by Cerys du Lys
She can be reached on her website at www.selenakitt.com
At the Mercy of their game
Gia Vanna
Chapter One
Anna had heard thirty-three trite congratulations and at least fifteen sympathetic platitudes in the hour she had been at Lady Frances’s salon - she was counting. And not a single one of them had yet been uttered with any genuine feeling.
Her mother was the worst.
“That dear boy will be such a prospect for Anna,” Horatia Rossington said, her thin puckered face pinching around her words. She nodded her head, and the other women copied her, bobbing their heads in time like a circle of birds. They could not hide their ghoulish curiosity as they stared at Anna. Such a happy occasion - Anna’s forthcoming wedding! And oh, what delicious tragedy behind it! The year of mourning was almost over and Anna thought her mother was almost sorry to leave it behind. She’d been able to milk so much gossip and sympathy from the accident; it had given her a focus. Now, the focus would be back on Anna and this wedding.
Anna knew she would never be able to forget Lucy. Her best friend and cousin - still the loss burned her. A year was not long enough to get used to life without her one confidante.
Around her, the women bobbed and murmured. Lady Frances held her salons monthly and an invitation was highly prized. Anna should have been giggling and simpering with the other wide-eyed girls and their mothers and sisters and aunts. But this feminine cage was of no interest to Anna. Once, yes, she would have loved this; the tiny frail tea-cups, the delicate cakes, the swathes of satin and lace and printed calico. The elaborate hairstyles, the gossip and the judging. The pale, tasteful colors and the tinkling laughter.
But she would have found the pleasure through sharing the experience with Lucy. Since Lucy’s untimely accident, all colors had faded to gray. Food had turned to dust. And life had become one long November day - even now, in early summer.
Anna sat bolt-upright, and let her eyes go blurry so she could not see their hungry expressions. She knew what her mother meant by “prospect” - she was implying that Anna had been lucky to win the affection of Stapleton Jones. It wasn’t like there were many other suitors around, pleading for her hand in marriage. Only Stapleton, with his slack wet lips and his pale blue eyes, had been persistent.
He’d been persistent even while he had been betrothed to Lucy. Anna’s stomach twisted. No, forget it. It was all too complicated. And Lucy was gone. The conversation around her faded out again. Gone gone gone. Echoes, words, sensations...
“Anna!” Her own name was being called, and it sounded like a knife.
Her mother was leaning over, and patting her hand. Horatia’s skin was dry and papery. Anna returned to her senses slowly, and felt her face flush as she realized she must have been ignoring her mother for some time.
“She’s having one of her attacks again,” Horatia said, her voice far louder than it should have been.
Lady Frances murmured something appropriately sympathetic. Someone else - Anna did know her, but all the names were mush in her head - asked if she ought to have smelling salts.
“No, no,” Horatia said, waving the suggestion away. “She always was a rather sensitive soul. I caught her reading novels once. I would rather not encourage her attacks, for who would want a wilting wife? Alas poor Stapleton.” As if the marriage would be a test for Stapleton; some kind of charity he was bestowing upon Anna by marrying her.
Anna clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms. The voices around her were fading out again, and her vision seemed to narrow, darkening at the edges as a roaring grew in her head. Her mother was wrong! These attacks, as she referred to them, were relatively new. She had never suffered anything of the sort until the tragic accident which had stolen away Lucy. And at first they had been accepted as part of her grief - but since mourning was officially over, and the engagement to Stapleton announced, the attacks had resumed and with much greater power.
Her heart hammered. As the voices melted away into a deep roar, she began to feel a sense of impending doom. She knew what was going to happen and she tried to fight it but there was a frightening feeling of inevitability about it - she knew she would struggle to breathe, and her heart would expand, and her chest would tighten, and one day these attacks would surely kill her.
If they did kill her, at least she would be with Lucy. She pictured her best friend’s face but she could no longer see her clearly. She fought down the panic; I’m losing her memory, her face, she wanted to wail. Lucy!
