Thrust after violent thrust, he raped her. The thrill of forcing himself into her spumed through him until his breathing turned to short bursts grunted between clenched teeth.
She was weeping now, huge choking sobs. But screaming, too. Somehow screaming as he hammered his fury, his jealousy, his disgust into her.
As the great clock began to chime midnight, he closed his hands around her throat. "Shut up. Damn you." He rammed her head against the floor, squeezed harder. And still the screaming pierced his brain.
Abby heard it, too. Dimly. The baby's frantic cries pealed through her head along with the slow, formal bongs of the midnight hour. She slapped, weak protests against the hands that cut off her air, tried to shut her body off from the unspeakable invasion.
Help me. Mother of Jesus. Help me. Help my baby.
Her vision dimmed. Her heels drummed wildly on the floor as she convulsed.
The last thing she heard was her crying daughter. The last thing she thought was, Lucian.
The door of the nursery burst open. Josephine Manet stood just inside the nursery. She summed up the scene quickly. Coldly.
"Julian."
His hands still vised around Abby's throat, he looked up. If his mother saw madness in his eyes, she chose to ignore it. With her gilt hair neatly braided for the night, her robe sternly buttoned to the neck, she stepped over, stared down.
Abby's eyes were wide and staring. There was a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, and bruises blooming along her cheeks.
Dispassionately, she leaned down, laid her fingers against Abby's throat.
"She's dead," Josephine announced and moved quickly to the connecting door. She opened it, glanced into the maid's room. Then closed it, locked it.
She stood for a moment, her back against it, her hand at her own throat as she thought of what could come. Disgrace, ruin, scandal.
"It was . . . an accident." His hands began to shake as they slid away from Abby's throat. The whiskey was whirling in his head now, clouding it. It churned in his belly, sickening it.
He could see the marks on her skin, dark and deep and damning. "She . . . tried to seduce me, then, she attacked . . ."
She crossed the room again, her slippers clicking on wood. Crouching down, Josephine slapped him, one hard crack of flesh on flesh. "Quiet. Be quiet and do exactly as I say. I won't lose another son to this creature. Take her down to her bedroom. Go out through the gallery and stay there until I come."
"It was her fault."
"Yes. Now she's paid for it. Take her down, Julian. And be quick."
"They'll . . ." A single tear gathered in the corner of his eye and spilled over. "They'll hang me. I have to get away."
"No. No, they won't hang you." She brought his head to her shoulder, stroking his hair over the body of her daughter-in-law. "No, my sweet, they won't hang you. Do what Mama says now. Carry her to the bedroom and wait for me. Everything's going to be all right. Everything's going to be as it should be. I promise."
"I don't want to touch her."
"Julian!" The crooning tone snapped into icy command. "Do as I say. Immediately."
She rose, walked over to the crib, where the baby's wails had turned to miserable whimpers. In the heat of the moment, she considered simply laying her hand over the child's mouth and nose. Hardly different than drowning a bag of kittens.
And yet . . .
The child had her son's blood in her, and therefore her own. She could despise it, but she couldn't destroy it. "Go to sleep," she said. "We'll decide what to do about you later."
As her son carried the girl he'd raped and murdered from the room, Josephine began to set the nursery to rights again. She picked up the candle, scrubbed at the cooling wax until she could see no trace.
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