It did not normally take so long for gossip of the strength of the night Verity spent at Mr Armiger's to die out, but Me Armiger was new to the neighbourhood, and rich and handsome beside, so all the inhabitants of both town and village were eager to talk about him still, and Verity had always had an air of superiority about her that the villagers of Little Hough had disliked, so they in particular were keen to air her dirty laundry as often as possible. So even as autumn became winter, and the first gentle snows began to fall upon the country, Verity was still in disgrace, and Mr Armiger was still thought to be a devilish rake, which did little to detract from his charms in the eyes of eligible young ladies and their mothers. A husband was supposed to sow his wild oats before he settled down, after all.

This made Mr Armiger rather miserable. He had no intention of remarrying. Quite the opposite: he was determined to live the remainder of his life a bachelor. His first marriage had been made while he was very young, and still very naive, to a very beautiful Florentine girl of a poor but well-bred family. Somehow the stars had aligned and it had not been the disaster that young love often turned out to be, but rather six sweet, halcyon years, terminated brutally by a sudden sweeping fever, a fever that, in the end, had spared Mr Armiger his life, but taken that of his wife and child, and bleached his crow-black hair to an abnormal shade of grey. Still grieving, he was convinced that he could find no woman who could ever match the love he had found in Giulia Landolfi, and that it would be an insult to her memory to try.

Neil Armiger preferred to attempt a life of restrained bachelorhood, of books, and solitude, and long, lonely walks in the valley wilderness. It was an attempt only, as in Houglen perfect strangers seemed to believe themselves entitled to his company. They had so many rational excuses for public events, with so many coquettish virgins begging his attention at each of them.

It wasn't that he felt he was distracted from his grief by the flirtatious young debutantes around him, but he did find them tiresome. They seemed to find his statement of intended bachelorhood more of a challenge than a deterrent, and though he found many of them to be pretty, he found none of them to be charming.

Occasionally he found himself wondering how Verity Baker might act, if she were invited to a ball, wherein the implicit challenge of the night was to seduce the stand-offish Mr Armiger, but even in the ordinary way of things, she was rather below the social circle he mingled with, and at a time like this, with gossip still circulating, she was very much a pariah.

He had not seen her since the night she spent under his roof, and heard little of her, as the gossip that surrounded her involved him too intimately for any but the most gauche of debutantes to mention it in his hearing. She remained only in his memory as a beautiful paradox: high-born, but poorly bred; intelligent, but uneducated; bold, but prudish. It was a paradox that made him curious, and a curiosity that social strictures prevented being satisfied, which in turn only made him more curious still, especially when the faintest whisper of her name in his presence was immediately followed by a hush of silence, and then a chorus of raised eyebrows and clicking tongues.

One day, in mid December, he found an opportunity to partially sate his curiosity. He was at a tea party in Mrs Stanley's house. Mrs Stanley's two eldest nieces were also in attendance, and in their best mood to flirt. It was to avoid them that he had hurried to make the acquaintance of the vicar's daughter, Clare Abernathy. She was the youngest of the women there, little more than a child, and far too young to flirt. After trying to piggy-back his conversation with her for several minutes, the enterprising Miss Stanleys had transferred their attentions to the more likely Mr Bigham, who had recently come into a large enough fortune that any lady might be persuaded to overlook his paucity of chin and jaw.

Running out of ways to describe the weather, which was a light and pleasant snow, Neil began to discuss the paintings in Mrs Stanley's drawing room. It was a topic that brought about some surprising animation in his companion. Clare began eagerly to talk about her own amateur drawings, and mentioned that Verity had been teaching her, and Neil latched onto that immediately.

"Verity? Miss Baker?" he said eagerly. "She is your tutor?"

"She was my companion." Clare looked away sadly. "Father told her not to come back, when... there was some talk she did something she shouldn't ought have done. She didn't do it, I'm sure, but father said it was best if we didn't meet anymore. She was so good at drawing, Sir, and she was my friend."

There was a plaintive agony in the young woman's voice. Neil felt a stab of guilt, knowing exactly what was the something that Clare was too polite or ignorant to mention.

"She did not do what they think, I can assure you," he said quietly, and she blushed furiously at the hint of adult mysteries.

"If you tell everyone that, Sir, will my father let her come back?" Clare asked quietly.

"I doubt it very much. Some things can't be unsaid."

"Can you try?"

