She pushed herself into a standing position and staggered across the room. Mary felt disoriented and dizzy as she moved through the house like she did not really know what she was doing, but she kept on going. She forced her feet to keep on moving with the thought of Charlotte and her unborn baby at the forefront of her mind. Now that she did not have a plan to save them both, she needed to at least try to prevent the constant arguing from escalating. Everything about her was shaking, even her insides vibrated against her ribcage. The sheer terror was so intense now, and that only grew the louder the screaming got, the nearer she got to the danger.
“... you do not dare behave like that in public again,” Lord Jones yelled as he towered over Charlotte who had fallen to the floor in a heap in her fancy dress which now looked torn and dishevelled. Mary did not know what had happened before this moment, but she could hazard a guess. He had been forceful with his hands again, leaving her with fresh bruises to hide. Surely whatever he thought that Charlotte had done, it was not bad enough to deserve this? Her sister was meek and quiet around him; she was like a shell of herself. There was no way that she could have done something terrible. “I will not have it.”
“But ... but I did not ...” Charlotte sobbed. It seemed that she was not even sure what she had done wrong, but there probably was not anything to be honest. It did not take Lord Jones much to snap anymore. “I do not ...”
“Stop,” Mary rasped loudly, trying not to sound like a broken woman as she did. She needed some of that inner strength that she had been so proud of before, but it had deserted her. “Stop it, this is not right. Please, leave Charlotte alone ...”
On hearing her voice, Lord Jones span and glared at Mary as if she were the sole source of his anger. He almost seemed to forget about his wife on the floor as he discovered someone new to absorb his temper. His nostrils flared, and his eyes flashed with rage as he stared at her as if she was the Devil. “Are you still here?” he snarled as he took a step closer with his fists curling around until his knuckles turned a funny shade of white. “I cannot believe that my wife allowed you into my home. The ruined Roberts sister, affecting my reputation with her own.”
Mary felt scared. Genuinely frightened, even more so than before. She felt it consume her and swallow her whole, leaving her a shuddering wreck. Much as she was glad to help Charlotte, she could not help thinking that this might well have been a big mistake. She took a step backwards as sheer terror consumed her. There was something in the way that Lord Jones was looking at her that made her feel as small as an ant. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t want to cause ... this.”
“This?” Lord Jones yelled as his arms flailed in front of him. His cheeks were redder than any human’s that Mary had ever seen before. How did Charlotte stand this? It was utterly insane. “This? You mean my marriage, which by the way is absolutely nothing to do with you I might like to add. I do not want to ever hear you speak about my marriage.”
“I did not ... I did not mean ...”
“What? You did not mean to cause offence? Well, you have done ...”
The words dragged Mary’s sister out of her daze of confusion. Charlotte’s vision had returned now after the whack she had received earlier, and she could see her husband looming down towards her sister with that same terrible glint in his eye that he had when he came at her. She could not take this; he had already taken things way too far, and she could not allow him to go after Mary. That would be the absolute worst thing ever and also entirely her fault. She did not think that he would ever do this to someone else. If so, she would have done something much sooner to put a stop to it.
I should have kept them separate, she thought as she blinked rapidly. I should never have let Mary come into my home. Maybe none of this would have happened; maybe she would even still be at home. She would not have lost her inheritance and kept her mouth shut.
Despite the fact that she was a very quiet person these days, her husband was always telling her off for her mouth, just as he was today. She was not totally sure what she had done, but maybe he was right. Maybe if she had not mentioned that things were difficult to Mary, then none of this would have happened.
But there was no point in getting lost in past mistakes. Not when the effects of those mistakes were happening right now in front of her. What she needed to do was finally take action, to stand up to the man who had terrorised her life. She needed to do this for herself, for her sister, and for her baby too. If her husband was willing to go at Mary like that, then it was likely that he would not treat their baby well either. She had held onto the wish that he would at least be a good father, even if he were a terrible husband, but it seemed that dream was vanishing as well.
“Stop,” she panted out as her tight chest tried its best to get some air in. It was almost as if she had something wrapped around her insides, refusing to let her breathe properly. “Stop it now.”
She staggered over to him, tackling his rage head on for the very first time in their turbulent marriage. It had never been so bad before. Things had never been so violent. There had been intense rage and the odd outburst that resulted in her getting hurt, but nothing like this. This was on another scale.
“Please, let us just talk. We need to talk ...”
Charlotte could not even finish her sentence because Lord Jones smacked his hand backwards without even looking at her and hit her in the face again. Because she was already hurt, it did not take long to knock her to the ground again. Her body fell backwards without her permission, making Charlotte feel more out of control than she ever had done before. It was awful. Even as her arms flailed around trying to grab onto something, she knew that she would find nothing. It was taken out of her hands now, and she just had to go. She hit her head so hard as her body finally reached the floor that the blackness came for her rapidly. Charlotte knew that she needed to keep her wits about her to stop this from escalating, but she could not. Her eyes fell closed, and she shut the world out completely.
“Stop!” Mary screamed, repeating what the girls had been saying to Lord Jones ever since this whole rampage started. Despite hitting his wife again, he was still coming for her, but Mary really needed him to stop this time and not just for herself. She knew that he wanted to hit her which, of course, she wanted to avoid, but this was not about her. “Charlotte is hurt.”
With an unexpected burst of strength, she shoved Lord Jones out the way and flew past him. There was an ice-cold sensation deep in her stomach that something was wrong, really wrong, and she needed to address that. Mary could not stand it; this was not what she had wanted at all. When she came to intervene, she hoped to make it better, not worse, just as Charlotte had warned her that she would.
I should have listened, she thought desperately. I never should have gone against her wishes.