Chapter 21: Raffine - a swordsman who will provoke a duel on the slightest pretext or cause.

"Can I have another cup of water?" James asked.

It was the day after Sark's determined realisation of how he was going to break James Dodgson. The cold, northern daylight filtered in through an ornate skylight. The room they were in was high ceilinged, grand, the walls lined with polished panelling and shelves, the shelves lined with leather bound volumes: they were in the library of his magnificent Palace suite. Pieces of high technology gleamed discreetly amid the old-world opulence. Sark was a boy who liked his toys.

He gave a long blink at the contortions of her accent. Did the way she spoke actually qualify as English?

"You may have another cup of water," he responded with silky civility, stressing the word 'may' to correct her syntax, before he continued with a sudden biting coldness, "when you can pronounce the word 'water' correctly."

Following the 'spitting water all over the lap top' incident when he'd questioned her about her period, he hadn't let her keep a cup on her desk. As of this morning she had to request permission if she wanted to drink. She suddenly found that she had to request permission if she wanted to do many things which, even as Sark's prisoner, she had previously taken as a right. He had upbraided and criticised her on almost every little thing since the day had begun. The working day had begun at nine, it was now noon. Three hours of being destabilised, attacked, undercut. In reaction, a sense of being undermined and disorientated was beginning to swamp her. She hadn't realised just how much she had come to rely upon Sark's definitions and boundaries – which in their own way had been seemingly fair – until he had suddenly changed them. She was beginning to feel as she had as a small child back in the school yard – picked on.

He had shot her, nicked a bullet through her calf, and that had been bad, but this current treatment was worse. It was his cursory, blasé disdain, the sense he projected that he barely managed to tolerate his boredom with her: his dismissal of her. More than the bullet with which he had shot her, his remembered words had hurt her far more: you're becoming tedious. The sheer rejection and humiliation she felt was what truly smarted.

From his position sitting deep in a leather armchair, Sark watched the effect he was having. He allowed himself a small smile of self-congratulation, it looked like the blade of a knife. He could clearly see her discomfort.

Excellent, it's working! She hurt me … and now it's payback!

He continued speaking.

"I am accustomed to English as she is spoken Dr. Dodgson; you speak English as she is mangled." He calmly rose and poured a paper-cup of water from a drink stand and strolled toward her with it. On reaching her he abruptly leant into her. "Tell me, did anyone actually teach you to speak English, or did you simply pick it up from the natives as you went along?"

The words were delivered with a smooth unpleasantness in which he thoroughly revelled. He saw her face reddening under his attack. Good, he liked it when a perfectly good plan worked. He saw her move a hand to snatch the cup of water and he jerked it back before she could catch it.

"No Doctor."

"What?"

"Oh you may have the water, but I don't think you can be trusted to drink it by yourself, I think you need help."

He watched her face keenly, his unblinking gaze scouring it for signs of change, for indications as to what she was thinking, how she was feeling. Was that almost a sense of rising panic he could see? When she spoke, her voice was certainly shaking enough.

"I think I can be trusted to drink a cup of water by myself. What d'ya think I'm gonna do, try and drown you in it?"

"I'm more concerned with any efforts you might make to throw it on the keyboard, short out the laptop, and slow us down by the time it takes to get you a new one and download the information from the old." It was bullshit of course, but Sark wanted excuses to exercise control over her and anything would do. It wasn't just to get her working the Rambaldi problem, it was revenge. He was angry, she'd hurt him and that wasn't going to happen again. "Hands behind your back please, Doctor."

He saw her stare up at him in complete disbelief. "What? You are not gonna seriously refuse to let me hold the cup?"

Sark smiled down at her, a cold parody of a warm friendship. "But of course I am. Oh do come along Doctor, don't sulk, after all, I can always tie them there."

At his dreadful suggestion his face showed nothing but its usual veneer of la politesse, in turn her face showed her bewilderment and unease at what was happening – at how Sark was behaving - but his threat held good because she knew he would do it and she complied.

He held the cup to her mouth and she attempted to drink. Sark's mathematical mind calculated angles and he deliberately tipped the cup ever so slightly so that when the water ran down her chin it looked as though she was the one being clumsy.

She instinctively moved to hold the cup herself.

"No," a sharp admonishment.

She reddened with mortification under Sark's reprimand. He could clearly see how unhappy she was. "This is ridiculous," she spluttered, "I could die 'a thirst just sittin' here. If you'd just let me drink it myself - "

"- then I wouldn't have half the fun."

