“Courting couples do,” Portia replied, “though I wasn’t about to take that risk with your uncle. As fond as he was of his port, he might have left me widowed before I’d wed, as the saying goes. Harry would have bruited about your parents’ indiscretion had your father thwarted the courtship. The good vicar was vain and hypocritical enough to be manipulated that easily.”

The fire crackled softly, the cat purred, and Matilda downed half her remaining drink. “Is every adult woman forced to constantly manage and accommodate the self-indulgence and arrogance of the men around her?”

Portia nudged the brandy bottle closer to Matilda’s elbow. “Tremont isn’t self-indulgent or arrogant, and he’s marvelously well-read. He didn’t simply memorize his lines for the day and then spit them out for the headmaster. He is a learned man, Matilda. Smart enough for you, and a good man.”

How smart was a woman who’d not known the circumstances of her own birth?

Matilda rose to pace, her progress around the parlor tracked visually by the cat. “My father… My father berated me constantly for laughing, for curtseying too quickly, for smiling at the butcher’s boy, or not making a long enough production of grace on the few occasions he allowed me to say it. He assured me over and over again that I would come to a bad end, that I was a burden sent by the devil to try his patience.”

“Your father was impatient, and he certainly tried your mother’s nerves. He also lied if he claimed you were sent by the imp, Matilda. You were an ominously well-behaved girl, and your father’s own precipitate wooing occasioned your conception. If you didn’t realize that Harry was a born deceiver, maybe that’s because your father lied to you from your birth. He told you that you weren’t quiet enough, pious enough, submissive enough to God’s will… The lack of virtue never lay with you. I’m sorry we didn’t have this discussion years ago, but I thought Harry would have told you.”

Matilda paused before a very good sketch of the cat posed beside a vase of irises. “Papa would doubtless take the oldest dodge in the Bible and blame Mama for tempting him, though she married straight out of the schoolroom. What does ‘ominously well-behaved’ mean?”

Portia stroked the cat and gazed at the fire. “When a girl is held to an impossible standard for too long, she eventually stumbles, and that stumbling can feel… good. Like freedom and honesty and power.”

What experience did Portia speak from? “Portia, why do I feel as if it’s only now, as I’m on the brink of leaving England, that I begin to know you?”