A Victorian Virgin? Ch. 04

"What did she say to you?"

"She called me whore. She read the letter and she-"

"I'm sorry I sent it."

"She shouldn't have been reading it. He shouldn't have been looking for it."

"He?"

"Her husband. I'm sure he saw me hide the letter. He would have pulled it out, read it and given it to Charlotte, anything to get me in trouble."

"Why would he do that?"

"He hates me and I hate him."

"Why?"

"Because he resents that Charlotte and I had a better life before he came along. He's trained it out of Charlotte, so that she settles for that cheap accommodation, shabby furniture and clothes. She even talks differently when she's around him. It's horrid."

"Do you think he's really like that?"

"Yes. He's horrible."

"Because he was born in less austere circumstance to you?"

"No."

"It seems to me that you're the one with the resentment against him, rather than the reciprocal."

"That's not true- I-"

"You don't like him because he's poor and he makes your sister happy, more happy than anybody has ever made you and more happy than your family ever made your sister. You hate Sam Morpeth, not because of anything he has ever done to you, but because of what he is. That is why you said whatever you said to Charlotte. You wanted to break the happiness she seemed to have, because you did not have it."

"No- Why are you saying these things? I told you I feel guilty-"

"If you do, that is why."

"Why are you being so nasty to me?"

"It's the truth."

"What rights have you to speak to me like this? How dare you?"

"Victoria, please."

"You're supposed to make me feel better, not worse!"

"I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to come out like that."

"How was it supposed to come out?"

Ned touched the cold fists that were held defensively in front of the woman's body. In the flickering candlelight, he could see that they were pale and mottled with sluggish circulation. He reached further up her forearm, inside the loose sleeve of her nightshirt. The skin got no warmer; instead, he felt the tiny muscles beneath the skin erecting the hairs in response to the cold. "God, you're like ice. Have you been lying here in the cold for all this time?"

"What are you doing?" Victoria snapped, pulling her arm away. She wrapped her shawl more tightly over her body so that the only part visible above her hips was her face, the only thing below, the expanse of white nightshirt. She felt his hand brush her bruised, vulnerable face and jerked her head back.

"It's freezing in here. You don't even have a fireplace-"

"There's one in the kitchen for everybody to use."

"Have you got a warming pan?"

"Where am I supposed to get one of those?"

"What about stockings, are you wearing any?"

"Of course I am." She felt his hands run up her clothed thigh and flinched. "Don't do that."

Ned's hands retracted. "Have you any more stockings?"

"Yes," Victoria said, suspiciously.

"Where are they?"

"In the chest."

He quickly fumbled through the drawers, causing the candle seated on top to rattle, the cast light shaky. His hands returned with a pair of woolen socks. "Why aren't you wearing these?"

"I've already got stockings on," she protested as he motioned her toward the bed. "What are you doing?"

"Sit down." His hands pressured her to do so and she did, reluctantly. He knelt before her and took one of her feet in his hands, rubbing it vigorously through the cotton of her stocking. "Rub your arms to get your circulation running, else you'll catch cold and be very sick." It was an overstatement, but she needed the motivation to get herself warm. He looked up at her and saw she wasn't obeying. "Rub your arms, Nightingale, or I'll do it for you."

Having slipped the socks upon her small, cold, feet, he got back up. "Where's your cape? You need to put that on as well."

Victoria's eyes met his in displeasure. "It was stolen."

"When?" Ned asked, alarmed.

"At the woman's boarding house-"

"Didn't you keep it in your sight? It's the sort of thing the people around here would love to get their dirty hands on."

"I'm not stupid, you know," Victoria snapped.

"Then what happened?"

"I had to share a room with three other women. I put my suitcase in my locker, but I slept with my cape over my bed to keep me warm. I woke up the next morning and it was gone. I don't know who took it. I complained to the keeper, but she didn't do anything. So I left. Now I'm in this shit-hole."

"You shouldn't swear."

"I hate it here!" Her voice was vicious, but brittle. He could see a gleaming ridge of tears building upon her lower eyelid.

