I already resented the rapport I felt growing between you two. I didn’t know if I wanted all of your attention, or all of Magdalena’s. I was slipping fast into a heady, dark maelstrom of jealousy and want. I needed a glass of water, and a quiet room to sit down in and wait for the world to stop spinning. But there wasn’t time. I was swept along on your arm, Magdalena trotting along on the other side of you like a sharp-toothed terrier.
“The home has been in my family for five generations,” she said as the heavy wooden doors swung open and ushered us inside. “It is my responsibility and pleasure to maintain it.”
I could hear the glow of pride in her voice as I took in the lovely tapestries and the strong grey stone walls, but there was a strange twinge in her words that almost sounded like bitterness. Perhaps the pleasure came with some sort of price.
Servants scattered as she strode through the home, keeping their eyes fixed firmly on the floor, or on the folded linens in their hands.
“You have them so well-trained,” you noted, leaning down over to Magdalena although your voice carried easily.
She practically glowed with self-satisfaction.
“Like many of my contemporaries, they were not accustomed to receiving orders from a woman untied to any man, but diligence and a strong hand breaks all bad habits.”
The two of you shared a private smile, probably remembering something in one of your letters.
“You’ve found cruelty to be an effective tool,” I said airily, following her through the vaulting wood and stone halls of her ancestral home. Magdalena threw a look to me over her shoulder, quirking a plucked eyebrow.
“I am firm, my lady, and I understand leverage. The people only call me cruel because it is easier to think of a woman as cruel than competent. Surely, you can understand that.”
She was clever, and I wanted to smile, but I swallowed down the treacherous gesture. Let her be clever, and pretty besides. I must not let her ingratiate herself to me when she was obviously already so ingratiated to my husband. Perhaps inappropriately so.
Appropriate. The absurdity of the word struck me and I almost scoffed aloud. What, if anything, in our life was appropriate? We killed to live, we lied and cheated and took lovers, we slipped from town to town like ghosts, draining the populace of their money and blood before moving on. Not a month ago we had brought two young men home with us from the streets and taken our pleasure with them before draining them dry in our wedding bed. I had given up appropriate when I had given up my ability to eat mortal food, to walk abroad in the sun.
Then why did my heart twinge whenever you looked at her?
I prayed that we would have a moment alone before dinner. To fight, to reconnect, I didn’t know. I just needed you without pretense, in private. But I was not to get my wish.
We were separated and ushered into different rooms to dress for dinner. The fashion had been looser on the streets of Vienna, but now I was dressed in the Spanish style, in severe, dark fabrics with jewels at my waist and a ruff at my throat. The aristocracy were merciless when it came to their airs and graces, you had told me, and would not hesitate to mock or excommunicate anyone who didn’t take propriety seriously. I was to be on my best behavior, to remember all you had taught me about high society and keep my mouth shut when I could not.
And so, before I even had an instant to catch my breath, I was laced into a confection of brocade and ushered into the belly of the beast.
The ballroom was filled with twenty or thirty members of the gentry. Her contemporaries, she had called them. They drifted through the ballroom in silk and velvet, drinking from beaten gold goblets while a quartet of musicians strummed on lyres. I suspected some had travelled in for the festivities.
How long had Magdalena been expecting you? Since before the siege on Vienna? And moreover, why did she want to impress you so badly?
I found you among the crowd, looking handsome and impassable in your black doublet and jerkin trimmed with gold. I sank into my place on your arm, suddenly feeling exhausted. The night had just begun, but I wanted to curl up and sleep it all away.
“You look lovely,” you said, smoothing your knuckle over my cheek as though nothing was wrong, as though Magdalena didn’t exist. For a moment, under the scorching weight of your unadulterated attention, I felt like I was the only person in the world.
Maybe it wouldn’t be terrible, a treacherous thought offered, to share you with another if you still looked at me like that when we were alone.
Magdalena was leading the dance, a prim and provincial series of turns and bows. She darted in between her partners, lightly brushing hands and shoulders in a complex series of touches. Every so often, her dark eyes flickered over to you.