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Chapter Text

John woke in a dimly lit room—heavy curtains were drawn across his windows, as they always were at night, but streamers of sunlight were forcing their way past the gaps in the cloth.  He shook his head, disoriented at waking up when the sun was so high in the sky.  His headache was fearsome.

“Good morning, John.”  His mother had entered the room.  “How are you feeling this morning?”

“I’ve overslept.  I have to get on to the mill.  I must call on Miss Hale.”  He sat up and swayed—his mother, it appeared, had been expecting this, because she had quickly bent down behind him to place a pillow behind his back.

“You’ve been very ill, John, you need to rest.”

“I need to get to the mill—” but through the window floated the clanks and jolt that spoke of smooth operation.  “Miss Hale—”

“Miss Hale is not to be called on today.  The mill is fine—your brother Watson has appointed a manager for you.  Your job today is to rest, my boy.”

“But—brother?  Is Fanny married already?  How long have I been ill?”

“About six months it is now,” Hannah Thornton told him with a resigned gleam.  “You had a bad knock to your head—an accident with a carriage.  You’ve been a bit of a noodle, as that Nick Higgins likes to call it.  But,” she put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him severely.  “You are on the mend.  Your job now is to get well, my boy.”

“But, mother—”  He stopped himself.  “Have we had this conversation before?”

“Yes, a time or two,” his mother said, severe, amused.  “Now, close your eyes while I open these curtains, and I have a bite of gruel for you to breakfast on.”

“I can’t stand gruel,” he said, blinking and squinting as the room filled with searing light.

“And yet you will eat it.  You know I will spoon feed you if you won’t,” she said in a warning tone.

An invalid’s life was a dull and monotonous thing—John needed only a day of it to know that.  His mother made him dress in soft light invalid’s clothes and took him for a turn about his room—it worried him both how little strength he had in his limbs, and how easily she could support his weight.  His reward for his effort was to sit in his armchair while she read the newspaper aloud, before she put him back to sleep until his dinner.

“How many days of this life have you lived, mother?” he asked, as he turned over the pabulum on his plate with disinterest.

“Enough,” she said grimly.  “It isn’t always the same—you’ve only been getting up to dine for a month or so.  And Fanny comes to sit with you once a week, so I can get out to do my errands.  I don’t mind a bit of fresh air, I will admit.”

“I am sorry to burden you so,” he said humbly. 

“You are my son,” she said stoutly.  “You’ve done many a kind thing for the people of Milton; now it comes back to you, as is only just.”

He nodded, wondering how badly things were left—the state of his finances had not been rosy, when last he had had time to review them.

“Mr Bell has forgiven you rent for a year,” his mother told him, reading (remembering?) his thought.  “Your bankers, too, have deferred interest for a twelvemonth.  They know the name Thornton is a good one—they wish you back with a sound business to transact with when you have your wits again.  Dr Donaldson thought we would know where things will stand after a year.”

“So I have six months more of grace, then,” he nodded in understanding.  “I will do my best, mother.”  A thought, urgent, returned.  “I need to call on Miss Hale.”

“Miss Hale has been to see you,” Hannah Thornton said shortly, and that was the end of that.

***

John woke in a dimly lit room—heavy curtains were drawn across his windows, as they always were at night, but streamers of sunlight were forcing their way past the gaps in the cloth.  He shook his head, disoriented at waking up when the sun was so high in the sky.  His headache was fearsome.

“Good morning, John.”  His mother had entered the room.  “How are you feeling this morning?”

“I’ve overslept.  I have to get on to the mill.  I must call on Miss Hale.”  He sat up and swayed—his mother, it appeared, had been expecting this, because she had quickly bent down behind him to place a pillow behind his back.

“You’ve been very ill, John, you need to rest.”

“I need to get to the mill—” but through the window floated the clanks and jolt that spoke of smooth operation.  “Miss Hale—”

“Miss Hale is not to be called on today.  The mill is fine—your brother Watson has appointed a manager for you—”

“I missed Fanny’s wedding,” he said with a grimace.  “I hope she was not too cross with me—was it a very ridiculous circus?”

“Not too badly done,” his mother told him, eying him with interest.  “The bride was very happy.”

“Have we had this conversation before?”

“Not quite the same one.  How is your head, my John?”

“Splitting,” he admitted.  “I have to call on Miss Hale,” and she sighed.

***

He got the truth out of Hannah Thornton a few days later, when she had become convinced that he would remember it.

“Miss Hale came to see you at first, all tricked out in black for her father, as is fitting.  Oh, she cried very prettily, a few times, when she thought no one could see her.  Then—” Hannah shook out the table cloth she was mending with a hard snap, her mouth set in a harder line “—then she found out your brains were addled and did not linger in Milton long enough to wipe the dust from her boots.”

“But—she does not live with her father anymore?”

“Oh, dear John, I’m sorry, it were six months ago now, and I’ve been forgetting.  Richard Hale is dead—in his sleep, they say.  I stopped telling you because you took it so hard, every time.”

It should distress him, in his invalid state, to know how easily he could cry.  He was too fatigued, too fragile now to let it worry him, and he let the tears flow freely until his mother finally took him up to bed.

The next day, she decided he was strong enough for his inheritance—an old, finely bound edition of the writings of Plato, an old familiar volume brought out often in his lessons as a treat for a well performing student.  It had been owned, John now could see, not just by Hale but by several other men, learned professors, he supposed, who had passed down their thought in fine pencil notations in an unbroken line of scholarship.  He hoped to be worthy of it.  There was a note tucked in among the fly leaves and he squinted to read it:

Dear Sir, — The accompanying book I am sure will be valued by you for the sake of my father, to whom it belonged.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Hale

“I have to see Miss Hale,” he said again, tears rolling down his cheeks, and his mother, for the first time showing a disturbance in the placid calm with which she had faced down many difficult weeks, finally groaned in exasperation.

***

It was when John was so bored with sitting about in the shadows of his house that he had taken to interrogating his servants as they gamely tried to work around him that he realised it was time to go out.  He did so deliberately, selecting his familiar black wool garments, donning them as armour, telling himself that he would not let fear quell this project.  His hands trembled tying his cravat, but he would not demean himself by asking for help, and eventually got it done on his own.  His watch he weighed in his hands for a long time, running the cool silver through his fingers.  He opened it by habit—it had stopped, of course—and he closed it without resetting the time, tucked it into his vest pocket as a memory of former days of power.

It took him a long time to open his front door.  At the top of the steps, he staggered as if at a great blow: the late autumn sunshine was no match for the last days of August, the stink of angry mob, stones and hard wooden clogs flying through the air, a falling girl slumping against his chest.  He blinked—hard—gripped the rail tightly, and let the scene resolve into the normal busy function of a mill yard.  He used the hand rail, and his stick, and stumped down, only slowly aware as he concentrated on his balance that the busy knocks and buffets and shouts of a working mill were quieting.  He looked up to see a mosaic of faces turned towards him—“Measter!” a voice called.  “Measter, it’s hotpot, today!”

