Patreon LogoYour support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)

A Household of Three - a Meridian Society tale (The Corsair & Madam Mim)

Algernon stared at the house, feeling like his heart was gripped in a vise and lead filled his stomach. These visits were always hard, filled with guilt and self-loathing for having failed Maggie. But this one felt especially hard, because of the news he brought. The news his wife deserved to know.

“I’m here,” Anne Marie reassured him as they mounted the steps. “And since I shall not be able to drink with you this time, we shall have massive quantities of cake.”

He paused, turning to face her and taking both her hands in his. “Thank you.” He held her gaze a moment, then turned and opened the door.

“Professor,” Mrs. Heath said, before curtsying. “Marquise de Sévigné.” There was a glint of humor in her expression as she insisted on standing on protocol when Anne Marie entered the house. “I trust you had a pleasant drive?”

“The weather is quite likely, Mrs. Heath,” he answered, hanging his coat and hat on a hook. “And how is... how is Margaret, today?”

“Very well, actually,” the nurse answered. “I didn’t have to remind her that you were visiting today, when I helped her dress, and she even thought to ask about ‘her good friend Anne’.” She hesitated, watching Algernon’s expression. “If I had to make an assessment, she’s about ten years old today. She’s making a chalk sketch of the garden, and it shows some of her old talent.”

Pain must have been visible in his face, because her expression turned sympathetic. These visits were the worst, because glimmers of the woman she had been were visible in Maggie’s fractured psyche. Worse, she was at her most fragile, because it was the closest she allowed herself to come to the woman she’d been and the tortured she’d suffered. “I... understand.” He glanced at the stairs. “You... May wish to prepare a sedative. Just in case.”

“I see,” Mrs. Heath replied, looking from Algernon to Anne Marie and back. She understood their relationship, after all. “Nothing bad, I hope?”

“I don’t believe so,” Algernon sighed. “How Maggie will take it remains to be seen.”
 
"Madame la Commandant," Anne Marie returned with a friendly smile, returning the curtsy as well. She had insisted a number of times that Mrs. Heath call her Anne Marie, or at the very least Madame LaMonte, but the woman insisted upon using her title, so she had bestowed one of her own upon the formidable woman. Mrs. Heath was probably her favorite thing about these visits. She hung her hat as well, though the weather was warm enough and the fashion had turned to where she didn't need a coat in the summer weather.

Maggie sounded to be in good spirits, which was always a good start. When they visited on her difficult days it only made things worse and prolonged the agony while they were there. On good days she was often pleasant and amiable, even if she had difficulty carrying conversation or remembering that they had been there for more than a moment. It was still heartbreaking, but it was better than the alternative. Anne Marie had a feeling that she wouldn't continue to have a good day, and her heart dropped like a stone when Mrs. Heath said she'd mentioned 'her good friend Anne.' Friend. This woman considered her a friend, and here she was stealing her husband, stealing her life, giving him everything that monster had taken from her. Her throat constricted and she squeezed Algernon's arm even as he asked Mrs. Heath to prepare a sedative and remained cryptic as to the reasons why.

The journey up the single flight of stairs seemed to take forever, and Anne Marie's vision narrowed to a pin point focused upon the landing. Once they made it up at long last she gripped his arm and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. It felt as though her chest was closing in panic as she tried to find her breath and shook her head.

"I can't do it Algie," she gasped. "This was a mistake. I..." She stopped and looked at him. If it was difficult for her how much moreso must it be for him? No, now was not the time for her to be selfish. She needed him. "I'm sorry, mon amour," she murmured, shaking her head and placing a gentle kiss on his lips. "A brief moment of panic. And, I admit, guilt. But I do not think it is a mistake to tell her, and you deserve to not have to do it alone." She put her hand on the knob and looked at him. "Shall we?"
 
At the top of the stairs, Anne Marie gripped his arm with a queasy, panicked expression. Sick dread coiled in Algernon’s gut at the sight. Was she all right? Was the baby all right? "I can't do it Algie," she gasped. "This was a mistake. I..."

Ah. He nodded understanding, embracing her gently. “I understand,” he murmured, her words echoing his own dread. “I...”

“I'm sorry, mon amour," she murmured, shaking her head and placing a gentle kiss on his lips. "A brief moment of panic. And, I admit, guilt. But I do not think it is a mistake to tell her, and you deserve to not have to do it alone."

