I.

It began to snow at twilight, when Hannah was still five miles out from Hawbridge. Already cold, already tired, her hems muddy, her feet blistered, at the first flake of snow upon her cheek, she sank to her knees on the road and let out an animal sob.

Nothing had gone as planned.

She had intended to sneak her horse from the stables and ride to Hawbridge. But the stable master had seen her, and refused to let her take the horse out in such cold weather. No matter. She could walk to the village and catch the mail-coach to Hawbridge. Perhaps she would even meet a carter on the way, who would give her a lift for a penny. But every stranger she passed had taken one glance at her sable-trimmed pelisse and, seeing she was a lady of class, refused to let her up, for fear of the consequences. She had thought she was saved when Mr Gordon, the local book-binder, had passed her in his gig and confessed he was on the way to Hawbridge himself, but his willingness to give her a ride had proved no more than a trick: as soon they reached the crossroads, he had turned the gig around and headed back for home.

“Your Father won’t ever forgive me if I don’t,” he explained, when she protested. “Now don’t you tell me he gave you permission to go to Hawbridge. He wouldn’t have sent you off without a footman, or in this weather, a coach. You’re doing a might silly thing, Miss Templeton, and I won’t help you do it.”

Indeed, Hannah could see that Mr Gordon was prepared to retrace the miles to her own home, even though it would put him out by an hour or more, in these muddy February roads. She begged and pleaded with him to let her back down and drive away, but he refused with Scottish stubbornness. In the end, she had jumped from his gig and run away, and as he could hardly bodily restrain her, he had merely chased her for half a mile before his horse, thankfully, threw a shoe.

She still felt guilty, for both him and the horse.

Then, at the village, where she had hoped to buy a seat on the mail-coach, she learned that it had left fifteen minutes ago. In her desperation, she had even tried to run after it, though she had known the moment the post-master’s wife had told her it was gone that it was hopeless. She would have to walk the eight miles to Hawbridge and book a room in the inn overnight, and get the Bath coach the next evening.

Hannah had certainly money enough, but her experience with the carters and Mr Gordon gave her an anxious intuition that all the innkeepers in Hawbridge might find her gold not gilded enough to let her a room. Besides, Hannah was slightly afraid of the idea of staying in an inn, alone, overnight. Her imagination naively cast up images of drunken sailors, carousing highwaymen, and women of ambiguously ill repute. She had never before travelled except in her own carriage, and never before been hosted anywhere less comfortable than a private cottage, owned by family or friends.

Now, as the snow powdered the mud around her, she was beginning to realize that neither would she even make it to Hawbridge. She could not walk five miles through the snow. She felt as though she could barely walk five hundred yards.

For quite five minutes, Hannah sat in a slump on the ground, and indulged herself in an orgy of self-pity. Horrifying situations came to her: she would be eaten by wolves. She would be kidnapped by highwaymen. She would found by her father. She was helpless, hungry, and very much in trouble.

When, after five minutes, she was just as in trouble and just as helpless, and, moreover, a stray snowflake managed to float its way under the collar of her cloak to land on her neck, she sat up, and hastily considered the rather more real danger that she would freeze to death.

She was on a country road. Not the main highway to Hawbridge, but a lesser used one, down through scantily populated farmland. She hadn’t dared go by the highway, which would be busy. Now she realized her mistake. There were few enough travellers who took this road, even on a sunny July day. On a snowy January evening, there was only Hannah. And she was miles from anywhere like civilization.

She clambered to her feet, and pulled her collar tightly around her. The leaden skies above held no promise that the snow would be a light one; no, it increased by the moment, and with it, a growing wind. Hannah shivered.

“I wish – I wish I’d never left the house,” she said, in a voice that throbbed with tears.

For a moment, she thought of turning back, and trying to reach the village. There, surely, she would find someone to take her home. But even if she was capable of making that distance, her stubbornness - and her fear of her father’s wrath - spurred her onwards. She trudged through the falling snow, occasionally wiping a tear from her eyes. In minutes, it became clear that she could not walk indefinitely. The snow was becoming quite a storm, and her boots were beginning to soak through. She began to search the fields dimly through the mists of snow for the sign of an occupied farmhouse or cottage. When she saw a dark, square shape, looming up at the top of a small hill, she pressed eagerly towards it, clambering awkwardly over a fence, and stumbling through a furrowed field, more shifting sleet than solid earth under her feet.

It was not a farmhouse, but a shed of some sort, a hut, barely more than sixteen feet across. The light was failing now, and she felt her way around the rough walls to the door. It did not open at her first push, and she cried out, thinking it must be locked. Her second, desperate shove was so strong that the door burst inwards under her, and she fell into the room.

Inside, it was almost pitch-black. Hannah stood still, shivering. She had always been a little scared of the dark. And the shed was not a friendly sort of place. The faint light allowed her some idea of vague dark things piled against the walls, and she rather thought one of the things had moved when she came in. Too large for a stray dog, surely?

She took a cautious step backwards. Behind her, the door creaked threateningly.

The things, whatever they were, were still again. Perhaps she had imagined it.

But her heart was pounding, and the chill of the hut was considerably less comfortable than she had imagined. She turned back to look out into the swirling snow. Perhaps if she walked a little further, she would find a cottage or a farmhouse, where she could beg a room for the night. She paused at the threshold, and stared out into the darkening night, looking for a light, that might signify a window, that might signify a house.

But the snow, blustering in the moaning wind, obscured any light that might have been there, and Hannah hesitated where she was, uncertain of what to do.

“For God’s sake,” exploded a voice behind her, “Stay in or go out as you must, but shut the ruddy door!”

~~

A/N: This is a fluffy little short story I recently came up with between novel-writing! It’s in five chapters, and will be updated every 2-3 days.

II.

Hannah shrieked, and spun around.

“W-who’s there!?”

“Me,” said someone, from the darkness of the hut. He used the patronizing, over-enunciated sort of tone supercilious governesses used when explaining French grammar to little girls. “And you, I suppose.” He waited a moment. “Is there anyone else?”

Presumably, the vague dark shapes against the wall of the hut hid no more people, for no one else spoke. Hannah’s imagination, which had been trained on the most lurid of gothic novels, cast upon her the conviction that this stranger in the dark must be a rake, waiting to allay a confused young woman such as herself. Indeed, she could see a vague figure moving in the darkness now, coming towards her. Before it, she backed helplessly into the snow, which had become a storm.

“It’s cold out there!”

The figure reached the doorway, and stood there. It was too dark now to see properly and she could tell only that he was taller than her – much taller – and swaying slightly. In fact, he took the door frame rather carefully in one hand, as though he needed it to stay upright. His breath, when he spoke next, brought with it the definite scent of strong spirits.

“You had better come back in, Miss!” He was shouting slightly, to be heard above the wind. When she made no move, he added. “Quickly!”

Hannah tried to reply with feminine dignity, but it was quite impossible when she, too, had to shout,“I should think – I am a lady, Sir! I cannot stay with you in this hut tonight!”

“Stuff!” the man yelled. “What else are we going to do? There isn’t another shelter for miles!”

“But my reputation will suffer!”

“Of all the-” The man risked letting go of the doorway to raise his arms helplessly to the sky. He swayed, and hastily grabbed the doorpost again.

