Montgomery Beauregard's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Montgomery Beauregard came to ask his blind Nana a question that could ruin him. He wanted to marry the heiress. Her family had forbidden the match, and no one would tell him why. If he guessed wrong and insulted them, they would turn him away for good. So he brought the one person who knew every old family in the mire. He pushed open the door of the sagging mansion where he had grown up. The swamp pressed close outside, wet and green. Inside, dust coated the grand staircase. His cane tapped the warped floorboards as he crossed to her. Magnolia sat in her wheelchair by the cold window. Her white hair was swept up the way she had worn it for sixty years. Her gnarled fingers rested in her lap. Her eyes, hazy and blind, turned toward his footsteps before he spoke. "You walk heavier when you're afraid," she said. "Sit down, Monty." He removed his top hat and knelt beside her chair. "I need the truth, Nana. Her people forbid me. I don't know what I've done." Magnolia was quiet a long moment. Her jaw tightened. "You've done nothing," she said. "But your grandfather did." Montgomery leaned closer. "Grandfather?" "Her family and ours share a border," she said. "Long ago there was a marriage promised between our houses. Your grandfather broke it. He chose me instead. Her people never forgave the shame of being cast aside." Montgomery's hands went cold. "So the quarrel is old. It has nothing to do with me." "It has everything to do with your name," she said. "Go to them proud, and they hear your grandfather's arrogance. Go to them begging, and they crush you." She gripped his sleeve. "You must go with an apology no Beauregard has ever offered. Admit the wrong. Ask nothing in return." Montgomery sat back on his heels. He had come dreading some crime of his own. Instead he carried a debt eighty years old. "They'll expect me to defend the family," he said slowly. "If I bow instead, they may soften." "Or they may spit on you," Magnolia said. "But now you know the wound. Before, you were blind. Now only I am." A thin smile crossed her lips. Montgomery kissed her wrinkled hand. He had his answer. He knew the reason at last, and the shape of the risk ahead. He stood and set his hat back on his head. The floor creaked under his boots. "Then I'll go and apologize for a man I never met," he said. "And pray the heiress is worth my pride." "She is," Magnolia said, "if she's anything like the woman your grandfather chose." Montgomery walked out into the wet dark. He had crossed the first wall. But a harder one waited: to face her family's door and offer the one thing his blood had never given them.