It happened without Verity realizing that Jane Walthrope became an indelible member of her social circle that summer. At first, her distrust over their first two meetings lingered, but Jane was so charming, and friendly and amusing and clever that this passed over into some sort of strange friendship.

It was a strange friendship indeed, for Verity, now that she knew she loved Neil, could not help but be struck by an impotent jealousy at the woman who engaged so much of his interest, if not his affections. It was a jealousy made all the worse by the observation that Jane never once flirted with Neil, though she made free game of the rest of the village men with scant regard to their eligibility. Verity knew that if Neil had not been important to Jane, she would have flirted as recklessly with him as she did the others. Try as she would, Verity could not contain her occasional thrills of fear or anger when she saw Jane and Neil being, damnably, respectably, friendly to one another. But knowing her jealousy for what it was, she forced herself to be extra generous and affectionate to Jane, who responded in kind, and so she found herself in the very strange position of being bosom friends with a woman who gave rise to her worst nightmare.

Or not quite her worst nightmare.

The letter from Mr Colbert, Neil's lawyer, came towards the end of summer. A trial for the annulment was to be held in September, in the London Consistory Court.

Neil read the letter aloud to her at the breakfast table, with some notable silences where Verity was sure he was redacting the most uncomfortable phrases. She silently thanked him for it, and sipped her coffee from trembling fingers.

Neil put the letter back down and sighed.

"Colbert is a good lawyer, but my father can afford the best. Verity, I don't think we can stop this."

She looked down at her plate, at the food untouched.

"No. We can't."

She rose, bent to kiss him, and went to her room.

She knew that they could not stop it. The power lay in two men: their respective fathers. Well, she thought as she dressed in her oldest, least expensive gown, Neil tried his and that didn't work, so now, I'll try mine.

She didn't tell him she was going, nor the servants. She quit the manor through the side entrance and walked the three miles to Lesser Hough, to the street where her father's cottage lay.

It was not yet noon, and she did not bother knocking. She walked through the unlocked kitchen entrance, bile rising in her throat at the old smell – how had she never noticed how much it smelled? It smelled of gin, and sickness, and damp. There was a woman from the village who came weekly to scrub and cook and slap the house into something resembling order. She was paid well for her troubles, Verity knew, because Neil was the one who paid her, but Verity pitied her all the same. The cupboards were splintered and warped, and the tiles crooked and broken, the grime of years seeped into every crack and fissure.

The dining room was worse. Verity swallowed, and steadied herself against the wall a moment, remembering what had happened to her the last time she was here. For a moment, she thought of fleeing – and might have if it hadn't been for her father's snore, coming down from the rickety stair case. She hurried through the dining room, and up the stairs to his room.

It was dark in here, the curtains drawn across the windows, and she could only just make out his form draped over the bed, the rags of blankets all trammelled up against the walls and the foot of the bed, as though he had fought them in his sleep.

He had gained weight in the belly, she noticed with disgust, too much weight – yet the rest of him was sinewy and bony and undernourished. His arms were bare to the elbows, and his shirt was open down to his sternum, revealing the sinews, and coarse greying hairs. He snored again, the sound uncomfortably loud, and Verity grimaced.

She did not wish to touch him, so she kicked at the lumpy mattress until he woke. He yelled something, sat up, and his bleary eyes focused weakly on her.

"So you came back."

He was sober, at the very least. Whatever he had drunk last night had worked its way through his system and was out of him. Being out of him, it left him in a temper too.

Verity went to the window, and pulled open the thin curtains, and shoved open the shutter, which was broken and always stuck.

With the light, she could tell that the cleaning woman did not venture here. Clothes lay strewn across the floor, along with empty glasses and bottles, and straw from the mattress. She caught a glimpse of a mouse scurrying under the bed. There were other scurrying things too, in the eaves, coming down the walls, in the shadows of the floor.

For one moment, she wanted to cry – not for herself, but for the man her father might have been. He was reduced to no more than an animal, living in his own filth. It wasn't right.

The moment passed.

Her father slung his legs over the bed, glared at her, and scratched his sagging throat, itching with a half-week of beard.

"I knew you'd come back."

There was something reminiscent of an animal's snarl to his voice. Perhaps it would have been better if he was drunk. At least then, he wouldn't be so angry.

"Father," Verity said softly, "Why are you saying you didn't consent to my marrying Neil?"

He scowled, and winced, as though the movement made his head ache.

"I didn't say you could marry him, you're my daughter."

"You told him he had your blessing."

"He lies!"

Verity sighed. "You can't go on with this, father. You can't destroy my marriage. It won't do anybody any good."

"Good!? What do you know of good! You never cared for me. You never loved me. You won't help me get the things I need. You ran off and left me, like everyone else. I don't know what I ever did to deserve you."

Verity winced, but she remembered her purpose, and kept a rein on her temper. "Is it money you need, father? We'll give you money, if you stop this. We're already giving you money, but we can give you some more."

His eyes took on a cunning expression. "He told me how much you were worth, that earl fellow. He's got the money. It doesn't go to your man. It goes to other one. The cripple. You won't ever see it. So don't say you can give it to me."