"Look, it's going to be all right-" Ned sat down beside her and placed a gentle arm over her shoulders. She shook him away.

"How?" Her voice had lost the vicious conviction and now came out in broken sounds. He saw her try to blink the tears from her eyes.

"I found you a new nursing position, like I said I would." Ned's arm crept back over her shoulder and this time she did not pull away.

"Where?" she sniffed.

"I'm going into practice with a doctor named Richard Smales. He's a bachelor, so we'll need a nurse as a chaperone for female patients," Ned said.

"What happened to the Hawke Clinic?"

He hadn't planned to tell her, but it came spilling out anyway. "I lost my position there, over a month ago. Immediately- maybe a two days, after you left. Uncle seemed to be in the mood to lose some members of staff."

"Why?"

He took a deep breath and felt his heart palpitate against his ribs. Suddenly, he was not so sure of himself. "One of the nurses complained about me, Miss Ramsey, it was."

"On the night I lost my job, she lied to Dr. Hawke about how long I was away from Mrs. Gore. It wasn't half an hour. It was ten minutes, if that. She's poisonous. What did she say about you?" Victoria whispered, vehemently.

"She told the truth, about me. I harassed her, just as I harassed you-"

"You made her touch you? That's disgusting!" Victoria pulled quickly from his body. It did not feel so safe to have this man's arm about her waist, to smell his man smell and contemplate kissing him. Charlotte's words rose into her mind like bile from her gut. She had told herself that Charlotte was wrong, that Ned was not the sort of man that would use her and then leave her, when every piece of evidence pointed in the opposite direction.

"I touched her- But you have to understand, it didn't mean anything to me-"

"Does that mean that what you did to me didn't mean anything either?" Victoria snapped.

"No, Victoria, no-" He scrambled to get his arms back around her waist but she had pulled from him, and her nails were scratching to get away. He pushed her harder, levering his body weight across hers until he had her pinned beneath him. He heard her give a stifled scream, but he did not stop. "Please don't scream." He flattened her shoulders to the bed and held her wrists in place with his hands. "You have to understand, I love you."

"You're hurting me- Please stop-" Victoria shrieked. She felt his hard erection digging into her stomach. Her abdomen tensed in response. "Don't- Please-" Her voice lowered to a whimper as she felt his hasty fingers scratching to raise the fabric of her nightdress, his hot mouth pinching the skin on her neck.

He saw the fear in her eyes and it killed him. She was like some trapped animal, lying beneath him, waiting for the lash of pain. Quickly, he pulled himself away. Why was he doing this? It wasn't supposed to happen this way. The fear in her eyes drove the tears from his. He left her clenched in a ball upon the bed whilst he sank upon the clothing draped chair, his head in hands. "I'm sorry," he heard his voice say, sounding so distant and coarse. What had he become? He was no better than a rapist. "I'm so sorry. I do love you. I'm sorry."

She watched his body heave as the tears rushed from his body. The brute was gone, replaced by a scared, crying child. "Why are you crying?" she whispered.

The cheeks beneath his eyes ran with water. His eyes were red and bloodshot. "I hurt you. I forced you back- I shouldn't have done that. I'm so sorry."

"I don't understand-"

"It wasn't supposed to be like this. None of it. You weren't supposed to be- I wasn't supposed-"

"You love me?" Victoria said, incredulously.

"Yes." She saw him start to shake as the tears came hot and hard from his eyes. "I'm so so sorry."

Victoria was still confused. "Why are you sorry?"

"I love you. You don't understand. I'm not supposed to love anybody- I can't- But you, I don't know what it is, but you, you're like me and I love you-" His voice broke. "God- I'm sorry I scared you- So sorry-"

The fear was gone as quickly as it had come. Victoria regarded the frightened, crying man who sat hunched beside the bed. Ned's words had lost any coherency, replaced by throat-tearing sobs. One thought gleamed in her mind. Grown men didn't cry like that unless they really thought that they had lost something important. She had certainly never seen her father or Sam Morpeth cry, even when times became especially tough. Ned didn't strike her as especially melancholic. He loved her, or so he said. He thought that he had lost her forever by trying to- Had he really forced her? Wasn't that what she had wanted all along? It was fear at his speed, fear at how he had become like an animal, pushing to take what she would have willingly given him. What about Patricia Ramsey? Should she forget about it? It had happened before he had come to visit her at Charlotte's, she had no rights over him then.

