Spotted: Our reformed devil entering yet another church for Sunday services. These weekly visits are making this author long for the exploits of days gone by, but I suppose you cannot blame a man for falling in love. With whom you ask? That's one secret I'm not allowed to tell.
He shifts his weight; his hand twitching against the side of his leg. He stretches his legs out, brushes one against hers in the process, and he may pretend that the contact was merely accidentally, but the smirk on his lips betrays him. His exasperation is evident to her and, if it was proper, she would gladly reach out and hold his hand, squeeze it in thanks for how many of these conversations he has attended with her in the last few weeks.
The sermon continues in a monotonous drone of words that give him no comfort yet the way she sits beside him eyes sparkling, brain eagerly soaking up the words spoken gives him hope. There is no fire and brimstone in this speech, no fury and damnation. The delivery may not be particularly exciting, but the lack of excitement is disappointing to neither of them.
The sermon ends with a snap of the deliverer's book. The service ends with a series of prayers that easily roll of her tongue. And then he is standing, offering her his arm, and gingerly clutching her hand as he wraps it around his bicep. Her skirt swishes gracefully against the floor as he guides her down the aisle, out into the courtyard where the sun shines brightly and where the local gentry can endeavor to introduce themselves.
Eventually, the crowd disperses to return home, to return to their wayward ways without concern until next Sunday when they return seeking penitence for their sins. She slips away from him and moves towards the small party clustered around the front door.
"Excuse me, Father?" She interrupts. The older couple bids adieu, leaving her and the priest alone. "Do you have a moment to speak to me?"
The priest mulls over the question for a moment, remembering he was to call upon Mister and Mrs. Nicholas and share a meal with them following the conclusion of his Sunday service. But he decides to set aside the calling of his rumbling stomach, albeit grudgingly, for the higher calling of his profession. He invites her in, eyes flicking to the man and woman who accompanied her here in a silent question.
"Mister Bass and my lady's maid will wait outside," the visitor to his church explains. He accepts the information, gesturing for her to enter to church and shutting the door behind them.
"My name is Father George," he introduces. His eyes take in her appearance, and his voice drops to hesitant tone as he hazards a guess. "Mrs. Bass, I presume?"
"No," she swiftly replies. "I'm Mrs. Grimaldi."
"And how long until you and Mister Bass are married?"
The question catches her off guard. She had expected Father George to cast Chuck as her brother as so many have before him after her correction of his guess as to their relation.
"Wha—how did you—"
"I have officiated over many wedding ceremonies and given many a lecture where men and women shift in their seats bored out of their minds. Your Mister Bass may not have believed a word I say, but he clearly wants you to believe in my sermon. And nonbelievers don't exhibit that unless they want something for those they love. So, tell me, have the banns been read for you two yet?"
"No," Blair replies.
"And Mister Bass has made an offer?"
"Yes," she says and then remembering the way that proposal occurred, she amends her previous statement. "No. Not exactly."
Father George raises an eyebrow in question of her answer. He is not entirely comfortable with the "not exactly" portion of her statement. He tries very hard to rise above the gossip passed amongst the members of his parish, but even he succumbs to the curiosity of reading the gossip column in the Spectator every now and then. Mister Bass' name is synonymous with the kind of man Father George councils the young men of his ward not to be.
"I have some," she pauses and her voice drops lower when she finds the correct word. "I have some demons I need to deal with before he can propose."
"Ah," Father George replies with a click of his tongue. "And I suppose those demons are why you traveled to a parish previously unknown to you for Sunday services?"
"How do you know I have never been here before?"
"I have presided over this parish for nearly forty years. I would remember if you or Mister Bass ever set foot into this church."
Blair turns away from Father George, turns her gaze to the alter at the front of the church. She nods her head slowly under the weight of the crucifixion staring down at her. Eyes close yet open when she feels Father George's hand press against her elbow.
"Would you like to carry on our discussion in my office?"
