A Winter's Promise

by Christelle Dabos

  “But what sort of madness entered your head? Going out like that, in the middle of the night, without me to chaperone you! You made me go insane with worry! You . . . you’ve got as much sense as an occasional table!”

  Each reproach triggered shooting pains at the back of Ophelia’s neck. Her aunt must have realized that she wasn’t feeling herself since she forced her to sit on a chair and thrust a cup of tea into her hands. “What are those marks on your cheeks? Did you have an unpleasant encounter? Did someone assault you?”

  Berenilde gently took Aunt Rosaline by the shoulders to calm her down. “Not by a man, if that’s what’s worrying you,” she reassured her. “Ophelia met her in-laws. The Dragons sometimes have rather cold manners.”

  “Rather cold manners?” repeated the aunt, staggered. “Are you making fun of me? Look at her face!”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Madam Rosaline, it’s to my nephew that your niece owes some explanations. Let’s go into the antechamber for a while.”

  As the two women retired into the neighboring room, leaving the door ajar, Ophelia listlessly moved the spoon around in her lemon tea. Thorn’s silhouette was outlined against the sitting-room window like a great motionless shadow. Absorbed in surveying the park, he hadn’t so much as looked at her since she’d come in. He was wearing a black uniform with golden epaulettes that made him seem even stiffer than usual. His work clothes, no doubt.

  Outside, the autumn colors were unusually subdued. Weighing down on the treetops was a covering of dark clouds from which flashes of lightning flickered. There was a storm brewing.

  As Thorn turned from the window and slowly moved towards her, Ophelia had a singularly heightened perception of certain things: the bright flashes of lightning on the carpet, the warm cup between her gloves, the febrile hum of the house. However, Thorn’s silence in the background was far more disquieting. She looked straight ahead of her. Her stiff neck prevented her from raising her eyes to meet his, located too high up. She found it annoying not to be able to see the expression on his face. Would he slap her just as Freya had?

  “I don’t make a habit of regretting,” Ophelia preempted him. She’d prepared herself for a reprimand, a scene, a slap in the face from Thorn, anything but this disturbingly calm voice:

  “I’m not entirely sure which of my warnings was lost on you.”

  “Your warnings, they were just words to me. I needed to see your world with my own eyes.”

  Ophelia had got up from her chair to try to speak to him face-to-face, but it was impossible with this cricked neck before such a tall man. Right now she had a clear view of Thorn’s fob watch, its chain hanging from his uniform.

  “With whose collusion did you get out?”

  “That of your back door. I tamed it.”

  Thorn’s forbidding voice, hardened by his accent, had prompted Ophelia to answer honestly; she didn’t want to drag the servants into her wrongdoing. In front of her, the thin hand seized the fob watch and opened its cover with a flick of the thumb.

  “Who assaulted you and for what reason?”

  His tone was as impersonal as that of an investigating police officer. These questions weren’t a sign of concern; Thorn merely wanted to ascertain to what extent Ophelia had compromised them. She decided not to mention her meeting with the ambassador. It was doubtless a mistake, but she would have found revealing the content of their conversation to him very embarrassing. “Only your sister, Freya, whose path I crossed by chance. She doesn’t seem to approve of our marriage.”

  “Half-sister,” Thorn corrected. “She hates me. I’m amazed you survived that encounter.”

  “I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

  Thorn’s thumb snapped the cover of his watch shut. “You’ve just made a public spectacle of yourself. All we can hope is that Freya holds her tongue and doesn’t target us with any unpleasant repercussions. In the meantime, I would advise you to keep a low profile forthwith.”

  Ophelia pushed her glasses back up her nose. From the way Thorn had been carrying out his questioning, she’d thought him very detached. She’d been wrong: this incident had deeply angered him. “It’s your fault,” she murmured. “You’re not preparing me adequately for this world by keeping me in ignorance.”

  She saw Thorn’s fingers tighten around his watch. Berenilde’s return to the room distracted his attention. “Well?” she asked, gently.

  “We’re going to have to change our strategy,” Thorn announc­ed, crossing his arms behind his back.

