10. Read All About It

Darling girl,
Enclosed is your very first column, guaranteed to keep me, your humble servant, rolling in readers and you, the acid-tongued temptress, amused. I've embellished a little, of course, so we'll see how madam enjoys a taste of her own medicine.
Yours in vicarious pleasure,
– A

Blair would've liked to laugh aloud as she read and reread the missive, taking personal pleasure in Asher's undisguised viciousness. Unfortunately, she was sweating profusely and in a great deal of pain, and laughter was quite out of the question. Leather straps encircled her torso at the waist and below the bust line, with another odious binding digging into her forehead. Attached to these three was a steel pole that ran the length of her spine and forced it into a perfect verticality, which was as pleasing as it was painful. She'd been wearing the contraption for two hours or so, and it seemed miraculous to Blair that her teeth hadn't been worn down to stumps from so much grinding against the ache.

"What on earth are you doing, B?"

"Don't you remember Mama's edict? The days when I had to wear this damned thing every single day but Sunday?"

"You hated it then."

"I hate it now."

"Then why are you torturing yourself?"

"It has come to my attention –" She winced as Serena unstrapped the lower rung of the contraption. "That for all her faults, my mother had an excellent plan in mind for me, without which I've been behaving like a child."

Her friend freed her entirely, then gently rubbed the red welt the frame had left on Blair's forehead. "How, exactly?"

"I haven't been thinking rationally." She rose and went directly to the bathroom, turning the tap so a blessedly cool stream of water ran over her hands. Once they were damp, she patted her face where the leather had dug in, then smoothed on some of Serena's travelling cream for good measure. "I was so lost in my own misery that I didn't think logically about why and how that misery had come about; I automatically assumed that it was I who was unlovable, not Jenny, not the nothing who had to use blackmail to even achieve a counterfeit of love. I was dangerously close to behaving in the same manner last night."

Serena leaned close, propping her chin on Blair's shoulder. Their lovely reflections gazed back from the gilt framed mirror above the sink. "You were so sad at dinner, and then so different when Sir Hugo and the others asked you to dance. What happened?"

"Chuck told me I had no heart."

"You can't believe that."

"I don't. And more importantly, neither does he."

"Blair…" The golden head pressed against the dark one, as if pushing their skulls together might push caution and care through the skin.

"Jenny was delving for information about a ring I don't have, but a ring that would mean something to me were it in my possession – the stone was commissioned from the same diamond as my father's bracelet, it would obviously mean the world to me – and who could've told her? The jeweller might've known it was meant for me, but not that I had it. Someone told her." Blair was beautifully flushed, but to Serena her eyes looked too hot. They verged upon fevered. "He told her, knowing it would get back to me, which can't help but invalidate every word he said. He wanted me to know that he'd blown everything he had at the time on a ring for me. He's trying to make amends in the most ridiculous manner. He's trying to manipulate me into hating him in order to set me free."

"You want him back," Serena surmised drily.

"No."

"No?"

"We were and are beyond the reach of any help, unless you can think of some way to do away with Jenny that doesn't involve hog tying and drowning her." Blair slipped from beneath Serena's touch and briskly slapped herself once on each cheek, adding lively spots of colour which only increased the appearance of frenzy. "But he mustn't stop loving me. Chuck ceasing to love me and giving up on loving me changes everything."

"How?"

"It just does."

"Blair…" She was at a loss what to say, pretty, stalwart Serena. "You're still beautiful, you're still young…"

"I'm not." A vase tipped as Blair flung herself down before the vanity, though she caught it before it could do any damage. "I'm not beautiful compared to some sixteen year old skirt with the big innocent gaze and freshness that comes from being fresh off a farm, that which is now considered desirable. If I lose him, I've lost everything. He's part of who I used to be. He's part of who I have to be, if they're to covet me as they used to."

Silent as a guardian angel, Serena leant against the doorframe of the en suite and doubted everything that had so recently left her friend's mouth. Blair was making another mistake, though she didn't know it yet. As much as she claimed to hate him, the reason she needed Chuck to love her was because she needed her own love, her own deeply buried, constantly denied love to be reciprocated. It was nothing to do with the status that came with having a swain, as the world could never know about this suitor's existence. She was right to say he was part of her past, insofar as he was part of her future too. In essence, Blair was correct: Chuck was part of who she used to be.