She considers his suggestion, rejects it, and offers her own. The confessional adds another level of protection, of security to her secrets, and she longs to sequester herself in the darkness of the small space. Father George relents after a moment, gestures for her to wait a moment before entering so he can at least maintain a modicum of secrecy between him and his parishioner.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two days since my last confession."
"Go ahead, my child," he says after overcoming the initial shock of the length of time that has passed between her last confession and this one. Not even the most religiously adherent of his flock confess with such consistency.
"I – I participated in amoral behavior with a man," Blair informs him yet her confession is unsurprising to the priest given who accompanied her this morning.
"And how long has it been since you participated in this amoral behavior?"
"Nine weeks."
"So you have already been absolved of this sin?" He asks, and she confirms that she has already been told to say two Hail Mary's for her participation. "Have you committed other sins for which you have not been absolved?"
"Yes," she confesses softly after a moment. Her voice cracks, breaks as she tries to find the strength to tell yet another person of her crime. "My child – I killed my baby with my first husband."
"How?"
"He was born sickly. There – there was an open sore on his back. And—"
She cuts herself off and yet he does not need any more information. The condition she speaks of he has seen twice before – once as a child on the little girl born to his mother and then again thirty-nine years ago to a parishioner in his first year as a priest. Both children had died soon after birth albeit one slower than the other, and the passage had been cruel and torturous to both women he ministered to.
"He wasn't baptized. I sent for a priest, but Father Cavali arrived too late. And now he's condemned to hell with the unrepentant sinners and the murders because I cursed him with my sins."
"Your sins?" Father George questions in surprise.
"I lied. I schemed. I participated in – I initiated amoral behavior with a man. I trapped myself in a union because I was weak. A coward. And God punished my son for my transgressions."
"Oh, no, my dear. Whoever told you this, whoever blamed you was the one weak and cowardly one. We are all sinners in God's eyes, but he would not condemn a helpless child to an eternity of hellfire."
"But my baby was not baptized. Father Cavalia and Father Smythe said—"
"And if you spoke to Father Edwards and Father Johnson," he interrupts, "you would find that they would tell you the same thing I am telling you. Your child experienced great suffering in his short life. God would not want to punish him – or you – any further."
"And if I married, then future children?" She asks slowly with a voice dripping in anxious hopefulness.
"I cannot predict the future, my dear, and I cannot tell you if what happened before will repeat again. That is for God to decide. But I can tell you that he loves all his children and wants us to be happy. Provided we live moralistic lives," he adds, recalling her earlier words about amoral behavior with Mister Bass. "There is no way to know why God called your baby home. But he has obviously given you a second chance at happiness. You should not accept one plan for your life and reject the other."
The two sit in silence for a moment. Her tight and constrained breathing loosens as she internalizes his words, as the fire of blame that ragged inside her cools to smoldering embers. She reaches up, touches the tear rolling down her face, and her voices comes out like a soft whisper.
"Father, would you – would you say a prayer for my little boy?"
Father George agrees immediately, promises to add her son to his daily prayers. And then before he dismisses her, before he tells her to continue to find strength in God, he asks her one more question, asks her if her little boy had a name.
"No, not officially," she replies. "My husband's family was not interested in naming him."
"Yes, but what did you call him, my child?"
"Harold," she confesses in a torturous whisper. "I named him Harold after my father."
She opens the curtain protecting her identity and leaves the cool sanctuary of the church before Father George can ask her any more questions. The heavy oak door opens just wide enough to let her slip through, and the beating of the sun's rays warms her chilled skin. If Mister Bass or Dorota notices her appearance first it does not matter as they both reach her at the same name, concern and worry evident on their faces.
"What's wrong? Are you alright?"
The voices become blended in her ears; the questions an echo of one another. And all she can do is nod, smile through her tears as she demands for Dorota to hand her the list she painstakingly made nine weeks ago.
Dorota hesitates for just a moment, forcing Blair to bark out her name in order to compel her into handing over the list. The lady's maid scrambles to retrieve the list from the small drawstring purse around her wrist and thrusts it into Blair's hands.
At the very bottom of list remains a single name. There is no way to cross the name off the list until she returns home but when she does, when the name is stricken off the long list, she will have faced the obstacles standing between them.
