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Chapter Text

George finds Bertha as she is stalking through the empty dining room, one hand pressed to her forehead and the other resting on the just of hip. To anyone unfamiliar with her habits, she is simply visualizing table settings, planning for the upcoming luncheon that she will be hosting for Mr. McAllister and his friends. Instead, she frets about a train wreck, Gladys, and her only likely opportunity to latch onto the coattails of Mr. McAllister’s four-hundred. Though the dinner hour draws near, she remains in her day dress, black lace around her shoulders and torso and a flash of scarlet at her chest.

The combination is a perfect match to her blazing fury and dark thoughts. To be so painfully close to the top, and yet to have so many obstacles still remaining—

--not least among them her daughter and husband, mirrored in their obstinance and romantic natures—

--she fists the hand at her waist, fingernails digging into her bare palm. She wants nothing more than for Gladys's ball to be a success, for George to prevail above those who would doubt his integrity. But even so, to have to deal with these trials now is not ideal in the least.

As though summoned by her bleak mood, George enters through the door to her back, stepping lightly through the open doorway and pausing once just inside. Bertha knows from the measured tread of his shoes across the polished floor and the way he waits patiently for her to turn that it is indeed he who has come to disturb her in her silence; they have not lived together for so long for her not to instinctively know when her husband is near. Her back straightens, spine unfurling to its full, if modest, height. Their parting words from earlier still ring loudly in her ears, and she refuses to be seen sulking. She curls her lip, schooling her face back into its impassive mask. She cannot afford to be soft, not now, not when they are within a stone’s throw of breaking through that final wall.

They are so very close to finally earning the respect of all those who have snubbed them.

Hearing George’s footsteps renew, pace, and then stop—some ten feet behind her, she would guess, just on the other side of their long dining table—she frowns. As her earlier ire surges, she very nearly opens her mouth to spit out some terse, angry insult. Before she can cast the words out, though, they catch heavily in her throat, dying at her lips before she has the chance to dig herself into an even deeper hole. George knows her too well to truly believe that she cares nothing for their current crisis, or for Gladys’s current heartache. A flash of real worry—concern for him, whatever he might say, and true remorse for the men who had died in the crash—spikes white-hot and sudden, and she freezes in place beside the head of their grand table. 

What if one of the dead had been George, or Larry? Both her husband and son travel quite frequently by train. What if some engineer’s unethical actions and greed had left her own family bereft?

If, indeed, it has not already?

Sighing, she turns, both hands fluttering to rest in front of her stomach, her head canting up almost against her will to meet George’s eyes where he lurks near the doorframe. The late afternoon sun has left the curtained room nearly entirely shaded. With no grand dinner planned this evening the lamps are extinguished and the only light left to illuminate them comes from the main hall and the few, scant beams of sunlight that force their way in through the highest corners of the windows. 

“I do care about the crash,” she admits quietly, chin tilting just slightly to one side in silent concession to his own concerns. It is the most she will come to a true apology, and they both know how much even this admission costs her pride. “And Glaldys, of course.” She cannot help but continue on, just slightly. He is a man, and cannot ever understand just how quickly, how completely, their reality can rob a woman of any semblance of her own self. “Our soceity is not kind to women. It’s a cruel world in which to be female, George. I only want to give her the life she deserves. She will not do that with a young, timid banker from Manhattan.”

George sighs, crossing the room to her side in a few, quick steps. “Not a cruel world for you, I hope, my dearest.” He reaches out and grasps her left hand, draws it across the space between them to cradle it in his palms, thumbs sweeping across her knuckles, lingering at the rings that encircle her finger. They both note the way he carefully omits any mention of Archie Baldwin; that quarrel, it would seem, has already been placed behind them. 

Bertha shakes her head, unable to keep the flicker of emotion from denting the straight-pressed line of her lips. “Of course not, George. Not for over twenty years.“ She twists her hand, catches one of his wrists, her fingers drawing his arm up so that she can clasp his own hand between both of hers at her chest. “But, Gladys is such a sweet girl, and thinks so well of everyone she meets.” She brushes her lips across his knuckles, locking her eyes onto his in a stare that speaks so much more than the simple words that tumble across her lips. “She needs someone who can protect her once she’s out of our care.”

Humming his assent, George maneuvers his captive hand up to frame the curve of her jaw, bringing her own hands along for the ride. They shift and curve, tracing the lines of his forearm briefly. “I don’t think your luncheon is a waste of time,” he murmurs softly, the corners of his brown eyes crinkling. “You know I am your biggest supporter, and if you believe the venture to be worth it then I shall defer to your good judgment. Your strategy within this new world of ours is unparalleled.”

Bertha leans into the touch, her own palms bracing against the back of his broad hand, holding him captive against her just as much as she trusts him to hold her. She closes her eyes and inhales sharply through her nose, expelling the air in a slow, heavy sigh.  After so many years together—so many years of loving, and of arguing, and of simply knowing one another—they are able to have an entire conversation within the span of several seconds. She squeezes his hand beneath both of hers, feels his palm flatten and flex against the defined line of her jaw, watches his lips twitch behind his beard and his eyes crinkle at the corners. In return, she offers a soft little smile that she keeps reserved solely for him, allowing every bit of her recent fatigue and stress to seep back into her posture. 

Moving slowly, as though she is some wild beast to be tamed, George extracts his thumb from beneath her palms and sweeps it across her face. Gently, he chases the contour of her cheek down to the plush curve of her lip. “I didn’t mean it, earlier,” he mumbles, altogether too contritely for her preferences.

Bertha arches a brow even as she leans into his touch, a cat arching into its next caress, her eyes half-lidded as she all but purrs beneath the sweep of his thumb as it drags across her smooth skin. “You should have,” she says tartly, a sharp contrast to the way she then sighs and presses a kiss to the pad of his finger. “You were right.”

She does shock him with that, she can feel it in the way he tenses. His body is pressed just close enough to hers that she can feel his muscles lock, watch the way his expressive eyes shift and darken with a flicker of keen acknowledgement. “Hmmm,” is all he offers outright, but he does shuffle to bring his other hand up to join its partner, cupping her face in both palms and tipping her chin up until she is looking properly into his eyes. “You were right as well, of course,” he counters, and seals the deal with a soft kiss.

After over twenty years, Bertha feels like she should be used to George’s kisses. She has been on the receiving end of so very many of them, after all: sweet, sleepy kisses; chaste pecks when in the presence of company; a soft greeting or gentle goodbye; the deeply passionate embraces they so often share behind closed doors, and occasionally not. But, each and every time…well, it feels like the very first.

He places his lips atop hers, and the way they slide gently across her mouth leaves her breathless, as though he has gone and sucked every bit of oxygen from her lungs. He is meticulous, sweeping from side-to-side, one hand shifting to cradle the back of her head, searching for the little kernel of truth that she had let slip into her words as they spoke. Every single time he kisses her, she feels raw, undone—made anew, a phoenix borne from the ashes or Christ stepped straight from his tomb.

Sighing, she allows him to press his love into her skin, moves her lips in reciprocation beneath his own, rakes her hand gently through his hair in a silent but equally-demonstrative play of her own passions and affections. “Will you be able to find the man responsible?” Bertha whispers, feeling the roughness of his slightly-chapped lips against her own as she speaks. For a moment, they are very nearly one, as close as they can be without joining in the biblical sense: breathing the same air, sharing the same thoughts, one mind and very nearly one body, pressed chest-to-chest and tucked as tightly together as two people full-clothed in their day dress might possibly hope to be.

“I desperately hope so.” George sounds exhausted, and she flicks her eyes open to their full extend in order to take in his tall form, shoulders drooping slightly beneath the weight of the stress he has been forced to bear. “Even if we do, who is to say that the investigation will still not attempt to pin the blame on me? It was my train, my darling, and my company; arguably, my orders, if they can find anything to prove it.” His fingers curl ever-so-slightly against her jaw as his hand tenses. 

“You will come through it, George.” Of this, Bertha is certain. In no one living does she place more faith than in her husband. He has yet to truly fail in this life they have built, and this will not be the time he does. She releases her grip on his hair, allowing her arms to fall open in silent offering. “We will come through it, best it, as we have conquered everything that lies in our past.”

Wordlessly, George all but falls into her embrace, arms wrapping around her back like a vice, hands splaying at her hips to hold her as tightly to him as he dares. He bows his head, presses it against her shoulder, his breath staggered and uneven. 

“Everyone expects some miraculous recovery.” His voice is muffled against the dark fabric of her dress. “I do not know if I can provide one, Bertha.”

She forces her trembling hands to still before she lifts them to the back of his neck, carding her fingers slowly through his hair as she holds him as tightly as he clutches her. Rare is the day when her husband feels inadequate to face any task, and she….well, in this instance, it seems that she will need to be their backbone. “You won’t have to do it alone, my love,” she promises, plans already beginning to emerge from her churning thoughts. 

She shifts against him, jolts one hip into his and nudges his shoulder just so in silent instruction to lift his head. “No matter what this investigation brings,” Bertha promises, lifting up onto the balls of her feet so that she can press her forehead against his, blue eyes locked onto brown in a desperate attempt to force her truth onto him, “we will face it as we do everything--- together. ”

Chapter Text

George isn’t sure how long they stand together in the darkened library, Clay’s telegram crumpled in his fist and Bertha pressed up against his side. His mind is churning, raging and roiling with the possibilities of missed facts and fudged ledgers. 

For the opposition to have written proof —

—either he has well and truly finally been caught on the wrong side of his own pride, or someone is doing a damned good job of framing him.

He knows which option he suspects to be the truth, and from the way Bertha clutches his back, her lips pressed to his shoulder, he rather knows what certainty she has settled upon as well.

