Content Warning: Early term miscarriage. I've marked the start of the paragraph with an asterisk (*) if you'd like to skip it. Please take care when reading.
Chapter 9
Antonia Colette du Beaumont watches with rapt attention as her elder sister, Marie Claire, prepares for her first ball.
Perhaps prepares is not quite the word for it.
Marie Claire does not ready herself. She is but a passive participant in a complex process, sitting, standing, and leaning as directed by the surrounding brood of fripperous hens, who pluck at her with sharp fingers and sharper tongues.
Their mother Eloise's friends are self-proclaimed experts in all things feminine: beauty charms and flirting; marriage and babies; love. There is nothing upon which this prudish flock hesitates to voice their opinions. Their be-curled, be-jeweled heads dip and dive, focused on the task of perfecting Marie Claire for a future in their coveted coop. She will be a woman of high society.
Her sister unquestionably belongs there. She is an accomplished young lady, the pride of the family, according to their mother's oft-repeated refrain.
Normally, the reminder nettles.
Antonia is only eleven, but she has received the same education as her sister, dutifully delivered by a governess Eloise hired from Paris. She can read, sew, and sing just like Marie Claire, though her pace is slower, her stitches not as fine, and her notes not as clarion.
Tonight, however, she sees the difference.
Feels it.
Because at sixteen, Marie Claire holds herself with a maturity Antonia knows she cannot match. Her sister is the model of patience as the working women fuss over the smallest details.
She sits in stillness as her thick, brown hair is wrapped around tongs that have been heated over the fire, and silently endures the sharp sting of hair pins being pressed into her skull. Antonia recognizes relief in her sister's eyes as the setting charm, which will hold each perfect curl in place through a night of laughter and dancing, is finally cast.
She leans and braces against the bedpost as her corset is cinched tight. Antonia holds her breath in practice and solidarity, wincing in sympathy as the stays sculpt false curves from Marie Claire's lean figure. She is painfully aware of her own haricot body, a flat panel from neck to feet, fatless and formless, and fears—not for the first time—that the promised breasts, hips, and thighs will never appear.
Even modest ones will do; she does not ask for much.
The private anxiety is overridden by a familiar pang of jealousy as Marie Claire steps into her new gown.
The du Beaumonts are financially comfortable, but not so wealthy that new gowns and shoes and gloves and jewels are de rigueur. A week ago, while Marie Claire was preoccupied with Latin—lessons Antonia would start next year—she snuck into her sister's room to steal a touch.
The cream-coloured fabric was soft as down beneath her fingers, and the satin ribbon at the bust was shiny and uncreased. The hand-picked lace along the bodice and sleeves looked as fragile as rose petals. She dared study only a small piece near the hem, lest a fingernail catch and pull the delicate work. Small crystals sparkled along the skirt. It would have taken years to count them all.
Antonia was sure she had never seen a finer gown in her life.
Seeing her sister wear it only confirms her suspicion. She tries to find fault in Marie Claire's presentation. Some evidence that the lady before her ever had sticky fingers from nicking fresh-baked tarts from the kitchen or chocolate-smeared lips from devouring her favourite gâteau. A sign that she had ever snarled at Antonia for misbehaving during lessons or wept with her when their grand-mère passed.
She cannot.
Their mother, however, boasts a more critical eye.
Corrections are required. More rouge on Marie Claire's snowy cheeks. A different pair of satin gloves, trimmed with sapphire ribbon instead of sunbright daffodil. Two too many sprigs of babe's breath flower in her dark hair. They are plucked from the exquisite construction by an efficient hand.
The nitpicking stops. The ladies step back.
Standing against the fire's glow, Marie Claire ceases to be her sister. Instead, she is an angel, soft and pure and good. She is the goddess Aphrodite, transported from the age of myth to present day to redefine beauty.
Antonia knows her sister will end the night with a suite of suitors, if not a proposal.
She says as much. Marie Claire takes her hand and squeezes. Though Antonia is not the first to make such a prediction, she is the first to be acknowledged for it.
"This will be your fate, too. Painted and paraded until a man decides your worth." Despite her radiance, Marie Claire's grey eyes contain a sadness that Antonia does not understand. "Don't wish for this. Enjoy your freedom. It will be taken from you sooner than you know."
