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Chapter Fifteen

Serafina tried to focus on her book, her embroidery, her music, but she could not. She could still feel the crush of Forthenby’s lips upon her, still feel the hard press of his arms, still feel how it had been to have her will, her ability to think, speak clearly, taken from her and held to the bidding of this cruel, this unspeakable man. 

How dare he? 

How dare he put his tongue in to mouth? How could his saliva be on her lips, her gums, her teeth? 

The thought made her nauseous. Her body, sacrosanct, the preserve of herself alone, had been violated, invaded, despoiled.

Yet, in the moment, she had not wanted him to stop. 

Even now, when she thought of it – to be overwhelmed in that way, to be not merely held, invaded, overcome... 

Intolerable. It was intolerable.

She pulled herself to standing, began to pace, moving with quick, furious gestures. The thoughts would not leave her, horrible, insistent, and with all the fascination of the obscene. The feeling of hands sliding along her spine, the heat of his skin, cool stiff linen of his clothes...

Back and forth she paced, striding, turning about with gasping breath.
The softness, yes, the very softness of his lips. The rasp of stubble…

Her thighs chafed, against one another, hot, uncomfortable.

But it was monstrous, monstrous. 

Yet, like a compelling bitterness, her mind could not but return to it, and that – in itself – was a humiliation. 

And her husband knew it. Far worse than his touch was the way that he taunted her with it, far worse was his disdainful parting shot which cut through all her fierceness and resistance.

“Or is that more to your taste?” 

How did he know? How was it that he could see through everything to this hypocrisy at her core? 

Had she not fantasised, idly, about such men, such violence, such contempt?  Had she not always known that, trembling, somewhere within her, was surrender to such baseness?

And Forthenby had seen this, had shown her that he knew, and brought them both to the very edge of the precipice before… leaving her, unviolated. 

Which she was glad of, of course. She was pleased, very pleased, that she had only been scalded by him, not truly burned. Naturally, it was a relief. She had survived.

But it made no sense. 

For all his faults she had never thought him a man governed by his temper. In all their sparring, he had been aloof, contemptuous, but always calm. She had heard – in the whispering way one caught gossip deliberately concealed from oneself – that even on the dreadful morning when he had met with Mr Thornton, he had done it cheerfully, without fear or wrath. 

If Forthenby could steel himself for murder and betrayal with such equanimity, then surely, if stirred to rage, he was capable of enormity. Yet Serafina had made him angry – so angry he had blazed with it, that he had slammed doors and stomped his feet – but he had done… nothing. Or near enough.

Serafina sat, drew breath, calmed herself. 

For the moment, at least, she was safe. She had heard Forthenby leave, Peach trailing after him, and by now she knew the signs well enough that he would not return early. 

But who was to say that he would not come back drunk. And if he were drunk, then might he not...?

Serafina went to her sewing basket, slipped a pair of scissors in to the pocket of her gown, then tried to think of more cheerful things. 

Nothing came to mind.

For all of Mrs Tooting’s efforts, Serafina’s early girlhood had been much stifled with by her father, his notions, and his moods, and in those days she had been prone to morbid notions. It was not until William was born that, his heir assured, her father had been content to leave Serafina in her mother’s hands, and she had been able to leave that gloom and despondency behind her.

Now, the habit of those days returned and, as then, she felt the sheer loneliness of the injustice. Of the two men she was supposed to depend upon to protect her – her father and her husband – she trusted neither. The only three people who might support her in this plight were far beyond her reach, and two of them were women, as powerless as herself. 

As to the third?

Deep in her heart, in a place she could not bring herself to look, she could still feel the barb which Forthenby had cast at her so casually. 
She had married his rival, his enemy, his betrayer. How would Mr Thornton feel about her inconstancy?

Would he be inclined to forgiveness?