“Never lead, but obey! For they are created for pleasure and delight alone!”

“As long as it isn’t their pleasure, their delight,” I said.

“What? Women having their own delight?”

I heard myself laugh out loud, and it startled me, for it was a sound I hadn’t heard in many months. To be deprived of one’s own laughter I knew in that moment to be a cursed thing. I felt delight as my right, my connection to the wonder that the world contained. I’d relied, for so long, on Fanny to provide it. But here instead was a near stranger, a man with tight-curled hair and plain dress—the opposite of Fanny in every way—making a twenty-seven-year-old spinster laugh. I realized I had tears in my eyes, and hadn’t spoken for some time.

“I’m sorry. Did I offend you, Miss Wollstonecraft?”

“No, Mr. Johnson,” I said. “You amused me. And I’m grateful for it.”

He looked down at my pages, his brow heavy. I prepared for the worst.

“Well, I would be grateful if you would take ten pounds for it, your manuscript.”

“Ten pounds?”

“With one condition.”

I held my breath.

“That you will send me anything you write in the future, give me first chance at it.”

I wanted to throw my arms around him and bless his good face. The whole way back to Newington Green, I felt the wind lift my sails. An important publisher, who had high regard in the world I wanted to be regarded by, would publish me. But Johnson’s ten pounds, though I was elated to have it, wasn’t enough to dig myself and my sisters out of the hole we were in, not to mention do something to help the Bloods, who had lost their primary source of income with Fanny’s passing. I’d promised her I would never abandon them, and promised myself. I would find something—anything—to right my ship.

I would not fail my friend again.

Robert and Caroline King, Lord and Lady of Kingsborough, Mitchelstown, Ireland, were in need of a governess, and liked the sound of me. I was the right age, a spinster, and now an experienced schoolmistress. Lady Kingsborough had been impressed by my book, or at least that I’d written one. But more to the point, they would pay forty pounds for a year’s service, which, if I could suffer it that long, would give me twenty to pay off my debts and give something to the Bloods, while the rest I would save to help me and my sisters begin a new life. One year, and then I would be free.