Worry gnaws at him with sharp teeth, chewing holes in his stern facade. Worry, and guilt —he so hates to have tainted the victory of her luncheon with this news, knows it is exactly the last card she would have been wished to have dealt from the deck. Still, selfishly, he cannot be more grateful to have his wife at his side in this particular moment. Despite the cold that has swept through his veins, Bertha is warm where she has latched onto his arm, radiating concern in blistering waves that he can feel even through the layers of formal attire that separate them.

“Someone has worked hard to make you appear the guilty party, my love,” she murmurs lowly, turning those deep blue eyes up to catch him in a look of partial despair. The rest is encapsulated in a scalding blaze of white-hot fury as Bertha presses her lips firmly into a thin line that bodes ill for whomever has elected to attempt to play games with her husband’s reputation. Her brow is furrowed where it still rests against his shoulder. “If I find them first,” she hisses into the crisp fabric of his dinner jacket, “I make no promises to leave any pieces for you to even attempt to bring to trial.”

That startles a chuckle out of him, and from the slight, if pressed, smile she offers in answer George is quite certain that such was her intent from the start. “While I appreciate the thought, my dear,” he says, shifting them so that he may draw her properly into his arms, chin dropping to rest atop her head, “I believe it will benefit us more to at least leave some scraps available for my exoneration.”

He feels her huff of laughter against his neck as she tucks her face against him, arms sliding under his coat. Her palms splay across his back, gently massaging the muscles that had instinctively tensed upon reading Clay’s news. George feels strung out, every bit the criminal some people will imagine that he truly is, left to hang alongside yesterday’s men and just as easily forgotten. Between the ill news and Bertha’s luncheon and everything else in between, he is nearly limp with fatigue, his mind wrung out like a wet rag. 

He is exhausted, all but sagging into Bertha’s slight but sturdy frame. Every remnant of rational thought has leached from his prone form, leaving him with little else but the scraps of his senses. Bertha’s hair is soft beneath his chin, despite the occasional pin that catches and digs into his neck as she shifts in his arms. Her skin is even softer where it grazes the sliver of his neck that remains bared between his coat and tie and beard. The rich scent of her perfume—something lightly floral, accented with what might be a hint of vanilla—floods his nose, and for a brief moment he is able to surrender himself entirely to her comforting presence, overwhelmed by her in a way that eclipses any other conscious thought beyond Bertha. 

“Have I told you how much I adore you?” The words are muttered into her hair, for he finds he cannot even drudge up the energy to shift his face so that he may look her in the eye. Instead, he gathers her even more tightly against himself, hands sliding to the curve of her waist and palms splaying across the swaths of fabric that make up her voluminous skirts.

Bertha’s answering chuckle resonates down to the heart of him, cracks down to the fragile marrow of his bones. Even at his absolute worst—or perhaps especially in those moments—he can count on Bertha to be a pillar of support. After a few deep breaths, even with his arms full of his wife, even with every residual fragment of his attention honed upon her , he finds he can think of little more than the very real likelihood of a trial looming on the horizon. Doubt is a nasty mistress and has its way of trickling in through even the faintest of cracks, and he breathes deeply through his nose as he attempts to stave off its advances.

“I can hear you thinking,” Bertha murmurs. Rising on the balls of her feet, she presses a light kiss to the underside of his jaw just at the edge of his beard. George feels her lips curl against his skin as she smiles at his sharp gasp. Bertha squeezes his shoulders before drawing back and turning those luminous eyes on him, pinning him in place with the directness of her stare. “Upstairs?”

“I don’t think—” he begins, suddenly ashamed that he does not feel capable of anything beyond sleep. 

Bertha cuts him off with a finger to his lips. “To rest, George,” she chides, offering him that soft, gentle smile that she reserves solely for him. “You’re all but drooping where you stand.” Smoothly, she extracts herself from his arms, dancing just out of reach. She is radiant, starlight made flesh, her gown and jewels shimmering in the muted light of the library as she hovers at the edge of his vision. George mourns the loss of her with a quiet sigh but spares an appreciative glance across her radiant form. 

As a compromise, he offers his arm, feeling instantaneously more grounded when she slips her own through the offered loop. The weight of her hand and arm as they press against his are a comfort. Equally, the weight of her body as she sags lightly against him, seeking her own support, is bolstering, a testament to her reliance upon him just as much as it is to his trust in her to keep him from stumbling on the long climb upstairs to their rooms. And, unspoken but no less substantial, his trust in her to keep him afloat as they face their turning tides.

If he is to be perfectly honest, George is barely cognizant for any portion of their trek upstairs. He is distantly aware of Bertha dismissing the servants for the evening, calling out to Mrs. Bruce as they step from the study, and he vaguely recalls the conspiratorial nod she exchanges with Church as they begin their ascent up the staircase. Were he more himself, he would spare a stray comment to remark on the staircase— her staircase, as he always refers to it—proving more a hindrance than a help in this sort of circumstance, but he can do little more than give Church a perfunctory jerk of his head and sag heavily against his wife as she guides him up the stairs. He forces himself to focus on the arm looped through his and the sparkle of Bertha’s presence tucked within her delicate gown amidst the glitter of the hall lighting, a vision of stairlight and silver and diamonds pressed against his side. 

Bertha steers him down the hall to his room, guides him through the door, bypassing his dressing room and sitting him directly on his bed. He follows her lead, unseeing, as trusting as a blind man to his cane. He does scrounge up the wherewithal to reach out and catch her hand as she seemingly means to withdraw, bring it in close and ghost the whisper of a kiss across the back of her knuckles. The way her eyes crinkle at the corners never fails to delight him, an unconscious display of affection that she has never quite been able to mask. 

“We will see this through, George, just watch us.” Bertha slides her hand free to drag her thumb along the curve of his jaw, fingers curling in his beard in a fleeting caress before she ducks down and breathes a kiss against the corner of his lips. “We’ll find the culprit and we’ll leave him to rot. ” The words are a promise as much a challenge, branded into his skin by the heat of her spirit.

 The gentle way she moves to slip his dinner jacket from his shoulders is in direct contrast to her fierce words. Her eyes contain more worry than rage, that much he can catch, and he feels his heart stutter in his chest at the force of raw affection that threatens to overflow the banks of his veins and consume him outright. Even at their lowest, Bertha has always been their pillar of strength. 

“How is it that you are so consistently strong, my dear?” Though phrased half-heartedly as a question, it is more an observation than anything, a statement of fact as resolute as if he has declared the sky to be blue. He reaches for her as she attempts to slide his suspenders from his shoulders, waistcoat already cast aside, and curls his fingers around her delicate wrists. “You are truly a marvel,” he continues, bringing her hands slowly up to his lips. “Whenever I feel at my lowest, here you are: my rock, my lodestone.” He places a kiss across each of her fluttering pulse-points, careful to keep his grip loose and gentle as he plies her wrists and palms with soft, delicate kisses.

“As you have always been mine,” Bertha counters. Her eyes hold the light of galaxies, speckles of crystal blue glinting from a deep indigo sky. Marvelous things, her eyes, changeable and gorgeous much as the rest of her, constantly in motion and shifting with the ebb and flow of her moods and thoughts. Each time she affords him a glance, George discovers something new, an explorer charting familiar and much-loved territory yet always managing to chart a new mark upon his map. They are truly the closest George has come to being able to claim a glimpse to the innermost workings of her soul.

Bertha gives a pleased little sigh, as though she can follow the trajectory of his thoughts, and steals another kiss from his lips. In his more poetic moments, George would almost dare to claim that she steals a bit of his soul with each embrace they share. If that is truly the case, he hopes to slip from this world with every bit of his being encased within her.

Sliding free of his hold, Bertha tugs his suspenders down his shoulders, hands pausing to squeeze his waist once the supports hang loose before she raises her arms to encircle his neck. Small as her hands are she cannot completely span its full width, but such is not her intent. She holds him to comfort, not to control, thumbs sliding in slow, measured strokes along the length of his pulse. George cannot help the way it jumps beneath her touch, always responsive to her proximity no matter how chaste the intent. Her hands pluck at his crisp, white tie, undoing it in a flurry of quick movements and deftly sliding it from around his throat before tossing it aside. She has George’s shirt half-unbuttoned before he can do little more than sigh and shudder beneath her competent hands. 

“I am sorry I’m not more…myself,” he murmurs as she slips the shirt fully from his shoulders, tossing it, too, to the floor to land in a crumpled heap. They both know that he speaks of more than simply his exhaustion. Bertha presses her palm flat against his bare chest, and he spares a fleeting thought to how right the warmth of her skin feels above his heart before he concedes defeat and allows her to push him down against the mattress. The moment his head hits the pillows he knows he is done for, his exhaustion making itself known in resonant waves. 

“You are George Russell no matter what the circumstances,” Bertha informs him, her voice just as fierce as when she had promised swift retribution upon whomever had delivered the so-called proof of his crooked dealings. “We have made it too far for something such as this to defeat us.” She leans down, cards a hand swiftly through his hair. “We’ll get them, George, and we will give them hell.”

He flutters his eyes open, forcing them to focus on the hazy form of his wife as she hovers at his side. “Indeed we shall,” he finds himself agreeing, and believes every word of it. Despite his best intentions, his eyes slide shut for another indeterminate moment, the soft pillows and warm sheets an irresistible combination that draw him closer and closer to sleep. He musters just enough bearing to shuffle and shuck off his pants and smallclothes, kicking them out from under the comforter to pile on the floor.

When he blinks again, the room is dark and Bertha is sliding into bed beside him, her hair freed from its restraints and her body adorned with only the sheerest of nightgowns. “Did I wake you?” she asks quietly, smoothing a hand across his brow in silent apology.

“Pleasantly so,” he counters, and rolls onto his back with one arm extended so she can tuck herself up against his side, head resting atop his heart and face pressed into his neck. He slides his arm across her back, feeling the heat of her resonating through the thin fabric of her gown. “Thank you,” he whispers into the darkness, knowing that she will hear him and understand.

