Copyright © 2024 Lesley McDowell

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the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means,

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by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by

WILDFIRE

an imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

First published as an Ebook in Great Britain by

WILDFIRE

an imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP in 2024

All characters – apart from the obvious historical figures – in this publication are

fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to

reproducing copyright material. The author and publisher will be glad

to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

Cover design by Amy Cox

Illustrations by Lucy Rose

eISBN: 978 1 0354 0027 0

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

About the Author

Praise

Also by Lesley McDowell

About the Book

Dedication

Epigraph

Acknowledgements

Field Place, 1849

I.

Clairy, Lake Geneva 1816

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1843

II.

Clairy, Lake Geneva 1816

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1843

III.

Clairy, Lake Geneva 1816

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1843

IV.

Clairy, Lake Geneva 1816

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1843

V.

Este, 1818

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1845

Field Place, 1849

Bournemouth, 1859

Author’s Note

Bibliography

Lesley McDowell is an author and editorial consultant. From 1998–2018 she was a literary critic for The Herald, The Scotsman, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and others. Her first novel was The Picnic (2007). In 2010 she published Between the Sheets: The Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th-Century Women Writers, which was shortlisted for the non-fiction prize in the 2011 Scottish Book Awards. Her second novel, Unfashioned Creatures, about Mary Shelley’s Scottish childhood friend, was published by Saraband in 2013. She has a PhD on the work of James Joyce, and has won three Creative Scotland writers’ bursaries.

Praise for Lesley McDowell

‘Beautifully written, Clairmont tells the sensuous hidden story of an influential historic woman.’

Sara Sheridan

‘A novel that captures feverish infatuation, devastating betrayal and the glimpse of a legendary moment in history; Clairmont is an absorbing, intoxicating page-turner about a woman who deserves to be remembered.’

Jennifer Saint

‘Clairmont is an intimate and enlightening tale of one of Romanticism’s forsaken muses – artfully told in beautiful prose, a story that lingers in the mind far beyond the last page.’

Susan Stokes-Chapman

‘A sensitive, beautifully told fictionalisation that gives a voice to one of literature’s greatest muses.’

Laura Shepperson

‘Clairmont is a fascinating journey into the dark underbelly of Romanticism. I was gripped, horrified and enlightened – and in awe of a woman who risked such pain and sorrow to “mix in the throng”.’

Meg Clothier

‘Clairmont is a beautifully written unveiling of a character who deserves to be as remembered as Byron and Shelley. A delightfully haunting gem of a story.’

L. R. Lam

‘A must for all lovers of historical fiction. Clairmont is a true-life story of hope, passion, and regrets with Claire Clairmont (step-sister of the writer Mary Shelley) enduring against all odds after an ill-starred affair with the poet, Byron.’

Essie Fox

By Lesley McDowell

Fiction

The Picnic

Unfashioned Creatures

Clairmont

Non-fiction

Between the Sheets: The Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th-Century Women Writers

The spellbinding, bold new retelling of the story of Lord Byron and the Shelleys, from the perspective of Claire Clairmont, the incredible woman that history tried to forget. Perfect for readers of Hamnet, Mrs England and Godmersham Park.

Geneva.

They always come back to it, somehow.

They’re the only ones who know what took place there.

1816. A massive volcanic eruption has caused the worst storms that Europe has seen in decades, yet Percy and Mary Shelley have chosen to visit the infamous Lord Byron at his villa on Lake Geneva. It wasn’t their idea: Mary’s eighteen-year-old step-sister, Claire Clairmont, insisted.

But the reason for Claire’s visit is more pressing than a summer escape with the most famous writers in the world. She’s pregnant with Byron’s child – a child Byron doesn’t want, and scarcely believes is his own.

Claire has the world in her grasp. This trip should have given her everything she ever dreamed of. But within days, her life will be in ruins.

History has all but forgotten her story – but she will not be silenced.

For every Claire Clairmont who fears her story will be forgotten

‘I would willingly think that my memory may not be lost in oblivion as my life has been’

Claire Clairmont

Acknowledgements

In 1998, a newspaper asked me to review a new publication – Maurice or The Fisher’s Cot, a newly discovered short story for children by Mary Shelley. But it was the introduction by Claire Tomalin that grabbed my attention, and this sentence in particular: ‘To begin with, there is the matter of lost children.’ I knew who Claire Clairmont was from reading the Romantic poets and Frankenstein when I was a student. But I didn’t know about her remarkable life after Shelley’s death, or the full extent of her losses. After this, I read everything I could find – the two biographies about her, her volumes of letters, her journals. I had an idea to write a novel about her life and that’s what I tried to do. But I lacked the experience to make it work, and after several attempts, I moved on to other subjects and published other things.

Twenty-four years and several novels later – both published and unpublished – I tried again, and the result is Clairmont. My first and biggest thanks are to my editor Jack Butler, for sending me the email that every writer dreams of receiving. From our first conversation, he showed me how well he understood Claire’s story, and that I could trust him completely with what I wanted to write. The support of the team at Wildfire has been a joy to experience; again, it’s been everything a writer could want.

I’d also like to thank Helen Fitzgerald, for introducing me to writing in coffee shops, which led me to my favourite Caffe Nero and ‘my’ writing desk. Huge thanks to The Society of Authors and The Royal Literary Fund for much appreciated financial aid during the latter stages of writing, and to my agent, Ian Drury, for signing me up when I really thought my publishing chances were all gone. Thanks especially to my Mum, Irene McDowell, and to my dear friends who have kept me going through the years of highs and lows. And, most of all, thanks to my amazing husband, Russel McLean. Claire wasn’t lucky enough to marry her soulmate; thankyou, Russel, for not being a Byron. Or a Shelley!

Lesley McDowell, March 2023

Field Place, 1849

‘How long have you known? Tell me!’

The shut door doesn’t answer.

She thumps her heart to smother its beat. But on it pulses; on, on, on.

On, on, on, she counts the warnings she didn’t heed. Ominous clouds lingering after the rain. A single raven brooding on a shattered chimneypot. Her own foolish smile at the memory of this house, and of a similar journey to the village nearby, made many years ago.

Only after the carriage rounded the bend to halt by worn pillared doors did she feel it. That unseen tug at her shoulder. The kind a ghost – or an old enemy – would give.

So maybe that’s why she’s here, on the floor of the upstairs hallway with her back against a locked door, skirts fanned about her.

Why she’s pulling at the buttons on her boot, fierce as a French cook plucking a goose.

Why she’s getting to her feet, boot in hand, to strike the door with such rage that the heel flies off, scuttling into the darkness.

Why she’s a mad woman, screaming over and over.

‘Let me in, Mary! Damn you. Damn you. Let me in!’

I.

Clairy, Lake Geneva 1816

‘Oh, let me in, Mary. I’ve said sorry a hundred times.’

The hole in her chemise crinkles when she changes position. Mice, when they first travelled to the Continent two years ago, got into their trunks, feasted on everything.

It’s not quite ruined yet, though. Not like the one lying on her bed.

A delicious thought, bringing her knees to her chest. Scampering up her spine to rest where he lately put his lips. On her neck, a bruise purples where his teeth pressed; on her right breast, crescent moons left by his fingernails redden.

She hadn’t thought to feel – or see – the ruin of her reputation in quite that way. And soon there will be so much more of it for everyone to see! A snigger seeps out; she clamps a hand over her mouth, swallows it back down. Stretches her scratched legs along the hard wooden floor outside Mary’s room.

Mary had made plenty of others feel the ruin of her own reputation when she – no, they, for don’t they do everything together? – first ran off two years ago. Sitting at the door, she bites her lip, wonders if her own ruin will have the same effect. Another laugh bubbles up then – ah, but Albe hasn’t invited her to follow him in the same way Shelley did Mary.

No matter; it’ll be a given now. No neckerchiefs will hide his mark on her, not when her belly grows. No collars, no matter how extravagant, will disguise that.

Her fingers stop stroking her stomach; there’s nothing showing yet, of course. They travel up her breastbone, then find the tender spot on her neck. It nips a little. He’d watched the vein pulse before sinking his teeth into it, hard. He likes making women hurt, he’d said. A woman’s pain is a sign of grande passion.

She didn’t weep, though.

‘Clary Clearmont,’ he’d teased, as she lay naked as a newborn on his grand four-poster. ‘Clarity Clair de Lune,’ he’d said, ringed fingers skimming her breasts back and forth to catch on her nipples, hoping to force tears from her.

Mary’s just jealous.

‘Leave me alone.’ Mary’s furious, reedy voice comes from behind the door. It would grate on her if she wasn’t so delighted with herself. ‘I’ve told you a hundred times.’

But now Shelley’s tramping upstairs, pink-cheeked as a babe, eyes full of the sea, almost tripping over her legs, with no remarks at all about her scratches. Does he even see them? He’s muttering – lines of a new poem, probably – as he strides past the door, before Mary’s voice stops him.

‘Pecksie! Pecksie!’ he says.

Claire shrugs.

He shakes his head, finger at his lips. ‘My love, come out,’ he calls through the door. ‘Claire’s very sorry.’

Tutting, Claire gets to her feet. ‘Claire’s had enough of being sorry. Dear God. All this fuss over bedsheets.’

The bedsheets are blowing in the wind like white clouds, suspended from Albe’s balcony high up on the hill behind their little house.

The second Mary saw them from the garden, she threw a strop to shake the birds from the trees. ‘Why don’t you just sell tickets?’

And so it began. Back and forth they went, over and over, until Little Willmouse started to cry and Mary ran upstairs to him, calling her all sorts of names.

So, Albe’s made a show of their night together. But it’s only to the good; why doesn’t Mary see that? Claire gets to wondering who hung out the sheets, and pictures Fletcher, sulky and bent, grappling with his master’s soiled bedding. Then Polidori, his poor physician – Polly-dolly – entangled in his hero’s linen, face like a lost thundercloud.

That makes her snort too loudly, though.

The door flies open, Mary clasping Willmouse to her wet bosom. His round blue eyes blink, and Claire blows him a kiss and reaches for him. Mary thrusts the child at his father instead.

‘She brought us all this way, just for herself. When she said it was for all of us. For you.’

‘Who’s she?’ Claire demands, barring Mary’s way to the stairs. ‘And besides, Shelley—’

But that’s another secret, beside the one in her belly. She stops. Mary’s breath is in her nostrils, she’s so close. Her eyes are tear-stained, her face pale and pinched. Guilt softens Claire; she’s about to apologise again when Mary shoves past, saying, ‘You really believe he cares about the women he takes to bed?’

‘Well, he’s only known three kinds,’ she says, keeping her tone light as air. ‘Whores. Servants. Aristocrats. I confuse him.’

‘Oh yes, Claire, you’re holding all the cards.’ Mary’s golden hair is undone and bushy in that fetching way Shelley likes. She’s buttoning up her loose chemise, patchy and wet after feeding Willmouse. Shelley stares after Mary with a need that pushes Claire out of view, consigns her to the margins.

As though she doesn’t exist.

Albe’s never looked at her the way Shelley does Mary. Excluding everyone else in the room by the force of his gaze.

Not yet. Not yet.

All she’s had to offer him was the ruin of her reputation. But it’s far beyond that now, the kind of ruin that grows inside a woman.

Her sister’s envy breaks into her thoughts.

‘I didn’t show off what I was – we were – doing,’ Mary’s saying to Shelley now. ‘I took the greatest care—’

Oh, Mary only wants her small and humble. Stuck on the outskirts of everything.

But it’s her ever-growing ruin that will bring her closer to Albe. As close as his own wife was, once.

So pride lifts her chin as she bares her ruined neck and follows Mary, who’s flouncing down the rickety wooden stairs of little Maison Chapuis like Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess at Versailles. And we all know what happened to her, Claire thinks, just before the top of her head hits the banister above. Mary’s tall, but Claire’s taller still.

The ceilings are too small to let anything grow. They’d crush her just as Mary would, given half a chance.

At least it’s better than the Hotel d’Angleterre. Even pokier rooms, and full of gossiping Britons, smirking every time Albe showed his face. Little people thinking to mock and stare at him.

‘Oh, but I take care, too, Mary,’ she says. ‘That’s why I sneaked out last night. And I didn’t bring Albe here – not like I did at the hotel.’ She smirks a little, flings it like a clot of earth at Mary’s back.

Mary has a bowl of milk in her hands. For a moment, it seems she’ll throw it, so Claire ducks, calling out for Shelley, who’s holding a shrieking Willmouse. Mary shouts back, Shelley insists on calm, and all of them miss the first rap at the door.

The second one is sharper. Claire stands up straight; Mary grips the bowl tight. Even Willmouse falls silent.

‘Fletcher!’ says Shelley, when the man enters. Mary wraps her arms about her stained chemise, sinks into a chair. Claire won’t cover herself though; no, she shakes her hair about her shoulders. Albe called her ‘devil’s bride’ last night, her black curls loose and long. She licks her lips. Shelley, looking dazed, wet fringe stuck to his forehead, his little finger in Willmouse’s mouth, asks, ‘Is everything well?’

‘Lord Byron wishes to know if you will attend at the villa at two,’ Fletcher murmurs, surveying the room with a raised eyebrow like an appalled mother.

Yes, there are upturned cups and dirty bowls and plates encrusted with food. A chair, knocked over yesterday, hasn’t been righted, and a jumble of apples and figs and cheese and bread are jostling for space on the kitchen table. Empty wine glasses dot the room.

An abundance of everything that’s fresh and filling – well, isn’t that what lovers want?

Claire pouts at Fletcher. ‘It’s no worse than Villa Diodati,’ she says.

The villa had been in much this state last night, when she had crept in under the dark of the clouds, sniggering and softly singing her way upstairs to Albe’s room. She almost tripped over an empty wine bottle at his door; his bed was strewn with them, the floor littered with abandoned peaches, plums, hazelnuts.

‘Doesn’t Fletcher clean this up for you?’ she’d asked him, long after they’d added a few more bottles themselves.

But he’d only rolled his eyes.

He needs someone to take care of him as a manservant cannot. He needs her.

But already Fletcher’s turned on muddy heels, to trudge his way back through the vineyard between their houses, and Shelley’s shaking his head at her nerve.

‘Dear God,’ says Mary, pointing at him. ‘You want this more than she does. But we’ll be the ones to clear it up, when the mess is made.’

Suddenly, exhaustion rolls through her, like those volcano clouds of late, plunging her spirits down once more.

Scrambling her way down the hill to Chapuis in a dark, gloomy dawn – as unlike the night-time as it’s possible to be, for in this contrary summer, thanks to Mount Tambono erupting and causing magnificent electric storms, the world is lit up every evening – she had cursed loose vines for scratching her legs, and Albe for insisting on her leaving before light.

Electricity, says Shelley, is proof that Creation has nothing to do with a God.

She’s learned more than that, though. Why, she thinks – and a little smile stretches her lips now – hasn’t she also learned that Creation is at one with Ruin?

‘I’m going to bed,’ she announces, sloping past them both to the tiny chambre off the kitchen. ‘Willmouse – bid your parents be quiet an hour or so!’

Mary’s bowl hits her door as it closes. Willmouse’s wails force his father into the garden beneath her window; Shelley’s cooing makes her wriggle on the thin mattress. Her bruised thighs throb; she gets up to use the pot, her trickle of water stinging. Pats herself with more care than he showed – but that’s the way of grande passion, she tells herself, lying down again, stroking where he so lately nipped and bit.

He’s hungry for me, she thinks. That’s what it is. Insatiable hunger. And I am his feast.

They climb the hill just after two o’clock – they’re always late as a party, even for Albe, who’ll be late himself. Elise, a woman from the village with a child of her own, has come to sit with Willmouse.

‘He will be fine with her,’ Shelley insists.

‘But I’ve never left him with anyone before,’ Mary cries. ‘What if something happens?’

She’s thinking of the first baby she lost, of course. The little girl only survived a few days.

‘Nothing will happen – you must get used to it, if you are to have time to write,’ Shelley says.

‘He’s right, you have to trust,’ Claire says, then stops, bites her lip. To birth a child and have it die so soon is not easy – she should support her sister now, take Mary’s side, not Shelley’s, the way she always does. She shakes her head as though there’s water in her ears. Oh, but Mary doesn’t make it easy. Only this morning, she’d said, ‘You know Albe will never marry you,’ when she knows Claire wants no such thing.

But that little voice in her head – Mary, naturally – had whispered, ‘You would like a place in his household. You’d like to be acknowledged by him, by the world, as his.’

‘I don’t give a stuff for marriage,’ she’d said, ‘and neither does Shelley. Only you do, Mary. And that will never happen.’ Her arrow hit its mark, for Shelley has one wife already, and no amount of Mary’s scrawling her name Mary Godwin Shelley will alter that.

It was cruel to taunt her, Claire thinks now, but Mary often makes her feel cruel these days, in a way she never did when they were small. So much has changed between them since, and that saddens her, as they trudge uphill. Again, a little loneliness creeps through her bones. When Mary wants Claire’s company, she has it. When Mary wants Claire out of the way, she has that, too.

A troublesome younger sister, threatening the older sister’s happiness.

Claire’s frown’s heavy, as if from a too-tight bonnet. ‘Shake it away! It’s just water in your ears,’ she murmurs. Albe doesn’t care for irritated or gloomy looks in women.

But when she turns round to see Mary wiping her eyes, her attitude shifts again, and her frown returns.

‘Here, take my arm,’ she says, after scrambling back down the hill to her sister, just as Mary stumbles from twisting to stare at the cottage where Elise is rocking Willmouse to sleep.

‘You still stink of him,’ Mary says crudely, pulling away.

Oh, wouldn’t her many admirers be shocked to hear what comes out of Mary’s mouth sometimes. All that comes out of Claire’s is her tongue, which she waggles in Mary’s face.

‘You and Shelley are no purists behind closed doors, and all the world can hear it,’ she says, then scrambles away before Mary can annoy her with a reply. ‘There be none of Beauty’s daughters with a magic like thee,’ she sings out to Shelley, who’s up ahead. She sings in the manner of an old washerwoman, pulls hideous faces to make him laugh. ‘How many women can say Albe has written a poem for them?’ she asks him, panting at the steep incline.

‘Too many to count,’ says Shelley, then checks her cross expression.

‘You can do much better than him,’ she says. ‘You know me.’

The day’s still cold and grey under a cloud of ash, and Shelley’s legs are so very much longer than her own. He strides higher and higher, as if gliding over a frozen lake.

‘Oh, no doubt about it. On both counts.’

He’s assuming too much, even if he’s smiling, which irks her. Even if it’s true.

‘Last night, he had certain ideas. Albe had, I mean,’ Claire says. ‘Shocking ones, some might think. He’s very taken with Mary – haven’t you noticed?’

She’s not being mischievous; it’s only the truth.

‘He wants us – the four of us, together, to explore – oh, he suggested that we might – oh, but he’d drunk a lot of wine.’ And she laughs nervously, pulls the ribbon from her hair to shake it loose in the grey, ashy air.

‘Might what?’ Shelley halts, staring around him.

‘He thinks you and I already share – you know. A bed. So if Mary were willing to do the same—’

Shelley doesn’t believe in jealousy. Or in the possession of people. ‘Mary’s free to do what she wants,’ he says. ‘You know I encourage that.’

‘But with the baby and everything – she might not care to—’

He shrugs, still staring up at the mist, which shrouds the mountain tops above them. ‘Albe’s free to ask whomever for whatever he wants. Mary can agree or disagree. What else does free love mean, if not that? Though I thought his horror of communal living was predicated upon fewer bodies around him. Not more.’ He takes a long step forward.

She’s a little relieved by his answer, yet peeved, too. With a pout he doesn’t see, she begins, ‘So I’m also free to ask—’

‘Just be careful of him,’ he interrupts. ‘Pull back a little. Don’t be so eager.’

‘You didn’t say that when you were telling me to write to him.’ She catches up, seizes Shelley’s arm to make him face her.

‘I didn’t tell you so much as . . .’ He tails off, shrugging once again.

‘So much as what?’ After all Albe’s attempts to make her weep, now tears are in her throat.

‘I thought you understood better than this,’ he murmurs. ‘Don’t disappoint me.’

There’s no space between them on this hillside. Mary’s still far behind.

Suddenly, Claire presses in close, whispers in his ear so that her lips rest for a second on his earlobe, ‘What if he wants to keep me with him always?’

He frowns, fingers lightly the mark on her neck, exposed now by a breeze blowing back her hair. ‘Don’t go looking for that.’

‘But Mary would prefer it.’

He shakes his head. ‘Mary has more understanding than you give her credit for.’

She steps back, crosses her arms. ‘Since when?’

‘She cares very deeply. Even if you don’t have care for your own self,’ he mutters. ‘She’s a mother now. You can see – it’s changed her.’

For a moment, she can’t respond. Then, she loosens her arms, curls her fists and says, ‘Mary was right when she said we’re here for you. This isn’t for me at all.’

But he’s already turned away from her, is heading back down the hill towards Mary. She shouts after him, furiously, ‘I’m nobody’s puppet. I am—’

He flicks his hand in the air as though she’s a fly buzzing round him. Dear God, but the pair of them are insufferable, she thinks. Alone on the hillside suddenly, a scowl disrupts her features. Her lower lip wobbles a little.

Playful Clairy; fun Clairy. She’s the only one they want.

Well, she won’t have it. She’s a mother now. It’s changed her. Yes, motherhood does that. So let them see what it will do to Claire.

She strokes her plump chin, just where Albe likes to tease her with ma petite boule de suif. Does he think she’s fat? It occurs to her she’ll be fatter soon enough, and already she’s forgotten Shelley and Mary, is climbing the hill as fast as she can. By the time she arrives, she’s too hot to breathe steadily and is soaking with sweat, which isn’t the best way to greet Albe. Will he want her when she’s big?

She heads for the house, fretful fingers pulling at her hair to set it off her shoulders, expose her neck. The villa’s pale grey pillars resemble those of a Greek temple, set amidst lush greens, though there are few flowers blooming in this ashy summer.

If Zeus is inside, thunderbolts ready to destroy his Semele, then she’ll welcome it. He won’t refuse her, big or not. She’s irresistible; he’s told her often enough.

‘Come, fiery death!’ she shouts, opening plump arms wide. Shelley and Mary catch up with her; Mary tugs at her shoulder, trying to quiet her. That irritating way of hers! She pushes her sister’s hand away, just as Mary did to her.

‘Open up the castle of Otranto!’ she calls up.

But it’s Fletcher who appears in the doorway, barring their entry as if he’s never seen them before. Which only makes her shout the louder.

Suddenly, a volley of tiny rocks bounces off their heads and shoulders.

On the balcony above them all, he’s swaying, nightshirt open to his chest, dark hair awry, his face bloated and pale in the dwindling light. He’s picking handfuls of peach stones from a bowl balanced on the wall.

‘Vanquish the hordes who would destroy me!’ he cries, waving a wine goblet in his other hand so that some drops splash down on top of them. He pelts them a few more times, laughing. Mary squeals and Shelley ushers her inside, past Fletcher.

Oh, they’ll never understand Albe, not as Claire does. She picks up a handful of peach stones from the grass, lobs them back at him.

‘The barbarians are at the gates!’ he shouts like an old man, throaty and drunk. But her aim’s too good, for one of the stones strikes him in the eye, and he cries out, ‘You little bitch, you’ve blinded me!’ before stumbling inside.

‘There be none of Beauty’s daughters with a magic like thee,’ she sings, then bites her lip. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ she calls up. But he did start it. She shrugs, picks up her skirts and waltzes into the villa, humming.

In the silent, dark hallway, though, she comes to a standstill, the music in her head falling away. She’s alone, suddenly hesitant. Their whole affair has been a dance set to these steps: rush, hesitate, pull back; rush, hesitate, pull back.

The black candelabra beside her is lit, showing up the black-and-white tiles of the floor, but the top of the grand stone stairway disappears into darkness.

She’s a single chess piece, waiting for the right move. Fletcher, the rook, has disappeared. The king is upstairs in his room. Mary is queen, though; Claire most definitely is not.

Atheist as she is, she can’t be his bishop. And she’ll not be a pawn in his game. So she’ll be his knight, she decides, and that restores her confidence a little. Maybe she’ll run upstairs to him. Flout his very clear rules about never entering his bedroom uninvited.

A loud cough pulls her, knight-errant, away from what might be a terrible mistake. In the drawing room, an enormous fire is ablaze, as though evening has fallen already. A second cough draws her eye to the chaise facing the tall, windowed doors.

Polly-dolly’s lying there, his left arm raised above his head, palm resting on his forehead. He looks like a widowed empress, she thinks, and stifles a giggle. What kind of a doctor is he? His pretty fringed eyelids are closed tight, but his eyelashes twitch. The smell of pear drops filters up on his breath.

‘You might have waited for us,’ she says, nudging his shoulder.

‘I did,’ he squeaks in his high-pitched voice, a mismatch for his dark, demonic looks. ‘You’re very late. There’ll be no walk now.’

‘I say if there will be a walk or not,’ Albe announces from the doorway. He’s fashioned a neckerchief over his eye like a pirate. She rushes over, full of concern, but he sidesteps and she bumps into Shelley and Mary instead.

‘You’re not blinded at all,’ she says, annoyed at his rudeness. There’s a red wine stain on his chin, and his eyes are crusty with sleep, or the lack of it. His shirt hangs loose – a different one from the night before, but with a similar tear that she imagines has been made by some other, not so long past, grand passion.

‘No thanks to you, madam,’ he says, turning to Shelley to pull him into another room, away from the rest of them.

Jealousy makes her mean; she seizes Mary’s arm, takes her over to Polly-dolly. Mary’s nearness causes him pain because he cannot have her, and his pain assuages Claire’s.

‘Don’t you think Mary looks very fine this day? She’s bereft at leaving Willmouse behind, so we must cheer her up,’ she says, nudging her stepsister forwards.

Polly-dolly rises, but he’s dizzy from the opium. He kisses Mary’s hand like a deer nuzzling for scraps. He has a handsome face, foggy and twitching though it is. His delight makes Mary blush; he steers her to the window, whispering and pointing.

Albe and Shelley appear outside in the entrance hall, talking.

Claire is alone, caught between two groups. Wanted by neither.

Lightning flashes; thunder rumbles overhead. Still, nobody attends to her.

She’s a knight – what should be her move now? She can slip to the side, or push straight ahead.

Or stand still, of course.

She fingers the mark on her neck. An idea comes to her. She picks up a glass goblet from a little table, calls out for wine.

Nobody answers. She calls out again.

Mary’s giggling at something Polly-dolly mutters in her ear. Albe gestures to Shelley, who frowns, listening closely.

She tries a third time. Nothing.

She broods a moment. When the lightning flashes, she drops the glass goblet.

‘Claire!’ Mary cries; Polly-dolly says, ‘But did a shard of glass – is that a scratch there – dear Mary—’ as he flaps at Mary’s cheek. Shelley asks, ‘What happened?’

And Albe – well, Albe knows what she did, for he was looking in her direction as she did it, and he didn’t try to stop her.

‘Clear it away,’ he says, and for a moment she thinks he’s talking to her. She’s shocked at her own behaviour – why does she behave so differently when he’s there? Bending down, she lifts a piece of broken glass, clutches it in her hand. Its jagged edges pierce her palm. She cries out, and drops the shard just as Fletcher – for he’s the one Albe meant, of course – appears with a brush.

‘It’s only a little cut,’ she says, but already Polly-dolly’s left the room, returning with a piece of muslin and some balm. He’s a fool, but he can be kind, and she’s grateful – and ashamed, as Albe still ignores her, even when she gestures in his direction. He wants only Shelley, it seems. Polly-dolly wants only Mary.

The storm saves her, though. For once Fletcher has lit more candles, stoked the fire, brought more glass goblets, poured out wine, they gather together, all five of them. Talk begins of storms, of the differences between Galvani and Volta, of the flow of electricity within animal and human bodies.

She’s no longer apart, or alone.

So even though it’s near midnight before Shelley and Mary remember Willmouse and make their way back down the hill to Chapuis, finally letting her have Albe to herself, she can’t be sorry.

When Albe woke at six, though, it was to chase her away as usual.

A few hours later, and they’re all out on the promised walk together. But she’s tired, and because she couldn’t face breakfast, her belly’s grumbling. Polly-dolly’s prattling at Mary, of course, helping her over the worst spots on the hill as though she’s an invalid. Indeed, there’s a high wall further ahead; Claire struggles over it. Albe shouts at Polly-dolly, ‘Take care with Mary over the wall!’

She mutters to herself under grey skies. Polly-dolly can’t see that his suit is useless, that Mary has a five-month-old baby whose father is married to another woman. Why does the silly doctor think Mary has room for him? And why must Albe attend to Mary more than to her? His voice is always so much more serious and earnest when he’s in conversation with her sister. Why do they all run after her? Ah, but her mood’s black today!

From far behind, Polly-dolly’s ministrations filter up. Albe and Shelley stride on ahead.

She’s caught between two groups again.

Claire de lune.

Claire alone.

She scuffs at the scrub under her feet like a child, at the pebbles and weeds that litter the hillside, at the soft webbing of ash that covers the ground and is ruining the bloom of little flowers.

More ruin. Perhaps Albe cares not to see his mark on her. His words to her last night were uttered with a new kind of contempt. There have been many kinds with him so far. A fat contempt, when he’s eaten all he can, and she’s a dish he wants but can’t stomach. A foul contempt, as though she’s the contents of his bedpan but he can’t resist taking a sniff. A maidenly contempt, when he retreats from her like a virgin bride. A vampiric contempt, when only her blood will keep him alive, and he loathes her for it.

‘“But first, on earth as vampire sent; Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent; Then ghastly haunt thy native place; And suck the blood of all thy race . . .”’

When she’d quoted from The Giaour at him, he hadn’t enjoyed hearing his own words. Instead, he’d yawned and said, ‘Vampires. So dull. How I wish I’d never written that.’

‘You don’t mean it,’ she said. ‘You should write about them again.’

‘You’re not enough like your first letters to me,’ he’d said, rolling onto his back. ‘You were all humble supplication; be like that again. Not a smug little strumpet who thinks she can make demands, or tell me what to write about.’

A lordly contempt.

‘I’m a “new genus” of woman,’ she’d said, lifting her chin.

‘A new what?’

‘Mary’s mother said it—’

‘The hyena in petticoats herself.’

‘She wanted to support herself. To earn her income by writing.’

‘That’s the “new genus”? Female scribblers? Dear God, save us from those.’

‘But it’s important – she wanted us women not to have power over men, but over ourselves—’

‘Then have power over this,’ he’d said, seizing her neck and pushing her face down on his risen prick to fill her mouth, stop her words. ‘You’re just a harlot, a whore, and nothing else,’ he’d murmured, as she worked on him. ‘Clairy Cocotte.’

It seemed that he fell asleep the very moment he’d finished, snoring and spread-eagled over the bed, consigning her to the corner. She pushed his foot – his bad foot – and he groaned in his dreams, but that was all.

‘I only want what you and Mary have,’ she’d said to Shelley, just three months ago. They’d left Mary in the country with newborn Willmouse to come up to London to persuade her father – their father, for Godwin’s the only one Claire has ever known – to accept Mary’s relationship with Shelley, and to make clear how Shelley might help their papa’s never-ending money problems. She’d stayed with Godwin and her mama at first; Shelley took rooms in town. But Claire didn’t get on with her mama at all, for she wouldn’t let her be, forever in her ear about ‘fallen’ Mary, and how Shelley would ruin both girls forever, and how Claire must give up all the silly notions Shelley had put in her head that love is free, and about equality in possessions.

And her papa wouldn’t have Willmouse’s name spoken in the house.

‘It’s unbearable,’ she’d said, when she arrived at Shelley’s lodgings with her bags and an agonised expression.

That evening, they had discussed her future in his rooms. ‘What do I do now?’ she said. ‘Where do I go? Mary doesn’t want me. And living with Mama is impossible.’

‘You won’t leave – us – again. I promise,’ he said.

‘But you have another baby now. We can’t just ignore what Mary wants.’

‘And what about what I want?’ he said.

At those times, it did seem that they were the only two beings in the whole world. A world with no Mary. Not even Willmouse. When he paused to peer out the filthy window at the havoc in the streets below, she wondered if he was planning for it again. That communal living he wanted. Mary, and Harriet, and Claire. The children. All together.

Harriet had said no the first time he’d suggested it, when they came back from the Continent.

Harriet – the wife who thought babies and more babies would keep a genius to his wedding vows, when genius can obey only its own – was a fool.

A sly sort of look had come over his face when he’d turned back to her. Yes; she understood him, stretched out to take his hand. Wasn’t this the moment to solder that special energy between them?

He shook his head. ‘No – I am wrong. This must be about what you want, dearest Claire. Ah, now what good fortune it would be if we wanted the same thing.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but how to get it is the question we keep on asking, it seems.’

She sighed, annoyed that the moment wasn’t turning out the way she hoped.

‘Well, what do you think of him?’ he said then, pointing at the battered copy of The Giaour on the bed. The author’s name was more familiar to her than her own. (She’d only lately chosen hers. No more Plain Jane; she was now Claire, a musical echo of Clairmont. A surname from a father she’d never known.)

‘That he’s the greatest, most notorious poet of the age – is that what you mean?’

Shelley sat down on the bed beside her. ‘His separation from Lady Millbanke isn’t just gossip. He’s – legally – almost free.’

‘Ah, but they say much worse – even that he’s in love with his own sister. That he and she have—’

‘Oh, imagine what they say about us.’

She had to concede that.

‘Don’t you want what Mary has?’ That sly look shifting over his features again. She shivered a little. He smiled; the slyness vanished as quickly as it had come.

‘Mary has you.’

‘And you may have – him.’

She couldn’t think clearly at first. The notion itself was too huge to grasp, like one of the philosophical puzzles their papa would put to her and Mary when they were little.

‘He’s too far above me,’ she said, slowly, shaking her head. ‘He’s famous. No – infamous. Imagine what Mama would say.’ That made her giggle, though more from nerves than humour.

Shelley tapped the book of poems. ‘He’s a poet.’

‘And I’m nothing. I’m nobody,’ she said. ‘He’d never hear me.’

‘I’ll make him hear you. We’ll make him, together. The rumour is he’s leaving England soon. We have to hurry.’

‘But what can I offer him?’

‘Ah, my love, don’t sell yourself so short.’

She’d bloomed eighteen months ago, and to an excessive degree, Mary said. Maybe that was the beginning of the breach between them. Her bosom threatened the top of her dresses; bodices ripped as she stretched out of her hips and waist, her plump arms branching out from her shoulders as if to welcome all comers. Wriggling in her chemise, barefoot and hair loose, she’d pouted for a joke that evening. He’d laughed, reached out his hand, saying, ‘Lord Byron will see Madam now.’

She’d slapped his hand, giggled again. ‘Not so fast, sir. Now, read me a poem, there’s a good man.’

As they’d expected, a first letter directed to the theatre where he was a member went unanswered.

They persisted anyway.

Then the day arrived: a tentative response. Not an agreement to meet, but close. It emboldened them to write again.

My folly may be great, but the Creator ought not to destroy his Creature.

‘Will he understand my meaning?’ she’d asked Shelley, hand poised over the page, ink dropping tiny dots. ‘He’ll not think me too much like the Lamb woman?’

The room was dark that cloudless night, and he’d yawned at her question, but also because he’d been away two whole days and was exhausted. Mary was due to arrive with Willmouse, which had consumed his attention, only he was distracted, unsettled. He didn’t say where he’d been, only that receipt of a letter from her papa hadn’t pleased him. And the Chancery case that was to release him funds was still undecided.

He was determined, he said, to quit the country. The sooner, the better.

‘Will Mary want to?’

‘Mary will want what I want,’ he’d said, and so she’d picked up her pen and scribbled, for there was another plan circling their talk.

If you shall condescend to answer the following question, you will at least be rewarded by the gratitude I shall feel.

‘That makes it clearer.’

‘No, this won’t lure him in,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘You’re right – play on him a little more.’

And so they wrote.

If a woman whose reputation has yet remained unstained

if without either guardian or husband to control she should throw herself upon your mercy

if with a beating heart she should confess the love she has borne you many years

if she should secure to you secrisy and safety

if she should return your kindness with fond affection and unbounded devotion

could you betray her

or would you be as silent as the grave?

‘Too much?’

‘I don’t think there is “too much” for him.’

And sure enough, the next time, he took the bait. An embossed card arrived, with the words Lord Byron across it in gold.

‘How do I answer him?’

‘Ah, be humble – stress your alone-ness. Remember, that terrible night, when we were awake all night and the pillow moved without you touching it? Tell him of the fit that came about. And all the supernatural things we endured – you endured. Tell him you think you must be some kind of witch, that there’s devilry in you, that you try not to be wicked, but—’

‘Won’t that frighten him? He’s in trouble. Maybe comfort’s all he wants. His wife is accusing him of all sorts of terrible things.’

‘All nonsense. Imagine what your papa tells people about me.’

But he agreed she could be gentle with him, ask him for help with a singing career.

‘So, we’re to meet – in his private rooms at the theatre,’ she’d announced the next day, reading out the short letter.

‘Perfect. You’ll sing for him.’

She’d dressed carefully while Shelley left to fetch Mary. Tighter stays than normal, her bodice full to overflowing. Hair up but falling loose. Respectable, but not demure.

That nothing about her was worthy of such a great name made her skittish, though; fidgety. She dabbed her forehead in the carriage all the way, though her skin was as dry as dust.

But when Fletcher showed her in that first evening, Byron was softer-limbed and paler than she expected. His wrists were swollen, and his fingers even more so. The newspaper in his hand held his gaze as he sat hunched on the chaise, while she stood open-mouthed, wondering if this really could be the celebrated poet himself.

The man women left husbands for. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

He seemed unremarkable.

And then he raised his eyes.

Fringed by lashes, thick and dark, they were wide as a cat’s and deep and dark as a forest. A pearl of light in them guided you on; then it would vanish, in a blink, leaving you groping your way.

His forehead was high, the eyebrows straight and noble. His mouth was excessive, almost feminine. Red, and wet, and full.

So many contradictions. They caught her on a hook; she moved forward, holding her breath, as if being eased out of water. When she reached him, she licked her lips unthinking, and his gaze rested there. When she fingered the bare skin of her unadorned neck, as candles flickered around the room, his gaze rested there, too.

Without another word, she opened her mouth and sang.

Bewitched was the word he used later. He’d stood up, then walked around her throughout the song. She felt his eyes behind her, felt a tingling in her fingers. When he’d sat down with a sigh, she thought at first that she’d failed and hesitated, ready to leave. But she was daring; sinking to her knees, she seized his hand and pressed it to her breast, breathing softly.

Bewitched, he murmured in her ear, the wine from his breath sharp and strong.

But she’s too transparent to bewitch anyone, she thinks, as she clambers on over lakeside scrub. For all his talk of devil’s bride, she’s too obvious, too telling in her features about what lies in her soul.

She’s all clarity.

Claire de lune.

Clairy Cocotte.

And now Shelley has no need for her; not now they’re all here together, and these two men are becoming friends.

How fast they go, the pair of them, over the brambles and gorse ahead. Too fast, she grumbles to herself, for a man who’s had so little sleep. But she won’t give up yet and scrambles after them, panting and sore, blinking in the ashy light, coughing every now and then.

Albe’s voice is sorrowful, yet longing, too.

‘. . . I’ve never met one like her. Ah, the tricks she has, to lure you in. And then you try to wriggle free . . .’

Her heart lifts; they’re discussing her!

‘You can do nothing to prevent its distribution, at least? By a legal route?’

No. They’re not discussing her.

‘Apparently it describes me as beautiful. That’s the least libellous part. And I do like to make maidens weep; she has that description right.’

They mean Glenarvon. Caroline Lamb’s book. Albe laughs as the hill flattens out to a plateau; Shelley stares, transfixed and silent, lost to the misty view, before wandering to the edge.

Claire’s heart is thumping. Her face burns. The air’s warmed now.

Albe sinks down onto sparse grass and little pebbles, leans back on his elbows with a grunt, closes his eyes.

‘You won’t make me weep,’ she announces, looking down.

He opens one eye, shades his view from the greying light. ‘What’s that? Did someone speak?’

She kicks his bad foot; he closes his eye. Shelley’s at the edge of the plateau, his arms aloft, out of earshot.

‘Don’t you want – a companion, at least? Someone to order your household. To take care of you.’ She sits down with a bump, huddles at his side, her hand resting on his chest.

He pushes it away, his eyes still closed.

‘I could take care of it all for you – I don’t mean marriage, of course. I know what my worth is – but you want it, the care of a woman like—’

Yawning, he blinks, stares ahead at Shelley. ‘You have no idea what I want, and the least of it is a woman ordering my household. I couldn’t want anything less.’

‘I knew what you wanted last night,’ she says, in a coquettish way, but a look of distaste comes over his face and she draws back.

Her belly spasms.

He notices her small cry of pain; it makes him smile.

She tries again. ‘If you’d only—’

But he twists away with a ‘Dear Christ, can you not leave off for a minute?’ that sparks a jabbing behind her eyes. Perhaps she should weep. Perhaps then he’d be kinder.

But she’ll never know, for just at that moment, Mary screams loud enough to wake the dead, and the three of them start up, looking in her direction. She screams again, waving her arms wildly in the air.

For a moment, Claire thinks it must be Willmouse, that something terrible has happened to him. Shelley starts running; Albe is on his feet.

It’s not Willmouse.

It’s Polly-dolly.

Lying quite dead, flat on his back on the stony ground. Arms splayed out like a crucifixion, his legs twisted beneath him.

Shelley gives an urgent cry; Albe sways, unsteady as a boat, before stumbling towards them.

And Claire, his devil-bride, so dark and mysterious?

She throws up into a bramble bush.

Polly-dolly isn’t dead. Alas for them all, she thinks, wobbling, hand on her belly to stop the tipping inside. He’s just twisted an ankle.

But he’s wailing worse than Willmouse. They slow down. Albe has his fists in his pockets; Shelley’s already extending a hand to the man on the ground. So she lingers a minute, thinks Mary’s fussing around enough for them both.

Polly-dolly groans and reaches up for Shelley, but then sinks back down with the pain of it.

‘Can you bear any weight on it at all?’ Mary says.

‘I think I may faint,’ he murmurs.

Albe tsks and raises his eyebrows. Shelley kneels down beside Polly-dolly. Claire can’t feel sorry for him; besides, vomiting into a bush isn’t pleasant, her throat’s still scratchy from retching, and when she takes some of Mary’s water, nobody asks if she is well. He’s stolen all the attention.

‘Oh, take off his boot if it’s so bad,’ she says, a little crossly.

He shrieks high-pitched as a babe when Shelley grips it; she and Mary exchange a look. Both times Mary gave birth, she didn’t make this amount of noise.

‘Do you want a stick to bite down on, perhaps?’ Claire says.

Albe sniggers.

‘Have a care for my ears,’ Shelley mutters as Polly-dolly lets out another shriek, but at last the boot’s off. The area around the ankle bone is puffy and white.

‘It must be broken,’ Polly-dolly says. ‘I can’t walk on it.’

‘Run and get Fletcher,’ Albe says to Claire, oblivious to her sickness. She’s about to answer back that she’s no housemaid, but another wave of nausea rises, sending her hand to her mouth.

‘There’s no need for that, we’ll manage very well between us,’ says Shelley. ‘Here, Polidori – take my arm.’ He directs Albe to take the doctor’s left, much to his outrage.

Not all men are created equal to him, she wants to say, doesn’t Shelley know that? She stifles a laugh. It’s worth the humiliation she’s suffered so far to see this, at least.

And he’s doing what Shelley wants. There’s something between them, she thinks, suddenly, that’s more than poetry. Albe’s a lord; Shelley’s a baronet’s son. Mary isn’t titled, but she’s the daughter of Godwin. Albe reveres him above anyone else.

‘You, my dear, are nothing and nobody,’ he’d said once. ‘You can’t even be sure who your father was.’

‘You don’t treat titled ladies any better, so what does it matter?’ she’d replied, and he hadn’t mentioned her lineage, or lack of it, again.

Still, though, he and Shelley have a way of talking to one another.

A little bile sparks and rises from her gut. The thought that she’s made a terrible mistake somehow is edging its way around her brain like a cat circling a bird. She shakes her head to chase it away, but only brings on such nausea that she has to grab Mary’s arm to steady herself.

Mary whispers, ‘He’s not so badly hurt,’ thinking her shakiness is due to Polly-dolly’s accident. Claire gives a small smile. Her hand flits, unwitting, to her belly, and rests there.

Shelley’s been concentrating on the task in front of him all this while. But he turns his gaze towards her now, and shades his eyes as if to see better, just as her hand moves across her belly, circles below it. His eyes lock with hers.

He knows. He knows – she’s sure of it. He knows what she’s holding there. He opens his mouth to speak, but the look that comes over his face then – a mere second, it lasts – is so horrible in its transformation, every feature twisted or blackened, that she almost sinks to her knees in fright. It’s still his face, but buried beneath something so ugly and sick that his mouth can only make a frame for words that won’t come out.

And then, in an instant, it’s over. He’s his old self again; his face resumes its normal shape, its high forehead and odd-tipped nose, soft lips, high cheekbones. The blond fringe falling into his blue eyes. The Shelley she’s seen almost every day for the past two years.

Not the monster of a moment ago.

She blinks, clutches her throat. But everyone else is looking at Polly-dolly, and now Shelley is, too, his face just a little paler, his hands betraying the hint of a tremor.

He’s aware of something – of himself, of her.

She takes another swig, shakily, from Mary’s flask, wipes spilled water from her chin. Mary’s busy with Polly-dolly’s boot. Shelley nudges Albe to heave the shrieking man to a standing position on one leg, his arms resting on their shoulders.

They begin the trudge uphill with Claire at the rear. She is still troubled, rubbing her eyes as if that might dispel what she saw. Mary says to Polly-dolly, ‘You really shouldn’t have jumped that wall,’ as though he didn’t jump the wall for her.

He made a mistake, and he made it for love.

Her head’s banging; she shades her eyes, though it’s not bright. She longs to be indoors, urges them to hurry up. But they’re talking about tomorrow night, as if everything is normal.

‘What about the ball at Madame Odier’s?’ Mary asks.

‘Polly-dolly will have to stay home,’ says Albe. ‘We’ll struggle without him, of course, but struggle we must.’

Polly-dolly grumbles; last night he spoke so much of his fondness for Louis Odier and his theories on sleepwalking, talking on and on until Albe yawned and insisted they all leave.

She’d stayed behind – not invited, but when Albe found her outside his bedroom door already in a state of undress, well, he said, what could he do but invite her in?

What, indeed.

Shelley has fallen quiet again. Has he really guessed her condition? Perhaps he’s just unsettled by their little quarrel on the hill yesterday. Perhaps he’s doubting the wisdom of their plan for her and Albe. After all, he doesn’t want to lose her to him forever.

A baby – Albe’s baby – will do that.

She catches her breath; she should speak to him alone, as soon as possible. But Polly-dolly’s shouting orders, and when Albe drops him the minute Fletcher appears, and his broken foot hits the floor, he shrieks like a trodden cat, and everyone’s fussing around again.

Only once the wailing doctor is settled on the chaise, can she take a look about her. Albe’s vanished, and Mary’s pouring Polly-dolly some brandy. Shelley’s watching her from the fireplace, but as she approaches, he stares – not at her this time, but at some point beyond, and with the same diseased, transformed look. It’s like a horrible streak of lightning across his face, both him and not-him. As though someone’s taken all his features – his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his forehead, his cheekbones – and twisted them back on.

She tries to cover her eyes, but someone catches her hands, pulls her away.

Albe.

He whispers in her ear, ‘Well now, have you ever seen such a fool?’

She glances over to where he’s nodding: Polly-dolly is kissing Mary’s hand and rolling his eyes in pain. His thick black hair tumbles over his forehead; she’s stroking it back from his eyes, and his face is a sea of bliss.

‘Which one?’ she says.

He pulls away; a sudden draught from the open front door blows between them.

‘What a dreadful lot of bitches you women are. She’ – he points at Mary – ‘is one of the few worth talking to. A queen amongst you. No, a goddess.’ His fingers seize the back of her neck, fingernails digging into her skin. Her shoulders jump, but she won’t cry out.

‘I may not have her intellectual—’ She gasps, but his fingernails only deepen; she reaches up to prise them off, but he grabs her hand, twists it behind her back.

No; she won’t cry out.

‘You’re a mere handmaiden, my dear Clairy.’

‘You preferred a handmaiden to a goddess last night,’ she says.

He bends his head, nips her neck with his teeth. Tears spark despite herself.

‘Indeed – fucking goddesses spawns devils, don’t you know that? Though it’d be better than the dolts mortals produce. I’ll not add to their number.’

He’s forgotten he has a child, a daughter by his wife, back in England. Ada’s her name; she’s six months old.

He releases her as suddenly as he seized her, and moves away. Behind, in the encroaching dark, a door slams.

For a moment or two, she doesn’t move a muscle or turn her head. Then, slowly, her left hand curls into a fist; the fingers of her right hand, the one he twisted, tap her neck. She winces; the same spot where he bit before. Her heartbeat’s faint; she’s holding her breath. Or maybe he’s bitten that out of her, too.

So it takes her a few moments to focus on what’s happening in the room beyond.

Fletcher has entered and lit candles against the coming storm. He’s making for the door, blocking her view of Shelley, so it’s only when he’s gone past that she sees it.

Shelley, staring for a third time at that point over her shoulder.

She won’t look at his face, at that terrible expression she knows will be there. Instead, she hurries over to him, her head down. ‘It’s a game, remember?’ she whispers, up close at last, arms winding about him. ‘Just a game. I won’t leave you.’

He’s trembling against her grip; she pulls back a little, still avoiding his face, tries to rest her hand on his arm. But he can’t bear it, and shakes her off.

‘She’s here,’ he murmurs. ‘Don’t you see?’

‘Who?’ she says, twisting round, but now Mary’s forced herself between them, reaching up around his neck to kiss his cheek and smooth his hair, pulling him to her. He resists at first. Claire steps away to let Mary guide him over to a chair as though he’s old before his time. His short, shallow breaths make her aware she’s been holding her own breath all this time; she releases it with a sigh.

Mary hears her; misunderstands. ‘You wanted this; now look what it’s doing to him! He was too troubled for this journey; I thought it all along. But you had to have your way.’

She’s stung; her fingers fly to her neck once again. ‘He wanted it more than I did. You admitted that yourself.’

For a moment, she thinks Mary will slap her. Shelley’s trying to speak; he opens his mouth but no words come out, and Albe’s there, coming up behind to grip her elbow, pull her to one side. ‘There’s laudanum in my room,’ he mutters in her ear. ‘You know where.’

She obeys without asking any more, and runs out into the hallway. The rest of the villa is silent; just murmuring from the drawing room follows her. By the time she’s reached the top of the stairs, all she hears is the wind outside.

She’s been in Albe’s room several times by now; she hesitates this time, though, reluctant to go inside.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she says aloud, and turns the door handle. The bedchamber’s gloomy, with no sun and no moon to light it. Nothing at the window but thunderclouds, rolling towards her. Perhaps the storm has started this mood in Shelley. Perhaps it’s not at all what she thinks it is. Perhaps she’s wrong about everything.

A flash of lightning makes her blink; the rumble that follows seems to come from inside the house itself. She hurries to the door in the far corner.

In Albe’s washroom sits the medicine chest beneath a robe hanging on a hook. It’s not locked. Inside are two rows of bottles, jars. She checks each label. Opium. Heroin. Laudanum. Mercury. Quinine. Arsenic. Cocaine.

Seven.

There’s space in the chest for eight. A bottle of something is missing.

The laudanum is half full. She examines the others, which are equally used. She unscrews the top of the laudanum bottle; the tip will easily dispense a few drops on the tongue. If she can administer this, why does Albe need a doctor at all? She could do this for him whenever he needed it.

If she is indeed a handmaiden, then let her be this kind of handmaiden.

Downstairs she runs, bottle in hand, back to the drawing room. Shelley’s muttering under his breath, Albe’s hand on his shoulder, and cries out when a streak of lightning flashes. Mary is perched on a stool by the armchair, stroking his hand.

‘Four drops on the tongue,’ Polly-dolly calls over from the chaise. ‘Yes, yes, a good steady hand is what you need. Like that, yes.’

Albe sighs when she’s done, says, ‘Dear God, but this is a poor party.’ He lifts his hand from Shelley’s shoulder. Shelley slowly rights himself.

Albe rings for Fletcher.

He could have done that for the laudanum, she thinks, instead of making her fetch it. Then she realises.

He wanted her out of the room.

Her mind wanders back to the eighth bottle in the medicine chest.

Albe raises his eyebrows as if guessing her thoughts, waggles a finger at his nose. ‘Not now, madam,’ he says. She opens her mouth to ask anyway, but Fletcher arrives with glass goblets and a decanter of red wine on a silver tray, disturbing the room once again.

This time, though, the disturbance is positive, restoring Shelley, though he won’t look in her direction. He takes more drops in water; the rest of them drink wine and toast the storm. Polly-dolly suggests a reading of his new play, and Albe claps encouragement.

She sits further away from them all, though. Positions herself near the door, as if in need of escape.

She can’t order her thoughts; the wound on her neck is throbbing hard, and she downs her glass of wine in a single gulp, thirsts for more as the thunder rolls again.

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

A summer storm; a clap of thunder. Loud enough to make the devil hide.

Or the devil’s governess.

The devil knows this country house has enough rooms in which to hide. Twenty-six in all; half of them public, half of them private. And each one a constant mess no number of servants can ever tidy. More mess than she’s ever known – even in the years she spent travelling with Mary and Shelley. Their household was always chaos, what with all the servants.

And all the babies.

She won’t think about them now, not when she’s running. The devil himself can’t make her.

‘Hide me, quick!’ she hisses when she bursts into the morning room, startling Hermann Gambs into dropping his copy of Kant, a Shelley favourite that other summer of storms. But she won’t think about him either, for from him she’ll flit to Albe and what he said last year with his dying breath . . . oh no, she won’t think about any of that. But she’s bunching her fist at her breast because she can’t help it as she flies across the floor, flimsy nightrobes flapping.

Her empty fist. Maybe it’s just how she is these days, holding on to something that isn’t there. Well, this house likes to do the same, doesn’t it, laying claim to what it doesn’t have.

Hence the worn Louis XV chairs in every room. Versailles-esque windows overlooking the gardens. Coffee and croissants for breakfast and assiettes à pâté for lunch, with boeuf à la mode at dinner. French wine, French beer, the Journal des dames et des Modes, the parterre style of French gardens.

Underneath, though, the true heart of the house beats, right until the first snows. I prefer my land of ice-caves and bears, she wrote to Mary, when another letter arrived begging her to let her sister know how she is, to come ‘home’. As the cold takes over, the Russian of the serfs, now more often indoors by the kitchen fires, invades the family’s French speech. Their soup is more borscht than consommé. Valenki boots replace Marie Ivanovna’s French silk shoes.

Perhaps she’s balling her fist against the denial of that Russian heart, as the summer comes back and they must all put on France’s face instead. Even though winter means freezing rides on icy sleighs that numb her hands and feet beneath the rugs. After all, summer has its rush of beetles from under makeshift beds. Has sudden swarms of flies when a stable door opens.

So, she halts in the middle of the room as if lost – what am I doing here? That happens more often in this house, too. Then the realisation dawns, and she moves, remembers to hide.

But the room has only a single hiding place.

‘Hurry!’ she urges Gambs as she clambers into the armoire. ‘Shut the door!’

Shut out the light, while thunder crashes overhead.

As footsteps batter the hallway parquet.

As whoops and cries fly like spears after a bear.

As into the room they come charging.

Through the keyhole, she spies lit candles flickering with the commotion. Gambs sits, adjusting his pince-nez. He’ll not give her away.

Oh, but of course he’ll never fool them. He couldn’t fool a fly.

And now little Dunia and Vanya are on him, pulling his boots and shirt cuffs, smacking his head and shoulders. Behind them, their band of cut-throats and revolutionaries shriek, ‘Find the Czarina!’, and then a lightning fork fires up a great ‘Oooh!’ and a sudden stillness, before they turn on him again.

They should all be in bed. Or, at least, wherever Marie Ivanovna’s had the mattresses dragged tonight. She changes her mind every day about where to sleep and it’s exhausting. And if she catches them playing, she’ll stamp and scream . . . but they’ve no care at all, jumping up and down, drowning out Gambs’s protests. Poor Gambs! From the order and refinement of Dresden to this.

A laugh bubbles up; she swallows it down.

‘Where is she? Our Czarina! We want you! Come with us now!’ Five-year-old Dunia stamps her foot, flushed face fit to burst.

‘She went that way.’ Gambs points to the door to the garden. ‘You can’t follow at this hour, though. Your mama forbids it.’

Dunia hesitates; so do the other young ones. The gardener’s children, scruffy and sniggering and barefoot; the prince’s daughter, her blond hair awry; her little brother, in his nightgown; and three more raggedy souls Claire’s glimpsed only now and then – serf children from the estate, narrow-eyed and scratching, sallow cheeks rubbed with dirt.

At nine years old, though, Vanya isn’t as simple. He’s approaching the door of the armoire, sniffing the air. In the dark, she catches her breath.

‘Lavender,’ he says. ‘Like Mam’selle Claire wears.’

‘It’s drying there . . .’ says Gambs, points to a sprig in the vase by the fire. He bends down to the boy, to look him in the eyes.

Oh, but she’s told him not to do that, not even in the friendliest way. Vanya doesn’t care for it; it’s taken her months just to get him to hold her hand without trembling. To speak to strangers without stammering.

So she can’t help clicking her tongue, which gives her away.

‘Ha ha!’ Vanya pulls open the armoire door, and out she tumbles with no grace at all, giggling and scolding, and they seize her robe and pull her ribbons while she squeals for Gambs to stop them.

And while she’s in the middle of this, Marie Ivanovna waddles in. Of course she does, she has a special instinct for the wrong moment. Claire’s on her feet, but they’re pulling her down, making her laugh in spite of herself.

Marie Ivanovna claps fat bejewelled hands together, stamps a bare foot. She’s in her nightclothes, too. ‘Mam’selle Claire! Monsieur Gambs! You are their governess! Their tutor! It is past midnight!’

Claire seizes Dunia as Gambs grapples for his spectacles. The other children – except Vanya – cluster behind her as she swallows down another laugh. Thunder smashes into the room and everyone jumps.

‘Enough! I cannot bear it – I cannot bear it!’ Marie Ivanovna howls, holding her hands up to the ceiling as if catching cobwebs. Gambs winks at Claire. Together, they shoo the children out into the hallway: Dunia, Vanya, the princess and her brother one way; the gardener’s children and the little serfs the other. Back in the morning room, Marie Ivanovna is shaking, her cheeks wet. Claire tsks and wraps her arms around her.

‘They terrify me, always—’

A flash of white light; the older woman screams.

‘It’s just electricity,’ Claire murmurs in her employer’s ear. ‘Galvani discovered that you could make a dead frog move with it—’

Marie Ivanovna shrieks again, ‘Do not talk to me of dead frogs!’

‘It’s better than using dead men, even if they were murderers. Did you know a man called Andrew Ure put two metallic rods against a hanged convict and made his muscles convulse?’

‘Mam’selle Claire, I will not hear another word of dead frogs or dead men.’

At least she’s stopped crying. Claire steps back. ‘Vanya’s showing a real talent for dissection, though,’ she says. She never can stop even when she knows she should. ‘He brought in a dead mouse the other day – Anoushka caught it – so Gambs helped us open it up and we put the innards under the microscope—’

Marie Ivanovna’s wise to it now, though. ‘I know what you are trying to do, Mam’selle Claire, and it will not work. Have more discipline over these children!’

But Claire knows now how she may speak to her employer in Russia. No English mistress would stand for it from a governess, but here, things are different. She eats with the family; she entertains guests with the family. She’s one of them, for all she’s Mam’selle Claire – which brings rewards and punishments both. So she lifts her chin and speaks like a younger sister of another ‘Mary’, only this time a Russian one, Marie Ivanovna.

‘They’re your children. You know, if you didn’t insist on stuffing their heads with facts all the time, but let them explore properly . . . you’ve seen how Vanya’s come on so much since—’

‘Since you and he started dissecting mice?’ Marie Ivanovna holds up her hand. ‘It’s disgusting and there will be no more of it.’

Claire rolls her eyes. What an ignorant mother Vanya has. ‘It’s not “disgusting”. Do you know there’s a battery now that’s powered by electricity? Because Galvani was wrong, in the end—’

‘You will not bamboozle me, Mam’selle.’ Marie Ivanovna shakes her head. ‘And you will stick to the programme I drew up for the children. And if I hear one more word from you about that dog, Rousseau—’

‘But he’s right! Children need the freedom to explore, the freedom to grow into who—’

‘Enough!’ Marie Ivanovna holds out her hand.

‘I don’t have it,’ Claire says, shrugging, her hands clasped behind her back.

‘You are lying!’ Marie Ivanovna makes a grab for her nightdress; Claire grapples with her, batting her hands away.

‘Ladies!’ Gambs gets between them.

They’re both panting; Marie Ivanovna shouts, ‘Give me the key!’; Claire shouts back, ‘I’m telling you, I don’t have it!’, and on it goes, as the key to the library jingles in the pocket of her nightdress.

At last, Marie Ivanovna gives in. ‘If it were not my birthday, I would – I would—’

‘You’d what? Banish me?’

They’re both trembling; she’s gone too far this time. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I am. It’s your birthday – I don’t mean to upset you. We’re friends, Madame. I didn’t want to make you cry.’

Marie Ivanovna pouts like a child. She’s at least a foot shorter; she takes another swipe at Claire’s nightdress, looking for the key, but laughs when Claire foils her again.