They couldn't. They didn't have it. They were rich, but it was a drop in the ocean compared to what the Earl of Albroke could put a hand to.

"But it's not a nice thing to do, to destroy a marriage," Verity pleaded. "Didn't grandmother try to do that to you? Why would you do that to your daughter?"

"Hah! That—" For a moment, Mr Baker remembered he was a man, and not just a creature. His mouth snapped shut. Verity could guess what the next word was to have been. "You took her side, didn't you? You left me, and went and stayed with her, and her people, and now you're just like them. Don't pretend you aren't. You're no daughter of mine."

"Then it's not to you to be claiming I can't marry who I will!" Verity snapped. She made an attempt to rein herself in, but realized there was no point. Neither mercy nor malignity would suade Mr Baker to withdraw the suit: Mr Baker wanted only money.

She tossed her head.

"And you're no father of mine. I should have told you years ago – you never once cared for me, or loved me, or did anything to better me. You treated me like a slave and a whore. You never protected me. Or mother. If you were once a man – were you ever a man!? Were you ever a man or were you always this!?" She pointed a finger at his stinking, dishevelled form, at the bugs, and the mess, and the smell. "Do your worst, father. Take the money. You're a liar and I know it, and Neil knows it. You gave permission for me to be married because it advantaged you then, and you're pretending you didn't now because it advantages you. You – You're—"

Her vocabulary failed her for a moment. Mr Baker took the opportunity to begin to cry, and accuse her of being ungrateful and cruel, and even certain unrepeatable things.

Verity cut through them all.

"You're worthless."

She turned and left the room. Mr Baker followed her down the stairs, he shouted things, he accused her. He kept it up until she was at the gate.

She did not listen, and she did not look back.

By the time she got home, the worst of her anger had cooled. Neil met her in the shabby little egress by the side door. He must have guessed where she had gone.

"He won't change his mind."

"No." Her voice was blurred with tears. She took off her bonnet and gloves, and laid them down on the worn side table. She wouldn't look at him, because she didn't want him to see the tears in her eyes, but she could see in the mirror that he was leaning against the chest opposite, and watching her too.

She kept her head bowed, and moved away.

"Verity."

"I have a headache."

"Verity."

"I'm going to-"

"Verity, will you marry me?"

She stopped with her hand on the doorknob, and slowly turned back to him.

"What?"

He was standing, with his hands clutched together in front of him, looking concerned and a little sheepish.

"I never asked properly before. And since it looks like we're going to be not married, in the future, I want to ask now. Will you marry me again? Will you?"

The tears she had not shed began to stream down her cheeks – so fiercely that she could see nothing of her husband but the faint blur he made as she stumbled towards him. He pulled her into his arms and she pressed her face to the cloth of his jacket, feeling its comforting roughness against her cheeks, breathing in its comforting, woody smell.

"Will you marry me?" he asked, once more, and she realized she had not replied.

"Yes. Oh, yes."

She raised her head and kissed him with a fierce, blind hunger.

Some minutes later, she pulled away, looked around the shabby half-hall, with its boots on the floor, and the outside door with the window in it, and the open doorway to the back hallway. They both giggled.

"Come to bed with me," she whispered.

"It's just on one o'clock, my dear," he replied tauntingly.

"I want you. I need you." She kissed him. "I love you, Neil."

The last words were said with a trill of sadness to them. She'd been holding them back for a long time now, but at last she could hold them no longer. He must have caught it. He kissed her.

"Verity. Do you mean it?"

"Yes. I do." She faced him, half-bravely, prepared for rejection.

There was none. She had taken steps to close the gap between them. He had neither backed away, nor stepped closer. He kissed her eyes, and then her lips.

"I'm honoured, my dear. I'm really... very happy. I couldn't ask for a better woman to love me."

Perhaps it was that, his obvious guilt that she felt more for him than he did for her, that led him to take her hand, and lead her away up the stairs to the bedrooms. Perhaps it was only that he wanted her as much as she wanted him, and the months had been long and lonely.

She held him for a long time afterwards, and they murmured sweet nothings to one another, and played with each other's fingers and hair and flesh.

"You won't avoid me after this, will you?" Verity asked anxiously. "If we can be married again January, there's not time enough for a baby to be born before then."

"I couldn't avoid you if I tried," he promised. "I missed you."

Hadn't she missed him!

Some time later, with her head resting on his chest, and her fingers playing idly with his, she said quietly,

"I know you don't love me. But I want you to know how I feel. Can we live like that?"

He brought her fingers to his to kiss them. "Yes." He kissed every one. "I like you a lot, Verity. I always did, you know, and I like you more every day. And I'm really very happy to know that you love me. I didn't think... I don't deserve it."

She rolled over, and pressed her body to his.

"Since when was love ever deserved?"

But those were the last sensible words for some time.

Dun. Dun. Dun. What's that!? An update?! In fact, updates may be only Fridays for the next few weeks. I've been trying to keep up twice a week for a while, but I'm pretty busy right now, and I've run out of pre-written chapters. Once I manage to set aside a solid writing binge and get some more written, I'll be able to resume twice-weekly updates.

Thanks so much for the loads of reads this story has been getting recently as well! It's crazy!! I'm really glad so many people are enjoying this <3