There is a pause, and then the weight of a slender arm across his midsection, the press of a palm against his side. “We’ll show them, my love,” she promises. “We’ll show them all.”

As George drifts off to sleep, his wife in his arms where she belongs, he finds that he quite believes her.

Chapter Text

Bertha keeps her distance from George for a few days after their fight. 

She won’t necessarily say that she is avoiding him, but nevertheless she ensures that she is nowhere to be found whenever she thinks he might be searching for her. If she knows he is home in his study or the drawing room, then she is at the very least in one of the upstairs rooms, if she is in the house at all. If George is working late at the office, Bertha does not stay up to await his return. She does not ever lock her own door, but neither does she leave her own room to seek out his. To find it locked to her would be an indignity that she was not prepared to face.

The truth of the matter is that she cannot bring herself to admit that there is anything wrong. They have worked so hard, fought so hard— 

For her to admit that this hearing is a matter of any actual significance would mean that she would have to admit that they are not the impregnable force that the rest of the city believes them to be. She has fought so hard, is fighting so hard, to raise that facade from the dust of their pasts. They are supposed to be untouchable, beyond the reach of any of the mere mortals who lay claim to the upper tiers of New York City. George can’t go to prison. It cannot even be a possibility. He is at the center of everything they have built. Money aside, he is the heart of their little family, and he certainly has the softer heart between the two of them. Bertha is not stupid—George is a family man, and behind every fierce industry victory is the desire to see his wife and children happy, to use his considerable wealth, influence, and power to give them everything they could possibly desire.

What really makes Bertha shudder, though, is the nasty truth that she doesn’t know how to live without him. The mere possibility of it coats her mind in a hazy film, paints itself across her heart until there is only the most sluggish of rhythms throbbing painfully within her chest.

George can’t leave her.

The night that she storms out the door, leaves him sitting alone at the table she had kept set for him---the night she flees, her mind whispers---she stalks up to her room and spends the rest of the night and half of the early morning pouring over papers that she has pilfered from George’s study. Records, memos, accounts and ledgers—she will never tell him that she has done it, but she scours each and every line and letter, every single number, looking for something that might aid his case.

When she looks him in the eye the next morning, she keeps her gaze cool and impassive. She ignores the hurt that flickers briefly across his face, beats back the instincts that urge her forward, to gather him back into her arms and tell him that they will weather this storm together. Words mean nothing in circumstances such as these—useless platitudes, wasted breath that could be better put toward preserving their family’s reputation. 

Gladys’s ball has become the focal point of their upward ascension; Bertha cannot simply cast it aside for a ‘what-if’ that hovers on the edge of certainty. Similarly, Mr. McAllister is the gatekeeper that stands between the family and social success. She can’t let any opportunity to entertain him pass them by, either. Bertha grits her teeth, digs in her heels. She will not surrender the ground that she has gained for the mere possibility of defeat. Even so, deep in her heart of hearts, she rails and rages against the bars of fate that have slammed into place and cut them off effortlessly from any hope of immediate success. George—he is everything. How can she concede that he might be taken from her on the word of a crook and charlatan? She’s always told him that his love is ‘almost enough’, has trusted that his understanding of her nature, her desires, runs deep enough for him to understand that, for her, such a declaration from her means that his love is as close to everything as she will ever come. 

So, she ducks her head, glares at George in a fierce attempt to burn away that flicker of doubt she can pick out within his dark eyes, and goes about her day as scheduled. 

Dinner that evening passes civilly, if only just, and Bertha does not miss the concerned glances her children exchange over the tabletop during the final course. As midnight draws closer, Bertha sequesters herself in her room once more, reading through papers she has again filched from George’s desk. They will not be defeated. Neither of them knows the meaning of the word. If she stays up well into the early hours of the morning chasing leads that seemingly do not exist, well—that is her secret alone

She ignores her husband completely when she finally emerges from her room the following morning, chin held high as she descends the stairs. She catches a flash of his coat and profile just as departs through the front door, and she knows from the stubborn set of his jaw that it will be a long, late day at the office for him. Mr. Edison’s light ceremony is quickly approaching, and her plans are locked in steel as much as her husband’s business interests. Her carriages are ready, the guests confirmed, and she cannot dredge up an ounce of interest in the event—not even the slightest bit of concern, not the faintest bit of pleasure even in light of the resoundingly positive responses she has received for her invitations.

The apathy she feels is nothing like the bright spark that illuminates her with each successful step higher on her acension. She feels instead a sharp twist of some other unpleasant thing in her gut, churning almost painfully as she thinks of attending the event and refusing to meet George’s eye throughout the course of the night. Guilt, she thinks briefly with a snarl, before dashing it out of her mind with a furious shake of her head.

Bertha tries desperately to focus, brings her frustration to bear upon her daily correspondence and paces the house in search of menial tasks to occupy her mind. She still finds herself quite adrift throughout the day, eyes dark and distant as her thoughts flit between her upcoming event and the no-doubt gloomy form of her husband where he is inevitably hunched over his desk scouring his own papers and reports. It is a dark cloud that hangs over their household, and she cannot bring herself to summon the energy to lift them out of it. She cannot help with the practicalities, beyond pretending the issue does not exist whilst in the face of the public eye, but—

—equally, she cannot desert George in his hour of need. 

She knows it, just as much as she can almost sense the sharp breath he takes as he pauses in his reading, follow the path of the hand he passes across his eyes, trace the furrow between his brow as he glowers down at his desk. She may only be able to help outwardly through her apparent and publicly scornful disregard of the allegations, but, at home—

—Bertha cannot help but allow a hint of softness to creep through her callous facade. 

Hands crossed at her waist, she paces to the second-floor window that faces the street, looking out across the sunlit road with unseeing eyes. All of her plans have already been settled, laid out before her feet like the tracks of her husband’s trains. She absolutely cannot waver from the course upon which she has set them, or she will derail every intricate plan that she has worked into the web which she has woven beneath their feet. 

Mrs. Astor and her four hundred will yield. She will earn their acceptance, will claim it with her chin held high and her eyes glittering like twin sapphire flames. That is not up for debate. 

But—

—neither will she be able to allow herself to maintain her current pretense beyond another day at best.

She lingers well past her typical time in the drawing room as the daylight hours turn to late afternoon, her eyes growing heavy and her shoulders drooping far beyond the socially acceptable, cheek braced upon her unyielding palm. She hears George return, sometime before the six-o’clock hour, and settle himself in his study. Stubbornly, she keeps her gaze fixed upon her letters, eyes gliding sightlessly across handwriting ranging from dismal to immaculate, heedless of the words the missives through which she shifts contain.

Bertha waits until the daytime clamor has faded, the servants scattering into their evening routines and her children fleeing upstairs to change. She really should follow, with their evening meal looming upon the horizon, but she cannot help but spare a few moments to at least attempt to meet George halfway. It goes, of course, about as well as she had hoped—which is to say, not very well at all.

After some half-hearted remarks about Turner of all people—and now, after seeing her talking with Larry in the hallway, the woman absolutely must go—he all but dismisses her attempts at a truce, painting her wilful disregard of their circumstances as some passing flight of fancy rather than the challenge to the accusations leveled against him that it truly is. 

“We’ll tell them how it’s going to be.” She throws the words out in a final, defiant hope that George will see her and not the elaborate illusion that she has crafted.

It is hardly a concession of defeat, but it is an olive branch, extended however tenuously between them. Bertha hopes despite herself that George sees it for what it truly is—her heart, offered out between the upon a silver platter, bare and exposed before all the world, proud and unwavering before the obstacles presented to them. She will not come right out and say as much—it is hardly in her nature to concede even the briefest moment of weakness, but—

—he knows her, more than anyone in this world might claim to do so. He knows what it costs her to even concede this much, can read between the furrowed lines of her brow and the confident tilt of her chin more plainly than even the keenest of scholars could scour the pages of the most sacred of texts. 

Though she can sense the discontent still simmering behind his dark eyes, she knows she has sown the first seeds, set them back upon the tracks of their familiar and well-missed—and much- loved , though she would never admit it out loud—partnership. Her bed that night remains cold for many hours, her mind awake and churning, her body frigid and listless beneath the sheets. She had hoped he might come to her, after she approached him earlier in the day, but as nighttime has grown darker so, too, have her hopes of an easy reconciliation. 

As tired as she is, she has little left in reserve to address the demons that nip at her heels while alone and in bed. She can do little more than toss and turn and worry, and that is hardly like her at all.

Even the thought of Mr. Edison’s lights do little to warm her. 

Sighing, she flings back her covers and slides from her bed, shoving her feet into a pair of slippers and drawing her dressing gown about her shoulders. The path to George’s room is second nature. She doesn’t bother knocking, instead simply turning the handle and slipping inside, keeping her eyes facing the door as she shuts it neatly behind her.

Her husband is still awake. The faint glow of an oil-lamp at her back tells her that much, at least.

“Is this to be a repeat of recent nights?” George asks coldly in greeting. “Have you come to tell me that my company’s failure is a figment of my own imagination? That you’ll visit me in prison with Mr. McAllister as your chaperone and with Mrs. Astor waiting in the carriage on the street?”

Despite her stiff back, Bertha cannot suppress the sudden flicker of shame that canters down her spine at the unfeeling words. It strikes before she is able to catch herself, and she knows George can see the way she flinches back from his vitriol. Teeth digging into her bottom lip, she schools her face back into its porcelain mask. If she keeps her eyes focused on the wall, she can pretend she doesn’t see the way his eyes widen and then soften, the way he begins to sweep away the stack of papers currently piled upon his lap. The tang of blood is sharp against her tongue, her lower lip tingling as she carves out a line in her mouth as the price for her silence. 