She got up and stood in front of him. They didn't touch. For the first time, she didn't hear a small voice in the back of her mind, cautioning her about her actions. The only sounds that the vibrating bones of her ears picked up was the massive, drumming beat of her heart, her rasping breath and Hawke's tears. Her tongue was thick with emotion, the words seeming to stick to the dry skin of her throat so that her voice was unnaturally husky. "I love you too, I think." It was as if a dam had broken inside of her. Once the words had fallen from her tongue, her own tears fell from her eyes, mingling with his upon the cold floorboards until they were indistinguishable.

Ned's body lurched as if a bolt of lightning had passed through him. The game was over, at last. He felt naked; the protective mask of non-emotion torn from his body by his own buried thoughts. The skeptic in his mind told him to leave now, but his boots remained fused to the floorboards. For a moment, he couldn't look at her, for fear she'd see the pathetic creature that remained now that everything else had gone. His running eyes slowly rose, taking in the shawl-shrouded creature that stood before him in her long, loose nightshirt. He saw the trembling lower jaw, with its small divisive cleft and the tears running from her glittering eyes. She was just as afraid as he was. "Really?" he whimpered.

"I think so." Victoria felt the tight grip of her fingers upon her shawl relax as the woolen fabric slipped from her shoulders. It was strange, that now everything was out in the open, they were both equal. She did not get the feeling that he was looking down upon her, laughing at her, or pushing her anymore.

"What do we do now?" Ned gasped as Nightingale's shawl fell to the floor. She stood before him in her thick nightshirt. The firm mounds of her breasts, mounted by cold-stiffened nipples pushed upon the fabric of her shift. He wanted to reach for her, but he no longer knew how.

"I don't know," Victoria whispered. She wished he would do something to make her feel less vulnerable.

He saw the fabric of her clothing shiver as the body beneath responded to cold and emotion. "You must be freezing," he whispered. "You'll catch your death of cold, if you're not careful." He recognized the warmth of his gray coat, a final insulative layer over his jacket, waistcoat, shirt and singlet. He got to his feet and shrugged the garment from about his shoulders. "You'd best put this on." He had not recognized another person's need like this before. If he was treating a patient, the test of his own knowledge drove him to the cure, rather than any compassion for their condition. If he gave a woman a handkerchief, it was only so that she would be emotionally in debt to him.

Ned stood behind her and helped her into the coat. It was about the right length, but far too broad across the back for her body. At least she would be warm. He then picked up the shawl and wrapped this over the top of the coat. "You don't have to put yourself in discomfort because of me," Victoria protested, but he quieted her with a kiss, tasting the salt of their combined tears upon her warm lips.

Her arms quickly became intertwined with his as she pulled him against her chest. Her kisses were urgent and violent, her lips pressed to his as if she wanted to contain him within her body. His lower lip became caught between her wet lips as the pressure of her small hands on his neck brought his mouth hard against hers.

His hands traced the warm, naked curves of her body beneath her clothes, his loins stiffening in the response. She gave an involuntary groan as his hands reached the soft swell of her buttocks and dipped into the hot crease between her cheeks. He heard his own coarse breathing as he felt her readiness. The sudden thrust of her hips in response to his roving fingers drove his arousal upward. In a fluid movement, they were both upon the narrow bed.

He gently pulled up her nightshirt to expose the milky, white skin of her thighs to the flickering candlelight. They were long and soft, curved and womanly. He ran his hands over the fine hairs of her flesh and felt the aroused prickling associated with the cold. She shivered in response, and his eyes flashed up to her face. He saw the fear, burning as brightly in her eyes as it had when they had argued, only this time, she was unresisting. "I won't hurt you," Ned whispered. He hoped, with all his heart, that that was true.

