Quickly I shoved my underthings into a drawer, then climbed into bed, pulling the satin sheets up to my chin.
“You may come in.”
He had undressed and was wearing only his long-tailed shirt. It was a shock. I don’t know what I expected, but not the exposure of hairy, slightly bowed, muscular legs.
I would have liked another glass of champagne, anything, suddenly, to forestall the inevitable, but I said nothing.
My lips quivered in a smile.
He came up to the bed, leaned over, and turned the lamp on. “Aren’t you going to let me look at you?” he asked.
“I didn’t think ...”
“But you are my wife now, darling.’’ There was something hard beneath those affectionate words, the smile he gave me.
“As you wish, Roger.’’
I pushed the sheet down a few inches. He grasped it from my hands and tore it away.
“That’s better.-’’ His eyes went over me greedily. “Just as I imagined. One can’t always tell, you know. Lovely, lovely!’’
He leaned over and lifting my breasts from their gauzy cocoon, bent his head and kissed each in turn, fondling and kneading, taking a nipple between his sharp teeth. When I gasped, he laughed, a chortle that held no humor in it.
“You excite me,” he said. “Why don’t you remove the gown?’’
I couldn’t. My arms remained frozen by my side. He lifted the skirt, then wrapping it about his wrist, yanked it from my body.
“Roger!’’
He threw himself upon me, nudging my legs apart, and entered me with brutal force. I recoiled with the pain, but he held me while he began to move and to heave, panting like an animal. Gross, obscene! I felt as though I had been invaded by a red-hot pitchfork, and I turned my head away to hide my contorted face. But he did not seem to notice. Digging his chin into my shoulder, he went on, working in a fury, his assault growing more savage, until suddenly his body convulsed with a series of twitchings as he cried out in release.
He said nothing, did not kiss or caress me, hardly acknowledged my presence. Reaching over, he raised himself and turned off the lamp. Then, moving to the adjacent pillow, he fell asleep almost immediately.
After a while I got up and went to the washbasin, where I scrubbed my thighs. I found another gown, one of plain lawn, and put it on. Then I sat down in a chair near the window.
My mother had warned me that the first night might not be pleasant, but then she had said, “It will get better as time goes on if you have a thoughtful husband who loves you, as I am sure Roger does.”
Perhaps Mama had garnished the truth, coated it with sugar, or perhaps Roger, overeager, had simply lost his head. To be fair I ought to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was hard, but I would try.
I went back to bed, easing myself in beside Roger, who was snoring faintly now, his head thrown back. He looked so guileless in sleep. How could he have acted so brutishly? Perhaps any man would be that way with a new bride, even Page.
I fell asleep as the clock in the sitting room was striking the hour in mocking, musical tones. How long I slept I did not know, but it was still dark when I heard a match strike and saw Roger, completely naked now, turn up the bedside lamp.
“Awake?” He pressed the palm of his hand down on my belly, moving it up to my breasts.
“Roger . . . ,” I whispered. I couldn’t, not again, not this soon. I still ached where he had forced me.
“You needn't be afraid,” he said. “I’m not going to touch you there. There are other ways. More pleasurable.”
“Roger, couldn’t we . . . wait?”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t see why. This is our wedding night, isn’t it? If you are going to learn my habits, you might as well do so in the beginning.”
I didn’t know why I had to learn—learn what?—at this time of night.
He said, “Get up.”
I obeyed, standing in my bare feet, poised, waiting for him to rip the gown from me. But he did not touch me. Instead he sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Kneel, Sabrina.”
I stared at him. “Go on, kneel down in front of me. Go on!”
I did as he asked.
“Now,” he said, as if instructing a child, “do you see this?” He indicated the monstrous thing that had entered me so painfully hours earlier, now limp, like a wrinkled eel.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“You are going to make it grow. I want you to pet it. Go on, go on, it won’t hurt you.” And when I did not move, he grasped my hand and placed it over his organ. It was worse than the incident in the carriage, for now I felt the naked, repellent skin and his eyes on me, staring with avid interest.