“Then I will bring my penny,” he said gravely and waved at his hands to get back to their work.

The stairs to his counting house were another challenge, but his balance was better now, and he stumped grimly to the muffled murmur of his office, more faces turned his way.  “And here’s the man himself—” Watson, Fanny’s fiancé, no, husband now, turned and stood. 

Thornton reached to shake his hand, gripped as firmly as he could.  “I have you to thank for still having a mill, I think.”

Watson was magnanimous.  “We’re family now, man.  And I’m flush with a speculation that paid out—I can afford a bit more time nosing about seeing how you run things.  Here’s my young sprig who wants to make partner—he’s been proving himself at Marlborough Street.”

The younger man—the appointed manager, Thornton supposed—was half standing out of his chair.  John took one of the visitor’s chairs and leaned his stick against his leg, this bare short walk had exhausted him.  “No, no,” he told the young man, “I’m not quite ready for that seat yet.”

“Yes, sir.  I’m Andrew Hughes, sir.  I was just giving Mr Watson a report…”  Hughes presented him with a sheaf of papers, which made Thornton’s eyes cross and he waved it away.

“Just tell it me.  The mill sounds about right, that’s the important thing.”

“Sir?”

Thornton waved his head in the direction of the window, the hum and jostle familiar to his ears.  “You know, it sounds right.  You might go to the spinning room by and by, but it’s not urgent quite yet.”

“The spinning room?”

Thornton nodded.  “The number three spinner gets itself unseated when the line shaft runs too fast.  You want the overlookers to check it every now and then.”

“Yes, sir.” 

His brother-in-law chuckled.  “That’s how you get to be partner, Hughes.  Pay attention to the Bulldog.”

Thornton sat with his eyes closed, listening to the verbal report.  At last he asked: “why did you sign a contract with Hampers?  He was laying off work last year, wasn’t he?”  He hoped that he had not already been told this answer.

“Hampers is trying to get into the China market, sir.  He wanted to go in double on some orders to block out some of the American manufacturers.” 

Thornton nodded, thinking it through, aware he was skirting too close to a headache.  The stopwork whistle shrieked and he jerked his head at the assault.  He stood then.  “Thank you for the update, gentleman, it’s good to know this mill is in safe hands.  I’m promised to the canteen…”

“The hands’ll think you’re soft, you spend too much time palling about with them,” Watson said with disgust.

Thornton shared with him a smile of great bliss and sweetness.  “Gentlemen.”

***

In the canteen, the rowdy dinner time chatter dimmed a little as he entered.  Nick Higgins and two of his cronies, other hands with whom Thornton had formed—not an intimacy, exactly—but a careful friendship built on a shared human interest, had staked out the table nearest the cooking stove and waved at him.  He took his seat gratefully and dug into the meal set before him.  “This is good,” he said, “this is very good.”

“Hey Mary!” Jackson called.  “Measter likes your cookery.”

“That’s Miss Mary to you,” Higgins defended his daughter’s character with his elbow.

Thornton felt the corners of his mouth drag up.  “My thanks, Miss Higgins,” he said to the girl.  “This is the best stew I’ve ever tasted.”

“Listen to him, wi’ his fancy dinners.  Yo’ll be cooking to the Queen, next, Miss Mary.”

Thornton shook his head and took another spoonful.  “I’ve been eating invalid food for a sixmonth.  Best meal of my life.  I like it very much, Miss Mary.”

“Yo’ll take your mutton wi’ us on Sunday,” Higgins told him.  “Our Mary makes a wicked toffee pudding.”

“I’d like that very much, Higgins, Miss Higgins.”

The room was still quieter than it should be, he could feel the sliding glances of workers, checking him then glancing away, men who needed their work assessing their livelihood.  He turned to one of the younger men, sitting down the table.  “And how is your wife, Riley?  She was with child, was she not?  Did she come to her time safely?”

“She did, measter, I have a little boy now.”

“I’m glad.  You must be proud.  And you, Hargreaves,” he nodded to another man.  “Young Hughes says that he’s made you leading hand.  Well done.”  He nudged a little, with small words here and there, until conversations began to rise up around him and he could let some of his concentration go.

***

Princeton was too far to walk, which infuriated him.  His mother had hired horses to take him the two miles that Sunday, and it irritated him more to know that she was right.

“I’ll be back for you in three hours.”  The carriage had pulled to a stop.

“I’m not five, mother.” 

“I know, John.  Enjoy your dinner.” She fidgeted with his collar.

“Will you be alright on your own, this evening?”

“Oh yes, I’m off to one of my gossips next, and we’ll have a comfortable coze.”

The ghost of a smile crossed his lips and he kissed her on the cheek.

***

It was disorientating to be in the Higgins’ house.  A pack of children he had come to know well had grown in height and vigour in, seemingly, but a few weeks, and they clung to his knees with interest and intrigue.  He was led to the room’s one armchair, and sat gratefully, accepted ‘lile Jack’ onto his knee and looked about the room.  He had been interested in these children’s education, once upon a time, and was pleased to see there were books about the room: he smiled genially to see Mary Higgins sitting with the oldest boy, Tommy, carefully working on a piece of writing, both sounding out their words under their breath.  “It’s good you’re teaching young Tommy to read, Mary.  He’s a sponge, isn’t he?”

“Was there really a hole in your head?” Tommy asked.  “Uncle Nick says they drilled a hole in your head.”

John bent forward and parted his hair to show the thick slab of scar.  Infants crowded around him to gawk.

“Would you say you are better now, sir?” Mary asked.

“I’m a little better.  I still get headaches when I read—I might need you and Tommy to come work for me as secretaries.”

She folded away the paper carefully and pocketed it.  “I have to start the gravy.”

In the little space of time between dinner being cleared away and the teacups being brought out, Higgins solemnly produced two clay bottles of beer.

“It’s not quite Sunday, then,” John said with his ghost of a smile.  He pulled the stopper out and took a judicious sip. 

Nick shrugged, noncommittally.  He raised his bottle: “to the parson.  He were a gent.”

“He was.”

“Do yo’ remember much o’ your’n accident?”

“Nothing at all,” Thornton said frankly.  “Nor the few weeks before it for that matter.  I know I must have gone to France—I can remember packing, and I have notes in my appointment book—but there and back again are pretty much mysteries.  It’s times like this I wish I’d kept a diary to save up for my old age.”

“Gi’s me the willies, thinking o’ waking up and six months is gon.”