Sometimes even Sark was amazed at the nasty little sneer he could inject into his voice.

Her face burned with humiliation as she looked away from him, shocked and hurt in one.

Sark batted away any disquiet at it and fastened on the knowledge: it's the humiliation that hurts her. Keep pressing. Do it again. She hurt you. She's got it coming.

"It's like dancing Doctor, surely some one has taught even you to dance?" His British accent pronounced it 'darnce'. "You remember don't you? Boy, girl? I lead, you follow? Now … tip back … there's a good little girl," he purred the last words and felt a callous satisfaction at the delicious mix of fury and embarrassment they provoked on her face, "…slowly … "

He abruptly tipped her chair back so that it was balanced on its two rear legs, supporting the angle of it against his inner thigh. As he knew she would, she tensed in her vulnerable backward tilted position, gasping slightly, afraid of being dropped. Leaning closely over her, he put the cup to her and let her drink.

To any far off observer, unaware of their respective roles as captor and captive, he appeared to proceed with all the care and tenderness due to the feeding of a baby bird who had landed on a window ledge.

As the day wore on, James almost tearfully found herself enmeshed in a series of unfair rules and regulations. And they were all utterly contrary!

Sark kept criticising her accent and modes of expression.

But it hadn't bothered him before! her inner six year old wailed.

Under the constant onslaught of his chill words, all of hers seemed to have deserted her. All her quick, sneery come-backs gone. She felt like Alice playing croquet with the Queen and watching all the poor cards race to paint the roses red, fearful of 'off with their heads' because the Queen had suddenly decided she didn't like the roses white! Only unlike Alice, James felt she had somehow lost her verve and élan, she couldn't find the easy, derisive words to dismiss the situation.

But it's not fair! she howled within.

This time there was no private voice to tell her to pull herself together. She felt as though, in a few short hours, this new icily determined Sark, a Sark she hadn't met before, had pushed her back down her personal evolutionary ladder, stripped away her maturity and knocked her straight back into the schoolyard where the cry of it's not fair was totally appropriate. It was almost as though he'd regressed her back to the age of six, back to before she had all her smart words and cutting phrases to defend her, back to before she'd developed her smart-aleck shell and she was just the little kid in the corner getting pushed around by bigger kids, held up only by her own inner moral compass telling her that it was all wrong, that it's not fair!

Her distress washed quite openly cross her face. Her mouth compressed into a small, unhappy, downward tick – he's being so mean! I don't understand it! She was hungry, she was thirsty and now she realised with a jarring shame and discomfort that she also had to go to the toilet!

From a distance Sark watched her cross her legs and squeeze them together. Yes, his suspicions were correct, she needed to use the bathroom and it was an excellent sign of events that she quite lacked the nerve to request permission. Observing her discomfort he felt ever more determined to persist with his new found tactic of sheer, iniquitous nastiness. He knew it was working and was resolute that he gain his objective, that of taking James Dodgson apart and reconstructing her as something useful, something 'tamed'. Irina would expect it and he desired it. He couldn't afford to have James Dodgson as a disruptive force in his life any longer, he needed order and he was determined that he would have it.

James Dodgson wasn't a human being, he told himself, she was his latest toy, and as a child he had always played with his toys until they broke, pulling them apart to find out just how they worked. Well, he was going to break this one. If there was any other method of forcing James' co-operation, he suddenly wasn't interested in it, he wanted this one.

"Like to use the lavatory would you? Why don't you just ask Doctor, or don't you have the vocabulary for it?"

He watched her as an entomologist watches an insect … or as a boy watches an ant farm. He saw her glare straight at the at the laptop screen, not moving. Oh no Doctor, you will reply, non-compliance is not allowed.

"Doctor, if you don't ask, I will see to it that you don't get. And I will only ask one more time, do you require to use the bathroom?"

"Alright, yes!" she hissed, stubbornly staring at the laptop and not looking at him.

"Well then, we'd better go to it hadn't we?" He moved toward her, taking the key to her bonds from out of his pocket.

"We?" she cried out.

"Certainly. If you will try to shoot me, you can hardly expect any trust in return can you?" His tone shifted into an arctic range. "Didn't I explain another one of those little rules of Rambaldi Boot Camp? No privacy."

He saw her face crumple under the sudden weight of her conflicting emotions of wrath, frustration and fearful, tearful anger at the sheer injustice of it all. "Why are you being so mean to me?"

"Because you threatened to shoot me. That never goes down well."

"You can't go to the bathroom with me! You just can't!"

