Like a flower, Claudia folded outward showing everything and revealing nothing. The world did not know how to interpret the beautiful patterns she displayed.  She was marrying a handsome, wealthy and pretty-worded man. She had every right to be happy.  So they saw the joy of a girl well wedd.  She folded out to reveal all with every glance, but no one saw anything. Animal lust and love just as unrefined filled her every line.  No one saw.

No one but her mother who watched her with something akin to longing and something akin to hate.  

And so passed an overflowing handful of days.  Claudia was not joyous but preparing for the sun.  The rest of her small world was oblivious to anything but a dreamy look in her eyes.

Very little broke up these days.  Life is extremely monotonous.  Its drone is only interesting to those caught in the middle, and often not even then.  

Even Claudia’s music lesson, when it failed to produce anything other than a stuffy woman and a piano, caused no ripples. Claudia, it would seem, was not hoping or planning.  She was merely waiting patiently.  He could appear at any time—angel and devil that he was.  It was no more likely in his sister’s house than elsewhere.  All she had to do was wait.

But he was not the man to break her patient waiting.  One day as she slipped out into the garden, a heavy hand plopped on her arm.  And Claudia stirred; her eyes snapped up and met her step-brother’s brutal face.  They said nothing but stood for a moment with his hand painfully clutching her arm.

Until Claudia, with the gentility bred into her, smiled and bowed her head.  “Hello, Roderick.  It is a fair day, is it not? Walk with me?”

“And if I’ve no wish to walk with you?”  He replied.

Claudia laughed knowing it was not a joke, but knowing she was lost if she did not pretend it was.  He brought his other hand up to clasp her free arm.  Claudia flinched.  

“Mother tells me you’ve taken to night walks.”

Claudia could not speak.  She wilted; her world of sunshine floundered and came face to face with her old reality.  Something of his strange maleness, which shocked her at every encounter, and his cruelty, left her unable to defend herself.  

“People will begin to talk.  Is that what you want?  I think it is.  I think you are bent on disgracing us all.”  His eyes burned.  Panic rose up inside her.  Because she knew that if Roderick ever found out it would all be over for her.  Because he didn’t care if she was disgraced.  Deep down, she believed it was one of the few things he desired, to see her shamed, ruined.

“You know that it is not.”  Her eyes had flown to the ground.  The memory of Bennett’s hands wouldn’t come to her and she was alone with her fear. Abandoned.

“You are a fool or worse, do you know that?”

A moment of clarity came, and Claudia lifted her eyes. Roderick did not know. He did not even suspect.  If he had he would not hold his tongue.  His suspicions would spill over and engulf them both.  “Mother has made it clear already that night walks are not for young ladies.  Let me go if you please, you are hurting me.”

His hands fell away but his face did not.  It loomed there angry and defiant, brutish.  His anger, she knew, was unreasonable.  Events merely provided an excuse for some burning rage already inside him.  For an instant, her mind grappled with a concept it could not in the end hold.

“You are not in the least contrite.”

“For I have not harmed you, Brother, nor shall I.”  Claudia took a step back.  Her smile shook.  Strength and beauty fled leaving her only a frightened sheltered girl.  “I am silly perhaps but have done no harm.”

I will go to Bennett. I will find him.  This is not my world.  This is not the world of a God who loves me.

“You will ruin us all one day.”

Claudia turned and fled.  The panic in her gut at an insistent image of him following did not fade until she was safely inside the house.  There she halted, knowing that she must not show signs of fear or anger here.  She moved slowly and softly through the hallway.  

Her room provided minimal shelter from the eyes she felt in the walls. On entering she drifted over to her vanity.  She stared into her face reflected in the mirror but did not see her reflection.  Her hands rested on the stiff linen of her skirt, but she did not feel it.  She felt instead the press of her brother’s hands against her flesh.  And she saw rain.  It sluiced down across her reflection so she could see nothing of the face that had pleased her for so long.  

She reached down and twisted her engagement ring.  She was lost and helpless and though used to being lost and helpless this time it addled her.  Perhaps because, for the first time, she had felt safe. Bennett was the only way to regain that feeling.

She drifted through the next days with her resolve to find Bennett intact. In a season of parties, she bloomed.  Like a flower, she was brought out to be seen, was admired, and then set aside.  The men who briefly admired her beauty and charms quickly turned to other girls who were less attached. In some cases less attached was the preference, once youth began to wilt, attachments meant almost nothing and the only goal was to be admired again.

Inside the shell of her propriety, Claudia was anything but.  She plotted to acquire her goal without thought.  She angled with demure eyes and smiles to get to places where she might find Bennett.  Her face turned out to the sun, she could see nothing else and only habit kept her from a firmer course of action.  Claudia had never learned action, only inaction.  So she was inactive in her seeking, but still she sought.

Then at a reasonably sized dinner party she acquired her goal.  The party was slow and quiet, a dead weight around a young girl’s neck.  Victor sat beside her, but he too seemed blind to her.  He spoke of books and other things Claudia had no inclination to care about or any familiarity with.  So she sat with her hand resting on his arm, and her face turned to watch the stillness of a bouquet of white roses.

