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Bertha had not spoken to her husband for almost two months.
She was aware that among her peers, this was nothing extraordinary. The wives and husbands largely lead independent lives, the men absorbed in their business ventures or land acquisition schemes, often spending weeks away from home, while their wives were preoccupied with household management and their own charity projects. They would make an appearance together when the stars aligned, at a soiree or an opera outing or a ball, after which they would separate again into their own individual bedrooms with no pangs of longing, perfectly content with their lives.
However, things were different with her and George. They spent so much time together, from breakfast on until joining one another in bed at night, that when a business trip kept him away, she felt much like a bird with its wings cut off. She was still able to go on with her life as usual, but there was still an absence so fundamental it could not be ignored. Evidently, he felt the same because he would cut his trips short often to return to her as soon as possible.
And not once had they been separated by an ocean before.
She was unsurprised not to have received a single letter from him during her stay in England. Not that she would have answered him anyway. There was her pride, and the fact that she had little time for correspondence unless she was pretending to attend to it. Every wakeful moment was spent thinking of ways to help Gladys adjust.
She was so proud of her. Every day, she had grown more into her new role, and it was a joy to watch how her confidence along with her contentment grow. She fully believed she would be happy eventually. Happiness was a fickle thing, often too dependent on love not to shatter in a single heartbeat, but Bertha had done everything in her power to give her daughter every tool possible to build it for herself.
Their last conversation left her soothed that Gladys would be able to hold her own against Lady Sarah and gradually grow her dazzling legacy. Still, it was a struggle to leave her. Bertha had only managed to stifle her tears until her carriage had turned from the yard, slipping from view.
She had arrived back in the states around three weeks ago after a long, lonely crossing. There was a carriage and Church waiting to escort her home. She sent him to the 61st street to get her some necessary items and took the carriage to the train station so she could proceed directly to Newport. Perhaps it would have constituted some great mark of defiance, had George been home and anxiously awaiting her arrival as usual — but that was not the case.
It was not as if he were driving her out of the city. George knew as well as she that New York was her turf, and he'd have a miserable chance trying to claim it when it had been Bertha who had endeavored to open up every door to the Russell family — including the gentleman’s club where he was currently hiding out like some proud prince in exile.
But even if some prodigal spirit eventually found its way into him, she had no desire to be there when he came back knocking. She would not go to that empty house. She would not go there even if George had checked out of the Union Club the moment he heard of Gallia's docking. She would not risk wandering through the hallways and calling his name without receiving an answer. Just the thought froze her heart like icy water closing over her head.
Pain. Pain was what she'd run from. Not him.
She was no stranger to great amounts of suffering in her youth, but with hard work, there had come a time in her life where she could shrug off all forms of misery with ease by staying focused on her goals. Numbness to anything that might slow her down was her best tool of survival. However, there was one person who had the singular ability to render her frailer than porcelain through no significant effort.
You have made me weak, she heard his words in her head.
As you have made me, she wanted to answer.
The Newport house welcomed her with comforting darkness. It seemed that Church's telegram had not reached the staff yet, but she preferred it that way. There was only one footman to greet her, and one maid to quickly prepare her room. There was no time for fuss or fanfare, and blessedly enough, she was left alone not long after arriving. In the ensuing silence, she tried to muster back that ever-so-useful numbness. Failing that, she replaced it with wrath.
So what if George had made good on his threat to stay away? Would she even want to see him after all the vile things he said? After he had broken her heart?
Perhaps breaking was the wrong word. He had more so wrapped his hand around it and squeezed, much like he might her neck, his fingers carving into the flesh of her throat and slowly extinguishing the life out of her. That was how she had felt, this prolonged choking throughout the ten days the steamship had taken to reach Liverpool, only intermittently being granted reprieve when she thought about Gladys and planned ahead.
On the return journey, the feeling had returned, but with it her spitefulness had grown.
She had thought that it would power her for a good while, but after the first night alone in her bed in Newport, weariness had set in her bones. It did not take long for her to receive her first invitations as the society learned of her arrival, but she turned them all down, citing an illness as the reason.
In a way, she was unwell. For the first time in her life, she did not care for opening her house to visitors or sketching out her calendar to accommodate everywhere important she should make an appearance, much less stepping out of her house.
