Chapter 10: The Box

On Wednesday I asked my husband to take me to Drury Lane.

I had not said a word about Half Moon Street in two days.

I had eaten what was put before me and played piquet with Kitty and let the Dowager look at me over her sherry.

I had also, every night, let him hold me in the dark, and not asked.

"Mr. Kean is playing Richard," I said at breakfast. "I should like to see a man who is wicked in earnest."

Gervase looked up so fast that his tea slopped.

"Of course," he said. "Anything you like."

He had been saying it for two days.

We had a box on the second tier, with a red curtain half drawn and a view of the whole house.

Gervase wore black and silver, no rings.

I wore the grey silk and a Kashmir shawl the Dowager had put round my shoulders in the hall, with a look.

"For the draughts," she had said.

Below us the pit filled with a roar and a smell of oranges.

I sat very straight with my gloved hands in my lap.

The curtain rose on Gloucester alone on the stage, and a thousand people held their breath.

It was the third woman who spoiled it.

She was in the pit, near the front, in a scarlet gown, with a fan.

She turned and looked straight up at our box, and she smiled, and kissed two fingers, and blew the kiss.

Gervase went still.

I felt it in the whole length of his thigh beside mine.

"Do you know her?"

"No."

"Truly?"

"I have never seen that woman in my life."

I looked at his profile.

He said it so flatly that I almost believed him.

I made up my mind.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Proposed to London's Wickedest Duke, and He Said Yes from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.