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CHAPTER 1
March 1814
MARY GODWIN
Mary tugged closer the tartan shawl that still smelled of Dundee's wild heaths, wondering if she was ready to shed the final lonely moments of her journey home from Scotland-that eyry of freedom where her father had sent her to be educated by an old radical friend so she might be brought up a philosopher like her mother.
At nearly seventeen years old, Mary understood her education was now considered complete even as she tucked into her reticule the well-loved volume of her mother's most celebrated-and vilified-book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Mary had read every book written by or about her mother, save the one that her father had strictly forbidden her, but this was her most beloved, and she'd been rereading its fabric-soft pages since the Osnaburgh had begun its traverse of the murky Thames.
Live each day as if it were your last.
For a woman with no intention of living beyond the age of thirty-eight-the age her mother died-Mary reasoned, at best, she had only twenty-two years left to live. Truly live.
Ahead of her, London bustled beneath soot-filled skies, and with the motion of the city came a return to her old life. Whether she wished it or not.
Standing on the deck, Mary rocked on her heels-London's frenetic energy was catching even from this distance-until she spotted her father's ramrod posture among the crowd milling about the wharf, a standout in his eccentric emerald waistcoat. Decorum forgotten, Mary waved wildly to catch his attention while burly sailors sprang to action to secure the Osnaburgh. Oh, how she had missed her father!
He had been her sole family for so many years. And it had been enough, at least for her. Her father had obviously needed something more.
Scotland's heather-speckled hills and the white-capped waves of the North Sea-the same that had caused Mary a week of seasickness and now made her striped cambric carriage dress hang looser on her bones-may never have existed as the weary Osnaburgh passengers jostled her forward onto the pier. Mary's sudden joy evaporated the moment she spied the gray-garbed wardress of a woman standing next to William Godwin. Mary wanted her father to be happy-truly, she did-but it was near impossible to find solace in her father's remarriage, to dour Jane Clairmont.
The noise and sun-rotten stench of the docks closed around her like a fist as her father and termagant of a stepmother approached.
"Grata domum, Mary." William Godwin kept both hands on his mahogany walking stick like a philosopher of old. The image was marred only by that eye-numbing emerald waistcoat.
"Gratias tibi," she responded in flawless Latin, preening at the pride reflected in her father's warm gray eyes. It was an old game of theirs, conversing in Latin. Once she'd mastered the ancient language of the classics, they'd moved to French until Mary could converse just as easily in both languages. She'd learned early how to capture her father's praise-through the accumulation of knowledge.
Jane-who also understood Latin-merely ignored their exchange. Mary recalled her stepmother responding once in the dead language during a dinnertime conversation. It was shortly after she'd joined the Godwin household, but Mary's father had ignored her, and Jane never again partook of their forays into Latin.
William Godwin rubbed the bend in his nose and appraised Mary with an approving nod-her stoic father abhorred tender embraces, especially in public, but his eyes had taken on an extra mistiness that made Mary hope he might embrace her, just this once. Instead, he gruffly cleared his throat before directing arrangements for the delivery of her portmanteau.
"You should have arrived an hour ago," Jane tutted under her breath, replacing the polished timepiece in her pocket. "Supper will be late and there's nothing to be done about it."
"My apologies. I learned much in Scotland, but not how to control the winds." Baiting her stepmother had been a favorite pastime before Scotland-like a tattered bear in a ring, Jane usually responded with growls and much gnashing of her pointed little teeth. Now that Mary was older, she had promised herself to try harder with Jane upon her return. In less than a minute, she was back to old habits.
Be kind, Mary, her father had implored when he'd first informed her of his upcoming marriage. For me.
More than ten years later and she was still trying.
"Please forgive me." Mary wished her father had come alone to meet her. "It's been a difficult journey and I'm out of sorts."
Jane scowled but didn't scold further, which Mary took as a small measure of progress.
"The porter assures me your trunk will arrive this afternoon." Her father gestured with his walking stick away from the Osnaburgh. "Shall we?"
"Indeed. If we hurry, I might still salvage the chestnut soup." Jane was already marching through the crowd in the direction of Skinner Street, leaving Mary and her father to trail behind like unruly attendants.
