Preface
2019, Riene
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She looked well in the pink gown, she knew, the color matching the roses in the garden, less of a hue than the roses on her cheek. She smiled and bobbed her head as he drew up, his expression frankly admiring.
"Which way to the river road, girl? Mademoiselle," he amended a moment later as she came to the gate, the better to give directions.
She knew him, had seen him drive about the village with his family in an open carriage during the summers. A second son, the family coming to visit a summer home. She blushed all the more prettily as she spoke. Though a revolution and years of a despot had changed many fortunes, there must still be some money, for in no way could such horses be maintained without. He tipped his hat and rode off, and she resolved to be in the garden on the morrow, in her yellow gown that set off her hair and eyes.
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She was vexed that he would not take the time to meet her parents, though there were reasons a-plenty, good reasons, too, she thought, and it was just as easy to meet him in the quieter places of the countryside, where the bramble hedges hid the field from the road, where the copse grew thick, where the grassy hills were soft to lie upon. She admired the way his boots shone with polish in the sunlight, the cut of his waistcoat and breeches, the pride he took in his collars and cuffs.
And the way his eyes laughed down into hers, and the feel of his hands, warm on her skin.
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Her mother cried when she told them, and her father swore. They demanded the truth and she told them, her small head held proudly, that he would marry her.
"You fool," her mother spat, "you are ruined. He has been betrothed these months to a girl from the City, whose family has wealth from Trade. He will not come for you." Her father said he would find a man to take her, soiled as she was, for a price. All of their hopes for comfort in their old age, the music lessons, the art lessons, wasted.
.
In that they were wrong. He did come for her, frowning. "Could you not have been more careful?" he asked, then brushed aside her tears. "No matter. I know the man of whom your father speaks. We are...well acquainted." The smile did not reach his eyes. "He will not have you."
But there were reasons they could not be wed, right away. An older brother, cruel, an elderly father, so much like the stories she had read and hidden that her father might not find them.
It was easy to agree to slip away.
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The travel was wearying, under the hard eyes of the woman. "I will meet you when I can, as I can. My father… But she will do for you, be your guardian and helper. It is all very proper." And so the hired carriage took them away.
The stone building had been a hunting lodge, perhaps, a simple arrangement of two up, two down, a fireplace for warmth, a pump for water. True to his word there was food, and francs for material to make smocks to cover her rapidly expanding figure. And he came often, arriving with a reddened face from the cold, or perhaps strong drink, and left the prints of his hands and teeth on her pale skin, even as he rutted and gorged himself on her body. And always excuses. A father, unwell, but they would present the family with a fine son, a strong and healthy lad, and then they would be wed, and she would be a lady.
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The nights grew cold and frost gathered on the panes. Her body was not her own, used for his pleasure and swollen so. She did not know it for her own, ankles thick and a lines where none had been before. She rubbed tallow on the angry red marks on her hips, her breasts, felt the low throb in her back, and obediently swallowed the possets the resentful woman made to ease her nausea, even as she felt the cramps twist her guts each time.
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She wanted her mother, wanted him, wanted anyone but this angry stranger, even after so many months still a stranger, who cursed and sweated and shouted even as she screamed and writhed on the bed, the hot smell of blood and fluids fouling the linens, through the endless waves of pain and tearing and finally finally merciful blackness.
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"What have you done?" He turned away, sickened, tossing the blanket over the—she could not call it a face—of the puling jaundiced-yellow thing in the basket, the thing that screamed incessantly, that puked immediately when put to her swollen breasts and seized a cracked nipple in its misshapen mouth, the milk leaking from the gaping hole where a nose should have been, choking and gasping, and she sobbed, telling him she had only eaten the foods and drunk the teas the other woman had made for her, and his face changed, a dawning realization. He took the stairs two at a time, a thunder of boots on warped wood and there were screams and blows, and accusations, even as the thing in the cradle cried and whimpered.
"What have you done?"
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He was gone. There would be no marriage, no heir, no lady, no life of ease and comfort. She would drag herself back to the house on the linden lane, to face her family, and spend her life in repentance of her sins.
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Thanks for reading, and please review. :)
~R