The Unchaste

Platinum Threadwork

It was a string of knotted flesh, like a serpent running under her skin, in an astray, yet predestined manner_ a mere pursuit of stitch-mark now. A story to tell and be told. Platinum stitch-mark, shadowing the paleness of soft skin around it in an odd red hue_ it arched over both of Tiffany's breast, met at the cleavage, and then travelling low, it again bifurcated at her lower abdomen.

On a silk page, this would have been christened as Embroidery. But so brutally engraved on a woman, this same needle-work, somehow_ had no reputation to be called anything if not something tragedy_ this embroidery bespoke consequences far more brusque than the former one. Far more preternatural.

Tiffany touched the suture lightly, and trailed its itinerary with soft revulsion.

"This was..." She hummed, staring down. "...this had been where the rag doll was torn open, filled again with pigeon feathers, and then sutured back shut so as to be played again with."

But Delilah was not listening. Other, more impossible things have been alleged in the course of this extraordinary nightmare and it was unworkable for Delilah_ the murderess, the witch, the Devil disguised_ to let her mind detach from that one statement it clung to.

"Why were you buried at Ivybrough?" She asked dazedly. "Who was so cruel as to_"

"They would have been cruel had they not buried me." Tiffany cut in apathetically. "I never said they buried me living. Or what else should be done with the dead Delilah?"

"No." Delilah cried. "Impossible! That is not even.... Ridiculous! Lady Tiffany, listen to what you are phrasing."

"They could also have cremated me." Tiffany continued in her musing. "But dare I say I am sorry they didn't. Things would have been so unlike at that juncture."

"Have you lost your mind?" Delilah scoffed in alarm. "Your ladyship! I mean no offence, pardon my audacity, but you do not perceive what you are talking of."

"Or perhaps it is just you, Delilah." Tiffany laughed a sullen laughter. "You do not believe what I am talking of. You do not wish to, because then_ it will question every single lesson you have been made to know since infancy. It will alter your science, your anthropology, your religion, your upbringing and question it all the same. I understand. I understand that you find it hard to_"

"I find it impossible." Delilah snapped. "I find it outrageous that you would play such hoax on me only to_ to serve what purpose Tiffany? What do you want?"

"I want you to not accuse Richard the way you do." Tiffany was unruffled by Delilah's rage. "I want you to not hate that man. He deserves better. Delilah, you must believe all that I tell you and you must save my Rich_ Lord Richard from what is coming."

"I am scarcely able to understand you." Delilah closed her eyes shut and pressed her finger at the bridge of her nose, sighing wearily. "I have been told enough distressing things by His Grace for today. Can your tale not wait, my lady? Pray do not amplify this mêlée with the cut-rate Penny dreadful you are uttering."

The sharpness of those words, callous as they were, pained Tiffany into wordlessness, because the next moment, the big blue eyes turned absurdly glassy and the carnation like lips hung low. Tiffany made no move to deal with her state of undress. She was complacently suspended into a substantial, soundless meditation, meanwhile not endeavoring to check her tears or to leave the chamber. She had to say something.

Delilah was, by now, disturbed enough that the tears in the lady's eyes made her only more and all the more agitated. She stomped to the window once, balling her fists by her side_ a slow ache spreading down her limbs.