Early Saturday evening, 12 September 1942, at Malfoy Manor in Tintagel...
Angelo Bruno hadn’t been able to talk to Ekaterin Dolohov all day-she’d either been with the other bridesmaids, then confined to her room (while he was stuck on carriage duty) or surrounded by the rest of the bridesmaids at the wedding supper. During the first part of the dancing, she was under close supervision, and he was afraid that whoever was watching would probably think of talking to him as potentially “getting into trouble”. As soon as the knot of girls around Susie Kyteler broke up, Angelo went to ask Katya to dance, because as soon as Rodrigo got to her, he knew he wasn’t going to dance with her again.
“Hello, Katya,” said Angelo. “I’m glad they let you out.”
“I suppose people would have asked too many questions,” said Katya with a frown. “Anyhow I was told this is it, I have to behave myself or else.”
Ordinarily Angelo would have been sympathetic to any trouble Katya got in, but what she’d threatened to do had been far beyond their usual pranks. “What exactly did you say to Yvon, anyway?”
“Let’s not go into details, shall we?” Katya sighed. “One of the country cousins might hear me, and I’ve heard far too many tales of what they’d have done if they’d heard me the first time.”
“Well, they would,” Angelo said, frowning. “They’re not like us. I know what you’re like when you’re angry, but they take things like that seriously.” Whatever it was-Katya’s usual hyperbole, no doubt.
“It was perfectly justified. You don’t want to know what I’d do if someone dumped me on my wedding day,” Katya grumbled.
“Since it’s likely to be Rodrigo, I probably would just so I could protect him,” Angelo said with a smile, trying to lighten the mood. “But he wouldn’t do that, and you wouldn’t actually do whatever you’d said.” He thought for a moment. “Imagine it the other way, if Rodrigo got confused and nearly married someone other than you. That’s closer to what happened here, you know.”
Katya looked at him sidewise in complete disbelief. “How do you figure, he was confused? I do realise they’re both blond, but so are most of Charis’ relatives…”
“Yvon and Alessio were inseparable when they were younger.” Angelo had been young enough then to think it all rather annoying, but now that he was so much more mature he understood how they’d felt. “I don’t know what happened between them, but it was a big mistake. Alessio would never have looked at Valeria if he’d known Yvon still wanted him.”
“I always figured Yvon and Alessio, based on the stories, were like you and Rodrigo,” Katya said, looking down at her shoes as they danced.
“Somebody wasn’t telling the stories right, then,” said Angelo. “I’d miss him terribly if he ever left, but I wouldn’t be lost without him the way they were.”
“You two were together before Melly and I were with you,” said Katya, who didn’t believe it. “And Alessio had Valeria and Yvon had…girls. He brought Rosier to the reception in August, although he told Bastiana he was seeing someone else when she asked him what he thought he was doing with someone so young. Of course, he was Hunter then.” She hadn’t known him well at all.
Angelo shook his head. “Yvon was only serious about girls up to the point where they got serious about him. Alessio…I don’t know. I’d never met Valeria before this weekend. I like her, but I have no idea what he was thinking when he proposed to her.”
“But I think you’d be just as upset without Rodrigo as you would be without Melly,” Katya said awkwardly. She was sure she’d be lost without Melly, as much as she would be without Rodrigo, and now she wondered if Rodrigo understood that as well as she thought he had. “Melina said Yvon had made Alessio choose. And that’s wrong.”
Angelo thought about that for a moment. “You’re right, I would. And you, too. But if I had to choose between the three of you and anyone else, there’d be no question about it.” He shrugged. “I don’t think anyone knows exactly what happened with them. Maybe they could add a third person, maybe not, but they’ll never give each other up. They tried, and they were just miserable.”
Katya nodded. “Melina said Yvon had been religious, and that that had made Alessio miserable, and that Alessio deserved better than to be treated that way.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Angelo said; he remembered when Yvon had announced his intention to enter the priesthood, but he also remembered that no-one had taken it half as seriously as Yvon had.
