Marguerite Blakeney is clearly beyond scruples (blazeinhereyes) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-03-06 22:20:00 |
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The fact that Marguerite had been in his dreams was a surprise, the fact that she became his wife was even more of one, but he didn’t shy away from it. Perhaps their connection in the dreams helped explain their connection here? Or was it all simply that they had a connection regardless of anything else, that they’d find each other regardless of what life they were living? The latter seemed more romantic to him, and perhaps that’s the one he would choose to go with for the time being.
But first and foremost, he was going to heed what Marguerite had told him after he’d begun dreaming. She told him to talk to her after he dreamt of something happening. And, well, what happened with St. Cyr clearly seemed to be that thing. He felt the dismay and confusion of his dream self, but he wasn’t going to let it win him over this time. This time, he would talk to Marguerite.
Perhaps he should have called first, or texted, but he had simply decided to go over to Marguerite’s. On the way, he did stop to get a bottle of wine, partially for an apology for coming over unannounced, and perhaps partially because the fact it was Valentine’s Day registered in his head. He didn’t quite know how to approach this day. He and Marguerite were married in the dreams, but they weren’t precisely dating here. Though he kind of would like to be, but that wasn’t his goal for today. Today, it was a conversation, and whatever stemmed from it.
Finally arriving at Marguerite’s place with the wine in hand, he knocked and waited, thoughts of St. Cyr foremost on his mind, a pensive look on his face.
Marguerite herself liked to believe that it was more a matter of how no matter where they were, what world, they would find one another. After all, the connection had happened before she had even put it together that he was Percy as she hadn’t gotten his name until he left. Which was important to her. Armand had expressed concern before that she would hold out as if waiting for some man to show up and holding onto that, even though that was hardly Marguerite’s style. But to know the connection happened before she knew who he was? Still important.
And then when he had started dreaming, she had known that no matter how difficult the conversation would be, they needed to discuss St. Cyr because with what she now knew from the dreams, she knew her fears and self preservation had been unnecessary. Plus, the two were a bit more removed from the situation. St. Cyr wasn’t here as far as she knew, it was a different life and even as she still felt it had been ridiculous of Percy to try and get her to denounce something in front of guests she didn’t know, she didn’t want that hanging over them.
And she had dreamt of denouncing St. Cyr in this latest set of dreams. Naive, headstrong, not knowing what her words would do, the disgust and revulsion she felt at the aftermath. No blackmail. Just the bitter anger of a sister who saw her brother attacked just because of their station, before she had even met Percy. That had been hard enough, but waking up that morning, she had dreamt of telling Percy once they were married and how he said it was ‘too late for circumstances’, followed by a year of coldness and distance.
It was as if her concerns had been justified, even when she knew that Percy hadn’t seemed to care in the first set. Perhaps it was just the timing, perhaps… Marguerite didn’t know. All she knew was that as she woke up, she needed to relax, so she had drawn a bath and used a bath bomb in order to try and get her thoughts in order before getting out and changing, doing her hair and makeup. She was an actress after all, no need for her to wear her heartbreak and then closing off on her face. It would pass, she knew it would. She’d gone through this before.
All things considered, she had forgotten what day it was thanks to the dream and instead had just done her errands before getting back to her flat, turning on some of the fairy lights she had hanging around windows and doorframes. She was debating texting Armand to see if he was free when she heard the knock at the door. Pushing herself up from the couch, she went and opened the door, eyes widening some.
“Percy!” Did they have plans that she had forgotten about? But then she noticed his look and it was easy to figure out why he had shown up, “I’m guessing you had the dream I mentioned. Come in.” It was odd how their dreams had lined up in regards to learning about St. Cyr. Typical Orange County. She had forgotten how it could taunt you with the timing of dreams.
Normally seeing Marguerite was a good thing, but Percy was a bit distracted by the dream. However, he hoped that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, which was why he was there to let her explain what had happened. While Percy had a good network of friends keeping him apprised of things, he didn’t think they had the entire story. Possibly because in this life, he knew Marguerite wanted to talk to him about it.
