The salon was stifling and not in temperature alone. Bodies and candles might had warmed it considerably. Or perhaps it was merely the crush of bodies, the cloying sweetness of perfumes layered over unwashed skin, the smoke from a hundred candles burning too close that had calcified the air. The laughter was too bright, the smiles too fixed and strained, and the endless choreography of a hunting party where no one had actually come to hunt had become tedious.

Or rather, people hadn’t come to hunt animals.

Countess Maria Juliana had long stopped distinguishing between discomfort and the simple act of existing at these gatherings.

She stood at the center of a cluster of admirers and was seemingly holding court, her fan moving in slow, deliberate arcs. They had crowded her chair, their laughter ringing just a shade too loud, their eyes lingering just a moment too long on the curve of her neck above her bodice. Her fan was conversing in a language on its own: a flutter to dismiss, a snap to command attention, a slow wave to invite. Juliana was good at this, she spoke this language fluently.

“Surely, Countess, you don’t mean to tell us you find the countryside dull?” The young Baron - what was his name again? - leaned closer than necessary. His breath smelled of wine and candied oranges. “Being this far out of Schönbrunn is truly freedom incomparable.”

“On the contrary.” Juliana’s smile was a masterpiece of pleasant deflection. “I find it refreshingly honest. The animals here don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are. Unlike certain company.”

Laughter rippled from the mouth of her audience. Someone tittered behind a fan. The Baron’s cheeks flushed. It didn’t matter what Juliana said: They would have laughed regardless, because she was the Countess Erdődy-Hévíz, and her notoriety was a currency she spent freely.

Let them look. Let them whisper behind their fans. She had learned long ago that the only defense against scandal was to wear it like a second gown. A gown that was fitted, deliberate, and impossible to ignore.

Another suitor approached. Younger than her usual admirers, handsome in that forgettable way that suggested good breeding and better connections. His name escaped her — something German or Bohemian, something appropriate. He bowed over her hand, his lips hovering above her knuckles without touching.

"Countess, you are unjust. You have monopolized the attention of every soul in this room, and yet you yourself have not spared a single glance for me."

Juliana smiled. It was a masterpiece of exquisity, practiced and polished through years and before mirrors in three different palaces. “Herr...” She blinked, her blue eyes sparkling and reflecting the flicker of the candles. In the same motion she lifted her fan before her lower face and muttered something indistinguishable that might have been a name. It was the most graceful recovery. “You flatter me. I am merely a woman enjoying the festivities. The attention you speak of belongs to the host’s excellent wine, which is the most charming of mistresses.”

He laughed, as expected. The young noble launched into some drivel about his estate, his prospects, his plans. Juliana’s gaze started to drift; boredom was spreading itself over her like a blanket.

Mingling with each other and yet very aware of standing and rank were elder Barons, young debutante Marchionesses, ladies-in-waiting to the Empress that was barricading herself behind lavishly decorated doors to wage a war she meticulously planned for by auctioning off her daughters. Everyone here had a name and expected the other to know it. Meanwhile her own name had been whispered about behind tautly spanned fans for years.

Across the salon, a woman stood near the hearth. Juliana’s perceptive eyes came to rest on her. The woman was heavy with child, her hand resting on the swell of her belly with that particular radiance that seemed to afflict expectant mothers. Her robe, utterly devoid of stays and instead falling freely on her plump form, indicated the final stages. Her husband hovered beside her, proud and utterly besotted. They made a handsome picture.

Juliana’s chest tightened, the movement of her fan stalled, before it picked up again. Measured as to not betray the stutter of emotion in her.

The light caught the woman’s face at a specific angle, and for one horrible, suspended moment she remembered a different face, could feel the way of small hands resting in hers.

Isabella. The way she had glowed, briefly, before the glow had turned into fever. They way the silence had settled after, thick and suffocating as wool. Her smile however did not falter.

“... and I hoped, Countess, that you might honor me with a dance during the next set.”

Juliana’s attention returned to her suitor. The man was still speaking in this hopeful manner. Her family’s expectations echoes in his every polished syllable: Remarry well, secure your position, produce an heir before you are too old, before scandal catches up and overtakes whatever of your beauty remains.

Her lashes twitched. “Perhaps,” she heard herself say as if she was a complete other person. “If the music is agreeable.”

He bowed again, satisfied, and retreated to spread his courtship elsewhere. To greener pastures, and younger stock.

The moment he was gone, Juliana rose. The room swayed. Not from drink, because she had been sipping the same glass of wine for an hour; the same wine she falsely had praised a minute ago.

She needed air.

Juliana moved toward the edge of the salon, toward the tall windows that overlooked the estate grounds. The heavy brocade curtain swallowed the light and half covered one of her sides. A servant passed with a tray. She almost reached for another glass, but then stopped. What even was the point? Wine had long since lost its ability to soften the edges.

Through the glass she could see the sky. Dark clouds were gathering on the horizon, heavy and with the colour of rotten plums. A storm was brewing and approaching in fast gallop. The air already carried that peculiar stillness that preceded violence: The birds had gone quiet, while the wind was holding its breath.

Something in Juliana was stirring. It wasn’t fear, just relief. The same stillness she felt, when she stood in front of an impenetrable pool of water, or a spire on top a cathedral, or any place where the ground ended and the air began.

“My dear Countess, you are hiding.”

The voice cut through her reverie. Juliana turned to find the mistress of her, the handmaiden who had been hovering at the periphery of her vision all evening. A servant, a girl seemingly present to serve and accommodate. Yet, Juliana had felt her steady gaze and the assessment that was unbecoming to an attendant.