Anna tried to regulate her breathing, half-listening through the fog around her as Horatia and Lady Frances fussed and fretted with sneering concern. I have to get control.
Lucy’s face was still before her, now so unclear and blurry, the worms in her empty eye sockets, the dirt clogging her once-fair skin, the bones of her skull showing through, ripping through, tearing through -
“No!” Anna cried, leaping to her feet. The walls were moving, and the air was thicker than treacle. “I must have air - forgive me -”
“Anna!” Horatia remained seated, and the tone in her voice showed that she fully expected Anna to obey. After all, she usually did. Horatia had ruled her daughter with a rod of iron. Sometimes, literally. And her dutiful daughter always obeyed.
Not today. If I do not get out of this room I shall surely die, Anna thought desperately. She pushed past the fleshy, red-faced Lady Frances who had come to her side, offering a steadying arm. She felt the older woman stumble back but she could not stop to apologize; she had to get out.
“Anna!” Her mother’s voice was distant and did not drag her back. Not this time. Since the accident, Anna’s view of her mother, her father, and her place in the world was utterly changed. Ties were finally severed that ought to have been broken long ago, and she was unravelling. Had circumstances been different, she would have welcomed the freedom of it, but with her best friend dead and this new, unwanted, second-hand fiancé looming in her future - she felt she had no anchors at all.
Anna hurtled down the wide stairs, her thin satin pumps light on the thick carpet that ran down the center of the stairs. Lady Frances was a wealthy woman and liked to show it. The servants in their neat matching uniforms, all black cotton and starched white caps, turned to the walls as she went past, in just the way that Lady Frances commanded them. The different social classes were invisible to one another in this kind of home.
Her light fur-trimmed wrap and lace-edged hat were in another room somewhere, taken off by the butler when she had first arrived. All she had were her gloves, clasped in her hands, but she didn’t hesitate. She had to get air, and never mind her wrap and hat. The startled doorman leapt to the brass handles and had only got one half of the black double doors open before she had pressed through, and ran down the stone steps into the wide, tree-lined boulevard of the most select area of London.
Air, air, air. She looked up and down the road but her eyes were blurry and she ran across anyway, not caring that she could not see clearly. She went for an iron gate in the railings and made her way into the neat parkland that faced Lady Frances’s town house. She could see a bench by a tree, and focused on it. If I can just get there, I shall be safe, she told herself, aware of the illogicality. She needed a target, that was all. Somewhere to get to that wasn’t Lady Frances’ salon.
She sank onto the bench and dropped her head into her hands, and concentrated on her breathing. She felt immediately better for being out of the cloying room of women and their ceaseless, senseless, meaningless chatter.
Oh, Lucy. We didn’t chatter like that! Or when we did, it didn’t matter. Oh Lucy, I miss you still.
Then she felt a stab of guilt. She could not mourn forever. Now she was to be moving on, and looking forward to her wedding. Her bright new future. That should have been Lucy’s future.
She shuddered.
Think not on it, she instructed herself, and straightened up, so that she could breathe more easily. The panic was receding
. Her mother was not making things easy for her. Anna sighed, and looked about, expecting to see the bent and creeping figure of Horatia emerging from Lady Frances’s house.
Nothing. Oh, this was to be a test, or some kind of punishment, Anna realized. She was to return to the salon and beg everyone’s forgiveness for her unseemly behavior.
A month ago, she would have done so. Now, with her life turned upside down and her one confidante gone, there seemed so little need to conform to society’s mores any longer. Being a good and dutiful daughter had not made Lucy live, had it? It had not brought Anna a fiancé of her own choosing. So why ought she to follow those codes laid down to her? It seemed to make no difference to a vengeful God who would take whomsoever He chose, regardless of how one lived one’s life.