He was also part of who she was, and couldn't be without him.

"The way he used to."

Blair said this almost beneath her breath as she stroked rouge over her cheeks; Serena wondered if she'd even heard herself speak.

~#~

"Have you seen this?"

Chuck awoke with a mouthful of newspaper and a pounding head, his collar choking him. He wasn't exactly cognisant of what he'd drunk the night before, only that there'd been a great deal of it and that he'd developed the habit of finding Blair at the bottom of every glass, and filling it up again when he didn't manage to sink her. There she'd be, the fiercely fought tremble of her bottom lip more telling than the words she'd spat at him, the black painted spars of her lashes curling outward like clock springs as she'd refused to blink – as if looking away from him might betray her. His day would be spent in contemplation of this and self-flagellation, but for now there was the pressing matter that his wife had just flung a freshly delivered copy of the New York Standard into his face.

"Naturally I haven't, considering I was imagining myself in Sodom and Gomorrah until you threw it at me." He turned over and was repulsed by the taste of his own tongue. "Do we have any juice?"

Jenny rolled her eyes as the paper flopped onto the floor, snatched it up and began to read aloud. "'Miss B visited the public dining car to commend a soldier or two for his service, and stayed for cards…in the company of Mr DH, and appears to be teaching him city manners, something neither he nor his sister seem to possess'!" She snorted indelicately. "And you'll surely enjoy this: 'no word on how the most famous new money new union is going, but perhaps Mr Bass would have time to comment if he could tear himself away from one particular female guest for even a moment'!"

"I haven't been attached to anyone."

"Liar."

"I made the official decision last night not to attach myself to anybody, not ever." She started as he cast a glance behind him, a wickedly sharp glance like a shard of glass which cut her to the core. "Don't accuse me of having feelings you couldn't begin to comprehend, even if they were yours."

In an instant, Jenny had recovered herself. "Will you shave now?"

"No."

"Will you do anything about this libellous article?"

Chuck sighed. "The majority of it is true, and it only raises your profile to have such publicity. The idea of a spy in our camp is, I admit, somewhat distressing, but all it means is that your manners must be above reproach. Against my better judgement, I've made a sacrifice which will incidentally strengthen our marriage." He writhed, pressed his back against the dressing room couch, squinted at the gilded ceiling, was as incapable as ever of being comfortable in her presence. "You're going to have to give up on your tantrums if you want to keep pace with the martyr I've inexplicably become."

"You did that for me?"

"No." He was too sore to laugh, both inside and out. "Never for you."

There was a moment of silence, and then Jenny lowered her long, skinny body down onto Chuck's. She lay atop him and watched the fire flee his eyes, leaving them iced over and hostile. He took her hands so they couldn't rest on his chest and breastbone and held the upper part of her body away from his, arching her back like a snake as she struggled against him. "Nothing changes," he told her coolly. "You have your caveat, and I have mine."

"You have needs."

"Then give me up and let me go to her."

"You have needs," she snarled. "Needs that can be fulfilled by any woman with a pulse and, more importantly, by the woman you're married to!"

"I lay with a woman-child once before," he replied. "But I was a child too, and we were too stupid to admit that we weren't ready for each other. Everything is spoilt when you give yourself up too early and too easily. Jenny," he said softly, using her name for the first time in a long time. "If I were the soul that matched yours, though I sometimes doubt you have one, even then I would wait for you. As it is, you've locked my own God-given soul away from me. Why the Hell –" It was a velvet curse from his scotch scarred tongue. "Would you dare to dream that I want you when you've taken so much from me?"

"We're married," was her stubborn refrain.

"So were Joseph and Mary, and she remained the Blessed Virgin Mother until the end of her days."

"She had a son!"

"You have a wardrobe full of Worth gowns." Chuck drew his legs up, still careful to be gentle as he thrust she and he to opposite ends of the couch. "I believe that's the modern equivalent."

