My Husband's Woman

Everything had been taken from me.

“Twins or not, this is absurd. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize my own wife? To imagine you could deceive me with such a paltry lie — it isn’t even amusing.”

My husband, Cedric Drake, did not recognize his own wife.

“Duchess Ernst’s belongings have all been loaded onto the carriage, every last one. The moment her examination is over, she’ll be able to depart without delay.”

The servants who had stood at my side for three years had finished making ready to cast me out of the estate.

“Gloria, have you truly no shame? I understand the shock of losing your husband was great, but even so — how could you go after my husband too…? Leave my estate at once. I’d rather not see your face for a while.”

And even my twin, Gloria Ernst, was shamelessly playing the part of ‘Marienne Drake.’ Playing me.

My husband, my people, even my very name. None of it was mine anymore.

“You’d all do well to stop this. I have no intention of playing along with this ridiculous performance.”

I forced a composed tone, steadying my trembling lips.

“Why am I Gloria? I’m not Gloria, I’m…”

Never in my life had I imagined facing a situation like this. How had I come to a moment where I had to prove that I was myself? I hadn’t the faintest idea how a person was even supposed to do such a thing.

“I am the real Marienne. The lady of this house, Marienne Drake…!”
“Oh, Ria. Please.”

Gloria. No. That loathsome woman beside my husband, feigning dizziness as she pretended to be me. My one and only twin, and the root of this whole catastrophe.

“How long do you mean to keep up an act that’s already been exposed? I’m begging you. Don’t disappoint me any further than this.”

Gloria burrowed into my husband’s arms and put on her most pitiful face. I very nearly screamed at the sheer gall of her.

“Gloria, enough of your games. I don’t intend to forgive anything more.”

Even so, I choked down the anger rising in me and clung to my reason as best I could. But…

“Darling, it really does seem Ria hit her head badly. Oh, what are we to do. Our poor Gloria.”

Nestled in Cedric’s arms, Gloria let a few piteous tears fall at last, foisting her own name, Gloria Ernst, onto me all the while.

“Mari, don’t cry. It isn’t your fault.”

Cedric wrapped an arm around Gloria’s shoulders and patted her tenderly.

Why the sight drove me to such fury was plain enough. He must have held Gloria just this tenderly all along, everywhere my eyes could never reach, just as, only a few nights past, he had dared to lie with her under my own roof.

“How is it not my fault? This happened because I failed to look after Ria properly when she was hurting.”

Even with my own two ears to hear it, I couldn’t believe it. She knew better than anyone how dearly I had cherished her, and still she could say a thing like that.

Gloria had trampled the last of my forbearance. All my effort to turn a blind eye to their betrayal, for the sake of the family and its honor, had in the end come to nothing.

“…So you mean to deceive me to the very last.”

Clutching my swimming head, I walked slowly toward Cedric. There were far too many watching eyes here; I had to put this preposterous scene to rest, and quickly.

“You know the truth, don’t you. Which of us is your real wife. So put an end to this quickly — before it becomes something that truly can’t be undone.”
“Put an end to what. Why do you keep spouting such nonsense…”
“Cedric!”

I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. At last I stepped right up to him and lunged, grabbing his arm with all the force I could muster.

— Smack.

“What do you think you’re doing? How distasteful!”

Cedric flung my hand off, hard.

I lost my balance and caught at a garden pillar to keep from falling; the rose vines coiled around it bit into the soft skin of my palm. But against the misery of this senseless nightmare, the sting of torn skin was nothing at all.

“…”

At the sight of my wounded hand, Cedric’s eyes wavered, ever so faintly. Yet not for an instant did his obstinate manner shift.

“That will do, Duchess Ernst.”

Would it sound foolish to admit that only in that moment did the truth come crashing down on me?

This was no joke, no mistake. In deadly earnest, my husband meant to seat my twin, not me, in the place of Countess Drake. Perhaps just as he had wished all along.

“You can’t truly believe this lie will last forever.”

Cedric met my desperate question with a dumbfounded, humorless laugh.

“A lie, is it. Now I really am curious — which of us the people who watched all this will decide is the one lying.”