The wind shrieked, and snow splintered against Hannah’s cheeks. Staring at the man, she could just tell that he was wearing a greatcoat, its hems flapping against his ankles. She also thought he was staring at her.

“If you’ll go for a walk,” she shouted, “I’m sure you’ll find another shed.”

“I won’t go for a walk,” the man shouted. “And I won’t find another shed. Now get inside!”

And then, tiring of the argument, he reached out, attached a hand firmly to the collar of her pelisse, and pulled her bodily back into the hut, with such clumsy strength that she stumbled to her knees on the floor. A moment later, the door slammed, and the howling wind was shut out with it.

“Can’t stand,” the man muttered, “Woman’s foolishness.”

With the door shut, even the dim light from the sky was gone, and Hannah could see nothing now. She shuffled backwards on her behind over the splintering floor, in the direction away from the man’s voice. Her back hit the wall of the hut, and she stopped there, pulling her knees defensively to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. But her fear of the man’s rakishness may have been unfounded, at least as it pertained to her: she heard the soft pop of a cork being pulled from a bottle, and the pungent smell of spirits clouded the room.

The man swallowed and sighed contentedly. “Just like fire. Bless the West Indies. Do you want a drink, Miss?”

“No.”

“It’ll keep you warm,” the man added. “That’s why I ask. I can tell you’re more the champagne type. Lady, I’m drunk.”

“Yes.”

There was the sound of fumbling. Something fell over and clattered on the floor. The man cursed. Then the man fell over too, and cursed again.

“My feet,” he moaned, “Have betrayed me.”

“I can’t stand,” Hannah said primly, “Men’s foolishness.”

There was a brief silence, and then the man began to laugh. It was a very honest sort of laughter, for one who seemed to be laughing at himself, and Hannah found herself beginning to believe that perhaps her unwanted companion was not so sinister as she had first thought. Perhaps he was merely a drunken farmer, lost of his way home. If tomorrow she could persuade him to tell no one of the night they had shared in the hut, her reputation might be saved. Of course she would have to be nice to him, but Hannah generally found it hard to be mean to anyone. And already, at his laughter, she found her aloof propriety beginning to melt.

“Alright,” the man said, when his laughter had faded to a wheeze, “We’re both fools. We must be. Only a fool would end up in a place like this on a night like this.” He took another swig of the bottle. Then, as though it had just occurred to him, “Why are you here?”

“I – uh…” Hannah was not so well-thawed as to confess her escapade to the stranger. Hastily, she sought for a plausible lie. “I had a carriage accident.”

“No you didn’t,” the man said instantly. “That won’t do at all. You sound rich. You sound young. Where’s your governess? Where is your footman? Where is your groom? Surely you did not leave them in the carriage?”

“I have been out of the schoolroom three years yet!” Hannah exclaimed. “And – why, I am quite fond of driving myself anyway.”

“Without a groom? Lady, it simply does not hold.” The patronizing governess tone had crept into the man’s voice again.

“Not all young ladies do as gentleman would expect! I happen to like driving, and my curricle came to accident! That is all!”

From the faint sound of rustling cloth, she had the idea the man was shaking his head in the dark. She began to elaborate:

“When it began to snow, the roads grew soft, and so my wheels stuck. If I had thought to bring a groom, perhaps he would have been able to get the wheels moving again, but I didn’t. I was thoughtless.”

“Very thoughtless,” the man said, “If you came here so hastily, without caring for  your horse. Couldn’t unshackle him and save the poor beast from the snow storm?”

“I – I tried to…”

“Monstrously cruel! Tut-Tut! The poor creature will be dead of cold by morning. Why couldn’t you unshackle him?”

Hannah was silent, but not defeated. Her mind raced for an answer.

“Come now, why?” the man taunted. “Is it because he doesn’t exist?”

“My hands were too cold,” Hannah snipped. “I could not undo the buckles. Don’t – don’t think it didn’t wound me to leave Persephone there! I can only hope she will be alright – that the storm will calm down…” Falling back on the one weapon that had never failed since childhood, Hannah let out a throbbing sob. “I did not wish to leave her!”

She sniffed, and sobbed, and swallowed. The man was rather quiet, in the face of this feminine passion. Indeed, Hannah could only hear him shuffling about on the floor some distance away. She let her sobbing subside into distrait gasps for air, and then settled back into triumphant silence.

The man continued to shuffle about, and quite suddenly Hannah realized he was shuffling very near to her, and then, like a spider scuttling about under the sheets of her bed at night, his hand ran across her foot.

“Oh! Sir! What-”

“Sorry,” the man said cheerfully, and she smelled again the spirit on his breath. “Wrong bit!”

His hand patted next at the wall behind her, loosing a cloud of dust over her face and shoulders, and sending them both coughing. It was while she was coughing that he discovered her shoulder, and patted his way down it until he held her hand.

“There!” he said proudly. “Knew you had them!”

Hannah snatched her hand away. “Had what?” she demanded, coughing again to clear her throat. “You must know, Sir, I am a lady – a lady, I say.”

“I do know,” he said. “You’ve got gloves. Kid, by the feel. So your hands can’t have been cold.”

“I am a delicate lady,” Hannah corrected. “Delicate ladies feel the cold.”

“No,” said the man, shuffling away from her again, and feeling about in the dark – she realized, for his bottle of spirit, as she heard the slosh of liquid in the bottle. “No, the crying was very good, Lady, but there are too many contradictions in it. If you wear gloves your hands wouldn’t have been cold. They’re not riding gloves anyway – they’re soft and unworn. And if you are delicate, then you would have had more sense than to go out in this weather. I simply cannot believe you. There is no horse, there is no carriage, your carriage did not break down, and your horse will not die, because she is not there.”

Hannah fell back upon dignity. “I am outraged by your assertion that I am not being honest, Sir.”

“Why?” the man said. “It’s true.”

Hannah resolved not to talk to him. She wrapped the folds of her pelisse around her knees and arms and rested her chin on her knees. The man was undaunted by her silence.

“The lie means, of course, that you were doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing. Lady, this, I approve. Let me guess – you’re not eloping, are you?”

“No!”

“A disappointment. It’s such a romantic sort of spasm, isn’t it? Gretna Green, and closed coaches and false names. But I’d be very upset with the boy who let you run around unsheltered on a night like this, so perhaps for the best that he didn’t. No!” The man almost shouted. “Why! I’ve got it! Lady, you’re a runaway! Fantastic! I always wanted to meet one!”

“My curricle-” Hannah said obstinately.

“No,” the man interrupted. “We’ve covered that. I’d lay odds Penelophon is at home in her stable.”

“You’d lose! Her name is Persephone!”

“Very well, Persephone. Now, Lady, why’d you do it? Step-mother cruel to you?”

“I don’t have a step-mother. And my mother is really very nice. And I didn’t run away.” But her voice failed rather, on the last syllables.

“It’s alright,” the man said sympathetically. “You can tell an uncle. You might as well, really, since if you don’t I’ll have to start on my peccadilloes, and then we’ll be here more than just overnight. A runaway is a nice short melodrama. I think we can get it over with by dawn.”

