When they were all gone, and it was just Neil and Verity alone in the room, she came over newly shy. She walked slowly around the table, Neil watching her every movement from his seat by the fire.

"I'm a little tired," he admitted. "But I think we need this."

"I think we need more than this. And I think we will not get it." She came closer, and examined again the hollows of his cheeks and hoped, without conviction, that he was not dying.

"We will not." He patted the chair in front of him. "Please sit. It cannot be easy for you to stand."

She laughed a little, nervously, and sat down. "I'm pregnant, not crippled. Though I get tired easily too."

That seemed to close the conversation for a few minutes. He plucked at a loose thread in his dressing gown. She fiddled with a scratchy fingernail.

"We have very little time," Neil said abruptly. "Let's not waste it in silence. Miss B- Did I call you Verity?"

"Always." She smiled. "Please, do again."

"Verity." She could see it was foreign to him. "It is a very pretty name."

"Of all the Charitys and Prudences and Patiences in the world, I am very glad my mother prized truth over those virtues."

"And is it true? Are you truthful, or prudent, or patient, or generous?" There was a faint smile on his skull-head face. She wondered if he was attempting to flirt.

"In no amount that makes me worthy of the name of the virtue, I believe."

"You are doing better than me. I don't think I've got any virtue in my bones. I'm honourable, but I'm not virtuous. The virtuous do it because they're good; the honourable do it because others are watching."

"But I know that is lie – you cannot lie to me. I know you too well." She took his hand in her eagerness. "Your greatest virtue is kindness. Even this hour is kindness."

"And selfishness. I wanted it as badly as you... though perhaps for different reasons." He closed his hand over hers. "In all the world, in all of eternity, we have only this little room, and a single hour: to be married: to live and die and love and part in that single hour. And I've nothing to give you in this hour, no life or love. I can only take what you can give me. So you see, I am not being kind. I am being selfish."

"I shall give you all I can." She blinked back the tears that rose to her eyes. "What do you want me to give?"

He held her hand still. His flesh was dry and hot.

"Truth." He smiled. "Memory.

"Which... memories?"

"Tell me how we met. How we fell in love. You must know the past year or more of my life. I – don't. Can you give it back to me?"

She hesitated. "In bits... I can." She did not want to lie, but she knew she could not tell the entire truth either. Richard had told her in the carriage that Neil did not know they had been married and that it had been annulled. Nor did she want to tell him of the horrible night that had resulted in their engagement. "We did not like each other, overly much, when we first met."

"Where?"

"M-my father's house." She flushed. "My father is dead now – but he was an acquaintance, a rather low acquaintance of yours, in the manner of gentlemanly acquaintances."

Neil raised his eyebrows. "Which manner is this, exactly?"

"You may have played cards with him, a little more than was good – for him."

"I was one of those – fellows." He sneered a little, at himself. "No wonder you did not like me – though why did I dislike you?"

"Well – if I think about it, even then, you probably liked me a little, but I disliked you so thoroughly that I was incapable of seeing it. But you – were a little cruel. You were inclined to tease me."

"I ... hope I am wrong when I imagine the type of teasing you endured."

"Probably not." She squeezed his hand. "I don't wish to detail it. It is enough to say that I was ill disposed towards you after that first meeting. But afterwards, we met in the village alone, and you attempted to apologise."

"I've never been good at apologies," he murmured. "I'm too proud for that sort of thing. Though I might burn up inside without showing it."

"No – no I am sure you were genuine. But my pride was hurt, and I would not accept it. And then... later, that December, I was ill." She skipped the Harlan episode completely. There was no way to even begin describing that without hurting Neil. "I was very ill, and my grandmother took me into her care. You see, you and my grandmother were rather more the same social circle. And while I recovered, you were – there. My grandmother may have indeed engineered to thrust you into my path a little more than necessary."

"And we fell in love over a sickbed."

"Something like that." There was little way to describe the year after – the year of the marriage that had not been. "We courted for a year," she said lamely. "It was the longest engagement – it was nearly eternity. You – used to worry about your wife, a lot. Julia. Because you loved her for a long time, and grieved her, for so long. And I was not twenty-one, and my father was – reluctant. So we waited."

"I should have married you when-" He hesitated. "I mean, I put you in a certain predicament. I should have married you immediately after that."

