Before the Fact by Francis Iles

Author:Francis Iles
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-84858-362-7
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing Limited
Published: 2011-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

3

Of course Lina visualized herself as Ronald’s mistress.

She spent most of that same night in doing so.

Here was the lover that Joyce had been counselling her so earnestly to take, for the raising of her little finger. She saw herself in his arms, under his kisses, in bed with him. The result both surprised and horrified her. That he attracted her strongly, and that he was the only man besides Johnnie who had ever attracted her physically, she knew already: what she had not realized before was that she actively desired him.

To desire a man whom one has known only for a bare, twenty-four hours! In spite of life with Johnnie, Lina was still old-fashioned enough to find that disturbing.

She wondered whether Johnnie’s moral example had coarsened her. Lying alone in bed, with no man to touch by her side, she felt it rather depraved that she should want to have one there; and a man at that whom she had known such a preposterously short time – whom, in fact, she did not know at all. And when, too, she certainly did not love him.

(And Johnnie had called her a wet fish!)

Not that she loved Johnnie any more.

She hated Johnnie now – hated him bitterly and angrily and revengefully. He might have been her child once, but he had been a monster-child who had turned matricide. No, Johnnie would not stand in the way of her taking Ronald as a lover if she decided to do so in the end. She would not do so yet, of course. Ronald, who had such a delightfully high opinion of her, must never think that she was to be won too easily. It had been drilled into Lina from her early ’teens that no man thinks anything of a woman whom he can win easily. Somehow she had paid no attention to that admirable precept before she became engaged to Johnnie. And look at the result!

She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling and worrying over whether she would ever take Ronald for a lover, or not.

Her thoughts turned to Janet, who had had the same problem to decide and had decided it.

She felt no bitterness against Janet. The bitterness that might have been felt against Janet had all been transferred to swell Johnnie’s total. Janet must have suffered a lot before she decided, and more still afterwards. Lina could only be sorry for her.

Unlike most women, Janet was not a natural hypocrite. That was why Lina had liked her from the first. She must have found the hypocrite’s rôle very horrible. But she had been helpless. One is helpless, when one loves. Lina knew that. Janet must have hated Johnnie for making her a traitress, even while she loved him. Poor Janet: she must have suffered. She could not have made Johnnie a very satisfactory mistress.

But Johnnie ...

He had set out to get her, of course. Probably he had been working to do so for years. Janet really had disliked him once, and Johnnie could not have borne that, from a woman.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.