Escorted by Eloise and followed by her friends, Marie Claire leaves the dressing room. Her gown fans out behind her, her steps so dainty and measured she appears to float.
Antonia watches from the window as she descends the front steps and ascends into the family's carriage. It is unrecognisable from two weeks ago: painted robin's egg blue with crisp white trim and gold filigree. Even the horses are groomed. Their brown coats shine in the late afternoon light, not a single burr or knot to be found in their braided manes and flowing tails.
The carriage rolls down their long gravel drive and disappears around a bend.
Antonia sighs. Marie Claire's advice—or was it a warning?—makes little sense against tonight's glamour and romance. She longs for the day when she will be a debutante. The dresses she will wear, the attention she will receive, the pride she will inspire…
Her mother will look at her and see an equal to Marie Claire in elegance, beauty, and worth.
Her suitors will adore her. She will attract the best man from the best family, win his heart, run his home, and bear his heirs.
She will be a woman of status and a model of motherhood.
Antonia is sure of it: nothing will be so pleasing or perfect as finding a husband.
All she has to do is wait.
Antonia's prediction is accurate. Marie Claire returns with a long list of suitors. The brood returns to opine over the proffered names, though as mother hen, Eloise's judgement reigns supreme.
Within one year, Marie Claire is engaged, married, and pregnant. Her sister's husband is twice her age, half as attractive, and three times as rich—a favourable equation by any measure.
Eloise is enraptured. With so much accomplished before the age of seventeen, Marie Claire is the model against which all other young ladies are measured.
Antonia included.
She feels the pressure of expectation and applies herself to her studies. Her reading improves, as does her stitching. Her singing voice will never be as beautiful, but she takes to languages like a duck to water. Latin, English, her native French, fragments of Gaelic and a handful of Druidic runes—nothing written or spoken remains a mystery for long.
That is how, on her thirteenth birthday, when a thick parchment envelope arrives addressed to her, Antonia knows it is from Beauxbatons. The school has accepted girls for five years now, and Antonia has met whatever test of merit the institution has set for its female scholars.
She begs Eloise to attend.
Her mother eschews the radical notion that women ought to receive a formal education. Governesses worked for her, after all, and Marie Claire secured an advantageous match without completing the rigorous coursework Beauxbatons is sure to require.
Antonia cajoles and cries, but she is only thirteen and powerless against her mother's will.
Ultimately, she is denied.
The years pass, filled with dull days of homeschooling. Of tutors who know what they know and offer no avenue to discover what they do not.
It is frustrating. Stymying.
But it is all Antonia has.
She completes her education at age sixteen, and not a moment too soon. The structured days of languages she has mastered, books she has read, teas she finds tiresome, and embroideries that make her hands cramp have started to chafe.
She has grown disobedient.
Willful.
Impatient.
She is ready to come out, longs to escape the insistent hand of her mother's influence. She yearns for independence, and a husband and a space of her own. Eloise lets the decision hang, suspending Antonia in misery as the April season approaches.
She appeals to her sister; Marie Claire agrees to assist.
She visits in February, a rare winter sojourn made without her dullard husband. She tasks Antonia with occupying her children while she and Eloise take tea. Antonia promises to walk the frozen gardens with her nephew and twin nieces, thaw them before the fire, make them cocoa, and read with them before bed. She vows to spend all day with them tomorrow, and the day after that. Well into the weekend, if that is what it takes.
However long Marie Claire needs them occupied, so long as Eloise consents.
After an hour in the gardens, when the children are apple-cheeked and breathless and Antonia is near spare with anxiety, they reenter the house. Their mother remains in the parlour, involved in her needlepoint. Antonia accompanies Marie Claire and the children upstairs, helping prepare them for their nap.
They do not speak, save cajoling young Luc beneath the blankets and singing a gentle duet to Honore and Félicité. When three pairs of eyes drift close, the sisters share a look. Marie Claire nods. Antonia throws her arms around her neck, whispering thanks and lifelong devotion.
Marie Claire leaves as March begins, though Antonia begs for her to stay. She can help Antonia prepare for the ball and mitigate the stifling presence of their mother, who would be preoccupied with doting upon her grandchildren.
