"You're pregnant," Richard repeated.

The colour drained from the woman's face. By degrees of her ankles and knees and elbows, she folded up on herself, until she was only a flood of scarlet silk and white flesh upon the floor.

She had fainted.

Cursing, he flew to her side – as quickly as a lame man with crooked knees and uneven legs can fly. Her lips were moving faintly, though no sound came from them.

"Miss Baker? Miss Baker?" He pressed a gloved hand hesitantly to her cheek.

She did not respond.

He was too small and weak to raise her on his own, and even if he hadn't been, there was nowhere for a fainting woman to lie. There was no couch, not even an armed chair. He had some confused idea of smelling salts: looking around, he saw the half-empty bottles of brandy on the mantelpiece. His confused idea solidified. He pulled himself to his feet and hobbled to the fireplace and back, with one of the bottles in hand. Down by her side, he uncorked the bottle and pressed it helplessly to her lips. A moment later, she spluttered and coughed, and her eyes blearily opened.

"Just lie there for a moment. You fainted."

He got back to his feet and sunk in the nearest chair with his legs splayed out in front of him, to ease the aches that had risen to his knees with the effort of squatting and rising. His boots almost touched her skirts where she lay on the floor, still coughing brandy from her throat. He took a surreptitious sip from the bottle himself, and grimaced as he swallowed. It was sour as vinegar.

Eventually, she swayed to her feet, and waved him back when he made to rise.

"Stay there."

He stayed. She went out to the kitchen, and then the garden beyond. When she did not come back after a quarter of an hour, a spike of unfamiliar concern assailed him, and he hobbled swiftly in her footsteps.

She had not fainted again. She was sitting forlornly on the edge of the well in the miserable, weed-strewn yard that lay behind the cottage.

"Can you get me some water?" she asked, not looking at him.

There was no real pulley, only a bucket on a rope. He lowered it, until he heard the splash, and dragged it back up again, his muscles protesting. She drank heedlessly from her cupped hands, and when she was finished, splashed her face and gasped.

"Better?"

"Better." Her chest was heaving in and out. Some droplets of water, spilled on her breast, danced with the movement. He bent over to fetch the cover for the well and drag his eyes away from her, hoping she had not caught him looking. "How did you know?"

Until that moment, he hadn't. It had only been a suspicion, driven by some jealous intuition of his own. Confirmed, he felt a spasm of unidentifiable emotion. His hands shook as he slid the well cover back into place. He forced them to relax, and sat down next to her.

"Intuition," he said flatly. "You were so proud – I knew you were keeping something secret, and what else does a woman in your position have, to keep secret?"

She gave an unpleasant cackle of laughter. "I won't be able to keep it secret much longer."

Richard wished he had never come to confront her with his suspicion. It would have been better to leave, unknowing. But he had a strong instinct towards clannishness, and it was Neil's child she was carrying. In his mind, it was more Neil's child, an Armiger child, than it was hers. And that made it his secret, as well as hers.

Only what was he to do now?

They sat in silence, and she made no move to evict him; she only leaned back on her hands, staring at the sleet grey sky above them. He could discern no visible sign of her condition—but then, the high-waisted gowns of the current fashion were very forgiving to pregnant women.

"When will the baby be born?" he asked abruptly.

She twisted her head to look at him. "Does it matter?"

"Yes."

She shrugged. "Mrs Roper told me it would be midsummer. She knows more than I do, on these matters."

He counted the months backwards. It would have been October, perhaps even September. And the annulment had come through on the nineteenth of October. "Do you – do you think it was conceived while you were married to him?" he asked hesitantly.

"Oh no. According to the word of law, I have never been married to anybody, Lord Landon," she said, with a cold irony. And then, her irony dissolving into anger, she blurted, "Yes, dammit, we never once made love since you did that to us."