“Hmm.  I found some flowers in my pocket-book of all things, and I’ve no idea how they got there.  Did I pick them?  Did someone give them to me?  Were they important?”  He shrugged.  He thought he might have picked them; he had the idea of himself standing at a hedgerow teasing them out of the brambles, but why, or even if he had, instead of fancying a situation that would fit the observable facts was beyond his book.

“I wondered,” Thornton said quietly, “if you had heard any news of Miss Hale.”

Nick shook his head.  “Not for months.  Hoo were down at Marlborough Street most days, right at first, helping to nurse you.  Whiter than a sheet, hoo was—no, one o’ em statues yo’d see in a museum, and as still as one.  Hoo mighta done a harm to herself, if hoo hadna had someone to take care of, I could see that right enough.”

“And then what happened?”

“Her fancy London aunt swooped down and swept her off South.  Oh, you should ha' seen Mrs High and Mighty Shaw with her ringlets tighter’n a spring, and the Hale house tighter’n a barricade.  Oh, that Miss Dixon wonnut let the likes o’ me in the house with some toffee-nosed London servants to impress, when it’s my Mary was th’only soul our Miss Marget would have her cry out with.”  Higgins dug the old tobacco out of his pipe in disgust, tossed it into the bin, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, face twisted in old rage.  “We munnot be able to say good bye, even, m’appen we thought to go camp out at the train station.”

“I see.  And did you hear anything after that?”

Higgins shook his head sharply, and puffed a few times to draw the smoke.  “How’s this, my lovelies?” he addressed the younger Boucher children and, sucking in air mightily with rounded cheeks, puffed three smoke rings in a row out into the air, to general acclaim.  John sat in his chair and silently watched the smoke drift through the room.  He had not yet suffocated the panic, the fear, no, the certainty that with respect to Margaret Hale he had committed some grievous breach of conduct.  And he had no idea what it was.

Chapter Text

Oxford was a city of dreaming spires, or so the guide books said.  When John fetched up there in a cold and dreary January, it reminded him of nothing more than dirty dishwater.  Dead leaves had lost any lustre they ever had, tossed about with the snow that had come some weeks ago and had time to become old, and grubby, and careworn, with not even Christmas to look forward to.  The thaw would be even uglier.

He was standing outside the red brick of Plymouth College, a building whose familiarity racked his brains with thoughts of which edifice in the Industrial North it could possibly remind him of, convincing himself that it was time to go inside and argue with the porter, when his quarry emerged of its own accord.  A group of old men, solidly black in academic gowns and mortar boards, emerged from the building in a flock, and Thornton moved to stand solidly in the centre of the footpath, legs astride, both hands on his stick as this flutter of learned men flowed past him.

Mr Bell came up short, urbane, capricious.  “Goodness gracious me, Mr Thornton himself.  Your lady mother wrote to say you were up and about again.  Congratulations, boy, it was a remarkable knock, so they said.  Or perhaps I should say, a dreeful dint.”

“Thank you, sir.  I am obliged to you exceedingly for your assistance in the operation of my mill while I have been ill.”

“Think nothing of it,” Bell said.  “I’m far too idle a soul to be traipsing about Milton in search of a new tenant.  And no need to wear yourself out coming up in person.  You’re skin and bones, boy.”  He shifted his weight as if to step past and Thornton reacted without thinking, opening his hand just slightly as if to block the older man’s path.  Bell subsided.

“In fact, sir, I come on other business.  I was hoping you could give me word of Miss Hale’s whereabouts.  She left Milton very suddenly, everyone says, and I am concerned about her.”

“Her Aunt claimed her.”  Bell raised the bundle of papers tucked under one arm, as if to request the barrier of John’s hand be removed, although it was no real impediment to any soul.

“She is not with the Lennoxes and Shaws,” Thornton said patiently.  “I have already been to London to ask.”  He had, in fact, spent several days watching that fashionable Harley Street house on the off chance he had been lied to, until a police constable made him stop.

“Then I am afraid I cannot help you,” Bell said genially.  “Now, I simply must go—there are very few days in the year when we Fellows are expected to do anything resembling work, but this is one of them.”

“Please!” the word burst from him, and he schooled himself to more patience.  “Please, sir, I am in very great anxiety over Miss Hale’s well-being.  Is she unwell?  In distress?  In disgrace?  Her father was my very great friend—I feel a duty to inquire, and assist, if assistance be needed.”

Bell shifted his weight again.  “I am a dried up old stick, young man, but in my day, when a woman left no forwarding address, it was because she did not care to correspond.  She is safe, and with friends who love her.  Let that be enough.”

Thornton sighed, and shifted his weight also, turned sideways on the road so that his last, best lead could slip away from him.

***

He was sitting in his dining room two days later, still weary from the train journey, staring out at thin dirty light, while his mother continued her infernal mending beside him.  There was a great pounding at the front door and he started—one of the maids must have opened it, because in burst Nicholas Higgins and his daughter, into the holy of holies that was beyond the reach of any mill worker.  The dull, incurious Mary was blubbering, her apron held to her face; the cause of her distress shouting beside her.

“Hussy!  Minx!  I’ll teach yo’ to keep secrets fro’ me!”

“They were mine, dad,” Mary sobbed.  “Bessie got everythin’ else, these were for me.  They’re mine.”

“What on earth?” Hannah Thornton rose from her chair.

“Look at this spy!  I’ll gi’ you the back of my hand, girl, just yo’ see if I don’t—”

“HIGGINS!” John roared, bringing his stick down on the floor in an almighty thump.  “The day you lay a hand on your daughter is your last in Marlborough Street.”  His voice dropped: low, cold, snakelike.  “Try me and see.”

“Oh, ay, all kiss me hand, are yo’?  Thou’ll change thy mind right quick when thou seest the secrets this hussy’s bin keeping.”  Higgins ripped the apron from Mary’s face and gestured angrily at the scatter of papers fallen to the floor.

“Mary?  Are you alright?”  John searched her face carefully, but despite her tears, her father was more bark than bite.  She was only fifteen.

“They were mine,” she snivelled, kneeling to collect the papers.  “I wunnot doing no harm.”

John knelt to help her, then stopped as he recognised the graceful familiar handwriting, punctuated by delicate pen and ink miniatures interleaving the text, little flashes of colour on the smooth, hot pressed paper.  He rose quickly and pulled out the note from his copy of Plato.  “These are from Margaret Hale.”

“I c’n write to who I like,” the girl said defiantly, “there’s no law agin it.”

“No.  No law at all,” John said gently.  “Of course, you would want to hear from your friend.  And no one thought to ask you.”