It would have taken too much out of her, and right now she needed all her strength for thinking. Now more than ever, she needed to consider her next steps.
This went on for a little over three weeks, so long that even her Newport staff started to believe that she was truly ill. She spent only an hour a day at her writing desk penning letters to manage her opera and charity affairs, and crafting excuses to her noisier associates for what kept her away — overseeing renovations was what she had settled on. The rest of the time she spent in her bed, staring at her ceiling, trying to formulate a plan of action that her desperate heart kept tearing apart because of what its existence implied. Eventually, she would drift off to sleep, and if she was fortunate, it would be dreamless. She had always had the torturous ability to envision everything that could go wrong in her nightmares.
In the middle of one such dream, she suddenly started awake.
There was someone else in the room. She could feel it.
The confirmation came in the sound of heavy footsteps, and an unsettlingly familiar masculine voice.
"So this is where you were hiding out."
She sat up, seeing George standing there in the yellow glow of a recently ignited gas lamp. He was wearing his overcoat and other travel attire, standing in her bedroom in his muddy boots, and the sight was so bizarre she was not sure if she was still dreaming.
She had the strangest urge to cover herself up. She was only wearing a sheer nightgown in the summer heat, after all, but felt utterly ridiculous about the notion the next moment. Perhaps dream George might still harbor some thoughts of ravishing her, but certainly not this man, this real man who was staring at her darkly like a ferryman set to sail her to hell.
"You gave everyone at home a terrible fright, not showing your face for weeks," he muttered, wresting his gaze away to focus on something in the window.
That was patently not true. All of the staff knew where she was, and Larry would likely not care if he had returned home in the meantime.
"What are you doing here, George?" she asked, channeling all of her mounting ire to her voice.
After a moment of reluctance, his eyes shifted to her again. They immediately hardened as he took her face properly in.
"Have you been ill? Is that why you have been staying here? Has a doctor visited?"
And then growl of a question:
"Why was I not sent for?"
Bertha stared at him incredulously.
She was not exactly offended that he had made this unflattering assumption, god knew she had to look like death, but there were no bounds to her dismay when it came to the fact that he was standing here in the first place, examining her appearance and speaking of doctors as if he would not consider it quite the boon from heaven if she dropped dead within this financial quarter.
"Would you not be more comfortable at home?" he asked, and before waiting for her answer, he reached out a hand.
"Come on now, let's get you—"
Bertha evaded his touch, recoiling away from him.
Seeing the expression on his face, she was struck by the notion of what a mirror that had action had been to the way George had spurned her weeks earlier. She felt a stirring of pleasure at the sight, like a cooling salve smoothed against an ache.
He withdrew his hand slowly, his eyes regarding her with something akin to surprise. Then his jaw clenched, and he was back in control of his features.
Right now, he confounded her. What did he expect, that she would be grateful that he even deigned to talk to her? That he has enough concern for her to come see that she's still alive?
Now it made sense that he had mentioned sending for a doctor. She had to be on her deathbed not to have been waiting for him back home, ready to lay her little head on her husband's lap and blink her wet pretty eyes and plead that he might consider forgiving her.
That fanciful delusion might have amused her if not for the fact that she had entertained her own fair share of fantasies about repentance. Those had involved him racing to the docks just as Gallia was about to set sail, a frantic plea on his lips, or a 13-page letter sent to Sidmouth, full of remorse and longing, or finally, him nearly landing his hands on Church as he informed him that his wife was not coming home.
She supposed they were both fools.
Still, it was surprising he had actually come. She could only surmise he was here to force some lengthy admission of guilt out of her. His ego withered the longer he went without. Or he was here because the household was in chaos, and he couldn't even locate the laundry room. It was either or.
Only one way to find out.
"What are you doing here? What do you want?" she asked tersely.
She could almost hear George grind his molars down as he delayed his reply. It told her exactly how pleased he was to be there.
In a way, she had sympathy. It had to be humiliating to be the first to approach the other right now. She might have only been compelled to do the same were he threatening to set fire to her wardrobe back home.
"Fine, let's do this now," he finally rasped out.
Bertha curved an impatient eyebrow as further words did not immediately follow.
His eyes flitted to the floor as he finally spoke his meaning in a low voice.
