We have Christmas dinner in the small palace dining room. When we go down, Prince Konrad, Lady Irena and Florian are already there waiting for us as servants lay a feast of vegetables and fish on the table. Dominik and Zofia take up wisps of hay from a painted basket and strew them out between the dishes, while Henryka solemnly takes two extra settings from the sideboard and lays them at one end of the table.

"Are Valery and Barany to join us?" I ask Mariusz. "Your aunts?"

He shakes his head. "The extra settings are for my dead brother and father. It is a Christmas tradition here. You will see, Florian will lay one for his mother."

But Florian is over by the window, craning his neck at the sky. It is left to Irena to take another plate and more cutlery and place them for the dead wife she replaced. Konrad sidles over to us and wishes us Merry Christmas in Selician, then turns his attention to the dowager duchess.

I am hungry by this time, despite all the spiced cakes I have eaten, and want nothing but to sit down and eat, but there is more waiting yet to be done. Zofia and Dominik go to the windows with Florian, though I notice that Zofia stands between Dominik and Florian like a bulwark.

"What are they doing?" I whisper to Mariusz. "When can we eat? I'm starving."

"They are looking for the first star of the evening. When it appears, we can start eating. It is another little tradition."

I look doubtfully at the sky outside. "It's rather cloudy."

"Don't worry. Florian will not let you go hungry long."

Even as he speaks, Florian points outside and shouts. Dominik says, "Where, where? I don't see it," but Florian ignores him. Zofia squints outside the window and repeats Dominik, but Florian has already left the window and is inserting himself self-importantly into a chair at the table. Duchess Maria and I wander over to the window and peer out, but the snow clouds blanket the sky, reflecting in bilious yellow the gaslights of the city below.

"I didn't see the star," Dominik says sadly in Selician.

Duchess Maria pats him on the shoulder and says something in comforting tones. No one seems keen to argue that there was no star, though I am certain Florian lied. Perhaps we are all too hungry. We shift guiltily towards the table. Dominik swallows bravely and comes with us.

With no guests to entertain tonight, we can sit as we like without regard for formality or rank. By unspoken accord, everyone avoids Florian already sitting at the centre of the table. Zofia and Dominik sit together at one end and Henryka joins them. That leaves Mariusz and I to sit at the other. Before Konrad can think of taking the seat next to me, I pull it out and invite Duchess Maria to sit. This leaves Irena and Konrad to sit with Florian and effectively breaks the conversation into three groups across the table: the children down the other end speaking lively Selician and often laughing, Irena quietly helping Florian to the dishes he demands or talking across him to Konrad, and our end, which is almost silent, but for polite remarks in French about the meal.

After a little while, Mariusz and Duchess Maria start up a quiet conversation in Selician, which I can just about determine is about Mariusz's dead brother and father. I don't wish to intrude on it, but I see tears coming and going in both their eyes, which they blink back under the candlelight. I think that a warm, comforting wife might touch her husband's arm or rub his shoulder were to she to see him on the verge of tears, but I am not that wife to Mariusz, not that woman to anyone, and even if I were the cold weight of Konrad's thoughtful glances down my end of the table makes it impossible to try.

Halfway through the meal, both the children's laughter and Mariusz and his mother's conversation are interrupted when Konrad stands up abruptly. He mutters something in Selician and heads for the door. As he leaves, he bumps one shoulder into the doorjamb, quite heavily. Perhaps he is drunk, though the conversation he had been having with Irena was quiet and irregular. Irena hurries after him. As soon as she is up from her chair, Florian reaches across the table to snaffle a slice of a prized cake, his sleeve dangling into a pot of gravy. Duchess Maria calls sharply to him and he scowls.

"What's wrong with Konrad?" I ask Mariusz.

"He has a... I don't know what you call it in your language. A bad headache with blindness. He gets them sometimes."

"Migraine?"

"Ah. Yes. It is similar in our language. Don't frown for his health, please. The condition is harmless. He suffers nothing from it but his wife's sympathy."

"I wasn't frowning." Or if I had been, not out of sympathy. There is something satisfying in knowing that Konrad has such a weakness, and I would not mind if he suffered more from it than Irena's sympathy. "Ah. She is back already."

