“She’ll be warm enough on the inside,” the doctor replied shortly. “And the muscle convulsions will make things … more interesting.”
Dread seized hold of her with a grip tighter than either of their cruel, groping hands.
“P-please. Don’t,” she stuttered, before her jaw clenched shut on another wave of chills. If only she could struggle. It wouldn’t help her, she knew that, but at least she wouldn’t have this feeling of being bound by her own sinew and skin. Of all the hopeless anger she felt at the moment, most of it was directed at her own useless limbs.
“That’s right, milady, we’ll be making ya beg for it,” Mr. Burns said with apparent relish before addressing the doctor on the other side of her. “I’ve been wanting to get me ’ands on those tits for months, why’d you make us wait so long?”
“This is no government-run institution, Burns, with poor oversight and crowding. Also, this isn’t just any woman. She’s a viscountess. I had to make certain her family wouldn’t make a fuss about her. That they wouldn’t soften or change their minds and take her home. But the Viscount Benchley has just recently assured me that she’s well and truly abandoned to our tender mercies.”
Mr. Burns made a noise of anticipation that roiled what little food Mena had in her belly. There had been a spider baked into her bread that evening for dinner, so she’d only drunk the rancid broth.
“Never shagged nobili’iy before,” he observed.
“Indeed.” Dr. Rosenblatt turned to address Mena. “It may please you to know, Lady Benchley, that your husband has parceled off Birch Haven Place and sold it to make a generous contribution to the institution here at Belle Glen. You’ll be a guest here … indefinitely.”
At that terrible news, a sob escaped her, though, sadly, tears never came. It was as though she were incapable of producing any.
Birch Haven Place had been her home. Her only refuge. And now she’d well and truly lost everything.
The portly Dr. Rosenblatt was audibly short of breath by the time they reached her room, and her weight was primarily supported by the orderly.
“Not a dainty bird, are ya?” Burns remarked. “Well, that’s awright, I s’pose. You’re not like to see tits like those ’uns on a delicate lady.”
The jangle of the keys the doctor pulled from the pocket of his overcoat finally produced a spurt of panic strong enough to slam her heart against her ribs. A trickle of fire started in her scalp and dripped down her spine until her entire body seemed dipped in acid.
Dr. Rosenblatt’s fat fingers seemed clumsy with excitement, his cheeks flushed beneath his gray beard. “I’m going to go first,” he said. “I don’t know where else you’ve put that dirty cod.”
“And ya don’t want to know, neither,” Burns joked, and they shared a masculine chuckle.
Hot tears finally managed to gather behind her eyes and they felt more substantial than the rough hands clamped about her numb arms and waist. Mena wished that she had led the kind of life in which their vulgarity still shocked her. That she’d never known what it was to have a man inside her after she’d said no. Or while she’d cried. Or while she’d struggled and fought. Her husband had taken care of that, hadn’t he?
By the time the heavy door to her room swung open, Mena was able to twitch her fingers. Her strength and blood flow was returning in terrible increments.
Which meant she might be able to struggle—but could she fend them both off?
She doubted it. They were brutes. Two men who mocked her for her height and size when Mr. Burns’s muscle was covered with a layer of softness and Dr. Rosenblatt was simply fat.
They would win, they would overpower her, and then—a gag she was unable to suppress stole her breath.
“Dr. Rosenblatt!” Nurse Schopf’s voice echoed down the hallway like a cannon blast. “Doctor, you must come now!”
A cacophony of madness erupted as other patients were roused, the more unstable of them screeching and making their horrid noises.
“We are being invaded!” the nurse screeched.
“Invaded?” Dr. Rosenblatt visibly blanched. “By whom?”
“The police!”
Lip curling in disgust, Rosenblatt made a nasty comment and then tossed the keys to Mr. Burns. “Put this one in her quarters and use the restraints while I deal with this.”
“With pleasure!” Burns gathered Mena to him and forced her into the unlocked room that had become the stage for her nightly battles with the abyss.
“Not the restraints,” she rasped out, desperation helping her to regain her voice somewhat. “You don’t have to do this. Please just leave me be.” There was a special kind of fear in not being able to move one’s limbs in the night; the fear created its own sort of lunacy as the mind worked while the body could not. Mena imagined all sorts of horrors to combat the chill of being manacled, spread-eagled, on her hard plank bed. An errant fire that she could do nothing about but lie in wait until it consumed her slowly, or London rats chewing on her feet, or spiders crawling on her with no way to brush them off.
And here a new terror was introduced. A man, two men, with unadulterated access to her body and no way for her to struggle, or strain, or even shift to alleviate the pain that came with intercourse.
Some strength began to return to Mena’s hips and shoulders, working its way slowly out from the torso. Everywhere he touched it felt like his skin was made of razors and hers of silk. The ripping sensation was almost audible.