The silence between them continues to grow, neither able to quite summon the words necessary to break it. Finally, Bertha musters her fiercest glower, the one that can level buildings and raze cities to the ground, and forces herself to meet her husband’s eyes. 

The sudden flash of shame she sees on George’s face is not what she is expecting. 

Anger, certainly; she had braced herself to receive every bit of his earlier rage. Irritation, stress, frustration—he is more than owed all of these. Embarrassment and remorse, though— those she does not expect, and the sight of them on sharp display sends a hot surge of self-reproach washing through her.

“I’m sorry,” George says quietly, and Bertha cannot stop her eyes from visibly widening in shock. “My anger is not directed at you, not truly.” He presses his hand to his brow, leaning briefly on it with a frown. “I’m afraid I’m just…”

“It should be.” Bertha surprises them both with the sharpness of her words. Her declaration cuts through the cloying silence that splits the difference between them. “I have behaved abominably. I do care, you know. I care quite a lot, for whatever it’s worth—if it is worth anything at all.” She smooths her hands along her dressing gown. “We must ascend to that next level, George, we must if we are to succeed in this level of New York, but…that success will be nothing without you to be here to celebrate it alongside me.” She hopes he receives her words for the concession that they truly are.

And George, of course, who knows her nearly as well as she knows herself—he hears her. Of course he does. He always does.

In a single move, he all but hurls himself off his mattress and stumbles toward her, catching her up in his arms as soon as he is close enough to reach. His hands fall into place at her waist as he tucks her against his chest and Bertha cannot stop the soft sigh of relief that slips from her lips. It’s like coming home. “I know you care, my darling,” he murmurs into her hair. “I do. I just—”

“I know,” she says just as lowly against the fabric of his dressing gown. “I’m impossible. I’m stubborn and stern, and I can’t even pretend to see beyond my own goals—”

“Do you truly think I could love you less for it?” The fierceness of his words startle her. “I am well aware of who you are, my dear, and I love you for it, not in spite of it.”

Bertha exhales, a great sigh that expels all the worries and fears that have plagued her these last long days. “I can’t lose you,” she confesses. She does raise her eyes to his then, unable to do him the disservice of keeping her eyes downcast and her emotions locked out of sight, her lips tightening as she faces him head-on. “You…” One hand rises, thumb flickering out to smooth the corner of his lower lip. “You are at the heart of everything, George. No number of Mrs. Astors or Mr. McAllisters can compare to you. ” It’s like pulling a rib from her chest to admit it, but she must say it, knows that he needs to hear it.

They spend a long moment in silence, heads bowed and eyes closed, simply content to breathe in the same air and share the space that they had each been denying themselves these last long days. "I've missed you," she murmurs into his chest, her palms slipping around his shoulders to press against the muscles of his back. They can both sense when the mood shifts, feel that infinitesimal hitch in the air as tender slides seamlessly into something decidedly less so. Without looking, Bertha can sense that George’s eyes have darkened and feels her own pulse quicken in response.

His hands slide to the tie of her dressing gown, fingers playing gently with the knot before they undo it and shift upward to catch the brocade edging and pull it back entirely from her shoulders. Bertha cannot stop herself from smiling up at him in answer. Her breath catches in her chest as her husband responds by pushing the fabric away entirely to land in an expensive puddle of silk upon the floor. 

 Bertha catches his wrists as his hands dip lower, low, to the hem of her nightgown. "My turn," she informs him, dragging his hands up to settle at the dip of her waist instead, twisting and turning until the wide span of his fingers splays entirely about her hips. She shifts even closer to him, as close as the air between them will allow, and then drops her hands to his own belt, undoes the knot at his waist with ease. Offering him a more genuine smile, she pushes back his dressing gown with a disregard equal to his own for hers as to where it lands upon the floor. Before he can do little else but suck in a sharp breath, her hands fly to the buttons of his nightshirt, undoing them in a series of deft flicks. She presses the pads of her fingers to his chest, brands him with her touch and revels in the feel of smooth skin and coarse hair beneath her fingertips. 

"This is my apology," she murmurs, sucking a kiss against his rocketing heart. Feeling the weight of his eyes catch her in their orbit, she lifts her head just enough to flutter her lashes up at him, lips twitching in just the faintest hint of a coquettish smile. Hands drifting lower, lips following, skating across his ribs, she maps a path across his trembling skin. "Mine," she whispers as she undoes his drawstring. It has become a claim now, her reclaiming of him as she slides his sleep pants down and follows their descent to the floor, kneeling before him. Though she cannot see his eyes from this angle, she hears his sharp inhale and can easily conjure the anticipatory gleam that has no doubt appeared in his dark gaze.

“George–” She wets her lips. Her hair is down, brushed carelessly across one shoulder, and she knows the picture she makes: cheeks flushed and neck slightly bowed, her eyes dark as the fathomless depths of the ocean. Anticipation makes her breath catch unevenly in her chest and she digs a hand into his thigh, feels the corded muscles tense beneath her fingers. He stands hard and proud, his eyes blown out to coal-dark depths, hands flexing in agitation just around the periphery of her shoulders. He does not touch touch her, he never does unless invited, and Bertha suddenly finds herself aching—

“Be gentle,” she orders, locking her eyes briefly upon his before she lowers her head. One of her hands finds his own, curls delicately around his broad palm, draws it down, down to knot itself in her hair. She flicks her tongue out, wets her lips, teases him with the flicker of one finger up and down his flushed length—

It is an exchange of power between them, this dance; she on her knees, he entirely at her mercy. The pull of it is heady, as is the taste of him upon her tongue when she finally sets her lips to him, sucking the head of him into her mouth, savoring the weight of him against her. She applies pressure, briefly, and feels his hips buck reflexively toward her, into her. 

To have her husband, normally so studiously proper, undone before her is a heady toxin.

Bertha’s own hands climb, waltzing up his thighs. One settles on the well-defined curve of his ass, directing him closer, pulling him more tightly against her eager mouth. The other slides up along his inner thighs, pauses briefly as it passes the slick-slide motion of her lips. She spares a moment to wet her palm, eyes sashaying up, up along the planes of his body until they can lock onto his hungry gaze, a smile curling at the edges of her mouth as much as its current occupation will allow. She brings that other hand to bear on the parts of him she cannot reach with her mouth alone, working him like a finely-tuned instrument. 

They know each other so well, by this point in their lives. Intimately does not begin to do their relationship justice as a descriptor. They are practically one person, one intent, by this point in their marriage. They have never been shy about their intentions—ambition, affection, lust, and love, coiled into a single package spread between two individual people—but—

Bertha feels him stutter, feels his hand weave itself through her chestnut locks, feels her own thighs grow wet at the thought of his imminent pleasure. Two halves of a whole, they are, even when they are at odds. When unified, well—

“Bertha, darling, I’m—” George bites it off between clenched teeth, ever the gentleman behind closed doors, no matter what he might claim in the office. She simply hums around him in response, moves the hand that rests at the base of him to frame his hip, and swallows him deep.

What other society wife would seek to pleasure her husband in such a manner? What other civilized woman would achieve her own pleasure spread on her knees before him, ensuring his every need has been met—?

George’s hands tighten deliciously in her hair, just the slightest pull upon the delicate strands at her nape, and he spends himself into her willing mouth with a grunt and a sigh. His free hand settles gently at her cheek, splaying out across the elegant line of her jaw, thumb sweeping upward to smooth her lip as she swallows him down before he withdraws. 

“You did not have to do that,” he says roughly, voice rubbed raw from how he has bitten back every exclamation that threatened to burst free in the wake of her attentions.

“But I wanted to,” she counters archly, breathing heavily as she rests her cheek briefly upon his thigh. “I would lower myself for no one but you—" She means to go on, to explain herself more plainly, but he seizes her and all but drags herself up to his lips, kissing her like a desert wanderer who has found himself his oasis. She’s never tired of the way he seeks her out after claiming such pleasures, the way he so obviously relishes seeking the taste of himself upon her lips.

He moves to mirror her earlier motion, knees buckling, but she catches him where he stands with a solid hand pressed against his chest. “Maybe tomorrow,” Bertha murmurs, raising up upon the balls of her feet to slide her lips across the underside of his roughened jaw. “Tonight…was about you, my dearest.” She rakes her fingers through his unruly curls, roughened by her earlier caresses. “I am with you, no matter what the judge decides.” She claims his lips in another searing kiss, tongue flickering out to sweep through his mouth in a brief, blistering claim. “I am yours, no matter what face I might present to society.”

Bertha combs her fingers through his hair again, smoothing this time instead of ruffling, drawing him down so that his lips tickle the expanse of bare skin above the barely-modest neckline of her nightdress. “We will win,” she whispers fiercely, even as she draws him slowly toward his bed— their bed— settles him down upon silken sheets and downy pillows, splays herself across his prone form. “We’ll show them how it is.”

Despite the phrase being a repetition of an earlier argument, it bears no ill will this night. It is instead a promise, a capitulation between two parties who are all-too-willing to yield “I’ll look for you tomorrow evening,” she whispers into his chest, drawing one hand up to curl lazily about his shoulder, playing with the curls of his beard where it meets his neck.

“Not as much as I will be looking for you ,” he promises, and ducks his head to press an indulgent kiss to her brow.

It is hardly the perfect resolution to their recent arguments, around their recent obstacles. But, whatever the coming days might bring, they at least know that they will face them united, each in their own way. There will be hell to pay the day the Russells face a foe of such magnitude whilst divided, and….hell, well, it had better be ready.

George and Bertha Russell are on their way.

Chapter Text

“Are you certain this is the best course of action?” George asked, shutting Bertha’s bedroom door firmly behind him. He used the question as both announcement of his presence and an expression of genuine concern. The thought of his entire family–and Bertha, in particular—retiring to Newport just in time for his hearing had been turning his blood to ice in his veins over and over again, despite the blistering heat that rolled across the city in waves. 

