“Well,” he said, finally laying down all of his papers and looking me straight in the eye. “That is a surprise. You’re a married woman, then, Mrs. Allen! But it still does not explain to me why you rang the bell of an old and distempered solicitor.”

With a start, I realized it did not. “Yes, of course. I recently saw my husband with a young woman whom he apparently wishes to marry. We shall both be implicated in bigamy if I do not manage to divorce him right away. But I do not know how to go about it, and I beg you to give me the wisest course of action.”

He did not answer right away. When he did, it was with a solicitor’s typical caution, not the brashness that I had seen from him only a moment ago.

“You are quite sure that your husband means to marry this young woman? The man in question is undoubtedly your husband, and their plans are marriage and nothing else?”

I thought of the lovely young thing in my shop, going on about her trousseau. “Yes. I am quite sure on both points.”

He looked down at his desk, then glanced at his pen, but made no move to make any notes of what I was saying. I was thankful for all this. The longer the conversation remained only between the two of us, the longer I might manage to keep my horrible secret.

“I am prepared to find all the evidence of their plans I can,” I said. “After all, they will not be able to marry legally unless I divorce the man first. And if I do divorce him, I highly doubt his bride will wish to pursue the marriage, though I must admit that is not my first concern.”

“You sound as if you wished to protect her, Mrs. Allen.”

I thought on it for a moment. I despised the woman, and she had certainly shown nothing but contempt for me. And yet, this was not quite enough for me to despise her. I had been taken in by Luke Barlow, with his excellent manners and his eagerness in the boudoir. If I acted quickly, I might ensure that this woman would not suffer what I suffered. And any woman who came after her would at least be legally able to marry the man, even if his character might give rise to other concerns.

Mr. White, however, had other concerns. He leaned forward in his chair and looked at me carefully. “And you have no reason to believe that the original marriage was not valid? It sounds as if you were very young, Mrs. Allen. Did both of you have permission from your parents?”

“We were old enough,” I told him. “Twenty one. We should have known better, at least in the eyes of the law.”

He shook his head. “Well, at present, let me be the one to worry about the law. And I’m forced to inform you that you must take the opposite course.”

I opened my eyes wider. “What, reconcile with the man?” After a decade apart, I knew not how I would begin, and I certainly did not want to go begging my former husband to accept me after he had turned against me when my need was greatest.

Mr. White was rubbing his eyes, and even if his words had been gentler than they were, I would have known the situation was confounding just by his manner. “No, no reconciliation is needed. But a woman trying to obtain a divorce in this country must either have an unlimited purse or die in the attempt. You’ll not believe how many women who have been killed by their husbands, there very same men that the court would not allow them to divorce. Insufficient grounds, they say.”

I thought of my old neighbor, a Mrs. Lind. She was not killed by her husband, but a woman who was supposed to be her nurse began carrying on with the husband. Mr. Lind beat his wife whenever he was drunk, which was most of the time, and he laughed in her face when she told him to stop seeing the nurse. Then the pair of them, mater and nurse, ran off to Scotland. Whether it was to marry or to simply live in sin outside of London’s reach, I had never known. And even with all that, I was not sure if Mrs. Lind had ever been able to get a divorce from the scoundrel. She had tried, but what the solicitor was telling me had been true for her. Since her husband had not been quite as violent as he might have been, the fact that he had gone off to live with a comely younger woman was of little interest to the courts.

“Then what were you meaning by the opposite course, sir?” I asked again, the weariness from my long journey beginning to tell on me.

He sat back in his chair again, folding his hands over his great belly. “Well, you must try and get him to divorce you. I’m sorry if that sounds shocking.”

I laughed. “Not as shocking as it seems difficult. I don’t wish to have any contact with the man, but I would rather divorce him than force him to divorce me. Particularly when he was the one who grew too ashamed of me to continue the marriage.”

“A sad story, but one I have heard before,” said Mr. White. “Some men have no honor.”

I waited for a few moments, hoping that he might say that he had changed his mind, and that he had found some alternative. Apparently, this was not to be, and so I sighed and attempted to chart a course that would lead to a discreet divorce.

“If I wanted to sever the bond of marriage,” I asked quietly, “What would I do?”

Mr. White harrumphed. “Well, there is no discreet way to ask this question, so I’m sure you will forgive me. Is there evidence that you could get to him? Evidence that, in your eyes, at least, the marriage has ended?”

It was not a shocking question, and I thought on it. The problem was that my paramour in the city insisted on perfect secrecy, and when I was there, I thought it fit to maintain that for my own purposes. We had never written any letters that a court could object to, and we certainly had not been seen in public together.

“I have no evidence, I am afraid.”

The man frowned. “Well, Mrs. Allen, I’m going to have to trust that you know what you’re doing. Unless you find a way to create some documentation for that man to take with him to a judge, your marital status is all but assured.”