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Bertha does send a servant out for him in exactly half an hour. He tracks the time on his pocket watch, and finds himself smiling slightly when a figure appears in the distance. He follows the lad back to the castle dutifully, like a humbled dog.
Gladys has been asking for him, he learns on arriving back inside. When he goes into her bed chamber, Bertha ducks out, leaving a kiss in Gladys’s hair before she goes. It’s strange to see her so affectionate. Usually she parents with the softness of a decorated war general.
He does his best to put on a smile and a passable impression of his old self. Gladys seems to have forgotten their recent conflict. He supposes anything but the essentials must slip one’s mind under such circumstances. Her resentment of him, it appears, isn’t essential. That loosens something tight in his chest, just a bit.
She shows him his sleeping granddaughter, luminous with pride. George considers the tiny creature. One forgets how small they are at first, and how perfect.
“We’ve decided to call her Bertha.”
George raises his eyebrows. “Have you?”
“Oh, hush.” Gladys goes back to doting upon her daughter.
“No more high-ranking relations to honor first?”
“We felt it only right,” says Hector, “as she was so instrumental in our union.”
“Indeed she was,” George mutters. But with Gladys so pleased and a beautiful new life in her arms, he finds the words don’t have as much vitriol as they might have. “Get some sleep, sweetheart. You’ve fought a hard battle today.”
“I will just as soon as I can bear to stop looking at her,” Gladys says. “I promise.” She glances away from the baby to spare him a giddy, awed smile.
George pats her shoulder. “I’m so glad that you’re happy.”
“I am,” she says wonderingly. “I didn’t know you could be so.”
He leaves her to Hector and her daughter.
“Congratulations,” he tells the Duke on the way out. “You’ll never know a sweeter victory.”
Hector smiles at him, clearly thrilled. A thoroughly decent fellow. No trace of the mercenary fiend who’d waited for his prize at the head of the church. “Of that I have no doubt.”
***
When George stops by her room, Bertha is sitting at the vanity, her lady’s maid valiantly attempting to fix her tangled hair. She’s in her nightdress, though sunshine pours in through cracks in the dusty curtains. She must be exhausted.
“Can you give us a moment?” George requests.
The lady’s maid looks to Bertha. Clearly his reputation precedes him.
Bertha gives her a discreet nod, and the maid slips out after promising to report back if Gladys needs anything, no matter how small. With the door shut behind them, George tries to seem natural. He still isn’t used to the tension in the air between them when they’re alone, even if he’s the one who established the tradition in the first place.
“They’ve named her for you,” he says.
Bertha brushes her hair, her eyes on her own face in the mirror. “I didn’t put them up to it, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“No, I …” He tries to find the words. “I didn’t think she would ever speak to you again. Now she’s named her daughter after you.”
“It all worked out. Sometimes things do.” Bertha shrugs.
He sits on the bed. “This was luck. You couldn’t have known.”
“It was luck. He could have turned out to be cruel, though I wouldn’t have pursued it if he’d struck me as the type. He could have decided he didn’t love her after all.” Only the slightest sniff betrays her there. “But as women, luck is all we have. We might as well try to stack the odds in our favor.”
He thinks of how wretched all the business with the Duke had made him feel, how powerless and feeble. Perhaps that is a feeling even his dauntless wife knows very well. Perhaps it’s a feeling every woman knows.
A horrible thought.
“I see,” he says.
She turns to face him. “Do you? Finally?”
He’s caught off-guard by the directness of her gaze. “I still don’t like that you left me with no choice.”
“You’re the head of the household, George. You always have a choice. The choice.”
“Then why did I feel that if I went against you, you’d never forgive me?”
She frowns. “So instead I’m the one who’s supposed to bear it. Never being forgiven.”
I forgive you, he wants to say, but can’t. It catches in his throat.
“You can bear anything,” he says instead. He means it as a compliment.
She doesn’t take it that way. “And that means I shall have to, I suppose.”
“I don’t want to hurt you. Not anymore.”
“But you did want to.”
“Yes. I did. I was very hurt myself. You know I’m not one to retreat and lick my wounds when I’ve been attacked.”
“I didn’t attack you!”
“Well, it felt that way.”
