She flushed at the memory. “But Master–”
“I think,” he interrupted thoughtfully, “that you should call me Jason when we are alone. Otherwise it will seem as though you are here only out of duty. And that is not the case, is it, Abigail? You are not here simply because I took the choice from you, are you?”
She had no response to such digs, such jests. She was uneducated in the proper way to dance around one’s lover, had never heard nor experienced the right kind of wit to employ. So she did the only thing she could think to do to get him to stop such a conversation. She stood up on her toes and brushed her lips against his.
Once she made contact, he took over, eating through her mouth and running his hands over her until her tremors apparently grew too great for him to ignore. He drew away a bit, moved his hand to cup her face.
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” He gave her no time to answer. “I have never seen one so fair. There are many women in Rome, Abigail. Many women who vied for my attentions. But in spite of their stained lips and arranged hair, none of them can compare to what I see in you. You have really what they create in a facade. You are the paradigm that they all aspire to.”
He ran a thumb across her cheek, the hand on her waist growing restless. His fingers clenched in a fist around a stretch of the fabric. “Take this off,” his muttered hoarsely.
She stared at his chin. Did he really expected her to do such a thing herself? The haze she saw in a glance at his eyes told her he did indeed. Her breath caught in her throat and held; she reached down with unsteady hands and clasped at the cloth. She closed her eyes, forced air into her lungs. And moved her arms up.
*
It was hours later when Jason finally gave her leave to return to her own room, and she went with weak limbs and a bruised soul. She was exhausted, but what was more, she felt broken. As though she was no longer the self that she knew, no longer the Abigail that deserved even a morsel of love from those dearest her.
As she moved silently into her little chamber and slipped onto her pallet, hard now in comparison to the bed she had just occupied, but blessedly familiar, she felt the thread of bitterness that had been overshadowed by her mistress’s faith surge to life again, squeezing her being in a vice of affliction.
“Jehovah,” she whispered fiercely into the darkness as the tears flooded her eyes as the Nile did the plains, “why must you submit me to this? What have I done, what have I not done, that I deserve to be used so? Why does your supreme will see fit that your maidservant be forced to such a pass?”
No answer penetrated the darkness, and she had expected none. The Lord did not speak to those too weak to stand up for him. He did not deign to respond to those who obeyed men before him.
But it was he who had placed her in this home. It was he who had given her the face, the figure that had drawn the young master. It was he who instructed his servant’s servants to obey their masters, who gave to men that inescapable right over women.
Unbidden, the story of Lot came into her mind, and the depravity of his city of choice. When the angels, the very messengers of God had visited him and the mobs had come knocking at his door to demand they be turned over for their carnal pleasure, Lot’s response had been quick. “I have two virgin daughters–do with them what you want, but leave these men alone!”
“A noble defense indeed.” Pain hardening into anger, she directed her mutter into her single pillow. “That one would sacrifice one’s daughters was acceptable, even laudable. Certainly, he offered it to the salvation of the heavenly creatures, but what of his daughters? What of your daughters, Lord? Did you create us just to provide for the lusts of man?”
The answer seemed obvious, and the weight of the realization forced her breath out in a sigh. She closed her eyes, ignored the aches coursing through her lower body, and pushed herself resolutely into sleep.
Chapter Ten
Andrew’s fears of one day were not assuaged the next by the circles he saw under Abigail’s eyes. When he entered the kitchen she stood alone, going about her daily chores as absently as ever. But he did not like the exhaustion he saw on her face or the shuttered eyes she turned on him when he entered. It had been many years since she had looked at him with such lack of feeling, many years since he had seen that hollow spot within her. Looking at her now, he knew fear.
“Abigail.” He moved to her side. She did not stop working at his approach, but he interrupted with a finger to lift her chin up, forcing her eyes to follow. He longed to be able to gather her into his arms, to kiss away the worry as he would hopefully soon have the right to do. Instead, he lowered his hand again, slightly reassured when he saw a flicker of familiar warmth in her eyes. “What is wrong, my friend? You look unwell.”