The Sisters Read Online Free PDF

tulips, and through the windows, blue, like blossoms of sky. Palm fronds peeked out from the edges of the scene, and a large gold urn and flat bowl sat beside the bath.
    “Wonderful,” Mabel said. “Is it in Turkey? Bertie will love this.” She looked at her stepfather. “May I show her tomorrow?”
    “There’s no hurry,” he said. “Look again.” He’d removed the first picture. Two of the women on the steps had opened the silk draping at the top, exposing their breasts. The tints of their flesh, the detail of their nipples, the depth of the optical trick made those round breasts as real as Mabel’s own. Before she could speak, Butcher pulled aside that picture, and now the first three women had completely removed their top draperies. One was reaching forward to untie another’s skirt. The woman beside the column had moved to join the one beside the bath. They had both disrobed entirely and now sat gazing intently at each other’s nakedness. One extended her hand as if to caress her companion’s breast.
    A flick of Butcher’s hand, and now all the women were naked, their silks lying in shimmering heaps. Some had gotten in the bath, though they stood to show off their bodies. One pair sat on the floor, facing each other, their legs entwined.
    Mabel threw the viewer aside and sprang up, but Butcher caught her by her waist and pulled her down onto the bed. “Prettiest girl,” he said, and pressed his mouth hard against hers. His throat swallowed her scream and his hard chest absorbed her struggles. He held her down with the weight of his body, and when he released the kiss, he clamped one hand across her mouth and the other across her throat. “Not a sound, now.” He pressed her throat harder. “Not a sound. This stays between us. Wouldn’t take a bit of trouble to kill that sister of yours.”
    Both terror and ignorance had kept her from screaming again. Mabel knew little then of what happened between men and women, and so when she lay there while he tugged her party dress off her shoulders and over her hips, unlaced her corset and rolled down her stockings, she thought he was just going to look at her, perhaps beat her. Anything else was beyond her conceiving, so, when he turned her over on the bed and jammed her face into the wool blanket, she couldn’t comprehend what he was doing, imagining he must have sprouted claws to dig within her and tear out her insides. She’d seen him disembowel a deer once and thought now he must be disemboweling her.
    He’d been less cruel to the deer. He’d killed it first.
    In the dawn light, she was astonished to wake up, to find herself alive. In his bed. In his arms. Her hip bones felt as if they’d been torn from the rest of her body, perhaps broken, and there was such a burning inside her, she thought he must have driven in a lighted candle to sear her with the melted wax. But she was strangely clean, too. The soft scent of lavender rose from her skin, and she was wearing one of her mother’s linen nightdresses.
    Though it was agony, she rolled to her side, trying to slip out of the bed without waking Butcher, but his arms tightened around her. His breath on her neck, he nuzzled against her. “Little wife,” he said. “In this room, you’re my little wife.”
    “Oh, no, no.” Hot tears flowed down Mabel’s cheeks. Again she tried to pull herself free.
    “In this room, I said.” Butcher clasped his fingers like a vise around her jaw and forced her to look at him. “Everyplace else, you’re my little girl.” Nothing, not even coal, was blacker than his eyes. “Say it. Say ‘Yes, Daddy.’” Mabel twisted away, but he jerked her back, holding even tighter now. “Say it!”
    “Yes, Daddy.”
    “Like you mean it.”
    She closed her eyes and tried to swallow, tried to recall her father’s face. What came to her was Bertie’s face—little Bertie, still sleeping, she prayed, two rooms away—Bertie’s face and Butcher’s words from last night. Two