Chain of Iron

“Never mind Charles,” said Matthew, propelling himself savagely out of the armchair. Oscar gave a concerned woof. “And as for James—”

“I don’t wish you to be angry with him,” Cordelia said, suddenly worried. “I would never want that. He loves you, you are his parabatai—”

“And I love him,” said Matthew. “But I have always loved him and understood him. Now I love him but do not understand him at all. I knew he loved Grace. I thought it was because of the way he met her. She seemed to desperately need saving, and James has always wanted to save people. Even those who very clearly cannot be saved. And I, of all people, cannot fault him for that.” He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “But to let her into your home, to embrace her with you standing right there—how could I not be angry with him?” He dropped his hands. “Even if just on his own behalf. Grace will never make him happy.”

“But that is his choice. He loves her. It is not something he can simply be talked out of. There is nothing that can—or should—be done about it.”

Matthew gave a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “You are remarkably calm.”

“I always knew it,” said Cordelia. “He has never really been dishonest. I was the one who was not honest. I did not tell him I loved him. I do not think he would have consented to marry me if he had known how I felt.”

Matthew was silent. Cordelia, too, had run out of words: she had finally said it, the dark, awful thought that lurked in her soul. She had tricked James into marrying her, pretending to an indifference she did not feel. She had lied to him, and earned this consequence.

“It is only that I do not know what to do,” she said. “Divorce now, after such a short time, would ruin me, I think. But I do not—I cannot go back to that house—”

At last Matthew spoke, with a sort of jerky precision, like a windup toy coming to life. “You—you could—stay here.”

“With you?” She was startled. “Sleep on the sofa? That would be very … bohemian. But it wouldn’t do, my family would never—”

“Not with me,” he said. “I am going to Paris. I was planning to leave tomorrow.”

She flashed back to the steamer trunk by the door. “You’re going to Paris?” she said, feeling suddenly, terribly alone. “But—why?”

“Because I couldn’t bear to be here.” Matthew began to pace. “I took an oath to stand by James’s side. And I love him—he has always been all the things that I am not. Honest where I am not. Brave where I am a coward. When I thought his choice was you—”

“It was never me,” said Cordelia, setting her teacup down.

“I thought he took you for granted,” said Matthew. “Then I saw the way he ran to you, after that battle in Nelson Square. It seems a thousand years ago now, but I remember it. He ran and caught you up and he seemed—desperate—to know that you were all right. As if he would die if you weren’t. And I thought—I thought I had misjudged him. So I told myself to stop.”

Cordelia licked her dry lips. “Stop what?”

“Hoping, I suppose,” he said. “That you would see that I loved you.”

She stared at him, motionless, too shocked to speak.

“I fully expected James to come to his senses,” he said. “Good Lord, when I saw you two in the Whispering Room, I thought it would barely be seconds before he was hitting himself with a brick for ever having thought he loved Grace while at the same time throwing himself at your feet and professing his adoration.”

Cordelia thought of Matthew saying to her, what felt like a long time ago now, I have wished for a long time for him to place his affections somewhere else, and yet, when I saw him with you in the Whispering Room, I was not happy.

Yet it had never occurred to her that he intended anything by it but flirting—Matthew’s flirting, which meant nothing at all.

“I suppose I merely thought it would be enough for you to know,” he said. “That you might—if anything were to happen to me, you would remember I loved you desperately. And if for some reason, at the end of a year, you and James divorced, I would—well, I would have waited. But I would have hoped the time would have come when my addresses would not have been disgusting to you.”

“Matthew,” she said. “Look at you. Listen to you. Your addresses could never be disgusting.”

He almost smiled. “I remember,” he said. “At the ball, the first time I really met you, you told me I was beautiful. That held me for quite a long time, you know. I am very vain. I didn’t love you then, I don’t think, though I recall thinking how fine you looked when your eyes blazed with anger. And then at the Hell Ruelle, when you danced, and proved yourself braver than all the rest of us combined, I knew it for sure. But love is not always a lightning bolt, is it? Sometimes it is a creeping vine. It grows slowly until suddenly it is all that there is in the world.”

“I don’t know what to say,” she murmured. “Only that I truly did not suspect …”

He gave another of those harsh laughs, clearly directed only at himself. “I suppose I should be pleased that I have been a good actor. Perhaps when inevitably I am tossed out of the Clave for some future misdeed, I will find a new success upon the stage.”

Cordelia was speechless. She did not want to hurt him; she had been hurt enough and had no desire to pass it on to someone else. Especially as dear a friend as Matthew. Despite his open talk of love, Matthew held himself like a wounded animal, wary and tensed.

“I wouldn’t imagine you know what to say,” he said. “But … I had to tell you. You had to know how I feel. I was going to Paris because it seemed to me James finally understood what he had, being married to you—and I was glad, only I also knew I could not bear to see it. I thought in Paris I might forget. In Paris, one forgets everything.”

She darted her gaze up to his. “I envy you,” she said softly. “We have common cause in our anguish, I suppose, but you can flee it—you can go to Paris alone and nobody remarks upon it. What I dread as much as anything else is the gossip, the things people will say when they find out about James and Grace. What my family will say. What Will and Tessa will think—they were always so kind to me—and Lucie—”

Without warning, Matthew flung himself to his knees on the thick carpet. He was kneeling in front of her, a position that filled her with a sudden alarm.

“You cannot propose,” she said. “I am already married.”

At that, he actually did smile, and caught at her hand. Cordelia made no move to draw it back. For so long, she thought, she had lived with the knowledge that James did not care for her the way she did for him. And now a beautiful young man was kneeling before her, holding her hand, gazing at her with a wordless fervor. Nearly all her life she had dreamed of three things: bearing Cortana, being Lucie’s parabatai, and being loved. She had lost the first two. She could not bear to fling this last, small thing away from her so quickly.

“I was not going to propose marriage,” he said. “I was going to propose something else. That you come to Paris with me.” He tightened his grip on her hand; there was high color in his cheeks, and he was speaking almost feverishly. “Hear me out. You need to forget as badly as I do. Paris is a city of wonders, my favorite in the world. I know you have been there, but you have not been there with me.” She smiled—it was good to know Matthew’s vanities had not deserted him. “We will see the Pont Alexandre lit up at night—go to Montmartre, where everything is scandalous—eat dinner at Maxim’s and know it is but the start of a magical evening of cabarets and dancing and theater and art.” He tipped his head back to look directly into her eyes. “I would never press my attentions on you. We will stay in separate hotel rooms. I will be your friend, that is all. Only let me see you happy in Paris. It is the greatest gift you could give me.”