He knew why Bertha insisted on this uncharacteristic lack of physical support. Ostensibly, he agreed with her. If they acted as though nothing were the matter, well, then…the matter itself must then become nothing . He hoped that would be the end result of this exhausting debacle, and he knew without question that Bertha did as well. Every move they made had a certain amount of risk inherent to it; it just so happened that this particular venture had crashed about them more spectacularly than either might have imagined.

If it helped his wife to view the entire debacle through such a veiled lens, then who was he to deny her? Masking the truth through flippant dismissal might not be his preferred means of addressing it amongst society, but if Bertha insisted, well…he trusted her far too much to dismiss her advice, regardless of how much it hurt him to watch her flutter about speaking of dinners and balls. 

He knew she was shaken by the entirety of it, the scale of this crisis they faced. They knew each other too well to not to already know just how much the other was affected by the possibility of future struggles. The threat of litigation, of prison and other harsher possibilities lurked, wraithlike, along the thread of potential horizons, simply waiting for the opportune time to strike and sink its teeth into them at the first, fluttering signs of weakness. 

And, well…if by watching her beat back her own worries with fierce blows he was able to at least partially quell his own fears, then they both emerged victorious. He knew nothing better than the sight of Bertha striding forward to do battle, her chin held high and her armor polished, expensive swaths of fabric settled about her curves like old friends and diamonds draped about her throat like a lover’s hands. She was a force to be reckoned with even on her worst of days, and on her best—well, he pitied the fool who dared to stand between Bertha and her inevitable victory.

Even so, he could not stop himself from breaching the tentative lines of the truce they had established, of seeking her out the night before her departure for Newport. He had found himself restless, turning fitfully in his bed, unable to stopper the relentless tide of worries that beat against the bulwark of his mind. His bed had been cold, his arms empty, and he had done little more than twist and turn, bare against the sheets, his agitation growing exponentially alongside his stress for the days that were yet to come. The thought of so many nights apart coupled with the imminent and omnipresent weight of that godforsaken hearing , well…

George had never claimed to be a selfless man.

“May I?” he asked belatedly, realizing that such an insensitive and dissident entrance would hardly endear himself to his rather anxious wife.  If he was concerned, she could hardly be anything but that herself, and he knew from long experience that they often passed their emotions back-and-forth like a tennis volley. He had already closed the door before he had finished speaking, sealing them away from the rest of the house, and he offered her his best, somber smile and quirk of an eyebrow even as he left his palm flat against the heavy wood. 

If she ordered him to go he would, despite the heat that flickered just beneath the uppermost layer of his skin, the agitation that surged and roiled within fragile trappings of his mortal frame. He was unsettled, a wild beast set loose amongst the city, restless and rambling and altogether separated from any sense or semblance of reasonable, rational thought.

“Be my guest,” Bertha offered wryly, and something within George settled, falling into place with a sigh. She had welcomed him in, despite his obvious restlessness and their earlier strife, invited him into her little sanctuary even with the weight of their previous arguments still hanging above their heads. He felt much like he was being set to trial in that very moment, leaning against the door of his wife’s bedroom, pinned to the thick wood by the weight of her guttering blue eyes.

“Oh George, ” she chided, a faint hint of fondness infusing her words even as her lips tightened in exasperation. “I’d hardly turn you away now.” She shifted in her bed, eschewing her own avalanche of documents in a fluttering cascade of paper as she moved to sit fully upright. 

George narrowed his brows, focusing his gaze upon the heaping stack of paper that draped the soft tapestry of her sheets–financial reports, memos, account books, all scattered across the half-turned covers. “Are those from my office?” he asked bemusedly, feeling his eyebrows begin what had seemingly become their traditional creep toward his browline. Far be it for him to assume that Bertha would ever become predictable, but after her emphatic opinions on his upcoming hearing he had hardly expected to find her scouring a stack of legal and financial documents that she had quite obviously pilfered from either the library or his office itself. He did not dare to imagine when she might have made the trip to obtain them, if it were indeed the latter.

“They…might have originated in that location,” she hedged, lips twitching slightly as though she knew precisely the turn his thoughts had taken. Despite his obvious amusement, she displayed no signs of discomfiture. Her hands stacked the papers one-by-one, laying them neatly upon her lap before shifting them to her bedside table. Task completed, she cut her eyes toward George. “Did you really think I’d leave you completely on your own, darling?”

“With your imminent departure to Newport looming, I confess it has seemed so.” He could not contain the bitter retort as it slipped from his lips; nor did he want to, when he allowed himself to stop and consider the matter. Selfishly, he wanted her there. With him. In the courtroom as close as circumstances would allow, her presence and the soothing balm of her cool, unflinching gaze as much an aid to his nerves as the facts and statements that he had been preparing.

Uncharacteristically, she sighed, shoulders rising and falling beneath the sheer fabric of her nightgown, one delicate hand fluttering to pinch the bridge of her nose. “I know.”

From Bertha, that was practically the equivalent of weeping in despair. George found himself kneeling by her bedside before he even realized he had moved. "That was selfish of me,” he capitulated, reaching to catch her free hand between both of his and draw it tenderly down to his lips. “Forgive me, my dear.”

She brought her other hand down to rest on the arch of his jaw, thumb sliding across the curve of his cheek. “I’m the selfish one, George. We both know that. I always have been.”

He surprised them both when he turned his head to kiss the pad of her thumb, lips lingering a hair too long for him to maintain any pretense of chaste intent. “I love you for who you are,” he informed her, the words familiar and oft-repeated. “I know who I married.” He nipped at her thumb and, quite unexpectedly, she laughed. The bright sound lightened the shadows that had been haunting him by several shades, chasing them back into the deeper corners of his mind and encircling him briefly in a warm, joyous ring. It was a reprieve he had not realized he had needed, the sound of his wife’s laughter a balm to his very soul. 

“You do, ” she marveled, pulling her hand free to card it through his hair before curling it around his neck. “Far be it for me to say you came into this marriage blindly.”

Eyes crinkling, George rose enough to catch her face between his palms and press a kiss to her lips. “I married a bold little thing with a big heart and even bigger dreams, and the courage to chase them,” he breathed against her, staring at her closed eyes with such a fierceness that she was forced to open them and all but physically catch the earnestness that leaked from his gaze.

“George,” she protested halfheartedly, swatting at his chest. Amusement lingered, for a moment, flickering between them like sparks crackling along a wire. George felt years younger, as though they were again newly-wed and free of the worries that plagued them now. He stole another kiss, lips sliding across her mouth, his tongue flickering out to trace the seam of her lips as he used his hands to tilt her head back, seeking refuge in the warmth of her. 

Bertha responded in turn, surging upward to twine her fingers through the curls of his hair, tugging him down down until he fell gracelessly atop her, body settling instinctively against her torso and between her splayed thighs. They both bit back a groan at that, George’s mouth slipping to the arch of her neck as her head fell back against the pillows, hips jerking up on instinct at the hard press of her husband against her. Her eyes darkened to a deep marine, the laughter falling away from her lips. “You know I would be there if I thought I could,” she all but pleaded, hands carding restlessly through his hair even as she squirmed against him, too overwhelmed even to chastise him about how she’d have to wear much higher necklines in Newport than she had hoped, “but—”

“But we shouldn’t show any weakness. Not now,” he finished for her, relaxing enough to press a soft kiss against the mark he had created, shifting so that his weight was braced above her, forearms anchored to the bed on either side of her shoulders, his lips just skimming the curve of her forehead. He still burned with desire, but ignored it in favor of soothing the wound that had quite obviously carved itself onto his wife’s heart. His hands fluttered out, traced the curve of her bare shoulders to the edge of her nightgown, fingers trembling where they met the juncture of smooth flesh and sheer silk.

Bertha shifted to the right, scooting over enough to flip the covers down and pat the mattress beside her. “We’re so close, ” she sighed, tucking herself against his side as he slid into place next to her. “To falter now—” Her hand flexed against his arm. “But I’d not forgive myself if you were to lose this hearing. The thought of you truly facing prison, George—”

He exhaled and dropped a kiss to the top of her head, arm wrapping about her shoulders. “Clay has the utmost faith in your ability to persevere,” he informed her, apropos of nothing. He could feel the quiet huff of laughter that his questionable words of comfort coaxed from her lips, a gentle hitch of her back at his side and the rise-and-fall of her shoulders as she giggled.

“High praise indeed,” she chortled, hiding her face against his neck as she laughed. It felt wrong to sit there in shared amusement, tempting fate by laughing in its face; but, at the same time, it was the break in the ice they both had needed, and George could feel his heart thawing, water rushing through his veins to mesh with his blood, ardor cooling slightly but feeling more alive than he had in weeks. 

How long they sat in comfortable silence George could not entirely say, but after some time he felt her move against him, sensed her interest shifting from comfort to something decidedly more carnal. “George,” she murmured, lips still pressed against his neck, the slide of them against his skin now kindling desire rather than stoking the embers of simple affection.

“Hmmm?” He twisted and gripped her with steady palms, pulling her completely atop him and swallowing her startled yelp as he caught her lips in a fierce kiss. For a long moment, they simply existed, lips moving against one another and hands following familiar paths across neck and back and shoulders, sliding and caressing and holding as they fell into place against each other.

“I worry for you every day,” she breathed, legs settling across his hips as she draped herself above him, hands falling to cradle his cheeks. “Just because I am leaving does not mean that I do not care.”