‘Ah, enough! I must get to sleep. You will both be busy – and do not look to me for any rest tomorrow. It is your own fault!’

They both nod as Marie Ivanovna, chuckling to herself, leaves the room. Only when she’s sure the little woman is out of earshot does Claire produce the key from her pocket and say to Gambs, ‘I’ll make scientists and philosophers and poets of them all, if it’s the last thing I do.’

She expects him to smile, but he’s downcast instead.

Oh no, she thinks, time to leave, and she heads for the door.

‘No, please!’ he says. ‘We were to discuss it tonight – you promised. Then you disappeared after supper. So we will discuss it now.’

She yawns. ‘Oh, it’ll have to wait – look at the time! And Marie Ivanovna’s right – we’ll be punished tomorrow. The party – I’m exhausted just thinking about it.’

‘Do not put off the future forever. You promised me an answer.’ He’s stretching out a hand; she doesn’t shift from the door. His fingers can only reach so far.

‘A thing exists if I perceive it, so as I cannot perceive the future, then—’

‘Then you do not have one? That is denial, Claire, not Immaterialism.’ He returns to his book, fixing his pince-nez on his Shelleyan nose. But he’s only pretending to read. For an insane moment, she wonders whether to tell him the truth.

‘After tomorrow, then. After the party,’ she says, instead.

He grunts; she closes the door and pads along the corridor.

Candles in enormous brass stands burn all the way, a waste of light, but so much here is waste. The storm’s burned itself out, at least. She doesn’t like storms any more than Marie Ivanovna, but for different reasons, of course. Sometimes, she’d like to scream it at the top of her voice, what she used to be, who she used to know. All this creeping about, taking care, watching what she says. It’s not her; Shelley would be disappointed in her, maybe. Or he might understand.

She prefers to think he’d understand. Better than Mary does, anyway. Always pestering her to go back to London, as if it’s any better there. She’d have had her married off to that wrinkled old bore Peacock years ago.

At least here she gets to argue back.

Which would be worse? Marriage to an old bore, she decides. Or just marriage in general; she hasn’t changed her mind about that. At least she’s twenty-seven now; too old, by most reckoning. Mary’s mother would be proud of them both, she tells Mary all the time. Hold your head high, she writes, when Mary tells her of yet another memoir, yet another article, yet another pamphlet, which expresses outrage over Shelley’s work. He’s better than all of them. We are better than all of them.

She’s not convinced Mary believes it, though. She’d be a better keeper of his flame than Mary, she thinks, hurrying on to her room on the floor above.

But that’s for wives alone. Not for – whatever she was.

Her night robes rustle. The magazine in her pocket, too.

A clatter of pots falling onto stone floors makes her start. The kitchens are at this end of the house. If she were to stand still and scream, a hundred souls would appear in a hundred doorways, hundreds of eyes glinting in the dark.

No one disappears in a house like this, for all its chaos.

Who she was might appear at any time, if she’s not always watching. No, Shelley wouldn’t despise her for it if he could see her now. He’d understand her waiting, her hoping that Marie Ivanovna wouldn’t take the newly delivered copy of Blackwood’s to her room, as is her habit.

Her hoping that she’d forget it, leave it behind in the drawing room.

Only after midnight could she sneak down; and there it was! She’d stuffed it into her cape’s inner pocket.

What a miracle the children hadn’t found it and ruined it with their games. How unlucky that they’d heard her – though she’d been as quiet as a mouse – and given chase like that.

The moon glints from window to window on this side of the house all the way to the stairs for the first floor. There’s an unadorned wooden door at the end of this corridor, just along from Marie Ivanovna’s and the children’s rooms. It creaks as she pushes it.

Inside her little room, she takes Mary’s letter from the bureau and sets it out on the bed. Then she smooths out the crushed magazine beside it. The light from the moon is enough to read by, but she lights a taper anyway.

Ah, the magazine first. Get it over with, what plaudits they’ve no doubt given him. She tears out the relevant pages, then folds up the magazine, ready for returning tomorrow morning. She sits on the bed, her back against the wall, and starts to read.

It is indeed quite laughable to hear so much said, both in print and society, of his Lordship’s beauty. He was, in truth, in no respect particularly handsome, and his busts and portraits bear testimony to the fact he had a habit of knitting his brows into a misanthropic frown little calculated to bespeak affection.

A review of a recent memoir about Albe. She smirks at ‘in no respect particularly handsome’. How he’d rage about that, she thinks.

You’ll never forget me, he’d told her. Her smile vanishes. What lies. What lies came out of his mouth, even when he was dying.

She turns to the next paragraph.

Lord Byron is abused for the freedom with which he has spoken of certain of his favourite familiars; but, as we have already said, he affected to be more vicious than he really was, and yet, of what sort of ladies has he spoken? Has he mentioned the name of one who is entitled to the slightest consideration, or whose reputation has not been blown over all the town long ago without his help?

She stares at the page, reads it again, and then a third time.

. . . of what sort of ladies . . .

She licks her lips; something’s bubbling up inside her like a bad soup stewing, and she can’t stop it.

. . . who is entitled to the slightest consideration . . .

She fixes the back of her hand across her mouth.

. . . whose reputation has not yet been blown all over the town long ago . . .

Her hand falls. ‘Dear God,’ she says aloud. ‘What a pompous, stupid, silly, prejudiced—’

Her voice rises with each word, so she grabs a cushion in case she has to press it to her lips, stop a yell that would wake everyone up.

But it vanishes; for there’s one thing, she realises, that matters more.

That the writer says she’s not entitled to be considered. That the reputation of ladies of her sort is already blown all over town.

She wants to laugh, suddenly. Well, then, she’s safe! She won’t be exposed as someone appalling, simply because she’s already too appalling to be exposed.

How this man loathes women, though. Another is called a ridiculous vixen. How might the reviewer have referred to her, if he’d thought her worthy of consideration?

Clairy Cocotte.

She hears it clear as day, though it’s almost ten years ago now. Albe’s voice. And Mary’s surprise shot at him that night – Don’t call her that! – which undid it all.

But she’s Mam’selle Claire now. Words he’d never said, will never say.

She sighs, picks up Mary’s letter. It arrived this morning, but she’s not had a chance to read it yet. ‘Not true,’ she admits aloud. She’s had plenty of chances. She just doesn’t want to hear that plaintive voice begging yet again.

At least the first page is about little Percy. Shelley’s son. Her adored boy. Her darling boy. And Mary’s, too, of course.

She rubs her eyes, reads on.

But I have just made acquaintance with Tom Moore – he reminds me delightfully of the past and I like him much – you would too, I am sure. There is something warm and genuine in his feelings and manner which is very attentive—

She raises an eyebrow. ‘You always did like the attention of a young man, Mary,’ she says. ‘Tom Moore had better look out.’ Even if he’s happily married.

She’s being uncharitable. She reads on.

. . . and redeems him from the sin of worldliness with which he has been charged.

Her eyebrows rise. Sin of worldliness? But he was Albe’s good friend, after all. Did he hear about Clairy Cocotte from Albe? Mary continues.

I have breakfasted with him, and we spoke of Shelley and Byron. I feel perfectly at ease talking about them with him, especially as I have been so long exiled from the style of society in which I spent the better part of my life. You know how I crave it all back! I am sure the book he is planning will be a great tribute to both men.

The book he is planning. A tribute to both men.

‘Dear God,’ she says out loud again. ‘Dear God, Mary. What on earth have you done to me now? Can you really be this stupid?’

She gets up, muttering furiously, and goes over to the bureau. Dips her pen into the ink to write a letter – then stops. It’s too late for any protest or warning from her, now that Mary’s already ‘breakfasted’ with him. And told him who knows how much.

She wants to swallow, but her throat’s too dry. She pours herself a little water from the small decanter. If she’s mentioned in Moore’s book and Marie Ivanovna discovers it, she’ll be cast out, nobody will employ her and she’ll have to go home.

Just as Mary wants her to do.

What a wicked sister. What a wicked woman. The familiar knot in her chest tightens and burns; she coughs, but it never comes up.

She turns to her journal instead. It’s the only place she can say what she really thinks.

She has forsaken even their memory for the pitiful pleasure of trifling with triflers, and has exchanged the sole thought of his being for a share in the corruption of society.

Would to God she could perish without note or remembrance, so the brightness of his name might not be darkened by the corruption she sheds upon it . . .

‘You’ll never forget me,’ Albe had said to her.

When Fletcher told Mary last year that Albe had mentioned her when he was dying in Greece, Claire had raged at her in a letter, ‘He’s lying, of course he’s lying.’

Mary had written:

He regretted how he treated you, according to Fletcher. And Fletcher was always very honest, so I think perhaps you can forgive him now.

Never. Never. It was all lies – Fletcher lying for his dead master. Or Albe himself, lying for a better passage into heaven.

A she-wolf raises a howl in the distant forest. Calling to her mate, perhaps. Or warning him away.

She lifts her pen again.

The instant she appears I feel not as if I had blood in my veins but in its stead the crawling motion of the Death Worm.

Damn Mary. Damn her to a fiery burning hell. Let fire rain down on her, just like it did before. Only this time, don’t let it stop.

She blows out the candle. Smoke from the burned wick fills her little governess’s room; fills her nostrils, her throat. Sparks a memory; so she breathes in as she imagines she would have done that day three summers ago, if she’d been standing by his funeral pyre on the beach in Lerici as she’d wanted to. Smelling his body burn – or what was left of it, after the fish had eaten his face, his hands. Taking him up into herself, pulling in every last ashy, dead scent of him.

Dear God, but she’d wanted to be there. Mary, again. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.

Albe was there, though. So she was told afterwards.

Ah, but she could have defied Mary. Insisted on being present. Then she’d have been there by the pyre. Positioned between him and Albe one last time.

Let fire rain down on her just like it did before.

How it did rain down on her once before, she remembers. Blood rain. Pioggia di sangue, the locals called it.

Rain would mix with the red sand from the south, those cauldron-hot drops, and come pelting down, streaking every surface with terracotta tears.

That hot sirocco wind, whirling up from the deserts of Africa.

The colours left by the wind might have been pretty, but it was too wild for Mary. Like a dangerous tiger stalking outside the house, it kept Mary indoors, lying on a chaise . . . Ah, perhaps she’s being unkind, for Mary couldn’t, wouldn’t get up, not after all the bleeding that began with such a rush only a bath filled with ice could save her. She’d held Mary’s hand while her sister’s teeth chattered; rubbed her fingers until the colour came back to her cheeks. Stroked her hair as the bleeding slowed, then wrapped her chilled and naked body in all the blankets she could find. The baby – Mary’s last – gone.

But on the day of the blood rain, Mary did get up. She had no choice, she said. There was still no news. Shelley’s boat still hadn’t been sighted from Livorno, further along the coast, where he’d gone to visit him.

Albe, of course. The source of all the pain she’s ever felt.

Mary had told her husband before he left that she hated him. That she was sick of his continual nightmares. Of his hysterical screaming about whatever visions he’d had. Of his disloyalty to her. She wanted, she said, never to have to look on his face again.

Claire hears every word, clear as if it’s being shouted next to her little governess’s room, right now, here in this house. She shivers. After that terrible row with Mary, Shelley went to the village and bought prussic acid. He’d kill himself, he told Mary.

Fine, Mary had said. She wouldn’t even say goodbye to him the day he sailed to Livorno with their friend, Edward Williams. Edward’s wife, Jane, joined Claire as both women said goodbye. Well, she understood his nightmares better than Mary perhaps, after all the ones she was having herself.

He’d grasped her hand, sadly, and said, ‘Endings have to be faced,’ or some such thing – she couldn’t make it out for the wind on the beach whipping her hair about her ears, but when she shouted, ‘What?’ he was already wading out to the boat.

But on that red-sky morning two weeks after he and Edward sailed to Livorno, and four days after both men were due to return to Lerici, Mary had said, ‘I’ll go mad if I don’t go and look for him myself.’

Claire stared at Mary’s coffee, sitting untouched. ‘Wouldn’t you rather I went?’ She was thinking of Percy, only two and a half years old, without his mother.

But Mary shook her head. ‘Look after my boy for me.’

The Serpent is shut out from Paradise.

Many times after the day he sailed away, Claire had watched the sea from the terrace, wondering if she’d heard him right. ‘Endings have to be faced.’ Mary had spent that time facing nothing.

But I dread

To speak what you may know too well.

And so when it was Mary’s turn to leave for Livorno, accompanied by Edward’s wife, Jane, Claire had stood and watched the empty road on the other side of the house, long after Mary had put up an umbrella to shield herself from the red rain and climbed into a carriage.

That day, the heat soaked through her thinnest dress, wet as the rain outside, leaving her arms and her back and her legs slippery wet. Her hair frizzed so much she was tempted to cut it all off. She’d turned away from the window eventually to go to little Percy, who was napping as his mother left, and then she took a last look across the sea. The sun was setting slowly on the horizon. It looked as though the sea was on fire.

The house was still and silent, though. Thick vines trailed over the terrace; tiny lizards raced across cracked stone floors. Wet leaves slapped as the wind blew them back and forth; storm petrels hovered for a few seconds, then were carried away by the winds.

Yes: the world was on fire. It seemed to her that day that she was the only one left.

The last woman.

The thought of it had panicked her as she padded through the house to little Percy, filling her with sudden, crazed thoughts.

But I dread

To speak what you may know too well.

What if the worst happened, and neither Shelley nor Mary ever came back?

What will you do?

Little Percy would be left to her care just as now, but for always.

By the time she reached his little bed on the floor upstairs, he was awake from his nap. She reached out to help him out of bed; What if? she murmured, and it was as though he heard her, for the little boy smiled then and said, ‘May we go out, Mama Claire?’

Mama Claire was his secret name for her that she’d taught him from when he was born. Only to use when it was just the two of them, she’d always said.

‘Ah, it’s night now,’ she told him. ‘But tomorrow we will, yes.’

How to manage it, though – tomorrow? Well, another carriage could be got from the village for them easily enough. She’d pack a single trunk with clothes for them. Make her way to her friend, Mrs Mason, in Pisa. That wasn’t so far away. Mrs Mason would help them.

Would shelter them both.

Barricade them in.

If a desperate mother should come calling.

‘Where is Mama?’ Percy asked as he trotted by her side down to the kitchen. He was frowning; she wrapped her arms around him, willing him not to cry.

‘Gone for a day or two, that’s all. So it’s only us. Won’t that be fun?’

He looked dubious but only for a second, as she held out some biscotti on her palm for him, as if he were a pup. It worked; he took them, munched happily.

Then she closed the shutters tight, lighting only a few candles. Outside, the wind picked up, battered the house.

He wasn’t hers, she reminded herself later, as she sat alone in the dark of the kitchen, scarcely breathing, Percy back upstairs in his bed. What an insane idea to take him away with her . . .

He wasn’t hers. No one was hers.

She dabbed her wet eyes, told herself it was dust from the wind.

She was looking after someone else’s child. Not her own.

‘And I had better get used to it,’ she muttered, dousing the last candle and heading for her room.

The smoke from the candle has gone; so has her rage. She’d forgotten that part of the night she spent alone with little Percy, waiting for Mary to come back with her husband. The part where she had predicted her own future.

‘Am I used to it yet?’ she wonders, pulling off her boots, undoing her dress. At least she doesn’t pretend to be Vanya and Dunia’s mother. Whatever Hermann Gambs says.

She thinks of him, of his question, as she lies back, drifting off to a troubled sleep eventually, by the dawn. The next morning, though, she still doesn’t have an answer for him. She’s late, too, rushing into the breakfast room with her hair still unpinned, her face unwashed, barely ready to face Marie Ivanovna. But nobody’s there.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ she mutters, before gulping down some cold coffee and munching on a cold crust of toast. Ten minutes later and she’s in the morning room, wondering if Marie Ivanovna’s there. But it’s only Gambs, in a chair by the window, reading a newspaper. In the garden outside, the children are running about, screaming and shouting. The servants are erecting a huge marquee for Marie Ivanovna’s birthday celebrations.

Claire sits on the chair opposite Gambs, pins up her loose hair, says, ‘We won’t have much time today to talk but perhaps later—’

‘Are you going to put me off forever?’ he says, peering over the top of his pince-nez. ‘Marie Ivanovna does not have a birthday every day, you know.’

‘Of course not,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t treat you that way, but how am I to—’

At which moment little Dunia bursts in with a huge coloured ball, shrieking, ‘Mam’selle! Mam’selle!’

She laughs; Gambs throws Dunia’s ball for her to catch.

‘Perhaps we should sneak away,’ he says.

Dunia runs up, tugs at her skirts.

‘Very well, we will take you with us,’ Gambs says, lifting her up.

‘You’re the one who said not to pretend they’re mine,’ she says.

The little girl’s cheeks bulge like a baby’s. Claire reaches up, gently pinches one of them. He sets the child down on the floor, and she runs out of the room.

‘But I do not pretend anything,’ he says, ‘while you, Claire—’

But he’s interrupted again, this time by the boom of a small cannon, which makes them both jump and hurry to the door.

The birthday celebrations have begun.

Only many, many hours later can she return to her room. Marie Ivanovna’s birthday has been a great success, at least, but Claire has not answered Gambs’s question yet, and it’s hanging over her, even though it’ll be dawn soon. It’s fizzing her mind and stopping her sleep.

Finally, she gets out of bed, paces back and forth across the wooden floor, thinking hard.

Eventually, she takes out Mary’s letter again. And maybe it’s the exertions of the day; maybe it’s too many memories crowding in. Maybe it’s still not long enough from all that happened; maybe she’s still not far enough away from her stepsister.

Maybe it’s all of these things. Maybe it’s little Dunia, or Gambs and what he wants from her. Whatever it is, it has her in tears, sobbing in a way she hasn’t done for the last three years.

She tries to soften the noise she’s making with a cushion, but it seeps out, echoes round the walls of her room.

When the knocking at her door comes, soft but urgent, she’s not surprised. She gets up, dabs at her face. Opens the door to him. He’s standing in his nightshirt, dark hair awry, fingers ink-stained.

‘I was writing – I heard you,’ he says. ‘Ah, Claire – what can I do?’ He reaches out to touch her cheek, wipe the mess of tears away.

So easy for him to do.

If she will let him do it.

Clairy Cocotte.

In the distance, the she-wolf howls.

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1843

He’s taking each naked toe in his mouth, his soft, soft mouth. To make her swoon and cry out, ‘Stop, stop, stop’. Ah, but she never gives in as easy as that.

‘Claire,’ he murmurs, ticklish lips on her calf now, licking up her thigh. Now she may say it; now that he’s inside, tongue and fingers both, digging, wriggling, that shriek can leave her. Then a groan, rich and deep, follows; another, yet; and, at last, a sigh.

La petite mort. Perhaps that’s why she always feels bereft afterwards, like she’s given something of herself away that she’ll never get back. An absurd notion; and the feeling only lasts a few seconds. It wasn’t always like that. But it was such a long time before this man came to her bed. Maybe she’s changed.

‘I’ve changed,’ she says, blinking at her reflection in the little hand mirror, shaking out still-black hair that’s damp with sweat. The candles flicker. It’s daytime, but the shutters are closed against the stench of rotting food in the alleyways below. Paris is like this in July; no wonder the rich leave it for the country.

He’s leaning towards her now, his breath hot, smelling of her. Prises the mirror from her fingers.

‘Trust me; you’ve yet to find out how much you change,’ she says. Her voice is no longer deep and amorous; she’s high-pitched, like a mother chiding her son. ‘As you age. From your youthful days.’

No wonder he grimaces. So it’s off-putting, of course it is. But she can’t help it. It’s only the truth, after all.

‘Don’t do that to yourself,’ he says. ‘I don’t care what age you are.’

‘You will, one day. Ah, this should be the last time. Go find a girl your own age. Have fun with her.’

She doesn’t mean that. As he knows. So he says, ‘You’d never forgive me if I found a girl my own age. You’d poison me or stab me or something. Don’t think I don’t know you.’

‘But seriously. You need to marry well. How much do they pay new solicitors at Lincoln’s Inn?’

He rolls away from her, cross. ‘You’re treating me like a child. An idiot.’

Something jars. The Ideot. The story she’d begun writing – oh, more years ago than she cares to remember now. It’s about the mind of a girl judged simple and backward; a mind waiting to be enlightened by the right influences, she tells him. Before it becomes a kind of twisted horror story.

‘You never told me that,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know you wrote.’

‘You see – you don’t know everything about me at all.’

A bang goes off from one of the ramshackle buildings northwards, causing shouts and screams, making horses shriek. They both start, but the ruckus stops almost at once. There’s always something bursting out of its skin in this city these days; it’s a powder keg, its fuse constantly being set alight.

It’s funny, she thinks, how much you get used to danger and threat. She shrugs, settles back down on the pillows. He cradles her chin. She says, ‘I’ve even been published, once. A short story. It’s called “The Pole”.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘How could you not know that? Ah, I’m just teasing you. It’s in Mary’s name. Had to be. I’d never have got it placed with my own.’

In Mary’s name.

He kisses her, but she’s restless now. ‘And she’ll be here soon – you really do have to go,’ she says, back up on her elbows. Her breasts are still plump; her skin still smooth. She’s not the pale, voluptuous girl she once was; she is more brown-skinned now, after years of Russian and Italian summers, and her black hair is so thick and curly she’s even been mistaken for Moroccan once.

But she knows the value of her own allure better these days. The worth of her. Even if she is older.

He kisses her again, but he can’t afford her, she tells him.

‘I know. I know. So why bother with me?’ he says, sulking.

‘We just don’t have the time, that’s all. Really, I’ll see you later—’

But he stops up her mouth, more forcefully this time. A single vertical line gets through the shutters, cleaving the middle of the bed in two as their limbs criss-cross. And she can’t resist climbing on top to view his pale, hard chest under her olive hands; the sprouting of reddish hair from the pinkish-white skin; the small strawberry nipples. Dipping her head down, she licks her way along his body, which hasn’t so much as a fingertip of loose flesh. His shoulders are tight and muscular and square, though he affects a hunch because he thinks it makes him look bookish and poetic. His thighs stiffen as her hair brushes them; he’s ready.

What to hold back; what to release.

Thirty years – almost – of lessons learned.

‘But you will find time to read my manuscript,’ he’s pleading afterwards, when they lie side by side, sticky and hot once more.

She takes a sip of warm white wine, her head fuzzy, thighs tingling.

‘You did say you would – and when I find a backer, I’ll have it ready. You have to move quickly in this business. Time waits for no man, as they say.’

‘In this business . . .’ she repeats, and laughs a little.

He reaches below the crumpled sheets, ready for her a third time, his fingers groping, but she’s had enough. She pushes them away, but he’s insistent. More from lack of energy than desire, she gives in – just as a bell chimes from two floors below.

His mouth nuzzles her.

The bell chimes again.

His tongue strokes and flicks.

It chimes a third time. And then a fourth, and a fifth.

She shoves him away, sits bolt upright. ‘Oh, dear God,’ she gasps. The clock says three.

There’s no time at all; maybe only seconds. She grabs her kimono robe from the bottom of the bed, where he’d pulled it from her earlier. He wrestles it back.

‘No – she’s here—’

The bell chimes again. On her feet, she puts a finger to her lips. There’s a short, sharp knock at the door, a faint but distinct cry of, ‘Claire? Are you there? Claire? It’s me, it’s Mary! Are you at home?’

They stare at one another before she runs naked along the vestibule to the salon overlooking the cluttered, filthy street. Sure enough, down below, sit Mary’s trunks. The cab that delivered her is picking its way through the detritus that litters the cobbles, the pony taking its time. They never come up this far; it’s too narrow. Mary must have insisted. Claire runs back to the bedroom, frowns because he’s still dressing, as though he wants to get found out. Fool that he is – Mary would explode if she caught them.

‘Hurry!’ she hisses. Another knock comes, another pleading, ‘Claire, are you there?’, but this time harder-edged and joined by another voice: her neighbour, old Madame Bouchard, who’s out on the landing speaking to Mary. Mary’s Italian is perfection; her French, less so.

‘Quick,’ Claire says. ‘This way!’

Snatching up her robe with one hand, she pulls him with the other into the vestibule and shoves him into the little salle à manger on the right, which looks down onto a tiny square, three floors below. Branches of a giant sycamore growing nearby almost reach her wooden balcony.

‘You want me to climb onto that tree? Are you mad?’

She’s calm, robe fastened around her, loose hair pinned up. ‘You know she can’t find you here.’

He raises his arms in protest, thinks better of it, then swings a leg over the balcony. It groans. ‘This isn’t safe!’

The rapping at her front door continues. Madame Bouchard calls out, ‘Êtes vous tombée?’ in case she’s had an accident.

She wants to laugh. He’s stuck between the balcony and the tree branch, with a leg on each and neither secure enough to let him make the leap he needs to. She clamps her hand over her mouth.

‘Absurd!’ he shouts from the tree. ‘No more! Tell her. Or I will!’ He scrambles, hot and furious, to grip a branch above him; now he can swing his leg from the balcony in safety. The cobbles below wouldn’t be kind if he fell, but there’s enough horse manure and rotten cabbage to cushion him if he did.

He reaches the ground with a final leap. ‘Tell her tonight,’ he shouts up again, as she flaps at him to be quiet. ‘Or I will.’

She throws down his boots first, then balls up his shirt and throws that down, too. He makes a rude gesture at a drunk couple nearby who are swaying, staring at him, before he dodges his way through the dark little lane that leads north, away from her.

The drunk couple below shout at one another; a few more folk tip out of a nearby inn, stand and watch, throw some insults. The man, rough-looking and bearded, shoves the woman, then tosses a few coins at her feet. She’s thin, her feet are bare and her hair is loose. One shoulder is uncovered. The woman bares her breast. The man shouts,

‘Cochon! Cochon à merde!’

Then a word Claire hasn’t heard for years hurtles through the air.

‘Cocotte! Cocotte! Cocotte!’

The woman might be thin, but she’s not afraid. She swipes at his cheek; he grasps her by the wrist. Claire’s about to shout when someone across the square throws a missile of some sort. The crowd holler, but the couple stop; the man gazes up to see who threw whatever it was at him. The woman scampers away.

Claire shuts the balcony doors, trembles in her flimsy robe.

Clairy Cocotte.

‘You’ll never forget me,’ he’d said. Never. And how he made sure of it.

She hasn’t forgiven him.

Her old foe. Right to the end, so he’ll be.

She sighs; hate can be exhausting. And she’s no foolish girl by the shore of Lake Geneva, scrambling up a hill of twisting vines at his lordship’s every insistence. She’s outlived him by almost twenty years.

She grinds her bare heel into the rug, as though he’s dirt on a shoe sole.

‘Claire! Are you there? Dear God, can she be away? I am to stay with her . . .’

Mary. She hurries through to the bedroom, smooths over the rumpled bedsheets, splashes on eau de cologne.

It’s past three; her state of undress will horrify her stepsister.

Clairy Cocotte.

Forever the naughty younger one; forever the troublesome, wilful one, who spoils it all. Just like in her story. Just like that night. Playing Geraldine to Mary’s Christabel and the blood that came after . . .

But there’s no time for this. She runs back along the vestibule, pulls the bolt.

Open the door and be sure to smile!

So she does. On the landing, several neighbours are gathered. Madame Bouchard and Mary at the front, the latter as appalled as she’d expected. Madame Bouchard shrugs. Ah, she’s seen Madame Clairmont in a state of undress before. She’s la femme anglaise. La femme bohémienne. Who gives them no trouble in this filthy Paris village of cafés, bars, guinguettes. And cocottes.

Claire lifts her hand to her forehead, peers as if looking into something too bright. ‘Je suis désolé – c’est la migraine—’

Even Mary understands that.

‘I could hardly get out of bed.’

Madame Bouchard and the others cluster on the dark landing, shuffling and muttering. One makes to enter the apartment, but Mary, silent and pale and cold, squeezes into the vestibule, blocking their way. She shuts the door, follows her sister.

‘Ah, you’re here at last! I’m sorry I wasn’t—’

But Mary interrupts. ‘How could you?’ she says, fury spreading across her face. ‘How. Could. You?’

She wraps the robe tightly around her. ‘What do you mean?,’ she says, but not waiting for an answer, she heads along the vestibule to her bedroom. ‘I took so long because—’ then she pauses.

‘You think that is what I mean?’ Mary follows her, stands in bedroom doorway, her arms folded. ‘Oh, but you know what it is, you do not fool me for a minute, Claire . . .’

Has Mary guessed indeed? But she can’t have seen him, she thinks, as she sponges herself at the washstand, patting between her legs. Mary already has her back to the room.

‘I should have known it all – but I trusted you. It’s betrayal, that’s what it is. Betrayal, and nothing less.’

Claire frowns. If Mary knows about her young man, then she must have learned it before today. But how? From whom?

‘Oh lord,’ Claire mutters, pulling on fresh drawers. She ties a light corset with no busk inside. ‘Mary, honestly, I can explain everything.’

Clairy Cocotte.

‘Damn you, you old coquin,’ she mutters. ‘Meurtrier. Tueur.’

‘What are you saying now?’

Claire pulls on a pale silk dress, fastens a ribbon round her waist, slips her feet into silk slippers. Only when she’s checking herself in the glass does she notice the script of his latest play on her bureau. She shoves it inside, locks it. Mary will pass through this room to get to her bed in the little boxroom beyond.

‘It’s all right,’ Claire says, ‘you can look now. I’m decent.’

‘You’ve insulted me. And Shelley’s memory; I mean how could you, Claire . . .’ Mary isn’t stopping.

‘What has Shelley to do with—’

Claire squeezes past Mary into the salon, where she opens the shutters to let in some air. But it’s too foul, so she closes them again.

They’ll just have to sit in the stifling heat, with candles adding yet more.

Mary is gabbling. ‘You know how important this is to me. If it should get out that he—’

She interrupts. ‘I don’t understand what Shelley has to do with it.’

‘But my lawyer says there’s nothing he can do,’ Mary prattles on, wringing her hands. ‘And now you’ll not do anything, of course. Didn’t you say the lease of this apartment is ten years?’

Claire turns her back on Mary. None of this makes sense, and she needs wine; needs to breathe. The room’s too hot. She’ll have to open the shutters. The stench hits them, but it’s either that or boil like a pair of frogs on a stove.

It’s been two years since they last saw one another. She’d ‘disappeared’ straight after her mama’s funeral that day, and Mary afterwards chased all their friends, asking where she’d gone, was she still in London, for she’d not heard a word. It took Claire two months after she left London, to write to Mary from Paris.

If one only dared to be frank in this world and tell all one feels, how clear and comprehensible the world would become. But you know yet one is often obliged to conceal one’s affairs, or one’s feelings from the very person one would most like to disclose them to. More I cannot say, but I am sure your mind, which is all intuition, will guess my meaning, and be glad that I am happy.

Guess my meaning. Be glad that I am happy.

Mary was glad, she said, writing back straightaway. Who is he? Who is bringing you such happiness?

But Claire didn’t say.

‘Start from the beginning, Mary, please,’ Claire says, but then remembers Mary’s trunk in the street below. ‘Ah, your baggage.’

Someone’s brought it upstairs before thieves got to it, she’s relieved to see. She pulls it inside and returns to the salon. Mary still hasn’t removed her hat.

‘You should take that off,’ Claire says, nodding at the bonnet. ‘Or d’you want to suffer even more in this heat?’

‘Do not make a joke of me,’ Mary says. Her lower lip trembles, and her large blue eyes water as they tend to nowadays. Claire had noticed that when she was back in England.

But she doesn’t unpin her bonnet. Stubborn Mary. Her hair, still golden, still fine, is crushed beneath it; her face, flushed in odd patches, trickles sweat. Fine lines around her eyes have deepened since Claire last saw her; her mouth turns down more sharply.

But she’s still a beauty. And she still holds herself the way a woman does when she’s always been beautiful. If she’s aware of her ageing, she doesn’t believe it.

Mary knows her worth, too. There’s a fretfulness, though, in her handwringing. A shakiness to her pacing about the floor.

The older sister; the one with all the burdens. Even that first time they fled to the Continent with Shelley, Mary was the one who wouldn’t bathe naked in the stream. The one who made sure of eight hours’ sleep, when she and Shelley sat up all night. The one who dismissed stories of ghosts as foolish, childish.

Mary, Mary, never contrary.

That was Claire. Clairy Contraire.

The years disappear; all she’s learned vanishes, and here her older sister is, still scolding her for misbehaviour. She bites her lip, just as she always did when she was in trouble with Mary, before the urge to annoy her even more takes over.

‘Oh, Mary – what can be so terrible? Have you really come all this way just to shout at me?’

Mary’s fury freezes, then melts into something worse: self-pity. This, Claire can’t bear. She’d rather have the fury.

‘This is a very pretty apartment,’ Mary’s saying, pointing about with a trembling hand. ‘Roomier than you suggested in your letter. Much larger.’

‘You think so? It’s hardly the most fashionable – but you know I don’t care for—’

‘And such a very large room. High ceilings! And the aspect, too.’

‘It’s north-facing, Mary.’

‘Cool in summer, then.’

She’s fanning her face because of the heat.

‘And the light! Like Italy – like Geneva—’

‘Yes – like Geneva. Dark and stormy. If that’s what you mean.’

‘I mean Geneva on my recent visit. That I made with Percy.’

‘How is Percy?’

‘What a healing experience it was. Even if we weren’t allowed into the villa. But just to stand and look over the lake, remember the birth of my poor little book . . .’

Poor little book, indeed.

‘Oh, what is it, Mary, for God’s sake?’

‘What must this apartment cost you?’

‘It is – about – well, eight hundred francs.’

‘Eight hundred? A year, I assume.’

‘Don’t be silly—’

‘But you only have yourself to think of, whereas I have myself and Percy.’ Mary heaves a great sigh, fixes on the chair in front of her, makes a show of sitting down with care.

I’m not a child, Claire thinks. I’m forty-five years old and I won’t be bullied. ‘Just be plain with me, please. You know I can’t bear it when you’re like this.’

‘I just wish you could have told me of it yourself. You can imagine – I knew nothing of it, so it was a shock.’

Claire squares her shoulders, standing above her.

Mary’s eyes water, spill. She dabs them. ‘But it was Shelley’s nature to be generous. You know how he was with every waif and stray.’

‘Shelley? Ah!’ Light begins to dawn. ‘So this is about—’

‘His will, yes. A good friend – an executor of his will – has been in contact with me with some very hurtful, very difficult news. Sir Timothy only has a few days left.’

Relief drops Claire’s shoulders. A desire to laugh bubbles up, as it always does when something terrible strikes her as absurd. ‘We’ve heard about Sir Tim on his deathbed too many times to believe it now. I still think he’ll live forever.’ She sits down in the chair opposite her stepsister.

‘Don’t talk about him that way.’

‘Don’t jinx it, you mean.’

‘Claire. For heaven’s sake.’ At last, Mary takes off her bonnet, sniffing heavily. ‘I want to know, why you didn’t tell me about what Shelley left you. Yes – I have discovered it all, you may as well know.’

Claire sighs. ‘It’s not some dreadful secret. I always assumed you knew what he left for me.’

But that’s not true at all. Shelley told Claire; he didn’t tell Mary. And she didn’t tell Mary. Nobody told Mary. But now Mary knows. Ah well, she thinks, crossing her legs. It was bound to come out, sooner or later.

‘You didn’t assume that at all. You kept it from me, both of you.’

‘We both knew how you’d react—’

‘About him leaving you twelve thousand pounds! A sum like that! And when he told me he was leaving you six thousand. Not twelve.’

‘You know it wasn’t just for me,’ Claire says, quietly. ‘It was for me and any dependants I may have.’

‘But you didn’t have any, in the end. Did you?’ Mary’s voice is shrill; she knows she’s pressing on bruised skin.

‘You can be a very cruel woman when you want to be. How could he have changed his will, when there was only three months between his death and . . .’ But she can’t finish. She gets up and goes to the window. Thick black clouds are passing over the sun; rain threatens. The rotting vegetables and horse muck will swirl and sink and smell worse when it stops. Some shutters bang closed opposite; a cart overturns and the men holler at one another.

Her little party for the great poet’s widow is due to begin soon. The room darkens.

‘I don’t want to cause you pain,’ Mary is saying to her turned back. ‘But Percy is his only living child—’

‘And not a child anymore!’ She spins round to face her sister, but it’s almost too dark in the little salon now to make her out. ‘He’s a grown man, who will inherit it all, and any moment now, so you say—’

‘But think what he could have done with those extra six thousand pounds – could still do if you sign them over to him!’

‘Yes, let me think what Percy could do. Oh, I know – he could take another grand tour, perhaps? Or buy another sailboat?’

‘Don’t be foul. If you had named him for the extra amount, he could have borrowed on it, knowing what was there to inherit. There were also my own – needs. As his mother.’

‘Haven’t I sent you money over the years? Even when I had scarcely two farthings to rub together. You’ve had an allowance from Sir Timothy—’

‘Two hundred and fifty a year hardly counts, when Percy’s school fees were a fifth of that!’

‘Can you hear yourself, Mary? Don’t you know how comfortably you’ve had it?’

‘Oh, you’ve poisoned all my life! Every single second of it. I won’t be rid of you until I’m dead. At least Heaven will be a world without you.’ Mary flings her bonnet to the floor. The storm outside breaks at that moment, making both women jump. Lightning cuts into the darkness, crude and unwelcome. They don’t want to see each other’s faces, each other’s anger.

Paris storms, Claire thinks. Worse than Geneva ones.

Geneva. They always come back to it, somehow.

And always will. Especially now, when she and Mary are the only ones left from that summer. Albe’s dead. Shelley’s dead. Poor Polly-dolly was the first to die, and by his own hand. Fletcher died four years ago.

They’re the only ones who know what took place then.

She’s seized by something beyond her, so it seems, and pushes out her forefinger for Mary to meet with her own. Just like they used to do when they were children.

But Mary’s either forgotten or doesn’t want to do it.

Claire shakes her head, says, ‘Ah, it’s no good, Mary. Us being at each other’s throats like this. Not after all this time.’

The clock ticks. Another flash, another rumble. Raindrops fall; there is shouting, shrieking, folk scrambling in the street below.

‘Can’t you imagine what that extra amount would have meant to me, for my work?’ Mary says. ‘No more scribbling for every penny. Rushing every word. Waiting to see what sales might bring, wishing for more time to think—’

‘You know what I think of your work. I’ve always been afraid you’d stop writing – rest on your laurels. You’re the one who’s raised the position of all women. You don’t know your own value, that’s the trouble. Shelley would have owed a fortune to anyone if it meant buying time to write. But you won’t—’

‘I won’t be in debt. I have a horror of it.’

‘But you must write. You’re better than any man alive.’

Mary bites her lip.

Flattery always works, but Claire means what she is saying.

‘So why didn’t you make that extra six thousand over to me? If that’s what you think? You knew what it meant.’

‘I don’t have the power to change a will that isn’t even released yet—’

‘That’s no excuse. You could have acknowledged the endowment. Borrowed on it as you have for this place and – sent me the extra money—’

‘Ah, so I can be in debt, but not you?’

You’re just a handmaiden to a goddess, he’d said once.

Mary’s fighting for every breath. They’ll make each other ill.

‘Perhaps,’ Claire says, at last, ‘you’re right. I could have borrowed, helped you. But I don’t think that’s really what is upsetting you.’

Mary purses her lips, looks away, so she tries again.

‘I’m sorry, Mary. Truly, I’m sorry that we kept it from you.’

Be more generous, she thinks. She tries a third time.

‘But you’ve earned your living by your pen, just as your mother wanted.’

A new genus.

She won’t give Mary everything. ‘And look at me. I’ve supported myself these last twenty years, and sometimes I thought being a governess would kill me, so I’ve earned a little quiet and a place of my own and I’ll hear no more about it—’ She breaks off as her temper rises once again.

Mary mutters, but their little Parisian storm is past. Wine eases them to a softer tone with one another. She agrees to help Mary with money when she needs it. Mary promises to invite her to Field Place when Percy inherits.

‘To the end of Sir Timothy Shelley!’ Claire says, raising her glass.

Mary frowns. ‘It’s wicked to—’

‘Oh come on, don’t be a hypocrite. Not when you’ve been wishing for it for twenty years.’

At last, Mary smiles. And he is still a secret, at least. Not what Mary was talking about at all.

And then the bell chimes, for the umpteenth time that day.

Her party guests are here, and nothing is ready.

II.

Clairy, Lake Geneva 1816

‘Oh, read that line again, Polly-dolly. It’s too marvellous.’

Polly-dolly’s play is terrible, his reading of it even worse. Albe’s head drops back; ah, she knows what’s coming now. That tell-tale perspiration glistening on his forehead just before he gives chase . . . They’re all watching him, and his cruelty should disgust her. But when he stretches his body across the rug beneath the darkened window like that, with his shirt open and his hair curling at his neck, the nobility in his raised chin, his forehead, that isn’t there in anyone else she’s ever met, there’s a tug deep down inside her.

When he raises his head and catches her eye, she knows he knows it’s there, too.

Ah, so much knowledge, and none of it a help to her. So, forget knowledge; remember feeling instead. What dilutes the threat is always the absurd. She stares, searching the purple-red wine stain above his upper lip; the wolfish teeth turning grey. No; she can’t find the absurd there. Wantonness, maybe. Recklessness, certainly.

But not the absurd.

Maybe it’s in Mary’s laughter. In his winking at her, his blowing kisses to make her pout like a painting.

Claire thinks she might throw up. Right in the middle of this ridiculous room, all over his ridiculous cushions. She imagines doing so; but no, the absurd isn’t there, either. She struggles out of her seat, swaying a little, opens her mouth for a retort. Instead, a belch pops out. She covers her mouth, gasps, then chuckles.

So, the absurd was right there, inside her all along.

‘Good Lord, Claire.’ That’s Mary, older sister.

‘Boule de suif.’ That’s Albe tsking, maidenish and prim.

‘I’m not fat!’ That’s her, hand on her belly, which is even now protruding through the thin muslin. She’s still laughing.

He chucks an acorn – when did he gather acorns? – that just misses her cheek. She catches it though, throws it back with another laugh – their game, after all.

But she misses him, her aim too wide.

So when he gets to his feet to bait the doctor all over again, the laughter evaporates. The absurd can’t defeat the threat of danger. And what else does she have but that? What else is any of this but utterly, utterly absurd?

‘Come on, Polly-dolly! Don’t stop with your play now,’ he’s saying. ‘That’d be too cruel. Teasing us like this – you must have been taking lessons from Miss Clairmont.’

‘Like calls to like,’ is the smartest thing she can think of to say.

‘But I forgot she doesn’t tease anymore,’ he carries on as if she hasn’t spoken. ‘It’s too dull of her; there’s your lesson, Polly-dolly. Don’t be dull. Don’t be a Clairy Cocotte Fastidieuse.’

Nobody speaks up to defend her against his remarks. She waits, her mind blank, the wine stopping her tongue. How to reply, what to do? How dare he? But of course he does.

Then Mary says to Polly-dolly, ‘I liked that you introduced Dr Darwin. That was bold of you – his business with the piece of vermicelli moving—’

‘Go on!’ Albe booms. ‘I insist you read it out once more! You read so very well.’

Claire is relieved that his bullying is back with the hapless doctor, but nobody’s sticking up for Polly-dolly, either. They’re just Albe’s toys. Dogs for him to kick as everyone watches.

Well, she won’t have it.

Wobbling on her feet still, she gives a sarcastic curtsey and says, ‘I’d say sorry, your lordship, only with you being chased from the land of your birth, I couldn’t tell what was due to you and what wasn’t. You are still a lord. Ain’t you?’

Albe raises an empty glass to her performance. Shelley, with a dreamy expression, titters like a child, and points to something beyond Polly-dolly. They all follow his gaze; nothing’s there. Albe tosses his glass at the doctor; it just misses his bad ankle.

‘Dear God, but what are either of you two anyway?’ Polly-dolly has had enough. He tries to get off the chaise, but his ankle hits the floor and he shrieks. ‘Poets, are you? Tell me then, what can you do better than me,’ he says to Albe, ‘except write poetry?’

Albe ambles over to the chaise, halts at the doctor’s ankle. He looks as though he might step on it. Polly-dolly lifts it away from him, scowling.

‘First,’ says Albe, quietly, ‘I can hit the keyhole of that door with my pistol. Second, I can swim across the lake to the other side. And third’ – but his voice is trembling, boyish, like a bullied child, suddenly – ‘third, I can give you a thrashing.’

Polly-dolly turns away; his papers slip to the floor. Mary gathers them up. The writing is scrawled large and black, like a child’s.

Albe holds out his hand for the pages; Mary gives them to him. He holds them aloft.

‘“Tis thus the goitr’d idiot of the Alps . . .”’ He stops, disbelieving. Then recovers, saying, ‘You are writing about yourself, Polly-dolly, I see. A form of confession by the goitr’d idiot of the Alps himself, no less. Well, at least you’re at the vanguard of newness, Polly-dolly. No matter if it’s bad. Much worse was offered us at Drury Lane.’

She gathers her legs up under her, but the room’s thick with the heat of the candles, so she stretches them out again and watches for the attack, ready to move quickly. Albe’s back on the rug, waving another glass in her direction for her to fill. She doesn’t budge. He smirks at her refusal; Mary obliges, and he thanks her, catching her hand and kissing it, sneaking a look at Shelley. But Shelley’s gaze is elsewhere, far away from this room.

She wishes she were, too. Forget Polly-dolly’s play. This isle is full of noises. They’re all stuck here in their very own Tempest and can’t get away. The air’s stifling; she pulls at her bodice to loosen it. Sweat runs down her back. Albe’s Prospero, of course. Polly-dolly is the hapless Caliban. Mary, Miranda.

So who’s she?

Ariel. Slave to Albe until she wins her freedom.

‘You were talking before of sleepwalking,’ Mary’s saying, like a dutiful Miranda, ‘and of whether man was thought to be merely an instrument. Who directs us – through somnambulism—’

‘Who – or what – confers the principle of life?’ says Albe, clambering to his feet once again. This time, he takes the same bottle from before out of his pocket, dangles it in front of Mary. ‘Shall we find out?’ He wipes his mouth with his shirt sleeve.

Shelley lets him tap a few drops into his glass of water. He has no role in their Tempest; Shelley’s only ever Shelley. Mary accepts some drops; Polly-dolly, too. When it’s her turn, though, Albe swaps the bottle with another, near identical one.

It’s a sleight of hand, barely perceptible, but she catches it just the same.

‘What—?’ she says, but he plants a hard kiss on her lips before she can say any more.

‘Forgive me my roughness before, Clairy,’ he whispers. He winks, lets drops fall into her wine.

She sniffs; it smells of mint.

‘Mint – and wine?’ she says.

He doesn’t answer her question; says, instead, ‘You will stay with me tonight. You’ve not taken offence, I hope. Ah, you know how I can be, better than all of them.’

She wants to refuse, to tell him he’ll get no more of her.

But she does know him better than the rest of them. And he hasn’t asked her in so long.

From his place on the rug, he stares at her with a new and curious kind of look. It seems like sympathy, but that’s not an emotion she’s seen in him yet. Is Albe even capable of sympathy, she wonders, but then she thinks of those words he wrote about her – the words she mocked with Shelley, just the other day. There be none of beauty’s daughters with a magic like thee; And like music on the waters is thy sweet voice to me . . .

Sympathy runs throughout that poem, she thinks, her mood rising as she sips her wine. Yes; it’s all sympathy.

So the spirit bows before thee; To listen and adore thee . . .

But he’s never bowed down before her. Has never adored her.

So his feelings may come and go; so his love may not be constant, may not even be love. But who is she to resist what such a man does offer, when the cruelty stops? She sips a little more, lets the liquid warm her as the room darkens with the running down of the candles. The storm’s done; their Tempest is just beginning. How far past midnight it is, she can’t be sure without checking the grandfather clock, and that would mean removing her gaze from Albe’s, who’s bewitched by her, staring as she lifts the glass to her lips.

Bewitched.

Devil-bride.

‘Who directs man between waking and sleeping . . .’ Shelley says, his voice drifting around the room like a reel of smoke. From Albe drifts another voice, so that they meet and merge, become entwined.

Claire hasn’t eaten all day, but she’s not hungry. A comforting wooziness drifts around inside her belly like the two men’s voices, before curling up to rest inside her mouth, making her lick her lips.

Perhaps – for all she’s promised Shelley never to leave him – Albe does want her with him. This is just his way, as he said. He wants her in his household.

Ah, it’s true; they both want her.

The warm feeling bubbles in her mouth; she closes her eyes to taste mint and blackberry. Why not?

She giggles and yawns, stretches her arms out in front of her like a lazy cat, full of fish.

How she got down the hill she can’t recall. Or at what hour of day or night. But that somehow she did is clear. For here she is, right in her own bed, in her old chemise. And it’s morning.

But something’s not right.

She rests her palm on her forehead to stop the throbbing. Her mouth fills with water; her heart races. Her belly lurches and heaves; she rolls over, lunges at the chamber pot beneath the bed.

Nothing, though.

Another wave; another retching. Nothing.

Over and over she goes, just endless, rolling waves. When it stops, she lies still on her back, trying to calm her pitching belly. It occurs to her that she hasn’t bled for ten weeks now. Her fingers check between her legs; there’s only a tender kind of pain when she presses.

Perhaps he was rough with her last night. But she can’t recall that, either – how can she not recall that? There’s a tingling in her hands now, as she tries to focus, to picture herself with him, and a rising panic in her breast makes her heart hammer. She holds her fist against it, and then the rolling sensation begins again, forcing her to sit up.

It’s like seasickness, like being tossed about in a boat. She grips the side of the narrow bed. Sounds of the lake lapping at the shore beyond the cottage filter up to her.

The lake.

Yes; last night they went out onto the lake in the boat.

The moon had lit it up strange and silvery, and she sat in the middle, one man in front and one behind, the boat swaying gently from side to side. The air was cool; she shivered. She was sitting in the centre, between them both.

Where she belongs.

But she couldn’t see them; her hand did reach out, though, did press against Albe’s chest in front of her. Her heart skips; there was a blindfold around her eyes. It pressed on her temples, her eye sockets, tied tight at the back of her skull. She can still feel it.

Albe laughed, she’s sure; put his mouth to her ear. His fingers, searching, found the gap in her drawers. Pushed her thighs apart, bent his head down between them.

Gripping that thick head of hair, groaning, she was – but then another pair of hands – him behind her – tipped her head back, eased her down all the way until she lay flat, like a floating corpse. Ophelia, drowned. Those hands from behind worked their way down the bodice of her dress. Squeezed her breasts, lifted them out to bare them to the night air.

That head bent down; a tongue at her nipples; teeth nipping them.

Her stomach heaves; she grabs the chamber pot, retches and spasms violently, then vomits red wine and green bile into the pot. It splashes on the bed; on her chemise. She wipes her mouth, trembling, with the back of her hand, before another spasm and another.

Several minutes pass before it stops. Shivering, she gets out of bed, pulls the rough blanket around her and tiptoes out of her room. On the kitchen table, a pail of warm, fresh milk sits. She dips a bowl into it and sips slowly.

A dream; an outrageous dream. That was all. There was no boat. No Albe. No Shelley – for it was not him.

But the sensation of fingers pressing, pushing, is too strong. Did he? Did they? She lifts her shift, inspects her thighs.

The tell-tale red crescent moons of Albe’s fingernails. Dug in deep as he could.

Her nipples are too tender to touch.

That seasick feeling rises up again. She grips the kitchen table for steadiness, but she won’t close her eyes, won’t remember – or imagine – the rest of it.

Upstairs, all is quiet. Shelley’s left for his morning sail, most likely.

So she’ll go and wait by the shoreline. Tell him about her dream. He’ll laugh, tell her off for drinking too much wine. She can hear him say it. Like he has before.

It’s just your imagination, Claire.

It’s just their game. It’s happened before, after all. Not exactly what took place in the boat, of course – if it took place, and it couldn’t have, could it? – but they have played games before. Intimate games.

You understand, don’t you, Claire?

She thinks, yes, she does. She understands it’s what she wants. As for Albe; well, he’d suggested it in the first place, she does remember that. Let’s go boating on the lake. A fizzing in her fingertips when they settled her between them, rowed out beneath the moon.

Dream or reality; it’s up to her to choose.

She blinks in the gloom of the kitchen. Waits for another spasm. When it doesn’t come, she goes to the front door and wanders out, barefoot and hugging the blanket and the bowl of milk, down the little grassy path strewn with stones that make her wince. At the shoreline, she settles down, brings her knees up to her chest. It’s not cold, but she shivers in the soft grey light anyway, and waits. Wonders when they’ll see the sun again.

She’s only been there a minute when footsteps rustle along the grass.

Mary. Claire shades her face with her hand as she looks up at her sister. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’

Mary sits on the ground too close, making her edge away. There’s a neediness in the action that makes Claire think she might vomit again.

She’s done nothing wrong. Nothing that people like them wouldn’t choose to do.

Mary’s hair is loose, drifting light as fennel, brushing Claire’s face, tickling her cheek. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ Mary says. ‘I’ve had strange dreams all night, after we got back. Perhaps it was what Albe put in our wine.’ She laughs a little. ‘Perhaps it’s this place. I wonder if it’s doing us any good. I’m sorry – I’m talking about myself. I heard you before – were you sick?’

Claire gives a little nod. ‘Just my stomach. But don’t you love it here? Shelley said he could stay forever. I thought you—’ She stops.

Mary’s shuddering, shaking her head. ‘The lake’s putting a spell on him.’

Claire stiffens. ‘Not really. He just likes sailing on it—’

Mary says, ‘That boat rocks too much. It’s dangerous.’

‘At least it’s daylight now – last night was—’ But she stops again. There’s a sick feeling rising up from her belly once more. She can’t look at Mary.

‘Oh, last night . . .’ Mary’s saying, matter-of-fact, cool. ‘I don’t know which one of them is worse. But Shelley can’t swim, I wish Albe would remember that.’

Claire is on a tightrope, wobbly and sweating. The wrong step now, and she’ll fall into the blackness below. ‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘It was very dark. Though the moon was—’

‘Ah yes, the moon.’ Mary’s voice is still clear, strong. ‘But I was out on the terrace, I think. Looking down at the lake below the moon. He said to do that.’

Claire’s heart skips. So it will end between the two of them, here and now. She gazes across the lake to the mountains rising up. She’ll wander them, maybe, she thinks. Cut loose from everyone after Mary casts her out. Alone. Very well, then. So be it.

She lifts her chin, forgets the pounding in her ears. There’s one last throw of the dice available to her. She takes it.

‘Oh Mary,’ she says, slamming her hand down on the grass. ‘What do people like us care for rules? Free love is what—’

‘You know he likes toying with us,’ Mary interrupts again. Her voice is steady, though, and calm. ‘He likes to make us see what isn’t there.’

For a moment, she doesn’t know who Mary means, Albe or Shelley. Mary eases Claire’s hair back, smoothing it down just as she would when they were little. Claire is surprised by this. She won’t concede to Mary yet, though; says to her, ‘I can’t be made to feel what I don’t feel. I can’t be made to do what I don’t want to.’

‘Is that true?’ Mary says, winding Claire’s hair around her shoulders, stroking the back of her neck. ‘What was that tincture Albe gave us all last night, I wonder?’

‘Don’t you know all you saw? All you felt?’

‘What I felt was – nothing at all. Truly. I felt nothing.’

‘Maybe because you don’t believe in what you can’t touch,’ Claire says.

‘Maybe. Except – well, there’s one instance I can think of.’ Mary points at her belly.

Claire’s aghast. ‘Are you expecting again?’

‘No, no. I thought so, but it came on this morning. And you? We’re usually at the same time—’

Claire affects a shrug, but the effort fails and she gasps out instead, ‘Oh, I’m a little – late. That’s all.’

There’s silence between them, except for a very few birds calling above, and the sound of the water lapping at their feet.

‘Shelley has me and Willmouse already,’ Mary says then. ‘Not to mention Harriet, and Ianthe and Charles. And he’s always promising money over to my papa. From one thousand a year. It may sound generous, but Harriet gets two hundred at least, and what’s left is for himself, for me, for you, for Willmouse—’

She won’t rise to it.

She rises to it.

‘It’s hardly the poorhouse, Mary. You’re still free to do whatever you want. Have as many babies as you want—’

‘Freedom isn’t free – not of cost, not of responsibility.’

Claire gives an impatient sigh, says, ‘Oh God, Mary, must you?’

There’s a pause. Mary says, in a sad voice, ‘Motherhood isn’t what you think it is – I feel alone all the time. I’ve been thinking about my mother. You always say you want to be just like her. But would you make those trips north? Be free like her to go all that way – but alone, with only a baby for company. All for a man who made promises he didn’t keep.’

Claire picks up a handful of tiny pebbles, throws them into the water. They float, just for a second, before sinking down. That feeling of dread she’s been fighting since she woke up seeps back through her bones. How deep is the lake? How cold and dark is the bottom of it?

It could be restful, though. Hidden from the surface where nobody could find you.

‘My mother tried that, too,’ Mary says, following her gaze. ‘Water like this – and mountains – they let us think we’re free. When they were talking last night about the state between waking and sleeping—’

‘Shelley’s always looking for an answer. I saw you making notes.’

‘If an unseen life force can make us act when we’re not even aware of our own selves, then how free are we? Is to be free not all a great trick, an illusion?’ Mary shifts position, gathers her hands up under her chemise to pull it close.

A rare beat of sunlight pulses for a second or two through the clouds. Perhaps last night was just such a trick, Claire thinks. After all, Mary hasn’t said what she saw. Not definitely.

Perhaps her belly, her late menses – perhaps those, too, are illusions.

‘Maybe we’re the object of this trick, then. Or perhaps we participate in it,’ she says, slowly.

‘Ah, now,’ says Mary, and sighs. ‘That’s a question. I wish I could talk to my mother about it. Oh, and about so many things. I do think, though, on that trip north, she finally understood what it meant to be free. The enormity of it. It’s how she came to be with papa. She’d had enough of it.’

‘No, you’re wrong. I think she embraced it. As you have. Aren’t you free to write? Just as she wanted you to be.’

Mary shrugs. A sadness has settled on her face; nothing Claire says will lift it now. Best not even try.

Mary gives her a watery smile, though. ‘You – you’ll be an educator of young minds. As she was. Once you’ve – ah, found the right family.’

‘One that likes Rousseau.’

That makes them both laugh, just a little. Then Mary says, frowning, ‘But his notions of who and what is free aren’t necessarily what you think they are.’

Claire bristles, straightens her back. ‘I know Albe better than you do.’

Mary stands up, brushes down her chemise. ‘That’s not who I mean,’ she says, then turns and swishes up the path back to the cottage before Claire can reply.

Why won’t she spell it out properly? Always this swimming under the surface. Claire hates it; Mary can’t delude herself any- more about voluntary tricks, or partial views. She scrambles to her feet, heads up the path.

But she stops halfway, halted by a sudden spasm in her belly. Mary looks too frail to bear children, yet she’s survived two births. Even if only one of her babies did.

Women are stronger than they look, her mother would say, out of Godwin’s hearing, when she totted up the hours spent in the bookshop, the paltry profits it made. And they need to be was always her parting shot.

Doubt rises in her like bile, making her shiver. Is Claire stronger than she looks, too? A rupture is coming, whether she likes it or not, one that might cast her out, or even down to the bottom of a lake.

No; she’s stronger; of course she is.

How many women before her have wondered this, though?

It’s too late to stop it.

Her hands are shaking.

The party at Madame Odier’s is only an hour away. The three of them clamber up the hill in silence for Albe’s carriage to take them into Compegny. She and Mary haven’t spoken further since this morning; Shelley’s been distant and strange, too. Perhaps they’ve been discussing her; perhaps they’ve guessed her condition. Yes, she’s sure they must have.

Or perhaps he’s confirming with Mary what took place on the lake. Oh, but it’s too vexing. She dresses to expose her shoulders, pulling her gown as low on her breasts as she dares. She leaves her hair loose and tangled; before they leave, she takes a thick riband and pockets it. If she’s to be blindfolded again, let it be a pretty thing, of her own choosing.

Let her lure them, not the other way round. Like she did Albe with her letters. The letters he helped her write. Was this, she wonders, always Shelley’s intention?

Love is free; she thinks of the looks between him and Albe. His discomfort, he said only a day or two ago, comes when he’s too close to him. His physical presence, his physical beauty, is too much, he said.

Perhaps that’s been causing his strange, disfigured expressions of late. His dark visions of a female form.

Freedom’s a fine thread, spinning them all tighter and tighter.

At some point, that thread will snap; she can feel it.

When the villa looms into view up ahead, she announces, ‘I’m going to stay behind with Polly-dolly, not go to Madame Odier’s.’

The carriage is ready; horses paw the ground. Albe’s late, of course; they wait outside, the front door open.

‘Really?’ says Mary, eager, pleased. Happy to have her out of the way, Claire supposes.

Shelley says nothing, too busy gazing up at the gloomy sky, fingering his collar. The Renaissance image, she thinks, of a beautiful boy. A poetic Puck.

A dangerous faerie.

Plunging his hands beneath her dress.

She starts. His hands were cold, she thinks suddenly. She remembers. So it must be a memory. Not her imagination at all.

Blinking in the half-light, she opens her mouth to say something, but at that moment, Albe appears in the doorway in a blue-and-gold silk dress coat that makes them all stop and stare. Beneath it, he’s wearing a mustard velvet waistcoat with a woven silk pattern of branches and leaves. Even his eyes glint gold. His hair’s thick with scent, too, and glistening; his top lip is damp, his cheeks flushed. He looks as though he’s come from a roll in his bed – but who’s here to provide that for him, but she?