Irena comes back, alone.

"He must have gotten rid of her," Mariusz says cynically. "No man likes to be fussed over when he is sick."

"I think it depends on the woman doing the fussing." Without Konrad here with us, I feel more at ease. "But have it your way. Next time you are hungover, I will offer you no sympathy."

"You never do."

"Ah. And you resent me for that. So you do want to be fussed over, but you don't want to admit it."

"No." Mariusz laughs. "Maybe."

It is the second laugh I have earned from him today, and I can't help but feel pleased, even if he did not give me a present. Perhaps he was just too uncertain about what to get me. Certainly, it cannot be a deliberate snub, or he would not have seemed so embarrassed by it. I don't think he dislikes me. Not anymore.

The meal draws lingeringly to a close. Dominik and Zofia adjourn to the hearth rug, where they play with Dominik's new dice game. Mariusz slides back in his chair and hooks a knee over the corner of the table, despite his mother's disapproving glare. Irena gives up on restraining Florian from the gingerbread and drinks wine like she has someone to be sympathetic to her hangovers.

Somehow, I can't picture Konrad in the position.

I feel sorry for her, not just for the way she looks now, but for the man she has married. For how much she loves him, though he clearly does not deserve it.

I glance at Mariusz, dozing in his chair. But I do not love him. It hurts me less.

I get up from the table.

"Where are you going?" Mariusz asks sleepily.

"My room. I have something I want."

"Be quick then. We have to leave for midnight mass soon."

As soon as I am out of the room, I lift my skirts and run on my toes. I'm out of breath when I reach our apartments and have to stop to catch my breath. It is dark within, except for a soft glow from beneath Mariusz's door. I feel my way across the room and open his door. He has left a candle burning on his desk, worn nearly to a stub and flickering in the draught coming from his open dressing room door.

"Foolish man," I say to myself. "Zofia's right. He is forgetful."

But his loss is my gain. I take up the candle and go to my own room, where I find Irena's bookmark in my desk. It is still in the brown paper the shop wrapped it in, ribbonless and unadorned, but it must be enough, for I have no time to prettify it now. I take it and leave the room, blowing out the candle as I go.

Back downstairs, everyone has shifted from the table and started to put on cloaks and gloves, ready for the journey to the cathedral for mass. I slip quietly over to Irena, who is trying to help Florian with his buttons.

"Here," I say, passing her the bookmark in its paper wrapping. "I have a small present for you. It's nothing much, but I thought you might like it. Merry Christmas, Lady Irena."

"What is it?" Florian demands. "Don't I get one?"

"Hush," I say. "It is your stepmother's."

Irena unwraps it curiously. "Oh! How pretty!" She looks closer, and her face lights up. "It's Ruslan and Ludmila! The scene where she is spirited away by the evil wizard. Thank you! I just love it. And I have nothing for you but my best wishes."

"They are enough. If they are sincere, they are enough."

"Of course they are. Oh, I wish you knew this opera. Would you like to come and see it with me?" A hint of familiar shyness returns to Irena's voice. "I think, if I say you want it, Konrad will offer to take us. There is sure to be a showing some time this coming year."

"What do we need him for?" I say. "We can go alone, together. There's no need to bring a man who doesn't like opera. He would only darken the mood."

A broad smile lightens Irena's face. "I never thought of doing that. Oh, we could. We could indeed. You will just love it. I know you will."

Florian demands her attention again — he has undone one of his buttons and cannot get it back on. I notice Mariusz watching us from across the room, holding my cloak in his arms. I go to him and let him help me into it.

"What did you give her?" he asks.

"A bookmark. It's nothing really. I just feel sorry for her."

"She is a little pathetic, I suppose. The ineffectual type."

Mariusz's callousness annoys me. "Anyway, Zofia is right. You are forgetful. You left a candle burning in your room."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did. It was burning when I came in. I saw it under the door."

"Well, I suppose I must have." He does not seem insulted. He looks at me curiously. "Would you be very angry if I had forgotten to get you a present?"

"But you did not forget," I say archly. "It just isn't ready yet."

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2024-12-24: Alex finally finds a way to give Irena the bookmark.