The Shameful Secret of Sibyl Vane ((LitShark & Little_Zora))

[LitShark]

The Shameful Secret of Sibyl Vane ((LitShark & zora_little))

When the final curtain came down, Dorian didn’t clap his hands once. Sir Henry gave a polite spattering of applause which seemed more condescending than earnest, and some drunk nearer to the front woke himself long enough to give two, half-hearted claps. Though the house never seemed to fill beyond about a third of its intended capacity, all save the napping drunk, Dorian and Sir Henry had all made hasty retreats during intermission—off to seek some more rewarding and less disgraceful form of artful diversion.

The play had been very bad indeed.

Worse even than the grotesque butchery inflicted on the pinnacle of the Bard’s repertoire, Romeo and Juliet, was the fact that it had been Dorian’s fresh-minted fiancée whose performance had dragged the whole of the production into the mire of predictable drudgery. She’d performed so poorly—it was as if her dreadful and stilted acting of Juliet had pierced the fog of love with inscrutable light—he saw clearly for the first time since he’d first seen her play Rosalind in As You Like It. Where her talent and gifts had first inspired love in him, this dreadful sham of a performance had driven all the love from him.

Only bitter disdain remained in him.

“Perhaps we’ve caught her on an off night, surely the poor thing must have been consumed with apprehension, knowing that tonight was the eve of your elopement.” Sir Henry was trying to spin the travesty into a forgivable light, and Dorian hated him for it. “The venue scarcely suits such a thing that can catch your eye. We must immediately begin introducing her around among society, she’s meant to play to a bigger house, in a proper theatre.”

“Rubbish.” Dorian answered distractedly, combing his fingers through his long, onyx hair. “Pure and unblended rubbish—and you know it Harry. The whole show, her on a proper stage, the marriage, her performance—if it could even be called such without gagging—they’re all pure rubbish! How could I have been so shortsighted?”

“Now, now my lad. Don’t be so hard on the poor thing. If you’ll take a moment to recall, it was I who cautioned you against giving so much leverage to these sudden feelings of love. She’s still just a child, she’ll come to—“

“Love! There you’ve hit on exactly the matter at hand. Juliet is no older than Sibyl—it’s love that defines her and the awkward, lurching, obvious counterfeit that took place on that stage tonight could not have come from one who knows love as well as she has professed. The counterfeit on that stage tonight is merely a symptom of the viral semblance which has reinvented her in my esteem. It’s all rubbish.”

“But Dorian, you’ve made promises… you’ve done things. You have a responsibility.”

“Funny argument from you, who’s so often away from his wedded wife, to argue the weight of promises and fidelity. I cannot marry her—I will not. Promises, chastity and responsibility be damned! I owe nothing to a low-class hack like her.”

Dorian straightened his coat with a pair of clenched fists, took his silk hat from the empty seat behind him and strode into the aisle with purpose. He walked past the drunkard who had fallen back asleep, running a white glove through his long, flowing hair, setting it in perfect alignment before returning his hat to his head. He’d made up his mind, it seemed so clear now what he needed to do. He marched up the stage steps, shouldering his way past the curtain into the backstage area where he’d met Sibyl night-after-night during their whirlwind courtships, in happier times before he lost all respect for her.

“Please be reasonable, won’t you? Don’t make any rash decisions, surely you could take some time to rethink things. You’re acting as rashly as you did when you first fell for her—surely she can redeem herself.”

“What she’s done is unredeemable, Harry.” Dorian whispered to his friend, making his way toward the dressing room. “She’s killed my love, and that’s the whole of it. There’s no bringing it back. The girl doesn’t even know my name. Perhaps once I’ve broken things off with her she’ll finally demonstrate some genuine emotion, rather than that parody of love she played at tonight.”

“The play was very bad, indeed.” Harry answered gravely, twisting the end of his moustache with gloved fingers.

Dorian began tapping his foot eagerly, the longer he waited for Sibyl, the more he began to question his resolve. No, his mind was made up and neither her smile, her laugh nor that adorable way she had of pouting when things displeased her would weaken him. Even if she threw herself on his mercy and begged, he would not be dissuaded. He would not marry Sibyl Vane, he would not, in fact, ever see her again and would tell her so.

Seeking a husband as fallen woman suited her station anyway. She was better suited to that role than any star-crossed lover anyway. It would all be for the best.

