Preview of Her Lost Words by Stephanie Marie Thornton

Preview of Her Lost Words by Stephanie Marie Thornton

PROLOGUE

February 1775

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

I yearned to disappear.

It had been two days since I’d last eaten and still longer since I’d bathed, but those were inconsequential trifles at this moment. Huddled in the corner of Hoxton’s cold stone church, I grimaced at the poppy-blossom spatters of blood that now speckled the muddy hem of my threadbare muslin dress. I thought about my mother cowering on the scuffed wooden floorboards of our drafty front hall, her front tooth chipped and lower lip leaking blood. The weak winter sunlight had illuminated her like a fallen angel when she had turned toward me, her eyes pleading with me to run. Then my father had clutched her auburn hair with one fist, the other poised to land yet another blow.

“Stop!” I had yelled in a rush of breath. “Stop!”

“Shut your mouth,” my father had growled, his breath reeking of gin as it had since he’d squandered the last shilling of his ten-thousand-pound inheritance. “Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”

But then I was on him, biting and hissing and clawing, anything to have dragged him away from my mother.

The mess of her blood and broken teeth had been the last thing I saw before he raised his fist again. Then my world exploded.

When I’d come to, everything had changed. With one eye swollen shut and my ears still ringing with my mother’s urging to go, I’d run out of the house as fast as my feet would carry me, as if ravens had nipped at my heels and torn at the very threads of my soul. I ran as if I could escape this hell.

I told myself I was running toward a better life.

The howling winds brought me back to the present. The mild winter temperatures had plummeted and my fingers cracked and bled, the victims of my incessant picking at them as I worried over what to do next. It was a rare stroke of luck that Reverend Clare made a habit of leaving the Hoxton church door unlocked; otherwise I’d already be frozen stiff.

The recent horrors I’d experienced were still circling my rav- aged mind when the reverend’s wife found me curled in one of the front pews on that second morning.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” She clutched one hand over her heart as she peered down at me. The candle in her hand lit her up like a kindly seraphim, one with dimples and graying hair at her temples. “Who have we here?”

“No one so exalted, I’m afraid. Just plain Mary Wollstonecraft.” My mouth felt as if it had been packed with wool as I rubbed my eyes, then winced at the throbbing pain rooted somewhere deep within my left eye socket.

“It is you, Mary.” Mrs. Clare frowned as she touched her

candle to those on the plain wooden altar. “What in heaven’s name are you doing here at this hour?”

“Praying.”

It wasn’t truly a lie. Over the past two days I’d prayed for many things—a cure for my father, a new life for my mother, and

a way to make everything better. Essentially, I’d prayed to rewrite the entire history of my fifteen-year-old life. Or to find a new one. “Well, we could all use a little more prayer in our lives.” Mrs.

Clare held up the altar candelabra and offered her customary warm smile. Then she gasped.

It took a moment to remember that I must look an absolute fright. “I tripped,” I mumbled, feeling my body cave in on itself: chin down, shoulders forward, arms clasped around my middle.

As if I might truly disappear.

Mrs. Clare hesitated, but I could tell her mind was churning from how her gleaming eyes darted to and from my face, like curious little minnows. We’d lived in Hoxton only a few months—this decaying village north of London claimed three crumbling insane asylums that rang at all hours with the screams of the unfortunate inmates locked within—but kindly Mrs. Clare slipped me a new book to read every Sunday: Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. I wanted her to like me, but today I desperately needed her not to send me back to my father’s house. “A nasty fall, to be sure,” she said, as if mulling over each word. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

I shook my head, ever so slowly.

“Well, you’ll catch your death of a cold,” she announced. “Follow me.”

I merely stared until she turned at the entrance, arms akimbo as she cleared her throat. “Do you usually dawdle?”

With downcast eyes, I hustled after Mrs. Clare, and breathed a sigh of relief when she opened the door to the rectory instead of leading me down the weed-choked lane to my father’s house. “Miss Wollstonecraft is joining us for luncheon today,” she announced matter-of-factly to Reverend Clare through the open door of his first-floor study. The reverend merely gave a distracted wave. He was a tougher needle to thread than his good-

natured wife, given that I’d only ever heard him speak during his long-winded Sunday sermons. In fact, he so rarely left the rectory that I’d once heard him boast that he’d owned the one same pair of shoes for fourteen years. That might have been the case, but as I followed Mrs. Clare into a room down the hall, I discovered the one thing that the Clares did not scrimp on.

Books.

Beautiful, wonderful books.

The Clare library was merely a back room on the bottom floor, but it was crammed from floor to ceiling with all manner of volumes. Fat books, thin books, some freshly leather bound, and others so aged they looked ready to crumble at the slightest touch. I could feel a difference even in the air of that room, as if it were somehow heavier, weighed down by all that knowledge. I thought of how glorious it would be to curl up here in the sunshine and spend an entire afternoon immersed in reading. Except this wasn’t my house, and that sort of honeysuckle fantasy would never come true, certainly not for a girl like me, whose earliest memory was of my father hanging our family dog during a drunken rage. Not even my fist pressed against my lips could stifle the tears that stung my eyes then.

Mrs. Clare glanced my way, hesitating before thumbing through a shelf. “Sometimes, the Lord sends us challenges, to test our mettle and forge iron into our bones.” Her delicate fingers flitted over several titles before finally pulling one from its shelf. “Reverend Clare and I hoped to be blessed by a passel of children, but our Heavenly Father had other plans for us. Thus, we transformed this room into a library.” She handed the volume to me and closed my fingers over the embossed letters on the front. I expected the Bible, but it was Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. “Words have the power to trans-

form us, Mary. They can lift us from our grief. The ideas they form can even offer humanity the hope for a better future.”

