Chapter 9: Half Moon Street

In the morning my husband told me he was going to see his solicitor.

He kissed my forehead at the breakfast table and went out with his hat in his hand.

He was a very bad liar, and I did not know why I had never noticed.

I put down my toast.

"Granny O," said Kitty, "she has her battle face."

"Hush, child," said the Dowager, and looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup full of sherry. "Take the plain carriage."

I took a hackney, because it was less noticeable and because I wanted the air.

I told the driver to follow the grey carriage with the Tarrant crest, three lengths back.

It went to Half Moon Street, to a narrow house with a green door, and the Duke of Tarrant got out and knocked.

He was let in at once.

I sat in the hackney for ten minutes by the church clock, and then I paid the driver and walked up the steps.

I knocked.

A maid opened the door and looked at my face, and I do not know what she saw there, but she stood aside.

"The Duke is in the parlour, ma'am," she said. "With Mrs. Fane."

Fane, I thought.

Lord Fane's wife, once, in the story.

I walked down the passage and opened the parlour door.

Gervase was standing at the fireplace, and a woman sat on the sofa with her hands twisted in her lap.

She was thirty-odd, with honey-brown hair pinned plainly and tired, kind, frightened eyes.

She wore a grey gown that had been mended at the cuff.

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