It was half past eight in the evening. Col. Tavington paced anxiously back and forth in his room, while his wife fed his son.
"I can't take this anymore!" he said through clenched teeth. "Did you not see what Jae looked like? Horrible! Absolutely horrible! Wrapped in a worn blanket, clothing shredded to pieces, and a bruised cheek with a large hand print! And she won't say anything! ANYTHING!"
Col. Tavington gripped the wine glass he was holding so tight that it shattered in his hands as tiny crystal shards and red wine bore into his palm, making it sting and bleed. But he didn't care. His adrenaline was running too high for him to feel the pain.
"William, calm yourself." said Mary firmly, putting Braden down on the four-poster.
"I will not, Mary!" snapped the colonel, his voice rising.
"William, I am as concerned about her as you are, but you cannot force her to give you answers. And given the information you've told me, I gather that if she could, she would have told you by now, yet she has not, which probably means that there is a much higher power stopping her. You'll just have to trust her as she requested you to do."
"Yes well, if Jula hadn't gone off with that boy, none of this probably would have happened, as it seems as everything has gone to Hell since then.."
Mary shot him a furious glare.
"Now that, William Tavington, was not fair."
"Oh hell, Mary! You know as well as I do that things have been going terribly since that event!" Col. Tavington yelled.
Braden began to cry, sensing the tension in the room building. Mary picked him up and cradled him in her arms, cooing softly to him in an effort to calm him and shot her husband a severe look, to which he answered with an equally severe one of his own, shaking in anger, still not heeding the fact that his right hand was dripping with blood and wine.
"You stop this right now!" Mary hissed at the colonel. "It's irrational-"
"Irrational? IRRATIONAL?" Col. Tavington roared, his eyes nearly white with passionate anger.
"Yes, William, irrational! You're behaving like an absolute beast! Yes, this isn't an easy situation in any way, shape, or form, but your current method of handling it, yelling at the top of your voice, is absolutely ghastly!"
"I don't give a bloody damn! I refuse to just stand here and let Jae be tormented!"
"And I refuse to have you in here yelling and cursing with our son in the room!" Mary snapped.
Col. Tavington bristled, every muscle in his body flexed to the max.
"Don't you-"
"Don't even pull your 'superior' bullocks with me, sir! Now, calm yourself, or get out until you can!" said Mary, her voice beginning to escalate as she glared at him with a look that could have frozen Hell.
"Very well," replied Col. Tavington through gritted teeth, finally noticing his hand. "I'll go..."
"Good."
With that, Col. Tavington strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him and stormed to the washroom to clean and bandage his hand, not returning to his quarters until well past eleven in the evening, to find Braden asleep and Mary lying in bed awake, gazing at him as he dressed in his nightclothes, her look still frosty from the fight they had earlier.
"Good night." he said in a tense, almost forced manner climbing into the four-poster next to his wife.
Mary glanced at her husband before turning her back to him.
"Good night, sir..."