Author's note: So thank you for all your wonderful support and reviews and comments and criticisms. We've still got lots more to go but I do like this chapter and I hope you do too.
Clarisse Renaldi was used to humiliation. She was not a stranger to the feeling of being swallowed alive. This wasn't the worst by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly wasn't the easiest either. She knew she would get through it; that in three months from now the papers would have moved on and the fact that their king was prone to extramarital affairs would just be quiet knowledge rather than sensational copy, but it was still a trial to know she had at least three months of this ahead of her.
Rupert, metaphorically caught with his pants around his ankles, had been stupid again.
Rupert was always stupid when it came to women but this time a very clever person had been nearby with a camera. Maybe it was just a kiss, but it was a kiss with the entire world as its audience.
She had stopped being angry a long time ago, when she had lost the right to be angry at infidelity. Now, it just tired her.
She set the paper aside and tipped her head onto the desk, feeling the cool of the oak against her cheek.
A familiar knock at the door filled her with equal dread and happiness.
"Hello," he closed it behind her, "It's nine p.m., Your Majesty. You should put the work aside."
"I did an hour ago," she answered, "I was simply enjoying today's papers."
He flinched at her irony, "Clarisse, it's-"
"Something I have no right to comment on," she said simply, "He came by to apologise this morning and told me he'd deal with it."
"Well, that's good."
She could see Joseph was insulted that she'd drawn a comparison between what they had done and what Rupert did all the time but she didn't have the energy to become offended or to excuse it. At the end of the day, they had both broken their marriage vows with other people. Love didn't figure to separate the circumstances of physical sex. It didn't make it right because she loved Joseph and she had lost all right to be angry at Rupert the moment she stepped over the threshold of Joseph's apartment.
She was simply as bad as Rupert, if not more so. And it was an unspoken contention between them that Joseph did not believe the same.
"Distract me, Joseph. Make me laugh."
"I'll try," he smiled, "I love seeing you laugh."
"It's a rarity now," she said dryly, "Have tea with me then, if you can't make me laugh?"
For a while, a long time, there had been an open wound stretching between them, festering and ripped and sore. It was healing now; nursed and bandaged with quiet teas in her chamber and soft touches to her cheek. It had started that night in the parlour, the night they had realised they were as lost as each other. Sixteen years had bandaged it too, begun to suture the wound.
Sixteen years of being so afraid they'd cave that they barely shared a word.
"I hate tea Clarisse, can I have coffee?"
"It's so terrible for you," she answered, but gave into his smile, "But of course."
She called for tea and settled on the couch, discarding the papers in the trash as she passed.
"How's Anna?"
"Angry," she answered, "Isn't Anna always angry these days?"
When talk of their eighteen year old daughter came between them it was always with concern for her anger that had sprouted in her early teens and had yet to be laid to rest. It was an oft occurring conversation between them and they had yet to come upon a sufficient solution.
"What should we do?"
He asked, eying her warily.
"I am fed up talking about it, if I am to be blunt. And I am fresh out of suggestions regarding how we bring our daughter round. How are you Joseph? I haven't asked you that in a while."
"I'm fine, I'm good," he answered and she could tell he was edging around his words, "I feel…I feel closer to you recently."
She knew he would say this and she knew it wasn't a lie. A warning sounded in her head – don't lead him on, don't hurt him again – but she was too tired to resist it. She had spent so very long resisting it.
"You are my friend," she answered, "You have always been my friend but yes, yes I agree. Despite the fact I know it is dangerous to do so."
He was silent and was about to speak when Priscilla entered with the tea. She smiled, set the tray up and curtsied as she went.
"I…" she poured the tea, not looking him in the eye, "I am tired of pushing you away."
She could see the shock that flittered across his face as she looked up but he did well to mask it.
She willed herself to continue, "Because the miss is too much. I don't want us to…"
He nodded, showing he understood she couldn't voice it, couldn't say 'have sex' because it wasn't an ample enough word to cover it and 'love making' was paltry too.
"But I do want us to talk more, laugh more," she lifted the calming tea to her mouth and it shook across her lips, "I want you to look at me like you used to."
She had been building to say this for so long that it felt as if the weight was gone from her shoulders, allowing her to breathe deeply for the first time in a long time.
"I didn't know I had stopped," he said honestly.