He got her up off the floor and gave her a handkerchief.  “Nick, leave her be, she did naught that was wrong.”  He looked at the letter in his hand ruefully; the words swam before his eyes.  Miss Hale was in some green and blue place, apparently, from the pictures she was sending to Mary, some calm Eden after the noise and clatter of Milton he hoped.  He stopped and looked again at the first page, the top line, forced his eyes to focus.

They had been dated.

***

It took John Thornton three days to make his way to the little Western Isle—more north than north—where Margaret Hale had gone to ground.  It was a journey from the familiar to the strange: the main line to Glasgow where from time to time he had conducted business, changing to a clickety clack lesser train on a minor line; at last, the transfer to carriers’ carts and a ferry, crewed by dour fishermen who, when they chose to use English at all, spoke a slurry Scots dialect, nothing like the educated brogue of the University men who came down from Edinburgh and Glasgow to be chemists, and engineers, and doctors.

The boat sailed through great stacks of islands, devil’s chimneys emerging from the mist, seabirds wheeling off cliffs and about the little steam boat looking for fish spoil.  It rocked hard as the steersman turned it, and John flinched at the spray of seawater in his face, grasped the side of the boat as they turned into a harbour and a small greystone village backed by a towering seacliff.  The ancient Romans had had a name for these islands, he once had known, Ultima Thule, further north than north.  It took John some time to find a soul who would give him directions, wandering about the little village asking for “the English woman?  The Sassenach?” and showing the address he had copied off Margaret’s letter to Mary.  Eventually, an old gnarled grandmother with a distaff tucked under her arm gave him the time of day, keeping a steady rhythm with her drop spindle as she oversaw children playing in her yard, the meticulous heavy work of making homespun linen the hard way.  The old woman grunted and pointed upwards to a narrow track that wound up the cliff overlooking the bay.  John nodded his thanks and presented her with a coin which she looked at as so much litter, before he trudged up the path.

There was an antecedent on the path before him, one of the men who had come to meet the ferry boat, gathered his packages onto a pack donkey, and headed away without stopping to chat.  They were a silent lot here.  He shook his head at the spray from a squall hitting his face, walked through the green and grey land with odd cairns piled here and there and squat huge beaked birds who stumped about in sharply dressed black and white.  The wind blew through everything: Ultima Thule, nowhere left to go.

John was a slow walker now, he made up no appreciable time on the man with the donkey, and by the time he reached the clifftop, to a little house of dressed stone, the other one was making a fuss of his pack animal, rubbing it down with a hay twist and whispering endearments in, of all things, Spanish.  John stood easily, resting his hands on his stick, for the burro to be cared for and turned into a little paddock fenced by piled stone walls, waited for the man to attend him.

The stranger had the appearance of a Spaniard; he had jet black hair cut longer than an Englishman would have it, and swarthy skin covering a long face with a wide, generous mouth, and quick, lithe hands.  He had been seen once dimly, the receiver of affection, and was never to be forgot.  Thornton waited patiently for the younger man, expecting more foreignness on this very strange day, but, in fact, the stranger spoke, when he chose to, in clear educated English.

“Do you know,” the stranger observed, “I think you must be the magnificent Mr Thornton.”

“You have the advantage of me, sir.”

“You may call me Dickinson,” the stranger said magnanimously.  “I’ve worn a false name for so many years that my real one is an ill-fitting, scratchy old thing.”

“Are you in legal jeopardy then?  Or merely disgrace?”

“Yes, very,” the wide mouth gleamed.  “Margaret was adamant that you would manage to find her sooner rather than later—I’m glad I didn’t put money on it.”

“I would like to see Miss Hale,” Thornton said patiently.  “Is it still Miss Hale?”

“Oh, yes.”  There was a freighted meaning placed on the phrase.  Thornton glowered.

“Then may I see her?”

“Well, there’s the thing, you see.  She was equally adamant that she wanted me to send you away.  A stranger’s wishes over a loved one’s… it’s extremely awkward, but there it is.”

Thornton grimaced.  “Then let me say, Mr Dickinson, that I think very little of you.”  He watched the man’s eyes flicker with amusement.  Thornton persevered.  “You committed an act of violence—left an innocent woman to stand both the legal consequences and harm to her character—and now that you have convinced her to fly with you to this remote place, to share your exile—your disgrace—with you, you have not even had the grace to give her the protection of your name.”

Dickinson was amused.  “Is that what you think happened?”  He glanced away, further up the cliff path, where two dark figures were making their way along the cliff edge.  “Help me get my supplies in, will you?” and without further ado began unloading the pack saddle into a beehive shaped cairn, turf-topped.  Thornton wearily stumped closer and began lifting sacks out to pass on, his hands trembling with fatigue.

“Why did you not marry her?  If you don’t mind my asking.”  Thornton hefted a sack of flour.  “And why here of all places?  Surely there are more comfortable places to live in seclusion?”

“For secondly, I do mind your asking; for firstly, because the law would have rather a lot to say about it, if Margaret hadn’t first; and for thirdly, because she was insistent on remaining in Britain.  She is a gentle, good kind of a girl, who has been much burdened by other people’s woes these past years; I like to humour her fancies where I may.”

“But you don’t care enough to marry her.  I suppose you are already married, then.”

“Yes, I am; and I fancy no great desire to marry my sister.  It sounds grotesquely Egyptian to me, although I saw an island in the South Pacific once where they kept up the practice, at least for their ruling classes.”  Dickinson stuck out a hand: “Frederick Hale.  We haven’t met, but I do believe I’ve seen your face before, at a certain railway station.”

Thornton rocked back on his feet.  “Sister!”

“My only.  I do assure you, sir,” Hale informed him stiffly, “that if Margaret had seen fit to inform me of her difficulty at the time, I would have returned to extricate her from it.”

John Thornton turned his head in confusion, watched the toiling figures on the clifftop path in wonderment.  “But then—what is her difficulty now?”

“Come inside.”  Frederick Hale had finished stacking rocks over the front of the cairn.  “Come and share our ‘snack’ with us.  We live very simply, as you can see,” showing the way into a little cottage of dressed stone, with a tiny front hall opening onto a kitchen, “but I dare say I’ve lived in worse places.”

***

When the women came in, Frederick was slicing bread and setting wedges of crumbly white cheese on a plate.  Dixon entered first. “You!” and glared at him with such unrelenting hatred, such revulsion straight from the Gates of Hell, that John lowered his eyes before her.  Behind the maid, a merry voice pealed out: “Dixon, dear!  You’re letting the warmth out, I’m freezing.”  Margaret entered the cottage, closing the front door behind her, shutting out the light.  “Oh,” she said.

“Miss Hale,” John Thornton said, his face suffusing with sudden ready sympathy.  “Dear God, I am so sorry.”

