You mightn’t believe me when I tell you I soon forgot those pages were there, but that is just what happened. Nor was there malice in what I did, though there are so many now trying to find malice in everything I did. If it was a crime, then I am guilty of it, and I confess it here. But I just wanted to keep that book as close as I could get it to my skin. Not to remind myself happiness was still possible, but to remind myself that anger was.

From the hallway, the tick of footsteps. I barely had time to scramble upright, swipe up my bucket and rag, and stumble over to the hearth.

A man appeared. He drew back when he saw me. ‘Langton’s girl,’ he said.

The finest mind in all of England. But he was a man, not a mind. And a large one at that. Wearing a black, well-starched suit, white cravat, shoes polished to blinding. Long nose, sandy hair pulled smooth, tied with a black ribbon at the nape. He looked as old as Langton, but his eyes were bright, his hands steady. He had the gift of health.

But then I disappointed myself. Because it was terror, not anger, that I felt. I drew back. ‘Mr Benham? I was . . . I was . . . lighting your fires. Sir.’

He frowned at me, walked over to his desk. Blocked the globe, like a cloud over the sun. He leaned over and lifted his letter.

I flapped my hands, sure that he’d seen me take those pages. ‘I’ll sew them back in, if I can, if you’ll ‒’

‘Sew what?’

‘What is it worth? A few pages out of Candide?’ I let my arms hang, a sick feeling in my stomach.

‘Candide?’ He glanced behind him. ‘Oh. Ha! Quite right, quite right. What’s any page worth? Of any book? Words as commodities.’ He tapped his forefinger to his lips. His hands were pale and girlish, like those of any man who works only in his head. ‘Langton said you had some wit.’

In those days, I had a dog’s nose for praise, though what I was thinking was that Langton would never have said any such thing. ‘He did?’

‘He also said you were a machine and he could wind you up and make you move.’

‘That sounds more like him.’

He laughed to himself. ‘Marguerite will find you droll.’

I stepped back, still in the grip of my terror, but knowing I had to steady myself. The only thing a maid can do with a new master is to study him. ‘Sir.’

Along the top of the bookcase, I could see a telescope with a gilt-edged eyepiece, a marble statuette of a horse bucking onto its hind legs, a rocking cow made of plain old wood. I couldn’t see what one thing had to do with the next or why they were hidden up there out of reach. They looked like toys he might have found it difficult to part with, as if he was ashamed for the world and his mother to know that the finest mind in England still hadn’t put away his childish things. He flipped the tail of his jacket, lowered himself into the chair. ‘Stay. I want a word with you.’