"Nor did I, until I noticed it had been so long since you'd looked at me at all."
He reached over then and placed an infinitely gentle kiss on her forehead. She shook under him, realising she was trembling in fear as he touched her properly for the first time in years.
"I won't ask anything of you," he reassured.
"I know," she laughed gently, "I do."
"Mama!"
She moved away, girded herself for the storm about to settle on their first moment of bliss for years. At least Joseph was here to counter his own daughter's fire.
"Mama!"
Her jeans appeared first, ripped and torn and altogether completely inappropriate. Her hair was a mass of curls which fell all the way to her waist, falling over a tight black t-shirt that Clarisse knew her father couldn't bear.
"Oh, Joe," she stalled, her Doc Martins thumping to a halt on the floor.
"Princess," he made to stand.
"Sit Joe, it's alright."
Clarisse cringed a little at her demanding tone but he seemed to let it go, remaining exactly where he was on the sofa.
"Mama, are you okay?"
"Of course," Clarisse answered, impressed with her own breeziness.
"But…" Anna faltered and a darkness veiled her face, "But have...the papers?"
Clarisse felt Joseph tense beside her, though he was a distance away. Of course she knew exactly what Anna meant but the very thought of discussing this with her daughter made her feel nauseous.
"Maybe just now isn't-," Joseph began but he was quickly spoken over.
"So he's allowed to do that to her, to me, to us? Is he? He's allowed to do that? He's such a shit."
"Anna!"
She shook her head and her fire seemed to die. She looked awkward once again, a little girl in an adult's world and an adult's clothing. Clarisse wanted to take her in her arms then but her teenager would not allow it, she knew. She hoped soon that this would end. The boys had been rebellious but there was something else about Anna, something that was charged and dangerous.
"It's just…it's humiliating, humiliating…for you."
Clarisse felt, quite clearly, that it wasn't really about she herself being humiliated. Anna simply hated Rupert, and any excuse to see him in the wrong appealed to her.
"But it's not your worry to carry Anna," she answered, feeling her response was entirely underwhelming but knowing nothing else to say.
They had this conversation all the time.
"I would string him up for humiliating me," she muttered, sitting down on the chair across from them.
"Anna, he's your father," Joseph suddenly said, trawling out a lie that Clarisse hated more than any other one she'd ever fabricated, "And he doesn't deserve that."
"He deserves all of it. He's a whoremonger and a drunk."
"Anna!" Joseph stood up, "Anna don't use that language…don't speak like that."
She stood up too, her much smaller frame towered over by Joseph.
"You defend him! You defend him for doing that to her," she pointed at Clarisse, "You are a coward Joseph and she's no better!"
She stormed out then, slamming the door behind her and screaming along the corridor. He said nothing as he stared at the door.
"She has your spirit."
Clarisse said this because she couldn't help but be dry in the face of such an insult.
Joseph looked at her askance, "We tiptoe around her Clarisse, that's the real issue."
She nodded, her voice threatening to break, "Yes, she is very much our fault."
"You think we deserve this punishment," he sat down beside her, "I can see it in your eyes."
"All of this…pain. All of it, because we were weak."
He shook his head, slipped his hand into hers, "Because we were human."
"What a horrible thing to be."
-0-
"You cannot send her," Clarisse insisted, hands gripping the edge of the desk in a white-knuckled fury, "I will not let you."
Rupert didn't even look up, "It's been arranged. Clarisse, she needs to go."
"Well un-arrange it! Rupert, just let me speak to her," she knew her voice was pleading but it didn't seem to matter.
"Clarisse, Clarisse you're always speaking to her," he threw the newspaper, open at page three, towards her, "It evidently doesn't work."
She couldn't bare to look at the picture. The black and white was somehow more graphic than if it was in colour. It wasn't terrible, of course, but the image of her daughter being poured into a limo by a man who they did not know, a man they did not recognise, a man who had no name or title but a firm grip on her knee and his lips on her neck, was an obscenity.
"She's eighteen-"
"And she's acting well beyond her years!"
Clarisse paced back towards the window and looked out into the snow. Just now, Joseph was nursing Anna's little wounds of spite, keeping her calm in her rooms and chambers. The boy had just been a bit of fun, she had said, just some fun and too much vodka. When had her daughter started going to clubs, Clarisse wondered? Who had taught her to give her security the slip? Or had that always been in her?