‘Get in, or stay behind, it makes no difference to me, Clairy Cocotte,’ he says, climbing into the carriage. He smells strange, too; she sniffs the air, can’t decide what it is.

‘I’m free to do as I choose,’ she says. He shrugs, settling in his seat. Shelley’s helping Mary up the steps on the other side of the carriage. She leans in to him, says, ‘Last night, out on the lake – if we were to sail out again—’

‘Ah, you’re shameless indeed,’ he mutters, waggles his finger at her, before raising his voice and saying, ‘What do you make of this girl of ours, Shelley?’ But then he looks at her more closely. ‘You’re pale. Not feeling well?’

She’s touched by his concern. Her eyelids flutter. ‘No – I mean, yes. It’s why I’m staying behind—’

Their gazes lock. Her hand flits to her belly; he closes his eyes slowly, thick black eyelashes smudging together.

Knowledge worming its way in.

But no: he’s just got some grit in his eye. He rubs hard, says, ‘Good, good,’ then slams the carriage door. She steps back, waits in the gloom as Fletcher chivvies the horses to walk off.

Only a minute or two, and they’re gone. She stands still, alone under the trees. No, it’s not like her to miss a party. So much lately is not like her, and yet is also very like her.

She turns and heads inside the house, where Fletcher has lit the usual candles. Black clouds are gathering overhead for the daily storm; the grandfather clock has just chimed five times. A rumble sounds from the mountains beyond.

‘Polly-dolly? Are you there?’

A loud cough comes from the drawing room. Polly-dolly is lying on the chaise, looking every bit as though he hasn’t moved since the night before. He’s even wearing the same clothes. Perhaps he slept there; well, Albe wouldn’t help him upstairs, and Fletcher would probably just ignore his calls.

He’s reading a book, full, soft lips mouthing the words on the page. She approaches, reads the title page aloud: ‘Fantasmagoriana.’

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘This is from the first story; it’s called “The Family Portraits”.’ And he reads aloud, translating from the French as he goes. ‘“It was not then a dream, a chimera, the fruit of an overheated imagination! But a mysterious and infallible messenger, which, dispatched from the world of spirits, had passed close to him.”’

‘You don’t believe in “the world of spirits”,’ she says loftily, sitting down on the end of the chaise.

‘I was surprised that you all do,’ he says.

‘Well, I certainly believe in ghosts. And yes, Shelley does. We believe in them passionately,’ she says, lifting her chin, as though that proves it. ‘Mary’s the only one who doesn’t. She’s too much of a materialist. She only believes in what she can see or touch.’

Except for one instance.

Her hand flits to her belly in an echo of Mary earlier that day, though Polly-dolly won’t understand that, of course. He’s delighted to be paired with Mary, though. ‘That’s true enough,’ he says, excitedly. ‘A ghost story is meant to scare, and the horror of the material body, not a phantom, is far more frightening – as I’m sure she’d agree.’

‘You’ll just have to ask her when she returns.’

‘So I will.’ He pauses, then says, ‘Why are you staying behind?’

She eases off her cloak. ‘Oh, I was poorly before. And I don’t feel like dancing.’

His eyebrows lift at the exposing neckline of her dress, making her laugh and show her teeth as well as her bosom. Power ripples through her; she waggles her forefinger at him so that he shrugs, pretends not to be interested in her.

The clouds roll in across the lake.

‘Mary thinks there’s something macabre about this view,’ she says, pointing to the windows.

‘Oh, yes. That’s precisely the word. Macabre. Mary has it right.’

She clicks her tongue. How he delights in agreeing with Mary, even when she’s not there!

‘But you can’t see the macabre,’ she says. ‘Or touch it. It’s a connection with death, not death itself. Aren’t you both materialists, as you said?’

‘Is that what Shelley thinks, or you?’

‘I have a mind of my own, you know,’ she snaps. ‘And it’s objective truth, whatever anyone thinks.’

He doesn’t argue. It occurs to her that his opinion isn’t important, but having it might be useful just the same.

She cocks her head, says, in the most offhand way she can manage, ‘When we were out on the lake last night—’

‘Ah, so that’s where you all went? I woke up, but everyone had gone.’

‘Mary was here. On the terrace.’

‘Was she? I didn’t see her.’

She won’t be deterred, now she’s decided on this course. ‘Can I confide in you, as a medical man?’

Polly-dolly nods, pushes himself up on his elbows.

‘Well, there was a night, about two years ago when we were living in London, the three of us. Mary went to bed early. She was expecting – her first. She was tired all the time.’

Polly-dolly nods again.

Claire leans forward, conspiratorially. ‘Shelley had had some – very odd experiences, in the past. With the supernatural, I mean. We would sit up late, talking about them, just the two of us. Mary had – has – no time for such things. You know that. So one night, long past midnight, we were talking, and he asked me if I’d read Joanna Baillie’s play, The Tragedy of Orra.’

Polly-dolly looks blank.

She tsks, flicks her hand at him. ‘You haven’t? Oh, Mary and I adored it. Orra’s a girl who refuses to marry the man she’s been ordered to marry, because she’s in love with someone else. So she’s imprisoned in a castle in the Black Forest, and she goes mad because Rudigere, a knight, becomes obsessed with her. “Ladies, do not be obeying, even for a while, men that threaten or cajole you!” Isn’t that a perfect line? We used to repeat it all the time, we drove my mother wild . . .’

She pauses. How often does Albe threaten or cajole her? But it’s not so clear as that. If it were, she’d know what to do. Joanna Baillie hadn’t alerted her to the men who don’t cajole, who don’t threaten. She hadn’t advised on what to do about the ones who mock. Who write beautiful poems for you. Who declare you both bride and devil in the one night.

No; Joanna Baillie had said nothing of those men.

‘Go on,’ says Polly-dolly.

She blinks; the room’s wavering in the candlelight. A familiar rumbling heads towards them across the lake.

‘Shelley was very disturbed all of a sudden. I can’t explain it, the look that came over his face.’ But she has seen this look again, and so recently. The macabre. What association with death has Shelley made here? She shakes her head. ‘He frightened me.’ She breaks off, gives a little laugh. ‘Though I enjoy frightening him, too; it’s our game. Anyway, I went upstairs to bed.’ She doesn’t pay attention to Polly-dolly. She doesn’t look at him at all, gazes only at the window. ‘I put my candle on the dresser and stood, looking at the pillow. It was lying right in the middle of my bed, you see. And then I turned to look at the window’ – and now she does look at Polly-dolly – ‘and when I turned back to the bed, the pillow had moved. I swear it had. It was now on the chair.’

Polly-dolly frowns. He’s a man of medicine. He’ll have a rational explanation.

She opens her palms. ‘You think I hallucinated it. I was very – overwrought – that night.’ Memories cluster, like before. Bumping and shoving to force their way in. But she won’t let them. ‘I ran back downstairs in a state, and asked Shelley if he’d somehow got into my room and moved the pillow. He said of course he hadn’t. He said I looked so very . . . Ah, but he did sit up with me all night, going over the details. I don’t recall much more. I got very tired, I remember, and I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, I was back in my bed and Mary was soothing me.’

Something turns inside her; the weight of what she’s not telling Polly-dolly, perhaps.

‘You think a ghost moved the pillow? Or the pillow was a ghost?’ There’s a smirk on his face. She longs to smack it.

‘Give me a better explanation, then.’

‘You imagined the whole thing. Or you moved the pillow yourself without realising it. A consequence of scaring yourself silly with ghostly tales beforehand.’

‘I wish I hadn’t told you now. I knew you wouldn’t take it seriously.’

‘Maybe Shelley did it.’

‘I told you – I was in the room alone.’

‘So your memory says. But maybe you weren’t alone at all. Maybe you prefer to recall it that way. Maybe the truth is too much.’

She stares at him.

Lightning forks over the lake, making them both start. He grips his book, then opens it. ‘“Remember the words of Voltaire”,’ he reads aloud. ‘“It is no uncommon thing for a person of lively feelings to fancy he sees what never really existed.’”

‘That’s what Mary said,’ she murmurs.

‘It’s what the wicked rely on,’ he says. ‘They play on the fancies of those with – lively feelings.’

‘And they play on them with?’

‘Ideas, notions, stories, of course.’

‘You’re a doctor – he brought you here for a reason. More than ideas or stories.’

‘That’s true.’

‘But what he needs – will he make us need it, too?’

The room darkens. ‘I’ll find another position,’ he says, in a low voice. ‘And he’ll leave you behind with them, without another thought for you. And we’ll never stop wishing it wasn’t so. That’s what he does.’

Her heartbeat is light. ‘Oh, he won’t do that to me,’ she says. ‘I have – a bigger hold—’

‘You don’t understand – he doesn’t want to be held. Not by anything, or anyone. And what he doesn’t want, he’ll be rid of.’

There’s no greater hold than a child.

A chill comes over her; she must get away from this stuffy room, now. Away from Polly-dolly’s attempts to scare her. But it’s too dark to make her way down the hill to the cottage, which is what she’d prefer, and the rain is pelting now. Her stupid silk slippers would never cope in the mud.

And besides, there’s her real reason for staying behind in the first place; she’d almost forgotten it.

‘I think I’ll have a short rest upstairs,’ she says. ‘My weak stomach.’

He shrugs, satisfied she’s understood him, and turns back to his book.

Up the staircase she goes, but hesitates outside Albe’s room. She might not care for what she finds there. It may prove her wrong, and Polly-dolly right, and how unbearable that would be.

His bedroom door isn’t locked; in she drifts, like the breeze from the open window beyond. It chills, but it’s oddly comforting, too, so she leaves it open.

And it seems as though a version of herself – another Claire, the silent, supplicant Claire of the night before on the lake, and of other nights in London rooms; the Claire they positioned in the middle between them, unable to escape even if she wanted to, but they know this Claire would never want to, for she never does – lies down on the bed and closes her eyes.

And so she does what this strange version of herself does, and lies down on the bed, too.

And she must have fallen asleep there like some drifting girl in a fairy tale, because suddenly the clock downstairs chimes ten.

‘Get up!’ she hisses at her sleeping self, but this Claire has no care for what she’s saying; this closed-eyed Claire is smiling, pulling up her dress, letting her fingers trail down from her breasts to between her thighs, to the gap in her drawers, where they grope and push, to make her cry out, stop, stop!

She opens her eyes, shakes her head.

It’s a pillow in the middle of the bed.

She’s dreamt it all. But now there’s no time to delay – the others will be home from Madame Odier’s soon. How could she have fallen asleep like that? She sits up, yawns. The washroom is slightly ajar; a little moonlight creeps through the gap. Where Albe keeps his medicine chest.

She gets off the bed and hurries through to the washroom; the chest is there in the same place as before. Unlocked. Two rows of bottles.

Eight.

The missing one has been returned.

Pennyroyal, says the label.

She’s never heard of such a thing. She removes the stopper. The scent of mint wafts up.

Her stomach gurns; her sickness that morning. Their game out on the lake. Mary’s words, What was in that tincture Albe gave us, do you suppose?

But now the rumble of carriage wheels, and the whinnying of horses breaks in, and she goes back into the bedroom, the tiny bottle in her pocket.

The pillow isn’t in the middle of the bed, but on a chair.

It is no uncommon thing for a person of lively feelings to fancy he sees what never really existed.

Downstairs, it’s all noise and chaos. They left Madame Odier’s early, Albe’s saying, ‘Because I can’t bear their little looks and their little words. Dear God, they’re a shallow lot, your friends, Polly-dolly. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.’ He rips apart the buttons on his dress coat and flings it to the floor for Fletcher to pick up later, once he’s settled the horses. Mary’s looking shaken; Shelley merely confused, as if he’s hearing a story he doesn’t understand.

Claire waits by the door, her hand in her pocket, gripping the little bottle. Albe flings an arm around her shoulder, looks down the front of her dress with raised eyebrows and pulls her close. ‘Upstairs to my room, there’s a good girl. I am in the mood for you now!’ he whispers in her ear. He pats her bottom, pushes her towards the door. But she won’t be so easy, twists away to the centre of the room instead.

Polly-dolly cries, ‘I have a story for everyone. You’ll all like it very much – well, it’s not one of my own.’ He smiles at this joke against himself. ‘But my French isn’t as good as Claire’s – I translate La Morte Fiancee as “The Death Bride” – would you agree?’

‘I’ll help you with the translation,’ Claire says, hurrying across the room to the chaise. She glances behind her. Albe’s shaking his head, but he’s amused. The thrill of the chase, she can see he’s thinking. This will be fun.

Her fingers won’t let go of the little bottle in her pocket, though. In the far corner, Shelley settles on some cushions in the shadows and Albe joins him, stretches his leg across Shelley’s.

Mary settles in a chair beside Polly-dolly, who’s looking over his shoulder, to where Claire ought to be, as the translator. But then she’d be out of Albe’s eyeline, and she wants to stay fixed there.

She has a plan.

Polly-dolly begins to read, more haltingly than he did when she was alone with him. It seems Albe makes the difference; well, of course he does. They all lose a little something of themselves when he’s present. What she loses, she’s not yet sure.

‘“In a short time I discovered that they still mourned the loss of Ida’s twin sister who had died about a year before. Ida and Hildegarde resembled each other so much, that they were only to be distinguished from each other by a slight mark of a strawberry visible on Hildegarde’s neck. Her room and everything in it was left precisely in the same state as when she was alive . . . the two sisters had but one heart, one mind . . .’”

Albe yawns and says, ‘I’ll tell you what happens. He’ll have encountered a woman who resembles Ida perfectly. Her exact double – I do adore a double. Especially in women.’ He lifts his glass in her direction. ‘Except for the strawberry mark on her neck. But the encounter was after the dear Hildegarde’s death. So – it can only mean – he must have fucked a ghost. Do I have it right?’

Polly-dolly closes the book in exasperation. ‘You’ve read it before. Must you spoil it for everyone else?’

‘I, spoil things? I say we can write a better ghost story. We are writers, are we not?’ He winks at Claire.

‘I want inspiration first,’ Shelley speaks up suddenly. ‘Not the natural world.’ He gestures towards the window. ‘Something other—’

‘And your definition of other?’ says Albe.

‘What is not right. By which I mean strange. In the wrong place.’

Mary goes to sit on the other side of Shelley; Albe moves his leg from across his. Shelley’s eyes are wild, the very definition of other, Claire thinks, if eyes can be in the wrong place. The thought’s absurd; she laughs, which catches Albe’s attention.

‘What’s the great joke?’ he says, a little crossly. ‘Not my suggestion, surely, Clairy Cocotte?’

Before she can answer, Mary speaks. ‘Stop calling her that, Albe.’ Icy cold her voice is, cold as the lake itself. ‘She’s my sister; she’s owed respect.’

The room whirls. Nobody ever speaks to Albe like this. He frowns, lifts his hand. Then he does an unusual thing. He bows his head, says, quietly, ‘As you wish, my dear Miss Godwin. It will not pass my lips again, I promise you. I apologise to you. And to Miss Clairmont.’

Mary gives a slight nod.

None of them notice what Claire does next. None except Albe. She slips her hand out of her dress pocket and opens it, to show the bottle sitting there, flat on her palm.

From his corner, he can’t possibly make out the lettering. She pockets it, quickly; he gets to his feet, his face inscrutable but his voice trembling, and says, ‘Wait a moment – let me fetch a selection from the library. If it’s inspiration you want, I’ll bring it all.’

He crosses the room, candles flickering as he breezes past. Mary asks Polly-dolly to continue with his story, and so, after a few pages, Claire takes her chance, rises from the chaise like some kind of ghostly figure herself in the dim light, and follows Albe out of the room.

The library is on the far left. The door is ajar, so she pushes it just a little, but the room’s all in darkness, apart from a slight glow at the window. She blinks. There, in the far corner, is the bent shape of Albe, crouched in a chair. In she tiptoes, taking care not to trip over the stacks of books scattered over the floor.

He doesn’t appear to sense her presence. She grips the little bottle in her fist. Now she’ll demand to know what its contents are for.

But he’s making the strangest noise. His back is shaking; his head still bowed. It takes her a few seconds to realise.

He’s crying. Albe is crying.

She hesitates; he’s still not showing any sign he knows she’s there. Perhaps she should slip out, leave him be. But he’s weeping; she can’t bear it. It can’t just be because of Mary’s scolding. She takes a few steps towards him; his hand shoots out, grasping in the air. She reaches forward, seizes it.

‘Ah, Clairy,’ he says, wiping his eyes.

‘What—’

‘Let it be enough that I’m cast out. That they’ll destroy every word I ever wrote if it means I won’t infect another fool with ideas or anything else.’

She huddles closer.

‘I have a child I’ll never see again. They’ll never let me. They’ll poison her with what they think is goodness. Little Ada, in their hands—’

This is her moment. To tell him that what he’s lost, she can replace.

And so she does. Those very words. She watches them spin around his head, settle on his wet cheekbones, trickle down to voluptuous lips. Which she kisses as if to give him life. He responds, needy and urgent.

‘I thought it,’ he whispers. ‘I did wonder, you know.’

She can’t be sure if he’s pleased or not. So she assures him, says, ‘Come upstairs with me.’

Perhaps he misunderstands her; perhaps he understands exactly.

She stands up. ‘Come upstairs,’ she says again, holding out her hand. He hesitates, then nods with a sadness as unbearable as his weeping. She’ll do anything – anything – to banish it. He leans on her arm, follows her lead, limps across the room. In the drawing room, low candles glow as Polly-dolly reads aloud, and Mary and Shelley murmur to one another in the corner.

She climbs the stairs, Albe behind, his head hanging down, gripping her hand. How strange to be leading him like this; motherhood won’t be lonely for her, after all.

At the bedroom door, she turns the handle, pushes open the door, pulls him inside.

He obeys every word, every direction.

In the morning, she wakes, lying alongside him as he sleeps.

No more banishment at dawn. No more being sent down the hill.

She yawns and stretches, remembers the new tenderness between them in the night.

A bridge has been crossed.

Everything is changed.

Polly-dolly was wrong about Albe not wanting to be held.

It’s all he’s ever wanted. She knows that now.

She has him.

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

She has him.

So he told her, in the night. You have me, he said.

She’s felt that moment of power before, though.

Is it true, or does it lie, is always the question. And even now, this morning in her bed, alone, she can’t be sure of the answer.

All she knows is the night before has changed everything, and it’s her own fault that it has. She washes carefully, douching at the washstand – though it’s probably too late for that, since it’s hours after – then dresses.

Downstairs, the breakfast room is empty. She takes her seat at the table – there’s a sealed note beside her plate. So he’s been down here already.

She rubs her eyes and heaves a sigh. She thought she had changed. That she wasn’t a foolish girl who made foolish decisions anymore.

And in one night, she’s managed to undo it all.

At least the breakfast room is deserted. She could wish it would stay that way; she had thought of feigning illness, hiding in her bed.

But she’s not like that. She’ll face things, however difficult. So she tells herself.

A pot of thick coffee sits on the dresser, lukewarm and almost empty. There’s just enough to fill a tiny cup; she sips slowly. Her body’s quiet, at least; it’s a long time since a man’s body has been so close, so intimate with hers. Eager to know everything. Ah, she’d almost forgotten how it was. Her body hadn’t though; it had responded too eagerly for him. She’d had to disabuse him of some of his notions about her. But only some. Not all of his illusions about her could withstand the shattering.

She closes her eyes, murmurs, ‘Oh, Claire.’

When she opens them again, the sealed letter is still there. It hasn’t moved, hasn’t disappeared. Oh, for ghostly shenanigans of the kind Shelley loved to scare her with. Yes, she could do with those now.

‘Don’t be so cowardly,’ she says out loud. Her hands don’t move. ‘The sooner it’s done . . .’

It’s a poem.

From the depths of my retreat I dare not speak of you.

My heart is full of you, but my lips are silent.

You will never learn from my voice

That my muse has forever donned your features.

He’s signed it ‘H. C. G.’

As though there might be some doubt about who it was from.

Ah, but that’s harsh of her – and unfair. Last night wasn’t – intended, that’s all. She might once have enjoyed acting on impulse – well, perhaps not every time Shelley suggested a move to this house, or that place. These suggestions usually came in the middle of the morning, to happen before sunset. But then all the moving – all the impromptu shifts in their lives – started to cause harm. He’d begun to recognise it himself. When it was too late.

They all think her coming to Russia was impromptu, too. Typical of her impulsive ways, they said. Off she goes, to who knows where at a moment’s notice.

But it’s just a way of doing her down – making out she has no capacity for rationality. When she’d thought about it all so carefully.

Everything has been thought about carefully.

Until now.

She stares at the poem again, tips her head to the side as if to see it better. His hand is less extravagant than Shelley’s. Less flowing. Takes up less room on the page. He’s less sure then, of himself and his gifts. But wants to make the tribute – even if it’ll only show what he’s lacking.

It’s harsh – and unfair, again – to compare the two of them. To compare him to genius.

His whole existence was visionary. In his looks and in his manners breathed that high and superhuman tone which we can only conceive as belonging to a superior being.

Had she really quoted from her journal to him last night? Ah, what else did she say, what else did she give away . . .? But he’s known of the connection, of her communications with Mary, from early on. She hasn’t said so much more. Has never spoken about Albe.

Her shoulders relax a little; she eases them back. He’d have known she’d compare him to Shelley. And he still wrote it anyway.

And she needs a confidant here, a friend by her side. Not her stepsister, far away in London.

She frowns so hard her eyes hurt. Her hand holding the poem shakes; the coffee cup in her other hand shakes, too.

Not just two, but three poems have now been written for her. Gambs knows about Shelley’s, but not about Albe’s. She cocks her head, squints at the end of the table. For a moment, she smiles, pictures them like three courtiers bowing down before her.

Even Albe. What he wrote, after their first night together. Just before he left for Geneva; was it hurried, she always wondered, in those few days between his night with her and his leaving England? A flood of words he couldn’t stop when he thought of her?

There be none of beauty’s daughters

With a magic like thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me  . . .

So the spirit bows before thee

To listen and adore thee . . .

Ah, but he was the great liar. She must remember that. Even the lying curls of his letters – well, she spent all those days at Chapuis transcribing his damn pages – were too neat, too pointed. Even in a rush of inspiration.

Too smooth a rhyme, too trite a meaning.

The spirit bows before thee.

She’s going to be sick.

She’s not going to be sick.

She dabs her mouth, picks off a crust of bread from the plate on the table. Chews slowly until the feeling passes.

Shelley’s is different. Her copy of it, that is; not the one Mary published last year.

Thy voice, slow rising like a spirit, lingers

O’ershadowing me with soft and lulling wings;

The blood and life within thy snowy fingers

Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings!

My brain is wild, my breath comes quick

The blood is listening in my frame . . .

Mary, changing ‘thy voice’ to ‘her voice’; ‘slow rising like a spirit’ to ‘hovering o’er my soul’. Changing ‘o’ershadowing me’ to ‘o’ershadowing it’.

No more ‘thy snowy fingers’. Now it was ‘those snowy fingers’.

To keep her safe, Mary said.

Nobody could guess it was about her. Nobody must guess. Not when it is all still so close, Mary had written.

But she knows what Mary really meant. She meant nobody must ever know.

Oh, living in hiding, without her past open to everyone, suits her; it’s the only way she can work for herself, live as she intended.

But her hiding this way suits Mary, too. How well it suits her – to be the only voice. The only face. The grieving widow. The celebrated author.

And up it comes, that mix of loss and impotent rage. She grips the table edge, closes her eyes. Swallows hard so it won’t pull her under . . .

The blood is listening in my frame

‘Claire!’

Gambs’s soft voice betrays him; she doesn’t even have to turn around. She dabs her eyes quickly, then her mouth. Mouth; eyes; her body betrays her every time.

He sits down, full of concern and care. ‘But you are weeping,’ he says.

She forces a small smile.

‘Was last night so terrible, so—’

‘No. No. Of course not.’

‘I wanted to say to you—’

‘No – I think – we mustn’t—’

‘Ah, now you fear what you – what we—’

‘Not we. Me. I’ve ruined everything. I always do.’

‘At least it is not my poem causing these tears.’ His attempt at a joke. So poor she almost laughs.

‘Oh, the poem is – very beautiful.’

‘Please – you have experienced true poetic beauty, thanks to him. I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee . . .’

He lays down his already earmarked copy of Mary’s new edition. Shelley’s Posthumous Poems stares at her from the breakfast table.

She shudders. ‘No, don’t. Don’t compare yourself—’

‘How can I not?’

So he wants the pain of comparison. It’s all grist to the mill. The suffering a true artist needs. A little roll of contempt turns inside her.

She could show him real pain. Then he’d never ask for it again.

He was too tender last night; she knew where he’d put his hands. What part of her he’d kiss. How respectful he’d be.

Clairy Cocotte.

He’s too handsome for failure, that’s the trouble. With a broad, white forehead and black hair, brows arched, dark eyes, a delicate, oval jaw. To most women, he’d be a prize.

Madame Claire Gambs. Just like that.

‘I can’t give you what you want.’

‘I think you are not so clear on that—’

‘You have to understand, I don’t want marriage.’

‘Is it not time to give up these wrong ideals—’

Thank goodness, then, for Zilla, Marie Ivanovna’s housekeeper. Before she loses her temper.

‘Zachar Nickolaivitch pribyl!’ the old woman says, her face at the door, so agitated she forgets her French. ‘Ici! Ici!’

Both she and Gambs start up. ‘He’ll want Vanya – I’ll go up to him. Dunia’s easy, but I can prepare Vanya a little better.’

Gambs nods. There’s such disappointment on his face – yet determination, too. Something flickers in her. That combination was on her face, too, once upon a time. No wonder Albe lost patience.

Ah, but she’ll be kinder than he was.

Kinder than a murderer.

Perhaps it’s last night; perhaps she’s more rattled than she’s admitting to herself. But it’s true: she doesn’t want to be anyone’s wife. Never did, and especially not after what happened. What she let happen.

No. She catches her breath, tastes bitter coffee on her lips as she runs upstairs. Panic and alarm are crashing through every room; there’s no time to dwell on the past, on him. Zachar Nickolaivitch wasn’t expected until next week. The cook in the kitchen below is yelling orders; stableboys outside are clattering around the horses in the courtyard. Zilla is at Marie Ivanovna’s room, where a cry goes up; there’s more scurrying and thumping of boots as servants run from room to room, banging doors as they go, gabbling to one another.

She directs a couple of them to Dunia’s room, but the little girl is in the gardens with her cousin, the princess. She hurries past Marie Ivanovna’s room – running, so she’s not stopped and pulled in to help her dress – to Vanya’s bedroom, just two doors along.

When she knocks and enters, it might be another world, it’s so dark and quiet and cool. The drapes are still closed, but Vanya’s pale fingers, smudged with the charcoal he’s using to draw some monstrous landscape over by the bed, glint a little.

Tiny figures are in a small boat, rocked by enormous waves. Great black clouds are above their heads.

When has the boy ever seen such a storm? He’s never even been to the sea.

‘You told me about wicked storms,’ he says, without turning from his picture on the floor. The paper’s covered; there’s not a scrap of white. She kneels down beside him. At nine years old, he’s tall already, almost as tall as she is, and his long legs stretch behind him as he leans on his elbows, facing down.

‘Have I spoken about them so often? This is very like them.’

‘I know. I’m good at storms.’

She pauses. ‘Vanya, your papa’s arrived. Sooner than we expected. He’ll want to see you.’

The boy stops drawing.

‘I’ll do what I can to protect you. Promise.’

When he faces her, resting on his elbow, his eyes squint past her, and his pale cheeks, his heavy eyebrows, give him a look older than his age.

‘Did you go down for breakfast earlier?’

He shakes his head.

‘Shall we rehearse?’

‘I remember what to do,’ he says, sitting up with a sigh. ‘And it is only for a little while. Stand up straight. Shoulders back. Chin up. Look ahead! And I am word perfect on my historical speeches.’ He gives a mock salute, his expression unchanged.

She resists the urge to hug him, which she knows he can’t bear, and instead puts out her hand. He shakes it solemnly; she holds it longer than she knows he’s comfortable with. Another test. His jaw clenches.

‘Well done,’ she whispers, releasing his hand. She gets up from her knees and goes over to the drapes. ‘No more darkness, just for a couple of days.’

He doesn’t protest, just rolls up his picture. She leads him to the washstand, takes his hands and places them inside the bowl.

‘All great artists have to hide a part of themselves away,’ she says, using a cloth to rub the charcoal from his fingers. ‘I knew a poet once who wanted to tell the world what he believed in. But nobody would listen.’

‘Nobody? Not even his father?’

‘Especially not his father. You’re not alone, see. Fathers don’t often understand.’

Vanya considers this. ‘Mothers don’t understand, either.’

‘Ah, no. But you know what? One day, someone will. Someone will understand everything about you, and you won’t have to hide it away. But even then, you might still want to. Just for yourself. Keep a bit of yourself back, just for you.’

He frowns. She dries his hands and collects his clothes from the giant dresser. ‘I’ll wait outside while you dress, then we’ll go down together.’ The boy nods; she closes the door. Outside in the corridor, the yelling and banging carry on. The whole house, it seems, is protesting.

The count’s an imbecile. Anyone with eyes can see his son’s terrified and making the best of it, but he thinks the boy’s being arrogant.

‘Look me in the eyes and say it once again!’

Vanya is trembling from head to foot; Marie Ivanovna is giving him encouraging smiles, then frowns, because now he’s getting the answers wrong.

She’s in the corner of the drawing room, nudging Gambs, who’s by her side. Little Dunia’s hiding behind her skirts as Count Nickolaivitch makes Vanya repeat what he’s said, even though he was word perfect the first time, just as he’d told Claire he would be.

But it’s not enough. He has to repeat it again and again until he slips up, and then the count can rub his hands together in satisfaction, and send the boy to bed without any supper.

‘It’s disgusting,’ she says to Gambs afterwards, upstairs.

He shouldn’t be in her room; Marie Ivanovna would have a fit if she found him there, even though it’s only dusk and they’re doing nothing except talking, and the door’s open.

‘His own son. Humiliating him like that. He’ll not do it to Dunia. I swear I’ll not let him bring her down, too.’

In the drawing room before, she’d feared the child would wet herself, as she was apt to do when she was frightened. So she’d bent down, whispered, ‘Remember what I told you. Picture him as a rabbit. A giant rabbit, with big white teeth – you see his moustache? Picture a carrot underneath it.’

Dunia had giggled, and Claire had led her forward to curtsey for her father. Her little French recital was perfect, if somewhat slow and halting. But her father nodded in approval at least, and Marie Ivanovna lifted her daughter onto his lap. Dunia had reached out for his moustache; Claire’s heart skipped a beat, but then he’d laughed, to everyone’s relief.

Vanya, though, she’d found hiding in the dresser of his room afterwards. It took her half an hour to coax him out.

She’s pacing back and forth now, as Gambs stands by the door, watching.

‘Do you not want children of your own one day?’ he says. ‘Why all this time with the children of others, Claire? When you do not have to do it.’

That stops her. Dear God, if he only knew the truth about her. But he doesn’t know it, and can’t know it, not all of it. He’s assumed, though, that he knows enough to say this. Of course he has.

Mary has always been wary of her rage; has always complained of how it would burst out of nowhere. But that isn’t true; it comes from a specific place inside her, and now that place is beginning to dance the little dance it does before it bursts into flames and she shouts the house down.

He doesn’t know that about her, either. Swallow it down, she tells herself. Before she says anything in reply. Don’t let him know.

With an effort, she stays cold, says quietly, ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. My dear Gambs. Don’t—’

‘Of course I know. I have made you the offer – you have not considered what it means.’

She sighs, sits down on the bed. The dancing fires inside her burn down. ‘How can you still want to? I’m a friend to radicals – was brought up by radicals – have lived with radicals—’

Yes; she told him that much. About not knowing who her own father was. About Godwin marrying her mama nonetheless. About Mary and Shelley living together before they were married. Having children before they were married.

‘So, we have been honest with one another now,’ he says. ‘And I was – unbecoming – in my youth, too.’

‘You?’

‘Ah, we hid once, myself and some friends, in the tower of a gallery. We woke the whole town with horns and trombones. And I threatened a duel with another student – over the colour of a pipe, not a woman. And we did duel, but we survived.’

She laughs. ‘Well, that’s far too shocking. But it’s different for a man—’

He pinches her waist, whispers in her ear, ‘I will wear you down. I will win out.’ She raises her hand; he ducks, but she catches him. A few nights ago, she’d bounced a cushion off the heads of Vanya, Dunia, the little princess and their band of followers, one after another, counting, making them squeal and laugh.

‘Are we the children now?’ he says.

‘You wouldn’t want to be—’

But for the second time that day, they’re interrupted. Just when she’s weakening; just when she might say it, there’s a shout from a kitchen girl at the end of the corridor. ‘Mam’selle Claire! Mam’selle Claire!’

‘Oh, what now?’

Gambs lets go. She blows him a small kiss; she’s escaped him again, but perhaps she has him wrong. Perhaps life with him would be good.

Perhaps she does deserve it, after all.

Fun Clairy. Playful Clairy.

No; she’ll not be that again. Not after what she let be done.

By the time she’s reached the drawing room downstairs, she’s sombre faced.

‘Visi-teuse,’ mutters the same kitchen girl in bad French.

Claire nods. In the drawing room sits Marie Ivanovna, who looks tired. It’s been a long day. And it’s not over yet.

‘Mam’selle Claire, this is Mam’selle Trewin,’ Marie Ivanovna says.

A young woman stands up and extends her hand. She’s not pretty, but she’s graceful, and thin, and light, with a guileless expression. More than anything, though, she’s English, which delights Claire. She opens her arms – reckless Clairy – and embraces the stranger, who shudders a little, then relaxes and returns the embrace.

‘How wonderful—’ says Miss Trewin, in a high, light voice that suits her. Her eyes suit her, too, being a soft brown. Her complexion is pale. Claire’s become a scholar of faces; this one has intelligence, and honesty, too.

In her enthusiasm, she can’t help interrupting. ‘It really is wonderful! Ah, to meet another Englishwoman. I was beginning to despair I’d ever have a conversation in English again – ah, Madame, forgive me, you know what I mean—’

Marie Ivanovna raises an eyebrow. ‘Ah, you English – so rude, so clumsy.’ She gets up and pours herself a glass of wine, ignoring the needs of her guest. Miss Trewin meets Claire’s eye; they both smile.

‘Indeed we are,’ says Miss Trewin, sitting down, nonetheless. ‘And now I’m being even clumsier, not explaining myself.’

Marie Ivanovna exaggerates a yawn; Claire frowns at her, but Miss Trewin doesn’t seem to mind, carrying on in the same light, pleasant voice, ‘I’m with the Galitzin family, you see. We are at Nazarievna, but I have a week or so to myself and when I heard about you—’

‘About me?’ Claire sits down with a bump.

‘Oh, you know how everyone gossips here, when you’re the only English governess for miles. I was told a story one evening a few weeks ago. About a young Englishwoman at a party who was attended to by all the gentlemen in the room, so that she was all anybody talked about the next day. But she’d not accepted any cards, and I was told she talked with them all, just like a man would. And I thought, I have to meet this creature—’

‘I talked like a man because I talked about serious things?’ Claire heaves a sigh, raises her eyes to heaven.

Marie Ivanovna sits up straight. ‘I have told you, they will gossip when you talk like that in company.’

‘Am I only to talk about hair partings and dress hems? That’s not why you employed me. And anyway, you like our conversations.’

Marie Ivanovna tsks. ‘Please tell me that you are not another independent woman, Mam’selle Trewin? This country has only room enough for one, and it is Mam’selle Claire. We cannot have another.’

Miss Trewin blushes, but there’s an odd look in her eyes when she says, ‘Oh no, but I do think it very hard that a woman should be judged for being serious when to be anything else would be—’

But Marie Ivanovna is getting to her feet. ‘Neither of you will find husbands with this attitude. Which is just as well for me, perhaps. Ah, I must go to my son and say goodnight to him. Mam’selle Claire – look after Mam’selle Trewin as best you can.’ She totters out of the room on her little heels.

Claire smiles at Miss Trewin, but the moment’s changed already. The young woman is on her feet again, pacing round the room.

‘Is something wrong?’ Claire says.

‘Oh yes,’ Miss Trewin says. ‘A great deal, but where to begin? How to go about it?’ She seems to be talking only to herself; Claire gazes around the room, wondering what’s caused this transformation.

‘Perhaps you should sit and tell me.’

‘Yes, yes. You see – I have something to ask you.’

‘To ask me? But we hardly know one another.’

Miss Trewin’s face unexpectedly crumples; she takes a tiny handkerchief from the pocket of her dress, which Claire can’t help noticing is grander than hers, with fine lining and careful stitching. In fact, she isn’t dressed like a governess at all. There’s an emerald ring on the middle finger of her left hand, whose extravagance glints in the light.

She catches Claire looking at it. ‘I have to take someone into my confidence, and I don’t know what to do next, you see,’ she says.

Claire laughs a little. ‘You haven’t stolen that, have you? Are the Galitzins about to break down the door?’

Miss Trewin shakes her head. ‘You won’t believe what I’m about to tell you.’ Then she laughs too, shows small, white teeth. ‘Ah, you must wonder what kind of person I am, saying this, when we’re strangers. But I feel as though I know you, Miss Clairmont. People speak so highly of you. I think I can trust you.’

‘You really can’t,’ Claire says. ‘I’m hopeless with secrets—’ She stops, thinking of Gambs. Of the past. Hiding in this country of ice and wild bears. Imagining, for a brief moment, what it would be like if she didn’t have to conceal anything ever again. ‘I know it’s hard, always keeping things to yourself. As we have to, in this profession,’ Claire says.

‘I knew I was right to come,’ Miss Trewin says, sitting down beside her and seizing her hand. Claire pulls back a little; Miss Trewin lets go. ‘Please – don’t be alarmed, it’s just – let me explain.’

Now Claire remembers passing a carpet bag in the hallway. ‘You’ve left the Galitzins, haven’t you?’

Miss Trewin nods. ‘I can’t go back. The princess – she’s unwell. She’s made accusations—’

‘What kind of accusations?’

‘You have to promise this will go no further,’ says Miss Trewin, huddling closer. Again, Claire wonders why the woman has come to her. Then she realises. ‘You want to confide in another Englishwoman. Is that it?’

Miss Trewin nods. ‘They don’t understand in this country.’

Claire murmurs agreement.

Miss Trewin continues. ‘Oh, the prince is a terribly kind man – so good to his children. But his wife is very unstable. He would join us in the nursery, you see, even at mealtimes. She became very jealous of this, and today she accused me – well, of terrible things I can’t repeat.’

Claire frowns. ‘I can stand to hear terrible things, Miss Trewin. What has the Princess accused you of?’

‘She’s quite depraved.’ Miss Trewin lowers her voice. ‘I’ve never known a position in such a household. She takes opium – and at all hours. Creates all kinds of scenes, tearing at her clothes, howling at the moon. She’s quite mad. The poor prince doesn’t know what to do.’ She pauses; Claire waits. ‘Two nights ago,’ she continues, ‘in a quite awful state, the Prince came to my room—’

Now Claire’s eyebrows fly up. ‘He came to your room in the night?’

‘Oh, it was very early. Not yet nine o’clock. He was terribly distressed. She had thrown a vase at his head, there was a cut on it, and I did my best to mend it, and so I was pressing a handkerchief to it but it must have looked as though – we were so very close –’ Miss Trewin looks meaningfully at her; now, she understands what the real story is – ‘and when the dreadful woman appeared at that moment, she flew into such a rage, of course she did, accusing us of every wicked thing.’

‘And now she’s dismissed you?’ Claire says. Miss Trewin nods.

‘It’s so unfair. And I worry for him, and for the children.’

‘I’m very sorry for you. It does sound terrible – what can I do?’

Mary delights in sending her every newspaper account she comes across of defenceless young governesses in danger from rapacious employers who would ruin their reputations. Some have taken their own lives, can you imagine the horror? Mary has written.

She’s never sent her a story like this, though. An odd look flits across Miss Trewin’s face, hardening it, just for a second or two. She bends forward, whispers, ‘But are you not indeed Claire Clairmont, the stepsister of the writer, Mrs Mary Shelley?’

It’s as though Miss Trewin can see into her mind. Claire sits back, appalled, her mouth open. ‘I don’t know who—’

Miss Trewin reaches for her hand, but Claire snatches it away.

‘But I’m your friend – and Mrs Shelley’s! Please believe me. Write to her about me – she will confirm it. Oh, I’ve begun this in entirely the wrong way! I’ve not come to threaten you. I will keep your secret – I will not reveal who you are. I would not dream of it.’

I will not reveal . . .

Claire is aghast, still. What has Mary told her? How could Mary give her away like this?

‘You see, I am also a – radical,’ Miss Trewin is saying in her low voice. ‘And so is the prince – there are many of us here, you know, in this country.’

Claire’s head starts to spin. She thinks she might be sick. ‘Wait – wait,’ she says, holding her hand up, palm flat. ‘First, you tell me you’re embroiled with your employer, then that you know my closest family. And now that you’re a – secret agitator of some kind?’

Miss Trewin shrugs. She twirls the emerald ring on her finger; her eyes sparkle, too. ‘The prince and I mean to be together. But we will have revolution first.’

Claire stares and stares at the young woman in horror and confusion.

Then, out of nowhere, something rises in her, and she laughs.

‘Poor Miss Trewin,’ murmurs Gambs at breakfast the next morning. ‘Did she sleep well?’

‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘Marie Ivanovna’s determined to write to the Galitzins about their dreadful treatment of their governess. But I can persuade her not to, I think.’

‘It would do no good, that is true,’ he says, buttering his toast.

She wonders about confiding in him about Miss Trewin’s political activities. But she – Louise – hasn’t given her permission to do that yet.

‘Anyone can see that she is no seductress,’ he says. ‘She seems very respectable, much more so than you.’ He winks; she laughs.

‘It’s only for a short while,’ she says, laying her hand briefly on Gambs’s arm. ‘She’ll find another position soon. Then she’ll move on.’

At Marie Ivanovna’s instruction, Gambs had carried a mattress up to Claire’s room the night before for Louise to sleep on, much to little Dunia’s excitement when she discovered it that morning. She thought it meant she’d have two governesses instead of one.

Gambs frowns. ‘There is something you are not telling me,’ he says. ‘You are too – excitable – this morning.’

It’s true; she must calm herself.

‘We stayed up all night talking, Louise and I. It was fun – I haven’t had that for a long time. I argued that sex ought to be abolished – she argued that it shouldn’t,’ she says, and laughs. ‘So we ended up agreeing that we’d found a state based on the Turkish model – only the tables would be turned, and the men shut up in harems and kept by the women.’

Gambs raises his eyebrows. She throws a bread roll at him.

‘She has improved your mood, though – I like that,’ he says.

‘She’s a delight. We intend to go to Greece one day and fight the Turks.’

‘So you have forgotten me already?’

‘No, but—’

‘But what?’

She’s silent a moment. How to explain that the arrival of this young woman and her ludicrous plans – well, they must be, can only be, ludicrous, and yet how exciting they are, how entrancing – have made her feel alive. As he hasn’t been able to, for all their shared intimacy. She imagines saying it out loud – confiding in him properly.

But that’s impossible. Her spirits plunge.

‘Miss Trewin’s an idealist, it’s true. In the utopian tradition,’ she says, slowly. She sighs. ‘I have a weakness for that tradition, too. I don’t want to accept a reality where better isn’t possible.’

He shakes his head at her like she’s Vanya at his lessons. ‘What else is there in the world but what is real?’

‘A life is as full of made-up things, as it is of what is real,’ she says.

She thinks of Albe. Sometimes it’s only made-up things. Sometimes it’s only lies.

Louise Trewin met with Mary, who told her as much as she wanted to about Claire.

Thomas Moore met with Mary, who told him as much as she wanted to about Albe, about Shelley.

But who will meet with her, to hear what she wants to tell?

Nobody. She’s to stay silent and in the dark, or she’ll lose her position, her independence.

‘It’s telling the difference between what is made up and what is not that matters,’ she says, getting up from the table. ‘And who is doing the telling.’

‘Ah,’ says Gambs. ‘Then you do want revolution!’

Yes, she thinks. Yes. Turn it all upside down. Let the poets rule, acknowledged legislators of the world. Then, just maybe, she’ll get her chance to speak.

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1843

‘Vive la révolution! Tout le monde! Enrichissez vous!’

Lady Sussex, full lips blackberry red from too much punch, maple hair tumbling about her shoulders, seizes the fire poker and holds it aloft like a drunken Marianne, Liberty leading the people. Her toga-like dress slips from one shoulder; she waves the poker, hits a china vase. It smashes to the floor. Everybody whoops, even Claire.

‘Ah, you’d only destroy what isn’t yours,’ she says, laughing. She’d paid a few pennies for the vase from a stall at the market. It had been an ugly thing, but she’d warmed to it anyway.

‘Madame, let me,’ says the handsomer of the two young men Lady Sussex has brought with her. He catches her under the elbow as she stumbles with a dustpan and brush. Mary fusses round; Betsy Kaisaroff, too, her friend from her Russian days.

‘Be careful you don’t cut yourself!’

‘What a hideous thing it was.’

‘We should all be rid of our possessions, including you, Lady Sussex. But how would you manage without your townhouse?’

Gatteschi – Ferdinando Luigi is his full name – bats long, dark eyelashes like a courtesan, Claire thinks, as he chides Lady Sussex, who just wriggles and burps from a chair. Mary winks at him, reaches for Lady Sussex’s glass of wine; a secret look. That’s a surprise to Claire – they barely know one another, have spent only a few hours together in this room so far.

But things can happen quickly, sometimes. When the timing’s right. When people want it to happen. His friend, Signor Guitera, who’s older and less showily dressed in his workman’s jacket and boots, lacks the looks of a minor god. But he’s more convincing, with deep lines and a worried expression on his weathered face. He’s a man who’s endured hard times; Gatteschi, in his twenties, fresh-faced and dandyish, can’t ever have chopped a frozen piece of wood, fished in a filthy river.

Whether the experience of one invalidates the beliefs and commitments of them both – ‘We fight for the republic of Ausonia!’ Gatteschi’s explaining at this very moment to Mary – Claire is not sure. They are, they say, Good Cousins of the Carbonari.

‘Help me in the kitchen a moment, Mary,’ Claire says, extending a hand, but Mary’s too busy listening to the others.

‘The problem you revolutionaries will always have,’ Lady Sussex is saying, ‘is that you don’t know what to do when you win, or how to do it. So you simply repeat the mistakes of those you’ve overthrown.’ She yawns.

‘That’s not true at all,’ says Gatteschi. ‘We are for justice. We follow Kantian principles. We oppose oppression in all its forms.’ He has the captivating voice of an orator, but it’s too big for this little salon, too deep.

‘Precisely,’ says Lady Sussex. ‘How very general; how very vague.’

‘We oppose the glorification of an individual leader—’

‘But you adore Mrs Shelley’s husband, so you say. You’d have him lead you if he were still alive.’

Claire shivers when Lady Sussex says this. Gatteschi glances Mary’s way; Mary dabs her eyes.

‘Then they would listen indeed,’ he says.

‘To your words? Only actions will say anything.’

‘It is as though she never hears a word I say. But you do. You have the ear of one who understands,’ he murmurs to Mary.

Lady Sussex is cross about his new preference; Claire can see that. Everyone can see it.

‘Come here,’ Lady Sussex says, but he doesn’t move, waves his hand, daring her to cause a scene.

When Mary’s shining, what can Lady Sussex do?

Guitera strokes his wide, dark whiskers – his young companion is bare-faced, which Mary prefers – and crosses the room to take up the seat on Mary’s other side.

Her sister’s light.

That light drew Shelley when he was a restless, married man. It drew Polidori to her that terrible summer. Even Albe couldn’t shut his eyes to it, when she chose to shine it. A light both fragile and full of power.

Claire blinks; the party’s running away from her. Things are being plotted, she feels, as Guitera bends his head to Gatteschi across Mary, whispering, even taking her hand very briefly. The outcome of Frances bringing two revolutionaries with her. Yes, it’s Lady Sussex’s fault that Mary’s giggling, blushing. Forgetting who she is.

Oh, but isn’t that to the good? Doesn’t she try to forget, too? Nobody can be alert every minute of the day. So perhaps Claire should relax a bit. When Betsy whispers in her ear, ‘Will you not play for us? Quickly, before a row ensues,’ she shrugs as if it’s no matter.

It’s too late, though.

‘You mean to have both of them, I see that,’ Lady Sussex says, leaning across Mary, waving her glass between Gatteschi and Guitera. ‘You’ve stolen my admirers from me.’

Claire is bemused, too; she hasn’t seen Mary like this in years. Stealing admirers, indeed. She almost wants to laugh.

And Frances is so furious.

‘You’d have me turn away – from my husband’s readers?’ Mary says, innocent, disingenuous. ‘I would never do that – no, not ever.’

‘Readers of your husband? Is that what they are, indeed? Devotees of his poetry – then let us hear them recite a little. Come, Gatteschi. Which of Mrs Shelley’s husband’s poems is your favourite?’

Gatteschi frowns beautiful lines across his noble forehead.

Mary places a hand on his arm. ‘I wouldn’t have you perform for me—’

‘Madame,’ he says, ‘I cannot choose a favourite. They are all my favourites.’

Lady Sussex snorts.

Claire stands up, says, ‘Why don’t I play for everyone?’ and hurries to the piano before anyone can object.

Mary’s delight stops; Lady Sussex waves her glass about. Betsy goes to the window, ready to close the shutters in case shouts from the ramshackle street below disrupt Claire’s singing.

Her voice is still beautiful. Still the breath of summer night, which when the starry waters sleep; Round western isles, with incense blossoms bright; Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight . . .

Her neighbours above and below know her voice; occasionally, they’ve called out from their apartments when she stops, urging her to play on, encore.

This time, though, she’s interrupted by a loud snore. Lady Sussex. Mary giggles. Gatteschi’s whispering in her ear once more, his mouth getting lost in her maze of golden hair. Guitera raises his eyebrows at Claire, but she’s in no mood to flirt. She closes the lid of the piano.

‘Thank you for listening so well,’ she says, before getting up and pouring herself some wine. Betsy’s speaking to Guitera, admonishing him by the look on his face; Lady Sussex’s snoring is too loud to be real.

Claire swings past Mary. ‘Do you remember—’ she begins, but Gatteschi’s there before her.

‘“Rise like lions after slumber!”’ he announces, to startle Mary. He rests a hand on her arm. ‘Ah, but you see, my father was a great man, wealthy until they took it from him. My mother – what a beauty. But the tragedy of my family took that from her, too. We were sent down into the very depths of poverty—’

‘Not this old story again,’ says Lady Sussex, rudely, awakening.

‘I want to hear it,’ says Mary, sticking out her chin.

Gatteschi gives her an adoring glance.

What on earth made Claire think they might get on, Mary and Frances? She’d not thought Mary had it in her to be a rival again. She’d thought those days were behind her.

Claire shrugs, says, ‘Indeed, tell us all.’

‘The fight goes on. Hail, the carbonari! Rise up, no? “Shake your chains to earth like dew” – did he not write that, Madame, your husband?’

So Gatteschi knows The Mask of Anarchy. Ah, but he’s more full of quotes than he is his own story. They wait, but for some reason he won’t give them what they’re asking for. Even Mary.

‘I’m sorry Percy doesn’t care for Paris,’ Claire says, suddenly, to change the subject.

‘Oh, he hasn’t the slightest interest in pictures or antiquities or history of any kind,’ Mary says, sadly. Her light still shines, though. No dousing that, even if she wanted to. She takes another gulp of wine. ‘If he can’t be sailing or swimming—’

‘Ah, like his poor father!’ says Gatteschi. ‘To be the son of such a man, such a great poet. I am truly sorry not to meet him here with you.’

‘He doesn’t care for poetry either, though, does he? Percy, I mean,’ Claire can’t help herself.

‘Of course he does. Why would you say that?’ says Mary.

‘Isn’t he married yet? How old is your son, Mary?’ Lady Sussex sparks up now, too. ‘Twenty? Ah – twenty-three! Young Natalie – Betsy’s daughter – is about the same age. She’s looking for a husband, isn’t she, Betsy? She’s rich enough to keep young Percy in boats for a lifetime.’

‘Really, Frances, I won’t have this!’ says Betsy, furious, getting to her feet. She leaves the room; Claire runs into the vestibule after her, but the front door slams shut. She’s gone.

Back in the salon, Lady Sussex is saying, ‘It’s true. I think you should introduce Natalie and Percy. What about it, Claire? See how well they like one another.’

But Mary’s appalled. ‘Please don’t speak about my son like this. It’s hardly appropriate. And poor Betsy – look what you’ve done—’

‘Oh, Betsy won’t care. Well, if we can’t discuss Percy, what about one of his friends? Natalie must have someone! Can’t you recommend anyone, Mary? Has he a suitable friend, or is he a rabble-rouser, a cad, friendless and cruel?’

Mary looks helplessly at Claire, who says, ‘Stop being so mischievous, Frances. Look what you’ve done already, chasing Betsy away like that.’

But Lady Sussex won’t be diverted. She makes matters worse. ‘Perhaps you have a young man of your own, Mary. To keep you company at home? Didn’t you tell us you were travelling alone with one of Percy’s friends recently?’ Lady Sussex winks at the room.

Oh, what made Claire think to invite her? She’s chiding herself as she picks up the decanter of wine, tries to pour herself a glass with a shaking hand. Her mouth’s suddenly too dry for speech. Gatteschi’s shifting in his chair and staring at Mary, whom she has to rescue, now, before it all gets so much worse.

But she can’t think how to stop it.

‘I – I—’ Mary stammers. ‘I wasn’t always alone with him. Just when Percy wouldn’t visit a museum, or – but Alexander Knox is a true gallant and a wonderful poet—’

‘Alexander Knox! So that is his name! And another poet!’ cries Lady Sussex.

Pink spots appear on Mary’s cheeks.

‘My, my, see how she blushes, everyone! You must tell us all about this gallant Alexander Knox. Poor Gatteschi – you have a rival!’

Claire has to turn her back on the room, or her face will give her away. She hears tears in Mary’s voice; angry tears. No – she daren’t turn round.

‘You mistake it deliberately,’ Mary says. ‘He is my very dear friend—’

‘Is he indeed? Has he money?’ Lady Sussex persists. ‘What kind of friend is he, precisely?’ She laughs, waves her wine glass about. ‘I demand you tell us.’

‘I don’t care for your demands,’ Mary says, coldly.

At last, Claire turns; her sister is standing, swaying a little. Gatteschi offers his hand but Mary refuses. Her famous light has gone out. She’s a little woman again, aged and pale.

‘They’re disrespectful,’ she says. ‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’ She nods at Gatteschi, who seizes her hand and kisses it, and then she disappears into the vestibule. Claire knows better than to follow her in that mood. Now Gatteschi and Guitera take up their hats – the party is over. Lady Sussex leans on them both as they help her out the front door and down the steps.

‘And so it is done,’ Claire mutters, as she surveys the mess of cups and glasses and plates left behind in the sudden quiet, the spilled wine marks on the cushions, the books scattered about the floor. ‘At least Mary’s been honoured – or perhaps not.’

Thankfully, there are no sounds from the bedroom, or the little anteroom beyond; no crying, no sighing. Maybe Mary’s asleep already, she thinks, bending down to pick up the books, the cups. But her back creaks, forces her into a chair for a moment. Better leave it all to Stephanie; she comes tomorrow.

The street outside is quiet. Paris is sleeping at last. Has her party been such a disaster, then? Perhaps Mary – a little worse for wine – will only remember Gatteschi’s attentions in the morning. Yes – Claire will remember those, too, focus on them for her. Away from Lady Sussex. Away from Alexander Knox. Mary was far too touchy about him.

She wonders for a moment. Lady Sussex was being ridiculous, suggesting a liaison between them – ridiculous, and disrespectful, just as Mary said.

The image comes anyway, whether she likes it or not. Mary, leaning on the arm of a young man; Mary, led into a crowded theatre by her son’s handsome friend; Mary, smiling coquettishly as he bends to whisper in her ear as they gaze at a painting in a gallery.

And Mary did blush at the mention of his name. So Claire’s thoughts can’t be so far from the truth. She frowns in the dark, clicks her tongue. There’s an odd feeling swirling inside her, one she hasn’t felt in years. ‘Jealous of her, are you?’ she mutters to herself. ‘So much for all your independence.’

Disliking herself in this mood, she gets up out of the chair and goes through to the bedroom. In the anteroom, Mary is snoring gently. Discontent seeps through her, seems to cast twisted shadows on the wall as she sets down the candle on top of her bureau.

Inside it is a copy of The English Annual, which published her story, ‘The Pole’, seven years ago. Under Mary’s name, just as she’d said.

Write the last scene for me, she’d written to Mary. I never have time to finish it.

The truth was, she didn’t know how to. She never was good at endings.

Beginnings were different, though. Her tale was of two sisters and one man. Now, where did that come from? She smiles. One sister is Marietta, a singer with a bewitching voice. And the other is Idalie, a genius artist, ‘as lovely as one of Rafaelle’s Madonnas . . . her hair of a golden and burnished brown . . .’

And then a stranger arrives in Italy one night. Who hears Marietta’s voice, though he can’t see her.

‘She breathed forth melody after melody for her own pleasure, like some lone nightingale that, in a home of green leaves, sings to cheer its solitude with sweet sounds . . .’

Well, why not make the tribute clear? A singer’s very like a poet; didn’t Shelley tell her as much?

She murmurs in the gloom of the bedroom. ‘A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness, and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds . . .’

The stranger was ‘the Pole’, Ladislas, who fell in love with Idalie, of course. Marietta, meanwhile, was threatened by her brother, Giorgio, for disregarding his will, and following her own path instead to become a trained opera singer.

Well, who else could that be?

‘There is a brother . . . a villain quite varnished in picturesque, like one of your Lord Byron’s corsairs and giaours . . .’

She was too caught up with politics to serve the story well, she had told Mary.

Would Idalie and Ladislas be happy ever after? Would Marietta triumph over Giorgio to forge her own path?

How Mary transformed her little tale in that final page!

‘. . . the fitful moonbeams seemed to disclose here and there ghastly countenances and mangled limbs, and the dew of night appeared to her excited imagination as the slippery moisture of the lifeblood of her victim.’

No wonder the editors thought it the work of the author of Frankenstein.

She’s never been jealous. No; she even chuckles, her mood lifting.

And then the surprise ending.

‘Marietta spread the intelligence of her sister’s marriage, and thus entirely cleared Idalie’s fair fame; and quitting Italy soon after, joined the happy Ladislas and his bride at Paris.’

Together forever, the three of them. The ‘wild’ younger sister, always present.

Ah, Mary, Claire thinks, suddenly touched. I should have been more loyal to you. I should have told you about Shelley’s bequest. But maybe you’d have finished my story differently if I had.

She can always imagine the smoke so well, if she closes her eyes. She can smell it.

Even though she wasn’t there.

A letter had arrived, that July day. Mary had returned from Livorno with their friend Jane only the night before, exhausted, without any sighting of their husbands.

Shelley’s boat, the Don Juan, was over a week late now. Claire had torn the letter open and read it all. Dizzy with the news, she’d rushed to little Percy first, who’d woken with the ring of the bell. Kissing the top of his head, holding him on her lap while she helped him dress, her arms tight around his little chest, she couldn’t stop the tears falling, and told him, when he touched her cheek, that she was being silly, a goose, and he made a quacking noise so that she’d laugh.

The letter was from another friend, who was still in Livorno, searching for Shelley, for the boat.

It said that his body had been found, washed ashore near Viareggio.

The return journey from Livorno – his coming back to them – in a storm, had done for him. He had refused to listen to warnings about the storm; no other men took to their boats that day. He’d insisted, apparently. No one could stop him.

Then, what is life? I cried.

‘What have you to complain of?’ Claire had said to him, just before he’d sailed out all those days before. ‘You still have Mary and Percy. I have nothing, no one.’

‘Cheer Mary up for me, please, I beg you,’ he’d said. ‘And remember, she will always be with you.’

Claire had sat at the kitchen table that day the letter came, with little Percy perched on the seat beside her, gabbling happily. The letter, she’d left beside Mary, sleeping on the bed. She was being a coward, not telling her herself, but waiting was worse. And when the howl came at last from Mary’s room, she took little Percy out onto the terrace and closed the doors behind them so he wouldn’t hear his mother’s cries.

When Mary could face it, they discussed what to do with his body. Mary wanted it brought to them from Viareggio. And so it was, a few days later, that friends built a funeral pyre on the beach, for what remained of him.

She’d always wished afterwards that she’d been present at the burning, and even now, twenty-one years later, she still wishes it. Even if it was a terrible sight. Even if the smell of it was so bad that not even frankincense could douse it.

I have never met a man who wasn’t a beast in comparison to him, Albe had said. He was present, of course. For a little while, she’d heard afterwards. But then he’d gone for a swim instead.

The night of his funeral, lying in bed alongside Mary because her sister couldn’t be left alone, not for a minute, she’d felt it rise inside her. Her growing conviction that he’d wanted the storm. Had sailed towards death, deliberately.

He’d seen his double, he’d told her not long before he left. Had ‘met’ him out on the terrace, and his double had said to him, ‘How long do you mean to be content?’

‘Ah, my dearest, dearest Shelley,’ she murmurs, staring at the pages of her story. Her eyes smart with tears as she sits at her bureau in her little Paris apartment. He had been telling the truth, though: Mary is always with her. Weren’t they doubles one night at the Villa Diodati? Albe had been obsessed with Christabel. Insisted they perform the roles, the two halves of the one woman.

Geraldine and Christabel.

Like sisters; one good, one evil.

Marietta and Idalie; Geraldine and Christabel; Mary and Claire.

One woman, split into two.