When John had first met Margaret Hale, he had thought her a queen, dressed in elegant simplicity against the ways of his gaudy town.  Today, she was in a country woman’s garb, her hair stuffed untidily into a tam o’ shanter, a skirt of some coarse blue striped stuff, thick shawls wrapped around her against the cold.  She was still a queen, with her erect carriage and thrown back head—in exile—the delicate placement of her hand on the doorjamb behind her an act of grace that a great master would seek her out to paint.  But none of it, none of the knitting and jumpers and shawls, could disguise the round pregnant belly protruding proud from her coat.

“I’ll make you some coffee, miss,” Dixon broke the silence.  “You’re that chilled through.”

Margaret turned away into the hall and took off her coat, taking her time, her back to the room.  When she sat down at the table, she glared severely at her brother.  “Frederick.  You promised you would make him go away.”

“Technically, I promised I would tell him to go away, which I have, Peggy dear.”  He rolled his head at her affectionately.  “He’s taller than me.  And an invalid—I wouldn’t want another head injury on my conscience.  And—if he goes away now, I’ll never know what he has to say.”

Dixon set two cups of coffee on the table with a heavy thump.  Without looking, Frederick snaked a long arm behind him to reach down a pottery mug from the dresser, which he filled with coffee and set before Thornton.

“But—may I ask—who is the man?”  John felt sick at the thought of someone laying hands on his Margaret.  Her hair would be as soft as thistle fluff, she would turn her head—  He tallied in his head, frantically, all the members of the male tribe who could possibly have had access to the Hale house—

Margaret gazed at him for a long minute, her face whiter than white, the little spots of fool’s gold colour the wind had chafed into her cheeks unnatural against her pallor.  She lifted her chin.

“That would be the third thing my sister has been adamant about.”

“I—” Thornton suddenly whitened, himself—there had been a spate of burglaries and other crime in the vicinity of Crampton, before he had left for France—he could remember warning Hale about it—“did some man force you, Margaret?” he asked, his voice cracking.  “Miss Hale, you have the full weight of the law behind you—”

Her glare of withering contempt seemed answer enough, and he breathed through his nose, letting the tightness of his chest ease.

“You did not need to come,” Margaret said, her voice husky, her hands wrapped around her coffee mug.  “We are all quite well, as you can see.”

“I came,” Thornton shook his head, “I suppose I came to see if you were in need of assistance.  Hale was my friend: I feel a duty towards his family.  I—  What will you do after the baby is born?  This seems an unchancy place to raise it.”

Margaret turned her head away.  “I don’t know.  We haven’t decided.  My family agreed—there were—I asked for a year of grace.  I will decide then.”

Frederick reached a hand to grip hers warmly.  “You will always have a home with me and Dolores in Spain.”

John looked away, stung by the rush of warmth and affection reserved to another.  Jealousy jolted the words out of him.  “And do I have no say in this?”

“Well,” Frederick said, his face wry and mobile.  “That’s the question, is it not?  Do you have rights in this?”

Thornton put his hands flat on the table, schooled himself to calm.  Frederick Hale had his thumb on the crux of it: through all those long distant months of jealousy and reproof, of coldness, nay, of cruelty in his manners towards Margaret, John had never ceased to think of her as somehow ‘his’ girl.  “Miss Hale.  I beg that you will allow me to give you the protection of my name.”

“No!” the words were flung out of her.  “It is abhorrent, repugnant.  Despicable.”

“I mean it kindly and with honour, Margaret.”

“Well,” Frederick interjected.  “We’ve heard what you have to say, Mr Thornton.  I’ll walk you down to the village, shall I?  The widow Machlachlan can give you a bed for the night.  The ferry leaves about nine these days, with the light as it is.”

“I’ll go,” Thornton announced, enunciating his words in the low and determined growl with which he cut through the babble of quarrelling men, “when I have had a private interview with Miss Hale.”

Chapter Text

John returned to his home in the later afternoon, the shadows falling bleakly on the grey stone of Milton, workers were trudging about in the execution of tasks they would need to complete by lamplight anyway.  His mother had been away from home; by her habitual economy, the fire had been laid but not lit.  He stood there in the darkening room until she entered; and he looked up from where he leaned on the chimney-piece to tell her: “Mother, I have done such wrong.”

***

Three days ago:

Margaret attacked him as soon as they left the cottage.  “Mr Thornton,” she said, in the voice he hated, that high elegant condescension of a queen talking down to a peasant who was too well-meaning to know his own impudence.  “Mr Thornton, as you can see, I am in the care of the head of my family; any fancied obligation you may feel, you are absolved of.”

Fancied!  No, she was trying to make him angry, to drive him away.  “Miss Hale, I beg you to reconsider.  Marriage lines matter in this world—bastards lead difficult lives, as do their mothers.  I see these cases cross my desk very often, as magistrate.”

Her head whipped around and she glared.  Oh, he had stung her, although he did not know why.  Away from the sheltered depression that held the house, the wind knocked into him like a body blow.  “I promise you that I would make no imposition.  I would not even require you to reside in the same house, if you did not like it.”

Her lip curled.  “You have said what you wanted to say, Mr Thornton, I do not believe there is anything more to discuss.”

“There is.  I loved your father.”  He let his breath out.  “Yes, it is ridiculous of me to attempt to argue you into an agreement of this nature.  Margaret, I know that I have been cold—no, cruel to you in my pretensions of indifference.  My pride and my temper are my undoing, yes, I own it, regret it.  I have had much time to reflect these past months.  I do intend to do better, whether you accept me or no.  But I loved your father, dear Miss Hale.  Can that not be enough for you?”

She was breathing hard.  “I am not the girl who entraps honourable men into paying her maintenance.”

He tightened his mouth.  “Does my feebleness repulse you, Miss Hale?  Do you fear being shackled to a cripple?”

“No!  God, no.”

John bowed his head and let her go.  I can call spirits from the vasty deep, he thought, but will they answer?

Margaret had walked ahead of him, onto the peak of the cliff where she clung to a rusted iron pole.  Seabirds wheeled and cried, attacking the air.  She had taken off her hat rather than lose it, and her hair had freed itself likewise from its pins: the wind flung out a thick braid, thicker than her wrist, wildly in the air.  She had none of the zaftig luxuriousness with which his sister Fanny had embarked on her first pregnancy; Margaret was fined down, the flesh melted from her face, cheek bones high and sharp.  She looked at him bleakly.  “The men here, they tie ropes to these poles, and climb down looking for birds’ eggs.”

“Half way down hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!” he quoted the half-remembered line.

“Yes.”

The hand at her side was white with cold, bar the chilblains reddening her knuckles, and he picked it up between his two, blowing on her fingers and chafing her hand to bring some warmth back.  She looked down dispassionately, as if that hand belonged to another woman entirely.