When had she become a haunted shell of the joyful little girl who had brought such happiness?
Sudden anger surged in her and she was white with fury at Rupert. If she wanted, she could see it as his fault – all of it. He had driven her from their loveless marriage into a bed of such love that it had made her indifferent to the mistakes, the dangers, she was subjecting herself to. Anna's existence was his fault. Pierre's remoteness was his fault and so was Phillippe's misery.
And so was Joseph's.
It was his ignorance that enraged her most.
"And are we to exile every member of our family that ends up on the tabloid covers? Because if we are-"
He slammed his fist on the table, scattering papers all over his office and silencing her. She backed away; cringing from his fury.
"Let's not play tit for tat woman! If we're to do that," spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth, "I swear you'll come out much worse. She goes to Switzerland or I will turn on you Clarisse, before she ruins this family. I've been silent for years…but I will not have, I will not have your little…"
She felt herself go blurry, woozy with faintness and surged towards the desk to find balance.
"She goes Clarisse, am I clear?"
The threat was not explicit, because Rupert's threats never were, but it was enough to force her to capitulate. He was a good man, she reminded herself. A good man who knew enough to threaten her.
And it was a threat he felt he could obviously make. Her stomach churned at the realisation he knew – that he understood her lie and had perhaps known if for many years.
Yet he'd said nothing. She was too cowardly to question why, to be thankful to him for his silence. So, as she always did, she pretended she didn't hear it at all.
"Fine," she said, her voice weak, "Fine, yes. Just let me tell her."
"It did your sons no harm," he looked down at the papers and she noticed, for the first time, how old he looked, "It'll do her good darling."
"Yes."
"You can go now Clarisse, get some sleep," he said softly, "Okay?"
She stood up, her legs flimsy as she tried to support herself. Something was screaming in her, a realisation, but as she had for years she ignored it.
-0-
Anna clutched Joseph's hand, her fine fingers wrapped in his. The streets of Geneva, wide and clean and lined with beautiful buildings, were perhaps the prettiest place of exile he'd ever observed. Supressing his own sadness was proving much worse than he'd imagined. He'd wanted her to go to university, not to finishing school. He'd wanted her to learn, not to be trained. Clarisse had been utterly distraught but unable to prevent it and he hadn't had the heart to ask her why she gave in so easily. He was such a coward he didn't want to know the answer. But he had an inkling that Rupert had the upper hand. He wondered, not for the first time, in Rupert knew.
"This is a punishment," she said quietly, eyes trained on the world outside.
"I don't know –"
"It is Joe," she squeezed his fingers, "Because I told him what I think."
"You what?"
He was genuinely shocked. He had heard not a whisper of it, not even from the maids. Whenever it had happened it had happened quietly, secretly. In fact, for a second he doubted it had happened at all.
"Anna, that was-"
"It was necessary," she cut in softly, "It was time I did to him what he does to me. He won't tell anyone – I humiliated him too much."
"What do you mean by that?"
He felt utterly puzzled by her cryptic conversation.
"It doesn't matter," she shrugged and pulled her hand from his.
"It does," he insisted, realising the car was slowing and he was running out of time with her, "Anna-"
"Stop pretending it matters," she said coldly, "I'm here now. He has what he wants. Soon I'll be old enough and he will not have any say over me."
"And then you can speak to him sensibly, kind-"
"Do you ever feel you're leading a life that isn't yours?"
She looked him straight in the face, eyes strong and startlingly blue. She had his eyes. Her mouth was in a grim line and he knew he had to be honest in the face of her interruption.
"All the time."
"So do I."
She was silent until the head of the school met them in the hall.
"Don't leave me here," she whispered, a little desperately, "Send me to Magda."
The mention of his sister almost floored him.
"Anna-"
"I knew you couldn't do it," she turned her face away, "I knew you wouldn't do it. She means more to you than I do. Her reputation means more than me. She means more than me. And that's always been the way of it."
He wouldn't tell Clarisse about what she said, about what her eyes said to him. He thought and thought and felt panic tightening like iron around his chest until exhaustion claimed him with its nightmares and blackness.
Because his daughter knew and he didn't know how. His daughter knew she was his.