"I am here to ask you."
Something strange happened to the flow time at those words. It halted violently, crashing against her as if into a wall, stayed mercilessly still for an eternity before suddenly catching up to full speed
without her on board. She sat frozen, processing his words, trying to stumble away from the conclusion they led her to like a prey under pursuit.
"Ask me what?" she asked with all the calmness she could muster. "To come home?"
He shook his head, turning away from her. No, it was something more than that.
Anxiety was twisting tighter and tighter around her airways. It was troubling her, the way he seemed reluctant to meet her eyes all of a sudden.
"What do you mean?" she repeated herself, willing him to look at her.
The silence in the room prevailed as he refused to answer. He did not need to. She could already guess rather confidently what it was that he wanted to ask.
She closed her eyes. Just for a moment, just to quell the tell-tale well of emotion on her face. She also had to bite her tongue to keep from uttering something desperate, something pleading. She refuses to be hysterical in front of him.
Bertha could see now that simply leading a separate life from her after she had disappointed him so was not his style. He was a sensible businessman who needed to see black on white, lest there would be any trouble of her demanding things he deemed her no longer entitled to. If he had set his heart on leaving her, it would be a loath to procrastinate making the matter official. And he needed her home to sort out the details.
Keeping her eyes clenched shut was not working. She turned her face away as a precaution. There were shards of glass in her throat that demanded her to expel all the agony that had exploded inside her in the form of tears. However, if she started crying, it would be admitting defeat, demonstrating to him the regret and atonement he was itching to see. He was an avenging angel punishing her for her sins, and she was the weeping Eve rightfully banished from her garden realm. How tragic, how preventable her sin if she had only been good.
That wretched thought had her lift her chin, aggressively blinking away her unshed tears. Ah, but she had been good. Good enough to make her daughter a duchess. She knew she should have done a better job assuading Gladys' fears and preparing her for her role, but she had made no mistake. Her daughter would be influential, wealthy, resplendent like the brightest jewel in the Queen's crown and happy, and Bertha would do this all over again if she had to.
"Let's hear it," she said in a low voice.
He stared at her, a deep incredulous knot forming between his brows. It was as if he had expected her to protest.
She tamped down the urge to audibly snarl.
Did he expect her to simply roll over? Let him do the most humiliating thing a husband could do to a wife? It was astounding, truly, her not being cooperative, her not readily listening to all his insulting arguments why he should be allowed to pull a Charles Fane and drag her through the gutters of New York. She ought to simply agree, at once resigning herself to her new life as a social outcast.
"I said, let's hear it," she repeated herself when George's stupefied silence went on. She gave him a cold, hard look, straightening her spine, as poised and dignified in her nightgown as on a battlefield with armor.
His expression turned a little darker, his face a little grayer. No, this was not the response he had expected at all, and it grieved her. Could he claim to know her at all if he thought she wouldn't go down with a fight?
"Very well then," he finally sputtered.
He crossed his arms over his chest, staring her down like a mountain he was going to make crumble just with his determined gaze.
"I received a letter from Gladys some time ago," he began. "She told me Hector is treating her well and in regard to his sister... It appears your visit was of some benefit. She sounds encouraged, even hopeful. I don't know what you told her, but it seems to have done the trick. She is making the best out of it."
She had certainly not expected him to start with a commendation of what she had done with Gladys. Or could it be called a commendation? It sounded like he was simply relieved she had not made things worse.
"I am confident that she will make the best out of her new position," she answered neutrally. "After all, there are many worse things in the world than being a duchess."
His nostrils flared. Now they were getting somewhere.
"Regardless of the good you have done, you do realize I had every right to be angry, don't you?"
"Have you finally decided whether this anger was directed at me or yourself?"
His lips drew into a thin, pale line. Curiously enough, he looked like he was under significant strain to contain his fury. But there was only so much he could prevent from unleashing, as evidenced by the almost shrill tone of his voice the next time he spoke.
"You are hardly the innocent martyr here. We would have never been even in the position of questioning our daughter's happiness if it weren't for you. If you hadn't interfered..."
