A mild non-consensual act - I am very against sexual violence but I wanted to show Ethan brought as low as he could be. I don't mean to offend and hope that I don't.

He couldn't work out if the pounding was in his head or coming from the door. The only thing he was totally conscious of was that it had woken him and he wished to Christ it hadn't. His throat burned, his stomach felt liked he'd been repeatedly and viciously kicked and there was a throbbing in his abused hands that probably meant he'd broken at least a few bones. Awareness exploded in on him like the sun that was streaming in from the window where he'd failed to pull the drapes that last evening and he realised that his head was throbbing but in a different rhythm to the vibrations that had woken him. He managed to drag his carcass that felt like a lead weight off the hardness of the floor that was littered with evidence of last night's excess. An empty whiskey bottle lay on the rug another tipped over on the carpet almost empty although how much of that was in his system and how much on the floor was uncertain.

He'd started drinking the moment he walked through the door not even stopping to remove his coat and hat. He went at it with dedication, pouring and tossing down shot after shot relentless in his need to obliterate not only his imaginings of what was happening at Grandage Place in the peace and darkness of their marital bed but what he'd seen in the parlour during the torturous moments he'd spent in their presence. Her happiness, his adoration the comfort and mutual need that radiated between them. That could have been his, his peace, his comfort. Her eyes turning to his in joy at his return. Her hand reaching up to caress his cheek as she'd done before. He could still remember her touch, firm and knowing, promising so much. Her lips would have been his to claim, her body his to pleasure and take pleasure from. But he'd taken what she'd offered and discarded it like something vile. And now he didn't even have pain to comfort him, he was beyond pain, ruined and made indifferent by his selfish stupidity.

The rattling of the door handle brought him back again to the present and he lumbered to feet moving unsteadily towards the door and whoever was so insistent on gaining entry. He was going to make then pay and if it was Victor he'd hit him.

Luckily the key was in the lock. It took him a few moments to gather the co-ordination to turn the key in the door his injured hands screaming in protest as splinters dug deep into the meat of his knuckles. He yanked the door open viciously but the torrent of abuse that had been hanging on his swollen mouth was snatched away by the sight that met his eyes.

She was perfect, cool, calm and collected in a skirt and coat of warm dove grey piped in the sapphire blue of her eyes. Her hair was simply dressed and her hands, as always were un-gloved despite the coolness still in the air the cold gleam of gold a physical reminder of how she'd moved beyond him.

"Vanessa." It was all he could manage and it came out on a croak that betrayed how he'd spent the time since running from her presence, as well as the obvious stink of cheap spirits that emanated from himself and his rooms.

Her eyes were still detached and it seemed to him that her beautiful mouth curved in disgust but not surprise at the state she'd found himself in.

"I see you have resorted to your usual coping mechanism. Why am I not surprised. You need to pull yourself together and come with me. For some reason Sir Malcolm is insisting on seeing you immediately. I'll wait in the carriage downstairs. I need you to hurry." She turned to go.

"Wait, please Vanessa, don't go." He put out his hand not daring to touch her and she flicked her eyes down which widened at what she saw.

"God Ethan what have you done to your hands?" She pushed past him into the room, shutting the door behind her. "Sit down, I'd better clean those up. I suppose you've been fighting." She gestured him towards the bed and went straight to the jug and bowl on the night stand pouring the water into the bowl and bringing a towel with her. She removed her coat and hung it carefully on the back of a chair. He watched the stretch of her muscles underneath the white lace and silk blouse that the removal of her coat exposed, the graceful shrug of her shoulders, the hint of her corset under the fine material. Her unexpected use of his first name provided him with his first glimmer of hope.

"Only a wall." He murmured but she ignored this quip and asked if he had first aid materials. He indicated the desk by the window and she quickly collected the materials there.

The pain of her ministrations was agonising but he did not believe she was being purposely rough, her touch was light but purposeful and his hands were soon cleaned and skilfully bandaged. Even with the hangover that was pounding through his body he was so aware of her closeness. Her hands on his, her leg almost touching his, her hair as she bent over almost brushing against his skin. And her scent, just as he remembered storm wild, fresh as a morning on the moor.

Lust knifed through his body and before he knew what he was doing and before she could rise, he'd lunged towards her his mouth cleaving to hers his tightly bandaged hands grabbing her shoulders. The touch of her the taste of her mouth under his felt so good, so right. He pushed her down onto the bed desperate to feel more his hands scrabbling to yank the blouse out of the waist band of her skirt and then down to pull her skirt up. His fevered brain imagined ripping her clothes to shreds to plunge into her to feel her move under him in the wildness he craved so he could feel something as he took her hard, fast - so he could feel something.

But something stayed him as his hands finally found the skin of her thigh. In his imaginings she would meet his passion with that of her own but she did not move she lay still, cold, unmoving beneath his hands and mouth. She did not fight him but nor did she welcome him – she was unyielding.

He pulled away horrified by what he'd done and by the look of utter distain in her eyes. His alcohol soaked brain suddenly realising that he'd tried to rape her. Force himself on her, the woman that he supposedly loved. The woman that he'd promised to protect but had tried to violate because he was jealous, because she was someone else's.

"Vanessa, I'm sorry. Fuck, I don't know what happened. Believe me I don't want, I never wanted to hurt you. For…"

She sat up and her hand connected with the side of his head causing pain to explode through every brain cell. Then the hand that had just struck him grasped his throat.

