Verity, warned of Jane's visit, had been waiting on the windowsill of Richard's bedroom, which looked out over the front entrance. As soon as she saw Jane and Richard making their way down the front steps, she left the window-seat, and hustled down the hallway to Neil's room to see if Jane's visit had imbibed him with any real spirit.

"They're going to give me laudanum," he said, when she entered. "You shouldn't sit up. It will tire you."

A week ago, Lord Albroke had hired an accoucheur who had had examined Verity – despite her protest and indignity – and commended her health. He prescribed, to her disgust, a regimen of diet hardly more appealing than Neil's, and daily cold baths. Neither diet nor bathing seemed to have any real effect upon Verity or the baby, but she did not wish to incur Lord Albroke's wrath by protesting them. She had to save her protests for more important battles. The accoucheur's third prescription had been his insistence that she not tire herself, and on learning that her activities included helping to nurse Neil, he had been horrified.

"No more than a few hours a day," he had insisted. "Certainly she cannot stay up the night with him!"

That Verity did not feel tired seemed not to matter. The servants, the accoucheur, the midwives, and Lord Albroke were most solicitous of her comfort – in that one regard. She must not tire herself. Even Neil had become concerned by it.

A flush of anger burned through her. Then Jane's visit had tired Neil, and they were going to make him relax, by flushing his spirit with the deadening laudanum, and by the time he was well enough to talk to, she would be pushed back to bed like a grumpy child. And she could see by the sagging slope of his shoulders that he was tired, but that was all – good, honest, tiredness, the kind any ordinary person might be allowed to sleep off. But no – they would dose him with laudanum, and if Jane's visit had done any good for his spirit at all, the memory of it would be bleached out of him by sleepless dreams and drugs, until tomorrow morning he would only look quietly pleased and say, "It was quite nice, I am sure, it must have been quite nice, to see Jane again," and she would have to listen and smile and nod and say of course it must have been, to see such an old friend, because she dared not excite him, dared not breathe a whisper of her loathing and fear of the other woman.

She caught Neil's hand in a silent plea of desperation – desperate enough that for a moment his tiredness became confusion. His palm was cool and dry in hers. No fever today. "Get up," she demanded. "Come with me."

He was unresistant, perhaps even eager. She helped pull him out of bed, and kept her hold on his hand as they stole out of the suite and down the hallway. At one point, she heard footsteps, and she crammed them both behind the curtain of a window nook. Neil was pressed up against her side, one hand against the wall behind her neck, for balance. The proximity sent an unexpected ripple of warm anticipation through her body. His eyes, barely inches from her own, brightened with laughter, and his lips twitched. With her hands trapped behind him, she pressed her lips to his to stifle his laugh. The footsteps – a woman's – reached the nook, and a chambermaid gasped, and tapped quickly onwards. When her footsteps disappeared behind a creaking door, Verity released her hold on Neil's twitching lips.

"Did she see us?" whispered Neil.

"Only the lump we make behind the curtain. I think she thought we were servants."

"Then we're safe."

He was still pressed against her, looking close upon her. She thought he was even trying to close the distance, but it was hard to tell, because she was dizzy with the hope that he was.

In the distance, below, a door opened and shut. Verity remembered the nurse would be returning with the laudanum.

"We won't be safe here – for long," she said, untangling herself from behind the curtain, and looking out into the hallway. "Quickly now."

She had figured out where they were going now. At the end of the hall was a French window that opened out onto a small roof-top terrace, overlooking the west gardens. Neil's feet were slow and unsteady on the carpet – and unslippered and pale. She held his hand in hers, and half-pulled him along, sure that the nurse or a servant would return any second. But they made it, and she pushed him through, and shut the door safely behind them.

He gasped, and sank to his knees on the flagstones.

"It is summer."

"Yes." She lowered herself more carefully beside him. The stones were hot from the afternoon sun. Busy black ants were running back and forth across them, looking for a last meal before the day ended. One ran over Neil's finger, and he held it aloft, watching it scurry, confused, about his finger.

"It doesn't feel like summer in my room."

He pushed the ant gently back onto the stones, and raised his face, eyes closed, to the sinking sun over the horizon. There were shadows in every crevice of his face – his temples, his cheeks, his eyes, his chin. The light made the new lines on his face deeper, particularly around the eyes. The scar on his temple flared vividly pink.

And he was smiling.

