The Edge

After dinner, I was seated at the piano and Lord Robert was playing a game of chess with Stephen. Michael was sat apart from us, pretending to be reading but I studied him over the top of the instrument and he didn't turn a page for a full hour. After this time he seemed to make a decision, looking up from his book and catching my gaze as he did so. He got up and walked casually over to the piano. Leaning down, in pretence of seeing what music I was playing, he murmured to me that he wished to speak with me before the night was out. Would I permit him to speak privately with me in our bedroom? I had been given ample time to consider how I would respond to this during the evening and I whispered back that I would gladly speak with him but not in my room. If he wished to meet that evening, I would receive him in the craft room. He nodded, not looking best pleased, but he agreed to this. He then went over to the other men and suggested a game of cards. Lord Robert had just won his second game against Mr Bruce and so the change of diversion was welcomed.

At last, I decided to retire for the night. I had been invited with great courtesy by my husband to join them in a game of cards but had preferred to continue playing.

All my life I have had the happy talent of being able to memorise a piece of music or prose within a few hearings of it. This means that I need little prompting from musical scores and so my mind can wander as I play. I don't look idle and yet my thoughts can take me as far as I wish them to. That evening I had chosen to play favourite pieces of mine, the beautiful melodies of Mozart, and I continued with these as the card players got in to their game. As the men concentrated on their cards, I switched to Chopin, it seemed to fit my mood better. It allowed my mind to follow the twists of the music and relax. I wanted nothing more than to be calm when I spoke with Michael.

I gazed over the top of the piano and stared out into the dark of the night through the windows. I allowed myself to fantasise about Stephen being my husband and Michael the visitor. I thought of Michael and me, our courtship and our wedding, our honeymoon in France. It had all happened so quickly.

We had met at a ball given by some well connected mutual friends in Kent. I remembered preparing for the event with care, being given leave to buy a new dress for the occasion. I had chosen a dress with a skirt of pure white, the bodice of duck egg blue. I had worn white flowers in my hair, my dress was simple and my stepmother had insisted that I wore my hair in a flowing Grecian style which exposed my neck and made me look very young and fresh.

At the ball, I had been approached early by Michael Llewellyn, who was introduced to me as a friend of one of my brothers. I had found him kind and interesting, with good manners and a gentlemanly way. He had called on me at home within the week and we met at a few dinner parties over the next month. My parents and their friends seemed set on pushing us together. I found him to be handsome, kind and intelligent. He proposed to me in the garden of a friends London home, during a house party. I had said yes straight away. I knew nothing of love but what I had read in books and I knew nothing of men but what I had been told at school and by the other girls there. My stepmother had encouraged me, my father had approved of the marriage and I wanted so much to get away from a house where I had little value and no true friend.

Our wedding had been small, we had honeymooned in Paris then returned to his family home in Wales. Once there we had spent little time together, falling quickly into a routine of only seeing each other from dinner time onwards. Our son had been quickly conceived and while I had great affection for Michael, James was the first person I had ever truly loved. I had nothing to ask for, compared with many wives, I knew that. I was comfortably situated. But I had not been happy until Stephen Bruce had come to the house. Now I had to make some sort of choice concerning how my marriage was to carry on.

I finished the piece I was playing then excused myself. I shook hands goodnight with the men and went upstairs to the craft room. I stared up at the portrait of Elizabeth and Richard. The woman who had built the doll's house and lived, a captive, in this house, was captivating me. I felt an empathy with her, a fellowship. I wanted to have some of her strength and wished anew that we could have known each other in same way.

Michael's heavy tread sounded on the stairs. He was in the doorway in moments, watching me. He commented quietly that I should ask to have the stair carpet tacked down, it was coming loose in places. He looked up at the portrait. His father had told him of it at dinner so it was not a shock to him to see it. However he turned away from it quickly and did not seem especially interested in it.

He began bluntly, asking me point blank if he could move back into our bed chamber and if we could reclaim our relationship. He needed me. H e felt that the rift between us would only widen if we stayed sleeping apart. He also felt embarrassed that his wife forsook him. I felt that while his first objection was a true one, the second was the one he cared more about. For a man who dressed with care, even in a remote area, and to whom appearance was of great value, being shunned by me would rankle.

I calmly stated that I would welcome him back into our bedchamber if that was what he wished. I forgave his behaviour and understood his objection. He looked relieved. He bowed and said that he was going to have a nightcap with the other men and would be up to bed shortly. I bent my head and he left, leaving me feeling rather empty. I was delighted that there had been no row, that we had both been calm and felt that he had rather expected there to be one. I was worried though. He might well be in my bed but I had no wish for him to reclaim me as his wife.

I went to my own room. I undressed and prepared for bed. I got under the covers, I tried to settle but could not. I opened a book and endeavoured to read but the words on the page eluded me. I put it away and lay back, listening to the wind. When I heard the men come upstairs, I turned quickly on my side, having decided that evasion was the quickest way tonight, and feigned sleep.

The door opened. I heard Michael come in, step around the bed and go into his dressing room. My heart began to beat faster. I lay still, trying to regulate my breathing so it would sound as though I were slumbering. Michael re-entered the room. I heard him quietly dowse the lamps, get in to bed beside, felt the sheets tug and the slide and swish of the covers. Then his hand on my hip. I lay still, my heavy breathing quickening a little but I fought to keep it even. His hand rubbed my hip then went on, up my body to my shoulder. He squeezed me. I twisted a little and feigned a sigh in my sleep then the hand tried to pull me over, onto my back. I resisted it. That was my mistake.

