The Forbidden Room

The Wedding Night

Dinner is uneventful.

Mrs. Edwards serves us in the dining room and I am careful to keep the conversation light and pleasant like a lady should. I am under the impression that my husband is not a very talkative man and he spends a lot of his mealtime trying to eat and act like a gentleman. Since he is one-armed, his food is prepared so that he doesn't have to use his knife and he makes an obvious effort to act as if he wasn't disabled.

After dinner, he asks me what I wish to do and I say I am used to reading or playing games so we move to the parlour to play cards. I am quite certain he lets me win. I laugh a few times and every time he is surprised, so I try to act more ladylike towards the end of the evening. He mentions that since I like to read, he'll have the library cleaned and dusted in the morning. I wonder who will have to do this, but I don't mention it.

Then he walks me back upstairs and wishes me goodnight at my bedroom door. I hide my confusion and step into the now warm room. He closes the door behind me and my heart sinks.

I don't understand.

Why do we have two bedrooms? Why is he leaving me alone like this? Is it some ritual that I've never heard of and yet that I'm supposed to be aware of? What am I supposed to do?

I sit on my bed, pulling at my corset to breathe. All of a sudden the room is too warm, the fire in the hearth too bright.

This is not how it is supposed to be.

I am not supposed to leave a hellish life for a worse one. I told Aunt Mae: if it meant avoiding the madhouse, she could marry me off to anybody. Someone old, someone ugly, someone poor, someone mean. She could send me to India or America, to Scotland or to Wales. I didn't care, as long as it meant that man would take me away and keep me safe from my relatives.

But if this marriage is a fraud, if my husband won't share my bed even once, then I'm not safe.

I sit up on the bed, get undressed and put on my nightgown. I let my hair down on my shoulders, and tip-toe barefoot in the corridor with a candlestick in hand.

I pause at the door of the master bedroom but I can't hear anything beside the wind howling outside.

I knock and the door flies open, startling me.

My husband stands on the threshold, an angry scowl on his face. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

He grabs me by the arm, pulls me inside his room and slams the door behind me. I yank my arm free and distance myself from him as much as possible by stepping toward the four-poster bed.

The bedroom is impressively large, with a series of four windows overlooking the park. Right now the velvet curtains are all drawn but a fire in the hearth and candelabras light the room, casting long shadows on the floral wallpaper. Objects brought back from Africa clutter the place: carved figurines, stuffed animals and oddly-shaped blades that I can't identify.

As I move away from my husband, I knock against a pedestal table and send some sort of pagan wooden statuette crashing on the thick carpet.

"Watch what you're doing!" he hisses.

His angry eyes bore into mine, but I refuse to look away or to let my frantic heartbeat take over my senses.

"You're the one who pushed me!" I snap.

Now that he is at a safe distance and doesn't seem willing to move from his spot, I straighten my back and try to look as dignified as I can in my nightgown.

My husband's breathing calms down and he replies in a cooler tone, "What are you doing out of your room at this hour?"

His eyebrows are still furrowed and his tone is irritated, but at least he is not threatening anymore. He is still wearing his evening outfit, but his waistcoat is open and he has taken off his tie. On a leather armchair on my right, a book has been left open - I must have interrupted his reading.

"I was confused," I reply with honesty.

He stares at me, waiting for me to elaborate.

"This is our wedding night," I add for good measure.

If he thinks he can frighten me into giving up on what I want, he is quite mistaken.

He snorts, and walks to the armchair to retrieve the abandoned book. He picks it up and closes it with a thud.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he says.

I have no idea what he means, so I say, "I don't pretend I do. But you agreed to marry me. With that come a few... responsibilities, I'm afraid."

I hope I don't sound sarcastic. I have years of experience in negotiating, I am usually good at this. But I don't know him as well as I knew Aunt Mae.

I realise this when he throws the book on the rug and shouts, "You don't know what you're talking about!"

He closes the distance between us with a few long strides and stops right in front of me. I tense and my heartbeat is out of control again, but I press my lips together and stay motionless as he goes on, "I did not invite you in!"

I keep my gaze on him and hold his stare. I know that look, halfway between loathing and wrath, and it hurts to see it in his eyes, but he can be angry with me all he wants, I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not giving in.

"Why do you have to spoil everything?" he goes on, "I walked you to your room and that's where you should be! The last thing I want tonight is to have you here!"

He waits for me to speak, or to cry, or to run away, but I'm too surprised to talk. And since I'm not sure what he expects, I don't do anything. As I am just staring, he concludes, "The last thing I want tonight is to have you touching me!"

This is uncalled for and I have had enough. I don't understand what made him turn from a gentleman, reserved, yes, but perfectly well-mannered, into a shouting brute.

"I shall see you in the morning, then," I reply in the coldest tone I can muster.

By that I'm hinting that he shouldn't expect me to be gone in the morning.

I bypass him and open the bedroom door. A window must have been left open somewhere in the manor because a chilly draught engulfs me and extinguishes my candle, as well as most of the lights in the bedchamber. The corridor is pitch-dark and I turn around to say, "I'm going to need to relight that candle."

My husband's face is now half in shadows and I can't properly see his features anymore, which means that I almost jump out of my skin when he shouts, "Sam!"

I am not calmed down by the fact that his servant immediately materialises out of the shadows.

"Grab a candle, will you?" my husband tells him. "We'll escort Amelia back to her bedroom."

Now this is truly humiliating.

"This is ridiculous," I protest, "I don't need escorting anywhere."

To prove my point, I take hold of the nearest candlestick and march out into the corridor. The soles of my slippers slide quietly on the wooden floor, so the two men's footsteps are very loud as they hit the parquet floor to come after me.

It takes me only a few heartbeats to reach my bedroom door and I turn around before entering the room.

"Have a good night, gentlemen."

I don't wait for them to reply and I close the door behind me with an exasperated sigh. Once inside, I regret not slamming the door in their faces. But then, that wouldn't have been very ladylike.

***

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