“What is the real reason, Margaret?” he asked, his voice soft, gentle.

“I do not like you.”

“No.  You’re a truthful girl, Miss Hale, more so than most, and you are lying to me now, I know it.  Tell me.”

She turned, close enough for him to feel the warmth of breath on his face, her eyes wide, the pupils engorged so much that he could barely see the grey of her irises.  “You don’t remember.”

There was water on his face.  “Margaret, I cannot remember if you will not tell it me.”

She whirled, ripped her hand free, hastened down the path, slid the last few feet and sat down hard.  “Ow!” she shrieked.

John slid down, too, as fast as he could without, Jack-like, himself falling and landing on her head.  “Miss Hale!  Are you alright?”

“Because you don’t remember!” she cried in fury.  “There, does that satisfy you?  It’s impossible because you don’t remember.”

***

Hannah Thornton’s jaw set and her lips curled back: the bulldog.  “You would never deflower a virgin, John.  That girl’s gotten herself into trouble and is casting about for some likely fellow who cannot say ‘no, not he.’”

“No.  No, mother.  Margaret is a truthful girl; she would only ever lie to protect someone she loves.  You can talk to the maid if you like: Dixon was looking fair set to row when I saw her.  I’ll warrant she knows every sordid detail and kept quiet all this time, out of love for her mistress.  No, I committed this act, though I could not tell you why.

***

Three days ago:

John Thornton stood in front of Margaret, beset by indecision.  She was curled up around herself, too big in her belly to rise without assistance, and his assistance she clearly did not want. 

“I?!” he said again.

She turned her head away, colour finally come into her face, too much of it, a wild creature brought to bay at last.

He braced himself with his stick and held out his hand—patient, furious with himself for having once had the strength to pick up this girl and carry her back to safety, will-she or nill-she.  “I took advantage of you?”

She held his wrist, long enough to pull herself up, then sat down again.  “Ow,” she said in a smaller voice.

He knelt and tried to examine her ankle, she cringed away—“Margaret!” he snapped, finally really angry.  “For once in your life, let someone take care of you!”  It was a twist rather than a break; he used his cravat for want of a better bandage to brace the joint.  “Will you try again, miss?”  Once on her feet, he handed her his walking stick, and looked down, thin lips compressed, arms crossed, deep in thought.  He breathed out slowly.  “You say that I took advantage of you, Miss Hale?  I cannot deny it, with my head the way it has been but… will you please elucidate the circumstances?”

“No, actually, I took advantage of you.”  Miss Hale’s head was erect, queenly, her curl of lip contemptuous, her voice high and brittle.  “I have the advantage of you on the facts, also.  You have no responsibility here.”

“I cannot think there is anyone in the world who would agree with you, Miss Hale.  Would you give me the facts so that I may judge for myself?”  He had fallen back on the tones he had used in their arguments, long ago in the safety of Mr Hale’s parlour, and Mrs Hale’s chaperonage.

She tested her weight on the stick and took a few cautious steps.  “It was after papa died.  You brought the news to Milton, you see—papa had died in Oxford—you’d met them there by chance, and Mr Bell could not travel.  He had the gout or something; he gave you a letter for me, instead.”

“I see… And what then?”

“You were—kind—kinder—it doesn’t matter.”  Kinder than he had been in many months, he filled in the blanks, rather glumly.  “You said there had been many burglaries in Crampton, that you didn’t like to leave two women alone, insisted on staying the night.”

His eyebrows rose.  No.  Margaret was a truthful girl, and this escapade had such an air of unlikeliness that gave it the additional ring of truth.

She shrugged, one shouldered.  “In the night I woke up, and you heard me walking about.  You were talking to me through the door for a long time, just nothing things really.  Dixon always sleeps like the dead, and Martha was away visiting her mother.  Eventually, well, eventually you came in—I think you were afraid I was going to faint—you kept telling me that I should try to cry, that I would feel better when I cried—” he had been weeping, too, he suddenly realised.  She was rubbing her arm with one hand.  “I don’t know.  I just felt so cold; numb, as if I would never feel anything ever again.  You told me to make you leave a couple of times.  So you see—”

John was horrified.  “You are telling me, Miss Hale, that I insisted on spending the night in a house where you were unchaperoned; I came into your room—I made you the steward of my honour… and you somehow believe I have no responsibility for my conduct—?”

“You were a commodity, John Thornton,” she said sharply, bitterly.  “A warm body when anyone’s would do.  And Margaret Hale is no better than she should be.  You need not flatter yourself.”

Margaret Hale had always been a maidenly girl, John remembered: the sort who would happily spend a dinner party listening to the conversation of mill owners talking shop, or debate moral issues with her father’s favourite student because—in her head—she was a precocious child who had been allowed to sit up with her elders.  She had been genuinely unaware of the construction others would place on her running out into a riot, or walking about with an unknown relative, because why should she not be?  She was an innocent.  Of course, she would not know what she was feeling, or how to turn away a would-be lover.

Margaret had dropped the stick and was pressing both hands to her cheeks, scarlet with mortification.  This story, once begun, needed to be told.  “When I awoke in the morning, you had gone.  I sent Dixon out to the market; I needed to think about what I would say—I knew you would call—I just needed to think.  Then she came home and said there had been a terrible accident.”  She scrubbed her face, the tears coming at last.  “You saved a child, did anyone tell you that?  That’s all.”

He scrubbed his own face hard, knelt and retrieved the stick and offered it to her again.  Oh God.  He spoke roughly.  “I beg that you will not think—I hope you do not—I do not wish to think of myself as someone who seduced you with intent, who acted as part of a campaign of persecution, who tried deliberately to put you in a position where you could not refuse marriage.  Please forgive me.  I will do nothing further to make you frightened of me.”

She walked down the hill, her head bowed, he trailing behind.  Just before they reached the cottage, he stopped her once more.  “Margaret.  In all the plans you have contemplated for your child, was one of them to send a basket to Milton with a note?  If there was, will you please consider it?  I would rather have my chance to do right by it—that would be kinder than never even knowing what I had lost—”

She weighed the stick in her hand, and leaned it against the dressed stone wall, went inside and bolted the door with a considered thud.

Thornton sighed and turned to trudge back down the hill, to find the Widow Machlachlan and some shelter before he lost the light.

***

Hannah Thornton breathed out slowly.  “Well.”

“Yes,” her son said quietly.  “I love her and she wants nothing more to do with me; for my own fault.  Mother, you used to say such words to me when I was a child.  Humble, pious words, brave and trustful.  Will you tell them me again?  I say them to myself, but they would come differently from you, with all the cares and trials you have had to bear.  Will you?”

She made him bend his head, and kissed his forehead.  “You are my son.”

***

Hannah Thornton was too old to be traipsing about the wilds of Scotland.  She went anyway.

