Between Two Women

Lately Gloria had been learning, and learning firsthand, that what shows on the surface is never the whole of a thing. Day by day, the world she’d thought she knew seemed to crumble a little more. Not so long ago Cedric had seemed ready to hand her anything she asked for, down to the shirt off his back; as it turned out, he was nothing half so devoted. And his mother, Helena, was every bit as two-faced a creature.

“Ugh, when in the world is that old crone going to go home?”

The social season had come round, and Helena Drake was still lodging in the capital. Thanks to her, Gloria had spent the past several months on the receiving end of a mother-in-law’s torments she never should have had to endure, and harsh ones at that. Helena’s disapproving eye dogged her over every least thing, to say nothing of the endless sarcasm and scolding heaped on top.

“My dear, your posture has been simply dreadful of late. Your shoulders were already hunched when you sat, and now there’s no grace to your walk either, somehow.”
“You didn’t used to be like this, but there’s a curious change come over your eyes. If something isn’t to your liking, do say so to my face. Don’t just sit there with your mouth clamped shut as though it had been pasted over, glaring at me the way you are.”

It was getting to where Gloria could no longer so much as meet Helena’s nagging with a smile. Every time she had to endure such talk from her mother-in-law, all she could do afterward was secretly badger Cedric about it.

The in-law strife had reached its peak at the tea party the day before. Helena was the hostess, so Gloria did her utmost not to ruffle the woman’s temper. The invited noblewomen tended to read, from where they’d been seated, exactly what the hostess thought of them, which was all the more reason to take care.

There had been that recent incident, too, where a young lady at some noblewoman’s tea party broke out in hives after eating peach cake; that sort of trouble had to be guarded against as well. If any such mishap occurred at Helena’s party, Gloria’s eardrums would surely not survive the day intact. So, after fierce calculation, she arranged the seating and fussed over every last dessert to suit each guest’s constitution.

But the trouble came from a quarter she had never once anticipated.

“Marienne, what in the world is the meaning of this!”
“Whatever is the matter? Is something wrong?”
“Just now the Marchioness Hartford came and told me her seat had been set so far from mine she could scarcely follow a word of the conversation.”
“The Marchioness? That can’t be. I most certainly placed her in the seat beside you, Mother—”
“So now you mean to tell me I’m lying, just to find some fault with you?”
“…No. I’ll go and look into what happened.”

A little while later, Gloria discovered the whole thing had been an accident, the fault of one dim-witted housemaid. A newly hired servant had blundered and shown a guest to the wrong seat.

“It seems one of the newly taken-on girls made a mistake. I’ll punish her severely, as an example, and then have her put out of the house.”

To soothe Helena’s temper, Gloria had to offer up excuses that went entirely against the grain. But once the woman’s mood had curdled, it showed no sign of easing.

“You do talk exactly as though none of it were your fault. Did I not tell you that every year, before the social season, it is only common sense to drill the servants thoroughly so not a single mistake slips through?”

“…”

“I had thought you’d seen to it beforehand, but now I find you never did at all. You simply took it upon yourself to skip it.”
“I’ll take care from now on, Mother.”
“Good heavens, what am I to do with you. The one thing about you that was even half tolerable was your skill at keeping house, and if you can’t manage even that properly, then what on earth am I to do with you!”
“I’m truly sor—”
“Will you shut that mouth! I am sick to death of hearing that wretched ‘sorry’ of yours!”

Helena’s reproaches had not let up even now, into a fresh new day. Fleeing a mother-in-law who could not seem to loosen her grip on her anger, Gloria had taken refuge in a café on the capital’s central street.

“How on earth does a servant’s mistake become my fault? Honestly, she ought to pick her quarrels with a little more restraint.”

Playing the meek, obedient Marienne was so stifling she could hardly stand it. It galled her beyond words that she couldn’t get out so much as a peep against Helena, who dressed her down like that in front of all the servants. Had she followed her temper, she’d have loved to flip that flower-laden tea table for all the world to see; but with Cedric’s safety and her own to think of, she couldn’t quite bring herself to it.

Gloria shot a prim, sulky glare across the table at Cedric, who sat there doing nothing but read his newspaper. Ever since he’d opened it, he’d been letting her complaints about Helena go in one ear and out the other.

In one motion she snatched the newspaper from him and folded it in half. Cedric stared at the confiscated paper, incredulous, then brazenly waggled his eyebrows.

“Tell me, Cedric. Just how much am I supposed to put up with?”

Cedric let out a sigh at her wearisome lament.

“You— don’t be so emotional. Think it through rationally and there wasn’t a single thing Mother said that was wrong.”
“What? You think that’s a thing to say?”
“Shh— there are eyes everywhere. Keep your voice down.”

Their table sat out in the garden with not a soul nearby, but Gloria lowered her voice a notch all the same.

“It isn’t fair. No one told me a thing. Whether it’s your house’s precious ‘basics’ or its ‘traditions,’ I knew nothing at all about the social season. How was I supposed to prepare for any of it?”
“Of course no one told you. Every year she handled the social-season preparations single-handed. She never did like anyone’s help; said that when things went wrong it only doubled the work.”

