The Weight of the World

“It doesn’t make any damn sense!”

This was the most emotional Mary had ever seen Geordo in nearly a decade of… well, friendship, she supposed. It was rather strange to think that. She was so used to thinking of him as her rival for Katarina, or just as the perfect Prince. And yet they spent a lot of time together as part of the group, and since their scandalous conversation she’d seen a lot more of Geordo the person, rather than Geordo the Prince.

But this was still the first time she’d ever heard him swear.

“It’s only one problem,” she said soothingly. “It’s hardly the end of the world.”

“It’s not one problem, it’s never just one problem! Maybe for you, but I’m a prince, I have to get it right, I have to get everything right, don’t you see? I can’t be seen to fail, I can’t be seen to be less than perfect, everything I do reflects on my parents, I have to be perfect, I have to…”

“You have to sit down,” she interrupted. She pointed at the floor by her feet. “Down.”

She’d done her best to sound confident, but the hand folded in her lap was clenched white-knuckle-tight. If this backfired…

Slowly, staring at her like a snake stares at a snake charmer, he took two slow steps towards her, and sank to his knees at her feet.

She let out the breath she’d been holding, and relaxed her shoulders enough that she could give him something like a real smile. “Well done. Now, out there-” she gestured in a way that she hoped conveyed ‘everywhere you have to socialise with people outside our circle’ “-you may have to be perfect. I might not be a Prince, but I am a lady, and I know more about that pressure that you would guess. But that’s out there. In here, with me, and with the rest of our friends, you don’t have to be anyone but Geordo.”

He blinked, like a man coming awake from a dream, and inclined his head very slightly, acknowledging her point.

“May I touch you?”

That obviously hadn’t been what he expected. “Why? We’re not… You’re not… I can’t…”

“You can. Here and now, you can do whatever you want. I’m not going to touch you… carnally. I just wanted to offer comfort.”

“I… I supposed so.”

Gently, very aware that she had no idea what she was doing, she reached and laid a hand on his shoulder. It seemed the safest part of him.

“Breath with me,” she suggested. Her mother had done that sometimes, when Mary was scared or overly emotional, asked her to match her breaths until she stopped feeling so overwhelmed.

She drew in a deep breath, felt the way the expansion of her chest pressed her corset down onto her hips, and then slowly exhaled, letting some of her tension bleed out of her.

Geordo had mirrored her inhale, but he wasn’t steady yet, and he exhaled too fast, the breath leaving him in a rush.

She didn’t mention it. He’d get here. “Again.”

This time she counted in her head as she inhaled and exhaled, three beats in, one beat hold, three beats out again. Beneath her hand, she could feel the tension in Geordo’s shoulders even through his coat, but he managed to stay much closer to her rhythm.

“Again.”

They continued like that, breathing together. In for three, hold, out for three. Geordo’s shoulder’s moved with the breath, and it might have been her imagination, but she fancied she could feel some of the tension leaving him with each exhale.

“Good, that’s good.”

Geordo ducked his head for a moment, and then lifted it to meet her gaze. He looked calmer, but also a good deal more embarrassed. “Thank you.”

“We’re friends, aren’t we? I mean, damn it all, we’re practically family.”

“Yes, I suppose we are.”

“Now, do you want to tell me what’s really the matter?”

“I can’t get my head around combined element theory. No matter how hard I study, it never starts making sense, and I know it’s going to be on the exam. Professor Luna as good as told me so.”

“And?”

He sighed, and to her surprise pressed his head against her arm like an affectionate cat. “I keep asking myself what mother would say about all this. All of us, I mean. Father would be bad enough, but mother…

“She can’t very well blacklist Admiral Nerson, not when he’s commander of the Navy, but she won’t have the Halimtons at the palace, not for anything. Not even Geoffrey was able to persuade her to relent. If she knew that I… I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“My sisters would love the chance to have father disown me,” Mary admitted. “They’ve been looking for excuses for years. They think I bring disrepute on the family just by existing, although my hobbies and the way I dress doesn’t help.” There were a lot of ways an inventive person could call a woman a harlot without actually coming out and saying it, and Mary had heard them all. But despite the fact that she had first begun dressing immodestly in the hope of catching Katarina’s eye, she had found that she liked it. She liked the way her body looked in bright colours and low necklines, she liked picking out shoes that were worth showing off under too-short hemlines, she liked that people considered her wardrobe to be interesting and worthy of discussion. Even if Katarina were to tell her tomorrow that she preferred modestly dressed girls, she wouldn’t change her style.

“If my sisters ever uncovered even a whiff of this scandal, at least before I’m safely married off to Nicol and out of their reach, they would make my life a living hell. They might even succeed in persuading father to cast me out.

“I don’t know what it is like for you, but I know what it is to spend your life worried that you won’t measure up to someone else’s standards. But that’s out there. In here, when I’m with my friends, I don’t have to worry about that, because I know you all accept me as I am. Just like we accept you. You don’t have to be perfect, not with us.”

“I… I would like… May I lay my head on your lap? My mother would allow me to do that sometimes, when I was a boy, and it was always soothing.”

“Of course.”

Silently, he arranged himself beside her chair, his shoulder pressed against her calf and his head resting in her lap.

His hair, when she dared to stroke it, was almost as soft and fine as Sophia’s, slipping from her fingers like satin.

“I think I can see a little of what people enjoy about this,” he said, so softly she almost didn’t hear him. “Why some people long to be on their knees.”

“You try and carry the weight of the whole world. Anyone would need to stop and set it down sometimes.”

“I didn’t know I was allowed.”

“You are with me,” she told him, carding her fingers through his hair. “You are with us.”