It was then, pushed away and called a child, that Jenny formulated her own resolution: she would no longer be jealous of Chuck and Blair, no matter what occurred; from now on, her mission in life would be to make Chuck as envious and possessive of her as possible. She knew if she tried hard enough, she could get under his skin and rile him up to the point of fury. Then he'd take her to prove she was his, his and no one else's, and she'd be safe and wanted and loved and her wardrobe full of Worth gowns would be as nothing in comparison.

~#~

Ruffles were being 'done' that season, or so advised the dressmaker whom Serena had sought along the boulevard. While nothing could be run up within the space of a day, two light summer gowns had been altered to reflect the trend, for all it was early in the year and not the fashionable time to vacation. The small pannier frills on Blair's still smaller hips rippled in the breeze coming in off the water, more temperate than the previous day but still enough to necessitate the constant application of a handkerchief soaked in ice water to her brow. Serena was made of hardier stuff, as was Charlie – they were like lizards in the heat, all long limbs and bright smiles. In Blair's favour, however, her best friend had no talent for croquet.

Good.

"All against all, is it?" inquired Blair breezily as she approached a recumbent Jenny, whose sea foam cotton draped frame was itself draped across an outdoor chaise. "I do so hate picking sides."

"All against all," Jenny confirmed, though her lips didn't seem to move as she spoke, and her eyes didn't change in expression. "Dan will join you and Serena, and Chuck when he cares to make an appearance."

She was unaware that Chuck had just emerged from the hotel's great French doors, and was standing behind her as he remarked, "I think the day is too hot for you, Mrs Bass. You'll burn lying out here like an egg on a stove."

"I'll bronze," Jenny snapped. "Like the other ladies of this halcyon state."

"As you wish."

Blair imperceptibly tilted her hat a little further forward, protecting her nose from a possible blight of freckles but decreasing the flow of air to her skin. She was as convinced as ever that beauty was only obtainable through suffering, as her earlier experience with the frame had proved. Her back ached, but it was ramrod straight, and that was what mattered. Keeping her visage lily or virgin rose white was what mattered, not the discomfort she was experiencing from being outside at such a time. She daintily removed her right glove, waved it to and fro in front of her face for a few moments, then slipped it back over her wrist.

"Shall we play?"

It was unsurprising to everyone, even Dan himself, that Daniel Humphrey couldn't play croquet if his life depended upon it. Serena would line up a shot or do her own game damage in order to get him past, and still he would knock the ball and send it spinning in the opposite direction. His sister had even deigned to sit upright so she could laugh at him as he flailed, the jaunty red kerchief around his neck growing darker and darker with sweat. Serena laughed too, but not unkindly, for she herself was not much better, and would've been worse if she' hadn't been born and raised with it. A few feet away and therefore much further on in the game, Blair was doing her damnedest to play dirty. She was quite famous for it in New York, which may have been half the reason no one there ever wanted to play with her. She'd aim her ball through the wicket so it stopped only just on the other side, advancing her game but not allowing the player who followed after to pass their ball directly through the hoop and score too.

That player, of course, was Chuck.

Each took their turn in perfect silence.

"Will you think very badly of me for giving up?" Dan asked with not a little shortness of breath; he'd been forced to chase his ball all over the green and them thwack them back to Serena again, leading to the kind of comedy of errors which ended with the ball beneath her skirt, miles away beyond her or rebounding off her toes.

"If you let me lose too," Serena replied, dropping her own mallet in a most unladylike show and, worse, winking at him. "Blair will prevail eventually, she always does. It's usually because gentlemen change the rules for her as she goes along, but in this case it's more likely to be the all-consuming desire to show off."

"To Chuck?"

"No, to us," was her answer. "Beating Chuck is the demonstrative part."

They took seats behind the imperial tableau that was Jenny Bass, and were handed dewed glasses of pink lemonade by Ivy. Serena took a sip and shivered in delight at the coldness.

"Did you know –" And so began Dan's attempt to be charming. "That pink lemonade was apparently invented by a clown who stole the washing water from a horse rider with red stockings, mixed it with the drink and sold it as strawberry lemonade?"

