Alone. She and Cal stood alone in the bedroom chamber. Rose felt defeated and exhausted and lonely. Jack had gotten the best of her and made her look like a fool. After everything that had just happened so quickly, she was ready to sleep and go home and conform to the first-class lifestyle all over again.
Cal took a breath as if to say something, and then, without any warning, raised his hand and struck her. She yelped, but took it. On some level, she believed she deserved it. On another, she just didn't care, nor did she have the energy or will to stop him. He spat at her something about being a slut. She considered that silently. Was she? She had slept with a man without being married to him. Was that all it took? She supposed she'd also been engaged to another man at the time, if one was to consider Cal a man and their violently-spastic relationship an engagement.
Suddenly, Cal gripped her shoulders and shook her. "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" Before she could think or respond, the door opened behind her. The thought of Jack returning to save her crossed her mind, but only briefly. Just thinking of Jack made her hurt worse. He had betrayed her, and she very well may have loved him, even if it was wrong for her to. Now, he had gotten her into a huge mess for nothing. He denied taking the necklace, but Mother always said once a liar, always a liar.
"Not now," Cal spoke to the crewman impatiently, "we are busy." The crewman then insisted they put on life-jackets and come up on deck, reminding them how cold it was and advised them to dress warmly.
Rose remembered something she seemed to have forgotten in the midst of all her internal commotion: the ship had been damaged by an iceberg not one hour before this incident. She thought dumbly, and almost laughed to herself because of it, how she had brought Jack here to warn her mother of the ship's new potential to sink. Jack had protested and showed his anxiousness, but Rose brought him anyway, thinking he just was worried what Cal and her mother would think. Now, she was the wiser, and knew he had really been worried that they might find the diamond on his person. She felt like an idiot. A real first-class idiot.
When the crewman left, Cal furiously slammed the door behind him, locking it as quickly as possible, as if he expected someone else to try to get in immediately afterward.
Taking in a deep breath, Cal turned around, a perverse smile painted on his face. For the first time, Rose felt a twinge of fright shake through her. "Now, darling," he came toward her with open arms, "I think you and I must have a talk, wouldn't you agree?" She sucked in a breath. "I have some questions that you surely may have the answers to, and for such questions, I don't think it's wise we have any interruptions."
Rose looked at Cal and thought wildly of how strange her life had become. There had only been two men in her life: one whom she did not love, and one whom she did. One had been honest and true, one had been lying and thieving. One hit her forcefully, one kissed her passionately. One treated her as property, and one treated her as a naïve first-class girl. She found herself pondering then, as Cal glared at her menacingly, still smiling, which did she prefer? Which of those men, assuming they were the only two options, would Rose have rather stayed with, accepting every side of them?
"Shall we get started?" Cal pursed his lips. "Right, well, first of all, I would like to know if you intended to come back to me after all your whoring around. You unclothed yourself for that heathen, and never for me, so I can only assume you never figured it into your future to come back to your fiance."
Rose said nothing.
Cal smiled wider. "No reply, eh? Not so smart and witty now are we? I bet you are feeling awfully dimwitted right about now, aren't you? I certainly would be. At least you didn't give yourself to him." Cal paused, allowing the smile to fade slightly. "Did you?" He asked, as if he never considered that to be a possibility.
Rose found her voice. Quietly, without any affliction, she replied. "What's done is done. You can't do anymore about it now than I can."
Cal wasn't smiling anymore. He looked as Rose had never seen anyone look before. Anger mixed in with a crazed expression and fit his face too well. He shook ever so subtly, his face reddening a little. Rose didn't expect this reaction. Then again, she hadn't really known what to expect. It wasn't as if she'd had much practice in telling her fiance she'd slept with another man just hours before. How was she to know he had cared so much in the first place?
Cal stepped toward her, clawing her scalp as he grabbed her hair and twisted her head. The pain caused Rose to wince. Her head was turned to the side like a dog who's being punished. Cal spoke loudly into her ear. "Did you give your virginity to that rat? Did you, Rose?"
Rose wanted to retort, but she couldn't. The pain in her head was intense; she was sure Cal was ripping her hair out. She clawed at his hand, punched at his gut, but there was no use.
Cal finally released her hair, but only so he could grab the part of her dress that was closest to her collarbone. He pulled her so quickly, her feet couldn't keep up. He pushed her onto the bed.
She knew what was happening. He hovered over her just as she turned onto her stomach in a desperate attempt to crawl away. All his weight was on her legs now and she couldn't move anymore, except for awkward and useless wiggling. While she wiggled, though, she felt something that scared her worse than anything so far: a hard object pressing into her upper thigh.
