LADY ANN'S FOLLY: Chapter Five - Part Three

Ann dozed, warm and delightfully at peace; content in a way she didn't ever remember being. 

The panoply of passion that had carried her on a palanquin of pure unfettered indulgence had been everything she had ever desired or needed; the absolute expression of her repressed aristocratic fantasies. Burt had been everything; a conglomeration of every masculine virtue; the ideal concert of brawn, dark sexual experience, single-minded intent and simple innocent affection. He was worth a thousand Richard Hurleys. Riches meant nothing compared to the candor and clarity in Burt's simple soul. He was the perfect man. 

Ann stretched, like a baby in the crib, her smile stretching. 

Then her eyes popped open. 

"Oh God." 

She sat up and looked at her surroundings: the dirty hayloft; the crumpled pallet and its weathered blanket; the gaps in the door; the rusty stove; the old tin bath. The memories of her life as Burt weren't prominent anymore. They hadn't been for some time - she knew herself only as Ann now really - but she wasn't Ann anymore and there was enough Burt in her still to feel the sudden weight of this abominable situation battering her down and pinning her as though a tree had fallen on her heart. 

How far had she let this go? How deeply had she allowed herself to wallow in the deadly embrace of tantalising degradation? 

Too far. Too deep. And enough to forget herself entirely. 

Her breath caught and rattled in her throat. She couldn't hurl it out through her lips; couldn't draw it back in. It was a man trap; all of this. It was nothing less than a trap baited with mesmerism and lust. And if she remained here much longer then she would never get out. She really would be Mavis Gibbs forever; an uncouth harlot, spawned and mired in poverty and dissolution to the end of her days. 

Ann scrambled up. She didn't want this. She couldn't dare risk even another minute here for fear its hooks would snare her completely. She had to get out. 

She scrabbled for her clothes, roughly pulling them on, noting half way through dressing with an eerie sense of despair that already her decorum had been whittled into a lower set of standards. In her haste she had forgotten much of what she'd learned in London in her gentrification. Her actions were overly casual; with no regard for primness or propriety. 

"I'm not Mavis," she muttered. "I'm not Mavis. I'm Ann. I'm Lady Ann Neville." 

But her voice betrayed her. It wasn't broad Yorkshire; not now she was no longer lost in the moments of lust, intoxicated on Burt's virility; but the quality of her voice wasn't clipped and controlled as it had been a day earlier. 

"Oh what have I done?" she said, her forehead crinkling. "Why on Earth was I so stupid?" 

She went to the hayloft door, straightening her skirts hurriedly, then she grasped the pendant, tucked away safely in her pocket and stared at it, drawing herself together; telling herself it would be alright. 

As long as she had the pendant she could reverse this terrible mistake any time of her choosing. Or... almost any time. She just had to be cautious. That was all. 

She looked back at the dishevelled pallet on the floor and the sight of it brought back the memory of her time with Burt like it was a pinpoint of light in the corner of her eye. 

Had it been a mistake really? 

Hadn't it been exactly what she had wanted? More than she ever could have expected? 

Of course it had been. 

Whatever happened next she couldn't regret that. Not for a second. 

Ann's lips curled in a dirty smile, reliving the intense pleasure for a moment longer, then she let herself out into the cool morning air and set off toward Griply Hall.