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Chapter 12
“Darling. You’re the toast of the town.”
This announcement came several mornings after the ball. Marta sat half-upright at the breakfast table, while Laura tore through a seeming pound of breakfast beans. Marta had struggled to sleep the evening before and had both palms stretched flat against her cheek. Aunt Margaret’s announcement regarding “toast” dripped through her. What on earth did it mean?
Laura was the first to ask. She swallowed down a massive gulp of beans and tapped her lips with a napkin. “The toast?”
“Oh, of course. I’ve forgotten yet again that you don’t understand a word of English,” Aunt Margaret returned, her cheeks blotching.
“She’s got rather good in just a few days,” Marta insisted. “You really must give her more credit.”
Aunt Margaret seemed disinterested in such a task. She cleared her throat once more and said, “Regardless, darling, it seems that you’ve made quite an impression across the county. This morning, you received countless invitations to some of the greatest parties of the season. Everyone feels as though their party is nothing without your appearance.”
This had been the sort of reaction Marta had enjoyed when she’d first entered the season in Austria: the belle of the ball, the favourite, the girl-near-woman who brought life and vitality to every glittering scene. For this reason, this announcement filled her with an impossible level of fatigue. She sniffed and drudged up a smile.
“That’s marvellous, Aunt Margaret. Really,” she said. Doubt simmered in her voice.
“I can tell how excited you truly are,” Ewan said.
She shot him a dark look in return, her blonde brows furrowed. Ewan gave a half-shrug and dipped his spoon back into his beans. Aunt Margaret piled up several opened invitations across the breakfast table. With each of the letters she flashed before her, Marta felt stones grow in her stomach. Each seemed like a call to death.
“Oh! And I nearly forgot. You’ve received a letter from your dear mother,” Aunt Margaret said. She lifted this final one to the air and fluttered it.
“I see that you’ve allowed Marta to open this letter on her own,” Ewan said, his voice sizzling with sarcasm. “How terribly kind of you.”
In truth, Marta assumed she hadn’t opened it due to her excitement for the other letters. Now, Marta hurriedly tore up to grip the letter, seconds before she assumed her aunt would open it herself. Her eyes connected with Laura’s, as she spoke in German, “Goodness. It’s a bit like prison around here, isn’t it?”
Laura, whose mouth remained glued shut with beans, only nodded. The second she swallowed back, she blurted, “Perhaps you can take it to your room?”
“You girls with your secret language,” Aunt Margaret said. She let her shoulders slump forward, as though this, beyond anything else, had defeated her. She then grumbled something about ungratefulness amid such beauty and spun back towards the hallway, seemingly disinterested in her own breakfast.
Marta couldn’t care. Not immediately—for within her hands was the first word from her homeland she’d had since her arrival. She hurried towards the staircase and hustled up towards her bedroom. When she reached it, she kicked the door closed and fell upon the top of the mattress and held the letter out before her. Her mother’s perfect, tidy, and oddly artistic handwriting stretched across the white. She could fully imagine it: her mother seated at her desk on the first floor, view of the mountains stretched out before her. She’d always been a dutiful correspondent to her homeland of England. Now, with her daughter cast out to England, she seemed willing to keep this up.
Darling Marta,
I hope this letter finds you well. Throughout the past weeks, I have struggled with our decision to send you to England. The house has felt dreadfully empty and echo-y. Recently, I called out for none other than Laura, as she is terribly good at the sort of stitch I’ve struggled with recently on a new garment, then remembered that she’d taken off across the continent with you. Our dogs seem to miss you all the more, as they spent a good deal of the past week howling at the moon. Your father seems inconsolable, although he busies himself with his friendships and his beer—such is the Austrian way.
I know that by the time this letter has reached you, you will have surely fallen into some sort of societal scene in England. This is your way. I’ve always known you to be entirely sociable, the sort of girl—nay, woman—who the rest of the world is drawn to. As you sat in your bedroom throughout those weeks after the incident here in Austria, I knew that you required a fresh start—an opportunity to remember how the world truly saw you.
I know that in some very precise and surely honest ways, you hate me for what I’ve done to you. You’re an Austrian girl, and it’s a fact I’ve always regretted about you. I so love my home country—and I abandoned it for the love, or whatever it was at the time, of your father. I regret that it’s very difficult to imagine what it’s like to be a young woman again. The memories fall away from you, year by year. Perhaps I’ve become too jaded to truly understand your mind and your heart.
I pray that you’ll remain on in England as long as you find it necessary to heal your broken heart. I wanted only to send this letter as a reminder of my deep and incessant love for you. Nothing could dismiss that. Not even the inner cruelty and darkness of my own heart, a circumstance that I pray will never happen to you. But how could it? You’re the kindest and most vibrant woman I know. It seems outside the bounds of any sort of reason that I was the woman who gave birth to you.
I hope also that my dear sister hasn’t put you through too much stress. Aunt Margaret means well, although I must admit, what she’s done can frequently be seen through the lens of her own self-betterment. That said, even if you do perceive this, I hope you’ll have a fine time laughing about it. There’s really nothing else to do.
Love,
Mother
The letter had been far outside the bounds of Marta’s expectations. She and her mother had never spoken so frankly. As she’d read through the various portions of the letter that discussed those lacklustre final weeks in Austria, Marta’s stomach had clenched with sadness. She hated imagining herself in her mother’s eyes as a crumpled-up child, the single result of a gone-wrong courtship. “A love triangle! Can you imagine anything more humiliating,” had been the words of one of her once-dear friends in Austria.
Humiliating, yes. For herself, and Mother and Father, as well.
Her mother was correct. At least in England, her reputation seemed sterling. She was an exciting fresh face, a force of nature in an otherwise clear-cut society. She folded her mother’s letter and returned it to the envelope, her heart lurching about in her throat. She felt a new sort of resolve.
**
That afternoon, Marta took tea with Ewan and Tatiana in the garden. Aunt Margaret was otherwise occupied.
