Chapter 9 #2
The rest of the evening passed for Victoria in a haze of nervous worry. She kept to herself unless she was spoken to and did her very best not to draw the attention of Wilhelm again as he seemed to enjoy torturing both Sophia and her in tandem.
The carriage ride back to Thousand-Sword Castle with Helena was silent and uncomfortable.
Neither one spoke over the creak of the carriage wheels and the occasional rustle of fabric when the terrain caused the carriage to jostle, and the rhythmic clop of the horse’s hooves against the road were the only sounds that dared infiltrate the silence.
Weak, yellow light from the coach box lanterns created a soft tangerine glow that danced softly onto the small windows of the carriage. There was barely enough light to see the face of the other woman sitting in darkness.
Blackened shadows from the trees and hedgerows rushed past in strange patterns as Victoria sat straight-backed in the seat across from Helena.
Her legs begged to curl under her rear so that she might lean against the window or stretch out on the bench.
Despite overwhelming exhaustion from the evening, she couldn’t relax, not yet.
The easy flow of friendliness had stopped with Helena after she had seen Wilhelm’s hand on Victoria under the table.
Helena had the tact and grace not to say anything to Victoria, but she wondered how long until she heard the sharp, cruel words that were bound to be said to her now that they were alone in the carriage together.
A wave of loneliness that never quite left swelled in Victoria’s chest. She had liked Helena. A lot. Even if Helena had not seen Wilhelm’s indiscretion, this end to their friendship would have happened, eventually. She had that effect on people.
It was impossible to know what to say. She never knew how to let them know she wanted—needed—some sort of friendship, and if there were a way, Victoria did not know of it. The entire workings of a human heart she knew, but not how to use it to stop feeling so lonely.
Victoria, on the rare occasion she found someone she wanted to know better, instead worried too severely about offending the prospective friend and then would remain too quiet, too stiff, too…
something. She wasn’t sure what the last ingredient was, only that she did not know the correct measure of it, instead being too much or too little of whatever was needed.
Even had she been able to explain away the Wilhelm situation, Helena was far too worldly and social to have held any interest in a genuine friendship with Victoria.
She didn’t particularly care for the entire group of friends, though Johanna, Ida, and Rosemary had been surprisingly nice to her, but Helena had seemed different.
Relatable in her interests and creativity, reasonably intelligent in her conversation.
Victoria hadn’t realized quite how much she’d actually wanted a friend that wasn’t dead until now, when it was being taken away from her, and as she sat drained and hollow from the forced composure of the evening, she ran through everything she had done and said, searching and analyzing how she could adjust and do differently if ever she were given another chance.
“Leopold is my brother.”
Victoria roused at the sudden statement. “I’m—I beg your pardon?”
Helena’s voice grew louder, more impatient, as if saying it again were a torture. “Leopold is my brother. He is a master tailor in Paris; that’s how Sophia knows him.” The words fell from her curled lip with disgust.
Victoria vaguely remembered Sophia mentioning the name but couldn’t remember why they had been speaking about Helena’s brother. “That sounds very nice. Does he make you—or Sophia—a lot of pieces?” She trod carefully, grateful for a line of communication finally.
“She’s such a witch sometimes, though I daresay, with the way Wilhelm behaves, how could she not be?”
The soft clink of the metal on the horses’ tack lingered in the air, a fragile sound suspended in the hollow stillness between them.
“My husband and Leopold are in love,” Helena stated.
“Your brother?” Victoria’s breath stilled. “Helena…” She trailed off, unsure of what to say.
“Yes. They live in France together, in our home.” Even in the dark, Victoria could see the woman’s pointed chin lift slightly.
“I—I’m so sorry,” Victoria muttered with wide eyes. “How awful. What can I do to help you?”
Helena let out an inaudible sigh. “Don’t be sorry.
They have been in love longer than I have been around.
We have a sort of…arrangement. Karl was required to marry in order to receive a rather substantial inheritance.
The two are both like my big brothers. When they came to me and asked me to marry Karl, I agreed.
Now the two of them can live a somewhat normal life together, and I reap the enormous financial benefits.
Every few months I return so that we may be seen doting on one another in public.