She did not know whether it was more infuriating or amusing, George pretending that he would have done a better job picking a husband for their daughter through sheer inaction. Archie Baldwin, the man he had given a job to separate her from Gladys two years ago, was on the verge of being fired for mismanagement of money. Then there was Billy Carlton who had bolted like a spooked horse at the mere prospect of facing George. Bertha saw a sea of indecision and helplessness in his future.
George seemed to realize much the same as soon as the words had left his mouth because he went quiet, angrily shaking his head.
"She might have found someone respectable. And someone she loves," he sighed. "But I will grant you that the situation is not as bad as I thought. At least not anymore. I can only pray Hector proves himself worthy. In any case... it was perhaps an unfair assumption that she was doomed to misery."
She listened with some surprise. It was as if he were pulling back his anger, swallowing it down and softening all of the resentful words that had spilled over from him now and in the foyer. Bedgrudgingly so, but still.
What was even more surprising was what followed.
"I know I did not express my stance very productively, it was belated and excessive. I shouldn't have yelled at you in front of the servants. And I know I shouldn't have accused you of anything untoward with Mr. Merrick. You did not act a coquette."
Whatever strange triumph this little speech might have brought her, it vanished like fog at dawn.To be told by her husband that she was being too charming to a man they were meant to charm was one thing, but being told that one did not quite reach threshold a coquette like it was a great concession took the cake. It was near she did not snort.
He fumbled for the next words, struggling against his pride like a horse against its bridle. Ah, what great endurance she was beholding.
"And I know I shouldn't have shut you out of my business. Believe me, I can understand perfectly well why you would want to punish me for these transgressions."
He turned to look at her, and she was taken aback by the sudden change in his expression. His face had gone from barely masked frustration to something that could only be described as tortured.
"But enough is enough," he breathed out.
Another frantic change was the start of his pacing. He looked to waiting for something, perhaps her admission that indeed, she was to blame for whatever he was presently wrestling with. That wouldn't be coming, and whether realizing that or not, he abruptly stopped in front of her.
"Won't you just come home, Bertha."
The words rushed out of his mouth like water bursting through a dam.
She felt much like a woman adrift in a stormy sea with only a single wooden plank as her buoy. Listening to him talk, she had been able to quickly work out that divorce might not be on the table after all, but that left her with a wealth of confusion. He seemed to think she was staying here somehow to spite him and wanted her back in New York, that much was clear, but to what purpose? It couldn't be as simple as him requiring a scapegoat for whatever anxieties he was harboring and not telling her about, could it?
"I am sure people miss you in the city," he added. "At the Metropolitan, at your charitable societies. And you have missed a great many events."
"Now you have concern for my social calendar?" she fired back.
Now she had a clue what he wanted. He had to have come to the bitter realization that it was much harder to conduct his business affairs without a smiling wife to host dinners. However, a wife had to take care she wouldn't smile too brightly, or flutter her lashes once too many times, or make her voice too sweet as she feigned interest in the dinner guest. God forbid if she looked pleased at all at any compliment given to her, that was cuckolding at its very definition.
"I never said...," he started but trailed off, clenching his eyes shut as he was forced to recall and catalogue all the unkind things he had been saying to her.
She watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. He was thinking, furiously trying to chart a way out of this maze.
"All these... theatrics over a few words spoken in anger," he sighed, his eyes still closed.
Theatrics. They seemed to have very different definitions of the word. What she would consider to be theatrics was sulking at the Union Club until it became clear that his wife was not setting a foot on the 61st street, and it was therefore imperative to storm Newport in the middle of the night to drag her back home. She could only surmise that the only reason he had not hauled her over his shoulder and carried her to his carriage in a caveman fashion was Church whose loyalty was firmly and blessedly established in his mistress's camp.
It seemed to be dawning on him that all the attempts to reason with her were sticking as successfully as undercooked macaroni. It was time to try something else. He knew better than to reach for her again, but he did take a step closer and looked at her most imploringly, his pained gaze as tangible as a touch.
"Surely you have some affection left for me?" he asked carefully, as if daring her to contradict her. She might just take the bait.
"Not right now, I do not," she spat.
There was an almost imperceptible recoil as the words sailed over him. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then his bloodshot eyes narrowed into something like an accusation. It was as if she were the villain, the one taking joy in stabbing his heart.