“So it’s true,” said Katya nervously.
Angelo nodded. “Yvon wanted to be a priest, but he also wanted Alessio. Like I said, they were confused.”
“You don’t think they’ll make each other miserable all over again? Because Melina does,” said Katya. It had seemed a likely story to her.
“I think if it even looks like they might, Lady Dracaena will make them regret it.” Angelo grinned. “And so will every other friend they’ve got. I don’t think that’ll happen, though. Nobody wants to go through this again, especially not them.”
“They’re your friends, then,” Katya said with a sigh, “but Valeria’s mine.” And Valeria was an outsider, like she was. Katya was suddenly struck by how much she really didn’t know about the world that Angelo and Rodrigo had grown up in; it was nothing like her own, and nothing at all like Melly’s.
“That’s fine, she needs friends. And if you want to help her play any of the pranks on Yvon and Alessio that we’d planned for the new couples, I’ll even help.” Angelo grinned, then turned serious. “Just don’t threaten them. I don’t want to lose you, either.”
Katya groaned. “Rodrigo would really leave me, if I couldn’t live here?” She frowned. “You know I was disowned because of him. Not just him, but part. And Melly will be, when her mother realises that you’re serious.” Granted, it wasn’t much to give up, being a Dolohov daughter-being afraid of her brother and more afraid of her parents-but she’d had a dowry, and that had been something; if Rodrigo didn’t marry her, and she didn’t go into the Company, she was very unlikely to find a job except at the front.
Angelo shook his head, puzzled. Didn’t she realise what could have happened? “No, Rodrigo wouldn’t leave you. But you threatened Yvon. You could’ve been killed for that.”
Katya nodded. “The country cousins. That’s what Santino calls them.” She pursed her lips.
“They’re not like us, and we’re on their land. We have to follow their rules here,” Angelo said insistently.
Katya nodded, frowning. “Why are they like that? They don’t understand jokes?” Not that she had been joking, really, but she probably would have stopped short of actually doing anything she’d threatened to do.
Angelo shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen them smile. But they don’t know you, and they take things literally. Whatever you said, I’m sure you were just blowing off steam, but they thought you meant it.”
“Would have thought. They weren’t there.” Katya sighed. The country cousins didn’t smile. Dracaena had told her that much; that if they bared their teeth you were in trouble.
“Lucky for you,” Angelo said, and couldn’t help but shudder at what would’ve happened if they had been.
“Valeria hit him. Alessio, not Yvon.” Katya bit her lip. “Lady Malfoy said they wouldn’t have cared about that. That Alessio isn’t their prince.”
Angelo nodded. “He’s not. We can do whatever we want to each other, but not to any of the Malfoys.”
Katya nodded. “I don’t really like that,” she said with a shrug. “I mean it’s true, but it isn’t right.” It wasn’t fair. The Malfoys were good people, but they weren’t better than everyone else.
Angelo shook his head in frustration. He wasn’t sure how to explain things-he wasn’t quite sure he understood it himself. “Lady Dracaena is the sacred queen. If something happens to her, the land suffers for it. If Grindelwald had managed to kill her last summer-well, I’m not sure what would’ve happened, but bad wouldn’t begin to describe it. So the country cousins protect her and her heirs. The rest of us really don’t matter, not like they do.”
“Yvon’s French,” said Katya, perplexed. “He’s her foster son, is he really related to her?”
“Yvon’s a Malfoy,” Angelo insisted. “Geography doesn’t work like you’d expect in the Bois. I don’t know what his lineage is, but it isn’t very different from hers.”
“I suppose not,” said Katya. “Can we…can we just dance?”
“Yes,” said Angelo with a relieved smile; he still didn’t know if Katya understood why what she’d done was wrong, but at least, he hoped, she understood how serious it had been.
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