Hannah was unconvinced. The man had pinned her down with an unerring accuracy, despite his addled condition, but she was still trying to come up with a lie to explain why she, a young lady of obvious class, had sought shelter in a shed in the middle of nowhere on a wintry evening like this. That this lie would have to also encompass why she had lied about the curricle, while still obfuscating the truth, seemed a very delicate sort of puzzle. She did not know if she could solve it.

“I ran away once, myself,” said the man, from the darkness. “I was fourteen years old – the head master whipped me.”

Hannah, who was soft-hearted, felt some sympathy for the boy the man had been. “How awful of him.”

“Yes,” the man agreed. “Awful b- b-b-bird he was. Of course, I was only three days in London before I ran out of money, so I had to run back again. I tried to put a brave face on it. Walked in at lunch, and demanded pudding. The head master didn’t whip me, because he thought I’d run away again, but he’d sent word to my father, and when my father arrived, he took the strap to me, to make up for it.”

“ Fathers! “ Hannah’s voice curled with loathing.

“Ah.” The man’s tone was warm with understanding. “Then it’s your father that’s the cruel one. It’s him you ran away from. My dear, we are brothers in misfortune. Tell a brother your troubles.”

In the preceding three days, Hannah had complained, at length, to her brother, mother, friends and even servants of the cruel treatment her father offered her. Her complaints had fallen upon deaf ears. Her brother considered her a silly little fool. Her mother considered her intractable and proud. Her friends thought she was being melodramatic and cynical. Her servants suggested she should do as her father told. It was balm to Hannah’s wounded soul to finally hear a sympathetic voice – even if it was a slightly slurred one.

“It’s not that I try to antagonize him,” she burst, “But I don’t think he even ever thinks of how he antagonizes me!”

“Nor mine,” the man agreed. “Go on. What did he do?”

“He – he arranged for me to marry the most awful man!” Tears swelled in Hannah’s eyes, and spilled warmly down her cold-numbed cheeks. “It’s impossible!”

“I should say it is,” said the man, offended on her behalf. “He can’t force you, can he? It’s not legal!”

“N-no. But he is making it difficult. He won’t send me to London where I could meet someone nice . He’ll be furious if I marry anyone else – he won’t give permission, of course, but I’ll be twenty-one in June, and that won’t matter then – except, of course, for my dowry. But – if a man loved me, that wouldn’t matter, would it?”

“I believe it might.” The man sounded apologetic for his sex. “I should not like to lie to you, Lady. It will be a hindrance.”

Hannah sighed. “Then my father is all the more to be blamed. He’s been planning it my whole life, you see. It will make him happy, so he does not consider that it should make me unhappy.”

“Is he really so bad?” the man asked. “This man you’re to marry, I mean. Is he old, and haggard, and cruel, and mean?”

“I – well, that’s the trouble. I don’t know. I’ve never met him. He’s young, at least. He is four and twenty. He’s been in Antigua for the past four years, and before then it was Oxford, and before then, Eton. I only know what my father said – and what my father said made me believe that he must be very awful indeed.”

There was a very fierce howling of the wind outside just then, and conversation was forestalled. Hannah huddled into her pelisse and shivered. When the wind died down again, the man spoke:

“But what – exactly – did your father say?”

“Why – he’s everything I’m not! He’s – he’s smart. And intellectual. And clever. And good, and obedient, and proper, and modest, and responsible and unfoolish and discreet and unflirting and charming….” Running out of adjectives and breath, Hannah faded into silence, chest heaving with emotion.

“Dreadful. But surely virtue alone cannot persuade you against him?”

“Yes,” said Hannah. “It can. Whenever you do something foolish, whenever you break a rule, or flirt too much, or dare to waltz, or read exciting books, and refuse to read the boring sort of things your governess wants you to, or run in the high street, or wear a dress that father considers too loud, or eat too much of the oysters and refuse to drink the cambric tea, or steal a cake from the larder, or some apples from the orchard – to be brought up in front of your father and be told that stupid Daniel Byrd would never do such a thing, nor allow such a thing, nor condone such a thing! You could not dare think a person anything but awful when you have been compared to them all your life – and always lost – and never met them!”

“By God,” said the drunk man, as if this was to him a revelation. “No. No, one could not!”

Then, in the darkness, he began to cackle with laughter. Hannah, who had at first been relieved to see he understood, began to get embarrassed, suspecting he was laughing at her.

“It’s not funny! I – I did run away, you see. I was to meet him for the first time tonight, and I decided I would not. So I ran away.” The man continued to laugh. “It is not funny!”

The man wheezed his way back to rationality. “No – no it’s not – but, well, it is – you see – you did say his name was Daniel Byrd, didn’t you?”

“Y-yes? Do you – do you know him?”

“I should say I do! Why – why, I - I was in Antigua with him! Came over on the same boat. That’s why it’s funny, you see. I should say, though I hate to discredit a man, that your father has either been lying or been greatly deceived - about Daniel Byrd.”

“Then – he is not awful, the way I was told?” she said, half-hopefully.

“He’s worse!” The man uncorked the bottle and took a healthy swallow. “He’s not clever – not at all. And he’s not good. He’s not any of what you say – certainly I should call him – by what I know of him – a deep-dyed scoundrel!”

“Why – what has he done?”

“What hasn’t he done! He stole Captain Cresswalk’s boat, over in the English Harbour. I hear it was meant to be a jaunt, but he got caught in a squall and was a week at sea with it before he returned – could your father have never heard of that? It was quite the scandal! And he is quite – I should say – a stupid, uneducated fool. He drinks too much. I say that, as I drink from the bottle of the finest rum that ever graced English shores, so you must see I know whereof I speak. He gambles. He lost a thousand pounds at baccarat in one night! Won it back and double the next night too – but lost it first, mind. And baccarat!”

“Baccarat!” Hannah breathed out in an ecstasy of imagination. Her own tame games of whist with her elderly female relatives when they needed a fourth had not excited her, but when his own friends were absent, and he was bored, her older brother had condescended to allow her to be his opponent in more masculine and exciting card games. “He’s not in debt is he? If he’s in debt, my father won’t make me marry him.”

“It would be your freedom. But I don’t think he is – he might be a fool, but he’s a lucky one.”

“Bother.” Hannah sighed. “I suppose – I suppose he consorts with – undesirable females?”

“Only desirable ones.”

“And – he’s – he’s not an Atheist, or a Catholic, is he?”

“I believe not.”

Hannah clung to her last hope. “Or a Whig?”

“I think he must be a sort of apathetic Tory, or content to call himself one.”

Hannah gave up hope. If she married as her father willed, she would have to put up with Daniel Byrd’s drunkenness and gambling and recklessness the rest of her life. Sir Byrd must have pulled the wool over her father’s eyes – no wonder Sir Byrd had sent his son off to Antigua!

She raised her head again miserably. “Can I have some of that drink, Sir?”

“Naturally.” The man shifted in the dark, and a moment later the bottle pressed against her leg. She took off a glove to uncork it, and took a naively generous swallow. Fire burned in her throat, and then her belly, and she almost choked.

“It awful.” She took another, hesitant sip, her ears buzzing. “It’s wonderful.”

The man laughed softly in the darkness.

She dared test her tolerance no more. Feeling brave and scandalous and almost up to competing with the Daniel Byrds of the world, she corked the bottle, and dropped it in her lap.

“What time do you think it is?”