Richard hunched over his stick, his hands trembling again. But he had punctured her reserve at last, and she was ranting, without looking at him:

"We wanted to spare the servants their dignity, and ourselves under God. So we decided not to make love until we were married again. But the baby must have been started by October. I didn't know it until later, and he never knew. That morning – the morning he left, I had just started to suspect it. He wanted to talk to me, he had something to tell me, but I wouldn't open the door to him. I lay in bed and felt ill, and tired, and I thought, 'Is it a baby? Could we have started a baby?' But I wouldn't open the door to him. I was angry – over something unimportant – and I wouldn't speak to him. I stood at the window and I watched him leave, and I wanted to run after him then, and tell him, but I didn't – I didn't tell him, because I was a stupid, angry fool. And then, when the word came that his ship had gone down – that he would not return – I could never tell him then. He had asked me to go with him, you know – and I refused. I refused, that morning, because I was angry with him, and so I didn't go with him – and now... now... I wish I had." She curled up in a ball over her knees, and from it, cried muffled, "I wish I had."

"Thank god you didn't," Richard said. Between everything, his fear and his guilt and his shame, he was conscious of the overwhelming relief that she hadn't gone on the ill-fated ship. It was his relief that decided him. Though perhaps, since the first time he had met her, he had been decided, and not known it.

Slowly, Richard stood, and, leaning heavily on his stick, got down on his one bending knee before her, in the three inches of winter mud.

"What are you doing?" she said faintly, uncurling from her ball of anguish. "What are you doing?"

"Miss Baker, will you marry me?"

*    *    *

Verity stared blindly at Richard. It was absurd – surely he could see it was absurd!? For him to destroy her marriage to his brother, because she was not good enough, and then ask to marry her himself!?

She was so confused, the only thing she could think to say was, "Doesn't it hurt you, to kneel? Stand up, do."

He remained kneeling, shaking with the effort. "Marry me, and I will claim this child as my own, and make it legitimate – for god's sake, do. Let me – let me restore to you that which I took. Please."

"No!" She shook her head so violently that it hurt. "Can't you see it's impossible! Lord Landon – of all the things you have taken from me, my reputation is the least of them! You took my love, and my father, and my family. I would never subject this baby I carry to the whims and wills of a man like you! I would rather the world scorn me for my sins."

He finally did stand up, and then sat back down again on the wall of the well next to her, brushing the mud from his buckskins. She shifted away, unconsciously.

"I have treated you abominably," he said, in a flat, uncomfortable voice. "But you must see that precisely because of that reason, I must make some reparation to you."

"I can look after myself."

"I know."

His cold yellow eyes met hers with something of a pleading look in them. She was unmoved. Perhaps her countenance persuaded him where her protestation had not. His pleading gaze became guilty, and he looked away.

"Let's forget emotions, for the moment, and be practical," he said. "Will your grandmother help you, financially, or socially?"

Verity hesitated. "I don't know. She may give me money, and send me away somewhere until the baby is born, but she will not continue to support me in society here. Especially not if I raise the child – and I will not let the child be taken from me."

"But money is not your immediate concern – we Armigers will always help you with money. The baby you carry is – is of our blood." He gave her a weak smile.

"It's Neil's child," she insisted. "Blood has nothing to do with it. And I've told you, and I mean it, I want nothing to do with your family."

"You don't understand. Had you told my father about the baby, he would never have let you leave the house."

"Exactly why he must not know!"

For a moment, Richard was silent. "I do see your point."

"I don't like him at all."

"No one does. But he will not deny you any claim to his money or social support, when he knows about the child. And I will give you mine, freely."

Her voice softly venomous, Verity said, "Do you expect me to thank you? I cannot thank you. I loathe you, as I have never loathed a man. You have been responsible for so much of my pain. I want none of your support, as you so call it."

