Chapter Text
“Did you know Aunt Monica has a Boston Marriage?”
She looks up from her book though she is not reading it or seeing it. On the table is a tray of food she has not touched and next to it are the ripped up pages that her mother sends to her describing the decisions she is making for her wedding. Gladys doesn’t read them she just rips them and puts them next to the tray of food. She eats a couple of mouthfuls of bread she hoards under the pillow and sips water and doesn’t touch anything else. Adelheid shoots her a forlorn kind of look when she sees the fully tray and takes it away and Gladys turns to her brother.
“Oh do come in”
Larry pouts but says nothing and then sits down on the bed. “She’s coming by the way?”
“Satan?”
“No Aunt Monica.” Larry says with a grin. “I invited her”
“You invited her?” she says slowly. “To my wedding?”
“Oh please your more interested in that book than you are this wedding, but I thought that I would invite Aunt Monica and Aunt Emily with her and as it turns out mother got wind but by then the invitation had gone out and—”
Now Gladys can see what her brother is finding so funny. Since the move from Pennsylvania for New York about five years ago her mother has been firm in the belief that her sister does not exist. She does not speak about her, has not invited her and does not invite conversation with her family. Even when Aunt Monica sends presents to them her mother looks at them with a scoff and an eyeroll as if she can see who they’ve come from and nine times out of ten she will find a way to get rid of them. Gladys always thought it was sad that her mother was ashamed of her family but then the Duke of Buckingham crashed into their lives and she now finds that she understands exactly what it is to be ashamed of your family.
“Take it she’s happy”
“Not really. But then again we don’t care about that do we?”
“Whose we?” she asks scathingly. “I don’t remember you coming to my defence when this whole thing started. You just looked between father and the Duke and then sat down”
He shoots her a long look. “Don’t” he says flatly. “Don’t act like I haven’t tried sister because I have its just…talking to her is like talking to a stone and right now he’s buried himself in his office and doesn’t come out. Personally I don’t know why he’s here, he doesn’t want anything to do with the wedding—”
“So father and I have something in common then” she says drolly and Larry flashes her a smile. Gladys shuts her book.
“You know she is never going to be alright with Marian Brook no matter how much you push it”
“I don’t really care, it’s different for me I suppose.”
“Yes you’re a man”
Larry nods. He admits it then, that he will get the great love story and the happy ending and the nice house and the rest of it because he is a man, she gets the Duke of bloody Buckingham and his sister who according to both Adelheid and Jenny is the rudest woman they have ever had the most unfortunate pleasure to wait on.
Which when you think about it does say quiet a bit does it not?
Gladys puts down her book.
“What is this about a Boston Marriage?”
“Do you remember Aunt Em?”
“Vaguely. She has a son I think, couple of years older than you and she’s Aunt Monica’s lodger. We called her Aunt Em because…I don’t know because we were small?”
“Well she encouraged it, and she is a hell of a lot more than Aunt Monica’s lodger. You know how our Aunt has never been married but has a lot of dogs?”
“Yes”
“And Aunt Em”
“Yes…”
But then she follows his logic. Despite her mother’s desire to keep her buried in girlhood until she can lie on her back and spread her legs to the richest man in the world Gladys does know about somethings. She knows about Oscar Van Rhijn, she knows about John Adams and she knows about that kind of love and to be honest as long as everyone is happy and consents what does she care? To be honest being the wife of a man in love with a man would be bliss right now compared to what she is going to marry.
But she follows Larry’s thought process and—
“Oh”
“Yes”
“And you invited them?”
“Yes, of course only Aunt Monica is coming, Aunt Em apparently has bad lungs and cannot stand the smoke of the city—”
“Don’t they live in—"
“Don’t I had this conversation downstairs but the point is that Aunt Monica is coming and she is bringing Aunt Em’s son and mother is not happy”
“Why?”
“You know why”
“Well I don’t see why not?” Gladys says turning back to her book. “Unless she is afraid Aunt Monica is going to say something and if you have managed thirty years with a lady lover or whatever the technical term is then you are going to keep your mouth shut surely? I hear discretion is paramount in cases such as these”
Larry snorts as the door opens and their mother comes in. Larry laughs out loud and flops back on the bed and Gladys picks up her book again. Her mother looks around the room as if trying to gather her thoughts and it is clear that she is not happy.
“Your Aunt has set off for New York, she will be here presently” she says in that clipped tone. Gladys smirks.
“Good” Larry says into the silence.
“She will feel thoughally out of place by it all no doubt—”
“I think Aunt Monica can be the judge of her own feelings” Larry says simply. “You can’t control how other people feel”
Gladys laughs and both sets of eyes turn onto her.
“Yet” she says letting the word drawl. Her mother sighs.
“I wish you would eat something” she says and her tone takes on a beguiling kind of lit that Gladys thinks once upon a time she might have mistook as care. Or maybe it is care, she doesn’t know, she looks at her mother and she thinks she is a stranger. She thinks that should bother her but to be honest she is so apathetic that she doesn’t have it in her to feel anything anymore. All the joy, all the love, all the hate, all the fear, all of it has been stripped away by these events.
She takes her mother’s hand off her own and puts it on the chair so that they are no longer touching.
“And I wish you would listen to me when I say I don’t want this” she says gently. “But I think in this life we are destined to be disappointed in the other”
Larry winces at the look on her mother’s face and would this be anything other than the life that Gladys did not want being thrust upon her she thinks she would feel sorry for her but she just…can’t. Maybe history will judge her harshly for this but even if the Duke turned out to be the best husband in the world it would still not change how she feels now about the woman sat in front of her.
