Shut Up, Would You

I stared over Cedric’s shoulder at Herman, drawing further and further away. Gloria had pressed the whole of her upper body against him and was smiling fit to split her face. Try as I might not to look, I looked; try as I might not to mind, I minded.

Once again the dance began, round and round. I had permitted this only because I needed to stay close to Cedric and Gloria, but now that his hand was actually clasped in mine, I felt as though I might be sick. To hold the gaze of the man who had cheated on me with my own twin, and to hold it this long, was more than my stomach could bear.

“Ria.”

And then, out of nowhere, Cedric Drake called me ‘Ria.’ The name was as good as a declaration of war, and I glared at him.

“—have the two of you grown close enough for that? You and Duke Ernst.”

He added it in a jeering drawl. I started to draw a short breath, stopped, and let out a hollow laugh instead.

And what am I meant to do about that?

I pretended not to hear and put distance between us. Ignore him, I thought, and he would give up pestering me with talk. But Cedric closed the distance again at his leisure, and then, pitching his voice very low, whispered into my ear.

“How exactly did you seduce him?”

Naturally I gave not one word in answer to that filth of a question. Just as I had when Herman asked me something, I chose silence. Only this silence carried a different meaning. It meant that filth was to be ignored, and thoroughly.

Cedric had misread it entirely. Taking my stillness for permission to go on, he grew a shade more insolent and crossed the line one more time.

“Did you sleep with him?”
“What?”

For a moment the sheer effrontery of it drove out my resolve to dismiss Cedric as a beast beyond all reasoning.

“Then again, of course you didn’t. A woman as straitlaced as you, with her own twin’s husband — hardly.”

It was bait, and he watched for my reaction. Before I could so much as shut my mouth at such an outrage, words that had never passed through my head came out of me.

“Would you please just shut up? And stop using your mouth as a sewer.”

I ground the warning out at him. My coarseness seemed to startle him for a moment, but he soon smoothed his face over again.

“Shut up — how unkind of you. Don’t be so angry, Mari. It was never my intention to insult you.”
“…”
“I only wish to tell you one thing. Something you have been overlooking.”

Listening to Cedric’s drivel was labor beyond bearing. I even considered flinging off his hand and walking straight out of the hall, though that impulse too would have done my plan very little good.

“You can hardly go on living as Gloria at Herman Ernst’s side forever, can you.”

I raised my eyebrows at him, as if daring him to go on. Cedric shrugged and hitched up one corner of his mouth, as though sneering at me.

“Though of course, greedy Ria won’t simply sit by and watch it happen.”
“Don’t talk in circles. Just say what you want to say.”
“I told you to calm down, Mari. I said it plainly, didn’t I. That I only want to tell you what you’ve been overlooking.”

While Cedric picked out and prattled the most repellent words he could find, my eyes went again and again to Herman and Gloria. Past the breadth of Herman’s back, Gloria’s coquettish smile kept catching in my eye.

“For you, I am the best there is.”

Just about when my gaze reached Herman’s hand at Gloria’s waist, Cedric Drake spoke.

“What I mean is that you ought to be turning that lofty fawning of yours on me. Not on that wretched Herman Ernst.”

Madman.

I swallowed down the curse I could not spit out, and in the same moment Cedric lifted me up in time with the music. I had hardly eaten a thing, and still I wanted to pour every manner of thing over the crown of his head. Curses, spit, anything at all that a mouth could produce. I was choking my temper down with such thoughts when he opened his mouth, as though in genuine lamentation.

“Had you only done so, I would have put you back as ‘Marienne’ long ago.”

In that moment I understood. To set Cedric on the same level as a beast was an insult to the beast.

“Hah. Fawning.”

I chewed his word back over, incredulous.

Sooner than fawn on you to win back my place, I would tell Herman everything.

The instant my feet touched the floor, Cedric spoke.

“I’ve come to see it clearly of late. That there is no one so well suited to the seat of Countess Drake as you.”

He was trying to win me over with a logic all his own. The trouble was that not one part of that logic was sane.

“Gloria doesn’t help with the family business, nor does she look after the house. And she’s forever quarreling with Mother. Born of the same womb on the same day at the same hour — how can she be so utterly different from you, who were obedient in all things?”

He unburdened himself of it all, rambling on as though making some confession to me.

“At this rate, House Drake will not escape the fate that House Ernst met in the past.”
“And what on earth has that to do with me?”
“Mari.”

Perhaps he had finally taken leave of his senses altogether. In a place this crowded with people, Cedric called me ‘Mari.’

“Honestly, I regret it more these days than I ever have. That I cast aside a wife as perfect as you.”
“…”
“So why should we not overlook each other’s faults, and think together on a way through this?”

What fault of mine, precisely, was he proposing to overlook. If I had my way I would have stamped down hard on the instep of this man, shameless as if his face had never once known what it was to flush. Or else I would have twisted the nose clean off this man who gazed at me with the wistfulness one keeps for an old lover.

“I’ve no idea what it is you’ve been babbling about all this while. You want me to find a way through — with you?”
“A way back to before that incident.”
“Hah!”

Did Cedric truly believe such a thing was possible?

If so much as a nail-sized hole opens in a sound ship, you must cut away every plank along that stretch and fit new ones in their place. Otherwise a fault sets into the structure, and some other part soon gives way.

And this was a matter between people, no less. Cedric and I had once been husband and wife. The trouble surrounding us was nothing remotely nail-sized, and even if we did go back, it could never be as it was.

And besides.

I had no intention whatsoever of forgiving Cedric. Once I had my name back, I meant to be rid of him forever.

“Cedric.”
“Yes, Mari.”

I said it just as Marienne had on some day long past, the devoted and faithful wife of Cedric. When I called his name, he smiled softly. I lifted my chin at him, straight and unbending.

“Once was quite enough. Twice is a little stale.”
“What?”
“Pretending to repent. Pretending to regret. Pretending you have only now grasped something important.”

I glanced once at his slightly parted mouth and spoke straight out, without the smallest tremor.

“I told you plainly that time, and I’ll tell you again — whatever you do, I am never going back.”

The soles of my feet itched. I wanted, this very instant, to grind my heel down on Cedric’s instep as I had at the triumphal banquet.

“You stole my name, and now you tell me you’d have given it back if only I’d behaved? That I should come back to you as the wife who helped with the business, kept the house, and waited on your mother?”
“…Mari.”
“I can’t bear to hear it. Your words don’t even sound like words.”
“Calm yourself first. You’re far too worked up.”
“The one who’s worked up would be your lover.”

I had hesitated over whether to call Gloria Cedric’s ‘wife’ or his ‘mistress,’ and settled at last on ‘lover.’ At the same time I jerked my chin at her, all but spilling into Herman’s arms.

“What in the world does she imagine she’s doing.”

The moment the words left me, incredulous, Cedric’s face hardened. Watching Gloria beam so radiantly up at Herman, he seemed to be feeling a jealousy he could not manage. It struck me that I, too, wanted to know what expression Herman wore just then, but I made a point of not looking that way.

“I’ll tell you one thing you’ve been overlooking, as well.”

The music had entered its final passage. Contrary to my earlier wish for this dance to end, I poured the words out in a rapid burst, as though every second were too precious to waste.

“What I want back is not the ‘Countess Drake,’ nor ‘Cedric’s wife,’ nor anything of the kind. Only my name — ‘Marienne’ — stolen from me by a pair of grotesques. That, and nothing else.”

“…”

The final figure came. I drew away from Cedric in the natural motion of it, and as I came back to him, I spoke quietly.

“So don’t go having any delusions. It sickens me half to death.”