Verity's anger dissolved, and she was weeping into her knees. She felt Neil's tentative hand at her shoulder.

"Miss Baker, are you hurt?"

"I love you, and you're dying," she sobbed. "Neil, I love you, and I need you to live."

His hand tightened on her shoulder. She pushed herself blindly towards him, clinging to the collar of his night shirt, and pressed her wet eyes against his breast.

"I am not the man you loved," Neil protested quietly. "He died that night in the storm. I'm just the shell he left behind."

"You're lying! You lost your memories – but your character, your heart – they have not changed." She raised her face to his, blinking away the tears. "I need you."

She kissed him. It was a desperate, hungry kiss, reaching for something that could not be touched. At the back of her mind she thought, this might be the last time I ever kiss him, and she did not pull away after one moment, or even two, or three.

And he, perhaps seduced, perhaps sympathetic, perhaps understanding, put frail arms around her, and pulled her closer.

* * *

On the other side of the house, down below, Jane was slowly pacing the lawn with Richard by her side while the servants readied the coach to return her home.

"I don't know if I did him much good after all," she said, "But I'd like to come back if he wants me."

"He probably will. We'll see how he is over the next few days in any case. How did you find him?"

"Poorly." She shuddered. "Very poorly. It wasn't as bad when my husband was dying – he was fat, I suppose he had that going for him. You couldn't see his skeleton through his skin."

"He has gained a little weight. He was much thinner before."

"Then do you think he will recover?"

Richard shrugged. "He needs to be kept in a good humour. Half the problem is that even when he is sane, he doesn't care – to eat, to live, to hope."

"Well," Jane said bravely, "I shall flirt him back to health. Men always enjoy that – from me."

"You shall not. Talk with him – of only cheerful things. Of happy memories. Tell him fairy tales, if you must."

"I'm out of fairy tales. I don't believe in happy endings anymore. Perhaps I never did. Or perhaps my trouble is that I know I'm an evil stepsister and don't want to believe I'll get my eyes pecked out by doves while some hated Cinderella marries my prince." She took his arm lightly in her gloved hand. "Rich, what did happen to his Cinderella? Does she know?"

"She knows."

"And she has not come for him?"

"She has." He paused. "She did."

"And you threw her out." Jane laughed away the faint prick of guilt. "If I hadn't come to your house that day... Perhaps I'm the evil fairy god mother instead. The poor girl. I liked her, after a while, but I hated her too. And she loathed me, but was far too well mannered to let it be noticed."

Richard was silent beside her. Jane narrowed her eyes.

"What did your father do to her?" she demanded. "He did something. I can tell."

"He –" Richard clicked his tongue against his teeth. "She is living here."

"Here!? But why-" Jane broke off as she realized the only answer to her unfinished question. "No." A belated horror flooded her veins. She remembered Neil's white-faced confession the night she had last seen him: morally, I cannot abandon her. Now she believed she had divined its cause. "She had a baby."

"Not quite yet," Richard said quietly. "It cannot be very long now."

"Oh." Jane broke away from him and plucked savagely at a leaf from a hydrangea. "Oh!" She dropped the torn leaf on the ground and began on another. "Poor Neil. Does he know?"

"When he is sane, he understands that the baby is his." Richard placed his hand on her wrists, and pulled her gently away from the flower bush. "That's enough carnage, Jane."

She looked in dismay at the green stains on her gloves. "Oh dear. It is." She wiped at them delicately. "I didn't imagine, until now – my sordid mind couldn't bear to imagine, I suppose, that they might have a child together. I really don't think she's good for him."

"No." Richard gave her a long, calculating look that she did not like. "You don't think she's good enough for him. There's quite a difference there." With his stick, he prodded the leaf on the grass. "Enough carnage, Jane. If you try to influence Neil or anybody else against the girl, if you try to leverage your knowledge of her position against her, I will be the one to forbid you from Neil's life – whatever remains of it. We've done enough damage to her already."

The carriage was finally rolling into the driveway. Jane looked wide-eyed at Richard.

"You think she's good enough. You!?"

"She's the mother of my nephew or niece. She must be good enough."

It did not occur to Jane that Richard might be lying, or why. Her sordid mind could not bear to imagine such a noble truth.

