Mother and Father believed me. At the end of the day, in the darkest hours of the nights I lay awake in my room, that gave me comfort. They determined that since most of the world wouldn't, because what woman is accosted in her own house by a visitor, then the best solution would be to run away.
Not for long, they insisted, but for now. In the end I really wasn't sure if it was because they wanted to protect me or because they wanted to protect themselves. I guess it didn't matter in the end. My influence over our family could ruin not only our reputation but also my father's delicate business interests and since so many lives depend on the solvency of my family… We all make sacrifices for those who matter to us.
So there I was, disgraced and embarrassed, and running away to America. Socially to my grandmother, who I hadn't seen in ages, but more correctly to try and bear the weight of my family's shame. I was there to see if England and its inhabitants could forget the man who died in my bedroom. No, the man who died in my bed.
What I didn't tell anyone, though they guessed it from my face and my appearance when they found me, was that his advances were more than forcing himself toward me. He forced himself on me. Even in polite society they don't think educated men of our positions can be the bastions of such brutality.
That, in a perverse way, was what killed him I think. His delicate upbringing as a man of the county gave him a weak heart. His belief that he was somehow special or better than the others gave him a weak sense of respect for others. And his belief that anyone was his to take gave him a weak understanding of me.
I fought back as best I could. His weight and practice (though I shudder to think I was not the first… I know I could not have been but it doesn't make the realization better that other women suffered under his hand as I did) held me almost immobile while he forced me. But my fist on his chest, banging repeatedly, gave his heart too much.
Even now, watching the copper figure of the Lady Liberty rising over the Hudson Bay, I can't say which is worse. The fact that he left me violated in my own bed or that he then died there. Even after months of pretending he died in his own bed, even after the harrowing ordeal of dragging his body through the halls of my family's home with the help of Gwen and my mother, even after realizing I wouldn't have to bear his child… I still can't say.
But this is why I'm here, so I never have to say. So I never have to face girls I danced in big ballrooms with and tell them I'm not the damaged goods they whisper behind fans I am. So I never have to face men who once stumbled over themselves to marry me tell me they're no longer interested. So I never have to face myself.