She wipes her eyes; a stab of pain in her belly makes her groan softly.

In the anteroom, Mary murmurs in her sleep, but doesn’t wake up.

The candle’s almost down to the wick. She folds the story back into the little drawer of the bureau and lifts out something else, gleaming gold in the dark.

It’s a locket, with a curl of fair hair inside. Baby’s hair, soft and fine.

Mary has her husband’s heart, rescued from the funeral pyre, hidden in the pages of a copy of Alastor.

Claire has a lock of hair.

No hearts. No books. No grave, because that’s been kept from her, too.

Just a secret curl of hair she can never show to a living soul.

In the morning, she’s woken from a disturbed night’s sleep by sounds coming from the kitchen. Stephanie, she thinks drowsily, then remembers Mary.

She sits up; the door to the boxroom is open, and the little makeshift bed is empty. She pulls a kimono around her shoulders and eases stiff limbs out of bed.

In the kitchen, Mary’s humming to herself. A pot of coffee sits on the small range; a plate of toasted bread is on the table, a pat of butter beside it. A jug with gardenias that weren’t there yesterday.

‘You’re happy this morning,’ Claire says, sitting down and rubbing her eyes. Her sleep had been full of horrible dreams.

Mary looks as if she’s drunk from the fountain of youth, merry-eyed, all brightness and light. She points to a note on the table. ‘Ferdinando – Signor Gatteschi – sent such a beautiful note. And the flowers. Aren’t they lovely?’

His handwriting is small, secretive. There’s no signature.

‘How d’you know it’s from him?’ Claire yawns, pours herself some coffee.

Mary giggles. ‘He told me to watch for it. See that odd curl on the last letter? It’s a “G”. He said he’d put it here so I’d know.’

‘He is very . . .’ Claire searches for the right word.

‘He reminds me of the kind of people we used to know,’ Mary carries on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Exciting people. His political struggles—’

‘I’d have thought you’d had enough of those from Godwin,’ Claire says, drily.

Mary frowns.

‘Well, you know what it means,’ Claire continues. ‘They never have enough money, revolutionaries. They’re always on the lookout for it. He thinks you’ve got money, probably.’ She’s being mean; she can’t help it. She’s all twisted inside, somehow, and wishes she hadn’t indulged in memories of the past last night.

‘Do you have to think the worst of him – because he’s my friend? Do you really think he just wants money from me? Can’t I enjoy his admiration for – for – my husband?’

His admiration for you, Claire wants to say. But that’s unkind, so she says instead, ‘I don’t know, Mary. We don’t know anything about him. Maybe you’re right.’

‘The members of Young Italy can hardly advertise themselves, not when Mazzini’s exiled in London. Perhaps I can visit him when I go back. He has a school there, and is friends with Carlyle, you know . . .’ Mary has a dreamy look in her eyes.

Alarmed, Claire warns, ‘Don’t get carried away with it all.’

‘They only want unification of their country. They have to stand against tyranny. No wonder Shelley’s a hero to them.’

‘I’ll ask Frances what she knows,’ Claire says. ‘I’ve learned to be careful. You should be, too.’ She doesn’t mean to sound so prim; she’s still tired, that’s all. Has forgotten she meant to encourage Mary in her distraction with Gatteschi. Keep her from thinking of young men back in England.

But to her surprise, Mary agrees. ‘Let’s call on her today. We have to help him.’

Mary in a depressed mood is almost better than Mary in a boosted one, Claire thinks as she dresses. Her sister chatters to her from the boxroom, just as she did when they were children; that alarms her, too. When Mary flies this high, the fall to earth is only the worse for it.

After Stephanie arrives to clean the apartment, they head out together, arm in arm. The streets are cluttered, higgledy-piggledy, and she breaks away to dodge some carts, but Mary calls her back, insists on the closeness between them.

Lady Sussex is in Saint-Germain, an hour’s walk away. Mary’s chattering on about what Lady Sussex said the night before, and Claire thinks she might scream if she doesn’t break free from her sister’s arm.

‘I’m used to being teased about him, Claire. I’m used to it. But she was so rude – when am I planning to marry him, they all said at home, which was bad enough—’

This time, she does pull her arm away, making Mary stumble. ‘You haven’t considered it, have you? For heaven’s sake, Mary—’

‘Oh, you’re as bad as the rest of them!’ Mary’s eyes are sparkling; her step is light and girlish. Claire wishes she could go back home alone, considers faking an illness. ‘It was only a trip. But perhaps we’ll take another one together. To the Loire, or the Rhine. Percy has no interest, but Knox has. He’s a wonderful companion – not some prize to be won in a raffle, as Lady Sussex seems to think.’

‘You sound – a little possessive of him,’ Claire says at last.

‘Well, he’s my friend as well as Percy’s. That’s my point.’

That glow in her cheeks; those pink spots.

‘Does Knox lack money?’ Claire asks – too harshly, for Mary takes it the wrong way and begins an old complaint.

‘You never could bear it; last night, I felt it on me, that old envy of yours. Does it never get better with you?’

Claire doesn’t reply. They don’t say much more until they get to Lady Sussex’s apartment. The butler is appropriately shabby; so are the framed paintings in the hallway. ‘Lady Sussex has a lot of parties,’ Claire says, shrugging. ‘Sometimes things get ruined. Her husband’s never here to see it.’

‘Ruined reputations, too, I think,’ Mary says, but then they hear voices from the room upstairs.

‘Ferdinando!’ says Mary, clapping her hands. ‘We’ll speak to him together.’

At the top of the stairs, appear Lady Sussex – wide-eyed and untidy as ever, her dress loose and hanging – and Gatteschi, a flush in his cheeks that raises Claire’s eyebrows. Mary doesn’t seem to notice, though. He runs downstairs and seizes Mary’s hand, kissing it passionately.

‘Your note – and the flowers – were beautiful,’ Mary says, blushing.

There’ll be no unprejudiced judgement of him now, Claire thinks. Nothing that Lady Sussex can say will turn Mary against him.

In the drawing room, they gather at the unused grand piano, talking for a while, before Lady Sussex draws Claire away to the window. The gardens are as unkempt as the house; everything is overgrown. Perfect for hiding things, Claire thinks, for some reason.

‘I know he is a hero,’ Lady Sussex whispers, ‘that he’s a Napoleon of Italy, a Wellington who will lead his people to victory – but perhaps Mary should tread carefully. You can put it to her, my dear, that he is – he is—’

‘That he is not to be trusted?’ Claire says, but the man himself overhears her, crosses the space between them to seize her arm.

‘Are you a traitor to our cause? To me? To all of us?’ he cries. ‘Tell me the truth!’

Her old stomach complaint resumes, has her clutching her belly as she quietly protests his accusations. Mary tries to reassure Gatteschi with pats and strokes, holding his hands as he claims despair.

What nonsense, she thinks. What a fuss. He makes too much of it – why? But she’s in no mood now to wonder, and says only, ‘I have to go. I must lie down for a while.’

‘I will make sure Mary gets back safely,’ says Lady Sussex.

Claire tries to explain to Mary, but when she approaches her, Mary turns her back, waves her away, as though to protect Gatteschi from her.

It’s absurd. Out in the street, she hails a cab and is soon back at her apartment, alone. The stomach pains ease immediately.

There’s a note waiting for her, slipped under the door.

Her young man.

Oh, but she’d warned him. Not while Mary’s here.

It’s too hard, keeping him a secret. She’s a fool; Mary’s a fool.

Two women in their forties entranced with handsome young men . . . two halves of the same coin. Doubles in their foolishness, perhaps. But how small Mary looked in Lady Sussex’s drawing room. Beautiful, yes, but Gatteschi is bursting with youthful energy, his face unlined, his body straight and strong. Mary, even with her light, is bent, sagging.

In the bedroom, Claire finds the glass and stares, pulls her face this way and that. Is she old and tired-looking, too? She sighs, opens the note. His hand is unmistakeable, lawyerly and clear.

Forgive my words yesterday. I have to go back to London soon, I must see you before I go. Write and tell me where, and when.

He’ll go and stay away for weeks, and she’ll be miserable with just Mary for company – until Mary goes, too, and then it will be just her, alone.

The ring of the bell startles her out of self-pity. Ah, he’s come to the apartment! When she forbade it, too.

But it’s not him – it’s Mary. Contrite and offering friendship, yet oddly light-hearted, too.

‘I felt badly the moment you left,’ she says, stepping into the vestibule. ‘I know those terrible pains you get – I don’t want to think I caused them.’

Claire shakes her head, doesn’t know what to say.

Mary carries on. ‘So let me take you out. We’ll go and have something to eat – think of a favourite place. My treat. My thank you to you.’

‘Are you sure? Is Gatteschi all right with what—’

‘Oh, he understands. And I’m going to help him – fund his cause. Please don’t look at me like that, it’s my money.’

It’s Percy’s money, from Sir Tim, Claire wants to say, but she holds her tongue, and goes to wash.

Later, outside, the maze of streets is full of talk and jumbling folk as always, but early evening is her favourite time of the day, so she’s not caring, suddenly, about Mary’s involvement, or her young man’s demands, or any of it. She mixes in the throng, for what more of a throng could there be than this?

They’re squeezing down a narrow street towards a little square ahead; a crowd’s stalled, watching a juggler tossing balls of flame into the air. Mary squeals – how is it that she’s more of a girl now than she was when she was young, Claire wonders – and pushes forward.

‘Look! Come, Claire. See who it is!’

She can’t see over the heads of those in front. Mary squirrels her way through; Claire follows, knocking into folk and getting a few choice remarks for her trouble.

There’s a young man in a flat cap and shabby suit, whose fair moustache lines a thin, wide top lip.

‘Look!’ Mary’s saying, seizing her arm and waving with the other. ‘Look! It’s Knox! Can you believe it? And after we were talking about him! I thought he’d gone back to London. Knox!’

Get her away, get her away now!

But Mary is resisting her efforts, pulling hard. ‘For heaven’s sake, let go of me, Claire. What’s the matter with you? Knox! Knox!’

She can hardly bear to look; wishes for Mary to be struck blind at that moment, for the sky to fall on top of them, for anything at all to stop what is about to happen.

Because the young man is turning his head slowly. His brown eyes are clear; his eyebrows knitted together in a familiar frown. A flush is stealing over his pale face, and his mouth forms her name.

It’s too late.

She wills him not to speak; Mary has almost reached him. And maybe he understands, for he ducks down behind an elderly woman, almost spinning her off her feet, to disappear into the crowd.

Mary reaches out – but he’s gone. ‘He saw me,’ she says, panting. ‘He turned and looked right at me—’

‘How very odd,’ Claire murmurs, nudging her away from the crowd. But Mary won’t let it drop. Tomorrow, she says, they’ll discover where he’s staying and she’ll confront him about his running away.

‘How hurtful of him to do that. How puzzling. To pretend not to know me!’ She shakes her head as they push through another busy little alley.

Claire says nothing.

Well, what can she say?

When he’s behaved exactly as she asked him to.

III.

Clairy, Lake Geneva 1816

It’s noon before she leaves him. He’s still asleep. She slips and slides all the way down the muddy hillside, giggling and exhilarated.

Soaking hemlines don’t slow her down. No mere ‘handmaiden’ now, she’s elevated to muse. She’s Aoede, muse of song and voice. Calliope, muse of poets. Chief of them all, daughter of a king, goddess of memory.

On she flies, skimming loose vines, pebbles, bramble bushes that would trip her up. What petty things of the earth they are. She’s with the gods. She’s a lover of a Great One. A mother-to-be of a Great One.

But then she stops halfway, suddenly, panting and unsteady. Her vision tips for a soft kick inside her belly, a tiny baby’s heel, just as when Mary was big with Willmouse and his hand pressed from inside so hard she could make out the curve of his fist.

A little shiver of fear catches her breath. Not for the pain of labour when the time comes, so far off at the moment. Not even for the dangers of childbirth.

But for her baby, surrounded by so many Great Ones, who might despise its mother for not being a Great One herself. Lover of, yes. Mother of. Stepdaughter of. Stepsister of . . . ah, all those ofs.

‘A new genus,’ she tells her belly. ‘I’ll be the first. That makes me a Great One, too.’ She smiles, pictures Mary’s mother taking her arm, strolling with her down the hill, confiding new ideas. The hillside’s still cast in never-ending greyness. But that’ll pass, Mary’s mother is saying. The summer will pass. And afterwards, she’ll be that new kind of woman. A new kind of mother. Unwed but respected. Mother and teacher. Lover and loved.

‘Ah,’ she sighs out loud, opening her arms dramatically to the grey and the cold. ‘What I want is here! On this glorious morning!’

She can tell Mary now. Even if Mary has guessed already; well, she’s no good at secrets. They burn inside her, so she blows them out as soon as she can.

Up she scrambles, down to the cottage, bursting with her news. Inside, though, it’s empty and silent, spoiling her fun. She pouts like Willmouse when he wants his feed. So they’ve gone out with him, most likely. They’ll have to hurry. They can’t take him up to the Villa Diodati, and Albe wants them all there soon. They can’t keep him waiting.

Albe, who doesn’t care for babies.

That’s a thought to flick away, though. In her own little room, she stops, undone dress at her feet. Poised naked over the washbasin, damp cloth in her hand, she’s struck by fluttering inside her, this time real and not imagined. Can it be . . .? Her fingers stroke her belly but nothing’s showing yet.

Two menses missed; tomorrow will be eight weeks from the first night she spent with him.

Her fingertips tingle too much; her legs wobble, so she sits on the bed to dry herself slowly, before making her way upstairs in her underclothes for one of Mary’s dresses. She’s always forgetting to add her own clothes to the laundry Mary sends to the girl in the village; Claire’s dresses gather in a heap on the floor in her room.

Mary’s hang neatly, of course. The loosest will have to do, one that Mary had taken out when she was expecting Willmouse. But even that’s too tight in the bodice. Her breasts are already heavy, full; when she stretches, the dress rips a little under her armpits. She shakes her head, wriggles her shoulders, pulls her shift up from underneath to frill around her bosom.

Mary won’t be happy, but she knows how it is. When you’re carrying a child.

She catches sight of herself in the glass, can’t keep the giddy feeling in. More giggles bubble up. She covers her mouth, whispers ‘Baby Albe.’ Naming the boy she’ll give birth to.

Albe has a daughter already.

She starts to hum and sway from side to side, hands on her hips, smiling.

‘Claire! Are you here?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ she calls down, for they’ve arrived all three, but Elise is with them, too, so there’ll be no revelations now, not till later. She ties a bow big on the bodice to cover the tightness cutting every breath and digging into her back, then drapes the shawl Shelley gave her across near-naked shoulders.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Mary’s settling Willmouse in Elise’s arms.

‘So you’re back at last?’ Mary says. Oh, but Mary’s all sourness and disapproval. Claire sticks out her chin, ready for it. ‘But that’s my—’

‘Nothing of mine is clean.’

‘You might have asked first.’

‘Take it back then, I’ll go in my shift.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Claire.’

Shelley ignores their bickering, trudges upstairs.

‘He’s not well,’ Mary mouths. ‘It’s the – air. The lake.’

‘Elise doesn’t care what you’re saying, do you Elise?’ Claire says, just to be annoying. Mary flushes, grumbles, ‘I’d give anything for a few nights without Albe, dear as he is. He’s taking a toll on—’

‘It’s not his fault,’ Claire interrupts. ‘Don’t blame him. He wants us again – wants our – your – ghost stories.’

Mary brightens a fraction. ‘I hope to think of something,’ she says, as Elise bustles about, picking up this and that, Willmouse cradled in one arm. He’s enjoying it; watches them all with his perfect blue eyes. Claire blows him a kiss; he gurgles and smiles shyly. He knows already she’s not his mother, and what a mother is.

And what a mother should be, Mary is. It all revolves around her; they all revolve around her. Mary calls Shelley down from the top of the stairs. Mary jokes about their attendance on the ‘Great Poet’. Mary issues orders to Elise, directs Shelley, kisses Willmouse when he reaches for her.

Mary, ordering their little world.

Watch and learn, for you’ll order your own little world one day, she tells herself.

‘Penny for them?’ Shelley says, sadly, as he passes.

‘You can’t afford them,’ she says, swinging away.

Well, he can’t count on her like before. Everything’s different now.

‘Oh, let me help,’ she says to Mary, who’s picking up discarded scarves and shoes. Better get some practice in. Be how a mother is. ‘Remember your coat, Shelley, you forget how cold it gets.’

He raises an eyebrow; Mary tuts.

‘And sweet Willmouse,’ Claire says, lifting the pot of lukewarm coffee from the stove and pouring a cup for Elise, who’s sunk down on a chair, and who says, ‘Thank you, Claire,’ in an astonished voice, as though she’s never poured a cup of coffee for the woman before.

Well, she hasn’t.

‘That’s enough,’ says Mary, at last. But Mary’s misunderstood her.

‘I’m not mocking you—’ she starts, but it’s too late, for Mary’s bundled them out on to the path, and the three of them trudge up through the vineyard in silence. ‘I said I wasn’t mocking,’ Claire tries again, but Shelley’s raced too far ahead, and for once Mary is faster, too. As if she wants to get away from her.

Claire shrugs; no matter. They’ll change their attitude soon enough.

She swings her skirts – Mary’s skirts – over the muddy puddles, for the rain’s begun again, but by the time they reach the villa, her shoes are soaking. In the entrance hall, she takes them off, goes barefoot. ‘You should, too,’ she says, as Mary hesitates. ‘Unless you want to die of cold and leave Willmouse motherless?’

Mary scowls. Claire knows she’s being impossible, but the devil’s got into her and that’s what pride is; who cares, she thinks, if it’s a sin? She runs into the drawing room, enjoying the feel of the tiles under her bare feet, and flings off her shawl.

‘What a trek it is!’ she sighs, bouncing into a chair and letting her feet fly up. Polly-dolly’s up and about – he points a walking stick in her direction.

‘Well, something’s pleased you in spite of it,’ he says, pulling out a chair for Mary, who scowls at her. Claire makes a face at her sister; Polly-dolly hands them both a glass of wine, and Shelley opens the windowed doors to the terrace and steps out, despite the blinding rain.

‘Oh, he’s not well, isn’t that what you said, Mary?’ Claire says, when Polly-dolly asks what he thinks he’s doing.

Shelley comes back in, peels off his coat and starts scratching his arms.

‘He looks well enough to me,’ says Polly-dolly, as Mary throws her a look.

But Claire’s having too much fun. ‘It’s the lake,’ she says, in a dramatic voice. ‘It’s the mountains.’

Mary’s furious; Claire can’t blame her, but she giggles anyway.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you,’ Mary says, moving to stand by the window. Polly-dolly scurries over; Shelley sinks into his chair by the fire. ‘But I would wish you were a million miles away.’

‘Ah, sister,’ Claire says, waving Mary away with her hand and winking at Shelley, who’s unresponsive. How dull they all are. ‘Come on, Albe,’ she murmurs. ‘Rescue me!’

But he doesn’t appear.

She spends a restless hour going back and forth to the door, looking up at the staircase, wondering whether to break his rules, ignoring Mary’s irritated sighs. Eventually, she gives up, joins the others by the fire. But she can’t sit still.

‘Sing to us,’ says Shelley. ‘Not a dirge, but something a touch melancholy. For me.’

‘I’m not in the right mood—’

‘Sing, ‘Fare You Well’. Please, Claire.’

Fare you well my dear, I must be gone

And leave you for a while

If I roam I’ll come back again

Though I roam ten thousand miles, my dear

Though I roam ten thousand miles.

So fair thou art, my bonny lass

So deep in love am I

But I will never prove false

To the bonny lass I love

Till the stars fall from the sky, my dear

Till the stars—

But a slow, low whistle interrupts her before she’s finished, and they all turn away from her.

It’s Albe, standing in the doorway, lit candelabra in his left hand. His shirt – the same from the night before, judging by the red wine stains – is loose, his hair awry. His lips are stained blackcurrant; he yawns rudely, holds up the book in his other hand.

‘Guests!’ he says. ‘Inspiration!’

He’s swaying a little; the candelabra swings. Polly-dolly rushes to take it from him. Albe scowls, thrusts it at the doctor’s chest, almost knocking him over.

‘Albe,’ Claire says, getting to her feet, stretching her arms out to him just as she’s pictured doing since she arrived and he wasn’t ready, waiting for her.

He ignores her open arms. Makes for Shelley instead. ‘What d’you think? This is the inspiration we need.’

Shelley’s rubbing his eyes as if to see better. Claire is still standing, arms falling by her sides. ‘Albe,’ she says, again. There’s a nipping just under her ribcage like a bad stitch. He takes no notice of her.

‘We’ll want two sisters if we’re to enact it,’ Albe says, nudging Shelley, who nods. ‘Will they play, d’you think?’

Shelley shrugs. Mary is frowning.

Anger is rising in Claire. She swallows it down, but out it pops. ‘Why are you asking him? Is he to give permission for us?’ she says. Her fingers tug at the edge of her shift, poking over the top of her too-tight bodice.

The movement catches his eye. ‘All right, Mam’selle La Revolution,’ he says, acknowledging her at last. ‘Let’s have your say-so.’

‘Then I say yes,’ she says.

‘You all heard her – Mary?’

Mary nods, reluctantly.

‘So, let’s begin. “Tis the middle of the night by the castle clock; And the owls have awakened the crowing cock . . .”’

‘You want us to enact Christabel?’ Mary interrupts him.

‘You will be Christabel and Geraldine!’ Albe says.

Outside, the wind has changed direction. Rain and hail lash the windowpanes, dance like a hundred pairs of tiny boots.

Claire’s heart is beating almost as fast. ‘But which is which?’ she says. I dare you, she thinks. I dare you. The tingling’s back in her fingers, but it’s different this time. Say it.

And so he does. Of course he does.

‘Christabel is our beautiful heroine, full of grace and goodness. That’s you, dear Mary,’ he says. ‘But Geraldine – ah, now, Geraldine’s a wanton slut of a devil-bride. Who could that be? Why, our very own Clairy Cocotte. Ah – my apologies, Mary—’

Claire bites her lip so hard she rips the skin, cradles her jaw with her palm as her eyes water. He’s drunk; drugged with opium, laudanum, maybe pennyroyal, whatever that is. It’s not him.

She steps close enough to him to touch those eyelashes of his eyes, thick as spider legs. ‘This isn’t you. I know you better,’ she whispers.

He blinks. For a moment, she thinks he’s going to weep. Then his expression changes; he bows his head, says in her ear, ‘Play the game, Clairy. If you do, what might you win?’ Then he pushes her aside and shouts, ‘We will want costumes! Fashion us something, Polly-dolly – quickly, now. Look in my room, there must be some things we can use—’

Polly-dolly’s confused and annoyed, but obeys. Shelley’s confused, too – they all are. They’re all at sea, and Albe is their captain. Sink or swim, they’ll go down with him. The room darkens. Fletcher appears with more wine, lays it on the table, then leaves.

Albe picks up the decanter, pours out four glasses. ‘I was recalling our “twins” from yesterday’s story, you see,’ he says. ‘We’ll have another “double” today. D’you think women only come in doubles? Ah well – I’ve a fancy for a ghost who’s a double, I think. The horror of it, after all. Seeing yourself as a ghost.’

Shelley starts in his chair; Claire rests a hand on his shoulder, but he’s trembling as he sits back.

‘The image of your own self! Your ghostly double . . .’ Albe’s rambling a bit now as he goes around the room with the glasses on a silver tray. He pulls out a little bottle from his pocket, too, taps drops into Mary’s wine and Shelley’s water. He drops the same into hers. No mint this time; just the scent of pear drops, sweet and sugary.

She sips. By the time Polly-dolly returns, empty-handed and full of excuses, she’s already woozy, but more at ease.

Albe says, ‘Mary – take my cloak.’ It’s a beautiful, embroidered, silken thing that makes her gasp. He holds it above her head. ‘Yes, lay it over your head, like a nun—’

Mary’s unsure; his fingers fuss at her throat, her neck, as he whispers in her ear, before lifting her hair, then tugging it back, just a little, so that her neck’s exposed, with his forefinger and thumb pressing on her throat.

Something inside Claire twists; Mary pouts and wriggles; he smiles, then pats her on the head like a child.

Then it’s her turn. She’s been waiting for this, how he’ll lay hands on her.

‘You, my dear, are definitely a ghost. Down to your shift, please.’

She thinks she’s misheard. But he comes over, yanks her shawl from her shoulders, careless of her hair, which catches on it, making her wince. ‘No complaints now, Geraldine. Isn’t this what you want?’

She says nothing as Mary calls over, ‘Where do I stand?’ He points to a spot on the floor, then nudges Claire, plucks the bow she’s tied over her bodice. ‘Hurry up now, devil-bride,’ he says, and winks at her.

It’s just their game. This is how he is. And the room’s dark enough and she’s not shy. So, what’s the harm? She finishes the wine in two gulps; he pours her more. She eases down the bodice first, then her skirt, until she’s barefoot in her shift and drawers.

‘Over by the fire, Geraldine,’ he says, poking her side so that she starts. ‘And we’ll begin.’

Shelley’s gazing at them all, but not seeming to see; Polly-dolly is in a chair in the shadows – she can’t make out what he’s doing. Albe pulls her shift down past her shoulders; she catches it. ‘No, you don’t,’ she says, and he smiles.

‘“The night is chill, the forest bare” – ah yes, now, lean on the chair like that – “There she sees a damsel bright” – now you, Geraldine – read it.’

Claire doesn’t like him calling her that name. But she does as he says. They all do, after all.

‘“Have pity on my sore distress,”’ she reads out loud. ‘“I scarce can speak for weariness. Stretch forth thy hand—”’

He interrupts her. ‘Do it then, like that; stretch out as he describes.’ And he’s behind her now, lifting up her right arm, beckoning to Mary to come forward. ‘“Said Christabel—”’

‘“How camest thou here?”’ says Mary, wide-eyed and light as air, golden hair fanning about her shoulders.

Her sister’s close enough to touch, but Claire’s thick black curls could crush that golden bird’s nest. Obliterate it.

‘“My sire is of a noble line; And my name is Geraldine.”’ She takes up the next line, frowning. ‘“Five warriors seized me yestermorn; Me, even me, a maid forlorn: They choked my cries with force and fright—’”

But Albe’s got her by the waist, fingers digging in hard. She cries out. He says, ‘Come, Geraldine, play the part!’

Her hand is at his chest to hold him off. She speaks; Mary speaks; she speaks again; Shelley stares; Polly-dolly seeps into the shadows.

She stops when Albe holds up his hand.

‘Now for my favourite part. Christabel – get down here in front of the fire’ – he points – ‘and you, Geraldine, down beside her.’

Mary, all dreamy-eyed and glowing, lies down on her side, facing Shelley. Claire lies on her side, too, facing Mary. The room’s shadows, huge and dark, dance about the fire, as thunder rumbles at the window, and the rain hammers down.

‘So, you must look at her – but murderously,’ whispers Albe in her ear. ‘Remember how much you hate her? She has everything you want. So take it from her.’

Mary is pouting like a beautiful angel, golden hair shining under the silken robe. Her face is all delicate lines, soft eyes and paleness. Claire can’t bear it; can’t bear her. Yes, she thinks. Sometimes I could kill you.

His hand grips her shoulder.

‘“Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,”’ he says, ‘“And slowly rolled her eyes around; Then drawing in her breath aloud; Like one that shuddered, she unbound; The cincture from beneath her breast” – yes, Geraldine, lean over like so, imagine a dagger in your hand – “Her silken robe, and inner vest; Dropt to her feet, and full in view; BEHOLD! Her bosom and half her side; A sight to DREAM of, not to tell! O SHIELD her! SHIELD sweet Christabel!”’

With a ridiculous whooping noise in her ear, he seizes the neck of her chemise, lifting her up towards him. His eyes are blazing; she cries out, tries to push him away, but he’s taken a small dagger from his trouser pocket, is plunging it into the neck of her shift.

In a single movement, he rips the material, then, holding each torn side apart, exposes her body, before pushing her back onto the rug.

Mary screams, hands flying to her mouth. From somewhere in the dark, Polly-dolly gives a strange sort of muffled cry.

Claire’s instinct is to grapple with him, to cover herself. Every impulse screams it.

And then, suddenly, her mind goes quiet. Her body freezes. She stares at him, into his eyes.

He blinks once, twice. The blade of the dagger is digging into her side; she wonders for a moment if he means to kill her. He looks as though he hates her.

All of it, from the ripping of her chemise to his murderous look, lasts only a second. For, almost instantly, he shrugs, lets go of the chemise, stands back. Now she can move; she snatches the torn chemise close as Mary wraps her shawl around her shoulders.

‘Albe, why do you take things so far?’ Mary’s saying, not noticing Shelley getting to his feet. But Claire notices, for all she’s stuck between fury and humiliation, not knowing what to say or do but hug her chemise to her chest.

She sees it, but can’t speak, and then Shelley lets out a howl.

Clapping his head with shaking hands, then batting them about him, he howls a second time. Mary cries out, flies to him, but he pushes her away, like some horrible copy of her own tussle with Albe a moment before. Polly-dolly is at the fireplace now, and Albe is swaying on his feet, mumbling.

And then Shelley’s gone, stumbling from the room. The library door slams.

‘He’s ill, he’s ill,’ Mary says, beginning to cry. ‘Please, somebody do something.’

Polly-dolly says, ‘Let me, Mary,’ and hurries out. The library door shuts again.

Mary sniffs; Albe runs his fingers through his hair, says, ‘Well, I’ve seen worse performances—’

But Claire has had enough of his humour. Clutching the shawl with one hand, she collects her dress from the floor, retreats to the furthest corner of the room. Trembling, she fashions a knot out of the torn ends of her chemise, then lifts her dress over her head, pulls the knotted edge of the chemise up over the bodice.

When she turns round, she sees that Albe has wandered over to the chaise. He’s yawning. He drains a wine glass, lies back on the chaise and closes his eyes. Mary, still sniffling, goes out into the entrance hall. Claire watches as Mary presses herself up against the closed library door, her hand splayed on the wood.

It’s just her and Albe in the room now. She holds her breath a moment, hand on her heart, deciding what to do.

He doesn’t hear her padding across the room in her bare feet. He is too woozy to realise what’s happening.

When her fist strikes his jaw, it knocks his head against the back of the chaise.

‘What the—?’ He’s got her hand, but she twists it away, then sidesteps out of his reach. She’s done now. Across the floor she flies, to the bottom of the staircase, Albe’s feeble curses chasing her like aged dogs after a fox.

In the shadowy dark, candles flickering, she stops and waits. No; he won’t rouse himself – belittle himself – to chase after Clairy Cocotte, to hunt down Geraldine. Even if he’s furious. He’ll take his revenge some other way.

Panting and cradling her hurt hand – for his jaw was thick enough – she takes each stair one at a time, then sinks down at the top.

What kind of father can he be to a child of hers? He’s too cruel; he hates her, will hate her child.

Their child.

Don’t weep. Ah, but her heart’s ready to burst, and tears are crouching behind her eyes, waiting for the call. So she balls her good fist instead, rubs her forehead with it. Hiccups, before hot bile rises, sharp and bitter. Her ribcage echoes.

She needs water; there’s always some in his bedroom. And more, besides – but just a small amount of that. Her legs tremble as she stands; her good hand shakes as she tries his door.

It’s unlocked. Inside, the washroom beckons. Lightning cuts the floor, makes her blink as she pads across it.

After Albe fell asleep last night, she’d returned the bottle of pennyroyal. The medicine chest has seven bottles inside it – minus the one he has downstairs.

She lifts each bottle out, but there’s no pennyroyal. There’s a new one, though: VALERIAN.

It doesn’t smell of mint. It’s not the same tincture.

Maybe Polly-dolly has the bottle. She sits down on the stone floor. The coolness is a relief; the rain at the window is easing. Thunder rumbles, but softly. Her heart’s still hammering, though; tears sneak out, tiptoe down her cheeks.

The bottle of laudanum. Just enough so that she can face them all again; face him, especially, for Lord knows what attitude he’ll take to her now. For two pins, she’d sneak out back to the cottage. But first, just a couple of drops on her tongue – like that. And there it is! Warmth sweeps through her bones too fast, and she almost panics. But then it eases, and she sighs, goes with it.

She won’t run.

After a few minutes, she finds she can stand up. Hands to the walls, groping her way out in the dark. Downstairs, a strange smell is filtering out from the library. She stops and waits at the door a minute – there’s no noise at all from the drawing room across the way, and anyway, she’s not ready for him yet – then pushes it open.

Shelley is lying full-length on the floor, his head propped up on some cushions. His eyes are half-closed and he’s murmuring to himself, but he seems peaceful.

‘How is he?’ she says.

‘I’ve given him some ether,’ says Polly-dolly, quietly. ‘He keeps talking about some terrible vision that made him shout out. A naked woman.’ He stops, then, ‘He says he was looking at Mary.’

They both know that’s not true.

‘He said she had eyes – where her nipples should be.’

Her body. But Mary’s eyes. Judging him; watching him. Did she do so after all, that night from the terrace?

‘Albe’s little trick has – unsettled him, too much.’

‘It’s unsettled him?’ Her fist is at her chest. She perches on the arm of a chair for a breath.

He frowns. ‘Your hand,’ he says, then goes to the open bag on the floor. He takes out some muslin and a jar of balm. He’s very gentle as he smears some of the balm on her hand, but still she winces.

‘You leap over the edge,’ he says, when she tells him how she hurt it. ‘Shelley teeters there, and makes it worse.’

‘Perhaps he wants to be pushed over it, though.’

They both stare at him.

‘Albe will push him,’ Polly-dolly says. ‘You and Mary are holding him back.’

‘That’s not true – not at all. Shelley knows his own genius. Nobody holds him back.’

‘Don’t you understand, that’s what you’re for?’

‘I think you don’t care for women very much.’

But she hasn’t noticed until now how weary Polly-dolly looks. His gaunt cheeks. His eyelids flutter a second; his hand rests on his forehead. He doesn’t argue with her.

‘I must ask you,’ she says, quietly, ‘what is “pennyroyal”? I’ve seen it – in a tincture. What’s it used for?’

He seems restored by her question; the gauntness in his cheeks fills out as he blows out a breath, says with authority, ‘Taken most commonly in tea. Very popular amongst working women. To stop a pregnancy.’

‘To stop a pregnancy?’ But her words die the moment they’re spoken. Something cool pours through her arms, her legs, into her fingers and toes. A liquid ice, turning her and her baby to stone.

‘I do care for women. It’s Albe who doesn’t. Only – women of genius, with him, perhaps. Mary’s a genius.’ Polly-dolly is babbling now. They’re standing out in the entrance hall together, and he hasn’t noticed that she’s turned to stone. ‘But not a genius to threaten him.’

‘What’s going on?’ calls Albe from the drawing room.

Polly-dolly heads in; she can’t move. Well, she’s stone, after all.

Mary is pale and standing by the window.

He’s done it to them both. Made statues of the women in the house. Does he do this everywhere?

‘How is dear Shelley?’ Albe’s saying to Polly-dolly, who replies, ‘Sleeping. I gave him some ether.’

She watches them from the hallway, outside, on the threshold of the room, unable to cross. ‘Ah, the pressure to create on the minds of genius, even for fun,’ Albe’s saying.

‘Well, it didn’t make Mary hallucinate,’ says Polly-dolly.

‘I should have said male genius,’ replies Albe.

Suddenly, Mary moves, lifting and stretching her right arm. And at that moment, Claire finds her own limbs loosening. She takes a deep breath, walks into the drawing room.

Albe’s still talking. Mary passes him, comes towards her as if in a dream, walking towards her sister.

Mary stretches out her right arm again. Claire twists, stretches out her left.

And then they point, forefinger to forefinger. Just as they used to, when they were children, stretching across their bed to one another, until their fingers touched, before pulling back, as if something had sparked between them, and burned their fingertips.

Over and over they’d do it, gasping each time.

Mary’s papa had a charcoal copy on his desk.

The Creation of Adam. One God, one Man. They could never settle on which of them was God, which one Man. Who was the Creator, who the Created.

The Creator ought not to destroy his Creature, she wrote to Albe.

Now, across the floor of the villa, they reach towards one another, until their forefingers touch.

And then the imagined spark lights up, and their fingertips alight, too, and burn. They flick their fingers apart, their hands flying up into the air.

At the same moment, they laugh, just as they used to.

Albe stares, says, ‘What the—?’, while Polly-dolly claps.

Then a cry comes from the library. She and Mary look to the hallway.

‘Female genius knows only interruptions,’ Claire says. But Mary’s already past her, heading out the door. Polly-dolly’s on his feet, too.

They’re left alone.

Albe frowns, shifts on the chaise a little, as though he’s afraid of her.

‘Well, Clairy,’ he says, drawling out her name. ‘You’ve done your worst. So we are even, I think.’

She lifts her chin, concentrates on his face. Nothing will make her look away first. She steps closer.

He flinches, just a little.

‘It hasn’t worked, you know. Your trick,’ she says. She taps her belly. ‘I still have her. In here. Your child.’

When she gets up an hour or two later, Shelley’s in the drawing room, but Albe’s disappeared. She had wanted quiet, and the dark, to lie down for a while, and had found a small, bare, study-like room, with a couch and a desk. She lay on the couch, palm against her chest, trying to understand. Albe had told her he’d ‘guessed’ at her pregnancy. He’d seemed to want it, that night he broke down.

So why had he tried to destroy it?

The fluttering inside her wasn’t pleasant, but it reminded her of something alive and solid. The rain eased off as she lay, breathing in and out, and gradually, she slipped away to sleep and only woke when she felt the sensation of something heavy sitting on her chest, pressing down, leaving her fighting for air.

Now, hours later, the grandfather clock strikes two. It’s silvery black outside, but not for long. The summer light’s due soon, in all its greyness. In the drawing room, Polly-dolly snores in a chair. Mary is at the table, staring out across the lake, sheets of paper in front of her. From his chair by a dwindling fire, Shelley, looking more restored than she’s seen him in days, greets her.

There’s a tray of food on the table: bread, cheeses, grapes, apples. She’s suddenly hungry, cuts slices of bread. The smell of the cheese makes her nauseous, though, so she avoids that. Nobody speaks.

When she’s eaten enough, she sits by Shelley, not wanting to disturb Mary, who’s scribbling again.

‘Are you recovered now?’

He shrugs. He’s still pale and sleepy-eyed. But less haunted- looking. ‘Everything tonight has been – nightmarish.’

She nods, touches the knot of her torn chemise, still poking over the top of her bodice.

He doesn’t notice; perhaps he’s forgotten what Albe did. What caused him to run in fright. ‘Trapped between waking and sleeping isn’t – ah, the best place. Not able to work. Look at Mary, how she’s writing. I need – that. What she has.’

But you can’t have it, Claire wants to say. It’s not yours to take.

‘So we’ve hatched a plan,’ he says. ‘Albe and I. The day after tomorrow. We’re leaving, the two of us. Just a small excursion. I want to see more of the region, of the lake.’

‘You want to see more of him, you mean.’

He puts a finger to his lips. ‘I’ll do what I can for you,’ he says. ‘For you – and for’ – he nods at her belly – ‘the baby.’

‘He’s told you, then.’

‘Yes. I promise you, Claire. I promise. Trust me to do this.’

So, she’ll need him to intercede for her. Of course. Her will sinks; it’s over, then. He tried to destroy her child; she struck him in the face.

And now Shelley will step in. Take over.

A last little spark of fight burns. ‘Mary,’ she says, appealing to her sister. ‘You’ve heard of this plan?’

There’s a peculiar light on Mary’s face. ‘Ah – but yes, I think it’s a good plan,’ she says, distracted, waving ink-stained fingers, before turning back to her papers.

Claire can’t fight them both. So they wait for Albe to show, or for the light to rise. When it does, they slip out of the villa and slide down through the muddy vineyard back to the cottage.

She hasn’t said goodbye to Albe. He didn’t appear at all.

She’ll see him again tomorrow, she thinks, as she climbs into her narrow bed. She’ll insist on him seeing her. This business is between them.

She doesn’t see him again tomorrow. Fletcher arrives instead, with a message. Mary and Shelley are invited to the villa that night.

She is not.

She is not to be allowed in ever again. He’ll not see her, not exchange a single word with her.

‘Let him be for now,’ says Mary, in her room, dressing wearily. Claire is sitting on the bed, watching her. ‘Oh, that we could stay home, too!’

The whole day’s been quiet. Claire had slept badly, spent a few wakeful hours reading. Shelley’s been out in the boat; Mary’s had Willmouse to look after.

‘You are happy for them to go off together?’ Claire asks.

A shadow passes over Mary’s face. ‘I want – he wants this trip. Perhaps it’s better – and for you, too. Ah, but we must go up tonight. You understand, don’t you?’

‘What choice do I have?’ she grumbles.

So, she stays in the cottage, baby William on her lap after his feed. She toys with names in her head, boys’ names first, then girls’.

It’s a girl, she decides. Just as she said to him. It came unbidden, at that moment she confronted him with I still have her.

She doesn’t think about what name Albe might prefer; well, she’ll refuse what he prefers.

She trembles a little at how badly things have gone.

There’ll be no future as his companion now; no taking care of him, and their baby, together. She can’t see what the way forward will be at all yet. What a new genus means for her now. When Willmouse wakes up and starts to cry, she walks around the kitchen alone with him in her arms. She opens the door a couple of times, and even takes the path towards the lake, hoping the sounds of the water lapping will settle him. But he doesn’t like the wind, and she’s scared of dropping him, or tripping up.

What quietens him eventually is her singing. She tries a popular one first, ‘Lilies of the Valley’, to make his eyes open wide; then hums ‘Fur Elise’, which has him blinking and smiling. Over and over, she hums, until he closes his eyes; she tries a little ‘Fidelio’, but softly, and soon he’s fast asleep.

It’s easy enough. She imagines a typhoon, or some other great disaster, sweeping away the villa on top of the hill, taking everyone there with it. Leaving her alone with this baby in her arms.

‘Would you like that, Willmouse? Just you and me in the whole wide world?’

Her own mama was left alone after her father died, after all. And with two children to care for. And Mary’s mother was alone with a baby before she met Godwin.

Many mothers manage alone. She can, too.

That cheers her. Willmouse gurgles in his cot while she fixes food for herself. Then she checks him for changing before taking him up to Mary’s room.

She wakes, ages later, to Mary shaking her arm. She’s fallen asleep on her back on their bed, Willmouse lying on top of her.

‘You might have rolled over and squashed him,’ Mary says, lifting him.

Claire sits up, rubs her eyes. It’s morning; they’ve stayed at the villa all night. ‘Well, you should have come back sooner,’ she says.

‘And he needs changing.’

‘I did change him a few hours ago.’

Mary humphs, whisks Willmouse away. Downstairs, Shelley’s packing a few things for his trip around the lakes. He’ll be gone about four days, he says. He seems happy, eager. The night of his fright has banished his haunted look.

She hovers by his elbow, getting in the way every time he reaches for something.

‘What do you want, Claire?’ he says.

She glances upstairs. Mary has closed the bedroom door to feed Willmouse in peace. Claire whispers, ‘I must ask you something.’

‘Let’s discuss it when I’m back,’ he says. ‘I promised I’d speak with him about the baby. I’ll do what I can. But I think – he won’t forgive you. You have to trust me, I said so.’

‘He won’t forgive me? After all that he’s done? Tearing my shift, poisoning my wine – he wanted me to lose the baby—’

‘Oh, you imagine so much, conjure up all sorts—’

‘You think I imagined it all?’ She blinks in disbelief. ‘You really saw none of it?’

‘Of what?’

‘He tore my chemise!’

Shelley shakes his head. ‘Mary says you were fighting one another and it ripped. You are – violent, sometimes, in your feeling. It can – frighten people.’

She won’t believe it. Tries again. ‘Did I imagine the night on the lake, too?’

There’s hurt in his eyes, and pity. But then a slyness – barely perceptible, but it’s there – creeps in. ‘You drank too much – you nearly fell out of the boat—’

A lump hardens in her throat. ‘Before that. The boat was rocking—’

He lifts his hand to her chin then, tips it up. He’s very close; fair eyelashes lighten his eyes, make them appear more truthful. She swallows.

‘Why don’t you trust me more? What you see, feel, isn’t always what . . .’ his voice trails off. His hand frees her chin; fingers, light as air, dance up to her hairline, then wind themselves in her thick curls. His lips hover above hers. She pushes her palm against his shoulder. Inside, something tips. Like a boat, rocking.

‘If only you could . . .’ he murmurs in her ear.

Upstairs, a door opens. Mary. He steps back, winks as he used to. She’s confused. He calls up, ‘What it is, my love?’ as Mary descends with Willmouse in her arms.

Claire says, ‘He likes it when I sing to him.’

Mary nods.

And so Claire opens her mouth and starts to sing, and the baby quietens, just like before.

Without Shelley, the house assumes a different rhythm. Less punctuated, perhaps, by his sudden appearances from the lake, or his strictness about meals. It’s still untidy, of course, but the day meanders through it, picking its way slowly. She and Mary take turns with Willmouse; she sings to him while Mary works upstairs, making notes.

On their second day, after she’s moved into Mary’s bed, sisters again, she’s woken up when Mary kicks out, gives a shriek in her sleep. It’s just after dawn; the room is as grey as ever.

‘I thought you’d stopped all of that,’ Claire grumbles, rubbing her eyes. ‘I don’t know how Shelley manages it.’

Mary’s just sitting up straight, staring ahead. Claire sighs, gets out of bed and goes downstairs to fetch a cup of milk, as she used to do when they were small and Mary had one of her terrible nightmares. By the time she’s returned, Mary has lit a candle. Willmouse hasn’t woken, at least.

‘I saw him in my dream,’ Mary says.

‘Shelley?’

‘A – monster. He stared at me. Two yellow eyes, blinking at me. He was going to kill me. I knew – I’d have to kill him first.’

‘Monsters,’ Claire says, then sighs.

‘No – you don’t understand. I’d made him. He was my creation and I was going to kill him.’ Mary covers her eyes. ‘What mother kills her own child?’

Claire rests her hand on Mary’s back. ‘You dreamed you gave birth to a monster. I think that might be my nightmare, not yours. Given who the father is.’ She shrugs at her belly to make Mary smile, but Mary doesn’t.

Mary says, ‘I think – I was not a mother, though. I was a man – I’d created him.’

‘You always did want to play God in our game!’

‘You don’t understand. I made him, out of other men. Parts of them.’

‘How horrible.’

‘Yes, it is. Horrible.’

They sit in the quiet dark. Claire remembers. ‘“The Creator ought not to destroy his Creature.”’

‘What? What did you say?’

She shakes her head. ‘Oh, I wrote it in a letter to Albe. One of the first ones. To flatter him, make him feel that he’d made me approach him. Ah, so I am the monster.’ She laughs a little.

Mary’s fine features tighten, her mouth forming a hard little line. ‘Sometimes I think you are.’

‘Well, that’s a fine thing to say. You told Shelley my shift ripped because Albe and I were fighting. You saw what he did.’

Mary gets out of bed. ‘It’s a waste of time talking to you. You’re such a child.’ She picks up the now wakened Willmouse. Claire’s too dumbfounded to say anything.

Mary continues, ‘I’ve been wondering all this time, what you expect to come of it. Your situation with him. You have to grow up.’

Claire pulls her knees up to her chin. It’ll never be like before between them again – before Shelley; before Mary fell out with their mama; before, when they shared the same bed, the same toys, books, dresses. Whispering at night about what they wanted, when they were grown up.

‘I didn’t plan for this to happen,’ Claire says.

‘It won’t be for you as it is for me. I told you.’

She prickles at Mary’s tone, her words. No, it’s not like before. ‘It’s not up to you,’ she says, hotly. ‘It’s what Shelley thinks – anyway, he’s going to arrange it with Albe, somehow—’

‘Arrange what? Living with him, in his household? As what? A servant? A mistress?’ Mary gives a snort. ‘He doesn’t even want to see your face.’

Claire swings her legs out of bed, says, ‘You’re just a jealous old witch,’ and marches out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She pauses on the landing; Willmouse has begun to cry. Good, she thinks, and goes downstairs, making sure to make as much noise as possible.

How she hates her. How foul Mary is. With her foul dreams and her foul words. Ah, she’s too angry even to think properly. She glances at the makeshift desk she’s set up in the kitchen. A pile of Albe’s papers – the precious third canto of his poem Childe Harolde – sits on top. He sent them down to be transcribed before he left with Shelley, who said he’d persuaded him to let her do the job. To show willing, was how he put it. To say sorry.

She lifts them up, glances at the kitchen fire.

There be none of beauty’s daughters with a magic like thee.

It’s all her mama’s fault. And Papa’s. That evening – so many years ago now – when the Great Poet came, long after their bedtime. While he was being fed in the dining room, she and Mary hid behind the sofa in the living room, waiting and giggling. The shadows swallowed them whole, but they played cat’s cradle back and forth, until at last the voices and the footsteps came, and the door opened, and they shrank back against the wall, in case they were discovered.

But they weren’t. Mama was talkative as always; Papa murmured from time to time, but Mama would stop to listen to him. On this occasion, they all listened to Coleridge, the Great Poet.

They knew the poem already.

It is an ancient Mariner

And he stoppeth one of three.

By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

His accent was friendly, lilting in that Devonshire way they occasionally heard out on the street. A comical sound; she and Mary covered their mouths, giggling, when he began. Before falling spellbound as the wedding guest.

‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!

From the fiends that plague thee thus!

Why look’st thou so?’ – ‘With my cross-bow

I shot the ALBATROSS.’

When Coleridge the Great Poet clapped his hands together, they gasped, held their breaths, clutched at each other. But nobody heard; nobody came for them.

Claire sighs at the pages in her hand; ah, the Great Poet and His Achievements. Now Albe and Shelley, and even Mary – it’s what they all want, too, to fly skyward.

While she stays here on the ground, watching them above her. Like when she was a child, listening spellbound behind a sofa.

Until that clap of the hands.

The breaking of the spell.

And they fall to earth beside her.

‘I have my story,’ Mary says, later that day. So she’s decided to speak to her now. Well, she’s not forgotten so easily, or forgiven. So Claire grunts, pours herself another cup of coffee. Willmouse is being charming, gurgling and grinning at her as she holds out a ribbon for him to suck.

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Mary says again. She sounds weary. Claire turns from Willmouse and looks. Mary yawns; the quarrel has long since passed for her.

‘Then I’m very happy for you,’ Claire says. ‘Truly.’

‘I was thinking – about the Michelangelo. What we do with it.’

God and Adam, reaching across. ‘The Creator and his Creature,’ Mary is saying. ‘My creator is a young doctor—’

‘Not Polly-dolly, surely?’ Claire snorts.

‘No, he’s not like – well, perhaps a little,’ Mary says. ‘My doctor’s name is Frankenstein – less easy to make something silly out of that.’

Claire nods, her face serious. ‘So, tell me,’ she says.

Mary’s frowning, rubbing her hands together. ‘What happens when Adam is not content to be Adam? When he wants to be God?’ She smiles, suddenly, that golden light that Claire hasn’t seen in a while shining. ‘We never could decide which of us was which—’

‘You are the Creator, Mary. I concede it.’

‘Aren’t all mothers?’ Mary says, looking pointedly at Claire’s belly.

She’s just about to ask more about the story, when someone knocks loudly at the front door.

Polly-dolly.

‘I have a dilemma, and I want your opinion,’ he says, rushing in before either of them has spoken. They exchange a look; Claire pours him a cup of lukewarm coffee from the pot that’s been standing on the stove for ages, while Mary takes up a seat across the kitchen table. He’s in a passion, red-faced and panting. He must have run all the way down the hill, she thinks. So much for his bad ankle.

‘Look here,’ he says, removing a pile of papers from a saddlebag. ‘Albe’s. What am I to do about them?’

‘The fire’s going very merrily,’ Claire says. ‘I just threw some of Albe’s poems on it.’

He gives a cry, starts up from his chair. Mary shakes her head, says, ‘Claire,’ in that warning tone. Claire shrugs. He sits back down again, hand on his heart.

‘Don’t frighten me like that.’

‘Don’t make it so easy, then.’

He tuts. Then begins again, addressing himself to Mary only. Claire smiles, thinks, This will be fun.

‘So, I have two beginnings. One is mine, one is Albe’s.’

‘Why do you have Albe’s story?’ Mary asks.

‘Oh Lord, I don’t have to transcribe that, too, do I?’ Claire says. It irks her how they’re waiting on him. Another Great Poet.

You’re just a handmaiden.

He says, ‘Albe’s given up on it. It’s only a fragment, the beginning of a story. But I think I can progress it.’

Claire raises her eyebrows.

Mary says, ‘Did Albe give it to you?’

Polly-dolly looks confused for a moment. ‘Not exactly,’ he confesses, at last.

‘Then maybe put it back,’ she says.

‘But he threw it away. Almost into the fire! He started an outline for a poem instead, and now he’s gone away with Shelley, I think that—’

‘That what?’ Mary asks.

‘Oh, you know how he is. It’s the story of – well, it’s of him, and myself! Don’t I have some right to it?’

‘It’s the story of a rich lord and his poor doctor?’ Claire says. ‘I thought it was supposed to be a ghost story – or does he murder you, Polly-dolly?’

‘Don’t call me that,’ he says, suddenly. ‘You don’t like his name for you – and I have never used it.’

Claire feels her face flush. ‘I apologise – doctor.’

He lifts his head, resumes speaking. Claire clasps her hands together; Mary gives her a look.

‘His story is of two friends – yes, one’s a rich lord – who travel together to Turkey. When they arrive, one of them announces his wish to die, but asks his friend to conceal his death. His friend must also perform a number of rituals every year on the anniversary of his death.’

‘Why?’

But Polly-dolly carries on, breathlessly. ‘He asks his friend to bury him that evening in the very spot where they’re watching a bird with a snake in its mouth. Ten minutes later, he is dead.’

Claire is about to say something rude, then remembers. Albe and Shelley – two friends – are away on their boat trip together.

‘The friend assumes he’s been poisoned. He buries him, just as he asked. Then he says, “Between astonishment and grief, I was tearless.”’

Claire imagines Albe at a makeshift grave, Shelley six feet below the earth. Glances at Mary, who’s pale. Thinking the same.

‘Perhaps I might use it, you see,’ Polly-dolly’s saying. ‘My own story is weak – the premise. Oh, I envisaged a skull-headed lady, punished for peeping through a keyhole—’

‘Perhaps not,’ Mary murmurs, but her attention is elsewhere.

‘Two friends travelling, but only one returns,’ Claire says. ‘At least tell me it’s not the wealthy lord who returns . . .’

‘It is not.’

‘Well, that’s something,’ she says, getting up from her chair and taking up her cape. ‘I want some air – I’ll let Mary advise you.’

It’s fine outside, dry and brighter than any day so far. Polly-dolly’s still talking, his voice filtering out along the path, growing fainter as she climbs away, up through the vineyard. Sunlight glints through the clouds. When she reaches the house, she’s out of breath, sweating, and has to discard her cape.

She raps loudly on the door.

Nobody answers. Perhaps Fletcher’s asleep. Or tending to the animals in Albe’s zoo. The dogs, the horses, the monkeys. The cats and the birds.

She pushes the door open with a creak. The hallway is in darkness. No need for candles when the lord and master’s absent.

The staircase beckons ahead. To her surprise, his bedroom door is unlocked, too. Inside, everything’s tidied away. She stands, gazing round the room, for a long time; it’s her last time here, she knows.

In the washroom, the medicine chest still sits. Inside are the same eight bottles. But there’s no pennyroyal.

Defeated, she returns to the bedroom. It was a foolish hope, a silly urge, to come here. Of course there would be nothing to find. No proof of what he did to her.

She sits on the bed to think a moment. On Albe’s bureau in the far corner lie some papers; unfinished compositions, most likely. More poems for the kitchen fire – if only she had the nerve, she thinks.

But when she goes over to read them, she sees what they are.

They’re not lines of a new poem.

They’re a letter, to his half-sister, Augusta. The one all the rumours are about. She’s too curious; and is paid for her curiosity with the sight of her own name.

. . . I could not exactly play the stoic with a woman who had scrambled eight hundred miles to unphilosophize me . . .

Scrambled to unphilosophize me.

Heat spreads through her. Well, her mama does say, eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves.

She stares, fixed by his hand. What else might be written there about her? To be forewarned is to be forearmed, her mama also says. Claire picks up another page, then another, searches for her name.

But he’s asking about Medora, Augusta’s daughter.

. . . How goes my little girl? What of me does she show yet? For I am a possessive Papa, and will want signs of it . . .

She thinks, it is no uncommon thing for a person of lively feelings to fancy he sees what never really existed.

But these are solid things.

A tincture, clearly labelled.

A letter, mentioning her.

A child, by his sister.

A child, by her.

Not rumour, then. Not just gossip, as Shelley had said.

All these things not mere fancy. They exist; they matter.

She shivers. He’s a monster. Whoever created him, will be the one to destroy him. It’s not her task; she’s no Atropos, no Hermes, no Nyx.

But when he falls to earth – and he will, one day, he will – she’ll step over his lifeless form and smile.

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

‘Allegra, you kept saying,’ says Louise Trewin a few days later, while they’re dressing.

Claire tsks; she’s having to step over all Louise’s things, strewn about the floor. ‘Can’t you keep your voice down?’ she says, but Louise pays no attention, chatters on.

‘Over and over and over, you kept saying it. Who is she? You were very angry, so she has certainly done you harm. I was almost afraid.’

Claire imagines stuffing Louise’s own chemise in her mouth. Instead, she says, ‘Please, I’m begging you – be quiet.’

‘But it’s only a dream – oh, and then you mentioned taking a knife to someone—’

Louise titters.

Claire relaxes. A way out. ‘So you were the one dreaming, then,’ she says. ‘Of course you were. Your revolutionary plans. See what they make you imagine.’

Louise gives her a sly look, opens her mouth to ask more questions. Claire picks up her chemise from the mattress, toys with her intention, then says, ‘And please look after your things a little better – I can barely find a thing amongst your mess.’ She flings the soiled garment at the other woman, who has already opened the door and is skipping down the corridor to breakfast, leaving Claire to tidy up.

Their little friendship honeymoon hasn’t lasted long. Already, Louise is driving her mad, with the loudness of her voice, the messiness of her ways.

And her unrelenting nosiness. That’s the worst.

‘You sent her to punish me, Mary. I swear it. She wants to know far too much, and for what reason I can’t fathom,’ Claire mutters, picking up a pair of Louise’s drawers that are hanging on the back of the chair. Maybe Louise just wants her to join her revolution, but why she thinks Claire would be any use, she doesn’t know. Does Louise picture an army of furious governesses, demanding respect and better pay with their blackboard pointers?

No; it’s more than that.

She clicks her tongue, unlocks her bureau. Only the key keeps it free from Louise’s clutter – and her curiosity.

Gambs’s voice drifts up through the open window from the gardens below, where Dunia and the little princess play with the serf children. He’s trying to teach them all a poem. Good luck, she thinks, seating herself at the desk. They’d test Rousseau himself to the limit. Ah, but she can’t help smiling, not when Dunia’s yelping like a little puppy, so that the rest of them copy her, setting off a chorus of barks.

Gambs shouts, ‘Enough now!’ but it’s useless. Dunia’s calling, ‘Mam’selle Claire! Where are you?’, and it’s all she can do not to place a hand on her heart and abandon her journal, and these precious few moments alone, for the little girl.

She wavers, standing up, ready to run down to the child – but then Louise’s high-pitched voice pierces the air. Back down she sits, sighing. That’s the trouble with great houses in this country. The multitude of guests – the length of their stays – the demands they make.

The things they overhear. Like words spoken in nightmares.

How to explain it to a curious roommate? She knows Louise won’t forget it easily. She’s like a dog with a bone, Claire thinks. She won’t let go.

But to say, ‘It’s just my old nightmare,’ is impossible.

My old nightmare. Wouldn’t Fuseli have had fun painting that? More than a demon sitting on a sleeping woman’s chest, anyway. That was the worst he could think of.

She shudders, though the room’s stuffy and warm already, and it’s not even noon yet. She can’t picture the details of that stay in Geneva now. Sometimes, even the larger ones, like the villa, the cottage, even the lake itself, are hazy. But the nightmare’s as clear as ever.

It first came to her in the weeks after she started working for Marie Ivanovna. The little girl that Albe would pluck from her body to toss into darkness while she screamed at him not to kill their child wasn’t lost to her, but she was locked away in some cold, dark place alone, instead. In these terrible dreams, Albe would lie to her, insist that their child was dead.

So, every day, she would be desperate for a haunting. One that would never come, because the child wasn’t dead. Not dead but alive somewhere, just out of her reach.

Thinking like that only makes for madness, though.

From down below, Louise’s voice breaks in, brings Claire back to herself. ‘Vive la révolution!’ Louise shouts.

The children take up the call, ignore Gambs’s shushing.

Claire knows she should go down, help him restore order. In a minute or two. She has something to do first. She licks the nib, dips it into the ink again. Decides to write a letter.

So, Mary, how came you by Miss Trewin? Oh, she is pleasant enough but strange and not one I would have thought you would have chosen for a friend. I am anxious, too, to know all that you have told her about me in particular, for she is not discreet though she believes she is, and all the world will know her secrets.

For all she’s so far away from Mary in London – Mary, the great poet’s widow; Mary, the celebrated writer, who’s attending performances of Frankenstein, gets invited to salons and lectures, and breakfasts with Moore and Medwin, and more Louise Trewins, most likely – well, it seems she’s never quite far enough.

Mix in the throng – Mary’s mother’s words, her own little mantra. Mix in the throng! But that would mean mixing with Mary back in London.

Maybe even living with her again.

Insufferable.