 

[Little_Zora]

“Oh gentle Romeo, if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully: Or, if thou thinkst I am too quickly won, I’ll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay, so though wilt woo; but else, not for the world.”

A loud wet snoring sound ripped through the ensuing, overdramatic silence after Sybil’s last line. There was a brief cough as she rummaged in her head for her next line, someone hissed “Get on with it, missy!” The theatre was almost empty, and those few that had cared to attend the play did not show much interest in it at all.

Sybil Vane did not care. Romeo – really not more than an aged dreadful old ham of an actor – cleared his throat, his forced, laughably lovesick expression tacked to his features as if with rusty nails. Oh! Her mind had wandered off, wandered off to the balcony where she knew her very own Prince Charming, her Dorian, was following her every move. She rattled down her next lines impatiently, so fast that Romeo started swaying nervously under the onslaught of sweet words from his Juliet.

“Lady, by yonder blessed moon…”

Her mind wandered off again, and she could not help but throw furtive glances up into the half-shadows of the upper balcony, where she knew Dorian would be seated, as he had been night after night now, to watch her perform.

“…all these fruit-tree tops…!”

There was an edgy urgency to Romeo’s voice now that obviously tried to get her to continue. Sybil forced herself to focus on him, and tried to imagine the beautiful, radiant features of her Prince Charming.

“O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable.”

It was impossible. Looking into the waxen, made-up face of the dreadful actor pretending to love, how could she put any truth in her own words? But Dorian, he had sworn, too. Tonight they would finally run away together, they would finally be able to be together, and be together forever, never to be separated again. How everything had fallen into place so wonderfully!

How was she supposed to act, if she really was in love with Dorian, when every fibre of her being longed to be with him, and only him? For Sibyl, acting had been an escape, a way to go on with each day, to dream and to evolve, but now?

“Do not swear at all. Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, which is the God of my idolatry, and I’ll believe thee.”

Again, she glanced up towards the balcony. There he sat, somewhere in the dark, her God, her idol, her one true love, and she would do anything for him, defy anyone, and anything, just to be with him forever. She needed no longer pretend, for Dorian was indeed hers, and she was his. Romeo? A farce only, a cardboard man.

“This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.”

Thus spoke Juliet. But she, Sibyl, did not need to wait much longer. Yes, Sybil Vane had long been a passionate, a charming actress, she had drawn a merry crowd to this shoddy side street theatre, she had changed roles and identities with ease, like a costume she could slip in and out of. Acting had been her only passion then, her only consolation in a life of need and relative poverty, and the women she was miming on stage had been her jealously coveted alter egos.

But Sybil did not need to find recourse in such pretences any longer, not since she met him, her Prince Charming, her Dorian. Surely he was as aware as she that the silly charade was nothing compared to the real passion that animated each of their movements, each of their thoughts, and each of their living moments. When would this dreadful play finally come to an end?

***

When the final curtain fell, Sybil could barely wait to run from the stage, where Romeo insisted to curtsy a second, then a third time in front of a mostly empty theatre, his sweaty hand firmly holding on to hers, dragging her onto the stage to be leered at by a tired drunkard.

“Oh, come off it”, she finally hissed at him, tearing herself loose to make her way to her dressing room where she knew Dorian was waiting, as he had every night before this one.

“Can’t wait to have him paw your sweet thighs again, can you, eh?”

On other nights, his mean comment might have made her fret, when she had still tried to convince those that cared to listen that Dorian was a true gentleman, a man of his word and of honour, not a man who mistook pretty actresses for better prostitutes, not a man like that at all.

No, she did not know much about him, in fact she only had his first name and his sweet, gentle manners to go by, but after the wedding, surely, she would find out who his family really was. He had not told her, but a man dressed in fine cloth like he was, smelling like expensive perfume, always perfectly coiffed and shaved – he had to be a gentlemen, and she, Sybil Vane, would be his lady wife so soon!

Sybil’s heart was beating like a drum when she put her hand onto the door handle of her dressing room, and finally entered.

“Oh, was this not the most dreadful of performances?” She threw herself in his arms. “But who is Romeo to me, my dear Dorian, when I have you?”

