Bea nodded as he spoke. “He’s like your brother,” she agreed quietly, looking at her shoes. She was conscious he must think she did not understand, but she did. She did. She thought of her sisters and wondered, in a distant kind of way, if it had been one of them instead of Vardon…How would she have reacted? It was a question she couldn’t answer.
Still, it wasn’t and the theoretical question didn’t matter in the long run. After all, her sisters had each fought against Vardon’s tyranny, each in their own way: Veronica with fire and Lina with love. Like them, what Bea had done, she had done because she had believed it was right. In his way, Victor had done the same. How could she possibly fault anyone for that? Yet, no matter how similar their motives, their decisions had placed them on opposite sides of the board and now they were at a crossroads. Now they were here, in this miserable place, though Bea was conscious they both probably wished they could be nearly anywhere else.
She wanted to ask him what Vardon’s plans were, where things were headed now, how Victor thought he would treat Lina and her child, given the way he had gotten her but…She found she couldn’t, not now that he thought her only interest in him had been finding out things about Xavier. Ironically, it seemed wrong somehow now to ask for information honestly, now that he knew she’d come by it in a less open way. She thought of this irony and laughed humorlessly, turning away from him again.
Somehow, it gave her courage. “What will become of Lina now?” she asked, running her fingers absently across the chest in front of her. “The baby?” She turned back to him, again. She wanted to ask him to look out for her sister, once she was gone, but she had no right to ask favors now.
‘Yes.’ He’d said, cooly. ‘Wouldn’t you think me a fool if I thought otherwise?’
It was a blow, but one she’d worked very hard to earn. Still, she felt it as much as she’d ever felt her father’s blows: more, because she’d deserved it; more, because for all that he’d never actually struck her. Bea held his gaze. His eyes burned, but his cheeks were flushed and she thought she probably looked quite the opposite. Another small irony. Bea shook her head. “I never thought you were a fool, Victor,” she said, finally. “Even when we disagree, and even when I hated you, I never thought that. In all this mess, you were the only one who was always honest. Maybe that makes you the best of us.“
She paused, didn’t like leaving that hanging there now that she knew he thought she was still being insincere, but couldn’t think what else to say. She believed it, after all. It shouldn’t have surprised her that she’d lost all credibility in his eyes, but somehow it did. Bea had always prided herself on her utter honesty, even in the face of threat, but when she’d let that virtue cave, she’d still somehow thought of herself as honest in her own mind. After all, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t told them all at some point exactly what she thought, even while she charmed and dined and danced and chatted them all, she’d thought herself honest because, in her heart, she’d been doing what she believed in and because, after a time, when she said she loved him, she’d really meant it. Somehow it had eluded her that all she’d been doing was lying. Maybe, and worst of all, she’d been lying to herself all along.
Bea laughed again, a sad sound, and shook her head. “You think that he has not harmed her? Separating her from the man she loves so cruelly, forcing her to be his bride, to do his will against her own, holding her here as a glorified captive - exotic and exciting to watch like a lion in a zoo! How can you possibly think that this does her no harm? He gave his word, yes, but already he’s broken it again and again and again. Everyday my sister breaks her heart over these things. How is that not harm?”
Too late she realized that he had said ‘you’ and not ‘her.’ Bea bit her lip, realizing it didn’t matter. She’d essentially described her own situation as well, hadn’t she? At least she wasn’t Vardon’s bride. That was far, far worse than any of Bea’s own punishments. And that was the inequality that most horrified her. How was it that Lina suffered worse than she did, herself, for the things that Bea had done? Injustice, yes, Bea had been right. There was no justice to be found in this place. There had been something awful to fight here, all along, but all she’d done was drug her own sister into its path.
“Lina did nothing wrong!” she whispered, sinking against the wall. She was close to tears, but she refused to shed a single one, not here, not now, not in front of him. Still, her voice was choked and she took a moment to compose herself, when he spoke next.
‘You really must think me a fool if you expect me to believe that.’
It occurred to her that, like Lina, Victor hadn’t really done anything wrong, and like Lina, here he stood breaking his heart over it again and again and again. Bea stared at him, felt a cold that wasn’t in the air wash over her. Bea tore her gaze away, staring blankly towards the door. “No,” she mumbled. “I’m the fool.”
When her reprieve had come, she’d thought as she always thought: I can fix this, now that I have some time before I die, I can set all to rights. After all of this, it boggled her mind to think that she’d believed something so foolhardy. There was no fixing this, no setting it right.
Finally, after everything, Bea had come up against a wall too high to climb, a puzzle too complex to solve, a situation too broken to ever salvage. She’d protected her sisters from an abusive father and helped Arcadia in its efforts to fell a tyrant. Wasn’t that enough? Was she really so proud and delusional as to think she could really do any good here? Her magnum opus was complete and the sands of time had nearly trickled out of her hourglass. Something like this would take a lifetime to heal and hers was gone. Her time was up. Still, after everything she’d done to him, she owed him some sweet balm. There was only one thing left to do to help him, now, with the time it had left, to help dull the pain. She could make him hate her.
