In truth, Verity Baker had returned from her grandmother's house with nothing but a cup of hot tea and some biscuits in her stomach. Her grandmother, unwilling as ever to have a relationship with her grand-daughter by elopement, had made Verity wait for several hours before sending her maid down with the message that Lady Duvalle was indisposed.

And now Verity made her way home, still hungry, still poor, and now cold and unsure of where her next meal was coming from. Her father had proved more unreliable than ever, and debts were coming up from all corners. He'd sold off whatever he didn't need from the house already, and was even considering selling some of the things he did need, like the tired old mare. Verity was tempted, every night, to flee the village, and seek her fortune without her father's mismanagement hanging like a lead weight around her neck. Of fortune, she had modest expectations: she would not turn down any honest work, no matter how low or unpleasant, as long as it paid enough to keep her in bread and under a roof. She even conceded that the bread could be stale, and the roof leaky. And every night, she found herself prevented by the sure knowledge that if she left her father alone, he would face an immediate and catastrophic ruin.

When she arrived home, it was snowing properly, and a closed coach resting out the front of her cottage was becoming banked in white. Her heart sunk upon recognizing its shabby design and the shivering horse still harnessed to it. Mr Harlan was here. It was he who had run into her outside the gate several months ago, and of all her father's creditors, he was the most demanding and poisonous. To Verity, he paid an obsequious attention, until her coldness broke his mask, and he would raise his voice against her in curses. To her father, he never bothered with the obsequious manner, and was only ever violent.

Verity stabled her own mare, and threw a blanket over his horse, miserable in the snow. She crept through the back door into the kitchen, hung up her cloak noiselessly, and listened carefully to the conversation taking place on the other side of the dining room door.

"Please, Mr Harlan," her father begged. "Please don't."

"Listen to me, Baker," Harlan shouted greasily, "You can't delay any longer. I need some payment."

"I don't have anything." Her father was almost whimpering.

"You don't have anything? What's this, then?" A pause, and then the crash of china. "What's this?" Another pause, and then the same.

Verity could listen no longer. She opened the door to find Mr Harlan holding a china plate hostage, high above his head, shattered triangles of other dishes at his feet. She recognized the broken spout of their only teapot. Mr Baker was reaching up for the plate that Mr Harlan held, but Mr Baker had never been tall, and Harlan was a decade younger, and athletic besides. He held her father away from him with one contemptuous hand twisting the collar of his dirty shirt.

When Harlan saw her, he put the china casually down on the sideboard, and pushed her father down into a chair.

"Good evening, my dear Miss Verity."

She did not return his courtesy. Instead, she looked tellingly at the broken china on the floor. "If you continue to break our property, it is you who shall owe us, Sir."

Harlan raised one amused eyebrow. "If I broke everything your father owned, I would not have damages to half what he owes. Not a quarter."

A quarter, thought Verity, was a very generous estimate of their condition. She had some knowledge of the level of her father's debt to Harlan. For months, Harlan had let that debt lie unpaid. He had even been most generous in allowing her father to wage more money at further games, given him so many honest chances to make it all back, sympathised so sincerely with his so many honest losses. And then, just as Mr Baker himself recognized the trap he had fallen into, Harlan had closed it, and demanded at once everything he had owed.

"Well," Harlan said, pulling out a chair for her. "You are a lady and I am being uncivil. Pray sit down."

"I shall not." And she remained by the kitchen door.

"You should take your leave, Verity," her father said weakly. "I will sort this out."

"Will you?" Harlan leaned on the table, his form looming over her father's diminutive slouch. "I've been thinking, you're not much capable of sorting anything out. She's the one that does the sorting. I can see that."

"She's a very clever girl," her father agreed.

"I have no money of my own," Verity warned.

"Well it wasn't money I was thinking of." The man twisted his head to give Verity one of his wide, unpleasant smiles, and, seeing that she was backing into the kitchen, pushed himself suddenly off the table and pulled closed the door behind her. It hit her in the heels, and she stumbled forward. Against the choice of falling into his chest, or to the floor, she landed on her knees in the shards of broken china.

He offered her a hand to help her up. "Miss Verity?"

She pushed herself to her feet, stumbled backwards away from him, until her back hit the wall, and she could retreat no further. To her right were the stairs, but they led only to the tiny attic bedroom. Harlan stood in front of the kitchen door, and following her gaze to the front door, and back again, took another step, until he was equally within reach of both of them.

She looked desperately to her father, who was looking at Harlan, a strange hope alight on his face.

"I know you've sorted things for him before," Harlan said dangerously. "Arranged things, paid his debts, as you can."

"You know wrong!"

But Harlan ignored Verity. He was eyeing Mr Baker instead.