He knew instantly that I was awake and pretending to be asleep. He spun me onto my back so fast that my eyes opened in shock. I saw again his face contort with anger and hurt.

“What are you doing? Playing pretend with me, your husband? Do you think I am so repulsive that you would lie to me rather than bare my company? Well?” His voice was harsh and I detected the undercurrent of genuine upset. I hurried to placate him. I told him I was nervous, that I worried I would not please him, that I had been tired but had not wanted to refuse him out right. He looked incredulous and disbelieving. I kept on, saying that I was still sore from my illness and that I wished only to be a good wife to him but that I could not bare to disappoint him. I even, God help me, stroked his cheek and told him how handsome he was. His vanity mollified, he seemed to relent a little. He relaxed his grip.

He took me in his arms and I could do nothing to prevent it. I allowed him fondle my breasts through my night gown. He tried to raise my gown then but I insisted that I could do nothing that night. He sighed and pushed his member into my hand and forced me to perform an act with my hands. Satisfied somewhat by this, he turned away from me and went to sleep. I lay beside him, feeling my own sleep was far away. How long could I keep pushing him away? Not long. Soon he would claim his rights and I could not deny him.

Sleep only came after several hours of listening to Michael snore. When he got up I was at last in exhausted slumber but I awoke again when he closed the bedroom door. I couldn't bare to stay in our bed once he had left it. I rose and called for hot water, a bath. I scrubbed myself clean, I put on a gown of cream coloured cloth, its purity made me feel better. I forced myself to take breakfast, to organise the weeks menus with Mrs Levin and speak to the gardeners about wood and coal for the winter's fires. I then wrote several orders to shops in London. The first was to my dress maker, ordering a new gown, to be cut simply but in the deepest red. The second was to a stationers for new brushes and papers. The third was to a perfumers, asking for him to send me a bottle of Rose fragrance, one that he personally recommended. I was determined to take what strength I could from Elizabeth. Wearing a similar perfume was a good start.

The day went by uneventfully- that is, for the rest of the house. Stephen returned from the village at lunch time and presented me the new key to Elizabeth's bedroom. We both went there and spent a happy couple of hours sketching the furniture (Stephen) and the wall paper (myself). My companion was careful not to ask any details about the previous night but I did away with formalities and told him of what had passed between Michael and myself. He was gratified, even if he chose to try and hide it. But he did caution me that I should submit to my husband's desires for it would make my life significantly easier and my rest would be restored. Indeed I was having trouble staying awake by mid afternoon. My mind wandered and my head swam. My eyes kept closing. Michael finished his sketching and then said he would go out for a walk, would I accompany him? I declined, I was tired. I would likely place my sketches in the craft room then go to rest in my room until the evening.

Once there I felt disinclined to leave the comfort and peace of the craft room. I sat beside the dolls house and observed the newly refurbished ground floor. We had papered the upper floors and the only room that was blank was the one that would be Elizabeth's reproduced bed chamber. I idly imagined being Elizabeth, spending every day in either my bedroom or in this very chamber, when it had been her sitting room. Of not seeing my children, for surely her husband had not allowed it. Of my body being too weak to walk around much and not having the liberty to do so even if I had chosen to. My head sunk down and onto my arms, pillowed itself there. My heavy eyes closed. I fell into a dream.

A dream filled with tiny cells filled with shrieking or crying inmates, dressed in rags. It was chill and the sounds rang off the walls. People were tied to beds, or rampaged around their rooms, screaming or shouting. Their hair was matted and their eyes were wild or distraught. The cells lined a corridor with hard faced attendants walking up and down, lashing at the barred doors with heavy sticks or intimidating the inhabitants who cowered before them. In the dream I moved unseen to a room at the end where a gentleman was being shown in to observe a treatment. I went in and saw the plunge pool I had imagined. A woman was being lowered into its freezing depths. Her hair was cut to her shoulders, shaggy and unbrushed. She had already been plunged once and it was plastered to her skull in wet strands. Her grey flannel gown was shapeless and soaking, peeling away from her at the neck so that the doctor and the visitor could clearly see her swinging breasts. The men laughed coarsely and I ran forward, trying to get their attention. I suddenly saw that the visitor was Michael! My Michael, in this horrible place. The doctor was Lord Richard, Elizabeth's husband. I knew now that the woman must be Elizabeth. I had to save her!

As I started forward, they plunged her again and then pulled her up, coughing, half drowned. I heard Lord Richard shout to her that she must confess her guilt and allow him to heal her or she would never again see her son. Elizabeth raised her head and I saw my own face there! The woman was me, not her.

In that instant I awoke. Anna was shaking my shoulder. She had come to find me, it was close to dinner time and I was missed downstairs. I hurried myself awake, went to my room and splashed my flushed face with water, trying to get rid of the vision of myself insane and tied to an instrument of torture. As I went downstairs, I tried to chase away the thoughts of that terrible asylum I had imagined. Dinner passed in a blur. I ate little, said less. After dinner I made an effort, joined in at cards and lost myself in the game. Once back in my bedroom, I dressed in one of my more erotic night gowns, the others seemed too like the lunatics gown I had seen in my dream.

Michael came in and seemed pleased by my dress. In bed, I allowed him to have me and I made the right noises and tried to feel some pleasure about what he did. Instead I felt numb. Afterwards he insisted on holding me and I felt suffocated. What was happening to me?