Tell Me I'm The Better Man

“A pity. We’ve a separate engagement after tonight’s performance. Next time we’ll extend you a proper invitation to our own residence — you really must call on us then.”

Herman had read the room at once. He crossed to us and declined the Viscountess’s invitation, smoothing over a moment that had teetered on the edge of awkwardness.

“Oh my, so you had an engagement. My eagerness ran ahead of me and I never thought that far.”

The Viscountess answered with a bright smile, without a trace of displeasure, though she couldn’t quite hide a flicker of disappointment.

“This is how she is. Once she takes to someone, she charges straight ahead without a second thought.”

Viscount Ashburn had been watching from just behind her, and he slid into the conversation without the slightest effort.

“But do think kindly of it, Duchess. It’s only that my wife so enjoyed talking with you.”

He said it with an arm curled around his wife’s shoulders, a gesture that spoke of a practiced tenderness and of the deep bond between them.

A devoted husband, exactly as the rumors had promised.

“I thought nothing ill of it at all. If anything, I’m the one who fears she may have overstepped.”

I was still waving my hands in light demurral as I said it when Herman’s large hand settled around my shoulder, all at once. The motion was so natural that no one gave him a second glance, but, startled to the core, I could only look up at him with wide, round eyes.

“My wife, too — it isn’t that she found the Viscountess disagreeable, only that she couldn’t bring herself to refuse. Her heart is a tender one, so I do beg your generous understanding.”

Then, as if mimicking the Viscount, he arranged his face into the very same expression.

“Herman.”

Heat rushed to my face and I hurried to hush him, but Herman only gave an insufferable little shrug.

“Ha ha — the two of you are very close indeed. A fine thing to see.”

Viscount Ashburn laughed, easy and genial. The light banter passed back and forth, and the mood grew warmer still.

It probably came off so smoothly only because he and Herman were already acquainted to some degree. Come to think of it, Herman seemed to be on familiar terms with half the nobility.

“It’s nothing next to you two — Balter’s foremost pair of lovebirds. If anything, we’re the ones who ought to learn a thing or two from you.”

Herman returned the compliment without batting an eye. In the middle of it all, I quietly swallowed a sigh of my own.

It isn’t as though we’re holding a contest over who’s the more devoted husband.

Even with a smile fixed on my lips, I couldn’t shake how mortifying the whole thing was.

The whole exchange, with each man seemingly bent on out-praising his own wife, struck me at moments as a piece of overwrought theater. The true leads of tonight’s opera, it seemed, were these two men.

And yet, strangely enough…

It didn’t feel unpleasant. The Viscountess seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the whole cheek-warming exchange, and she only smiled at me, as though she understood my embarrassment perfectly.

She had clearly lived a long while accustomed to this sort of tenderness from her husband. Without thinking, I returned her easy, warm smile.

And then, all at once, some corner of my heart sank heavily.

…Ah.

I ducked my head a little and bit my lip.

The Viscountess and I stood in entirely different positions.

Unlike the Viscount and his wife, Herman’s tenderness wasn’t truly mine to claim. It was a mirage, nothing more, and it would vanish the instant the name ‘Gloria’ fell away. In truth, the only one here wearing a mask and playing a part might well be me.

The curtain rose, and the performance began.

The moment the orchestra struck up its first strains, instinct told me that this opera would go down as a masterwork of the age.

A golden ring, said to grant boundless power.¹

A dwarf, robbed of the ring by the gods, lays a curse upon it, and the gods, against all their original design, fall to warring over who will possess it. Act One hinted that they were each driven by an entirely different motive and yet racing as one toward the same ruin. I hadn’t seen the ending, and still the catastrophe waiting for them stood as vivid before my eyes as if someone had painted it there.

Might there not be just such a ruin at the end of the road I walk, too?

Still, gripping as it all was, I couldn’t give the performance my full attention. When a singer poured out an aria that soared clear up to the eighth octave, and again when she carried the feat off magnificently and the whole house erupted in cheers, I only clapped along in a daze.

“Gloria.”

Just then Herman, seated beside me, called to me in a low voice. He leaned close and breathed the words against my ear.

“What do you make of the necklace that woman’s wearing?”
“The necklace?”