It is a good plan, a solid strategy.
Her sister shakes her head with a sad smile.
And perhaps it is a trick of the light, an illusion caused by the weak dawn rays filtering through the foyer's mullioned windows, but Marie Claire looks much older than her twenty-one years. Shallow furrows line the formerly smooth skin of her forehead, and half-circles ring the angles of her mouth. Puffy bags sit beneath her eyes. The sparkling greys have lost their edge, weathered like pebbles on a battered shore.
Marie Claire does not repeat the warning of half a decade ago. Instead, she presses Antonia's hand and wishes her good luck.
The words impart a chill.
The chill turns into an ague.
Sickness lays Antonia low for almost two weeks. Her body hurts, her mind slows, but as the weather turns, so does her health. Body and spirit warming, Antonia milks the opportunity, declining lessons to remain abed and plan.
When April arrives, everything is set.
She spends the days before the ball staring at her new dress—cream coloured and breathtakingly fine, just like Marie Claire's—and debating the accent colour. Her initial desire is scarlet, the colour of passion and blood. The moment Eloise sees her holding the ribbon up for comparison, the option is gone, literally disappearing from between her fingers thanks to the curl of her mother's lip and a flick of her be-ringed hand.
Antonia's second choice is moss green.
Her hair is curled and charmed, her waist cinched tight enough to make all but short, shallow breaths painful. She wears shoes with a modest heel, presses scent to the hollows of her neck, and dabs vermilion to her lips, much to her mother's displeasure.
Eloise's disapproval will be that much sweeter when Antonia ends the evening with a suitor.
She has already decided to accept any man who shows interest. Her schoolgirl dreams of finding the best man from the best family feel hopelessly naïve. She cannot wait for romance. She has no patience for it when the desperation to escape her mother's oppressive hand weighs so heavy.
Finding a husband is the key that will unlock the cage of Antonia's unhappiness and allow her to fly into her own life.
She imagines a future of feeling valued and, with time, maybe even loved.
The dream stretches before her like a golden orchard. It is but a practical matter to reach forward and pick a ripe fruit. The harvest is plentiful this year.
Available men outnumber the ladies almost two to one, and Antonia's dance card fills quickly. Her partners whirl her across the floor, whispering promises to waltzes and flirting over furlanas.
She feels breathless from the attention, dizzy from the spinning.
Candle smoke veils the room in a gauzy haze.
When Antonia sees Brutus Malfoy for the first time, he is like a figure from her dreams. For how could such a man exist beyond the realm of her imagination? He is tall and broad shouldered, with dark, hooded eyes and platinum hair that shines like corn silk. He wears a fashionable, dark green robe, with silver serpents laid out along the sleeves and tails. He laughs with a quartet of men, two of whom have already danced with her.
He spies her over the lip of his goblet.
The room fades away.
He curls his finger, beckoning.
Drawn like an insect to a pitcher plant, pulled in by petals and ignorant of the peril, Antonia goes to him.
Theirs is a whirlpool romance, where every interaction pulls her closer to the all-consuming vortex at Brutus' centre. She glimpses the void now and again, witnessing the hints of darkness that reside within the man she thinks she loves. He snaps at any other man who dares compete for her attention, though he has made her no formal promise. He crushes a flower gifted to her in jest by one of their party during a countryside picnic, scowling at her as he closes the delicate pink carnation in his fist.
As if she has invited the joke.
As if she could ever want anyone other than him.
After that, Brutus keeps her close. He begins answering questions on her behalf, substituting his opinions for hers without a thought.
It rankles.
Antonia is well educated and interested in current events. She has her own opinions and has never shied from speaking for herself. But she bites her tongue and remembers her goal. A partner is a practical decision, one made for expedience, not emotion.
Besides, if Brutus is to be her husband, will they not need to share one mind? One view of the world and its eccentricities?
When they are wed, they will have more time to discuss the intricacies of politics, magic, and global affairs. They can reach parity later; the altar must come first.
Solitude is sought. On rare occasions, they find it, slipping away from their chaperones and into abandoned rooms, where Brutus takes liberties with his hands and lips.
