The chateau Gertrude called home nestled at the end of a winding road on the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon was delightfully silent in the summer air. She had given her only maid, a jittery freckle faced girl in her late teens, the night off to enjoy the festival with friends. After a glass of Chardonnay Gertrude had sat down at the grand piano that encompassed  the entrance hall and played a few tunes, manicured fingers deftly plucking at polished keys, but her mind was elsewhere. Windows were often left open during the summer, and as thus not only did the smell of blooming gardens enter her home but of fried confectionery and burnt rubber courtesy of fireworks as well. 

 In the few years Gertrude called Stratford-upon-Avon home, she had not once ventured to attend the festival held every summer at the square, but something called to her this time. It might have been the loneliness pricking underneath her skin or perhaps the stuffiness of having been cooped up too long, but for whatever it was, Gertrude left a fine wine glass, half filled with a mauve lip stick stain tainting the glass on the lid of her piano to dart upstairs and get dressed in more appropriate attire. 

Some twenty minutes an airy, pale canary sundress adorned her willowy limbs and a pair of simple, eggshell Jimmy Choo kitten heels adorned manicured feet. Hair, always coiffed to perfection, was touched up in a gilded mirror and necessities (as well as a small flask, for she would never drink the swill that they served in town) neatly put in a pearl enclosed clutch dangling from fingertips as she began the walk to the square. Driving would've been a much more sensible choice, but she didn't live that far from town, and how she hated to get behind the wheel. The flaxen haired woman breathed deeply, enjoying the assault of summer's aroma on her senses.

It wasn't long until kitten heels stepped gracefully onto cobblestone and crowds of gay merrygoers covered the streets around her. Other than nodding respectfully, no one approached her - that was to be expected, though. Gertrude hadn't made much of a name for herself as a gossiper or small talker. It was all the same to her that she be left alone to enjoy the festival, though there was something ironic in her leaving the solitude of her home only to feel it more sharply surrounded by people. 

An almost sickly sweetness assaulted Gertrude's senses, then, and she sniffed surreptitiously, her nose guiding her to a stand selling toffee apples. She smiled warmly at the elderly man commandeering it.

"May I purchase one of your apples, Alfred?" Gertrude questioned, lilting British voice that had so often gotten her admirers when a young girl now tinted with undertones of thick vowel usage, having spent so long speaking Danish in Copenhagen. It still felt odd to her to go back to her mother tongue sometimes. 

"Of course, Madame von der Maase." The old man replied cheerily, wrapping one up for the elegant woman that stood before him. Gertrude, waiting patiently for the man's arthritic hands, glanced to her peripheral vision to her left, noticing something odd. Two young men, finely dressed and lavishly accesorized, appeared to be speaking quite near the toffee apple stand she currently stood at, one with a cigarette dangling between fingers. Gertrude smiled faintly. The way he held himself - so self-assured, but with an aggravated stance. He reminded her of her Hamlet. 

She thanked the old man for the apple and held the stick between two manicured fingers, taking a seat on a bench near the two men and appeared to be enjoying the festivities around her, though her sharp ears were instead listening to the conversation a stone's throw away from her.