“He forced you?”
I imagine finding Terrence French the next time we are in Trescott and slitting his throat.
She shakes her head. “No. I was willing. But only because I wanted to hurt myself. And he was the perfect mechanism. He wasn’t kind. When he bedded me and when he spoke of me. He knew I was ruining myself by being with him and he told anyone who would listen anyway. I had put myself on a path of destruction and he only hastened me down it. And he was an unpleasant, selfish lover. If I hated myself any less, I would have stopped.”
I squeeze her hand.
“Annabelle.”
“I know,” she says softly. “But let me explain. George was Terrence’s friend. George was a different type than Terrence. He had grown up poor in Trescott, but he was clever and had gotten his fees paid to Harrow. He was going to Oxford. But Terrence said that he was clumsy with women. And he wanted me to bed George, to initiate him in the ways of women. He suggested it and I agreed.”
My stomach turns. It kills me that she was so treated. That this horrible young man saw her as nothing more than a toy—something he could loan out to another.
“We all met at the lake. It was summer and unusually warm. Terrence had me—and then George did too.”
Her countenance is gray. But unlike when she told me about Frank, she doesn’t seem near tears.
“He was actually better than Terrence. He was shaking, I remember. And gentle. In other circumstances we would have liked each other, I think.”
She pauses gravely.
“Anyway, George was nervous. And he had had an extraordinary quantity of gin. Terrence always drank and he was drunk too. After George and I—copulated, he went in the water. I think he felt ashamed. Terrence and I got into a fight once he left. He was jealous.” She laughs bitterly, that bitter laugh I hate. “Even though he begged me to swive George, he was cross once it happened. He called me all sorts of names. And, of course, I protested this treatment.”
“I will kill him.”
“Oh,” she says, rolling her eyes. “He isn’t worth that, Alfred. Anyway, after some time we realized that George was missing. That he wasn’t in the water. And then Terrence realized that hewas—but he was drowned.”
“And the town and your father blamed you even though it wasn’t your fault.”
She shrugs. “Was it not my fault? I was there. I let him go into the water. A poor, shaking boy whose virginity I had just taken. He was handsome, George. He had a bright future. He was better than either me or Terrence, to be honest.”
“Than Terrence, yes. But not you,” I protest.
“A girl so depraved as to bed two boys in one night?” She shakes her head. “Anyway, it was a scandal that my father could not overlook. Terrence and George weren’t common boyslike Frank. My father cast me out. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve always felt guilty about George—because his death was my salvation. George saved me in a way. I went to London in disgrace. And I built something for myself.”
“Thank you for telling me,” I choke out.
“Do you love me now?” she says, her voice stripped of all emotion. “When you have learned that what they say of me is true?”
“Annabelle,” I say, at a loss for how to explain the complexity of my feelings. “It isn’t true. What they say.”
“How can you say that, Alfred? After what I just told you?”
I can’t believe that she, of all people, could say such a thing.
“It is you, Annabelle, who taught me that there is no shame in desire.”
Her eyes flare.
“But it wasn’tdesire,Alfred. I didn’tdesireTerrence. I let him use me. I still don’t know why. Not completely. Or why I agreed to bed his friend upon his request—and then let the boy drown.”
“You didn’t let him drown. You didn’t know. Come here,” I say, unable to bear another moment with her out of my arms. “Please.”
To my relief, she doesn’t resist.
“Do you know how many nights I spent aching and ashamed?” I say in her ear. “That I spent terrified of my own desires? Terrified to even touch myself because of what those who were supposed to know better told me? Countless. Too many for one lifetime.”
“But you werehonorable. You resisted your worst impulses.”
