She had always seen the chance of such a thing happening to her in actual, vivid life as a matter so remote as to not be worth worrying about.
The moment was surreal, almost dreamlike.This unreality allowed Elizabeth, despite the grip of adrenaline and the sweat gathering in her armpits, to wait patiently to strike the earl at the first moment she thought his guard was let down.
Movements that had been practiced to perfection for a few days with that pugilist flickered half remembered through her brain.
The earl laughed as he shut the door behind him.His piercing, handsome, evil blue eyes looked through her.The sneer was one of command.
He’d already slapped a purpling bruise onto her face.But Elizabeth could not feel any pain.
Elizabeth pulled her elbows tighter against herself, in a way that made her feel helpless.She trembled, and made a pretense of looking every direction.The fireplace was next across from the bed, with red embers glowing.Iron poker and scoop.A Chinese style vase with delicate blue veins and accents sat on the marble ledge above the fire, glowing in thin light through the windows.There was a vivid painting of a naked woman with impossibly large breasts sitting atop the waist of an unrobed gentleman, her eyes rolled back in ecstasy as he grabbed her hips.
Her mouth was dry.
Silk hangings surrounded the bed, with its dense pillowed red silk coverlets.
An absent part of Elizabeth’s brain thought this was all very cliché for a rake’s den.
Lachglass leered at her, smiling softly, making his thick lips thicker, and his paunch a bit more prominent.He stepped forward to grab her arms.He squeezed them so tight they hurt.In the moment that he grabbed her, Elizabeth realized she could not drive her knee into his crotch.The angle was wrong, and he was seemingly tensed and ready for her to do that.
The head.
The pugilist’s voice snapped through her mind, in what was a long speech that seemed to take just an instant for her to relive.She felt again the warm summer breeze on her face, the scent of freshly mown hay, the callused hands of the pugilist, the coltish feel of her long legs and arms that the rest of her body had not grown into.The slow speaking voice of the pugilist, as he paused with every few words to make sure she had heard, and the way he repeated himself.
“The head.That skull bone.Thick it is.”He had made her nod.“The skull is thick.You can bang a fellow up neatly if you hit a soft spot with it.The skull.There is power in the neck.Crack it forward, and you can break a man’s nose, or jaw.Just don’t hit him onhisskull.’Cause it’s hard, the skull is.Hit them with your hard parts on their squishy parts.”
Lachglass laughingly pulled her towards him, planning to force his gross mouth against her.
Crack.
A loud crack, and a soft crumpling sound as the nose collapsed.
Elizabeth’s eyes swam as the top of her head cracked against the earl’s face.He released her arms with an inarticulate moan of pain.
Now grabbing his shoulders for leverage, Elizabeth kneed his groin.
Heoofed again, his eyes went wide in pain and then started to water as blood flowed freely from his nose.
Elizabeth stepped back away from the earl.Her eyes flickered to the door.
With an inarticulate grunt, Lachglass snarled at her, and unevenly spread one arm to catch her if she ran past him, as he continued to grotesquely grip his wounded groin with the other.
Her heart pounded.The outside door was still locked.She could run past him.
Elizabeth turned towards the mantelpiece, but because she was frightened in that instant that it would take too long to grab and draw the poker from out of the iron holding rack, she grabbed the out-of-placedly pretty vase from the mantelpiece with one hand.It was heavier than the delicate blue tracery made it look.
Lord Lachglass stumbled towards her.
Driven by all her terror and all her determination to not lose to this horrible creature, she brought it down on his head.
Amidst shards of shattered fine china, Lachglass dropped like a sack of manure.
Elizabeth’s eyes swam.She could not see anything.She panted hard.He wasn’t moving.She was dizzy.
Not moving at all.
What now?
A new fear took her, and Elizabeth knelt down to the earl’s body.She couldn’t see him breathing.There was no sound of air moving in and out, his chest was still.