“Perhaps five. Went dark not long ago. Goes dark early this time of year.”

“I suppose Sir Byrd and his son will have arrived at home by now,” said Hannah. “My father’s holding a dinner in honour of Daniel Byrd returning, but really it’s so that I can meet him. There’s going to be roast duck, and hot bread pudding, and mulled wine. And,” she added wistfully, “A fire in the grate.”

The stranger shifted in the darkness. “Fire,” he echoed. “Duck.”

There was a long silence, in which Hannah lost herself in envious imagination of her home and the dinner that lay waiting there. She was so lost in her reverie that she did not even notice that the man, too, had fallen into silence. When the effort of imagining her father biting in duck-breast, and Sir Byrd drinking mulled wine, and the amorphous figure of Daniel Byrd eating third helpings of her favourite pudding became too painful for her, Hannah forcibly brought herself back to the present: to the cold, black hut, and the drunk companion she had in it.

“But I have some apple mince pies in my reticule, Sir, if you would like to share them with me.”

There was no answer to this.

“Sir?”

Hannah grew alarmed at the sudden silence. She felt her way over the floor, until she touched something woolen and solid.

“Sir?”

Silence. With some embarrassment, she patted her hand softly over the thing, which seemed to be the man’s greatcoat, and the man within it. She oriented her hands along the triangle of a collar, and patted gently until she found his face. She bit the finger of a glove to pull it off, and laid a hand to his cheek. He was smooth shaven, which surprised her, and younger than she had thought, for his skin was smooth and unlined. His breath brushed warmly past her fingers. He was not dead.

“Sir?”

He shifted a little. A soft snore broke the silence.

He had fallen asleep.

~~

III.

The man on the floor slept, occasionally emitting a soft snore, while Hannah ate three of her mince pies in the dark. They were very clammy, and rather squashed and sticky. Hunger might have made them appetizing, but as Hannah had eaten enough ham sandwiches and lemon cake at luncheon for her mother to rebuke her gluttony, and as before then she had her usual breakfast of hot rolls, cheese, and chocolate, her hunger was really only the sort of discontented wantingness common to small children, lazy kitchen cats, and spoiled young ladies. She ate resentfully, thinking of the dinner she was missing all the while, and jealous of those who would, not far away, shortly be sitting down to it. She was resentful enough to attempt the rum again, which took some of the jealousy off, particularly when she realized how nicely it went with the pies.

The man was still sleeping when she was done. Energized, and with a pleasant, dizzy fire in her belly and behind her ears, Hannah decided to take proper stock of her surroundings.

She shuffled about, feeling her way with her feet and hands. It seemed to be a sort of storage shed. Piled in one corner and along one wall were coarse-woven sacks, full with something that smelled heavily sweet and earthy. Hannah pushed a finger into one, and found whatever was inside was dense and fine-ground. Flour? Soil? More likely soil, or possibly – her nose wrinkled – horse manure.

She felt her way further around, stumbling over the drunken man, who, disturbed in his dream, shouted,

“No, no, Sir, I won’t do it… she’s barnacle all through!”

Immediately after that, Hannah ran into a wooden barrow, and was surprised enough to swear. She gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth, in case the drunk man had woken and heard, but he seemed to be still sleeping, because he only said crossly,

“I’ll be damned, but I won’t be barnacled for you, Sir!”

Hannah gave a gurgle of laughter. The drunk man, turning over, gave a dramatic sigh, and fell silent once more.

There was something in the wheelbarrow. Some kind of stiffened, mud-caked cloth piled haphazardly into it. A carriage cover? A horse blanket?

Whatever it was, its folds scraped against each other as Hannah pulled it up, and flakes of mud and clouds of dust scattered in the damp air. Hannah sneezed.

She dropped it back in the barrow, and continued to feel her way along the wall of the hut. Her gloved hands touched some poles, leaning against the wall: farm tools. Near the door, she found a workman’s cap hanging on a hook, and a quantity of rope. On the far wall, there was a series of shelves, holding a clutter of nothings. She picked up a glass jar and shook it slightly, to hear it clink: probably screws or nails. There were a large number of bottles and tins – presumably gardening supplies – and various bits and pieces: an abandoned pencil stub, the handle of an axe, a sprung mouse trap, coils of wire.

There was nothing else in the shed. Disappointed, Hannah felt her way back to the sacks of what she preferred to believe was dirt, and clambered on top of them for a seat. She was interrupted once by the drunk man, who mumbled suspiciously in his sleep,

“Don’t think you can fob me off with a toad, Sir. I know warts when I see them.”

But after that, falling into a deeper sleep, he became silent, and Hannah had no company but herself and her feelings. The sacks, though soft, became uncomfortable after a time, and now that she had no activity or chatter to distract her, she was becoming painfully aware of the depth the chill was sinking into her bones. She shifted this way and that, and pulled her feet up under her, but nothing could dislodge the chill. Now, too, she became aware of a draught she had not yet noticed, stealing into the barn, and creeping its way down the back of her neck.

She got up, and paced the floor to warm herself. Then, remembering the drunk man, and concerned for both his silence and the chill, she knelt by him once more and removed her glove to feel his cheek – stone cold.

Alarmed, she held her hand by his mouth to feel if he was still breathing, and was relieved to find a faint warm breath brush over her fingers. But that he was chill – despite his greatcoat, more affected by the cold than her – she was sure.

She wondered if she should wake him – but that would not warm him. Light a fire? But even if she had tools and knowledge, they would suffocate from the smoke, might even set light to the barn that sheltered them.

Remembering the cloth in the barrow, she pulled it out, and shook it for several long minutes – fearing mice, spiders, and other nasty things. When it might just be clean enough, she laid it out on the ground next to the man, and shoved and pushed at his shoulders, until she had him roughly rolled over onto it. She picked up the corners, and wrapped him in the sheet like a cocoon. It would be something.

With no more she could do, she crawled back to her perch and, worming herself in the hollow between some sacks, managed to find some shelter from the draught.

---

Some hours later, after Hannah had fallen into a series of light, uncomfortable dozes, the man awoke, and, swearing, began to fight his way out from the cocoon she had made him. The effort disturbed Hannah from her sleep, and she sat up, at first bewildered, and then disappointed, to remember where she was.

“Are you there?” the man called. “Lady, are you there?”

“I’m here,” Hannah said, crawling out from her burrow, into which she had slipped deeper during her sleep.

“I thought I’d dreamed you!” The man kicked at the sheet. “What’s this? Ah, I see. You haven’t given me your cloak, have you?”

“No. Some bit of cloth I found lying about.”

“You’re an angel, Lady.”

Hannah blushed in the darkness.

There was shuffling down below, as the man rearranged himself within the sheet, and then the pop of the bottle cork, and the sound of his drinking.

“You must think,” he observed, “That I’m a dreadful lush, a dreadful fool.”

“It had crossed my mind,” she admitted.

“Quite a sharp mind,” the man said wryly. “I must protest, I must insist you understand, I am not entirely depraved, and have been known to be accused, even, of having enough better qualities to make my lesser ones seem all the blacker. But yesterday – I suppose it must be yesterday now – I made the foolish attempt of drowning my sorrows – and misjudged their depth.”

There was an undercurrent of amusement in his voice, but Hannah, soft-hearted, heard only sorrows, and felt for him.