Swallowing, he nodded. “This won’t be bloody easy, will it?” he answered with a forced rictus of a smile, tension and anxiety cracking his reserve for a moment and allowing his Australian accent out.

She put her hand on the knob and looked at him. "Shall we?"

He drew a deep breath, and made a show of adjusting his lapels and straightening his tie. It was his own little ritual, a way of putting the reserved armor of Doctor Algernon Swift back into place. “Indeed.”

Normally, as a gentleman, he would have insisted Anne Marie enter Iraq. But not in this case, not when they were there to visit his wife. So he stepped into the room, heart clenching as he saw Maggie sitting at a table and sketching with chalk as she watched the garden. For an instant it was too much, too much like a scene from their marriage. From before Gustave. He but his lip as she turned in surprise, and watched her face light up as she saw him.

“Algie!” she cried, leaping to her feet and racing across the room to embrace him before drawing back with a shy laugh. “I’m sorry. Mum says I should learn to be more reserved or the bus won’t like me.” She clasped her arms behind her back and swayed a little as her voice became teasing. “But you like me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Algernon replied, voice nearly cracking with strain. “I... I do...”

“Good,” she smiled, and then her expression lit up again as she flung herself into Anne Marie’s arms. “Anne! You came too!” She laughed as she embraced the younger woman. “It’s all right if I hug you, isn’t it?”
 
They drew a deep breath at the same time and Anne Marie waited for him to readjust himself, to put everything back into its just-so place, before pushing open the door. Usually he held the door for her, but it was different whenever they came here. She wasn't sure whether he were punishing himself or protecting her, or both, but Algernon always insisted upon entering first, upon being the first to see his wife and the first one she saw. He was often met with either ebullience or shrieking, and today it seemed to be the former. She wondered which was worse for him, especially when she teased him like this. Of course he liked her--he loved her--and Anne Marie felt her heart break a little more whenever Maggie forgot that. God this was going to--

"Oof!" Anne Marie caught the shorter, older woman in her arms and smiled. They could have been friends, she thought. Not that they weren't now, but proper friends. "Of course it is," she said with a smile, squeezing her gently. "I like to think I'm much more approachable than stuffy old Algie any day." She glanced over at her lover with a small, sad smile. On Maggie's good days Anne Marie would gang up on him with her and, when she was lucid, would tease him about his stiff manners and staunch propriety. Mostly it was to keep herself from bursting into tears, but Maggie always seemed to have fun with it.

Finally they disentangled themselves and Anne Marie took both of her hands. Her smile was cautious, not overly joyful, not as she had been when she'd told him. She didn't want Maggie to get the wrong idea. Still, there was bound to be some anger there, and she didn't want it to be directed at Algie. It wasn't his fault she had fallen in love with him, wasn't his fault she hadn't been more careful, believing herself to be ruined. But most of all she couldn't bear to see him hurt by her anger; she would much rather take it all herself than see an ounce of it directed at him. Gently she led Maggie to the table and sat with her.

"That's a very good sketch," she commented, looking at the competent sketch of the garden. Better than she could have managed, anyway, but probably still a ghost of Maggie's former talent. She was about ten today, Mrs. Heath had said...it would probably be best not to dally. Ten-year-olds knew when something was up; they weren't stupid. She took both of Maggie's hands again and turned to face her fully. "Maggie, we've got something we want to tell you. I'm...that is..." Anne Marie took a deep breath and looked at Algernon. The look of pain was enough to steel her resolve, knowing that it would be worse if everything got heaped on him. Her stomach churned; she had vomited twice already this morning, from the baby or anxiety it was difficult to tell, and she felt almost as though she would again. She tasted metal as she tried again, all but blurting it out. "Algie and I are going to have a baby."
 
“Maggie, we've got something we want to tell you,” Anne Marie said, drawing a deep breath.

“Oh?” Maggie perched herself on her chair, looking curious and intrigued. “What is it? Is it a secret? I’m very good at keeping secrets!”

“I'm...that is...". Words failed her, and she shit a look of desperation at Algernon. He swallowed hard, torn between trying to comfort her and being ready to comfort his wife.

“Do you know it, Algie?” Maggie asked, turning a wide-eyed gaze on him. “Ooh, I can’t wait!”

“I... Yes, I do,” he conceded. “We have something we need to tell you, Maggie. Something... important.”

She clapped her hands together. “What? What is it?”

"Algie and I are going to have a baby."