 

[LitShark]

Dorian flinched noticeably when Sibyl lunged at him, redirecting her face with a gloved hand as she tried to kiss him. Sir Henry scoffed behind his whiskers and Dorian grasped her by the shoulders to maintain a respectable distance between them. Her skin felt as soft as ever and her eyes were no less luminous than he remembered and her smile no less warm—yet it was different now, Dorian knew that she was no longer who she had been to him.

“Do not call me that.” Dorian said curtly, shaking Sibyl by her shoulders firmly. “You ought to have more respect for my station than to address me in such a familiar way, Sibyl. I am not your Dorian, nor do you have me. It’s true that once you caught my eye—fascinated me even, for a spell; but that interest of mine, my love for you was linked to your talent and skill as an artist, your acting ability was what drew me to you. Now—seeing you suddenly take leave of it—watching you cast off your God-given talents like some moth-eaten shawl, I find that I can no longer see what I once found so appealing. In short, you have killed my love.”

With that, Dorian gave Sibyl a firm shove by her shoulders, wanting to be free of his contact with her, lest the softness of her skin permeate his gloves and weaken his resolve. He turned his back on her, turning back toward Lord Henry and sharply sniffing a pinch of snuff into his sinuses.

“I am sorry that I must meet you under such… unfortunate circumstances. I’ve heard wonderful things about you, my dear. I am Lord Henry Wotton, I—“

“Enough!” Dorian shouted at his companion, “she’s no longer worth your attention, Harry. She’s humiliated me enough without you dancing around the fact of her dreadful performance. How could I have been so blind? I’ve almost come to believe that it was a specter—some other Sibyl who first caught my eye as Ganymede and Rosalind. Let’s go, Harry. Perhaps we can still seek some more worthy diversion. There’s no beauty left here.”

Dorian placed his hat back upon his head and turned back toward Sibyl on his way to the door.

“You’ll someday find someone who will love you, who can look past the transient nature of your artistic gifts, but I cannot suffer you as a bumbling and detestable Juliet. You have killed my love, now you must seek to inspire it elsewhere—closer to your natural station.”

With that, Dorian tossed his silk scarf over his shoulder and began to stride past Sibyl, leaving Henry to make his own adieus.

“It’s been a pleasure, miss.” Henry sneered, tipping his hat after placing it on his head.

 

[zora_little]

Dorian had never before refused a kiss from his Sybil, and his gesture utterly confused her. What was the meaning of his behaviour? Sibyl looked at him, her eyes widening first with amusement, then gradually with confusion and fear.

She listened to him as he was roughly shaking her by the shoulders like an unruly child, still unable to make sense of his words? His station…? He was not…hers? The joy had been wiped from her features as if with a rough paintbrush, making way instead for an expression of growing pain. She cried out in hurt surprise as he shoved her away from him, stumbling against her dresser with a groan of pain.

“My Dorian, what has gotten into to you that you are so angry with me?”

She was barely able to pay attention to the friend that Dorian had brought with him, a tall, broad-shouldered man she had never seen before. Sybil had never imagined her Dorian as someone who entertained friendships, it had always been as if the two of them had only breathed, lived, existed for each other.

“Oh Dorian, please, do not leave me like this!” She stumbled past the man who had introduced herself as a gentleman and aristocrat, almost shoving him out of the way in her haste.

“Trust me if I tell you that I can play any role for you, Dorian, any role at all!”

Was he really leaving? Did he indeed mean every of his cruel, cold words? How was that possible? How was it possible that her loving heart, a fluttering, happy bird in her chest just minutes ago, had turned into ash, filling her with nothing but dread? Surely, this was a joke on his part, a test of her resolve? Or, failing that, a nightmare maybe? Sybil pinched her own arm, and flinched at the instant sensation of pain.

“Please do not leave me! I cannot be, cannot live without you, Dorian!” A sob rose from her chest and she shook her head to suppress it. “Please, you are my Prince Charming, you are my everything! Do not leave me here to die – and die I surely will if you abandon me!”

Tears were now springing from her eyes as she hurried after him. Did he not realise that he was the sole reason that she did not need to act anymore? That she was unable to pretend love to an old, saggy face caked with make-up, when he took up all the room inside her heart?

“I can be the Juliet, the Rosalind, the Ophelia that you desire!” She lunged at the door, throwing herself between the Dorian and his only way out of the modest dressing room, her delicate face streamed with tears. “Tell me who you want me to be, my dear Dorian, I will prove my talent to you, I will prove to you that I am an actress worthy of your love and your attention, I swear it!”