His brow furrowed, his own hand lifting to smooth a wayward lock of hair from her forehead even as the other slipped to her back, pressing her more firmly against him, grinding the hardest part of himself into the cradle of her thighs. “I have never doubted that,” he said earnestly. She rocked gently against him in reply, fingers winding through the curls of his beard as she bit back a groan. “I know the appearances we must keep,” he whispered, leaning up to kiss the arch of her cheekbone, “the front we must present to the world.” He moved his mouth to the other side of her face in a mirror of the same motion. “We have not climbed as high as we have by allowing fear to control us.” He dropped his mouth to her own, dragged his teeth across her bottom lip, nibbling at it before soothing the plump flesh with his tongue.

His wife was the only person with whom he could be so honest, so open—and it was the same, for her with him. They knew each other as intimately as two people could, body and mind and soul each bared before the other, carved open and exposed, every secret raw and spread out on display like a corpse beneath the knife.

Bertha knew he was terrified, however well he hid it, stressed to the gills and consumed by guilt for the five men that had died, whatever he might claim to the contrary. Soft she had called him, and the sharp contrast between the ruthless businessman and the tender-hearted family man was their most precious secret—in truth, that was the very reason those words, spat in anger though they might have been, had stung so fiercely. 

“I’ll write to you every day we are gone,” she promised, overriding the maudlin turn his thoughts had taken, her vow pressed against his forehead with burning lips. It was a brand that seared itself onto his soul and knit the scattered fragments of it back into a single tapestry, wove him back together with a single press of her mouth against his furrowed brow. “I’ll think of you every day,” she continued, sliding lower to nibble at the underside of his neck, her hands falling to his shoulders, guiding him back until he reclined, half-sitting, against the headboard. “Every day, and every night.” She parted his dressing gown with unwavering hands, shoved it from his shoulders, smiled in delight against his throat as her questing fingers revealed nothing but skin beneath the garment. 

In an entirely uncharacteristically romantic gesture, she pressed her palm flat against his chest, directly above his heart, nails digging into his skin just enough to leave a semi-circle of crescents in the pale flesh. “I’ll be with you as well, my dear,” she told him, blue eyes nearly black as she caught his gaze before ducking to replace her hand with her lips, kissing each of the five marks she had left to stake her claim. “ Here. ” 

George groaned. His patience was already frayed and fraught, worn thin and at the end of his rope. He scrabbled for the hem of her nightgown, seized it between trembling fingers and all but yanked it up and off of her, baring her to his hungry gaze. “Beautiful,” he breathed, a priest set before his altar, devoted to worshiping her with every scrap of devotion left to his blemished soul. His hands rose to play at her breasts, teasing her nipples into stiff peaks. He relinquished one to curve the flat of his palm around the back of her neck, to tug her down toward him and claim her lips in a bruising kiss. He wanted to see her undone, see her flushed and wanting, leave her trembling with the memory of him before she left for the shores of Rhode Island and abandoned him to a city that seemed hollow without her presence to fill it.

Bertha did not sit idly, her own hands tugging and shoving until he shifted enough to allow her to wrench his dressing gown away and toss it over the side of the bed, her hips splayed across his own, the wetness between her thighs teasing them both as she rubbed herself shamelessly against him. He was hard to the point of distraction, and the calculated slide of her innermost lips against his throbbing member did little to alleviate that agony. She threaded her fingers through the curls at the back of his head and yanked him forward to her breast. 

George followed without question, fastening his lips tightly about one nipple, wetting it with several deft flicks of his tongue before he grazed his teeth across it, teasing her to the point of blind desire. He mirrored the actions of his mouth with one hand, the other slipping down to settle at the apex of their thighs, seeking the swollen bud that hid between her legs, circling it briefly before he slid a finger into her opening. It went with next to no resistance, and he groaned around her breast at how wet she was for him, how eager.

Her hands flattened against the back of his head, pressing him to her for several long moments as she writhed against his finger, yanking him away only to direct him to the opposite breast, her mouth half-open as she panted, writhing above him. 

George could barely restrain the desire that blazed beneath the surface of his skin, any chill from their prior disagreements long since obliterated, burned away beneath the blue flame that kindled in the depths of her eyes, the way her hips writhed against his fingers as he added another to her and crooked it, seeking the spot that would make her see stars, his cock trapped between her hips and his own stomach, flared and flushed an angry red, feeling ever shuddering pulse of her walls about his fingers as though it were already embedded inside her.

Just as he felt her begin to quiver, he yanked his fingers away, fumbling for himself, coating his sheath in her wetness. Pulling from her breast with a wet pop, he caught her eyes, waited for her silted, desperate nod, and then drove himself home, hands settling on her hips as he bit at her lips, tongue sweeping gracelessly into her mouth, pulling her atop him as he checked his angle so that she could slide down atop him until he was buried to the hilt in her. 

The warmth of her walls around him brought relief and damnation in tandem, the flex and flutter of her muscles about his cock a teasing torment as much as it was a breath of relief. Never one to sit idly, Bertha caught his hands in hers, drew them out to his sides and pinned them to the pillows on either side of their joined hips. “I have you,” she promised, eyes locking on his in a promise that no words had a hope of overcoming, lifting her hips and tipping her head back in a groan at the friction the movement created between them, sinking back down and nipping at his Adam’s apple in a flash of petty possessiveness. It was just below where his tie would sit on any given daym and he knew without question she had chosen the site on purpose so that he could feel the memory of her chafe against his foral wear, trapped in his office, set before a room of his peers whilst promenaded about like a show-horse before his audience throughout the course of his hearing.

Thrusting upward, he allowed the harsh, uncontrolled groan he had been fighting to be ripped from his lips, the sound spiraling out between them to catch on the walls and curtains and portraits that dotted the room. She worried the mark against his flesh, painting him with a physical display of her desire, nipping lightly at the dark bruise once it was established. Her teeth and tongue were like lighting, quick and fleeting and like quicksilver, carving their mark against his skin even as they slipped away, feylike and unhindered in their retreat, claiming him even as they darted away, tempting him to follow.

George could feel the curve of her smile against her skin. “Mine,” she purred, every bit the smug wife claiming her prize. She twisted her hips just so, and the tension she had on one hand relaxed just enough that he felt safe in swinging it upward to slide across her cheek, kiss her fiercely, slip down to the dip of her waist and drive her even more deeply onto him. 

Bertha moaned, the sound low and erotic beyond anything some street worker might conjure to entertain a customer, her movements faltering slightly as she neared her precipice. George pressed a sloppy kiss to the corner of her mouth, caught the deep, deep blue of her fevered gaze, and slipped that same hand down between them, seeking out the bud that pulsed beneath the pad of his finger. She wanted— oh she wanted—

He jerked, driving up, lips finding a spot just below her collarbone that a dress would hide, teeth worrying a mark darker than any he might have otherwise carved, thumb swiping in calculated circles around that most sensitive part of herself, and—

—Bertha shuddered, lashes fluttering, eyes still fixed determinedly upon his own and her lips parted, every inch the goddess he proclaimed her to be, and fell apart above him. Her thighs trembled where they curled about his waist, her walls fluttering against his shaft as they spasmed, every bit of her coming undone above him. He forced himself to wait until she was just starting to come down from her high, thrusting shallowly against her, every scrape and slide against her quivering flesh like the press of a hot iron to his tender skin, then seized her hips and thrust once, twice, until he, too, was coming with a groan, the sound muffled against her lips as she slipped low enough to offer him a messy kiss, all teeth and tongue and no finesse, utterly delicious to his scattered brain.

She sank down against him, temporarily boneless, lipping at his collarbone and playing with the sparse hairs of his chest with one hand. The other slid upwards to curl into his hair, tugging until he was forced to tip his chin down to press a kiss to her brows. He chased the laugh lines she professed to hate, tracing each and every one with a kiss, his own hands smoothing across the unblemished skin of her back as she all but splayed out against him, a cat curling against its favorite perch beneath the heat of an afternoon sun. 

“I’ll miss you terribly,” he confessed, chasing the arch of her cheekbone down to the corner of her lip, shuffling on the pillows until they were both laying flat against the mattress, Bertha pillowed atop his chest. He was still inside her, growing softer by the second. He knew he should move, but the intimate moment had been so long in coming between them, and she was soft in his arms, and the look in her eyes was even softer, if such a thing were possible, and—

“You’ll telegram?” she asked, tentatively, quietly. Such hesitance was not something he was accustomed to in his bold wife, and he twined his arms around her shoulders even as he slipped free of her, coaxing her down to curl about him, tucking her in against his side as her head settled into place upon his chest, cheek resting against the throbbing pulse of his heart.

“As soon as the hearing has concluded,” he promised, feeling bonelessly exhausted for the first time in many weeks. The coming days would bring additional strife, he had no doubt of it, but—

—with Bertha tucked against his side, sated and sloppy and as heedless to the constraints of the society they had chosen as she might ever be, he could hardly bring himself to care. Instead, he swept his hand into her hair, pressed a gentle kiss to her brow, and allowed himself to fall into the first restful sleep he had been able to claim since this entire debacle had begun. 

The hearing was yet to come, but—his wife was on his side, and he knew without a doubt she would fight tooth and nail for him no matter what the outcome. 

In that moment, it was all he needed.

Chapter Text

Bertha slipped into her guest room in Mr. McAllister’s house with a sigh, barely waiting for the door to slide shut behind her before she sagged back against it with a hand over her eyes. Exhaustion had become her constant companion, but these last weeks had tested her capacity to bear it beyond its usual reserve. Rarely, if ever, did she consider the weight of her jewelry a burden, but tonight the necklace at her throat felt like a collar, her earrings chains, each delicate piece yanking her closer and closer to the floor like some unrelenting anchor.

Dinner had been a success—even more of one than she had hoped—but now that it was over she could feel nothing but raw, desperate relief. Relief, and the acute need to be as close to her husband as soon as their schedules might allow. George’s telegram had been a sharp, if unexpected, reassurance in the moments before the dinner, but the details had been sparing at best. To think that Miss Brooks’s spontaneous decision to purchase gloves had been the saving grace of the entire ordeal, well—

Bertha would never be able to thank the girl directly, but she swore then and there that if there were a way she could repay her unexpected assistance in the coming months, she would. 

