His hand dug deeper into the thick flesh of the man's throat and he could feel the outline of the windpipe which with only the slightest increase of pressure would crush the life out of him. He stopped just short as Sir Malcolm's instructions had been clear, frighten the shit out of him so he'd do the job he'd been employed to do but don't kill him. Part of him enjoyed the terror and pain he was inflicting; in some sick way it cut through the numbness that still infected him – he had found little in the past few months that gave him any pleasure besides causing others pain.
Even sex was nothing more than a function to exacerbate some of the pent up pressure and frustration that built up inside him at the situation he found herself in. The previous night he'd found a whore that in some sad way reminded him of Vanessa although her delicate frame and black hair had more to do with malnutrition and hair dye than any natural causes. On getting her back to his rooms though he could hardly bear to look at her let alone allow himself to take her and had pushed her firmly but gently to her knees to pleasure him with her mouth something he could never imagine Vanessa doing and he couldn't bear to associate a woman like that with his image of her. As her lips and the warm, wet cavern of her mouth worked the length of his shaft he let his mind wander torturing himself with every sight of her he'd had since that terrible morning he'd tried to violate her. She'd been right, Sir Malcolm had insisted on his continued presence at the house and he frequently found himself in close proximity to her. Although the distain that had radiated from every cell on that dreadful morning was still at times present, she seemed to have thawed slightly towards him as the weeks had passed although her demeanour could never be called more than cool. He watched her intently noting changes in her, particularly in her clothes now being of lighter hues than previous, although he felt that they didn't always seem to sit comfortably on her shoulders.
He observed her surreptitiously trying to find any evidence of the unhappiness that Sir Malcolm had spoken about but she was a mistress of detachment and he could ascertain nothing other than a kind of contentment in the way she carried herself, particularly when her husband was around. Her husband. That term tore at the scabs that formed over the abrasions that covered his hurts and opened them not as the searing pain he still longed for but as dull ache that lingered continuously at the back of his senses. The sight of them together was intolerable and when Victor touched her he had to fight down the urge to rip his hand off. Luckily he was not of a demonstrative nature and she seemed not to encourage physical contact although the thought of them together, alone in their bedroom still haunted him. It was an image of her thrown down against white pillows her hair tousled, her lips red and curved in a smile of welcome and eyes dark with passion that brought him finally to a climax and he spent his seed with a guttural moan into the willing mouth he'd paid for.
The face in front of him was turning purple, the eyes bulging out of their sockets, feet kicking uselessly trying to gain purchase on the wall that Ethan had him suspended against. A strangled sound tore from the thug's lips and Ethan shook him harder until he could almost hear his teeth rattle.
"Find him quickly because if I have to come looking for you again I'll tear your fucking throat out with my teeth. You've got three days. Fail to come up with an address and you're a dead man." He released the man who fell to the floor gasping for breath, hatred and fear coming off him in waves. He turned his back half hoping his victim would make a miraculous recovery and attack him from the rear, giving him a reason to kick seven barrels of hell out of him and to really inflict some damage, but he lay there useless.
As he walked away out of the alley, he could hardly recognise himself. He was no better than the thugs and criminals that Sir Malcolm had him intimidate to gain the information he seemed so desperate to glean although his primary purpose was not one he shared with him. He did not care about the older man's motives and although occasionally the mindlessness violence of the acts he committed prickled at his conscious, this was infrequent though and as time went on they worried him less. They provided for him a sense of purpose of worth, financial security and an excuse to at times be within the same house if not room as her.
He knew Sir Malcolm was waiting for an update but he found his feet taking him in a different direction from the house in Grandage Place where he was expected. He knew he shouldn't go there but he could not help it and he quickened his stride trying to beat the gathering gloom of night and the down pour that threatened. He felt drawn there because there he could watch her unobserved and without her knowledge. He'd been going for weeks, ever since he'd overheard her discussing her work with Sir Malcolm. He returned night after night to the abandoned warehouses under the railway bridge that housed the poor, the sick and the desperate never entering the confines but standing in the shadows to watch her exit that place where she moved amongst the most needy, offering food and succour. It was there that he could watch her when for those moments after she emerged, she seemed as she had been before, the careful constricts that she clothed herself in when he was near stripped away. Her warmth and humanity laid bare. It was there he could truly see the woman that he loved and not the stone idol that she metamorphosed into on laying her eyes upon him.