The silence stretched between them, long and taut like a rope under the strain of a brutal weight. She refused to be the first one to speak, to let it snap, so she kept her chin up, her eyes silently locked on his.
"Do you want me to get on my knees and beg?" he finally murmured.
George seemed to have taken to sarcasm recently. She did not appreciate it, and was just about to tell him just that when the impossible happened.
He began to lower himself.
It was hardly a graceful action. His knees bent only reluctantly, which was hardly a surprise. George Russell was not a man who knelt in front of his opponent. He'd rather wring their or his own neck. Yet there he was, on his knees on the floor, looking up at her like a pilgrim at the end of his grueling trek, expecting a miracle as she gaped back at him in dismay.
For a moment, she wondered if she had not really succumbed to some fever-inducing disease and was hallucinating the sight before her. George was actually nowhere near Newport but smoking cigars in some leather armchair and plotting his revenge on her. That image would have at least sated her, knowing that he was kept awake by her. But this scene only bewildered her, the ruthless man she knew her husband to be stooped down so he was on level with her, looking at her in this inexplicably beseeching way.
It was absurd as a hurricane coming to a halt before a dragonfly.
"Please," he said.
And after a ragged exhale,
"Come home."
She was dazed enough by the words not to react for a moment, but her doubts soon crept in. What could it be that was so vital that he needed her cooperation this desperately? The longer she remained silent, musing on this, the unhappier George visibly grew.
"Alright, Bertha. You have proven your point", he finally muttered, getting up.
His gaze slid to her travel trunk.
"I am going to call Andre up here to help you pack."
"No," came her simple and stern reply.
"You won't come with me?"
"I won't."
"You wish to torment me further," he stated.
"I have absolutely no desires in that regard," she retorted. "What I would like to know is why I should do anything you tell me to when you refuse to even answer my question. Tell me what you want, George. Why do you need me home? What is that you are trying to ask me?"
There had to be something driving him. Something he wanted to conceal from her.
"You know what it is," he near growled.
"No, I really don't! At first, I thought you were asking to be free of me, but I suppose that is not the case."
His eyes flew wide at this in utter shock, as if those words had been the last thing he ever expected to hear. It was the look of a man witnessing the eclipse of a sun for the first time.
If her eyes did not deceive her, she could swear she saw a great deal of color drain from his face which confounded her because surely, he had to have considered—
"Is that what you want?" he asked, his voice quaking with barely contained agitation.
"I never said that."
"But you are telling me you have no affection for me," he said, licking his lips. There was a desperate gleam to his eye she couldn't even begin to interpret. "How else am I supposed to take that?"
"George, you are going to have start explaining what has you acting like this right now or I will think you have lost it," she hissed, scrambling up from the bed.
She came to stand directly in front of him, but still he wouldn't answer, just kept breathing hard, unfurling and furling his fists by his sides, staring somewhere past her. He looked like a starving, frenzied animal, and only now could Bertha see that he couldn't have been sleeping or eating much at all since the last time she saw him.
And then finally, he turned to look at her and thundered his response.
"I am here to ask you not to leave me."
Now it was her turn to sway with shock.
He couldn't have stunned her more if he had picked up the desk in the corner and thrown it through the window. That would have at least made sense in terms of the anger he held for her — anger that, according to all laws of nature, should prevent him from coming crawling at her feet.
He seemed to have drawn assumptions about her long absence from home. Assumptions she did not quite understand. Did he not want to be rid of her after all? Even though he was the one who threatened to leave? Unless he hadn't meant it, not a word of it, because he loved her and was here to bring her back to where she belonged. Her heart gave a stumble in her chest at the thought.
"Happy now?" he gritted out.
And the ire swarmed back in again. Or he had bluffed to teach me a lesson, she decided.
"No. Certainly not with the tone of your voice," she said icily.
"I did not come here to shower you in poetry and romantic sentimentalities. Is that what you expected?"
She considered whether he seriously thought that she had purposefully lured him here to woo her back. Still, there was a small curl of satisfaction in her gut because it would have worked. Even now, he looked like he was reconsidering his stance on poetry.
She fixed him with a pointed look.
"I expected nothing from you. That would have been foolish of me, after you made it perfectly clear you wanted nothing to do with me."
