A Remarriage For Whose Sake?

But no matter how I tried to steady my resolve, nothing that touched on Herman ever went the way I’d planned. Events drifted on heedless of my will, like a boat cut loose upon the open sea, and the current carried me right to the point where demanding a divorce of Herman was out of the question entirely.

“What did you say?”

The next morning, I was out on the balcony with my coffee when word reached me of something I had not expected.

“The Marquis and Marchioness Seymour have sent a telegram, my lady — they mean to call on you sometime this afternoon.”

The abrupt message left me at a loss for a moment. The notice was perfunctory in the extreme. Small as the capital was, where everyone of consequence lived cheek by jowl, there were still limits; custom held that word of a call be sent three days ahead at the very least. And for them to have sent word this thoughtless even so…

It must mean they’re that angry.

I called to mind my father’s face as I had come upon it at the triumphal banquet the night before. His lips had been pressed thin, his expression brimming with fury, his eyes blazing like fire above all else, and that alone had told me everything I needed to know of how he’d taken the affair at the ceremony. I hardly needed to ask what had moved him to demand so sudden a meeting.

“I’d best make ready.”

I rose from my seat and asked Elli to make ready to receive my parents.

What a mercy, at least, that they’re calling while Herman is away.

Herman had been out since early morning, saying he had the railway enterprise to discuss with officials from the imperial Ministries of the Interior and Finance. I lingered on the balcony a while, lost in thought, until his carriage had shrunk to a distant speck.

The streets had yet to cool from the fervor of the triumphal ceremony, and every quarter of the capital still rang with festive clamor, yet Herman paid it not the slightest mind. The people’s cheers, the welcome of the crowds, none of it concerned him. He was a man who set far greater store by the hours of toil and devotion hidden behind the dazzling glory than by the glory itself.

From what I had gathered, watching him this while, he was astonishingly single-minded. Whatever he set out to accomplish, he never dithered or hung back. His philosophy was simple, and forceful for its very simplicity; whatever the circumstance, he never squandered an hour on brooding or worry. That manner of his could be resolute and unsparing to a fault, yet it seemed, too, to explain why so many placed their trust in him.

Remembering the way he had set off that morning, I felt a sudden urge to sum the man up in a single word.

He’s just like a steam locomotive.

A steam locomotive, hauling its great bulk down the rails without rest, a will that never halted and never turned back, needing nothing but forward drive to press on and on.

Herman was exactly that sort of man.

Come to think of it, there may be no man alive better suited to the railway enterprise than he is.

The longer I watched him at close quarters, the more formidable a man he seemed. And then, catching myself dwelling on a fact I had no wish to admit, I gave my head a brisk shake.

Enough, Marienne. Stop thinking of him.

Of late, the moment I let the tension slacken even briefly, the thread of my thoughts led straight to Herman without fail. The habit unsettled me to no end, and worse, it was the last thing I could wish for. Each time his face, his way of speaking, his every smallest gesture rose up in my mind, an inexplicable confusion and disquiet came surging over me.

It was exactly two o’clock in the afternoon when word came from the hotel that the Marquis Seymour and his wife had arrived. I asked that my parents be shown into the small drawing room beside the bedchamber.

I had just taken up my place in one corner of the drawing room, brewing a fragrant black tea for the two of them, neither of whom cared for coffee, when the door flew open with a bang and Father and Mother came sweeping in.

“You’ve come.”

I hurried to the door and made my courtesy. Father, with no mind to receive it, clicked his tongue roughly and simply took his seat.

“So you’ve the nerve to let a greeting out of that mouth, have you.”

Mother, following him into the room, let out a sigh before all else.

“Haah — Gloria. Sit down, for now.”

Then she shooed out even Elli, who stood at my side, and locked the door fast, for fear that anyone might overhear.

“Have you no sense in you whatsoever!”

The moment the door shut, Father’s bellow came flying.

“How could you carry on so recklessly at the triumphal banquet! Have you any notion how many houses you’ve made a laughingstock of this time!”

Father drew a tabloid from inside his coat and flung it onto the table.

Duchess Ernst’s Wild Outburst: A Scene at Her Husband’s Triumphal Banquet
The Seymour Sisters’ Unrelenting Discord: Their Upbringing Called Into Question
A Baptism of Wine and Blows: The Drake Couple’s Season of Suffering

Every last one a headline to set my face ablaze.

