As I walked off, I recognized that I had surely been wrong. The man had most likely been with many women before, and I should have to be careful that he did not carry any contamination I might wish to avoid. If he really had the experience that I believed, he might well be prepared to take plenty of precautions. After all, I wanted only a divorce, not some particular illness. It was one of the advantages of frigging Mr. Wharton. Though a rogue at heart, due to his fear of women he had been chaste before he married and quite faithful to his wife while she was alive. It took years of leering at me over the counter of my shop, and a powerful dose of loneliness for me, before the two of us came to an arrangement.

I went to his home, we shared less than an hour, and I left with some expensive present that could not be traced to him. In truth, my body was so full of inconvenient urges that I would have gone along with the arrangement even if it did not involve a payment, but it certainly helped salve my conscience when I wondered what my daughter would think of me. If ever she found out and decided I was too dishonorable to keep her good opinion, at least she might receive a large cash present from her estranged mama.

The nameless man was different from Mr. Wharton. He not only had a veritable harem of women at his beck and call, at least according to my imagination, but he also knew how to send them in different directions so as to avert suspicion.

It was wise of him to suggest that the two of us walk to the inn using different routes, as I was easily able to blend in with the large party in front of us, as it consisted mainly of loud women with a few gangly young men mixed in for good measure. I pretended that I was smiling at some of their jokes, all the while watching for the place that I knew the inn to be. If anyone had seen me with the nameless man, he could have stated rather accurately that he only walked with me for some blocks before I rejoined some others and he went a different way.

As I approached, though, I saw someone on the other side of the street, and quickly turned my face away. In the fading light, it appeared to be Mr. Barlow, walking alone with his eyes searching the streets about him for something.

But as soon as I looked back, he was out of view, and I wondered if I had in fact seen him. If he were courting a young lady in town, there was no reason for him to be in Bath so early in the year.

Hiding my face, I continued on, wondering if I possibly could have seen him. On the one hand, it would be extremely unlucky for me to see the man twice in the span of one week when a whole ten years had passed without our meeting each other even once. After some thought, I did wonder why that was. In the early days of my business, I had been afraid that he would walk through the door on any given day. After all, the people that I served ranged from workers to merchants, merchants to wealthy merchants, wealthy merchants to gentlemen, and finally from gentlemen to wealthy gentlemen and very wealthy ladies. For some years, I had been serving the group that included Mr. Barlow, and yet I had lost my fear of seeing him.

I had assumed that he was likely still at Woodshire, and this was probably close to the truth. It seemed strange that his sister had not come to town, but perhaps she had managed to marry someone from a local “good” family, hand-selected by her mama, as her brother almost had. Miss Courtenay was the other person whose presence I feared, but on that score I had a little bit more peace. The gossip that I heard from one of her cousins, years ago, was that she had married some sort of important Belgian man and gone to live with him for good. So the woman who had found Paris dull was doomed to live all her life on the continent. It would have amused me, were I not terrified that this particular cousin might somehow discern my role in her relative’s humiliation.

The thoughts of the Barlow family swirled about my head as I tried to find the inn, realizing that I may have taken the wrong way through the streets. As the night began to darken, I wondered whether I may have made a mistake, and whether I should hail a carriage simply to have a guarantee that I would be delivered to the correct address. Though I did not have an address, only a landmark.

A landmark that, I realized with relief, was swiftly coming into view. St. Swithin Church looked austere in the fading light. I recalled the story of the saint himself restoring a basket of eggs that were broken by silly men. If I broke some part of myself, would a prayer for forgiveness be enough to restore it? Normally, as someone who did not believe in any sort of higher power, I avoided churches and only attended to show outward respectability. But, for a moment, I wished I were a believer. The power of cleansing myself with a prayer and a little bit of divine intervention would have been quite useful.

Attempting to stop thinking about sin, I straightened my shoulders and looked away from St. Swithin’s to the buildings just across the street. I saw the inn and prepared myself to ask for the little room, well aware that I might be about to do far more damage to my reputation and my hard-won identity than I ever thought possible.