London Days and London Nights

by Neftzer

The exploits of Robin Oxley and the Lady Marion Nighten pre-WWII from The Don't Series, a BBC Robin Hood WWII AU. Contains MAJOR SPOILERS for that fic series. For Glorious Clio.

A/N: Read The Don't Series, starting with "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree". It's worth it. I promise.
Herein lie MAJOR SPOILERS for that fic series.
You have been warned.

---

London Days and London Nights: Robin Oxley and Marion Nighten Pre-War
(as suggested by Glorious Clio)

London's West End, 1936 - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - It was sometime well-after three in the morning. Marion was in the main floor's street-level study, to the back of the house, going over her father's most recent papers. She was neither his social nor his personal secretary, but she had fallen into the habit (to the point he had come to expect it from her) of proofing and vetting all his speeches and other writings; no other person on the planet more invested in or acquainted with his work than herself.

The built-in bookshelves ringed the room, which, despite its twelve-foot ceilings retained (to her) a comfortably snug feeling. She rolled the moving library ladder along its track, pleased that it had been greased as she had requested of their housekeeper, so that it might not disrupt anyone when she made use of it late into the night, as was her custom.

She reached for the volume of Kant, just a handbreadth beyond her grasp, when the sound of a knocking at the front door (A knocking? Really? she thought) brought her down the ladder's steps and through the ceiling-high pocket doors into the (thanks to her mother, elegant) three-story foyer.

The knocking came again.

With curiosity (it was well-after three in the a.m.) she slipped shoelessly across the marble floor, past the large, round 6-foot in diameter pedestal table (for visitors' hats and gloves), its Louis Comfort Tiffany vase seeming to explode with its filling of bright dahlias, and to the oversized front door.

Frankly, it was not a door she was used to opening. But the butler and much of the rest of the upstairs household staff were away from town, as were all the family, save herself.

When she usually encountered this door it was being held by someone for her, and opened and shut by a pair of hands not her own. It was a door of considerable size and heft.

The knocking continued.

She glanced behind her, up the long, graceful balustrade as it wound its way around the stairs, to the upper floors of the town house. Any servants asleep, long ago.

Marion reached out and opened the door.

A man leaned against the frame, his back to her, looking down at the street some twenty steps below.

She recognized his extravagantly silver roadster, left catawampus nearly half onto the sidewalk, (saved only by inches from having struck the cast-iron fencing about a tree) before she recognized him.

"Percival," he began to speak before he turned around, seeming to believe...expect? that her brother's valet would have answered the door.

He swung himself about to face the doorway, reacting as though he were about to suffer impact with something as substantial as the shut door when he saw her standing there in her borrowed-from-her-brother's-closet pajamas (lapel and button-front top, and pant bottom) and silk dressing gown.

"Angels and ministers of grace!" he exclaimed, his eyes widening and contracting at the sight of her. "Where the devil is Percival?" He listed a bit to the side.

Marion peeked her head out and looked from one end of the deserted street to the other. "Robin Goodfellow," she called him after her brother's pet name for his notoriously mischievous friend, Oxley, "keys."

He produced them without protest.

"Now take yourself into the study-quietly."

Oxley took a step into the foyer. As no one was present to accept his white scarf, gloves, hat and walking stick, he placed them, somewhat clatteringly, on the table.

Assuring herself that it was unlikely he was soused enough to collapse in her absence, Marion stole down the twenty or so stone steps to the sidewalk and the Buick Roadster convertible below, feeling a juicy naughtiness to be out in the air-nearly in the public street in Mayfair-in only striped silk pajamas-and a man's set, at that (for all that it had been two years since Claudette Colbert sported them at the cinema in "It Happened One Night"). This was, after all, respectable Mayfair, not bohemia, not Hollywood. Her toes, free of socks, stockings or nylons caressed the gas pedal of Oxley's car as she went about re-parking it somewhat more acceptably, curbside.

When she returned to the house (the door still standing open just as she had left it), he had done as he was bid. She found him in the study, looking about as if he very much wished someone would ask him to take a seat.

"What brings you here?" she asked, without standing on ceremony, her curiosity well piqued by such a late-night caller.

His hands ran along the leather seam of a nearby chair back. "I could not, in good conscience, (as I thought my parking job so well-illustrated) drive any farther."

She did not offer him a seat. She was quite enjoying the moment, her tone jolly, but slightly scolding. "You could not call home for a ride, or find a cabbie?"