“…”

When I ought to have been begging forgiveness for staining the family’s honor, I instead took in each of the articles, one by one, slow and deliberate.

If anything, it’s a relief.

Had I not thrown Cedric’s and Gloria’s words back in their faces that day, every one of these headlines would instead have read something like Love, or Impulse? The Suspect Bond Between Duchess Ernst and Count Drake, or A Scandal to Shake Noble Society! Duchess Ernst’s Perilous Longing.

“Because of you I can’t so much as walk the streets at night! My face burns even with no sun on it! You should have holed up in the ducal lands — why did you ever come up to the capital!”

Father raged so hard that his mustache quivered with the force of his snorting breath.

At his words, that I ought to have stayed shut away in the ducal lands, I barely managed to choke down the feeling that surged up in me. My anger and hurt toward my parents ran deep, but deeper still was the anxious dread, filling my whole chest, that I might be cast out of the capital just like this.

“It seems you’ve not the least curiosity as to why I did what I did.”

I had once heard it said that the fiercest of all human feelings is the sense of being wronged, and only now could I agree with the words wholeheartedly.

“Neither of you thinks of anything but the family and its standing, instead of asking me what happened.”

Every last part of Father’s fury struck me as utterly unjust.

“Ria — what have you done so well that you’d talk back to your father? When begging forgiveness on your knees still wouldn’t be enough…”

Mother scolded me not to stoke Father’s temper for nothing. She pressed a hand to her chest again and again, short of breath, as though she might swoon at any moment.

“Haah — the two of you truly will be the death of me.”

With Mother’s agitated sigh, the drawing room settled for a while into a lull.

“All right — since it’s come to this, let me at least ask you something.”

Breaking the long silence at last, Mother spoke.

“Why in the world are you like this? The two of you were once close enough to split a single bean between you. So why do you keep stirring up these quarrels, hm?”

Close enough to split a single bean, were we. Yes, there had been a time like that, once. Locked as I had been these past months in a feud with Gloria the likes of which we had never known, I had clean forgotten that our sisterly love was once counted among the finest in all the Empire.

“Now, Gloria — Mari still cares for you so terribly, you know. Only a few days ago she went and picked out prospects for your remarriage herself and brought them to show me. And every one from a house of the first rank, at that…”
“Remarriage? Whatever are you talking about?”

The moment I heard the word remarriage, I broke off dwelling on the past and hastily cut Mother short.

Is she saying she means to marry me off into some other house?

Divorce from Herman I had turned over in my mind a hundred times and more, but remarriage into another house was a thing I had never once so much as considered. What was more, Herman, laboring under the delusion that I was his wife, showed not the faintest intention of divorcing me.

So why had my parents come calling without a whisper of warning, only to press a remarriage on me? However much every soul in the Empire might take it for a settled thing, to be discussing remarriage when I had not even divorced was, there was no denying, rather too soon.

“You speak, Mother, as though it were a certainty that Herman would cast me off.”
“And what would Duke Ernst, wanting for nothing, want with keeping the likes of you on as a wife?”

Father vented his exasperation in a tone that seemed to hold me in contempt.

“Surely you don’t take at face value what Duke Ernst said at the triumphal banquet? Cling as you like to words he spoke for appearance’s sake, to get himself past the moment — it will only leave you the more wretched.”
“Do calm yourself, dear.”

Mother moved to restrain Father.

“Ria, your father may speak this way, but he has worried over you a great deal. He’s lain awake at night, talking it over with me at length — which house we ought to send you to.”

Mother spoke up in haste, as if to mediate between Father and me. She seemed to say something more after that, but for the ringing that filled my ears I could scarcely make it out.

“After talking it through with your mother, we’ve narrowed it down to the Berg, Wolf, and Lenz houses, or thereabouts. Though with what they have to offer, they seem more than you deserve, even in your present state.”

Names of houses I had heard of once or twice came tumbling out of Father’s mouth.

That is, if one sets aside the fact that they’re men either grown too old to hear well, or so steeped in lechery they’re after a second wife…

Yes, they were houses of distinction, right enough, just as Father said.

“…”

Gloria’s intent in putting these houses forward was so transparent it nearly made me laugh. Berg, Wolf, Lenz. Every last one of them lay far from the capital.

So this is your scheme, Gloria — to sweep me clean out of your sight for good.