“I’m very sorry,” she said. “I suppose – I suppose you’re not such a fool then.”

“Oh, I am,” he argued. “I assure you I am. Only a fool would judge his sorrows as I did mine. I judged them – without even seeing them. And now I’m here.” He paused. “Though, I suppose, it’s the less sorrow for both of us, that both our sorrows placed us here. I should hate to be here alone.”

Hannah thought of how long the wait would seem, were there no one else to talk to, how dark and cold the hut, how fearsome its isolation.

“Oh yes,” she said, with a shudder. “It would be awful to be alone.”

There was a brief silence, and Hannah noticed, for the first time, that the whistling of the wind had ceased, but for the occasional rush against the tiles of the barn.

“The storm seems to be dying down,” she said. “I suppose – I suppose we might search for help now. But I don’t know if I want to trek about the country in the drifts and the dark.”

“No,” the man said decisively. “We’ll be safer if we wait it out here. In the morning light, there won’t be any difficulty finding our way home.” He sighed a little. “I am hungry though.”

Hannah remembered the rest of her pies. “I have some apple pies,” she said tentatively. “They’re a bit squished, but it’s something.”

“God bless,” the man said fervently. “I’m beginning to think you really are an angel – what a pity.”

Hannah crawled over the sacks in the dark and felt about below. She came across a hard shoulder, and a hand closed over hers.

“Wait a moment.” She fumbled with her reticule until she found the parcel. “Here.”

Their hands groped again, and the exchange was effected.

“I already ate all I wanted,” she said. “So take what you will.”

“You’re vewy, vewy kind,” the man mumbled, through a mouthful of pie.

The effort of his eating put a halt to conversation for some time. Hannah, relieved he was no longer drunk, and not likely to freeze to death, crawled back to her hollow and nestled into it. Her mind, relieved of all other cares, returned to her major problem: how to run away to Bath. Despite the discomfort of her failure, so far, to run away more than a few miles, to anything more than a shed, she was still determined in her plan. But it seemed almost impossible now. Her father would be looking for her by now, and with the roads snowed over, any travel would be slow. She might not be able, even, to walk to Hawbridge, and if she did reach it, there was a possibility the mail coach would not even run until the roads had cleared.

The man finished eating, sighed, and thanked Hannah again, interrupting her thoughts.

“You’ve got to be one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met,” he said sincerely. “I tell you, Lady, there’s no one else I would rather be locked up with.”

She blushed warmly in the darkness. “I’m not hungry anymore, so it doesn’t signify.”

“And the cloth over me?” the man demanded. “And being so friendly, for all I was drunk? And never once complaining about how cold it is, or anything else of that nature? My Lady, you’re a treasure.”

Hannah squirmed in her hollow of sacks. To be complimented in such a way struck her deeply with embarrassed pleasure.

“I – I did what I could.” She patted her heated cheeks. To distract from the compliment, she plunged quickly into conversation, “What do I do tomorrow, when it is light? I can’t walk to Hawbridge – I don’t know how far I can walk, with snow on the road. And I can’t go home – father will be so angry, and besides, Sir Byrd and his son might still be there, if they are snowed in. I don’t want to meet Mr Byrd.”

The man was thoughtful. “Are you quite certain you won’t marry him?”

“Yes! I mean, even if he’s not what I’ve been told, what you’ve said is – well, nearly quite as bad. I must be allowed to make my own mind up.”

“Yessss…” said the man. “But perhaps… well… I should think that is an argument to meet him, rather than avoid it. For if you do, you will be able to make up your mind perfectly well, and nobody will be able to tell you that you are wrong about him.”

“No,” Hannah said. “I have made up my mind.”

“Then I shall not argue with you to unmake it. But what is Mr Byrd’s mind about you?”

Hannah, in all her twenty years, had never considered Daniel Byrd’s mind about anything.

“He may,” suggested the man, “Be as indisposed to you as you are to him.

“He won’t be,” Hannah said mournfully. “I’m far too pretty for any young man not to like me.”

“…Are you really?”

“That’s part of why I ran away. If we had met two years ago, when I still had spots, I might have managed to off-put him, but I’m quite at my best now.”

The man was unconvinced. “Do you not think Mr Byrd would care about personality too?”

“Why should he?” Hannah retorted. “One needs not be friends with one’s wife. My looks and my dowry are what he’ll care about. They’re what his father cares about anyway. I don’t think his father even likes me but he likes what I come contained in.”

There was a brief chuckle in the darkness. “Perhaps his father has spent so long looking at your container he never learned enough of what was within to like it.”

“If he had, I doubt he would. I’m always doing such foolish things - even running away, I suppose, was very foolish. He will not like that at all.”

Hannah buried herself further in the pile of sacks. The man drank rum.

“I must get to Bath,” Hannah said eventually. “It’s where my sister lives. Anyone can be anybody in a big city. I could even get a job, if my sister does not help me.”

“A job.” The man sounded amused. “What sort of job?”

“I am good at French,” said Hannah. “I could be a governess”

“Being married is, I hear, preferable to being a governess.”

“It depends who you’re married to – and whose children you’re governing. I like children, and children like me.”

“Most children do like people who aren’t their governesses.”

“But what else do I do!? I will not go home, I will not marry him, and I have no money without my dowry.”

Hannah, who generally, perversely found confidence from opposition, became certain. Yes. She would go to Bath, and once she was there something would work out. She had a full and naive belief in the power of fate. The power of fate had put her and this stranger together in a barn tonight. Surely, that meant something.

“Yes,” she said, sitting up. “And you’ll help me.”

The stranger sputtered over his rum. “Me!?”

“Absolutely,” said Hannah. “You do see, don’t you, that it’s the only thing to do? Can’t you help me get there?”

“Of course not! I’m – I mean - it’s impossible!”

“So is Daniel Byrd,” Hannah reminded him. “I have money, you know. I planned to get there by myself, but the snow has stopped me from walking far. You do live nearby don’t you? If you don’t have a carriage, can I buy a horse? Once I get to Oxford, I ought to be able to make the rest of the way by myself.”

“I have both, but it will not answer. Lady, I won’t do it. I like you, but I won’t do it.”

“If you liked me” - Hannah gave a persuasive sob - “You would help me.”

“Because I like you, I won’t. You should be very much mistaken to persist in running away! Go home! I’ll help you get home!”

“But tomorrow my father will be so angry,” Hannah said, finding hot, real tears prick to her eyes. “When I get back.. and… I just wish he wouldn’t be so fierce about it all.”

She wiped her eyes on the back of her gloves and sniffed.

A long moment later, there was a firm pressure on her shoulder. The stranger was gripping her, the way she’d seen men grasp each other, on occasion. It was not a fit way to touch a lady, and she knew it, and it endeared her all the more to the clumsy gesture of comfort.

“It’ll all work out, I’m sure. Maybe a few day’s disgrace, a bit of a scrap. Less trouble than Bath. Sometimes, you just have to return to a beating, and take it, and hope that what comes next isn’t so bad.” He dropped his grip. “I have an idea it won’t be. Somehow.”

Hannah, comforted, but not reassured, found herself smiling at him in the dark, until she foolishly realized he could not see it.

~~

A/N: Probably need to edit this again tomorrow.

IV.