Leopold fashions me a new wardrobe, and then I travel somewhere else.
Many speculate, but few know the truth of our relationship. ”
“And Sophia is one,” Victoria added softly.
“Yes, though she generally holds the threat of losing new dresses in higher regard and silences her tongue. You understandably got under her skin.”
Silence pressed into the space once more.
Helena’s voice softened. “I’ve shared my secret; now it’s your turn. Are you having an affair with Wilhelm?”
Victoria could lie. All Helena had seen was him grip her thigh.
The problem with loneliness was that while the solitude and isolation that came with grief could bring temporary comfort, in its truest form, it was a dismal emptiness that craved relief.
“Yes, but only because he forces it and I fear I have no other choice,” Victoria admitted. Her eyelids pressed closed so tightly that white stars speckled her vision while she waited for what Helena would say next.
“I see.” Her words were not harsh or judgmental.
Victoria let out a slow breath. Perhaps their friendship wasn’t over before it had really begun; maybe there was still hope.
“Then he has something on you? He’s holding something over you?” Energy surged through Helena’s words with a defensive bite.
“Yes.” Victoria nodded. She wanted to lie down in front of the carriage and let the horses pulling it trample her. What would she say when Helena asked more questions that Victoria could not answer?
“That snake. And all while dragging poor Sophia through it as well, and he isn’t even hiding it!”
Suddenly, Helena was on the seat next to Victoria, her shoulder pressing against Victoria’s as the padding of the seat dipped. “I can help. Is it money? I’ve just told you, I have a near endless supply, and my cats hardly—no, it’s not money.”
Victoria shook her head, words failing at the surprising generosity of her new friend.
“Then he knows something.” Helena leaned back to get a better look at Victoria.
Victoria pressed and pulled at her fingernails.
Helena was going to ask what it was, what secret Victoria kept that was so damning that she would go to such measures to keep it hidden.
She’d already told Helena about Wilhelm.
Would she spill all her secrets? Tell her about the lessons and the experiments, and how she was dissecting jarred hearts and brains hoping to resurrect her mother? Where would she stop?
“We need to learn something about him, a mistake he’s made—something that we could use to free you from his coercion.”
Victoria stared blankly out the window in silence, unable to look at her friend during the last bend of trail before the castle as she listened to Helena rambling passionately about the various methods they could use to stop Wilhelm from his abuse and free her from the situation.
At the castle, the two women said their goodbyes, and Victoria made to step out of the carriage and into the night, her foot hovering above the step.
The realization fell to her that not once, in all the mentions of finding a way to help Victoria, not one time had Helena so much as asked what the secret was.
She was ready and willing to fight for Victoria blindly.
Unfamiliar warmth bloomed in her hollow chest. She fell back into the coach and put her arms on Helena’s shoulders, giving her an awkward hug.
“Thank you,” she muttered, moving quickly back out of the carriage and into the front door of the castle before the other woman could respond.
“There she is! How was your evening?” Alphonse called out happily, greeting her by the large circular table in the center of the dark entrance.
“It was nice,” Victoria said, and for once, she meant it.
“Walk with me, tell me everything.” He smiled widely. Just as his foot lifted to take the single step onto the level of the landing by the door, he tripped. His body fell forward, narrowly missing the sharp corner of the molding beneath the stairs to the upper levels.
“Papa!” Victoria cried out as she lunged at him. She helped him off the floor, frantically searching his face and hands for injuries.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, not meeting her eyes.
Once she realized he was all right, the frustrated anger that had been held behind a barricade too long snapped out of her.
“This is idiotic! How can you have these symptoms for so long and we cannot find a cure?” she shouted as she raised her hands high in frustration.
“Have you even tried? Or are you as eager to leave me as mother was!”
Her words lashed across Alphonse’s face, causing him to wince as if he’d been slapped.
Exhausted and frustrated, Victoria continued her rant.
“Over the years I have watched you heal things that are impossible to heal. I have watched you diagnose and cure intricate diseases when you did nothing more than look at the symptoms of their tongues! How can we not figure out what plagues you?” Her chest rose and fell with ragged, heavy breaths.