She was on her knees looking up at her Prince Charming, too afraid to reach out to touch him, but desiring nothing more. Wiping her tears away, she continued eagerly, her voice filled with the renewed enthusiasm of an idea.

“Why don’t you be the director of the play you would like to see me in, Dorian? You may judge me as harshly as you desire, you may be the jury of my talent and cast me away if I fail to convince you!” Finally Sybil worked up the courage to reach out, shyly touching the seam of his coat, her fingers curling beseechingly into the soft fabric.

“I beg you to give me that chance, dear Dorian. Give me one more chance to prove myself in your eyes. I am an actress, by God, and I will prove it to you. Please do not cast me away just yet. Oh, please, I beg you, just one more chance. I will do anything you’ll ask of me.”

 

[LitShark]

Sir Henry scoffed and straightened his jacket as Sibyl barged past him in her sprint to block Dorian from leaving her dressing room. Dorian’s gloved hand had actually begun to open the door before she slammed it shut again by throwing her body against it. Dorian sighed loudly through his nose as she began to beg, removing his hat and looking back at Henry so that he’d know to do the same. It seemed they were a captive audience for the time being.

Sir Henry scoffed out loud, bringing a gloved hand up to his mouth too late to suppress the haughtily derisive laugh that bristled past his moustache when Sibyl claimed that she’d die without Dorian, prompting a snide smile from the man himself. Actresses and their melodrama, Dorian thought, always overstating the matter.

“Sibyl, you’re making a mockery of yourself,” Dorian interjected as she began to weep, “please cease this display at once before you make things worse for yourself.”

“Now, now, Dorian. Let the girl finish. I’ll admit that this is a sight more entertaining than that farce from the stage. Go on, little swan, plead your case.”

Dorian shot a glare back at his companion, notorious for delighting in the prolonged suffering of others—women in particular. Still, once Henry demanded something of Dorian there seemed no conceivable outcome besides that Dorian should heed to his demands. The thought briefly crossed his mind to demand recompense from his companion, insist that Sir Henry pay for their inevitable ventures into the West End dens if he was going to insist on hearing Sibyl’s ridiculous lamentations, but he held back. When Dorian turned back toward Sibyl who had been cast as their entertainment, she was on her knees.

Sibyl made grandiose promises, seemingly reinvigorated by Henry’s interjection on her behalf, not knowing Harry’s proclivity for relishing the sorrow of others. She was wiping tears from her face as she begged and pleaded for Dorian to direct her into a role that could please him, promised to do whatever he pleased and cede to his judgment if she ever fell short. When she reached out to touch the seam of his coat, touching the fabric so gently and sweetly. Dorian felt himself weakening, felt her prostration working on him—he also felt his cock becoming rigid down the leg of his trousers.

“Why Dorian—just look at the poor thing.” Henry chuckled, the pointed derision in his tone evident only to Dorian who knew him, the perfect semblance of sincerity. “One thing I know about life, my boy, is that I’ve never had too many women around who swore to do anything I asked of them.”

“Harry, I cannot do it. I simply no longer feel—“

“Listen to her, she’s not asking you to feel. She wants only for you to take. To ask of her whatever you desire and allow her to become that—why just as she is now, I see what you must have once seen in her, why she’s Ophelia in the flesh!”

“Harry, I couldn’t.”

“I could, why just let me! Would you come with me my dear, if I sought to secret you home with me and stash you away from my wife in a closet like a lewd, little fetish to stave away my boredom? I think it’s a generous offer Dorian, but if you’re going to prostrate yourself, dear girl, you ought to hint with some skin. Begging on your knees is such a cliché—it’s bare shoulders that truly communicate desperation.”

Henry leaned past Dorian, tugging down the sleeves of Sibyl’s Juliet costume dress until her shoulders and collarbones were clearly exposed—a smooth, pale surface like the side of a pearl. There was an audible tearing sound, and the collar dipped immodestly at the front where the fabric ripped. He hadn’t meant to rip it, but showed no outward sign as a smile crossed his lips. Henry ran his palms slowly across Sibyl’s exposed chest and shoulders with bare hands, Dorian wondered when he’d taken his gloves off and quickly followed suit.

When Henry moved back behind Dorian, and he looked down again, his prick achieved a full erection. His trousers were all askew from the intrusion of his hard cock, and he took a moment to adjust, yet made no move to disentangle Sibyl’s slender, pale fingers from the silk of his coat.