Percy wasn’t quite certain where his dreams would go next, especially considering the revelation had come on his wedding day. Things had interesting timing sometimes.
“Yes, I believe I have,” he responded, trying to lift his mood a bit. Being around Marguerite always helped improve his mood. He only hoped that the discussion wouldn’t ultimately make him feel worse. Shaking off the feelings from the dreams seemed to be difficult at times, now being one of those times.
At the invitation, he entered her apartment. “I brought some wine. Seemed like this was a conversation that may or may not require some.” Though he hoped it also served as an apology for coming over unannounced. For all he knew she could have been in the middle of doing something important.
All things considered, Marguerite couldn’t know exactly if the dreams he was having were the ones she’d had before. She knew that it wasn’t her current set of dreams as she had asked about Armand’s age given the strangeness of her brother suddenly being older than her. Still, she knew there was always the chance it was another set but she had a feeling that the dreams Percy was having were the ones she’d already gone through.
It was hard to know how the conversation would go, how it would make him feel given the nature of what she would have to tell him. Though she did take heart that he had actually come to talk to her about it, especially given how in the dream she’d woken from he hadn’t even given her the chance to explain, how it was too late for circumstances… The fact Percy was willing to ask her about it instead of taking that approach.
So instead she just nodded and motioned Percy to sit before taking the wine to put it through a decanter to air the wine out (what, she was French) then poured two glasses and made her way back to the couch.
“Where do you want me to start?”
Percy was right that this conversation would take wine. Even if she understood her reasoning behind certain actions she had taken, had done what was necessary to survive, it wasn’t something she found easy to talk about. But, she would tell him all, even what she hadn’t been able to say in the dreams because she’d been so anxious about Armand that the deeper history of it hadn’t mattered.
It was not a situation he’d thought was possible when he first moved to Orange County. Funny how he had come here looking to expand his business, and now he was one of quite a few people who experienced dreams of another life. And now he was dreaming of the same thing Marguerite had dreamt of. Or at least he was assuming it was the same thing and not something simply similar. Percy was, however, definitely willing to hear Marguerite out. While he wasn’t happy with the news in the dream, after she had told him to ask him about it when he’d dreamt, he had said he would. So here he was, a man of his word and giving her the chance to explain.
He couldn’t quite begin to guess at what she did have to tell him. There were many possibilities as to what she had to tell him. With any luck, hopefully it wouldn’t be as bad as it certainly sounded like in the dream. Percy had been devastated at thinking Marguerite was someone he couldn’t trust. So hopefully this talk would dispel any concerns he had.
“The beginning, I suppose? Better to understand the whole picture that way, I think.” He didn’t mind Marguerite airing out the wine. She undoubtedly needed the time to prepare herself for this talk. It wasn’t like he had given her any warning about it, after all. And sometimes it took a little time to pull one’s self together.
The beginning did tend to be the best place to start. And well given the complicated nature of the entire situation, the way everything interwove…. So Marguerite nodded some.
“The beginning it is.” Giving Percy his glass of wine, the actress took a sip of her own as she tried to figure out how to start. Band aid approach she supposed. If she was starting at the beginning, it meant starting before she had even met Chauvelin, before Armand had been thrashed by St. Cyr’s men on his orders.
“As you know, I basically raised Armand since I was ten after the loss of our parents…. Which wasn’t exactly easy, odd jobs here and there, nothing stable. When I was fifteen, I realized there was one way I could make a stable income so that we could live in one place, where Armand could go to school…. So I became a prostitute.” It was strange having this conversation, to put it into actual words. Yes she eventually told the Pimpernel about being a free woman, a more polite term, as she desperately tried to explain so he’d save her brother. But in this setting...
“Armand never knew. I just told him it was my costume job at the Comedie Francaise, he accepted it. I could never tell him really, he would have stopped his education or blamed himself had he known. But Armand? He always was so quick to trust and give his heart. Perhaps he could be more rational than me, but in love he was just as reckless and headstrong. Anyway, he made the mistake of daring to love the daughter of St. Cyr, he wrote her a letter and when St. Cyr found out, he had his man thrash Armand to an inch of his life as he just watched.”