The sentence seemed to explode in the air, forcing itself though her lips and detonating. Expressions flickered across Maggie’s face, happiness and shock and pain all at once. “That’s... wonderful?” she said slowly, uncertain. “You... I had... we had... a... a...”

“Maggie,” Algernon said, reaching for her. His heart felt like it would burst when she flinched away and tumbled from her chair, then half crawled to cower against Anne Marie’s legs.

“A doll,” Maggie gasped, emphasizing the word. “Such... such a lovely little doll. Dolls... dolls don’t... don’t... don’t cry. They... they... they just... just... just break...”. Great sobs ripped through her frame. “My... my Helen! Helen! Don’t... don’t cry, ba-dolly! Mommy’s here. Mommy... is... trying...”

Algernon went to his knees, staring helplessly as Maggie flinched away with a shriek. She buried her face in Anne Marie’s skirts, shaking and sobbing. “Helen,” she wailed. “Helen.”
 
She had been so very excited for the secret, and that made it all the worse when Anne Marie finally forced the words from her lips. She hadn't meant to be that blunt about it; she had meant to ease Maggie into it, to find a way to break it to her more gently though she hadn't the slightest idea how. But there it was and there it lay, and the expressions flickering across Maggie's face, the uncertainty and pain in her voice almost too much to bear. But Anne Marie would bear it, for Algie's sake if not Maggie's, so that he wouldn't have to do this alone.

When she was upset like this, Maggie tended to cling to Anne Marie rather than to her husband. The only reason she could imagine why was that as a man Algernon was much more threatening, reminded her of LaMonte, but that didn't make it any easier to see the pain in his expression whenever she cowered from him. It all only made the dowager feel worse even as she comforted the sobbing woman, wishing she herself could sob too. She gave her love a look of sorrowful sympathy and leaned over to wrap an arm around Maggie's shoulders, stroking her hair with the other hand and shushing her gently. She wished so badly that Maggie would have been angry instead.

"He's gone," Anne Marie murmured as Maggie cried out for her long dead daughter, a daughter who would have been not much younger than Anne Marie herself, hoping that telling her of LaMonte's fate would at least begin to comfort her. "The man who did this to you, to Helen...Algie and I made sure that he left this world in the greatest agony possible, and he can never harm you or anyone else ever again." It didn't bring her daughter back, and it was probably cold comfort even to the part of Maggie who had forgotten having a child, but it was the best she could think to offer.
 
He wanted to cry.

No, that wasn’t quite correct. He wanted to sob. To curl in on himself,wracked with misery at the sight of his pregnant lovertrying to comfort his wife. At the sight of his wife, broken and helpless, clinging for comfort to his lover as she sobbed in terror and heartbreak. He wanted to mourn the hollowness of his revenge. Gustave had died in agony, and it had changed nothing.

Instead, he stood up. Stood, and made a show of dusting off knees. “This is a lovely picture,” he remarked, trying to keep the hollow sound of heartbreak from his voice. “You’ve really caught the colors of the flowers in the garden.” Which was true, although it was quite amateurish compared to the skill she’d displayed when they’d wed.

“Do...”. Maggie’s voice broke, and she hiccuped before scrubbing at tear-stained era with a trembling hand. “Do you... think so..?”

“Yes,” Algernon said, looking at the picture. At the picture, and not at Maggie or Anne Marie. Doing so would break him in this moment, he knew. “However do you manage.”

Unsteadily, still sniffing, Maggie climbed to her feet. “Well,” she said uncertainly. “I... just look at, at the garden. And I try to, to draw what I see.” She sniffed again.

Algernon offered her a handkerchief. “Here, my dear. Dry your eyes.”

She took the cloth uncertainly. “Algie? Why... why was I crying?”

“No reason,” he lied, still staring blindly at the picture. “No reason at all.”
 
"Do you think she will remember in the long run?" Anne Marie asked as she unlaced her shoes. They were hellishly tight on her feet, swollen and sore from the heat and from standing. She knew eventually she would be forced to leave her laces unfashionably loose or else risk doing permanent damage to her feet, but for now she would simply suffer through it. Pressing a knuckle into her arch she rested her ankle on the other knee in an unladylike fashion as she tried to rub away some of the pain. "She remembers me, but do you think she will remember our child? That it is your child too?"