“Very well, I’ll grant you the chance you desire, but the moment that you disappoint me or fail to do as instructed, know that you’ll be headed back here to your mother, brother and Jewish promoter. You have five minutes to pack your things and rearrange your face. Wear your finest clothes—whatever it is that can mean to one such as yourself.”

To punctuate his final verdict, Dorian snatched his coat away from Sibyl’s grasp and turned away to properly fix his trousers without his willy at eye level to her. Dorian slid his gloves back onto his hands when Sibyl departed and Sir Henry followed suit.

 

[zora_little]

Sybil was too distressed to fight back against Sir Henry, and when he ripped her cheap costume, exposing more of her chest than was proper or decent, she was unable to move away, trapped as she was between him and the door.

“Sir, what kind of woman do you take me for?” Her voice was merely a hoarse whisper, not more, and both men ignored it. She flinched at the touch of his bare hands against her skin. No, really, what was the meaning of such rude advances, and in front of her dear Prince Charming?

But Dorian, her Dorian, he did find it in his heart to cede to her pleas.

“Oh thank you, Dorian, thank you so much!” Forgotten was her uncovered state, forgotten the lecherous stare of her lover’s companion. “You will see, you will not regret this, I will make you proud!”

She kissed the seam of his coat before he tore it from her trembling hands, but it mattered not. He had said yes!

***

Sybil decided on a beautifully cut dress made of crêpe de chine in the colour of a dark emerald green that, her brother always said, brought out the rich brown of her eyes. She had bought it for herself in Petticoat Lane only a few months ago, and the shopkeeper had sworn that it had been worn only once before she acquired it. The silk made for such an exquisite contrast against her pale skin. Dorian had never seen this dress on her, she had wanted to surprise him with it – but what better moment than now to enchant and please than tonight?

Her hands were shaking slightly as she tried to lace up her bodice with the help of an instrument that real ladies did not need to use, for they had maids to wait on them – and she, too, would soon enough be able to give up the shamefully destitute act of dressing herself. Once her Dorian was swayed, once he loved her like he had before, she would live in a grand house, waited on by servants, with a different dress for every day of the year.

Forgotten were her tears. This was how it was going to be! Dorian and her were star-crossed lovers, they were meant to be, and this little incident was nothing but a test of their resolve. Nothing would come between them.

She would prove to him that she was worthy of his love and adoration. Surely he would not want his ghastly friend to treat her badly, his behaviour earlier had been a slip, a mistake that he likely already regretted. Would a real gentleman take such liberties with an honourable woman? Surely not. And Dorian was no ruffian. It was likely that he had already reprimanded his rowdy friend for accidentally ripping Sybil’s costume as he had.

Sitting in front of her mirror she dabbed away the exaggerated make-up, ruined as it was by her tears, to apply a fine coat of powder and only a bit of rouge for her cheeks and her lips. A good actress did not need to recur to masks to convince, and Sybil was going to show them what talents she was yet able to unveil.

Finally she chose a pretty, cheap faux pearl necklace and matching earrings. Then she hastily threw her few meagre possessions in a small leather bag, before hesitating for a moment.

What would she tell her mother, what the Jew? The horrid theatre owner still had rights over her, and she was unable to simply leave, or he would take it out on her family. What to do? Would Dorian step in and help her? Would he pay? Her brother could not know, he would not approve, and not understand – he was convinced of Dorian’s bad intentions, had always been.

So what to do?

Her gaze fell onto the torn silk costume on the floor, and she had an idea, a horrible, a bold idea – but it would save her family’s honour and keep her safe from the grasp of the Jew: if they thought she was dead, she would be able to go where she pleased, and her and Dorian could be together, finally, without any more obstacles in their way.

A hastily scribbled note and the costume found on the banks of the River Thames was all she now needed to arrange.

 

[LitShark]

When Sibyl had left the room, Dorian looked sternly at Sir Henry, who seemed all too pleased with himself as he pulled a cigarette from his silver case and began to smoke. Sir Henry seemed utterly unmoved by his companion’s impatience, tapping the ash from his cigarette onto the already filthy carpet of the backstage dressing room. Sir Henry sat on the fraying couch at the far edge of the room, backed by hanging costumes.