A fierce feeling of anger and spite rose up in Anna and she lurched to her feet. She felt naked without her wrap and her hat, but she decided she would not - could not! - return to that house. Instead, as she could not rail against God, she decided to spite her mother instead, and she turned away from the house and began to walk briskly through the park.
She was feeling much better. Perhaps it was the simple act of walking, and being away from the stultifying salon. She lifted her head and stretched out her legs rather more sharply than a well-bred woman ought to walk, and felt the layers of her grief begin to peel back to reveal her old self once more.
And with that came the realization as sudden and startling as a thunderclap - she was walking alone in London.
Her legs were moving forward now as if unconnected to her brain. So much had happened that she did not care. Alone in London! She would have laughed if she thought she could ever laugh again. She had never, ever, in her whole life of twenty short years, been alone in the streets of the great capital.
And so, because some devil was possessing her, she walked on, hatless and free, following a wide pleasant road towards a busier intersection. Here, she had to watch out for carriages and coaches. There was more noise, and bustle, and a general drive of crowds intent on getting from place to place. Horses clattered past, and drays, and carts, and hordes of boys, and dogs too. She stopped, and stared around, and the fact that she was motionless seemed to draw more attention to her than the shocking fact that she was wearing no hat, and had no chaperone.
So to avoid the stares, she moved on, stepping quickly, drawn along with the flow to narrower streets where the houses were becoming shops and hawkers cried their wares, and small children reached out their skinny, scabby arms to her, and with a jolt she realized she was the very finest dressed person on the street.
Even without her hat.
Anna faltered again, and came to a stop by a corner, where she tried to press against the wall, seeking some shelter from the prying eyes all around her. She was lost. She looked back up the way she had come, and saw numerous side streets. Which one had she taken to end up here? There had been a barrow of vegetables by it. But now she saw three barrows, and all looked alike.
The panic was returning, but it was different. Her fingers tingled and her skin was tight, and sweat prickled under her arms, but she did not feel in fear of passing out or dying. She was simply afraid.
I have no money but perhaps I can ask a street child for directions home, and promise to pay them if they accompany me, she thought, and looked around. Her eye fell on a ragged child but as soon as they turned their ancient face to hers, she knew that the cynicism of that young life would demand payment upfront.
Well then, she told herself, I shall walk on, and come to a respectable area, and ask the first fine man or woman that I see, and they shall be sure to help me. I have walked here and I can walk out, too, just as easily.
She turned back in the direction she had come from, and searched for any familiar junction or turning. With a leap of joy she spotted a red door that she had remarked upon when she had first passed it, and knew she was going in the right direction. With renewed vigor, she strode on.
But at the end of the street she was once more dismayed and she paused to gather herself.
“Good day, miss. May I be of assistance?”
She turned and flushed at the impropriety of being spoken to by a stranger. He was a tall man, thick set, with a wide neck and dark eyes. He had a shading of growth on his chin, but no beard, and his eyes were fixed with a deep intensity on hers. He was dressed as a gentleman, in a frock coat and top hat, and that gave her hope.
“Good day, sir. Forgive me…” She heard the stutter in her voice and she looked down, settling her eyes on the tips of his black leather boots. “I am afraid I am somewhat lost. I seek Grove Street.”
He didn’t reply at first, and she had to raise her head to see why he was silent. His bristling black eyebrows sloped up and he smiled slightly, which made her shiver.
“Grove Street indeed?” he said quietly, and moved in closer to her. As she edged back, he put out a white-gloved hand and rested it on her forearm, closing his fingers with firm menace. “Steady, miss. Stay by me. Who knows what ruffians are abroad in these streets?”
Her immediate and uncharitable thought was that in spite of his fine jacket and well-whitened linen, he seemed a ruffian - but she was being low, she chided herself. He was merely concerned for her. “Thank you,” she managed to say with politeness. “Yes, Grove Street. The house of Lady Frances. Might you escort me there? You should be… rewarded.”
