“Shall we do it now?”
She was suddenly impatient. “Yes, please, quickly.”
She sensed him fumbling with his trousers, then he lay between her legs. She was frightened — she had heard stories about how much it hurt the first time — but she was also consumed by longing for him.
She felt him ease into her. After a moment he encountered resistance. He pushed gently, and it hurt. “Stop!” she said.
He looked at her worriedly. “I’m sorry—”
“It will be all right. Kiss me.”
He lowered his face to hers and kissed her lips, gently at first and then passionately. She put her hands on his waist, lifted her hips off the bed a little, then pulled him to her. There was a pain, sharp enough to make her cry out, then something gave way inside her and she felt a tremendous release of tension. She broke the kiss and looked at him.
“Are you all right?” he said.
She nodded. “Did I make a noise?”
“Yes, but I don’t think anyone heard.”
“Don’t stop,” she said.
He hesitated a moment longer. “Maisie,” he murmured, “is this a dream?”
“If it is, let’s not wake up yet.” She moved against him, guiding him with her hands on his hips. He followed her lead. It reminded her of how they had danced together just a few hours earlier. She gave herself up to the sensation. He began to pant.
Distantly, above the noise of his breathing and hers, she heard a door open.
She was so absorbed in her feelings and Hugh’s body that the sound failed to alarm her.
Suddenly a harsh voice shattered the mood like a stone through a window. “Well, well, Hugh — what’s all this?”
Maisie froze.
Hugh gave a despairing groan, and she felt his seed spurt warm inside her.
She wanted to cry.
The sneering voice came again. “What do you think this house is, a brothel?”
Maisie whispered: “Hugh — get off me.”
He withdrew from her and rolled off the bed. She saw his cousin Edward standing in the doorway, smoking a cigar and staring at them intently. Hugh quickly covered her with a big towel. She sat upright and pulled it up to her neck.
Edward grinned nastily. “Well, if you’ve finished I might give her a go.”
Hugh wrapped a towel around his waist. Controlling his anger with a visible effort, he said: “You’re drunk, Edward — go to your room before you say something completely unforgivable.”
Edward ignored him and approached the bed. “Why, it’s Solly Greenbourne’s dollymop! But I won’t tell him — so long as you’re nice to me.”
Maisie saw that he was in earnest, and she shuddered with loathing. She knew that some men were inflamed by a woman who had just been with another man — April had told her the slang term for a woman in that state, a buttered bun — and she knew intuitively that Edward was such a man.
Hugh was enraged. “Get out of here, you damn fool,” he said.
“Be a sport,” Edward persisted. “After all, she’s only a damn whore.” With that he reached down and snatched away Maisie’s towel.
She jumped off the bed from the other side, covering herself with her arms; but there was no need. Hugh took two strides across the little room and hit Edward a mighty punch on the nose. Blood spurted and Edward let out a roar of agony.
Edward was rendered harmless instantly, but Hugh was still angry, and he hit him again.
Edward screamed in fear and pain and blundered to the door. Hugh went after him, throwing punches at the back of his head. Edward began to yell: “Leave me alone, stop it, please!” He fell through the doorway.
Maisie followed them out. Edward was stretched out on the floor and Hugh was sitting on top of him, still hitting him. She cried: “Hugh, stop, you’ll kill him!” She tried to grab Hugh’s arms, but he was in a fury and it was hard to restrain him.
A moment later she glimpsed a movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked up and saw Hugh’s aunt Augusta standing at the top of the stairs in a black silk peignoir, staring at her. In the flickering gaslight she looked like a voluptuous ghost.
There was a strange look in Augusta’s eyes. At first Maisie could not read her expression; then, after a moment, she understood, and she was frightened.
It was a look of triumph.
AS SOON AS AUGUSTA SAW THE NAKED GIRL she sensed that this was her chance to get rid of Hugh once and for all.
She recognized her immediately. This was the trollop who had insulted her in the park, the one they called the Lioness. The thought had crossed her mind even then that this little minx might one day get Hugh into serious trouble: there was something arrogant and uncompromising in the set of her head and the light in her eyes. Even now, when she ought to be mortified by shame, she stood there, stark naked, and stared back at Augusta coolly. She had a magnificent body, small but shapely, with plump white breasts and a riot of sand-colored hair at her groin. Her look was so haughty that she almost made Augusta feel like the intruder. But she would be the downfall of Hugh.
The outlines of a plan were forming in Augusta’s mind when suddenly she saw Edward lying on the floor with blood all over his face.
All her old fears rose up in force, and she was taken back twenty-three years, to when he had nearly died as a baby. Blind panic swamped her. “Teddy!” she screamed. “What’s happened to Teddy!” She fell to her knees beside him. “Speak to me, speak to me!” she yelled. She was possessed by an unbearable dread, just as she had been when her baby kept getting thinner and thinner every day and the doctors could not understand why.
Edward sat up and groaned.
“Say something!” she pleaded.
“Don’t call me Teddy,” he said.
Her terror eased a fraction. He was conscious and could speak. But his voice was thick and his nose looked out of shape. “What happened?” she said.
“I caught Hugh with his whore, and he just went mad!” Edward said.
Forcing down her rage and fear, she reached out gently and touched Edward’s nose. He gave a loud yelp, but permitted her to press delicately. There was nothing broken, she thought; it was just swelling up.
She heard her husband’s voice say: “What the deuce is going on?”
She stood up. “Hugh has attacked Edward,” she said.
“Is the boy all right?”
“I think so.”