Over the previous three hours Maggie had alternated between being perfectly delightful and lucid and devolving into crying fits as she relived the trauma of losing her daughter. Sometimes Anne Marie thought perhaps Algernon's wife was her divinely sent punishment for all the lives she had taken. It felt like Hell, after all, to have to sit there and watch her forget and remember over and over, to comfort the woman whose husband she had stolen, who ought to have this life and this child in her place. While she knew he was an atheist she sometimes wondered whether Algie felt the same way. How could anyone not? She had known Maggie would react poorly, and part of her thought maybe that was her real reason for telling her: to punish herself even if some divine entity wouldn't.

"How are you feeling, mon amour?" She looked concerned as she poured the brandy Mrs. Heath had left for them and handed Algie the snifter before putting the kettle on for herself. "Please...you don't have to hold back any longer."
 
Algernon drained the glass at one go, then refilled it. “Awful,” he replied in a hollow voice “I thought I was prepared for this, but...” he gestured vaguely in the direction of the main house with his snifter. “I wasn’t.”

He sighed, and took a much more reasonable sip. “Do sit down, I can get that,” he declared getting two mugs and the tea out. His hands shook a little as he did, clattering the mugs together, and he glared at them as if force of Will could banish the shakes. “But, to your first question..? I don’t know. I really don’t.”

Sighing, he slumped into a chair and stared blankly in the direction of the stove. “She’s regressed into childhood herself, as a way of escaping what... what she suffered. It’s possible that, much of the time, she’ll simply believe our child to be another playmate.” His hand trembled as he sipped at his brandy. “Or that she’ll choose to believe, at any rate.”

He fell silent for a time. Finally he spoke again, his voice a harsh whisper barely audible above the whistle of the boiling kettle. “We had our revenge. Why does it feel so... empty?”
 
Anne Marie sighed and looked pityingly at Algie as he shakily prepared the tea. Coming to see Maggie was always upsetting for the both of them, but she had never seen him quite like this. She reached over to grip his hand gently as he sipped his brandy and suggested that she may come to see their child as a playmate.

"Would that be so terrible?" she asked softly, genuinely wondering. When the child was young, certainly, it wouldn't be nearly as awful. Having someone to play with might be good for the both of them. But as the child got older and grew up while Maggie stayed the same mental age...? It would only get more heartbreaking. They were both silent for a time and she squeezed his hand as the kettle began to whistle. She allowed him to get up and make the tea before answering his question when he sat back down.

"I don't know," she admitted. Then, after some thought, "Possibly because even though he is gone, everything he destroyed still remains. Even this child is a small miracle, after what he did to me." She sighed and sipped her tea. "They say that revenge never truly puts your demons to rest, only time and forgiveness. But I find I can never forgive him, even though I've tried. I fear we may be doomed always to be haunted by him."
 
“Haunted by him.” Algernon grimaced. “What a fate, to have our heels dogged eternally by the specter of a man we worked so hard to utterly destroy.” He considered his brandy glass, still half-full, and carefully set it down. “And this does nothing but but a small sliver of forgetfulness.”

Rising, he embraced Anne Marie. “A sliver denied you,” he whispered. “So often, I think only of my own pain and forget how hard these visits must be for you. Thank you for coming.”

He held her for a while, enjoying the warmth of her embrace and the rounded swell f her stomach against his own. “Now then,” he said eventually, “if we may not drink to forget, shall we bake something!”
 
Anne Marie smiled sadly and gave him a little squeeze. "You deserve to think of your own pain," she admitted, "especially when it is what kept you going for so long. It is what brought us together, after all." She squeezed him again, gently. "Just remember to let go of it every now and then to think of our future and things will be alright, mon amour. But I won't deny, it is painful for me too."

They stood there for a while, just enjoying the embrace. She enjoyed the quiet moments like this, just the two of them without any walls or masks. It was one of her favorite things about the shift in their relationship, something that made her wish it could be like this all the time. Alas, they were not that sort of couple...but when they were alone together she wished it would just go on forever. At last Algie suggested that since they could not drink--she could not drink, and he had reconsidered his brandy in solidarity--that they bake.

"Mais oui," she replied with a smile. She'd been craving fruit all morning, so clearly something fruit-filled was in order. "The doctor said that our child is about the size of a lemon...we may need to go to market, but perhaps some lemon bars to celebrate our petit citron." She crinkled her nose briefly as she smiled. "Mmm...and cherries. We shall also have cherry turnovers, since we are 'turning over a new leaf,' as they say, and beginning a chapter of our lives completely free of that monster, never to be touched by him."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom