The Wedding Night

Sleep, of course, was out of the question. If I could only pull this off, I might get through the night without a disaster; but my heart was hammering with nerves and would not settle.

After a while, Tess’s voice reached me from beyond the door, calling.

“My lady, where have you gone off to!”

The more she called, the tighter I screwed my eyes shut. Whatever happened, I had to keep up the pretense of being asleep.

“My lady…?”

In that instant the bedroom door opened, and I felt a presence come flooding in against my back.

“My lady, don’t tell me you’re asleep? Good heavens. Your hair’s still wet, even.”
“…”
“Do wake up, my lady. You oughtn’t sleep here — you’re to go and sleep in the master’s chamber.”

Tess whispered, giving my shoulder a gentle shake. I let my body go limp in her hands and shut my eyes all the tighter.

“Quickly, now. The master is, at this very moment—”
“That’s enough of that.”

That was the moment.

“My wife seems to have had a very tiring day of it.”

Herman Ernst’s voice settled, thick and clammy, over the blanket I’d dragged up to my chin.

“But, Master.”
“It’s all right — the rest of you, withdraw. Tonight I’ll sleep in this room.”

Herman had boxed me in perfectly; there was nowhere left to run. In the dark, all I could do was swallow a soundless cry of dismay.

Now what am I supposed to do.

The knot of people who had clustered, murmuring, at the bedroom door ebbed away like a receding tide. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it in the shift of the air alone: the door clicked shut, they were gone, and before long I was left there alone with Herman, the two of us.

Heavy footfalls approached, slow and deliberate. Then the bed dipped and sank softly on one side. For some reason my left cheek prickled, as though Herman’s gaze had come to rest against it.

“…”

Herman kept his silence. A cold sweat ran down the length of my spine, and, afraid my breathing might snag under the strain, I bent every nerve to letting it out slow and even.

“Do you mean to go on pretending to be asleep?”

An age seemed to pass before that low voice settled down over me. Under the blanket, the toes I’d tucked out of sight curled in on themselves without my willing it.

“Well. Once you’ve begun a thing, you’d best see it through to the end.”

With a soft breath he blew out the candle in his hand, and pitch darkness fell. The blanket rustled, and a moment later a strange warmth began to reach me.

Am I really under the same blanket as Herman Ernst right now?

Every muscle in my body drew taut. Each fine hair on me stood on end, bristling toward the man.

“!”

A shadow loomed over me, reaching for my face, and my eyes flew open before I could stop them.

“Shh. That won’t do.”

A large hand swept tenderly down over my brow and eyes, and I was forced to lower my lids again and feign sleep. I felt exactly like a child pitching a fuss about being put to bed.

“You’re deep asleep right now, remember. You mustn’t open your eyes, not on any account.”
“…”
“Whatever I do, don’t react to it.”

It was an absurd thing to say, when he’d plainly met my eyes, clear as day, only a moment before. To keep feigning sleep now was nothing but a ridiculous farce.

“Well — if you like, you may open your eyes. But whatever happens after is on your own head.”

At that threat, I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes again.

“There. Good. You’re doing well. Very wise of you.”

It was exactly the tone one uses to coax a child. Beneath it, though, he made no attempt to hide his contempt for my small show of defiance.

It was then.

A large hand came and slowly lifted the back of my head. He teased free the hair that had bunched every which way, damp still, and straightened the pillow I’d knocked askew when I flung myself down in my hurry.

“…”

These tender gestures, so at odds with the situation, only put me more on edge. The touch was nothing like delicate, and yet unmistakably tender; he spread my wet hair out flat, slow and careful, and blotted the water from it with a towel.

“What was the great hurry, that you’d play at sleep without even drying your hair.”

Herman clicked his tongue, a short, sharp sound.

“I’ve thought it over carefully. The reason you’re behaving like this.”
“…”
“The reason you keep trying to go to the capital, and putting distance between us, I mean.”

After a long, drawn-out silence, he murmured, his voice low and sunken.

“Is it, perhaps, because of that man.”

Herman was still pressing the towel into my wet hair, firm and insistent, exactly as though he were holding something down by force, enduring it.

That man…?

I hadn’t the faintest idea who he could suddenly be asking about. As I secretly clenched my fist and turned it over, a certain figure flashed to the front of my mind like a bolt of lightning.

Surely he doesn’t mean Cedric?

And the guess struck home, precisely on the mark.

“What in the world did you find so pleasing about Count Drake?”

Gloria’s rumored hunger for her twin’s husband, tangled up with my own push to reclaim my rightful place, had made a situation more than ripe for Herman to misread. And what was more, Gloria, Herman’s wife, really had given herself over to Cedric Drake, hadn’t she.

