Chapter IX
"We are going to dine out today. Dress accordingly."
Those had been the only words her husband had spoken to Mina all day long. When without business engagements, he now spent his days barricaded in his study, and Mina hadn't found yet reasons to interrupt his reproving silence. She couldn't forget his terrible stare at seeing her tears, shed profusely at Jonathan and the life she had lost forever. Terrified to walk downstairs, Mina had opted for spending the last days barricaded herself in her chambers. She shook despairingly her head, and rearranged again for the fifth time her dress in front of the large mirror of her boudoir. She wished she could be as charming as Lady Jayne, always at ease in all kinds of social situations, and then she hated herself for even thinking it.
For ten days now, after that last, heart-wrenching encounter with her Jonathan, Mina had in vain tried to make sense of her mind.
She should despise her husband for deceiving her into marrying him. She should hate him for his abominable treatment of her. She should abhor him with all her forces for consorting openly with Lady Jayne in her own house. It was all so despicable.
But then she pictured Alexander's reverent smile when he called her 'his beloved Ilona', and she wished to be that woman that evidently he loved so much. He was always kind to her, when he called her 'his Ilona', she reminisced fondly. She recognized it was a sick kind of feeling.
He had pursued her in the most shameful of ways, had blackmailed her to marry him, and lied to her over and over again, and then he seemed to have simply forgotten her. It was impossible not to notice the complicit glances between him and Lady Jayne, at any given time they were together. And she had been at their house already on three more separate occasions, with one pretext or another. She had always been received with the utmost delight by Alexander, Mina mournfully considered.
The only explanation her tired mind could come up with, was that he simply had decided to ruin her life as if it had been all a game for him. She felt cheated of a future, and love and happiness, by a monster she had been too weak to resist.
In the end, nobody else could be blamed but her, she recognized with brutal honesty, while removing the pins on her head and trying to rearrange her hair for the third time in a fashionable style, or at least one her husband wouldn't find exception with.
With a sigh and a last hopeless look at the mirror, she left the room and descended the stairs of the stately manor. Alexander was waiting for her in the hall, impeccably dressed. He looked at her with a cursory glance and said, "I don't like that dress. Go change."
Mina's heart sank. "But we will be late," she tried to explain.
"It's doesn't matter, go change. Something more cheerful, we are not going to a funeral," he added curtly while Mina was already climbing up the stairs, her body shaking lightly with something akin to despair.
The coach ride was painstakingly long, an oppressive silence dominating the crisp night air, and Mina's forsaken heart. They stepped down the vehicle and penetrated into a maze of barely lit, narrow alleys, until they reached their destination.
Taking a seat beside Alexander in the glaringly obscene club, Mina asked, "What are we doing here?" She felt lost. Scantily clad women were dancing about, and the whole ambiance spelled debauchery to her. Lady Jayne was also there with them at a nearby table, with a new conquest for the night, and all the will to make the most of it. She kept shooting sly glances at Grayson, while intent on proceeding with her amorous advances on the other man.
Alexander moved closer to his wife on the sofa. Grasping her thigh under the table, he said, "Why, I thought you would find yourself in your natural element here. I remember I had to rescue you from a similar environment, not a few weeks ago." He started clapping loudly to a particularly indecent performance of one of the dancers of the facility.
Lady Jayne approached them and took a seat beside Mina. "Oh, Alexander, I don't know how you do find these places," she said with delight, examining enthusiastically the different couples around them, in different stages of intoxication. "And Mrs. Grayson, you are here too!" she exclaimed, as if Mina had just happened to appear there from thin air by some sort of astounding magician's trick.
"How do you do, Lady Wetherby?" was the composed response she received from the woman.
"Come, come, I don't want to see this long face, dear Mina! We are all here to have fun", Jayne exhorted, placing her chair closer to the other woman, and leaning to whisper in her ear. "You will not be able to retain your husband for long, if you bore him. Take it as a very good advice from a woman with much more experience in the matters of the heart." She smiled knowingly at her, and then she added in a louder tone, "Our Alexander is a scoundrel, always seeking new thrills!" She giggled mirthfully, with a meaningful glance at the object of her desire.
Grayson splayed his arms on the sofa's headrest and crossed his legs with a favorable grin, is if he were king of the facilities, and of the two women's hearts. He nodded to Lady Jayne, a salacious expression on his face. "You know me very well, Madam," he said while grasping her hand to kiss it sensuously. Mina lowered her stare.
"Here, Mrs. Grayson, I will order now something that will make you right at ease with the crowd," Jayne stated garrulously, with a nod to one of the waiters. "It's called absinthe, you absolutely must try it!"
Grayson eyed Mina with an intense stare. "Mina is no stranger to this kind of entertainment. Maybe is just my company that she doesn't appreciate. But a few nights ago, she seemed to have the best of her times with Miss Westenra, I can assure you, Lady Wetherby." He threw an admonishing glare at his wife.
Jayne looked at the man with glee. "Oh, poor Alexander! Are we feeling mistreated, today?