“If you ever don’t like what I’m doing, tell me that.”
“And you’ll give up the fight?”
“Almost certainly not. But at least we’ll be on even ground.”
He can’t help asking it. “Why are you talking as if we’re still … how we were?”
She gives him an exasperated look. “It was a long night, and I’m tired, and I’m relieved, and very happy for our daughter and our son-in-law. Forgive me for treating you like my husband. It’s an old habit. I promise I’ll break it tomorrow.”
She moves past him, seeming unbothered by his presence, and gets into bed. He stays seated. At the sight of her stretching out, he’s struck by a near-overwhelming urge to settle in beside her.
He doesn’t dare, of course.
She throws a glance back at him, but doesn’t say anything. Instead, she settles into her pillow and turns, facing away from him. They languish in the quiet together.
“I’m not like you,” he confesses at last. He feels freer to speak without her eyes on him. “I lack your strength. Your certainty.”
“Since when? Since the shooting? Because George, you will regain your full strength. I know it. Don’t give up.”
“Since her wedding.” His voice fails him. He forces the words out pitifully. “I can’t bear what I’ve done.”
She turns back to face him, and pats the empty space on the bed beside her. Obediently, he moves there.
“You’ll have to bear it,” she tells him. Her tone is firm, but not unkind. “It’s past. It isn’t going anywhere. All you can do is make sure to do better things in the future.” He nods, barely, but can’t look at her. “How can you still lament it so? Would you really want to deny her all she has? Her status? This home? Her family? That sweet little girl?”
George stares down at his hands. “I broke a vow.”
“More than one,” Bertha mutters.
“She was innocent,” he protests. “And you are–”
“Guilty?”
“Strong.”
She laughs shortly. “Not always. Not as strong as you think I am.”
“You’ve done very well without me.”
“I have,” she agrees, with her usual bluntness. “But do you think that’s been easy for me?”
“You make it look that way.”
“You know me better than that. You must know how I’ve hated it. I never wanted you gone. Not for a moment.”
“I had to leave.” He wonders if he’ll ever find a way to say it that makes him into anything besides a heartless cad. “I couldn’t stand it any longer. What we did to her together.”
Bertha narrows her eyes at him. “What do you want me to do? Say I regret it when I don’t?”
“How can’t you?” he asks. It’s nearly a plea.
“I only ever made her one promise: to give her the brightest future a girl in her position could have. I’ve done that. I’m not going to say I was wrong when everything since has proven I wasn’t. I’m not going to make myself smaller for you.” She falters at last, looking sad. “Once, you wouldn’t have wanted me to.”
“I don’t want that,” he protests, uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”
“You already have. Over and over again.”
“She cried the whole way to the altar. You didn’t care.”
“I couldn’t care,” she corrects, as if it’s a meaningful distinction. “And today she wept for joy holding her daughter in her arms. It’s a happy ending, George. Will you ever accept that?”
“I don’t know.” It’s the most honest answer he can give.
“Well,” she says, nearly stoic, “I gave up my love match so she could have hers, in the end. I haven’t got anything more valuable than that to give.”
“Nor do I.”
She gives him a weary, joyless smile. “Can we stop going over all this for now, please? I’m exhausted. I promise to pick it up again when I’ve got my strength back.”
“I’ve said my piece. I won’t trouble you with it again.”
“We’ll see,” Bertha says wryly.
George examines her face. “You do look tired.”
“Thank you,” she scoffs.
Concern rears up in him, like a muscle achy with neglect. “Was it horrible? To watch her go through all that?”
For a moment, Bertha’s expression changes. Her eyes shine. Her chin quivers. Once, he would have held her. He reaches for her hand, a meager substitute, and she holds it gratefully.
“It’s always horrible,” she says at last, “to see one’s children suffer.”
“I know.”
“But she survived.”
“Yes,” George agrees quietly. “She did.”
She did.
Bertha holds his hand tight for a moment longer, then lets go. “Turn out the light, will you? And fix the curtains?”
He does, like a dutiful servant. For a few minutes, his whole aim in life is to adjust the curtains as best he can so that no sunlight sneaks through to disturb her.
He returns to the bed afterward, since Bertha hasn’t asked him to go. He finds he doesn’t have the strength to be parted from her just now.
