CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Adrienne lay on the narrow bed upstairs, turning first to face the wall next to the bed, and then back again, facing the wall just a few feet away. She couldn’t stop the fluttering in her stomach. Her mind raced. Too many thoughts fought for her attention, and she could not concentrate on any of them, her mind swimming with murky, surrealistic images.
Adrienne turned on her side again. Her mind was playing tricks on her. She was dizzy and dazed and could not focus. The walls of her narrow room pushed in on her, as if she were caught in a vise. It reminded her of the time when she was six years old and had the chicken pox. Her fever had gone dangerously high. She remembered the way the room receded and then grew large again, making her dizzy. Just how much poison had she ingested? She wished she knew more about it, knew of some way to counteract the effects of whatever this drug was.
Adrienne turned over again, her eyes searching the darkness of the room. The sounds of life below her had stopped. The castle was quiet. The grandfather clock in the ballroom below her pounded out twelve strokes. They reverberated through the floor. Tomorrow. She was leaving tomorrow. She chanted it in her head like a mantra, like a prayer. Tomorrow. She was leaving tomorrow. If she didn’t die tonight from the poison, if her body could fight off the effects for just a few more hours, she would be gone.
She rolled onto her back and lay staring at the ceiling. She let out one long breath, trying to quiet her racing mind and queasy stomach. Mice ran along the rafters in the roof above her. She could hear them scratching and chewing somewhere over her head. She watched as the ceiling started playing tricks on her. One corner of the room stretched away from her, as if the room had grown to ten times its normal size. Her breath caught; her stomach clenched with the flutterings of panic. She kept her eyes on the corner of the ceiling, cringed as it began to grow larger and larger, before moving back toward her as if the room were shrinking.
The sound slipped under the door and into her consciousness, as imperceptible as a feather falling. Something, someone, was outside her room, moving quietly in the dark. She strained her ears, wondering if her mind had failed her completely. Was the poison making her imagine things? She wondered if she could trust any of her own perceptions right now. But no, there was the sound again, closer. She heard footsteps, soft and deliberate, on the back stairs. The sound was on the servants’ stairs: the ones only Adrienne and the nuns from Montcalme ever used. She stared into the dark, waiting. Her body focused and tensed toward the sound. Listening.
The footsteps reached the fourth floor, moved tentatively down the hallway toward Adrienne’s door. Adrienne scanned the dark. Marie. Come to find out if the poison had worked or if she would have to use more. Or would she try something more serious? Had she, like Adrienne, been dreaming of ways to commit murder? Ways to rid herself of her troublesome niece?
She heard the door to the room push inward, just a breath of sound as it moved against the floor. Adrienne closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.
The footsteps moved forward, slow, conscious, steps that skimmed carefully in the dark, barely brushing across the floor. Adrienne felt a pressure on the mattress next to her, felt the warmth of another person sitting next to her on the bed. She heard breathing. She forced herself to breathe, forced the slow, unhurried breaths of a sleeper. She felt her eyelids flutter, willed them to stay still.
Someone slipped off the mattress to the floor and knelt beside the bed. Cold fingers reached under the covers and brushed against her arm. Adrienne pictured the syringe, could almost feel the sting of the needle in her vein, poison pushing into her bloodstream, rushing its way toward her heart.
The hand moved away from her arm. Long, slender fingers lingered on her breasts, moving slowly toward her belly, and between her legs.
Adrienne’s eyes shot open; she jerked. She tried to sit up.
“Adrienne,” Julien whispered. “You’re awake.”
She gasped. He moved up from the floor and perched on the side of the bed, his hip next to hers. His hand pressed against her shoulder, pushing her back against the mattress.
“I saw you,” he murmured into the dark. “Tonight. Watching me. Staring at me.” The lids of his eyes drooped, heavy and curved. His breath smelled of wine, and beneath that, brandy. “I’ve seen you watching me, for a while now. You watch me from the windows.” His eyes held that feverish gleam that she had seen before—that same feverish gleam she had noticed when Eliza Creighton had come to visit. “The windows in my room.” He smiled, his breath a puff of amusement. “I know exactly what you’re doing. I know exactly what you want.”
He shoved her shoulder down and leaned toward her face. His breath was sour. Adrienne started to squirm, tried to tear away from the force that bore down on her. He brought his other hand up and clamped it over her mouth. His eyes glowed, fire sparkling in their dark depths. She fought as hard as she could, terrified that he was there to kill her, to silence her forever.
With one hand, he continued to hold Adrienne’s mouth shut, his arm stretching across her body with a strength that seemed far beyond his size, his infirmity. He pushed her into the thin, hard mattress. Adrienne squirmed harder. She raised her back, trying to force him up. She kicked against the mattress, the covers flying up.
Julien brought his right hand back and slapped her, hard, on the side of the head. “Hold still,” he hissed. Adrienne stopped moving. Her head throbbed with pain; for a moment, her vision blurred.
He fumbled with his pajama bottoms with one hand, the other still clamped on Adrienne’s mouth. He pulled the covers back, yanked her gown up, and pushed himself on top of her. She writhed and fought, but he held her tightly and fought harder, forcing her legs apart with his knee. When he thrust himself inside, she gasped. Her back arched. The pain shot up through her spine, straight to her eyes. They smarted and stung.
“Ah!” she gasped, her mouth growing hot and wet inside his palm. She tried to fight him with her free arm, and he drove into her harder. Her blood pulsed, her pelvis throbbed with a red-hot light, like holding a hand over the flame. She felt as if she might faint.
He gasped, moved again, his breath coming out in ragged, sour puffs right over her face. His eyes were closed; he drove into her again and again and again with an angry force.
Tears escaped, running down the sides of her face and onto the pillow. She wanted to cry, wanted to scream, but his hand held her tight, squeezed against her lips, forced her head against the pillow. His elbow trapped her hair. Every time he moved, it pulled against her scalp. She stopped moving, stopped trying to fight. Every motion sent her reeling, a throbbing, aching, burning pressure against her limbs, her back, her pelvis.
Julien moaned, fell on her, his body knocking the wind out of her. He lay there, his body heavy against her. He panted. Adrienne felt tears running from her eyes, pooling in her hair.
He took his hand away from her mouth and rolled off of her. He smiled, his teeth bright in the dim light. He stood, straightened his nightclothes, and looked down. She stared at him through her tears, this man who could be so brutal. Her thighs burned. Her insides screamed with a white-hot pain. She felt wet, sticky, and dirty, like during her monthly.
“I’ve been watching you, Adrienne. Watching you, watching me. Keeping an eye on me. You can hardly keep your hands off of me, can you?” He humphed into the air. “I knew it. I knew you wanted it. That glow . . . that stare . . .” He turned and ran his hand over her breast. He smiled again, into the dark. “Anytime, my dear. Anytime at all.” He turned and moved softly to the door.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered, his hands on the door. “I won’t tell my mother what a little whore you are.”
She heard him turn the key in the lock.