"Why not? I never did give you a full body cavity search, so I ought to accompany you now more than ever."

"No!" cried James.

Sark mimicked her accent.

" 'No!' Well, let me see, as House Captain for Team Bastard …" he rested his hands in his pockets, adopting an attitude of mock consideration - he didn't want to accompany her, it would be unpleasant for him - "we'll give you a choice. Which of the following privileges do you prefer? Either, permission to eat and drink like a civilised human being with the proper utensils, or …" he switched his tone to a coldness, "permission to relieve yourself in private?" He saw her flinch at the unfair Sophie's Choice between what must surely have been two basic rights. "And failure to pick one or any attempt to negotiate on the matter will incur a penalty of whatever I devise." He angled his head and looked down at her, querying almost scientifically. "Do you understand that?"

She glared at him and nearly sobbed her words out. "Do I understand that? What do I look like, a stupid genius?"

Sark stared down at her calmly, head tilted in that characteristic way he had. "Which is it to be, Doctor?"

She seethed almost tearfully under his gaze, but it was no contest really, she had to pick one, and he knew just which one it would have to be.

He watched her little jaw grind.

Oh come on James, don't bore me by holding out for nothing, you know you have to give. Just say the words.

"I choose crappin' in private!" she blurted out.

Sark almost laughed at her childish delivery. He raised his chin slightly so that he was gazing at the ceiling, his neck slightly extended, throat revealed, head faintly to one side. It was a stance characteristic of him but he didn't realise it, he never paid attention to himself long enough to realise it. "Really now," he drawled pleasantly, "was that a nice way to express oneself?" He clicked his voice up a gear and switched without warning to cold, clipped cruelty. "Respond again and answer correctly; speak politely and refer to me as Mr. Sark." He knew perfectly well what he was doing with his sudden alterations of vocal delivery, pleasant and then piercing, soft and then sharp. He was alternating between hot and cold, freeze and thaw. It was the tool nature used to crack rocks. His cultured, upper class British accent, with its alternately drawling and clipped delivery, let him sound contemptuous and scornful even if he were just casually saying hello, so now, when he was actually aiming to hurt, his voice was a lethal weapon. He switched to warm cosiness again, knowing that the unpredictability of his delivery de-stabilised and upset her far more than anything he actually said. "After all, if you're a bad girl," he continued, shifting down to smooth charm again, "you will incur a penalty."

He saw her visibly swallow a Go Large portion of distress and rage. She managed to speak.

"I choose the privilege of relieving myself in private, Sir, Mr. Sark, Sir."

Sark looked down upon her and wondered, just what was it about the Bayou drawl that so easily lent itself to sarcasm?

His greatest advantage was James' sheer lack of game-face, that her almost every emotion flashed across her for anyone to read, and he wasn't just anyone. If necessary he'd have decoded the Rosetta Stone if it hadn't already been done. He noted the small, unhappy straight line of her mouth. He knew she was going to come out from this hating, fearing and despising him. Fine. No problem. Bring It On. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? He had the method now and he was a ruthless exponent of it. In one short day he would lop off all the parts of her psyche that didn't suit him. He'd make her be the shape he wanted, a different, altered James. They'd fit together like hand in fist.

And then she'll never be able to hurt me again. We're not partners, we're not going to be partners. We're not going to share, we're not going to be equals, I don't do equal.

He unexpectedly caught his reflection in the glassed door of a bookshelf and was momentarily taken aback; his expression had been the very essence of unpleasantness. It almost shocked him. He jerked his gaze away from his image and got back on the clock.

As the day relentlessly ground on he found he got a kick out of making her jump. Not surprising really, he reflected, given the little games he used to play with Allison Doren.

As afternoon approached he repeatedly caught himself circling her desk, repetitively prowling around her. He could have easily stayed away, verbally terrorising her from the comfort of a distant armchair, but he told himself that physical proximity added to the sense of threat. Sark had always known that any infringement of personal space was far less a display of affection than a display of power. He was an expert in power, he specialised in its abuse.

Some aspect of him thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of her fear. There were other aspects to him, but he wasn't allowing them in the game. They were going to stay on the bench till the job was done.

Coursing about her, he kept her pinned down with his gaze. Whenever she dared look up, her glance was unable to challenge his own and flinched away. After a while she had stopped looking up at all and had stayed still, crouched over the desk, almost unseeing, awaiting his next assault – just trying to ride it out.

