Remembrance

What happened next was something I don’t want to remember. The horrible, silent man who said he was my husband tossed me over his shoulder and carried me up the stairs. I couldn’t help remembering that Scarlett got carried in Rhett’s arms and he made love to her later. I was up for that. This man was a throwback to a Neanderthal but he was rather sexy. And he was my husband and he was Jamie—I think.

But he tossed me on the bed, left the room, locking the door behind him, and minutes later the gray-haired doctor appeared again and I got to see what an Edwardian gynecological exam was like. I wanted to hobnob with the king but instead I get a historic pap smear.

Let’s just say that it was done under the covers with as much politeness as such a thing can be done, with as little embarrassment as possible. I knew what the problem was. Fainting twice in one day probably meant that Lady de Grey was pregnant. Now I knew why she’d disappeared. I somehow didn’t think she and her dark, hostile husband spent lazy afternoons in bed, so if this Catherine was pregnant, it was by another man.

When the doctor, with his hands involved in the examination, gave me a startled look, I knew I was on the mark. No doubt everyone knew of Lady de Grey’s approaching divorce and here she was pregnant with another man’s child.

I’m sure I turned red with embarrassment but the doctor said nothing as he closed his bag and left the room.

My maid came to me, took off my corset (thank you, Lord), and put me in a lush dressing gown. Then she brushed my hair down my back and left me to wait, no doubt for him.

So what was I to say to a man who had just been told that his wife who hadn’t slept with him in heaven knows how long was pregnant?

By the time he came to my room I am ashamed to say that I was very nervous. I don’t like promiscuity. I always believe in one man at a time, both in my books and in my life. Maybe what happened to me in this life is what taught me that lesson.

“You have made me the laughingstock of England. Why?” he asked, his dark eyes glaring at me for a moment before he turned away to stare out the window.

I must say that he did funny little things to the inside of me. I always believe in keeping control with men. With Steven I made certain that I analyzed everything; I wanted to do what was good for me. But this man made me feel emotion. That’s the best way I can describe his effect on me: emotion. Now if I could just figure out what that emotion was, I’d feel a great deal calmer.

I swallowed. “I take it you mean all the men. I was…I was lonely. You’re always in the garden and—”

He whirled around to glare at me with his piercing eyes. “I mean there have been no men—as you know.”

It took me a moment to understand that one, and when I did understand, I could hardly believe it. There was only one way he could know that there had been no men. “You mean I’m a—” I smiled. “I’m a virgin?” At that thought I couldn’t help but laugh. A thirty-nine-year-old American woman transported back in time into the twenty-seven-year-old body of a virgin!

“This is a matter of jest to you?” he asked with anger.

“Just sort of,” I answered, then looked up at him. “If I’m a virgin, why do you want to divorce me?”

“As you well know, I am going to marry Fiona.”

How very modern, I thought, with more anger than I should have felt. Should I invite the harlot to tea?

While I was digesting this disgusting bit of news, Catherine spoke up, using what I had come to regard as my mouth. “But a divorce will make me an outcast. No man will want me if you divorce me.”

“Then you should have thought of that before you made all of England laugh at me.”

“And how did I do that?” I asked, growing more angry by the second. He had already chosen his next bride, his wife was a virgin and I was the one to be punished.

“With your lascivious letters!” was his enraged answer. “By telling the world you’d slept with every man in England from the king down. I will not be a cuckold.”

“A cuckold! Are you crazy? I didn’t sleep with any other men. You heard the doctor say I’m a virgin. You could tell everyone the letters weren’t true. Tell them you have proof that I’ve never slept with any man.?

??

His eyes seemed to grow blacker. “Tell the world that my wife is a virgin? My wife?!”

I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “You’ll divorce me, make me a pariah, set me aside, knowing I am innocent?”

The look in his eyes answered that. Yes he would.

During this exchange Catherine had been hovering around, letting me know how devastating a divorce would be to her. It would ruin her life, but it wouldn’t affect him; he had the money and the title. The unfairness of it all made me very angry. I looked up at him with a smirk. “Why haven’t you taken her…I mean, my virginity? You can’t do it so you don’t want anyone to know, is that it? Have you told your lovely Fiona you’re only half a man?”

I’d never before provoked a man to sexual rage. Were I a character in a novel by some romance authors of a decade before I would have found myself on the bed with my skirts over my head, but I’ve always fought against the device of rape in romance novels. When I turned in my second novel, my editor (not Daria) said, “I’m afraid we can’t publish this because the hero doesn’t rape the heroine, so the reader won’t believe he’s virile.” I burst into tears and said, “Then I’ll have to find another publishing house because if the hero commits rape, then he’s not a hero.” This seems logical now but back then it was revolutionary. The editor did publish it but she warned me it wouldn’t sell. It did, of course, sell very well, and that editor now edits for a porn publisher.

However, this was real and I didn’t have complete control here. I put my hand to my throat and backed away from him. There was murder in his eyes and I knew in my heart he wanted to show me he could do what he hadn’t done before.

But I saw he wasn’t going to do anything. He had too much honor to hit a woman and something was keeping him from the rape I could see that he wanted to enact. Sometimes there’s a devil in me. A little forked-tailed red-skinned devil that sits on my right shoulder and makes me do awful things. I could feel poor virginal Catherine cowering inside me, terrified of this man, and I felt all the injustice of what-men-do-to-women.