A Lady Under Siege(71)
“I can’t do it,” Betsy complained. With the wheel slipping forward and backward under her, she couldn’t find the courage to let go of the deck rail.
“Maybe I should come over and help you,” Derek suggested. “I did manage to get up on it this morning, but it’s easier over here—my yard is mostly hard-packed dirt, not like your squishy soft lawn. We should really take it out on the pavement.”
Meghan came out onto her deck. She told Derek there was someone at his front door and he should go answer it.
“I’m not expecting anyone, it’s probably Johos or something. Forget it,” he said.
“What’s Johos?” Betsy asked.
“Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Meghan replied. “Derek, it’s not anyone like that, I think it’s important that you go answer your door.”
Catching an odd note of insistence in her voice, Derek gave her a puzzled look. Meghan, first making sure Betsy was preoccupied with her new toy, made a discreet gesture with her eyes that could only mean ‘meet me over there.’
Betsy looked up from the unicycle. “I’ve decided to forgive him,” she said happily.
“Good. You stay here, and for God’s sake put your helmet on before you try to ride that thing.” She headed back into the house. “You hear me? Stay in the back yard.”
DEREK OPENED HIS FRONT door, and Meghan brushed quickly past him, striding to his living room. “I need to talk to Thomas,” she said brusquely.
“I figured as much,” Derek replied. “How’d it go? Did Tom and Sylvanne—”
“Terrible. I shouldn’t have let you put him up to it.”
“What happened? She didn’t kill him, did she?”
“No. He—”
“That’s all right then. No harm no foul, right?”
“There was harm. There was terrible harm. He tried to take her against her will, and he would have done it, except she bit him— and you know what? Good for her, I say. Good for Sylvanne! First time you’ve heard me say that!”
“Calm down, calm down,” Derek urged her. “Where were they, when all this happened?”
“In her bed.”
“And did he drag her there, or did she invite him?”
“She invited him. I know what you’re thinking. She enticed him, yes, that’s right, and then she pulled out the knife, and slashed at him. But did she really try to kill him? I’m not sure. She swung the knife, but it was half-hearted, like she wanted to fail. Like a criminal who wants to get caught. Stop me before I do something evil.”
“I thought you were in her mind. You’re supposed to know exactly what she’s thinking.”
“I am. I was. Sometimes people don’t know what they want. There she was, she had him exactly where she wanted him, like a lamb led to slaughter—and he’d totally dropped his guard, he was just crazed! Obsessed with having her! Worry about a little thing like a knife in the back? Forget it! He was like, I must take you, right now!”
“Then she stabbed him?”
“She grazed him.”
“But drew blood?”
“Yes.”
“Ouch. Must’ve hurt like hell. Probably made him furious. No wonder he tried to force her.”
“The worst of it is he kept saying it was for me, he was trying to please me. But it didn’t please me at all. I felt only her resistance, that she didn’t want it, that she wasn’t ready for it.” She sighed deeply. “Poor thing. She had to listen to him mooning yet again over some bizarre futuristic woman she doesn’t even believe in. That’s what’s preventing her from loving him—he keeps telling her he’s in love with me! She put up such a brave fight—she really ripped a chunk out of his shoulder when she bit him!” Meghan nearly laughed at the thought of it, then turned sombre again. “I feel so sorry for her, so guilty for what I put her through.”
“Don’t make her sound innocent,” Derek countered. “She took the lead. Bringing him to bed was her idea.”
“Yes, but—”
“Up to a point, it all went according to her plan, right?”
Meghan shook her head. “The plan was, they would have sex, and it was going to be consensual—not consensual exactly, but she would allow him. But really that was Mabel’s plan—Sylvanne just couldn’t think of anything better, so she went along, because it did mirror Judith’s story, which her husband had instructed her to follow.”