(If she were to be honest with herself, she rather hoped it might be in the form of bolstering a courtship with Larry. The niece of Agnes van Rhijn would not have been her first choice for her son, but it took a much less observant woman than herself to not notice the way Larry had taken a shine to their quick-witted neighbor. If said quick-witted neighbor had also happened to spare her own husband a trial and probable trip to prison, well —needless to say, there was little she would not do for the girl, if it were within her power to orchestrate)

Still, those were musings for another time. 

Bertha sighed again, fingers clenching around the diamonds she held clutched within her cupped palm, a fortune’s worth of jewels cradled in her hand. Once upon a time, such a thought would have filled her with a near-tangible spark of glee, the tingle of it racing sharply down her spine and filling her with an acute sense of vicious satisfaction. To be the owner of such wealth, to drape herself in it like a lady of olden times, diamonds and pearls and emeralds and rubies scattered careless across her person, seemingly without care—

—it had been one of her oldest dreams, and one of the happiest days of her life when she had seen such dreams fulfilled.

Years later, however, the novelty had at least somewhat faded, and now she clutched her diamond-studded earrings, necklace, and tiara with a bit of a wilting posture, her back slanted and head drooping, exhaustion sweeping ever-closer as she allowed herself to drift over to the vanity of her guest room. Lips pursed, she stepped to the dressing table to deposit the jewelry in its respective setting, fingers grazing the velvet boxes and worn wood as she trailed her hand across the length of the borrowed furniture. In her own house, a footman would have claimed it immediately, but this was Newport, and Mr. McAllister’s house besides. She had sacrificed many a luxury in the passage to Rhode Island to maintain the quaint, “cottage” couture maintained by New York’s upper class in its seaside retreat. Though Adelheide was certain to soon appear, there were far fewer servants in the house and she was left to her own devices far more than even at her own home.

Bertha bared her teeth in the mirror, relishing the way her features transformed into something fey and almost feral with the simple gesture. 

Despite the acute relief that had all but washed through her as she had hungrily devoured George’s hastily-transcribed message, she now found herself desiring nothing more than the comfort of her husband’s arms. The sting of that vapid indignity was doubled—no, quadrupled— by the fact that he simply was not there. Distance and circumstance separated them as neatly as any body of water, and Bertha found herself pining—rather irritably, she might add—for a man who had no hope of arriving within the next few days, if even that . A successful hearing was a victory, but there were still messes to be mopped up, floods to be diverted, and damage to be undone. None of that could be accomplished overnight. 

What made it all the worse was that this base, petulant yearing was not borne out of any lust or desire, but out of the raw need for the most simple of human comforts. She just missed George: t he comfort of his presence, the warmth of his embrace, the steady thrum of his heart beneath her ear when they laid curled up together in bed as they talked about the trials of their respective days. It had been far too long since they had been able to share the same space and simply exist, and Bertha was keenly feeling the absence of such simple intimacies.

The wave of unadulterated satisfaction she had derived from a successfully-navigated dinner had been fleeting at best. Even though she always professed to want more, the heady rush of triumph had fled rather more quickly than possible, leaving her empty and aching for George’s presence at her side.

Contrary to common debate, she was no oblivious fool or flippant, uncaring wife. She knew quite well how much of a strain these last few weeks had placed upon his shoulders. Atlas himself had carried less weight than George in these trying times, his business partners and competitors alike having abandoned him to the trials of what they claimed to be the failings of his own pride. They hadn’t seen the persistent flicker of guilt in his eyes as he read the accounts of the injured, the dead. They hadn’t seen him rip and tear and utterly demolish the message that contained word of Dickson’s faulty axles into shreds, hadn’t seen his shoulders tense beneath his jacket as he gripped the edge of his desk the way she knew he wished he could seize the other man’s throat instead of a measly piece of furniture.

He had always been the better person between the two of them. 

Of that, Bertha had always been certain. He was ruthless and exacting in the office, the boardroom, and the exchange, especially the exchange, but—he believed wholeheartedly in his family and would do anything and everything to better their lives.

It translated into his business life as well, sometimes. She was not unaware of it. She could see beneath the surface of the cool facade he flashed after Mr. Morris had chosen the coward’s way out of a situation of his own making, had seen the clench of his jaw beneath the stern press of his lips as he walked himself through the other man’s final moments, imagined himself in his competitor’s shoes.

Soft, she had called him, but they both knew that he was not. 

He was merciless and unrelenting when required; he relished it, even, especially when he managed to overcome a particularly fierce competitor and claim his prize. Robber baron, they called him on the streets and in the press. The term was technically true, especially in matters of business, but—in matters of the heart, matters of family and love—

Well, Bertha knew him best of all. She knew when she was bested.

He had her outstripped by far in ways of the heart. Some days, she loathed him for it; others, she loathed herself. Still, she had her own weaknesses as well, and at the end of this tedious, long series of weeks she found herschel tired, lonely, and desperately wishing that George would appear at her side..

Victory at the hearing notwithstanding, Bertha knew the toll these last weeks had placed upon her husband. She knew how much he wished he could have simply withdrawn to Newport with the rest of them, taken himself as a guest in Mr. McAllister’s house, ignored the hearing and all that came with it, and allowed the world at large to flit and flutter by without a care to its workings and politics.

At this particular moment, she herself desired nothing more than George. Just to see him, to press her cheek against his chest, and know that he was with her and safe. Nothing more than that, she promised herself, staring at herself in the vanity mirror and catching the lie hot and sharp in the glittering blue eyes that gazed back at her. Just him, just him—

Even so, they had not gotten where they now stood by always doing what they wanted . Indeed, Bertha rather imagined if George had his way they would scarcely leave one bedroom or another for days at a time if left to his own desires. In many instances, she would have found herself hard pressed to disagree. They fell into each other all too easily, even on the kindest of days, and—

So uncharacteristically enmeshed in her own thoughts was she that she did not notice the door of her room open and close until she heard the quiet snick of the wood against the door frame. 

“Ah, Adelheid.” Spinning on her heel, Bertha turned to greet her maid. Dinner had been a long affair, and the games afterward drawn out well beyond the point of tedium. Ridding herself of her jewelry had been the only step she was capable of taking on her own, given her attire.  “I am beyond ready to change—”

And she caught herself on a sharp gasp, for it was not, in fact, Adelheid who peered at her from the doorway, but rather George . His dark eyes glittered joyfully with naked desire and poorly-masked amusement, the combination only slightly overshadowed by the residual worry that still creased his eyes and put a cast to the slant of his lips. He was, undoubtedly, a sight for sore eyes and then some.

“Hello, my dear,” he murmured. He closed and locked the door behind his, his free hand rising to smooth his rumpled hair.

An armed battalion could not have forced Bertha’s eyes away from him as she tracked the movement of his hand through his hair. As his arm dropped, she continued to trace his form with a hungry gaze, sweeping up and down from head to toe, determined to prove to herself that he had returned to her hale and whole. His hair was still a bit disheveled—it was likely he had been carding his hands through it whilst on the ferry—and his tie askew, but otherwise he appeared a picture-perfect example of gentlemanly composure.

“George, ” Bertha breathed, taking one step toward him. 

Had she not been so relieved to see him in the flesh, she would have despised herself for how breathy, how needy the exclamation portrayed her. As it stood, however, she was breathless; and, she was needy. She had been missing her husband for some time: days, if one were to count their physical time apart, but weeks if they were to weave the tapestry of this entire travesty across a consistent timeline. They had both been so consumed— he by the accident and hearing, she by her worries about him and her plans for Newport and Gladys—

Forcing herself to pause, to breathe, she smoothed her hands down the sides of her evening gown. Her palms paused at her waist to press against the dip or her corset. “How—?”

George chuckled, the low sound a balm to her soul that she hadn’t known it had needed. 

“Even the best of servants may take a bribe, Bertha,” he said teasingly, closing the distance between them by two more steps so that only a single span was left to separate them. “As you might have observed through your acquisition of Mr. Bannister’s expertise during your luncheon for Mr. McAllister.” The mischievous arch of one eyebrow dared her to object. 

Bertha snorted despite herself, a quiet huff of laughter slipping from her parted lips as she dipped her head. Oh, she had missed this ridiculous man. Still, to have come all this way, and unannounced—

“I blackmailed the butler into not giving me away,” George elaborated, intuiting the slant of her thoughts. “Watson somehow acquired a bit of knowledge that proved quite useful tonight.” Grinning outright, he carefully shrugged out of his jacket and set it carelessly atop the rather foreboding wooden chair to his left. “Then, I gave a maid a very generous amount to direct me to your rooms and remain silent about it.”

“But what will they all say downstairs in the morning?” Bertha asked. It came out somewhat breathlessly, her eyes continuing to traverse his frame, peeling him apart layer-by-layer as though to seek out any internal wounds from the hearing that might, without her keen attention, have already begun to fester. She should care more about the possible scandal, she knew. She had not gone to all this effort to cast it away for a single night with her husband, but—

—he was here, with her, when she had just been so desperately wishing for him to manifest in this very house—

George gave a quiet hum of satisfaction, his hands already yanking his tie from beneath his waistcoat, fingers fiddling with the silk as he slowly undid the knot that held it bound against his throat. “An extra bribe might have been included to knock at the door before the rest of the house awakens, and to present me as newly-arrived sometime later in the morning,” he informed her with a boyish grin.

