“It was after dinner. Miss Berkwell sat some ways away from me and my husband, the Lord Clarence, was at my right. I watched from across the room as Miss Berkwell took a sip, a single sip, of the fig liqueur from her pretty crystal glass. Within seconds, she reached her hand to her throat, a lascivious smile on her face. She began to cross and uncross her legs—I could see it all, Nella! I could see it so clearly, what was happening to her—but I began to fear that someone might catch me looking, and so I turned to my left and began to speak with my dear friend Mariel, and she told me all about her recent visit to Lyon, and on and on she went, until after a short while I dared to look over at Miss Berkwell again.”

Lady Clarence sucked in a breath, her throat rattling. “But she was gone, and my husband, too, and the crystal glass of liqueur with them. I could not believe I’d missed it—that he’d stepped away with her in that short time, and I had missed it. I was sure, in that moment, I would never lay eyes on her face again, and I imagined the two of them running off to his library or back to the carriage house for the final time. I took comfort in this, you know.”

As she told her story, I remained still, envisioning it all before me: the dinner table of puddings and evening gowns, the fig liqueur, the fine green powder hiding in the viscid shadows of it.

“But then I grew anxious,” Lady Clarence continued, “thinking perhaps it was all happening a bit too fast, and I worried that in her state of lust, she may forget the liqueur altogether and not drink the required amount.” She paused, looking around. “Might I have some wine to calm my nerves, please?”

I rushed to my cupboard, poured her a glass and set it in front of her.

“I began to panic, Nella, and considered searching them out, confronting them, asking her to join the ladies in the drawing room. Instead, I remained frozen at my seat while Mariel continued to spout on about Lyon, and I prayed that at any moment my husband would come into the room, telling me something terrible had happened to her, his dear cousin.” Lady Clarence looked down at the floor and suddenly wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.

“Then I saw a ghost approaching from the corridor. The ghost of Miss Berkwell. Oh, how I nearly cried out! I stifled it, thank heavens—how strange that would have seemed to the dinner guests—but I soon learned it was no ghost. It was her, in flesh and blood. I knew it by the mole on her neck, red and inflamed, as though my husband’s lips had just been on it.”