The devil of it all was that he had been trying. Whenever anyone made slight hints as to what had passed between him and Miss Baker that night, he had said blandly that Miss Baker was as pure as the day she was born, and of course no one had believed him. The more he protested her innocence, the more people believed her guilt.

So he had fallen back upon silence and aloofness.

"She was your paid companion, wasn't she?" he said suddenly, realizing that he had dealt a blow to Miss Baker's income as well as her reputation. How careless and stupid he had been. He cursed himself again for his stupid, cruel sense of humour.

"My father helped her a little. Her father is not so careful as he ought be, with his money."

It was a very delicate way of putting it. Neil had found that Mr Baker had been over eager to play cards, and over eager to lose. The man might have boasted he had been a good card sharp in his younger days, but the cheats he had attempted upon Neil were clumsy, and even if successful would not have compensated for his bad luck and worse judgement.

"That is a pity," Neil said softly.

When the party was over, he resolved to apologize to Miss Baker at the first opportunity. He would ride to her house, if he had to, and beg forgiveness for his stupidity. And if she would allow him to do anything more – if he could replace the stipend she had lost from the vicar – he would offer that too.

But he did not have to ride to her house. On the way home from the party, in his carriage, he met a sober looking Miss Baker on her sway-backed mare, walking slowly back to Little Hough.

"Miss Baker," he called, opening the door of his carriage and jumping out while the driver was still slowing it. "Miss Baker, may I speak with you?"

"You may, Mr Armiger."

Close up, in the cold, fading light of day, he saw a new kind of beauty in her. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and her face was thinner. The light looked very sharp upon her cheekbones. She was no longer a Madonna. Her expression was that of a Judith.

"I..." He found himself stuck for words. His usual elegance of expression crumpled, and he blurted, clumsily, "I was at a party, just now, and I met young Miss Abernathy. You used to be her companion, and after the night you spent at my house – the rumours, I mean – her father no longer pays..." He saw two scarlet blooms stain Miss Baker's white cheeks, her hands tighten on the reins, and stopped himself.

But she only shrugged, feigning an indifference her stiffness and redness belied. "I do not seek your charity, Mr Armiger."

"I was not offering it."

"Yes you were. And if you must know, I have been to beg the leavings of my grandmother. She was most..." Verity's face grew grim, her lips tightening. "Ah, I will not starve today at any rate. You can calm your guilt. Keep your change."

She made to move on, but Neil stopped her, clutching at the bridle of her elderly nag. "Wait. Please, Miss Baker, I have behaved abominably towards you, inconsiderately, cruelly, lustfully. And it is not just enough that I have done that. I have then destroyed your reputation through my carelessness. I have greatly, severely wronged you. Please, please allow me to apologise."

Rather than anger or softness, either of which Neil expected, Verity threw back her head and laughed loudly. Her nag jostled uneasily beneath her, and she quietened and rubbed its neck. "Oh, Mr Armiger, these words you say, they may appease your conscience, but they don't do much, do they?"

And she rode on into the gently falling snow, leaving him behind. The anger of rejection burned him, and he resentfully thought that there was not much point in the doing, if she would not accept it, and not much point in the saying, if it was not doing, so how could a man win then? But it wasn't more than a moment before his shame washed out his anger, and he realized his words had probably hurt her more than they had helped. She was right. She had seen through him. He had apologized for his own conscience, not her comfort.

He wanted to call her back, to try it again, to explain that as well as apology, he owed her gratitude: the morning after she left, he had finally dared open all the cases of his wife's things, brought back with him from Italy. Her letters, he had preserved in a mahogany cabinet. Her books, he had consigned to a special corner of his own library. Her portrait he had hung, and her ivory miniature he had finally dared wear on a locket beneath his shirt. Most of her clothing, he had wastefully burned.

He had found he could not, however, burn the green and silver gown. It was now no longer wholly his wife's. It had lost the scent of her in its wearing. He felt as though it now belonged to Verity, and that to burn it would bring her bad fortune.

Though there was plenty of that already brought her.

Feeling guiltier than he had when he set out to apologise, Neil ordered his driver to change direction: he would be dropped at the nearest public house, have a few drinks, and walk home.

Author Note: I want to clarify some geography, because I find it confusing myself. Verity lives in Little Hough, which is a subsidiary village of a town, Greater Hough. Houglen is the name of the small valley the town and village are situated in.