Even so. How could he misread a thing so badly.

Every action I’d taken until now had sprung not from loving Cedric Drake, but from hating him.

A husband who had shattered the sacred vow of marriage.

A man who had ground every ounce of my respect and goodwill into the dirt.

I loathed Cedric Drake to the point of death. As the thought ran on, the rims of my eyes grew suddenly hot.

Had I bitten down hard on my lip without realizing? A warm thumb came, slow and gentle, and drew it free.

“At first, I thought it was understandable. Told that your husband was dead, you might well have needed someone to lean on.”
“…”
“Why it had to be Cedric Drake, of all people — your own twin’s husband — I couldn’t say, but no matter.”

A deep sigh spilled out of him and reached all the way to my brow.

“And yet even now that I’ve come back — why. Yes, let me hear it while we’re at it. In what way am I lesser than that bastard?”

“Never once in my whole life have I had cause to feel such inferiority,” Herman muttered. “And now, thanks to my wife, I’m getting my fill of it.”

“That’s—”

I opened my mouth to deny it, to say anything at all. Cedric Drake had once been my husband, true; but being lumped in with him and misjudged in the same breath was, absurd as it sounds, intensely distasteful to me.

“No. Don’t answer. I’ve no wish to hear it.”

But a firm voice cut off my excuse. Or rather, it was his callused hand that physically stopped my lips. They lost their shape, pressed flat beneath Herman’s palm, and for an instant I couldn’t decide whether to feel embarrassed by it or humiliated.

“And in case you’ve forgotten — you’re asleep right now.”

Then Herman drew the blanket up to my chin, as though I were some doll for him to play dress-up with.

Dumbfounded, I ended up staring at him with my eyes wide open. Just then Herman turned his gaze idly my way, and our eyes met. Those grey eyes, caught in the night, shone with a fierce, piercing light, as though the dark were the very hour they were made for.

…Should I close my eyes again.

But for some reason I didn’t want to. Stubbornness, perhaps; whatever it was, I had no wish to look away from his gaze. No; more precisely, I wanted to tell him not to measure himself against Cedric. Cedric Drake wasn’t a man worth setting on the scales beside anyone to begin with, and against Herman, who meant to stand by his wife under any circumstances, the comparison was all the more impossible.

And then.

“Shall we go together? The triumphal ceremony.”

Herman asked it with his eyes fixed on mine. So startled that I sucked in a hollow breath, I sat bolt upright, only for him to press a firm hand to my shoulder at once and lay me back down just as I’d been.

“You’ve quite a talent for seeing yourself objectively, it seems. Just as you said, you do seem to have a touch of sleepwalking. Springing bolt upright out of a dead sleep, and all.”

To think the excuse I’d blurted out so carelessly on our walk through the wood would come back to bite me like this. A wave of resentment welled up in me, and I primly shut my eyes, telling him without words that I’d play along to his tune, just as he wanted.

“Yes — if you walk into the triumphal ceremony on my arm, as my partner, perhaps then you’ll come to feel it for yourself. Just whose place at your side it truly is.”
“Really? You mean I may?”

I couldn’t believe Herman had gone back on his refusal. Without meaning to, I opened my eyes and looked straight at him as I asked.

“This is trouble. And here I took it for an excuse — but your sleep-talking really is this dreadful.”

Once again Herman brushed off my reaction and turned the subject aside. Then, unhurried, he lay down on his side of the bed and burrowed deep beneath the blanket.

I watched him lying there, face to face with me, in a daze, but he gave no reaction at all, only settling himself down to sleep. Before long, his long lashes veiled the grey of his eyes.

“Listen to me, honestly. What am I doing, going on and on at someone fast asleep.”
“Do stop teasing me, please. Are you truly going to take me to the capital?”
“What sincerity do you expect from words a man mutters to himself at a sleeping woman’s side.”
“Herman…”
“Spend the whole night turning it over, then. Whether you ought to believe those words or not — with nothing before you but the back of a sleeping man’s head.”

With that, Herman turned his back to me, light and unhurried. As the blanket fluttered and a faint draft breathed out of it, the dim scent of wine drifted over from him.

So he’s been drinking.

As a rule I’d never once seen him take any pleasure in drink. Could it be that, on edge about tonight, he’d tossed back a light glass or two?

“…”

Gazing at that broad back, I turned his parting curse over and over in my mind for a very long while.

“Spend the whole night turning it over, then. Whether you ought to believe those words or not — with nothing before you but the back of a sleeping man’s head.”

For, just as he’d said, all I could do the whole night through was stare at the back of the man who’d turned away from me.