28. Catherine
Afew days after the ball, St. Erth announced that we were going to visit Bath.
“Would you like that, Kitten?” he asked, taking a sip of tea as we sat under a shady tree.
“Yes, I would,” I cried eagerly. “Very much.”
His lips curved up. “Good. But what would happen if you didn’t want to go?”
I bit my lip but I forced myself to meet his eyes.
“You would take me anyway.”
“That’s right, Viscountess,” St. Erth said with satisfaction. “Perhaps you’ll make a proper wife yet.”
When I smelled the sea, my heart gave a great leap inside me. Why, the smell of it was even better than I had dreamed. Fresh and sharp and salt and sea!
Bath was crowded, full of the Ton escaping to the seaside during the heat of the year in London, or there to try to cure their ailments by taking the waters there.
But although it was crowded, St. Erth had managed to secure a very pretty soft cream-colored house overlooking the beach, and we walked along the crowded pathways.
The wind whipped my hair, and I felt that wild untamed excitement unfurl inside me.
After a cold meat luncheon, we went to the Pump Room to take the waters. I smelled the sharp tang of the mineral water, my stomach roiling.
I took one tentative sip.
“Drink up,” my husband ordered sharply and I looked apprehensively at the small cup.
I didn’t want to defy him, but I didn’t think I could manage any more of the health cure.
“My stomach doesn’t feel so good,” I said in a small voice.
He raised immaculate eyebrows, and with one swift hand he grabbed a nearby almanac, counting rapidly back through the weeks.
There was a gleam in his eyes, and he took one curl in a big hand, brushing my cheek with calloused fingertips.
“Oh, Kitten. What a good girl you are.”
“Do you think. . .?” I asked in a tremulous voice, surprised by the wild leap of my own heart.
“I do,” St. Erth said with satisfaction, showing me the time that had passed since my last monthly flow. “You don’t have to drink this bilge now. I’ll go and get you some cakes.”
With a speaking glance, full of triumph, he got up and headed for the refreshments.
I was sitting, happy and bewildered, when to my surprise, Papa appeared in front of me.
“I did not know you were here!” I cried. He must have rushed over to Bath as soon as he got the letter that we were going there.
“Are you with child?” Papa demanded. “It is the second month since you were married.”
I hesitated.
It would make Papa very angry, to be sure, but perhaps this was a way of making sure that he stopped these nonsensical attempts on St. Erth’s life that could only end in failure.
“Yes, I am,” I said, feeling a sudden spark of pride and excitement.
“Get rid of it,” Papa said, moving in front of me.
His handsome face looked distorted with fury now.
“No!” I said.
“I didn’t raise you to open your legs like a slut for some common whore’s son,” Papa said, flecks of spittle flying from his lips.
I had never seen my father so filled with rage before, and I felt an answering fury snake over me. “She was a better parent than you ever were!” I snapped. “You should leave. If St. Erth finds you here, he’ll kill you. Just go back to Mama and don’t bother us again.”
“You will be sorry,” he spat at me, then he turned on his heel and left.
I was still trembling when St. Erth came back, but I forced myself to stay calm so he wouldn’t suspect anything.
The next morning my mind was still in a whirl, and I woke up early, feeling sick to my stomach.
I decided to go sea bathing to see if I could distract myself, so I left my sleeping husband and headed for the ladies’ beach.
I was the first one at the beach, and the attendant led me smilingly into the best and most luxurious bathing machine where I could change in privacy into the weighted skirts that would help me stay properly covered while I waded in the sea water.
As Viscountess St. Erth, I was greeted everywhere with the kind of deferential respect that I was most unused to ever encountering before, and I didn’t know how much of that was due to my new title or that fact that my husband was most impatient of anyone who did not accord me the proper treatment he felt I deserved.
When I was done changing, I opened the door, the fresh sea air filling my nose with the delicious scents of salt and waves. I didn’t see the attendant, though, and I looked nervously around, stepping tentatively out into the sea water. It was cold but bracingly so, and I felt my cheeks flush pleasurably. But just as I had put my other foot into the water, my skirts heavy with the weights to keep them from floating up, I felt a hand go over my mouth and my head was knocked into the side of the bathing machine.
And my father came around the side.
His eyes were glinting with malice. He held his hand over my nose and mouth, cutting off my breathing and making panic spiral through my body.
“There’s one way to ensure that St. Erth never succeeds in his revenge,” Papa spat at me. “And that’s to simply kill you and prevent him from having an heir. It’s so simple. I should have thought of this before. You are much easier to kill than he would be.”
I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I tried to struggle but my skirts weighed me down.
“I didn’t think you would amount to much, with your plain face,” he said. “But I’d rather have no daughter at all and keep my lands intact.”
And he dunked my head under the water again.
I knew I was going to die. My father had sent the attendants away and it was so early that the rest of the beach was still deserted.
I kicked and flailed under the water, but Papa held me under.
My body felt strangely weightless and my head swam, and just as my vision began to blacken, his hold on me was loosened and I was lifted from under the water as St. Erth drove Papa’s head into the side of the bathing machine with his other hand.
I gasped thankfully for air, and St. Erth swept me up with one hand, my thick skirts soaking his breeches.
“How dare you,” Papa was sputtering, but St. Erth was in no mood for conversation.
“Convenient,” he said. “My revenge will come early. 9 months early, to be precise.”
With his left hand, he tightened his hold on Papa’s neckerchief, suddenly twisting so viciously that I heard my father’s neck break under his fingers.
I was still gasping for breath, held so tightly by my husband that his strong, firm heartbeat reverberated in my own chest.
“Kitten, your father is dead,” St. Erth said dismissively as Papa’s body sank down into the cold waters.
“Thank you,” I said weakly. “How did you know I was out here?”
“You left my bed without saying where you were going, naughty puss,” he said. “Of course I came after you.”
And the serpent won.
Like Eve, I couldn’t resist. I knew what he was and I still said it.
“I love you,” I said, throwing my arms around my cruel husband’s neck.
“I love you too,” the Viscount returned, my husband’s mouth on my throat, my lips, every inch of skin he could see. “And now,” he said, “I want you to sit here on the bathing machine while I put the weights from your dress on your father’s clothes, so I can send him out to the ocean without fear of his corpse floating back onto the beach and thoroughly ruining our breakfast.”
So I sat, shivering, on the side of the bathing machine while St. Erth slit the bottom of my dress and tied my weights to my father, and I watched as he waded out until the water was waist-high and he sent my father out to the deep sea.
Then he waded back and took me in his arms, carrying me back to the beach and back to our rented house.
“Let’s take to the sea,” the Viscount said, the hot waters of my bath finally taking the chill of my attempted murder away. “I’d like to sail to Italy.”
“That sounds wonderful,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to go on a sea voyage.”
“Good,” my husband said. “But you have no choice in the matter, you know. You’ll be doing what I want whether you like it or not.”
And then my husband’s fingers were slipping into the bathwater and down to my cunt and then inside me, and my body moved in rhythm with his touch, always his to take and command.