“What do you care how I feel about her or anyone else?” Heathcliff said. “I’ve had enough. You’ve treated me damnably, Cathy. Damnably! Do you hear? And if you think I’m so dim witted I can’t see it, you’re a fool. I can’t be soothed with your sweet words and if you think I won’t take revenge, you’re an idiot.”

“I’ve treated you damnably? How have I?” I asked.

“We could have had a palace, you and I. But you flattened it to the ground. You built a hovel in its place. You admire yourself for your generosity in allowing me to live there. You feast and throw me crumbs from the table and expect me to be grateful!”

“You want revenge?” I said.

“Not on you. Never on you. You’re welcome to torture me to death for your own amusement. We both know a tyrant beats his slaves, yet they never turn on him. Instead the slaves crush those beneath them. Thank you for telling me Isabella’s secret. I intend to make use of it.”

“Why must you do that?” I asked. “Do peace and harmony bore you? Edgar was in good temper, you could come and go as you pleased. Were we too peaceful, that you want a fight? You will destroy everything! Well, do it if you must. Quarrel with Edgar. Trick his sister. That’s the perfect way to take revenge on me.”

“Don’t act the wounded innocent. This is your doing, Cathy,” Heathcliff raged on. “Your heart is as deep as mine. Why did you pour your love into so small a vessel as Edgar Linton?! You might as well try to hold the ocean in a horse trough. You knew Edgar could not love you in eighty years as much as I could in a single day! And yet you chose that milksop and expect me to be content? Do you know how much I yearn to pull out that golden hair of his? To peel off his milk white skin? I’d offer to paint this house with his blood if I thought I could squeeze more than a teaspoon from his miserable body.”

Nelly must have slipped out of the kitchen, but I was not aware of it until she came back. Edgar was with her. He looked at me, the very model of respectability, just like his father. My husband was shocked to the core. Not with Heathcliff, for he already knew him to be a lost cause. With me.

“Why do you remain here when he uses such language, Catherine?” Edgar said. “Are you so hardened that it does not shock you?”

Until that moment, I’d been ready to defend Edgar. I’d been about to demand that Heathcliff swear he would not harm a hair on my husband’s head. But now suddenly I felt that I was looking at an enemy.