Page 93 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

It took her a moment to realize that the nightie was bunched around her neck too, above her breasts. Her skin was damp with cold sweat, a sheen of mountain night. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, somehow watery and dark all at once. It was as if she could see the pain in her head, massive and overpowering, radiating forward from the back.

And then she realized her panties were gone.

"Hello,Fanny," Wickham said.The edge of the world.That tone of voice.

She heard him but could not see him. He was close, near her feet but standing. She blinked back the pain, trying again to clear her vision, and she thought she could see him, a silhouette looming above her, the darkest thing in the dark.

He had dragged her from beneath the trees into the faint moonlight.My burning back.He wanted toseeher as much as he could. Lizzy heard nothing but Wickham's voice, his heavy breathing. The firefight she had been running to had ended.

Karen!

The thin remainder of the waning moon above her seemed a portent. She could see him now a bit better, the gun in his hand, heavy and long-barreled. She tried to move, but her body seemed distant from her will, unresponsive. She could feel, sense, experience—but not act. He bent and put the gun on the ground by his feet. When he stood back up, he unzipped his pants.

"I wanted you to do this willingly and then to regret it and have to live with that regret—but you were neverher,were you,Fanny?” He reached into his pants and produced his erection, which took the place of the gun he had been holding on her. He stroked himself a couple of times as he spoke. "I told you what was coming, whoever you are." His voice was supersaturated with cruel desire, desire for cruelty.

A second later, he was on top of her. She could not move before, but now it was impossible. His full weight bore down on her, pressing her against the rocky ground beneath her. She felt his hand slip between her legs.

He's touching me in that tone of voice.

The final act in the theater of the real.

Final curtain.

"It's a shame," he whispered regretfully in her ear, his breath hot, infernal. "I'd have so enjoyed youwet."

Tears ran from Lizzy's eyes. Wickham's hand moved from between her legs to her throat and joined his other there. He began to squeeze as she felt him move his body, positioning himself to violate her. She shut her eyes and held Fitzwilliam in her mind, trying not to acknowledge what was about to happen, trying to imagine that she had yielded to Fitzwilliam when he visited her in her bedroom, that she had abandoned this mission when she had the chance.

"Look at me, you little bitch," Wickham said, squeezing her throat tighter.

She opened her eyes. She could see the leer on his face, the pride of possession, revenge. He moved his hips again, trying to align himself with her but finding it hard to do with both hands occupied. It was horrifying and ludicrous.

"Never easy, are you, Fanny?" He moved again, using his death grip on her throat to lift his upper body, and she felt him touch her there, down there, not with his hands, ready but not yet inside her. More tears. Her vision blurred again.

And then she heard sounds, loud sounds.

It took her a moment to recognize them.Gunshots. Wickham's head snapped up as if he heard them, too. But when he faced her again, his forehead was different—black. For a moment, his hands were still tight around her throat, and then they relaxed and he slumped forward on top of her.

Dead weight. She felt his hot blood wet on her face, in her hair.

His forehead wasn't black, it wasred...

"Lizzy…!" She heard Fitzwilliam’s voice from the other edge of the world, or she thought she did…

It might have been a dream, infinite but infinitesimal, a hazy prelude to another forfeit of consciousness…

Chapter Twenty-Three: Vitamin T

When one is pretending, the entire body revolts.

—Anais Nin

Freedom is the harmony of the inner life with truth.

—Walter Jackson Bate

Tuesday, October 27

White. A blinding white, whiter than any bleach could whiten it.

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