Work Text:
George finds he can’t stand it, the baby’s last hours before joining the rest of them in the outside world. Gladys’s cries echo through Sidmouth Castle, each one of them a crueler fist around his heart than the last. He waits with Lady Sarah, who seems to understand she’s uninvited to the main event despite her sex. He wishes Larry were here to provide some less unnerving company, but he’s back home, keeping the business afloat and doting on his dear Miss Brook. Hector is upstairs at his wife’s side, just the way George had been all those years ago. The mark of a good husband. George had been one, once.
It goes on for hours. No easy birth for his daughter, never mind the grand future her mother had purchased for her with her freedom. Babies, it seems, don’t care whether their mothers are duchesses. They’ll arrive just as mercilessly as they please. Gladys shrieks and moans. Big, monstrous sounds of agony from such a lovely slip of a girl. He wonders how Bertha can stomach it up close. He can’t stop thinking of Gladys’s small hand on his arm as he walked her down the aisle to her fate, in front of all those witnesses to the ritual sacrifice. In his mind’s eye, he grabs her hand, turns them around, pulls her out of the church and into daylight.
Gladys screams and screams. Perhaps George walked her to her death. Only time will tell.
Finally, he gives up and goes outside, strolling into the misty dawn. Gladys is strong, he tells himself, though he’s never thought of her as particularly so before. She must be strong, with such a mother.
He walks through the endless gardens. It does nothing to loosen the miserable tension. On top of the animal fear in his chest, he’s soon aware of the weakness that hasn’t left him since he was shot. Finally, exhausted, he sits on a stone bench and pulls the laudanum bottle from his pocket. He takes a swig, glancing around as if Bertha might leap out from behind a bush somewhere and catch him at it. It’s unsettling, being back under the same roof with her. That’s one benefit to no longer sharing a home; she would’ve noticed by now. He’ll kick the habit. He’s not in any real danger. It’s a means of relaxing after a stressful day (and all his days are stressful days), now that he no longer has his wife’s arms to rest in.
He should go inside, should check to see if his daughter still lives, but something in him shrinks from it. If it’s bad news, he’d rather postpone it. If it’s good, he won’t be able to feel its weight. All that’s good turns to ash for him these days. Once he had thought it was only Bertha. Lately, it seems to be everything.
Listening to the unbothered twittering of the birds, who don’t know or care that a sweet girl might die, he nods off. In his dream, Bertha is playing hide and seek with him – dipping behind hedges, shining brighter than the brilliant flowers. He catches her and kisses her. She melts into his arms. My darling, he murmurs into her hair. My love.
“George?”
He opens his eyes. His wife disappears, replaced by her identical successor. She looks as if she’s just run for her life: dress wrinkled, hair slipping from its once-careful coiffure into a charming mess around her face and shoulders. It’s been so long since he’s seen her in a state of anything besides deliberate perfection. Out of an absurd sense of chivalry, he looks away.
He’s surprised that she could bear to be away from Gladys’s side for a moment. The two of them are thick as thieves lately. He’ll never understand how marrying Hector mended fences between mother and daughter and put a gulf between him and Gladys, who can’t forgive him for the apparent crime of no longer wanting to endure Bertha’s endless machinations.
My leaving - it was all for you, don’t you understand? he snapped at her once, months earlier.
Well, I don’t want it, Gladys retorted, tilting her chin with an imperiousness that was all her mother. Will you forgive her now?
He hadn’t, of course. He’s a stubborn man. Sometimes he wishes he wasn’t.
“There you are,” Bertha says. He thinks of how her voice used to glow saying words like that.
“Here I am,” he agrees. “Is she–”
Relief sweetens her face. “Gladys is fine.”
“And the baby?”
Bertha hugs herself in the chill of the morning. She hadn’t bothered to cover up before coming out. “Just a girl, I’m afraid. But a magnificent one. Such sturdy little lungs. It’s a wonder you didn’t hear her from here.”
“How wonderful.” And then, because he’s out of practice giving her soft words: “I’m sorry you haven’t gotten your heir to the dukedom yet.”
“Who’s to say?” Bertha counters. “Laws change all the time.”
This is her great cause lately – the power of women, advocating for their right to live independently. To have a voice. It’s not surprising. It rather suits her.
“Come in,” Bertha urges. “See her. See both of them.”
He thinks of how she would have moved once: sauntering over to where he sits; offering a hand to pull him up; fixing her sweet, wry gaze on him. He would’ve tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and teased her about being the most beautiful grandmother in the world. They would’ve walked in together, all smiles in the brightening morning.
Now she stays a careful distance away, her arms still wrapped around herself like she’s anticipating a blow.
“Not yet,” he says.
“You’ve left me, George. Not her.”
“Tell her that.”
“I think that’s your job.”
“She doesn’t want to see me. She wants her husband, and you.”