It had been with some disgust that she inspected the cliff path, and had bullied local villagers into jury-rigging a sedan chair and carrying her up the cliff on their shoulders.  No one at the little house answered her knock on the door, and she let herself in regardless.

Margaret was inside, with a blanket spread over the kitchen table, working on her ironing, the whole redolent of the warm vegetation smell of a peat fire.  She didn’t look up.  “You should not have come, Mrs Thornton, we will be removing tomorrow.”

“You will not,” Hannah said fiercely.

Margaret looked up, her face sweating from the heat of the fire, twists of hair sticking to her face.

“You will not.  Anyone can see your belly has dropped.  If you travel now, then you are even more of a fool than I take you to be.”

The girl put her iron back on the stovetop to reheat, folded the garment neatly into a waiting trunk, and laid out a new shirt.  “You should not have come.  We want nothing from your family.”

“Ay, and you think you owe nothing, either.”

Margaret scowled.  “You know what he was like eight months ago.  A child.  You cannot make a ten year old boy a husband and father—for someone else’s error!—it’s obscene.  A sweet boy, too, who won’t understand, but he’ll try to make himself a man in a day anyway.  I have a better sense of honour than that.”  She put the iron back on the stove and leaned both hands on the table, a thoughtful, introspective look on her face.  She grimaced.

“Yes,” Hannah said.  “Yes, sometimes it’s like that.  It comes along slowly, and then suddenly all at once.  Fetch your coat, a walk will take your mind off it.”

Outside, she bullied her hapless chair bearers into going back down the hill to fetch whatever passed for a midwife in this god-forsaken place.

“And you!  Dixon, and whoever you are!  Get that fire built up high, there’s a baby wants to be born.”

Chapter Text

From John Thornton to Adam Bell:

Mr Bell,

I have spoken to Miss Hale, and am now familiar with the facts of the case.  I fully accept my responsibility for her situation.

I do not intend to prosecute my wishes against Margaret’s clearly expressed denial; however, should she ever come to speak with you on the subject, I would beg you to transmit from me that my offer is kindly meant, and one that she is at liberty to revisit if she should change her mind.

With respect to my civil liability, I will not be denied.  As her godfather, may I ask my banker to remit to you monies for Miss Hale’s maintenance and that of her child?

Please tell Margaret I am sorry.

Sincerely,

John Thornton.

***

John tossed his pen down at last, lifted the sand shaker, then set it down with a clink.  He had been delaying this necessary business as if, by refusing to take any practical steps to manage the circumstance he shied from, he could refuse his consent to its existing at all.  The ink could dry on its own.

He flung himself on his bed in misery, old jumbles of words and sounds echoing in his head, the dreadful headache of what he used to call the White Days reverberating behind his eyes.  He rubbed his face irritably.  There had been water on his face…

There was water on his face, soft drops of it falling on cheeks and lips and soaking into the padding over his eyes: a gentle voice: “John.  John, I have to go now.”  He tried to catch at a hand, it pulled away.  “No—I’m sorry.  You need to get well, and I cannot help you, Mr Thornton, only harm you.”  The hand soothed his forehead, brushed hair away from his brow, soft lips on his skin—he turned his head, but there was no one there.

He groaned aloud.  “Margaret, what did you do?”

There was more, harder and sharper to get to, a needle piercing behind his eyes.  He’d been shaking…

…and someone was coughing next to him, a hacking gagging sound.  He’d tried to raise his head: it hurt to purge like that, had hurt.  “I’m so sorry, Doctor Donaldson,” a sweet voice was saying, “sometimes the smell gets to me.”  Someone was washing his face and helping him to lie back down.

“Hmm.  Miss Hale—I can assure you of my professional discretion but… have your courses been delayed at all?”

There was a long silence, the sharp acrid smell of vomit drowning out the rosewater smell he’d become used to in this close room.  “Oh.”

“I wouldn’t be in a hurry to make any grand announcements just yet, Miss Hale; sometimes these things simply… end on their own, and it’s no one’s fault.  It might spare you some complications.  I can give you some medicine to unblock your courses, if you would like it.”

“Thank you for your advice, doctor,” a solemn, sad voice.  There were doors opening and closing, and he tried to rise again, pulling the cloth from his eyes.

“No!  No, no, no, no no, no—you must keep the bandages on, Mr Thornton; your eyes are very weak still and they need to mend.”

“I have to see Miss Hale—she is in distress.”  He staggered, landed hard on one knee, a strong lithe form supported him, too small for his weight, gamely trying to lift him anyway.

“You need to rest, Mr Thornton.”

A voice called through the door.  “Miss Hale?  Is everything well?”

“It is now, Mrs Thornton.  He fell out of the bed, but he’s alright now.”  She sat next to him on the bed, breathing hard, leaning her head against his shoulder.  He was shuddering with effort and he felt a hand rubbing against his back.  “Everything will be alright, John, I promise,” she said quietly.

John rolled out of his bed, the bandages gone from his eyes.  He rummaged in his dresser for his pocket book, opened it and found some yellow flowers, held them up to his face to breathe deeply.  He had picked these, on a crystal-clear spring day, too early for the season by his Northern sensibilities, but it had been spring all the same.  He had walked into the New Forest from Southampton, had been shadowed by ancient trees, had seen the commoners with their grazing animals simply standing and enjoying the day, had sat with a jovial innkeeper who had been pleased to speak about the Hales, had been that rare thing: a human creature who had time simply to chat with a stranger.  He didn’t remember everything, no, many days of those lost months were gone still, possibly for ever… but he remembered enough.

***

It was such a rare event for Hannah Thornton to be absent from Milton, and those few instances carefully planned excursions to the seaside, well-telegraphed and the result of careful planning, that it really was too much to expect the ladies of Milton to not be intensely curious as to her recent movements.  These were her bosom friends, however, and they nobly waited the expected day of recuperation before descending on Marlborough Street to extract by force and arms, guile and skilfully worded questions, the elucidation of Hannah’s private business.

Hannah let the chatter go on about her, intent on her needlework as the ladies politely shared their own news first—a recent dinner party at which there had some small contretemps, now cleared up.  “We are so sorry you were not able to attend, Mrs Thornton,” Mrs Forrester said innocently.  “I was saying to my husband just yesterday that it has been an age since we had you to a dinner.”

“Why thank you, Mrs Forrester, I regret I was unable to come,” Mrs Thornton said drily.  There were little clinks and rustles about the room, yes, her turn had come.  “I’ve been up to Scotland to see about my John’s fiancée.”

