Marquise

The Marquise de Brinvilliers was accused of having conspired with her lover, the Chevalier de Sainte Croix, to poison her father and her two brothers in order to inherit their estates.

In 1986, she appeared in the stage adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuse opposite Alan Rickman, playing the manipulative marquise whose icy demeanour seems to have clung to Duncan's image like frost ever since, even though it is so at odds with her warmth in person.

The house was a big elaborate limestone affair, evidently new. Winter sunshine sparkled on lace-hung casement, on glass marquise, and the burnished bronze foliations of grille and door.