The music stopped and the priest stepped forward, a benevolent smile on his face. Beatrice wondered what else her husband would take from her. First it would be her fortune and Half Moon House, then her stammer, and what then? Her unladylike interest in the sciences? Her love of fungi? She had been careful never to discuss such things with him during their courtship, sticking only to acceptable topics, but he could hardly fail to notice her interests once they were married and shared a home. And what about her desire to carry as few children as possible, or preferably none at all? He would not accept it; she knew that he wouldn’t.

Suddenly she was back at her mother’s deathbed, making the wrong choice, being a coward, taking the easy way out. It was a mistake that had haunted her ever since. Was she really so stupid that she was going to make another one just like it? One that would decide the course of her life forever? She glanced back at the house and, for just a moment, thought she saw her mother at the window of her old bedroom, looking down upon the wedding with a sad expression on her face. Of course her mother was not really there – she was only the ghost of an idea, the light reflecting strangely upon the glass – yet suddenly Beatrice was certain that she would not have approved of Eustace, or this wedding.

The world is a difficult place to be a woman, she had told Beatrice more than once. Do not allow yourself to be bullied into unhappiness.

Beatrice had let her mother down once. She didn’t intend to do so again. Her determination exploded out of her fear, bursting right through any dread she had about what people would think, what they would say, how they would judge her. They could all be damned, the lot of them.

‘Stop,’ she said.

The priest looked startled. Eustace had gone utterly still.

‘Beatrice,’ he said. The word came out very quietly. There was a warning in it and his gloved hand held hers too tightly, squeezing the bones of her fingers together, making her whole hand ache. But Beatrice was done with being obedient. She was done with being decorous. And she was done with being trapped.

She yanked her hand free and pushed back her veil to look her betrothed in the eye.

‘I’m s-sorry,’ she said. ‘But I c-can’t marry you. I won’t.’