“Servants talk, George,” Bertha chided, the effect of her words entirely diminished by the way she swayed as she entered his orbit. Every inch of him exuded a powerful magnetic pull, luring her ever-closer like a fluttering moth to an inextinguishable flame. Bertha settled her palms at his shoulders, rising on tiptoes to skim her lips along the edge of his beard as she pressed a series of fleeting kisses to the underside of his jaw. Without her boots, which she had shucked the moments after her jewelry when she had reached the sanctity of her temporary quarters, she could barely reach his chin with her lips. 

“Not this time,” he swore, his eyes dark with another, unspoken promise. He discarded the tie to the floor in a puddle of silk, his hands dropping to her waist and tugging her tightly against him. “It is good to see you.” The confession came out a sigh against her collarbone as he allowed his head to drop to her shoulder, face turning so that his lips were pressed softly against her skin. The low neckline of her dress allowed him an expanse of territory to explore, but he contented himself with ghosting the softest of kisses back and forth along the exposed arch of her throat, humming lowly as he allowed himself to revel in the feel of her beneath his lips. 

Bertha spared a stray thought of gratitude to herself for having had the foresight to shed her jewelry immediately, for it gave George unimpeded access to her neck. She had missed the teasing path he loved to follow from cheek to chest, his lips pausing to linger, as always, in the hollow between her collarbones. The way he lingered over every exposed inch of her, hovering and nuzzling against her as though she were some treasure to be cherished—it eased a hollow ache within her that she had not even realized had begun to spread.  

“I’ve missed you too,” she admitted. It was a confession to them both. Closing her eyes, she lifted one hand to the back of his head, allowing herself the luxury of burying her fingers in his hair, fingers teasing his mussed curls into an even greater state of disarray as she scritched and scratched along his scalp. “And…I’m glad you’re here, propriety be damned.” It was a steep admission for her to make, as much as she had consistently preached about appearances and social expectation as of late.

But…she was done acting as though she did not care. She had missed her husband, and for tonight, at least, she refused to pretend otherwise.

George answered with a joyful laugh, the sound of it traveling through her like an electric shock. How long had it been since she had seen him so happy? “I’m glad I’m here as well, my darling.” Quick as lightning, he swept her off her feet and into his arms, grinning broadly as she gave a quiet yelp of shock, feet kicking uselessly in the air as she dangled at least a foot above the ground.

“Put me down, George!”

Fist pounding against his chest, Bertha struggled in vain against his tight hold, wriggling in place as she squirmed in his arms. Still, she contradicted herself entirely as she wrapped her other arm around his shoulders and flattened her other palm against her chest. “You are absolutely ridiculous,” she said, burying her face against his neck to hide the grin that threatened to overtake her. Indignity or no, there was something so right about being held so tightly in his arms, to be pressed up against him so that she might feel the steady thrum of his heart beneath her ear, to affirm to herself that he was real, he was there, and he was safe.

George only held her more tightly against him. From the way his breath shuddered against her, he was only just beginning to truly allow himself to embrace his victory at the hearing. There was the slightest tremor in his arms and torso that told Bertha all was not entirely well, and she scrunched and shuffled within his grasp until both her arms snaked around his neck, tucking herself entirely against him as mirth faded quickly into concern and an uncommon wave of sentimentality claimed her.

Bertha’s smile softened into something infinitely more tender, the hand braced against his chest slipping up to the curve of his jaw instead, fingertips tanging in his beard as she tugged his face toward hers. “You are ridiculous,” she repeated, far more tenderly this time, sweeping a series of soft kisses across the arch of his cheekbone before hiding her face against his neck. 

She could feel his lips twist in a smile, and allowed her own mouth to slant upwards in a slight smile of her own. There was her husband. This pensive man who had been haunting the halls of their house for these last, long weeks had not been George, not really—he was far too much a force of nature to sustain such a grim countenance for so long, and to have him finally beginning to break free of such bonds was an absolute relief. 

“ Ridiculous, ” she repeated for the third time, this time even more softly. It was less a comment to him than it was a critique of herself. She was giving way. She knew it, he knew it. It was an apology as much as an acknowledgement. Her lips tightened, and she knew he could feel the twist of them against his neck as she hid her face away against the bit of his throat left exposed above the collar of his throat that had been left exposed by the removal of his scarlet tie.

Deft fingers moved to his waistcoat, sliding buttons out of place as they urged it off of his shoulders and to the floor behind him. “Do you—” Bertha began, and then faltered, feeling ridiculously off-kilter in a way that she had not in so very long. “That is—” She breathed deeply in through her nose, nostrils flaring and eyes flashing a deep, sapphire blue. George had told her time and time again how her eyes shifted with her moods, how they slid from sky-blue to deep azure, to a rich, bottomless marine that threatened to engulf them both when she so rarely allowed emotion to truly overcome her. She always flushed and demurred such statements, but he had repeated them so often that she had come to grudgingly accept them to be as close to fact as he might come.

The sapphire necklace he had once gifted her as proof had not hurt his argument, either.

Sighing, she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I hope you do not hold this trip against me,” she murmured. It was not quite an apology, but it was as close to one as either of them could venture.

“Not at all.” George had already begun to shake his head when Bertha opened her mouth to speak, one hand pressing firmly against the back of her head to fist in her dark tumble of hair as the other splayed across her back to pull her firmly across his chest. Her face slipped neatly into the gap between his chin and shoulder and he tipped his mouth toward her ear. “It was the right thing to do, however much I wanted you there with me.”

Bertha huffed out another small sigh. “Still,” she sniffed. “I despised having to pretend to be so flippant to the likes of Mr. McAllister and Mamie Fish. They saw straight through me, of course—the whole city knew about the hearing, but what else could I do?” She played with a few curls of his hair, pinning them between thumb and forefinger and twirling them about. “Still, apparently it was the right move, and all is well, but—”

George’s hands dropped to the dip of her back, lowering her back to the floor so that he could lean her back far enough to peer down at her and meet her eyes with his dark, earnest gaze. “All is well,” he swore. “And all is forgiven. I know the game you play is as important as my business dealings are to me, and one that is as foreign to me as another language.” His eyes twinkled. “I will not do you the injustice of insinuating that they are as foreign to me as my business dealings are to you. ”

They both spared a quiet snicker to times long past, when Bertha had followed the market as closely as her husband, and had made many purchases and sales in his name to further their ascension.

Bertha surprised them both when she sagged against him, drooping to the point of actual exhaustion and forehead resting solidly against his chest. “May we just…lie down for a bit?” she asked quietly. It was not at all uncommon for them to share each other’s company, but usually such moments were preceded by a great deal more intimacy. Tonight, though, Bertha was just tired . 

George, of course, read her as easily as he always had. “Of course, my dearest,” he agreed warmly, tucking her more tightly against his side and stooping to press a soft kiss to the top of her head. He maneuvered them closer to the bed, shuffling so that he could shed his waistcoat, braces, trousers, and shirt while still keeping her as close to him as possible. Sitting, he prompted her with gentle hands to turn and slowly helped her slowly out of the remainder of her evening dress. If his fingers and lips lingered briefly on each patch of exposed skin, well, he was only a man, and a man deeply in love with his wife at that. 

When she was left only in her chemise and he in his smallclothes, they slid into bed together, George on his back and Bertha nestling up beside him. She twisted in his arms, curling up into him, her arms curving around his torso so that she could splay herself fully across his body and nestle her face against his neck. She so very rarely allowed herself to be so needy , but she had won her victory and he had claimed his own, and she was tired of fighting. For just one night, she wanted to claim her spoils without worrying what the rest of the world thought of them. “I’m glad you’re here, George,” she murmured, twisting so that she could peer up at him through heavy-lidded eyes.

His teeth flashed in the dim light of the dying fire. “Me too,” he murmured, twisting his neck so that he could feather a kiss across her brow. “I would make the trip here and back ten times over for just a single night in your arms, my dear.”

“Even if it is just to sleep?” Bertha asked, sounding small and despising herself for it. She could feel his brow furrow against her as he frowned. 

“Even then. Especially then.” He scrunched away just enough for her to be able to see the gleaming coals of his eyes, their fire stoked by a love that was tendered by decades of shared affection, respect, and trust. “I love you, my darling, and am happiest when I have your heart.” He paused, his hand finding its way between them to press tenderly against her breast in the spot where her biggest tell stirred within its cage of bone and muscle. “As I do right now,” he added softly.

“You always have it,” Bertha whispered, returning her face to its hiding place against his neck rather than meet his eyes. Her most solemn confessions were made in just such a setting, George’s body warm beside hers, his mind and heart bared to her and welcoming of her every flay and foible. “I just…”

“Want more,” he murmured. It was not an accusation. She could detect a hint of poorly-disguised fondness in the statement, and could not stop herself from rolling her eyes even as a few frustrated tears slipped free of her shuttered eyelids.

“I shouldn’t ,” she whispered fiercely against him, lips tickling his neck. “Any sensible woman would not. I do love you George, so much that it hurts. It feels all too often that we’re simply two halves of the same person, and I can hardly even exist without you nearby most days. But—I cannot stop myself. We can do more, be better. Between us, we can rise to a height the likes of which New York, America , has never seen—”

She cut off with a gasp as her husband turned in full to press a hungry kiss to her parted lips, his mouth moving with abandon across her own as he drank down every bit of the ambition pouring from her bared soul. 

“And I love you all the more for it,” he swore, lips moving to christen each corner of her mouth with matching kisses, his palms smoothing across her shoulders and thumbs sweeping to trace the dip and divot of her collarbones. “I know the woman I chose to marry. I expect nothing less, my darling. Your every success is my own, just as you have claim to every new line, station, factory, and mill that goes up in the name of one of my companies.”

“Partners,” Bertha whispered, the old promise between them causing her lips to twist upward in a genuine smile. 

“Partners.” George agreed, stroking a hand through her hair, fingers trailing through the long strands and curving tenderly around the back of her head. “As long as we both shall live.”

They sealed it with a kiss.