"It should never have been said."
"Ah, but it was said. Among many other things. And while you might be quite comfortable taking back your words, the same cannot necessarily be said about me. Do you remember what I promised you last year?"
There will be no more forgiveness.
The words petrified him better than any blade at his throat could have. She could have sworn the rest of the color from his face had drained in that singular instant.
During her miserable voyage across the ocean, she had thought the only reason George had utterly disregarded this threat was because he had simply completely stopped loving her. It did not matter anymore how he talked to her, how much he hurt her, as she was of no value anymore. Yet here he was proclaiming the very opposite, but unconscious of the fact that the sword of Damocles had already fallen.
Indeed, she was having a hard time thinking of a reason to return to him, only to await the next time his resentment and frustration overflew, drowning her in the process.
He looked into her eyes and saw this, perhaps had seen all along, because the terror contorting his features grew only a modicum.
He raked his hands through his hair and his jaw worked, clenching and unclenching like he was trying to desperately articulate any of the dozen thoughts pouring into his head.
"I am asking you to be sensible about this," he finally exhaled. "You can't just stay here forever."
He had circled right back to beating her with sense and reason. She did not know whether to laugh or cry.
"And why not?" she snapped. "I could be perfectly comfortable here. People go wherever I go nowadays, you know. I would not expect to be without company for long."
She had naturally meant company in the most innocent sense of the word, but that telegram had gone over his head by a mile. The not too unfamiliar symptoms of overbrimming, desperate jealousy flooded his expression.
"Is... is there someone else?"
That was when she tore from the seams.
"You know what," she spat, surging forward, her vision swimming in red mist. "I actually don't even care that you seem to think that I am sleeping with half of Rhode Island now that I have cleared New York."
"That is not what I—"
"What it tells about you is the real point of interest here. You don't even have a good reason to seethe with jealousy, and if you mention Mr. Merrick, I will laugh in your face. No, there is something that has you flailing right now, something humiliating, something that makes you feel so small, so less than a man that you think I'd rather pick anyone off the street than you!"
Judging by the look on his face, she had hit the nail on the head.
"But the real insult is that you have still not deigned to tell me what is going on, all the while you profess you can't have me leave you! Is it me that you actually want or a mute, deaf doll who doesn't question you?"
"Of course it is you I want!"
"And yet you speak of me like I am an anchor around your foot! You told me I made you weak!" she cried out with the full force of her furious despair.
The words slammed against him like the crack of a whip, just as they had her. Her eyes were burning, the fury in her chest boiling like the waters of hell, and all she wanted to do was grab at his coat lapels and tear at them, at him until he would meet her gaze and face the wretched animal his cruelty had rendered her into.
She didn't, lowering her voice into a measured tone with all her effort.
"What does that mean, George? Listening to me, trusting me makes you weak, that you have been a fool to humor me all these years? That you have been a henpecked clown?"
"That is not what I meant," he tried with a barely audible voice.
"I know very well what you meant," she spat. "I only need to use what you told me in my bedroom as a reference. You have been disillusioned by me. Your Raphael fresco has turned out to be cheap trash. Discard me then. I'd rather you did that instead of whatever this is, castigating me as a cuckolder because of your jealousy and insecurity, heaping all your guilt over your own passivity on me, but willing to cast all that aside so I can host you your dinners. I'd rather you be a man and call me a monster to my face and be done with me!"
George was silent for a long time, looking very much like all the life had been drained out of his body.
"You are not a monster," he finally said.
"You don't need to lie. I can accept that. I can accept you thinking I have done wrong by Gladys. I will bear the responsibility for her happiness or misery. But I will not be the bearer of your sins."
She had come almost face to face with him during this uninhibited eruption of everything on her heart. Her chest was heaving, and she was conscious of the fact that he was close enough to be the source of every breath she sucked into her lungs just now. She hated it, she hated him and the way he was looking at her, like he only now understood.
"I have treated you very ill," he whispered. "And I am so sorry."
A shuddery breath escaped her. Only now she heard those words. Now was that so hard? she almost wanted to say, but no words could rise from her throat without her choking on them.