“You’re giving her false hope, Harry. It’s unkind.” Dorian huffed, pacing nervously around the small room. “I cannot love her, I told you. It—it’s all worn away.”

“My dear boy, who is speaking of love? You cannot love her, very well—you’ve told her as much. What she’s promised us is performance—diversion. I would see what the girl can do, will you or no.” Harry spoke casually, gesturing with his smoke, leaving wide, looping swirls of smoke hanging before him as if drawing a treasure map. “We’ll take the girl around, show her a good time and demand of her impossible feats of human debauchery that eventually she’ll balk at. Then, having failed you we’ll swat her on the bottom like a disobedient child and send her back here to her family and obscurity, richer with experience and wiser in matters of the heart.”

“It’s unconscionable!” Dorian cried, finally beginning to see the full scale of Henry’s intention.

“Oh, so for you to rob the girl of her honour prematurely and then leave her now so unsatisfied is a light load on your conscience. At least now she’ll have a taste of the finer things and how wide the world is before she has to slink back to this hole as a tarnished wretch.”

“But I did what I did for love!”

“I’m also acting out of love, Dorian. Can’t you see it? I love art, beauty, youth, the theatre, performance and spectacle. I love diversion, aesthetic and pleasure above the sentimental feelings of one silly, idealistic girl. Let’s show her what life can be like for men such as us. Then you can leave her to whatever fate awaits soiled, pretty things of low birth.”

“Harry, I—“ Dorian’s last attempt at protest was interrupted by Sibyl’s return to the room, and her appearance was sufficient to halt all other conversations. She was breathtaking.

“My dear girl!” Sir Henry acclaimed, standing from his place on the couch and flicking his cigarette onto the carpet, “why you’re positively radiant. Who would have known from the drab, unremarkable display you made on stage. Why I think you might be able to do what you’ve promised after all. Doesn’t she look beautiful, Dorian?”

“Quite presentable, yes.” Dorian mumbled, using his snuff box to distract him from Sibyl’s beguiling appearance. “Shall we?”

“Indeed we shall.” Henry grinned, reaching out to grasp the back of Sibyl’s soft, angular neck in his gloved hand, steering her by the head out of the dressing room toward the front of the house, “tonight, my darling girl, you’re going to give us a performance. My companion and I have agreed, tonight you’ll play Scheherazade to us two sultans. You’ll be our courtesan for the evening, a high-end whore to put common trollups to shame. We’ll also bring you into contact with others who resemble the role you’ve been cast in—allow you to assume the role through Stanislavski’s method for acting. Rest assured, we will grant you the opportunity to awe us with your skills. You’ll make a fine whore indeed.”

Dorian was as meek as the grave as he trailed behind Sir Henry and Sibyl, one leading the other out to the damp street. Dorian took Sibyl’s hand in his, holding her like an impetuous toddler while Harry called loudly for a handsome.

 

[zora_little]

Sybil felt an uncomfortable shiver when Sir Henry grabbed her by neck like one would a charming, disobedient kitten, but she was still under too much of a shock to protest. Her mind was racing, still trying to catch up with the events of this strange evening. So had her Dorian forgiven her then? Hr did promise her another chance, did he not?

But the way his friend was talking! The language he was using! Sybil was not sure if he was trying to pull her leg, or scare her or if, God forbid, he meant what he said.

Sir Henry’s words were both promise and threat, but Sybil did not dare to reply. A courtesan? A…whore? She felt her face flush in shame, but neither of the men would have noticed. Entertain them for one evening, surely, yes, as an actress playing a whore. That was all, and she would excel at it.

She stumbled more than she walked in Sir Henry’s grip, pondering what he said. A whore she could play. She had played fallen women, despoiled maidens and mistresses on stage, and her Jewish promoter did not object to lewd allegations and saucy lines in order to attract a crowd, much to the chagrin of her darling brother. But something in Sir Henry’s manner made her think that what would be asked of her tonight would be much different.

Her heart raced as she hurried down to the street. Her Prince Charming had always been the perfect gentleman, had only stolen kisses and shy caresses behind stage, insisting that they would get married before he would dare to be bolder with his lover. But this Henry…Sybil shivered, realising that she was afraid of his friend.

Grateful for his touch she held on to Dorian’s offered hand as Sir Henry called for a driver to take them away, and she forced herself not to look back, not to doubt that this decision was the only right one to take.

