“She impressed me with her kindness toward you. It was impossible not to notice her gentle touch while you slept. She cares for you.”
Gentle touch? I caught myself leaning toward him to hear more, but straightening, I let the anger return with a roil. “It doesn’t change what she did. No apology could ever repair the injury she’s done.”
The physician watched me with thoughtful eyes. “My young friend, in my work as a physician, I’ve seen what hatred does to people’s minds, to people’s bodies. It festers inside like an infection, killing every happy thought and feeling until there is no joy in life, only raw anger. I see that anger growing in you. Only the tonic of forgiveness can stop its spread.”
I shook my head. This man couldn’t understand how badly the countess had wronged me. He might assume she’d broken my heart, but if he knew what she’d done to my mother—what she was still doing, playing the pretender for all these men—he would never ask me to forgive her.
The physician pushed himself from the table and took my shoulders in his hands. “Some men are born noble. Others must create nobility in themselves. Never does a man exhibit truer nobility than when he forgives the undeserving.”
I nodded to appease him, then shrugged out of his grip and hobbled from the room.
***
Over the next fortnight I followed the physician’s orders, keeping off my feet as much as meals and trips to the latrine allowed. The time spent was miserable. My inactive body allowed my mind to race like the waters of a river leading nowhere. I couldn’t forget the physician’s words about forgiveness. Or his cryptic comment about me being blind to the countess’s suffering. What suffering? I’d never seen her smile so much since coming to Brussels.
Though in truth, the smiles never quite reached her eyes.
But this was what she was born for, what all noblewomen were born for. To marry themselves off to the richest, most titled man that would have them so they could bring honor and gain to their families. It was little different than breeding dogs for better speed or strength. No wonder the countess hadn’t been eager to come here. She’d said she hoped to find a man to love, and she resented being tasked to marry only for advantage. Maybe she was as much a victim as I, both of us caught in the tangled web of the count and his schemes. Were her smiles nothing more than a mask to conceal her misery?
Seeing things from that light made me more than pity her.
It made me want to protect her.
But she would never stand for it, would she? Hadn’t she rejected me as much as I’d rejected her that night in the rain, her wet locks clinging to her face and her eyes pooling as she’d gripped Mother’s letter?“I must go to Brussels, now more than ever.”
She’d as good as said the twisted history between us made her anxious to be away from me.
Yet the odd little physician claimed Margaretha had displayed unconcealed affection toward me. Had I misunderstood everything about her from the beginning?
And why did that thought, the hope of her continued affections, lift my spirits? What kind of morbid man would harbor hopes for the woman who’d killed his mother?
Even if I truly forgave her, it wouldn’t solve anything between us. There were too many obstacles to consider, none of which could be overcome by a simple “I forgive you.” It was easier to dislike her. It hurt less than admitting I still cared for a woman so impossibly beyond my reach that it was almost ridiculous to imagine.
Almost.
Except for those nights when my thoughts floated to her, wherever she was in the palace, and I let the day’s controlled, tightly contained thoughts out of their glass jar to float where they may. And oh, how they soared!
I dreamed of how different life would be if my mother hadn’t been cast off. If she’d never met that blacksmith and I’d been born a noble. Would Margaretha and I have been friends on equal terms? Would she have married me if I’d asked?
I remembered our days in Wildungen in the cool, lush forests and her bright smile. Not the simpering, sultry smile she gave to these men in the palace, but her true smile. Warm and open and reserved just for me. And when I recalled that smile, I thought of her lips, deep red and soft under mine...
My thoughts, exhausted by their flight, would eventually settle down into their glass jar, where I’d tamp a tight cork over them. In the end I was always left with a pain that ached through my bones like I’d been put to the rack, and I would promise myself not to think of her again, only to repeat the sweet torture the very next night.
On the eve of the masque, I ran the gauntlet of my feelings again. Though I’d learned the servants were invited, I tried my best to stay away from the great hall but found myself wandering into the room just as the play was drawing to a close. Men in masks tripped over each other to reach a trunk of false gold as they performed for the royals on the dais and the servants sitting against the walls. I spotted Ilsa among the servants and slowly made my way to her, while searching the nobility for Margaretha. If I was going to be at the masque, I ought to use the opportunity to thank her for helping after the boar’s attack. It was basic civility.
Ilsa caught my hand from her place on the floor and pulled me down beside her, almost toppling me over.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t make it,” she whispered. “When the masque is done, the actors and court will dance together. Have you recovered enough from your hobblin’ that I dare risk my toes for a dance with you?”
“I wouldn’t dream of stepping on your slippers,” I answered. “Spare your toes and your dance for someone more skilled.”
I returned my attention to searching for Margaretha until Ilsa answered, “I’d spare my whole evening for you if you asked, bruised toes and all.”
Pity pulled my gaze down to her. I knew the pain of disappointment and would never want to inflict it on anyone, but it was kinder to help Ilsa see the truth of my feelings. “Really, Ilsa, I have no interest in dancing.”
Her beguiling little smile turned to a pout. “Why attend at all if you’ve no intention—”
The crowd burst into applause, drowning her words. With the play now done, costumed men ran around the hall, hovering their hands over their eyes in the exaggerated pose of looking for something. One actor pulled a chambermaid up from the floor, leading her to the open center of the room as music started playing. A second actor collected Queen Mary’s dwarf, and a third collected the queen’s favored lady-in-waiting. I wondered how the lady would feel about dancing in the same circle as the servants, but no one acted surprised by the mix of classes, as if the spectacle of the masque dissolved all social barriers.