  Berenilde shook her little blond curls as she gave a small smile of derision. She was neither dressed nor made-up, and yet she was more beautiful than ever. “To whom could your sister tell what she saw? She’s fallen out with the whole of the Citaceleste.”

  “Let’s say someone else knows and the rumor spreads. If it’s known that my fiancée is here, we won’t be left in peace.” Thorn turned to Ophelia. Though she couldn’t meet his eyes, she could almost feel the steely look on her skin. “And it’s mainly this foolish girl that we’ve got to watch out for.”

  “What do you suggest, then?”

  We must redouble our vigilance and knock a bit of sense into her. You and me both, in turn.”

  Berenilde’s smile became twisted. “If we’re not seen very often, up there, it will arouse curiosity, don’t you think?”

  “Not if there’s a good reason for it,” retorted Thorn. “I fear, dear aunt, that you may suffer a few complications. As for me, what could be more normal than that I should make myself available to you?”

  Berenilde instinctively placed her hand on her stomach. Suddenly, Ophelia put into words all that had continually struck her since her arrival here. Those loose clothes, those bouts of tiredness, that languor . . .

  The widow Berenilde was expecting a baby. “It’s he who should be looking after me,” she whispered in a flat voice. “I don’t want to be away from the court. He truly loves me, you understand?”

  Thorn looked contemptuous. Evidently, these emotional outbursts exasperated him. “Farouk has stopped being interested in you, as you well know.”

  Ophelia was flabbergasted. The spirit of the family? This woman was pregnant by her own ancestor?

  Berenilde had turned whiter than the silk of her dressing gown. She had to force herself to recompose, feature by feature, a serene face. “Fine,” she acquiesced. “You’re right, dear boy, as always.”

  Above her smile, the look she gave Ophelia was poisonous.

  The Claws

  From that day onwards, Ophelia’s existence became more restricted than ever. Going on solitary walks or into any rooms in the manor with large mirrors was forbidden to her. The cheval mirror in her room was removed. Until they felt able to withdraw from the demands of the court without arousing suspicion, Thorn and Berenilde had placed her under constant surveillance. Ophelia slept with a lady’s maid beside her bed; couldn’t walk a step without a servant following close behind; and could hear the grandmother’s wheezy cough even behind the door of the lavatory. And it didn’t help that, since Freya’s two slaps, she’d had her neck stuck in a brace.

  Ophelia put up with all these constraints, regardless. Thorn had advised her to keep a low profile and her instinct whispered that he was right, at least for now. What she dreaded most was still to come: the return of master and mistress to the manor. She sensed that that was when her real punishment for breaking the rules would begin. “Knock a bit of sense into her,” Thorn had said. What had he meant by that?

  One afternoon in January, Berenilde feigned a malaise while watching a fashionable play. Before she’d even returned home, all the Citaceleste’s newspapers were already spreading alarmist rumors. Favorite’s Pregnancy Ordeal was the headline in one of them. Miscarriage Again for the Widow! another cynically proclaimed.

  “Do put aside all that nonsense, my sweet child,” advised Berenild
e when she found Ophelia engrossed in a newspaper, in the boudoir. She stretched out voluptuously on an oval ottoman and requested a chamomile tea. “In fact, bring me the book on the table, over there. Thanks to you, I’ll have plenty of time to read from now on!”

  Berenilde had highlighted these words with a serene smile that sent shivers down Ophelia’s spine. The atmosphere suddenly darkened. Outside, the weather vanes on the roofs went crazy as a storm-whipped wind was rising. In the boudoir, a drop of water fell silently on a window, and, just seconds later, a dense curtain of rain was pounding the gardens. Stiff in her neck brace, Ophelia positioned herself at a window. It felt strange to her to see so much rain falling without it making the slightest noise or any puddles on the ground. This illusion really did leave a lot to be desired.

  “What gloomy weather, by Jove!” sighed Berenilde, turning the pages of her book. “I can barely see to read.” She settled more comfortably on her ottoman and delicately massaged her eyelids.