This particular flavour of nosiness’ mistress, Countess Sophie de Gramont was approaching with a smile that did not reach her eyes.

She was an attractive woman. Dark auburn, powdered hair, well-dressed, well-connected, with that particular confidence that came from never having been truly wounded. They had known each other for years. They had disliked each other for nearly as long. And yet there was a familiarity in it, a rhythm to their exchanged that Juliana found almost comforting in its predictability.

“I am doing no such thing, Countess,” Juliana replied smoothly. “I am merely admiring the view. The Prince Khevenhüller has excellent grounds.”

“The Prince Khevenhüller has mud and trees, darling.” The other woman’s smile sharpened. “But I forget... you Translatheinians find such rustic charms novel.”

“And you Cislatheinians find them tedious, which is why you complain about them so eloquently.”

Countess Sophie’s breath stuttered, a brief moment in which she blinked. Then, surprisingly, she let a genuine laugh hear. “Touché. I see the country air hasn’t dulled your tongue.”

Juliana’s eyebrow twitched, a slip in her composure. She found she didn’t mind. “It would take more than air to accomplish that.”

They stood together in shallow camaraderie, two women in silk and powder, each holding her own kind of loneliness. Sophie’s gaze flickered toward the window. “A storm is coming,” she observed.”

“Indeed.”

“You should retire, storms do have the inconvenient habit of making one feel melancholic, doesn’t it? The men are planning a hunt tomorrow, and you’ll want your rest if you intend to charm the eligible bachelors.” The brunette’s lips twitched. “There are several here who have made their intentions unmistakably clear. If you... are inclined.”

Juliana’s smile remained fixed, yet her eyes sharpened. For all their shared charade of playing at rivalry, she didn’t underestimate someone possessing a sharper mind than half of these “eligible bachelors” present.

“How thoughtful of you to consider my prospects.”

Sophie brought a gloved hand to her mouth and turned, her skirts over the crinoline rustling. “I am always thoughtful. I’ll send my girl to check on you later. You look pale.”

Before Juliana could respond, she was gone; swept away into the crowd, leaving nothing but the faint trail of her perfume and the lingering weight of her scrutiny.

Juliana exhaled. Simultaneously the first rumble of thunder rolled across the grounds. The guests began to stir, glancing toward the windows with varying degrees of concern, morbid delight and wary apprehension. A storm at a country party was entertainment: something to discuss, to exclaim over and to fill the silences between dances.

The Countess did not move toward the safety of the interior. Quite the opposite: Instead, she drifted toward the doors that led to the terrace.

The rain started as a whisper, crescendoed through a murmur to a roar. In an instance the guests that had convened on the terrace scattered, laughing, shrieking, rushing toward the shelter of the house. Silk and velvet were gathered up, and wigs were protected by gloved hands. The salon erupted into chaos.

Juliana walked in the opposite direction and stepped through the doors into the downpour. The cold hit her like the crack of a whip, sharp and shocking. Her gown was ruined in seconds, while the powder on her face began to run. Her hair, that had been painstakingly and carefully arranged hours prior, plastered itself to her skull.

And yet, she did not run, nor did she seek cover. She simply walked with each step measured and every and each breath an act of will. The terrace extended along the rear of the house, bordered by a stone railing that overlooked the estate’s sloping grounds. Below, the landscape had disappeared into grey, swallowed by rain and the impending darkness; the world had been reduced to sound and fury.

At the railing Juliana stopped. Her hands gripped the wet stone, all the while water streamed down her face, into her eyes and making her blind to nature’s chaotic display. The shivers caught up to her. They were violent, uncontrollable tremors that rattled her bones and shook her frame. Juliana did not care for it.

The only thing she was able to do was stare down at the long drop. The grounds were invisible, hidden and covered by the ivy crawling up the facade. But she knew they were there: the slope, the darkness, the end of something.

It was not yet a decision, not even an impulse that befell her. A question simply, posed posed to no one in particular: What would it feel like to jump? To stop everything? With everything being the smiling, the performing. To stop being the Countess Erdődy-Hévíz, the scandalous widow, a desirable match, just an empty vessel. In a heartbeat she would have ceased carrying the weight of a love that had died in blood and screams, leaving nothing but a hollow space where her heart should have been.

Isabella’s face surfaced unbidden: The way she had looked in those final days with her face pale, sweating and terrified. The way her hand had felt in Juliana’s grip, or how it had grown colder with each passing hour. The midwife had shaken her head, and the doctor had averted his eyes, and the world had narrowed to a single terrible truth. Gone.

Isabella was gone. And the child with her.

Sudden thunder cracked overhead and the rain picked up its pace. Juliana’s fingers tightened on the railing in response. She did not hear the footsteps approaching. The presence behind her went unnoticed until it was already there. When she turned her head, she found herself no longer alone.

The woman now standing in the rain as well was a stranger. Or perhaps had only went unnoticed until now, because she was a handmaid, clearly. Someone’s servant. And she was someone who had no business here, in this moment, at the edge of something irreversible.

Juliana felt the prick of irritation inside her. She regarded her from her half-closed lids: Water dripped from the woman’s chin, her ordinary and unremarkable servant gown clung to her frame like a second skin and she looked like a drowned creature. That, Juliana thought, must have been her mirror: a ghost, warning her from becoming a tragedy in silk.

The Countess did not move away from the railing, and neither did she attempt to compose herself. For that she had lost the drive, as she felt too hollowed out to find herself to care.

Instead, she let out a short, humourless laugh. The sound was swallowed by the storm, but her lips moved anyway, shaping words that felt like a confession and a deflection all at once.

“I suppose I am a sight.”