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.