Reflections
Water brimmed in the copper bath, a mist of steam rising from the surface like the whisper of pipeweed smoke. Estella thought of Gandalf's cleverness with smoke rings, a comforting enchantment from childhood days, then swirled her hand through the water to disperse the rose oil Dandy had sprinkled there. She was alone now and the door was locked. Gingerly, with shaking fingers, she removed the shawl Pervinca had tied about her, and then her gown: the bodice was ruined, a closer examination showing that repairing it would require more skill with a needle than she possessed. Laying both articles on the chair, Estella picked up a hand mirror and turned it to her now naked form. The marks on her arms were already livid, and the scratches across her décolletage, though ugly were not deep and would heal soon enough. She trained the mirror downwards, stifling a small sob when she saw the purple marks of a blow on her bosom, a trail of similar contusions leading downwards over her ribs, then more claw marks on her hip...almost not wishing to see, she shifted the angle of the glass to view the curve of her buttocks and found a cruel cross-hatching of scratches and bruises...
For a long time she stood silent, looking at nothing. She set the mirror down, and stepped into the bath, the hot water at once a relief to her aching muscles, and a stinging reminder, had she yet needed one, of the broken skin on her body. Closing her eyes, she slid beneath the water. She was weary of weeping.
Surfacing from the water's embrace, Estella laid her head against the high back of the bath, keeping her eyes tight shut. There was nothing for it but to get away. She wished, with all her heart, that Pervinca was right, that Merry might rescue her from this nightmare, but that was little more than a romantic dream, every bit as insubstantial as one of those smoke rings...
Unbidden, memory stirred...
...The night of her coming of age party, warm, as balmy as midsummer although it was only April... Some of the men had been trying to top one another with ever more fanciful smoke rings and sounds of revelry carried on the breeze from the edge of the party field to the water meadow... "Walk with me Estella" he'd said, and that was where they'd ended, where she'd seen the dark glow in his eyes as he turned and took her hand – they had held hands before, many times, danced together, played together as children, and she wasn't sure when it had begun to change, but now it was more, the touch and linking of their fingers like the fitting of a key to a lock, or an answer to an unspoken question...For a long, long moment they stood looking at one another, then he bent toward her...His lips were warm and firm, instantly familiar, a light almost chaste kiss the first touch... He murmured her name, smiled and put his mouth against her mouth...She loved the soft nudge of his nose into her cheek, his special smell, like new mown hay, pipeweed and some indefinable, delicious flower...And then came the warm dart of his tongue in her mouth – deep within, excited hunger unfolded and clutched at her, made her pull him closer...She was lost in him, their bodies pressed together, but not closely enough... "Merry," she knitted the fingers of one hand into the bright curls at the nape of his neck...Only a stifled laugh from behind a tussock had broken the spell: Pippin, of course, spying on them, making Merry swoop for a clod of earth to hurl at his friend, but turning back to look at her before giving chase, his face shining...That was how it ought to be, the promise of more a source for yearning, not...
...Disgust, struggling, clawing...She shut her eyes tight, trying to block out Lotho and summon Merry...
Yes, she had to get away.
In the ordinary scheme of things there were relatives she could visit, the Tooks, her cousin Ferdibrand and his wife Mentha...these places would not do, not this time. The Shire was large, she doubted if any hobbit knew the length and breadth of it, and her own family was an especially unadventurous line of hobbits, known by name to all, but strangers to all but kin and those dwelling in their own farthing. She looked once more at the tattered gown lying on the chair by the bath – her ability with needle and thread was adequate at best, but there were other skills a woman might sell, and why might she not, like Dandy, Pennyroyal and many others like them find work as a servant somewhere far from Budgeford and the reach of Lotho Sackville-Baggins?