“Have I asked? No. So let’s forget about it. Do you feel like seeing some more of the house? Been in the family for ages, you know.” He tipped the glass to his mouth. Emptied it.
And then he looked at her, and there was something in his eyes, or behind his eyes, somehow, that set every nerve in her body jangling with apprehension. His easy friendliness of their earlier meetings was gone, and in its stead was a sort of avid, predatory watchfulness.
“I’m not feeling all that well,” she protested. “I think it might be best if I went home.”
“Don’t be such a wet blanket. Finish that sherry, and let me show you this house. How often does a girl like you get a peek inside a place like this?”
He’d taken her coat when they came in, but she still had her bag. The front door was only yards away. But would it be locked? And surely he didn’t mean to hurt her. He’d think her mad if she suddenly ran across the room and started clawing at the front door.
“Come on,” he said, and took her hand in his. He led her to the stairs, wide and carpeted, and she was surprised by how gritty the banister felt under her free hand. As if no one had wiped it down in months and months.
They reached the top of the stairs. “There’s another drawing room at the very front,” he explained, “and several guest rooms along the hall. At the back are my parents’ bedrooms. You’ll like my mother’s room. She had it done up by some poncy decorator just before the war.”
He hadn’t let go of her hand, so she had no choice but to follow him. He opened the door, swore under his breath when the overhead light failed to come on, and went over to the mantel, still dragging her along, and switched on the lamp there.
It was hard to make out much, for the light wasn’t especially strong, but she could see pink and silver everywhere: the carpet, the draperies, the upholstery on the occasional chairs and settee by the hearth. Even the bedcover was made of pink-and-silver brocade.
“What do you think?” he asked, and she realized he had let go of her hand. He’d gone over to the windows and was pulling back the draperies. Now was the time for her to go—just run. Run.
But then he was at her side again, his hand combing through her hair, and she was too frightened to move. “It’s very pretty,” she lied.
The room, and the house, had once been pretty, but now they felt and smelled as if they were rotting away. Armies of mice and silverfish and woodworm were nibbling away at his house, and Jeremy didn’t seem to notice or care.
“My mother hasn’t been here in years. She and my father never come in from the country. They live their lives, and I live mine, and they don’t care that it’s all gone. That my inheritance is nothing but this moldering heap and mountains of debt. I’ll never be free of it. And now I’m almost out of time.”
He twisted her hair in his fingers, winding it tight, so tight she couldn’t move her head. “You are very pretty, you know.”
He began to kiss her, and his mouth was a little too hard against hers, his fingers pressing a fraction too tightly against the soft skin of her arm, and he didn’t seem to notice, or care, that he was pulling her hair.
It was the first time he had kissed her and she didn’t like anything about it. “Jeremy,” she said. “Please stop.”
His hand moved from her arm to her breast, kneading, pawing, and one of his fingernails scraped against the soft skin just above her brassiere. She flinched, and he laughed softly.
“Were you expecting hearts and flowers? Stupid, silly girl.”
“I wasn’t expecting anything. I’d like to go downstairs now.”
“Why did you think I brought you here, if not for this?”
“You said you wanted to show me the house, and now I’ve seen it and I’d like to go home.”
“Stupid, silly girl,” he repeated, and he pulled at her hair so sharply that tears came to her eyes. He might do anything to her now, for they were alone in the house. She was alone and she had gone into this bedroom with him willingly, or at least that was how anyone else would see it.
He propelled her backward, one stumbling step after another, and then the back of her knees hit something. It was the bed, the bed, and he pushed her back, finally letting go of her hair, but only so he might pull at her skirt, higher and higher, oblivious to her slapping hands. The same fingernail that had caught at her breast before now tore one of her stockings. It laddered, splintering, and he laughed, a cold, sharp heh that killed the last of her hope.