His face darkened and she realized she had insulted his honor by suggesting he would act out of mercenary impulses, and she flushed and tried to make her words less damaging. “I mean, sir, if it were to take you out of your way, that we should see to it that you were recompensed for any trouble…”
“Of course. I understand you perfectly. Allow me to introduce myself; I am Hugh Craythorne. Now, if you would take my arm, I shall bring you to safety.”
He spoke so confidently and fluidly that she had wrapped her arm about his and fallen into step with him before she had a chance to think. He made statements that were wired right to her brain, and her body obeyed. It was comforting. It was a relief to let someone else take over, and she had to trust a man so finely dressed.
“I came from the other direction, I think, sir,” she said, her voice trembling with her daring as they walked briskly along the busy street. She drew far fewer stares now she was safely in the company of a man once more.
“Yes, of course. I think you must have wandered a great deal. I think it best to take you a direct route back, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes!” Anna felt rather stupid.
“You have not told me your name.”
She felt doubly silly. “Oh, forgive me, sir. Anna Rossington.”
“Rossington? Jasper Rossington?”
“My father, sir.”
“Is he, indeed.” Hugh Craythorne increased his pace, and seemed to be looking around him. His grip was firm on her arm, and Anna’s panic began to return - they were not in the right area, she was sure of it. In fact, as they rounded a corner, she was faced with a most unfamiliar scene, and she tried to stop, but Hugh Craythorne was dragging her on with grim determination.
They were approaching a jumble of warehouses and tall buildings, and all around them, stevedores and hawkers and workers and rough men and gangs of children swarmed like flies crawling in filth. She could see the tall masts of ships in the distance, and closer to, there were barges and cutties being loaded and unloaded. Coils of rope snared her feet, and the shouts and cries echoed in her mind.
“Sir, sir, we must stop!” she called, but she knew, already, she was undone. This man had no intention of taking her back to Lady Frances and her mother.
This man was altogether another sort of man.
She pulled back desperately and began to shout louder: “Stop! I beg of you! Will someone-”
He spun her around, so that he could pull her to her chest, and clamped his hand over her mouth, his other arm holding her body tight to his. Sensations overwhelmed her - she had never been agains
t a man like this! And though heads turned their way, and people openly stared, no one stepped up to help her. Instead, to her horror, as she was propelled forwards to a nondescript tall red-bricked warehouse, the watching men clapped their hands and hooted and made derisory comments.
She barely understood the words but she fully understood their meaning. She tried to bite his hand but got only a slight mouthful of glove. His scent was spicy and musky, and his muscles were like iron. He half-lifted her so that her scuffed satin pumps just brushed the ground and then he kicked out, his thigh lifting up alongside her, to batter open the wooden door of the warehouse, and she was flung forward into the gloom. She scrabbled frantically on her knees in dust and filth. The door was pulled closed quickly behind her, and she heard Hugh Craythorne laugh.
Not this, not like this, not me, oh Lord - she froze for a moment, crouched down, but as her vision adjusted to the darkness, she was aware of a circle of men around her, advancing. She could not think whether she ought to rise to her feet or protect herself and curl into a ball. So she did neither, and stayed as she was, on all fours, looking around, searching each face for a glimmer of human feeling.
There were half a dozen men, and Hugh. In contrast to his fine jacket and polished boots, the men were in shirt sleeves rolled to their elbows, their thick arms covered in dark markings and scars. They wore rough brown trousers held up by wide leather belts, and their hair was lank and their faces unshaved.
And they were all, to a man, staring at her with an unnatural hunger.
Chapter Two
Anna squeezed her eyes shut, praying it might all be a dream, though she knew it was not. Had it been one man alone, she vowed she would fight him, but against such a crowd, she knew she ran the risk of being beaten to death if she tried to resist. All I need do is survive, she told herself, and refused to let herself think about what kind of future she would have once her only worth as a woman - her virginity - had been taken. No, let me simply endure this, and afterwards I can face those terrible decisions. Just survive, just survive.