‘Oh!’ I cried out.

She looked up.

‘It’s just – I’ve read that.’ I pointed at the book.

‘Milton?’

‘Yes. Ma’am.’

‘Madame. Ma’am is so English.’

I swallowed, lifted my cloth, took some of the paste onto it. She lowered the book, and I could see then that it was ink on her cheek, not a bruise. Thick as shadow. Black blooms dotted also across her skirt. I felt myself wishing I could unpick that word ‒ ma’am ‒ the way Phibbah would unpick a bad seam. Her eyes flicked to my brow and her mouth twisted. Was she laughing at me? Gawping at my hair? I felt it slipping out of the plait I’d tried to make that morning, growing like a sponge in water.

She smiled. ‘English maids are not so well-read.’

‘I . . .’

‘Something new ‒ at last. Nothing is ever new in this old bone-yard.’ She sloped her head in my direction. Along the margin of the page, a scrawl of words had been pressed in, nicked like a badly shaved neck: Non. NON. NON!

‘You are writing your own notes in it?’

She followed my gaze. ‘Well, if you choose to make one thing happen in a book, a thousand other things do not. When I read, it’s those thousand other things that I wonder about.’

‘You’re a writer?’

‘La! A writer!’ She shook her head. ‘Non. Not a writer. I am a wife. And my own husband would say that is occupation enough for any wife of his. Mr Benham is a friend to bluestockings, but he prefers them in the wild rather than domesticated . . . When Wollstonecraft said that a woman will be crucified for aiming at respect instead of love, she must have meant at the hands of the very man who is supposed to love her . . .’ She laughed, and I heard bitter notes in it. Then she picked up the book again. ‘Well. Did you like it?’

‘You must like it, to scribble so much in it.’

‘On the contrary, I think I dislike it intensely. But I have just read Mathilda ‒ do you know it?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I thought to write some notes on its themes, purely for my own entertainment, on the topic of the relationship between father and daughter – there is that kind of love between them, you see, in Mathilda, that makes for controversy. Then this sprang to mind and I thought I would reread it –’

‘The mind is its own place . . . ?’

‘Indeed! You have read it!’

I had. Hidden behind the grill, stomach flipping with each page. I looked away, towards the cold grate. She sat forward. From the glint in her eye I could see that I’d amused her. ‘You are very well-spoken, for a ‒’

‘Black?’

‘A maid!’ She smiled. ‘For a maid.’

‘Oh.’ My face flamed. There I was. Kneeling like prayer or begging. Stone poking my shins. I tried to get up. ‘Well, I –’