If I Can't Have Him

God, this is infuriating enough to make me sick.

The moment Marienne slipped from sight, Gloria ground her teeth, watching Herman Ernst hemmed in by a crowd.

His looks, only finer now after so long apart. The honor he’d won distinguishing himself in the Central Continent War. The enterprise rights the Emperor had granted him this very day at the triumphal ceremony.

All of it should have been mine — why?!

Even though she’d thrown it all away with her own hands, the resentment came surging back regardless. The lengths she had gone to, to make him hers: she’d cajoled Marienne, thrown tantrums at Mother, and, when even that wasn’t enough, groveled to Father, until she’d barely clawed out her place. And now she’d lost it just like this, for nothing.

Had I known he’d come strolling back alive and whole like this, I’d never have let these past five years go so utterly to ruin.

God seemed to hoard all his cruelty for her alone, so much so that she half-suspected he’d dug a pit and lain in wait, just to snatch Herman away from her.

“Mari.”

At that moment Cedric, who had been reading the mood of the banquet hall, bent down and pressed himself close to her.

“What are you doing? There are people everywhere.”

Gloria brushed at her shoulder with her fan, a couple of light taps, meaning for him to back off. Cedric pressing himself against her on top of everything else was past tiresome now; it was enough to make her furious.

“I’m setting off now, so time it right and follow. It’ll be a problem if you’re even a little late.”
“I’ve got it. What do you take me for, an idiot?”

Cedric needed everything spelled out for him again and again, and it grated on her. He held her gaze a moment, as though he found her untrustworthy.

“What’s put you in a mood this time?”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“Nothing, my foot. It’s written all over your face.”
“I said it’s nothing, really.”

She couldn’t fathom why he was being so tiresome, so clingy, and she wanted to scream at him to just go already. But in a room where every person of influence in the empire had gathered, that was out of the question.

“Juss urry un go. (Just hurry up and go.)”

Fixing a passably elegant smile on her face, she muttered it through her teeth like a ventriloquist. Left with no choice, Cedric gave an awkward nod and moved off.

Right — now’s no time to be dwelling on other things.

She watched Cedric recede into the distance. More than anything, now was the time to focus on getting Marienne and Herman divorced. Once that was done, this foul mood of hers would surely lift a good deal, and she called to mind the scene she’d spent the whole evening grinding her teeth over.

Marienne and Herman, dancing the minuet at the center of the hall. As the soft strains of the strings filled Lumen Hall, the two of them had matched their steps gracefully to the music, Herman leading with perfectly controlled movements and Marienne following his lead with elegant poise.

And what’s more…

Why on earth do they look so intimate?

The way they kept glancing at each other, moment to moment, carried a warmth that went beyond the courtesy proper to a public occasion.

Her standing in society is dragging through the gutter, and she’s even squandered the whole of the Ernst fortune, on top of it all.

So why in the world wasn’t Herman casting Marienne out? He showed nothing like the aversion to ‘Gloria Ernst’ she’d imagined.

It’s not as if he’s deaf — he must have heard the rumors. And it’s not as if he’s blind to the state of the finances, either.

And so, the whole time she watched them dance, Gloria felt her thoughts snarling every which way. Whether this was jealousy toward Marienne or regret over Herman, she could not tell. An unpleasantness she couldn’t name had kept her from mastering her expression the whole banquet through.

No, Gloria. Stop thinking about it.

With a sharp shake of her head she wiped the lingering images away and calmed her rioting heart, reminding herself that Marienne would soon be cast aside once more in any case.

If I can’t have him, then neither can Marienne.

That was only natural. A pity, of course, for the woman who would be cast off not once but twice. Marienne wretchedly abandoned by Herman, while she herself lived out her days in ease and comfort at House Drake. Gloria longed for that day to come all the sooner.

A snort of laughter slipped out. It seemed to be the first time she’d laughed since entering the banquet hall.

That’s just it — why do you keep coveting the very things I can’t have?

She and Marienne had been fated, from the first, to be born as one; it was only through ill luck that they’d come into the world in two separate bodies. That had been Gloria’s grievance all her life. The affection and attention she would have had all to herself, had they been born as one, she’d always been forced to share with Mari.

