6. Catherine
The day after I learned Papa had accepted St. Erth’s proposal, I woke up with butterflies in my stomach.
How was I going to get out of this? Perhaps I could plead illness or go for a visit to some distant relation’s home?
I ran the plans around in my head when I heard a sharp knock on the door.
It was my mother holding a box.
“Open this,” she said, her face wreathed in smiles. “It’s your wedding gown. You’re getting married today.”
And my mother, who had very little interest in me beyond my hair and clothes, waited in my room until my maid Mary had put on the dress and done my hair! The dress was beautifully cut, with a high lace collar, and fit me perfectly.
How had he gotten a wedding dress made so quickly?
Then she propelled me down the stairs and left me in a hallway.
“I don’t—I don’t want to get married!” I cried helplessly, but when I saw Papa appear, I knew I was going to be forcibly taken to the church.
My fears began to spiral as Papa went to arrange for the carriage. It was all happening way too fast! I thought I had more time to prepare how to escape.
Special licenses were very expensive!
Why was St. Erth in such a hurry?
“How are you doing, angel?” Cook asked, patting my cheek affectionately. My parents had never seemed to take much of an interest in me, and my happiest memories as a child were helping Cook bake or curled up in a corner of the kitchen reading.
“I’m scared,” I whispered. “I don’t want to get married to him.”
“Now, darling, don’t be too afraid of your wedding night!” she said affectionately.
Wedding night! I hadn’t even considered that!
“Gentlemen surely love that wet hole between our legs,” Cook went on confidentially. “I expect that’s the same whether the man is a Viscount or,” and here she paused, raising her voice angrily, “the second footman.”
I tried to absorb the idea that the man who had ruined one of my best skirts would now be allowed to do whatever he wanted in that soft wet place between my thighs.
Then Papa was at my arm and propelling me into the carriage and across London to the church where St. Erth had said to meet him.
As we pulled up, the Viscount was standing in front of the church in a soft dove-gray jacket with dove-gray breeches and Mechelin lace on his wrists.
“You will be accorded the luckiest girl in England,” Mama breathed beside me, but I only look at St. Erth with fear and uncertainty.
It was simply unnatural for a man this handsome to want to marry a woman like me.
He stepped up to help me down from the carriage, and I gathered up my courage to hiss in an undertone at him.
“I am being forced to do this!”
I’m not sure what I had expected, but he only shrugged, one hard hand on my elbow propelling me into the church.
“Surely you don’t want to marry an unwilling wife?” I asked in some amazement.
“It’s a matter of complete indifference to me,” he said, looking down at me. “Willing or unwilling, you marry me today.”
My heart pounded in my chest, the blood all rushing to my ears.
Amazed at my own boldness, I hissed at the Viscount.
“I don’t care what you say! am going to say no when they ask if I object!”
“Is that so?” the Viscount whispered in my ear, and, without another word, he put a hand on my mouth and dragged me down a side hallway.
I thought I had been afraid of him before, but it was nothing to now, one hand tight on my mouth and the other hand twisting my arms behind my back.
Then he whirled me around.
“You will do nothing to stop this ceremony,” he ordered, and he put a hand on my high lace collar and grabbed the fine fabric, twisting it so hard in his hands that I gasped.
“Stop,” I croaked, but he only twisted tighter with cruel fingers, and I began to panic as his hold cut off my air supply, my fingers desperately scrabbling at my neck, trying to pry him off me.
But he was too strong.
“I’ve been planning this wedding for a long time, and no bratty little miss is going to stop it,” he snarled.
“A long time?” I gasped, barely even able to talk. “You just met me for the first time a week ago!”
My head swam, stars flashing in my eyes, and I stumbled. It was only then that he loosened his hold on me. With hard, impatient fingers, he undid the first button at the back of my collar.
I gasped for air, inhaling it into my lungs, and he undid another button.
“What are you doing?” I cried, my voice cracking, and I put my hands back to try to push him away, only for my fingers to meet cold, dry scales.
Then I felt the sinuous, cool slide of a snake around my neck and I screamed.
“Don’t scream,” St. Erth said. “I’d hate for it to bite you. The antidote for snake venom is so hard to find.”
“Take it off me, please,” I begged in a whisper.
“No,” he said.
“I promise,” I cried, as the heavy body of the snake wound around my neck, “I’ll marry you!”
The snake slithered down my shoulder, and I could feel its little tongue flicking out against the high curve of my breasts and then my nipples with a rattling hiss. I stifled a scream as it wound with cool unconcern around my breasts, the tail flicking back and forth, and settled underneath them.
“I’m afraid I just don’t trust you,” St. Erth sighed. “I need some assurance.”
Then he turned my body and marched me back into the church where the bishop was waiting.
The ceremony was a blur. The words, the avaricious looks on Papa and Mama’s faces, the heavy golden ring on my finger. I could think of nothing but the snake rustling invisibly underneath my breasts, coiling its cool body between and around me. At every moment I expected the snake to open its jaws and sink its fangs into me.
St. Erth’s “I do” was firm and confident and apparently my tiny, shuddering “I do” counted just as much as his, because I heard a sound from his throat when I said it, low and unsettling.
As we walked back out, I felt a sharp prick on the back of my neck, two little puncture wounds underneath my new bonnet, and I shrieked and stumbled forward.
“It has bitten me,” I gasped to St. Erth as his hard hands caught me. But I felt his mouth twist up behind me and he unbuttoned the top button again, this time so harshly that the entire pearl button popped off. He reached a hand down my top, his fingers skimming my breasts, making me shiver, as he grasped the snake’s body and pulled it carefully from my bosom.
As he threw it into the grass outside, I heard his low mocking laughter.
“I am dying,” I cried, my knees giving out.
But he only set me back on my feet.
“That snake isn’t poisonous,” he growled in my ear. “I’m more dangerous to you than any snake. That was a reminder that you are mine now.”
My parents and brother came up to give us congratulations, my whole family looking relaxed and joyous.
“I am taking my new Viscountess home to Rosewood Manor immediately,” St. Erth said.
“Certainly,” Papa said, his smile stretching from ear to ear. It could not be more obvious that he saw the Viscount’s money for me as a good trade. “Take her whenever you wish. If you would just sign these papers before you leave. . .”
My new husband’s mouth curved up, slow and wicked.
“I don’t think I will, Wendover,” he said, reaching out to take my hand in his big one.
“Why not?” Papa asked sharply.
“Because,” St. Erth said, and suddenly he seemed to loom over Papa. It was bitingly, painfully clear how powerful and strong my new husband was. “I have no interest in helping you keep your lands. I plan to take them away from you.”
Papa and Mama gaped uncomprehendingly at him.
“At one time, you had a mistress,” St. Erth said flatly. “Her name was Arabella. This mistress you abandoned when she got sick. Instead of spending her dying days with the comfort and nursing you promised, she spent them in a dirty cheap boarding house. Her son had stowed away as a cabin boy and came back on land to find his mother dead.”
The Viscount then smiled, and the beauty of his face was almost disorienting, the shadows of sun low in the sky making his face look unearthly and devilish.
“That son was me and his revenge is mine. Your daughter Catherine will be taken and fucked to bear the heir that will force you from your home so you can spend your aging days penniless, poor, and desperate.”
My parents looked frozen in shock, useless stuttering pleas falling from their lips, and my new husband grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me painfully after him and tossed me bodily into the waiting carriage.