 

[LitShark]

Even through his gloves, Dorian could feel the softness of Sibyl’s hand as he cradled it in his, the softness of her skin was in fact truly exquisite—it always had been. He was having sincere misgivings about giving over a creature as innocent and soft as her to be subjected to something as hard as the will of Sir Henry Wotton, but she had disgraced him with that performance. Perhaps it was a kinder thing to break her heart in this way rather than outright rejection—at least in this way, she could be comforted by the knowledge that she’d left him for his proclivities, rather than him leaving her for her theatrical ineptitude.

The horse’s hooves clattered across the uneven cobbles as the carriage approached. Henry swung the door open with one foot perched on the step, offering his other hand to Sibyl with a broad smile behind his imposing moustache.

“Come now, my dear. The rest of our evening awaits us.” Henry grinned, helping Sibyl into the carriage.

Once Sibyl was inside, Henry went in after her, sitting very close to her and effectively pinning her against the far side of the carriage with Dorian taking the last seat closest to the door. Henry draped his arm around Sibyl’s shoulder, unconcerned with her apparent discomfort as he called up to the driver.

“To the waterfront, my good man. We’re on our way to the dens.”

“As you wish, Sir,” the driver called back, urging the horse forward just after Dorian closed the door of the carriage.

“Won’t you entertain us while we travel, my beauty?” Sir Henry asked, leaning close and whispering so that his mustache hairs tickled the long, smooth line of Sibyl’s neck, “won’t you give us a song to make our journey move more swiftly? I’ve heard tales that say you’ve been blessed with a beautiful voice.”

Though Dorian couldn’t hear what Henry was whispering to Sibyl, he did see his hand moving over the soft, billowy fabric of her dress, sliding over the outline of her thigh and bunching the fabric up in his fist, feeling for skin.

Dorian opened his mouth to object, but the words wouldn’t come. He had no real objection, least of all given the terms of their prolonged companionship. Instead he opened his snuff box and snorted a pinch into each nostril while Harry lit a cigarette.

 

[zora_little]

Sybil sat pressed against the wall of the carriage, unable to move both for discomfort and fear. How close Sir Henry was sitting to her already! She had hoped that Dorian would come to her rescue and place himself between his beloved and his lecherous friend, but her hopes had come to naught.

A song? All she could concentrate on was the intimate proximity she now shared with Sir Henry, the rocking of the carriage, and the frightful anticipation of yet more of his advances.

She delicately cleared her throat. It was hard to even think of a song with Sir Henry’s fingers digging into her thigh. He had pulled up her dress so far as to bare the smooth skin just above her stockings, and his hands possessively rested against the so indecently revealed flesh. She threw a furtive glance at Dorian, but he seemed oblivious to his friend’s behaviour. Surely he could not approve of such blatant impropriety.

But Sybil was afraid that by opposing Sir Henry’s touch he would take offense, and thus lower her chances to win back the affections of her dear Prince Charming. Trying to ignore the hand on her thigh, she started to sing a folk song her mother had taught her:

Silvy, Silvy, all on one day,
She dressed herself in man's array,
A sword and pistol all by her side,
To meet her true love she did ride.

It was a silly song, really, and her voice wavered slightly as the pressure against her skin did not relent. But she was an actress, and knew how to be professional. What if she just slipped into a role now? What if she simply pretended that Sir Henry was a lewd man and she a tavern wench entertaining him, and nothing more? It was a play then, a game! Taking a deep breath, she started to sing again, her voice firmer and clear as a bell:

She met her true love all in the plain,
'Stand and deliver, kind sir,' she said,
'Stand and deliver, kind sir,' said she,
Or else this moment you shall die.'

Would that please Dorian? She had sung to him before, playfully, and he used to love listening to her. Sometimes he had rested his head in her lap and closed his eyes, giving himself up to the music and her slender fingers playing with his beautiful hair. How she longed for him to do this again! Instead, she felt the coarse hairs of Sir Henry’s moustache against her throat, and she flinched. But if she was to regain Dorian’s love and respect, she must not be distracted by such minor things.

Oh, when she'd robbed him of all his store,
She says, 'Kind sir, there's one thing more,
A diamond ring which I know you have,
Deliver that, your sweet life to save.'

'The diamond ring is a token won,
I will keep it if my life I lose;'
She being tender hearted just like a dove,
She rode away from her true love.