The first fat and cold drops of rain began hammering down just as he got to the usual doorway where he secreted himself that had a full view of the doorway she used as her exit from that place of despair. He was only just in time. She stopped just under the edge of the arch removing from her pale face the cloth that she'd tied around her mouth that provided some protection from the diseases she subjected herself to. As usual his anger at Victor not taking more care of her, not stopping her in her reckless endeavours surfaced but he knew he was being unfair. What man could stand against her and her want? Not him or Sir Malcolm had manged so how the bloodless doctor, her supposed husband would manage was laughable. Even from the distance between them he could see the strain on her face, the lines of fatigue sharpening her beauty even more. He knew he only had seconds before the carriage would arrive to whisk her way home and the next time he saw her she would have donned her frozen armour.
His eyes raked over her like a starving man both relishing the closeness but despairing at the distance, aching for one touch, for just a brush of sleeve or skirt against him to allow him to feel something. But the time stretched on he realised that the carriage had not come. He could see her scanning the street looking both left and right her body tense, listening for any sign of the transport that had never let her down before. The rain was thrashing down now relentless in its down pour. He could see her weighing up her possibilities before she stepped out into the rain just as he moved almost involuntarily towards her.
It was in that second that her eyes found his and he swore he saw a flash of something he could only describe as relief in their blue depths although she made no further step towards him standing in the deluge her clothes becoming quickly plastered to her form. In less than ten steps he was in front of her and all he could think was how standing in the flood, she seemed so honest, so real like that night on the moor. Quickly and without speaking his stripped his long coat off him draping it round her offering her some protection. One hand raised to grip it closer to her at the neck and the other she slipped into his hand which somehow, although he did not remember why, he'd held out to her. The shock of her icy skin against his spurred him into conscious thought because without it he might have just stood and gazed at her.
"My rooms are close, you can dry yourself there and then I'll find you a cab to take you home."
She returned his gaze looking deep into his eyes that he thought would be almost invisible in the gloom but seemed to accept the offer with a slight nod of her head although her face remained in inscrutable.
The journey back to his rooms along the rain drenched streets took only minutes and yet he savoured every second trying desperately to engrain it into his psyche so that he could relive it in the lonely hours of the night when her image haunted him the most. He was shocked at how easily she'd accepted his help and his hand, how it appeared she'd almost know he was there and also at the change in her demeanour. It was as if the rain that beat down upon them in some way was in its deluge washing their relationship clean, renewing it returning it to some semblance of the purity he'd always sensed when they'd been together before he'd departed. He barely felt the freezing water permeating his clothes that quickly became soaked focussed as he was on the feeling of the flesh of her hand in his, warmed and protected within the grip of his fingers. The way although so small, it seemed to fill the entire space as if it belonged there and the sensations he derived from it being there, the trust she seemed to show him made his heart bleed and pain blossom through him like bullet. At last the sensation of pure and utter pain that he had so longed for and it almost overwhelmed him in its fresh sharpness like a newly wetted blade.
She dropped his hand as he got to the door unlocking it quickly and stepped aside to usher her in. He felt her hesitation as her eyes flicked through the open door to the bed that could be seen, unmade in the corner.
"Go in and get dry there's clean towels in the chest by the bed. I'll got out and find a cab and wait with it until you're ready to come down. I won't come in. I understand…."
She turned her eyes towards him and the look he saw there silenced what he was going to say, in fact in that moment he completely forgot what had been hovering on his lips only seconds before. Her eyelashes were spiky with damp framing the sapphire blue that radiated with what he could only describe as trust and a lack of concern at being back in the place where he'd so nearly ruined any hope of her ever feeling safe with him again. She walked past him hanging his coat over a chair and then moved to the chest to retrieve the towels that he thanked God were freshly laundered. She returned to him and handed him one before wrapping another around her shoulders. She moved then to the small table and sat at the chair where she proceeded to unpin her hair.
Quickly despite dripping rivulets of water all over the floor he moved to build a fire in the grate the air in the room making his wet clothes feel frozen against his skin. Deftly he got the flames burning and then stripped off his jacket, waistcoat and shirt leaving his undershirt that had missed the worst of the soaking and turned to find her shivering, her arms wrapped around her torso, her hair only half unpinned. He could see her pallor was deathly white and her lips tinged with blue the shuddering wracking her body her eyes closed.
"Vanessa, come to the fire you're gonna freeze over there darlin'." The endearment slipped from his lips without him thinking but she didn't react only shook her head the shivering increasing.
He saw her open her lips but no sound came out only the chattering of her teeth she seemed unable to move.