"That's it?"
He asks cautiously, afraid to get his hopes up. She looks at him, looks back at the list and flips it over to reveal two more names written in her perfect script.
"Not polite to spy, Miss Blair," Dorota chastises without looking up from her stitching. Blair ignores the maid, continues to pick out from behind the curtains and watch the two men out on the veranda engage in easy conversation. Smiles and small laughs are exchanged between them under her watchful eye, and her face betrays the envy she feels over the scene, over how easily the two have managed to renew their friendship given how fractured it was.
She may be a master schemer, but she never expected this scheme to go so well. The idea of inviting Lord Theodore for a playdate with Aaron had come to her quickly, and she conveniently scheduled the playdate when she knew Theodore's mother would be visiting her father and brother and when she knew Chuck would come to call on her in the morning.
He had pulled her aside, demanded to know what she was up to with this plan, but she tenderly touched his face, stroked the line of his jaw in order to force him to look at her and calm down as she implores him to stop lying about how much he misses his former best friend. She refused to accept the passage of time as an excuse, reminding him that other could say could say the same for the two of them and that she knows how they have been friends.
"Look at them, Dorota," she implores. "They act as though nothing occurred between them."
"Mister Bass and Lord Archibald been friends for long time, Miss Blair," Dorota reminds her. "Besides, Lord Archibald have Lady Archibald and Mister Bass have you. No girl to fight over."
"They weren't fighting over a girl," Blair snaps. "They were fighting over Nate not validating Chuck's feelings."
"Over girl," Dorota finishes as she threads her needle through the embroidery and unravels yet another one of Blair's tangled stiches. Her charge may have been raised to be an accomplished lady, but Blair never had the tolerance for the amount of time required to complete such delicate handiwork. She was always too busy losing herself in the love stories she hid under her bed, scheming how to best get back at Penelope for some social slight, and daydreaming about her life as the future Countess of Constance to care.
"Oh, go do something useful," Blair rebukes having grown tired of Dorota's insistence in tying her up in this mess. She has born enough crosses, enough guilt in her life, and she will not accept the blame for this fractured relationship. She will, however, attempt to fix it because she knows how close Chuck and Nate were, knows that Nate is the closest thing Chuck ever had to a brother.
"Lady Rose said I not supposed to leave you alone with Mister Bass. Would not be proper."
"I'm not going to be alone with Mister Bass," Blair corrects. "Nate is here and so are Aaron and Nate's –"
The knock at the door to her private parlor interrupts her diatribe against Dorota's insistence on serving as her chaperon as though she is a debutante in her first season out in society. Bertram, the Rose's butler, opens the door and barely has the chance to announce the arrival of a visitor for Mrs. Grimaldi before said visitor sweeps into the room from behind him.
"What are you doing here?" Blair says icily, startling the blonde so badly that she freezes in the doorway of the room.
"Calling on you," Serena replies. "You sent me a note telling me to come see you, and then you leave me waiting in the foyer as though you weren't expecting me."
"I didn't send you a note," Blair retorts. "The only notes I've sent in last week were to Chuck and Nate."
"Well, I received one this morning with your seal on it," the blonde says.
Blair considers the information for a moment as her eyes slide to appraise her lady's maid, but Dorota's face bears no betrayal as she calmly gathers up her stitching and prepares to flee the fallout of this confrontation. The Polish woman has barely managed to stand up from the settee when the realization of who has played a hand in this scheme dawns upon her mistress.
"That Bassta—"
"Miss Blair," Dorota exclaims.
"It's alright, Dorota," a deep voice announces from the door. Blair's eyes narrow at his appearance and Dorota uses the shift in her attention as a cover to slip out of the door and escape unscathed from the fallout that is sure to occur.
"Bass, this is a punishable offense!"
"I'm only doing what you two refuse to do yourselves," he replies as he reaches for the door handle and begins to shut the door behind him. Serena begins to chastise Chuck as Blair silently steams over his betrayal. "There is a single malt and some Ladurée macaroons under the settee. Plenty to sustain you until you two figure things out."
