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“He - he lusts after me only,” he heard Marion gasp. “He doesn’t love me.”
“Oh, I’ve seen his face,” Simon heard her father jeer, “and he’s not had his fill of you yet, whether it’s lust or love he feels.”
Simon heard Marion gasp again at her release. He heard a few steps on the floorboards and turned silently into the room. The man’s back was facing him, completely unguarded, fixated as he was on Marion on the floor. Her skirt was rucked up from the fall, revealing her blue stockings underneath. Her father was looking down at her with a sickening mix of admiration and sadism.
Marion had her eyes closed as if bracing herself for another blow. With a wave of fury, Simon saw the blood trickling down her forehead and matting her hair, the dark bruising at her temple.
“I must say,” the man said lasciviously, “I have to congratulate you on using all your…assets to achieve such a meteoric social climb. You’ve done very well for yourself, haven’t you?”
Simon took his chance. He lifted his cane and swung it at the back of the man’s head with all the spitting rage he had stored up.
“She has indeed,” Simon said grimly.
* * *
Her head was pounding. The cut on her forehead stung from where the hammer of the gun had snagged her skin. Her stomach was rolling as her insides tried to understand what had happened when her father’s hard boot had met her soft body. Her scalp was stinging, small hairs pulled from the root from where she had been dragged. Her cheek burned with the ringing slap she had been given. Marion had never known pain like this. She felt as if her father was trying to stomp the spirit out of her, make her weak and submissive, and she was starting to feel like it might be working.
All she wanted to do was lie down and sleep, but her father was standing over her, mocking her once again. Marion was getting dizzy; she couldn’t really focus on the words he was saying. She closed her eyes, hoping simply to endure. She took out a slow, deep breath, ready for whatever came next. She felt a sudden surge of sadness for Simon. He was going to be widowed twice. At least it wouldn’t hurt him as much the second time around. At least this time, it would only be a woman that he liked, rather than one he had given his heart to.
Simon, if this is the end, please know I loved you.Marion waited for a blow that never came. She heard another voice above her, a different one, and opened her eyes. Simon.
For a moment, she thought she was dreaming. That the pain of her body had twisted her mind so that she saw her fantasies brought to life with astonishing vitality. Simon stood in the room, his treacle-dark hair matted against his forehead, his body taut with vigour and fury, his eyes blazing with justice.
This is a good dream,Marion thought, a little dazed. Then she saw her father falling to the floor, heard his angry screech. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m your son-in-law, sir,” Simon spat, bringing his cane smashing down on her father’s back again. One, two, three, four times.
This is a very good dream,Marion thought deliriously, wondering if she was actually dying right now and this was her brain happily trying to give her a happy ending. Then, suddenly, she felt a very real hand on her arm. She squirmed away from it, twisting, not wanting to be touched by her father again. Then she realised the hand on her arm was gentle, kind, and was attached to a long, muscular arm. Simon’s arm.
“Marion,” his voice broke through her hazy consciousness. He was looking down at her with a swirling grey mixture of sadness, worry, and anger in his eyes. “Marion can you hear me?”
“You’re here,” Marion whispered, her hand grasping his tightly. Despite the pain radiating through every part of her body and the tears pouring down her cheeks, she was filled with relief. “You’re actually here.”
“Of course,” Simon smiled tightly, though his eyes were still filled with rage and hurt. “Of course I am.”
Marion held on tight as he drew her to him, gathering her up along the floor and crushing her face into his chest so hard she could barely breathe. She held on, every second of his touch giving her life, her tears soaking into his shirt. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw something move. Her father’s hand, twitching, pulling out his pistol from his jacket, rolling onto his back and preparing to fire directly at Simon’s head.
“No!” Marion screamed, pulling Simon down to the floor with her, hearing her father curse behind her. “The gun, Simon!”
“Stay down!” Simon hissed, rolling away from Marion’s body to kick the gun out of her father’s hand. “You bloody rogue! You’d shoot a man in the back?”
“I’d shoot anyone who tried to kill me,” her father snarled, scrambling up and aiming a kick at Simon, who doubled over.
“You’d shoot your own daughter? You filthy bastard,” Simon growled, throwing himself at Ted to keep him away from Marion, the two men scrambling and brawling together on the floor. Dazed and confused, Marion saw a glint of metal in the corner of the room. It was the pistol. Before she knew what she was doing, she had crawled across the floor and seized it with both hands, pulling the hammer back with a wrenching click.
“Move, Simon!” she heard herself command, and Simon, glancing over his shoulder, quickly pushed himself away. Marion pointed the barrel and squeezed the trigger, shooting her own father in the leg.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“God dammit!” the man howled, rolling onto his side, clutching his thigh where a large bloodstain was beginning to spread. “You little whore!”
“You shut your mouth,” Simon growled, pressing his cane against her father’s wound so that he howled again. Simon couldn’t help but wish his wife had shot him in the chest and he was watching him bleed out on the floor, never able to harm anyone again. “The constable will be here any moment, and you will likely go to the noose. Though I have to say, I am tempted to carry out the sentence here.”
“Don’t, Simon, he’s not worth it.”
Simon left his cane pressing hard against the older man’s sternum, preventing him from getting up, but turned to look at his wife. Marion was standing a few feet away from them, the gun still held in her hands, still pointed at her father as if she didn’t trust herself to stop or him not to make a break for escape, even wounded as he was. Simon’s heart swelled with pride and pain to look at her. She was astonishing.
Marion’s gown was torn at the shoulder, revealing her naked shoulder bone and clavicle. The skin around her neck was flushed and bruised from tussles with her father. Her hair was wild and loose, half tumbling out of its pins, her bonnet lost. Her face on one side was red and bloody, and crimson blood dripped onto her bosom, staining the front of her dress. She looked like a woman who had gone through a war, but her eyes still glittered with danger and fury, tears coursing silently down her cheeks. Despite the roughness and brutality of her appearance, evidencing all the pain she had suffered that day, she still took Simon’s breath away. She wasn’t pretty or soft, like a springtime flower; she was hard and glorious, like a perfectly cut ruby.
