Chapter 18: The Physician's Letter

"I had it copied this afternoon," said the Dowager, "by a clerk with a weakness for sherry.

"I wanted you to read it before you wept on it."

She drew a folded paper out of her sleeve and gave it to me.

I read it on the stairs by her candle, with my husband's breath against my hair.

"'I have the honour to certify,'" I read, "'that on the fourteenth of last month I examined, at his own request, the Duke of Tarrant.

"'I find his Grace to be by constitution incapable of the marital act.

"'The infirmity is of long standing, and no course of treatment will mend it.

"'I regret to say the marriage cannot in conscience be called one.'"

"He examined me," said Gervase, "at my own request."

"On the fourteenth."

"I have not seen a physician since I was nine.

"I broke an arm falling out of a pear tree."

"Brayne is counting on your being too ashamed to deny it," said the Dowager.

"A man will say a great many things in a court to avoid saying that word aloud."

Gervase took the letter out of my hand.

He read it once, slowly, and gave it back.

"It's very well written," he said.

His voice was perfectly pleasant, and his hand was shaking.

He went up the stairs without another word.

I found him at breakfast, with the paper in front of his plate and his tea untouched.

The Dowager had summoned Kitty and the housekeeper's second pot of coffee, and was drawing on a tablecloth with a fork.

"The ball," she said. "Brayne will come.

"I shall send him a card, and he can't refuse it without admitting fear.

"He'll bring his friends, and he'll bring that letter."

"And we let him," I said.

Gervase looked up.

"We let him stand up in front of two hundred people and say it.

"We say nothing until he has finished."

"Mina."

"A lie told in a corner can only be denied in a corner.

"A lie told in a ballroom can be answered in a ballroom."

"I'll have to stand there," said my husband, "and be called it.

"In front of the Lords, who will believe it, because they'd like to."

"Yes."

"And say nothing."

"Until I answer."

He was quiet for a very long time.

I did not hurry him.

"My true thing," he said, "since it's morning.

"I have been afraid of being laughed at since I was sixteen.

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