She’s curled up on her side, facing away from him again. Her breathing settles quickly; in minutes, she’s asleep. She’s always been like that – extraordinarily able to shake off the pains of the day and do what needs doing next. Once, he wasn’t unlike her in that. He wonders if he ever will be again, or if that part of his life has gone.
He closes his eyes. He won’t sleep. Can’t, these days, without a cocktail of substances. But being in the dark beside her, listening to her breathe, brings a peace that he hasn’t known in a long time.
Once she’s fallen deeper into slumber, she rolls over, reaching for him on instinct. For a moment, he wants – still – nothing more than to fling her away, spurn her, make her feel some fraction of the hurt Gladys had felt. The hurt he had felt. But it passes, and he’s left with only his longing to be at home in her embrace. To offer her some slight repose. He pulls her into his arms. She settles comfortably, her face nestling into his neck. Her lips brush his skin. He’s struck, suddenly, with what might be a haze of memory or only imagination. Unbearable pain, an overwhelming urge to fall into something dark and infinite, and her holding his soul obstinately away from the brink. Keeping it tethered to hers, where it will always belong. Stay with me.
“Rest, my dear,” he whispers, holding her close. “You’ve done well.”
***
When George visits Gladys the next day, he does not mince words. “I owe you an apology. I broke my promise to you.”
Gladys stares at him, her eyes uncommonly hard. “Yes. You did.”
Even without the child in her arms – little Bertha is being admired by Hector and Lady Sarah and her namesake in another room – his daughter looks so grown up. As if she can see right through him. He fears, for an irrational second, that she knows the amount of laudanum it had taken to give him the strength to come into the room and face her. The way he crept out of Bertha’s room while she still slept, unable to endure seeing his wife wake up, and remember, and be disappointed in him anew.
If he had done right by his daughter when it counted, perhaps he wouldn’t be the man he is today – this miserable, wasting shadow.
But he never would have. He would have only ever chosen to give Bertha what she wanted.
Bertha, he is starting to suspect, cannot be blamed for that.
“There’s no fixing it now,” he says. Shame writhes in him.
“No,” Gladys agrees. “Onward and upward.”
“And you can withstand it?”
“I have withstood it. Not only that. I’ve made it into something good.”
“You have indeed.” His voice catches. “I’m very proud of you.”
For the first time, she sounds like her younger self. “So will you go back home?”
He hesitates. “I don’t need to explain to you how it feels to live with your mother.”
“You don’t,” Gladys says. “I know very well. But what’s the alternative? Living without her?”
George considers continuing down the path of such a fate. He wonders if he would survive it.
“I hope not,” he says.
***
Bertha is holding the baby when George finds her. Hector leaves at once to go dote upon Gladys. Meanwhile, Bertha and Lady Sarah, her present companion, appear to have entered a temporary truce, so long as there are no matters up for discussion more controversial than the perfection of one’s infant relations.
“Has there ever been a more beautiful grandmother?” George says in greeting. He feels again the sense of impersonating himself, but this time, the fit is more comfortable. It’s almost true.
Lady Sarah tut-tuts, as if there’s something distasteful about mentioning one’s wife’s obvious beauty in company.
“I’ll leave you two,” she declares, perhaps afraid they might begin to ravish each other on the settee at any moment.
“You frightened her off,” Bertha scolds.
“Good.”
She rolls her eyes at him, but there’s amusement underneath.
“How did you find Gladys?” she asks.
It takes no time to find the right word. “Strong.”
Stronger than I am, he doesn’t add. He doesn’t need to. Bertha gleans it easily.
“I thought you might,” she says.
She can see it, he knows. That he isn’t quite right. But she leaves it be for now.
He takes the empty seat beside her, settling in to admire their sleeping grandchild. He brushes a fingertip lightly against her tiny cheek. The entire world, so dull and rancid lately, seems to settle into something kind.
“They’re calling her Birdie for short,” Bertha informs him.
“Is that so? Good morning, Birdie. How do you do?”
The baby wiggles in her sleep, content in Bertha’s arms.
He looks up at his wife.
“What a blessing,” George admits.
Bertha beams at him. “A miracle.”