And the sheer gall of it — you always tried to have something more than I did.

Father’s love, the governess’s praise, the Ernst family’s marriage proposal.

And now, even Herman Ernst.

So this is your own fault, Mari.

Her thoughts back in order, Gloria looked about her, searching out the members of the reading circle. If she wasn’t to be late, she had to hurry.

In the neatly appointed retiring room, I rose slowly from where I’d been leaning against the damask sofa.

“My lady — are you going back now?”

Elli hurried to set my dress to rights.

“I suppose I’d better.”

I had no wish to, but there was no help for it. To absent myself from a banquet for long was a discourtesy, and worse, it could be taken as an insult to the host; so the moment the churning in my stomach settled, I got to my feet.

“It’s all right — rest easy, Elli.”

I waved off Elli, who offered to see me all the way to Lumen Hall. If only for the walk there, I wanted to be alone. After that I stepped out of the retiring room and walked slowly on. From far off, at the end of the corridor, came the noise of boisterous conversation. The banquet music had shifted at some point into a lively polka, and unlike that quick, buoyant melody, my own steps kept dragging, heavier and heavier.

Why did he look at me with those eyes?

Walking the deserted corridor, I found Herman’s gaze rising up in my mind once more. At a glance it had seemed indifferent, cold; and yet tangled feelings lay mixed in beneath it, as though there were something he wished to say and could not bring himself to put into words.

I wanted to read the message that gaze was sending me, but his feelings were far too obscure for me to grasp their meaning fully. For he, too, had seemed trapped inside some snarl of thought.

“Ah.”

I had been walking the palace corridor lost in thought when the toe of someone’s shoe came into my view. I stopped short and lifted my head.

“I’m sorry…”

It was a wide, wide corridor; I couldn’t think why anyone would plant themselves directly in my path. Even so, out of long-ingrained habit, the apology slipped out of me by reflex.

“…”
“…”

Cedric Drake was looking down at me.

What is he doing here?

Perhaps because I’d never imagined he would come seeking me out first, my mind seemed to dissolve into white. I could do nothing but stare at him blankly, until at last Cedric strode close and bent toward me.

“Mari.”

The instant my name came out from between his teeth, I snapped to, as though I’d been struck over the head.

“That desolate ducal castle must have been very hard on you.”

Cedric regarded me with an expression of the most heartfelt pity in all the world.

The crazy bastard.

I swear it was the first time. The first time I had ever muttered anything so coarse in my life. If I regretted one thing, it was only that I knew no word more insulting to fling at him.

“You were slight enough before, and now you look positively gaunt. However great a hardship it must have been.”

Cedric was reaching a hand toward my face, and I knocked it away with a sharp thwack of the fan and glared at him, eyes wide.

“Don’t put your hands on me.”

Had I let it be, his hand would have touched me. The mere thought of it was revolting, enough to set my teeth chattering.

How dare he. The nerve.

Cedric, looking sheepish, gently closed his reddened hand into a loose fist.

“…Mari.”

I wanted to round on him, flustered as he looked, and demand to know who exactly ought to be the flustered one here, that he should carry on so.

“So it’s only now you can see me as Marienne.”
“You seem very angry. But surely you might at least give me the chance to explain myself.”
“Explain yourself?”

It was so absurd that I found myself chewing his words back at him.

“I regret that I failed to put an end to a connection from my younger days and let Gloria lead me by the nose. On that point, I truly have nothing to say for myself.”

Though I had never once told him to go ahead and prattle out his excuses, Cedric began pouring out one absurdity after another.

“But I never dreamed Gloria would swap you out for herself.”
“Are you telling me this was all Gloria’s doing? That you were merely led along like a fool?”
“That woman threatened that if I didn’t go along, she’d lay bare every last one of my sins. That’s what left me with no choice in the matter.”

Cedric arranged his face into the very picture of sincere repentance.

“Only now that I’ve lost you do I understand.”
“…”
“I cannot live without you.”

And the line that came after that was a true spectacle to behold.

“Come back to me. The place you belong isn’t at that Ernst’s side — it’s right here, at mine.”