The Wicked Mother-in-Law And The Fake Daughter-in-Law

Helena Drake, the Dowager Countess Drake, had come to call at her son’s manor, timing her visit to coincide with the social season’s opening and the triumphal ceremony. She kept to a quiet seaside village in the south, where she passed her days at her gardening and her cross-stitch, and society knew her for a temperament as mild and generous as those genteel hobbies suggested. Whatever the provocation, she never once raised her voice, always speaking in soft, measured tones, and for that they had even christened her the Dawn Lark.

“How is it you seem to grow thinner by the day, my dear?”

Helena set aside the white cloche hat she had knitted with her own hands.

“However do you mean to bear an heir with a body like that?”

Cutting into her food at that hastily arranged dinner, Gloria understood at last that the genteel epithet pinned on Helena was, in truth, nothing more than a public mask.

“…Ah. Yes.”

Under the barbed words, Gloria only just managed to keep her face composed.

“Tsk. Look at those wrists. However do you manage to cut anything with wrists like those?”

Gloria’s gaze dropped to her own wrists. Those slim white wrists and ankles had always been her pride, yet one word from Helena left them feeling like some shameful flaw she ought to hide.

“It was bad enough that you kept your mother-in-law waiting the better part of an hour, but now, picking at your food in front of your elder besides…”
“…”
“You’re forever making me out to be the difficult one. Forcing me to speak so harshly over such trifling little things.”
“I’m sorry.”

Gloria studied Helena, reading what lay beneath the words, and soon enough she understood exactly where the old woman’s ill temper truly sprang from.

“But, Mother. The matter you’re so worried over — my husband and I are working hard at it.”

Gloria flashed a sweet, contrived smile.

“I’ll be sure to bring you happy news before the year is out.”
“Happy news?”
“A son, I mean.”

All this time, the one who had failed to produce a child had been Marienne Drake, and only because Cedric, worn down by Gloria’s own pressure, had kept his distance from his wife’s bed. Wasn’t that the truth of it? Now that she herself was mistress of House Drake, she had only to pop out a son or a daughter, easy as anything.

I’ll give you as many as you please — a mere heir, what of it.

Gloria was certain she was nothing like her twin. Only she could satisfy Helena; only she could seize the whole of Cedric’s love for herself.

“That’s right, Mother. Please don’t fret so.”

Only a little earlier, in the bedchamber, Cedric had been agonizing over whether he’d been right to take Gloria as his wife in Marienne’s stead. But watching her carry herself so sweetly even under Helena’s cutting reproaches, he resolved to put his doubts away.

I suppose I’ve simply been on edge, with so much on my mind of late.

No one could stay charming every hour of the day; sharing a roof, one was bound to catch the odd disagreeable glimpse now and then. Cedric made the effort to understand her behavior and shifted in his seat.

“We are doing our utmost as well, Mother. By around this time next year, I’ll be sure to place a lovely grandchild in your arms.”

The moment Cedric took Gloria’s side, the two women’s faces turned to opposites. Helena, a touch displeased now, dabbed at the corners of her mouth.

“How many times now have you told me you understand, and nothing more. It would be quicker for me to go and bear another son myself.”

Then she went on, her voice firm.

“The thing I said to you last time — see that you don’t let it go in one ear and out the other.”

The thing she’d said last time? Gloria had never once heard a word about Helena from Marienne. While she raced silently through her thoughts, the sharp-eyed Helena noticed she didn’t understand, and sighed.

“That if there’s still no news by the end of this year, I’ll look into finding another woman to bear the child.”
“!”
“No use putting on a face like you can’t remember. That’s a thing I’ve said to you over and over.”

With no intention of taking back a word of it, Helena calmly returned to her meal, and for once Gloria was left with nothing to say.

What sort of mad nonsense is that!

No wife alive would sit and listen quietly to talk of installing another woman under her own roof. And yet, of everyone at the table, she seemed to be the only one who found any of Helena’s rubbish the least bit strange. Watching Cedric carve his meat as placidly as ever, even after hearing such a thing, Gloria let a small, incredulous breath of a laugh escape her.

“And, my dear.”

Helena took a sip of water with an elegant motion of her hand and smiled fondly.