The hush grew quite pregnant with anticipation.  Hannah threaded her needle with marking thread with blissful unconcern.  “It has been the most vexed business.  My John—” her John had been sulking in his room or the warehouse ever since she had been home, and she had been leaving him to stew.  “My John—near a year ago it was—getting ready for his big trip to Havre, has a brainwave and realises there’s one girl only in the world who will do for him, and makes it right with her.  But—he tells nobody; he’s got a train to catch.  No matter, thinks he, he’ll have a month to himself to gloat, and cosset himself on his cleverness, and turn a hand at a love letter—not expecting, as you can see, to dint his brains out the day after his return.”

“Oh!”  Mrs Slickson, the youngest and most impressionable of the matrons, covered her mouth, her eyes very wide.

Hannah sighed.  “So then this girl, she turns missish—although,” Mrs Thornton said in fairness, “it is not her usual way—and thinks she’ll not be believed, doesn’t claim a fiancée’s rights, and dashes off to live with family while she is grieving.  My John’s been such a noddy, it’s taken him all this time to realise what his urgent piece of business was.”  She tsked.

“Your Fanny was saying Mr Thornton was always—” there was a muffled thud, not unlike a foot being nudged into someone’s leg, which Hannah ignored.

“I suppose Mrs Watson was very pleased to hear the news?” Mrs Henderson asked, very pleasantly.

“My Fanny has been very excited.”  She had been very hysterical, when told the previous day.  But really, Fanny had the vapours as an act of recreation, so in fact this conversation had been a service to her child.

“But then,” Hannah sucked air through her teeth, but really, the only way out was through.  “It then turns out that—in Miss Hale’s very natural grief for her father’s passing, the two of them acted in advance of their vows.  And now here’s this beautiful baby girl, for all she’s the spit of her father, who has to come home, and I’ve not had time to set up the nursery or air any of the baby linen.  John’s always been a reliable, straight-souled boy, but when he goes off the rails, I’ll swear he’s spectacular about it.”

There was a delicious silence.

“This kind of thing happens more than people like to say,” Mrs Henderson said suddenly.

“Yes, it does,” Mrs Thornton said, studiously avoiding the gaze of Mrs Hampers, whose own first grandchild had been of remarkable size and vigour for such a sadly premature babe.  “Well, it’s all mended now.  Did you say, Mrs Henderson, that you’d been helping your daughter choose her wedding clothes…?”

***

John was waiting for her in the hallway, arms crossed tightly, his whole body rigid with infuriated mortification.

“I do not enjoy, mother,” he snarled, “having my private business made into the tittle tattle of Milton.”

“This is my business, John.  Women’s business.  Yours is to bring your womenfolk home.”

His breath arrested, and he gazed at her, both fearing and hoping.

“A beautiful baby girl, Elizabeth Grace.  Now get yourself back to Scotland, and make it Elizabeth Grace Thornton.”

He writhed away from her.  “She won’t have me!”

“And do you think I accepted your father the first time he asked it of me?”  John spun around as if struck.  “John.  My John.  A woman needs to be flattered and cossetted at such times.  Leave the bulldog behind; take that gentle sweet heart you’ve been finding in yourself.  She wants you, I’ll swear she wants you—it’s the man a girl asks for in her extremity that she wants to spend her life with.”  He bent his head, and she kissed his forehead.  “These are the simple plain words you need to hear right now, my boy.”  He looked at her, agonised.

“And take your time on your way home, John.  I’ve a nursery to wallpaper and a town full of gossiping besoms who need to be bored of it before you cool your heels here again.”

He stopped.  “Mother.  I have only three months left of my grace year.  What if I cannot toughen myself in time?  Cotton’s a hard business.”

“Then you make Hughes your partner, or we sell up and you find a new trade that you like better.  Now bring them home!”

***

When John knocked on that little cottage door, high in the windy air, Frederick Hale was in shirt sleeves, the puff of warm peat fire smoke escaping through the door a welcome respite from the cold.  John bowed his head.  “I was hoping to see my daughter.”

Frederick poked his tongue into his cheek, considered his visitor for a long minute, then opened the door wide.  “They’re sleeping,” he explained.  In the back room, Dixon looked up from her knitting with a spite filled glare, which Thornton ignored.  Fred gestured at a little curtained off alcove, and settled into an easy chair in the opposite corner.  Hale had a hobby of his own, carving a little wooden toy with a wicked looking knife.

John drew the curtain back carefully.  Margaret was lying on her side, very pale and weary looking, huddled under brightly coloured shawls, one arm flung out towards the cradle, the black print of lashes on white cheeks making his heart cry out.  Beside her was—his child—a delicate thing, with a shock of fine black hair peeking out beneath a cap; tiny, wrinkled fingers; and knees bent up against her chest.  It pleased him more than he could say that they had cared enough about his daughter to put lace on her clothes.

The little girl opened dim unfocused eyes and began smacking her lips together, and he smiled at her solemnly, knelt by her.  “Hello, Miss Grace, I am very pleased to meet you,” he told her in a low voice.

She began to whimper a little, and he reached a careful finger to brush her cheek.  “Shh shh shh.  Your mama is tired.”  She turned a questing head to his finger and tried to gum it—“Oh!  Yes, of course, Gracie,” and he let her suck on his finger.  “Do you think you can hold on a little?  You can see your mama needs her sleep.”  He tried to think of a lullaby: “I see the moon and the moon sees me, God bless the moon and God bless me—there’s grace in the cottage and grace in the hall, and the grace of God is over us all…” he droned in a low gravelly voice.

“Poor old thing,” he whispered to the child, who was still gamely trying to suck some milk out of his finger with a warm, very wet, tongue.  He held her up against his chest, and recited some old words he had been made to learn years ago when he had been a boy, some fancy of his school master’s; a relief to him in these long late nights:

“No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh…”

“Give her to me.”  Margaret was watching him with wide, dark-ringed eyes.  Her voice was low and husky.

“Here.”  It was difficult holding such a fragile thing in his big clumsy hands.  “You’ve done a job with her, Margaret, she’s beautiful.  I’ll—leave you to your privacy.”

“You can stay,” she said quietly, and arranged her shawls so that she could feed her baby without too much exposure.  “Oh, please,” she whispered.  “Please.”  She rubbed her face with her hand, and tried to adjust the baby.  My milk hasn’t come in,” she explained to John.  “If it doesn’t come soon, Dixon says we’ll need to find a wet nurse.”  It seemed this last humiliation, in this dreadful year she had lived, was the final straw that had broken her.

John leaned against the wall, his arms wrapped around his knees, and simply talked.  “I didn’t come to pick a fight with you, Margaret.  There’s been too much of that.  Merely, to ask you in all humility what you need me to be.”

Margaret let out a long sigh, a simple “Oh…” and he heard the baby at her breast break into pops and whistles and little greedy gulps.  She closed her eyes in relief, sighed again.

“You can stay.”