"I'll consider the debt half yours, and half hers, as she ought to have been better at keeping you out of trouble than she has been. And for your half, I can afford to wait until spring, but only if her half is paid in full, tonight. So how about you run along, and let her and me sort her half out."

Verity felt fear drip like poison through her body. Her father, always a weak-willed man, began to get up from the table.

"I just need until spring," he murmured weakly, "just until spring."

"Father!"

He could not avoid her gaze when she called to him, but when their eyes met, his expression turned from an ugly mixture of shame and relief to a strange, haughty anger.

"Don't look at me like that! You're my daughter!"

And then he was gone, disappeared out the front door, and away into the snowy night. No doubt he would find, from somewhere, the money to buy himself a drink, or the gall to beg it from someone. Verity felt tears rise to her eyes. She considered the open front door, and the whirling snow beyond it. Harlan saw her. He did not slam the door, because there was no need for such violence. Not yet. He only closed it quietly with a smile, shutting out the cold and freedom. Verity darted madly for the kitchen, but he caught her in one stride, his arms closing tight around her waist.

"Now don't be silly."

"Don't touch me!" Verity shrieked. "I won't do this! I won't!"

"Then what will you do," he crooned in her ear, "When your father goes to a debtor's prison, and you're all alone, here, in a cottage, with rent to pay?" He pulled her backwards, close against his chest. He smelled like stale whiskey and sweat. "Do you think your landlord will be as kind as I am being?"

She broke away – later, she thought he must have let her, to give him some time to enjoy the chase – and made for the stairs. If she could get out the upstairs window, onto the roof...

Half-way up, he caught her by her ankles, but she kicked out and got him in the chin. He yelled a curse, and pulled her backwards, and they fell together down the narrow stairs, coming apart only when they hit the floor at the bottom. Lying on her belly amidst the broken china, it took her a moment to gather her breath and senses. He, recovering more quickly than she, and angered by the blow she had dealt him, was on top of her on his knees before she could move.

He grabbed her shoulders and threw her over on her back, her knee screaming in pain as it twisted. His former greasy persuasions were abandoned in his anger. He pulled her shoulders up again, just to slam her against the ground once more, knocking the breath from her. And then again, and again.

"Damn bitch! Damn whore!"

He stopped, hands clamped like steel vices to her shoulder, and heaved and seethed above her while she got her own breath back in strangled wheezes.

"Please!" gasped Verity. "Please – let me go!"

He did not let her go. He pinned her down with the weight of his body, one hand splayed over her chest, the other spidering lightly from her chin to her hips, and back again, like a child examining a Christmas present, trying to decide where, exactly, to start ripping it open. She grabbed his forearm, tried to push him off her, but his other hand slipped from her chin to her throat, squeezing until she slumped back on the floor.

After a moment, he let go, and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Her vision swam, and faded to blackness, though she did not lose consciousness. She heard him say, with grim triumph:

"Don't make this difficult. You'll enjoy it, once I get going."

She felt him shift above her. He came down low over her and clamped his teeth into her breast, biting down through the rough linen of her dress, biting harder, drawing blood. She whimpered and her hands worked like crabs against the floor with the pain. Her fingers touched something cold and sharp.

A long, thin triangle of broken china, from his earlier destruction. She tightened her grasp around it, slicing her palm, with a clean, revitalizing pain. Her mind cleared. Her vision returned. She saw the cracked, damp-stained plaster of the ceiling, his greasy yellow forelock dangling over his forehead. He was moving, rising. No, he must not! She put her left hand to the back of his neck, pulling him closer.

"That's it," he purred, and bit her again, no less savagely.

She raised her right hand, holding the china. She heard the plip as a droplet of blood fell from her hand and landed on the floor. He did not.

She plunged the shattered piece of china into his neck.

By luck, more than direction, it landed in the soft, recipient flesh between the side of his neck and the collar bone. He reared away from her, and for a moment his face and shirt were very white, and then she had the fearful relief of watching his face flood rapidly whiter, his shirt, rapidly redder.

"Bitch," he muttered, "you stabbed me."

Then he slumped forwards. He sprawled, unconscious, over her. His body was heavy, and she was weak through shock. It took some minutes before she could throw him off, and struggle out from under him. She limped for the kitchen door, fell against it, and it opened.

Then, shaking, she stopped, and looked back.

He was quite still on the floor, and the pool of blood was slowing its flood. Was he dead? Had she killed him?

But he made a sound, shifted slightly.

She fled into the night.

I have written and rewritten this chapter to make it as non-violent as possible. It's still pretty violent. But it's the only violent chapter in the book, so don't run away if you think this is gonna become one of those gross abuse/love stories. It's NOT.