They would be in it. She wanted to throw back her head and scream. This couldn’t be real, couldn’t be happening to her. And how could he think she was excited, how could he read her fear as passion? He didn’t know her at all. They were a pair of strangers united in a farce called matrimony and nothing good could come of it.

She was sure of this.

“You must be hungry,” he said. “We’ll eat first. The food is supposed to be excellent here. We’ll have dinner and then we can come back upstairs.”

A reprieve. She would have a meal first-that was his concession to her virginity. She would be appeased with food, fattened for the slaughter, then taken upstairs and possessed. How could he think that she was hungry? Didn’t he know her at all? Didn’t he have the slightest degree of sensitivity, of empathy?

Downstairs, they ate in a dining room with paneled walls and heavy furniture. There was no cloth on the table, just well-weathered old wood. The food could have been good or bad and she would not have known. She never tasted it. She sat across from him and tried to make conversation but could barely do that, and she ate without being aware of what she was eating.

Then he hurried her upstairs

He carried her over the threshold. He was a tall man, a strong man, and as he lifted her in his arms she thought that this ought to be giving her a sense of security. But it had the opposite effect. She felt so very small and weak that she wanted to cry out.

“I love you,” he said.

She couldn’t answer.

“Don’t be afraid-”

When she saw him nude for the first time she began to tremble visibly. She was afraid, she couldn’t look at him. The sight of him, and the feel of his eyes on her own bare flesh, and the huge bed looming at her.

He lay for a long time on the bed with her, his hands busy with her body. She felt him touch her, his hands on her breasts, her legs, and she thought that this was supposed to be awfully exciting. But all his games of love had the opposite effect of what he intended. Every touch made her quiver, not with passion but with fear and distaste. Every kiss made her just that more aware of what was to come.