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an expanse of azure, was good enough to grace the drawing room of a prosperous London merchant. Her carpet, a more profound blue than the wallpaper, had been weaved by Turkish girls who must now be in their dotage. On the console table by the door, beneath an oval antique mirror just big enough for her face, bloomed a vase of snowdrops that the head gardener had brought her in exchange for a batch of her madeleines, whispered to be as delicious as the first day of spring and twice as seductive.
    She wanted Dickie to leave, so she could pluck all the petals from the flowers and crush everything to a black pulp with her bare hands.
    She hadn’t been so livid in years. She’d certainly never imagined it possible for her to be angry at him, she who’d only ever thought of him with the fervent devotion laid at the feet of a beautiful saint.
    Perhaps she was more enraged at herself, for her abysmal failure, for believing that she’d achieved sorcery and enchantment enough to release him from the spell that bound him, and made him taste only in shades of gray.
    She tried to take refuge in rationality. If he didn’t like her food, then he didn’t like it. It wasn’t personal. None of this was personal. And of course he hadn’t meant to saddle her with the making of a sandwich; the request only came to her because of her own long-standing insistence that she, and not her subordinates—many of whose working day started at half past six in the morning—took care of Bertie’s late-night whims.
    But he was not allowed to have human faults. Not when she’d held him in such esteem, such perfection of memory. Not when she’d lived chastely and reverently in deference to that memory. Not when she still—
    She rose, went to the escritoire, and pulled out a piece of writing paper.
    “Be so kind as to wait a minute,” she said to Dickie as she unscrewed the cap of her fountain pen.
     

     
    The footman who came into the library bore not a tray of foodstuff, but a folded note and a look on his face reminiscent of Prior’s silent dismay earlier in the evening. Why was it that anything having to do with dining or the cook sent everyone in the house scrambling for their smelling salts?
    The note, written in French, went a long way toward answering Stuart’s question.
     
Dear Sir,
     
Dinnertime in this house is half past seven. When I have all my forces marshaled at Waterloo, I cannot be expected to wage a campaign in Leipzig at the drop of a hat.
The venue for dinner is the dining room. Generations of effort have gone into building, maintaining, and bettering the passage between the kitchen and the house. Years of training and practice are necessary before the house staff and the kitchen staff achieve such coordination that food arrives on the table piping hot and cooked to perfection. You may not, at will, decide that the library, at the opposite end of the house, serves your purpose better. It disrupts the entire process for everyone else involved.
My responsibilities in this house extend to producing breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. If you wish to dine at other times, your request must be made in advance. Mr. Bertram Somerset understood this. I’m surprised that you, sir, reputed to be a man of the people, have so little grasp of the consideration due those who labor on your behalf.
    Yours humbly,
Verity Durant
P.S. The larder in the warming kitchen has bread, butter, and a meat pie, enough to hold you until breakfast.
    Stuart was not unaccustomed to receiving irate letters. An MP never pleased all his constituents. And a barrister who won more cases than he ought to occasionally heard from incensed members of the opposing counsel.
    This note, however, went beyond irate, evidenced by the violence of its writing. At several places on the page the nib of the fountain pen had torn through the paper, the letters not so much jotted down as slapped onto the page, the t ’s and i ’s barely crossed and dotted in the wrath of the