Any satisfaction she might have felt from finally receiving an apology from a man who never offered one was dead on arrival. George was looking at her with naked despair, and it should have been satisfying, seeing him like this, scaring him with Newport just as much as he had scared her when he had driven her from his office like some disposable nuisance — but she just felt wearier than ever.
She slumped down on the bed again.
He followed her, tracking mud from his boots across the floor, but she was too tired to care.
"What more can I do to show you my remorse, Bertha? I have already gone on my knees for you."
The second the words had left his mouth, he knelt again for good measure in front of her, his hands on either side of her on the bed as he looked up at her, his eyes brimming with emotion.
All the prideful anger, all the posturing from earlier was gone. There was just her husband, stripped of all his worldly possessions and walls of defense, anything that might obscure the fact of how powerless he truly was. He was a beggar at the feet of a queen, almost clinging to her gown but not daring to.
"Do you want me to accompany you to every opera from now on?" he began, entreating. "Fund a new production? Or... that leak. Do you want me to find them? Do you want to destroy the papers spreading those rumors? You know I would do that for you. You must know that."
She could listen no longer. The words grated at her like salt over broken skin. She knew that George liked to profess his fealty by doing things for her, giving her anything that she might possibly want. But now it was only making her hate that he thought her clemency could be bought in such a way.
It made her mind slip back in time to when they were still young. She remembered him flinging pinecones to her windowpane, and her elegant delay before coming to the window, and the rather inelegant way she sneaked out of the house. George had come to see her despite the fact that her father would most certainly strangle him dead if he caught him again, and she remembered him kissing her hands and then her lips and then her neck, promising they'll marry as soon as he secured his position at Langdon & Co. He did not understand she would have married him right at that second in exchange of the simple promise that he took her wherever he went. He hadn't understood. He still did not understand.
"What I want you to do is go," she sighed. "I am tired."
She really was tired, and this conversation was making things worse. She wanted to sleep and cry and sleep again, a childish urge that made her feel utterly pathetic. She was acting like the first woman in the world who had gotten a tongue-lashing from her husband. Her mother would have laughed at her, told her just to relent already, to submit, to please him before he found someone else who would.
She was not her mother.
"Just go!" she snapped.
He gave her the most broken look and began to withdraw. Because of course he would. He would if she told him to.
Maybe it was that notion that made her a turncoat against her own words. She reached out her hand, grabbed his bicep and prevented him from rising. She stared at him, trembling, and couldn't have explained herself even with a gun to her temple, yet it was fitting. George Russell had made her irrational from the moment she had met him.
He looked at her hand and then at her. Something in his expression changed; grew a little less fraught, a little more renewed. She could see he considered the gesture a lifeline.
She let him.
"You are right, I have been angry at myself, and I have been taking it out on you. And I cannot blame you for hating me," he said, the words rushing out with barely a breath between them.
He looked up at her with eyes that made her want to crumble into him like a pile of sand into the tide.
"But I cannot do this without you."
The words dripped out as a prayer he was not expecting an answer to. Accepting this, he simply laid his head on her lap. Completely at her mercy.
Hesitantly, she brought her hands down. His cheek was resting against the silk of her nightgown, and the other she brushed with her thumb.
She wondered at her own tenderness. She could easily hurt him, push him forcefully off her, or press down with her fingers, dig her nails into his skin until she saw his heartblood well up - make him feel her how much he hurt her. She could kill him in more ways than one, but what would she do then? How could she do this without him? She was like the scorpion in the Persian fable she had once read about, asking a turtle to carry her across the river. If she stung the turtle, they would both be doomed.
George had done that, and now he was sinking, and maybe it was self-preservation, or maybe it was love, but she wanted to drag them down to the shore.
She slipped her fingers into his soft curls and started caressing him.
"Just tell me, George. Tell me what is going on with you," she offered as her single, indispensable request.
So he told her.
He told her of the downward spiral he had gotten sucked in, his failing business, the plans to course correct that kept folding one after another. Bertha listened without reaction, stroking his hair. It was like second nature to her. Her fingers roamed across his scalp in well-familiar paths from countless times before she'd lent an advisory ear to him. George leant gratefully into her touch, occasionally halting his speech just to relish in the comfort he knew he did not deserve.
When he had finally told her everything, Bertha contemplated the situation for a long, gravely silent stretch of time.