  “Does madam require that we light the lamps?” asked a servant who was stoking the fire in the stove.

  “No, don’t waste the gas. Well, I suppose I’m not a young thing anymore! I envy you your age, my dear girl.”

  “Doesn’t stop me from having to wear glasses,” muttered Ophelia.

  “Might you lend me your sight?” asked Berenilde, holding the book out to her. “You’re an eminent reader, after all!” Her tone had become more sensual, as though she were indulging in some strange game of seduction with Ophelia.

  “I am not that sort of reader, madam.”

  “Well, you are now!”

  Ophelia took a seat and tucked her hair behind her ears. Unable to bend her neck, she had to hold the book up. She glanced at the cover: The Morals of the Tower, by the Marquis Adalbert. The Tower? Shouldn’t it have been “the Court?”

  “It’s some maxims and portraits by a moralist who’s very famous up there,” Berenilde explained. “Every person of noble birth has to have read it at least once!”

  “This ‘tower,’ what is it? A metaphor?”

  “Not in the slightest, my dear girl; Lord Farouk’s tower is very real. It overlooks the Citaceleste—you can’t have missed it. It’s up there that the great and good of this world come to visit our Lord; that the ministers hold meetings; that the most famous artistes give their performances; that the best illusions are created! Anyhow, what about that reading?”

  Ophelia opened the book and randomly read a “maxim,” on the conflicts between passion and duty.

  “Forgive me, but I can’t understand you very well,” Berenilde interrupted. “Could you speak louder and with a less strong accent?”

  Right then, Ophelia knew exactly what form her punishment would take. A familiar tingling was turning into a terrible headache, exactly as had occurred with Thorn’s sister. From the cushions of her ottoman, with a smile on her lips, Berenilde was using her invisible power to thrash her.

  Ophelia raised her voice, but the pain between her temples increased and Berenilde interrupted her again: “Like that, it’s never going to work! How can I derive any pleasure from listening to you if you’re forever muttering into your hair?”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Rosaline intervened. “Ophelia’s elocution has always been a disaster.”

  Seated in an armchair, the aunt was examining, with a magnifying glass, the pages of an old encyclopedia she’d plucked from a bookcase. She wasn’t reading; she was just focusing on the quality of the paper. From time to time, she slid her finger over an imperfection, a tear or a damp patch; the paper was as good as new once she’d done so. Aunt Rosaline was so bored at the manor that she was repairing any books she fell upon. With a twinge of sorrow, Ophelia had even caught her repairing the wallpaper in the laundry. Basically, her aunt was like her: she couldn’t bear idleness.

  “I think it would be good for your niece to learn how to express herself in society,” declared Berenilde. “Come along, dear girl, make an effort and push a little on those vocal cords!”

  Ophelia tried to continue reading, but her vision was blurring. She felt as though spikes were piercing her skull. Reclining on her ottoman, Berenilde was observing her from the corner of her eye, with that silken smile that never left her. She knew that she was responsible for Ophelia’s suffering, and she knew that Ophelia knew it, too.

  She wants to see me crack, Ophelia deduced, tightening her grip on the book, she wants me to beg her out loud to stop.

  She did no such thing. Aunt Rosaline, focused on her encyclopedia, was unaware of the punishment that was being silently inflicted. If Ophelia weakened, if she revealed her pain, her aunt could do something stupid and be punished herself.

  “Louder!” ordered Berenilde.

  Ophelia was now seeing double. She was completely losing the thread of what she was reading.

  “If you muddle the sense of the words, you’re going to reduce this gem of spirituality into potato peelings,” lamented Berenilde. “And that dreadful accent, do make an effort!”

  Ophelia closed the book. “Forgive me, madam. I think it would be preferable to light the lamp so you can continue reading yourself.”

  Berenilde’s smile spread even further. Ophelia thought how like a rose this woman was. Beneath the velvet, cruel thorns were hiding. “That, my dear girl, is not the problem. One day, when you are married to my nephew and your position will be more established, you will have to make your entrance at court. There’s no place up there for the feebleminded.”

  “My niece is not feebleminded,” Aunt Rosaline declared, sharply.