"Don't say it. Don't ever ask me again to forgive you. To forgive you I'd have to feel something for you. Hear this Ethan Chandler I can never forgive you anything because I feel nothing for you, not even hatred. You mean nothing to me and you actions just now only confirm how right I am to cast you off. I asked you in my time of greatest need to walk with me but you were too afraid, too wrapped up in your own self-loathing to accept my love, to stand with me. I have no need of you now. Victor was there and he is now what I need. I stand with him and you mean nothing. I have to see you because we will be forced together due to mutual acquaintance and by Sir Malcolm's want but it will mean nothing to me. But I warn you touch me again and I will destroy you. You have seen what I am capable of and don't ever think I am beyond that. I will cast myself into the blackest night before I let you touch me again." Her voice was rough and full of pain but her eyes said nothing and it was that lack of feeling that scared him so deeply.

"What have I done to you?" He could hear the horror in his own voice the desolation at his destruction of something so precious.

Her laughter sounded harsh and brittle and in a way seemed to stay in the air.

"You set me free. Now get changed and meet me in the carriage down stairs." Carefully she righted her clothes, picked up her coat and was gone.

The carriage ride was excruciating. She refused to even look at him and he couldn't take his eyes off of her. She looked so delicate almost like he could crush her but it was just, as he knew to his peril, a façade. The beast that lurked in her soul was a thousand times more dangerous than even his on a blood moon and it seemed to have turned all its rage to focus on him. His body felt like it had been torn apart limb from limb and he ached to lie back in the comfort and balm of her arms, to feel her raven tresses fall down to shield him and to lose himself forever in the sky of her eyes. But that was just an illusion that his fevered brain constructed so he didn't have the face the truth. That he didn't have to accept her utter indifference towards him. His brain raged. Why had he done that to her? Tried to violate her knowing what he knew about what intimacy could bring out in her? That although she practised promiscuity that in fact her Catholic upbringing still caused her to view all kinds of sexual trysts as sinful. It made a lie of his love for her. He'd lost her forever.

On arrival she exited the carriage almost before it had fully stopped and the front door of 8 Grandage Place was opened as she stepped onto the threshold leaving him to scurry after her.

She walked straight to the door of her parlour and not slowing her step and with her back still to him said,

"Sir Malcolm is in the library."

The door closed behind her the quiet click of the latch the snap of manacles around his shattered heart.

His coat and hat was taken by the reticent Bennett and he was escorted to the library and bade to enter.

Sir Malcolm sat behind his desk and at first glance he looked little changed but as Ethan came closer he saw the ravages that illness had inflicted on this once strong and proud man. The chair in which he sat was wheeled, evidence that he could not walk although whether that was permanent was unclear. His hands were twisted and appeared crippled in some way and the left side of his face had dropped slightly showing the red inside of his lower eyelid and causing his lip into a permanent curl. However his eyes were bright and full of their usual intelligence.

"You're back." His voice was slurred but Ethan could understand him. "Too late Mr. Chandler or should I sat Talbot? Yes I know your secrets, I know who you are and what you've done."

"And Vanessa?" His voice was calm betraying none of the terror those words has struck into his heart.

"A little but not everything. I want to protect her as much as I am sure you do even now. Even though with her actions she's opened you up and gutted you like all those tribes you slaughtered. And you believed you deserved pain, for leaving her alone, abandoning her but you never imagined this did you? You never thought you'd lose to the likes of him."

"Isn't that what you wanted?" He spat it out before he could think his anger boiling up inside him like a storm. "You always favoured him, I suppose because he reminded you of your son. Who was I? Nothing but hired gun. An expendable brute. You needed him so in some way you could absolve your sin. Give yourself a fucking chance to save someone because you couldn't save him."

"Is that really what you think? Then you are just a brute. I never wanted him to marry Vanessa. Him, bloodless, passionless marry her? She deserves a life full of passion, a man who is her equal. A man who is not afraid to stand up to her, dominate her. She needs to be loved wildly, completely, madly. He can never do that. It's like a mating of a domestic tom cat to a lioness. I thought that was you. I still believe it is you but it can't be you now. She'll rip her own heart out before she is disloyal to him, loyalty is what she does and in it she is unbreakable however unhappy she is." Sir Malcolm's voice dropped, he seemed tired after his tirade.

"She's unhappy? I thought, I mean she seems so, content."

His laugh was harsh. "She is a master of deception. You see what she wants you do see. But you don't see her as I do. See her when she thinks she is alone, unobserved. That is her true self. Yes she is pleased because she has made him happy. But she will never be happy with him. She loves him because he needs her and she needs to be needed but she will never be in love with him. But enough of this Mr. Chandler we will not speak of this matter again. I have called you here on an entirely different matter. I am, as you see currently indisposed and therefore need a man such as you, a man I can trust to carry out certain tasks for me. These tasks will keep you busy, earn you the money I suspect you will need soon and also," and here his smile turned cruel, "give you the reasons you need to see her. You will be able to wallow in your self-inflicted pain that you seem to need. But I warn you, hurt her again and you will wish to Christ your father's money had never reached far enough to save you from the gallows. Leave now, but come back tomorrow as midday and bring your guns."