Neil Armiger was on his third glass of whiskey at the public house when an excited youth ran in and shouted over the crowd,
"You'll never guess what that Baker's daughter did this time! She's killed a man!"
Within an instant, a crowd surrounded the youth, demanding more. It turned out the youth didn't know more. He'd been sent to find men to form a search party for Miss Baker: she'd run away after killing this man, and the local constable wanted to find her, before she either disappeared to France, or fell into a drift.
Neil found himself suddenly sober, and full of a strange fear.
"Where's this search party starting from?" he demanded.
"Village green, in half an hour," the youth shouted, before wheeling to answer another question.
Neil hurried to the village green, which was covered in snow. A crowd of cloaked men were already waiting there.
"Did Miss Baker truly kill a man?" Neil asked quietly, to the constable, who was stamping his boots in the cold. The constable stared at him coldly a moment.
"Aye, or nearly. She stabbed him in her home, and he managed to crawl out down the street. He's with the surgeon now."
"And why did she stab him?"
"He says because her father owed him debts he couldn't pay. Good enough reason as any."
"Perhaps."
Neil was beginning to imagine more detailed circumstances. He did not think – no, he was certain – that Miss Baker would need a better reason to stab a man than because she owed him money, and his cynical mind leapt immediately to rape. But it was not the immediate problem. It was the first true fall of the winter, and the snow did not look to abate all night.
"Then, Miss Baker ran away, in this?" he asked.
"Yeah, that's what Mr Harlan says anyway. Says she was gone from the house when he could move, and we looked, and she is. Are you joining our search party, Mr Armiger? You know her, don't you?"
"I know she would not stab a man without excellent reason. But I will not join your search. I must go to bed."
But Neil did not go to bed. Instead, he walked briskly towards Little Hough, to the Baker cottage. Urgency compelled him to break into a trot at intervals, but it was some two miles, and with the snow piling higher on the ground, he could not move fast. He had time to think through the events as he knew them, and come up with all the possible reasons Verity might stab a man and then flee. None seemed to him so likely as rape, and a guilt colder than the snow began to seep through his body.
He arrived at her house almost running. There was an empty carriage out the front, covered in snow, the shafts empty. In fact, the constable had taken pity upon the freezing horse and stabled it with Verity's own skinny mare immediately. Neil did not know that, and only checked the carriage in case Verity had crept inside to hide. She had not, and it was empty. He went into the house, and stumbled through all three shabby, miserable rooms, calling her name, in case the constable had missed her hiding. China tinkled under his boots in the dining room, and he felt the sticky grip of half-dried blood under his feet, and knew that this was where the incident had occurred.
She was not there. But then, where had she gone?
He examined the view through the front door, the narrow street, the abandoned carriage. He went to the kitchen, and looked out the back door, facing towards grey-white fields, and then a loom of dark woods. He felt at the lump of shadow on the door hook. Her cloak, still damp from snow.
"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."
Diane put down her book again and sighed. "What is it?" she demanded crossly.
"Your grand-daughter. She is very ill, and the man with her says she has stabbed a man."
"Stabbed a man!? Oh, I knew Baker's blood would out."
"He said the man well-deserved it. Said Mr Armiger."
"Mr Armiger?" Diane tightened her gown around her shoulders like a warrior tightening his cloak for battle. "I will not abide that man in my house."
"He says, you must come and speak to him. He is very upset, madam. Your grand-daughter is being given a hot bath, and the physician has been sent for."
"Where is he? I shall come," Diane said grimly.
He was in the dining room, holding a steaming cup in his hands, but not drinking, and leaning warily against the fireplace. A blanket was draped around his shoulders, and the snow in his hair was quickly melting in the heat.
"I hope you know how impertinent it is for you to come here, with my granddaughter, at this time of night," Diane snapped.
Mr Armiger looked up with narrowed eyes, his normal air of placid animosity replaced by a cold and pointed anger.
"Lady Duvalle, this is not a social call. Your granddaughter is in great trouble."
"Miss Baker has been in great trouble since she was born. I have given up on her."
"She is currently in a warm bath being sweated back to life after being fallen in the snow in nothing but a gown for near two hours. Before then, she stabbed a man who assaulted her..." Mr Armiger's voice faltered a moment. He swallowed, as though the words tasted foul in his mouth. "I assume he raped her."
"Rape?" Diane took a seat on one of the chairs. "I am a little surprised you would come here and condemn another man so strongly for that action. It was you who took my granddaughter's honour."
"I have never laid a hand on your granddaughter." His gaze faltered too and he looked down into his cocoa. "Oh, I tried – but she would not let me and I am no rapist, Lady Duvalle."
Diane considered that more closely than she had the rest of Mr Armiger's unpleasant news. She had assumed, until that point, that Mr Armiger had seduced her granddaughter, despite his protestations to the contrary. But it was clear to her that he was not lying now. The gears in her cold, methodical mind began to turn. After a few minutes' silence, she said, distantly:
"Is the man dead, or merely stabbed?"
"He is still alive, I gather."
"Then I think you will find he did not rape her. No, if he had, she would have made sure she had killed him."
"But why else, then, would she have stabbed him!?"
"Because he was trying to do so. There are other horrific damages a man can inflict upon a woman, yes, but Verity's reputation as a whore does make her particularly vulnerable to being treated like one."
Armiger flinched, as Diane had intended him too. She stretched out her long white hands over the dining table, like a cat stretching its claws. Before she could sink them in though, the doorbell rang.
"That will be the physician," said Mr Armiger, visibly relieved.
They both went to meet the door, but it was not just the physician. Diane recognized also the constable, Greene, standing with him on the portico.
"We were searching for young Miss Baker, when we met the doctor, and he told us he was coming here to her," Mr Greene said ominously.
"Yes, Greene," said Diane. "Mr Armiger found my granddaughter lying in the snow, and brought her here to be tended to. She is very ill and cannot see you. Mr Layton, my butler will take you to her."
Diane stood aside and let the physician by, but did not invite the constable in. She was irritatingly aware of Mr Armiger hovering by her elbow, still huddled in the blanket her servants had given him. He ruined the impact of her blood-red silk dressing gown.
"Mr Armiger has explained to me some of what happened tonight." She tried to pretend he wasn't there. "I would appreciate the other half of the story. Why are you hunting my grand-daughter, and why was she in the snow?"
"Mr Harlan came staggering down main street with a shard of porcelain in his neck earlier this night. He managed to tell someone that Miss Baker had done it to him, before he fainted. I called out a search for her when she wasn't in her home. Thought she might have tried to run off."
"You missed her. She was lying in the snow in – where was it, Mr Armiger?"
"Just outside that little wood on the hill, perhaps five miles from her home. She was injured and unconscious."
"I thought you told me you didn't want to search for the girl," Greene said quizzically. "Changed your mind?"
"Mr Armiger is not on trial here," said Diane. "Incidentally, I suppose the man is not likely to die?"
Greene shrugged. "Surgeon patched him up. He went home, not to church, so I guess he thinks he'll live."
"You have told me all I need to hear. If you wish, Greene, you may wait in the morning room until Mr Layton has attended her, and ask him what he thinks of her condition, but I will not let you speak to her tonight."
"She has committed a crime, my lady, it is important I speak to her."
"Tomorrow. Shall you wait for the doctor?"
Greene hesitated. "Yes, yes I will, thank you, my lady."
She allowed him inside, and slammed the door against the cold. The butler appeared out of nowhere, and took Greene to the morning room.
Mr Armiger was creeping away with them, but Diane stopped him by raising one fine white finger and her arch, imperious voice:
"No, no, Mr Armiger. I am not finished with you yet."