LILY by Bergotte (most popular ebook readers .TXT) 📕

the presence of mind to sit with her arms pulled round her legs, rather than lie supine for her unwanted partner. Neville dropped his jacket on the floor and leapt on to the bed himself, forcing Lily to lie back whilst he stretched himself over her.

She struggled violently to throw him off, but to no avail. He was much physically stronger. He pulled the bedclothes down and bent over her. She felt a sudden, excruciating pain as he bit into the top of her left breast. They both lay still in silence, contemplating what he had done.

There was a faint sound of someone coming up the stairs.
“It’s my father,” said Lily, struggling out of the bed, pulling on her nightdress and reaching for a dressing gown from the hook on the back of the bedroom door. Neville sprang off the bed, seized his jacket and struggled into it as he stood by the fireplace. They heard a gentle tap, tap, tap, on the door, followed by Eli’s dulcet tones calling to his frightened daughter from the hallway. “Come in father, please come in,” Lily called out to him.

The door opened slowly and the old man shuffled inside. “I have some business to discuss with Dr Flint, you know,” he said to them both, as he stopped in the middle of the room, looking from one to the other of the occupants. “We will come down immediately, father,” replied Lily, as Eli Cohen turned on his heel and started to make his way slowly downstairs, without saying another word. Neville too kept silent, following a few seconds afterwards.

As soon as the door had closed behind him Lily rushed to her dressing table. She sat down heavily and stared into the glass, opening her dressing gown to reveal a large bloodstain on her white nightdress. “He’s actually drawn blood,” she said to herself out loud, unable to comprehend how Flint could have perpetrated such an act against her. “Yet,” she said, “it’s not in his character to do such a thing, I’m sure.”

She unfastened the buttons of her nightdress to examine the damage to her body. When she saw the clear, deep teeth marks of Neville Flint in the soft, pink flesh of her breast, she gasped in astonishment. The wound throbbed in pain. She gasped again when she realised that she was still bleeding from the vicious attack. She delved in a drawer and withdrew a kerchief with which to staunch the flow of blood.

Meanwhile, in the room below, Flint only half listened to what his host was telling him… something about medical supplies. His mind was in a whirlwind as he tried to work out why he had attacked Lily in such a callous manner. He rejected the idea that he had been overcome by an unconscious desire to do Lily harm, but it worried him that he had flagrantly flouted the terms of the Hippocratic Oath that he had taken when he had qualified as a doctor. He made some excuse to Eli and quickly left the house.

Upstairs, Lily had torn up her nightdress to make some long bandages, several of which she managed to tie round her, covering the wound in her breast, which was still bleeding, but not so profusely as previously. She got up from her seat at the dressing table and walked slowly to the bedroom door. As she did so, she experienced the excruciating pain of the wound once more and began to feel quite faint. She grasped hold of the door, opened it and walked gingerly along the passageway to the staircase, where she gripped the banister rail and made her way down to join her father.

She missed her footing on the bottom stair and fell forwards heavily. Her shocked father looked at her in astonishment, hurrying over to see what had happened to his beloved daughter. He saw the makeshift bandage when he opened her dressing gown to give her some air and the signs of blood on her breast. He started to tend her wound, but his training as a pharmacist was not enough. He needed a doctor. He hurried as quickly as he could to the front door, looked out down the road but could see no sign of Dr Flint. He turned back, his daughter needed help. For all he knew she might be near to death, if she had lost a great deal of blood…

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Publication Date: 07-13-2011

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