A little stab under her ribcage. Jab, jab, jab. Her head’s throbbing, too; ah. She presses her breasts; they’re tender. She dips her pen in the ink again, pauses, lifts it out, marks a clumsy asterisk in her journal. She’s four days late; she’s marking what should have arrived but hasn’t. Worry makes her shake her head a little, tap her woven plaits as though she can stir her body into more of what she hopes is a beginning.

It’s almost ten years since she last had this worry about lateness – no wonder her dreams are haunted, these last few nights.

‘Don’t misread the signs,’ she mutters. Claire Clairmont, Misreader of Signs. Though she’s been called worse things.

Clairy Cocotte.

Perhaps it’s why his voice has been in her dreams these past few nights, too. So much for thinking she’d rid herself of him for good, last summer. When she lit that small bonfire beyond the gardens to celebrate the news of his death at Missolonghi.

The earth was dry, and the wood. The fire blew up so easily, as though it was in league with her. Heaven knows his notes to her were few and far between. There wasn’t much to burn, then, that little package tied with black ribbon.

His hand was distinctive, though. Bleeding through the paper as she held it, flames dancing high for it like they were hungry.

Perhaps that was how his sister Augusta had felt in John Murray’s rooms, in those days after his death. His sister and his wife, Augusta and Annabella – for she was there, too, which must have sent his black soul spinning in his grave – standing before the blaze in the grate, tossing page after page of his precious memoirs into the fire.

So Mary had told her, anyway. ‘Albe was no saint, as we know too well, but to destroy – to burn – the words of genius! And after he had ordered Medwin to be sure and see it all published – Tom is beside himself about it – is a terrible crime. An unforgiveable crime,’ Mary had written to her.

Mary never takes her side. Words of genius, indeed! And to think what he’d have said about Claire in those pages. She’d have been discussed everywhere. Dear God, but she would indeed have been sent scurrying back home, to live with Godwin and her Mama. Or with Mary.

Which would be worse, she can’t say.

She rubs her eyes; it’s no good. Before she knows it, she’s unlocking that little drawer with another key. Where that slight package of his words sits, tied with black ribbon. She still has that crumpled letter of his to Augusta, too, the page she stole all those years ago. She smooths it out a little – some words have disappeared into the cracks. Their meaning has to be more guessed than read now, but the general sense is clear enough.

Medora. My little girl.

Why she couldn’t do it, that day, consign them to the flames, she still doesn’t really know. Maybe she’ll send them to Moore for his new biography instead. Or Medwin. Demand a high price for blowing it all up, his reputation as well as hers.

Well, they’d pay it, surely.

Then it wouldn’t matter what folk knew of her. Women with money are always respected, she thinks, even unmarried mothers. She taps her pen, tries to think of some famous examples, chews her lip at the thought of Mary’s horrified reaction to the publication of the page. Of Albe’s notes to her.

Ah, whoever Mary is now, she’s not someone who attracts scandal. That’s all far behind her, now she’s no longer the sixteen-year-old girl who ran away with a married man, a poet and a radical. She’s the Great Poet’s widow with a little son to rear, and is busy making sure they’re all respectable now: Shelley, herself, little Percy.

No; Claire couldn’t do anything to harm little Percy. Or her chances of seeing him from time to time. Mary would never forgive her.

So, Mary hasn’t sent Louise Trewin to expose her. Claire can be sure of that, at least. No matter how much Mary thinks she should go home.

‘Allons enfants de la Patrie; Le jour de gloire est arrivé!’ Another call to arms filters up from Louise.

Claire sighs, drops her pen, shuffles together the faded pages, closes the drawer and the bureau. Someone has to put a stop to this nonsense before they’re all dismissed.

So, out the door and along the corridor she runs, down the stairs and through the shortcut past the kitchens to the rose gardens.

‘The servants don’t speak French!’ Louise is shouting at Gambs, while Dunia and the other children jump and whoop around them. ‘They don’t know what we’re saying.’

‘The czar will not resign his right of succession. I know the rumours say he will, but he won’t,’ Gambs says, shaking his head; he looks furious. He’d like to shake Louise, judging by that frown. ‘You must find another hero for your revolution – but you must be quiet about it.’

In the sun, he looks paler than usual. So like Shelley. Apart from the Geneva summer, when he was brown as a chestnut.

Ghosts. They appear everywhere.

‘Don’t tell me to be quiet!’ Louise shouts again. ‘Don’t you see, that’s just what they want.’

‘Stop this – you know the children will sing it and then their father will hear it,’ Claire says, catching Louise by the elbow, but the other woman breaks free, thrusts her face towards Gambs.

‘He’s already resigned to it, I tell you. Czar Constantine is finished!’

‘But he is not an old man. Why would he do so?’ Gambs says.

Claire cocks her head at him, signalling, Look to the children! He nods, leads them past Louise towards the kitchens. Only Dunia’s refusing to go, staying close by Claire instead, tiny thumb in her mouth.

‘Oh, everyone knows he’s not well,’ Louise shouts after him, then turns to Claire instead, as Gambs waves back at her. ‘I tell you, it’s sooner rather than later. And who’ll be sorry to see him go? All the people he makes slaves?’

Claire bends down to give Dunia a hug. ‘Ah, well, if he does, perhaps Marie Ivanovna might change her views, and let me teach Dunia something more enlightening than table manners and curtseys.’

Dunia giggles, wraps her arms around Claire’s neck. Claire looks up at Louise. ‘Come on – we’ll walk in the woods and discuss it there.’

‘I knew you wanted revolution, too! Why don’t you join us, Claire? Fight for universal suffrage. For the right to speak about politics, religion, philosophy. Poetry.’

Claire stands up, starts to walk away towards the trees. Louise picks up her skirts, runs to her side.

‘Ah, but poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the universe,’ Claire says, as Louise frowns, ‘and you wouldn’t care even for unacknowledged ones to legislate – not without a vote, anyway.’

Silver birches thicken around them. Grassy banks rise, protective, either side of the rough path. Yes, it’s safer here.

‘What fool said such a thing?’ says Louise, impatient, cross.

‘What fool? Oh, only Mary’s husband,’ she murmurs. But she enjoys saying it, just to see Louise’s fallen face. Dunia runs on ahead, as Gambs catches them up.

‘I don’t believe you! He wouldn’t say—’

‘You misunderstand his meaning, Louise, as you do so often,’ interrupts Gambs.

‘Oh, you think women always misunderstand. As though we haven’t brains enough to think! Did he really say this? I want to know the precise context. I won’t believe he wrote anything that was not revolutionary.’

Claire shrugs; Gambs is watching her, as though she’s this odd being he doesn’t recognise. Perhaps she is. A goblin, a witch, a Clairy Cocotte. How she’s feeling, strange to herself, even. You’re only late, only late.

‘The context? Well, it’s an essay, and not published,’ she says. ‘So, yes – it’s too revolutionary for us all, you needn’t worry about his credentials. Dunia, watch out for bears and wolves!’

How the little monkey grins at her now. ‘Oui, Mam’selle Claire!’ she sings, scampering off again.

‘Not published! They’d silence him. His own country! It’s disgraceful. When will they see that he is one of the most—’

Gambs stops to fix his boot, signals to her to walk on with Louise, who now links her arm through Claire’s and drops her voice, makes them conspirators together. Nosy Louise, wanting more. Sniffing around for information. But why, Claire still doesn’t understand.

‘I told you that Mary let me read The Mask of Anarchy—’

‘Non-violent resistance,’ Claire says, ‘would hardly suit you, though.’ She’s annoyed that Mary and Louise might be closer than she’d thought. Mary wouldn’t show that poem to just anyone.

‘Non-violent? On the contrary!’ says Louise. ‘“Rise, like lions after slumber; In unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth like dew; Which in sleep had fallen on you; Ye are many – they are few!”’

Dunia’s back; she chants, ‘Ye are many, they are few’. Louise claps, sings it over and over.

‘You must both stop this,’ Gambs says, hurrying up behind them. ‘She will repeat it to Marie Ivanovna, and then there will be serious trouble for all of us.’

‘I’ve already told her that,’ Claire says, nodding at Louise.

‘It’s only the truth,’ says Louise.

‘Then we must keep the truth to ourselves – for now,’ says Gambs. ‘Be silent – as he is – for now.’

It’s only the truth. Perhaps that’s why Louise irritates her so much. She knows what it means to be told to be silent. Only, Louise won’t do it. Louise won’t compromise. Louise won’t back down.

Not like she did.

Yes, that’s irritating, indeed.

She withdraws her arm, suddenly loathing every part of herself for her weakness, her compliance.

‘I know. We’ll commemorate his life, if we can’t commemorate his work,’ Louise is saying.

But Claire feels sick; bile is rising in her throat. Oh, can it really be that, again? She thinks she might retch; clasps her stomach as they walk on.

‘Why don’t you write a play, Monsieur Gambs?’ says Louise. ‘He’s a hero to you, after all.’

Gambs looks to Claire for rescue; Louise looks to her for support. Dunia looks to her for – what? A mother’s love? Three pairs of hands reaching out for her, but she only needs away from their wanting, their pressing in. Even little Dunia is pressing her, heavier and heavier – so heavy that she thinks she might not be able to take another breath.

It’s too familiar, that old stealing of her breath . . . but the woods are dark, the sun can’t get through the thick leaves above. There’s a familiar tingling in her fingers, the prelude to panic.

‘Come on, Claire, you knew him best,’ says Louise, nudging her elbow. ‘What moment from his life would you choose? For us to dramatise, I mean.’

What moment would you choose?

But now the pathway is wobbling up ahead. She puts fingers to her forehead; it’s soaking and hot. Her throat’s dry; she can’t swallow.

‘After all,’ Louise continues, ‘Marie Ivanovna needn’t know whose life we’re dramatising.’

How brazen Louise is; no secret revolutionary, she. And Claire’s a buttoned-up governess who won’t speak about revolution or sing ‘La Marseillaise’. Who spends one night with a man and tortures herself for the consequences. Who hides away her past and her connections in case they expose who she once was.

Ah, it’s exhausting, demeaning. Infuriating.

‘You’re right,’ she says, suddenly. ‘Let’s show it – let’s show him. I’m not afraid.’

Even her hair is trapped tight, wound over and over in the Russian style. No more loose locks with which to scare the birds. Or woo Great Poets.

But her hands are hot and wet with sweat. The path is darkening again and her legs weaken, as if she’s suddenly at sea, tipping about the waves.

‘Do you not want to think this over, Claire?’ Gambs is saying from a point beyond, but then there’s Louise again, cutting off his words, babbling on behind her about declarations and riots and power, and all the while, if she can only concentrate on putting one foot in front of another, on staying upright until her head steadies, then she will see properly, will be as she was . . .

But the day’s too warm, and she’s pulling at the neck of her dress, so stiff and tight, as Louise and Gambs’s voices trail behind her, disappear into the background. Where’s Dunia gone? She has to find Dunia – it’s too easy to get lost in these woods if she leaves the path.

‘Dunia! Dunia!’

Claire plunges deeper and deeper into the woods – the path is still under her feet, but it’s thickening, changing, and she doesn’t recognise it. She’s taken a wrong turn, looks about wildly for the old path, and then suddenly, up ahead, there’s a small clearing.

Thank the Lord – Dunia! Bending over to pick more flowers.

She must tell her to leave them, they have more than enough. She’ll hurry. Dunia’s a little fiend for flowers, picking everything she can. She’ll run, stop her pulling up any more. But her legs are so heavy; the path’s disappeared.

‘Dunia! That’s enough. Dunia!’

But what’s this? The child ahead is fair where Dunia is dark. And wearing a little grey smock dress that she recognises, for didn’t she make it herself, pricking her thumbs over and over for her poor sewing skills? She walks towards her as if in a dream, for the child is no nearer for all the steps she’s taking.

But then the child looks up, stares straight at her.

A thin ray from the sun catches the cleft in her chin.

It’s just like her father’s.

‘Allegra!’ she shouts. ‘Allegra!’

But the little girl doesn’t hear, has bent down to pick flowers again. And she can’t get closer to her, and the sky’s darkening again, and her feet are tripping over each other, and her eyes are being forced to close, but she must hurry, as fast as she can.

‘Claire? Claire?’

There’s a canopy of leaves above her: she’s flat on her back on the mossy path. Gambs is holding her head up. Dunia’s peering into her face, a bouquet of cornflowers tickling her cheek.

‘Mam’selle Claire! I’m sorry I ran away!’

Louise moves into view, curious, confused.

No: she must get up, get up. Show them she’s well. That lie of an asterisk in her journal. Ah, but it can’t be.

‘I forgot to have breakfast, that’s all.’ Gambs must release her, must leave her be. ‘No need to worry, Dunia – see? I am quite well now. How silly I am. Now you know why you must eat your porridge every morning—’

‘Are you sure?’

Pull away from him.

‘You said that name again – Allegra.’ Louise is frowning at her.

Claire wobbles, steadies, says, ‘I’m fine, really. I just – but I’ve thought of a good moment for your play. Yes, I have it.’

In the absence of Zachar Nickolaivitch – who left for Moscow and his law office days ago – the house returns to Marie Ivanovna’s arms. Thank heaven, Claire thinks, later, eating and drinking more than she cares to at supper, to placate Gambs and distract Louise.

But then comes a servant knocking at her bedroom door, just when she wants a lie-down. ‘Marie Ivanovna wishes to see you, Mam’selle!’

Oh, Lord. If it’s about what Louise was shouting in the gardens, well, she’ll have to placate and distract her, too. Think up some other problem. The house has plenty of those, at least.

Claire splashes some water on her face – the afternoon’s walk has left her shaken enough to check herself like this, as though she might be made of air, all of a sudden. How real her vision in the woods was; but folk tales are full of changelings taking the shape of dead children. Demons deceive grieving parents all the time.

She blinks at her reflection in the mottled glass above the washbasin. Louise is downstairs with Gambs; Dunia is playing with Vanya in his room.

‘Am I going mad?’ she murmurs.

‘No. It’s just your body playing tricks on your mind, that’s all,’ says her reflection. ‘See? Tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, your menses will come on and the shakiness, the visions, will stop.’

Sensible Claire in the mirror – and it’s sensible Claire who takes her time making her way through the house to Marie Ivanovna, who is sitting outside on one of the many, many balconies. When Claire opens the door onto the terrace, the dipping red sun warms her face and she pats her cheeks.

She’s not a ghost, either.

There are pink and purple peonies spilling out over pots, and blousy rhododendrons stretching across the paths. Lilies and pansies spot the view of green hedges beyond with yellow and white. Breathe! And the warm, sweet evening air fills her better than any drop of laudanum, any warm glass of wine.

Marie Ivanovna’s waving her fan. Tapping her little heels on the stone floor.

Claire brushes loose wisps of sage and thyme, grown in bunches above the balcony, from the chair and sits down.

‘So tell me, Claire. What have you learned so far?’ Marie Ivanovna leans forwards, speaks in a low voice. She sets down her snuff box after taking a snort in each nostril, nods to Claire to take some. She shakes her head.

It’s all a game. Games with children; games with adults. What tone to take, then? Light, certainly. Admonishing, just a little.

So she shrugs and says, ‘Oh, this is all very silly. Louise isn’t what you think. She’s not some spy sent by Prince Galitzin. For what purpose?’ She affects a yawn, pours herself a lukewarm coffee from the pot on the table. ‘And I can’t be a spy for you. It’s insulting, really.’

Marie Ivanovna frowns, says, ‘I do not know Prince Galitzin well enough to know if his response to my letter is trustworthy.’

‘But why would he ask an English governess to spy on your household? What can he possibly suspect? Please be serious. She just has some . . . odd ideas, I think.’

‘He says she is quite mad and urges me to send her from here.’

‘There you are, then. He can’t have sent her to spy on you and want you to turn her out. That would defeat the purpose.’

Marie Ivanovna falls silent, sulks. Then brightens and says, ‘She appears very sane to me. I think perhaps it is a trick.’

‘To what possible end?’

‘I do not know who to believe. Ah, you think this is a joke, one of your country’s parlour games. To appear to be what you are not – to be in disguise. It is all very well in England, but it is not a game here.’

Claire feels an urge to laugh, suddenly, but rolls her eyes instead. ‘Honestly, I don’t think she’s given any sign of not being exactly who she says she is. If anything, she’s too much of what she says she is.’

Her humour’s lost on Madame, who says, ‘This is what I want’, tapping the arm of her chair. ‘I want Miss Trewin to move into Dunia’s room immediately. I want Dunia to move into your room. You are not to let my daughter out of your sight. And as for Vanya—’

‘Vanya doesn’t like her, anyway. He avoids her as much as possible.’

‘My son is a clever boy. My daughter is still too young.’

‘Would it not be easier to ask her to leave?’ A little hope rises in her breast.

Falls again, as Marie Ivanovna says, ‘And have her tell everyone that I lack hospitality? That I throw out onto the street defenceless young Englishwomen? Oh no – but I will watch what she does.’

Claire shrugs. She’s not sorry to lose Louise’s company at night, have little Dunia close instead.

Dunia sleeps curled against her belly all night like a cat, only occasionally stretching out or murmuring in her dreams. She strokes the girl’s fine, dark hair, hums soft tunes to ease her, thinking she might find it strange to be in another bed. But the child is untroubled all night.

Claire isn’t, though – not with the same nightmare back again. And when she has to mark another false asterisk in her journal the next morning, alarm tickles her belly, tips it about so that she even weeps a little, once Dunia’s gone downstairs for breakfast and she’s alone. She’d forgotten to lock the bureau yesterday, had only realised when Louise was tidying up her things to take into Dunia’s room, but she resists looking at those letters again.

Eventually, she goes downstairs, but not to breakfast; she can’t face food. Instead, she makes for the morning room. It’s a dark and humid late morning; there’s another summer storm on the way. The children are doing their lessons upstairs, copying out French numbers to one hundred. Marie Ivanovna has gone to visit a friend.

The storm might delay her tale if it gets bad, so she should hurry up with it.

She sits on the floor beside the open French windows, hoping for a breath of air as the clouds crowd in, pulls at the bodice of her dress. Her skirts are spread out; she’s left off stockings in the heat, doesn’t care about showing bare legs. Louise copies her; Gambs stretches out on the rug, his shirt undone, Shelley-like again.

‘He liked to rescue – oh, anyone. Women and children most of all, though. Once, when we were in France,’ Claire says, ‘he almost took a child from its father who’d tried to sell her to him. Can you imagine? Another time, someone left a baby at our door. I went with him to register the birth. Without that, she’d probably have died.’

Her voice trembles a little. Louise pats her hand; she pulls it away. She doesn’t mean offence; she just can’t bear to be touched. If she is, she might not manage it. A bead of sweat pops up just below her hairline. She wipes it; her fingertips are wet. She rubs them dry on her dress.

‘While we were in Italy one year, we heard about – a little girl – who’d been sent to a convent by her father. She was very ill. The mother wrote to us, begging for help.’

‘Ah, so this woman knew you? Was she a close acquaintance?’ asks Louise.

Obviously not, Claire wants to say. But she must be patient. ‘No – just a slight one. But he’d never refuse, you see. No matter what was asked, or how difficult it was. So, we forged a plan. He’d disguise himself, take a horse with him. The convent was some distance away – in Ravenna – but not so far that rescue wasn’t possible.’

Yes, that was the plan.

‘The mother wrote so plainly. How could anyone refuse her? Anyone, I mean, apart from the father. He was . . . cruel. He wouldn’t listen to her.’

I waited two months in the Autumn, expecting from all you professed, to see her every week, and when on the sudden you would no longer allow it to be, a melancholy fearfulness came over me which has never since passed away.

‘She’d already conceived of a plan to disguise herself as a nun and take up a place at the convent where her child was. But that would take time, and she was sure, she wrote, that her child was very ill. There was no time.’

I cannot go without having first seen and embraced Allegra – do not, I entreat you, refuse me this little – but only – consolation.

‘So she begged Shelley for help.’

Do not make the world dark to me, as if my Allegra were dead.

‘And he did rescue her, of course?’ says Louise.

Gambs is making notes, ready for his play.

Ah, but what other outcome could there be?

Will Gambs want the words Shelley wrote, she wonders. A little breeze drifts in through the window, falls dead in the stifling room. She wipes her brow again.

Florence, where she was living then, was so warm that year, even in April. Mary and Shelley were further west at Pisa, close to where Albe was staying. Where Shelley always wanted to be, it seemed to her then.

In the marshlands of Bagnacavallo near Ravenna to the east, some hundred and fifty miles from Pisa, a little girl with fair curls and a cleft in her chin lay on a hard cot. The convent was cold and clammy one day, wet and humid the next. The perfect conditions for illness to take hold and spread. The child wrote to her father, begging him to visit. A sad, pathetic note.

Will you not please your Allegrina who loves you so?

She’d had a chill, but seemed to recover, the nuns wrote to her father, who tossed the letter away, along with so much else. He was busy with a lover, a poem, a cause.

Claire can’t stand it, thinks she might be sick.

‘Does he rescue her?’ asks Louise again.

Claire swallows; Gambs is staring. ‘Yes – oh, yes, he does,’ she says, too quickly, her voice thick. ‘He – forged a letter to the nuns at the convent, and they handed the child over to him. It was very simple. Straightforward. We returned her to her mother, and – ah, they went somewhere far away to live.’

‘Did the father not pursue them?’

Claire shakes her head, not trusting herself to speak. She points to Gambs’s sheets of paper. He looks down, but doesn’t write.

‘Is it not a good tale?’ she says, at last.

‘“The Rescue of The Convent Child”,’ says Louise, and claps her hands, suddenly, startling Claire. ‘It’s a perfect allegory – down with the established religion!’

Claire doesn’t move, though she wants water, tea, coffee – anything. Her lips are cracked. She licks them; they dry instantly on the hot breeze through the window.

‘I think perhaps Marie Ivanovna might guess the allegory,’ Gambs says, slowly. ‘Perhaps something else would be more suitable—’

‘Oh, no, no. We must do it, it’s perfect. Dunia can play the rescued child,’ says Louise. ‘Marie Ivanovna will adore it so much. She’ll surely miss any other meaning. You can be our rescuer, Gambs. And Claire, why don’t you play the part of the mother? Or perhaps the abbess at the convent if you prefer? I’m happy to play either role.’

Play the part of the mother.

Claire murmurs something in reply, but she can’t stay in that room any longer.

Along the corridor she runs, tears blinding her. It takes forever to get to her room; she hides her face from a couple of servants she passes on the way. Nowhere can she find peace – only in her room.

When she gets there, she can let it go, what’s curled up inside her – but the tears stop instead. She takes a few breaths, tries to calm her heartbeat. Then pulls out a wooden chest from under her bed.

A different set of letters. These aren’t mere notes. These are full, and many.

She doesn’t need to read them; she knows them by heart.

Even the most painful ones that Shelley wrote her.

I know not what to think of the state of your mind, or what to fear for you – Your late plan about Allegra seems to me in its present form pregnant with irredeemable infamy to all the actors in it except yourself; in any form wherein I must actively cooperate inevitable destruction – I would not in any case make myself a party to a forged letter. (I could not refuse Lord Byron’s challenge; though that however to be deprecated would be the least in a series of mischiefs consequent on my fraudulent intervention in such a plan.) I say this because I am shocked at the thoughtless violence of your designs, and I want to put my sense of their madness in the strongest light.

How sick his refusal to help first made her. Infamy – destruction – violence – madness. What did he think she was suffering? She wouldn’t believe it; wrote to Mary, who’d understand better, know her feeling.

Mary was a mother, after all.

Mary was worse.

No one can more entirely agree with you than I in thinking that as soon as possible A. ought to be taken out of the hands of one as remorseless as he is unprincipled . . .

L.B. is at present a man of 12 or 15 thousand a year, he is on the spot, a man reckless of the ill he does others, obstinate to desperation in the pursuance of his plans or his revenge. What then would you do – having A. on the outside of the convent walls? Would you go to America? LB would use any means to find you out.

A little time, a very little time, may alter much of this. Spring is our unlucky season . . .

Beside the pile of letters lies a locket. Inside it, a lock of fair hair.

No; it’s too much. It’s a mistake. She has challenged nothing, changed nothing.

Yes, he rescued her. Yes, for he took a horse and forged a letter and they passed over the child to him, and he brought her home and put her in her arms. So that mother and daughter were together again, and would never be apart.

There’s a soft knock at the door. A child’s knock. She gets up, startled, rubs her eyes. Opens the door.

But nobody is there.

‘Allegra,’ she calls, softly. Blinks, waiting for the vision that appeared on her walk out. Why not now?

‘Allegra,’ she says again.

But there’s only a rumble of thunder overhead as the storm approaches. She goes back into her room and closes the door. Little Dunia’s nightdress is lying on the bed, its arms outstretched and empty. She picks it up and presses it to her face.

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1843

‘Knox, here! In this city, and without telling me!’ Mary’s been repeating it every morning for a week now. ‘We must find out where he’s staying!’

That’s been repeated, too, until Claire is ready to scream.

‘Percy will confirm it when he receives my letter.’

Every morning, this. Doesn’t Mary remember that she says it every day? And yet she announces it like a new thing.

But this morning – ah, this blessed morning – Mary’s got a headache. So severe that she can’t get up. ‘Just a cool cloth,’ she says, when Claire asks her if she wants anything, ‘and darkness. No light at all. I can’t bear it.’

So Claire enjoys her little apartment for a while, reads and plays music, sings softly. When Mary rises twelve hours later and appears in the salon, it’s late evening. In what little light is left, she catches the dimple resting at the corner of Mary’s upturned mouth like a delicious secret. Mary has taken care over her hair and her dress, even borrowed one of Claire’s extravagantly coloured scarves. Their colouring couldn’t be more different; nothing she has suits her stepsister. But Mary doesn’t seem to notice, is mixing scarlet with mauve, olive with turquoise, with the enthusiasm of a blind bride-to-be.

Claire wonders if she should say something. ‘Your headache’s gone; I’m glad,’ she says, trying to be kind. ‘But are you sure you should be going out?’

Mary offers up the note from Gatteschi that arrived not twenty minutes ago. ‘You’re becoming old-maidish. You need to get out more. Mix in the throng, as my mother said.’ And around she whirls in Claire’s lilac skirts, to pick her bonnet from the shelf and her indispensable with its handkerchief, fan, calling card and a few coins.

‘I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ Mary calls behind her as she leaves. There’s a trace of her orange blossom perfume left in the air once she’s gone. A skittish kind of scent. Claire fetches a cut lemon from the kitchen, squeezes some of the juice onto her palm, then flicks it around the salon.

‘Bitter is as bitter does,’ she murmurs. The apartment’s quiet again, but this time she feels oddly abandoned. It’s only nine in the evening; going through to her bedroom, she lights a lamp and shakes her hair loose, picks up again the letter from her brother, Charles. He’s going to be in Paris soon with his daughters, Pauline, who’s eighteen, and Clari, who’s seventeen.

Pauline’s something of a handful these days, ‘independent like her aunt Claire’, her brother says. But Clari – ah, pretty, bookish Clari, named for the aunt she’s so unlike in temperament, but who loves poetry just as much as she does – Clari is more than a niece. Clari’s like a daughter but not her daughter – no, not that, she’d not want that back, that continual fear of harm that could come to them.

‘Clari’s my protégée,’ she says to herself.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Clari will be a teacher one day, has spoken often of wanting to be. She wants an independent life of books and teaching, just like her aunt. No marriage contract.

So Clari’s quiet, but determined, and Claire will help her all she can.

But to have her here with her now? Much as she aches for that, is it wise? With men like Gatteschi about? He’d swoop down on her little Clari in a second, and she’s not worldly-wise, she might trip and fall and be devoured . . .

If she could keep her niece a child forever, she would. But oh, how would they be as women, those two little girls, Dunia and Allegra, about whom she often dreams? They’d be – what? – twenty-six and twenty-three now.

Yes, she writes. I would love to see you all again, perhaps though winter is better for the girls, to let them come here, away from your harsh temperatures?

She picks up her hand mirror from the bedside table, pinches her cheeks. Her complexion’s never rosy, but there’s an unhealthy flush in her sallow cheeks now that looks like a bruise. Half-moons of black under her eyes; sagging at her jowls like drops of dough.

‘What on earth does he see in you?’ she says to the face in the mirror. The face flashes a frown line back; bares yellowing teeth. ‘You old hag.’

When it began in London two years ago, she was giving a few private pupils singing lessons. That was by day. By night, her poor, deranged mama needed her every moment, once Ellen, the girl she’d hired, left for her supper. They lived in rented rooms in Golden Square, which weren’t as dark and mean as she felt them to be, but sucked every bit of life out of her all the same.

What might not have happened – if that singing lesson hadn’t ended early; if she’d gone straight home to her mama, who couldn’t remember she was Claire, and kept calling her by her old name, Jane; if she hadn’t fetched up in the square, wandering round and round it like a trapped beast, watched by the statue of the old king? What might not have happened is so close, suddenly, that she has to put the mirror down. Would she be here without its happening, in the City of Light? Or would she still be in those rented rooms, ageing by a square?

He’d caught her by the elbow, with a book of Shelley’s poems in his other hand. It wasn’t the first time they’d met. But it was the first time the two of them were together, alone.

‘The way you dress – London’s not used to it,’ he’d said, shaking his head. ‘You scandalise everyone. But I think you like that.’

She was tired, though, too tired to spar, and he saw that when she only gave him a small smile.

‘I wanted to ask you something – it’s my favourite line of his, from Alastor. Can you guess it?’

They sat side by side on a low bench as the autumn sun dipped behind the horizon, and the lamplighters were starting their rounds. Claire thought she might cry; being so near death every day did it, it wasn’t unusual for her, but he took it differently, took it for something more, and said, very quietly, almost a whisper, ‘“He lived, he died, he sung in solitude.” Isn’t that the soul of him? The soul of the poet? Of all of us?’

He hadn’t expected her to laugh at all, never mind as bitterly as she did. ‘Solitude! He couldn’t bear to be alone,’ she told him. ‘Oh, on mountain walks, yes. Even sailing trips. But come home to an empty house, empty rooms? He couldn’t survive a moment of that. We all had to be there. All of us. Whether we wanted to be or not.’

So that’s what he wants, she’d thought. To tease out her memories of the Great Poet. But didn’t he do enough of that with his son and his widow? Not that Percy would remember much about his father, being so young when he’d died. But Mary was always keen to talk about him.

‘Ah, Mary,’ he said. ‘He’s a god to her, that I understand. But to see the man behind it – well, you know how she won’t let that happen.’

‘And you think I can tell you that – about the man? Why?’

He’d looked down at her lap, her skirts, then up again at her hair, loosely piled high.

‘You already have. You see? I didn’t know that he needed company so much.’

At first, she was flattered by his attention. Even though he only wanted her for what she knew about Shelley.

So it seemed. But then she grew more confused by him. When he sent her little notes, bunches of flowers. When he started waiting for her by the square, knowing when her lessons finished. He was always polite, always respectful. But there would be those little darting looks, the occasional enquiry.

Finally, she said, ‘Are you writing about him?’ Her mother had been awake all night, constantly making for the front door in her nightrobes. Godwin was expecting her, she kept saying, though he’d been dead almost five years now. Claire would grapple with her, lead her back to bed, and an hour later, it would begin all over again. ‘I have to warn you. I’ll kill you if you do.’

She was smoking a cigarillo, the kind she’d occasionally enjoyed in Russia, in Dresden, in the little coffee shops where artists went. In the freezing smog of a November afternoon, she’d blown out the smoke and watched it sit in front of her, rest there as if it was a solid thing, before disappearing. It seemed to act as a kind of trigger for him – he’d stood up, insisted on taking her to Gunter’s on Berkeley Square, though it was too formal, too English for her, what with all the tight sleeves the fashionable women wore, the ever-wider bell-shaped skirts with petticoats that weighed them down, and pelerines and shawls to cover them and weigh them down still more. She still clung to a narrower skirt, a lower bodice. Unfashionable, but she could walk; run, if need be.

The tea shop was bright; women stared, for she wore no hat. She sipped her tea as he leaned towards her.

‘You’re using me. My life. For your own story. I won’t have it. I won’t let you publish a word. Nor will Mary.’

He’d shaken his head. ‘I’m not writing about him. I’m writing poetry – of my own.’ He slipped a piece of paper across the table to her.

She pushed it back.

‘It’s about you,’ he said.

Did he know how many poets had written about her?

‘I’m very bored with being a muse,’ she said. ‘And I was muse to the best.’

That was cruel of her, but he wasn’t swayed, wasn’t dissuaded. ‘I know – I still want you to read it.’

She caught a glimpse of the title – ‘Venus Arising From the Waves’ – and groaned. His handsome face fell; she thought for a minute that cruelty was her special talent.

‘You have to stop,’ she said, gently. ‘It is done. You won’t better them. So leave off – stop competing. Find another form – where they don’t live. Don’t chase after them. That’s all I have to say.’

She’d stood up, ready to leave for the last time, because she had a deranged mother to deal with at home and he couldn’t have any more of her time, not today or any day after. But then he said a strange thing that made her sit back down and look at him differently.

‘You fascinate me – not because of them,’ he said. ‘You are – I don’t know how to describe it. You are – not of the past, of them, in the way that you think. Not to me, anyway. You’re unlike anyone else I know. A different kind of woman. Born new. Like Venus. Out of the waves.’

She didn’t know what to say. It was simplistic, naïve. His vision. Ah, but wasn’t hers, once?

A new genus, she’d told Albe with such confidence.

She leaned towards him. ‘Yes,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Don’t make a mockery of it. I’m right. I see it.’

Claire had sat back then, surveyed him properly. Later, as they strolled along the street, she’d pulled him into a lane where there were no streetlamps, and kissed him, knocking him back against a door in the dark. Someone from the street beyond whistled as he fumbled under her skirts for the gap in her drawers; she’d pushed her hand down the front flap of his trousers. All in the lane at the back of a grand house, in the smog and the dark.

They were done faster than she would have liked; he’d apologised. She’d teach him, she’d said. That’s what she was, after all. A teacher.

‘A new kind of woman,’ he’d said, nuzzling at her neck. ‘Venus.’

‘I prefer Pandora,’ she’d said, but he didn’t hear her, or ignored it, because ‘Venus’ was the name he always used.

The next evening, there he was by the square again. And so it began between them. Hidden by trees and bushes; in doorways up little lanes; behind sheds or abandoned carts. On dark, foggy winter nights, over and over. She couldn’t have enough of him. Or he of her.

Then came the day that a seizure took her mama. A note arrived during her singing lesson. Ellen’s stark words, because she could only write a little.

Missus Godwin Struck Down.

How wrong it was to feel only relief – but it flooded her.

‘Where do I go now?’ she’d said to him the night after the burial, when she’d pulled him over the threshold and into her rooms for the first time.

‘Live with me,’ he’d said. ‘Marry me. Have my children.’

They were drunk from too much wine, squashed naked together on her tiny bed, because she couldn’t take her mama’s.

‘Be sensible. Mary would be appalled. She likes to think you’re her special acquaintance. And Percy would be horrified, too. His old aunt marrying his best friend? They can’t ever know.’

‘I don’t care,’ he’d said. She’d believed he didn’t, but his not caring wouldn’t ever be enough.

‘Mary’s too close, even in London,’ she’d said. ‘I can’t stay here – we can’t be here.’

And so, they chose Paris. Far enough from Mary; close enough to London for him to reach her, even if it wasn’t as often as they both wanted.

The time that she almost told Mary – More I cannot say, but I am sure your mind, which is all intuition, will guess my meaning, and be glad that I am happy – was her great moment of weakness, feeling too alone after he’d just left her apartment in Paris that first time. If she could have taken that letter back now, she would.

It occurs to her now, though, that Mary’s never asked about her lover. Never, not once, since she’s been here.

Claire shivers now, though the evening’s too hot.

Mary can’t have guessed.

Can she?

All those questions. The repeated questions. Where can Knox be staying? Why have we not crossed his path before now?

Mary would never ask outright. That’s not her way. She insinuates. Weeps, even. But doesn’t challenge.

Lost in her thoughts, Claire peels off her dress, her underclothes. Outside, it’s dark. She puts on her lightest nightdress – a transparent thing no heavier than a breath – and closes the shutters against insects buzzing for the light.

It’s unmistakeable. That sharp rap at the front door.

Maybe her thoughts have conjured him up. Maybe Mary has.

‘Just how I was picturing you,’ he says, when she opens the door. He pulls her close, presses lips on hers. Aroused already, his hand squeezing her buttocks, he pushes between her thighs.

‘Mary’s—’ she says.

‘Not here,’ he says. But doesn’t explain how he knows this.

Paris has too many secrets, she thinks.

The door falls shut behind him. So they tumble together into her bedroom.

It’s been over a week, after all. And she has something to prove. Old-maidish, indeed.

‘It won’t do you any good to tell her,’ she says, later. Covers are unbearable in this heat; she’s put out the light so they can open the shutters for a breath of wind, but there’s none. Her body’s soaking; he licks her belly, then looks up, says, ‘You keep saying that. I don’t think it would be the disaster you imagine.’

She pushes him away, but he stops her, holds her arms out, stares. ‘I like to view my work. I’d like Mary to view it, too.’

‘So that’s what it is,’ she says, wearily. ‘You want drama and mess and scandal. That’s what excites you. Not me.’

‘Here we go,’ he says, frowning. ‘The old argument.’

‘When Mary can help you, why would you risk it? She knows who publishes – imagine if she took all that away. Which she could do. And scandal won’t help you at the bar, either.’

‘You don’t understand how she sees me. She adores me. If Aunt hadn’t died . . . Mary was all for us taking another trip, just the two of us.’

‘She wouldn’t have. She thinks too much of her reputation.’

‘You think so? Is that what she’s doing right now, running around Paris with her young Italian?’

‘Maybe you should go back to London. Just while Mary’s here.’

‘Not a chance of it.’

‘She’s obsessed with finding you. She’s written to Percy. He’ll confirm you’re here.’

‘Fine.’

‘You’re being – irresponsible.’

‘Ah, now – I’ve got a surprise for you. It’s very responsible of me.’

He gets up from the bed, rummages around in his jacket, which is lying, discarded, on the floor. She waits, gazing at his naked back, his buttocks, his thighs.

He turns, grinning, holding up a large envelope. ‘So, tell me what you think,’ he says, and throws it on the bed beside her.

She opens it carefully, not trusting his delight.

The writing’s small, and unclear, but she can just make out Mr Alexander Knox, and three years’ lease and the address – it’s the little street adjoining hers.

‘I don’t think—’

‘Now it’s the most natural thing in the world for us to meet.’

‘But how did you find the money?’

‘Ah, Mary’s been very kind to me since Aunt died. Helping me out with little sums here and there.’ He’s grinning.

She catches her breath. ‘I won’t let anyone take advantage of her like this,’ she says, very quietly.

‘What d’you mean? I’m not, I swear, she wants to help me, and—’

‘No – you’re taking advantage, and I won’t have it.’

‘Claire, be reasonable.’

Redness is coming, the red of her old temper, the one Shelley couldn’t stand. Obstructing her vision, rolling through her, wanting her to scream, but these days her heart can’t take it; it’ll cost her too much if she does.

So she seizes her nightgown and runs from the bed to the little salle de bain, locking the door.

‘Claire?’ he calls through the door. ‘Claire?’

There’s a tiny Juliette balcony on the other side of the bathroom window. She opens the window, climbs out, sits on the balcony edge in her nightrobe, closing the window behind her. A few lamps are lit – his shouting is disrupting folk – but in this part of the city, there is always shouting, always scenes.

The night air is soaking up her breath. Her stomach churns for all the mistakes she’s made, keeps making. She looks down on the messy little square below. A bitter little laugh bubbles up, dies before it’s born.

He’s still at the door, but he’s stopped shouting, at least. Now he’s pleading. Somehow, that’s worse. She wishes she had one of Lady Sussex’s cigarillos – that, and something from the old days. Laudanum, maybe. They like absinthe here, but she’s not so keen. So she breathes in and out as if she did have a cigarillo, mimes Lady Sussex smoking out on the balcony. Someone below shouts up at her; she mutters under her breath, and he goes away.

It takes all her strength of mind to stay on the balcony. Even once he stops talking through the bathroom door; even once she hears his footsteps walking along the vestibule, and the front door slams behind him. Still, she waits. Only when a nearby clock strikes midnight does she climb back indoors and splash her face with water at the little sink.

She can’t go back to bed, though. So she puts on her flimsy nightdress once more, then her robe, heats up some coffee on the stove, and sits in the dark in the salon. Mary will be home soon.

And then she’ll tell her everything.

IV.

Clairy, Lake Geneva 1816

Ah, but the night at the villa keeps repeating in her mind like a terrible dream.

It’s not that she’s unused to scenes. God knows, Mary and her mama had plenty of those, shouting at one another for hours on end, before Papa had enough of it and sent Mary up to Scotland.

And that awful day Shelley had turned up in Skinner Street, threatening to kill himself and Mary if Mama and Papa wouldn’t let them be together. Waving a pistol in the air and making all kinds of murderous threats. She’d screamed, of course; Mama had come running, screaming more. Claire had thought Shelley would shoot her mama dead right there and then, but Mary had stopped him.

And the time before that, before they knew him, when he was in Ireland with Harriet and someone tried to shoot him dead. She’s heard about it so often it’s as though she was in that house when it happened.

And all the ghosts and the ghouls that make him shriek, make them both shriek. The terrifying looks she’s seen on his face since they arrived at their little cottage by the lake, the ones she’s been too afraid to investigate further, in case she pushes him over the edge into whatever abyss is waiting for him.

Ah, but it’s also true she enjoys a scene or two. When pistols aren’t being waved about. She’s even encouraged them on occasion – so Mary says. As though that isn’t what Shelley does, too. But Mary would never blame him, oh no.

Claire rubs her eyes, grumpy and ill at ease. She’s sitting alone at the edge of the lake, and the sun’s as high as noon can push it, flashing bright on the ripples of water.

It’s Albe’s fault she can’t sleep without nightmares. What he did was more than a scene, for all he pretended that’s what it was. He went beyond play, seizing her like that. Tearing her shift with his dagger.

And then the letter mentioning Medora.

It’s like some sordid Greek tragedy. All of it.

She knows it was her body, not her shift, that he’d wanted to rip apart. It won’t let her be, that memory of the crush of his knuckles at her clavicle. The ripping protest of the fabric. The breath of air that sighed, startling, over her belly and breasts.

He wakes her the moment she falls deep into sleep, the incestuous lover, the murderer at her neck. The breaker of all natural laws. He starts her out of peace like a shout so that she sits straight up in bed, hand on her heart, sharp pains like two points above her breastbone robbing her of breath, while Mary snores gently beside her and Willmouse yawns in his cot.

That she fought him, even struck him, never occurs in that nightly dream; she’s not sure now that she even did it.

But last night, for the first time, the dream altered, grew worse. She squints against the sun, pulls up her knees to wrap her arms around them. She hasn’t eaten this morning, hasn’t drunk any coffee, only a little water. Her stomach gurns, and she bows her head, lets it fall against her knees.

Because last night, in her dream, he got his wish and he murdered her. He cut her body open instead of the chemise, in one simple motion.

And out of the bloodied gash – at this, she lifts her head, gulps a little, shivers in the faint breeze – out of her own innards stepped a fair-haired little girl in a frilled smock, all pretty smiles and winks. The hems of her dress dripped with gore, though, and her feet were hidden in the pool of blood that was her mother’s belly. Claire had reached for her – gasping, still alive, her heart red and throbbing for all to see – but he had plucked out the bloodied child with one hand and threw her, as she screamed for her child, into the darkness.

Claire had shouted in her sleep, waking up Mary and Willmouse, who began to wail.

‘It’s more frightening than anything you can think of,’ she’d muttered to Mary in the dark. She longed to light a candle, but her hands shook. ‘Try putting that in your story.’

Mary had shushed her, not wanting to unsettle Willmouse even more. But once he was asleep again, she came back to bed and said, ‘I think you bring out the worst in him. Albe’s very humble – gentle, even gracious – when you’re not there.’

‘He doesn’t want to kill you, you mean.’ Sourness on her tongue.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Mary had said, yawning and lying down to close her eyes. ‘It’s more that he’s his true self when he’s with us. In a way that he can’t be with you.’

How Claire had wanted to smack her for that. ‘Ah, of course, he would show you his true self. Don’t they all?’ she’d said. Jealousy shot her out of bed then, pushed her, flouncing, out of the room, to bang the door behind her. Sulking downstairs on her little bed, alone, she’d been too furious to fall asleep again.

Only yesterday morning, she’d told Mary, ‘He will forgive me, you’ll see – there’s still a chance.’

Her sister didn’t even bother to look up from her writing. ‘You’re mad,’ was all she said.

‘I know him better than you give me credit for.’

A snort, one of Mary’s best.

Now, Claire shades her eyes from the sun to scan the lake for a glimpse of their sail. They’re due back later today, Shelley and Albe, if they hold to their schedule. Mary’s in the cottage, scribbling on while Willmouse sleeps. Claire has finished writing up the copies of Childe Harolde that Albe passed on to Shelley. Her little journal is on the pebbles beside her; she lifts it. Perhaps if she goes back indoors and writes down what took place that night, she can make better sense of it. Banish the nightmares.

But perhaps writing it down would only make them worse.

She can’t decide, swithers back and forth, picks the skin around her thumbnail until it cuts too deep and stings.

At least her morning sickness has stopped. If morning sickness is what it was – and back comes that tight knot of disbelief and rage, like a physical lump in the throat she can’t swallow down.

So she coughs instead, but it won’t come up, either. She picks up a pebble, flings it at the water, where it disappears with a satisfying plop. The air is sweet, warm and scented with late-blooming rhododendrons and azaleas. She gulps in the sweetness, swallows it down to banish the bile burning her throat.

It’s not fair that they were able to sail out on their little trip, just the two men together. Carefree of baby Willmouse and Polly-dolly, while she and Mary stayed behind, stuck with both.

When will it be her turn, hers and Mary’s? They should set out when they get back, just the two of them. Like Mary’s mother did, sailing across the water so far north, past icebergs and whales, snowy-white bears. They’d be reliant on their own resources, as she was, alone with the elements. How glorious! There’d be no whales, of course, but there’d be storms. No icebergs, but the lakes are deeper here than anywhere else. Who knows what lies beneath?

Her fingertips fizz at the thought; she eases her shoulders back, throws another pebble. This one bounces fiercely – once, twice, three times – then dives under.

She claps, delighted. How much better it feels, with a journey to plan. And to be out of reach after Albe returns. He can’t murder her and her baby then.

Or accuse her of stealing a page from his letter.

Oh, yes. She’ll show him.

Her dark mood is gone with a snap of the fingers, and up she scrambles, running along the path to the cottage, bursting through the door. ‘I have an idea, Mary!’ she shouts. ‘We’ll have our turn! We’ll go on a trip, sail across the lakes.’

She pounds upstairs to Mary’s bedroom, where her sister’s head is so low over the desk her nose is almost touching it. Willmouse gurgles in his cot when he sees her; she lifts him with care, smudges a little kiss on the top of his head. He grabs at her thick curls, hanging loose by his tiny fists.

‘When they get back,’ she says, panting, ‘we’ll set out over the lake. Like your mother did. Two women alone! Imagine it. Facing whatever might befall us.’

But Mary only looks dazed, as though she’s somewhere else entirely. So Claire says it again, more sombrely this time.

Mary frowns, says, ‘Be sensible, Claire, for God’s sake. And what do I do about Willmouse?’

‘Can’t Shelley stay behind with him? He is his father, after all,’ Claire says. ‘And remember, Elise will be here every day with both of them.’

That has Mary focusing now. They lock eyes, struck with the same thought in the same moment.

‘All right,’ she says, shrugging. ‘Shelley can come, too.’

He thinks it’s a perfect idea. He’s bronzed head to foot from his days away with Albe; his body is stronger, too, his back straighter, his stride longer. Like Paris before he stole Helen away, Claire thinks. A man that goddesses would fight over.

But he’s quiet and calm, as he hasn’t been in a long time. So it’s done him good to be away from her and from Mary, and that does hurt a little. No poetry came of their trip, though, he says. He needs his muses for that. And she wonders if Albe will become a muse to him; likes the idea of Albe as a muse.

Preferably a silent one. And turned to stone.

Better than a murderer – ah, but she can’t confide in Shelley about that dream of hers. He’s too content, too happy at last. It would be cruel to take that from him.

Sitting outside on the grass in the sun, he’s dandling Willmouse on his lap, keeping him from Mary, who needs to write. Claire rolls up her sleeves, toys with Willmouse’s fingers, pretends to bite them.

‘You’re getting brown,’ he says, nodding at her bare arms. ‘You were too pale – when I last saw you. Before we left, I mean, Albe and I.’

He’s been saying Albe and I a lot since he’s been back. She tries not to let it irk her; Mary doesn’t seem to have noticed, is still in that other world of her story. But it’s stopped Claire from asking him about that terrible night at the villa. She’s unsure about his allegiance. It’s not the first time this has happened, but before it was because of Mary, and his defending her in some row.

Now, he might take Albe’s side – and she might not be able to forgive him for that.

‘You remember,’ she says, slowly, ‘the day at the jetty. When I introduced him to you. There was a moment when I thought – no.’

‘No?’

‘That I’d made a mistake.’

‘I remember you standing between us,’ he says, with a smile. ‘Albe had to reach round you to see me.’

‘You were hiding behind me!’ she says, elbowing him. He holds a sleepy Willmouse up high; she can’t see his face.

‘I think you were both fearful of one another,’ she says.

‘Ah – perhaps we were.’

He was awkward, she remembers that. Unable to look Albe in the face at first, shielding himself from too much of his light. Claire was the lightning rod; protection and connection both.

Caught between. Like the night on the lake. A little flame sparks up between her thighs.

‘I’m going for a swim,’ she says, suddenly.

They both get to their feet, Willmouse big and wriggling in his father’s arms. ‘He’s grown so since I left, and it’s only been days,’ Shelley remarks, astonished, and she thinks, This is your third child, can it still amaze you how they grow? But that’s unkind. So she nods and smiles instead as they pick their way barefoot down the path to the edge of the lake. Shelley sits Willmouse gently on the pebbles, hands under his arms, but he doesn’t care for it, cries to rest on his father’s lap again.

That babyish need makes something ache inside Claire; she can’t get to the water fast enough. As Shelley coos, she pulls off her dress, stands in drawers and bodice. He glances up and laughs; Willmouse waves little arms as she winds round her black hair, sets it on her head like a temple goddess’s.

On she tiptoes, to the lapping water. ‘It’s freezing!’ she says, squealing with every step, before plunging her whole body under to get it over with. She floats, shivering, up to her neck. Shelley shakes his head. Her drawers drag on her, so she peels them off, then her soaking bodice, too. Balls them up and flings them onto the stony beach to land at his feet.

‘Hide your eyes from your shameless aunt,’ says Shelley to Willmouse, and she giggles. Her nakedness under the cold water frees her hips, her thighs, swells under her arms as she strikes out.

‘You should learn to swim!’ she shouts, but he doesn’t hear. Or won’t; he told them about a nasty storm that blew up suddenly, almost upended them one day, Albe and I. Water filled their boat. He was ready, he said, for the worst. Albe could swim; would have tried to save him had they ended up in the water. Probably, Shelley said, he’d have drowned them both in the attempt.

Still, though, he won’t learn. As though it’s what he wants: an icy, watery death in a storm.

‘It’s easy!’ she shouts again, but he’s talking to Willmouse.

The lake’s waves buoy her but the temperature’s too cold not to keep moving, and in a few minutes, she heads for the shore where the current’s warmer. Shelley looks away as she emerges – ‘Venus from the waves,’ she shouts, arms aloft – and won’t turn round, unusually prim. Another change in him, she thinks, patting herself dry with her dress.

That night. It’s changed them, no matter if he denies it.

Perhaps she should address it again after all. Maybe now the time is right. The sun warms her naked back, but her drawers and bodice are too wet to put back on, so she leaves them off, pulls on her dress, gets ready to speak.

Then a flash catches her eye.

Up at the cottage door, someone less prim, less changed, is standing, watching, hand raised for shade against the sun. Someone tall, well-born.

His loose, dark locks blow in the breeze.

‘If he was a painting, he’d be A Hero Returned From War,’ she says. She grimaces, then checks herself, attempts nonchalance instead. ‘What d’you think, Shelley – is he Ulysses? Should I play Penelope, perhaps?’

But Shelley doesn’t answer; he is too busy calling out, ‘Wait there!’, hurrying up the path towards him, Willmouse in his arms.

Her skin itches from more than drying; Albe might be here, after all, to retrieve that single page of his letter to Augusta. Her breath quickens. She smooths her dress and lets down her hair. Up ahead, the two men greet one another and disappear inside the cottage.

She takes a step forward, then stops. ‘Don’t run,’ she mutters to herself. ‘Don’t give chase.’ She may no longer have the swing in her hips she used to before that night, but she’ll not creep, either. She thinks of the water just moments before. Swim, she thinks, stretching her arms behind her, as though the path is waves pushing against her. Swim on, pace after pace.

But by the time she’s at the door, her attitude has shifted. She’s got her fist raised to push the door open and make him accuse her. ‘Go on,’ she mutters. ‘Get it over with!’

Suddenly, though, there he is, right in front of her. She stumbles forward, lets out a little gasp. Every time, she forgets it: the impact of his eyes’ beauty. Those black lashes she wants to stroke. The light in the irises she wants shone on her alone.

She isn’t the only one to feel this. He can blind his enemies with those eyes; bind his friends to him forever. Albe and I.

But lovers? He’s never this beautiful in her dreams.

‘Albe,’ she says, fist falling to her side.

Whatever he accuses her of, she’ll admit it, take her punishment.

But he’s not accusing her of anything. He’s not even speaking to her. Won’t even look. Just sweeps past, as though she isn’t there. Shelley follows, satchel over his shoulder, finger at his lips.

‘Albe,’ she says again, but it’s no use. And then they’re gone, up the hill together to Villa Diodati.

Inside the cottage, Mary’s at the kitchen table, changing Willmouse. There’s a pile of fresh pages beside him, bound by ribbon. The copies Claire had made and left on her desk are no longer there – safe, instead, inside Shelley’s satchel.

‘So that’s what he came down for,’ she says. ‘To bring me more work.’ She gives a high little laugh.

Mary nods, says, ‘And this.’ She waves a single page, covered in his handwriting.

Claire raises an eyebrow. ‘I haven’t inspired another poem, surely?’

She hasn’t inspired another poem.

She has to sign an agreement saying that she won’t enter a room he’s occupying, even when he comes to the cottage. And that when she goes up to the villa to collect anything he’s written for the purposes of copying, she’ll not try to speak with him, or seek him out for that purpose. She’s not to accompany Mary or Shelley there, either, unless she’s been given his express permission.

So he knows, then. That she’s a thief. And this is to be her punishment. He won’t challenge her; he’ll just pretend she doesn’t exist.

‘Well, he can do his own copying,’ she says, furious. ‘Who does he think he is?’ She seizes the pages he’s left and makes for the kitchen fire, which is ablaze, though it’s a warm day.

Mary cries, ‘Don’t you dare!’, and abandons Willmouse on the table, his bare legs waggling, to chase after her.

She’s just about to stuff them into the stove furnace – she’s never been so determined to carry out a threat in her life, and Mary knows her well enough to know it, too – but Mary flies at her, grabs her arm. Claire cries out, they tussle, and Albe’s pages fly all over the floor. But Mary’s surprisingly strong; she gets Claire on her back, straddles her, pins down her arms so she can’t beat her away.

‘You can’t destroy genius,’ Mary says, panting, ‘because he won’t give you what you want. Stop being such a child. You’re going to be a mother, for heaven’s sake.’

Claire doesn’t move. Mary heaves a sigh, rolls off her. Remembers Willmouse and cries out, but he’s safe on his back on the table, clutching his toes.

‘Just sign it,’ Mary says, gathering up her son in his blanket, holding him tight against her. ‘It’s not legally binding.’

‘It’s humiliating,’ Claire says, getting to her feet, brushing down her dress. The sight of the scattered pages sickens her; very well, she thinks, she won’t touch a single one.

‘Well, I’m not picking them up,’ says Mary, reading her thoughts. She heads upstairs, leaving Claire alone.

By the time Shelley returns, it’s late. Albe’s pages are neatly stacked. Claire’s signature is bold at the bottom of the agreement.

‘I’ve told him what I think of that,’ Shelley says, sitting down at the table across from her and nodding at the paper. Mary is in her bedroom, snoozing, probably, along with Willmouse. Claire is calmer now, though; she has lit candles in the kitchen, even had a light meal of bread and cheese. Drunk a little wine.

‘He sees it as – a protection,’ he continues.

‘From what? From me?’

He shrugs.

‘I’m going to be the mother of his child, though God knows he’d put a stop to it if he could. God knows he’s tried.’ She pulls herself up a bit, raises her chin.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Those drops of his in my wine—’

‘Now you’re being spiteful, Claire. To accuse him of something so heinous—’

‘You think he isn’t capable of it?’

‘He believes sincerely in God.’

‘He breaks all of God’s laws every chance he gets.’

Shelley sighs, reaches across the table to touch her fingertips. For the first time since his return, she thinks she might cry.

‘Let him become accustomed to your condition first. We’ll go on our trip, just as you suggest—’

‘I won’t give up my baby. I’ve decided. He’s a monster, nothing less. There’s nothing more to be said about it.’

She pulls her hand back, but he grabs it, holds on hard. His fringe is blonder from his days sailing in the sun, his eyes bluer, the creases at the edges of his mouth deeper. She thinks again of Paris. Stealing Helen away from under the nose of her husband. Starting a war over what he wanted.

Shelley stole Mary away from her father because she was what he wanted. And all the while, he was married to Harriet.

Marriage doesn’t matter, she reminds herself.

And starting wars is revolution, is new beginnings.

But that’s where men’s wanting gets them.

‘Claire, please – it’s not as simple as that.’

‘Mary says I’m being a child,’ she says. ‘So I’m taking charge. Being a mother.’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘She doesn’t know what you want,’ he says. ‘Neither do you.’

‘Oh, but you do, I suppose?’

He doesn’t speak, but there’s the spread of something over his features that tells her what he’s thinking, and it’s all about his own allure.

She can’t start anything as glorious as a war; even all the wanting of all the women all over the world can never do that. Women can only squabble and roll about the floor, pulling at each other’s hair.

It infuriates her.

She twists her hand out of his. ‘Well, I don’t want you,’ she says, getting up from the table and hurrying to her little room before he can take advantage of her defeat.

She means it. Her mind is made up. She’ll keep her child and manage as a mother – alone, if she has to. She’ll wander the mountains, just her and her baby.

Today, though, there are three of them, and no baby. They’re setting out at last. Mont Blanc’s their destination, near Chamonix, which is two days’ walking, or more likely three, given their pace. They’ll head for Bonneville, then Cluses, then Sallanches, past Servoz, until Chamonix. They’ll walk as much as they can, climb the Bossons Glacier. Montenvers, the Mer de Glace.

Mary did shed a few tears when they left Willmouse snuggled up with Elise, who told her not to worry. She’ll not leave her daughter with anyone ever, Claire thinks, while they’re picking their way up the hillside. Her child will never be out of her sight. Not for a single day, not for a single hour.

Up ahead, Shelley has already reached the road where their mule’s waiting. Claire tries to offer a word of comfort to a sniffing Mary following on behind, gets told to be quiet.

She refuses to care; she’s been gentle, cheerful Claire, these last few days, Shelley’s favourite version.

‘I’ll be a mother alone, like Mary’s mother was,’ she’d told him last night, ‘and I’ll prove it.’

He didn’t believe her. Thought she was striking a pose. Thought he could persuade her. ‘You’re too easily managed by whoever you love in the moment,’ he said.

‘All right, then. I’ll be managed by my own child.’

‘And by him.’

Only later in bed did it strike her that he thinks she loves Albe.

Albe thinks so, but he’s meant to. For Shelley to think it is confusing, and only damages her trust in him a little more.

So, she’s waiting for the right moment on their walking trip to ask him. But because she can never be silent, she opens her mouth to sing instead, loud and deep. It’s a scurrilous sea shanty from their trip two years ago, which cheers Mary and makes Shelley laugh. How glorious the day is; how freeing, to make for the top of the world along a wild road as the sun winks at them through the trees.

It reminds her how much she relishes a journey; and she thinks again of how she’ll manage with a baby, if she has to. She’s young and resourceful. What else does she need but her own strong body, her own strong mind? A little red squirrel accompanies them, stops when they do for some food, a little bread and cheese that they’ve packed.

‘Nature’s our friend,’ she says, as the squirrel lets Mary hold it. Then Mary passes it to Shelley, but it bites his finger. ‘Or at least, a friend to women, if not to men,’ Claire says, but Shelley’s not laughing.

Instead, he says, crossly, ‘I think we must make a plan about the baby and put it to Albe.’

Mary has spotted some cornflowers up on the grassy verge, goes off to pick some.

‘Oh, must we talk about it now?’ Claire says, getting up too. ‘Why not leave it behind us, just for a few days?’

He shrugs, doesn’t mention it again until the trees stop and open fields of bright yellow corn appear. He’s nursing his bitten finger; perhaps that’s what makes him short with her. He bursts out, ‘You have to do what he wants, Claire, why don’t you see? The trick is to make him want what you want, too.’

Mary snorts, then says, ‘Not if it’s living with his household. That’s what she wants, and he’ll never give it her.’

‘No, no, it’s not,’ she says. ‘He’s – no, I’ll not live alongside him. Not ever.’

Mary and Shelley exchange a look.

‘I know more about him than either of you,’ Claire says, but stops. They’ve heard this before, of course. She hits Shelley’s arm playfully with her little beaded cloth purse.

