It was only a matter of time, she supposed, before this behavior was no longer coupled with sexual play, not that it even seemed playful anymore. It was as if he truly delighted in causing her harm. He liked that she was weaker than him. He liked proving it. He liked that she was frightened of him. All of these things were becoming more and more obvious.
Even so, she didn’t plan to kill him.
What happened was that she was staying in a room with a balcony. It was a small little area outside a door, just a semi-circle of space with a little railing that only came about to one’s waist. There wasn’t even room on the balcony for a chair or anything of that nature. It was only there to stand and look out, perhaps for someone to watch the sunrise in the morning.
The room was in Neith Abbey.
They were there because of her husband’s bloody scheme, except she wasn’t entirely sure if he was going to be putting into place right then, or if he was just gathering information so that he could put it into place at some point in the future.
Anyway, it wasn’t about that, her killing him.
It was…
Well, she didn’t plan it.
They got into an argument, well, it should not have been an argument. She should not have gotten angry. She tried to control such things within herself if she could.
He got angry, and this was not really her own fault, because she had learned quickly it was better to placate her husband than to cross him. It was only that he seemed to revel in finding fault with her, and he wasn’t entirely predictable.
He had once, you see, told her that he did not like her to wear yellow, and that he preferred her in blue.
So, she had practically remade her entire wardrobe in blue.
Except this was what he was angry about. He was pawing through the dresses she’d brought, which her maid had hung up for her in her room. They had rooms that adjoined each other, so that he could come and go easily through a door between them, and he had insisted—upon their arrival—that she not shut it for any reason. So, he came and went between their rooms freely, and he saw her dresses and now he was sorting through them.
“Blue,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve brought nothing but blue dresses.”
She had the temerity to say, “I thought you preferred me to wear blue.”
And he turned and backhanded her. “Hush,” he said.
She put her hand to her cheek, tears filling her eyes. In truth, compared to other things he had done to her, that had barely hurt, but she felt the injustice of all of it coursing through her, and it was nigh unbearable.
“This is the problem with you, you see,” he said to her. “I make one offhand comment and you go out of your way to change everything. You try too hard to please me, and it makes you look pathetic, and it makes me hate you.”
Caroline wasn’t entirely certain why this went through her the way it did.
Maybe it was because the injustice was still coursing through her.
Or maybe it was because she had heard versions of this from every man she’d ever had a fancy for, even from Mr. Darcyhimself, who had mostly been kind to her, but had seemingly begun to find her tiresome and did a poor job in hiding it.
She was angry.
She knew being angry wasn’t a good idea. She had been angry with him before when he hit her. At one point, she had even hit back. That had gone very, very badly for her. She’d been laid up in her bed for days afterward.
She knew she could not afford to be angry with her husband, but the anger was like a live thing. It had reared up within her and she had no control over it anymore.
So, she did the only thing she could do.
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room and onto the balcony. She slammed the door behind her, probably with too much force, and shut herself outside. It was still summer, so it was warm out here, quite warm, quite pleasant, in fact.
The pleasantness of the warmth and the balcony and the lovely view of the English countryside only seemed to make her angrier. How dare he visit this on her now, when everything else was so very, very pleasant?
She began to catalogue the times he had done things of this nature, found fault with her when his actions before had indicated he shouldn’t have found fault at all. Once, he had gotten angry with her for starting breakfast without him, but the day before, he had specifically told her that if she ever found herself in the breakfast parlor alone to break her fast and not to wait for him. Once, he had beaten her for making noises whilst he was doing his husbandly activity on her. He claimed that she was enjoying it too much and that was sinful, that women weren’t to enjoy it. And when she had said, in a small voice, that she was actually making noise because it was unpleasant, he had gotten quite, quite angry. Once, he had told her specifically that they must arrive early at the church on Sunday but when she had appeared ready to go at the appointed time he had snarledat her, telling her that she needn’t attend to every little thing he said with such vigor, that they had time yet before they could leave.
There was, she concluded, hands clenched in fists, in the warm and pleasant summer air on that balcony, no pleasing this man.
He could not, in fact,bepleased.
