“Family is important,” he said, looking down at her. He sounded sad, and she remembered that he had no family of his own.
“We’re each other’s family,” Althea said firmly, putting her hand over his on the back of the chair.
He turned his hand under hers and squeezed her fingers. “Still, your sisters—I hate to think of you isolated—”
She sighed. It was important to him, apparently, and she was determined to be a good wife, since it had already become obvious that there would be no children between them. “If you insist. But I will not have them here, you understand? I will go to the townhouse and receive them there.”
There had been an enormous party at the townhouse. In the middle of it, she had gone to her bedroom to change her shoes—the white ones had always pinched her feet, but they looked so elegant—and found her oldest sister rifling through her jewelry box and her middle sister going through the drawers of her vanity.
“Sister, dear,” said the oldest, leering, expecting her to ignore the intrusion, as she always had.
But she did not ignore it. She was no longer a little girl in a patched frock, but a married woman with a home and husband of her own. She bared her teeth and said “Get out. Go downstairs and leave gracefully, or I’ll have the footmen throw you out. You’re not welcome here any longer.”
“Althea, dear,” said her middle sister, trying to tuck her hand under Althea’s arm. “We’re your sisters. We just want to make sure you’re all right.”
“Then ask me,” she snapped. “You won’t find the answer at the bottom of the jewelry box. No, get out! I am sick to death of both of you.”
They left. Althea left the party in the hands of her aunt and went upstairs, pleading headache.
Thank god for Bluebeard. Otherwise she’d still be at home, dealing with those…those prying harpies. Not a shred of privacy to her name.
Her husband understood. When she said that she was sick of both of them, that they were appalling, that she would have nothing more to do with either of them, he did not argue. When she burst into furious tears at the end of it, he said “Oh, my dear—” and opened his arms, and she cried into the blue curls of his beard until her nose was red and she looked a fright.
He had apparently been a very evil man, but not actually a bad one. Althea had spent the last few months trying to get her mind around how such a thing was possible.
At the end, he’d tried to spare her. She remembered that, when everyone turned on him, when they’d dug up the bones and thrown them into the river.
Years had passed. Any blue in his beard had long since been replaced by gray. He no longer travelled for business or rode to hounds. Althea herself moved more slowly, and felt the weather in her bones.
They had not shared a bed for many years, but they were friends. Probably there had been other women, but he was always discreet, and Althea never faulted him. There had certainly not been other women for a number of years, nor other men either.
They spent evenings in the library. She would read funny passages aloud to him and he would laugh. They played chess. He usually won, but he was a patient teacher and occasionally she surprised him.
On that last night, he moved restlessly away from the chessboard, rubbing his left arm and gazing out the window.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He turned toward her and grasped her hands, his eyes fierce. “Althea—my love—promise me something.”
“Anything,” she said. She did not like the pallor of his face, or the way he kept rubbing his arm. “What can I do?”
“When I die—when I am dead—”
“Don’t talk like that!”
“It will happen soon. I was already well-aged when we were wed. I have lasted much longer than I expected, probably because of you, my dear. But it will happen. I can hear Death tapping at the walls. I know him—very well. I owe him this.”
Althea put a hand to her mouth.
“Promise me,” he said, “that when I am dead, you will burn the house down.”
“What?”
“The manor,” he said impatiently. He clasped his wrist to his chest, looking really angry, angrier than she had ever seen him look. “Take the furniture out if you must, take your clothes, whatever you want to keep—but burn it to the ground. Leave the doors opened. It must burn.”
“You’re mad,” she said unsteadily. “This is my home! I live here too! I can’t just—why?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said. He sank to his knees in front of her. “Please. If you have ever loved me—if we have been friends these last few years—”