He began to move my hand slowly back and forth. I turned my face away, but he brought it back, grasping my chin in firm hands. “Watch!” he ordered. “Watch.”
Slowly it grew, thickening, stretching in length, the head enpurpled, distended and damp with lust.
“Bend down and open your mouth, Sabrina,” he whispered hoarsely.
“I—I don’t know what you want.”
“You’ll see.” He pushed my head down and forced his pulsating member into my mouth. His body arched as he forced it deeper.
Shocked, sickened, I endured this horrendous situation for a few moments. It wasn’t the act so much as the humiliation: made to kneel before this beast who bade me to his will as if I were a scullery maid or a whore paid to pleasure him.
I broke away, surprised by my own strength when I tore his restraining hand from my arm.
“No,” I said. “No! I won’t submit to this—this obscenity.”
“You won’t?” He jerked me forward, leaning down so that his face was close to mine. “You needn’t go on with that pose, Sabrina. So pure and modest! You’re not fooling me. Your grandmother was a whore.”
I shrank back from his sneer. “It’s a lie!”
“It’s no lie. It’s common gossip in Richmond.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“It doesn’t matter whether you do or not. You’re my wife, Sabrina. Damn you!” He reached out, forcing me down between his legs, twisting my arm until I opened my mouth again.
His lewd movements and feral grunts lasted only a few seconds before he climaxed, but to me it was a century of nausea-filled loathing.
Afterward he lay back, closing his eyes, a satisfied smile on his face.
I wanted to kill him. I came closer to murder in that moment than I could ever have imagined. I didn’t weep. God knows I had plenty to weep about: the man who had been kind and courteous turned into a hideous brute. But I did not shed a single tear. I couldn’t. Something had hardened in me, had become cold as rigid steel.
I said, “If you do that again, I shall tell everyone, father, mother, relatives, friends. I shall have no shame—none whatsoever. I will scream, make a scene, but I will never submit to that kind of carnal behavior again.”
He sat up, his lips curling in disdain. “I daresay your grandmother—’ ’
“Be quiet! I don’t want you repeating that foul lie either, do you hear?”
“I might have known,” he said in disgust. “You might look like a luscious piece, but you’re nothing more than a frigid tease. Frigid!”
He spent the rest of the night on the sofa in the sitting room, while I lay sleepless in the testered bed, tearless, waiting for the dawn.
Chapter 28
My first impulse was to leave Paris and return to San Francisco with Mama and Papa. But even as I thought of it, I knew I couldn’t. No matter what I had told Roger, it would be awkward if not mortifying to reveal what had been done to me. How could I find the words to describe it? Even if I could force myself to tell them, Mama and Papa might not believe me. Roger was such a gentleman. They, Papa especially, would think I had left my husband because of a silly quarrel, their spoiled little darling running to the sheltering arms of doting parents. And my mother— how could I ever feel comfortable with her again?
> I couldn’t go home. Somehow I must come to an understanding with Roger. I was willing to be his wife in the normal way (though God knows I shuddered at the thought of his simply touching me), but would not submit to his perverted lust.
It wasn’t all that easy to discuss the matter. Seated on dainty boudoir chairs in the sitting room over a breakfast of croissants and coffee the next morning, Roger, correct in a long-waisted coat, dark silk tie, and pearl stickpin, seemed, as always, the refined, caring, civil young man I had known as a suitor.
“What would you like to do today, my dear?” he asked, stirring a lump of sugar in his coffee. “The Louvre, perhaps?”
“Roger, I would—”
“Or Notre Dame—well worth our time. I am at your disposal, darling, whatever you choose.”
“About last night ...”
“Our dinner was excellent. We can be back in time to dine here again, if you wish. You were saying . . . ?”
He was pretending nothing had happened, and for a moment or two I wondered if it really had.
“Roger—last night ...”
“Yes, my dear? Go on.”
But I had lost my nerve.