* * *

Neil held the crying woman in his arms, and when she finally broke away and buried her face once more in his chest, he closed his grip tighter around her, squeezing her shoulders gently and resting his cheek on top of her head. She was mostly in his lap by now, and his legs ached with the weight, but he felt unable to push her away. Most clearly, she needed him, and he had always been easily moved by fragility.

He dropped one hand to her belly. His baby. It moved under his touch, a rollicking, rolling move. An elbow, perhaps, or a fist. Of course she needed him. She was the mother of his child. His child, who would very soon be born, for she was so very round with the carrying of it by now that it surely could not be much longer. Again, the baby moved beneath his touch, turning over, finding a comfortable place to rest, or perhaps just exercising its tiny limbs. He was both terrified and amazed by the movement.

Fa la ninna, Fa la nanna...

"Ssh," he whispered. The woman, thinking he was talking to her, quietened her sobs. The voice in his head, for once compliant, grew quiet.

"You do not need me," he said quietly. "You are stronger than me."

"I need you." Her voice was dull with tears. "It wouldn't be so bad, if I thought you were fighting, but half the time, you seem to want to die."

Fa la ninna....

"Because I am dying, and it is painful. It hurts. Every day."

"Living is what hurts. Dying is easy. Sleep your way to death. That's what they want." She looked up at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen with tears. "When Giulia was dying, wouldn't you have begged her to fight – for even a few more breaths? I can't imagine you didn't."

He breathed in sharply, his gut twisting at her words.

"You told me once," she said sadly. "It was fever – you and – she. Both got it. But she died and you did not. You said you almost wished you had too. But you didn't tell me what those last days were like. If it's anything like me, you disbelieved it at first. You couldn't believe she was dying. And then, when you did, you would have done anything - anything – to keep her alive. And as she began to stop caring, you would have been angry – that she didn't."

He was breathing heavily. The voice in his head was singing louder than ever, but it could not drown out her words. He wanted to push her away, but lacked the strength.

For a moment, the woman in his arms was not Verity, but a beautiful Florentine, with hair like burnt gold, and eyes of the deepest, brightest brown – dulling – dulled...

"Don't," he whispered, "Non parlare così..."

And then they were green eyes once more, looking at him in the greatest confusion, and he felt some deep, gnawing pain in his chest, that he thought was his heart breaking. Though there was nothing to break it, on the sunny terrace. Nothing but the shadow of a memory, already slipping away.

The door slammed open behind them and they both jumped. Immediately, Verity was scrambling away from him, releasing her heavy weight from his legs. It was only a footman though, and he was leaning back into the house to shout,

"They're here!"

"They found us," Verity said numbly, sitting back, and pulling her skirts down around her ankles. Neil had the twitching impulse to pull them back up, and did not know where it came from. It was incongruous with his broken heart, but it was most definitely there. And for being there, his heart pained him just a little less, and he found himself cursing the footman for having found them so soon.

The nurse stepped jerkily out onto the terrace red-faced with temper. "That little woman! She mustn't!"

"Don't yell." Neil put his palms against the warm, rough stone, and tested his strength. "It's not her fault. I wanted to sit in the sun. She followed me to make sure I would come to no harm." He knew the nurse did not believe him, but did not care. "It's my fault," he ordered. "She followed me."

Slowly, he clambered to his feet, leaning heavily on the terrace balustrade and ignoring the hand of the footman, who was left with no other option but to offer it instead to Verity, who was still sitting, tear-stained, on the flagstones.

"She cannot be allowed with you tonight, Sir," the nurse said stubbornly, and then, looking properly at Verity for the first time, "Lord! But she is ill now! To bed!!"

It was Verity who was put to bed first, out of concern for the baby. Only afterwards was Neil tucked up with a cup of laudanum and chamomile.

"It shall strain you greatly," the nurse fretted. "You should not be in the sun! Rest!"

She pressed the cup of steaming chamomile and laudanum into his hands. Neil stared at it numbly.

"Drink up! It will make you sleep!" she said encouragingly. She left the room to fetch her knitting. Neil stared at the cup.

Sleep.

They would have him sleep until one day he entered sleep eternal.

With a scowl of disgust, he slipped out of bed on trembling knees and tossed the mixture out the window.

~~

A/N: This chapter took a lot of editing, and gained an extra 1000 words - but it became one of my favourites in the process. Neil finally gets  a grip. Richard faces off with Jane - and Jane is fooled twice by her own jealousy of Verity.

BTW: an accoucheur is like a regency era gynacologist.