Hannah woke groggily, to find the man shaking her shoulder. She stared blearily up at him: some faint light had entered the cabin, and she could now discern his silhouette from the faint grey shadows of the barn behind.

“I think it’s morning.”

Clawing at the sacks, she prised herself out of the gap into which she had fallen during the night. The man stepped back as she eased herself onto the floor. Her ankles and knees seemed to have frosted over in her sleep. Gingerly, she tried to stretch, and collapsed back on the sacks with a yelp as her calf began to cramp.

“Everything hurts!”

“But you don’t have a hangover,” the man said, half-triumphantly. “Come on. Up.”

Hannah did not get up. Leaving her to her misery, the man went to the door and opened it, allowing in a soft shaft of greyish light and a fall of snow. He went out over the snow, and Hannah’s curiosity impelled her to crawl off the sacks and hobble after him.

It was dawn, and the world was blanketed in white beneath a haze of pink clouds, burning bright at the horizon. The man was staring into the burning bright spot, his hands in his pockets, his back to Hannah. Hannah crunched forward through the snow and breathed in the prickling, chill morning air.

“Oh! Isn’t it pretty!?”

The man turned to her. For the first time, there was enough light for her to see his face. She found she liked it. It was a young, tanned face, framed by an unkempt mess of dark hair. The features were bony and rather heavy, but he was saved any severity of appearance the smile in his dark eyes, which she suspected might be a constant feature. As she looked, his mouth began to smile too, and he laughed.

“Well you’re pretty too. But I had an idea you would be.”

Hannah looked away shyly.

“There’s not more than a foot of snow, but it’ll put paid to walking far. I live nearby. I think closer than anyone else. Come with me, and I’ll see to it that you’re taken safely home.”

“Oh no!” Hannah thought of her furious father, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. “Really, I can’t go home. I won’t.”

“But where else can you go?” The man gestured at the sleeping white landscape around them. “It’s impossible to get to Bath, or London, or anywhere else in this. Even with a carriage, the roads are likely unusable until tomorrow. And you can’t walk!”

“Yes. I can. I will.” Obstinately, Hannah gathered the folds of her pelisse around her, and marched off over the snow in the direction of the road. It was a slow march, perhaps even a waddle, because the snow reached half-way up her calves, but if it was a waddle it was an imperious one.

The man, without trying to persuade her, walked after her. His legs being longer than hers, her hurrying only had the effect of exhausting her, as all he had to do was lengthen his stride to keep up.

“Don’t follow me.”

“I must.”

“No. You must leave me. If you won’t help-” She was stopped for a moment by a wooden fence, and the necessity of climbing it. Hovering on the lip, she said severely, “If you won’t help, leave.”

“Help? But that’s why I’m following!”

“But you won’t help me get to Bath.”

“No. That wouldn’t be helping.”

“Then – then I don’t need you to follow me. Good bye, Sir.”

Hannah jumped from her perch on the fence. But on the other side, banked up against the fence, the snow had gathered deceptively into a drift. Hannah sunk down into it with a scream. Her feet hit something, but not something solid enough, and she lost her balance and went down on her back in a cloud of enveloping snow.

She struggled, flailing her limbs, to pull herself out of it. A hand latched onto her own, and pulled hard. She surfaced, spitting snow from her mouth. The man was leaning over the fence, and it was his hand that had grabbed hers.

“You’re not hurt are you?”

“No.” Tears blurred Hannah’s vision. “Not hurt.”

The man bit his lip. He began to laugh.

“Oh don’t, don’t,” Hannah begged, letting her tears fall. “It’s not fair – you never had a horrid father like mine! I can’t – I can’t go back. And I won’t marry Daniel Byrd.”

“No. No it’s not fair.” He bit back his laughter. “It’s not.”

Hannah bowed her head and brushed snow from her pelisse. The snow had gotten under her clothes when she fell and was beginning to melt into her skirt, against her legs, and into her collarbones. She shivered.

“Nothing I can say ever makes father listen.”

“Nothing I can say makes you listen.” The corners of the man’s mouth twitched. “But you’re wet all through, and my home is closest. Come with me, and I’ll find you something dry.”

“But you’ll send me home.” Again, her eyes filled with tears. “You will.”

“Well – dam’me – I won’t,” he promised rashly. “I’ve got a horse and carriage, and when the roads are safe, I’ll send you anywhere you want to go.”

She blinked back the tears. “Really?”

“Really.” He brushed a clump of snow from her shoulders. “I can’t see what else I can do. You’ve out-stubborned me. If I don’t, you’ll tramp across the snow, fall into a million drifts, and you won’t even let me be there to pull you out of any of them.”

“No. I won’t.” Hannah considered it. A suspicion arose in her mind that a gentlemanly stranger might just, in fact, lure an innocent lass back to his castle and seduce her. In one of her favourite novels, it certainly would have been the case. But she was beginning to grow suspicious of novels. They didn’t seem to leave room for men like the one in front of her, who followed the villainous pursuits of drinking and swearing and wearing his clothes and hair dishevelled, but had nothing of the villain about his eyes or smile.

“Alright,” she decided. “I’ll go with you. But you’d better mean it. If you’re going to change your mind when we get there, or trick me, then you might as well tell me now. Unless you’re going to carry me kicking and screaming, I won’t go back to my parents.” She set her jaw. “And I’ll kick and scream all the way.”

“I promise. Wherever you want to go.”

“That’s alright then,” Hannah said graciously, as though conferring a favour on him. “Where is home?”

“Back that way.”

He helped her climb the fence again and they strode off back past the shed. Hannah hopped after him, stepping in the tracks he left in the snow to avoid having to slough through it herself. Her damp skirts slapped and dragged at her ankles. When the man reached the crest of the hill, he had to stop and wait for her to catch up.

There were more fields on the other side of the hill, walled by clumps of dark twiggy shrubs and hedges, sloping westwards until they terminated at a black-wooded ridge. At the bottom of this shallow valley, sheltered from the wind, was a cluster of black-boughed trees that must have just been hiding the house from which two tall grey chimneys rose.

“My house is among that copse.”

“It’s miles away.”

“Not more than two. And easier once we hit the trees. There shouldn’t be as much snow on the ground in the woods.” He gave her a considerate glance. “Will it help if you take my arm?”

“It helps if you go first and make a path. The snow’s too deep.”

“Then at least give me your reticule, and I’ll put it in my pocket.”

Hannah gave her snow-drenched, bedraggled reticule to the man, who folded it carefully away in the pocket of his greatcoat, and they moved on again, the man taking care to tramp down heavily in the snow. Hannah picked her way after him, holding up her skirts. The snow was deep enough, and the ground beneath it rough enough, that there was less conversation than panting. They climbed one fence, and crossed a field before the man started to talk. He was rather breathless.

“I can’t imagine we’ll be doing any travelling today. The snow’s too deep on the roads, and we’ll both be done in anyway.”

“I don’t like waiting.”

“I thought you wouldn’t.” There was something in the man’s voice that made Hannah think he was laughing at her. “What concerns me is what I’m going to do with you today. It’s one thing to spend the night with you in a barn, when we don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s another if I keep you alone with me when there are other options.”

Hannah was not unaware of the problem posed there. “Don’t you have a sister, or a wife?”

“Not… exactly.”

