Neil had thought Verity's coldness would pass as quickly as it had come. It did not. The morning after, she rebuffed his apologetic kisses, turned away from his prying fingers, and ignored his sweet nothings, for the nothings they were. That night, arrived in his friend's manor in the countryside, there was still nothing more than cold civility between them. She condescended to let him kiss her cheek good night, and he felt it for the condescension it was, and burned.
His pride stung, he turned cold too. He left her alone in the rambling French manor and spent several days exclusively in the company of his old friend Prothero, catching up on the years. They had met on the tour, in Italy, as boys of seventeen. As men of the same class and creed tend to do in a foreign place, they had bonded, despite their differences of temperament, or perhaps because of them. Prothero was care-free, hedonistic, and extroverted, the sort of young man who it seemed inevitable would grow into one of those fat, jovial, red-faced old men who demand the descriptor "Jolly." And, with the extra pounds he had put on in the past six or so years, it seemed to Neil that Prothero was doing all he could to hasten the transition.
After the first wave of acute nostalgia passed, and there was nothing more of the past to talk about, Neil turned his attention back to the future, to Verity. By then, the bruise to his pride had faded, and he could hardly remember what they had argued about, or why. Therefore, he wasn't expecting her to stare coldly at him, when he entered the drawing room to look for her that evening, and to say, in response to his gentle greeting,
"What do you want?"
It wasn't a grunt, or a growl, or a slur. It was worse than that, because there was no emotion in it at all, except a cold, snake-like distrust. He drew back, almost flinching, and then came in and shut the door behind him. No one else was around, and Verity was apparently amusing herself with embroidery by the light of a lamp.
"Oh, Verity, I've been neglecting you," he began sheepishly. He knew he had intended to be cruel, but only now did he realize how cruel it really had been: Verity spoke no French, and the only people who spoke English in the manor were he, Mr Prothero, and Mr Prothero's wife, who was mostly too busy with her new baby to pay her husband's visitors any attention.
"Yes," Verity said sharply. "So why speak to me now?"
He sat down on the settee next to her. "Please let me apologize," he begged.
"I can't stop you." She stabbed her needle through the cloth savagely. It was a silk handkerchief, and she was embroidering tiny pale pink roses along its edge. She was really very good at it â or had been until he had come in. Her stitches were now coming too rough and fast: the silk warped under her careless touch.
"I'm so sorry, my darling, I just â I had to catch up with an old friend, you must understand me."
"I do. Perfectly well." Her needle went savagely onward, and she would not look at him. "God knows I haven't heard a thousand untrue apologies before â God knows my father hasn't called me "My darling" a thousand times, in supplication â but he's a drunk. They're supposed to be abominable."
"Verity, no! That's not true â I really, I haven't been good to you and I want-"
"You're sliming," she said icily. "I loathe a man who slimes."
"No!" His cheeks burned. "I don't slime!"
She pulled her needle so violently through the cloth that the thread snapped, and she sat with it dumbly between her fingers.
"Verity," he said pleadingly.
She put the handkerchief down on the arm of the settee and went over to the table, to rummage through her workbasket.
He got up, and followed her.
"Verity."
Still, she wouldn't look at him. She found her thread, went back to the settee, and held it up to the light to thread it through the needle.
He came back, sat down beside her once more, and said casually,
"Are you going to ignore me forever?"
If he had continued in that way, he might have won her back that night, because there was no slime in voice now. Rather, he was beginning to goad her, with his clever little words and cold, ironic tone. He didn't know that, even though she didn't like him that way, she did find him amusing that way, and that she would probably have enjoyed that kind of verbal fight. But, remembering that he had come to apologize, not to fight, he controlled his tongue. He reached out and put a gently pleading hand on her knee.
She stabbed him with the needle.
He shrieked, and jumped up and backwards, holding his hand out in front of him. The needle glinted where it stuck up at a right angle from the soft flesh between the tendons of his first and second finger. A dark bead of blood swelled up around its base.
"Oh my god," she breathed. Her embroidery things scattered around her as she jumped up towards him. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry â I didn't mean to â" There were tears in her eyes, bright and glittering under the lamplight. She reached out her hands towards him. "Oh, I'm so sorry, does it hurt?"
He backed away, until he came against the glass side cabinet, his hand held out in front of him, the bead of blood trickling down the back of his palm. The first overwhelming waves of pain had subsided, and now his hand throbbed sharply. "Does it hurt!? God, woman, is it a rite of passage, with you, to stab your lovers?"
Her soft touch, having found his hand, to gently probe the wound, froze. The door opened, and Mrs Prothero looked in, her forehead twisted in worry.
"Someting is wrrrong?"
Verity turned her face to the door, eyes large and dark with unspoken horror.
"Acceedent?" Mrs Prothero said, seeing the blood drip from Armiger's wrist. "Ah! Mon tapis persan!"