“Your hair’s come a little undone. However much at home you may be, it’s hardly becoming. What on earth could you have been doing, to loosen hair that was bound up tight with a ribbon?”

In that gentle tone of hers, Helena spat out anything but gentle words.

“Seeing this sort of thing makes me wonder whether the two of you are truly making any effort at all. That a husband could be roused to desire, looking at a wife as disheveled as this…”
“…”
“For my part, I simply find it a little hard to understand.”

Gloria felt a sudden urge to shout that only moments ago this woman’s precious son had been pawing at her like a dog in heat.

“A beautiful woman has always been a diligent one, you know. I say all this for your own good, my dear.”

Rage flared in her, but she barely forced it down.

“Thank you, Mother. I’ll take it to heart.”

Had she still been the Duchess Ernst, it was an insolent remark she would never have had to sit and swallow.

Why should I be the one made to suffer such humiliation?

For just a moment, she found herself wondering whether choosing Drake over Ernst had been the right decision after all.

No. I don’t regret it. Never.

Gloria clenched a fist beneath the table and choked down the fury welling up in her. She could never go back to being an Ernst, and so she absolutely had to make herself belong among the Drakes.

“Your mother — what in the world is the matter with her?”
“Ria, what’s got into you now. And ‘your mother,’ honestly.”

Dinner behind them, Gloria had come up to the couple’s bedchamber and rounded on Cedric, who pressed a weary hand to his brow and heaved a long sigh.

These days their voices rose the moment they came face to face. Once, a single glance between them had sent sparks flying; now the sparks flew in quite another sense.

“Then what, is she only my mother? She’s your mother too, isn’t she. Get a hold of yourself. And I’m even saying this with my temper reined in and my words softened, mind you.”

Gloria flopped onto the bed and let her irritation spill out.

Mad old bat — hasn’t even the grace to age. Why is that old crone so hale and hearty? Picking at some fault at the end of every last sentence, as though she means to nag a person into the grave!

Those pointed looks all through the meal had been enough to leave the food sitting in her like a stone.

That’s not the knack of someone who’s only been at the badgering a day or two. How many years did Marienne put up with this?

A hard little thing, that twin of hers, too. To think she’d never once breathed a word against her own mother-in-law all that time; small wonder Gloria had been left so utterly in the dark that Helena Drake could turn out to have a temper like this.

“And how could she come all the way to the capital without so much as a word ahead? I can’t even rest easy in my own home — what is this!”

Gloria flung her hair back and pressed on with her complaint.

“You’ll just have to bear with it.”
“What?”
“Mother is a member of House Drake too — if she wishes, she has every right to drop in on her son’s home for a while. Ask her to send word before she comes and she’ll only take it to heart.”

Cedric, without the faintest grasp of Gloria’s fury, only went on saying the most maddening things imaginable. Unable to master the heat rising from the pit of her belly, Gloria clutched at the back of her neck.

“Were you always this thick-headed? Ugh — forget it. What’s the use of saying anything now.”
“Yes, good thinking. All that fretting only carves lines between your brows. Never mind it — let’s just get back to what we were doing earlier.”

Cedric gauged her mood and sidled up to Gloria’s side. She shoved him off and cut a sharp look up at him.

“With your mother right here in the house, this is what you want to do?”
“If we do this, Mother’s sure to be pleased too, you know? Going on about it the way she is — the sooner we put a grandchild in her arms…”
“No. Get away from me.”
“What’s the matter, Ria.”
“Are you asking because you honestly don’t know? Not until Mother goes back down south — not in this manor. No — I won’t.”

Cedric’s eyes went wide, and he spoke in despair.

“What? There’s no telling when Mother will go back down — how can you tell me to hold out until then?”
“Is that really something you ought to be asking me? If you don’t even know when your own mother is leaving, then what am I to do!”

In the end, fury boiling up to the very roots of her hair, Gloria shrieked and drove Cedric out.

“Go and find out when your mother’s leaving! And don’t you dare think of setting foot in this room until you do!”

And just like that, Cedric found himself flung bodily out of the bedchamber. He stood blankly in the corridor, staring at the firmly shut door.

…Was I truly in the right, after all.

Once again he could not help but weigh his choice all over. For however much he loved Gloria, coming to terms with even this side of her was no easy thing.