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“Don’t worry,” said Anne. “There will be lots of hats to choose from. Oh, look, Harriet, shawls. Your favorite.”

Harriet turned to the window Anne indicated. Shawls were truly her weakness. She kept to plain colors and fabrics for her gowns—dove grays, dark blues, and nut browns—but handwoven shawls from the distant East, with their vivid colors and formal designs, drew her. In the window, lying across a yellow damask sofa, was a stunning shawl of the deepest blue with a border of the curved buta design of the Mughal rulers of India embroidered in rich reds and golds.

“You should buy it, Harriet. It’s just what you love,” said Camille.

And there it was—the little reminder that she and her girls lived quite different lives. They could purchase whatever took their fancy and forget it in a week. She could not.

“I think I shall just admire it a moment longer,” Harriet said.

“We’ll take Octavia to Duddell’s,” said Camille. “They have the best prices.”

“And we won’t let her buy an ugly bonnet,” added Anne.

Harriet nodded, still looking at the shawl. It was the deep cerulean blue that painters had once reserved only for the robes of saints, the blue of the heavens on a bright winter day, the blue of distances.

She did not know how long she had stood when a male voice at her side said, “Miss Swanley?”

She turned to find Captain Simon Mudge, a retired naval officer with a limp and brown military whiskers that curved along his jaw from his ears to his chin. She had met him occasionally after Sunday services through her friend Margaret Leach, companion to Lady Eliza Fawkener. It was Margaret who had helped Harriet grow accustomed to the daily slights endured by women who chose the role of governess or companion.

Captain Mudge was a comfortable sort of gentleman, part of a group of avid novel readers who exchanged books and called themselves, as a sort of joke, the Back Bench Lending Library.

“Admiring the India shawls?” he asked.

“That blue one, very much,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “Did you know that the pattern is the unfurling of the cone of a male date palm tree, the source of life and fertility?”

“I did not know,” Harriet said, wondering if men saw beauty at all.

“I brought one much like that to my sister when I came back from the Indies,” he added.

“She must treasure it,” Harriet answered.

He nodded. “It is surely one of the wonders of the East that such beauty comes from the underbellies of shaggy, long-haired goats.”

Harriet laughed. “I had not thought of the goats, only of the artist at her loom.”

“His loom more like,” said the captain. “Are you here alone?”

“Oh,” said Harriet, looking down the arcade. She did not see the girls. “Please excuse me, Captain. I must return to my charges, who are on their own in a bonnet shop.”

He bowed, and she stepped into the crowd. All she could see down the line of the arcade were hats and bonnets. Duddell’s was near the garden end of the long passage. She told herself not to worry. Octavia would try on at least a half dozen bonnets, and Anne and Camille would not hesitate to share their opinions, so it was unlikely Octavia would purchase anything truly dreadful. Harriet meant to live by her principles of letting her charges make and learn from their mistakes. If Octavia bought an ugly bonnet, Harriet would let her wear it and judge its effect for herself.

She was halfway down the arcade when a hand gripped her arm and she was spun around to face Wynford. “Where is she?” he demanded.

Harriet looked up into his frowning face and willed herself to be calm. “She’s gone ahead with Anne and Camille to the hat shop,” Harriet said. “We’re not thirty steps away.”

“Admit it. You’ve lost her.”

A gentleman pushed past Harriet, casting a glare at the two of them for impeding the walkway.

Harriet steadied herself. “Not at all. The Luxborough girls are with her. I gave them permission to go ahead while I looked at a shawl.”

“Looked at a shawl, or met a man?” he asked.

Harriet gasped. He had both misread her conduct and assumed the right to censure her for it. “You have been spying, haven’t you?”

“My sister’s safety is at stake.” His mouth was a tight line.