"It is good to see you, corculum." At that moment, with the salt of the North Sea in her hair and the ground still pitching beneath her feet like the decks of the Osnaburgh, her father's words were a safe harbor. "I hope you don't mind the walk. I thought to hire a coach, but my wife reminded me that we must economize. And so . . . we walk."
Mary strolled alongside her father, hearing the hum under his breath and knowing it was because she was back home. However, she wasn't quite as content. London's cramped streets were a far cry from Dundee's wild heaths, and the city closed in on her, the ramshackle buildings blocking out the spring sunshine, the refuse and turgid brown waters gurgling down the uneven gutters. Even the poisonous black snake of the river Fleet was so different from the sparkling creeks she'd left behind in Scotland. London's grit settled on her like the finest ash as they passed first Newgate Prison, with its wagon of pallid inmates bound for the gallows at Tyburn Square, and then Newgate Market, where a forest of waxy hog carcasses with unseeing eyes hung on racks outside the butcher shops.
Mary heaved a sigh of relief when they finally arrived at 41 Skinner Street, the ground-level bookshop that had also been the Godwin family home in recent years. Her father opened the door to the accompaniment of the shrill yapping of Jane's three russet turnspit hounds. Mary ignored them because by then her eyes had landed on the best treasure of all.
Books.
The tiny shop and even tinier press of M. J. Godwin & Co. sold stationery, maps, and games. An avid reader, Mary's stepmother had named the entire enterprise after herself, although no one called her M. J. or Mary Jane any longer. The shop was a way to make ends meet, but the real prizes inside these four brick walls were the scores of glorious books stacked on every space that would hold them. Much of the shop was dedicated to the lucrative new business of selling children's books, but familiar names beckoned: Descartes, Locke, and Voltaire, along with the works of Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Paine, and so many others Mary's father had placed in her hands from the moment she could read.
It was Mary's first memory, her father teaching her to read amid the musty scent of spindle mushrooms and autumn's final decay at the St. Pancras cemetery. Seated on her father's lap atop her mother's grave, she'd shivered against the damp while a crow rooted among piles of decomposing oak leaves and William Godwin guided her tiny finger over the chiseled letters of the tombstone.
"M-A-R-Y." William Godwin's voice had caught on each letter. "Your mother's name was the same as yours, corculum."
"What does that mean," she'd asked with a wrinkle of her nose. "Cor-, cor-cul . . ."
"Corculum," he'd repeated. "It means little heart. For you're an offshoot of your mother, and I loved her very dearly."
She remembered watching her father remove an embroidered handkerchief from his hellfire-red waistcoat and blow his nose, this staid man who was greater and wiser to her than any other being on earth. Given his tender feelings for her mother, Mary still didn't understand how her father had developed any affection for Jane Clairmont, since her stepmother was the least sentimental-or kind-person she knew.
"Mary! You're back!" Ignoring the yapping dogs, Mary's stepsister Claire bounded down the stairs in a riot of shiny chocolate-hued ringlets and pink muslin ruffles. Less than a year her junior, Claire moved about the world like a shimmering hummingbird. A nearsighted, very loud hummingbird, who was still somehow endearing to everyone she met. "You'll never guess tonight's dinner guest!" She turned to her mother-Claire ignored William Godwin as much as Mary ignored Jane-and wrinkled her nose. "You didn't tell her, did you?"
Alas, the books-and any semblance of quiet-would have to be postponed.
"Where is Fanny?" Mary cared little for dinner guests but deeply for her half sister, who was conveniently missing from the melee.
"Mother had to pack her off to the country to visit our aunts." Claire's voice dropped. "One of Fanny's moods, you know."
A heaviness settled upon Mary's shoulders, for Fanny was prone to sweeping depressions and terrible crying jags. Suddenly Mary missed her eldest sister's tallow-scented embraces and thought of the solemn manner in which Fanny showed off her collection of pinned butterflies and other insects. That was Fanny's way-always quiet and deferential. Whereas Claire . . .
"Guess who is coming to dinner tonight, Mary?" Claire insisted. Her enthusiasm was catching. "Guess!"
"Hmm . . ." Smiling, Mary tapped a finger to her chin before removing her gloves. She couldn't help herself; her attempt not to needle her stepmother didn't extend to Claire. "Is it Mr. Burr again? I did enjoy performing speeches last time he came to visit."