“Not exactly.” Hannah repeated it carefully as she navigated around a clump of frosted brambles at the edge of a field. “What does that mean?”

“I have no sister, but I might be engaged,” the man said, with a strange carelessness. “I’m not really sure. Last night may have scotched it. It scotched something.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not sorry.” The man kicked a fallen branch out of the way and ploughed on over the snow. “Suffice to say, there is no duenna at home for you, excepting housekeepers and chambermaids. I’ll pass you into their hands, and make the right kind of excuses, which might end up being something close to the truth. But to keep you in my house for the night, then to travel with you, without a chaperone…”

“We have a day to find one. Would your housekeeper-”

“No.” The man was very firm. “I’m afraid she’s going to be very fierce with both of us when we arrive - and she’ll be right.” He stopped a moment and turned back to look pointedly at Hannah’s damp, dirty hems. “We’ve made rather a mess of ourselves.”

Hannah blushed for the both of them.

“Still,” said the man, walking on again. They were now in a big flat field with little crops of trees and shrubs through it - probably a livestock field. “I think I’ll be able to persuade people on my end that all’s well that end’s well - I don’t think your people will be so pleased, when they receive a letter from you via Bath post.”

Hannah clenched her numb toes inside their soaked boots and said nothing. The man, occupied with forging ahead through the snow, didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. The further they walked, the tireder and more uncomfortable Hannah felt. It wasn’t just the snow. She kept thinking of her mother and father. Her father would be angry of course, and her mother would cry. But there wasn’t any other way to have done things. Their happiness in her obedience would have come at the cost of Hannah’s own. But even disobedient, even justifying her disobedience, Hannah found herself somehow unhappy.

Some silent half-hour later, they arrived at the brick wall of a ha-ha, surrounded by a drift of snow. A wood of trees loomed beyond. The man waited while Hannah caught up. She’d been going slower and slower behind him, and even though her feet had gone numb long ago, she’d discovered that it didn’t make them feel any less tired.

“I’ll get up first, and then help you. Can you do it? The gate’s round the other side and it’s too far to trek.”

She sighed limply. “I suppose.”

“You’re a real square to have come so far.”

“Am I?” For a moment her spirits rose. “I keep thinking I’m a fool for ever leaving.”

“I think you’re both.” The creases under his eyes deepened as he smiled. “I rather like your foolishness too.”

“I’m on cold terms with it myself right now.”

“So if I’m going to persuade you to go home, now is the time?”

“Never is the time.” A note of panic crept into her voice. “I can’t go back. I must keep going.”

He patted her shoulder. “Then let’s keep going. Not far now.”

He floundered through the drift, hoisted himself up onto the wall, and scrambled over the lip. Getting Hannah up was then an exercise in strength and indignity. The strength was mostly on the man’s part, and the indignity not wholly on Hannah’s. At the top, he discreetly removed his hands from where they had slipped, and she wiped the cold impression of his coat collar from her cheek. Beneath his tan, his cheeks were tinged pink.

But after that, it was almost easy. The snow was shallower under the trees, and without the summer undergrowth, the wood-floor was almost flat. They emerged after a while onto a road between the trees, where there was space to walk abreast, and the man held out his arm for her. She took it, not because she really needed it now, but because she found it pleasant to hold.

“I was just thinking,” he said. “Do you like eggs for breakfast?”

“At least half a dozen.” Her eyes went wide. “You don’t have chocolate, do you?”

“I think we might. Though it’s coffee I’m dreaming of. And baked ham - if I can persuade the housekeeper to forgive me. It does make one hungry, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve never been so hungry in my life.”

The man was silent and thoughtful a moment. “Do you know the diet of an average governess?”

“I don’t have to be a governess.” She tossed her head. “Or I’ll be a rich one.”

“A rich governess, spending all her pay on butter and eggs and chocolate?”

Hannah met his eye challengingly. “A dozen eggs. And ham. And chocolate.”

He only laughed and pulled her arm closer in his.

It was at that moment that Hannah realized, after all that happened, she had never thought to ask him his name.

“Why, do you know, we never introduced ourselves!”

“Didn’t we? I suppose we didn’t. It’s just through here.”

Though the man’s arm was still firmly around hers, he seemed to have no real interest in her name. Hannah was disappointed. She had started to hope that the man was not so ungentlemanly as he had first appeared that night; that there might be the chance to forge an acquaintance that her father would disapprove only just enough to make the more exciting.

The man released her arm to open a wooden farm gate. There was a stone building just ahead, and Hannah’s heart rose at the thought of a soft chair, a warm fire, and boiled eggs. But when she trotted around the corner of the building she realized, with some disappointment, that it was not a cottage after all. The closed barn doors and the faint knicker of horses from within told that it was only a stable - a very large one.

“Why - you must be very wealthy.” She turned to him in surprise. “I thought you were-”

“I’m not,” the man said hastily. “Not yet, anyway.”

But across the snowy lawn, between the trunks of winter-bony oaks, Hannah could see the real house. It was a large house. It was the house whose chimneys she had seen nearly two miles away. It was a house she recognized from its owner’s vainglorious description of eighty-two windows and Grecian elegance.

It was Sir Byrd’s house.

“You tricked me!” She turned furiously to the man. “You lied! You said you’d help me and you took me straight to Sir Byrd!”

“No - wait, Miss Templeton.”

But Hannah didn’t wait. She turned on her heel and ran towards the woods. She didn’t know where she was going, or how she would even get there, but she knew she wasn’t staying.

It didn’t take more than a few yards for the man to catch her by the arm. She stopped, but refused to face him.

“You tricked me,” she repeated, her voice shaking. “Let me go. I told you what I’d do if you lied.”

“No – No, I didn’t trick you. And I didn’t lie. This is my house. This is my stable. I am Daniel Byrd.”

Hannah felt suddenly faint. She did not think it was from hunger. “What.” She stared at him in disbelief. “I - I beg your pardon?”

“I am Daniel Byrd.” He released his grip on her arm. “And I didn’t lie. I’ll take you anywhere you wish to go. But – I hope you’ll stay.”

V.

An hour or more later, Hannah was curled up in an armchair by the fire in Sir Byrd’s breakfast room, with Daniel Byrd on the chair pulled up next to her. He had sent her away into the care of the surprised housekeeper, who had taken care of the supply of clean clothes and the removal of soiled ones with only the barest hint of a raised eyebrow. Clean and dry, she had been brought down for breakfast, and found him similarly attired, and shaved, and washed, and waiting for her. They had made fast, silent work of the coffee, toast, ham, eggs, and chocolate, and warm and fed had retired to the seats by the fire. Sir Byrd was yet absent, having been snowed in at Mr Templeton’s house overnight, and they had the room and house to themselves.

Hannah eyed Daniel sleepily. She had been pleased to find his face just as charming shaved, but was thinking that whoever had arranged his hair had done too severe a job, and that it might be nice to disarrange it.

Daniel yawned, and settled back in his chair, resting his feet out in front of him towards the fire. “Where do we go from here, Miss Templeton? Bath? London? Timbuktu?”

“I don’t know.” A question had been burning in her mind for some time. “Why were you drunk in the shed last night, when you were supposed to be at my father’s?”