Richard winced. "I can do nothing but apologise for what I have done, continually, eternally, and fruitlessly. But, Miss Baker, if you're to have a baby, out of wedlock, with no money – scandal is the least of your worries. Look at this shabby cottage, look at the man your father is – this is no environment in which to raise a child! You need money, good people, a comfortable home. Well, I have only very little money of my own. My settlement comes with the title. But when I tell my father, he will make sure to provide for the child's upbringing."

"He must not be told!" Verity panicked, thinking of all that would happen if Lord Albroke knew of the baby. It was not unheard of for mistresses of wealthy men to have their ill-gotten children snatched from their arms almost at the moment of their birth, and to be barred ever seeing them again. She knew that Lord Albroke hated her. The prospect did not seem unlikely. "Please, Lord Landon," she begged, "Promise me you will not tell him."

"I can't make that promise when you risk impoverishment by it."

"But I don't." Verity put a hand to her sleeve, where the letter rustled reassuringly. "At least, I believe I don't. Your father gave my father ten thousand pounds. Nine thousand and four hundred of it is still sequestered in a bank in London. And my father is dead. He died last week. The money is mine, isn't it, if he dies without a will? Your father would not be able to get it returned to him?"

Richard looked at her with an obvious dawning admiration on his face. It made her uncomfortable, and she looked away.

"Yes. Yes, if your mother was his wife, and you are his only child, then it will all be yours. Miss Baker, I am sorry, for this loss, on top of the others."

"I lost him years ago." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but the tears that had pricked up were more for herself than her father. "I had forgotten the money until just now. There. It must satisfy you. Neither I nor the baby shall starve."

"Nine thousand, four hundred, you say? That would give you an interest of... a little over three hundred and fifty pounds a year. I mean, it's hardly luxury."

"It's more than enough for me. I lived off much less for most of my life."

"And you would need a lawyer – do you have one?"

"Mr Colbert will help me," Verity said, with more confidence than she felt. But in the face of Richard's eagerness to aid her, she was unwilling to show him any opportunity for it.

"He's solid enough, as lawyers go." Richard hesitated. "But still, Miss Baker... It is not right that my father does not know. It is his grandchild you are carrying. Armiger blood will run in its veins."

Verity swallowed her first impulse to snap back at him in anger. She knew if she started an argument now, he would tell his father out of hurt pride as much anything else. Instead, she laid a coaxing hand on Richard's arm, and forced herself to look upon him with what she hoped was a convincing impression of softness.

"Promise me you will not tell him. Please."

His arm went stiff at her touch. Warily, she drew back, believing she had offended him. But a moment later she realized it was only that she had exposed his natural awkwardness with her intimacy.

"I believe that I can trust you," she said, very softly, "But I am sure I cannot trust your father. Do you see why I do not wish for him to know?"

With any other man, it might have been too much, for Verity was unpractised at deception and coquetry, but Richard was even less experienced than she. He gave a strange, all-body shudder, like a man waking from a dream.

"I don't know what is best."

"Then perhaps you should consider that I do." She struggled to keep her tone soft and kind, and had to take a deliberate breath before going on, "Lord Landon, your efforts to do what is best so far have resulted in tragedy and sorrow. No, don't look at me like that. I am not accusing you. I hold no grudge." That was a bald lie, and a gross contradiction of everything she had told him earlier, but he did not seem to notice it. Mercilessly, she continued, her tone now faultlessly sweet, "It is only true that you have done great ill to me, and if you truly wish to make reparation, the one thing you would do is to listen to me now when I say that I do not trust him. Please. Promise me that you shall help me keep my secret safe. Promise me you will not tell him."

This time, she put both of her hands over his. The fleeting thought came to her: thank god he's wearing gloves.

Thank god, also, that Richard could not hear it. His last resistance crumbled at her touch.

"I won't tell him. I promise, I won't."

~~~~~~

A/N: This is a pretty long chapter. Richard has to be one of my favourite characters. He's an asshole, and he's so adorably incompetent at trying not to be one. And look! No cliff hanger!