"On your body. Yes, I know. Tibby guessed you'd think so. How very considerate of you." Her voice was perfectly level. "So I'd have learned of your death from the *Morning Post*, between the Tsar's breakfast and the price of Consols. *A melancholy affair took place at Chalk Farm on Saturday morning.* I'd have read it over my chocolate."
"Lady Sophia—"
"You came out to die for my name, Mr. Garrow, without once asking me whether I wanted it died for."
He was silent. The hackney lurched over a rut, and her shoulder brushed his and moved away.
"Did you?" he said at last. "Want it?"
"No." She turned her head and looked at him, and he saw that her eyes were wet, and that she was very angry about it. "I wanted it *used*. That's what a name is for. Mine is about all I have that's truly mine. Everything else belongs to my brother, or did belong to my father, or will one day belong to some husband. I've spent four years using it for Mrs. Mercer and Mrs. Bly and ninety-one widows on my list, getting into rooms where they'd never be let in, making clerks stand up who would rather sit down. That's what it's for. Not to be stood over in a wet field while two men shoot at each other to decide whether it's still clean." She took a breath that shook. "I'd rather it were dirty and useful than clean and buried with you."
He did not know what to say. He looked at her right hand, lying clenched on her knee, and at the small ink stain on the second finger, and thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think. I've been told all my life that I don't think. I believe it may be true."
"It's true," she said. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed, damply. "It's quite true. But you stood up. In February, at the Victualling Office. Do you remember? Eleven clerks in that room, and Mrs. Mercer with her papers, and me with my brother's name and my best bonnet, and ten of them went on writing. You were the only one who stood up."
"You were very difficult to sit through."
"I meant to be." She looked down at her hands. "I didn't know then that your name was on the casks. I didn't know when you came to my fund's committee in March with the first numbers, or in April, when I brought Mr. Mercer's last letter to your rooms and you read it standing by the window, and went quite white, and said nothing for a long time. *It stank so that the purser would not have the casks opened below.* Do you remember that line?"
"Every word of it."