Watching him recite it all so placidly, Gloria gave a scoffing snort, as if dumbfounded.

“So you’re comparing me to her now, are you?”
“Hah. I told you, don’t get emotional. I’m only stating facts.”
“Cedric.”

“…”

“Cedric!”

As her voice rose, Cedric threw up both hands in surrender.

“All right, I’m sorry. My fault. So let’s just drop it.”

Then, sparing not a thought for her distress, he took a sip from his teacup. Watching him, Gloria swallowed down a deep surge of irritation.

At first Cedric had almost seemed like someone I could lean on, but these days he’s nothing of the kind. He doesn’t fend off a single one of the old crone’s scoldings—he just tells me to put up with it, whatever she says.

A pale-faced man who handled the perfume business had taken to coming and going from the manor more and more often, and it was around then, too, that Cedric, tender as he’d always been toward her before, had grown strangely on edge.

Of late the Drake perfume business had run into serious trouble. Word had spread that a rival house’s perfume now lasted far longer on the skin, and Drake sales had plummeted. If they kept failing to move their stock, they might never recover what they’d sunk into it, and even keeping the workshop running would grow difficult. But none of that was any concern of Gloria’s; the business wasn’t tottering through any fault of hers.

“You start to say something and then stop? Don’t be maddening—finish it. What exactly is so different between me and her?”
“If I finish, what’s it going to turn into but a fight? You want a row in public?”
“And why shouldn’t I? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Gloria.”

In public, for fear their talk might reach the wrong ear, Cedric never let the names ‘Gloria’ or ‘Marienne’ pass his lips. So for a man like that to murmur her real name, low under his breath, was as good as a sign that his patience had already been stretched as far as it would go.

“Since you insist, I’ll speak plainly. By any measure you care to name, the truth is you’re not doing half of what Marienne did. You can’t read the account ledgers, you can’t go over the reports—so at the very least, as Mother says, you ought to keep the household properly.”
“Wow. So now you’re comparing us openly, right to my face?”
“It isn’t a comparison, it’s simply the fact of the—”
“Hah—you think I don’t do it because I can’t? Shall I make a proper comparison of my own, then? Of just how much more of a man Herman is than you!”

Gloria’s irritation-laced voice had not yet finished fading from the air.

— Slam!

Cedric had brought his palm down flat on the table, and now he rose from his seat, jaw clenched. Startled by the noise, Gloria looked up at him with dazed eyes.

“I’ve a great deal to see to over the perfume business, so I’ll head back to the manor ahead of you. Just understand that I carved this time out of a schedule I don’t have and came all this way for your sake—because you can’t stand my mother.”
“…Cedric.”
“Hire a carriage or come on your own two feet—however you like, but you’ll get yourself home alone. I’m taking ours.”
“Cedric—!”

Cedric strode off toward the café door without a backward glance. Before long, beyond the low garden shrubs, the Drake carriage could be seen drawing off into the distance.

“Well, I never. The sheer nerve of the man.”

Which of the two of them had any right to be angry, when he was the one raising his voice?

What shows on the surface wasn’t the whole of it after all. Back when he was Marienne’s man, what a splendid one he was.

Now that she actually had him in hand, he’d turned out to be nothing much.

“So aggravating. Honestly.”

All at once Herman Ernst rose up before her mind’s eye. There was a man out there wanting for nothing in wealth, looks, rank, or ability, and to think she was stuck at Cedric’s side instead. The whole business sickened her.

Now that I think of it—why isn’t there so much as a whisper of those two divorcing?

Uneasy, she gnawed and picked at her nails.

How can Herman mean to go on living with a woman trailing rumors like that? He was endlessly cold and curt with me—did he come back from the war with a knock to the head, or what?

A few weeks earlier, word had come from her parents that Herman and Marienne seemed to be getting on rather well. At first she’d assumed the two of them had merely fobbed her parents off with some stopgap tale when they’d descended on the couple out of nowhere. But now that not a word of any divorce had reached her even yet, her unease only mounted.

No—Gloria. You’ve still got a last resort left. Calm down. There’s not a chance in the world Marienne ends up happier than me.

Gloria snatched up her handbag in a fit of nerves. Since it had come to this, she would at least go shopping and work the mood off.

Heels clacking against the ground, she was just stepping out through the café door when it happened.

“Eeek!”

A newspaper delivery boy came barreling along heedlessly, slammed into Gloria, and went sprawling on the ground. Grubby, grime fairly streaming off him, the child took in the fine cut of her clothes, went white as a sheet, and began to whimper.

“I’m— I’m so sor—”
“Shut up! You filthy little beggar!”

The child shook like a leaf, but Gloria only flew into a blazing rage and shouted him down. An instant later, though, something caught her eye, and her expression sank into cold stillness. She snatched the tabloid out of the boy’s hands.

“What is this.”

Across the tabloid’s front page ran an article set in enormous type.

Beside the headline, Duke Ernst, the Man Who Seized Both Money and Love, a photograph of the ducal couple strolling arm in arm down the street, sorbet in hand, seared itself vividly into her vision.