"I didn't." She held the glass at arm's length. "They don't still make it to the same recipe, do they?"

"Just the same."

Her bright blue gaze found his, downturned and almost bashful. "You're teasing me."

"Yes." He grinned and chimed his glass against hers.

Chuck was suffering for sport as much as Blair was suffering for beauty, or perhaps more. He could smell her perspiration, the earthy scent of exertion that was easy to recognise from times long past and never to be repeated, only reflected upon and adored silently in the darkest hours of the night. She was clearly struggling with the rising temperature, though she never indicated or admitted that this was so. Her maid applied a moist handkerchief at regular intervals, but this could only give so much relief. In spite of himself, he began to fret as her step became heavier, though she was still canny enough to inch her ball past his and through the last hoop but one.

He was forced to go to her side to line up his shot; she wouldn't move from the spot until she'd seen he had taken it cleanly, and was naturally close enough to touch. Chuck didn't touch her – at least, didn't intend to – as he leant forward and felt the neat spar of her hip against his, the frailty of the pelvic bone leading to the slender legs and ankles. Blair didn't speak, but even her exhalations were loud as thunder when they were both concentrating so hard: he on outdoing her at her own game and continuing to stoke her anger against him, and she on not being beaten. If the weather wouldn't beat her, he certainly wouldn't.

A too hard tap on the ball sent it spinning, the angles wrongly calculated. She spoke softly.

"Am I distracting you?"

"Was I not transparent enough with you last night?"

"I understand you well enough. All I want to know is if I'm distracting you from the game."

"No."

"But you putted wrong."

"Yes."

"Because of me?"

"No."

"How queer."

"Not at all."

"I find a gentleman who isn't a natural sportsman to be a queer thing indeed."

"I don't know." Chuck found himself fixated on the mallet in his hands with the extreme interest of one who is avoiding looking at anything else. "We have to first agree that I'm a gentleman, which you in the past have denied, but which seems admissible when you yourself are all they call gentle and yet a gamesman, a cheat."

"Maybe I'm afraid of you winning."

"Common courtesy dictates I let you win."

"What would you know about common courtesy?" The snap had returned to Blair's tone and, when Chuck glanced up automatically, to her countenance. Coils of hair hung damply on either side of her flushed cheeks. The flesh there was tender and treacherous, but the rest of her face was a study in tautness, in gritted teeth, in a deliberately smooth brow. "Your dismissal of me last night was welcome, that's true, but the manner in which you did it was not the manner of a gentleman, nor that of any man of substance. Humphrey," she sneered. "Would have phrased it better than you. he would've at least tried to spare my weak and maidenly heart."

"Your heart is neither weak nor maidenly."

"My heart is absent, according to you!" In spite of her words, she moved closer to him, positioning herself as if to take a shot with her head turned back over her shoulder and her gaze still upon him. "But what would you know about it? You haven't touched it. You have never touched it, not then, not now, and never shall you."

Chuck's nobler emotions were still present within him, but they were blanketed and choked by an ire that made him reckless. She drove him to distraction in her sweetest and foulest moods, and there was nothing fouler than the times she denied them. She'd done it for two whole years, and though he was giving her up, she would deny it no more.

Out of sight of the observers, he reached over her shoulder and placed his hand on the bare skin of her décolleté, off centre so the bump-bump-bump of her heart was tangible and echoed within him. From such a way off, only the arch of his elbow would be visible. Blair drew in her breath as he dragged his fingers up and over her clavicle, along the bone that would have bare, naked and fleshless but for a thin covering of skin. He followed her neckline back to the place where her pulse was now hammering, pushing upwards as if it were begging to be touched. Chuck placed his palm carelessly atop it and dared to slide the rest of his hand down into her dress proper, to touch the outlines of what she'd sworn he'd never touch again through the finest of lace and silk and continue inward speculation on how very wrong his actions were, on how counterproductive this would be, on how Blair had laid her head back on his shoulder like a cat being stroked. More of her tautened, the sweeter and fouler parts, the parts which were more cat than kitten, the parts reflected in her quiet purr.