I swept my gaze over the scene, my eyes gone cold and still. Gloria, Cedric, even the estate’s servants: every last one of them regarded me with contempt. Search as I might, there was not a soul here who would take my side. Somehow, just as they all insisted, I felt as though I truly had become a madwoman.

Little by little, even I was beginning to grow confused. Was I really Marienne Drake? Could I actually be Gloria Ernst, so badly concussed that I’d deluded myself into believing I was another woman?

No. That couldn’t be.

Even if the whole world denied me, I was Marienne Drake. Every last memory inside my head was the proof of it.

I drew my eyes from the butterfly threading through the roses and took a sip of black tea.

The sunlight, the breeze, even Ria’s sweet chatter beside me: everything was just as it had always been.

“Congratulations, Mari. It’s already been three whole years.”

All of it, save the single fact that today was my husband’s and my own wedding anniversary.

“I know. Thank you for the kind words.”

Half-lost in idle reverie, I accepted her good wishes dryly.

Mine was, quite literally, a marriage ‘worth congratulating.’ It had been made not out of love but to protect each other’s wealth and standing, and as bargains went, that calculated one had held together rather well.

That was why, even knowing my husband kept a long-standing lover, I let nothing show.

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t disappointed. But most marriages of convenience are just like this.

So long as he brought no bastard of his into this estate, and so long as his mistress made no move against my place, I meant to look the other way on my husband’s affair. I also clung to the laughable faith that Cedric, so obsessed with his reputation as a ‘devoted husband,’ would never actually dare such a thing.

“I’m truly proud of you, Mari. There couldn’t be a more admirable couple anywhere than the two of you.”

And so trifles of that sort did nothing to spoil the picture of the ideal couple we showed the world. On the surface, at least, Cedric was dutiful in his conduct as a husband, and in some things he even granted me complete respect.

And I had done my part by it, too.

As time passed, I grew attached to my place as his wife. I helped my husband build up the house, learned a great deal, and found small satisfactions along the way, and the attachment came about naturally. That alone made this marriage worth it enough.

My husband doesn’t gamble, and he doesn’t raise his fists. And in any matter of the family, he always consults me.

Yes, by that measure, he was a good enough spouse.

“Will the Count come home a little early on a day like today? Surely he hasn’t forgotten what day it is?”

Just then Gloria laid her finger squarely on the very thing I hadn’t wanted to dwell on, and I thought her a touch impish for it. Or perhaps I felt it all the more keenly because of the string of little incidents lately.

Why is Gloria’s glove here…?

When a familiar lace glove had turned up in the inside pocket of my husband’s coat, I had told myself there was surely some circumstance I simply wasn’t aware of.

“I do hope the token of thanks I sent reached you well, my lady.”
“A token of thanks?”
“Yes, the little garnet brooch. I sent it along through Count Drake last week — I only hope it was to your liking.”
“…Ah, yes. I’d been meaning to thank you for it, in fact.”

The talk of a gift supposedly passed to me through my husband felt utterly unfamiliar, and left me at a loss. And a brooch that looked for all the world like that same gift had surfaced inside Gloria’s jewelry box. Too strange to be coincidence, too senseless to be real, I forced myself to look away from all of it.

I couldn’t bear the way my husband’s woman, whose name and face I didn’t even know, kept being painted over with Gloria’s. Of late that absurd fancy had set my nerves on edge more and more often.

Too far. Stop thinking about it.

I slowly closed my eyes as I spoke.

“I heard he had something important to see to. But he said he’d be back as soon as he possibly could.”
“As soon as he could? When is that?”

I ran back through the family’s business calendar in my mind, then answered lightly.

“Well… before dinner at the latest, I’d think.”
“Oh, then tonight we’ll all be able to have dinner together.”

Gloria looked forward to the anniversary supper as though nothing in the world could be more natural. Why, I wondered. And just then, something in her manner struck me as faintly unsettling.

“Um, my lady.”

A servant came running across the garden just then, stopped before the white gazebo, and called to me.

And yet the servant’s eyes stayed fixed not on me, but on Gloria.