They don’t know about the stolen page of Albe’s letter to Augusta. It’s in that purse, folded up into a tiny square. Well, she couldn’t very well leave it back at the cottage. What if Albe took a notion to search there while they were gone? Elise wouldn’t be able to stop him.

‘So what is the outcome you want? Really to be alone?’ Shelley asks, brushing her little purse away.

The afternoon’s hot now, in full sun. They’ve each removed their jackets, Shelley tying the arms of his around his waist. Mary carries hers like a baby in her arms, while Claire swings hers, gathered in her fist. She’s tied her hair up loosely, unbuttoned her bodice a little. Bonneville’s not far off; they’ll rest there a bit, under this cloudless sky. There’ll be glaciers soon, mighty enough to take her breath away. For now, she likes keeping her breath for herself and her baby.

Mary says exactly what Claire expects her to; oh yes. ‘Shelley’s right’ – Claire mimes a mouth talking with her hand behind Mary’s back – ‘you do need a plan. And it has to be a practical one.’

‘Ah, Mary, let’s strike out for the ideal,’ Shelley says, winks at her. She smiles back.

‘No,’ says Mary. ‘A baby is a practicality, why won’t you understand that? Because you don’t feed it!’

‘I feed it with my ideas!’ He spreads his arms wide; Claire laughs; Mary scowls.

‘I can imagine her – oh yes, she’s definitely her,’ Claire says, ‘growing up here, perhaps. Mama always did say my papa was from here – I feel it, you know. Maybe I have family in the next village, or the one after that . . .’

She’s prattling on, not noticing the look coming over Shelley’s face, so that when she says, ‘ . . . and it can’t be so much to rent rooms or a cottage. I will make enquiries the minute we get back. Yes, that’s what I’ll do—’

‘No,’ Shelley says, halting suddenly. ‘You have to stop this. I was wrong; Mary’s right.’

The sun is glinting in her face as she twists round; she puts up one hand to shade her eyes. Shelley takes her other hand. Mary’s walking on fast, leaving them behind.

‘I’m sorry, but I cannot let you make enquiries,’ he says. ‘I won’t lie to you. Ah, I was hoping another solution would present itself and I wouldn’t have to say—’

She narrows her eyes. ‘It’s Albe – what has he said to you?’

‘It’s not Albe. It’s my father. He’s stopped my allowance, all of it. I have no more money due, so there’s nothing more to be done. We have to go back to England after this trip, in a week or two.’

‘What? No!’ she says, pulling her hand away. ‘Mary!’ she calls out, but Mary’s ignoring her, leaving Shelley to deal with it.

‘It’s the business with Harriet,’ Shelley explains. ‘He insists I meet with him as soon as possible to sort it out, face to face. He thinks to force me to return to her—’

‘No!’ Claire says, and stamps her foot like a child. ‘I won’t go back.’

‘Ah, Claire. I wish it were otherwise, but you know how he is – and what can we do without money?’

‘He’s threatened it before and didn’t do it.’

His expression is too hard for her to read. He doesn’t reply, so she says, ‘Albe will—’

‘Will what? He won’t even be in the same room with you, Clairy.’

‘I’ll manage somehow.’

He puts an arm round her shoulder; she shrugs it off.

‘It’s Harriet’s doing. She’s been harassing my father. I’m sorry. She would spoil it for us,’ he says, then smacks the mule to pick up pace, moving ahead to join Mary, leaving Claire trailing behind, sulky as an infant.

By the time they reach Bonneville, it’s late afternoon. She’s still not speaking to either of them, says nothing when Shelley gets them adjoining rooms in the little inn. Mary disappears into hers to write; Shelley waits for a moment, then joins her. Claire stands alone, sets her small travelling bag on the narrow bed meant for an accompanying servant, then heads back outside to sit on a stone seat under a tree. The streets of the town are quiet. She takes out Albe’s page from her purse and unfolds it, glances at the handwriting, shudders, folds it back up again.

By the time Shelley comes outside, the sun’s setting. ‘Come in,’ he says, nodding to the inn door behind them. ‘You have to eat.’

She shakes her head; he mistakes her mood, thinks she’s still sulking.

‘I want,’ she says, ‘my child to know her father. But I want her to live with me.’

‘Ah, now,’ he says, sitting down on the bench, ‘at last we’re getting somewhere.’

‘Why, were you ever in any doubt of it? If I have to go back to England – if, I say,’ she adds, ‘then why can’t I be as Mary is, with you and her and Willmouse?’

She hates that he’s made her say it so plainly. He sits down beside her on the stone bench. She shifts a little, unsure.

‘I won’t ask for much, you know that,’ she says. ‘Money is – always difficult. And Mary’s difficult, too. I know she won’t want me there with you.’

He shakes his head. ‘Ah, it’s none of that. I would never force you to give up your child – what do you think I am? My concern about money, though, is what the world – and what my father, who holds the purse strings – will think. That your baby is mine. No matter what we say, they’ll all think it, and then—’

‘And then what?’

‘And then I really won’t have a penny to live on, and there will be no hope of any. My father will not forgive that – a third child, by a third mother. As for what Godwin and your mama would do . . . I think she’d shoot me dead.’

The reference to that day he came to their house in a frenzy, waving a pistol at her mama, is clear.

‘We could earn our living,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that the plan for me? To be a governess?’

‘Yes. And who’ll employ you, once the world knows you as an unwed mother?’

She’s silent; thinks, for the briefest second, of saying to him, you could work, as other men do. But the sons of baronets aren’t as other men. Geniuses aren’t as other men. And she couldn’t bear for Shelley to be employed in some mundane task, some piecemeal job of copying, or tutoring. Even writing for a living. A hack.

No. No one has the right to ask that of him.

‘You could go back to live with your mama, and Godwin,’ he says, slyly, knowing how she’ll respond.

And she does. ‘The worst of all options.’ She sighs.

He takes her hand, and she doesn’t resist. ‘Besides,’ he says, ‘we have to remember that this will be Albe’s child. No matter what the world – or my papa – believes.’

‘And my child – she is mine.’

‘That’s not what I mean. Look at the wealth he has. If he accepts responsibility for his child, look what that child will receive. The Byron name. The best schools that money can afford. A life that you could never even hope to provide for him – is it wrong to deny a child all of that?’

Claire blinks, rattles her feet against the ground.

He waits for her to stop, lowers his voice. ‘You know that Mary and I will do everything we can to help, if you decide you will keep the child. But should Albe want to raise his child – provide for him, or her—’

‘Albe’s a brute,’ she says, but her voice trembles.

‘I’ve spent time with him, Claire. I’ve seen his better qualities. Yes, he can be thoughtless, even cruel. But I believe he’s learned from his past mistakes; I do believe that.’

She remembers the night she found him weeping. ‘But how can I trust him?’ she says. ‘I would need assurance – he would have to assure me. That I would have my child with me sometimes. In the summer. And she will always have one of her parents with her, I won’t accept any other condition.’

‘Then we will arrange it. You see what can be done?’

‘I don’t like it,’ she says, in a small voice.

He squeezes her hand. ‘Trust me, Claire. Learn to accommodate Albe. As his wife never did – as my wife never has me. You are different. Show Albe that.’

Harriet. Annabella. Abandoned wives, both.

‘Play the game; don’t throw the board up in the air, as they’ve done.’

All the same, she can hardly bear thinking about it. ‘My child isn’t a game,’ she says, over her shoulder, as she makes off for the road beyond. It’s dark to be walking through the town by herself, but she doesn’t care.

He knows not to follow her, as he might do Mary.

After all, she’s different.

‘At least let me negotiate for you,’ Shelley’s saying the next morning, as they head out after breakfast. Mary’s still indoors, packing up her writing desk.

Claire stands in the sun with him, next to the mule. Her eyes are dry from lack of sleep because the servants’ bed was lumpy and mice scratched behind the walls.

‘At least let me do that. Don’t let him hear your voice, let it be mine. Perhaps he’ll give you what you want – I will try for it, I will. Maybe you’ll get to live with your child, supported by him. Let’s hope for that.’

Get to live with your child. Play the game, don’t throw the board in the air.

Ah, but she’s no good at games, and always throws the board in the air. Mary was the winner of games at home when they were small. Claire would get too impatient, rush her move. ‘You’re too easy to read,’ Mary would say, and it was true. All her thought, her feeling, was laid bare on her face. Then she’d have a fit of temper when she lost, throw up her cards, or the little chess pieces they played with.

And as for being silent? No; even without saying a word, she can’t be silent. How, she thinks, even to begin? But she must not be an Annabella. Not be a Harriet.

Mary joins them and they wander along the road. As they walk, Claire gropes for a way through to being what she must be.

If she returns Albe’s stolen page to him, perhaps. That might help convince him. Get her back in his good books.

Accommodate him.

How to manage the return of the page, though; how to butter up someone who won’t be in the same room with her? Questions jostle noisily in her head as they proceed to Servoz. Shelley and Mary speak intimately, as if in cahoots over something, but she knows it’s not her; it’s Harriet, and his father’s latest instructions. When waterfalls greet them, and glaciers of green rise up above orchards of apples and pears, she’s encouraged to sing again in spite of it all, and so they make their way on through the town.

‘Only three hours away now,’ Shelley calls back to her, always a few paces behind. Three hours from Mont Blanc itself!

But it’s the next day before they load up the mule again and make for the Mer de Glace, Shelley walking alongside, she and Mary taking turns on the animal. Claire’s tired again; it’s the baby, Mary says. And perhaps she’s right, because when they reach the Mer de Glace, and Claire stands at the edge of the Arveyron tributary and gazes across the river, flat and still as a sheet of ice, she feels her baby shift inside her.

Shelley is moved to loud tears by the sight, and Mary’s grappling for the right words, as Claire stands silent, saying nothing, but clasping her hands over her belly.

She can be like the Arveyron. A river of stillness, a body of silence. She can do it.

Prove her difference, without saying a word.

All she has to do is close her eyes, and conjure up the water, so vast and serene, yet seemingly solid. If she holds her breath, and thinks of it, she can be silent.

The decision made, she changes again. Becomes once more the Clairy whom Shelley loves. No sarcasms, no tantrums, no impossible demands.

She’s the sister Mary can bear to be with. Helpful, considerate.

And when they get back to the cottage, days later, the memories of what they saw on their trip blazing in their minds so that Shelley and Mary are caught up both in a frenzy of writing, she spends her time helping and considering.

Looking after Willmouse.

Doing laundry.

Tidying the kitchen.

Transcribing Albe’s poems.

Copying as beautifully as she can.

If she makes a single mistake, she tears up the page and begins again.

After a few days, helpful new Claire is rewarded. Albe agrees to a meeting, just he and Claire and Shelley, to talk about their child.

Mary’s not invited.

‘He doesn’t want a mother present because of what he’s about to do,’ Claire frets at the top of the stairs. ‘He’s going to try and take her away – he’s lost Ada and—’ She’s about to mention Medora, too, but bites her lip.

She’s on the verge of losing her balance, teetering on the edge of something too high, too fragile to bear her weight. Shelley sees it as she wobbles, pale as a sheet, and races from his desk to catch her as Mary stares. But she steadies herself just in time, and he returns to his writing, as Mary looks away.

Later, he says to her, ‘What am I, but a father, too? One who’s had two children taken from him? Harriet won’t even let me see my son. Little Charles – and I don’t even know what he looks like, should I pass him on the street.’

‘Should that make me feel better?’ she says, forgetting to be helpful Clairy as they trudge up between the vines towards Villa Diodati. Mary’s standing at the cottage door, watching them climb, Willmouse in her arms. Claire pants; there’s a pressing in her chest she can’t get rid of. It’s been there all day.

But he’s speeding ahead of her as usual, and they both know the answer, anyway. When the villa looms into view, her stomach lurches and she feels sick. It’s been weeks since she was last here; weeks since that night. How Albe will behave buzzes inside her like a nest of fleas. At least her nightmares have eased since they got back from their trip. Instead, she dreams of vast underwater caves, where she lives with a fish-baby, wide-eyed and pouting.

‘Just be silent, and still,’ Shelley says when they reach the top.

She nods, tries to sigh, but her breath cuts out. The stolen page is in her little purse. If her chance comes to sneak away and return it, then she will; she’s resolved to do it. Even if it is creased with all the folding she’s done. She’ll crunch it up, leave it lying on the bedroom floor perhaps, as though it’s been crushed underfoot.

If her chance comes.

Fletcher greets them at the door, unchanged in his expressions, and nods to them both. She’s about to swing past, then remembers her new attitude. She’s to be humble, but dignified, just as she practised with Mary the night before. How to incline her head just so. To look down, but politely, not in shame. To keep her expression free of emotion, her gestures tight.

So, she bows her head a little, steps back behind Shelley, who marches into the drawing room.

Albe’s waiting by the tall windows, looking down over the terrace to the lake. There’s not a cloud in the sky; they’re in the heavens, and the room dazzles with light. She can barely think, is grateful when Shelley says, ‘Albe!’ and opens his arms wide to him.

Shelley’s playing the game, too.

She mustn’t look into Albe’s eyes, she knows, so she stares instead at a fixed point beyond him, shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun and the glare of him. He murmurs a greeting to Shelley, gestures for them to follow. He sits on the couch first; they take up the one opposite.

There’s no preamble, no niceties. He doesn’t call Fletcher for tea; doesn’t pour wine. The old annoyance stirs in her chest, a ball of fury; the nightmare scene by the fire makes her want to cough it up, force it out. But she clasps her hands in her lap instead, presses her lips together.

‘How far along is it?’ he says. He’s looking at Shelley, though, not her. His cheeks are flushed. A little perspiration glistens on his forehead. But she won’t even glance at his eyes. They are where the traps are laid.

At least there’s a breeze from the open window, pleasant on her neck – she’s tied her hair up again, for the heat – and so she can answer, coolly, ‘Three months.’

Silence.

Shelley leans forward to speak, but Albe says, ‘I suppose the brat is mine?’

She jerks up, puppet-like, says, ‘I won’t be spoken to—’

Shelley tugs on her skirt; she sits back down. ‘Let’s not begin this way,’ he says to both of them. Albe scowls. She tries to remember the last time she kissed him. To think of the night he wept about Ada.

If you thought she wasn’t yours, you wouldn’t have tried to kill her, is what she wants to say, but doesn’t.

‘Ah, Albe – for you know that it’s yours,’ Shelley’s saying. ‘You know you are Claire’s – only.’

How humiliating; and Albe’s smirking at it. She itches to slap something, traps her fingers in a cat’s cradle.

‘I might have been the first,’ he says. ‘I won’t be the only.’

‘Come now, who else could compare?’ Shelley’s voice has a tone she doesn’t recognise, can’t pinpoint. Part plea, part threat, part flattery, part brotherliness – all of it, perhaps, and none of it.

‘True,’ Albe’s saying. ‘She’ll not forget me. I make sure of that with all of them.’

Shelley tries again. ‘It’s a Byron. You can be sure of it.’

‘Perhaps I want nothing to do with it, all the same.’ Albe affects a yawn, but there’s a flicker across his face that suggests his impatience is more pose than real feeling. Shelley sees it, too; his body stiffens beside her.

‘And maybe a Byron son – I’m the father of sons. To never see little Charles—’ Shelley breaks off so sharply that Claire lets fly her hand to his arm. ‘Ah, you know what haunts me, Albe,’ he finishes. Grief is pulling at his fingers, stretching them out towards the man sitting opposite. His palms are upward, as if offering up a gift on a plate. ‘The visions I’ve had . . .’

Suddenly, she understands. Those terrible looks of Shelley’s, those first weeks.

‘I saw a baby girl, I thought she was the one Mary lost – and then I saw him, my little Charles, my boy – but he was burning – with a terrible light—’

He covers his eyes. This is what they’ll have spoken about on their sailing trip together.

They’re connected beyond poetry. Both fathers of children they’ll never see.

A trembling runs through her.

Harriet. Annabella.

Wicked wives, keeping men’s children from them.

Be different.

‘All your talk of galvanism,’ Albe murmurs. ‘What did you expect but visions like that? I told you it’d do no good.’

Shelley wheezes a sigh, rubs his wet face. ‘Ah, you’re right. Mary did think of electricity – as a life force. Until I told her – for it’s death, too.’

Albe says nothing for a moment or two. At last, he says, ‘I’ve decided. I will take the child – when it’s born. I’ll place it with Augusta until it’s old enough for school—’

‘No!’ she says, up on her feet again. This time, Shelley can’t pull her back down.

Albe stares, the first time he’s looked at her since they arrived. ‘What objection can you have to the Honourable Augusta Leigh, daughter of a marchioness? Who is your mother? Your father?’

Claire is dizzy all of a sudden. Remembers she hasn’t eaten. Licks her lips and sinks back into her seat. ‘I only want—’ she begins, then stops.

‘Who are you to want anything?’

‘She is the child’s mother,’ Shelley says, before she can reply. ‘At least let it stay with Claire until it’s weaned.’

Albe twitches at the word ‘mother’.

I’m different, she wants to say.

‘I suppose even she can’t do that much damage,’ he says.

‘And you know that Mary and I will both be present, as much as we can – you trust Mary—’

Albe holds up a hand. ‘I do, I do. Then perhaps the first – twelve months? Is that time enough to wean it?’

She can’t bear any of this a moment longer, thinks she’ll scream if she doesn’t get away. But Shelley’s holding on to her skirts. He murmurs, ‘Fifteen months, at least.’

It’s breathtaking. Both of them.

‘Fifteen months, then. After that, I’ll place it with Augusta—’

‘No!’ she bursts out again. ‘I’ll not have—’

‘I’ve asked you before,’ Albe says. ‘What possible objection could you have?’

The page from his letter is inside her purse – how she wants to throw it in his face. But she remembers in time, takes a deep breath instead, sits up straight and says, ‘I want – I would wish – that at least one of her – his – parents is always with – her.’ Albe raises his eyebrows at the word ‘her’, but she doesn’t care. Reinforces it. ‘At least until she’s old enough for school.’

‘Stupid sentimentality.’ But his face has softened.

‘The chance to be a father again,’ Shelley says. ‘You cannot wish that away, Albe.’

‘A tiny version of myself. A son,’ Albe says, pointedly. ‘Perhaps it might be – well, interesting, if nothing else. Or a horror. I can’t decide which.’ But he’s agreeing; she sees that, at least.

‘You’ll let Claire visit, of course?’

Instantly, the frown appears again.

Shelley hurries on, ‘She must be able to see her own child—’

‘Not for a second. We’ll have no more to do with one another; that’s understood.’

Claire stands up a third time. It’s intolerable, all of it. Obscene.

They cause wars with their wanting; women roll about on the floor.

She won’t have it.

‘Then we have nothing more to say to one another. I refuse all of this.’ She lifts her chin, even as her voice wobbles. ‘And don’t even think to come after us. You’ll never see your son—’

Ah, but she’s ruined it now, and Shelley stands up, apologising to Albe, saying, ‘She’s with child, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

But Albe only laughs. ‘Yes, go,’ he says to her. ‘You’d get far. If I could be bothered chasing you.’

She stares; if she blinks, tears will fall, and then she’s truly done for.

‘No, no,’ says Shelley. ‘Wait. I can be the link between you. I’ll arrange visits – between Claire and her child. You need never see Claire, Albe, I promise you. Entrust the child to me – to us – and we’ll fetch him at times suitable for you, Mary and I—’

At the mention of Mary, Albe’s expression eases again. He cocks his head, as if it’s all a great game and he’s thinking about his next move.

Claire is too hot now, soaking under her arms, down her spine, between her legs. There’s a ripple in her belly. She wants to rip off the dress, then remembers what he did to her shift.

Remembers what he can do, if he chooses.

She longs for water, wine, anything. Why won’t he ring for Fletcher? Accommodate them?

But she knows why he won’t. He keeps them both waiting, sweating and wanting.

‘Very well then – at times of my request,’ he says, eventually, ‘you will come and fetch it, Shelley. But under no circumstances will I ever set eyes on her again.’

‘She understands that. And we’re returning to England anyway.’

‘Good. If she’s giving birth there, baptise it in London.’

‘Yes, of course.’

On they go, discussing her as if she’s not there. Finally, the two of them shake hands. Claire sits, her chest rising and falling so fast she thinks her bodice will burst. He’d like that, she thinks. Oh yes.

‘She won’t be its mother, of course,’ Albe’s saying.

‘There are laws—’ says Shelley.

‘I don’t mean legally. She’s not to tell it she’s its mother. She’s not to tell anyone. Not her mother, or Godwin. Nobody knows about it.’

It. It. Faster and faster goes her heart. It’s like water running through her fingers, this negotiation between them. Pouring through them, and she unable to save a single drop. She’ll be left with nothing at this rate. No child, not even an acknowledgement she’s ever had one.

‘But what else is she to be if not the mother?’ says Shelley.

‘She can be its aunt,’ Albe says. ‘That’s how she’ll know it growing up and how it will know her.’

It. It. It.

‘She’ll have a dozen more by then, anyway, I’m sure.’

And it strikes her that she will indeed be different – and he means to make it so. She’ll not be an Annabella, he’ll make sure of that. Nor will she be an Augusta, though, for there’s only one of those.

No; she’ll not be a mother.

But perhaps that’s the only way to manage this, to claw something back for herself.

Be an aunt.

Her head’s hot. She wants to think clearly, but they’re waiting for her to speak, Albe tapping the arm of the couch, Shelley’s leg twitching against her. She could end it all, of course. Say no, and walk away. Keep her child.

She has a sudden vision of herself in a dilapidated room, her baby starving on her lap.

She thinks of that older male acquaintance of Shelley’s she can’t bear but who adores her, who’d marry her in a second, give her and her baby safe haven.

She thinks of his withered hands on her skin. His ancient, snuff-stinking breath on her mouth.

She shudders. ‘I consent to it,’ she says.

Albe looks amused, as if he’s seen her imaginings.

‘The water closet – I need to go,’ she adds, her mouth dry. Her legs shake as she crosses the floor, but when she opens the drawing-room door, Fletcher is standing there.

‘Accompany Miss Clairmont to the salle de bain, Fletcher,’ calls Albe. ‘And don’t let her out of your sight for a minute. Not even when she’s pissing.’

She spins round. ‘Are you mad?’

‘I mean it, Fletcher,’ he calls out again.

Shelley’s on his feet, hurrying to the door, taking her arm. ‘Perhaps we are done here – I think so, it is settled now, yes? Then let’s go back to the cottage, Claire. You can wait—’

All the way down the hill, she refuses to speak to him. When they enter the cottage, she refuses to speak to Mary, either. She goes without a word to her little room and slams the door.

Let them think what they care to. Being different enough for Albe has been the most humiliating experience of her life.

Their last days by the lake are less like a humiliation, at least, and more like a dream. But not like the terrible dreams that came after that night.

All the same, the feeling that she’s lost a battle won’t let her be. Even when Shelley reassures her that his intention is to make sure she has her child every summer. At least every summer, he says.

Fifteen months.

For fifteen months, she’ll have her. Because Claire knows it’s a girl. Knows it better than anything else.

‘It won’t be a farewell. And think of what it will mean for the child to be acknowledged as Albe’s – he won’t want for a thing,’ Shelley says. ‘It’s the best outcome.’ There’s a tremor in his voice; he coughs to cover it up, but she hears it.

Mary says little, is too buoyed up by new plans to lodge in Bath when they return to England. Claire is to live in the town, too, but apart from them both, ‘So as not to attract talk and suspicion,’ Shelley says. ‘Remember my father will hear of it – we have to be above any of it. And Albe won’t care for it, either; he said nobody must know, after all.’

And Albe.

Fifteen months.

From this very day, then, she counts almost two years until she hands over her child to the man who tried to destroy her.

But before that can happen, an idea – oh, a terrible idea, a shameful idea, but a necessary one, too – takes hold of her. Its grip is so savage, so fierce, she can’t sleep, but tosses and turns all through the warm nights. Shelley and Mary go up to the villa every day, but now that Albe’s new guests have arrived, Shelley’s less keen. The Mad Monk, as he’s called, will stay, along with his former slaves.

‘He freed them,’ murmurs Mary, as Shelley rages on.

‘No matter,’ Shelley says.

As they argue, the idea grows and grows, until Claire thinks it might be the death of her, if she doesn’t act on it.

Misty, warm August days turn thick with scent. Their trunks are packed, the rooms all cleared. It’s their final day, and she can scarcely contain herself, has lost the good Clairy she became, and can’t find her again. So she’s sarcastic to Shelley, who sets off for a final sail, away from her, and sulky with Mary, who stays upstairs, prefers her story.

Elise is dozing in a chair in the kitchen, Willmouse asleep in the Moses basket beside her, on that last afternoon.

Claire will never forget a second of it, afterwards. It’ll haunt her for the rest of her life, she knows that, even as she tiptoes out through the kitchen. Bad Clairy. Bad Clairy, who makes off out of the cottage, a naughty child in a fairy tale, doing what’s been forbidden.

What else can she do? So she makes the familiar trek up through the vineyard to the villa, one last time, with every step thinking, This is a mistake, but unable to stop and turn back. Later, she’ll wonder if she was bewitched that day. What unseen string was pulling her on?

For on she goes, creeping up to the pillared doorway, stopping to look about, as if Albe might suddenly appear from behind a tree, or Fletcher might accost her, march her back down again.

But all’s quiet, empty, as she pushes the door, crosses the tiled hallway. She pauses halfway up the stairs, listening. It’s as if she’s willing a noise, to stop her doing what she’s about to do.

They’ve all gone out, Albe and his guests. She lets out a breath, carries on up to the bedroom door, pushes it and enters.

Inside, all is as it ever was. On the writing desk sits a pile of blank pages.

She takes the folded one she stole out of her little purse, smooths it out. Then, with a single violent gesture, scrunches it up in her hand. Throws it into a corner of the room.

Perhaps he’ll not care, not wonder how it’s made its return, and only note that it has.

And will note, too, now, that she’s innocent. He doesn’t need to hate her.

She sighs, takes a look about the room. That was only the opening act. She has another, much bigger one to follow, and her resolve is fading. Her legs are trembling; her hands, too.

No; she can’t do it. She was mad to think it.

But now shouts are pulling her over to the washroom. Its window looks directly onto the lake. There’s a group making merry – ah, his own laughter is always recognisable. She stares; they’re all men, three of them with black skin, stripped to the waist, running in and out of the water. Albe’s cheering on one in particular, who’s tripped on his way up the shore. He tumbles on top of him, before the dogs pile in, barking.

More laughter. They gather, a tangled group, Mad Monk Lewis and Albe and the Jamaican freedmen. Staggering about, for too much wine’s been drunk. One of them trips again. Albe gives him a playful kick and the man seizes his good foot, but misses.

Fifteen months.

Scrambled to unphilosophize me.

As she watches, Albe pulls away. They shout to him to stay, but he’s shaking his head. Making his way up towards the house.

The unseen thread pulling him, too.

It’s meant to be, then.

And off come her boots, her drawers, her dress and bodice, as though another being is taking them from her, not her own hands at all. And leaving not a scrap of clothing, as downstairs, the front door bangs open.

Albe’s calling out for Fletcher; then there’s a heavy foot on the staircase, uneven, awkward. Words are exchanged.

He’s heading for his room, one stair at a time.

On the landing on the other side of the door, a board creaks.

Into his bed she slides, smooth under the covers, a naked Red Riding Hood waiting for the wolf. When the door opens, Albe doesn’t see her at first. He’s looking ahead at the window, undoing his shirt.

She wonders for a moment if she’s really there. Then she coughs, and he jumps, turns towards the bed.

‘What the—’ He stares, astonished. Horrified.

She throws off the covers to reveal herself. She’s not showing much yet – a little bump, perhaps – but her breasts are fuller, her hips rounder.

Scrambled to unphilosophize me.

For a moment, she thinks he means to do it. Murder her, like in her dream. She can’t bear the look on his face; closes her eyes.

Let him slice open her belly. Throw her child away.

No; she’ll never know forever after what got into her.

There’s a rustling sound as he approaches the bed. She keeps her eyes shut, waits for the dagger at her throat, the coldness of steel on her skin.

But it’s teeth, nipping her neck, instead.

She gasps, opens her eyes.

He’s on her before she has time to blink again.

It was hardly loving, but it wasn’t rough, or cruel, as it could be sometimes. When he was done, she didn’t coo or fuss or pet him that way he always found annoying.

‘Sometimes I loathe myself even more than I loathe you,’ he mutters.

She doesn’t know what to say; gets out of bed to sit on the edge, a little dazed.

He thinks she’s agitating to stay, or maybe to go again, and kicks her with his foot. ‘On you go, Clairy Cocotte. That’s all you’ll get of me.’

The insult helps her get to her feet, steadies her, at least. She’ll remember it, whenever she needs to, now.

He turns over on his side, away from her, as she reaches for her drawers, her dress.

The balled-up page is lying in the corner of the room. She hesitates, but he’s already fast asleep, snoring. She slips across the floor and picks up the paper, stuffs it into her pocket. He has everything, after all; he will even have her child. She wants something of his, she thinks. Not a token. Something that, perhaps, one day, might prove more useful than that.

She’s not so foolish, not so romantic as he thinks.

Even so, at the door, she hesitates.

‘Goodbye, Albe,’ she whispers.

A snore is his only response.

Back at the cottage, no one’s noticed she’s been missing.

There’s just time for her to write a letter to Albe before they go. Light as a feather it is, yet devoted and oh so terribly true of feeling. Of course. Just like it was, in the beginning. If she can replicate it. When he’s done so much that’s so terrible.

For I love you more than anything, dearest Albe.

She licks the nib of her pen. Dips it in the ink, writes the words. A cup of water sits on the desk. Perhaps she can flick a drop on the page, affect a teardrop somehow.

My heart breaks to be leaving you after these weeks.

Yes, he’ll expect at least that, and more.

Do not be angry with me for my strong feeling. Who will not be strong of feeling once they have known you?

Be humble, that’s what Shelley told her in the beginning.

My worst fear is that you will forget me. Oh how I will pine all through winter! But you must have no worries, none at all, because I could not bear that, too.

Love, desire, whatever it takes.

Farewell, and if you should wish my death, please know that I would happily die to serve you.

That’s too much, surely. She shifts on her seat and her bruised thighs throb. He has enough sense of himself to believe she means it, though. Isn’t it what all women think of the irresistible Lord Byron?

In for a penny, in for a pound.

I shall love you to the very end of my life.

Fifteen months.

Play the game, Claire.

When they mount the cart holding their trunks in the dawn light just a few hours later, after Elise has delivered Claire’s note to the Villa Diodati, she’s more than ready.

‘I’m glad you’ve accepted it,’ Shelley’s saying, as they pant up the hill to the cart one last time. ‘You’ll see – we’ll manage the months without your baby. And then you’ll have him every summer. Aunt Claire,’ he says, winking as he helps her up the last of the climb.

‘Oh, indeed.’ She beams.

Men make war over their wants, expose them to the world, and in doing so, must either win or lose them.

But women hug their wants close, keep them to themselves. That way is to be sure of the win always.

So she’s thinking, settling herself beside her trunk next to Mary, with Elise on the other side of her, wincing with the mark of Albe on her, the memory of him inside her.

Suddenly, though, her daughter flutters inside her.

She straightens up, her hand on her belly.

She’ll win the game. Of course she will. She’s different.

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

‘Allegra,’ she murmurs, her eyes closed, as the little girl shifts on the bed, turns towards her, places fingers gently on her cheeks.

‘Mam’selle Claire,’ whispers Dunia, ‘wake up, Mam’selle Claire.’ The girl giggles, tries to prise open Claire’s eyelids. Claire plays along, of course, pretends to still be fast asleep. She used to do that with Allegra when she was little, too.

But Dunia is five years old, not a tiny thing yet to see her second birthday. Her fingers are strong; Claire’s eyes are wide open now, and large brown eyes stare into hers.

This has been their routine these past two weeks. Behind every morning spent this way, though, is a familiar fear of its ending. Louise will leave eventually, when Marie Ivanovna tires of her suspicions; Dunia will go back to her own room; these games will end, and Claire will have to stop pretending she’s a mother.

Gambs said it again yesterday.

You are not her mother, Claire.

She was furious. He’s just another man wanting to take a child away from a woman, she told herself, as she paced round and round her room later. Just another man who thinks to tell her what to do, what to feel.

So this morning, after dressing Dunia and settling her with her brother in the kitchen, she enjoyed her breakfast alone, then rushed away the minute he appeared.

Now she’s sitting outside the summer house, trying to gather her thoughts.

I talk to you freely about him because I know you will not believe I am in love, or that I have any other feeling but that of a most sincere and steady friendship for him. His attachment to me is very extreme but I have taken the very greatest care to explain to him—

‘Claire?’

She looks up, shades her eyes even though the sun is behind her. No surprise she hasn’t noticed him crossing the grass, then. This letter to Mary – ah, but it’s more of a letter to herself, about him. Full of ink blotches and crossings out, because her mind’s flitting this way and that.

‘I am interrupting; I will leave you in peace.’

But she snaps the lap desk shut, traps the bottle of ink and pen inside, and the letter. It’s not as if Mary would even understand. How strange, then, she thinks, that suddenly she wants Mary here. Would give anything to see her sister’s halo of golden hair lift in the slightest breeze beside her, her brow furrowed in that intense way of hers.

She wants to hear her voice explain, admonish, cajole, as it’s done ever since they were small.

Are you mad, Claire?

But yes, that’s what Mary would say to this letter. And just like that, the hankering leaves her.

‘No, no – here, sit beside me. Please.’ She beams up at him, shading her eyes more from him than from the light, as though she doesn’t want him to read what’s there.

As indeed she doesn’t; he thinks he sees through her, Hermann Gambs, and maybe sometimes – Dunia apart – he does.

He smiles back, with something in his expression she can’t quite read.

‘You want to ask me something in particular – so I should run away, I think. Call out for Marie Ivanovna!’

She is teasing him, as she has since the night of the ‘play’. It went well; Marie Ivanovna didn’t guess its provenance was a radical and a scandalous poet, and Louise was – well, she was over the moon and has been pestering Claire ever since, demanding to know everything she experienced with Shelley when they all lived together. Telling her that she’d be such a ‘heroine’ for the cause, ‘with your intimate connection to him, Claire’.

‘To have you with us – when you knew him so well,’ Louise has been saying ever since. Ah, there’s no innocence in her emphasis on that word. Louise wants and wants and wants – she’d gobble up the whole of Claire’s story if she set it on a plate, and bang the table for more afterwards.

Maybe Marie Ivanovna’s right. Maybe she should keep a closer eye on Louise. But she’s so annoying. Only yesterday, she greeted Claire at breakfast with, ‘Here’s our Sophie de Condorcet! Our Charlotte Goday!’

The summer house isn’t enough of an escape, and especially not from Louise Trewin.

‘No more plays though, I beg you,’ Claire says now. ‘Louise will want to canonise me next.’

He laughs, says, ‘St Claire, Patron Saint of . . .?’

‘Downtrodden Governesses.’ She catches his eye.

What he never saw that night of the play in her eyes was his own impending fatherhood. Scandal and entrapment. No, he never saw that, because it was gone by the time the play began. Her menses started just before it. Her eyes only showed relief, a necessary loss, a banishing.

She hasn’t had her ‘vision’ since, either. Though she’s gone wandering alone in the woods a few times, and called out, ‘Allegra’ so very softly that only a ghost could hear it.

‘Is that all?’ he says, cutting across her thoughts. ‘What of Muse to Geniuses?’

She tsks, he eases off his pince-nez, rubs them clean with his handkerchief as if he’s heard her thoughts but that’s not enough; he needs to see them, too.

‘Male poets always think so highly of themselves. I wonder if Sappho thought she was a genius,’ Claire says, but he looks so troubled that she stops. ‘But look what Dunia drew for me yesterday.’ She opens her lap desk, pulls out a piece of paper smudged with charcoal. ‘Female genius! Well, perhaps it’s not so clear as I thought it originally – but don’t you think she’s caught my smile, at least?’

He’s squinting at it – ‘Put your spectacles back on,’ she says – but he doesn’t. He runs his fingers through his hair instead, pushes the too-long black fringe high up from his forehead. It’s a gesture that always makes her stop and stare – as a sincere and steady friend, of course. Then he fixes her with dark eyes that belong to someone else.

‘Maybe she won’t be a great painter. But what about poet? Dunia, Russia’s greatest, known only by a single name. She’s nobody’s muse, I think.’

He’s shaking his head as though she’s a pupil of his who’s failed a test. ‘Enough of this. I have something to say that is – difficult,’ he says, and sits down, squeezes his palm onto her lap under the desk. They make her heart shrink, those words, even as she rests her hand on his arm in return, presses her shoulder into his. She turns, looking for his eyes, but he won’t let her find them this time, keeps looking down. Yet they’re so close, with barely a hand space between their faces. For a moment, she thinks she might kiss him. Wants, suddenly, to feel his lips pressing on hers. Yes – yes, she will kiss him.

She doesn’t kiss him.

‘Then don’t say it,’ she says, instead. ‘If it’s – such a difficult thing. Let’s just enjoy this – being like this – together.’

It’s because she suspects what he’s going to say: a renewal of his proposal. And when he leans down to pick a daisy, which he hands to her with a solemnity that makes her eyebrows lift, she loses her nerve, titters like an old maid. It makes her sound more scornful than she intends.

‘A token? Such a little one?’

He doesn’t notice her tone, says, ‘I – do not want to raise suspicion. When there may be an innocent explanation.’

‘You think a bigger flower would raise suspicion . . .?’

‘I am serious. This will be painful for you to hear – but I think perhaps you are not so fond of Louise these days.’

‘This is about Louise? Oh, that’s very disappointing—’

‘But you must listen to me. What I observed this morning – no, first, I heard—’ He stops. ‘Ah, Claire,’ he says. ‘Why will you not marry me and we can leave?’

But she’s thinking about Dunia. ‘I’ll not leave my darling – you can’t expect it, not ever. You know—’

‘She is not your darling, she’s Marie Ivanovna’s.’

‘She—’ But she stops herself.

‘So is there really no room for me? It is a mistake.’

She nudges him. ‘Making mistakes is my special talent. If I’m the patron saint of anything, it’s that, so let me be.’

He falls silent; they both stare across at the great house, its enormous windows glinting in the sun.

‘I was telling you that I went looking for you after breakfast,’ he continues eventually. ‘You must already have come out here.’

‘Dunia wanted to feed her pony before Marie Ivanovna took her and Vanya to the village. Some of the serf families are unwell, she said. I don’t think she should take the children to sick people, but she says they have to learn their duty to those they’re responsible for—’

Gambs holds up his hand. ‘Enough of them,’ he says.

She stares at him a moment. Every time she sees Shelley there, though, something disturbs the surface, like a ripple across a lake, and he changes, becomes someone she doesn’t know.

He’s frowning so hard his eyebrows, black and thick, form a roof over his eyes. ‘And enough of Dunia.’

‘Let me love her. Let me pretend.’

He heaves a sigh. ‘Then let me speak – about this other matter. I do not want to malign someone without proof.’

‘Ah – we are back to Louise?’

‘We are back to Louise. I did not see wrongdoing – I am inferring it, which may be wrong of me.’

She’s picked the daisy free of all its petals, and scatters them now on the grass. ‘Please be blunt – I can’t help if—’

‘Yes – yes – bluntness is to be preferred, but perhaps not in this situation. Let me ask you a question first.’

She’s losing her patience. ‘Anything.’

‘Do you keep your bureau locked when you are not in your room?’

She’s surprised; a little alarmed. ‘Of course.’

‘And today?’

‘Yes – at least, I’m sure I did—’

‘Then what I saw does not make sense, and you can understand my dilemma.’

He gives her a weak smile, but now she’s alarmed.

‘I do wish you’d come to the point.’

‘I went to look for you this morning after breakfast. I did not know you had gone to the stables. Your door was open. I went in, hearing a noise, thinking to find you there. But Louise was there instead.’

‘In my room? Alone?’

‘So you do not always lock your door?’

‘Yes – no—’

‘Might you have left your bureau open, too?’

‘No. Never.’

‘But she was sitting at your bureau, which was open. Sitting with her back to me. I asked what she was doing—’

‘Louise had opened my bureau?’

A cold feeling breezing along her bones, as though her skin has just shed itself.

I want you to watch her for me, Mam’selle Claire.

‘She told me that she was looking for writing paper. You always have some, and she could not find you, and so – as I say, perhaps it was as she says it was – Claire!’

But she’s on her feet, ready to run.

He puts out an arm to stop her. ‘You cannot accuse her. She closed the bureau; she had some writing paper in her hand. I saw it.’

‘Did she take the paper with her when she left my room?’

He releases her, opens his palms.

She says again, ‘Did she take the paper she was holding with her?’

He nods; she cries, ‘Oh, God.’

‘But what is—’

But it’s no use, because she’s off now, running across the grass, the lap desk weighing her down so that she has to stop halfway, panting, and he takes it from her, understanding that something more dangerous has happened than the borrowing of some writing paper.

‘Where’s Louise now?’ she says.

‘I do not know.’

It might not be too late. It might not be what she thinks.

At the house, everything is quiet. She runs in the back way for speed, up the stone stairs, with Gambs behind her. Along the corridor, she’s running, running, running to her little unlocked door at the end. She bursts through and surveys the inside of her room. She stops suddenly, as if expecting mayhem. A sign of the violation that’s taken place. But it’s all just as she left it this morning.

The bureau’s unlocked, indeed. But inside it, nothing is disturbed.

‘So it is as I hoped – she did want writing paper, that is all,’ he says, setting the lap desk on her bed.

‘No, no.’ With trembling fingers, she reaches for the little drawer, praying for it still to be locked, as she was sure it was.

It is not locked.

She swears under her breath. How stupid, how careless . . . She doesn’t dare breathe as she opens the drawer. Gambs waits.

The black ribbon round the thin wad of letters is tied up as always.

But not the way she would tie it.

‘Dear God,’ she says, sitting down at the desk, letters in her hand. ‘She’s read them.’

‘They are – from him?’

He means Shelley.

She can’t tell him, must flatten out each page, count them one by one.

It’s only at the end that she knows the full extent of it. An ‘Oh!’ escapes her and, too late, she covers her mouth and closes her eyes.

Her head pounds as she sits on Louise’s little bed. Louise’s room isn’t locked either. Gambs wanted to wait with her, but she told him, No. Let me deal with her.

For there are things she has to say; things that he cannot hear. Dear God, but he can’t hear it. What she has to say to get it back.

The page Louise has stolen.

A stolen page, stolen again – ha, Albe would enjoy this, she thinks, fidgeting on the mattress, perspiration settling around her hairline. He’d love the pain she’s in right now. Serves you right, he’d say.

Clairy Cocotte.

Oh, why didn’t she burn the damn thing when she had the chance? She gets up, paces back and forth. Shelley always said she had a terrible temper – he’d never believe the lengths she goes to now, to keep it in check. Her palms are red raw from her nails digging into them.

Balling her fists, ready to land a blow.

So on she paces, to wear herself out in the hope of diplomacy, as Gambs has called it. Be gentle with her, he’s said. ‘She’s more foolish than bad. You do not want her complaining to Marie Ivanovna . . .’

‘Marie Ivanovna was right about her,’ Claire had said, but she didn’t elaborate. It’s a blow to her pride, remembering how dismissive she was of Marie Ivanovna’s fears. How complacent she was, refusing to listen to the words of the woman who knew her own country, knew how things worked here. Well, she’s being punished for it now.

At last, she hears voices. Dunia calling out for Mam’selle Claire. Gambs telling her to come with him, for he promised he’d keep the child away until she’d spoken with Louise.

And Louise’s high-pitched, unbearable whine.

Her skin itches; she sits back on the bed. She’s searched Louise’s sparse desk (no roll-top, no drawer, no need for a key), and found nothing. The woman has it on her person.

Claire is ready to rip open her pockets, if she has to.

Footsteps slow and slapping, Louise’s familiar tread, climb the stone staircase and along the corridor.

When Louise opens the door, she doesn’t seem surprised to see Claire sitting there. ‘Are you joining us downstairs?’ she says.

The false lilt in her voice; the two red spots, high on her cheekbones. Louise’s eyes sparkle at her. But there’s a line of perspiration coating her upper lip; Claire has an urge to wipe it, like she would with a dirty child she doesn’t like.

Louise undoes her hat, flings it onto the bed. ‘Claire?’

She has to stand up. She curls her fists, uncurls them. ‘You were in my room this morning.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Well, I wanted writing paper, and—’

‘You wanted more than that.’ Her voice shakes.

‘I did? But no – what else—’

Claire is no good at diplomacy. No good at twisting others into giving what she wants. Her mouth dries. She says, ‘Please stop pretending. I know you have it – what is mine.’

‘It? But it’s only some sheets of writing paper—’

‘You’ve stolen – you’ve read—’

Louise is shaking her head. ‘Claire, what are you saying? Are you well? I’ve taken nothing but some blank sheets of paper – here, look, I am writing to my mama.’ She points, smiling, to the windowsill, where a pot of ink sits beside a rolled-up sheet of paper.

‘I insist that you admit it and return the page to me.’

Louise cocks her head, still smiling.

For a moment, Claire falters. Perhaps she mislaid the sheet herself . . .? No, the ribbon was tied differently. She’s not mistaken.

‘There’s nothing for me to admit,’ Louise says. ‘Oh, come now – what is this? Can you be so concerned? I should not have gone in, I apologise—’

Claire stands up, holds out her hand. ‘Give me what is mine. This is the last time I will ask you.’

They stare at one another. For a moment, it seems that Louise is relenting; she shrugs, opens the little bag at her wrist. Claire holds her breath, but Louise only removes a handkerchief, pats her lips with it. ‘It’s so hot! I think it’s made you ill, imagining all sorts of things. Like before our play.’

‘You have no right – what would you want with it?’

And that’s when she swipes at Louise’s little bag.

But Louise lifts it out of her reach, holds up a large hand, splayed in front of Claire’s face. ‘What on earth – how dare you?’

Claire hesitates; thinks, can she overpower her? But fighting – it’s ridiculous, appalling. ‘Do what you like with it,’ she says instead.

Louise retreats, backs herself against the wall, one hand at her chest as though she’s afraid. ‘Must I call for help? Really, Claire.’

‘Keep it,’ Claire says again, moving to the door. For she has another plan now, and wants only to get away as fast as possible.

It’s almost as though Louise guesses it, because now she tries to make her stay, takes up a different tone. ‘You need something more than that little girl to fuss over. So why will you not join us? Give your life some meaning beyond being a governess. Or marrying Gambs.’

Claire is too furious to breathe. ‘Is that what you want with it? To force me to join you?’

Louise opens her palms. ‘I have nothing of yours – but I can offer you more—’

She’ll never admit it; Claire sees that. So she hurries, in a fury, straight along the corridor, down the stairs and into the great hall. Voices wander through the air to her, the sound of a harp, and a piano. She passes two servants carrying trays of wine. Of course, Marie Ivanovna is entertaining this evening.

But she doesn’t care.

Into the drawing room she bursts.

‘Mam’selle Claire!’ Marie Ivanovna stands up, astonished, then beckons her over. There are two men and two women dressed in fine clothes. One of the women is at the harp, the other at the piano. Claire hasn’t seen them before; she curtseys, they nod their heads. Then she says to Marie Ivanovna, ‘I must speak with you – it’s very urgent – immediately, madame.’

Marie Ivanovna is all in a flurry at her words, her urging, the grip Claire has on her arm. The French windows open out onto the terrace, and so they leave her guests. As the music floats out to them, Claire holds harder on to Marie Ivanovna’s plump little arm and says in her ear, ‘Louise Trewin is a spy. You have to send her away. Now.’

Marie Ivanovna doesn’t hesitate. In just an hour or two, Louise is gone, and even though it means Dunia will be taken from her and sent back to her own room, Claire can’t be sorry. Perhaps, she thinks, she can persuade Marie Ivanovna to let Dunia stay with her a little longer. She goes upstairs to settle the little girl in bed in her room first, then goes through to Vanya. It’s late now; the boy is restless and grumpy, complaining of the heat, but when she tells him that Louise is gone, he raises a small smile.

She watches from an upstairs window as Louise, with her single carpet bag, walks down the driveway towards the gates and the setting sun. The cook’s son is accompanying her, as though she can’t be trusted to do it alone. When he unlocks the gate and she steps through, she turns and looks back at the house. Claire doesn’t move from the window. Let her know it was my work, she thinks.

Downstairs, Marie Ivanovna’s guests have gone, too. Madame is alone.

‘And now I must apologise to Prince Galitzin, and he is a most disagreeable man,’ says Marie Ivanovna, when she enters. ‘I blame you, Mam’selle Claire. You would not listen to me!’

‘That’s true, madame. I’m sorry.’

And she is sorry – but because the letter page is lost to her, maybe forever. Louise has no need of it, now that it hasn’t forced Claire to join her. She has no doubt that Louise will simply destroy it, if she hasn’t already.

‘I feel responsible – I should have confronted her before now,’ Claire continues.

‘And she has admitted stealing this letter from your old friend?’ Marie Ivanovna asks again. Claire hasn’t explained more than that to her employer, but Marie Ivanovna has a romantic heart and will suspect a past love.

‘What she’d want with it, I can’t imagine,’ Claire says, smiling weakly. ‘It is personal—’

‘I am sorry it is lost to you,’ says Marie Ivanovna, shaking her head. ‘To think I have hosted such a person. I will write to Prince Galitzin without delay. Ah, how disturbing this business has been!’

She falls silent, and both of them sit quietly for a few minutes. But Marie Ivanovna can never sit for long, and soon pulls the bell for tea, a few cakes, some bread. Neither of them feels like a long dinner. ‘But we must eat something,’ Marie Ivanovna says.

They are just having their first cup when Gambs rushes in, startling them both.

‘Is she come back?’ Marie Ivanovna says, getting to her feet, fury on her face. ‘Ah, that dreadful woman, what a nerve she has—’

‘No, it’s Vanya, madame,’ he says. He doesn’t look at Claire. ‘He has a fever.’

Marie Ivanovna drops her cup, shouts, ‘What has she done to my child? What has she done?’, and throws Claire such a look of accusation that its message can’t be doubted.

But surely she is wrong – surely Louise hasn’t harmed the children. And all because of her?

Dread freezes every muscle, every bone. ‘She can’t have—’ she whispers, but Marie Ivanovna and Gambs are already heading for the staircase. She wants to follow them – she must follow them – but her legs won’t move. When at last she does, for a moment it’s as though she’s in a dream, held back by feet as heavy as lead.

It’s only a brief moment, though, for now she’s at Vanya’s bedside, standing with Gambs and Marie Ivanovna, who’s weeping hysterically.

Vanya’s pale face is blistered, his hair standing up in wet patches. There’s a white line around his lips, and his eyes are closed.

‘Let me ride for the doctor,’ Gambs says, but Marie Ivanovna’s not listening, is covering her son with her body, weeping, so that Gambs must gently ease her away. Little Dunia appears at the door; Claire whisks her up into her arms and takes her back to her room, telling her that she mustn’t go to Vanya’s room, not until he’s better.

It’s only an hour before the doctor comes, but it feels like an age. He’s been busy, he says. Already three children in the village have died from the fever, and before twelve hours have passed, their cold little bodies have been placed in wooden boxes with crosses etched crudely upon them.

It’s not Louise’s doing at all.

It’s the visit he paid earlier that day to the village with his mother. With his little sister, Dunia.

Vanya hovers between life and death for ten long, terrible days that are full of weeping. Ravaged and bony, his still-babyish skin hollows at cheeks that were once rosy and plump.

She can barely stand to see it; is convinced Marie Ivanovna will kill herself with sobbing. She’s been in the company of mothers who have had to watch their children expire before their eyes. Mary had to be observed every minute of the day for weeks and weeks on end, after it happened to her. ‘She’ll do herself harm,’ Shelley had told her, ‘and I cannot prevent it.’ And so she, Claire, had to be the one who kept watch over a silent woman, day after lonely day.

So she watches over Marie Ivanovna, too.

‘It’s a curse – that witch Miss Trewin – she has cursed us!’ Marie Ivanovna says, over and over.

Worst of all, perhaps – although what is worse than a child on the point of death? – little Dunia is banished to the nursery, where she sleeps beside a servant who hasn’t been in contact with anyone from the village, even though Claire herself was never there. So far, she shows no sign of the fever, and for that at least, Claire must be thankful, even as she finds it impossible to sleep alone, longs for the child curled at her belly.

Banned from Dunia, she has little else to do but watch over Marie Ivanovna and Vanya both; listen to his laboured wheezing. His father’s due any day; the doctor sleeps in a side room. Gambs can’t rest, carries bowls of hot water to and from the kitchen, though there are servants enough to do it.

‘It’s a punishment,’ she says to him one night, exhausted. She hasn’t slept in days; has barely eaten a thing. ‘For what I did to Louise. Marie Ivanovna’s right. It’s a kind of curse. But what she did to me, why was that not punished, why—’

‘No – no. It was Marie Ivanovna who took the children to the village. She will not admit it, must look elsewhere for blame.’ He holds her hand across the boy’s chest. He’s exhausted, too.

They sit this way for hours, only occasionally changing position, hardly noticing the pain in their shoulders, their backs, their hands. Maybe even relishing the pain, she thinks at one moment, as the boy wheezes, stutters, coughs, then sighs as if it’s his last.

But it’s not his last. Not yet. He’s holding on, she thinks, for his papa, terrible though he is. And maybe there’s something in that, because when the door bangs open so hard it makes them both start and pull apart, and Count Nickolaivitch rushes in, the boy’s eyelids flutter. And when his father seizes him in a hug so fierce that Claire’s convinced he’s bound to crush him, the boy’s eyes open, and he says, only, ‘I am sorry, Papa.’

And a miracle happens. The very next morning, Vanya is better. He’s sitting up; has even taken a little soup.

Marie Ivanovna is beside herself, forgets all about Louise Trewin and her curses. But Claire hasn’t forgotten, can’t forget the feeling of horror that she had caused it, even when Gambs tells her that Vanya is out of danger.

‘I told you. Marie Ivanovna should never have taken them to the village,’ he says, again. ‘But it is over now – do you see that? It is over now.’

They are eating in the morning room, or trying to. Claire is too tired, and wants only to sleep. ‘I’ll have a nap first,’ she says, standing up. ‘Then I’ll see to Dunia.’ He nods, getting to his feet, too, and is about to open the door when a servant appears, out of breath.

It’s the woman attending Dunia.

The little girl has the fever.

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1843

She’s dozed off in the chair, wakes with a start when the front door slams. Mary’s giggling, chattering, staggering through the hallway from too much wine. Gatteschi’s voice tries to shush her. He’s drunk as well.

Into the salon they stumble, Mary tripping against a little table that crashes to the floor. How much she’s altered, and in just a week or two, Claire thinks, not moving, holding her breath in the dark. She hadn’t expected Mary to return with Gatteschi.

She gets up, goes through to the salon, where Mary’s fumbling for the lamp, muttering, high-pitched, like a child.

‘This is what you want,’ Claire says, lighting it.

Now it’s Mary’s turn to start; she sways against Gatteschi, who catches her by the elbow, steadies her.

‘Claire! You waited up for me, how kind,’ she says, and turns to Gatteschi to say, ‘I have the kindest sister, don’t you agree?’

Claire crosses her arms like a good maman. ‘You’re ready for your bed—’

But Mary’s having none of it. Claire has never – never – seen her like this. All inhibition gone, her eyes glazed with adoration.

No – that’s not quite true. She was like that once, a long, long time ago. Almost thirty years ago, in fact. But Gatteschi’s no Shelley. Has Mary completely lost her reason?

Gatteschi bows.

Mary gives Claire a sly look she doesn’t understand, then puts her arms around Gatteschi, watching Claire all the time. ‘Mine,’ she says, just as he burps, which makes Mary laugh.

Claire is puzzled; then something dawns on her. She moves towards her, whispers in Mary’s ear, ‘Have him. I do not want him.’

Her lover in Paris.

Mary thinks she’s stealing him.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Claire says, rudely. ‘Try not to set the place on fire,’ she adds, nodding at the lamp.

Gatteschi is pouring Mary some wine; they don’t notice her creep out of the salon and along the vestibule to her bedroom.

What to make of it – what to make of Mary – she cannot fathom. But then there’s another knock at the front door of the apartment.

‘Mary!’ shouts a voice from the stairs outside.

Claire thinks she might faint.

‘Knox!’ Mary shouts from the salon.

Claire scrambles out of bed, races to the vestibule to get to the front door first, but it’s too late.

‘Mary – why, I thought I saw you out in the street a moment ago,’ Knox is saying from the hallway outside. Mary seizes his hand, brings him triumphantly into the apartment as though he’s a prize. He’s flushed, though, guilty-looking and sweating; he pushes back his long fringe with his free hand, glances at Claire standing beside Mary for just a second or two.

She can’t even speak. It’s outrageous.

‘. . . so I took the liberty of following you – I hope you’ll forgive me.’ This is directed at Claire; he waves his hand towards her.

‘Of course I will,’ Mary says. ‘Claire, you know Percy’s wonderful friend, Knox, of course – but we’ve been wondering about you all week! I spotted you in a crowd – I was sure you saw me, you looked right at me.’

He’s shaking his head, innocent as a pup. Gatteschi’s gone quiet, not used to competing for Mary’s attention, perhaps. Claire wonders how he’ll manage it; Mary still hasn’t introduced them.

‘Have you sorted your aunt’s affairs? Tell me you have some time to spare. How long will you be here? Claire – help me.’ Mary beckons to her, as Knox removes his jacket.

‘It’s almost midnight—’ Claire begins, but nobody cares. Mary’s rushing on, gabbling, while Gatteschi steps aside to let Knox enter the salon.

Mary’s voice seems to hang above her, suspended from the ceiling. Claire looks up, half expecting it to fall on top of her.

‘Yes, everything’s in order—’

‘Then let us all go out – oh, yes, Claire, it’s very late, I know, I know, but there must be some places, you can show us.’ Mary’s looking to her, a man on either side of her, gesturing.

For a minute, their faces change; Albe and Shelley stare at her, Mary smiling and lively between them. Only Polly-dolly’s missing, Claire thinks, suddenly.

But this isn’t Geneva. She’s not pregnant. She’s not eighteen. She’s not caught between.

She always swore she never would be again.

Ugly feelings mix inside her.

Tell her now, they say. Wipe off that smile of hers.

She thought she’d forgiven Mary. Thought that business was done a long time ago.

‘There’s something you have to know, Mary,’ she says, but Knox interrupts her.

‘I know the perfect place – if we hurry. Madame Clairmont, how long will it take you to dress? Come with us,’ he says, but she refuses to join them. They decide they’ll leave without her.

‘I’ll never forgive you,’ she mutters as he goes.

He only smiles.

It’s almost noon when she wakes. She doesn’t know what time Mary came home, didn’t even hear her come through her bedroom into the little anteroom beyond.

Claire heats up some coffee in the kitchen, goes through to the salon. She’ll let Mary sleep on, if only to have some peace and quiet. Claire’s dreams were lurid, shocking; she’s as tired as if she hadn’t had any sleep at all.

Only when she’s making a small lunch for herself does she think she should wake Mary, so she goes into the anteroom.

Mary isn’t there. Her bed’s untidy, untouched since she rose yesterday after her headache. Claire hesitates, then justifies to herself what she’s about to do.

Mary’s things are put away messily. So she’s changed there, too, from the fastidious girl she once was. It doesn’t take Claire long, though, to find them.

Gatteschi’s notes.

His hand is small, neat. Hints at nothing more than affection. She sits down on the little bed.

For the second time, then, she resolves to tell her herself.

And so the day passes in waiting. Pacing back and forth along the vestibule, waiting for Mary to arrive. By sunset, she still hasn’t appeared.

She thinks about sending a note to Lady Sussex. Wonders about Knox, but doesn’t know if he’s at his usual hotel. The lease on his apartment won’t have begun yet – perhaps she can persuade him to cancel it, if he can. She hasn’t forgiven him, though.

Wavering between secrecy and revelation doesn’t do her any good. She eats a little, but it doesn’t stay inside her for long. By nightfall, there’s still no Mary, and so she’s unable to sleep, even though she’s more tired than she’s ever been. When light breaks at about three, she has an insane thought of walking the streets, in case Mary is lying there, injured or abandoned.

She goes back to sleep, waking every hour until eight, when she rises, dresses clumsily, chews some bread, but doesn’t bother with coffee.

It’s time to visit Lady Sussex. And fetch Mary, if that’s where she is.

‘Is it serious? Dear God, don’t let it be serious.’ She’s not ready for Mary to leave her. The other half of her? The Christabel to her Geraldine. The Idalie to her Marietta. After all they’ve shared.

‘She’s not at death’s door just yet.’ Lady Sussex smirks a little, but that’s her way; it doesn’t ease Claire’s worry. Lady Sussex would smirk at tragedy, yet bawl like a babe if she broke a fingernail.

‘Why so quiet, then?’ The house is in darkness, too; the drapes in the hall are shut and all the doors closed.

Lady Sussex leads her upstairs, candle in hand. ‘Noise makes her bleat like a lamb. I can’t bear it,’ she says. ‘Can you persuade her to move back to your apartment? She thinks Gatteschi is here, but I think she is dreaming. Though there is no fever, at least.’

Lady Sussex opens a door to the left of the upper hall. Usually, Claire would burst in – that being her way – but for some reason, she’s reluctant. The black of the room beyond is swallowing up the light from the candle; Lady Sussex doesn’t hand it to her, but slides past along the corridor, taking the light with her.

‘Mary?’ Claire whispers, and the blackness swallows the word, too, so she finds herself covering her mouth in case it takes more.

Then something stirs. She peers in the direction of the noise; a voice, feeble and hoarse, replies with one matching word. ‘Claire.’

