Herbert danced with another. It was not that he danced that stopped me, but the way he danced.
I didn't know the young girl he partnered, but she looked younger than I. His bracing arm pressed firmly against the curve of her lower back, pressing her close to him, into him. She didn't fight him, didn't hold herself away as she should. Perhaps she was too busy looking up at him with adoring eyes. He looked down at her. There was no adoration there, only lust. I knew it as soon as I saw it.
I turned away, turned back into the powder room to wash my face again, to wash away the thoughts barging their way back into my mind. I convinced myself that my mind played tricks on my eyes, vision infested and diseased by Ginevra's confession.
I threw the thoughts away as I would anything poisonous an
