Lady in Rags

Chapter Six: Home

"Oh, that poor girl," he said to himself, thinking of the ragged thinness of her dress.

With the snow piling higher on the ground, Neil examined the situation carefully. Where would she have run? Scared, frightened, whose help would she seek?

No one's.

Verity had no one.

His eyes lit again upon the woods in the distance. He was two steps towards it when he had a better idea, and returned to the kitchen to feel for a lamp, and matches. It took some fumbling, and he burned a finger, but after a minute he had a light. It lit up the shabby room in a fragile, orange glow. He winced at the sight of the crooked, empty shelves, the dirty, crumbling walls. He strode out the door, leaving it eagerly behind him.

He crossed the fields, climbing the fences, calling her name. Snow whirled around him, and his progress was slow against the rising drifts. He gave up and headed steadily for the shelter of the woods. She could not have stayed in the open.

There was less snow on the ground, in the woods, and it was very cold, and very dark, and very quiet. Everything felt muffled and strange, like a dream.

"Verity!" called Neil softly, and then louder, he shouted, "Verity!"

No one answered him. Perhaps she wasn't here. But the woods were not very large, and she could not have gone far from home so quickly, on her feet, in the snow. Surely she was here. Somewhere. He continued, calling her name, and listening desperately for any reply. After a little while, the woods began to fade away into farmland again, and he walked out into the open and stared over the silent dark countryside. A mile away, across an expanse of fields, he could see the shadow of a tall building, a few windows lit up within it. Lady Duvalle's manor.

He started towards it, thinking Verity might have headed there, but he had no gone more than a few feet when he saw the black shadow on the road ahead. It was not moving, and more snow was falling, and covering it from view.

He ran towards it.

Verity lay, half-buried in snow, face to the sky, her eyes shut and her face pale and strangely still.

"Verity!" He picked her up in his arms and shook her, patting her cheeks with his hands. "Verity!"

She made strange sounds, not words, but not a moan, simply an incomprehensible chatter.

"Verity, it's me. It's alright now." He was pulling off his cloak, and wrapping it around her, wet and sodden as she was with snow. "Verity, wake up. You need to get out of here. You'll be very ill."

And suddenly her eyes opened and she stared at him in numb confusion.

"Verity, I'm going to take you home."

"Don't be silly," she said, sounding suddenly lucid. "I don't have a home."

But she did, thought Neil, lumping her over one shoulder and staggering towards the lights in the distance. She had a home, though it was not a particularly pleasant one. And it was, at least, nearby.

---

Diane Duvalle was in her dressing gown in the library drinking a night time chocolate and reading a novel when the doorbell clanged aggressively throughout the manor. She put down her book, and strode furiously to the hall.

"Find out who on earth that is, and get them to go away," she demanded of her butler, running through the hall.

Ten minutes later, though, he was back and knocking apologetically at her door. "Madam, I think you must come. There is an emergency."