LITMIR.BIZ

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changing from belligerent to conciliatory. ‘Come on.’ His arm came round her neck and he lifted her off the pillows to kiss her. His mouth felt hot and spongy against hers and Isabel tried and failed to make her own relax.

      ‘Peter.’ She twisted her face aside. ‘My head aches tonight.’

      His fingers grasped her chin and turned her face beneath his again. ‘I’ll stop it aching,’ he said. He was pushing her down underneath him, half lying across the bed and reaching down inside her nightdress. The fear that was always lurking inside Isabel now sprang up, suffocating.

      ‘I don’t want to,’ she gasped, struggling to free herself.

      ‘Well, I want to.’

      He was very strong. Isabel rolled her head sideways to look at him, trying to gauge what stage he was at. Peter had a weak head for alcohol. Even when they drank together, glass for glass, she could see the signs of it in him before she felt them herself. When he was drunk he was oblivious of anything except getting what he wanted. But when he was drunk it was very quick, and she could bite the fear back and count, saying the numbers very clearly in her head like a litany, until it was over.

      She didn’t think he was drunk tonight. Usually that was worse. It took longer, and he wanted things that made her shiver and the fear was mixed with humiliation and disgust. The fingers of one of his hands were winding themselves in her hair, and the others were fumbling and stroking, trying to coax her along with him.

      ‘Lovely Isabel,’ he murmured. ‘Do something, will you?’ He was wheedling her now, and that was even more frightening.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Roll over. Look, like this.’ Pulling and pushing at her, he made her roll over so that her face was pressed into the lace pillow. Then he was on top of her and she felt a shock of disbelief and then a wave of terror as she realized what he was trying to do to her.

      ‘No,’ she whispered into the muffling pillow and then, almost screaming, ‘No.’

      His face was over her shoulder and she glimpsed the fine, blond hairs of his moustache pricking against the lace ruffle.

      ‘Let me try,’ he coaxed her. ‘I’ll be so gentle.’

      And all the time he was pushing at her, trying to force his swollen self into the wrong place.

      Isabel writhed from side to side, trying to escape him. But the more she struggled the tighter he held her. He was suddenly deaf and blind to the fact that she was Isabel, and the fighting, clawing creature that she had become seemed only to excite him further. His eyes were screwed tight shut and his face was drawn up into a scarlet pucker.

      Isabel felt the disgust hardening inside her like a stone.

      Peter was murmuring ‘Oh yes you will, oh yes you will,’ over and over again. Now he almost had her where he wanted her. Her wrists were imprisoned in one of his hands, and with the other he kept her head pressed down into the bedclothes. The weight of his torso pinned her down and his thick, muscular legs between hers kept them forced wide apart.

      The murmuring stopped abruptly as he hoisted himself for an instant and then forced himself into her.

      Isabel screamed, once. The pain was so severe that she thought she was split in half, but worse than the physical pain was her humiliation. That Peter should do this to her. That a man who had told her he loved her and promised to honour and cherish her should treat her like the lowest, filthiest object.

      If this was love, this and the other nights separating her from the day of her marriage, then she couldn’t bear it.

      At that moment, something snapped inside Isabel. The tears burnt her eyes, but she felt as if some vital part of herself had escaped from the body lying on the bed with Peter Jaspert jerking above it. She still felt the pain, and the tearing at her inner flesh, but she could stand outside herself and watch it happening with icy detachment.

      She both felt and saw Peter slithering in his own sweat against her back.

      She felt her tears, and saw her wet face against the white pillow. And then, when his shout came and his big body bucked over hers, she watched his contortions with cold, cold carelessness.

      As soon as he had finished with her Peter rolled away and lay exhausted on his back with his forearm over his face.

      Isabel was sobbing, and as soon as her body was her own again the blessed detachment from it was lost to her. She was just Isabel again, crying with fear and pain and revulsion. Where would she go from here? What would happen to them both now?

      At last, without moving his sheltering arm or trying to touch her, Peter said, ‘Isabel, don’t make a thing about it. It isn’t so very terrible, you know. Lots of men need to do it like that. Don’t pretend it hurt you more than it really did.’

      She heard the blustering, defensive note in his voice and knew that he was ashamed. It had happened before, to a lesser degree. He wouldn’t admit anything, but he would try to be gentler with her now and she would be reminded of the man she had dreamed into existence before her marriage.

      Taking a deep breath to control the sobbing, Isabel said, ‘You have no right to force me. You can’t force me to do what disgusts me.’

      She sensed him wincing at the word, and then he said coldly, ‘There is no force in marriage, Isabel. You are my wife.’

      ‘Not your possession,’ she bit back at him. But she knew that Peter wouldn’t hear her. He sat up and pulled the cover carefully around him. Except when he was excited, Peter was conscious of his nakedness.

      ‘I don’t know what to do with you, Isabel. God knows, I’ve tried hard enough. I’ve never known a woman as stiff as you. I thought it was just maidenly decency before we were married, but now I’m beginning to wonder.’ A note of vindictiveness crept into Peter’s voice. ‘It’s like poking a bolster for all the response you make.’

      And this was her husband, Isabel thought. Saying these things, hurting her like this.

      ‘What … what am I supposed to do?’ she asked.

      ‘You are supposed to enjoy it. Other women do, believe me.’

      Isabel flinched and stared down at her fingers twisted in the ribbons of her nightdress. Peter had known other women and they had enjoyed it. Of course he would have done before they were married, Isabel thought. She was not so naïve as to imagine he was as innocent as herself. But then, if exactly the same things had happened to other women and they had enjoyed them, then clearly it was herself who was at fault.

      Fleetingly she thought of Adeline and the physical pleasure she had suspected lay at the heart of her mother’s changing friendships and then, as always, she sheered away from the hint of coarseness in that.

      ‘I don’t, Peter. I … can’t.’

      Help me, she was going to say. Try to be patient. But he gave her no time for that. Peter made a small, angry noise. He stood up and gathered his scattered clothes and then banged through the door into his dressing room.

      For a long time Isabel lay dry-eyed in the crumpled bedclothes, staring at the closed door. As the pain and humiliation receded, a little of the detachment came back to her. The man who came to her bed wasn’t the man she had married. He wasn’t even the man who lived the other hours in the well-ordered house with her. He was another person, a stranger, and she would have to learn to exist with him. At the prospect of the years ahead Isabel went stiff in the sheets that still smelt of him.

      In the morning, Peter had gone out long before Isabel came downstairs and she was glad of that. The mornings were difficult enough at present anyway.

      Taking her cup of weak tea and lemon with her, she went into the drawing room and dialled her doctor’s number.

      Yes, the secretary confirmed. Of course Mr Hardwicke would see Mrs Jaspert this morning. Would eleven-thirty be suitable?

      Peter’s Daimler

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