The bed’s in the middle of the room, she tsks when she bumps against it. Heavy drapes shut out the daylight, but when she goes to open them, Mary says, ‘No light, please. I can’t bear it.’

So she must grope about for the bedposts, pad her way up the blankets to Mary herself. She can just make her out. Mary’s eyes are shut fast, her face pinched in pain. Even in the dark, though, her golden hair gleams, sparse as it is. Her dry lips are cracked, and the loose skin at her jaw is the colour of gruel. She swallows.

Mary’s an aged princess from a folk tale gone wrong.

‘What’s wrong with you, Mary?’ she whispers. ‘Frances said you wouldn’t let them tell me.’

‘Wouldn’t I? I don’t remember. My head aches.’

‘You didn’t want a doctor, either. I have to write to Percy—’

‘No – no, don’t worry him, it’ll pass. I feel better today than yesterday.’

‘You must go home, back to him.’

‘But I can’t leave Ferdinando – he needs me.’

Claire sniffs. There’s a basin on the floor beside the bed; watery vomit. On the nightstand is a jug of water and a cloth. She dips a cloth in the water, wets Mary’s lips with it. The gesture recalls something – little Dunia in a fever, all those years ago. Her stomach turns.

‘I can’t keep anything down,’ says Mary. ‘My head—’

‘I know you don’t want to leave, but I’m insisting.’

‘Then do me a favour first,’ Mary says. The old Mary, bartering as ever. So she must be feeling better.

A flutter of hope tickles in Claire’s chest. ‘If I can, will you agree to go home?’

‘Ferdinando,’ Mary says, ignoring her question. ‘I want to – support him. But I need – let me borrow it from you. A few hundred francs. I will repay it when I am home.’

‘No.’

‘Claire!’ Mary struggles to get up on her elbows, falls back. ‘I beg you.’

‘I don’t think—’

‘What can it cost – after all you owe me?’ Mary’s shaking under the covers. This is making her worse, getting her so distressed.

‘All right, all right. I have – two hundred. I can give him that.’

‘And I must find him a publisher in England – people have to know about his cause. Perhaps Edward Moxon. He wants a book from me about my travels . . .’ Mary hasn’t the breath to carry on.

Claire murmurs something about ‘when you’re better’, but Mary is shielding her eyes again.

‘It’s such an effort to open them when I’m taken like this.’ Mary, the genius. Mary, the one they all gathered round. How to bear it if she doesn’t get well?

Claire tiptoes out of the room after a while, once Mary is sleeping, lets herself out of the house.

Back in her apartment, she counts out the two hundred francs that Mary’s asked for. The next morning, after a fretful night, expecting a note announcing Mary’s death at any moment, she returns to Lady Sussex’s.

The news is better, though. ‘My maid tells me she’s eaten a little dry toast,’ says Lady Sussex when she’s shown in. ‘And sipped some hot water. She’s kept it down. I think it is passing.’

But feeling better doesn’t mean Mary has changed her mind. The drapes are open a little, and she’s sitting up, supported by pillows. Her face is still pale, but there’s a spark in her eyes.

Claire pulls the notes from her purse. ‘I don’t approve, you know that.’

‘He loves me,’ Mary says, staring at the window.

‘Oh, Mary, for heaven’s sake. Think about Percy – what would he say?’

‘Percy will adore him as much as I do.’

‘You mean to take him to England? Where? You don’t even have lodgings for you and Percy yet—’

‘He is a hero and an angel and a martyr.’

‘I don’t trust him.’

‘I said I would never marry again, but . . . Not that he would insult me by presuming—’

‘I won’t listen to this.’

‘I must get well – for him.’

It takes a full week for Mary to be able to stand, to walk, to dress, and though Claire attends her every minute of that time – despite Mary telling her to go away, to leave her alone if she thinks she’s so foolish – she can’t influence her at all.

‘You know what Shelley thought,’ Mary says. ‘He would have given Ferdinando everything. He would have adored him, too.’

The ravings of a mad woman, Claire thinks, could not be any more deluded.

Just over three weeks later, Mary leaves Paris and goes back to England, where Percy has found them a temporary home. Percy’s grandfather, Sir Timothy Shelley, is still expected to die at any moment, just as Mary had said at the start of her stay. ‘Then we’ll be at Field Place,’ Mary tells Claire on the station platform. ‘You can come and stay – Gatteschi will come, too.’

Gatteschi had said goodbye to her last night in the apartment. Mary had been sending him notes every day, not being well enough to receive him as often as she wanted.

Claire hugs her sister, dwarfed by the train, feels her bones through the thin coat and dress, the lack of fat, the too-soft muscle.

She’s sending Percy his mother in a damaged state. Ruined. ‘In love’.

Back in her apartment, suddenly empty after longing for three weeks for Mary to be gone, getting her wish has Claire unexpectedly weeping in a chair.

‘You’re just exhausted, that’s all,’ she says aloud, forcing herself to sit straight. ‘And you’ve chased away Knox, too. So well done, Claire. Well done.’

Her little salon swelters in the August heat – the worst month in Paris, so everyone says. At least she’s inured to the smells from the streets now.

So she sends out her laundry; sweeps the floors; dusts and washes and tidies away, until it’s as though Mary was never there.

‘And now what do I do?’ She has no lessons to give; no visits to make. It will take her a while to adjust to this alone-ness. Betsy Kaisaroff has gone travelling with her daughter Natalie, searching for a suitor. Lady Sussex has been abrupt and rude since Mary’s illness. Jealous, she supposes, of Gatteschi’s attentions. And then wild letters from Lady Sussex start to arrive over the following days and weeks – accusing Mary of conducting an affair under her own roof, even while she was ill – until Claire wonders if the Paris air is turning women in their forties quite mad.

She’s even been tempted to write to Knox in England – presuming he is back in London – but to what end, she can’t be sure. She’s not ready to forgive him; can’t be sure she ever will. She dreads the thought of his rented apartment so close to hers, of his visits there with other women, even, now that she’s no longer available to him. How will she feel about that? Jealousy prods her, worries her into starting letters that she never finishes, never sends.

She’ll not be Mary, nor Lady Sussex. Mad women, crying over men young enough to be their sons.

Claire has no son. Will never have one.

What a strange thought, she thinks one afternoon in her apartment, sitting at the window. It’s early September but still hot. It’s not only strange, though; it’s unpleasant, pinching like a stitch in her side, and for no reason other than to hurt. She’s the new genus, she tells herself. The childless woman who eschewed marriage and supports herself.

Such women don’t have sons. And it occurs to her for the first time to wonder what better care might Albe have taken, if little Allegra had been a boy and not a girl? He’d expected a boy; thought to have a son in his own image, no doubt. Was he disappointed by Allegra’s birth?

It wasn’t a long labour, when she gave birth that afternoon in the boarding house in Bath. The pain was bearable, which surprised her; she’d expected to scream and cry, but she didn’t. The midwife who attended said she was ‘made for bearing children’. When she offered Claire the tiny creature to suckle – despite all the fashion for wet-nurses, she wouldn’t have one – and her baby took to the breast, easily and without fuss, Claire thought that her love was so great that it had to be kept secret, or surely all mothers would rise up in defence of their children, have whole empires at their mercy.

She hasn’t thought about that day since; has buried it somewhere – where, she doesn’t know, just as she doesn’t know where her daughter is buried, for Albe wouldn’t confide it. But no – she’s wrong. There was one day she remembered it all. The day Mary left to look for her dead husband; the day she pretended little Percy was hers.

But she never gave birth to him. Never did birth a boy. A mother to a single little girl, that was her destiny. A longing stirs inside her; she goes to her bureau, takes out the little locket with the single curl of hair, kisses it.

Perhaps she ought to tell her story after all. Perhaps the time is come, with all these thoughts of the past. While she’s here in Paris, Madame Clairmont of Montmartre.

It sounds like a pseudonym, she thinks. She’ll be a veritable Madame Montaigne, following the great essayist’s example, writing about her lived experiences.

But she’s only blotting the paper with ink. It’s hard, finding the right tone for Madame Clairmont. ‘The whole point is to be myself,’ she says aloud. ‘Speak as I would, as myself.’

She writes it down: Essays, by Claire Clairmont.

A dedication, to Mary’s mother: If I exert my talents in writing, I may support myself in a comfortable way. I am then going to be the first of a new genus – I tremble at the attempt.

A signature.

But those other voices keep interrupting her own.

Snowy fingers teaching witchcraft.

Like music on the waters.

Sweet voice.

It’s no good; they crowd her head, those other voices. Their words, their poetry. They have it all, they say; she has nothing. At one point, she even bites down on her lip, pricks her own thumb so that finally the spot of blood sits there, proof that she is not nothing.

But the page is still blank.

Eventually, she gets up, shakily, lifts her purse, her thin shawl, too, though she’ll hardly need it in this heat, and heads out of the apartment. Down the rickety, dark stairs into the thick, musky street of early evening. Her belly rumbles, but she doesn’t want food – she wants something else. Good women – mothers and wives – are indoors now; bad women – whores and serving girls – are the only ones abroad.

She doesn’t fit any of it, though, being none of these things.

Her hunger for whatever it is pulls her on, never minding the odd stare, or the odd comment. Along and to the riverbank, where the violinists play and the jugglers dance and poets and dreamers can gather in peace.

Little lights glint as she nears them; the smell of roasted chestnuts drifts on the warm air. The narrow streets don’t widen nearer the river; if anything, they pull together tighter, but she doesn’t mind that, hurries on to the water as though it’s going to give her an answer. She reaches the bank by the Pont d’Iéna, the sun setting over the rooftops, and the chatter of a crowd reaches her, looser, drunk, swaying in the air so that she wants to sway with it.

It’s only when she reaches the edge of a crowd watching a small boy perform acrobatics with his father that she can breathe. She gazes around her, at the assortment of folk: men and women, laughing, talking. People just like her; people who can’t give their names to things.

As she sways, smiling, enjoying herself, mixing in the throng, a hand catches her elbow and a voice whispers, ‘Bread and circuses defeat the revolutionary spirit – but do you believe what they say?’

It’s Gatteschi. She starts, twists round; he nods, gives her the kind of smile he uses to charm women. She can’t deny his beauty, his manners.

‘But you are such a clever woman, signora. How many revolutions are distracted in this way?’

Remembering Mary, she lifts her arm. She won’t succumb. ‘Signor Gatteschi. What a pleasure to see you.’

‘Revolution is the air we breathe. Whether we realise it or not.’

‘If you say so,’ she says. She hasn’t the patience for this talk. She’s heard it before. Gatteschi’s revolution is the kind that favours men, not women, she thinks.

She says so; he doesn’t take offence, which surprises her. ‘Ah,’ he says, and winks at her this time. ‘I wonder if you have persuaded Mary to give up our cause, too. Since she returned to you from Lady Sussex, I noticed the change. And I see it in her letters to me now.’ He heaves an exaggerated sigh.

‘I wish she would give it up,’ Claire says. She can’t help her rudeness.

‘You do not agree that she should support us?’

‘Why? It’s your fight, not hers,’ she says. Silently thankful, she spies a gap in the crowd. Without saying more, she worms her way into the space, ducking down to squeeze through to the edges. But he’s behind her, catches her as she pushes out from the bodies all around.

‘It is all our fight. Perhaps you can help us—’

‘Me?’ She laughs, but she’s thinking, how to get rid of him now? ‘I have even less money than Mary.’

‘No, I mean, if you were to press upon her for a sum—’

‘And why on earth would I do that?’

The evening sun has dipped beyond the horizon. Someone strikes up a merry tune on a fiddle, a kind of song from the east that makes her think suddenly of her time in Moscow and St Petersburg, of the Islavsky estate in the beautiful Russian countryside – and now the melancholy feeling returns. She turns away from Gatteschi, away from his games.

But he pulls her back.

‘Ah, the little lanes of Paris talk. What would Mary think of your intimacy with her friend, Signor Knox?’ He doesn’t say it in a sinister or threatening way. He’s holding his hands open, as though he’s pondering some mystery.

She can’t hide the dryness in her mouth.

‘What intimacy? Anyway, I’d deny whatever you said. Mary would believe me over you.’

‘Perhaps – but what if Signor Knox should not deny it? I did observe you both that night in your apartment, signora. His attention was – molto ovvio.’

Very obvious. Indeed, for Knox shows every feeling, can’t help it. Why she could never have him and Mary in the same room together. Ah, how foolish she’s been, though. To think she was empty, a void, when in fact she’s full – too full. Full of years and years and all that’s ever happened, and all that’s going to happen, too, because that’s inside her as well. The future’s hers, not Mary’s, she can say that honestly to herself. The future’s not for a sickly, deluded Mary.

But aren’t they sisters?

He tips his hat. ‘I am a gentleman. But hurry, please. Revolution – ah, she does not wait forever.’ He bows; she wants to laugh in his face, show him he can’t frighten or alarm her.

But she says nothing, just stares, as he turns around and walks away.

He means it, though, sending her a note a few days later, reminding her of what he needs her to encourage Mary to give. How much to keep quiet about her affare segreto? He takes good care to mention that many times. He knows she cannot show his letter to Mary now.

She knows she should confess all to Mary, straightaway. If she doesn’t, who knows what harm this man will do? She is past saving, Claire thinks, rather grimly, at her desk. She has no son to protect, as Mary has. She has no great poet husband’s reputation to maintain. She has no reputation of her own, even. Gatteschi can do what he likes to her.

But to Mary – that frail, sickly sister of hers? He could ruin her.

So at first, Claire keeps to her apartment, the shutters closed, pretending to be gone. To have quit Paris.

She searches for a way to speak to Mary, without telling her what she doesn’t need to know, only what she does.

Just enough to save her from Gatteschi. Just enough for that.

Gatteschi is not what you think he is. I have heard terrible things about his conduct here. You must not write to him, and if he writes to you, destroy his letters immediately. Do not even read them. He is the most untrustworthy of men . . .

But she’s been too blunt. Mary doesn’t understand; her reply comes flying back.

I grieve very much you do not get on better with him, for the more I see of him the more I esteem his character; which seems to me singularly frank, confiding, and true. Only a few kind words and a little gentle management are required. Why are you so determined to think evil of our friends?

One morning, though, Claire’s maid Stephanie, who is friends with a housemaid at Lady Sussex’s, tells her of a fight.

‘She has given Monsieur Gatteschi hundreds of francs!’ Stephanie whispers in French in her little kitchen, as though spies are listening. ‘Pauvre Madame Sussex!’

Claire hasn’t opened a letter from Lady Sussex in weeks.

‘But that is not all! Lord Sussex came upon them arguing in the house – he returned very unexpected. He came at Monsieur Gatteschi – there was much screaming from Madame – and my friend, she thought that they might kill one another, for Lord Sussex attacked Monsieur Gatteschi!’

Gatteschi’s beautiful face.

‘Was it very bad?’ Claire says.

‘He will not see out of one eye for many weeks, and he will not eat steak for a while,’ Stephanie says, and laughs a little. ‘Lord Sussex learned to box at school, you know.’

Claire writes it all down in another letter to Mary.

So you must see, dear Mary, that you must end your friendship with him, and all thoughts of love, and marriage, and anything else that might commit you to him. I beg of you, do not open any more of his letters to you. Do not give him money and do not listen to him.

She only knows bluntness with Mary. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s all she’s ever known.

Mary thinks she’s gone mad.

Tells her she’s heard all sorts of things about her from Gatteschi. That she’s become the talk of Paris, with her wild looks. That she’s not eating and is hallucinating evil spirits.

What is wrong with you, Claire? I have asked Knox to look in on you when he is over in Paris – please do not hide from him. I must know what is causing such sickness in you, I am so very troubled by what I hear.

On and on, Mary goes.

Ah, what can she do here? She’ll leave for London, that’s what she’ll do. Confront Mary face to face. Find the courage to admit it all, though Gatteschi hasn’t told Mary about Claire and Knox yet.

She has to end what she is being put through. She’s not eating, not going out, not speaking with anyone. Gatteschi’s not wrong, she thinks, catching sight of herself in the mirror in her bedroom the day after Mary’s letter arrives. She’s worn through, thinner and sallower in her face than ever.

Once she makes a decision, she rarely changes her mind. Yes – she’ll go back to England. And so, she starts to pack. It is a rainy, breezy autumn morning, when the streets run with all kinds of detritus, only to be clogged by leaves at every turn.

She sits first at her desk in the bedroom for courage. Takes out the locket, the packet of letters, the precious things she can’t ever leave behind, no matter where she goes.

‘It’s all I ever do. Run from place to place,’ she says aloud. This threatens tears so much that she alarms even herself. What a mess. How to get out of it, when the only answer is to run away?

She can’t hold them back. Tears turn to sobs, sobs to something louder, so loud she doesn’t hear it at first.

Then it comes again.

That insistent, sharp knock of his that she hasn’t heard in weeks.

She lifts her head from the desk, wipes her eyes, sniffs hard.

It won’t be him. And anyway, she wants no rescuer. She’s a new genus . . . not some feeble woman down on her luck.

‘Claire! Claire!’

Yes, yes – it’s him. She gets out of her chair, goes to the door, presses her palm against it.

‘Are you there?’ he says. ‘Then let me in!’

V.

Este, 1818

‘Mama! Mama!’

Finger to her lips. Shelley’s working in the summer house. But Allegra – she named her Alba at her birth, thinking to win over her father with that nod to his pet name, Albe, but he insisted on Allegra and now she likes it – is not to be put off. A year and seven months old she is, and running as fast as the days themselves.

‘You come to me,’ Claire says, getting up from the grass, beckoning.

But the little girl has a devil in her, shaking her fair curls, pouting smudged lips. The sun catches the cleft in her chin. The whole world will know one day who gave her that, and it’s not her mother. ‘Mama comes to me.’

‘Ah, don’t I always?’

Scooping her up, hugging too hard because they were only reunited yesterday after four long months apart. The child’s father has been better than she feared, though – so what does it matter if he ignores her letters, even ones about their daughter? She showed her annoyance about that, in her last one to him. But Shelley was on her side, just as he’d promised. And now her little girl is here in her arms, where she belongs, wriggling and squealing.

Claire presses her nose to the top of her head, smells lavender and orange blossom. She’s bathed her already this morning, after sleeping curled round her all night. Like a craving it is, this need for her child’s skin on her own. For greedy, hot little fingers digging into her neck. A mutual need, because her daughter can’t surely live without her mama, and Mama can’t surely live without her baby.

And yet they’ve lived without one another these last four months. A terrible, dragging life, endless and empty, just days she endured until she had Allegra back again. So how in God’s name will she hand her back, when autumn comes? It’ll be eight months apart this time, eight months before they see one another again – no, no, it’s not possible. Allegra will have changed too much in that time. Will have learned without her mama by her side.

This was never a good idea. No matter how much Albe could do for her child. She was wrong to agree to it.

So Claire is fretting, even as she’s clasping the plump little legs, tickling her daughter’s bare feet, making her giggle and shriek.

‘But we must be quiet for Shelley,’ she whispers in the child’s ear. It’s no use; Claire can’t resist tickling her more, until the child squirms away at last, runs to the summer house to call for him.

When he comes to the door, though, he’s in good humour, pale as he is, for he’s been writing all night. He pretends to be a great bear, roaring. Allegra screams in delight, runs back to her mother’s arms.

‘I hope Clara will be as quick as Allegra has been to walk and talk,’ he says, stretching out his arms behind his back. He loosens his shirt in the noon sun; she’s wearing the lightest dress she has, no shift beneath, only drawers. Her hair’s up, but loose; her skin’s turning brown again. He gets on his knees beside them – ‘Ah, I creak like old floorboards; these nights sitting at a desk are not . . .’ – but Allegra reaches for his fringe, puts the end of it in her mouth, which brings him lower, until he’s lying on the grass. ‘I’d like Clara to have her sense of mischief, too,’ he says. ‘She’s too serious a baby yet.’

‘Clara’s only one,’ Claire says. Willmouse is three. The two of them have distracted her from her own child, missing from her arms since April. But they reminded her, too, and the reminding was a constant ache, a wound she’s never felt before. Well, she wasn’t a mother before. Allegra has changed everything.

‘You don’t think Albe will tire of her, do you? She is mischievous. Does he like that, do you think? Is that why he asked the Hoppners to look after her?’

Fretting, fretting. She can’t help it.

‘He didn’t give any sign of being tired of her when I saw him.’ Albe’s in Venice, at the Palazzo Mocenigo. Shelley went there alone to arrange the collection of Allegra. Mrs Hoppner is the wife of the English consul-general, a kind woman. But she isn’t the child’s mother, and he thinks Allegra has felt the lack – says so. Claire doesn’t know whether to be pleased or distressed by this.

‘I think he felt it wasn’t – ah, the right place for a child.’

She’s heard the talk; it was all over Venice. The wild nights and wilder women, frequenting the palazzo day and night. Albe’s worse than he ever was, it seems.

No, Allegra can’t be in a house like that. Not with a father like that. She’ll come to harm. See things she shouldn’t see.

‘But he knows it might look worse,’ Shelley says, yawning in the sun, ‘placing Allegra with strangers. He did say so. He wants to be a good father, I believe that. As much as he can be. As any of us can be.’ His voice lowers, ends in muttering.

Charles and Ianthe, his children by Harriet, who’s dead now – Harriet, who walked into the Serpentine after being made pregnant by some soldier not long after they got back from Geneva that summer, weighing herself down with stones, so they said – live with their grandparents. Shelley hasn’t seen them in over two years; won’t ever see them again, if Harriet’s parents have their way.

Perhaps that’s been plaguing him, too. What they both must do without. Why he seems hard to her own plight with Allegra sometimes.

She won’t make excuses for Albe, though. Allegra staggers across the grass to pick handfuls of it over by the rose bushes. ‘You told me he said I could have “it”.’ She lowers her voice, as if her child might understand if she heard them. ‘How can he refer to his own daughter like that?’

‘Oh, that’s only how he is, you know that. How they all are, his – class.’

‘You don’t speak that way. Yes, I know, I know, you’re not the same, but still—’

‘But still, he’s right about some things. When we spoke – yes, I know it would have been better if you’d been there to see the expression on his face, hear his voice. Perhaps that would settle you more. But if I even mention your name, he gets such a black look—’

‘That’s what worries me,’ she mutters, but he carries on.

‘And he said again that it wouldn’t be the wisest decision for you to keep her. He wasn’t thinking about himself. He was thinking about you.’

She snorts in disbelief.

‘Let us think the best of him,’ he says. ‘It’s true that he did say at our meeting that he’d support you both if you kept her – do you believe him when he says what you want to hear?’

‘No – and I don’t trust his change of heart. It’s for his own comfort only – his house is in such chaos, and he’s rarely sober, so I hear. Even he knows he can’t have a child with him.’

‘Ah – but you didn’t see his face when he said it. He knows that what he’s saying, that he would support you and Allegra living together, is impossible for you to carry out. He knows it would be the end of any ambitions you have for yourself.’

‘So he thinks to torture me with an offer I can’t accept.’

‘No. I think – that he doesn’t know what’s best, perhaps. For you, for Allegra. For himself. He flits from one decision to another. He wants to do the best thing, I feel. It’s very hard on him.’

‘Poor Albe,’ she says, sarcastically. Shelley tsks, shakes his head.

The sun is full in their faces. Allegra returns with a handful of grass, which she deposits on her mother’s lap. Claire shades her daughter’s fair hair with her hand. ‘We must get her a hat,’ she says.

Shelley runs inky fingers through his hair, pushing the long fringe upright, where it stays, stuck with sweat. Closes his eyes to the sun. Ink splodges pattern his shirt, the same one he’s been wearing three days in a row. His breastbone sticks out. ‘I know you want to alter the arrangement you made with him,’ he says, quietly, ‘but it’s the best one, believe me. And he’s been reasonable. More so than we expected—’

She nips the inside of her mouth, tears a little of the skin. ‘You said you had to pretend I wasn’t in Venice when you saw him,’ she says. ‘So it only works on a lie.’

‘Let’s call it – oh, only an omission of mine.’

‘Did he ask where I was?’

‘I said you were in Padua.’

‘Not an omission, then, is it?’ she calls out, because now he’s up and walking away, back towards the summer house, Allegra in his arms. He tips her upside down, much to her joy, little skirts falling over her head, chubby arms waving.

Albe’s been generous, though, that’s true enough, giving up this house, which he’d taken for himself, so that she could stay here with Allegra. Remind yourself, count them up. The good things he’s done.

‘He doesn’t like it when you’re high-handed with him,’ Shelley had said.

So it’s her own fault, writing as she did to him.

I have said nothing definitively because I knew what a very unnatural thing you would think it that I should interfere with my own child . . .

. . . I dare say that you rejoice that I shall not see my child because you will then know that there is one person in the world more miserable than yourself.

‘Well, he should try and better understand my position,’ she’d said.

Ah, but he’s right about that, too. Pretend, lie, let him do the negotiations – and Allegra will be with her every summer.

A stray cloud passes over the sun for a moment, dulling the sight of her little girl picking at the grass. Claire feels a slight panic. So many obstacles could arise each summer; Albe changes his mind with the direction of the wind. And if Allegra should ever fall ill – she’d not be there by her side, unless Albe let her, unless Shelley interceded for her.

She’s caught between them again. Something inside her tips as though she’s at sea; that dream she had of the three of them, two summers ago, in the boat on the lake at night . . . but no, this isn’t the same thing. Not the same thing at all.

Albe doesn’t mean well. He means to torture her. That’s all it is.

‘I sent for Mary this morning to come and join us straight away,’ Shelley’s saying now, over his shoulder. Allegra is righted and clinging to his hair, arms round his head. ‘You know I didn’t like leaving her – and then we’ll be exactly as I told Albe: Mary and I, with our children, you and Allegra. Omission, you see – of time, that’s all. Nine or ten days it should take her, if she leaves Lucca when she gets my letter. You want to see Willmouse and Clara, don’t you?’ he says to the little girl, whose face is level with his. She nods; he kisses her; sets her down.

‘Albe fears seeing you, he said it that way,’ he’d first told her after his meeting with Albe two days ago. ‘Fears the consequence of it being an addition to the family—’

He’d winked; Claire was surprised. ‘He said that?’ That he might still want her – resent the wanting, yes, but not be rid of it yet – after two years apart. Well, she could surely use that to her own cause.

‘He’s right to fear it, though,’ Shelley said. ‘You don’t want another Allegra. Imagine what that would do. I don’t think he’d ever recover.’

Another Allegra! But could there ever be another child so delightful, so beautiful, so perfect in every way?

Claire seizes her child’s little hand, leads her into the house, Shelley following on behind. Inside, the walls are old and cool. Set high on top of a hill, the breezes that reach them here are fresher and stronger than those in Venice. Elise was right when she wrote that alarming way about Allegra’s health three weeks ago. No wonder Shelley had sprung into action the minute she read out the letter. Mary’s protests about him leaving wouldn’t change his mind; and how Claire loves him for that, for bringing her with him to fetch her child from Albe.

And now Allegra blooms every minute that passes. She was pale, when Claire first saw her, carried in Shelley’s arms from the carriage when he arrived back in Este from Venice. A little subdued. She’d thought, Has he been cruel to you, your father? But Allegra’s face only brightens when she hears the name Albe. Or ‘Papa’. There’s no sign of mistreatment, of callousness. Maybe she doesn’t need to worry.

Another good thing, then. Count them up.

She can never thank Elise enough for the warning, though, so in the kitchen where the older woman is busy kneading dough, Claire creeps behind her, winds arms about her waist. She’s like an older sister now – older than Mary, but only by a few years. Not old enough to be her own mother – not nearly old enough. But Elise has a motherly air both she and Mary lack, Claire thinks. Elise is broad, sturdy, wide-hipped, sensible. She has a maternal kind of sensuousness; Elise is all about soothing, not with words but with hands. It’s Elise who lays cool cloths on hot foreheads; Elise who rubs angry bellies with lavender oil; Elise who dries wet cheeks with her bare fingers.

Dirt and mess don’t alarm Elise the way they do Mary. In that respect, she and Shelley are alike, though he wouldn’t ever think to clear dirt and mess away.

Today, though, Elise is unhappy. ‘Don’t do that,’ she mutters, pushing Claire’s arms away. Claire feels the rejection like a little stab at first, but bounces back with a kiss on her cheek instead.

Elise merely heaves a sigh, wipes her cheek with floury white fingers. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, then shrugs like a child.

Allegra is standing still, watching them both, thumb in her mouth.

Elise taps the little girl’s hand. ‘You will spoil its shape when you are older,’ she says, then wags a finger at her. Allegra puts her thumb right back in her mouth, watching her all the while. Elise’s eyes fill with tears; she wipes her hands on her apron and disappears from the room.

‘Whatever’s the matter with her?’ Claire says to Shelley, amazed. But he’s pouring himself a cup of coffee, doesn’t reply. She tries again. ‘She’s very cross today, don’t you think? Not her usual self.’

Shelley’s dreamy look is back, though – so he’s elsewhere again, she thinks, already back with his poem and the summer house.

‘Take care in the sun,’ he murmurs, as he steps outside again, shading his eyes.

The kitchen is silent.

‘Well, this isn’t so very good, is it?’ Claire says to Allegra, picking off a piece of the dough on the table. She nibbles it, gives some to the little girl.

Elise shuffles back in, flush-faced and swollen-eyed. Claire thinks what to say, instead of the obvious. ‘Can you make those biscotti that Allegra loves so much? They’re good for her teeth.’

It works; Elise smiles. Perhaps she’s missing her own daughter, though she saw her recently.

Ah, all these children, living apart from their mothers.

Claire had intended to be as her own mother was; as Mary’s mother was. Keeping her child by her, always. But that would mean marrying. As her mother did, and Mary’s mother, too. In the end, that’s always what it means.

Allegra tugs at her skirts, wanting to go outside again.

‘For your child, though? Why wouldn’t you marry?’ Mary had asked her not so long after she and Shelley got married. With Harriet so suddenly dead, for that brief moment, he was free. Mary had moved fast.

‘Why not show the world it can be done without marrying? That it’s possible to have both,’ Claire had said. ‘My child with me; and my independence.’

‘Independence of a sort; you’d always need Albe’s support,’ Mary had said, and that was an end of it. His support will never come without cruelty. Even if Claire could have Allegra with her always, he’d find a way to hurt them both.

She has two fears that constrain her in her letters to him now, though he’d deny she shows any constraint at all; he has complained to Shelley about her tone, her words, her refusal to be humble. She fears his capacity for cruelty, and she fears his capacity for indifference. Which would be worse, for a tiny being in his care?

There’s been no cruelty towards Allegra, but sending her to the Hoppners speaks of his indifference.

Her fears don’t ease but bloom throughout the day. Spread themselves into every corner of her, her brain, her body, her fingers and toes, so that by evening, when Allegra’s asleep on her cot in her room – that upturned mouth! Those golden curls! That such a cherub could be hers makes her tremble with fears for her – and they’re sitting outside on a rug as a fiery sun bleeds orange over the valley below, and the ruined castle of the Medicis to their right is full of owls and bats flying around, she’s tingling with them, can’t stop voicing them all over again.

‘But Albe doesn’t recommend it. Don’t you understand? He’s not in favour of it,’ Shelley says, yawning and lifting his arms behind his head. She catches a whiff of his odour, thick and musty but sweet, too. He hasn’t washed in days.

‘Might that not be worked upon, though?’

He has to see she’ll not give up.

‘Very imprudent, was how he put it. I don’t see how that’s “worked upon”.’

‘But you did “work upon” it a little.’

He’s getting exasperated now, shifts on the rug beside her. She pulls the shawl – the one he gave her – around her shoulders even though the temperature’s as warm as daytime. ‘Little lies are necessary – with him. I explained that. But to keep Allegra? To depend upon him to provide for you both – with everything you’ll need as she grows up, her education, her place in the world? She sings like you – she has your musical ability. Think what career Albe could provide her with.’

Claire wants Allegra to be whatever she wants to be when she grows up. But yes, that music in the little girl delights her. She may have her father’s chin, his mouth, his Byronic forehead. But her little voice, singing – that’s all from her mother.

‘Ah, Claire. Imagine the lies. When he doesn’t even want you in the same city as him. We’d never be done lying, all of us. What a mess it would be.’

There has to be an answer for that somewhere; she blinks, rubs her eyes, as if it’ll suddenly appear out of the bracken hills below. Untended olive trees rustle in the breeze. It’s not the Medicis, who once owned this place, though, that she thinks of. It’s the Romans. Maybe a Roman family settled here, on this hill, once. And now, nothing remains. They’re long gone, forgotten.

‘We know how to lie,’ she murmurs. ‘We are experts at it. My mama still doesn’t know about Allegra.’

‘And how hard it’s been to keep that from her. What do you think—?’

But from the house behind them, the noise of rummaging interrupts.

They pause. Mosquitos buzz, now that cicadas have quietened. Some bats screech about the ruins.

A woman coughs, then mutters. Just Elise, then. Claire is about to call to her to join them, when a door shuts. She’s gone to bed, most likely. Claire will look in on her when she turns in; their bedrooms are next to one another. Shelley’s is on the ground floor, nearest the kitchen. Mary would prefer that, he’d said.

‘Have you noticed how Elise has been today?’

He’s been busy translating, adapting. Prometheus Unbound, his new work is to be called. Inspired by Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. No – of course he hasn’t noticed.

‘Tell me,’ he says, instead of answering, ‘what do you make of this?’ He takes a page from his satchel, pushes it in front of her. ‘Read it out for me.’

But she won’t be put off. ‘I can’t really remember how she was in April – when she left with Allegra. Well, I wouldn’t have. Did you? Did you notice anything odd about her then?’

Drumming his fingers; rubbing his face that way. No; he’s not well yet at all.

‘You weren’t so well, either,’ she says, stroking his arm to pacify what’s inside him. ‘I forget that. What happened with the pistol and—’

‘It was an accident. I told you.’

‘Yes – but Mary’s still not mentioned it. I’d never have known if you hadn’t said—’

‘Just an accident,’ he mutters again.

‘But an accident with a pistol—’

He gets up, flings his arms about, swatting at mosquitos. ‘Ah, ghosts and ghouls come out to play here, did you know? Albe said the place is haunted. When it was a monastery, a monk was tortured by the Medicis. You can hear him shrieking, when the wind’s right.’

He comes up beside her, blows at her cheek in the dark. He likes her trembling, afraid.

She’s cross, suddenly. ‘You’d tell me, if they came again?’ she says. ‘The visions you get sometimes—’

He falls back onto his chair as if she’d shot him. But she has to know.

‘It wasn’t that, that made me do it.’

‘So what did?’

‘A mistake.’

She waits.

Silence.

‘What mistake?’

He doesn’t answer. She waits again, then he says, ‘With the pistol, was all it was. It needed to be discharged. Away from everyone. So I went to the woods by myself. That’s all. Mary was quite fine about it. The police made a fuss because – because they think everyone with a weapon here is agitatore politico.’

But his hands are restless again. She tries to still them, placing her own on his. He doesn’t look at her, just gazes down at the threadbare rug.

‘I’ll help Elise tomorrow,’ she says at last. ‘Perhaps she wants rest.’

He doesn’t answer, but picks up the page he handed her. ‘I see what’s missing now – I want ink,’ he says, and then he’s off, trailing through the darkness to the summer house, a single candle flickering in his hand. She watches the flame disappear through the trees, then takes up her glass and goes inside. Her arms want Allegra. While she has her.

Comfort and fretting, side by side, equal companions.

‘Mary’ll have set off by now,’ he says. It’s three days later; Elise’s mood has worsened, but she won’t accept help in the house. ‘Five days travelling – and then they’ll be here.’

He’s still pale, avoiding the sun as much as he does. But he’s cheerier this morning, whistles a tune while he holds Allegra’s hands, does a little dance with her. They’re in the kitchen; Elise has been making biscotti every day, with different flavours. Cinnamon. Vanilla. Apricot.

‘I want to start teaching her soon,’ she says. ‘Only as Rousseau has it, don’t worry. You think I should set up a desk and chair?’

He smiles.

‘Games that adults play, but ones of a size for children. Rousseau, like I said.’

He nods, pleased. Rousseau is the key to her future as a governess. He thinks she’s reconciled, then, to their original plan.

He won’t have to explain to Mary why Claire’s still with them, not once she’s placed in work with a good family. But if she reneges on the plan and keeps Allegra – ah, it’s Mary’s fear that she’ll never be rid of Claire.

And Mary’s moods are Shelley’s fear.

She blows her daughter a kiss; Allegra blows one back, aided by little fingers opening and closing, as though she’s releasing kisses like tiny birds. Claire laughs. Forget Mary. And her moods. Let her hand over Clara. Let her hand over Willmouse. Let her try with one of her two children, and see how hard it is to do!

‘Truffle hunting can start us off,’ she says, chewing on one of the biscotti. ‘Elise told me what to look for, but it doesn’t matter if we don’t find any.’

‘Take this with you,’ Elise says, coming into the kitchen. She hands over a basket with bread and cheese, and more apricots, which are Allegra’s favourite. A flagon of milk. Elise’s eyes are hooded, with dark circles underneath. She has not been sleeping. Claire has heard her every night, pacing back and forth across the flagstones of the room next to hers, light slaps as she goes.

Shelley waves as he heads off to the summer house; Claire thanks Elise, wants to hug her, but she’s already left, too, in the opposite direction.

‘Ah well, my girl,’ she says to Allegra, who’s bouncing up and down on tiny heels, ‘it’s just the two of us. Ready for adventure?’

Through the olive grove they go, then the woods that lead down the side of the valley. Where the brush is slippery, for it’s very dry on these hot days, she grips her daughter’s hand, or scoops her up on her hip. She wonders about wild boars in these parts. Other dangers she isn’t used to thinking of, having only had herself to worry about.

They leave off truffle hunting after a while, though, as it’s so hot. Claire picks a few fruits she recognises, a few olives, some pretty stones for a counting game. They sit under a tree for shade. She keeps expecting Allegra to tire, but the little girl chatters on to herself, nonsense she can’t make out.

It’s idyllic.

‘Drink all your milk,’ Claire says, pouring some into the cup Elise has packed. The sun plays with the breeze, winking through the leaves above. Allegra’s making games in her head with ghostly little friends, Claire thinks. Willmouse and Clara, maybe. She’ll be excited to see them again. She’ll have missed them when she was with Albe, and then at the Hoppners’.

Claire frowns, swallows her bread and cheese. She must make it clear to Albe what her daughter is used to. Little companions. Play. Not sleeping alone. Regularity in her surroundings. Not being passed on to strangers, no matter how kindly or well-intentioned.

If she makes it difficult for him, maybe he’ll think it easier to let Allegra stay with her, and support them both from afar. So maybe she’ll not be the educator she hoped to be, the one that Shelley has trained her to be.

Too many other people deciding what she should do, should be, should have – and then she hears it. Unmistakeable. The sound of someone weeping.

She glances down at Allegra, who hasn’t noticed. Maybe she imagined it. No – there it is again. Weeping, sniffing, coughing. Coming from the bank rising behind the trees on her left.

She doesn’t want to leave Allegra on her own, but someone might be in trouble, might need help.

‘Wait here,’ she says to her daughter. ‘Promise me?’

Allegra nods solemnly. Claire gets up slowly, brushes crumbs off her dress. Takes small steps over the brush. Allegra watches; Claire gives her a wave, and the little girl waves back.

She climbs up the bank, holding on to brush, slipping slightly. Behind her, Allegra is still watching. Claire cranes her head to see as she nears the top; recognises the dark bun of hair, the motherly slope of the neck.

‘Ah, Elise!’ she says.

Elise hides her face.

Claire glances behind her; Allegra waves again. ‘Please, come down and tell me what’s wrong!’

There’s a flat basket on the ground full of odd-looking leaves. She reaches for it; Elise snatches it away. Suddenly, Allegra sets up a wail.

‘Oh, my goodness – I’m coming, Mama’s here – Elise, come down to me – Allegra’s hurt!’ she says, sliding down the bank. Her daughter is holding out her middle finger, her little face screwed up and furious. Something has bitten her; there’s already a red weal on the soft skin.

Claire thinks Elise has abandoned them, but no – she’s right beside her.

‘Use this,’ she says, taking a small pot from her pocket.

‘It’s not poisonous; is it poisonous?’

Elise examines the spot; Allegra is still screaming, tears covering her cheeks. ‘No – it is not poison. A wasp, I think.’

‘Oh, my darling.’ Claire dabs ointment from the pot onto Allegra’s finger, pulls her onto her lap. The pain – and the wails – subside. Elise sits beside them in silence. The heat rises; Allegra’s eyes close.

In a low voice, so as not to wake her daughter, Claire says, ‘I understand if you don’t want to tell me. But if you want my help, I’m here.’

Elise doesn’t move.

‘Are you unwell?’ Claire asks, nodding at the basket of herbs. She can smell basil, thyme, lavender, mint. And something else that’s bitter, something familiar. She shivers. Pennyroyal. A scent she never wants to smell again. But it can’t be that.

‘I cannot stay with you all forever,’ Elise says, her eyes on a sleeping Allegra. ‘Ah – he loves her as if she were his own.’

‘He’s always had a weakness for children,’ Claire says, uncertain of Elise’s meaning. ‘I don’t understand – you won’t go with Allegra back to her father, do you mean?’

‘It never strikes you that I might have need of my own – time? My own life? Not always yours?’

She sounds so angry that Claire’s shocked. ‘You talk as though you hate us. But you’re one of us. You’ve been with us since Geneva, I can’t imagine you not—’

‘One of you, yes,’ says Elise. ‘Except when it is – inconvenient.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Claire says. ‘I’m sorry – perhaps I’m being blind. Has someone offended you? Is it Albe? Or has Shelley been unkind? He’s distracted – ah, but you know how he is when he’s writing.’

Elise lifts her chin, opens her mouth as if to say something, closes it again. Then she gets to her feet, clutching the basket to her.

Claire wakes Allegra. ‘You can trust me,’ she says. ‘I’ll help. I don’t want you to leave us.’

But Elise only shakes her head, then heads up the hill so fast she’s soon out of sight. Allegra babbles as they wind their own way slowly through the trees to the top of the hill. She’s proud of her hurt finger now, wants her mother to admire it.

By the time they’re back, Allegra is tired, clinging to her hip and needing her nap. Claire is about to take a shortcut to the house, but a raised voice near the summer house reaches her, changing her mind.

Up ahead, Elise is at the summer house door, shouting and gesticulating.

‘Good lord, what now?’ Claire mutters. She leaves the basket on the grass and sets down Allegra, hurries towards the summer house. But Elise runs off before she gets there, and Shelley has shut the summer house door.

She goes back to fetch Allegra, then heads into the kitchen instead. Elise is nowhere to be seen.

‘Sleepy time,’ she tells Allegra, leading her to the bedroom and helping her onto her own bed. The little girl is asleep in seconds. Claire waits, listening; nothing stirs but the chirrup of cicadas outside. She checks the child’s forehead for a temperature, or any sign the sting has caused further harm, but all’s well. Chubby little arms reach up as if in welcome; pale eyelashes flutter. Such a wave of adoration rolls through her then that it almost brings her to weeping. She lies on the bed to cradle her daughter. ‘Just a minute or two,’ she murmurs, closing her eyes.

The sun’s setting when she wakes. Nobody came looking for her.

Allegra yawns, hungry. Claire fetches some milk and bread from the deserted kitchen, waits while her daughter eats, then settles her back down again.

She picks up a cushion, takes it outside. Shelley’s sitting on the rug in darkness. The air is as hot as midday; her light dress sticks to her; perspiration trickles down her cheek.

Shelley’s shirtless, but he’s washed at last, she notices. There’s a bowl of water at his feet, too. Some of it, he splashes on his face.

Scrunched up beside him is a letter.

‘It’s from Mary. Clara’s unwell. She says she doesn’t dare leave Lucca yet,’ he says, blinking, and she thinks for a moment he might cry.

‘Oh no – how unwell?’

‘A slight fever. Not eating. The heat, no doubt. You remember Willmouse took against it when he was little? That’s why she’d be better here, where it’s cooler. Look how much Allegra’s improved.’ He travels from near weeping to annoyance too swiftly.

‘I don’t think Mary wants to be difficult. And it’s not so cool here now.’

‘Why can’t she just do as I ask? I want them here. It’s better for Clara.’ He puts his shirt back on.

Claire rests her knees against his arm, reaches across his back. His body’s too tight, too wooden. ‘I’m here. And Allegra. We’re as much yours as—’

‘She puts them first before me – has she always done that? I can hardly remember.’

‘Maybe – but I put Allegra before Albe—’

‘It’s not the same. Of course it’s not.’

She takes her arm away.

He notices; kisses the top of her head, light and brief. ‘I don’t mean it matters less.’

She leans away, a little cross. ‘Elise was upset earlier – said she can’t stay with us forever. What was she shouting at you about, at the summer house?’

He doesn’t like direct questions, never has. ‘Money,’ he says, after a while.

She sighs. ‘Not again? I thought there was enough—’

‘There is. Everything’s fine. No need to worry.’ He pats her hand; she lays her head against his neck. Bats give chase above their heads.

‘Tell me what you think of this,’ he says. Another page, more blottings and smudges on this one. He reads out loud, though it’s too dark now to see without a candle.

And whilst I waited with his child I played;

A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made,

A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being,

Graceful without design and unforeseeing,

With eyes – Oh speak not of her eyes! – which seem

Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam

With such deep meaning, as we never see

But in the human countenance . . .

‘Allegra.’

‘Allegra,’ he says.

‘“My wild yet gentle being . . .”’

He kisses her again, this time on her cheek, bends his head towards hers. Whispers, ‘And a reflection of you.’

She’s more mollified, but not enough yet. ‘This isn’t what you were working on before,’ she says.

‘No – I got diverted. Albe. You know the impression he leaves after I’ve spent time with him – it takes so long to shake it free. So I thought to write it.’

‘He overpowers everyone – d’you remember how we thought of it at first? That we’d have power over him. We couldn’t have been more wrong. Ah, was it all a great mistake, do you think?’

He’s silent. Owls swoop; they’re chasing mice. Rustling in the bushes, tiny creatures fleeing death.

‘You’d wish Allegra away?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then we made no mistake. Let’s not talk of children as mistakes – they can never be mistakes, no matter what wrong we did to get them.’

She’s about to ask again when his hand is under her chin, turning her face to his. He’s been weeping; is weeping, for his cheeks are wet. Or perhaps it’s just perspiration. She’s not sure, can’t decide, and then he says, ‘Would you – if he did succumb to that fear he says he has of you – if that were to happen – would you give him what he wants?’

‘But he won’t. You said so yourself. He can’t even bear to be in a room with me.’ She laughs a little, eases her face away.

‘He can’t trust himself, is what he said.’

Claire says nothing.

‘But who can,’ he says, ‘with you?’

It’s the most direct he’s ever been, but she won’t trust it, not yet. She’s been on this precipice before. Has tottered here, waiting to tip over.

He’s looking for something, she thinks. Assessing the moment. So she’ll do the same.

She understands him. Better than Mary does, sometimes.

And perhaps she says something like that out loud, for he says, ‘Yes, yes, I think that you do,’ and it seems like thanks for it, when his lips rest on hers. They’re light, though, brotherly, so she breaks away. She’s just a bud he’s alighted on. Just a leaf where he can rest his insect wings.

But she’s wrong. For then he’s back, lips pressing hard, which surprises her into opening her mouth. His tongue meets hers, his fingers tracing her neck.

And so it is different, this time.

‘Elise . . .’ she murmurs, pulling away. But they’re far enough from the house. It’s too dark to see without a light.

It’s not planned, at least not by her. Expected, yes – oh, many times. So many, she’s lost count. But now that it’s here, unplanned, unexpected, he’s in a strange sort of frenzy, as if desperate to get it over with, this thing that they must do, that they have both expected and planned or not planned, so many times. So she thinks to slow him down, because if it’s not what he wants – if it’s merely to be got over with – then she doesn’t want it, either.

But he’s resisting her slowing, as if he needs the frenzy – needs to be out of control, lost, and so not responsible for what he’s doing – and maybe that thought occurs to them both at the same time, because although he’s on her now, pushing her back against the cushions, fumbling at his breeches while she pulls up her dress, it’s the frenzy that outdoes him.

For frenzy also means haste. Which means – to her disbelief – that he’s spent already. She’s panting as much as he is, so perhaps both of them are amazed at what’s failed to be, though she can’t be sure, because when he does catch his breath all he says is, ‘Ah, yes,’ before lifting himself off her and sitting back to wipe his brow, his breeches.

She brings up bare knees, flicks her dress over them. The failure’s his fault, for not listening to her.

‘Wait a while,’ she says. But how long has she been waiting since the boat on the lake that night? If that’s what it was, and not a dream . . . two years, two months, is a long time.

And the darkness becomes heavy, like a blanket settling on them.

He doesn’t answer. After a few minutes, he gets to his feet to stagger away, muttering, into the house.

There’s been no apology; no explanation. This was their moment; did she ruin it, or did he?

The loss of it is just at the edge, just out of sight. She can feel its fingers, creeping up to get at her, to seize her and make her shake, make her cry.

Except that suddenly they stop creeping. Instead, they retreat, leaving her tearless, steady.

Handing Allegra over in April was loss. That was a true disorder of things. A true denial of love.

But this? This loss is a moment come too late, is all. And maybe there’ll be more moments like it – she has a sense of that, too – but they won’t compare. Nothing ever can.

And so she sits on the rug alone, breathing evenly in the night’s heat, as bats above flutter and squeal and pounce.

The next morning, she sleeps in. When she rises at last, Allegra’s already in the kitchen with Elise, who’s showing her how to roll dough. Claire rubs her eyes, yawns and stretches. She feels pleased with herself for some reason. For not weeping; for knowing what matters, perhaps.

‘Mama!’ Allegra rushes to her with flour-smeared cheeks to bury in her nightdress.

Elise gives her a strange look, though.

‘Is Shelley working again?’

‘He has gone to town,’ Elise says. ‘To send an urgent message, he said.’

Mary. Of course. She smiles – though Elise doesn’t smile back – before picking up Allegra and wandering out into the garden with her, her little legs dangling. They settle on the rug; she will have plenty of time to wash and dress later, when Allegra’s sleeping. She’s missed too much of her today already.

So when Shelley returns, and Claire is still not dressed, he thinks something’s wrong.

‘I feel perfectly fine,’ she says. ‘I slept very well – too well, I think.’

He’s overwrought, sweating from his journey back from town. Elise has disappeared somewhere inside the house; Claire hasn’t seen her for hours. Allegra, who’s been snoozing, wakes and reaches up for him.

He sits down beside them. ‘Mary will be here in a day or two,’ he says. ‘I’ve insisted. She won’t delay, not now.’

Anyone would think he’d told Mary, confessed all, the way he’s behaving. She finds it funny, suddenly, wants to laugh out loud. When there’s nothing to tell.

He makes for the summer house, where he stays until sunset. She washes and dresses, settles Allegra for bed.

In the kitchen later, they sit quietly – she knows he’ll not care to talk about what happened or did not happen the night before, and he’s not making the mistake of sitting out in the dark with her again. That makes her want to laugh, too. Ah, the fear they both have of me, she thinks, which swells something inside her – not pride, not conceit, but she can’t help some satisfaction, thinks that it can’t be so wrong to feel it.

A little awkwardly, then, they drink wine, eat some focaccia, a few slices of ciambella cake that’s been cooling in the pantry. A kind of salad left covered on the kitchen table. Cheese. Some olives.

Shelley’s appetite has returned, at least. Perhaps she’s helped with that, then. Feeding genius.

A handmaiden, Albe had called her. He has no idea, she thinks, what being a handmaiden is like. But nobody has, because nobody wants a handmaiden’s story.

‘You’re more than that,’ Shelley says. So she’s spoken the thought out loud. Like she did last night. ‘Albe knows it; I know it.’

And they’re friends again.

‘What the “more” is, though, is never very clear, is it?’ She doesn’t know what makes her threaten what’s just been established.

He winces a little, then says, ‘The new genus. The path you’re forging, remember?’

They both smile; she’s relieved, and keen now to forgive.

‘Forgive me,’ he says, and he’s read her thoughts, too, of course he has, for they are two halves of the same coin, so what else can she do? They don’t need to speak about the night before; they understand one another without that.

They finish their meal; then both yawn and stretch at the same time, laugh a little at that, get up and part ways at their separate rooms, close the doors behind them, let the owls and the bats do their hunting in peace.

In a few hours, though, she’s in agony. A burning worm’s twisting this way and that in her belly, making her groan out loud. She gets up, being careful not to wake Allegra, and goes to the kitchen, drinks some milk, hoping that will settle it.

But it only gets worse, much worse. Allegra sleeps on, oblivious, as she pads back and forth, squatting on the chamber pot over and over, clutching her belly. By the morning, she’s no better. Elise makes a mint tea, but she can’t keep that in, either. Allegra doesn’t understand, wants to play, so Elise takes the little girl outside while her mother lies curled on her bed in the dark.

Not until later does Elise tell her. ‘Shelley is the same; perhaps worse, I think,’ she says. ‘I am so sorry – it is my fault.’

Claire is sitting up in bed, finally; weak with purging, but at least the awful cramps have stopped. ‘What do you mean?’

Allegra’s been missing her mama all day, and is cuddling in.

‘Some leaves I picked – by mistake,’ Elise says, white as a sheet.

Claire remembers the basket of herbs. ‘I thought I smelled – pennyroyal,’ she whispers.

Elise looks horrified. ‘No, no, no,’ she says. ‘Please, you did not . . .’ But then she stops.

‘You were picking pennyroyal?’

Elise shakes her head.

It dawns on Claire. What it’s for. ‘I said I would help you. Are you – incinta? Are you trying to – get rid of it?’

Elise stiffens. ‘I covered the plate,’ she says. ‘You should not have touched it.’

‘But if you’re picking that herb—’

‘I was not – I am not, do not say such things about me, please.’ Elise leaves the room.

Claire hasn’t the energy to go after her, and soon falls asleep, Allegra beside her, comforted by the thought that at least her child has escaped whatever they ate, whatever has caused this.

The next morning, she’s able to wash and dress slowly. Elise avoids her, takes Allegra for a walk to the village without saying how Shelley is.

She knocks on his door before entering. He looks terrible, lying there on his bed, a wasted version of himself. And soaking in sweat, too, his face red and feverish.

She goes to the kitchen, boils some water for him to sip. It’s no use, he can’t keep it in.

‘I’ve been poisoned,’ he says, eyes closed in pain. ‘The ciambella, do you think? Oh, she wants to poison me!’

He’s delirious; must be. She tries to get his fever down, lays cooling cloths on his forehead. The breeze has, mercifully, returned. She opens his window to let it drift across his face.

By the time Elise returns with Allegra, Claire has been able to eat some bread, drink a mint tea she made herself. Shelley is still wretched, though he’s not accusing anyone of poisoning him anymore. Elise says nothing more about the wrong leaves; Claire watches her for signs like morning sickness, but Elise is even more closed to her than before.

By nightfall, she’s more exhausted than she thought possible; in the morning, though, Allegra is shaking her awake, excited and shouting, ‘Mama! Mama!’

A mess of calling outside – carriage drivers, Elise, then a little boy, speaking Italian in his high, familiar voice.

‘Willmouse!’ she says to Allegra. ‘Yes, yes, it is – go to them,’ she tells her daughter, reaching for her robe.

She’s dizzy when she stands up, but that’s all, and finds she can make her way, following the noise into the kitchen – and there she is.

It still takes her by surprise, Mary’s beauty, even though they’ve lived with one another, more or less, since they were Allegra’s age. And it takes her again, even though Mary’s clearly not well, leaning on the kitchen table, bending like a flower in the wind. Her blue eyes burn, though, wide and accusing, and for a minute she thinks Mary knows what she did, what they did – or did not do.

She’s about to say something, not teasing as she might have done two or three years ago, when she’d try to bait her sister, to get in a strike first before she was struck. She is reaching for something much more reasonable – more reassuring – when Mary’s face seems to collapse in on itself.

‘It’s no use,’ Mary says through her sobs. ‘It’s too late.’

Elise is gazing at Milly, Mary’s skinny little maid, who’s barely more than a girl herself, all awkward angles and elbows, standing still as a statue.

There’s a tiny bundle in her arms.

Claire covers her mouth with her hand.

‘She’s dying,’ Mary says, ‘Clara is dying.’

The kitchen falls silent; even Willmouse and Allegra are quiet. It’s no good; this can’t be. She won’t have it.

‘No, no, we’ll fetch a doctor,’ Claire says. ‘He’ll make her well.’

‘We travelled all night,’ says Mary. ‘I was terrified – of bandits, wolves. And all the while, she was getting worse. But Shelley said we must—’

Claire pulls very gently at the bundle, rests her forefinger lightly on the baby’s tiny chest. She thinks her heart might break; Mary, crumpled and exhausted, is acceding to the worst. But she can’t. She won’t.

‘Elise – you’re the fittest of all of us, I think,’ Claire says. ‘Run to the village and get a doctor. Please – as fast as you can.’

The village doctor is kindly but useless. He tells them what they already know: Clara has a fever, dysentery. He gives them some local remedies that have no effect, change nothing.

But she clings to life, Claire can see that. Clara wants to live, even if Mary has given up, can’t bear to hold, or even look at, her baby.

Shelley is out of bed, at least, and can keep down water and a little bread. He’s still pale, still breathless, but determined.

‘We’ll take her to Venice,’ he says. ‘We’ll leave first thing.’

‘Are you sure that’s best?’ Claire says. They’re in the kitchen, speaking in low voices. Mary has gone to bed; the children are asleep. Elise is somewhere; baby Clara is in her cot. ‘Maybe if we keep tending to her here—’

‘No,’ he says. He won’t be swayed when his mind’s made up, no matter how wrongheaded the plan. She knows that well enough. ‘We have to leave.’

Her stomach rebels again in the early hours, just when she thought she was recovered. ‘Will you not come with us?’ Shelley says, but she shakes her head. ‘I will hold you up. And Allegra—’

She can’t say she needs to hold Allegra, while Mary’s daughter is dying. She has hardly exchanged two words with Mary since her arrival. In Shelley’s room, she heard her tell him, ‘If we hadn’t had to come here – if you hadn’t left us in the first place – but you had to race off, you had to do whatever she says – Allegra isn’t yours, Clara is yours.’

So Claire won’t speak to Mary, won’t say a single word. They pass one another in the kitchen, as she takes care of Allegra and Willmouse, playmates once more. Keeps them away from the hopelessness inside.

Later that day, Mary and Shelley leave with Clara. Elise is the one to tell Claire that they’ve gone – they didn’t say goodbye.

‘He is very ill, too,’ Elise says. ‘He should not travel. But he listens to nobody else.’

‘No,’ Claire says. ‘When did Shelley ever listen?’

‘They are going to lose her,’ Elise says, folding up some cloths that have dried in the sun. There’s something odd about the way the woman moves – Claire is about to comment on it, quiz her again, when a loud knock at the front door, and a shout, distracts them both.

It’s Paolo Foggi, Shelley’s servant, the one he engaged back in Lucca, who came part of the way to Este with Claire and Shelley. Handsome and with an eye to an opportunity, she thinks – an eye he settles on Elise the moment he sees her, of course.

‘I was delayed, Signorina Clairmont – Signora Shelley bid me bring the rest of her things.’ He indicates the cart behind him, standing in the dusty road, laden with trunks and pallets.

‘Signor and Signora Shelley are gone to Venice,’ she says, leading him inside to the kitchen. Allegra recognises him; Willmouse is shyer. ‘We’re waiting to hear—’

Elise swings her hips, pours out coffee, slices some focaccia, making sure to say she made it herself.

He praises it; they lock eyes, smile.

Claire doesn’t want to watch them flirting; goes outside with the children.

‘When are Mama and Papa coming home?’ Willmouse asks. He doesn’t ask about Clara, she notices. ‘I want them. I want them now.’ He looks like he’s about to cry, stamping his foot.

‘Here,’ she says, handing him an apricot. ‘Let’s play a game of hide and seek. You go first. Try to find me and Allegra.’

He’s delighted by the attention, by her hard hugs, by her feeding him as much bread and cheese as she dares. He’s not a robust little boy; Allegra’s as tall as he is already, has as much strength and energy.

They can’t lose him as well.

The next two days pass slowly. Paolo Foggi’s installed in a house in the village, though because she’d prefer him to be in the house, given that there are only the two women there, he agrees to move into Shelley’s room until his return. It’s the best Claire can do, while they wait. She doesn’t believe in prayer, has been around Shelley too long to believe in that.

Three nights later, though, she offers up a kind of prayer of her own, to whomever or whatever might guide things.

And then, in the morning, the letter arrives.

Little Clara is dead.

They were rushing to the doctor in a boat, Shelley writes. Mary had her in her arms, she was feverish and crying, and then suddenly she was quiet. Her little limbs, which had been so restless, were still. When Mary pulled the shawl away, there wasn’t a breath from their baby; not a sigh, not a cry. Nothing. They were too late.

Claire reads only so much at a time, for the full letter is too much to bear. She hugs Allegra at each stage until the little girl begs to be let into the garden.

It’s up to her to tell Elise, of course, who can’t stop crying. Paolo Foggi keeps his arm around her longer than he should, then, catching Claire’s look, goes out to chop wood under the trees beyond.

Mary has been reduced to a kind of despair, Shelley writes.

Claire sits at the kitchen table, gazes out at Allegra and Willmouse chasing one another across the grass. Three and a half years ago, Mary’s first baby had died that terrible February in London. Never again, she’d said. Never again would she endure that; she’d rather die than endure it.

Shelley will have to watch over Mary, every minute. Mary’s mother tried twice to end her own life, but failed. Her half-sister, Fanny – her mother’s daughter by Gilbert Imlay – tried to end her own life and succeeded. Just as Harriet succeeded, almost nine months pregnant when she drowned herself.