His contact is too amorous to be proper, but Antonia does not care. He tastes like the unexplored depths of the ocean, an unknown she wants to plumb. His hands wrap around her like tentacles, and she is happy to drown in the wrath of his desire.
Like Marie Claire, she is engaged within six months.
Like Marie Claire, she is married within nine.
Unlike Marie Claire, she struggles to bear a child.
It is not for lack of trying.
Though society considers him a gentleman, there is nothing gentle about her husband. Brutus loves her body with a hunger that Antonia matches in those early, heady days of their marriage. She needs his affection like some women need laudanum, an addiction she will do anything—sacrifice anything—to feed.
No matter how much she protests, cites propriety or decorum, expresses discomfort, or confesses her fears, he overcomes them.
Demand weights his fists like a blacksmith's hammers. His touch bruises but never breaks. His control is as steady as iron as he shapes her into the woman he desires.
If his hands do the hard work, his tongue quenches the ache. He whispers beguiling confessions of his own, sharing his curiosities and his needs.
His worry of what will happen if she can not fulfil her marriage oaths.
His fear of what will happen if she fails him as a wife.
Antonia is eighteen when she learns of Brutus' first mistress: a widow from Paris twice his age.
The woman's chic city home is financed by the sale of her dead husband's abandoned estate in Wiltshire, England—a property that abuts the allotment bequeathed to the Malfoys by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century. She sells to them, and the deal features Brutus as the primary interlocutor.
The widow claims not to have known his marital status prior to beginning their tryst. She has the decency to end the affair quietly. A footman hand-delivers the assurance: a summary of their meetings, a profuse apology, and a handsome payoff for Antonia's discretion.
Antonia wanders the halls of their countryside home, numb, wondering if her dreams have turned lucid. When she catches sight of herself in the mirror room—done in the Versailles style and the envy of all their neighbours—she knows it is not.
She looks into her own eyes and sees the truth.
Her husband is unfaithful.
It may be her fault.
*Antonia's rage is swift. It burns inside of her, all-consuming, turning the fragile seed that had sprouted within her belly to ash. The loss of her husband's fidelity. The loss of the life she had carried for two months. The loss of a future in which she is respected and loved.
It is too much to bear.
She confronts him when he returns from Paris, and screams like she never has before. Her magic crackles the air around her, elemental, bursting forth though her wand is stowed two floors above. It is the wildest she has ever felt, the most dangerous.
Brutus takes her, with another woman's scent stale on his body, in the foyer of their home—a home she insisted he vacate mere minutes before.
It is a reclaiming. A territorial display.
Brutus promises her commitment and loyalty. He will keep trying. With a hand to her belly: they will keep trying.
She remains naïve enough to believe him.
Antonia discovers his second mistress while eight months pregnant, just two months past her twentieth birthday.
It is a young girl this time, also Parisienne, out in society for less than one year. Antonia has society gossip to thank for the news. This time, matters cannot settle quietly. The young girl's reputation is ruined, and Brutus is temporarily shunned from society events. Antonia, too ashamed to run to her mother, seeks refuge with Marie Claire.
Her son is born: a beautiful baby with his father's fine, light blond hair and her enigmatic grey eyes. She names him Septimus, and he becomes her world.
At last, Antonia understands what she failed to at ages eleven and sixteen. Men are inconstant, unreliable things. They are means to the only end that matters to a seventeenth century woman: children.
And Brutus is not the escape she had hoped. Instead, he is a weight around her ankle, or shears that clipped her feathers. True, he opened the door to one cage. Antonia had stepped through it only to be locked in another.
At least now she has company.
Septimus is well into his third month before Brutus humbles himself enough to arrive at Marie Claire's home.
Antonia does not wish to see him. She does not need him.
But what she feels is incongruent with what society expects. A woman raising a child alone is an impossibility, especially when the father still lives. And though Marie Claire would never say so, Antonia knows she has trespassed on her sister's hospitality for long enough.
She leaves with him, accompanied by more of his promises and something else all her own.
Wisdom.
Brutus' words are thinner than mountain air. Antonia knows he will continue to break his wedding vows. She will suffer the indignity of his infidelity again.
People will wonder why he strays. They will speculate on what she is unable to provide that would cause him to seek comfort in the arms of another. Ironic that those same people will prevent her from leaving him. She has no means of independence, and those who weep for her circumstances would turn her aside if she came to them for help.