Even though Armand was fine here, hadn’t had those injuries upon waking, the hatred and heartbreak remained, gripping the wine glass tightly before taking a breath and focusing herself.
“I took care of him…. And things were changing. The day we stormed the Bastille, I met a man, Chauvelin…” Percy wouldn’t know him all that well yet. One brief meeting as he closed the Comedie Francaise on her last night. “He became my lover. It was brief, it was mad… but it happened. He knew my past, he knew what St. Cyr had done to Armand… even though it had ended he remained obsessed with me, though it took me a long time to realize it.” Even now, thinking about that man, she felt her skin crawl remembering everything he had done.
“When he learned that we were to be married, he came to me. ‘How would you like it if your husband found out what sort of woman you are’. He threatened to tell you of my past, knowing I was desperate to keep my past that, my past…. An English aristo marrying a French actress was scandalous enough, but a prostitute?” She couldn’t help the bitter laugh that escaped, “I was so used to losing that I would do what I had to in order to keep from drowning. I knew the way it would look, I saw the different ways it would play out. My past being too much, you perhaps asking Armand because you wouldn’t want to offend me and then Armand finding out….”
Shaking her head some, Marguerite took a sip of wine.
“I was so afraid and desperate, that I listened to what Chauvelin asked… he knew that of anyone, St. Cyr would be the one man I would not feel as much guilt over so long as I believed that he would not be harmed, that he would just lose him money, be exiled. So he lied. He said that no harm would come to St. Cyr, just find out where the English had hidden him and then he would keep my secret and be gone from my life. But he lied just as easily as he breathed and I carry the blood of him and his family on my hands.”
Blinking back some tears, Marguerite decided to say screw it and more or less downed the rest of the wine in her glass. It wasn’t the proper way to drink wine but after all of that? It was necessary. Even knowing how in the dreams it hadn’t mattered to Percy in the end once he had learned she’d been blackmailed, with only half that information given the situation…. It was still a hard conversation to have, to admit all of that. Not knowing how Percy would respond, if here it would be too much for him.
Taking the glass of wine in hand, Percy simply held onto it, swirling the liquid in the glass now and then as he listened to Marguerite explain everything. It was hard to hear, but he hadn’t expected the situation to be easy to take. It was initially a little shocking that Marguerite had been a prostitute in the dreams. Yet even with that, as she continued on, it didn’t matter to him. He still saw her the way he had before.
Not to mention the 18th Century had been a very different time than today’s world. Being so young and having lost parents, there were only so many options one had in order to keep themselves alive. It only showed Percy the depths of Marguerite’s determined nature, her will to fight to keep Armand safe. It was perhaps a little odd to take that stance upon hearing what his wife in the dreams had done to sustain herself and her brother, but Percy wasn’t bothered much by such things. He judged people based on their actions, not on their line of work or the way they looked.
Actions spoke louder than words, after all.
Speaking of actions, he sipped at his wine, digesting everything, and his gaze never wavered away from Marguerite. “First of all, I don’t think any less of you for having been a prostitute in the dreams,” he said once Marguerite had finished. And he felt it was important to say that first so she wasn’t left wondering. “Secondly, clearly Chauvelin was blackmailing you. Maybe the blood of St. Cyr and his family is on your hands, maybe not, but you were not the one who chose to kill them. You were not the one who did that. And somehow I don’t think you would have so easily given that information over if you had known they were going to die.” She may be a fighter, one who wanted to hang onto what she had with a tight grip, but Percy was rather certain she wouldn’t let innocent people die just to hold onto her husband in the dreams.
Even the notion that she would just accept someone’s death made her sick and she finally stopped staring ahead as she had been while telling Percy everything that had happened, lost in the memories to stare at him aghast. Yes, he seemed to say that he didn’t think that was who she was, but the mere idea that she could even feasibly want his death…. Even in this new set of dreams where she had betrayed him before knowing Percy, by a flippant comment… his death had sickened her, made her see how far things were going and not for the better.