Today she is better, writes Shelley, hopefully.

Yes, Claire thinks, he will have to hope, and watch. ‘Don’t run so fast!’ she shouts, but the children don’t listen, and inevitably Allegra trips, looks surprised, then opens her mouth to wail, so Claire runs to her, arms outstretched.

It’s late when the carriage arrives a few nights later. Mary goes straight to their room without a word; Shelley pauses in the kitchen, only to shake his head, and then continues to the summer house in the dark.

Claire is frightened. How will they both recover from this? How will Mary behave with her son? The next morning, Willmouse bangs on the bedroom door, crying for his mother, but Mary won’t let him in. Claire ushers him away, takes him to his father, who’s slept on the floor of the summer house.

Only later, when they are alone, can she ask him how it is with Mary.

‘She blames me,’ Claire says. ‘I know she does. I made you come with me to get Allegra.’

He shakes his head. ‘She blames me – and she’s right to. I thought it was mild, a fever that would pass. But—’

Claire waits.

‘But I can live with the blame. Somehow. What is worse – ah, I think she will hate me for the rest of our lives. And how am I to go on with that?’

‘She’ll forgive you,’ Claire murmurs, but she knows it’s not true. Mary doesn’t forgive easily. Her black mood will descend on all of them, make even breathing difficult. Suddenly, she wishes that Mary would leave, take her misery away. Even take Shelley, for they’ve not spoken about what happened out in the garden that night not so long ago, and she knows now that he won’t speak of it – not soon, anyway.

And though she still has a few weeks left with Allegra, Shelley must barter with Albe as he promised he would, help her get more of her daughter for herself.

She feels ashamed, thinking only of herself and Allegra in the midst of Mary’s grief. But Allegra is all that matters. See, she wants to say, what happens when you don’t put your child first?

She won’t wait for Mary’s recriminations. They’ll both say things they can’t take back.

‘Take her back to Venice,’ she says to Shelley. ‘There are more distractions there. Here, she’ll have too much time on her hands, and you know what that does to her.’

He smiles. ‘I know what you want. For Mary to be gone.’

‘I’ve lived with her despair before. You know how we are – I’ll just make matters worse.’ She’s being selfish, but how to help it? ‘And then you can meet with Albe more,’ she adds, and his face lifts.

‘Yes. Yes,’ he murmurs.

‘So, do something for me, then,’ she says. ‘Speak to him about Allegra. Let me keep her. We can stay here – he let us have this place—’

He holds up a hand. ‘I can’t promise. But yes, I’ll try.’

A week later, he leaves with Mary and Willmouse. Allegra is sad for a while to lose her playmate, but cheers up when Elise presents her with apricot pie.

And so the days go on, in sun and play to forget the horror of little Clara’s dying. Elise and Paolo Foggi are always in one another’s company; she hears Elise laughing more than she has in ages. At night, she hears bare feet padding to and from Elise’s room, but turns away from it all.

All she wants is Allegra to be with her forever.

And then, one evening, unannounced, Shelley returns.

He will need her help, he says. He has a ‘great plan’. But she must wait to hear it, because it’s Elise he wants to speak with first.

And so, puzzled and anxious, she lies curled on her bed around a sleeping Allegra, hoping for the best from her child’s father; hoping that Shelley has won the argument. Hoping that he has remembered one little girl lost, and another who depends upon him now. Hoping that he doesn’t fail them both, as she knows, deep down, that he believes he failed Mary and failed Clara.

But because hoping is never enough for her, she gets up and pens a letter to Albe. Then she pens a different, separate one. Which one she sends may depend, after all, on what Shelley’s great plan is, and how it involves her.

And so, in the dark of the villa, she waits, while low voices carry from the room nearby.

Mam’selle Claire, Islavsky 1825

Ten days she sat by Vanya’s bedside. Five days it is now, so far, by Dunia’s.

But on the sixth day, to everyone’s great joy, the child rallies, is able to sit up by herself. She blinks in the dark of her little room, says, ‘Mama,’ and holds out her arms for Claire, who’s there alone when she wakes.

‘I’m here,’ she says, though she knows she shouldn’t, for she’s not Dunia’s mama, as Gambs keeps on saying. But the child has been near death; what does it matter now who she thinks she is, when she wants comfort and a welcome back to life?

Only when Claire has dried her tears and settled Dunia, made sure the child’s sipped some water and held it down, does she ring the bell.

‘Can you believe it?’ she says, when Gambs and Marie Ivanovna hurry in from Vanya’s room. They are both spending their time with Vanya, who’s not recovering as fast as they’d hoped. While the little girl has hovered at death’s door, Claire thinks. Only sons matter.

But not to her. Daughters will always come first.

She must move away from the bed, though, to let Marie Ivanovna hug her child. Claire’s bones ache when she stands; her legs tremble. Gambs catches her by the elbow as she stumbles a little.

‘You must eat,’ he whispers, but she shakes her head.

‘Later,’ she says.

That it was Claire who embraced her first on waking is all that matters to her. That it’s she who has the little girl’s heart. Dunia mumbles at Marie Ivanovna, yawns, then coughs a little. Marie Ivanovna sends down to the kitchens for some soup for her.

‘It is a miracle!’ she says over and over. ‘Both my children.’

But it’s Vanya’s bedside Marie Ivanovna returns to once more, after this miracle has occurred, leaving Claire and Dunia together.

‘My angel,’ Claire whispers, smoothing back the child’s hair after she’s had a little soup. Her eyes are still too bright, her cheeks still too red. But that will pass. Dunia’s eyelids flutter, but she grips Claire’s hand as she hums a favourite song for the child. Dunia smiles; Claire kisses her forehead, and Dunia murmurs, ‘Mama.’

It warms her more than anything has these past three years. She doesn’t care if it’s wrong to take the place of a natural mother; women took her place when Allegra wasn’t at her side, and the thought of her mingles with Dunia’s presence now, to make her weep, just a little, as the child falls asleep.

‘You should get some rest.’ It’s Gambs, tapping her shoulder. The sunset outside tells her it’s late; sitting in the chair by Dunia, she hasn’t noticed time passing. The child is breathing hard but evenly; her cheeks are still flushed but not covered in sweat as they were at the height of her fever.

‘If you do not rest now,’ Gambs says, ‘then what use will you be to her when she wakes?’

‘Yes, you’re right. But what if—’

‘She is out of danger. You can rest,’ he says. She lets him pull her gently out of the chair.

‘You will watch her for me? Marie Ivanovna should be here, but—’

‘I will watch. Now rest, and eat something.’

She goes down to the kitchens. The house is quiet when Count Nickolaivitch is there; everyone tiptoes about, wary of alerting him to their presence. She chews some bread and cheese, drinks some tea, then makes her way back to her room.

She hasn’t slept in her bed for five days. She removes her dress, washes, lies down in a clean shift, thinking only to nap a little, then go back to Dunia.

But it’s just before dawn when Gambs shakes her awake.

‘What is—?’

His face is terrible; his cheeks swollen and wet.

‘No,’ she says, but he can’t speak. Claire seizes a robe, flies out of the room and runs to Dunia’s bedside.

Marie Ivanovna is sobbing over her little girl.

‘I don’t understand – she was well when I left her, she was better, she sat up,’ Claire cries. ‘Fetch the doctor – Gambs, get him to come, why don’t you hurry—’

But there’s no point.

‘She had a fit,’ he says. He won’t look at her. ‘She began to shake and it was only a brief moment. Then she was gone.’

‘No – no – no – it can’t be. She was fine when I left her—’ Nothing can convince her. Nobody can persuade her, not even when Marie Ivanovna steps away from her daughter and Claire embraces the cold little body. Not even when she kisses Dunia’s cheeks, her forehead, as if to breathe life into her.

Only some hours later, when they come to remove her from the bedside, because the burial must take place as soon as possible and she’s in the way, is Claire forced to believe the little girl is gone. They carry Dunia’s body away, and leave her sitting alone in the room, scarcely able to breathe.

She opens her eyes. She’s lying on her back, in her own bed, in the dark. She blinks, swallows. Her throat’s burning, as though she’s been talking for hours. Her forehead is hot, too; her bedsheets are soaking.

It’s a week later; a week since she, too, hovered on the edge. After she caught the fever from Dunia. Little, cold Dunia, alone in her tiny grave at the edge of the woods.

‘I want to see it,’ she says to Gambs, when he visits her room for the first time. She’s been tended to by servants only; at least none of them have caught the fever from her. She’s lost weight; her dresses fall in folds about her waist and hips. In the mirror, a gaunt face looks back, dark rings under black eyes. Pale lips, yellowed skin. As if her blood’s been drained – every last drop of it.

‘When you are strong enough,’ he says.

She weeps silently; he can’t bear it, can only sit with her a short time before leaving her to her misery. He sends up the last of the flowers, instead, now it’s almost autumn. Tries to tempt her with delicious cakes he’s made the cook bake specially for her. Delivers drawings that Vanya has made of his little sister.

‘Vanya wants to see you, too.’

Today, Claire is sitting by the window of her bedroom, looking down onto the grass below. She hasn’t been out of doors yet. In the gardens, Vanya has a kite, is flying it in the breeze that’s picking up dying leaves and sending orange-yellow flickers through the air. The little princess is long gone, back to her home in St Petersburg; the serf children don’t play with him anymore.

‘He is lonely, I think. Marie Ivanovna says she wants another child – she is being very indiscreet about it, shouting it at the Count so everyone can hear. I think maybe this has undone her a little. Perhaps you can help her – Claire?’

The colour is creeping back into her cheeks now her appetite has returned, even though she doesn’t want that at all. There’s a deep need in her to go where Dunia has gone, but that need doesn’t frighten her. On the contrary, it makes her happy. She wonders how best to achieve it, now it’s clear her heart isn’t going to break after all and kill her. And Gambs won’t let her starve to death.

She’s not sure she could plunge a knife into her chest. Or fashion a noose properly. Poison is the only way – poisonous leaves of some sort – and so she must get to the woods.

‘Take me to Dunia,’ she says.

And finally, on this day, Gambs relents and says that he will.

She dresses appropriately. Luckily, it’s turned cold – a promise of winter is in the air – so she wears her cloak with its deep pockets, perfect for a store of herbs, stalks, leaves, whatever she can find. She’s not sure exactly what to look for, but anything that smells of mint, with that bitter tang she remembers from years before, should do it. When everyone’s asleep, she’ll boil the leaves, or chew them, or do whatever needs to be done to get them inside her.

There are two little girls waiting for her, after all – why is she taking so long to get to them?

The ground is wet when they set off; the sky overcast. Gambs is talking, but she’s not paying any attention. She’s been finding it hard to focus since Dunia, and since her own share of the illness. In any case, her legs are so feeble, and she’s not been outside in so long, that her breath is coming faster than it should, and she’s soon running out of it.

‘Stop here a moment or two,’ Gambs says as they near the summer house. She doesn’t want to delay, but she’s so exhausted she doesn’t have a choice.

They sit on the bench. ‘The last time we were here was the day of Louise’s theft,’ she murmurs.

‘It does seem a long time ago, that is true.’

‘I’d forgotten what she did. Ah, I think she meant to force me into revolution. Silly woman. And all it got her . . .’

‘Was dismissal.’

They both gaze at the house up ahead.

Gambs says, suddenly, ‘I do not think I can stay here.’ He makes a strange noise, like a strangled sort of cough, and when Claire turns her head, she’s shocked to see that he’s weeping.

‘But you have to,’ she says, laying her hand on his, their first touch since Dunia died. It’s impromptu; she doesn’t like this warmth, this intimacy. It all reminds her of being alive, when she just wants death and coldness. ‘Vanya will have no one if you leave. He’s a boy, growing – his father’s no use—’

‘Ah, but you have not seen him since – since Dunia. His father is very different with him now. They spend time together. The Count is gentle, patient. I am not who Vanya needs anymore.’

Suddenly, she wants to cry, too.

Gambs rubs his eyes. ‘I have set my heart on it. I have written to my old tutor in Dresden – there may be a place for me at the university.’

‘No – no. This is too sudden. Whatever you think about the prince—’

‘To be truthful, I have been thinking of it before the fever arrived. Because of you, in part, I think.’

She says nothing.

He carries on, ‘I will not stay here, when I know there is no hope. But perhaps you have changed your mind? To marry me, and come to Dresden – that would not be so terrible, would it?’

She’s restless now, wringing her hands together, a fluttering in her chest forcing her to her feet. He reaches out to hold her back, and she sits down again.

‘Is it not the easiest thing for you to do?’ he says. ‘I would only want you to do the easiest thing, Claire. Not what is hard for you to do, not at all.’

Something starts to roll off her. She can feel it, like a blanket of moss that’s been smothering her, getting into her nose and mouth, forcing her legs and arms to be still. It’s peeling back, and she wants to stop it, but she can’t.

‘I think – I think—’

‘Come with me,’ he says again.

There’s a bubbling up now, all the way from her toes. It’s silly, this feeling. Silly, and almost like laughter. To her horror, she can’t stop this either, and she’s laughing, a silly little laugh. Covers her mouth. But her shoulders begin to shake.

‘I am making you laugh with this?’ His expression flickers between outrage and confusion; she can’t help it, the tears she’s shedding are different now.

At last, though, the bubbling inside her pops, like a kind of hiccup.

‘Do you know what I was planning?’ she says. ‘Ah, all this while you’re thinking of me in a bridal dress with your family and friends congratulating us. And I – well, I’ve been planning to find some plants, some flowers, anything out there – that would make me sicken and die. Yes, really. Today – that was my intention.’

‘Claire—’

‘And now you’ve spoiled it.’

‘Claire,’ he says again, but it’s no use. She can’t stop what’s coming next, either. The need to make clear to him the most important part of her past. The part she’s never told him, never thought to tell him. About Albe, and Allegra, and what she was once.

A mother.

Clairy Clearmont.

‘You see,’ she says. ‘I never saw my child again, after that summer. I didn’t know it then, but it was my very last summer with her. She was only nineteen months old. Twenty, by the time I handed her back to her father. I’d thought that it was just the beginning for us, you see. Just the beginning. But it wasn’t at all. It was the end. And I begged him. I begged him, and I pleaded. Sometimes, I threatened. Because I didn’t know it was the end. I didn’t recognise it at all. I’ve never been very good with endings; do you see that in me? I think it must be obvious. It was obvious to him. I was obvious to him. Albe. So he thought, anyway.’

He doesn’t know who she means, of course, by that name. ‘Albe?’ he says.

And so she must explain.

March 16 1820

It is now almost a year and a half that I have not seen Allegra.

It would be quite useless I suppose to tell you how many times I have tried to see her and how utterly impossible it has been for me to do so. Mary was so melancholy and sickly that I cannot imagine how she could be left alone.

I think it is not asking too much of you to beg you will send her to us at Pisa . . .

‘You see,’ Claire says again, ‘we lost our darling Willmouse, too. Nine months after little Clara died. Oh, you can’t imagine Mary’s pain. It shocked us all. Shelley was convinced she’d do herself a mischief – she was pregnant with little Percy at the time. He made me watch her every minute of the day, and I did, because I owed it to her, you see. For little Clara, for Shelley leaving off and helping me instead. Which meant I couldn’t have my baby with us that summer. I couldn’t live alone with her, for Mary needed me – and I couldn’t have her in the house we shared, for fear Mary would see her and it would be unbearable.’

‘Your baby?’ he says.

23 April 1820

The warm weather has begun and increases with unusual violence; and every day brings more danger to Allegra. I shall set out from Pisa on Wednesday the third of May and shall reach Bologna on the 6th. I think it would not be so inconvenient to you to send Allegra to meet me at Bologna.

I am so anxious and miserable until I see her I can have no rest.

Though I can scarcely believe it possible that you will refuse my just requests yet I beg you to remember that I did not part with her at Milan until I had received your formal and explicit declaration that I should see my child at proper intervals. Nearly two years have now elapsed since I had that pleasure.

‘But he refused my requests. Reneged on our agreement. She had illness after illness, and I couldn’t see her—’

‘Who is Albe?’ Gentler this time, holding her hand.

‘A monster,’ she says. ‘The father of my child. Her murderer.’

May 1st 1820

My health is very bad which you cannot be surprised at when you consider how much I have suffered and there is nothing would soothe and console me so much as to see my Child.

He doesn’t believe her.

‘You don’t understand. I tried every approach. I was humble, I begged. I got angry. I threatened. I offered peace; I offered war.’

May 4th 1820

I beg from you the indulgence of a visit from my child because I am weaker every day and more miserable; I have already proved in ten thousand ways that I have so loved her as to have commanded nay to have destroyed such of my feelings as would have been injurious to her welfare.

You answer my request by menacing if I do not continue to suffer in silence, that you will inflict the greatest of all evils on my child.

You threatened to put her in a convent where I cannot have access to her until she is sixteen.

To deprive her of all domestic affections.

‘What did this – Albe – do to your child, Claire? Look at me, please.’

She’s not there with him, though; she’s in Pisa, in Florence. Enduring small rooms and hot, hot days; restless days of feverish writing, begging and pleading for her daughter.

March 24th 1821

I have just received the letter which announces the putting of Allegra into a Convent – before I quitted Geneva you promised me verbally it is true that my child whatever its sex should never be away from one of its parents. This promise is violated.

I do not describe my feelings of sorrow that this is to be Allegra’s destiny because I know what an excitement it would be to you, to continue and if possible augment the burthen. I resigned Allegra to you that she might be benefitted by advantages which I could not give her.

I have not had a moment’s content, fearing to allow myself ease, lest Allegra should be suffering from neglect.

‘Claire – I insist that you tell me.’

18th February 1822

I can no longer resist the internal inexplicable feeling which haunts me that I shall never see her any more.

I entreat you to destroy this feeling by allowing me to see her. I waited two months in the Autumn, expecting from all you professed to see her every week and when on the sudden you would no longer allow it to be, a melancholy fearfulness came over me which has never since passed away.

I have often entreated Shelley to intercede for me and he invariably answers that it is useless. I shall shortly leave Italy – I cannot go without having first seen and embraced Allegra. I shall abandon myself to despair if you refuse.

I conjure you do not make the world dark to me, as if my Allegra were dead.

‘As if my Allegra were dead,’ she says.

She’s trembling in her seat; his arms are wrapped around her as if to heat her from the chill.

‘The play,’ he says. ‘The play – then you were the mother, the child was yours—’

‘And I didn’t rescue her. Shelley wouldn’t – I begged him, but he said no. I begged Mary, but she said no. And my baby died in the convent at Ravenna where he placed her. My Allegra. Five years and three months after her birth.’

Casa Magni, Lerici. The last day of April. Cloudy but warm. She helped carry boxes from the boats that landed on the shore with their things. The house was right there at the sea, nothing separating it from the beach.

She’d spent the afternoon fretting, all the same. She’d dreamed the night before that Allegra was dead. After her failure to convince Shelley and Mary to help her rescue her daughter, she’d only been able to carry out the rescue in dreams. Or carry out part of it. Each time, she’d be on horseback, arriving at the convent doors. Somehow, she’d magically enter, and creep along silent corridors to the room where she knew – magically, somehow – that Allegra slept. But every time she made for the bed and whispered, ‘It’s Mama, it’s me,’ the dream would end, and she’d wake up.

The truth was, she didn’t even know if Allegra would recognise her now. It had been over three years since they’d last seen one another. Would she still be small enough for Claire to carry her in her arms? Were her curls still fair? Did she still laugh when someone tickled her? Did she remember the dark-haired woman who was her mama at all?

Claire was afraid, in her dream. Afraid that her daughter would open her eyes and scream at this stranger by her bed. There was so much time to make up for, she wasn’t sure it would even be possible anymore.

Her intention to go to Vienna was genuine. She hadn’t said it to placate Albe. She’d said it because it was true, and it was true because of what Elise had told her just a few weeks before.

Shelley had gone fishing the day they moved into Casa Magni. He never could bear to be around Mary on moving-in days – and besides, they were behaving as though they hated one another. Claire could hardly bear to be around them, either. He was avoiding her, too; she didn’t ask why.

She’d taken a nap late in the afternoon; when she woke up, with the wind picking up and blowing through the house, slamming doors and whistling, she’d decided to make herself something in the kitchen.

As she passed the drawing room, she heard Shelley say, ‘Albe can’t forgive himself . . .’

‘What has he done now?’ Claire said, standing in the doorway.

Mary had been crying; Shelley was pale. Little Percy gurgled in Mary’s arms.

It was growing dark outside, but at least the wind had stopped, dropping just like that. Candles flickered; her throat was dry.

‘What has he done?’ she said again. Dread, like a stomach-ache, dug into her sides, made her cross her arms, clutch them.

‘He hasn’t – ah, Claire,’ said Shelley, getting up and walking towards her. He held out his hands, but she wouldn’t take them.

‘It’s Allegra,’ she said. It was as though someone else beyond her was saying these words. ‘Is she dead?’

He stopped, stepped back a little. His eyes filled; a great freeze came up from her toes, rolled through her legs to her waist, her chest, gripped her heart. So the moment had come, after all. Such a terrible moment, to freeze her to her own death.

So she hoped.

‘Yes,’ Shelley said. ‘Typhus fever. A week ago. Dearest – ah, your hands—’

She was tearing the backs of her hands with her fingernails. That was all. Nothing else. No words, no cries of despair. Just this rending of her own flesh, that carried on long after Shelley and Mary guided her to bed, and made her drink a sleeping draught they thought would still her fingers.

But it didn’t. She lay, eyes wide open, all night, listening to the too-loud beat of her heart, so loud at one point she thought it might burst through her chest. Scratching, scratching, and tasting the blood on her fingers.

Her bare hands; her bare arms, too. They’d never hold her daughter again. So what use were they now? They’d failed her; they’d failed Allegra.

They’d not fail her now, though. They’d help her – to murder the man who’d as good as murdered her child.

Yes, they’d help her do that.

And so, at last, she stopped and slept.

‘I thought about it so many times,’ she says. ‘How to do it. Shelley and Mary couldn’t believe how calm I was in the days after. Ah, how calm I was! But plotting murder requires calm, doesn’t it? I thought of where to get what I needed, how I would get close enough to him. Poison, you see. I’d poison him. And I didn’t care – what might happen to me afterwards.’

Gambs is silent. Well, what can he say to this?

‘I spent days and days working it all out. He’d never be in a room with me, you see, so I’d have to get Shelley to arrange something. Perhaps I’d be in the room next to his. Perhaps I’d add something to his drink. Perhaps I’d sneak in – I’d done it before. Albe only ever saw what he wanted to see. And I could fool him, sometimes. Yes – he was a fool.’

‘Albe – tell me who—’

‘But he cheated me, didn’t he? Going to Greece and dying from some illness. Yes, he robbed me of my chance. He escaped.’

‘Who is he?’ Gambs says again, but there’s a tremor in his voice.

‘Ah,’ she says, twisting out of his arms to face him. ‘You know, don’t you? He’s the Corsair. The Vampire. Don Juan. Childe Harolde himself.’

Gambs stiffens.

‘I know you believe me. I always tell the truth, don’t I?’

She gets to her feet; he doesn’t stop her. The breeze has picked up. She shivers, exhausted suddenly. Time to be indoors. But there’s one last thing. She turns round. His mouth is still open; his eyebrows still raised.

‘So tell me,’ she says. ‘Will you take me to Dresden to be your bride now?’

That was capricious of her. Grandstanding. False. She abuses herself with these accusations in her room later. The house is quiet, in mourning as it is. She has her evening meal alone in her room, at her writing desk. This is what it’s like to be a governess. What she’s been experiencing all this time has been a delusion.

She’s written a letter to a friend in St Petersburg, a mathematics professor she spoke with on many occasions before she left there. He had recently told her of a place with a noble family in the city; if she wished to take it up, he would provide recommendations. She’d said no, of course. But that was before.

Her letter will only take a day or two to reach him. Then, if she’s lucky, she can be packed and ready within a week or so. Marie Ivanovna might be sorry to see her gone; she might not. Vanya will get used to her absence.

And Hermann Gambs?

Ah – he hasn’t said a word to her since her confiding in him. His proposal, she can assume, is now withdrawn. Not that she would have accepted it. That’s not the life she’s destined to have.

She’s meant to be punished, for failing her child. Just as Shelley was punished with drowning, for failing his children . . . perhaps she, too, should expect an early death. Should embrace it. What she deserves.

Or is a long life of regrets and pain a greater punishment?

It seems that that is indeed her fate, for the next day, and the day after, she finds her strength returning. There’s nothing for her to do – she’s not Vanya’s tutor – and Marie Ivanovna’s not showing herself yet. Gambs is avoiding her, she knows that. If he catches a glimpse of her, he hurries away in the opposite direction. He’s taking his meals in his rooms, too.

On the fourth day, a letter from the mathematics professor arrives.

He doesn’t mince his words.

I have lately met with an English governess here, a Miss Louise Trewin. What she has told me is indeed very shocking, for I had no awareness that the Miss Clairmont I knew, the model of good sense and accomplishments and good taste, is indeed issued from a very den of freethinkers!

God knows what Godwinish principles the children of my good friends might have imbibed from you!

Miss Trewin, therefore, is now happily placed with them instead. I trust you will understand that this must be an end to any friendship between us.

She can’t help a rueful smile. Louise Trewin!

We all get a revenge of sorts, in the end, she thinks.

Except Albe cheated her of her own.

She must formulate a different plan now, though. Plot another course. But which one?

A week later, the wind is freezing; snow is on its way. She’ll have to decide soon, or she won’t get away for another six months.

She shivers in her room, with only a single candle for any heat. Nights are worst; she dreads closing her eyes for the scenes that dreams make. She’s sure she must cry out in her sleep, for too many times when she wakes, she’s weeping.

So, though it’s only eight o’clock, she climbs into bed.

There’s a knock at the door – a serf bringing the warmed bedpan she had requested.

‘Come in,’ she says.

It’s not the serf.

Hermann Gambs stands in the doorway, on the threshold, where she can’t make out his features.

‘I would like – I would want you – to forgive me,’ he says.

She murmurs something. He steps into the room, closes the door behind him. They don’t know, either of them, if this will be the last time for them. But then, she never did know how to tell what was to come. If she did, what might she do differently?

This is her last thought before he touches her cheek, her hair.

Madame Clairmont, Paris 1845

Dearest Clari has written again. Ah, such good letters her brother’s daughter writes to her adoring aunt! Almost as good as her own (Mary says Claire writes the best letters of anyone she knows; she’ll allow this. She doesn’t have Mary’s genius, so she’ll claim what she can).

Summer is almost over, but it’s still very warm in Paris – her least favourite season, when the leaves fall and the yellows and reds only make her think of dying. She didn’t go back to England after all, that time. She stayed instead, for Knox and what she needed from him.

Now, though, the months have passed, and their affair isn’t what it once was. That’s yellow and dying, too, ever since their row in the spring.

No, she couldn’t marry him, she said. No, he shouldn’t marry her. ‘Go and find yourself a nice young heiress. Be wealthy. Have children.’

The truth was, she wasn’t in love with him. And she told him so, to his face.

I had a happy passion once, perfect in all its ways. It lasted ten minutes and those ten minutes have discomfited the rest of my life . . .

She wrote that to a friend, years ago. She repeated it to him. ‘How can you compare,’ she’d said, in the end, ‘to the men I have known?’

She meant to hurt him; it was the only way.

He’d left when she said that; she expected his return, letters, flowers, every day after. But they’ve never come, so now she knows it is over between them at last.

Perhaps, she thinks this autumn morning when she’s feeling melancholy, he’ll be her final romance. Now she’s forty-seven. But she can’t regret that it’s over. That the drama and the secrecy are over.

He’s been a chapter in her life, she tells herself. Nothing more.

So, she’s more than ready for the next one. Now that Sir Timothy has died at last – no, she wouldn’t be regretful or respectful about the old devil, she told Mary, why should she be? – now that Shelley’s bequest has finally been passed on to her – why, she has twelve thousand pounds. For her alone – but it was to be for her and Allegra, of course, so perhaps it’s only natural that thoughts of how to help Clari now come instead . . .

Yes, Clari. She pours herself some coffee at the kitchen table, sits with her niece’s letter in hand. Dearest Clari. Who writes poetry and sends her copies of her poems – some of which really aren’t too bad – asking for her opinion.

Clari begs to belong to a ‘new genus’, she says, just like her aunt. Claire sips the coffee and turns the page. Noon sunlight cuts across the table; she shades her eyes as she reads.

Papa has suggested it to me, Tante Claire, and I wish to put it to you for your thoughts. It is that we should open a school together, you and I. What do you think of that? Is it so ambitious for me to dream of it?

Well, now. That’s a surprise indeed. She lays down the page, smiling. Clari’s nineteen, soon to be twenty. At twenty, she had ambitions, too.

A little cloud passes over her face. At twenty, she also had a baby in her arms. She shakes her head – she won’t dwell – and reads on.

What would be the best location for such a school? I have been tutoring a family here in Vienna these past six months and I believe I am ready for a small classroom. Papa thinks England would suit our purposes better than Vienna, though. Or do you prefer to stay in Paris? I would live anywhere you wanted to, as long as I could be alongside you. The Clairmont School – it has a good sound, I think.

Clari is truly hers. She has no thoughts of babies or affairs with famous poets. She doesn’t want marriage.

I would live anywhere you wanted to, as long as I could live alongside you.

The words bring tears to Claire’s eyes; she dabs them. How silly she is, she thinks. To be so easily touched. But all this time, she’d thought she was alone. Had never imagined herself to be an example – someone for younger women to follow – even if she herself had followed the example of another woman, Mary’s mother. She had been a genius, of course, like her daughter. Claire’s no genius, but . . .

She takes the letter into the bedroom, sits at her writing desk. She’ll reply to Clari at once. Yes, she’s not tired of Paris exactly, but it’s long been time for her to move on. And now she has the money to do it, of course, thanks to Sir Timothy. What a project, she thinks. What a thing to embark upon!

She’s about to take up her pen, when another letter catches her eye.

Letters, letters. For Mary has written, too.

I will only write a few words – for I am too agitated – I am indeed humbled – & feel all my vanity and folly and pride. I meant no ill – I thought I was doing so kind so good an action – comforting an angel – till I found he was not one – till his affair with lady S.

She frowns, reading this again; heaves a sigh. How many times did she warn Mary about Gatteschi? About Lady Sussex? And she wouldn’t listen. Well, now – here is the result, and just as bad as she expected it to be. Two years, almost, it has taken this affair of Mary’s to die. What a protracted, needlessly painful death it is, too.

Poor Mary.

I am never afraid to love a man who does not love me.

‘Ah, Mary, but you should fear it. Hasn’t life taught you anything?’ Claire murmurs.

She’ll leave off replying for a day or two. Let Mary’s bruised self heal a little. Instead, she gets on with answering Clari’s suggestion, writing:

Yes, yes. I have many thoughts, and indeed England would be better for such a proposal. Let me make some enquiries – we have a great deal to plan – but it is an excellent suggestion, dearest Clari. You have made me very happy.

Her little apartment suddenly feels old, dusty and tired. She wants to shake off that dust. Well, she’s never settled in a single place for long.

To have a new phase of life opening ahead – a phase she hadn’t expected – ah, it’s too good, too fortunate. She can’t sit still, has to go outside. She takes a walk to Saint-Germain past Lady Sussex’s, thinks about confronting her. Gatteschi might have left off pestering her with notes all those months ago, but she could still tell Frances what she thinks of her. But that wouldn’t do any good, not now.

When she returns from market a few days later, though, another letter from Mary arrives. A feeling of dread stops her opening it straightaway. For a brief moment, she even thinks about throwing it away. ‘Oh, don’t be such a coward,’ she tells herself.

The harm’s been done. It’s too late for her to offer advice or support. Far, far too late.

I did reproach G. for his desertion of me and his affair with Lady S. But – oh Claire – he has threatened me! I may buy back my letters to him, or he will publish them.

I cannot stress – they are of a very intimate – personal – nature – you understand what I mean. If Percy should learn of them – should read them – should anyone read them – please burn all my correspondence on this matter for there is no knowing into whose hands – I will write my opinion though of Lady S. direct to her—

‘Oh, Mary, Mary, what have you done?’ Claire says out loud.

Her old stomach complaint returns, doubling her up in pain. When it stops, she paces round and round the little apartment. Two days later, Mary writes again.

I have asked Knox to help – he should be in Paris by the time you receive this – he will meet with you.

Knox. Mary. Pulling her back in when she’s scrambled her way out.

He’s due in an hour. She bustles around the apartment, moving chairs, even pictures. She wants to show him it’s changed in his absence.

At least Clari’s excited about her proposed investment in the school, their school. That’s what Claire must focus on, as she heaves her table across the room. Carries books from the mantelpiece to the window ledge. Moves pictures from one wall to the other.

She’s even prepared some food, not something she does very often. Some special bread, the kind Elise showed her how to make, so many years ago that summer in Este. The smell of it baking mixes with the air from the street below, and she’s anxious, suddenly, that she’s made it all too homespun, too welcoming. That he’ll think she wants him again.

She’s about to put everything back, take the half-baked bread out of the oven and throw it away, when a call from the stairway and a knock on the door stop her.

It takes her off-guard, then, the sudden trembling that’s running through her, the immediate dryness of her mouth. Absurd is what it is, she chides herself, steadying her breathing. She takes her time going to the door. Glances in the mirror on the way, smooths her hair, adjusts her dress. How very careful she’s been not to wear anything too alluring, too irresistible to him. She can’t help regretting that just a little, though. There was no need to do that to herself. She should have had confidence enough.

So when she opens the door, she makes sure to smile, to hold herself straight. ‘Knox—’

But he doesn’t so much as glance her way, pushing rudely past into the little salon. ‘I’ve come straight from Monsieur Delessert,’ he says. He hasn’t noticed the changes in the room; or if he has, doesn’t make any sign of it. ‘He’s the prefect of police.’

‘Oh.’ She offers him a seat; he shakes his head. She decides she’ll sit, anyway. He walks back and forth. He’s not changed much in the six months since their last meeting. His hair is shorter, perhaps. He’s browned – so he’s spent the summer out of doors, she thinks. Not studying law books at Lincoln’s Inn, as he should have been. She clasps her hands like a good mama, purses her lips.

He’s out of breath, too. ‘I’ve persuaded him,’ he says, ‘at least I think – that Gatteschi’s the kind of threat he wants to round up. God knows there are plenty of associations to convince him. And things being what they are in the city—’

‘Things?’

‘There’s trouble brewing.’ He looks out of the window.

She raises her voice, as if he’s far away. ‘I assume Mary knows what’s being done?’

He turns around, looks suddenly annoyed. ‘Of course she does.’

‘And you’re here because—?’

He doesn’t reply.

‘This Delessert,’ she says, ‘will apprehend Gatteschi?’

‘A bribe from Mary has helped.’

More money.

‘And her letters?’

‘They’ll take all his papers – including those.’

‘Then you have it done – why do you want to see me? What good can I do?’ she says.

‘Mary suggested it – should I need to liaise with someone here.’

‘And do you need to?’

She waits, hands still clasped.

‘You mean to make me work for it, then?’ he says, leaving the window. His approach makes her straighten; hold up her hand like a school mistress with a pupil.

‘I don’t mean anything of the sort,’ she says, and gets to her feet. ‘You should leave.’

But when he passes her on the way to the hall, and she catches the scent of him, the way the air changes when he brushes past, the very nearness of him, something greater than her will takes over, as it has so many times before.

‘This was a terrible mistake,’ she says. ‘And not what Mary had in mind.’

Her dress is thrown to one side; her drawers lie across the back of the chair.

‘Ah, stop,’ he says, nuzzling her neck, groping down between her thighs.

She pushes his hand away; he protests, but he’s worn out, too. A moment passes, then another; he begins to snore. Out of bed she slips, tiptoeing naked to the little salle de bain, where she wraps her robe about her, prepares the douche she hasn’t had to use in months.

She sits down, her legs suddenly weak. There’s that trembling going through her again – for another beginning? She hadn’t looked for one, not with him. Her new beginning was a practical one, with Clari and England and a school. Not this.

He’ll assume it’s a resumption of their old affair.

She feels a little panicky. Her teeth chatter, though the evening air is warm enough and the sun sets through the bathroom window, warming it even more. But oh, the prospect of dipping into their affaire again – with all it brings – the secrecy, hiding it from Mary, always fearing she’ll discover it – no. No, she has to resist it. Cough it up out of her, spit it out for good.

Though he’ll not let go that easily. She washes herself, her legs still trembling, then goes into the kitchen, pours herself a little wine. The bread is burned, of course, and she casts about, despairing suddenly. It was all in such order! Her life – what’s ahead for her. And now this. Mary didn’t mean to do this to her, wouldn’t have if she’d known – but she has, she has.

Later, when night has fallen and he’s woken, hungry, she persuades him out of the apartment to a little restaurant they used to go to. He doesn’t notice any coolness; is too buoyed by their beginning again to notice anything.

Or perhaps he’s just refusing to notice; that occurs to her, too.

‘When is the – raid on Gatteschi to take place?’ she asks, her voice low, after a plate of rabbit and potatoes is set before them. The gaslights are turned low, too – it’s perfect, she thinks, for lovers. But that’s not what they are.

‘At any moment,’ he says, chewing on a piece of bread. He indicates the plate in front of her. ‘Not hungry? You always used to be, afterwards.’

She shakes her head. ‘And Mary’s letters?’

‘I’m to dispose of them. Mary was very specific.’

‘She doesn’t want them back? I suppose she would be frightened of – them falling into someone’s hands.’

‘I should take offence,’ he says, reaching for a toothpick. ‘She wants you to be there when I destroy them. I can’t believe she wouldn’t trust me.’

‘Letters have a habit of coming back to haunt us,’ she says.

Letters, letters.

‘Those were her very words,’ he says. ‘“They will come back to haunt me, Knox,” she said. “I have to know they are gone forever.”’ He raises his eyebrows dramatically.

She ignores it.

‘You have to destroy the letters she sends you about this, too,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing so disgusting as blackmail.’

His face hasn’t the idealism it had when they first began their affair. He’s grown up; she thinks that’s a good thing. It will help her when she explains to him what she wants, doesn’t want.

‘The ugliest of crimes,’ he continues. ‘Lower than murder. What a creeping, low person to do it. They should hang them. All blackmailers.’

‘Not all of them are so low,’ she murmurs, remembering something.

He shakes his head. ‘No – hanging’s too good for them. A bit of drawing and quartering first, like in the old days. Make them feel it. If you’d seen what he’s done to Mary . . .’

Blackmail.

Lower than murder.

Ah, but there’s something even lower than that, and Mary knows it, too.

She can’t get it out of her head.

Once she’s back in the apartment – pushing Knox away at the door with pleas of exhaustion and promises that she’ll see him again soon – she takes out some paper, her pen.

She didn’t lie – she is tired; it’s past midnight and her time with Knox wasn’t expected. But the nagging question in her head – the word blackmail going round and round it – has her fretting at her desk.

It’s a long time since she wanted to ask this question. Perhaps it’s too late to ask it; perhaps it no longer matters. But her resentment’s building, and if she doesn’t find a way to calm it soon, it’ll bring her to her bed with those terrible stomach pains she gets when she’s unable to settle something.

What’s lower than blackmail? She holds the pen, ink dripping onto the page. The window is open to the little square at the back; voices travel up, some shouts, a few endearments. Bats whirl, too, squealing as they fly back and forth across each other.

Just like they did that summer in Este. Her last summer with Allegra.

She wrote so many letters in the years afterwards. Three years’ worth of letters to him, to Albe.

And never received a single response.

‘Does he hate me that much? Is he so afraid of my allure that he won’t even write?’ she’d raged at Shelley, one cold, gloomy night in Pisa, the rain pouring down outside. But Shelley was indoors, then out again, dreaming and writing. ‘You promised to intercede for me – can you not do more?’ she’d demanded. He’d protested, of course, said he always brought the matter up with Albe when they met from time to time. He did what he could, he said.

Mary didn’t even care to listen to her complaints by then – all she cared about was little Percy.

Little Percy, the survivor. The only one, after all.

On she went, writing, writing, just the same. So many letters to Albe, over and over, and never a reply. Only Shelley to tell her what was happening. That Allegra was well; that she was poorly; that she was well again.

And then, out of the blue, two months before Allegra died, Elise appeared at her door. The presentiment Claire had had about losing her daughter wasn’t without foundation – it was Elise who created it, after all, that February day in Florence.

The bedraggled woman, soaking in the cold and wet, outside her friends’ house in Florence. Claire was staying there to give Mary and Shelley some time to themselves in Pisa. To reconcile to one another, for things had been difficult between them. When her friend called up to her in her room – ‘There’s someone to speak with you, Claire’ – she hadn’t imagined it would be Elise. Wasn’t Elise married now, to Paolo Foggi? She hadn’t seen the woman in almost two years.

Claire had come downstairs, fresh from reading Shelley’s latest letter to her, her feelings in a confusion.

Do not think that my affection and anxiety for you ever cease. Or that I ever love you less, although that love has been and must be a source of disquiet to me – Tell me dearest what you mean to do and if it should give you pleasure, come and live with us.

Her friends didn’t want her to go back to live with Shelley and Mary, fearing their influence over her. ‘They make you ill,’ they said, ‘with their coming and going.’

She’d begun to think the same. So she’d been startled when Elise, standing there in the pouring rain, but refusing to come inside, said plainly, ‘I need your forgiveness.’

‘Why don’t you come inside?’ Claire said.

But nothing would persuade her. She had to meet her the next day, in a coffee house near the cathedral, Elise insisted.

There, at their little table, Elise looked haunted, ill, coughing and spluttering into a napkin, and shaking with something more than nerves. Consumption, Claire thought, and it had struck her, sadly, that perhaps Elise’s desperation to speak with her had to do with how much – or how little – time the woman had left.

‘Do you remember how I was the summer we were at Este?’ Elise began at last.

Claire hadn’t seen Allegra since the end of that special summer they’d had, when she’d handed her back to Albe in October. Over three years ago, now. But this wasn’t about Allegra; she tried to fix her thoughts.

‘I remember that you were – unhappy,’ she said.

Elise gave a little snort, pressed a napkin to her mouth. Then said, ‘I was incinta.’

Something jarred inside her when Elise used that word, like a piece of music going wrong. Her voice reverberated a little. Danger was beckoning; was too close. She said it, regardless, ‘But you denied it when I asked you about the herbs that made us sick that summer . . . ’

Another bout of coughing. ‘I was incinta and I had my baby in December. When we had all moved to Naples.’

Claire forgot to breathe at that moment. Blinked. Tried to recall. ‘I was very ill there . . .’ she said, slowly. ‘That whole month. I had to be carried on a chair when we visited Vesuvius . . . I was in bed for so many days, my stomach, I was ill all the time after I gave Allegra back to her father, you remember that . . .’

Elise nodded.

She shook her head a little. ‘No, I would have known if you had given birth, Elise. Don’t you imagine I would have heard a baby cry?’

‘You were on the second floor,’ Elise said, a little sour at Claire’s refusal to believe her. ‘I gave birth downstairs, on the kitchen floor! What do you think you would have heard, so many floors above me?’

She wouldn’t believe it, started to get angry. ‘Mary told me that you miscarried that month. That you were pregnant by Paolo Foggi and lost the baby.’

Elise gave her a look that Claire could hardly read. ‘I gave birth. I promise you. To a baby that lived. And I had to leave her behind,’ she said. Her red-rimmed eyes, huge in a face devoid of fat, began to fill. ‘You know how that is.’

She didn’t trust herself to speak. For she was remembering something else. Shelley’s great plan.

Mary, so inconsolable after Clara’s death.

Shelley, desperate, had acquired a foundling baby, he’d told her. He would give it to Mary, who needed one to fill her arms.

It was the end of December when he brought the baby to Mary. Claire, upstairs in her bed, ailing with stomach pains and missing Allegra, wasn’t there to witness the meeting between grieving mother and newborn. She heard later, though, how badly it went.

In the weeks that followed, quarrels between Mary and Shelley would upset Willmouse. Once she was feeling better, she’d take him out into the cold, wintry streets. The baby, named Elena, stayed in the kitchens with Elise; Claire avoided the kitchen and the baby girl, frightened of her own feelings.

And then one day, the baby girl was gone. And Claire forgot her. Mary never mentioned the child; Shelley didn’t either.

‘I had to leave her behind,’ Elise said again, and something in the woman’s miserable voice convinced her. For there was truth in it; and she recognised a mother’s pain when she heard it.

And so, in that coffee house on a miserable February day, Claire reached out to grasp Elise’s hand and learned something more. ‘She was yours, Elena was yours. Ah, but you know how I was then,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear to be in the house, with Mary crying all the time, and Allegra away, or I would have helped you keep her. But Mary wouldn’t have sent you away from your child . . .’

Elise only shook her head. ‘Mary insisted Paolo and I marry. But Paolo would not let me keep her because she was not his.’

‘So Shelley thought if Mary kept her, you would still see her every day. Yes, he would do that; he’d think it would help you. He was so very kind that way.’

Elise pulled her hand away. ‘Kind? He was not kind. He was Elena’s father.’

A flash of recollection. The moment that summer’s day at Este, when she came over the brow of the hill with Allegra.

Elise gesturing at Shelley outside the summer house.

And she, forever asking Shelley, What’s wrong with her, have you noticed?

‘No—’

‘He wanted his daughter to be with him, yes – so he gave her to Signora Mary. Perhaps he thought to make her happy. To make me happy. That’s what you think, is it not? But Signora Mary said no. Never. “Take it away,” she said.’

The stars twinkling in the night sky above them; the bats flitting round.

‘Mary wouldn’t have known – couldn’t have—’

Elise carried on as if she hadn’t spoken. Perhaps she hadn’t. ‘I wanted Paolo – I wanted Elena – but together, it was impossible. And so I left her behind. And then she died, two years later. Two years, and I hardly saw her.’

In the bustle of the coffee house, nobody noticed Elise weeping. Claire didn’t know what to say. She had a chance, then – a single moment when she could walk away, not learn any more. But she chose to stay.

‘When Elena died, Paolo said – he said, I will get money from Signor Shelley for you, I will make him pay for what you lost! Ah, I was so despairing, so furious – I agreed to what he wanted.’

Sniffing, stopping, coughing that dreadful death sound, starting again – the telling of the tale was almost worse than the tale itself, Claire thought afterwards.

‘Signor Shelley would not listen. He would not pay Paolo, when he threatened to tell the world Elena was his. And this is what I have to confess to you. Because I wrote to the Hoppners about Signor Shelley and Elena. I said Elena was his child – but by you, Signora Claire. By you.’

Claire pushed back her chair as if the table had suddenly caught fire. The coffee-house rumble of talk stopped, but she didn’t care. ‘How could you do that to me?’ she said. Perhaps the whole place heard her. But she said it again. ‘Why? Why did you do it? Don’t blame Paolo – you just said you were the one who wrote to the Hoppners.’

Elise didn’t look at her. ‘Because I saw you together. In the garden, that summer. In the dark. You – taking something – from me.’

Claire opened her mouth but couldn’t speak. It was all she could do not to rush at Elise, not to strike her, not to shake her. She couldn’t trust herself; without another word, she ran from the coffee house, along the back streets, until she lost her breath. And then she walked, all day, on and on, walking as if she couldn’t stop.

But she did, eventually. And the next day, Elise came to her friends’ house again. Begged to speak with her once more. She refused, but Elise persisted the day after. The day after that, Claire relented, but only because she wanted to make Elise promise to do one thing for her.

She must write to the Hoppners and tell them the truth.

It took many more meetings. More coffee houses. But Elise agreed. And so she wrote to Mary, to the Hoppners, to Albe himself. Elena Adelaide was not Claire’s child. She had lied to everyone about it.

Ah, Claire had truly thought then that it wasn’t too late! The Hoppners had believed Elise’s lie, had told it to Albe, and he – well, that was the beginning of his refusal to let her see Allegra. She finally understood it.

His fury – his hurt pride. To have to face the proof that her professed love for him was nothing but a sham.

All those months and months she spent writing to him asking for her daughter – useless letters to which he’d never reply. Of course he wouldn’t.

And so she sat down to write to Mary in Pisa.

How long have you known of this?

Known that Elena was Shelley’s child by Elise. Known that Albe thought Claire had had a child by Shelley. What did Mary know?

Coming over the brow of the hill, Allegra’s hand in hers.

Shading her eyes; the scene at the summer house. Elise’s face, angry, tearful. Shelley, silent, glowering.

Blackmail is an ugly business.

Help me to rescue my child!

And then Mary writing back to her in Florence, pleading ignorance but refusing to help her kidnap Allegra from the convent where her father had placed her, as Claire was begging her to do. Shelley writing, and refusing, too. Albe will challenge me to a duel. I will be killed.

Even though they owed it to her.

And in the end, Elise’s letters were no use. They were sent to the Hoppners too late. For only two months after she made her confession, Allegra was dead.

And all her blaming of Mary and Shelley, all her anger towards them for how she’d been lied to, and how she’d been misused, and how their actions had affected her child, and her chance to spend time with her, was blown away by a greater force, a greater evil.

Albe. The murderer of her child.

And she had forgotten what Mary and Shelley had done; had failed to do.

Yes, blackmail is an ugly business. But now, in her little apartment in Paris, that ugliness reminds her of what they all did. It wasn’t just Albe to blame. Mary and Shelley had their share of it, too.

Yet now she must, it seems, save Mary, where Mary did not save her.

She glances at the rumpled bedsheets; the air in the room still smells of him. Bats squeal outside again.

Mary has sent Knox to her, to fix her own difficulties with Gatteschi.

Meddling and manipulating when it suits her ends, not Claire’s. Never Claire’s.

How long, Mary? she thinks. How long have you known about him? About him and me? And she dips her pen in the ink again, ready to write.

Field Place, 1849

‘How long have you known it?’ she says again, but this time not at the top of her voice. Only because her voice is hoarse from shouting. She’s exhausted, suddenly, and leans her head against the bedroom door, curls up her knees.

There’s a rustling sound; Mary’s skirts. Claire imagines her sitting on the other side of the door, rests her palm against it.

‘Just tell me the truth,’ Claire says. ‘I’ve had enough of it all. You don’t need to open the door. Just tell me.’

Mary’s breathing has a rasp to it, as it does when she’s panicked. Claire’s own breathing is not much better. So she’ll wait a moment or two, although the rest of the household will return soon. How she frightened them off! Made them all abandon Field Place, abandon Mary herself.

‘You were meant to come three weeks ago,’ Mary whispers through the door at last. She stops to take another breath, then begins again, ‘Had you done so, it might never have happened at all.’

‘But I was looking after my nephew!’

‘I told you I won’t speak with you if you shout.’

Claire is wringing her hands as she apologises, promises to be reasonable.

‘You asked me to let Clari visit here without you,’ says Mary. ‘Remember that!’

Claire clenches her fists, digs her nails in hard. ‘So this is my fault? This – disaster? This – catastrophe?’

‘Oh, Claire. What is so disastrous about it? She is in love with him. He is in love with her. Be happy for Clari at least, can’t you?’

Clari, who’d reproached her recently for taking so long in setting up their school. Well, she’d invested badly some of her inheritance – buying that opera box at Mary’s suggestion, because it promised returns that would double her fortune, when, in fact, it had halved it – and the school, their school – The Clairmont School – had had to wait.

Mary says, a little plaintively, ‘I didn’t know Percy had invited him. I didn’t invite him. You’re quite wrong about it. I didn’t engineer it. I don’t know why you think I would have.’

But her tone is sly; Claire hears the shift in it.

‘We both know why,’ she says.

A sigh.

It was just after she stepped down from the carriage that she saw them. The front door was open, and they were in the passageway towards the back of the house. A couple, kissing. He held her in his arms – she giggled a little – his head bent towards her. He murmured something in her ear and then they kissed again.

When she stepped into the entrance hall, they’d broken apart at the noise, and turned their faces towards her.

Clari. Knox.

Perhaps it’s just the way of it, she thinks now, still curled outside Mary’s closed bedroom door. That there’s always one betrayal too far. No worse in content, only in its placing. The straw that breaks the camel’s back. The one to shatter it all.

Claire had stared at them as they approached her, Clari beaming and holding out her hand. ‘Look, Aunt Claire!’ she’d said. ‘I am engaged to be married! Isn’t it a wonderful surprise?’

And Knox, just behind her, his face inscrutable. The last time she saw him was in Paris, after the raid on Gatteschi. He was burning Mary’s letters, one by one, in the grate of her little apartment. When every last sheet was destroyed, he’d reached for her, but she’d explained her feelings. How impossible it was; how he should find a girl of his own age.

‘But the school, our school,’ was all she managed to say, standing before them in the entrance hall. Clari had flushed red; Knox had chuckled – nervously, but all the same. It was enough. And so she began to shout – to scream, even.

She doesn’t remember what she was screaming. Only that Mary had appeared then, and that she’d run at her, fists raised.

‘I thought you were going to kill me,’ Mary says from behind the door. ‘But it’s not my fault.’

‘No,’ Claire says, after a moment. ‘It never is, is it?’

‘Truly, I didn’t know. You wrote and told me yourself that you had ended your affair with your mysterious man.’

‘But you guessed who it was, didn’t you? You knew – was it Gatteschi? Did he tell you?’

Nothing. Then a soft ‘Yes.’

‘I’ll never forgive you,’ Claire says, standing up, her legs trembling in her fury, fists clenched. ‘You want only to hurt me – for what I was to Shelley. Yes, that is what you want to do. For what I was to him.’

‘Oh, Claire! How can you go on this way? I only believed that Knox would be better off with a girl of his own age . . .’

‘And that girl is to be my own niece? Clari is an innocent. He is a, he is a—’ But she can’t finish.

‘He is a wonderful man,’ Mary’s voice trembles.

He’s in her bed in her Paris apartment, kissing her toes; working his fingers up inside her; licking her nipples until she cries out.

Mary’s friends had teased her about her trips abroad with young Knox. When all the time . . . ‘Ah, but you wanted him for yourself and when you found you couldn’t have him . . .’

But she stops there. For it’s ridiculous. Mary will make her ridiculous, if she lets her. Make her fight over a man.

She’s done with that.

‘You’re wrong, Mary,’ she says again. Bangs on the door one last time to a loud gasp from her sister on the other side. ‘But you were always wrong.’

And then she’s gone.

Bournemouth, 1859

She takes out two pieces of paper, both old and creased, and – with a little difficulty, because she’s sixty-one years old and the sea-bathing she enjoys so much isn’t so good for her bones these days – she kneels beside the grave.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Daughter of William and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

And Widow of the Late Percy Bysshe Shelley

Born August 30 1797, Died February 1 1851.

‘Ha,’ she says to herself. The graveyard is deserted; it’s a warm summer day, after all. People have more cheering things to do than gather at a cemetery. She finds a stone to set on the pages so that they don’t blow away, though the breeze is slight.

‘There’ll be pilgrimages to you soon enough, Mary. You won’t feel so lonely then.’ Frankenstein is better known than anything Shelley wrote; maybe even Albe, too.

Claire fishes a box of matches out of her dress pocket. But before she lights one, she picks up the pages, scrutinises them as best she can without her spectacles.

One is easy to recognise. The writing is Albe’s, the page she stole from his room at the Villa Diodati, that summer in Geneva. The page she’d accused Louise Trewin of stealing. She was wrong about that, she’d discovered only a few years ago, when she was rifling through Shelley’s letters to her. Somehow the page was caught in among them; she’d missed it.

The other is her own. Her single-page letter to Mary, written that night in Paris, when she recalled how Elise told her about writing to the Hoppners, claiming that Claire was Elena’s mother and Shelley was her father.

‘I wrote it all out for you, you see?’ she says, waving the page at the gravestone. ‘Do you see, Mary? All about that night in Este I spent with him. Just to let you know. Make us even for what you did.’

The page that she never sent. Not even after their confrontation at Field Place. Not even then. She’ll keep it to herself forever.

She heaves a sigh, sets the pages down again under the stone. The trees give her enough shade; birds chatter. She takes out a match, strikes it.

This is her last day in England. Tomorrow, she’ll take the boat to Baden-Baden – to some friends there, Hermann Gambs and his family, for they have stayed friends all this time, even if she never became his wife. And there are children for her to teach there, too, for a while at least. She’ll restore her coffers a little; they are nearing empty again.

Then, she plans to go to Florence. Maybe Pisa, if she can bear it.

She’ll never live in her home country again.

The pages flare, blacken, flake into pieces on the browned grass.

As they fall, it occurs to her suddenly that she’s the last one now. From the night at the Villa Diodati, she’s the only one left. The only one to bear witness to how it all was.

Can she do it? She’s not sure; maybe if she says it out loud, she’ll feel it inside. So, as she slowly gets to her feet, she murmurs, ‘I forgive you.’

How can she not? ‘We were Christabel and Geraldine, once. Weren’t we?’ She laughs a little at that. ‘Ah, Mary,’ she says. ‘You should have written my story. Called it, The Last Woman.’

But Mary wouldn’t have wanted that. Write it yourself, she’d have said. And suddenly, Claire pictures her eighteen-year-old self in that cottage by the banks of Lake Geneva, her secret inside her belly, dancing down the rickety stairs to baby Willmouse smiling in his cot, as Mary calls down from the bedroom. Write it yourself!

Willmouse.

Clara.

Elena.

Dunia.

Allegra.

But Allegra, most of all. She lets a few tears well up, then brushes them away.

The last child.

Not a story she can ever tell.

I would willingly think that my memory may not be lost in oblivion as my life has been.

A last hope; a vain one, perhaps.

She sighs, smooths out her skirts, straightens her back. Picks up her carpetbag.

There’s a locket around her neck that she never removes: one with a fair curl of baby hair inside.

She brings it to her lips, kisses it. Then, without a single look back, she walks across the grass to the path.

After all, time waits for no woman. And she has a boat to catch.

Author’s Note

Claire Clairmont died on the 19th of March, 1879, at the Via Romana in Florence, where she had made her home for the last years of her life along with her niece, Pauline, the daughter of her half-brother, Charles Clairmont. Luigi Gatteschi, Mary Shelley’s blackmailer, lived nearby for a time, causing Claire to fly into a great rage when Pauline once suggested he visit.

Not many people can say they have inspired two of the greatest poets who have ever lived. But towards the end of her life, Claire inspired one of the greatest novelists, too. When Henry James heard about the American collector, Edward Silsbee, and his efforts to buy Claire’s letters from Shelley, as well as his dalliance with Pauline, he turned the story into The Aspern Papers.

In her biography of the Romantic circle, Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives, Daisy Hay transcribes the fragment of a memoir Claire had attempted to write once, which begins, ‘If I commit this sad tale to paper . . .’ Claire, astonishingly, describes both Byron and Shelley as ‘monsters of lying, meanness, cruelty and treachery.’

In 2010, the identity of Claire’s father was revealed to be Sir John Lethbridge, and not, as she had once supposed, of Swiss origin. It’s not known whether she ever learned of this herself; if so, there is no mention of it in her letters or journals.

Those readers familiar with Claire Clairmont’s life story will, I hope, forgive a few small liberties. I have adhered to the correct dates and places of major events, like the deaths of Shelley, Byron, Mary Shelley, William Shelley, Clara Shelley, and Claire’s daughter, Allegra. I have also quoted small sections from Claire’s letters and journals, as well as from Mary’s letters.

I cannot prove that Claire and Alexander Knox were ever intimate with one another, though Claire’s biographers, Robert Gittings and Jo Manton, believe she was romantically involved with someone in Paris when living there during the 1840s. They base this belief on a misreading of the words ‘I saw you know’ in a letter to Mary dated 2 June 1845 (‘I saw Knox’, is the correct reading, according to Marion Kingston Stocking, the editor of the two volumes of Claire’s letters). That Knox also took out a three-year lease on an apartment in Paris during the five years that Claire lived in the city, when Mary was describing him as virtually penniless, strikes me as curious, to say the least. It also explains to me Claire’s extreme behaviour on learning of her niece, Clari’s, sudden engagement to Knox in 1849 at Field Place, and the breach with Mary.

Claire’s theft of a page from Byron’s letter to his sister Augusta is invented. However, in a letter to Edward John Trelawny in 1870, she writes, ‘He (Byron) unlocked his Bureau and spread several of his Sister’s letters on a table and made me read them pointing out her signature at the end . . . he gathered up the letters, and of a sudden broke out fiercely, “there is a letter missing and you have taken it”. He was much agitated. I begged him to remember I had not had any of the letters in my hand even, which I had not. He looked over them again, found the missing letter . . . and made a sort of apology for grasping me by the arm so fiercely it had given me great pain’ (Letters, vol. 2).

Both Edward John Trelawny and Jane Williams are excluded from my story, though Jane is mentioned by name. They are crucial to a biography of Claire, of course. But though they appear, and disappear, and appear again throughout her life story, they aren’t present at all at the places I have fictionalised here, the Villa Diodati, Russia, and Paris. Therefore I felt it best to omit them.

As for the ‘Neapolitan Scandal’ surrounding the true parentage of the child, Elena Adelaide Shelley, I have largely followed Richard Holmes’ belief that Shelley and Elise Foggi were her natural parents, as detailed in his biography, Shelley, The Pursuit.

Louise Trewin’s betrayal of Claire in Russia is represented differently here. There is no proof Claire had an intimate relationship with Hermann Gambs, although her statements to Jane Williams about the exact nature of her love for him have always raised questions.

Mary does not appear to have known that in his will, Shelley set aside an extra £6,000, in addition to the £6,000 he bequeathed Claire, for her daughter Allegra, until Sir Timothy died and it was revealed. I have moved her discovery of this to just before the death of Sir Timothy rather than after, for dramatic purposes.

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