Their weeping would quiet only for whispers to begin.
With Septimus asleep against her breast, lulled by the rocking of the carriage over cobbled paths, Antonia makes a promise of her own.
If ever another of Brutus' affairs is made public, she will kill him.
She gives him her word. Speaks it aloud.
It is only fair that she communicates this ultimatum. Only right that he understands the consequences before he errs again.
She knows he will.
Brutus nods in acceptance, faking solemnity. Of course, he does not believe her. She is a woman, trained only in household charms. Her magic is as weak as her body, as fragile as her spirit.
She lets him believe it.
He did not witness her in the glory of childbirth.
He does not know what she can do.
Life quiets.
Septimus' first five years are idyllic. They move to an estate in the French countryside, Château Malfoi. It is wild with woods and streams and orchards, brimming with adventure and excitement. House-elves attend to his most basic needs and care. Brutus, when present, riffles his hair and takes him on broomstick rides. Antonia bends to his every whim, casting any spell he can think of and a fair few he cannot simply to hear his precious laugh.
She shields her son from the darker side of his charmed childhood.
She does not reveal how the split between herself and Brutus has widened into a gorge. She does not burst the pitiful hope of her son's frequent requests for a baby brother or sister. She does her best to erase all traces of her husband's influence, determined to raise Septimus in her image and not his father's.
It is easy enough, with Brutus' frequent trips to Paris for business. The sting of his infidelity has long faded, and he has kept his word: none of his affairs have gone public. Whispers abound; Antonia ignores them. She has removed herself from his circles, preferring the country to the city, her son to society. She is divorced in all ways but legally from her husband and is content to let him conduct whatever business pleases him.
Until he brings it home.
It begins an unremarkable day.
Antonia has an order to fill in town. Brutus lurks somewhere in the château—she neither knows nor cares about his exact location. Septimus occupies himself with a charmed chess set. He is staging a war, arguing with the pieces over troop position and battle strategies. She leaves him under the supervision of a house-elf and kisses him goodbye, promising a swift return and a sweet surprise, should he behave.
It is a rare autumn afternoon, bright and crisp, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. She walks to town, her pace leisurely, her enjoyment akin to bliss. Antonia's love for her son is boundless, but her devotion leaves little time for solitude or peace. She makes her purchases—new winter boots, fur-lined gloves, and a matching cloak for Septimus, preparations for the winter ahead—and stops by the patisserie for the promised treat. Macarons are his favourite. She chooses lemon for herself and chocolate for him.
Burdened with parcels, she hires a carriage back to the house. She slips in quietly, footsteps measured as she checks on Septimus. He has fallen asleep in the study, curled on the floor amongst the chess pieces. A house-elf has slipped a pillow beneath his head and covered him with a blanket. She lets him sleep and carries his parcels upstairs to unpack.
Though she has not felt the touch of a man in five years, she remembers the sound of lovemaking well.
Antonia's mind blanks. She drops her parcels at the door to Septimus' room. Her feet must carry her down the hallway for, next she knows, she is pushing open her husband's bedroom door.
Brutus, his body pale and hard and severe, pounds into some red-haired slattern from behind.
He does not see Antonia. Does not hear her. Does not note her presence until she snaps her fingers. He flies out of the woman and across the room, crashing into the wall with a howl and a curse. The woman he has been ploughing like a spring field screams and scrambles to cover herself.
Antonia stares her down, the deadly sheen in her grey eyes communicating enough. The woman gathers her clothes, dressing hastily before scurrying past and away, dashing through the manor as fast as her stockinged feet can carry her.
Brutus regains his footing, shameless, his member limp and glistening. He is furious, shouting. Antonia withstands his diatribe with cold calm.
She remembers her oath. Has planned for it, in fact.
Every moment away from Septimus has been spent in Brutus' library. She reads books he thinks her too simple to understand and practises dark spells on insects and reptiles. She has not yet summoned the callousness needed to work on a bird or a mammal, but she is confident in her ability. She has recorded everything, her notes more like a grimoire or an apothecarist's log than a housewife's journal. Years of theory and practice have made her an expert. She has all she needs to move forward.