His verbal assaults were many and frequent. Under the onslaught, James had lost any ability to fight back, she was just psychologically curled up in a ball, only hoping to withstand the emotional kickings and the mental freeze/thaw action of his terrifying switches between hot and cold, his sudden terrorizing shifts between the sinisterly pleasant and his cold that burned. He reflected that the only reason he hadn't had her brow-beaten before – say, in Switzerland – was because he hadn't really been trying. Well he was trying now, he was going for it as though his and Irina's very lives depended on it.

A late lunch had arrived. The person delivering it had taken one look at Sark and James and had dumped it down on a table and ran out. The meal was as ordered by Sark, sandwiches and grapes for him and, seeing as she was forbidden the use of utensils, a messy stew for her.

"How am I supposed to eat that?" Her voice was worn, hoarse sob.

Sark was surprised she still had it in her to even try to fight. He brought his face close to hers, his gaze drilling into her as she looked away from him, almost holding her breath with anxiety. "Not my problem Doctor. You should have thought of that when you forwent the use of utensils in your choice." He switched back to smooth, easy, pleasant civility. "Remember Doctor, you actively had a choice, and you did choose against eating properly."

"That was no choice! I didn't have a choice!" It was an almost ragged scream.

He switched to cold again. "If you will not comport yourself correctly then …" he thought, what piece of vilely unfair inequality could he engineer now? "… then, you shall forfeit the right to feed yourself at all. I shall have my men feed you until I determine that you are willing to behave like an adult."

James snapped.

Half-sobbing with rage she grabbed the grapes and flung them on the floor, then she went for the sandwiches and hurled them toward the nearest wall. It was a completely futile show of rebellion, but it was the best she could do, she had finally lost control.

Watching her snap, Sark shone with an inner gleam – finally, victory! At last! He had won! At the realisation he felt some hot, rolling thrill low down in the pit of his stomach. His body seethed with some unexpected animal excitement, but his mind felt very calm and very still and then clicked back in to order again. He had come to a conclusion; had he just won? – no, he hadn't. It wasn't over. It wasn't nearly over. He hadn't won because she hadn't yet lost.

"I want you to pick that food up."

"Why should I? I'm sure The Borrowers will want it!"

He wondered that she alluded to the British childhood nursery tale in an extreme such as this. To what part of her childhood had she been pushed, to mentally associate to a children's tale at all? A section of his mind mooted abstractly on the British element of the nursery tale, he noted that if you interchanged merely one vowel you could switch effortlessly back and forth between 'British' and 'brutish'.

"Pick…the…mess…up." His cold, slow, deliberate delivery was both shocking and menacing.

"The food has rolled across the floor!" Her voice had an almost hysterical edge. "How'm I supposed to pick it up from here! I'm chained to this goddamn table!"

Sark paused, he realised that she was very close to completely cracking and reminded himself that the aim was to break her spirit, not to shatter her. But some self-revelation came to him: but I want to shatter her. She hurt me and I'm going to hurt her back!

Un-nerved, Sark swallowed and backed away from the sudden thought, scrambling to re-assert his self-control. Total destruction wasn't part of the plan. It wasn't supposed to happen that way.

"Reach, dear Doctor. Are you telling me you couldn't possibly stretch out and flick at least some of it back with your foot? You certainly didn't expect anyone to clean it up for you, did you? You don't actually imagine that I or my staff relish your unsavoury surroundings?" As he spoke, Sark was shocked to hear his voice minutely beginning to crack and shake. He was horrified at it. What was going on? Why was he under pressure, and what from? - he was the one in charge! Without warning, he abruptly turned and left the room, blindly bent on getting out and regaining his complete composure.

He faced himself across a bathroom mirror.

Why am I doing all this?

He could have stayed away from the library, left to do other things, but he didn't. He could have issued any number of orders that she be left alone in the room, but he didn't. He should have done all those things, but he didn't. He knew that he should stay away until his complete self-command was rebuilt, that he should let her agonisingly fret about why he'd left, choke herself with fears as to what he was planning, but he didn't.

He didn't do any of those things because he didn't want to.

He wanted to go back into the library.

He felt magnetised towards it. He didn't know why, he told himself he didn't care why – if he still wanted a reason he told himself that he still had a job to do and that he was going to go back in there until it was damn well finished. That was all - there was no other reason! He strode back into the room, filled with a white hot wrath, hell-bent on revenge.

