The Whole Story

“It was you who slipped into the study last night, wasn’t it?”

Gloria’s sneer left me at a loss for words. I stood there mute, my lips moving without sound, while she pressed on in that brazen, offhand way of hers.

“It was just a mistake. We were both drunk, and we simply lost our heads that one time — that’s all.”
“You actually expect that to count as an…”
“So won’t you forgive me just this once, generous Mari that you are? Everyone slips up like that once or twice in their life, you know.”

Her face was far too shameless for someone making excuses. Gloria simply kept serving up her own selfish justifications, without a trace of remorse.

“I’m truly dumbfounded. If you’re going to spout nonsense, then you’d do better to grovel and beg my pardon. Or at least shed a few quiet tears.”
“Beg? Cry? Why should I? Honestly, isn’t it better for your husband to settle it in-house than to go wandering outside?”
“You really have lost your mind.”
“What? I’m not wrong. Rather than have him sleeping around with some other woman, isn’t it better he beds me, when I look exactly like—”

— Smack.

Gloria’s head snapped to the side. My palm, which had caught her cheek without mercy, burned as if I’d held it to a flame.

“Ha!”

Gloria shot me a venomous glare. Cradling her swelling cheek, she brought her head back around.

“Did you just hit me? You really have gone out of your mind!”

As if she, of all people, had any right to say it.

I met her eyes without flinching and told her plainly.

“The one out of her mind is you, Gloria. Just what sort of mind must a person have to do a thing like that and still carry on this way?”

Gloria genuinely didn’t seem to grasp what the problem was. To her I was apparently nothing more than a foolish wife who’d had her husband stolen away by another woman.

You are my twin — and if you truly understood that the man you laid your hands on is my husband, you could never say such things.

“To commit so depraved an act and then have the gall to call it a ‘mistake.’ You do the work of a common streetwalker, and call it a mistake.”
“Hey. Say that again. What? A streetwalker?”
“Of everything, that’s the part that offends you right now?”
“So I’m just supposed to sit there and take a thing like that? Likening me to some whore who sells her body for coin!”

Watching Gloria shriek at the top of her lungs, I no longer had the will even to throw her tantrum back in her face. I couldn’t begin to understand how I’d ended up trapped in a situation like this, or how Gloria had turned into this.

“I’m sorry you took offense. But you see, I’d assumed my husband’s longtime mistress was some vulgar woman of that sort. Not my one and only twin, who happens to look exactly like me.”
“…What. You knew?”
“Knew which part? That my husband had been carrying on behind my back for so long? Or that you’d been quietly hinting all along that you were the one he was with?”

A brief silence fell.

Gloria stood there dazed, as if someone had clubbed her on the back of the head. Then, all at once, she burst into a loud “Hahaha,” dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

“Wow, our Mari! You’re cleverer than I ever gave you credit for.”

I watched the bizarre display in a daze. Facing me, Gloria curled her lips into a nasty little smile and went on.

“And far, far stupider than I thought, too. Very, very much more so.”
“What?”
“No — actually, this is all for the best. Now that things have come to this, it’ll make the conversation easier. Mari, let’s just go on like this from now on, the three of us. It’s nothing difficult — just think of it as carrying on the way we are now…”

— Smack.

I struck Gloria’s cheek a second time. She still hadn’t come to her senses, still babbling that nonsense. It was my heart, more than my head, that had given the order.

Evidently she hadn’t expected a second blow; she stared at me, eyes wide. Even the faint tremor in them was so hateful it nearly drove me mad.

“All through the long night, I sat alone in this room and thought a thousand thoughts. Would it ease my heart to take the hunting rifle down from the wall and shoot the two of you? Or would it bring me peace to turn the barrel around and put it to my own head instead?”

I was dizzy, sick past all bearing. Even as I forced out each word, holding my fury down by main force, my jaw shook violently.

“And yet how can you, right to the very end, insult me with such absurd nonsense…”

Gloria cupped her cheek and glared at me. Then she curled the corner of her mouth into a small smile and spoke.

“That’s exactly why, Mari — I’m offering you a solution. What other way is there for us both to come away satisfied?”
“…”
“And do think it through. If you throw me out of this manor, do you really imagine Cedric will just stand by and let it happen?”

“You — right to the very end…”

Fury rose in me until the back of my neck prickled. I was so aghast, so enraged, that I couldn’t think what I ought to do.

I felt I could almost understand why the noblewomen of high society passed around a “guidebook for when you meet your husband’s mistress.” Though of course, not even that guidebook would have a chapter for the case where the mistress was one’s own twin.

“Gloria, there’s one thing you’re gravely mistaken about. I can put someone like you out of this manor with ease, and without that man’s consent. And if you still insist on digging in your heels, then I’ll simply have to pack your bags for you myself.”

I said it coldly, then turned on my heel. Stepping out of the drawing room, I called to one of the housemaids in the corridor.

“Sophie, tell the butler to have a carriage made ready this instant. And send a couple of maids up to Duchess Ernst’s room.”

I looked from the maid, flustered by the sudden order, to Gloria, left standing forlornly in the drawing room. Then, pointedly, for all to hear, I called out:

“Madam says she will be taking her leave now.”

With that, I started up the central staircase toward the second floor. I hadn’t gone far when a clamor of footsteps came pounding up behind me, and I glanced back to find Gloria charging after me, her face flushed crimson.

“So this is really how you mean to play it?”

From the foot of the stairs, Gloria looked up at me and twisted her mouth into a grin.

— Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!

For a moment I doubted my own eyes.

Gloria was battering her own cheeks, monstrous in her ferocity, alternating hands. In no time her face had swollen up grotesquely.