“Well, then give her something worth wanting. Be kind to her for a change. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your attitude toward her since we got here.”
“What about her attitude toward me? I suppose you’ve noticed that too.”
“You’re the parent. You’re the one who has to make amends. I’ve done it before – now it’s your turn.”
He holds his head in his hands. “Will you ever stop telling me what to do?”
“Probably not. Fortunately for you, you no longer have to listen.”
“Well, thank God for that,” he snaps.
He looks up. He expects her to look stricken, the way she had in the early days of things beginning to fall apart. She doesn’t. She looks unsurprised. Her brow is faintly furrowed in concern, but there’s no heartbreak there. Not anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He can’t stand not saying it. There’s an odd, dreamlike quality to the moment that allows him to speak. At home he would’ve held it in until it killed him. “I liked to listen, more often than not. Back then.”
“I know.”
This could be it. He could beg forgiveness. He knows there’s a good chance she would take him back, even now. When they’d really decided to part, once and for all, she’d said as much. I love you more than anything. I’m sorry if I’m not the sort of woman who can make you feel the truth of it, but it is true. I’ll love you until I die. I’ve spent my whole life, all of it that’s mattered, at your side. And I’d stay there for the rest of it, and do all I could to make us both happy. But if you don’t want that love, I’ll set it aside, and I’ll make do.
And she has. Quite handsomely. Their house bustles without him. She’s always busy with teas and parties and meetings and God knows what else. Somehow, any shame that might have come with their separation has slipped right off of her. She’s too buoyant, too constantly in motion to let it drag her down. She chips away at the world every day, making it better for women without husbands.
Though she does still have a husband, technically speaking. They aren’t divorced yet, but rumors have swirled after his months away from home. He’s heard there’s a considerable list of men swarming around her, vying for the role of someday second husband. There’s no small number of interested women making eyes at him. (Mrs. Winterton, at least, isn’t one of them, having recently wed Oscar Van Rhijn.) He hasn’t taken up with anyone. He doesn’t think Bertha has either. They were each other’s first and only sweethearts. Neither of them quite know what they’re doing now.
Tell her, you fool. Get on your knees.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak.
Bertha sways slightly, like she’d like to take a step closer, but doesn’t. She frowns. “I’m worried about you, George. I know you. Something’s not right.”
It isn’t something, of course. It’s everything.
“I’m tired,” he says. “That’s all.”
Finally she moves forward, coming right to him. She sinks to her knees on the dewy grass so that she can stare into his face. He wishes she wouldn’t. He prefers her standing tall above him.
Her hands clutch his. He swallows painfully at the sudden relief of her touch.
“Our daughter is a mother,” she says, looking right into his eyes. “You’re a grandfather. Can’t you feel it at all?” She’s shivering. Still, her grip is strong.
“Go inside, my darling.” He allows himself that one small indulgence. His fingers itch to touch her cheek. “It’s cold.”
She stares at him - a warm, dissecting stare. It’s all he can do to meet her gaze. The laudanum bottle burns in his pocket.
“I thought it was me who ruined it,” she says at last. Her voice is quiet. Small, for once. “I really did. Your arguments were convincing enough for that.” She bites her lip. “It wasn’t. It’s you.”
He looks up, away from her. Tears sting in his eyes.
“Get off,” he implores.
She listens. Her hands squeeze his, one last time, and she lets go. He balls his own hands into fists so he doesn’t reach out for her again.
Standing up, she smooths her hair – futilely, considering what a mess it is. It would be endearing if he still had a working heart. Whatever the bullet dislodged, it did it cleanly.
She folds her arms. “If you’re not back in half an hour, I’ll send one of the servants after you.”
“I’ll come back when I choose. Or have you already forgotten I’m not your concern any longer?”
“You’ll always be my concern,” she spits out. “To my foolish peril.”
His head aches. “Just go. I’ve had quite enough.”
She doesn’t move. Her eyes are bright with tears. He tries to look at her like she’s a man he dislikes sitting across his desk. A stranger on the street. Anything besides what she is.
Bertha lifts her chin. “You should be surrounded by your family now.” She gestures toward the lonely horizon. “But look around.”
He flinches, recognizing his words. When he’d said it to her, he’d been amazed at how easily it had come to him. She must have deserved it, he’d thought back then, if it was that natural to say to her, of all people. His second self. He’d thought nothing of it, leaving her to sit with those words. It had felt like justice for his daughter. Justice for himself.
Now, he keeps quiet. He doesn’t trust his voice not to shake. And besides, it’s the least he can give her. He left her alone with that awful sentiment. He’s earned his share of hurt.
After one last disappointed look, Bertha goes, arms folded again against the cold, and doesn’t turn around once. He watches her walk away, back up to the house, until she’s a speck of nothing. He wipes roughly at his wet face. On the breeze, he catches a trace of a baby’s sure, strong cry.