As suitors went, Eustace was as close to perfection as it was possible to be – a fact that Beatrice’s aunt had pointed out to her on more than one occasion. Not only was he charming, handsome, wealthy and titled, but he treated Beatrice with perfect courtesy, and came from one of the most noble families in England. It would be hard to marry any higher without marrying an actual prince. And nobody seemed to care that Beatrice had never wanted the prince in the fairy tale, that she’d always been more enamoured with the cursed frogs and poisonous mushrooms and wicked fairies.

Since she’d been very small, it had seemed perfectly and painfully self-evident to Beatrice that a man could not possibly compare with the fascination of a mushroom. He could not distract from the joy of studying, dissecting and cataloguing the various types of fungi, or from the delight of painstakingly creating highly detailed and accurate botanical illustrations.

Beatrice enjoyed collecting interesting plants and tending to her herbarium, and the thought of putting all that aside to become a wife and mother left her itching abominably within her own skin, causing it to feel too tight, as if it had been made for another person altogether. Regret burned in her stomach, as hot and black as a lump of smouldering coal. The match was a mistake. She knew that in her bones. She’d been an unwilling participant from the start. But the marriage had been organised by her aunt and Eustace’s mother, and it seemed that Beatrice was to have no say in the matter at all.

She’d tried to explain how she felt to her father when the proposal was first made, but it was hopeless. Perhaps things would have been different if her mother had still been alive. She had never minded Beatrice’s lack of poise, her plain features, her social awkwardness, her stammering, her fascination with mushrooms. She had seemed to accept Beatrice for who she truly was. But her father was a different matter.

A young woman needs a husband, Beatrice, he’d said. I beg you, don’t be unnatural. Don’t make life miserable for yourself. I want to leave this world knowing that you’re taken care of.

He’d known that he was dying, and the knowledge only seemed to make him more immovable. Still, he’d never called her unnatural before, and the memory continued to sting, white-hot as the lash of a whip. Beatrice wished she had spoken differently during that conversation – one of the last ones she’d had with her father before his death. She ought to have insisted on making herself heard and calling the marriage off, but instead she had allowed herself to get swept along on the tide of other people’s plans for her. The opal ring felt like a manacle, a brand of ownership, smoking and smouldering through all the delicate layers of her skin.