The Edge

When Stephen had gone I picked up the doll representing the late Lord Richard and considered it. Whatever tortures this man had inflicted on her, he had never killed his wife's spirit. She had merely hidden it more closely from him. On a whim, I opened the chapel part of the dolls house which was still in its original state- with the alter, cloth and candles, the pews all intact. The windows had been removed, as I had decided to remake those. I placed Lord Richard on his knees before the alter.

“Say your prayers.” I said out loud. “Say them and ask for forgiveness. You are as wicked a man as any that lie in prison. I hope your soul is as tortured as hers was when you left her in that terrible place.”

I closed the chapel and went down to my bedroom. I would have passed by except that I noticed my door was ajar. I went to close it but then saw movement inside. Pushing the door open I looked and froze. My stomach turned over and I felt sick. Michael was standing inside the bedroom, with the package from his fathers study in his hand. On my entrance he turned round and seeing me, his face contorted with anger. I should have moved away but I felt frozen. He crossed to me, pulled me away from the door and into the room then closed the door and locked it. He leaned his weight on it and glared at me, all his handsome good looks gone in that black angry gaze. I stood before him and waited for what he would stay.

“What in Hell's name are you doing with these?” His voice was low but full of barely suppressed anger. I couldn't answer, there was nothing I could think of that would stop him from his fury.

“Answer me!” He shouted and now he stepped towards me and threw the packet of papers down on the bed, gripping my shoulders hard. I cried out in fear, he was hurting me. He tried to prise his fingers away but he was too strong. I could do nothing but explain my foray into Lord Robert's study after looking for a picture of Elizabeth. I was not stupid enough to tell him more than that, the doll would stay my secret.

His face became red with fury. He shook me back and forth like a child, then flung me from him and I fell, cutting my head on the bedpost as I dropped onto the carpet. I began to shake all over, I couldn't help it.

“You stupid little........you stupid woman! My father invites us to live in this house and you repay him, you repay me by sneaking about rooms which are off limits to you, you pry into the past and you spy! What is the meaning of this deception, this base foolish behaviour? Are you sick in the head or just stupid?” He was walking backwards and forwards in front of the door, throwing out the words like daggers. I could hardly look at him, I stammer out apologies, tried to placate him. It was no good.

“This disgusts me! You disgust me! I had thought you a good and fair woman, now I see you are stupid and sly and no better than most........You appal me! How dare you do this, how dare you? Spying and sneaking behind my back when my father is so kind to you, then stealing documents that don't belong to you? I cant.....words fail me! I treat you well, I give you all you could want, I even move out of my own bedroom to accommodate your wishes and this is how you repay me! And don't keep saying you are sorry! If you were truly sorry you would have put these back rather than leaving them here where anyone could find them!”

He marched towards e and I thought for one moment he was going to strike me again but he just picked up the packet of documents and walked towards the door. Reaching it he unlocked the door and said, without looking at me

“You will stay up here for the remainder of this evening! No supper will be brought to you, you deserve no food in this house. I will tell the servants you are ill and to leave you in peace. I suggest you spend this time to consider what you will say to my father when he calls for you tomorrow. And on thinking of how to mend your ways and be a better wife to me. I thought it was me that was at fault but now I begin to wonder if that is so.” So saying, he quitted the room and locked me in.

I ran to the door, I heard him walking away down the passage, I rattled the door but he had truly locked it! Locked it and taken the key! I was trapped inside the room. I ran to my dressing room. It still had a basin of water, I used this to wash away the trickle of blood from my head where I had cut it. There was no door out to the corridor here.

I went across to his dressing room, looked for a door but there was none. I had only once or twice been inside, it was simple. A chest of drawers, a mirror, bath and wash stand, and a massive mahogany cupboard. Nothing more.

I went back into the bedroom. The fire wasn't lit, the room was chilly. The night had drawn in and it was dark outside. I could light the lamps but nothing more. I wrapped my arms around myself, I was crying again, miserable guilty tears. I had deserved my husbands tirade. I had been foolish and wrong to take those documents. And to not think of hiding them better! I deserved Michael's anger.

I lay down on the bed, kicking off my shoes. I lay still, trying to stop the tears but they had become sobs that shook me from head to foot. I felt sick, guilty, frightened and cold. I would beg Michael's pardon and his father's on the morrow. I would offer no excuses and hope that they would allow me to continue with the doll's house. I would stop digging into their secrets.

