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mouth.
    “And as for you, sir,” said Shelley sternly to my father, “if you abided by your principles you would not object to anything that has passed between your daughter and me. A man should not be bound by the shackles of marriage if he finds a superior love.”
    My father did not reply.
    “Make way,” ordered Shelley. “I will take my leave now.”
    He bowed to them, and, turning to me, kissed my hand. His eyes said, “I will never be allowed into this house again, even through the shop!”, as he spoke aloud, “I hope to see you all on a happier day. Until then, goodbye.”

MISTRESS
    A t first it was a game. Intoxicated with freedom, our spirits remained high all the way to Dover in the carriage, and all the way to Calais on the boat.
    I will never forget the sight of Jane on the windy deck, her bonnet-strings flapping about her chin, clutching her wayward skirts, screaming with laughter. And Shelley, his hair wild, his eyes wilder, roaring poetry, the words whipped this way and that by the gale. I held his arm so tightly I could feel his bones through his flesh, shirt, jacket and greatcoat. I was drowning in love.
    At the inn in Calais, Shelley and I were too excited to feel tired.
    “Tonight is our wedding night!” he said, laughing and kissing me. “Although, of course, we had no wedding…”
    “And, of course, you are about to find that your bride is no virgin…”
    “And yet her virginity is mine,” he replied softly.
    My heart began to thump. If only Jane could hear Shelley when he was at his most romantic!
    “The whole world will know I am no virgin now we have eloped,” I reminded him.
    He ceased his kisses. “Oh, Mary! Does it trouble you that you are a ruined woman?”
    “Not at all. A ruined reputation is without doubt the only kind to have.”
    “You will go to hell, dearest.”
    “You don’t believe in hell,
dearest
, so how can I go there?”
    Very late, I awoke from a brief sleep to find that Shelley had opened our bedroom shutters to the moonlight. He looked pensive but released from care. Reaching for his travel-stained shirt, he pulled it on over his head like a child.
    “Why have you no nightshirt?” I asked.
    “Because I have lived so long with nobody to see to such things. I was cast adrift. But now you are my anchor, and I am cold. Warm me up.”
    It was late July. The cheap room, high up in the eaves, was airless. But I put my arms around him and we lay and talked, and he took me and ruined my reputation further, and we talked more.
    I did not tell him about our baby. I wanted to keep the news inside me, as deeply embedded as the child itself, until the moment came to reveal it. My happiness was real, but even on that momentous night I was aware of the ease with which happiness, like other fragile objects, can be destroyed. What had happened, I wondered, to the happiness of Harriet Shelley, in the arms of whose husband I now lay?
    As the sky lightened over the roofs of Calais, Shelley slept. I lay curled up, my arms around him under the dirty shirt. He turned onto his back, snuffling like a dog. His head lolled off the bolster. He did not look handsome, but the sight of him stabbed me with desire.
    Angel, lover, master. All these adored things, until a few weeks ago utterly unknown, lay beside me in this foreign bed. The fancy came to me that Shelley, too, was as safe and adored as a baby inside its mother. My love was stronger than my parents’ outrage, or Harriet’s prior claim, or Shelley’s father’s dismissal of him. Only death, I was convinced, would part us from one another. I kissed his unshaven cheek.
    But it was not my kiss that awoke him. The sound of raised voices made us sit up. Groaning, Shelley put his head in his hands.
    Mama had pursued us. She was arguing with the landlady in the fluent French she had learned in her youth and taught to Jane. Her voice was accompanied by the noise of the ebony handle of her best parasol repeatedly striking the door