Chapter 7: The Gunter's Ice

Gunter's in Berkeley Square, on a fine afternoon, is the best theatre in London, and the ices are only an excuse.

We went on Saturday, all four of us, at the Dowager's insistence.

"If one is to be talked about," said Ottoline, "one should be talked about over a pineapple ice."

Every table was full of the ton in bonnets.

They looked at the Duke of Tarrant and his new duchess, and they lowered their voices, which is the loudest thing a room can do.

I sat very straight in my plain grey and ate lemon ice and did not look at anyone.

Gervase sat across from me in a mulberry waistcoat, with his foot against mine under the table.

He had put it there when we sat down.

He had not moved it since.

At the next table a young man in a shabby black coat dropped his spoon, picked it up, and dropped it again, looking at Kitty.

Kitty looked at the ceiling with great concentration and went pink to the roots of her braids.

"Curate's son," said the Dowager, without turning her head. "Good teeth. Poor prospects. Leave it a month."

"Granny O," said Kitty, scandalized and delighted.

"Don't granny me. I'm giving you advice."

That was when the second woman came.

She came through the tables in a pearl-grey pelisse with a feather in her bonnet, and conversation stopped table by table as she passed.

She stopped at ours.

"Your Grace," she said to Gervase, very sweet. "I did hope I'd find you.

"You promised me, on the Vauxhall lawn last August, that you would never marry."

The room went silent.

A spoon rang against a glass.

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