Her mother snatches her hand back as if burnt. She looks across Gladys face and then—
“Why must you hurt me like this?”
“Why must you push your dreams on me”
“I don’t want to push—”
Larry laughs from where he is still prone on the bed and Gladys sighs.
“I don’t want to do this now”
“You must come down eventually”
“Or what? Your dress me by force, hold me down and then drag me to the church in chains? Pull my hair like a child until I say yes?”
Her mother swallows and then—
“Will you come down and see your Aunt when she arrives?”
“She can come and see me if she wants to”
Her mother looks away and then back and then—
“It doesn’t have to be like this” she says and there is a hint of pleading in her voice. “It’s your wedding my dear it should be fun, we should be making these decisions together—”
“Why? Every decision I would make would be wrong and I would what? Thank you for guiding me? I am not going to do that, you can get your Duchess mother but you will lose your daughter and I am not the one who has to explain that to my husband at the end of the day when no invitations to the castle come through the door”
It’s as close as she can get to explaining to her mother her revenge if she goes through with this and keeping her voice calm (and she knows she will more than likely have to do this now) but she has been thinking on how best to get her mother back. As petty as it sounds she thinks the best thing is just to just snip her away. She will keep in contact with Larry of course and her father for financial reasons but she will not correspond with her mother, she will not see her, she will not invite her to the house in England, she will not meet her grandchildren, she might not even have children, she will have a Duchess and no daughter. Gladys will not appear at balls or come to New York and call upon her, she means this, she is putting her foot down and she means it, she is not going to reward her mother’s overwhelming ambition by feeding what she thinks is an utterly toxic situation.
The second Gladys Russell ceases to exist so does any relationship she has with her mother. Bertha Russell might be the Queen of New York but Gladys is her daughter and she has an iron spine too, just because her mother is used to bending it in her hands means nothing. She too can hold out and she too can be the monster and she too can be cold and she is going to enjoy every fucking moment of her mother realising how badly her plans have backfired when she has to explain to Mrs Astor why the Duchess of Buckingham will not come to a social setting if Mrs Russell is also present.
This might be the coldest moment of her life or even the most childish moment. But this is all she’s been reduced to. Cold revenge where there might have once been love.
Her mother gazes at her and then to Larry who is watching her with eyes so expressively like their father.
“Your young now” her mother says in an attempt to sooth over the situation. “But you will surely understand, and then you will be grateful and I will accept your apology with the dignity that you have not afforded me”
“Dream on”
Her mother leaves the room in a huff and Larry stands and then.
“Brr…”
“Whatever” she says opening her book again.
“You know I know she can be a nightmare but if your planning to do something stupid—”
“I will not jeopardise you and Miss Brooke” she says evenly. “You can get the happy ending you think life so richly promises you. You are after all a man.”
If Larry senses the irony he doesn’t comment on it, he just nods and then he stands up and goes to the door.
“Father will be back tonight”
“Good for father”
He nods and then goes to the door and puts his hand on the door and she asks.
“So she’s bringing her…lady lover’s son to the wedding?”
“Oh I don’t think he’s staying, I think we just have to put him in a room for a week.”
She nods and turns back to the book she was not reading.
“They will be here tomorrow. I think it’s just so Aunt Monica doesn’t travel alone but—”
She nods again. In truth she is barely listening but then she supposes if she ever is forced to meet him it would be good to know his name.
“What’s his name?”
“Darcy, I think he’s some kind of artist, there’s that new medium photography—don’t look at me like that Marian is a fan”
She rolls her eyes and then—
“Darcy’s a name?”
Larry flashes her a grin and then he opens the door and slips out of it and she watches him go and puts down her book and curls her legs under her body and sits there and finds that she is close to tears. She thinks that she is genuinely going to start crying because…she does not want this. And nobody wants to listen to her when she says she doesn’t. Her mother sees it through the lenses of her own happiness, her father has given up on any kind of promise to her and has fallen back on the age old ease of doing whatever he has to do to make her mother happy and Larry has his eye on his own future.
And it’s not that he’s bad…the Duke is pleasant enough she supposes he is polite, he seems to be well read, he seems to want to do the right thing but at the same time he has made his position clear. He wants money to save his castle and he wants a son by the end of the year otherwise that’s when things will be awkward. He cannot help himself, that’s the way he was raised, that’s the way the nobility is always raised, they are raised to believe that they are God’s gift to the world because that’s how it’s been for generations. He need an heir and a spare off her and some money off her father and after that if they can be comfortable that’s enough for him. He shows no real interest in her hobbies or in her life or in anything else. His sister will still control the house, she won’t have her friends or her maid or even the comfort of her country. Out of everything she thought that she would have to give up when she got married she did not think that it would have to be her country. That was really, really too much.
And it would just be that, awkward, dreadfully awkward. There was no love between the two of them, no similarities, no burning passion, just each other in separate bedrooms in a castle while he did his thing and she did…what?
No…it was not the life that she wanted.
And the excuse of, she doesn’t know him, once she marries him she will learn to like him well enough, does nothing but make her want to smash her mothers face in.
How has it come to this? How has her relationship with her mother disintegrated into this? How has it come to this?
She wipes her fingers on her cheeks and sighs. Weeping gets you nowhere in this family. She is a Russell. She is not allowed the luxury of weeping.
Her mother will make sure of that.
After all…Duchesses don’t weep.
Do they Bertha?