“…What on earth are you doing?”
“I’m going to go and beg Cedric not to cast me out of the manor, you see.”
“And what does that have to do with a stunt like this?”
“Well, since it’s come to this, the more pitiful I look, the better. Heartbreaking enough that he couldn’t possibly bring himself to throw me out.”

My mouth hung open; I couldn’t close it. The girl’s cunning defied all common sense.

“You really don’t feel the least bit sorry toward me, do you. If you felt even a shred of guilt, you couldn’t do this.”
“There’s one thing you’re badly mistaken about — Cedric was mine to begin with. Which means I’ve no reason to feel sorry toward you, and no reason to feel guilty, either.”

Gloria came climbing after me, close on my heels, without a shred of decorum or dignity. Her long, striding steps up the stairs were frantic, and every bit as precarious. She climbed so fast that she caught up to me in no time.

“Blocking my way won’t do you any good. Move aside.”

It was in that very instant.

At the top of the central staircase, Gloria, having just shoved past my shoulder, trod on the long trailing hem of her skirt and lost her footing.

“Gloria—!”

In that moment I forgot the whole situation and reached out toward her. It was as if time had slowed to a crawl.

In midair my eyes locked with Gloria’s, and then she clutched at my hand. My balance gave way in the blink of an eye. The chandelier, the one it took three ladders lashed together to reach and clean, blazed brilliantly across my eyes. The dizzying sense of floating made me shut my eyes without meaning to.

Ah — no.

— Crash-thud.

We tumbled down that towering staircase, rolling over and over, as if to prove that we had once been a single body.

“Kyaaaaah! My lady!”

Someone’s scream snagged at my fading consciousness. I managed to open my eyes, but everything was a blur.

In my swimming vision, only Gloria came into focus. Gloria, her eyes shut, cradled in my arms.

“Fetch the physician, quickly! My lady and the Duchess are gravely hurt!”

With that girl’s face the last thing before me, everything went black.

Some hours later, Gloria opened her eyes in her own room. The physician stepped out after a brief examination, remarking that she had been fortunate to come round so quickly, unlike Marienne, who still lay abed.

“Gloria!”

Cedric, who had been waiting in an agony of suspense, came rushing in breathless the moment word reached him that Gloria had woken. He seemed not even to register that he was calling out her name.

Once he’d dismissed every servant from the room, Cedric took Gloria’s hand, his eyes full of worry.

“Are you all right?”
“The doctor says I’m perfectly fine, but my whole body’s killing me. Nothing’s broken, is it?”
“Shall I call the physician back?”
“Never mind. He’ll only prattle on with the same thing anyway. Ugh, damn it. What am I going to do about my face?”
“I know — this pretty face of yours, hurt like this. What are we to do.”
“Cedric…”
“Do you have any idea how frightened I was? I haven’t been able to do a single thing since I heard you were hurt.”

Cedric gathered the frail Gloria into his arms, soothing and coaxing her. Her irritation somewhat blunted, she nestled into him, her face tearful.

“So what in the world happened between the two of you? I heard you had a terrible fight this morning.”

Cedric asked. For a moment Gloria faltered, struck by the reality of their situation, then steadied her breath and gathered herself. There would surely be no better moment than this to tell him the truth.

“Mari knows about us.”
“What?”

Cedric, whose eyes had been brimming with worry only moments before, pulled back from her with a loud, startled retort.

“Mari knows about us? What in the world is that supposed to mean?”
“Just what it sounds like. She says she saw everything. On our anniversary — the two of us, in the study, going at it.”

Cedric’s head swam.

The moment his affair with Gloria got out into high society, his reputation would collapse past all hope of recovery. That was the very reason he’d gone to such desperate lengths to hide the liaison all this time.

I’d held myself in check at the manor all along, and then last night I let my restraint slip for one moment. Drunk as she was, Gloria looked so lovely. Haa — I should have controlled myself.

Cedric gazed at Gloria, lying haggard on the bed. Even now, in the middle of all this, she was bewitching beyond words.

From her lush golden hair to her translucent skin to her striking features, everything about her was perfect. She was the only woman in the world who set his heart racing.

No. She was not, strictly speaking, the only one of her kind.

She looks exactly like Marienne — so why, of all people, did I have to fall in love with Gloria…

Once again he felt how cruel fate was. Had he only married Gloria from the start, none of this would ever have troubled him.

Unable to master the resentment welling up in him, Cedric let out a sigh. And in that moment, a brilliant idea flashed through his mind.

“…Ria.”
“Hm?”
“Our relationship — you’re certain Mari’s the only one who knows?”
“What kind of out-of-nowhere question is that?”

Even as she said it, Gloria replayed her morning conversation with Marienne. Nothing in it suggested Marienne had told anyone else of the infidelity. And if she’d only grown certain of the affair the night before, she’d hardly have had time to tell a soul.

Besides, Mari keeps her mouth shut to a maddening degree. Just look at how she’s known about her husband’s affair all this while and held her tongue.

So there was no chance she’d let word slip here and there and brought trouble down on herself.

“Probably, yeah. It’s hardly something to be proud of — why would she go blabbing it all over the place?”

At that, Cedric muttered under his breath.

“Right. Then there’s only one way to go about this.”

Cedric, who had been pacing the room restlessly, like a mutt desperate to relieve itself, stopped stock-still and turned to Gloria:

“You — from this moment, act as though you’re in agony, at death’s door. And before evening falls, you’re to put on a show of fainting all over again.”
“Faint again? No — what have you been going on about this whole time? Speak so I can understand you, would you.”

Gloria asked, her face uncomprehending. In a few long strides Cedric crossed to her, took her by the shoulders, and said with grim resolve:

“Because I’ll see to it that not a single soul sets foot on the second floor.”
“You’ll see to it…?”

Cedric’s eyes flashed for an instant.

“Tonight, you’re going to become ‘Marienne.’”