She was his. He ached to earth himself inside of her, to open her thighs and thrust into her depths. To push and grunt, hear her moan and feel her writhe. Another part of him thought that if he did this, he would hate her, just as he hated the other girls. She would have let her passions get ahead of her and become nothing better than a whore. The love he felt for her, as fragile as a butterfly's wing, would be torn away. He told himself that it was different with Nightingale, but was it? He couldn't tell. If he bedded her, the pull he felt for her might be gone, once she had fulfilled her idealism. But she wasn't ideal, was she? She wasn't a virgin, but she wasn't a whore like Cathy or Arabella. What was she to him? Why did he care that her sister had beaten her black and blue? Why did he want to protect her?

His attraction to the other girls had arisen from a need to punish them, in turn punishing himself, for ever thinking that somebody could possibly love them. For giving away their innocence to somebody merely because that person paid attention to their futile, stupid lives. They were no better than he had been, mooning after the illustrious Arabella because she comforted him and made him smile. What made Victoria any different?

Some element of her being was the same as his. He had felt it, when he had first taken her to the meetinghouse. It was part of the way she defended herself from intruders with barbs of her tongue and flashes of her eyes. There was something about her that was in him. He didn't know what, but it was there. He had always thought that opposites attracted, but perhaps this was an exception to the rule...

Her features hadn't relaxed from the strain of fear, he saw. He was also conscious of how stiff her limbs had become beneath his expert hands. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I've frightened you." He pulled the fabric back down across her nakedness, and moved aside so that his weight rested beside her. He reached for the blankets, but she had already pulled them over their bodies. As she did so, the candle guttered and died.

Victoria shifted her body toward the wall, to give him more space. Her body felt strangely hot, with the tingling wetness between her thighs that she always felt when Ned had kissed her. In part, she was glad that they had stopped. She did not want to, she couldn't, fulfill Charlotte's description of her. She was not a whore. She was (in her mind), and was determined to stay, a virgin. Yet still she felt the arousal burning her flesh, jolting her insides as the tiny muscles within her constricted around her moist orifice. This feeling intensified as Ned Hawke's body pressed itself behind hers, one of his hands passing beneath her body then hooking over breast, the other gently stroking her bruised face.

"You're beautiful." His hot breath caressed the line of her jaw, her ear and finally the side of her neck. She felt his lips close over the skin there, parting so that the warm wetness of his mouth pulled her flesh against his tongue. Her body grew hot with desire, but she remained motionless. Her arousal heightened as he moved his soft lips down the curve of her neck, until she felt herself shiver in his embrace. Slowly, she moved her aching body against his.

His loins stiffened as he felt her buttocks press against his genitals. He quickly moved his pelvis away for fear he might do something he regretted. At the same time, his hands reached inside the cocoon that he had so expertly made from the coat and shawl and unbuttoned the neck of her nightshirt. She felt his arms form a cross on her chest, as each hand palpitated the opposite, sweaty breast. For moments, his tender fingertips traced the curves of her body, circling in closer and closer to her hardened nipples. Just as she started to shake, he stopped. His fingers rested on her longing flesh. The feeling was somehow comforting and asexual. He kept his hands upon her as he tightened his embrace to her back. She ran her fingers over his hands, holding them to herself as she heard his breathing relax.

"Are you sleeping?" Victoria whispered. He didn't reply. She burrowed her body further into his embrace and shut her eyes. Sleep was a blessing that she had hardly experienced since she left her sister's house. She tried not to drift away, but she found herself doing so. In the security of his arms, she forgot the terrors of the previous night.

Ned heard her snore and wished that he could sleep as easily. Tears dripped down his cheeks, as he felt her breathe. He hadn't felt as he did now for twelve years. Not since that bitch, Arabella. It frightened him that he did not feel empty or hollow anymore. Victoria had filled the void in his soul. She shouldn't have, but she had. He didn't care that he hadn't had intercourse with her, there seemed to be no rush. Having his arms around her body was all the closeness he needed whilst he slept.