Chapter Twenty-Six #2
He ushered her through the hall and into a brightly lit, warm room, full of harmonious colors and big bowls of flowers.
She had an overall impression of domestic bliss, such that it tugged at her heart poignantly.
This was a house full of love, she had just time enough to think, when the raven-haired woman at its center arose from the comfortably stuffed chair she’d been sitting on, embroidery materials falling to her feet.
“Celestia. Look who’s come. It’s Analise!”
Celestia. The periphery of the room blurred.
All Ana could see was the woman. Tall, statuesque.
An oval face, deep brown eyes, fine features—a face of stunning, ethereal beauty surrounded by a bounty of glossy black hair.
A match to the figure in the maze’s fountain, although the sculptor had scarcely done her justice.
Ana was suddenly aware of her own curls, blown willy-nilly by the autumn wind, and her walking clothes, damp with perspiration and hanging heavily about her. Celestia was walking toward her with open arms, a timid expression of pleasure brightening her eyes and tinting her cheeks pink.
“Your Grace, it’s wonderful to meet you.”
Ana clasped hands with Celestia, one hundred questions bubbling behind her lips. She sensed that the goddess in front of her had just as many questions, if the quizzical narrowing of her delicately veined eyelids was any indication.
“I—” she hesitated. “Forgive me, I am woefully uneducated on family matters. I didn’t know that Rupert was married? I didn’t—well, I don’t know much of anything.”
Celestia nodded, understanding dawning on her face. “Rupert, will you ring for tea? Her Grace must be exhausted after undertaking the journey by foot, and in this blustery weather! Shall we sit and attempt to clear out some familial cobwebs?”
Ana sank into the proffered chair with relief. “Oh yes, please! You don’t know how much I’ve longed to learn a little bit more about Dex. He is rather a closed book to me.”
“To us all. But with good reason,” Celestia said enigmatically.
Rupert pushed a large armchair toward them and the trio sat for a moment looking at one another, as a maid entered with the tea service.
Ana decided that she liked them both very much, whatever Dex’s reasons for not feeling the same.
She was conscious of a fierce jealousy toward Celestia, but the woman’s kind demeanor and readiness to divulge information were immediately endearing.
She had meant something to Dex, that much was obvious.
Ana thought of the wild, abandoned fountain, its motion stilled by neglect, its surfaces fallen victim to nature’s design.
The sightless statue had filled her with foreboding.
The real Celestia radiated a calm warmth.
They were as different as night and day.
Rupert and Celestia exchanged glances. “I take it,” began Rupert, “that my brother didn’t tell you the nature of our quarrel? If you didn’t know that I was married, that is. He could hardly have told the tale while leaving that bit out.”
“No, he won’t talk about it. And those around him are forbidden to speak of it. Myself included.”
Celestia sighed. “I’m afraid I’m the cause of it all. I have spent so much time going back over the whole story, hoping to find some way to set it all right, but it all comes down to this—I tore the two brothers apart, quite without meaning to. But there it is.”
Ana held her breath, leaning forward eagerly in her seat. She had the dizzying feeling of standing at a cliff’s edge, transfixed by the distant landscape below. Whatever painful truth she learned here would change her forever, but turning away from it felt physically impossible.
“I’ve known Dex and Rupert my whole life, the three of us were childhood friends.
Oh, I was never very interested in their games of war and endless talk of horses, but whenever they needed a damsel in distress to rescue, or a regal queen to send them out on a new quest, I would fill the role.
I suppose it fit me well, because as we grew up, they both seemed to feel that I was destined to be in their lives always. ”
“She’s painting too faint a picture! We were both madly in love with her,” Rupert interjected, beaming devoted eyes at his wife.
“I liked them both well enough, but it was Rupert that I was always most drawn to, if I am being fully honest. Dex was so commanding, a born leader. I was a little in awe of him. He orchestrated our make-believe vignettes, told me where to stand and what to say. Rupert had a softer way about him, a gentleness I found more appealing. He would leave funny little bouquets and trinkets for me in my favorite haunts and peep at me with these adoring eyes.”
“Come, come. You make me out to be something of a ninny!” Rupert laughed, slapping his knee in mock consternation. “I suppose I was, at that. Utterly besotted, I was.”
Ana smiled, picturing the trio as youths. A smaller version of Dex, every bit as tyrannical as the adult version, directing the show. Rupert and Celestia, falling in love in the wings.
“I knew at a young age that my father and theirs had decided that I was the most suitable candidate to be Dex’s wife.
It was something I just grew up with, my future being planned for me.
The current of life was bearing me in that direction.
I floated along with it. I don’t like conflict.
It wasn’t a disagreeable prospect. It was just that I would have much preferred it to be Rupert.
I was so young . . .” She took a sip of tea.
“We became betrothed shortly before the war. Dex showed up one day asking to speak with my father, and then he marched out to the garden, where I was daydreaming in the sun, and said, ‘It’s time for us to be married. I love you, and you love me.’ What could I do? I could hardly say no.”
“It damn near wrecked me!” cried Rupert.
“My dearest love, and my older brother. I’d known it was bound to happen, but I’d had fantasies of whisking her away for myself, even dueling Dex for her hand.
Nothing at all realistic, boyhood passions run amok and all that, but real enough to me. I was desolate.”
“When Dex knew he was to go abroad with his regiment, our engagement became prolonged. I didn’t mind that, in fact, I encouraged it to be so.
He would have preferred to be married beforehand, but I insisted on a grand, elaborate wedding, something that would require months of preparation and the attendance of absolutely anyone of importance to society.