That night I again undressed and got into bed ahead of Roger, lying in the soft glow of lamplight, rigid with apprehension. But Roger seemed without desire, conducting himself as though we had been married for years. Kissing me on the forehead, he doused the lamp and got into bed.
“Good night, my dear,” he said and, turning on his side, was soon asleep.
He made no move to claim me as his wife during the days that followed, and I began to breathe a sigh of relief. Eventually it would come—our union as man and wife—but perhaps on reflection Roger had thought to give me a breathing space. Or perhaps his restraint was a form of apology.
One bright morning he suggested I do some shopping. “You haven’t bought any clothes,” he said. “A must in Paris. I have an account at Worth’s. Why don’t you order several gowns?”
“Thank you, Roger. Perhaps I will.”
“I won’t accompany you, Sabrina. I’ll take a stroll along the river, maybe visit Montmartre, if you don’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
“Don’t hurry back on my account.”
At Worth’s they were most apologetic. “Without an appointment, Madame . . . je la regrette beaucoup. Peut-être à demain? Tomorrow, at four o’clock.”
I took the cab back to the hotel, thinking to catch Roger before he went out.
I had my key in the lock when from the other side I heard a woman’s laugh. Then her voice, “Ah, Monsieur, prière— please . . . ,” the kind of breathless plea that means, “Ahhhh, yes, yes!”
Quietly I turned the key and opened the door.
Sure of my absence, Roger had not shut the bedroom door. He was fondling the woman’s large, overripe breasts, the brown nipples distended with teasing. I could not see her face, only those breasts, the heaving stomach, the twitching legs. I stepped aside, my heart beating violently.
Hotel maid? Whore? But what did it matter. I did not know what to do. Announce my presence? Leave? Pretend I hadn’t seen anything?
Oh, God, what a beast! What a mess!
She was laughing uproariously now, a laugh suddenly cut off. I heard the rustle of bedclothes, then silence.
I peeked around the edge of the wall. She was on top of him, her lank-haired head between his legs as he lay crosswise on the bed. His organ was wedged into her wide mouth.
I fled, slamming the door behind me.
Head held high I sailed through the lobby, impervious to the greetings of a fat matron from New Jersey whom we had met at dinner the previous evening. Out I went into the street, turning left at random, wanting only to get as far away as I could.
If he had to have a whore, why bring her to the hotel, why the bridal bed? Another humiliation, another taunt, another insult to my sense of decency.
I walked on past a bistro, past a baker’s shop, a confectioner’s where spun-sugar fancies beyond the plate-glass window seemed to mock me as I passed. Turning a corner I entered a narrow, tenement-lined street, following an old man who hobbled along, a string bag in one hand, his cane in the other. Overhead a window opened. A woman in a black shawl leaning over the sill and called, “Henri! François!” to a pair of small, towheaded children playing with stones on the cobbled street. I wondered what went on behind her front door, behind those gray brick walls. Was she a happy wife? Did she submit? Did she have a sampler worked with the words DUTY and OBEY hanging on her kitchen wall?
“Do you promise to cherish in sickness and in health. . . ?” the vicar at St. Giles had asked.
Why had I ever married? Because Mother hadn’t wanted me to be a spinster? Because all my school friends had husbands? Our headmistress had once said, “A woman’s fulfillment is to be both wife and mother.’’
Then I must be unnatural, unsuited for marriage, a female that defied the order of the universe.
I came to another corner where tables and chairs had been set out in front of a small café. I chose a seat near a ledge of potted geraniums. When the waiter appeared I ordered coffee. A man in a beret, sitting at one of the other tables, leered at me. I flushed, ignoring him, casting my eyes down, suddenly hating him with a fierceness that shook me. I hated him, hated all men. Page too. Why, I thought, had he waited all this time to write that letter? Why hadn’t he done so a week, a month, even a year after our quarrel? His behavior at Invernean had been inexcusable. He was older; he should have known better. Men were such selfish creatures. Blast the lot of them!
As I drank my coffee, the tumult within me slowly died. But it left a residue, a tough core of resolve. No shyness, no modest, finicky scruple would prevent me from speaking plainly to Roger again.
