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chair at the table, and took an apple from the bowl upon it. He looked at me, then he looked at the apple, and bit into it.

    ‘Now we ain’t got all night, Cathy, so ‘urry up yer scrubbin’ an’ then get tae bed,’ he said, his mouth full of crunchy fruit. ‘An’ don’ forget tae scrub yer slit. That’s the mos’ important bit.’

    Dejectedly, I listened to the sound of my father’s teeth piercing the flesh of the apple, and then I took the soap down to my sex, and washed the delicate little lips with my fingers, the soap making them slide easily up and down and around it. I’d never touched myself like this, in the bath before, and I began to wonder what it might feel like to insert the soap all the way in… or at least to pushy a single, soapy finger inside of me…

    But my father was watching my every move as he ate, and I knew not to do anything like that in front of him!

    Finally, I was done, and my father spared me the embarrassment of inspecting me, but simply told me to go to my bed, and to take my last sleep inside his four walls, for tomorrow I’d be lying in a bed far, far away from here.

    And I must confess, as I stepped down the murky corridor toward my chamber, I wiped away a few small tears, not because I was sorry to be leaving this house, but because I knew I would never again have the same relationship with my father that I had once had. To him, I was now nothing but a piece of hammered iron, for sale to the highest bidder.

Chapter 12

    The next morning I arose at five a.m. I had had a restless night’s sleep, full of dizzying dreams about the arrogant, obnoxious man who was soon to be my husband. I dreamt that I was nothing but a tiny woodlouse, and I saw his face, towering over me, squashing me under the sole of his shoe. Unable to sleep any longer, after such terrible nightmares, I got out of bed and made myself useful. I scrubbed the kitchen floor, then washed the table, the curtains, and even the inside of the tub which I had used to bathe in last night. By the end of all my cleaning, the light was coming in through the windows, and I was quite, quite filthy. Worse perhaps, than before I had taken to the tub last night.

    Fortunately, my father arose looking rather preoccupied, and did not notice my lack of cleanliness. He came out of his chamber, buttoning up his shirt and straightening his pantaloons, and when he saw me, he took me by the arm – roughly, as Georgina had done last night – and said: ‘Right, we’re off then. Ah promised we’d be there at daybreak.’ And he pulled me out of the kitchen, giving me no time to look behind me at the place I was leaving, only capable of looking ahead, and trying not to trip over any obstacles which lay in my path.

    My father had told the Duke he would marry us in his blacksmith’s shed, as had been in his tradition for many years, with all the marriage pronouncements he had previously made. I was somewhat surprised that the Duke had agreed to be married in a place as simple and dirty as this, but then I was also surprised that he wanted to marry me, and not even in a wedding dress! I was wearing my plain old brown dress, as ever, filthy and falling out of it as I was.

    My father opened the door of the shed wide open, letting in the light, and I stood by his anvil, cowering, awaiting whatever terrible fate I was about to enter into. Mere moments after we had arrived, I heard the sound of a heavy, assured step, and then I saw the Duke walking up the path to our humble home. He was dressed in a severe navy-blue suit, with golden buttons and gold buttons on his shoes. Really, if I hadn’t known better I’d truly think he was the king of England! I was so shocked by the strangeness of everything that was happening to me that I had to stifle a laugh, I really did. The situation was absurd.

    Once the Duke was standing beside me, I heard my father began to speak the words I had heard him speak so many times before. Except now he was