  Ophelia, on the verge of nausea, was only half-listening to them. The dull ache that had expanded inside her head had now turned into shooting pains down the back of her neck.

  A servant appeared in the doorway at just the right time and lowered a silver salver to Berenilde. On it lay a little envelope.

  “That dear Columbine is coming,” announced Berenilde, once she’d unsealed the flap. “This is but the start of the visiting—my malaise didn’t go unnoticed and a miscarriage would delight more than one of them!” Berenilde rose languidly from her divan and restored a little volume to her golden curls. “Madam Rosaline, my little Ophelia, I’m going to get myself ready. My convalescence must be believable, I need the appropriate makeup. A servant will shortly take you back to your rooms; you will not leave them as long as I’m receiving visitors.”

  Ophelia breathed a sigh of relief. The diversion had brought an end to her ordeal. She could see clearly again and the headache had gone. She really could have thought that she’d imagined what she’d just lived through if it weren’t for the nausea still affecting her stomach.

  Berenilde turned her luminous smile on her and stroked her cheek with a disconcerting tenderness. Ophelia felt a shiver running along her neck, just under her brace. “Do me a favor, my sweet girl. Put your free time to good use by working on your diction.”

  “Holy curler, she doesn’t mince her words!” exclaimed Aunt Rosaline once Berenilde had left the boudoir. “That woman is harder than she at first seems. Is it carrying the child of a family spirit that’s gone to her head like this?”

  Ophelia thought it best to keep her true thoughts to herself. Her godmother closed the encyclopedia, put down her magnifying glass, and took some hairpins out of a pocket in her dress. “But she’s not entirely wrong,” she continued, lifting up Ophelia’s brown curls. “You’re destined to become a society lady, so you must take care of your appearance.”

  Ophelia let Rosaline create a chignon. She was definitely pulling too hard on her hair, but this simple ritual, a touch maternal, gradually soothed her.

  “I’m not hurting you too much?”

  “No, no,” Ophelia lied, in a small voice.

  “With this braced neck, it’s not easy, doing your hair!”

  “I’ll soon be able to take it off.”
Ophelia felt a lump rising in her throat while her aunt cursed the knots in her hair. She knew it was very selfish, but she found the thought that one day this woman would leave unbearable. Curt and harsh she might be, but she was the only person preventing her from freezing up inside since their arrival. “Aunt?”

  “Mmmm?” murmured Rosaline, a hairpin stuck between her horsey teeth.

  “Home . . . you’re not missing it too much?”

  Aunt Rosaline gave her an astonished look and stuck the final pin into her chignon. Taking Ophelia by surprise, she held her in her arms and rubbed her back. “And it’s you who’s asking me that?”

  It lasted but the length of a breath. Aunt Rosaline stepped back, regained her stern look, and scolded Ophelia: “You’re not giving in now, for goodness sake! Buck up! Just show these toffs what you’re made of!”

  Ophelia felt her heart beating harder under her ribs. She didn’t really know the cause, but a smile rose to her lips. “Will do.”

  The rain fell all day, as it did the following day, and for the rest of the week. Berenilde was forever receiving visitors at the manor, confining Ophelia and Aunt Rosaline to their apartments. Their meals were brought up, but no one thought of giving them something to read or to occupy them. The hours seemed endless to Ophelia; she wondered how many more days this procession of aristocrats would go on for.

  When they all ate supper together, late in the evening, Ophelia had to endure Berenilde’s barbs. Charming and gracious for the first half of the meal, she reserved her poisoned arrows for dessert. “How clumsy that girl is!” she’d lament when Ophelia spilt sponge pudding on the tablecloth. “You’re so deadly dull!” she’d sigh as soon as a silence lengthened. “When are you finally going to burn that monstrosity?” she’d hiss, pointing her finger at Ophelia’s scarf. She’d make her repeat every sentence she uttered, mock her accent, criticize her manners, humiliate her with exceptional skill. And if she thought Ophelia wasn’t making enough effort to improve herself, she’d inflict atrocious headaches on her until the end of the meal.