Not Worth Looking For
By Laura Schiller
Based on: David Copperfield
Copyright: Charles Dickens' estate
"Annie, stop!"
She jumped and whirled around at the sound of her cousin's voice. As the last person left in the hallway, breathless with guiilty relief that he was finally leaving, the last thing she wanted or was to have Jack Maldon come back and corner her.
"Go on, Jack – your cab is waiting."
She tried to speak lightly, but her voice trembled. He was standing too close, one hand on the wall right next to her face, his eyes gleaming. The rest of his behavior she had been willing to ignore as her own imagination – but not this. How she hated to be proven right ... worse yet, to prove her mother right.
Mark my words, child, young John fancies you as much as ever he did … only whatever you decide to do about him, mind that the old Doctor don't find out! As if her husband's silver hair and absent manners made him worthless as anything but a source of money, and betraying him was only to be expected. Her skin crawled.
"Come now, dear cousin," Jack drawled. "Will you not leave me so much as a memento?"
Before she could get away, or even answer him, his mouth latched onto hers and his hand went to the bodice of her gown. For a moment, she froze with sheer disgust. This was to Dr. Strong's gentle embrace what London's sewers were to a fresh country lake.
"How dare you?" she hissed, after finally pulling away. "I never hinted – what gave you the idea – "
"Oh, shush, darling." Jack smiled down at the cherry-coloured ribbon that had come loose in his fist. "I shall come back soon enough, never you fear. Until then, this will tide me over."
He kissed the ribbon, held it teasingly out of her reach when she tried to grab it, and waved it at her on his way out the door. Dizzy with anger, shame, fear and other emotions she could not identify, she felt her corset growing tighter with every breath she took. Black spots appeared at the edges of her vision, and her head buzzed. She fell into unconsciousness almost gratefully, wishing she could wake up from this as nothing but a nightmare.
/
The moment she came to, however, Mrs. Markleham's shrill voice confirmed the truth.
"Why, you are missing a bow! Has anyone seen a ribbon – a cherry-coloured ribbon?"
Annie buried her face in Dr. Strong's shoulder – the only refuge she had left and for her blindness, the place she least deserved to be. Her answer came in a wry, bitter tone which no one in the room (except for one cunning clerk and, decades later, one observant little schoolboy) understood.
"I thought I had it safe ... but it is not worth looking for."