They'd had tea in the drawing room, talking about nothing important and laughing until it was time to change for dinner.  Now Betty Jo smiled as her parents closed the door to their room behind them.   "It's so good to see them relaxed and not worried," she said to Ian.  "Thank you for inviting them."

"You are most welcome. I'm rather surprised Jonah is accepting things the way he is, to be frank."

"Things?  About us?" she asked.

"Indeed. Your father and I have been, well, not exactly enemies for a very long time."

"None of us, except Mama, know much of anything about him from before he met her.  But from the little I've heard, things that Mama has said, he was very different then.  Now he won't do anything hardly that he thinks will upset her.  So I suspect she's talked to him about it, but I don't know."  She laughed.  "Mama always says having three beautiful daughters is his punishment."

He smiled and led her into a bedroom. "Yes, I dare say it's a trial.  Here.. I thought perhaps you might like your own room. After.. well, just in case you want privacy, and a safe place to talk to your mother or your sisters.  Over here," he walked across the room and opened a set of double doors, "is my room. We can leave the doors open when you wish.  This way you have room to dress and plenty of closet space. Just pull the bell rope here and your maid, Ruth, will be up to help you."  He paused, looking at her. "I hope... I hope it's all right. We can change it all if you like. But I thought, until... well, until you felt better, you might like .. might like things arranged this way."

She turned to look at the room, seizing the excuse to hide her face from him.  She willed the panic away, denied the tears building in her chest, and beat back every feeling of hurt and confusion.  "It's a lovely room," she said, the light tone made of adrenalin, airy from breathlessness.  She built a smile out of something and turned back to him. "Thank you for the thoughtfulness."

"It is all right?  Everyone seemed to think, well, that you might.. might not wish to be touched. Might want time alone, and I thought..." he hesitated, trying to understand her.

The smile fluttered and then landed again as she stepped towards him.  "Have I behaved as though I don't want to be touched by you?" her voice soft now, and curious.

"No, no, you haven't. But I didn't want you to feel you didn't have a choice. But after dinner, once everyone retires, I promise I'll join you here, if that's what you want."

She moved closer, her hands on his chest.  "You'd better," she said.  "Or I'll come after you." 

He wrapped her in his arms. "You won't have to, I promise. Now you get a shower and I'll see to .. bloody hell everything."

"What everything?  Can I help with any of it?  Or should I just let Ruth show me where she put my clothes?"

"You just worry about you right now," he replied, pulling the bellrope for Ruth. "Ruth should be here soon, although I bet the clothes will be pretty obviously in the cupboards."

She brushed a kiss on his lips and nodded.  "Probably."

"See you soon. Come down to the drawing room when you're dressed," he said with a smile as he hurried off.

She accepted a cup of coffee from Edwards with a smile and a thank you, making a mental note to speak to him soon.  Dinner had gone smoothly and been blessedly uncomplicated.  She'd felt her mother's eyes on her once or twice and had met them with a smile and comment that had seemed to satisfy what ever maternal worries she might still be harboring.  That left only what ever worries Ian might be harboring about her recovery and the state of her interest in him. 

She held up her share of the general conversation while admitting to herself that the thing she needed most right now was to reconnect with him physically.  She needed the reassurance and the clarity of their physical relationship to show her a way through her confusion.  She needed to put him and their life together, the intimacy they shared that was as different as it could be from what it had been with Collins, between her and what had happened, and her memories of what had happened, of how she'd been... 

She swallowed coffee hastily, cutting off the train of thought, forcing away the pictures in her head just the thought of it all brought with it and focused grimly on the conversation.

They were all watching her to some extent. Bobbie, and Billie and even Leroy. Ian's eyes were on her but then before they had always been too.

"Perhaps an early night," Ian was saying.

Libby agreed, evaluating her daughter's pallor out of the corner of her eye.  "Though it's hard to blame jet lag, it has that feel to it," she said.

Billie grinned.  "And we need to get back.  It's a work night for us."

Betty Jo conjured a laugh.  "I'm sure you'll bear up under the burden."

"We miss you," Leroy said, in response, concern in his easily read face.

"I miss ya'll too, honey," she said.  "I hope me being gone isn't making it hard on ya'll."

"We can handle it," Leroy replied. "You just worry about you right now. Get better, rest up."

The three younger folks finally left after lots of hugs and kisses and Jonah and Libby were the only guests left to see to.

Libby hugged her other daughter, noting the fine tension, the almost invisible shadows under her eyes and brushed her hair back.   "You go on up to bed, honey, you don't need to stand on ceremony with us.  We won't be long and you've had a long day."