The door is shut with a resounding thud, and the scrapping of a chair against the floor as it is jammed under the handle of the door informs them both that there is no means of escape unless they decide to climb out the window. Blair turns away from the blonde, walks towards the window once more as she considers her options, and then with a sigh, she resigns herself to falling victim to one of his schemes.
"So what did my missive supposedly say?"
"That you were sorry and you miss me," Serena replies softly.
"How can I be sorry when I only told you the truth?" Blair retorts as she turns on her heels and stares at her former best friend with her arms crossed across her chest. "The man you want to marry was going to publish these terrible stories about me and my family in order to make a name for himself. He was going to sacrifice my reputation in order to have you."
"And I told you that Dan wasn't actually going to go through with it. He gave the story to Chuck because he realizated how much it would hurt me to see you hurt," Serena replies as she takes a seat on the settee Dorota abandoned. "And you didn't even tell me half of what was in that article. I'm supposed to be your best friend, Blair, and I didn't even know you had a baby."
"When was I supposed to tell you? Half of my letters were returned unopened because you were off enjoying the sun in Santorini."
"I wasn't enjoying the sun in Santorini," Serena corrects. Her voice drops lower and cracks painfully as she speaks. "I was there looking for my father."
"You went looking for your father?" Blair questions in surprise as she glides across the room and takes a seat next to Serena. Lord William van der Woodsen set sail one day and never returned, and he is now considered to have abandoned his family by all of society and dead by most.
"Yeah, and I found him, too," Serena replies. "But he didn't want to see me."
"What?" Blair says, shaking her head. "Why didn't you say anything while all this was happening?"
"I guess I was ashamed," Serena informs her with a shrug. "Your dad adored you. Lord Rose adores you. And Mister Humphrey would do anything for Dan and Jenny."
"Not knowing you is your father's loss," Blair informs her gently. Serena shrugs her shoulders once again, tells Blair that she cannot seem to give up on the idea of finding him.
"I can't seem to get anything right. I didn't know you lost a baby, and I kept going on and on about wonderful your life in Paris was. Why didn't you stop me?"
"The same reason you didn't tell me," Blair states plainly as her voice wavers with emotion. "I was ashamed. I didn't want people to find out how terribly wrong my life had gone and judge me for the things I've done."
"You're my best friend, Blair. I wouldn't have judged you," Serena tells her. Blair offers a pointed look in rejection of her words, and Serena cannot help but smile as she backtracks slightly. "Okay, so I judged you when you first told me you kissed Chuck but, Blair, I've only ever wanted you to be happy. And now this thing between you and Dan—"
"What he wrote would have caused a scandal and you know it."
"And you would have run away again, ruining your chance at happiness with Chuck," Serena pointedly replies. "But Dan wasn't going to publish it. Chuck's already made sure of that. And even if he had, I would have helped you get through it."
"Really?"
"I love Dan, but we're sisters. You're my family. What is you, is me," the blonde replies as she reaches out and squeezes Blair's hand. "And I'm sorry I wasn't there for you in France when everything went horribly wrong, but there's nothing you could ever say to make me let go. I love you."
The two young women embrace; hold each other tightly as the door to the sitting room is pushed open. Blair looks over Serena's shoulder and her eyes narrow at the man watching from the doorway.
"Bass," she testily greets as she and Serena break apart. She stands up from the settee, sweeps across the room, and stands directly in front of him with a glare on her lips.
"You scheme against me," he informs her. "I scheme against you."
"Well, I don't like it," she snaps. "Desperate times may call for desperate measures, but scheming should be restricted to outsiders."
Chuck nods his head in agreement, snags her hand in his and raises it to his lips as he asks if she needs more time to accomplish what is left on her list.
"Yes," she informs him to his surprise. He had thought this would be the end, the final hurdle behind them, but she retracts her hand from his and taps it against his face in dismissal. "I'm spending the day with my best friend. You and yours seem to have returned to your old ways so I doubt you'll be too lonely without me."