Letters to Juliet

Chapter 20

(Author's note : Please forgive my poor English. It's not my mother tongue)

Candy was frozen and she hasted her pace toward her bedroom. Looking over the banister, she saw Terry talking with Mrs Hugues and thought that they were discussing about Cookie. The scene that the Duchess of Grandchester had made earlier had precipitated things and separated in a flash her poor friend from them. It wasn't so much the forced bath he had been subject to that worried her, but his fall as he tried to get up from his wheelchair.

- What an idea, getting up with a tibia fracture! - she thought, disapprovingly shaking her head.

Once again, Cookie had just proved how daredevil he was! As he was less and less suffering injuries thanks to the pretty Lucille's attentive care, she suspected him to have wings on his heels, wings that had royally broken on the soaked ground of the Grandchesters. Hopefully, he'll only have to deal with some bruises, it was at least all the bad she hoped for him. Anyhow, she had planned to go and see him before joining the guests. She would not have her mind at ease until she knows more about his state.

She turned the door handle and entered her bedroom into which darkness was creeping. Few minutes of quietness after such an animated day wouldn't hurt her!... Her wet dress sticked to her skin and she hastily made roll the straps of it along her shoulders. The dress fell down, leaving her with her underwear. The wind was gusting against the window and she shivered. She went to the bathroom and pulled the switch. The lamp above her crackled, lighting up the room with intermittent glows at the pace of the moaning sighs of the wind that infiltrated under the skirting boards in spite of the thickness of the walls. She heard then a clicking in the lock of her bedroom's door. It was probably the maid that was preparing her new gown... Reassured, she made slide the shower curtain, and was about to fully get undressed when two caressing hands laid themselves on her waist, pulling her backwards.

- Terry! - she said, chuckling of surprise â€" Come on, this is not the time...

As an answer, some lips brushed her shoulders, then gluttonously sticked to her skin. She moaned, tilting her head backward, then tensed up immediately by the unforgettable smell of alcohol that penetrated her nostrils, that smell she had been subject to all afternoon at each approach of … Rudolph!She sharply turned around, stepping back, horrified, her shaking body banging against the bathtub edge.

- Rudolph! What... What are you doing here? - She said in a toneless voice.

He was standing in front of her, eager-eyed and panting.

- You've enticed me all day, scamp, with your winks and smiles...

- Not on your life! How can you imagine this? Have you lost your mind?

- Indeed! - he exclaimed, grabbing her by her shoulders â€" You're driving me crazy! And I know that you desire me as much as I do, don't you?...

- Leave me alone! Help! Terryyyyyyyy ! - she yelled, struggling. But she quickly realized that Terry neither anybody else couldn't hear her because of the deafening wind that was shaking the whole castle. Her heart was beating loudly! She was so afraid that all her members were getting paralyzed and losing their vigor. She was at his mercy, in this cramped space that did not give any chance to escape!

Rudolph seized her and pulled her against him, searching her mouth, his whisky-filled breath spreading on her face. His powerful hands imprisoned hers. He was strong, stronger she had ever imagined! Firmly clasping her with his arm, his other hand wandered on every part of her body, pressing on them with hurry while he let escape little shouts of excitement. She was terrorized! Then he seized her face and forced her mouth, his rasping tongue looking for hers and ending over her cheeks with a viscous trickle of saliva. She screamed but her cry immediately died under the gluttonous lips of her assaulter, half suffocating her. He finally moved away with a sigh of satisfaction. She tilted her head to the side, out of air, feeling nausea growing in her throat and the bitterness of bile invading her mouth. She looked up and saw him smiling at her with one of these proud and satisfied smiles that she had so often seen appearing on another young man's face, whose features, though different, suddenly looked very similar to... Niel's! For a brief moment, she saw herself in this old mansion with him blocking the path, and this feeling of danger, of violence that she was about to live. She had escaped from it, terrified and unable later, to talk about it to anybody. Only Albert then Terry had been let into the secret but she had softened her tale for not throwing them into a panic. It was a wound she did not feel brave enough to share...