“I may hate the man and I do not know how I would react were I to see him here, but I would never wish death on him or knowingly send him to his grave.”
Perhaps she should have known better, but she had made the very real mistake of trusting Chauvelin in an attempt to get him to leave her alone so she never had to see him again. Had trusted he would keep his word because there had been a time when he’d had some sort of honor before he grew twisted and obsessive… or she had missed it all along.
It was a relief that Percy wasn’t holding her past against her (not that he had in the dreams once he knew) and that he seemed to see it wasn’t like she had just decided to betray the man. That it wasn’t too late for circumstance. But it was still a rather draining conversation.
That was the thing about some people, they simply became twisted by their desires or beliefs, sometimes both, and no one could see it until it was too late. Chauvelin, whom Percy had only briefly met in the dreams, certainly seemed to be a man twisted by desires and beliefs. Perhaps he had become swept up in the revolution. Such times tended to change a person, and not always for the better. But even with that, people, for the most part, had a choice in becoming that person. Being manipulated by others was one thing. Falling prey to your own desires and beliefs was quite another.
And Marguerite’s assertion of not wishing death on St. Cyr was more than enough to prove she’d never betrayed him in the dreams. Percy really did wish to reach into his dreams and smack his dream self for how he reacted to that news, but he couldn’t manipulate the dreams. All he could do was watch them play out this other life.
“I do not know what meaning it may carry, it is not as though we can change these dreams of ours simply by willing it, but I am sorry that I did not ask you about this.” Percy did feel guilty, though it was still strange. He had done these things in another life, but here he had a different life, somewhat, and he could learn from the mistakes he made in the dreams. This was the first mistake he would seek to rectify, and he was certain he had more to come.
People did change in the face of such times, rarely for the better. Sometimes it was just getting caught up in it all, other times it was said that it was a matter of discovering who you were. With Chauvelin? Marguerite was pretty sure it was the latter. After everything he had done. Even when he seemed in control of his passions, he had lied and manipulated her because he knew there were certain bridges she would not cross, even at risk of her past being discovered. Now, if it were to save Armand? That was where it got a bit more complicated.
“Honestly I have no idea what it was you thought would happen in that setting.” At first she had thought it had been Chauvelin, but after everything, she had pieced it together that Percy had sent the letter. Yes, it was her own, but the forgery was not that of Chauvelin’s. “Not that it seemed to matter in the latest set of dreams I had. Too late for circumstance was what you said. I imagine it was pride, especially as the whole St.Cyr business came from before we even met in this one, a flippant comment made by an angry sister to the wrong person, never realizing what would happen.”
Might as well get it out. The dreams were strange like that. You could learn from them, not make the same mistakes. But in some cases, you also found out what you were capable of in certain situations. Even so.
“Still, I know.” Reaching over, Marguerite took Percy’s hand and squeezed it. It wasn’t like she held it against him. Yes, a lot of heartache could have been avoided in the dreams had they actually discussed it (in theory though she wasn’t so sure now that she had started this new set). But as Percy said, there was nothing they could do about what happened in the dreams, they just had to go with it and live their lives here. “I’m sorry, too. For being afraid and letting myself be blackmailed instead of going to you about it.” Though would Percy have become the Scarlet Pimpernel had he not been trying to make up for her sins?
Percy could certainly understand that in dire circumstances, one could do anything. It was almost uncanny how people found out what they were made of when their feet were held to the fire. Some people burned, some people tried to resist and get away. Others found their strength and fought.
“It’s a bit jumbled, and I’m not fully following his logic at the moment. Though I’ll attribute that to the emotions from the dream clouding my mind a bit.” It wasn’t easy to swallow, and he seriously hated it, but what could he possibly do about it? Stewing over it wouldn’t help, and he couldn’t change it. Though as Marguerite described the same event in her latest set of dreams, his brow furrowed a bit. “That difference is rather strange to hear about. It seems that things take a bit of a different path in these new dreams of yours?”