"Hmm. You should have confided in me sooner," she murmured. "But that does not sound like anything that cannot be fixed."
It sounded like he had become consumed by a single goal that dimmed everything else, including his senses. She could empathize. That had been the Duke for her. The only difference was that it had been an achievable end; right now, George needed an outsider's opinion on whether Chicago was that for him. Left to his own devices, he might just bring his whole empire down out of spite for not getting what he wanted.
George lifted his head, a slight, surprised smile on his lips at her confidence in him.
"At times I think I can hardly be surprised by how much I love you anymore, but there you go, and I am in awe."
Bertha considered his words with both gratification and slight wariness which he could detect.
"What will I have to do to make you believe that?"
She hushed him. "I am confident you will think of something. But let's focus on the more pressing matters. Clay."
"I should have had him killed," he rasped out.
"Maybe you should have had, but it's too late now. We must find another way forward."
She tilted his chin up with her palm encouragingly. "We will lift ourselves up, won't we? Together."
"Useless without the other," he whispered.
You'd better remember that, she thought in her mind.
"You will never shut me out again, do you hear me?" she asked with a trembling voice, and George nodded emphatically.
"And I will not keep things from you either," she offered as a trade-off because she knew she had not been a saint when it came to transparency. She had feared George might judge her or try to stop her if she had been open about every little ruthless cog in her plans, but perhaps that had been the mistake. He had always been able to see her point of view if she had simply communicated it to him with complete honesty.
"And I hope you will tell me... if I have any cause for concern," he said in an odd tone of voice.
She looked at him questioningly.
"If a man emerges who makes you feel he appreciates you more."
Before Bertha could open her mouth and request he knock his head against the wall until all his sense returned to him, he went on.
"I will have you know those flatterers are not worth your time. I am the one who values you more than life itself."
He said it so gravely, so matter-of-factly, that she found herself believing him. For the time being.
"I am not leaving you for Merrick," she assured wearily.
"No, you are not because I can still have him killed."
She let out a small, fond sigh and tilted his chin up to kiss him.
The kiss was supposed to be soft and short, intended as a token of tentative forgiveness and reassurance that no men needed to be taken out as of yet. However, the moment their mouths connected, Bertha felt life burst within her like a spark igniting a dry branch, then a forest. It was a sheer impossibility not to squeeze herself closer or prevent a soft sigh falling from her lips.
Hearing it, George took no longer than one heartbeat to deepen the kiss and fist his hands in the material of her nightgown. Evidently, he had felt as desperate as she had these past months.
She really shouldn't encourage this. She really should send him off to his own room to think a little bit longer about his foolishness. But she had missed him so, and he tasted so lovely, a faint note of bourbon on his to tongue as if he had needed a serving to calm his anxieties before coming here, and now he was whispering "my darling, my love" between his kisses, and it felt simply cruel to deny herself what was virtually owed to her after all this fuss and misery. So she directed her husband's hand where it might bring her the most pleasure.
Greatly provoked by this, he tried to climb into the bed with her, but Bertha woke up just enough from her trance to warn him that he would never know the warmth of a woman's touch again if he crawled into her bed with his muddy boots. George promptly proceeded to throw them through the door to the hallway, hopefully scaring off a nosy servant or two who had been lured there by the sounds of the fighting.
Then he was over her, all around her, and his hands were full of her naked flesh under her nightgown, and Bertha had never found the solid warm bulk of him flush against her more comforting. Then he was splitting her legs open and oh, she feared the time required to bring her relief would be mortifyingly short.
It was that for George too, and the first desperate rut was soon followed by another, longer one, perhaps to retain each other's dignity. And after stumbling over the edge together again and coming to rest, still entwined in each other, they found themselves more than content.
Whenever they made love in her bed, George always spent the whole night by her side, the comfort of it lulling him fast asleep. He was even quicker to fall under tonight, which surprised her very little, considering the bags under his eyes. She was not similarly blessed, which was why she was accustomed to watching her husband in the dark hours of the night.
Tracing his bare arm with her fingers, she wondered. Wondered whether he would always come back for her, no matter what she did. Wondered whether she'd let him hurt her again.
Maybe. Probably.
Still, all that mattered was that he knew she'd be taking him down with her.
They'd drown together.