Betty Jo considered protest for a moment and then gave in.  "You and daddy sleep well," she said, kissing her cheek, "and I'll see you both at breakfast." Then she smiled at her father and Ian and left, closing the door softly behind her, pretending unconsciousness of the eyes that followed her out of the room.

"One last drink, Jonah? Libby?" Ian asked once the door was shut.

Libby nodded.  "A small one I think," she said.   Jonah agreed too, but without the stipulation.

Ian served them and took a seat. "I'm open for any and all helpful suggestions or other advice," Ian said once he took a seat. "One minute she seems terrific, the next... I don't mean to be walking on eggshells as they say around her but I'm watching everything I say and second guessing myself constantly."  He sighed and stared down at his drink.

"Has she talked about it at all to you?" Libby asked. 

"No. I'm afraid if I ask her about it she'll think I don't have any business asking her. So I'm hoping she'll tell me in her own time. If she wants to."

Libby frowned at her drink and set it aside.  "She's always been the most analytical of the three.  Whatever her problems or concerns, she usually wants to get it straight in her own mind before she talks about it.  When I told her about the baby and about how she might not be able to have others she didn't say anything.  She just changed the subject.  So it may be she just needs a few days at home, some space to think."

Ian nodded. It made sense to him. "And I really don't want to push her, so I'm hoping after she's here for awhile and has a chance to relax, maybe she'll be better able to do just that. I'm so glad you can be here for her, Libby. Especially since I still have to run up to London a time or two this week on business. I'll feel better knowing you and Jonah are here with her."

"I should be thanking you," she told him.  "Otherwise I'd be home making Jonah miserable with my fretting."

Jonah grunted, male tonal disagreement and patted Libby's hand.  "You never make me anything but happy, love."

Libby's lips twitched.  "Just happier sometimes than others, I know." 

Ian didn't seem to notice the byplay. He was still staring down at his drink. "Well, I should lock up.  I'm still a bit paranoid, I'll admit. I want to check in with Security and make sure all the alarms are set.  I'm not losing her now."

Jonah nodded and then cleared his throat, looking at Ian.  "I don't want to step on your toes, but ah..."

Ian looked up and met his eyes. "Yes?"

Jonah cleared his throat again and asked, his tone neutral, "Are you planning on taking her education in hand so that she's better able to defend herself if she needs to?"

"I think we could share that responsibility if you like," Ian replied.

Jonah nodded.  "If I'd known, I would have long ago."  It was the closest to an apology and an admission that he could come.

Ian nodded. accepting it. "Well, Marc and Dinah have some unique abilities. I'd learned to accept that some children of the talented were not talented themselves. Perhaps we'll find out it is all a question of merely something keeping their talents latent."

Jonah nodded and stood up, holding out a hand to his wife.  "Perhaps."

Libby smiled at Ian and laid a gentle hand on his arm.  "She's a survivor.  As hard as it may be or get, she'll make it through it.  I'm glad she has you though."

"That's very kind of you Libby. I wish I could get past feeling guilty about it happening to her though. She'd have been better off never having met me."

"No!" she said firmly.  "You don't know that.  You won't know that until it's all said and done.  Everybody suffers.  And no one gets to pick what.  So don't waste yourself thinking like that."

"I see where Betty Jo gets it, that fighting spirit," Ian said to her with a smile. "I'll try to remember that. And thank you."

She grinned.  "You're welcome.  Now go reassure yourself she's as safe as you and technology can make her.  We'll see you in the morning."

It was an hour later when Ian was satisfied that everything was in order, or at least as in order as he could cajole, demand and alter physics to manage.  Libby and Jonah had retired long ago. He let himself into his room, and leaned against the door, wishing Betty Jo were asleep there. Still, he'd promised to see if she wanted him to join her. So he slipped off his clothes, shaved, brushed his teeth and finally opened the doors to her room.

The room was bathed in moonlight, and he could see her lying comfortably on the bed, seemingly sound asleep. He almost turned to return to his own bed, but he felt such a sense of need to hold her just then, he crossed the room quickly.  He put a knee on the bed and leaned over to smell the reassuring wonderful scent of her hair and her skin.

"Darling?" he said softly near her ear.

She was laying on her side, her back to him with her palm pillowing her cheek, and her hair falling forward over her face in that place perfectly balanced between sleeping and waking where dreams seem real and the real seems like a dream.  She made a soft noise in response, leaning back towards him slightly.

He nuzzled her neck as he carefully moved to lay down next to her, molding himself along her back. "Go back to sleep, my love."

The beguiling warmth of his lips on the sensitive skin where her neck curved into her shoulder drifted like the night fog into her dreams while it drew her up, closer to consciousness.  She leaned further back, following their retreat with a faint sound of yearning wafting into the moonlight.  The solid wall of him behind her stopped her, puzzled her adding a lower note to the murmur of wanting.

