“Oh, my dear, dear girl. I know I’ve let you down, but I don’t know how to fix things.”

“Do you still love me, after everything that has happened?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then you have not let me down.” I took up his hand and stroked the freckled skin on the back. It was dry, but the palm of his hand and the pads of his fingers were as smooth as silk. They always had been, and I’d always found it curious. “I have made mistakes, Da, and I have made choices. One of those choices was not to seek a marriage.”

“Would it have been possible?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so. But it was not what I wanted.”

“But, Essy, life is hard for women who aren’t married.”

“Ditte seems to cope. Eleanor Bradley seems happy; Rosfrith and Elsie aren’t engaged, as far as I know.”

He searched my face, trying to understand what I was saying, what it meant. He was editing the future he thought I would have, excising the wedding, the son-in-law, the grandchildren. A sadness clouded his eyes. I thought of Her.

“Oh, Da.” Tears fell, and neither of us wiped our cheeks. “I have to think that I’ve made the right decisions. Please, please, just keep loving me. It’s what you do best.”

He nodded.

“And promise me.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t try to fix things. You are a brilliant lexicographer but not a matchmaker.”

He smiled. “I promise.”

The Scriptorium was an uncomfortable place for a while. Though I demurred, and Da stopped encouraging their efforts to impress me, Mr. Pope and Mr. Cushing were slow to understand. “They are a bit slow with everything,” Da commented with an apologetic smile.

But the source of most of my discomfort was Mr. Dankworth. Before he arrived, my desk had the perfect amount of privacy and perspective. I could do my work without interference, and when I paused I needed only to lean a fraction to my right to have a view of the sorting table and of Dr. Murray on his perch. If I leaned a fraction further, I could see who came and went through the Scriptorium door. Now, when I looked to my right, my view was the bulk of Mr. Dankworth’s hunched shoulders and the perfect part of his hair. I felt imprisoned.

Then he began scrutinising my work.