She came forward, crying about the blood on her carpets, and Neil twisted his hand to try to keep the blood from spilling. Verity, as though a spell had suddenly broken, whirled away from Neil, and through the door Mrs Prothero had vacated.
"It was just an accident," Neil protested later, while Mrs Prothero cleaned and bound his hand for him, chattering angrily at him in French all the while. "She didn't mean to do it."
"So you say!" Her charming, tired face flamed red. "Men like you give women many good reasons to stab a man, I've no doubt! But if you're going to do any stabbing, you'll not do it on my best carpet! You must tell her, if she kills you, she must do it outside, like any good guest would. What the English think of hospitality!"
At another time, Neil might have taken the chance to have a friendly argument about French hospitality laws, but he was worried, more about Verity than his hand, and as soon as Mrs Prothero had finished binding it, he thanked her and went upstairs to find Verity, though everybody else was beginning to sit down for supper.
She wasn't in their room. She wasn't in their small washroom either.
He explored every place he thought she might be, and even went out to look through the grounds, missing supper. She wasn't anywhere. After supper, he had a quiet word to Prothero, and servants were sent out with torches, to search the vineries, the outhouses, and the entire grounds. Someone found her â where, he never learned â but she came back, trailing miserably through the entrance hall.
"Verity," Neil said, in relief. "Are you alright?" He stretched his bandaged hand out to take hers.
"Don't touch me," she said quietly. The French servants could not understand the words, but they knew her tone. Anyone in any language would. His hand fell to his side, and all the servants looked on, with their faces alight with the thrill of a scene.
But he wasn't going to make one, and nor was Verity. She approached Mr Prothero anxiously.
"I'm so sorry about the fuss, Mr Prothero," she said. "I just â I just went for a walk. I'm so sorry about it. There was really no need to bother with me."
"There's no harm done. You're not cold? Hungry? There's some supper left over for you."
"Thank you â I'm starving."
Neil was starving too, having also missed supper, but no one seemed to remember it, and he wasn't going to remind them. The idea of having to sit at the little table in the kitchen, with Verity, while the gossipy cook looked on, was intolerable.
He went to bed.
An hour or so later, Verity came up. She slipped silently into the room and shut the door. He had left the two wall lamps lit, and sat up when she came in. He hadn't been able to sleep, and hadn't intended to. He had just needed to be alone in his shame.
"Please can we talk?" He was desperate to apologize to her â for real, this time. She had been right in seeing that his earlier apologies were not entirely true.
"Fine." She was white-faced, and refused to look at him.
But now, he didn't know what to say. He stuttered, and ummed and ahhed. She got out her bed-things, and disappeared behind the screen. A moment later she reappeared in her nightgown. She doused the candles, and went to the bed. There was only one large double bed for them, and it had never been used for anything other than sleeping, so far. He didn't hold any hope that tonight would be any different, and nor did he care. He wanted only to make sure that the hurt he had caused her wouldn't â linger.
She climbed in bed with him. She had nowhere else to sleep. But he noted how stiff she was, and how close to the edge she lay.
"Verity, I should never have said that," he whispered. "I just â I was mad with pain and I â I didn't mean it. And I know you didn't mean to do it â I could see that but I just..."
In the darkness, a half-swallowed sob escaped her throat. He ached to pull her close and comfort her â but what good would that do, to be embraced by the thornbush that had wounded you?
"I know you're not â you're not violent or anything. I just â I was..."
"It's not that! It's that- that one word... if you didn't mean it â isn't that worse? Because it's what you think, beneath what you mean... you called... you said, 'to stab your lovers' â my lovers â As though â that man â was my... that's what you think deep down." She buried her face in her pillow and unleashed a strange, shrieking cry into it.
"No, no, Verity, I â I was absolutely livid with pain and I â I didn't mean it that way. I'm not â I know who you are, and what kind of man â he was. Please, I never meant- I really, really didn't."
He was in as much an agony of shame as she was an agony of sorrow. He dug a finger into the throbbing wound of his hand, angry with himself, until the pain bloomed again and he had to grit his teeth against it.
"I'm so sorry."
"You should just forget it," she said drearily, emerging from the pillow, her voice thin, and threatening to collapse in on itself. "Just... forget it. It doesn't matter."
She may have slept, after that. He didn't know. He lay awake for a long time, listening to her breathing.
It was the eighth night of their marriage, and so far, the longest.
Whew. Dah-rah-mah. Two things you should know:
1) I don't speak French. There are a few French phrases in upcoming chapters, and of course this one. If they're wrong, please correct me.
2) I started this story a year and a half ago, wrote the first part, and then got stuck and abandoned it. Then, about six months ago I solved my problems and started writing it again, with a solid plotting outline to help me. But at this point, much of what I'm publishing on Wattpad is fairly recently written, and maybe isn't as strong as what was in Part One, which had more rigorous editing.