After I got back to the shop, I was very nearly useless. In fact, my hands, usually quick and capable, were shaking. So I knew that the afternoon was not going to go well.

However, there was one course still open to me. Though the nature of my enterprise did not allow me to have many friends, I did have one, and that was quite enough for me. Most of the city knew her as the Duchess of Wilmington, but to me she was Rachel.

A note to her was enough to set me spirits to rest, at least temporarily. Most of the time, I had only to tell Rachel that I needed cheering up before she swooped in to rescue me. We met when I was governess to her great-nieces, and though there was quite a difference in our ages, I had always felt that different upbringings and circumstances had somehow produced in us two women who were very similar to sisters. Rachel was as kind to me as any sister would be, and I was as short with her as a younger sister ought to be. We were, in truth, very well matched.

Before I could go to see her, I stopped in to check on my daughter. When Viviana’s tutors weren’t about, she was supposed to sit in our rooms and do her work. But when my mother was in the shop, I did not trust her to do it.

Indeed, when I walked in, Vivi was neither at her books nor ashamed of the steps she had taken to avoid them.

“Viviana,” I said. “You are to start Greek next week. How can you do that when you haven’t even finished your Latin work?”

“It’s not work if you don’t get any money for it,” I heard from the window. I could only see the back of Viviana, as she was peering through the curtains at something down below. The bow that she had tied at the bottom of her braid was askew, and I moved to fix it, but she ducked.

“Vivi,” I told the back of her head, but she did not turn. “It is the work that is set out for you.”

She only continued to look out the window, snorting in derision. “Mama, did you know that one of the carriages nearly overturned?”

For a moment, I worried. Commotion on the street outside sometimes hurt the shop, as customers might begin to avoid the street altogether. “An overturned carriage?”

She finally looked at me. “No, mama. I was trying to tell you that the carriage nearly overturned. It did not, and now it’s stopped on the far side.”

The strangest things seemed to arrest my daughter’s attention. “I wonder that you watch it, then.”

She began to smile again. “Mama, there was someone in it! And she got out and refused to go back in. They’re all trying to speak to her about it, but she refuses.”

“The poor woman knows what impertinence is, then. I should say that she and I have something in common.”

Viviana frowned at this, wrinkling her nose. “You also don’t like getting in dangerous carriages, mama?”

“No. What that woman and I have in common is a thorough knowledge of stubborn natures, and a full idea of their consequences. I am imagining that it would be rather difficult to get you to go back into a carriage, Vivi, as even learning these Latin verbs seems to be too much of a sacrifice.”

With another child, that might have been a stern reprimand, but Viviana only laughed, winking at me. “I will sacrifice the verbs, mama! I will sacrifice all of Latin. They can all go to some other girl, and I shall never have to be tortured with them ever again.”

She giggled so much that she could not stop herself, and I held her in my arms, finally laughing myself after a rather trying day.

For a moment, embracing my daughter, I did feel a great comfort. After all, she was as dear to me as anyone ever could be, and in spite of her impertinence she was growing into a smart young woman.

But then she ran off with a smile, and my heart contracted. Viviana’s dimples were not from me, they were from her father. Luke Barlow had done the “honorable” thing, and he had certainly not become a father until after we had taken our wedding vows, but he had left me to raise his child as he stayed in the woods where he himself had grown up.

It was a truth that I was not sure I could bear.