"Maybe the truth is you have no love in your heart," he murmured, his tongue lightly dancing against her ear as he spoke the most significant syllable. She would melt at that, she always did. "But maybe the more important truth is that lust is what drives you. Clockwork dolls are wound up, and so are you. You'll run and run until you find release, but even satisfaction is only fleeting for one such as you. You get wound up all over again, and your wheels and cogs then turn until you find something else that fails to slake your appetite."

"But what gets you," she responded, almost inaudibly. "Is that you couldn't do it either. I already told you: you're not man enough."

By this time, nearly all of Chuck's clamouring chivalrous intentions had fallen foul to the roaring in his ears. It was the strange pang of sorrow that accompanied her accusation, the truth that yes, he hadn't been man enough to discuss it with her, to ride out the storm with her, to give her the choice of whether to be disgraced or no that awoke him from this particular passion. It was what compelled him to grip Blair's shoulder and stand her upright with her back to him, to wipe the sweaty hand still clutching the croquet mallet – as if for dear life – on his handkerchief and to announce calmly, "Your turn." He could no longer see the raspberry hue of her lower lip, dark and plush like a plum, yielding like a cherry with the teeth behind like vicious little stones.

Good.

"Your turn," he repeated.

Whereupon she crumpled to the grass.

"Blair!" Came close to a shriek from the mouth of Serena, who flung down her glass of lemonade as if it were the offending party. Jenny didn't bother to stir herself, only flapped her arms as if a wasp had come near but Dan, who was now apparently pledged to the divine Miss van der Woodsen, body and soul, sprinted across the grass and fell to his knees at the invalid's side. Chuck was already there, had already lifted the tumbled head onto his knee. Ivy took the pragmatic approach of chasing after Blair's hat, which was attempting an escape with several hairpins in tow.

"It's the heat," Chuck reported, feeling the hot wrists and forehead. "Serena, some more water if you please. Humphrey, stop gawking at her, it's only a fainting fit. Go and get a cloth and an iced glass of juice."

"But –"

"Now, Humphrey."

He hurried away, and Blair quipped, "You saw to them very well. My compliments."

"You're supposed to be unconscious."

"I had something more to say." There was a frankness in her eyes, satiny brown and verging upon frightening. She was neither angry nor peaceful, uncharacteristically unreadable; that was what unnerved him. "You can put your hand wherever you wish, and it won't have any effect on me. You have your tactics, as any general does, and I have my defence. If that's how you want to play the game, you'd best know I'm wise to it." Chuck twirled a strand of hair and tugged, and Blair sighed. "You know what I like, yes, but I'm well aware of that. Despite whatever vestigial attraction my body may feel for you, my brain knows better." She smiled, and he frowned.

"The game is over, I rejected you. Accept it."

"Is it over?" And with her slippered foot, she stretched out and nudged the croquet ball through the last hoop. "No, darling, it isn't. You won't be rid of me until I know the truth of everything, the truth about before and after the wedding, the entire truth about you and Jenny, the truth about your rebuffing me, everything. And it does appear that I've won this round."

"This round of a game I didn't elect to have a part in?" Was Chuck's near growl, baited beyond belief.

Blair altered her inscrutable expression to prettily surprised. "Were you unaware that we were playing croquet today?"

He tried one last time. "I don't want you."

"You love me the way I loved you," she replied. Without all the queer and sour things passing through her eyes, the innocence of her pale face was despicable, horribly kissable. "And I decline, I refuse to let you stop."

Thanks to: Laura, elise, nIGHTsrAVEN47, SaturnineSunshine, abelard, Eternally Romantic, Infinitywr, KM, lulubelle2010, Nikki999, Dr. GG, odyjha, BellaB2010, girlinthisworld, Maribells and Poinsettia. I've had lots of favourites/alerts recently, I'd love to hear from all the newies as well as my best beloved oldies. Any questions? Comments? If you don't want to review, come see me on Tumblr or Formspring. Throwing things at me or demanding smut is also appreciated.