I heard a heavy tread in the hall outside then the sound of the key turning in the lock. I raised my head. Lord Robert stood in the doorway. His face was calm, grim but calm. He said gruffly to me

“You are at liberty again. I refuse to keep a house where women are treated like badly mannered dogs, even when they have done wrong. Get up, change and bathe your face. Then come downstairs. It is my wish that you join the family for dinner.”

I stared at him in shock. I started to apologise but he held up and hand, silencing me.

“We will talk of it tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday and we will talk of it then, when we have all had time enough to consider matters. Now, go and tidy yourself. I will see you shortly.” So saying, He strode away, his heavy footfalls becoming softer as he descended the stairs. I went to my dressing room, bathed my face as he had asked and changed into a quiet grey gown with silver embroidery. I redid my hair, checked that the cut on my head was covered by the wings of soft curls that drifted beside my cheeks and left my room.

Downstairs, Michael was quiet but civil. Stephen Bruce, who clearly had no idea of what had gone on, tried to make up for the lack of talk and my father in law seemed willing to assist him, conversing about the days business and in changes he had seen in the area over his life time. At dinner I could eat little but kept up the conversation. After dinner, Lord Robert asked me to play the piano which I did for the duration of the evening. When I left the men to go upstairs, I shook Stephen's hand as usual, received a cold kiss on the cheek from Michael and then went to Lord Robert to shake his hand goodnight. However, this time, he bent and kissed my cheek. Then stepped away and went back to his book.

Upstairs, I bathed, the fire had been lit so the apartment was warm. I felt utterly confused by the days events, I didn't know what to think and my mind was in a swirl of thoughts. I let them chase each other around and around my head while I stared at the flames and tried to calm myself. After a while I heard Michael come upstairs. I heard him say good night to Stephen Bruce and then go into his own room. I had half wondered if he would come to speak to me but he didn't. After another half an hour, there was a soft tap on my door and Stephen came in. he locked the door and came across to me, knelt beside me and took me into his arms. He pressed me to his chest and I went, feeling calmed by the sound of his heart beat. After a while he spoke, asking me what had gone on. Michael and Lord Robert had said nothing. When I told him he was quiet for a moment then said

“Do you wish me to leave? No, Love, I don't want to leave you but if it makes life easier for you and if you feel conflicted, I don't want to add to your troubles. I cant help feeling that before I came, your life was peaceful.” I shook my head. My life had been peaceful, true, but boring and I had simply never questioned it. And it was not Stephen who had stolen documents. He sighed and took me back into his arms, we lay before the fire entwined, listening to the stillness.

“You do know that I love you Imogen? I do. I love you very deeply. And if by leaving you, I would make you happier then I will do it. I swear to you, I shall.” I thought about him going. Leaving me. And it was like feeling death approach. I clung to him more tightly than before.

He gave a deep sigh then lay me back on the rug. Then he very carefully untied the bow at the neck of my night gown and unlaced the front so that it was open to my navel. He looked at me and I felt as though no one had ever looked at me before. His gaze drew in everything about me. The roundness of my nipples and how my large breasts fell back towards my armpits as I lay flat. The tiny red marks at the sides of my breasts which showed how they had been swollen by pregnancy. The marks on my stomach which showed dark red on my pale pale skin, and which always made me so embarrassed in front of Michael. The small deep well of my navel and the way my stomach curved upwards slightly then the flattening and the small hard ridges of my pelvic bones.

He didn't touch me. He just looked. Then he drew up the hem of my gown so that he could see my legs. He took hold of one of my feet and inspected it, the bump of my toes and the high instep. He examined the small pearly nails. The soft delicate skin underneath. Then, with his hand gripping my ankle, he eyes moved on. I had always thought that my calves were fat but he showed me that they were muscular and full, and how erotic he found their curves as he caressed them with his lips. The small scars on my knees from falling as a child, he wanted to know where each one came from, those little ridges of skin which still showed the impression of impact. He praised my thighs, praised the soft soft skin on the inner parts and the womanly curves of the outer. He laughed over the stretch marks on them, more evidence of my pregnancy and he said he found them erotic too. War wounds, he named them.

Then he pushed my dress up over the tops of my hips, exposing me completely. He ran a hand over the small soft patch of dark fur between my legs and gently pushed them apart, showing the pinkness there. He caressed me with his eyes then with his hand, stroking, stroking and then using his fingers to peel me apart and examine me properly. It made me smile, he was like a curious school boy with an exotic flower! He spoke in a low husky voice, whispered all the different shades of pink he could see, then lowered his face and kissed me on my belly, playfully nipping my navel with his teeth and kissing me again, lower and lower until the tip of his tongue touched a secret place, a place I had never before had touched.