In desperation at her state he strode over to her not caring how she reacted he had to get her warm, get her close to the fire and if she wouldn't move he'd bloody well move her. He swept her up into his arms, her gasp audible over the clash of her teeth although she didn't have time to physically react as he immediately placed her onto the mat as near to the fire as he could. The feeling of her form against his sent another knife of blissful pain through into his soul and he could hardly bear to lift his hands off her but knew he must. As the heat swept over her she shivered even more uncontrollably. Her clothes were wet but not soaked having been shielded in part by his overcoat but her hair that had been uncovered was a sodden mass.
He moved his hands into the dark mass and began to finish unpinning the heavy curls. He felt her start at the intimacy of his touch on her hair but he brooked no decent and without thinking he shushed her quiet, pulling the pins free so the whole amount fell onto the towel that covered her shoulders but he knew it would only drip making her wetter and colder. Rapidly he moved to the back to the chest to retrieve another towel. Then kneeling behind her he began to rub her raven curls squeezing the water out of them as the heat from the fire now burning brightly and with a more intense heat, bathed them both in its blissful warmth.
He could feel her so close to him, the initial tension both from the coldness and possibly his closeness under the rhythmic rubbing of her hair seem to melt out of her form and she relaxed, the chattering of her teeth and shaking of her body ceasing as continued to dry her hair.
"Thank you Mr Chandler." They were the first words she'd spoken and they seemed to punctuate the silence in the room, her husky tones turning the atmosphere warmer just as the fire in the grate warmed the air around them.
"You're welcome, Mrs Frankenstein." And he had to swallow the bile down that rose in his craw at giving sound to that name that in the past months he'd come to despise. His hands lifted the heavy fall away from her shoulders and began to dry the underside. Her hair felt almost alive in his hands, thick, rich full of life and satin smooth. In his mind's eye he imagined what it would be like to lie curtained in its richness, her face hovering over his her eyes full of unbridled passion. To run his fingers through it in affection, to plunge his hands deep into it to grasp her head, to bring her mouth to his but he quashed the thoughts as he felt his body respond to the images in his head and the woman just inches in front of him. Pain seared through him then at her closeness but also at her continued inaccessibility.
He felt her relax further her body a hair's breadth away from his. If she'd had lent back she would have rested against his chest but she remained agonisingly close but not touching although he could feel the warmth coming off her skin. The silence again stretched out between them. He was scared that she would move or ask him to since the worst of the wetness was gone from her hair though he continued to rub it with the towel just to have an excuse to touch her.
"I'm surprised that you are allowing me to do this after…." His voice petered out to nothing as for a moment he saw the tension form in her shoulders but only for a second and then she relaxed back.
"Your presence is no threat to me Ethan. You know that of which I am capable and I know that you are aware that I meant what I said, if you touch me again without my willingness I will destroy you. You were never a fool although your actions of late have painted a different picture." Her voice was soft and her tone too and he wondered if she mocked him.
"I'm sorry Vanessa. For everything."
She laughed then quietly but it contained no humour and behind it he felt her pain thick and dark.
"I know, but what is done is done and cannot be undone by any hand."
She turned then to face him and he sunk back down on his heels so they were almost level. With the firelight behind her, her face was in shadow and he could not ascertain the subtle nuances that he knew would cross her face.
"I wonder if what happened will turn out to be a blessing or a curse, whether one day we will look back at the choices we made and understand that our hand was forced. That just maybe if we'd been brave enough and we'd know that no other could be hurt if our actions would be different to those we allow ourselves."
Her voice had shrunk to almost a whisper barely discernible over the crackle of the fire and he leant closer in. It almost felt in those moments that they were the only people left alive and he watched in wonder as her hand lifted and began to close the gap between them her fingers reaching out towards his cheek.
"Mrs. Frankenstein. Madam are you there?" The voice was rough and accompanied by a harsh banging against the door. The mood was broken and Ethan felt the beast inside of him howl in anguish at the loss of that moment, the feel of her hand against his skin stolen away.
She jumped up but left him to open the door that he flung open barely trusting himself not to attack the intruder who'd imposed his presence on his single moment of true happiness in month.
The figure before him he recognised at the servant Bennet he glared at him without thinking and saw the man step back wariness flashing in his eyes.
Vanessa stepped forward, "Bennet where were you? Mr. Chandler had to rescue me from the most terrible down pour. I've been sheltering here trying to dry off. How did you know I was here?"
"I'm sorry Madam, the axil broke on the carriage, I've come by cab to fetch you. Sir Malcolm wondered if you'd be here since it is close to your work. He also wants to see you Sir." The man turned to Ethan noting his state of undress and then slipped past to look into the room, the unmade bed, the towels on the floor by the fire, the handful of hair pins scattered on the rug and a type of understanding blossoming in his gaze as he turned back to look back at them.
"He demands that you come now, as does your husband Madam."