Chapter 4: The Green Room

The first woman arrived at breakfast, which I thought showed a want of manners and a good sense of theatre.

The Dowager was buttering toast and drinking sherry from a coffee cup.

Kitty was reading the Morning Post aloud, and Gervase had a letter in his pocket that he had not touched, and a face to match.

The footman said, "A lady, your Grace. She won't give her name."

"Then she wants a scene," said the Dowager. "Show her in."

She was handsome and rouged, in a green pelisse, with a smile she had practised.

She looked at the table and at me and chose me.

"So this is the Duchess," she said. "I did think she'd be taller."

"I am taller," I said.

"Gervase, darling." She turned. "After the Green Room at Drury Lane, in March, I thought we were friends."

Kitty stopped reading.

The Dowager stopped buttering.

I looked at my husband.

He had gone very still, and his hands lay flat on the cloth, and he did not look at the woman at all.

"I never contradict a lady," said Gervase, quietly.

I felt it land under my ribs.

"Which March?" I said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Which night in March, and what was he wearing?"

She hesitated.

"A saffron waistcoat."

"He owns eleven.

"Describe the Green Room.

"Which door did he come in at, and did he take off his rings?"

"He, he came in at the stage door."

"The Green Room has no stage door, madam. It has a passage."

The woman's smile slipped a quarter of an inch.

I took a sovereign from my sleeve and put it on the cloth in front of her.

"For the hackney," I said. "Whoever sent you overpaid, and you should not have to walk."

She picked up the sovereign.

She left without a word, and Kitty wrote something in her notebook, and the Dowager reached for the sherry.

"Well done, child," said the Dowager.

Gervase said nothing at all.

That night I did not knock.

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