"Has it come too late?" The question resonated in the quiet for a moment, Demelza's green eyes flickered about the room attempting to find the answer. "Demelza?" Finally dragging her gaze to meet his own, not a word came to mind in response. Because this was the question wasn't it? It was quiet for a time, his hands gripping her arm and fingers in a steely hold.
Finally the grip began to tighten as her silence seemed to answer the query. Breaking eye contact Demelza withdrew her hands and pressed her palms onto the table top to aid her in standing. Fiddling with the shirt on the table that still needed mending, she began to speak. The tone was conversational, flat in its fictitiously casual way she so rarely used, mostly around those she distrusted.
"I've written to Verity." She did not turn, the needle stuck in one of the shirt sleeves, tucked between the fabrics to protect her from its sharp end whilst tidying the area. "I've done her a great disservice, not callin' on her in all this time." A false smile stretched across her face as she folded the article in her hands. "Me and Jeremy will be visitin' her a while, helpin' around her home where can, before the babe comes." Having finished the task, she kept her head down but flicked her eyes to see her husband still as stone, eyes glazed over as he stared just past her waist with a blank look across his face.
"Jinny'll be round more, helpin' Prudie while I be gone. She's that glad about the extra work I'm su-"
"How long will you be gone?" The question cracked like a whip, tensions rising in the room quicker than Demelza had been prepared for. She swallowed thickly when she met his gaze. It burned her, scorched across her skin before burrowing deep into her bones until finally igniting her chest and belly.
Ross's gaze had always been incredibly capable of setting her aflame, but never in this way. When they first wed his eyes would follow her about the room as she worked or at the end of the day as she readied herself for bed. In those moments, as he tracked her, the fire would start in her belly and send an ache below and above, her heart would pound unevenly as shivers ran down her spine. Some days all her blood would rush to her face as it reached for him, even her body seemed to crave his nearnress, in such a visceral way. The heat he coaxed out of her never made her feel exposed or vulnerable in the way it did now. This was not a look of want from her husband, but one of… of what? She could not discern his feelings any more than she could dictate the sun to rise and set.
Gathering her courage she lifted her head to meet his gaze head on. A tremor wracked her frame at the glint of it, flint like darkness ready to devour her whole. Demelza held her head high, allowing her ire, momentarily forgotten under his perusal, to strengthen her resolve and allowed it to solidify her spine straight and solid.
"I don't rightly know." Her words had the desired effect, Ross reared back a moment, blinking once, twice, a third time before shifting his gaze away from her. A tick in his jaw, clenching of his hands which still lay on the table top where she had broken his grasp on her arm, were the only responses he gave.
"Now is not the time to be off gallivanting across the country side," his voice was clipped, holding no argument. He was dismissing her and her choices as he always did when they did not suit him.
"I'm afeared that Verity is expecting me now. It's been arranged and-"
"Then unarranged it." He rose, back straight as a board with a dark look, one he normally reserved for those who crossed him. This was one of the moments Demelza knew would be forthcoming to a reckoning.
"I will not," she stated plainly. The wind outside, the rustling of the trees and the sounds of animals echoed in the room. Light poured in from the open windows lighting up corners and dancing across both his face and her own. Yet, though the world seemed at peace, the day bright and sunny, there was no contentment within the walls of Nampara. It was the meeting of two powers, great each in their own right. Titans standing and facing one another in battle.
Demelza refused to break first. She would not look away, she would not allow him to dictate her doings when it was convenient and disregarding her when it was not. He did not see, not truly, that her ire and scorn was not born of a singular night. No, it was born of so much more than that. He disrespected her one to many times, made it clear over and over again that his time was always better spent elsewhere.
Hers was not a complaint of simple infidelity of his body, but an infidelity of his mind, heart, and energy. How many times had she needed him, only to discover he had left to visit Trenwith? How many days had he spent loving and nurturing the son that was not his own? How many nights had she awaited his return only to discover he stopped over in town or elsewhere instead of coming home?
It was never just about a night with Elizabeth, it was about his months with Elizabeth. She saw neither hide nor hair of him for days and the moments she did see him were spent in either stilted conversation about the mine and her cousin or silence which seemed to ring even louder than his scornful comments about whatever struck his fancy that day. He had forfeited her trust, that was true, but not in a single night.
What was the point of their union as husband and wife when she was simply his house maid once more? She took care of his home but not his heart, she cared for his child but he did not take an interest in her or their son. This was long fated, for she, a simple miner's daughter from Ilagan, had always been resigned to knowledge that the great Ross Poldark would one day no longer be satisfied with playing happy husband to someone he deemed so far below him. For no matter how many times he spoke of her status change, no matter how he encouraged her lady-like behavior, there were a hundred more moments in which he looked down upon her with disdain for her failings. Words he spoke of love overshadowed by actions he made of dismissal.
Francis' words rung in her ears on days like today. He had gotten to the heart of the matter in a simple few words. Words which always teased at the edge of her consciousness but never full settled into a rightful place. They never took root, for her sense of self often prevented such beliefs to prosper.