"Women have been cruel to me lately," he stated, shaking lightly his head in mock melancholy. "Even you, Lady Jayne, are abandoning me today. I see your date looking our way with the most distressed expression. He wishes you back. Would you be so heartless to leave me, now that I have tasted the sublime pleasure of your company?"
Lady Jayne was now gloating. "Dear Mr. Grayson, you know I value immensely our friendship. But you knew that today I had a prior engagement. I hope you can forgive me if we rush off now. But I will promise to visit you tomorrow, if dear Mina will have me."
"Of course, you are always welcome in Mr. Grayson's house," Mina managed to say, a tense smile on her lips.
Lady Jayne was gone, and Mina started trembling. Without looking at Alexander, she asked, "Why are you doing this to me?" Her voice was a barely audible cry.
Grayson chuckled. "I'm not doing anything to you. You are always so melodramatic. Try to enjoy yourself a little bit more, will you?" he said, while leisurely lighting a cigar. He took a few drags with relish, and slowly puffed the smoke, with a devilish glance at Mina.
"That's why I'm here? To enjoy myself?" the woman questioned, a sad smile on her lips.
"Yes, Mrs. Grayson, I want you to enjoy yourself." He grinned at her. "The night is young, and there are many amenities in this club, not counting my upcoming surprise for you." He kept dragging on the cigar with nonchalance.
"Oh, I thought Lady Jayne was my surprise." She pursed her lips in disgust.
"No, Mrs. Grayson, I have something better in store for you." A contemptuous smile appeared on his face. "I've just brought you here to see your fiancée," Alexander said at last, with a grandiose gesture towards the right end of the room, where a particularly noisy group of people were assembled. "Am I not the best husband?"
Mina looked to that direction, unconsciously following Alexander's hand, and noticed at once her Jonathan; by the looks of it, he had been drinking liberally, and was now being mildly entertained by the lewd advances of one of the dancers. He seemed to be having a splendid time of himself.
"Do you miss him?" Alexander hissed into her ear, with a vague, complicit tone.
"No." She lowered her stare.
"Mrs. Grayson, I urge you not to be so coy. You can tell me," he added with a grimace. "Do you wish to be with him at this moment?"
"No."
"Let's see if it's true," Grayson uttered with a grin, while abruptly standing up and dragging forcefully the woman towards the back of the club.
"Where are we going?"
"I've booked a room just for us. So you can show me the love you have for me."
He slammed the door of the dingy alcove, tackily decorated with faded velvets and some sort of feathers plastered indiscriminately on the walls. There was a small bed on one side and poorly-lighting lamps everywhere. The accommodation was fairly depressing.
"Do you miss your Jonathan?" Alexander asked, while throwing himself with abandon on the bed.
"Wouldn't your Lady Jayne miss you instead, today?" Mina managed to say with a piqued voice.
"Alas, no, she has found her entertainment for the evening." Grayson suspired in exaggerated, theatrical distress. "And so have I." He stared at her predatorily. "What are you going to do to entertain me tonight, now that our beloved Lady Jayne is out of the way, and your Jonathan despises your choice of me with all his heart?"
"You are despicable."
"You have already told me that, if memory serves me well."
"I wish to go home."
"Not a chance, my dear." He stood up and moved over to her. "You can think of your Jonathan while you make love to me," he enticed her, one of his hands moving lasciviously to her hips. "Think that he's just a few feet over, heartbroken by your betrayal, think of him while I do this," he whispered, while throwing her viciously over the bed with a swift motion. His weight was soon over her, his breath on her face.
"Let me go!" the woman screamed in outrage.
"I saw you crying when your Jonathan was at the house. Do you wish it was him touching you now?" His hand descended between her legs. "Do you?"
"No."
"And now?" He started massaging rhythmically her most private parts. "Do you wish you had married him instead?"
"No," Mina repeated, with an uncontrollable moan escaping her lips.
"It's my turn to say that I don't believe you," he hissed in her ear, while expediently unbuttoning his trousers.
"Mina, do you hate me now?" he at last asked, ramming inside of her with relish.
Mina gasped and trembled in his arms. "You called me Mina," she said in wonderment.
"Are you thinking of him?"
"No."
"What are you thinking of?" he asked while maintaining a sweet, undulating rhythm, that was shaking Mina's body with waves of pleasure.
She was gripping his shoulders with passion. "That you called me Mina. Am I not your Ilona anymore?" she asked timidly, between a moan and another, which she was trying unsuccessfully to stifle.
"You will be always my Ilona." He kissed her fervently. "But you are also my beloved Mina, if you wish it to be so. Are you my Mina?"
"Yes."
"Never forget that. I love you, Mina. Do you love your Jonathan?"
"No."
Alexander gave a forceful push and exhaled in ecstasy. "Tell me you don't regret having married me," he whispered urgently, his head resting on her breasts.
Mina went silent.
He looked up and stared at the blue pool of her eyes. His expression hardened, and he gave a nervous laugh. Readjusting his trousers in haste, he shook his head and left the room, slamming the door behind him.