He had to wonder if he would also dreams of the things Marguerite was currently dreaming of. Percy supposed that only time would tell in that regard. Squeezing her hand back, he managed a little smile. “Fear is a powerful motivator at times, and it can make us act against our better judgement. I cannot hold it against you. It’s understandable how you would be afraid to tell me of your past.” Not to mention the absolute scandal it would cause if it had became public knowledge. It was bad enough that Percy had married a French actress. Not that he cared what other people thought or gossiped about. But that part of Marguerite’s past being common knowledge would make their lives rather difficult.
“It can be hard to differentiate between dreams and here…. Most of my confusion tended to deal with Armand’s well being, but sometimes the emotions are exceptionally strong when you wake up.” Goodness knew Marguerite remembered all of that. Even for a man she had never met. Thinking he had died had broken her heart until she dreamt of his showing up and proving them all wrong and framing Chauvelin. “They do. I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. It was strange enough dreaming of Armand being older than me by twelve years and going to school in a convent.”
Because really. Marguerite in a convent, even if that was the more typical schooling for girls in Paris at the time.
“I have seen mention before though how different dreams can be when there are numerous forms. Still, it is exceptionally strange to actually experience.”
Oh, Marguerite remembered the sting of the snide comments that were whispered behind her back in England, given she had also been dealing with Percy’s coldness in the dreams, it had often left her feeling even more isolated than she would have felt had her husband not been so distant. With that combination, she had never been so alone. And she had known how it would have gone had that part of her past been known. No matter how she flitted about and smiled, there was always that awareness of what set her apart from those in Percy’s social class. She would always be the outsider.
“It unfortunately is.”
Percy scratched his head a bit. “It is difficult when the emotions are there upon waking. Emotions from normal dreams can sometimes stick with you when you wake, but they fade quickly. These ones...do not fade so easily.” He supposed that was because it was basically another life, another him that he was dreaming of. It was one more bit of proof that these dreams were real, or at least were real in another time and another place and he was just now absorbing the events of that life.
“You went to school in a convent?” Percy asked, eyebrows shooting upwards. He tried not to laugh, but he was actually amused by that piece of information. Of course he knew it was customary for the time, but nevertheless. Marguerite in a convent was definitely a priceless image.
Though there were still serious implications of what was going to happen in his coming dreams. Percy thinking that Marguerite had betrayed him, yet also caught because he loved her. He already knew he wouldn’t divorce her, but figuring out where to go from there was not going to be easy. Or so he thought, anyway. They lived in perilous times.
“I definitely understand that and remember all too well how strong that emotional bleedover can be.” Even with this particular set of dreams, she found herself with the strong emotional pull that came from the dreams. She was a bit further removed than she’d been before, having already gone through this once before but that didn’t change how much the dreams could still have an effect on her.
“Yes, apparently so. I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise you to know I wasn’t the most well behaved of students as I always had an opinion.” She was known as the cleverest woman in Europe for a reason. Even as a child she’d pointed things out and oh how it had given Armand a headache. But that was the time in which they dreamt. So school at a convent, as peculiar as it sounded, still made sense.
That and it was good to lighten the mood given the heaviness of the whole St.Cyr conversation.
“So, what say you to finishing this bottle of wine over better conversation?”
“Really, it can be highly bothersome at times.” At least Marguerite, and indeed the rest of those of them who Dreamed, understood that. It was difficult enough to feel it, yet alone try to describe emotional bleedover from dreams.
“You, having an opinion? Oh certainly that must be a mistake!” Percy said in that dramatically sarcastic fashion that said he was only teasing. Marguerite not having an opinion on things would be like if the sun didn’t rise the next morning. It simply didn’t happen. Though it was definitely good to have a lighter conversation after the St. Cyr topic. They needed to balance the emotional discussion with something lighter.
Percy smiled. “I think that sounds like a brilliant idea.”