When she looked up again, perhaps bored by similarity, Bennett was seated by another woman.  Claudia narrowed her eyes across the broad room.  The other woman was rather homely and went by a name Claudia could not recall.  She knew only that she was well-wed and into her thirties.  Exactly the sort of woman who was safe to seduce, which Claudia understood.  She understood too that though she was Bennett’s he was not hers.

Then it was not jealousy that ruined Claudia’s smile.  Or she did not believe so.  She was disappointed.  After so long seeking him out, she found that just at the last party she’d encountered him at, there would be no getting at him.  Had she been more than background scenery, someone would have marked her go pale and her eyes and lips narrow.  Victor might have noticed but that his conversation had come to its intellectual peek.

And so it continued until dinner.  As they stood to go into the dining room, Victor turned to face her.  He was lovely as a dream.

“You look pale.  Are you feeling well?” Victor’s hand moved to cover hers where it lay on his arm.

“Do I look pale?  I do not feel pale,” Claudia said.

“How does one feel pale, my darling?”

“I suppose by feeling empty.  I feel rather flushed.”

Victor smiled, not understanding. It was a blend of parental acceptance and complete dismissal.

“What strange things women think,” said the man that Victor had been conversing with.

“Tis the sweetness of innocence.”  Victor responded but there was something rather cold in his voice.  Claudia looked at him with a brief piercing interest.  Her eyes found only a perfect jawline that attached to a perfectly expressionless mouth.

“Am I being teased gentlemen?”  Claudia smiled.  

“Only a smidge,” the meaningless man said with a smile as devoid of usefulness as he was.

“Shall I be offended?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.  Wouldn’t you?  Tis unpleasant to be offended.”

“I’ll be as you wish me,” Claudia said.  

Claudia was charming all through dinner.  She smiled and joked.  She flirted innocently and ate sparingly.  Not once did she look at Bennett, who was busily romancing another woman.  Now was not the time.  She was stalking him but like the best hunters she knew when to be still and wait unseen.  In this, she was a better hunter than Bennett himself who had been doing it for far longer.  

And she found her moment to pounce.  After dinner, when all had settled down Bennett and his prey ventured out into the garden.  Claudia slipped away into the sitting room with a soft smile to Victor.  From there, she ventured alone into the garden and waited for the other woman’s departure. Soon, the lady ventured in alone.

Claudia found him leaning against the back of a bench.  His head bent down as if in prayer—but who could he pray to?  He was certainly divine.  Claudia stilled and looked on him.  Reality had not yet imposed itself on her vision and made Bennett a man.  She allowed her eyes to worship and her body to light itself—a torch burning hot on quickly consumed fuel.

He lifted his gaze to her.  “I had thought maybe you were a dream.” He said ‘dream’ with a strange intonation that hinted both at nightmare and fantasy.  It can at least be said there was nothing of a love struck man in his voice.  His eyes wished her away.

“I want you,” Claudia said in turn and found herself at her side.  Her body stopped itself mere centimeters from his heat. “I will have you.”

“Why do you want so badly to be ruined?”

“I am ruined already, and I regret nothing.”  The huntress raised her finger to touch his lips.  “You want me.  Do you know it yet?  It doesn’t matter.  I will have you; we will burn together.”

Bennett took her hand painfully.  “What are you thinking?”

“I am not.” She did not shift her gaze.

Bennett laughed.  “There is something of a proper girl in you then.”

Claudia stretched up and pressed her lips to his.  Her body inserted itself into his heat and smell.  She sunk into that area around a person that is not touch but feels as real as one. The fibers of his clothing touched the fibers of hers.

Bennett pushed her back.  “Go now. You are a fool.”

“I will come for you tonight,” Claudia said.  Her hand slid down his body and rested softly but definitely between his legs. “Meet me.”

She turned away.  The feel of him rested on her fingertips, and hunger rested on her lips and between her legs.  She could not feel his eyes on her back.  She had stopped existing but for the hunger.  There was no need to exist until nightfall.

***

Roderick tipped the cheap liquor into his mouth and turned on his chair to face his smoking room. From somewhere in the house drifted smells of fresh bread. He sank deeper into his chair. The drink did nothing for him and with a grunt he tossed the glass across the room at the wall.

Stupid whore! His fists clenched as he imagined his mouthy little sister. He was moments away from calling for his driver. He needed to go downtown to find a whore who knew something about pleasure. Then his wife’s voice invaded his sanctuary. Too distant to make out words but her tone had a barb of complaint as always. Disappointing little bitch. Weren’t they all? Yes, all of them wretches.

His heart beat a little faster as he imagined sewing the woman’s mouth shut. Now he would have to go downtown. Much as she deserved it, a man couldn’t discipline a noble woman that way. A good slap now and then sure but you couldn’t give them their due.  Yet the unquenchable desire throbbed in him until calling a driver to take him downtown became an urgent matter.

He picked up the bell on his bar and rung. Hopefully the wife would say something about him going out and he could break her constantly flapping jaw.

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