Chapter 8: The Bath

On Sunday evening two footmen carried a copper tub into the Duchess's dressing room and went out again looking at nothing.

Gervase followed them in, carrying a ewer of hot water in both hands.

"I said tomorrow," he said.

"You did."

"I'd rather say it somewhere I can't lose my nerve.

"May I wash your hair?"

I looked at the steam rising from the tub, and at my husband in his shirtsleeves, and I began to unlace my gown.

"You don't have to ask," I said. "You just have to be quick."

He laughed, and turned his back, and then turned round again.

I stepped into the water and sat down with my knees drawn up, and the heat went all the way through me.

He knelt on the boards behind me and poured water over my head.

It ran down my neck and my shoulders and my spine.

He took a cake of soap that smelled of orange and worked it into my cropped curls.

His fingers were slow and sure on my scalp, and I let my head fall forward and shut my eyes.

"Nobody has done this for me since I was twelve," I said.

"Nobody has done this for me since my nurse."

He said it lightly.

I opened my eyes and stared at the opposite wall.

"The story you've heard about me," said Gervase, behind me, "is true in its outline.

"A woman's name is in it, and she's real, and she is a person, and I won't speak of her.

"The rest is that I became a story, Mina.

"It was easier than being a man.

"People ask nothing of a story but that it behave."

His fingers stilled at the back of my neck.

"I had not realized how tired I was of behaving," he said.

"Then you walked onto that terrace and told me I was wicked, and I hadn't the least idea what to do with it."

I turned in the water.

Soap ran into my eyes, and I blinked it away, and his face was very close and unguarded.

"I don't want the story," I said. "I want whoever is under it."

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