Arthur Wilburn’s face was
steely and belligerent both by choice and a peculiar twist of fate. The
physical traits of his lineage had been mirrored almost to perfection from
father to son for the past five generations. It was precisely his perceived
rebellion and almost palpable strength that drew women to him like crazed moths
to a scorching flame. Yet nothing drove them madder than his thirty years old
unwavering loyalty to just one of them: his wife Madeline.
The men were as usual, of
the opinion that women were a weak, sentimental and hopeless, brainless bunch.
They were unanimously wondering how on Earth an insensitive, insolent and proud
beast such as Arthur Wilburn had been able to fall so deeply in love with such
a gracious French woman. She had been only nineteen at the time he’d met her in
Paris. But it was more of a puzzle in the minds of these bitter ones how the
sweet, poetic beauty could have ever harbored any feelings for him in return.
Obvious enough, the only
one person who held the answer to the latter was Madeline Wilburn. A month
spent at Arthur’s side thirty years ago in La Ville-Lumière had more
than convinced her that he was an arrogant, loud-mouthed ox. A vain one too, at
age twenty four. Yet it was enough to dig a little deeper to find a warm and
tender Arthur with a vulnerable soul hiding from life’s blows underneath his
pugnacious exterior. Too bad he had taken a few too many by the time they had
met and was stubbornly refusing to give up the game of pretenses.
It took Madeline twenty
years to learn that women are not destined to reform men. It took her another
ten to get used to the bitter aftertaste of the realization. She still loved
her husband with a lover’s passion, a friend’s fondness and a somehow motherly
affection. But her heart had hardened along with Arthur’s face just as his soul
slowly began to turn rigid and unyielding after the loss of their only child
almost eighteen years ago.
At forty nine, Madeline
didn’t show her age, but her smile bore no responsive warmth and her
honey-colored eyes had long lost their glow that had crowned her as the most
beautiful woman in the society since her arrival in the Empire City in
1981. She was now an untouchable beauty whose dispassionate gaze sent icy
shivers down people’s spines and drew a long trail of whispers behind her. Some
compassionate, some reverent, but most of them bursting with boiling curiosity:
was it her husband who’d turned her into cold stone, or her daughter’s
kidnapping? Rumors that Madeline faced with dignified stoicism beneath which
bled a broken heart. Too bad tonight was another endless party night when
she’ll have to front again pitiful stares from married women, sympathetic
handshakes from their males, and inviting nods from old matrons who never
failed to skillfully allude to her marriage just as they were diligently
forecasting the weather.
Madeline sighed inwardly
and started twisting her dark mahogany hair into an elaborate bun, absently
pinning it. Maybe Elisabeth would have had dark mahogany hair too if she had
survived. Maybe she did. Elisabeth… The name had ultimately been Arthur’s
choice after a seven months long fiery debate.
“It is going to be a girl,
Madeline,” Arthur had said the moment the pregnancy was announced. “We will
call her Elisabeth.”
Madeline had looked at him
with shock. Half because she had expected a different reaction from a man who
had just found out he was going to be a father, but also bewildered by the
choice of the name.
“Elisabeth sounds nothing like a baby, dear.
It is awfully biblical. It means ‘God's promise,’ ‘Oath of God,’ ‘I am God’s
daughter.’ You cannot possibly think of your child as a nun. It is pathetic,”
she had said, her voice softly blurred by her French accent.
“It’s not biblical, it’s
royal.” He had dismissed her argument with a wave of his hand.
Everything in Arthur’s life
had to have majesty, she had thought. From the way he behaved with those who
surrounded him, from family and friends down to his servants, to the opulence
of the parties he hosted, and the pompousness of his tenure when he dealt with
his business partners. Even the condo he’d chosen as his residence in his
apartment building in Manhattan's Upper Side was obscenely snobbish with its
entirely French Louis XV style interior decoration. The condo was a modern
building redecorated on the inside to borrow a classic, provocatively towering
look. But that was Arthur, a pompous warm-at-heart who defied life’s blows by
imprinting his belligerence in everything that belonged to him. And now it was
his baby’s turn to be branded.
“I am not giving birth to a
princess, Arthur.” Madeline had rolled her eyes with visible frustration,
knowing too well she was fighting an already lost battle.
“Oh, yes, you are.” He had
stubbornly crossed his arms over his chest and they stayed that way for another
seven months until the name ‘Elisabeth Wilburn’ was elegantly printed
with winding letters on a commemorative birth certificate. Not only had Arthur
been right as to the sex of the baby, but a princess she was with her little
face and minuscule hands poking out of silky white, porcelain doll clothes
embroidered with the initials EW.
So was she dressed the day of her kidnapping. In white.