When I got back to the hotel, Roger was waiting for me. He must have known that I had inadvertently come upon him and his doxie—that slamming door had rattled the windows to the end of the corridor—and yet his face was as bland as a parson’s.
His mild countenance threatened to plunge me into rage again. How dare he? How dare he have the gall to meet my eyes with his own reflecting innocence.
“Good afternoon, Roger,” I said in a voice that held only a slight tremor.
“Good afternoon, Sabrina. How did it go at Worth’s?”
“They were fully engaged for the day, but promised to take me tomorrow at four.”
“What a pity! Won’t you sit down?”
“I prefer standing.”
He shrugged. Reaching for the whiskey decanter, he poured himself a glass. I watched, fists clenched at my sides, fighting for control.
“Where did you go, then?” he asked.
“You know very well I came back here, Roger. Although I wish I hadn’t. It would have spared me the sight of you sporting with that lolly on our marriage bed.”
“That is unfortunate.” He gave me a scathing look. “But a man has appetites that are past a woman’s understanding.”
“A decent woman’s, you mean.”
“If you had performed your duty, my dear, that incident would never have occurred.”
“Duty! That obscene . . . !” I took a deep breath before I went on. “I don’t wish to hear the word duty again.”
He surveyed me, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “I must say I never counted on your having such a willful temperament.”
“My ‘temperament’ has nothing to do with it. I think we had better come to an understanding. I will not leave you—”
“Leave me!” he interrupted, shocked. “I have not given you any reason to.”
“I daresay under the eyes of the law you have not. Jurisprudence is explicit about a wife who deserts her husband even for adultery. I repeat, I shall not leave you. But we will be husband and wife in name only.”
“Impossible. I want a son, an heir.”
“That is your misfortune.”
He rose out of the chair and, before I could evade his grasp, took h
old of my arm, twisting it roughly.
“You listen to me, Sabrina.” His lips were drawn back in an ugly grimace. “You are not dictating to me! No woman is. You will bear my son, do you hear?”
I tried hard not to flinch, to meet his angry eyes without a flicker of fear, though loathing knotted my stomach.
“Very well,” he said, releasing me. “Now that you understand, I will dictate the terms. I shan’t come to your bed more than once a week until you conceive. If the child is male, then I won’t trouble you again with my attentions. I’m not the monster you think,” he went on after a slight pause. “I will give you a generous allowance, carte blanche at the dressmaker’s. I want you to clothe yourself in a manner suitable to my station. To the world we shall appear as a happy couple.”
“Happy,” I echoed bitterly.
He went to the table where the whiskey decanter stood and poured himself another glass. “Care for a drink?”
“Thank you, no.” I watched as he sipped at his whiskey. “Why did you marry me, Roger?”
“Because you are beautiful. Because you have enough aristocratic blood in your veins to suit my requirements. Does that answer your question?”
Three days later, we sailed for America. Outwardly Roger’s behavior seemed proper. But I saw him—perhaps because I was watching—eye a pair of ripe-breasted slatterns on the third-class deck. One night he did not return to our cabin until dawn. He could have been gambling, but I knew that the group of men with whom he played each evening in the salon never continued their game past midnight. So Roger had not been at cards but in some woman’s bed.
Meanwhile, I made another discovery, one that shocked me, though by now I should have been beyond shock.
Roger was considered skilled at monte and faro, winning consistently at both. Why he did became clear one morning as I was brushing his frock coat preparatory to hanging it in our minuscule wardrobe and noticed a pocket inside his sleeve just under the cuff. It was a small seamed inset large enough to hide a playing card, which could be introduced unobtrusively by a practiced sleight-of-hand.
I remember staring at the gray serge sleeve and feeling once more that I was the butt of some terrible hoax. Roger had lied to me about that London club affair, lied as convincingly as he had about his love and respect for me. I almost wished his fellow players would catch him at cheating, though I knew the ensuing scandal would be most unpleasant.
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