His arm moved to encircle her, a warmth and weight along her side, his hand resting on her abdomen as he settled into the pillow next to her, his breath stirring the small hairs along her neck. 

It sent a shiver along her spine, bringing her one step nearer waking, triggering one more level of awareness.  The slight, gentle pull of the encircling arm drawing her back towards him entered her dream as something inexorable, a signal she recognized, turning her automatically to face him, still more asleep than awake.

"I knew you couldn't resist," he said with a smile in his voice. He brushed his lips along hers ever so gently, his hand following the curve of her hip down to her thigh.

She heard the words as the caress lingered, and she shifted restlessly against him, her lips clinging to his, drawing her leg up along his, her knee moving over top of his thigh.  The rasping sensation, faint and familiar of his hair on her skin was the spark, struck by the words, though she'd probably never know that, as she entered wakefulness on the stream of a dream changing to something else, something that wasn't a nightmare but that lived in her nightmares, that opened the gateway into the past.

His hand drifted forward and down, his fingers finding the place where her thighs met and working their way between them, his intent plain. His lips left hers and headed southwards kissing her neck and then the valley between her breasts.

His lips distracted her at first, a slightly jarring note that was out of place and not easily fit into the scene she was reliving.  But then his fingers moved and sensation bloomed, sharp, intense and the note was lost as her body responded to the stroking pressure of his fingers, desire arriving in a torrential flood drowning her and slamming her from the past into the present without understanding.  Her arousal, the pleasure flowing from his fingers, the pooling sweetness of the need lifting her hips instinctively in encouragement changed in an instant to suffocating shame and humiliation.  But where resistance hadn't been possible before it was now, and where she'd been helpless to do anything other than respond, now she wasn't and she fought, the shame transformed to rage and the humiliation made into ferocity, snarling and blind.

She caught Ian completely by surprise her fists connecting with his face, her knee coming up into his groin, taking the breath out of him with the pain of it. She pummeled his face, tears and anger blinding her, and at first all he could do was raise his hands to protect his eyes. When he had enough breath to move he grabbed at her wrists.

"Betty Jo! Betty Jo!" he kept saying hanging on for dear life to her wrists as her fists continued to flail.

It was the pressure of his fingers on her wrists that opened a crack for the sound of his voice to reach her.  It registered like blow, freezing her, opening her eyes, stopping her dead.  She saw him, saw that is was him and horror filled her, twisting her stomach.  "Oh God, oh god, oh god..." she said, like a litany.  "Oh god, no, no, no," on a rising note cresting just short of a scream.

Libby and Jonah came running, to find Ian with his arms wrapped around Betty Jo who was sobbing into his shoulder.  He looked up as they came rushing through the door, ignoring the fact that he was naked. He never let her go, nor did he stop saying, "It's fine. It's all right now. No permanent damage done."

Libby looked a question, hesitating, then she nodded and taking Jonah with her before he could say a word, left the room, closing the door behind her.

Betty Jo never knew they'd been there.

He held her until the sobs eased. "Flashback?" he asked finally.

She shuddered and nodded.  "I think so," she whispered, gulping air as she lifted her head to look at him.  "Oh god, I'm so sorry, Ian.  I'm so sorry.  I didn't mean to, I didn't know," she said, pleading with him.

"I don't think my nose is broken. If it is I'll just drop by the Refuge. It's the family jewels I'm a bit more worried about. Let me tell you, the knee to the groin tactic works wonders."

She bit her lip, nodding, her eyes huge and filled with tears.  "I'm so sorry," she said again.

"Are you all right? That's my main concern. I should let you sleep alone. It was my fault for stealing in here in the dead of night."

"Oh no please, don't say that," she said, afraid he might leave her.  "It wasn't your fault.  I want you here so much."

"Hush. I'm not going anywhere if you wish me to stay. Can we lay down now, perhaps? And maybe you can get some sleep."

She nodded, stung into silence and shifted so he could lay down.

"Betty Jo, what is it?" he asked.

She didn't know how to even begin to tell him.  She didn't know herself anymore except he seemed to be slipping further and further away and the harder she tried to stop it the worse it got.  So she shook her head and said, "I just attacked you and nothing makes any sense."

"I love you. Does that make any sense?" he asked her softly. "You didn't mean to hurt me. You didn't mean to attack me. I understand that."

She touched his face carefully, trying to smile.  "I love you."

He lay down and pulled her down into his arms, ignoring the pain, willing it away.  "Go to sleep. No one will hurt you any more."

She settled against him, willing it to be true and tried to sleep.

He lay there awake too, staring into the dark of the night, wondering how horrible it must have been for her.