Author's note: Thank you so so much for all your reviews. Again, there has to be rain before sunshine and all that...please stick with it.
And review too, if you'd like.
The snow was gathering on the edges of the windowsill, clumping in powdery little hills. Her daughter, a small and perky three, was gurgling and babbling to her toys in front of the fire. Her sons were arguing lightly over the merits of space travel and her husband was sitting beside the fire, cigar in one hand and engrossed in a book. There was a fragrant Christmas tree, encircled by abundant gifts and spicy eggnog and sinful Florentines.
What a perfect sight, she thought, if only, Clarisse, you liked knitting.
She let a bitter smile alight on her lips for a moment.
She had been so angry with him before he had gone home. Since he'd left the winter palace two days before, and left her in this world of isolation, she'd been trying to fathom what had prompted such blazing anger in her. It was such an acute fury that she hadn't shared it with him. Instead she'd smiled blandly and bid him farewell and pushed furious tears back as she watched him go.
It made her overflow with discomfit to realise that it was abandonment she felt.
And the feeling was as bizarre as it was unwarranted.
"Excuse me a moment," she murmured, "Please watch Anna, gentlemen."
All quiet, because every time they'd opened their mouth in the last few days she'd all but devoured their heads, they nodded their assent.
The winter palace was deathly quiet and she moved along the marble halls uninterrupted. Apparently Joseph had warned his staff to give her as wide a berth as she so obviously wanted before he departed for home.
But she didn't want a wide berth at all. From him, she wanted a closeness she'd never known before or after him. And instead he'd gone home, gone to the life he'd once promised her. He was moving on, pulling away, settling back into his routine of occasional visits home and quiet walks and sad smiles.
She took the heaviest fur coat she owned from the cupboard and slipped it on as if it was armour.
She slid out of the huge doors and into the grounds. Here, at least, she could pretend she was free. Because pretending was all she did now. Right behind her, Anton shuffled through the thick snow. He kept the distance he was supposed to keep as if she were a virulent danger.
It had started, the animosity, at Anna's third birthday.
There was no deep need to search for the moment it turned sour. She needn't look far. It was as inevitable as she'd told him, the turning of a tide long overdue.
He had shouted at a child who had become too boisterous at her party and pushed Anna in his infantile excitement. Joseph had roared at the little boy in the most absurd manner and the child had sobbed for hours, literally hours, afterwards.
She still cringed, heating up under the fur, at the memory. The entirety of the adults gathered had looked at him in an appalled fashion and he had simply glared and scooped Anna up. Rupert had laughed, actually laughed, and started the music again as if it was simply a trifle.
She'd watched Joseph tending gently to Anna's scuffed (but perfectly fine) knee and knew he wasn't able to control it anymore, to pretend like he was supposed to. He was her father in that moment, in front of a suspiciously ignorant room, and it was glaringly evident.
And over the following months that had become increasingly problematic. He was losing any sparkle, any humour he'd once had. He was losing the ability to hide, to lie, to pretend that nothing had gone between them.
It pained her to say that the man she loved was receding into the background of this aggressive, on edge brute.
The snow was falling thick and fast, weighing down her heavy coat even more. For one delicate moment she imagined lying down in the snow and never getting up again. She imagined the bitter cold becoming a gentle heat until nothing more remained.
Perhaps the only mark she would leave was her jealousy. Her jealousy that he'd gone without her.
Because Clarisse hadn't really believed that, three years down the line, she'd still be in the self-same position. She had been vocal, too emphatic, about it remaining exactly as it had to be while all the time hoping for a miracle that would set her on the path she was supposed to be on.
She'd though: just another few months and I'll get strong enough to tell Rupert, we'll be together, we'll be with Anna. I won't be queen but the boys will forgive me.
I will forgive me.
She'd starved herself of his affection and love and now it was eating her from the inside out. And he'd gone off to Spain to lead the life he had, the life apart from her.
Because she wasn't even a part anymore, not really and it was, without question, her fault.
Yet she blamed him because she was irrational and miserable.
Clarisse had been irrational and miserable from the moment she'd returned from Madrid and so had he…he was just better at disguising it.
-0-
Joseph knew, very clearly, that he was drinking too much. They had returned from church in the early hours, where before he'd already drank too much, and now he was polishing a bottle of Amontillado without so much as a concern for the taste. The farmhouse was seething with people, warm and humid. He'd slumped at the dining table, leaving behind the majority of the extended family and affectionate hangers on.
He felt uncomfortable and clumsily fished his wallet and loose coins and his I.D. badge from his back pocket. Then he took another gratuitous slug of the sherry.
"That was for everyone," his sister Rita snarked as she passed behind him with a plate of meats.
He muttered an insult under his breath and took another swig. He reached ungracefully for the wallet and used one finger to flick it open to reveal a photograph of his little girl.
Her little girl.