“You’re right,” she said, staring off into a corner. She couldn’t look at him. “You’re right. I was hoping I could make you help me, hoping I could manipulate you again. I see now you’re far past that.” Bea wiped hastily at her eyes, laughed. “Good for you.”
“What do you mean?” He asked, confused by her question. “What will become of them? Do you truly have any doubts there? Your sister is Vardon’s wife: she will be cared for and protected until the day she dies. So will your nephew. He will be Vardon’s heir. All of this … everything … will be his.” He will rule the world, Victor thought. “You won’t have to worry for either of them.”
He knew that she will would, despite his words. He knew that she’d rather see Madeline back in the South, then here with Vardon. Victor supposed he couldn’t entirely blame her for that: despite everything that Vardon could give Madeline; the life he could provide her with … he knew that Madeline had been happy with her simple life with Sebastian Gray. There was a part of him that tried to justify everything with the knowledge that Madeline would be well looked after; that she would be safe. Somehow he didn’t think that Beatrice would see it like that.
Victor saw Vardon’s complex as a fortress that would protect them; the Hartwrights only saw a prison.
I never thought you were a fool, she’d said, and he’d softened slightly at the sound of her words. He didn’t stop to consider that perhaps that this was a lie, too. He replayed them again in his head; wanting it to be true. Her betrayal had hurt all the more, when he had thought about her selecting him as her target because she thought it would be easy: because she thought he’d be stupid enough to believe her lies. It doesn’t matter now, he thought bitterly, whatever she thought of him. He had been foolish; it had been easy … far too easy for her to manipulate him.
He wondered how long she’d been planning this. He’d been drawn to her from the moment he first met her: her spark, her smile, her wit. She, on the other hand, would have none of him. He stopped pursuing her after she’d made it clear, but he never stopped caring for her. Part of him had always hoped that one day she would change her mind; but part of him knew that she never would. All it had taken was one smile in his direction, one lingering glance for him to ignore the voice in his head that told him that he cared far more for her than she did for him. He should have listened, but one sweet word from her had been enough to silence all of his reason for ever; had been enough to convince him that he didn’t care.
He had truly been a fool.
“Enough!” Victor raised his voice louder than he had meant to, but he only wished to silence her. He knew she was right: he knew that what Vardon had done to Madeline had been cruel. Victor tried to justify it: his reasonings had been enough to soothe his own conscious but he knew the more that Beatrice said, the less he would be able to say in Vardon’s defense and he didn’t mean to let her speak ill of him: Vardon was, after all, the only family he had left now. “I know you don’t see it;” He said, voice raised, “I know you refuse to see it! It makes all of this much easier, doesn’t it, to imagine Vardon as a monster? But he isn’t. He saved us all from the monster. We’d all likely be dead, if it wasn’t for him.”
He was angry: angrier with himself than anything else. He would have stormed out then, but then he looked at her. He’d never seen her look that way before. Lina did nothing wrong, she’d whispered. Victor wondered, suddenly, if he should not have tried to interfere. He’d saved Beatrice’s life, but he’d broken her heart in the process. She looked helpless; overwhelmed with guilt. She looked as though she would have rather been dead. He softened noticeably at the sight. He had to stop himself from going to her and taking her in his arms as he once would have; to whisper comforting words in her ear. Instead, all he could do was look on, feeling as helpless as she looked.
Victor knew that Beatrice considered all of this to be her fault. It wasn’t, he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her that it had been a double agent who had given her up. She’d never made a misstep. Even Vardon, who mistrusted her from the start, thought that she was a spy. She blamed herself for her sister’s situation. He knew that he couldn’t tell her; that he couldn’t breathe a word of it. He had to let her suffer.
After her next words, for a moment, he wanted to let her. I was hoping I could manipulate you, she’d said. His hands balled into tight fists at his sides, trying to push away all of the once happy memories that suddenly came flooding back. All of them lies.
And then, suddenly, he realized that he wasn’t sure if he believed her, even now, when she said she’d been manipulating him all along. She didn’t look at him when she said it and there was something in her voice that made him doubt her sincerity. He wondered why she would lie to him, now, about this, but he was more concerned with the thought that maybe she had cared for him, even a little. He realized the not knowing might drive him mad.
He couldn’t tell her about Jack Lewis, he realized, but he could tell her about his own involvement. It might ease her own feelings of guilt and it would certainly crush any lingering feelings she may or may not have for him. At least now, he would know for sure. “It was my idea.” He said, his voice calm and cool, “I suggested to Vardon that he try to make a deal with your sister for your life. He wanted to kill you. He would have killed you. But I made him see: there are punishments worse than death.”