At Herman’s out-of-nowhere question, I looked to the stage. Around the neck of the woman playing the goddess hung an antique necklace that might have stepped straight out of myth.

“The actress’s own beauty seems rather lost beneath it. It’s so large and gaudy that it’s the only thing the eye can settle on.”

He was right; the necklace was excessively beautiful. No doubt, once the opera had run its course, word of it would fill every tabloid in town. And once that happened, it would soon grow as scarce as hen’s teeth in society; no amount of money would be enough to lay hands on one.

“It is large and showy, but to my eye the actress still looks lovely. Perhaps because her neck is so slender — even so grand a necklace seems to suit her well.”

I answered easily, studying the necklace as I spoke; since the play drew on myth, they’d probably chosen the ornaments to match. I thought I’d played along with him earnestly enough, yet Herman’s response came back oddly lukewarm.

“Something I heard before the play began — that man there, the one playing the fire god. Quite the favorite among the noble ladies, they say. A fine voice, and a handsome face besides.”

It was true. The actor sang in a pleasing tenor, and with real wit besides, and he was singularly popular among the noble ladies.

“Yes, that’s right. Ludwig is his name, I believe. Famed for both his singing and his good looks.”

I’d done no more than agree with him, yet Herman was glaring at Ludwig with a distinctly ungracious look.

“What’s the matter?”
“What?”
“Is something wrong—”
“Nothing.”

The sullen voice landed right against my ear. Something was plainly bothering him.

Though somehow I thought I could guess the reason.

But instinct warned me that if I pressed in too deep, I’d never find my way back out again. Feigning complete ignorance, I turned my face back to the stage.

“I don’t like it.”

The moment I fixed my gaze on the stage, Herman spoke again.

“You — I really don’t like this.”

Unfolding the arms he’d kept tightly crossed, he finally aired outright the discontent he’d been letting slip only by degrees.

“When a husband praises another woman’s looks, doesn’t a wife usually ask whether he truly means it? Why in the world are you agreeing right along with me that she’s pretty?”
“…”
“And that male lead — I think very little of him. His acting’s overblown and his pitch is all over the place. To my eye he simply won’t do. Look at that slick face of his. Even if I’d knocked about a desert island for two years, I’d still come out a hundred times better than that.”

Herman pushed out his lips, his whole face set in a thorough sulk.

Was a man who had, in fact, been stranded on a desert island for two whole years really allowed to toss off a line like that so blithely?

He spoke as if the desert island had been no more than a stroll down the lane. And somehow this jealousy-that-wasn’t-jealousy of his was more diverting than the grand opera itself, and my eyes kept drifting back to him.

“Yes, I think you’re right.”
“…What was that?”

The crease that had formed between Herman’s brows smoothed away in an instant. Watching so plain and unmistakable a change was, in its own way, rather fun.

Even knowing I had no business finding it fun…

“I said Herman is more handsome than that man.”

Watching him tell a lie so transparent I could see clean through it, I couldn’t help myself, though I did rationalize it afterward, telling myself that something this obvious was surely safe to say aloud.

Herman looked for all the world as though he’d been struck on the back of the head.

“You — honestly.”

He let out a sudden, deep sigh, and murmured it low.

“Hah. No. When you throw it back at me like that—”

Herman covered his face with one large hand. The tips of his ears had gone red.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, do I. You’re doing it on purpose.”

It was the gesture of a man knocked somehow out of order. Watching him, I felt my insides tangle into knots.

“…It’s the truth, though.”

I hastily took up my opera glasses and tried to fix my attention on the stage. Only by hiding my face like that, it seemed, could I manage to breathe.

On the stage just then, Ludwig was playing a scene where, in a low bass-baritone, he murmured to the king of the gods. Watching him sing with the veins standing out at his throat, I felt almost sorry, of my own accord, for having failed to give the opera the attention it deserved.

About then, the opera glasses vanished from my hand with a small click. Herman had spirited them behind his back, and he jerked his chin toward the door.

“That’s enough watching. Let’s step out.”

We were in the very thick of the act. What was that supposed to mean? I looked at Herman, and he raised his eyebrows, as if to ask what I was still doing sitting there instead of getting up.

“Up you get. I’ve known all along you haven’t been able to concentrate.”