Teachers say I am distracted. Their disapproving stares, nods, I know they think I can do better. They scoff and wonder why I am not marrying and having children. It is a better pursuit for one as talentless as I. And I know they are right. My tone is too weak. My body can't stand the rigor. One time I had potential, before I became sick. Every day I can tie my corset tighter than the day before. I feel it crushing my ribs but without it I cannot sit up for the hours I need to. Without it my body would collapse.
I am too young to fall apart from the inside out. Every thin note I play is one more moment taken from my life. When summer comes again, a year spent in the school, I direct the carriage driver not to palace where Maria Louise waits but to a smaller palace. The manor looks the same as in the photo Cerise sent me. I wait until a maid greets me and leads me to the lady of the household.
At the window Cerise embroiders interwoven flowers and birds, images she used to scoff at. When I enter she puts aside her work and beckons me to come forward. I sit on a small sofa near her.
"Lady, what brings you to my modest home?" she asks. Her once short hair is bound up. She lacks all her once masculine grace. Just as mine is, her voice is weak from a too tight corset.
"Cerise, I wanted to see you, to hear your voice, to smell your perfume." I can hear myself beg. Suddenly those nights, sleeping at her side, are so distant. The taste of her lips, the smell of her hair, the sound of her breath, are from another world. The woman in front of me doesn't live in that world. "Lady, I'm sorry." She looks out the window and touches her stomach.
"We don't exist there anymore. And we can never return."
"Then kiss me once more." She shakes her head and stands to lead me out. Before she opens the door to let me out, she raises her hand to brush my cheek.
"I'm sorry." I can't raise my eyes to meet hers. And I know that I cannot live in that world. The world of music is now gone for me as was the world of schoolgirls. With my short life all I could do was obey my father's advisors and give them an heir.
When I enter the palace again, my cousin does not give me special treatment. Almost like she suspects me, she glances at me but never looks me in the face. George de Sand greets me with the warmth of a courtier. The many afternoons we spent together long forgotten. A year is a long time.
"Monsieur George, please meet me in the rose garden tomorrow afternoon," I request, plead, beg.
"I would be honored, Mademoiselle Aurore." Slick, heartless words slide from his mouth like I mean as much to him as the floor he walks upon. I wish that it did not have to be this way.
When we meet the next day, he wears the finery of a lord and my corset clutches my stomach so I can only force out whispers. Death eats away at me. Surrounded by the sickly sweet roses, I can almost imagine the peace I felt a year ago with George.
"I left the school. Music is not world for me. Monsieur George, please, will you marry me? Once I die, you'll have the status of a duke. Then you can marry the princess," I murmur. George stands above me and I am too afraid to look at his reaction. "I need only to create an heir and my weakened body can't survive childbirth." And that moment, he hates me. He hated that I provided the only way that he could marry the princess. He hated me so completely that he can say yes.