He couldn't believe she was his, that he'd made her in a mad moment that reverberated, now, through everything they did. In the picture she was in her mother's arms. It was pathetic really. He'd not had the balls to ask Clarisse for a photo of them, even though he was entitled to have a photo of his daughter, so he'd cut it out of one of the gossip magazines and stowed it away in the wallet he used when he was on leave.
Like a typical father but one who had to keep his daughter and her mother a filthy secret.
He felt tears start to prickle – a sensation so familiar now that he'd learned the best way to fight it was to think of her, giggling and gurgling, and tell himself she was worth it. Her very breath was worth it.
He heard footsteps behind him, then the kind voice of his oldest friend.
"C'mon old man," Andre murmured, "You need some air."
He let his friend manhandle him into the cool night, stumbling over the uneven steps of the back courtyard as he went.
"C'mon," Andre urged again, "It's Christmas."
Joseph laughed but it was hollow, as if the intention to laugh genuinely was not enough.
"I used to love Christmas."
Andre groaned a little and levered him onto the ground, so they were facing away from the horses' paddock and onto the villa. The view out into the bay was breath-taking, the hills climbing around them.
"I wanted to bring her here. I wanted to bring her and our daughter here."
"Do you think she ever considers what this does to you?"
He was surprised by the vehemence in his friend's voice, the anger that hadn't been there a second before.
"Andre-" he slurred.
"I mean it, have you ever told her?"
"It's not like that, she's not like that," he defended feebly, "I don't want you thinking that."
His friend quietened a moment then reached out and pulled him against him, so they were embraced and Joseph was curled into his chest.
"I feel so fucking sorry for you Joe," his friend said, "And that's the gist of it. You were always a fool for a beautiful girl."
"I love her," he grumbled, "I can't live without her. If I could live without both of them, I'd have left a long time ago."
His friend nodded.
"Magda's coming this way," his friend sat him up again and offered him a hadkerchief to wipe his face with, "Look presentable."
He was grateful for Andre for saving him from Magda's ever-pragmatic, sensible wrath.
"Hey," she kicked the sole of his upturned shoe and then chucked something into his lap.
It was his wallet.
He was too drunk though to do anything but stow it away in his pocket.
"Andre," she motioned with her head to the farmhouse, "Do you mind?"
Joseph didn't want his friend to leave and so he gripped his arm.
"He's drunk right now," Andre murmured.
"Andre, I wasn't really asking," his younger sister said blandly, "Go on."
"I don't want to talk Magda."
She bent down, "And that's why you're a train wreck."
Beside him Andre stood up and began to brush damp grass from his jeans.
"Please don't doctor me Magda. I-"
"My old friend," Andre squatted down and placed a gentle hand on Joseph's shoulder, "Maybe it's time to unburden yourself to someone. I mean, who else can you trust but Magda?"
"You're my little sister," he directed his words toward her, "You don't need to know this."
She looked so miserable for a moment, "I already know."
He let his head fall forward as she replaced Andre on the grass beside him, her back resting against the paddock fence too.
"She's very beautiful," Magda murmured finally, "Your little girl."
"Is there any point in pretending she's not mine?"
"No."
"Alright," he tipped his head back so it fell against a wrung. The sky was glorious with stars.
"Alright," she agreed, "What else?"
"I'm fucking dying inside," he said plainly, "I'm curdling and rotting and dying."
"That's not very healthy," she answered, sounding so much more like a doctor that she obviously intended.
"And I'm in love with another man's wife," he held out his fingers, counting the reasons for his misery as he went, "And she is the queen of a country and she has two sons she can't leave and she won't even look at me and she hates me. And I can't remember it, no matter how hard I try."
"Remember what?"
"How she feels in my arms," he was heavy with booze and maudlin and he knew he sounded pathetic.
"You need to let that go," Magda said after a moment of considered silence, "Whether or not there is mutual desire to rekindle whatever it was, it doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter if it was undying love or if it was just sex. You both have a child to protect from your mistakes now. You need to face up to that."
"I am trying, we both are," he knew it was as true an assessment of her as it was of him, "Magda, you can't breathe a word of this to anyone. Not even Matthias. I mean, she could be charged with treason. I could."
Magda looked him squarely in the face, "You know how ludicrously selfish you sound, right?"
He nodded silently.
"Maybe if you and Her Majesty hadn't been hell-bent on each other, you wouldn't have to think like that. But by the sounds of it, by the looks of her, you're both as insufferable as the other. It was stupid of you to do something without realising the consequences but you have. God Joe, accept it. She's never going to be your wife and that little girl is never publically going to be yours and you knew that from the minute you decided to sleep with her. Those were the caveats and you ignored them."
He was so horrified by the clarity of her assessment that he couldn't answer.
"Do you hate me?"
He eventually asked, eyeing his little sister's profile.
"No," she said softly, "No, I pity you. I pity your queen and I don't even know her. But it's my niece I pity most of all."
He nodded, "Me too."
"No you don't," his sister said gently, "Your pity lies with the relationship you thought you could have. That's why you're feeling this way. Pity your daughter, turn your focus to her."