What Remained Hers

"Do you still believe in the crown's cause?" Charny asked her, weeks later, watching her make quiet arrangements for their son's safety that most of her more ceremonial court colleagues had declined even to consider necessary.

Andrée set down the letter she'd been writing before answering. "Not the way I once did. Watching everything unfold this past year, I can't defend the monarchy as an abstract system anymore — not honestly, not with what I've watched it fail to do for people who needed it to do better."

"Then why the arrangements? Why the care with the servants, the provisions you won't discuss openly?"

"Because none of that is about the crown. It's about her." Andrée met his eyes. "I've stopped being able to defend the monarchy as an idea. I haven't stopped, for one single day, being loyal to the actual woman I've known for decades — not a mistress I serve out of duty, but a friend I've watched suffer through more than any friend should have to suffer. Those turned out to be two entirely different loyalties, and only one of them survived this year intact."

Charny considered this for a long moment. "That's not the same answer you gave me at the fire, that first evening."

"No. I've kept turning the question over since, and I think I've finally landed somewhere useful rather than somewhere merely honest." She reached for his hand. "I still don't know how much of my loyalty was carved into me before I ever got the chance to choose freely, and how much is actually mine. I've decided the question matters less than I once believed. A loyalty tested this many times, through this much true hardship, chosen again and again rather than abandoned when abandoning it would have been considerably easier — that becomes real, whatever its distant origins. I don't need the philosophy resolved to know that much for certain anymore."

"And us?" Charny asked. "Where does that leave us, now that you've settled the larger question?"

"Exactly where the fire conversation left us. I don't know what's coming, for her or for our family, once whatever's gathering finally arrives. What I know is that I intend to meet it with you, and with the same loyalty to her that's carried me through every crisis before this one." Andrée managed something close to a real smile. "It's not a resolved philosophy, Charny. It's a workable one. I've decided that's enough to build the remainder of this winter on, whatever comes after it."