‘Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid, Lill! I will go to him, make him leave you alone. He will never bother you again, I promise!’
There was a lump in my throat. Oh dear God. Was this really happening? My little sister Ella, sweet, innocent, shy little Ella was willing to face down a dastardly rake for my sake? She had hidden emergency reserves of courage that she had tapped now, for my sake, to protect me from the villain that was dragging me into a cesspool of iniquity. Never mind that the villain only existed in her imagination - this was touching.
She truly was the best sister one could wish for.
Yes, she is, but maybe she could stop this infernal rocking!
Very true. The motion made me feel woozy all over again, and once more, stars started dancing in front of my eyes. Ella’s voice seemed to be coming from a distance now…
‘Who is he? Oh Lill, please tell me. Who is the man? I know it may be hard for you to concentrate right now, but you really need to tell me. Can you tell me anything? What he looks like? His name?’
‘Napoleon…’
‘Napoleon? Dear Lord, he is a Frenchman? No wonder you’re in such a state! Did he touch you? Did he hurt you? Lill, you poor thing, do you remember his last name?’
‘Bonaparte,’ I mumbled, gazing at the stars dancing across my bedroom ceiling. ‘You know, the Emperor? The little chap with the funny hat and the hand glued to the inside of his jacket.’
‘Merciful God, Lill, you’re hallucinating!’
‘Am not!’ I protested. ‘He was there! He was! Ask the little piggies if you don't believe me.’
‘Lill?’
My head slumped to the side. The world around me shrank until all I could see was Ella’s anxious face.
‘Lill, stay with me!’
Now there was only the anxious tip of her anxious nose, surrounded by darkness.
‘Lill!’
And then there was nothing.
Unreal Dream of a Really Wonderful Nightmare
I woke in a torture chamber that bore significant resemblance to my bedroom. It couldn’t really be my bedroom, though. In my bedroom, my head was never filled with such agonizing pain, nor did my tongue dare to feel so much like an inflated badger’s tail in my private sanctum.
This was a torture chamber. Now, I only had to wait for the torturers to arrive, and the fun could begin.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited a little longer.
The badger who had substituted his tail for my tongue wiggled his behind, and I groaned as pain lanced through my head. Desperately, I tried to think of any ways I had ever learned to make badger tails vanish from one’s mouth. None came to mind.
I waited some more.
Slowly, the piercing pain in my head began to recede a little. As it did, memories of the previous night started to trickle back into my consciousness.
The drive to the East End… Dear me, had I really visited that horrible part of the city? It seemed so, the images were there all right, if a little bit jumbled. The dirty pub… the old sailor… the fight… by Jove, a real gunfight! Pity I didn’t have a nice, daring scar to show for it that would put any suitors off for the rest of my life. The drive back to Empire House in the dark… the office… the kiss…
My mind froze in mid-thought.
Wait just a minute!
The kiss?
I sat bolt upright, and regretted it immediately as a searing surge of pain shot through my skull. Clamping both hands on my eyes in an attempt to shut out the world, I pushed the pain aside and grasped desperately for the vague images of last night. No! Dear God, no…!
My hands slipped from my eyes, over my face, down to my parted lips. I was sure they had to be hideously swollen, about twice their normal size. Nothing less than such a gruesome disfigurement would do as a punishment for forsaking all my feminist principles and giving myself, even if just for a moment, willingly over to a man.
Shivering, I remembered Mr Ambrose’s mouth on me… The memory was demanding and gentle, cold and fierce all at the same time. It had been like nothing I had ever felt before.
In a totally disgusting way, of course, I reminded myself!
Ha! As if having Mr Ambrose kiss me could ever excite any feelings other than horror in me. It really had been horrifically horribly terrible, the way his lips had caressed mine, had asked me to open up, to give myself to him and just for a moment forget my aims, my dreams, the world and everything else for the sake of a hot feeling in the pit of my stomach that had rapidly grown into a firestorm. His arms around me had been like iron vices, his eyes dark as the deepest wells, and full of secrets I couldn’t hope to fathom. The fire that spread through my body seemed to be drawn to them, to him, out of my body into his, heating us and moulding us together in a silent cyclone of feelings.
I realized I was staring dreamily off into the distance, and hurriedly snapped my thoughts back on the here and now, where they belonged.
As you said before, I reminded myself once more. Frightfully disgusting and horribly terrible! That’s what it was like. Definitely. Absolutely.
My hands were clenching the sheets in a steely grip, and only now did I realize that they were shaking. How could I have let myself go like this? How could I have let go of every cherished principle of female independence for the sake of a few seconds of hot, immensely blissful…
No, not blissful, I corrected myself hurriedly, awful! Awful, understood? Awful!
How could I have forgotten myself like this, just for a few seconds of immensely awful kissing in the arms of a man?
Not just any man, mind, but Mr Rikkard Ambrose! The man who had humiliated me, who had made my life hell for the past few weeks, the man who was determined to get rid of me.
But… wasn’t he also the man who had let me stay because he had given his word, even though he didn’t like it? The man who had given me a job when nobody else would have? The man who had brought adventure and independence into my life? The man whose kiss roused feelings in me that had never, ever before…
No! Stop it!
I had to stop right there. If I sank into those memories again, I would start thinking thoughts I wouldn’t like… or rather would like too damn much… and would despise… and desire… oh, this was all so confusing!
Grabbing the pillow on the bed that most resembled Mr Ambrose’s head, I drew back my arm and gave it a good right hook. Unfortunately, the pillow didn’t have a great resemblance to the original. I knew, because if it hadn’t been before last night, now his chiselled face was branded into my mind forever.
No surprise, considering the lengthy opportunity I had had to study it at close quarters. Once more, the scene from last night flashed in front of my eyes: he swooping down towards me, pressing his lips on mine, hard, demanding, so incredibly…
Blast him!
How dare he! How dare he want me? And how dare I not want him to not want me?
Dash it all!
I had to face the facts.
It had really happened. Mr Ambrose had kissed me, kissed me passionately. I remembered it distinctly.
I sank forward onto the bed. This was probably the time when I should have started to cry in shame, like a good little lady. Ella probably would have. Personally, I thought my head still hurt too much to make the effort, but I punched the Mr-Ambrose-pillow a few more times for good measure.
Blast, blast, blast!
Was there no way it could not have happened? No way I could get out from under the weight of this horrible catastrophe, and could have imagined the whole thing?
No. I distinctly remembered it.
But then… I also remembered Napoleon playing chess in the powder room and a dance troupe of little yellow piggies. Maybe my memories of last night weren’t quite as reliable as I had thought. A ray of hope broke through the darkness of despair around me.
Please, I prayed. Please let them be unreliable, please!
Calm down, I told myself. You have to think about it logically.