He laughed, and went on laughing for some time before he was sober enough to explain. “I confess, the very same reason as you. I called on a friend yesterday, and got rather below water with him, weeping in his arms, belabouring my sorrows in being practically forced to marry Awful Miss Templeton.” His eyes glimmered with amusement. “My father sent his groom to fetch me, and he wasn’t very sympathetic, as it happens. He told me to get in the carriage and sober up and give you a chance. Well I got in one door of the carriage, and then out the other side when he wasn’t looking, and ran away into the fields. When I saw the shed, I thought to myself that my father would never think to look for me there. It all seemed very logical at the time.”

“Then…”

“My feelings for you,” said Daniel, “Were quite the same as yours for me. My father always told me you were so smart, and so good, and so well-behaved – I thought you were a frightful bluestocking.”

“Oh I’m not! You must know I’m not!”

“I do.” He smiled at her. “But I was surprised to find it was you – I knew as soon as you mentioned my name who you were. And I didn’t want to say it was me. I thought – well I thought if you were truly awful, I could get a warning of it without you knowing who I was.”

“And am I truly awful?”

“No.” He was very solemn. “You’re much worse. You’re twice – ten times as pretty as he said. You’re impossibly stubborn. You’re too soft-hearted for your own good. You’re nowhere near as snobbish as you should be. You’re a terrible liar. You’re wilful…” He trailed off. “I can’t believe my father thought he had to lie about you. You’re wonderful.”

She blushed, and turned her face to hide the heat in her cheeks in the heat from the fire. “You’re quite different to what I thought too,” she admitted. “Much more interesting.”

They fell into silence, and for some time there was no sound in the room but that of the spitting fire. Hannah was thinking about what might have happened if they had both gone to dinner yesterday after all. She wasn’t sure that she would have liked Daniel so much if she had met him under the cool strictures of a formal dinner, when he was on his best, most distant behaviour, trying, probably, to be the person his father had made him out to be.

Daniel broke the silence first.

“You didn’t say. Where do you want me to take you?”

The idea of London or Bath seemed like a distant and not entirely pleasant dream now, in the warm, comfortable breakfast room. Hannah didn’t want to leave the fire, or the chair, or the man beside her. She looked pleadingly at him.

“My father will be so angry.”

“I’m not unaware of it.” Daniel looked thoughtfully at her. “There might be a way to make it right. I’ve been thinking, you know, about giving it a try. Marrying you. I think it might make your father happy.” He hesitated. “I think it will make me happy.”

A warm thrill flooded Hannah. She could not speak, but the expression on her face must have been enough, because Daniel slid from his chair to kneel on the hearthrug at her feet, her knees brushing his hips.

“Where do you want me to take you?”

She was still unable to speak, still wishing for some more definite question. But his face within reach now, she did what she had been wishing to do, and reached out to run her hand back through his hair. The locks came free, tumbled over his brow again. He caught her hand and kissed her palm.

“Where do I take you?” He kissed her wrist. “Hannah, my angel, where do we go?”

“Home,” she said at last, “With you.”

He pulled her into his arms so he could kiss her properly, and again there was silence for some time. It was interrupted only by occasional soft-voiced murmurings or low ripples of laughter; then, savagely, ruptured by the sound of a door banging in the hall. Daniel drew back. His hair was thoroughly disordered again, as it should be.

“Daniel!” A voice roared in the hall outside.

“Oh bother. Wait here.” He gave her another swift kiss, and rose to his feet.

“Daniel!” The voice roared again. It was Sir Byrd.

“I’m here, Father.”

Daniel went out the door. Hannah sat up in front of the fireplace, and smoothed down her borrowed dressing gown. It was impossible to hear what Daniel was saying, and equally impossible not to hear Sir Byrd.

“The wretched girl has disappeared! Mr Templeton tried to play it off as she was ill with rheumatism, but what’s a twenty year old to do with rheumatism!? I played it quiet and asked the servants: she’s upped and left! She must have caught wind of your doings in the West Indies, and buggered off before you could marry her. Next we know, she’ll be in a convent in France, taking the vows. If you’d just a little more discretion - a little more taste!… No, all the blame is yours! Don’t try and wriggle out when you’ve been carousing all night - I know you!… Even if he gets her back he’ll never persuade her to marry you now! I had a ruddy time trying to even explain why you weren’t there! Poor fool thinks you’re in bed with the lumbago - you were, if he asks… God knows it’s an embarrassment to have a son with lumbago, but better than a disappeared daughter!… Well the marriage is off now, and I expect you to make up for it. Lord Shipley’s got a daughter - thirty if she’s a day, with a face like an axe, but it’s an advantage if he won’t mind offing her on you.”

It was enough for Hannah. She got up and went through into the hall. Sir Byrd was still shouting at Daniel, who was vainly trying to speak. He only sputtered into silence when he saw Hannah. Boldly, she walked up to Daniel, and took his hand.

“Good morning,” she said pleasantly.

Sir Byrd looked from one to the other, his mouth gaping.

“I hope my servants aren’t putting it about that I’ve run away. It’s not true. I was so worried when I heard of Daniel’s lumbago that I came here to nurse him last night. He made a full recovery, but by that time, I was snowed in, and couldn’t leave. I hope you’ll send word of the good news to my father immediately. He must be worried.”

Daniel’s hand tightened in hers, and the strangled noise he made made her suspect he was trying not to laugh.

“You might also tell him that we’re getting married,” added Hannah, “Because I know he’s had considerations about Mr Wolesly’s son, who doesn’t have lumbago.”

Sir Byrd’s mouth closed at last. “Miss Templeton.” He bowed stiffly. “I didn’t know you were here.” He eyed her suspiciously. “Is it true?”

“Quite true, Father. We’ll marry as soon as we can.”

Sir Byrd wheeled around to stare out the front window over the white lawn. Daniel took the chance to kiss Hannah’s cheek and whisper in her ear:

“You’re really the most terrible liar.”

“The sooner the better, I think,” Sir Byrd said ponderously. “If you’ve got lumbago, and she’s got rheumatism, best marry while you’ve still got the best of bad health before you.” He turned back to them. “I’ll send a groom to your father with the message. I’m sure he’ll be very happy to know you’re here.”

Sir Byrd disappeared in search of the groom. Daniel put his arm around Hannah and led her back to fireplace in the breakfast room.

“Rheumatism,” he teased, sinking down into a chair and pulling her down after him. “I suppose I’ll have to carry you from place to place, to save your poor knees.”

“With your lumbago?”

“Ah, but you nursed me and I made a full recovery.” Daniel ran a hand gently up and down her waist, sending warm shivers down Hannah’s spine. “And besides, I rather like the feel of you in my arms.”

It was a pleasant feeling to be in them. Pleasant to have no reason to leave them, for the snow had started up again outside, and Hannah thought she might be trapped in Sir Byrd’s house for the day at least.

“Alright,” she said, nestling closer into him, the warmth of his body leaching into her own. “I’m rheumatic, and I can’t walk, can’t, I think, even sit up without help. So you mustn’t let me go.”

Outside, the snow continued to bank up. Inside, the young couple continued to be unaware of it, unaware of everything outside themselves, unaware even of Sir Byrd coming to the breakfast room door and, with a flush and a quickening of paternal understanding, quietly pulling it closed upon them.

~~

A/N: The end!!!