Sark was literally breathing down the back of James' neck. He had been unable to pull away from her, gravitating about her in ever tighter circles, so he had made up his mind that he was going to control her. Now he was hanging over her, almost touching her. He leant over the back of her chair, his carved, unyielding face poised over her shoulder, where an angry angel might have been.

He sneeringly criticised the work she was doing on the laptop.

"Really, can't you go any faster? We acquired you because you were supposed to be intelligent, I'm wondering if we were wrong. After all," he sneered, "dressing eccentrically doesn't mean you're brilliant does it?" An exploratory finger slid over her shoddy clothing, as a botanist fingering the petals of a plant he might or might not snip, "it might just mean you want people to think you are."

James' face screwed up in response, red and blotchy with unshed tears of frustration, rage, fear and injustice as she tried to ignore him and keep working at the laptop. Sark drove on.

"Do you know that Neotech don't even want you back? They haven't even issued a reward for your return, they're not even looking for you." His laugh contained not one shred of humour. "The top management threw a party when they heard you were gone. With your research more or less finished, they had the project outcome and were still able to collect millions on insurance for your kidnapping." He remembered her isolated childhood and prised away at the insecurities it had engendered, enquiring with a malevolence that surpassed any mere cruelty, "What's it like to be so thoroughly despised, rejected and disregarded by all your peers?"

James burst into tears.

At the sudden sight Sark felt as though he'd been physically shoved backwards, he almost tottered on his heels: he was astounded. He didn't feel victorious, he didn't feel like he should … he felt alarmed, almost frightened at the startling display of emotion. He'd been expecting it, he'd been provoking it, but now it was here he was horrified by it. His voice betrayed a slight panic at the unexpected feelings it evoked in him. He decisively shifted towards regaining control.

"Stop crying Doctor," he clipped. She could not desist. "I said stop crying, it's a waste of time." Still the tears came. His voice grew harsher as his inexplicable sense of panic grew ever more keen – why won't she stop crying? "You're not listening to me Doctor! it's a waste of my time and I want you to stop!"

She couldn't stop and Sark registered the raw, hoarse howling with an increasing dread he did not understand.

What the fuck? Where is that grief coming from?

Sark countermanded himself.

What the hell am I scared of? – it's just tears! I've had grown men sobbing like babies before now! What's so alarming about this?

To Sark, an Apollonian being of clean, cold will, what he feared most was the loss of self-determination; he feared confusion, and he felt confused now. I have to stop that noise!

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, determined to control the situation. I will not have this getting out of hand! "Doctor, I want you to pull yourself together and stop this disgusting display!"

His own voice was only adding to the furore, it's cold hiss alarming her even as the situation alarmed him. In response, whatever sudden fissure there was in James Dodgson suddenly split wider and her shackled feet hammered against the floor convulsively as she tried to tear her wrist away from the desk. Sark was horrified. It was as though he'd destroyed the human being and had left only some wild animal. She was starting to scream. He felt as though the noise was peeling some defensive shell from him.

He had to stop her!

Sark slapped the side of her chair, once, sharply: trying to get her to snap-to.

Her only response was to twist mindlessly in her seat, a horrible keening noise rising in her throat, breaking out like some banshee cry, like a dog that has been left alone too long in a yard and has finally gone mad. It turned Sark's blood cold. Wide eyed, he heard that horrifying wail and knew he'd made some terrible miscalculation: he'd pushed too hard and something had snapped inside her head … and now something was threatening to snap inside his!

My God she has to stop crying!

"Stop it! Stop this wailing!" He grabbed her jaw in one of his hands, twisting her face toward him, making her look at him. All he could see was the terrible disfigured expression of someone who had finally broken. It was as though he'd wrecked some delicate instrument inside her head and now he couldn't fix it!

Jesus, is there anyone still alive in there?

He felt almost hysterical. Why won't she stop crying? He spoke ever more sharply. "Doctor, I need you to address the matter in hand!"

James started shaking her head frantically from side to side, breaking free of his grip, and that horrible wailing, keening noise just kept coming.

I have to make her stop!

Without any warning to her or to himself, in a complete panic he slammed his hand down hard on the desk, the whole structure trembling. Shoved on by his own alarm he pushed his face sideways to hers, almost touching her, glaring at her profile, his voice a bludgeoning weapon dialled up to a shout.

"I'M TELLING YOU TO SHUT UP!"

Before he even knew he was doing it, he grabbed a fistful of the scrappy notes she kept scattered across the desk top and flung them to the floor where they fell like leaves. James worked using loose notes jotted down on the backs of disused envelopes, on paper napkins, on anything really; working stuff out in her head before she committed the almost finished product to the laptop. Sark knew that, he knew that the messiness was an almost necessary corollary to her productivity, but stampeded by his own alarm he seized upon the characteristic and twisted it into a wrongdoing anyway.

