Marguerite was proud of herself for not scoffing at the comment that St. Cyr was a good man. Even in this place, even knowing that people were multi-faceted and could be good while being horrible at the same time, the image of Armand thrashed to such an extent all for writing a love letter to a girl who was in a higher class than they were.... it made her blood boil. Anyone who could do that... though she wasn't any better. She condemned a man because of fear, concern and that small amount of hatred that hadn't left her.
"And yet I'm the one who carried and continues to carry that guilt and not him." Because Chauvelin would never care. Even here where she had never met the man, she carried the guilt for his family being killed all because of her fear. Because she had been blackmailed and hadn't tried to outwit Chauvelin. He had known what buttons to press, what worries she would have to make her less willing to challenge him.
As much as she wanted to stand up, Marguerite could see that Percy was agitated in a way, in how he paced. No, she would do her best to temper her own emotions (hard as it was for her) and keep focused. This was because of her choices. Though she really shouldn't have been all that shocked that he wouldn't truly grasp what it had meant for her and Armand to grow up as they had in the dreams. They were from two completely different worlds and it was luck and talent alone that gave her the chance to rise above it.
"Not what you felt." She had been drawn to him because he was like anyone she had ever met. He hadn't let social convictions dictate his life and had let himself fall in love with a French actress, which was scandal enough back then. Marguerite wasn't a fool. She well knew how it had looked. "But what would be too much even for you regardless of your feelings. An actress is one thing, a woman who once prostituted herself is something else entirely." Women who could be arrested for fighting back against clients who tried to rob them of their fares, or were too violent because they were the ones in the wrong. She had seen it.
And now she stood because she knew she had to explain it.
"I was afraid, Percy. I was afraid of losing you when I fought so hard to hold onto the things which made life that much brighter in all that darkness." She had seen the ideals she believed in perverted and twisted. "I was so used to losing any inch I gained that I compromised my integrity in a desperate play to hold onto what we had."
Sighing, the actress paced briefly.
"It had crossed my mind, yes. But then I would remember every single thing I had seen done because of the insanity of a social class system meant to keep those like Armand and me down. I let fear win. Nor could I risk you asking Armand if you were told since he never knew what I did to finally have stability in our lives."
Exhausted from the Dream itself and now having to go into all of that, the complicated tendrils of life that was part of her though not lived in the sense she was alive now, Marguerite just sat back down and held her head in her hands.
"I was afraid and so made the worst mistake of my life, which led to the death of an entire family."