“Mama,” I said, and she did not even need to hear that word to know that I wished her to head back down the hall, where she would sit beside Viviana, waiting for us to finish our discussion.

If, indeed, there was to be a discussion. I was determined not to speak to the man at all, though on another day his appearance might have touched me. His eyes were turned down out of respect, and he was dressed formally, as if he meant to go to some sort of ball after speaking to me. I noticed once again that the years had favored his appearance, taking some of the curves away from his cheeks and making him look every inch the elegant young man. Only the way he rubbed his fingers with his thumbs said otherwise, and I wondered if might be even more nervous than I had once been.

The fact was, I was no longer nervous around the man. All of my capacity for worry had been wrung out of me by the evening, and I felt only anger. Luke Barlow had not earned any confidences, and the fact that he had managed to make his way into the one space that I thought would be cut off from him made me want to fight him off with a spear.

“I don’t see why you would come here,” I told him, Rachel’s death and the shock of his presence making me feel that my heart had been stripped bare. “I do not wish to see you. I cannot make this any clearer. You’re going to get ride of any trace of our marriage, so please leave.”

His eyes went over to the chairs. I could see that he wished to sit and talk, but he could not do so while I remained standing.

Still, he spoke to me, and he did not whisper. “Please,” he said. “That is not at all what I wish. Will you not give me a moment, Alice? I know that it was impertinent of me to come here like this, but I could think of no other way to reach you.”

“We cannot talk here,” I told him, and I lead the way down into the shop, where I stood by the wall, willing him to finally walk out the door.

He did not.

“Alice,” he said, making another attempt. “Please, listen to me. I don’t want only to erase things, to pave the way for me to marry a girl that my mother has chosen. You misunderstand me.”

“If you keep speaking to me, Mr. Barlow, I will not just throw you out of my shop. I will scream, and bring the neighbors in, and you will leave in irons. Tell me, is that what you wish?” I hissed at him.

“And if I don’t speak?” he asked, reaching a hand out to me without touching me. His face was so close to mine that I could tell he meant to kiss me, but only if I would allow it.

I did not kiss him. I pushed his shoulder down, and he sank to the floor, sitting and looking up at me.

When I joined him on the floor, I pushed him down to his back. I did not kiss him, but I rubbed at his breeches with both my hands and he moaned. Putting a finger to my lips, I took out his prick and held it in my hands. Then I raised my skirts, rubbing myself against the thing before I shoved it inside of me.

In the midst of life, we may well be in death, but all of the death and disappointment of the evening had given me a primal need for life. After I mounted Luke, I found a bliss greater than anything I had ever felt with Mr. Wharton overtaking me. It was as if everything in my life had been simplified to the very basic goal of getting Luke deep inside me, and as long as I did that my joy would only grow. Indeed, it made me crazed, frantic.

The dress had such a low cut that I did not even need to take it off in order to reveal myself to Luke. He grabbed at the neckline and my bosom came out easily, tender under his large hands. It bounced furiously as I threw myself into riding Luke, my bare hands over my mouth attempting to muffle what would surely have been screams of passion.

The end came so quickly that it shocked me, my eyes opening wide as my body grabbed at Luke, death throwing me back, then forward. He clutched me with just as much fire, and it only took two more short jerks for him to lose his own composure, spending inside me before either of us could give a single thought to safety. The unreality of it all was staggering, my shop suddenly quiet, the two of us no longer shaking the furniture with our eye-splitting ruckus.

It was also all that my mind could take, after hours in which I had been through every single emotion that a poet had ever described. Unsteady, I rose to my feet, attempting to use my shift to dry the evidence from me, pushing my bosom back into what now seemed to be an utterly ridiculous dress.

I opened the door to the shop, and the few sounds of the night came in. A dog barked once, then I heard horses. Two men drunkenly singing to each other could be heard from several streets away. The night air was cool and sobering.

“Go,” I told him, and he left.