“You must forget about the gown,” she sighed. “Perhaps you will buy me a new one. I have been told that you are among the richest men in England.”
“Is that what you want?” This, he understood.
Sabine screamed and reached to tug off her slipper. “No!” she cried, hurling the shoe at his head. She took a deep breath. “Stoker? Did you hear me cry for help in bed? Or for you to stop?”
He thought back, his face burning at the memory of his passion. It had been a wave of glorious relief and cresting guilt. A blur of her nakedness and his red-hot desire. He’d been out of his head.
She slid from the bed with a thump. “Did you hear me shout, ‘Stop, Stoker, please, I beg of you?’ Did I lie there like a carp on a plate, quietly enduring while you pounded away?”
He stared at her, distracted by the terrible memory of him “pounding away.”
“No!” she shouted, rounding on the bed. “I did not. What did I do instead?”
He watched her limp to him, her gait uneven in one shoe. She stooped to remove the remaining slipper, and he braced, ready to dodge.
“No, truly,” she continued. “I will not provide the answers to this. I want you to tell me. What were my reactions when we were in bed together?” She nodded to the scrambled bed. “Just now. Not ten minutes ago. I would like to hear it.”
“You... kissed me,” he said.
“Did I? That’s happened on three occasions now, hasn’t it, so it hardly qualifies. Somethingnew.”
“You called my name.”
“In horror?”
“Well—”
“Did I also say some version of, ‘Please,’ ‘Yes,’ ‘Oh!’ ‘More’?”
Her voice was flat and matter-of-fact. It was almost comical the way she rattled off such intimate exclamations. But she did not look amused. She looked angry. Stoker endeavored to take her seriously, to answer her outrage, to be contrite. It was his fault entirely. And yet, he could not deny that she’d said these very things.
He ventured, “It’s no excuse, but when you say these things, Sabine, in the heat of passion, it magnifies my struggle to hold back.”
“I believe that is the idea of succumbing to passionate lovemaking, Stoker. I am no authority—”
“Yes!” he agreed, “you were a virgin, and you’ve no idea—”
“What I was going to say was that I am no authority on anyone’s pleasure but my own! I should like to be an authority on yours, but it would appear we must devote considerable time to assuaging your guilt instead.”
“I have been broken,” he said, turning away. He heard the hyperbole as it left his lips, but he couldn’t stop. Hebelievedthe bloody hyperbole. “I am too broken for you.”
“Do not,” she said. Her voice was so vehement, he turned back. She marched across the room to a wardrobe on a far wall. Grabbing the knobs, she hurled it open and rifled through drawers and shelves, looking for—what? He could not say.
She pulled out a garment—a boy’s morning jacket—and shoved it back inside. She resumed her search, speaking to the open furniture. “You asked me earlier not to pity you, and now I must ask you to refrain from pitying yourself.”
“It’s not pity, Sabine. I cannot describe my struggle beyond saying that I want what isn’t decent. I don’t come to the bed with no despair in my life—”
She spun around. “I know it doesn’t warrant as much, but I was beaten for nine months by a sadistic uncle who is now trying to blow up England.” She turned back to the wardrobe, pulled out what appeared to be an ivory choirboy’s robe, and shoved it back.
“You said he never touched you in that way,” Stoker said, rising from the bed.
“I suppose a slap across the face, or a fork to the hand, or a boot to the ribs is not horrible enough.” She pulled out a small dark suit and shoved it back. She turned on him. “This room must belong to a miniature vicar.”
Stoker held up a finger. “When I first came to you, you shrank away from me. I could barely lift my head from the pillow, I was completely harmless, and yet you resisted any closeness. Because of Dryden, you could not be crowded or trapped.”
She closed the wardrobe and looked around the room. His jacket was in the middle of the rug in a wad, and she snatched it up and shoved into it. “Yes,when you first came to me, but then welearnedeachother. I saw, among other things, that you posed no threat. I found Iwantedto be close to you. Now I find Iwantto be crowded and trapped by you.”
He swore and turned away. She said the most incendiary things.
