A Breath Apart

“Is it G— Gloria you’re looking for?”

I could never afterward remember what my own voice had sounded like. Caught face to face with Herman with no preparation whatsoever, I avoided his eyes and babbled.

“She must be somewhere near here, though I couldn’t say where myself.”

I had to answer while pretending to be Marienne. The whole business was absurd. I was Marienne, and I had to pretend to be Marienne.

He can’t have seen through it.

He could not have. We were twins alike enough that a change of clothes left no one in the world able to tell us apart.

There’s nothing to worry about.

All I had done was come back to my own place. So long as I let no fluster show, I could deceive Herman well enough.

“…”
“…”

His gaze stayed level on my face and showed no sign of leaving it. Then, all at once, his dark brows twisted.

“…Why.”

His voice dropped to a dangerous low.

“Why are you dressed like that.”

“!”

I was so startled that no words would come. My head was in an uproar, and so was my chest. How in the world was I to deal with this?

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

I wet my lips and barely managed to get the denial out.

“Don’t lie to me.”

Of course, the denial was struck down the moment I made it.

“A lie, you say…”
“And don’t pretend you don’t understand, either.”

Herman ground the question out between clenched teeth.

“I am asking you why you are dressed in Countess Drake’s clothes and playing at being her.”

This was not in the plan. No, it should not have been possible in the first place.

Me…

My own husband had turned away from me. My own parents had not known me.

Herman Ernst knew me.

Whether being known as ‘Gloria’ could truly be called being known at all, I could not say.

How in the world…

Had he known me for his own wife?

I struggled to stay as calm as I could, and tried to think what ‘Marienne’ would have said and done in a situation like this. Would she have furrowed her brow as though put out? Or waved a hand and denied it?

You’ve lost your mind, Marienne.

All I had to do was speak as I always spoke. What was I doing, trying to imitate ‘Marienne’? It was as though something in my head had broken. Nothing else could explain why I should be pretending to be myself.

“I am sorry, Your Excellency, but I cannot understand what you are talking about. I am Marienne Drake, and so I am wearing my own clothes.”
“No. You know perfectly well what I am talking about.”

Herman came toward me, one step and then another. I could not tell why he kept closing the distance.

I have to run. Now, while I still can.

Instinct told me so, and still my legs would not stir; they might have been sunk into the ground.

Before I knew it he stood right in front of me, and after a brief silence he murmured, as though something in him were giving way.

“If you truly are not my wife, then you should never have stopped walking when I called you.”

We stood close enough for our breath to mingle, and his scent came rolling over me like a wave.

“You should have deceived me more thoroughly, so that I could not have known you, and even at this very moment you should have lifted your chin all the more brazenly.”

Unable to hide the hard set of his jaw, Herman went on.

“You should have played the woman who spent all today smiling that sickening smile at me — not the wife I have been searching for like a man gone mad.”

Nothing about him had ever wavered: not the step that carried him toward me, not the voice he held so steady.

“You are my wife. You are, aren’t you.”

And yet the dark eyes I met, so close before me, trembled helplessly, like something fluttering in the wind.

Ah…

In that instant I lost all will to argue against what he had said. Whatever I might say, here and now, it was plain that it would only wound him. And I knew perfectly well that worrying over his wounds was nothing more than hypocrisy, and that the wounds he suffered were not wholly my doing.

Because every step of my taking back my name is bound to wound Herman.

Even so, I wished with all my heart that he would not be wounded. That his heart might ache, perhaps, but that it not weigh on him for long. That I might come to his mind now and then, perhaps, but that the memory not linger.

Because you are, to me…

Someone I like.

Only at the very last of the last could I bring myself to own the feeling. All this time, I had liked Herman Ernst.

“And what do you mean to do now? Go to Cedric Drake, is that it?”

Herman’s face twisted until it hurt to look at.

“Then what of me.”

He asked it.

“What do you mean to do about me.”

I could not bring myself to answer. That I had to go. That he should look the other way and let me go. The words wouldn’t come together, only churned into a tangle.

And it was then.

The sound of a party coming out of the second-floor ladies’ retiring room reached me. They were drawing nearer and nearer to this spot; one turn of the corner and they would be upon us.

“It has been an age since I danced a mazurka, and I find it’s rather hard going.”
“Isn’t it just. Once you’ve a few years on you, a single five-minute piece wants half an hour of sitting down after it.”

It was calamity heaped upon calamity. Those voices belonged to the reading-circle ladies who had come to the ball. Which meant that this was the very moment I ought to have been hurrying down to the hall to play the pitiable wife with a straying husband, and even that would hardly have been enough.

And if, at so desperate a juncture as this, I were caught alone with Herman, in Marienne’s very likeness…

No. Stay like this any longer and it will end as neither one thing nor the other.

Had too much time slipped away? One after another, things kept slipping out of the plan. And the greatest variable among them, beyond any question, was Herman Ernst, who had known me at a single glance.

“!”

Herman sensed the others coming, caught hold of my wrist, and set off at a brisk walk. Before I could so much as protest, his hand drew me along and down the stairs, and by the time I came to myself I was already being pulled toward the far side of the banquet hall.

If we’re seen by anyone at this rate…!

I wanted to cry out to him, to beg him not to do this, but for fear that someone’s eye should fall on us I could not so much as let my breathing be heard. After a long while he came to a stop. That the place turned out to be a secluded corner of the rose garden was a small mercy, at least.

“W— wait. Please, let go of my hand.”

At my resistance Herman stopped walking at once and released my wrist. Quite meekly, for all the force with which he had dragged me here.

I looked off at the central hall, blazing bright in the distance, and thought.

It isn’t too late yet. If I go back to the ballroom now, it will still do.

If I told him firmly that I had to go, he might let me go as meekly as he had just let go of my hand.

“There is somewhere I have to be. I’ve no time to be standing about here—”
“Please.”

Herman cut across me, abruptly.

“Don’t go.”

For all the firmness of his voice, what he had wrung out of himself was nothing more than a plea that I not leave him.

The gaslamps lighting the garden were strewn about like constellations in a night sky, and where their soft glow rested on his face, a deep sorrow and a deep hesitation had settled.

“I’ll ask you nothing, so say nothing to me — just come away with me.”

I had somehow expected him to press and badger me for an explanation. Instead he was pleading with me, piteously, to say nothing at all.

Why do you…

Why, to the very last, did he go on gathering me in like this? Not once had I ever tried to take the measure of his heart. Thinking of it now, that may well have been for the best; his feeling seemed a thing too vast for me to dare to hold.

“I am begging you. Please.”

Herman pleaded. And in that instant, absurdly enough, a strange impulse took hold of me. I had been found out so easily, so pointlessly. Might it not be all right to stop the plan here, just as it was? What good would going back to being Marienne do me, after all? Could I not simply stay a little longer at his side?

To keep the truth welling up from the depths of me from passing my lips, I bit down without mercy on my poor, blameless lip.

“…”
“…”

How long did that suffocating standoff go on? Then, all at once, a sound from the direction of the garden entrance broke the silence.

They’re coming this way.

On the night of a ball there were people everywhere. Rustle, rustle. The crackle of twigs underfoot grew clearer, and the strollers’ steps came nearer and nearer to us.

If this goes on we’ll be found out. What am I to do?

In this darkness it would be difficult for anyone to know us at a glance, but even so, no one could be allowed to witness this scene.

Because at this moment we were Herman Ernst and Marienne Drake.

Abruptly, Herman bent low and drew his body close against mine.

“Quiet.”

And in that same instant he took my face in both his hands and tilted his head.