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.

~~