Exit, Pursued by a Baron by Aydra Richards

Author:Aydra Richards [Richards, Aydra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Luck, or fate, or some vengeful god had turned against him. The icy streets had turned hazardous, and the jumble of carriages struggling to traverse them had created a blockage that slowed his travel considerably. By the time he at last arrived at the theatre, it was too late to slip back behind the stage, where the actors congregated.

Instead he had had to take himself off to his box, where he would watch the play unfold once more. Then, as the curtain pulled, there she was—Lydia; Hermione. She was both at once, and he slammed his eyes closed against the sight of her.

No. He had made this bed for himself, and he would bear the shame that she gave back to him, for she had never earned it in the least to begin with. Now he saw himself in Leontes’ creeping suspicion, in his self-righteous condemnation. He watched himself accuse her; watched her plead her innocence. Watched himself discard her, and wished he could reach into the past and shake sense into himself.

But it had all happened already, and he could only sit—silent, arrested—and watch himself name her faithless, shameless, and worse. Now he could see truly what Montgomery had meant: she had never acted Hermione. It was all real for her; a nightmare she had suffered through years ago and from which she had never truly awoken. And now it was to become his own.

Lydia poured her grief out upon the stage in her sackcloth and ashes, a perfect picture of debased innocence—and they wept for her, the faceless crowd below. Marcus wept for her, though he hadn’t the right to do it. But she had agonized, and implored, and died upon the stage dozens of times before, retracing the path he had carved out for her each time. Each performance, he had killed her himself.

Only now, watching himself savage her honor, demean her and humiliate her, could he understand the rage she had carried with her onto the stage when she had acted Paulina. Only now could he understand how little Leontes deserved the happy ending he would, after all was said and done, receive.

Just as Hermione had done, Lydia had extended to him an unimaginable grace. And it had come to naught, because he had closed his eyes and his ears to every lesson he might have learned from these performances she had given. Every iteration, every role, had told a crucial truth he had denied.

His hands lay heavily in his lap, as if the weight of the crown that Montgomery had once given him sat upon them, and as the final curtain closed at last, he wondered if the burden of it would ever be lifted.

∞∞∞

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