SIR REGINALD'S SEDUCTION
This is a different look at how Robbie and Cecilia might have got together that summer. Please comment nicely!
"Sir Reginald was a wicked man," her little sister breathlessly began. "His soul was overflowing with unlawful desire!"
"Not overflowing, my love," Cecilia suggested sleepily. "Perhaps you could say he was 'consumed' with unlawful desire!"
"Sir Reginald was consumed with unlawful desire. Desire that would not let him eat or sleep. Desire that haunted him night and day. Desire for the fair, the chaste, the unattainable Eleanor."
"Mm." Cecilia Tallis shut her heavy, drooping eyelids, letting the whispery sound of Briony's breathless voice become one with the warmth of the sun and the hum of the insects. It was such a hot, still afternoon, and she was fearfully sleepy. If she slept for an hour or two now it might help to pass the time before dinner. Though she didn't know how she would ever stay awake through dinner if it proved as dull as last night's ghastly affair.
Cecilia hated the way her brother Leon was continually bringing home eligible young men for her to meet. Of course they were always very rich and very handsome. But there was something dreary about being paraded for their approval, and there was something wet and sniffling about the way they looked at her, as though they were puppy dogs who had been promised an especially delicious treat. Cecilia didn't want to be anyone's treat. What she wanted was . . . well, it was something quite different. She wanted . . . she wanted . . . she simply wanted . . .
Sir Reginald's hard and brutal hands overpowered her weak and trembling body. His lips burned as they pressed against hers . . .
When Cecilia woke up from her nap it seemed hours had passed. She sat up in the low, cushioned lounging chair and lit a cigarette, struggling to recall what she had wanted in her dream. It was odd, but she felt that Robbie Turner had been close by while she slept. Of course, as a gardener he might very well have been poking about. Still, she felt it was more than that. Cecilia puffed on her cigarette, frowning. Then she went inside to dress for dinner.
"Chocolates," said Paul Marshall, looking ever so pleased with himself at dinner. "People just can't say no to them."
"That sounds fascinating," Cecilia said. In actual fact she was nearly cross-eyed with boredom. All through dinner she'd been listening to the rich, handsome young man boast of his enormous wealth and the unlimited potential of the world's appetite for chocolate. Just to get a break from his ego she suggested a walk in the garden. What happened next was that she saw Robbie, the gardener, just wrapping things up for the day. And though he smiled and greeted her politely as always Cecilia felt a very strange need to have him notice that she was very interested in what Paul Marshall had to say. So she leaned closer to the fool and looked deep into his eyes and then all at once he kissed her and she realized exactly what she had been dreaming of that afternoon.
It was pointless trying to sleep that night. Cecilia kept reliving that awful kiss and the way she'd made a fool of herself afterwards, slapping Paul Marshall and having a fierce row with her mother and her father and her brother Leon and saying all sorts of childish things about the young men he kept bringing around to sniff her up and down as though they were dogs and she were a bitch in heat.
She wasn't a bitch in heat!
Cecilia went out into the garden in the moonlight, wearing a soft, silk, see-through bed gown. It was late at night, and when Robbie Turner came out of the bushes she turned to him with open arms, begging him to forgive her for being so blind for so long. He understood what she meant. Completely. But instead of holding her tenderly he took her right there on the wet grass, brutally and without mercy, till she wept and screamed and nearly died of pleasure.
It was just the type of story Briony would have loved. But of course she wasn't awake to see it.