He had described it as a bud, a tiny bud beside a blooming rose and he gently, oh so gently, touched it with the very tip of his tongue and then began to lick me there, slow and soft then harder and covering a bigger area so that he was touching all of me and I was becoming wet down there. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and my slight gasps as I moved my hips up and down to meet him.

When he moved her face away from me, I opened my eyes. I had never been touched like that before. He came close to me, kissed me on both cheeks and then the forehead.

“Take your shirt off.” I whispered to him and he did as I had asked, following it with his trousers. Naked, he knelt before me in the glow of the fire. His chest was covered with hair, his arms and thighs and a thicker patch around his sex. There was a dark line of it going down from his navel to his manhood and I lent out my hand and stroked it down, that dark arrowing path. I heard him intake his breath and I let my hand drift lower, so that I could take him in hand. He was half hard and I moved my fingers up and down his heavy length, feeling the silky soft flesh before harder and hotter under my ministrations. He groaned, lent forward so that he was straddled over me, so I could look up at his magnificent body, animal and strong in the flames. As I quickened the movement of my hand, he began to shake a little, a tremor that showed how I was weakening him and I pushed him down to lie beside me. I sat up and unfastened my hair letting it swing in its rich dark curls to my waist. Then I knelt upright, pulled my dishevelled gown over my head and naked, I stretched and displayed myself to him. I straddled his hips. I let my fingers travel through the length of his body, travelling a path through the forest of hair down the path leading to his sex, now upright and away from him and then I lifted myself and pushed him inside me.

Once there, I automatically began to rock backwards and forwards. He was bigger than Michael, and I had never before been in this position of dominance but he smiled encouragement, the look in his eyes, of startled wonder and lust, drove me to rock more strongly and then the lean my hands on his muscular chest so I could run them over him, tracing his nipples, even scratch them down him, leaving red tracks under the hair and making him gasp. His hands went to my breasts, now full and heavy with nipples dark red with passion and he gripped me tightly, letting his thumbs slip over the tips again and again as a wave began to rise inside me.

That wave was so intense, I didn't know what it was but I knew I could only move with it, ride it, ride him and I did so, now moving harder and faster, grinding against him and he lifted his hips to stay in me as deeply as possible. I was gasping, he put a hand up to cover my mouth and I caught his fingers between my teeth and bit, slipping my tongue over the rough pad of his thumb and he sat up, me in his lap, rocking me, me rocking him, our mouths meeting and clinging and the wave rose in both of us, hearts beating together and then I tipped back my head, his mouth kissing my exposed throat.

I closed my eyes and saw the top of the wave, salt foam and starlight, and I felt it crash over me, cover me and I felt stillness and motion collide. His mouth trembled against my throat and he gave a stifled groan and released himself inside me. Then he fell back and took me with him, entwined on the rug, faces together, my hair covering us like wings, hearts slowing down together.

Minutes later, he gently stroked the hair out of my face, kissed me gently and caressed my back. There was sweat on his face and chest, beads of it had made me damp as well. I licked one of them, it was salty sweet. His eyes were dark with passion, reflecting me, wanton and beautiful in the fire light. We stayed that way for a long time, animals sharing closeness, as he grew smaller inside me and I felt the wetness of his seed there. Then he drew me more tightly to him and knelt then stood, with me still clasped around him, and walked into my dressing room. There we finally separated. He took the water and sponge and washed me tenderly, washing himself away from my thighs, letting the cool water stop the flush of my cheeks. He washed himself too then we died each other with my towels.

He gave me a mischievous grin and picked me up, my legs wrapping around his waist again as he carried me back into my room. He sat on the edge of my bed, as we kissed more, he wound my hair around his big hands.

“so lovely. Its a crime that you must wear it up. But I feel almost as if that makes it all the better. Only I get to admire such beauty, in the dead of night where only the stars can see.” he murmured this into my hair, holding it to his face and inhaling its scent.

“This scent, I cant make it out. Its delicious. So fresh, so dense. What is it?”

I smiled. I told him that I always used a lemon and rosewater rinse on my hair, to make it shine more and give it that scent. My Grandmother in Italy had done so, as had my mother and she had always washed my hair herself when I was a child, showing me how to pluck the rose petals and squeeze the juice and peel from the lemon to make it.

He praised my hairs colour, its rich dark locks. He praised my fine pale skin, now flushed from our coupling. The clocks struck one. He drew back the sheets and lay me into my bed, lay beside me. He whispered into my ear that he would be gone at five, before the servants were up to light the fires but that he wanted to be close to me for the night. We lay pressed together like spoons, velvet skin and warm flesh. I fell asleep with his breath whispering in my ear.