Munich
1868
The kiss hadn’t made much of an impression on anyone. Not their fathers, not the Valkyrie, not Niels himself. Without comment, he and his wife had been marched straight from the platform in the Gare du Nord to another in the Gare de l’Est, where they boarded a train to Munich. Niels expected his father would lecture him the entire length of the trip, but he didn’t speak to his son at all, only read the same newspaper over and over until they pulled into the station in his home city. The Valkyrie and her father were in a separate compartment. He wondered if she was getting the same treatment.
The experience taught Niels that silence was a harsher punishment than censure. It left you waiting, anxious, and kept every bit of your body on edge. It filled the space fuller than any words could and left no room for even a modicum of relief.
And then, they were home, sitting with their mothers in the drawing room, being peppered with questions about the English countryside, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. The next evening, they dined at the Valkyrie’s parents’ house. No one mentioned anything about them having fled from Durham.
“It’s like being trapped in the most bizarre sort of dream,” his wife said, after they’d returned home at the end of the evening. “Whatever can they mean by it?”
“They’re sending the message that, no matter what we do, our circumstances will never change.”
“We’re married, so that’s no shock,” she said. “It was foolish of us to run. We’re bound together by the church. If we wanted to avoid that, we would’ve had to have acted before the ceremony.”
“You tried,” Niels said. “You refused to see me when I came to meet you.”
“It wasn’t much of an effort, and now we’re stuck. Their insistence on pretending nothing happened is making me half-mad with fury.”
“I’d rather they rail at us and tell us to behave.”
Her mouth drooped. “They don’t have to. What’s done is done. How we feel about it is irrelevant. I think their motivation for sending us away was pure. They thought it might bring us together.”
“I do like you better now than I did before. Not that I knew much about you before.”
“I still don’t want to be your wife.”
The words didn’t wound him, not in the slightest. He didn’t want to be her husband, but they were going to have to find a way to coexist. It would be simpler if they had a house of their own, but his father, convinced that much freedom would provide him opportunities to see Ludwig, would never allow that.
“They believe we’ve acted like disobedient children,” he said. “In my case, not only regarding this situation but because of the way I was living my life before our wedding. It’s why my father forced me to marry. You’re right that we can’t change the situation, but we can, perhaps, negotiate a truce between ourselves. If we’re to spend our lives as partners—”
“I’m not your partner and never will be, not in any meaningful emotional way. I’m going to tell your parents we want more space, a sitting room and two bedrooms. You can do as you please, and I will do whatever is necessary to fulfill the role of wife. I’ll live in this house, because I have no choice. I’ll be civil to your parents, because that’s polite. I’ll try not to resent you, because you didn’t want this any more than I did.” Her voice was listless, as if she had no more spirit with which to fight.
When his father had accused him of acquiescing too quickly to his marriage plans, he’d been right. Niels had known that a good wife would give him the cover he needed to eventually return to Ludwig. As a respectable married man, he would not be judged in the same light he might have been before. He would do whatever he could to keep the Valkyrie reasonably content, but it would be preferable if there was some way for her to find a measure of happiness.
“Is there anything I can do to improve your situation?” he asked. “Is there someone you’d like to, er, spend time with? Perhaps your friend from Paris? If so, I could make a show of being friends with him and he’d then be free to come here as often as he likes. No one need know he was spending time with you instead of me.”
“There’s nothing left for me. I might as well die here, in this house. My life is as good as over.”