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Georgina stopped too. “I just described how they feel to me.”

“But pronouns are immaterial. They’re parts of speech.”

“That follow certain rules.” Georgina’s voice was dry. “Hence your objection. You disapprove of they used in the singular.”

“Not at all. Authors were using they in the singular back in the fourteenth century. There’s a very long precedent.”

“I thought the fourteenth century was recent by your standards.” Georgina’s lips twitched. “It’s after 1066.”

She was teasing. That was humor in her eyes, not derision. Was she making a special effort? Or had Elfreda sometimes been too quick in the past to assume the worst?

“Actually,” said Elfreda, “they singular is quite old-fashioned. It was used to indicate a person about whom nothing was known. A stranger in the distance who might be male or female, or someone unspecified. Nowadays we are supposed to default to he in such instances. According to Fisher’s New Grammar, he is universal as well as masculine. Like man is universal as well as masculine.”

Georgina’s eyes gleamed. “Propaganda.”

“Propaganda.” Elfreda was incredulous. “The English language?”

“Codified by men for men.” Georgina focused on her with a sharp gaze. “Man is universal? All right. Imagine this. Parliament passes universal manhood suffrage. Would women be allowed to vote? Of course not. But women are hanged and transported for breaking laws that make no mention of women in particular. Man is universal then. He means she, but only when women have nothing to gain by it. For example, you can’t claim he means she to go to Oxford.”

Elfreda responded automatically. “I don’t want to go to Oxford. Papa went and says it’s all drunken stunts and he never read so little in his life.”

Georgina laughed. “Too good for Oxford. Noted. But you take my point.”

After a moment, Elfreda laughed too. She did take Georgina’s point.

“I want to become a Fellow of the Albion Society.” She couldn’t help her stomach’s little plunge. “They don’t allow women either. But I will make such an important contribution to the field, they will have no choice.”

Georgina’s smile was cynical. “I wish you luck with that.”

Elfreda bristled. “I will.”

“It’s not your ability to contribute that I doubt. It’s the other part.”

Elfreda bit her lip, mollified and perturbed in equal measure. Everything about this interaction with Georgina had upset her assumptions. She felt halfway dazed.

“Quakers are deliberate about pronouns.” Georgina’s cynicism had vanished. She looked contemplative. “You once marked people as high and low. It was used in the singular only to address one’s social superiors. Quakers didn’t like that. They insisted on thee and thou for everyone. Because we’re all equal before God.”

“You mix with Quakers?”

Georgina registered her incredulity with a faint smile. “My mother held fundraisers in London for women campaigning against West Indian sugar consumption. More of them were Quakers than not. Quaker plain speech is a protest against class division. Why not they as a protest against the division of the sexes?” She let this linger a moment in the air, then gave a shake. “In truth, I don’t have such lofty ambitions. For me, it’s what I said before. The fit.”

Elfreda nodded. She was fully dazed. For years, she’d believed that Georgina could only veer between an excess of animal spirits and self-indulgent ennui, due to an empty head and a hollow heart. She’d underestimated her. No, she’d underestimated them. It didn’t mean they were trustworthy. Her new understanding of their finer qualities, and their powers of fascination, only meant she could trust herself less when she was around them.

She had to stay on guard. Now more than ever.

“Why don’t you join us for dinner tonight? No lapdog. Perhaps a game of whist.” Georgina gestured in the direction of Redmayne Manor with a shoe. “Have you met Rosalie? Was she with Anne?”

The pergola formed before her, its lavender drapery of wisteria a languid frame for the feverish embraces within.

Elfreda’s blush was a screaming red. “A truce is a cessation of hostilities. A temporary cessation of hostilities.” Johnson’s Dictionary to the rescue. “A truce isn’t peace, or fellowship, or…”

Kissing.

“We do not dine,” she finished.

“My mistake.” Georgina bowed. Elfreda had trouble removing her eyes from the sardonic set of their mouth.

As she hurried away, she felt fairly certain that this was her mistake. And that it was entirely too late to correct.