Embrace Me by Roberta Latow Page B

gently moved aside the white collar of her blouse and exposed the bruises. Hannah pulled back.
    ‘Why don’t you get yourself a cup and have some coffee withme while I have my breakfast?’ he asked kindly.
    She looked fearfully at the entrance to the pub to see if Jethroe was coming back. They heard his car roar off and Harry did not miss the expression of relief on her face. Hannah smiled and pulled herself up, even gave him a smile. ‘I think I’ll do that, if you’re sure you mean it?’
    When she returned with her cup and saucer she was carrying a plate of hot buttered toast. Harry forked some bacon and egg into his mouth and Hannah spread a piece of the toast with gooseberry jam and bit into it.
    ‘Those bruises on your neck look fresh, would you like to tell me about them?’ he asked.
    Hannah placed her hand on the offending marks then pulled her collar forward to cover them. ‘Only if you promise to do nothing about what I tell you? You being a policeman and all.’
    ‘I promise if that’s what you want,’ he answered, thinking how pretty and sexy she was.
    ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t know. It’s common knowledge that I’m Jethroe’s girlfriend and that when he gets drunk he sometimes gets violent with me. You were sure to find out sooner or later.’
    ‘Why do you stand for it?’
    ‘Because I love him and it doesn’t happen all the time. It’s kind of a sexual thing, or partly. And most of the time it’s set off by something I do or say.’
    ‘He must stop or you must leave him, Hannah. This isn’t good for either of you.’
    ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that! I tried a couple of times and I was miserable without him. It’s just the way it is, the way
he
is, and not all the time. Our sex life is just one of the many skeletons in the closet here at Sefton Under Edge. We all know each other’s business but never interfere in it,’ she told him, taking another piece of toast.
    ‘Hannah, do you know Lady Olivia well?’
    ‘As well as anyone really knows her outside the inner circle up at the Park and maybe old Miss Plumm. Lady Olivia, whether you know her or not, always leaves her mark on you.’
    ‘Even you and Jethroe, Hannah?’ he asked.
    ‘We’re no exception. Jethroe was in love with Lady Olivia. I think he still is and always will be. He’d lay down his life for her.’
    ‘Why? And would you?’ asked Harry, clearly intrigued by this information.
    ‘If Jethroe even knew we were talking about her and our intimate affairs, he’d beat me within an inch of my life,’ said Hannah, who’d turned beetroot red and looked frightened.
    ‘I’ll never tell him.’
    She sat quite silent for several minutes. Harry thought then that he had lost her, that she was too frightened to give up any more secrets. Then she surprised him by beginning to speak in a more considered manner about herself, Jethroe and Lady Olivia.
    ‘I’d never met anyone like her before. She was marked by beauty and passion, hotter than the sun. She could melt people’s hearts and enjoy doing it. I had no idea that women could enjoy sex with both men and women, that women could love women – until I met her. Lady Olivia was a woman who knew how to love with courage. It was she who taught me how to give myself totally to sex and love, only I could never master being totally submissive to the man I love yet keep my own counsel, the way she could.
    ‘I will never leave Jethroe. I have learned to accept him with the faults he has and don’t think myself a lesser person for that. Maybe greater. We are and are not what we are. Lady Olivia is the beautiful adventurer we all yearn to be. We cherish her as we would cherish ourselves. She has changed so many of us here in the village but we’ve added nothing to her life. It was already whole and complete the way we want ours to be but can never quite achieve it. You see, none of us has the courage to take that last step over the edge, the way she does.’
    ‘And Jethroe?