A Duchess in the Rain

The duchess arrived at the church in a borrowed mourning veil and left it with a dead man’s letter sewn into her hem. No one noticed, because London had always preferred spectacle to truth, and on that March morning spectacle came obediently dressed in black silk, wet feathers, and three dozen carriages hissing through rain. Viola, Duchess of Hartmere, stood beneath the stone porch of St Bartholomew’s and listened to the bells toll for a husband who had not loved her enough to haunt her, though he had certainly hated her enough to leave instructions.