She asked the coachman to wait for her and walked briskly along the crowded pavements to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. She needed to be in the open air, needed space and time to think. She barely saw the crowds that passed her other than as a flash of color and a blur of faces. The babble of voices, the shouts of street vendors and the calls of coachmen and grooms broke over her like a wall of noise; the sun seemed too bright and hurt her eyes, the smells of unwashed bodies pressing close, of dung, of cut grass and flowers, sweet and sour, seemed to assault her. She walked almost blindly until she found a bench in the shade of an elm tree, and she sat down on it feeling suddenly old and tired. It did not grieve her that David had been unfaithful to her. The thought left her hollow and unemotional. It had happened so many times before that she had no trust in him remaining to be betrayed. She had known from early on in their marriage that he simply could not keep his breeches buttoned. And yet it had never occurred to her that he might have fathered a child on another woman.