Madeline finished sticking
the pins in her bun and sprayed a hint of Poison behind her ears. It was
almost six o’clock, and the table was being set for an early dinner. She was
supposed to be downstairs supervising the butlers, not frozen in front of the
mirror picking a forbidden lock she had sworn a million times not to tamper
with anymore. Arthur’s heart would silently contract with pain if he knew what
a cheat she was, breaking the promise not to obsessively push into her mind the
same nightmare again and again, almost eighteen years on. Turning from this
memory she left the room and descended the stairs with small, quiet steps,
running the tips of her fingers over the lacquer of the balustrade.
The heavy velvet curtains
had been already pulled closed in the dining room, although the sun was still
up in the sky. The chandeliers were gleaming on the high ceiling, their soft
radiance delicately mirrored on the silver cutlery.
Arthur’s face lit up at the
sight of his wife. His features always softened in her presence, his heart too.
She still melted him.
“You’re late,” he announced
to her. He courteously helped her sit down, pushing the chair beneath her as
she took her place at the far end of the table. His gaze quickly swept her.
She could see the unspoken
discontent that briefly flashed across his face before he regained his
composure.
Of course Arthur was
unhappy. She was once more wearing black for tonight’s party. This was a battle
that Madeline had won. There had been a few throughout their marriage. Black
represented Madeline’s removal from their society. Her rebellion against the
shallow rumormongers and their vitriol, but also against him for continuing to
make her go.
“It is not even six, dear.”
Madeline glanced at the hands of the Grandfather clock.
Arthur stood stiff with
impatience in front of his chair.
“I don’t even understand
why we have to dine at home when we are going to a party.” He forced himself to
keep his voice down. “There will be plenty of food there. If we don’t leave
right now we will be late, and the Devins will take it as a slap in their
faces, you know them. They will think that we only went there out of
perfunctory duty.” He finally sat down.
“Well, they would be right
as far as I am concerned, dear.” Madeline heaved a sigh in irritation at the
world he wanted to inhabit and drag her along to.
Feeding before they went
avoided the long tables where a decadent cornucopia of meals was arranged for
the guests to take their pick. Those were the worst possible place to linger at
a party. A whole herd of curious guests would without doubt corner her,
sneaking skillful questions in between mouthfuls of food.
The sadness in her voice
made Arthur jerk his stare to her face just as he was occupying himself with
placing a napkin on his lap. He sighed.
“I think it’s time to stop
pretending, Madeline,” he said, his voice now charged with tension and tenderness
all at once. “Stop protecting my feelings, and let’s talk about it. You just
can’t let go, that’s what it is. It’s not the fact that they gossip about the
happiness of our marriage, or that they ask you personal questions about me.”
Madeline’s heart skipped a
beat. She knew what was coming. “It is not what you think, Arthur,” she started
feebly, averting her gaze.
“It’s not?” He stared at
her and it nailed her soul, even though she wasn’t looking directly at him. “Can
you tell me that every time you stand in front of the mirror you are not asking
yourself if she would look like you?”
His words made her blink
back tears, but she stood her ground, her back ramrod straight. He wasn’t being
cruel, she knew that. It had taken her a long time to realize that his hurt ran
as deep as hers, perhaps even more, because he bore her burden on his shoulders
on top of his.
“Time is not a good healer,
isn’t it?” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
He forced a sad smile past
his lips, desperate to quell her distress.
“This is because you never speak about your
grief, Madeline. You just hide it, trying to protect me. I think that we are in
bad need to talk about it and…”
His words died at the sound
of the butler’s voice exploding with profound indignation across the walls. The
old servant burst into the dining room behind a short, fat man, holding his
chin up and his back straight with impeccable dignity as it was fit for a man
of his station.
“Mr. Rockwood, you are not
permitted to walk in these premises, unless and until I announce your arrival
and the Master allows you to enter,” the butler huffed at the unexpected guest.
Madeline’s grief receded in
a corner for a moment. William had been their butler for seventeen years. He considered
himself part of the family by now, taking more often than not the liberty to
make rules of his own and terrorize guests and servants alike as he pleased.
This was not the first time when a guest got rewarded with bluster for being a
nuisance or for breaching the house rules.
The sound of George
Rockwood’s steps crashing against the marble floor ceased abruptly and the
rumble of his heavy breathing filled the room. The investigator clasped his
chest with fingers whitened at the knuckles while the other hand jerked
outwards in a silent prayer to his hosts to wait a little.
A tinge of alarm tickled
Madeline at the back of her mind. She stood up and rushed to grab a glass of
water then approached her guest with slow, reluctant steps. “It is all right,
Mr. Rockwood, take your time,” she said.
George Rockwood stared at
her with wild, desperate eyes then his gaze roved over her husband’s face. “Mr.
Wilburn,” he managed to utter. “Mr. Wilburn,” he repeated in a harsh gurgle, “I
have news for you, sir, Madam… We found Miss Elisabeth!”
~~~~~
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