Claire narrowed her gimlet eyes. Mary had won that particular speech competition with Aaron Burr and outshone her stepsister's efforts to impress the former American vice president with an ill-rehearsed song. "Don't be an addle-plot." Claire poked Mary in the ribs with a roll of her doll-like eyes. "Not Mr. Burr."
Mary removed her bedraggled travel bonnet and barely suppressed a fresh smile as her father switched into his sharp-toed crimson Moroccan slippers. Some things never changed. "Then who?"
"Percy Bysshe Shelley," Claire exclaimed, but only sighed at Mary's blank stare. "The poet?"
"You girls will be your most charming tonight"-Jane shook a stern finger-"no talk of politics or philosophy, only the weather and the state of the roads." Her long nose verily twitched with disdain as she placed a stern matron's mobcap-no frills, only one row of sensible English bobbin lace-atop her head. Mary's stepmother need never worry about being driven from the throne of beauty, given that she'd never had a place there to begin with. With one barked command, Jane shooed her precious dogs upstairs. "Percy Shelley is currently your father's best hope for solvency."
Mary turned to her father in alarm and watched in dismay as his ears turned the same color as his outlandish slippers. Money had always been in short supply in the Godwin household, especially since her father had taken on Jane and Claire, but things had improved somewhat after her stepmother had wrangled him into opening the bookshop instead of relying solely on his pen. (It seemed more prescient to sell other authors' works, considering that few cared to purchase William Godwin's writings in the salacious aftermath of Mary Wollstonecraft's death.) But what Jane was insinuating . . .
"Surely things aren't so dire that you're planning to marry off one of us to salvage your accounts?" The idea was anathema to Mary-her father's perpetual lack of funds had always meant there would be no dowry for the girls, and thus marriage was unlikely. The very thought of trying to pair one of them into a match somehow advantageous to the family finances would have been entirely out of character for a man who claimed to want nothing more for his daughters than education and independence.
Although, given the narrow scope of suitable positions for young women-most notably those of wife and mother-Mary had often pondered what options her future held. A paid companion or governess? Spinster caretaker of her father and stepmother into their dotage?
Fortunately, her stepmother was quick to assuage the first of Mary's fears, only to replace it with another. "Percy Shelley is already married with an infant daughter and a second babe on the way. However, if your father did arrange a marriage for you, you'd say your vows and be a dutiful wife. Jaws will flap if you're still unwed by your twentieth year. Four years may seem ages away, but they'll pass sooner than you think."
Mary ground her teeth so hard they nearly fractured. "I care little about the opinions of small-minded people, and furthermore, I plan to make my own choice when it comes to marriage, if I ever marry. Anything less is oppression."
"Of course you'll choose your husband, if and when you decide to marry." Ever the peacekeeper, Godwin cleared his throat even as Jane threw her hands in the air. "Addressing the problem at hand, Percy Bysshe Shelley is an ardent admirer of my early work and is in a financial position to help moth-eaten radicals such as myself."
"He's a baronet's son," Claire gushed as she sashayed up the stairs. "Just wait until you see him, Mary. He's so terribly noble."
"He may be nobility," Jane groused, "but his boots are filthy. He tracked a mess into the dining room both times he's come to call."
"Mud on the carpets is a worthy price to pay if Shelley will lower the ebb waters of my accounts." Mary was struck by the deep furrows between her father's brows. His expression softened once Claire had disappeared upstairs and Jane marched toward the kitchen, nattering under her breath about wayward daughters and chestnut soup. "Be forewarned," he said to Mary, "your sisters are both quite taken with Percy Shelley. Claire turns quite addlepated when he's in the same room, and Fanny falls ever more silent, if you can imagine such a thing."
The floorboards creaked overhead, and Claire started singing "Sweet William's Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan" upstairs. The songbird sound of the broadside ballad made Mary smile, albeit briefly.
"How bad is it?" Mary asked quietly while her father unlocked the glass case that held the shop's most priceless volumes alongside her mother's first edition works. There were so many of them-it boggled the mind to think that one person could write so many important works over the course of so short a life. "The accounts, I mean. Surely you have something set aside?"