"I encouraged you – you mustn't think that you seduced me against my will. I was so utterly in love with you that I didn't care about propriety. It seemed so – so wrong to have to wait until I was twenty-one. I was angry with the people who prevented us from marrying immediately. So angry." For a woman named Verity, she found it easy to twist the truth into an acceptable lie.

"The people? Your aunt did not oppose?"

"No – your family was - displeased. Your brother came to visit and tried to persuade us to not... but, he has changed a lot now. Your father still does not like me. He will not allow me to your house, to visit you, or I would have come."

"I must make him allow you. Some how, I must."

But that would not do. She had accepted a deal with his father, a deal she was breaking even now.

"When you are well, you will come and find me. And our baby," she suaded. "But until then, your father is a man whose will should not be challenged – he frightens me."

"I'm not getting well." He slumped a little, and let go her hand. "The physician has said I shall die. The nurse has said I shall die. The nuns said as much. And – I don't believe it myself."

"I believe it!" she said fiercely – another lie of necessity. "I must believe it. You shall get well, and you shall hold our baby, and we will return to the place we fell in love. I'm not going to give up on you. I love you." She had been leaning closer with every word. By the last, it was hardly more than inch before she closed the gap between their lips and kissed him deeply.

Part of her half-hoped that, like a fairytale, her kiss would break his curse and make him remember. When his arms pulled her closer, and his curious, slightly clumsy, kiss returned hers, she thought it might be working.

"It might be a waste of the hour not to talk," he said, a moment later. "I wish we had more time."

"Yes." She leaned her forehead gently against his. "I wish we weren't in a nunnery."

He laughed. A fragile, broken laugh. At the sound, she felt the baby shifting and squirming inside her. She sat up.

"Our baby is kicking. Ouch. He must be turning around." She guided his hand to her belly. "Here. Feel him."

"Oh." His gasp of amazement broke her heart all over again. It had broken it so many times she wondered she had any of it left. "Oh – it's mine." His hand followed the movements.

"Yes." She watched the rising wonder on his face, her heart aching. "Neil, can you feel this, and tell me that you are dying? You can't. You can't say such a thing."

"But it isn't the saying that makes it true." Confusion clouded his eyes for a moment. "I've had this conversation before."

"Not with me."

"No?" He frowned. "No, I suppose not. It must have been someone else. Stand up, one moment."

There was a break in the conversation while she stood and he kissed her belly through her muslin skirts. When she sat down again, the baby seemed to have come to rest once more.

"I don't want to leave the two of you behind," he said softly. "I can't remember the moments we shared before this one, but I believe I must have loved you very much. But I am leaving, and you mustn't be afraid to hear it. I am dying."

"You mustn't believe that, Neil! You mustn't! If you believe it... then you have accepted it, and have stopped fighting it. I need you to fight it."

He gave her a weak, guilty smile. "Very well. I will fight."

"I told you," she said, "You can't lie to me."

He made no further protest, and she knew not how to change his mind. "I'll fight," she said quietly. "I always fight."

For a moment, a faint light came to his eyes. "So that's your virtue, then – fighting spirit." The light died. "But it isn't mine."

* * *

By the time the carriage rolled down the drive of Albroke Manor, Neil was so tired that eyes could no longer focus. He kept trying to relive the memory of the day, so that he wouldn't forget. He didn't want to ever forget. But even as he tried to think about Verity's soft voice talking about their past, the drumming rain reminded him only of the storm at sea. And when he had been carried into the house, and to his bed, he was nearly asleep.

"It might have killed him," the nurse said sceptically. "Barley porridge and tonic! Catholics!"

"Everything is worth trying," Richard said in the distance. But then the voices seemed to fade away. A new sound swelled up, soft and sweet.

Fa la ninna, fa la nanna

"Alright," he murmured. "I'm coming."

In the little room, the lullaby grew louder. Neil shut his eyes and listened closely to it. Around him, the bed seemed to rock as though in waves, and if he looked closely inside himself, he could see the yellow lights of a distance shore. But he didn't want to go there. Not anymore.

Fa la ninna, fa la nanna,

nella braccia della mamma

Fa la ninna bel bambin,

Fa la nanna bambin bel,

Fa la ninna, fa la nanna

Nella braccia della mamma

Sleepily, he thought he felt someone's arms close around his shoulders.

"So that's how it ends," he said to the darkness, and swam away from the yellow lights.

~~

A/N: This is such a tense chapter ending that the next one goes up as soon as I've finished editing it - gimme six hours. There's some very fiddly English in it I have to make sure of.