The morning already seemed to be wasted, and I did not want to waste the afternoon as well. I could not afford both to ignore the object of my visit to Bath and to make myself so mad with boredom that I would be sure to injure someone. If I could find the gentleman I had met the night before, then at least I might turn the afternoon into something amusing, rather than a series of humiliations. It was as if the city itself were designed to vex me, and I searched in vain for the address of the cathedral. Last night, motivated by guilt and intrigue, I had been able to find it. If I found it again and asked for the same room, might I find the man there, waiting for me?

Somehow I doubted this, but he seemed my best chance. Though my mind whispered that I could actually find a different man, perhaps one more willing to provide me with evidence of infidelity, my whole enterprise might be much more successful. Something stopped me from doing this. Whether it was the very strong impulse I had to go back and be with the man that my body longed to taste again, or whether it was simply because I did not want to bear the humiliation of being used by a different stranger, I could not say.

Though I did not know it as I wandered the streets under my wide hat, someone was searching for me even more closely. And by the time he found me, I was so disheartened by my rudimentary grasp of Bath geography so as to be quite susceptible.

“Please,” said the voice. “Can I help you?”

And when I looked up, I saw none other than the face of Luke Barlow.

I said “How do you do,” curtseying absently. My mouth did not seem ready to open and form any more words.

Fortunately, the gentleman was equally confused. “Miss Quint — Mrs. Bar — well,” he said, trying to settle on a name for the woman who had once been his wife. “Alice. I have taken rooms two streets over. Might I offer you some refreshment?”

I had half a mind to run, but then I would risk drawing more attention to the interaction. And I realized that I was both hungry and parched, having already spent many minutes wandering about in search of relief from my own torment.

And so, as if in a dream, I took the man’s arm, and we passed two blocks in absolute silence. It was not until we had entered his home, and had tea set down before us, that I was able to speak to the man. With the quiet girl who had brought our tea now out of the room, we were quite alone.

I had so many things to say to him that, at first, I was silent. But, as usual, I was the one with more of a backbone. I had not been brought up in a house where I could enjoy the luxury of silence, or run off every time I was faced with a sticky situation. So I forced myself to look at the man and shove the words up through my mouth.

“How did you find me?” I asked him, taking a sip of tea so that I appeared calm.

He frowned. “Well, after I saw you at the opera, it was not difficult.”

“You saw me at the opera? How does that translate into finding me here?”

My voice sounded so harsh that it was almost foreign to me, and Mr. Barlow was cautious as he answered.

“I asked some of the people around me who your companion was, knowing that they would also say something of you. I went to the shop the next day, but you were not in.”

I thought back to the spectacle. Though many of my clients hardly deigned to greet me when I was in such an opulent setting, they probably did tend to know me by sight.

“You should not have been able to find out my whereabouts simply from the shop,” I said. “I told mama not to tell people what I was doing.”

“You may forgive her for that. I made some comments, saying that I would look you up when I was next in Lancaster, and she revealed that you were here. After all, she did not know me.”

I scoffed, suddenly forgetting my nerves and speaking as a wronged daughter. “Well, how should she? It’s not as if you ever gave me a miniature. Nor a lock of hair, even.”

This seemed to pain him so much that I laughed. “But why worry about all those trifles? Tell me why you came here. You wish to annul our marriage, I suppose, and needed to find some evidence that I had not been faithful.”

At this, he winced. “No. I could annul it if I wished, of course, because the vicar had his mother-in-law write out all of those things, and she did not give the right spelling of your name.”

I snorted. “I wonder if it was because he displeased her in his own marriage. Then again, there are many who would say the same of you, calling me ‘that woman,’ and I suppose they would have the right to do so.”

“Please, Alice,” he said. “I did not come to hear such things.”

“Nor to get what you need for an annulment, apparently,” I said, watching him and trying to decide whether I believed his story. It was not so unlikely that the vicar’s wife’s mother had butchered my name, and that Luke Barlow would be able to have our union annulled quietly. But why had he not done so before acquiring a new fiancee, and why had he come to Bath when some of the most fashionable families were already returned to town?

I asked him. “Why did you come here, then?” I asked him.

“Because I could not find you,” he said. “And now I finally have.”

He reached to take my hand, and we sat staring at each other like a pair of romantic figurines.