He Dropped Three Women in One Night, Then We Took His Estate novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: The Swan Has a Debtor

Ottilie Dunmere drove the dower house cart into Corbel at dawn with her scarlet skirts bunched under a borrowed horse blanket.

The cart was a farm cart with one good wheel and a mule that disliked her.

She did not care.

She had left a wife and a ward asleep by a stove, and she had a theatre to save before breakfast.

The Gilded Swan stood on Candle Street between a chandler and a pawnbroker, its gold paint flaking in the frost.

There was a man in a grey coat on its front step.

He was holding a paper in one hand and a hammer in the other, and he was nailing the paper to the door.

"That is my door," Ottilie said, climbing down.

"It is the property of the Marquis of Voltraine," said the bailiff, "and by notice of the noble creditor, it is to be sealed at noon."

"Which creditor?"

"The Marquis's cousin on his mother's side."

"The banker," Ottilie said.

"I am not permitted to say."

"You just said it."

She went past him and pushed the door open with her shoulder.

Inside, nineteen people sat on the stage steps in their coats.

They had been sitting there all night.

The old prompter had a rug over his knees, and the two young sisters who played the maids were asleep against each other.

Her leading man, who was fifty and vain and loved her like a mother, stood up and held out his arms.

"We heard," he said. "The whole of Corbel heard. Is it true he put you out in front of the Princess's ladies?"

"In front of everyone," Ottilie said. "I wore my best red."

"Of course you did."

"If a man is going to ruin me, he can look at something worth looking at."

Somebody laughed, shakily.

She looked along the line of faces, the players she had fed and housed and paid for two years, and her voice came out low.

"I have a week," she said. "The lease does not end tonight. He has no power to end it by speaking. It ends when the notice is served and the term is up, and the term is a week from today."

"The bailiff says noon," said the prompter.

"The bailiff says what he is paid to say."

She pulled off the horse blanket.

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