She thought of Jack, suddenly realizing something: Jack didn't take the diamond. Of course he hadn't. He had been right; Lovejoy put it in his pocket. Cal was the evil one. Jack was the good one. Jack didn't lie. Cal did. Jack didn't rape her. Cal would. She desperately wished for Jack to come and get her, but knew he wouldn't.
It hadn't yet occurred to her to yell for help, but as Cal began to pull her dress up around her waste, she couldn't stop herself from screaming.
Cal flipped her onto her back effortlessly. He clamped his hand over her mouth. Rose tried futilely to bit him. He spoke through his teeth as close to her face as possible. "I'm just taking back what is rightfully mine."
He went back to pulling her dress up. Rose did the only thing she thought she could. She spit at Cal's face. He paused, laughing quietly. He turned her head. Rose trembled violently. Cal placed his lips on Rose's neck, and she was sure he could hear her heart beating ceaselessly hard.
Without moving his mouth from her neck, he reached down to continue pulling her dress up. When she began to scream again, he bit down on the delicate skin of her throat. She gasped, as the pain was sudden and sharp. He held her thin skin in his teeth, and it was enough to silence her.
Her dress was now up around her waist, exposing her undergarments. She was terrified. She shook and just kept thinking about how she wished he would stop biting her neck.
He moved his mouth from her neck, and Rose trembled at the sight of her own blood in the corners of his mouth.
He smiled down at her. He looked into her eyes as he pulled her underwear down. Rose thought then that they would need to come off her body entirely, and in order to do that, Cal would have to stand, or at least move off of her. She was right. Cal propped himself up with one arm, and with the other, moved the clothing down past her knees. Rose felt the weight lift off of her, and spotted her chance.
She began to weep, but she didn't let her own tears stop her. She grabbed the side of the bed, and tore her body out from under his. The action caused her to tumble to the floor. She scrambled to her feet as Cal grabbed at her. She ran past the bed, feeling his fingers graze her legs. She got to the door, but it didn't open. Locked. Cal's arms grabbed around her waste, and in a last-ditch effort, she pounded against the door with her fists two times before Cal threw her to the floor.
She tried to crawl away, but Cal, of course, got her. He grabbed her ankles and pulled her to him. Now, she had nothing underneath her dress and she was on her stomach. Cal could do whatever he wanted. He put his knees on either of her legs, pinning her down roughly as he fumbled to get his pants undone. For a moment, as Rose felt the hardness of the wooden floor against her, she wished she hadn't left the bed. From the beginning, she knew there was no getting out of this. She might as well have given herself a soft surface to lay on as Cal invaded her body. Cal took his knees off her, only to open her legs as wide as he could get them to open. He hiked her dress up over her bottom, so now she was fully exposed to him.
She cried. She couldn't see what he was doing. She was so afraid, she thought she might vomit.
"You really are beautiful," Cal breathed behind her. She whimpered, facing the fact that Cal was staring at her most private possession. Without any sort of warning, something penetrated her opening forcefully and quickly. Rose held back a scream, the sound escaping through her clenched teeth.
Rose realized it was his finger when she felt it moving around inside her like a worm. As quickly as he forced it in, he pulled it back out. Rose sobbed at the pain of it all. She heard Cal suck something. "A tainted taste," he remarked. She wished for Jack. She willed for him to be there. She cried harder at the memory of not siding with him in the first place. She regretted just letting Lovejoy and the others take him away. She had no idea where he was now. For all she knew, they had thrown him overboard. She wouldn't have put it past Lovejoy. So, she cried some more. At that point, it was all she could do. She cried for her body. She cried for Jack.
Cal moved again, this time, positioning himself directly above her, parallel to her body. He kissed the top of her head once. "At least I'm clean," Cal whispered. He laughed. Then, it happened. Cal and Rose's bodies became connected, key into lock. Rose screamed. It hurt. She felt blood leave her opening. It happened when she and Jack made love, but Jack had been gentle and slow; Cal was quick and deliberate.
Suddenly, the door flew open. Rose and Cal both turned their heads to see Jack standing in the doorway. After a moment of frozen and silent disbelief among the three of them, Jack jumped onto Cal, knocking him off of Rose. Rose crawled to the dresser, using as an aid to stand. She watched Cal and Jack hit each other, brutally trying to beat the other senseless.
Rose felt disoriented. The longer she looked at the scene, the slower it all became. She felt sluggish and groggy, and realized she needed the dresser, as without it holding her up, she might fall. She began trying to piece it together. One moment, she was on the floor, next Jack was there.
It was when Cal hit Jack's face that Rose came up from the waters of confusion to breathe again. She looked around quickly for something she could use to help Jack. She spotted an umbrella in the far corner of the room. She ran to it, grasping it in her hands. Without thinking, she returned to the brawling men, and used the sharp tip of it to pierce into Cal's side.