Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [43]
But she just shook her head, too choked with tears and humiliation to speak. He kept on holding her, stroking her hair and talking to her reassuringly until the tears ceased to flow and she looked up at him and saw him properly for the first time.
His hair was as blond as hers and his eyes were dark and long lashed. His nose was as fine and straight as a Greek statue and his brow was broad. He was so beautiful and his expression and smile were so sweet, she thought she must be looking into the face of an angel.
“Who are you?” she whispered, leaning back in his arms.
“I’m nobody,” he replied. “Just a waiter.”
Tears of sympathy spilled from her eyes as she said bitterly, “I’m a nobody too.”
“Francesca!” She turned and saw Mrs. Brice Leland and her father’s shocked faces and then she was dragged from her savior’s arms and her father was punching him and that beautiful good angel was covered in blood. He was on the ground and her father was kicking and cursing him and then he turned on her. He grabbed her arm, dragging her through the servants’ entrance and up the back stairs to her room. With a thrust that sent her sprawling to the floor he said in an icy whisper, “You are not fit for decent society. You are insane, a slut, a whore … I’ll see to it you are locked away forever.”
Then he slammed the door and turned the key and she realized what he intended to do. Oh, he wouldn’t lock her up here, to be forever the skeleton in the closet in the Harrison house. No, he would commit her to the state insane asylum near San Jose, where they locked up the real crazy people. And then he and Harry need never see her again. No one would see her. She might as well be dead.
Petrified, she ran to the barred window and peered out into the night. The moon was pushing through the mist and faint strains of music still came from the ballroom. A few servants lingered in the courtyard for a surreptitious cigarette, and a horse whinnied in the stables. She remembered Princess’s sad puzzled eyes when her father put the gun to her head, and she wished he would just shoot her too. But she knew he wouldn’t. He would beat her. And from that there was no escape.
She was summoned to her father’s study at seven the next morning. He was as immaculately dressed as ever, freshly shaved, and smelling faintly of bay rum cologne. He was standing by his desk, waiting, the old leather dog lead in his hand.
His eyes were chips of ice as he said, “You know what to do.”
Francie stood straight and absolutely still by the door. She had bathed her red swollen eyes, brushed her hair and tied it back with a ribbon, and she wore her old, sensible dark dress. She had prepared what she had to say very carefully, but now that the time had come to say it she was terrified. She took a deep breath—it was now or never.
“No, Father,” she said quietly. “I am not a child anymore. You will not beat me again.”
His implacable expression did not change. “Bend over the stool, Francesca,” he said.
She stared at him as he flexed the leather strap across his palm; it was as though she had never spoken.
“No,” she said loudly. “I told you, you will never beat me again.”
He closed his eyes as if trying to control himself, then his face dissolved into a mask of hatred and rage, and seizing her by the hair he dragged her across the room. He hurled her across the stool and lifted the strap and brought it down on her with all his strength. She screamed but he whipped her again and again, each lash harder than the last in a frenzy of anger until her screams stopped and she slid, stunned with pain and shock, to the floor.
He stood over her breathing heavily, the bloody strap clutched in his hand, his face full of contempt. Then he walked back to his desk, put the strap in a drawer, straightened his cravat, smoothed back his hair, and strode to the door. Maitland was waiting in the hall. He looked expressionlessly at his master as he told him to fetch Miss James and help her take Miss Francesca to her room; he was leaving for his office.
The governess’s face turned