She deserved better. It was not a thought she had ever truly believed, but the idea stuck. She deserved better than what Ross Poldark gave her. If her foray into the high class society party had taught her anything (aside from a damnable commitment to her vows) was that Ross was not the only man to have found her desirable. She may not be bred from money or come from genteel stock, but she was every inch the lady he had made her and she wanted more than to be treated as she was now.
"You are needed here and will not abandoned your duties because of your-"
"I leave on the morrow. I will send word when we've arrived safely." She turned to quit the room when she was blocked on her exit.
"You are not. Leaving. This. House." There was a menace in his words that startled her, eyes widening as the look on his face grew in intensity. It reminded her so of when he turned to find her standing in his mother's old silk dress. That night was so long ago now. What trials they had endured, what love they had shared since that fateful night, the surrender to passion that started this mess of a marriage. The flash of fear was soon replaced by blistering rage that boarded on hatred.
"Release me," her tone was cold and low, one she had never used on her beloved husband- even in her angriest of moments. He took another step towards her, his grip pulling her flush against his body as he leaned down. Face inches from her own, his dark curls fell forward and shadowed his eyes making them seem fiercer than before.
"You are not leaving Nampara. You will write to Verity and apologize, for you must put off your visit a while yet." It was the commanding attitude that set her off.
"I will write no such letter! I will leave on the morrow and I will visit my cousin because I fancy it!"
"Do as I bid you." He shot back without a second thought.
"I will not!" She was breathing hard now, chest heaving with indignation. "Be happy Ross, you can entertain Elizabeth when you wish without having to journey to Tren-"
Her words were cut off by the crash of his lips on her own. The hand that gripped her arm kept her close to him while the other bracketed around her waist like a band of iron. He kissed her like the world would end if they stopped. It was fueled with anger and longing, with a taste of… panic? Demelza could not identify such a state, as she never had she seen her husband so out of control. He clutched at her with a bruising force that sent a ripple down her torso.
Demelza did not realize they were moving until her back hit the wooden planks of the wall. The course surface scratched against her dress for a moment, her hair caught on the uneven wood before Ross released the grip on her arm to drive his hand into the riot of red curls at the back of her head. Using the new found leverage he angled her mouth to better access it with his tongue, hips pressed insistently against her own pinned her between the heat of his body and cool touch of the wall. For a moment she was lost in the feel of him but then broke their connection with a turn of her head. It did not seem to deter him.
"You will not leave," he kissed down her neck, nose nudging against her pulse point as his teeth scraped her shoulder. "You will not leave me Demelza," his voice broke on her name, hand spasming in her hair. "You will not, you will never… never Demelza. You can't and I… I can't, I can't-" his words slurred as he pressed his face further into her skin, clutching onto her to the point of pain.
"Ross-" he cut her off once more, lips sliding from her cheek to her lips. She felt it now, his desperation. The panic he so often was able to quell came pouring from him. He tried to hold it back but some slipped through the cracks and stained his voice and countenance. Her eyes slid shut as she took a fortifying breathe. She pushed firmly against his chest, eyes focused over his shoulder as she did so. It took a moment, but he relented his hold minutely, enough to lean back and see her face.
"I will go to Verity," she stated it in a warm voice but the firm decision there did little to appease him. His eyes widened a fraction and filled with the kind of agony she had never known him capable.
"Demelza… I," he looked so lost, his eyes searching hers as his breathing came out in short sharp breaths. "I will fix this. I swear it. I swear it." She saw him standing at the precipice, the begging in his tone easily distinguishable. Power surged through her veins then. She felt as if a single word would push him the last bit of distance and he would fall, he would fall and he would shatter.
"I do not know if you can," it was not in her nature to be cruel, especially not to the man she had loved for more of her life than she would like to admit. But honesty was what they needed now. She could no longer play the happy house wife whose gentle words and forgiving ways made him act so brazenly without even an apology. Demelza hated to admit it, but she resented him, she resented him almost as much as she loved him because he had taken her and he had decimated her in his endeavor to own her. Never would she love a man like she did the one before her. Even if they did break their bond no person would ever compare to him, he who lifted her from the dirt, dusted her off, and gave her a home before giving her his name. Ross engrained himself into her bones, his name etched into every inch of her and nothing would undo that.
She deserved better but she craved him and there was nothing fair about that, nothing right, nothing good. So she would give him honesty and she would give herself space. Time would decide their fate because she was no longer in a place to be trusted with such a choice.
She began to disentangle from their embrace as he went slack at her pronouncement. As she slipped from his grasp his hand rose and slid down her arm as she moved away before tangling their fingers together. Demelza did not turn nor did he approach her again. It was a whisper of a word when he spoke, a broken kind of tone that sent pain shooting through her, knocking into her bones and organs as it tore her apart from the inside out.
"Please," it was hoarse, the word dragged from the depths of his chest to be pushed out with such weight it must have left wounds in his throat. A singular word encompassing everything he wanted and desired, everything he needed. But Demelza was no longer able to give him what he needed, for the man behind her made that clear with every day he was away and every night he ignored her.
Untangling their hands she left the room without a word.