My chin still wobbling, I recognized the rare door that Mrs. Clare had just cracked open before me. And, as she led me to a chair and offered me a luncheon tray of meat, cheese, and lemonade, I was suddenly famished, greedy for food but also for the escape of all those words.

So I opened Locke. And I began to read.

I stayed past luncheon. In fact, I’d been at the rectory the entire day when Reverend Clare finally called me into his study. Which meant I was going to be turned out.

I wasn’t sure which was worse—being returned to my father or having to leave behind the Clares’ marvelous library. Oh, I truly felt as if someone had given me a maharaja’s sapphire and then commanded me not to look at it.

The reverend studied me through wire spectacles before folding his hands neatly upon his desk. “Mrs. Clare informs me you’ve been reading Locke.”

I had An Essay Concerning Human Understanding with me,

had sat unmoving the entire day until I’d nearly finished the first of its four books, which I now clutched tight to my chest, even as I wished to disappear and just stay here, unnoticed as I wandered within the wonderful worlds contained inside all those magical pages.

I swallowed, hard. “Indeed, sir.” “And?”

“And what?”

“What do you think of Locke’s statements? Do you agree that there are no innate principles?”

Never before had I been asked my opinion on anything,

certainly not about my beliefs regarding the stances of a famous philosopher. Finally, I gathered my wits long enough to speak. “I’m intrigued by Locke’s premise that observation and hu- man experience shape a person’s idea of what is true. It does seem accurate that infants come into this world without preconceptions.” I swallowed. “Only . . .” “Yes?”

I placed the book on the edge of the desk. It wasn’t as if I were debating Locke himself, only his ideas. “Well, can’t one also learn from someone else’s experiences?”

“Explain.”

I thought of my mother’s life, of her dogged insistence that a woman’s place was always with her husband and of the bottles of laudanum that were her constant companions. Already I knew her life wasn’t for me. Except I couldn’t very well speak of that with Reverend Clare. “Well, for example, I have experienced neither Judaism nor Islam, but I believe I can understand their basic tenets after reading Voltaire’s Dictionnaire Philosophique.” It was the first book Mrs. Clare had lent me, several weeks ago. “And I would wish everyone the opportunity to learn, even if they’re not able to observe or experience something firsthand. Locke doesn’t seem to account for that. At least not in this volume.”

Reverend Clare rubbed his chin. The pause was so long I struggled not to fidget. “You read and speak French, correct? And are proficient in geography and the use of globes?”

I didn’t understand the sudden change in subject, but then, Reverend Clare was known for his idiosyncrasies. “Yes. I am competent in both areas.”

“Excellent. You have a sound mind, Miss Wollstonecraft, one that I fear will languish here in Hoxton. Mrs. Clare directed me to speak to your father this morning—we believe you would be ideally suited as a governess. Or perhaps as a paid

companion. Unless you prefer to return home? Or are ready for a husband? I understand Farmer Jameson is looking for a new wife since being widowed last autumn.”

I recoiled. Farmer Jameson was nearly twice my age and al- ready missing half his teeth. No, marriage would not be the grand feature of my life.

“I’d happily be a governess or companion,” I responded, “but my parents would never agree. And I lack the necessary experience or letters of reference.”

“Your father has already agreed, so long as you send back half your wages to him here at Hoxton. And your mother was very enthusiastic about the idea.” Which meant my mother knew this was my only chance to escape, and had given her blessing. I felt a pang of guilt, knowing she was trapped, for society would always condemn a woman without a husband. “Mrs. Clare and I will be your reference. In fact, I already know of one possible position—a former congregation member of mine, now Lady Kingsborough of Bristol—has two young daughters she would like educated. Does that sound like some- thing you could manage?”

My head might well have popped off my neck from how fast I nodded. I’d only ever dreamed of leaving Hoxton, but that had been as likely as sprouting wings and learning to fly. Except I’d just been handed wings.

I rocked on my heels. “That would be ideal.”

The reverend retrieved a fresh piece of vellum from his desk and  tapped  a  quill  into  his  inkpot.  “Then  it’s  settled.”  He stopped and shook the pen at me, so I feared I’d suddenly angered him. “But you must promise me one thing.”

I would have promised to memorize every word of Locke’s four volumes in that moment. And to recite them all backward. “Anything.”

Reverend Clare gestured to the many books that lined the shelves of his study. “Knowledge is the fairest fruit and the food of joy. You must never forget that. And you must swear a solemn oath that you will never stop reading, or learning, or sharing that knowledge, like the philosophers of old.”

“I won’t,” I said, then stuck out my hand. “You have my word.” A touch of amusement bloomed at the corner of Reverend Clare’s mouth. His handshake was firm but not overly strong.

“Excellent. Oh, and Miss Wollstonecraft?” “Yes?”

The reverend’s watery eyes twinkled from behind his spectacles as he nudged An Essay Concerning Human Understanding toward me. “You may keep this volume of Locke. And the other three, too—can’t have a mismatched set, now can we?”

I felt the rusted twin shackles of past and present fall loose in that moment, the sudden buoyancy of their loss making me nearly giddy. I no longer needed to disappear—surely that was the inevitable fate of most girls and women throughout all of history—not when I was about to do the impossible.

I, Mary Wollstonecraft of Hoxton, would use wings stitched from words and knowledge and kindness to soar my way to freedom.

And I hoped never to look back.

Excerpted from HER LOST WORDS by Stephanie Marie Thornton, published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023

Preview of Her Lost Words by Stephanie Marie Thornton