"Look at you!" His voice was shouting. "Do you think that any of us likes to watch you sit here and create a slovenly disgrace?" He mentally yelled at himself: Christ, get a grip Sarkey! You're going too far! - but he couldn't get the self control to stop. "Do you think you'd even be here if we weren't forced to have you?"His voice rose uncontrollably to an ungoverned, hollering roar as he finally screamed out what his subconscious demanded that he say. "I DON'T WANT YOU HERE!"

I have to drive her off! I have to get away from her!

Suddenly, he hardly knew what he was doing. He almost gave way to a gripping urge to sweep the laptop up off the desk and hurl it to the floor – to utterly smash it, to utterly smash the works of Rambaldi which ensnared him. This had started out a few hours ago as a model for chipping away at James Dodgson, but now it had changed. The realisation sprang at him: it was now about obliterating her so that she couldn't hurt him, shooting at her till she broke. He could see the coroner's report now: death by multiple gunshot wounds to the mind. She'd hurt him, she was a danger, she made him feel, and feelings were … were going to get him killed!

He convulsively seized the back of her chair, gripping it and shaking it till his knuckles turned white, closing his eyes, fighting for his very self-possession. A battle raged in him, between that which needed to control at all costs and that which had finally realised that some costs were just too great.

What's happening to me? I'M LOSING IT!

It was war between he and himself.

She moved in the chair beneath him and the scent of a week of unwashed body rose off her. Furious, he ripped her up out of the chair, unfastened the cuff round her ankle and cast aside the shackle that loosely held her wrist to the desk.

He dragged her screaming towards the bathroom.

It was like hauling a terrified cat to the vets. She clawed and bucked and kicked,her screams rending the air as she tried to fight free of him. Sark's breath hissed in his lungs as he clamped down on her wildly jerking limbs, the wound in her leg oozing fresh blood as it split under her exertions.

He hauled her bodily into his private bathroom, trying to keep her limbs still. He clamped her under one arm, buying enough seconds to turn on the bath taps with his free hand. The vast header tank saw the deep claw-footed bath fill rapidly with a gush of steamy water. She screamed and struggled wildly, a lashing foot sweeping heavy glass jars off a shelf, smashing them to the floor, their expensive contents seeping out and thickly scenting the air. He grabbed the collar of her jacket at the nape of her neck and yanked it back and down, wrenching the item off in one go.

James' terrified scream came out in a high-pitched spiralling shriek.

Sark felt his mind starting to peel apart.

She tried to dig her nails into his arm through the sleeve of his suit. Useless. She got her hand back behind her head and grabbed a fistful of his curling blond hair instead. Better. Sark hissed in pain as she tried to rip a clutch of his hair out by the roots. He grabbed her hand and yanked it off him. She cried out as her fingers were accidentally crushed by his grip.

Sark winced, not for himself but in sudden sympathy for her. Christ, he had never wanted to hurt her … he had never wanted it to get this bad … all he had ever really wanted for them was … to get to know each other. He hadn't wanted to hit, he'd only wanted to … touch.

His mind stopped.

Oh Christ no!

Horrified, he dropped her as though she were red hot and then he tried to step back. She dumped down into the bath fully dressed. The water rose up and splashed over the sides as she landed in the bathtub on her ass.

There was a stillness as she stopped screaming. There was a second of tension within and between them, and then both were utterly spent.

She collapsed in the bath like Ophelia drowned. Sark's legs buckled and he sank to his knees, clinging on to the roll-top of the heavy cast-iron tub. Each of them heaved in breath like two worn-out runners in some dreadful marathon. Moving like a sleep-walker he picked up her injured leg and propped it on the edge of the bath. Her clumpy ugly shoe was sodden, so he tugged it off and then peeled off her sock. He rested his forehead against her bare shin, holding her small foot in his hand, panting for breath, eyes closed. She got a hand out of the tub and feebly pushed it at him, it became knotted up in his shirt collar, her tangled fingers touching his skin. It was impossible to say if she were trying to push him away, pull him close, or just hold on.

She was so exhausted, he didn't think she realised any of it.

His breathing was so raw he was almost sobbing.

He gave up the struggle he had been waging for days, almost terrified at the recognition.

You've tripped yourself up this time. You've got your fucking feelings involved on this one!