Dex acquiesced, because he could deny me nothing.
He had grown rather ardent during the engagement, perhaps because I often withdrew into my own head.
He must have found me aloof, more alluring in that way.
You’ve seen the fountain he had made for me? ”
“Yes.” Ana nodded into her teacup, raptly watching the drama unfold in her mind’s eye. Poor Dex. Poor Rupert. Poor Celestia!
“I never told Rupert my misgivings about the marriage. I purposefully avoided him leading up to Dex’s deployment.
It should have been Rupert who went to war—since their father had died and Dex was the duke, but Dex insisted on riding off to battle, leaving Rupert to remain at home for the duration, to manage the estate. ”
Celestia’s hand trembled slightly as she brought her teacup to her full, crimson lips. “Before Dex left, he installed me at his London townhouse. The wedding preparations were to proceed apace while he was away. I was fitted for a beautiful wedding gown fit for a princess.”
“I’ve seen it,” said Ana. “In the forbidden room.”
“The forbidden room?” Celestia asked, her face puzzled.
“When I first arrived at the duke’s townhouse, he told me I might choose my own chamber.
I unlocked the door to a room that had an expansive view of the square and a wardrobe filled with fine and expensive ladies’ clothing.
It caused quite the argument. He forbade me to have that room.
It seems his memories of you were to be kept preserved like a fossil in amber, locked away tightly. ”
“Oh. I had no idea. I thought he would have been rid of all the wedding trappings.”
A charged look passed between Rupert and Celestia.
“It seems my brother never found a way to move on after . . .”
“You’re racing ahead of me, Rupert,” Celestia chided. “Let me finish my story.”
“Of course, my love.”
“While I was in London, Rupert visited frequently. We would talk about Dex and the war, and when that topic grew tired (which it did rather quickly), we would spend hours upon hours just talking about stupid, trivial things. Caricatures in the papers that made us laugh, favorite foods, architecture we both admired. Meeting as adults for the first time, truly getting to know each other. We had such a comfortable rapport, so very much to talk about! Before I knew it, I was hopelessly in love.”
“The state I had always been in. You finally joined me there.” Rupert and Celestia gazed at each other, obviously forgetting their visitor for a moment in the happy memories.
Celestia turned back to Ana.
“Those years flew by. We never spoke words of love out loud, but much was simply understood between us. We were best friends, existing in our own little world of happiness. When Dex was injured and transferred to a hospital in London, that illusion was shattered. I’ll never forget visiting him there, half his face turned from me in shame, a terrible haunted air emanating from his every pore.
He was surrounded by ghosts. The natural brevity of his conversation had degraded into a silence that terrified me.
I knew in that instant that it was all wrong.
That I finally had to do an unthinkable thing, for both of our sakes.
But I couldn’t speak the words aloud. I couldn’t break our engagement.
I simply left. And then I . . . and then Rupert and I were married, in secret. ”
“But he’d suffered so much during the war!
” Heat rose in Ana’s chest, making her feel like she had a sudden fever.
“How could you do that to him, especially after he’d just come back?
” Her heart broke for him, imagining the agony of his existence in that moment.
Body wounded, heart broken by his brother and his fiancée’s betrayal.
Celestia bowed her head. “Nothing you can say to me is worse than the recriminations I have told myself over the years. I know that I dealt him a terrible blow when he was at his weakest, but I didn’t know what else to do.
I gave it weeks, but things went from bad to horrible.
I didn’t want to ruin three lives, when two of them could be salvaged.
I was na?ve enough to think that it might eventually be all right.
That he’d realize, as I honestly suspect to be true, that he’d never really loved me for me.
He loved the queen in the castle, seen from afar.
He loved the roles he’d made me play in our youth.
But he didn’t really know me, not really.
It was Rupert who knew me, inside and out. ”
Ana’s outrage calmed somewhat, tempered by empathy and understanding. “It was a terrible choice you had to make.”
“Yes. And I . . . we paid the consequences most dearly. Dex vowed never to speak to either of us again. And because he’s Dex, and his will is stronger than any other force on earth, he made it so and has never broken his word.”
“I miss my brother,” Rupert said quietly. “You can’t imagine what it’s like knowing you deserve the hatred of someone you love. I worshipped the ground he walked on. I was overjoyed when I heard he’d taken a wife, because surely that meant things were shifting?”
“We were overjoyed,” Celestia amended. “And we are so happy to meet you. We deserve for you to judge us harshly, I won’t deny that.
I couldn’t help observing how quick you were to defend him, and I applaud you for that.
You must love him, which is what he badly needs.
I hope hearing the circumstances surrounding the event has brought a tiny bit of understanding.
And maybe you’ll be able to forgive us. Even if he can’t. ”
Ana looked at the two of them, considering all they’d told her.
She could see it from all three perspectives, the author’s curse.
Their narratives entwined in this relentless, inexorable spiral.
Her imagination filled in the details, painting the scene as richly as if she’d lived it herself.
And she was living it, was also a character in their story.
Dex was who he was in part because of these two people, people who hurt him but loved him still, pain begetting pain begetting more pain.
She must attempt to put an end to the cycle. Even if he hated her for it. There was no other way forward. It was time to write a scene of reconciliation. Of redemption.
Her brother- and sister-in-law sat still as stone, staring at her with anticipation, Celestia for the first time truly resembling her marble counterpart in the fountain. Ana took a deep breath.
“Would the two of you care to dine with us at the castle in two days’ time? How do you feel about flummery?”