“Do you think the boys squirm and plead so prettily?” His question was punctuated with hard consonants, as though he’d spoken them through his teeth.
If she slid her eyes all the way to the side, she could just make out his shadow over her.
“Do you?”
“I—I—” Helplessness stole her words. Relieved her of all reason.
“No, Lady Alexandra, they take their licks.” The unwelcome heat of his breath on her cheek should have warned her. But, being uninitiated in the ways of men, she never could have dreamed that his tongue would follow.
The moist path he left across her cheekbone evoked such revulsion, she had no time to react before her arms were tangled in the layers of skirt and petticoat he’d tossed above her waist.
Stunned, she desperately tried to decide what to do. Should she fight him? Should she scream, hoping to rouse one of their teachers from their beds? Would they protect her? Would they expel her? Should she plead for his mercy? Or give in to the tears stinging her eyes and nose and hope they softened his ire? Should she submit to the lashing and be done with it?
“Thin enough to see the treasure beneath,” he murmured, confusing her utterly. “I think I’ll keep them on.”
Her panic-muddled thoughts only just processed that he referred to her white merino drawers when the first blow snapped against her tender rear.
Had he used the strap, she might have remained submissive. For the sake of a deserved punishment. For the protection of her future goals and her close friends.
She’d have taken her licks like a man.
But the bruising imprint of his fingers on her backside—the sound of flesh against hers, the pain of it, the absolute degradation—drew a violent response of which she’d not considered herself capable.
He was able to deliver three more punishing blows before her struggles became too wild for him to subdue with one arm.
He used his body, then, to pin her to his desk. Shaped it to hers. Torso to torso, hip to hip.
“Be still,” he panted, his serpentine voice thicker than before. “Or I’ll not be responsible for what you drive me to do.”
“You will be responsible,” she hissed. “I’ll make certain the law holds you responsible.”
His dreadful laugh filled the room. “Who do you think they’ll believe, Lady Alexandra? The respected headmaster whose family has educated ancient kings, or the spoiled little thief, making outlandish claims to save her reputation?”
His question gave her a moment’s pause.
Who, indeed? She was nobility in England. But here, so far from home … what power did she wield?
“Let me up.” She’d meant it as a demand, but it escaped as a plea. “Do it, or I’ll ruin you.”
“Not if I ruin you, first,” he snarled into her ear, driving her painfully against the desk with his body.
The shape of what she felt against her backside injected new terror into her veins. Greater strength. More conviction.
She became a wild thing, bucking and rearing against his solid strength. Frantic noises she’d intended to contain words broke from her. She’d meant to command him to stop. Then she tried to beg. But to her everlasting vexation, the sounds escaping seemed to only contain different forms of the word “no.”
She said it in every language she knew.
She screamed it as he reached between them to grapple with his trousers.
“Fight me all you like,” he breathed into her ear as he found the convenient opening in her drawers. “This won’t take long.”
And it didn’t.
Alexandra watched her rhythmic breaths spreading over the lacquered wood of the desk in a fleeting vapor.
They disappeared with every painful inhale.
Perhaps she could just stop breathing.
This won’t take long.
It didn’t have to.
Time, she thought, was of very little consequence. It only took a moment to lose everything. One’s virginity. One’s dignity. One’s ability to trust. To ever feel safe again.
One’s sanity.
One’s self.
Her eyes scanned the space before her, noting the inconsequential—the grain in the wood, the books on the shelf, the curtain the color of blood, a glint in the moonlight before her. The vision of Francesca pulling an object from her pocket flashed in her mind
A pearl handle.
The first item they’d ever taken from him.
The reason he now took her innocence from her.
The razor was cool and smooth in her palm, but when had she reached for it?
It could make him stop, she thought. I must make him stop.
She twisted suddenly, slashing the sharp blade across his throat.
The sounds he made now were not unlike the grunts and moans from before. And then they were wetter. Softer. Garbled.
He stumbled away from her. Out of her. Into the shadows. His hands clutched at his throat as though he could hold it together. His mouth formed words his windpipe could no longer lend voice to.
Blood disappeared into the collar of his black headmaster’s robes.
Her skirts whispered to the ground as she walked away, still clutching the razor in her aching fist. He reached for her, lurched toward her, and fell facefirst on the rug.
Silently, Alexandra closed the door behind her. She floated like a specter through halls of shadows which were interrupted only by the long, crooked crosses where the moon shone through the windowpanes. She climbed the stairs to the tower in which she and the Red Rogues shared a magnificent room.
The noises he’d made echoed inside her head, stole any other sounds, even the sound of her own voice as she whispered her confession.
“I killed him.”
* * *
The Red Rogues stood panting with exhaustion beneath a silver night sky as they watched Jean-Yves, the groundskeeper at de Chardonne, plant a stunning array of poppies. It was late enough to be early, and even at this hour the flowers all but glowed with sunset hues. He didn’t make neat little rows, but artful gathers of blooms, arranged with the perfect balance of natural chaos and controlled synchronicity.
“De Marchand has always been shit,” he spat in weighty, guttural French. “Now, at least, he will be useful shit. Fertilizing the gardens.” He took off his cap and swiped his balding pate as he glanced up at Alexandra with an expression of sorrow so complete, it threatened her composure. The drooping bags beneath his eyes were heavier than ever. Alexandra watched the wild tufts of hair above his ears flutter in a gentle breeze off the lake. “His behavior has escalated with no reprisal for too long. I’ve said for so long that de Marchand would forget himself and … and no one listened.”
Alexandra lowered her lashes. She hadn’t yet shed a tear.
Not as Francesca, in her long blue dressing gown and sleek carrot plaits, had tucked the razor into de Marchand’s pocket. Nor when stalwart Cecelia, her heart-shaped face pinched with determination, had rolled the body up in the bloodstained carpet and assisted Jean-Yves in hauling it out to the gardens.
Not even as the three of them had begun to cover his gray skin with black earth did a single tear fall.
The Rogues only allowed Alexandra to hold the lantern, which she’d done rather well, she thought. She’d stood like a statue, brandishing the light even when her shoulder had begun to tremble with fatigue. Even when it ached. Then burned.