Except opportunity.
Compartmentalization has helped her survive the revelation of her husband's true nature. It is close to instinct now and no great feat to summon at will.
So she does.
When Brutus breaks for breath, Antonia approaches, steady, though he looks ready to spring. He flinches as she places her hands on his shoulders, stills when she presses her lips to his. Her whispered request is met with hesitation. Maybe the animal in him—the same animal that cannot contain its rut for the sake of its mate—recognizes the trap. But that animal is incapable of higher reasoning.
Antonia knows what drives it, what feeds it, and her words lay a feast.
Brutus rationalises his uncertainty into insignificance and agrees to her proposal. She orders him away, needing time to prepare. He obeys, pausing to grab his cloak before leaving her alone in a room that smells like a stranger's sex.
Within hours, Antonia is ready, but it is not until nightfall—until Septimus sleeps soundly, helped along by a draught slipped into his evening cocoa—that she takes Brutus by the hand and leads him to their marriage bed.
The bedposts are hung with scarlet fabric embroidered with gold fleur-de-lys. She has changed the sheets, the fabric sinfully soft and virginal white. A single pillow lays in the bed's centre.
It is almost like it was.
His body is familiar territory, even after five years of abstinence. Antonia's fingers slip past his clothing's hooks and catches. She runs her palms down the firm lines of his torso, the muscles of his thighs, back up to the velvet between his legs. She forces him onto his back and strips for him. She takes her time, stepping out of her dress and letting him see her in the firelight. Motherhood has changed her. Hips wider, breasts fuller, stomach softer. A credit to her husband: it does not seem to matter. His interest is plain, his desire ravenous.
She climbs atop him. Brutus's hard hands find her gentle curves. Antonia wonders absently how she ever enjoyed the pressure of his touch.
He holds her like he owns her. Like he is entitled to her pain.
He wants control, but she presses him into the mattress, a hand on his chest, hips pinning him down. She eases onto him, her body slick with excitement.
It will not take long.
Brutus closes his eyes and grasps her waist, trying to impose his will. She resists, determined to take her pleasure. She rocks her hips, a steady rhythm that matches the cadence of her silent spell. She weaves it at her own pace, letting the power build gradually. It wells inside of her, the pressure drawing her muscles tight.
The edge looms.
Antonia leans over him, adjusting her angle, and moans as the length of him hits her just right. She begins to tremble as her hand closes around the knife hidden beneath the pillow.
She leans back with a cry. Her body pulses, drawing his orgasm into her while she drives the blade into him.
Brutus' eyes widen as the tip pierces his heart, but his gaze does not rest on hers for long. With a twist of her wrist, the draperies around their bedpost fall away. Affixed to their ceiling is a gilt mirror, two feet wide by three feet long. Only then does he understand the full scope of Antonia's intentions, the power of a vow made and fulfilled.
He screams, but it is too late.
Blood gushes around the knife in Brutus' chest, spilling out onto the sheets and soaking into the mattress. She withdraws the blade with a flourish, flinging his life across the walls and ceiling, across the mirror's glass and frame. She sees her reflection: white skin splattered scarlet, pink nipples dripping blood, red mouth wide in ecstasy.
Silence is no longer an option.
Her incantation fills the room, her words doubled, tripled, run through with moans and pleasured cries that are not her own.
Maiden, Mother, and Crone, unified by la petite mort, the best Antonia has had.
Her reflection disappears.
A different one takes its place.
Antonia looks down at Brutus. What little light ever shone from his dark eyes flickers out.
It is done.
Her body calms, power and pleasure fading as gradually as they built. Brutus' member grows limp inside her. His body cools. Antonia climbs off his corpse and lays beside him, leaning her legs up against the wall to keep his seed inside of her. Perhaps he can give her one more child.
Final, fair repayment for a life full of infidelity.
The pooled blood beneath her shoulders congeals. The gore on her cheeks and neck dries. Her hair mats and stiffens.
Her legs go numb. She does not mind.
For the chance of a second child, the discomfort is worth it. And it is certainly worth the view.
Brutus remains trapped in the mirror, dazed by the departure from his corporeal form, while Antonia lies beneath him.
She is finally free.