"Ah, home," he replied, taking a deep breath, his hand on the chair stilled now as though he would grip it for support. "That would mean encountering my father. And a staff-even my man, I believe-rewarded for tattling on me."

Marion's eyebrows rose in mild surprise that this man (from what she knew of him) would care. "And your club?"

He re-gripped the chair back, as though trying to ascertain the quality of its stuffing. "Filled with his spies, no doubt."

"Bonchurch?" She asked about his best friend and constant companion.

"Otherwise...engaged." His eyes slid over to her out of the side, his head not turning. He clearly wondered if he would yet be asked to take a seat.

"So you come here?" she continued her line of questioning. "Forgive me," she finally gestured to the chair, indicating that he should seat himself if it so pleased him. "I do not mean to be inhospitable, but...why here?"

In response to her signal and the offer of a chair, he removed his tuxedo jacket and placed his bow tie (already un-done and hanging loose about his neck when he was at the door) safely in its pocket. He let the jacket lay smoothly on a nearby chair and sank into the large leather armchair with a sound that might have been the chair accepting his weight, or his own bone-deep sigh.

"Your brother, and his man Percival, are usually quite good to me on such occasions-" he paused to exonerate himself, "though such are generally rare, as a rule. Clem is well-known for a liberal and reformist, and so, unlikely, I think, to also be in the earl's pocket." Now he began to remove his cufflinks, casually turning up his cuffs until they were well to his mid-forearm. Half-way through this action, it seemed to come to him that he ought to ask her permission for so casual and informal a gesture. He made a motion to garner her consent for the cufflinks, and followed it quickly with one regarding the casting off of the studs in the first few buttonholes of his shirt.

She assented to his actions. In what way would she protest? She, herself, had gone to the door and then into the street in pajamas that were not even her own. (She was unsure upon consideration of this whether wearing her own, feminine nightclothes-from the finest ateliers in Paris-would have been better, or worse, for such an activity.)

"You will find they are neither one here," she informed him, "Clem or Percival. The house is all but closed. The family set for holiday. I alone remain, with a bare bones staff. I gave the under-butler the weekend off."

He nodded his understanding, slowly as one might expect in his condition. (Although, frankly, he was seeming less tight to her with each passing moment.) During one nod, his chin still down and his face not visible, he said, "Tish has thrown me over."

"Tish Lavely?" she asked for clarification, though she did not actually need it. All of London knew they were a couple. "Is that why you are drunk?"

"No. The drunkenness came before. And is, it would seem, the impetus for her decision, as opposed to the result of it."

Because they were immersed in such a casual atmosphere, because she had, that Season, perhaps heard a bit too much of Robin Oxley and Tish Lavely and weren't they such a glittering couple, and perhaps spent a little too much time turning over the decisions made by her brother's Lothario-of-a-friend, Marion spoke carelessly, without the filters and strictures she might, at other moments in her life, employ. Her comment was not nasty or cutting, nor meant to be. It was delivered with empathy, it was truthful and insightful, and absolutely not something to be shared publicly with a man you did not know very well, about his personal life. "The Lavelys may well be Reformers all, but you cannot be too surprised: Tish wished to reform you, not be carried off into your harum-scarum ways. You ought to better know your audience."

His bowed head jerked up at that, keen on her commentary. "Audience? What? You ask me to view my romantic affairs in a political light?"

Marion shrugged, perhaps that was a weird way to couch what she meant. "Very well: what of Bonchurch?"

Robin rubbed at his head. "Went after her. To...comfort her, I think. Seemed to think I had treated her bestially," his voice altered in his tone, as he went on, "Why would you have asked that?"

She half-smiled at his query. "It is no secret he has long pined for her."

"No," he denied it. "No? He, well, he should have told me. Tish and I were never so very serious."

Now her smile was full, almost an unsuppressable grin. Could this man be so wrong? "Were you not?"

He gave no reply, but looked bewildered by her question.
Marion went to lean against her father's desk front. "Tish has told everyone she would have a string of pearls out of you-if not a promise-by Christmas."

"She has so boasted?" His tone was not soft, it had a slight edge to it.

Ah, so he didn't like that. "Even to me," Marion asserted.

"What do you mean, 'even to me'?"

"Well, I am hardly a member of your set."

"And so I am such a catch-such a 'prize' among the girls of 'my set'?" He said it with stupefied wonder at the notion. And yet, also, as though he did not quite believe it.

"What else have vapid females to claim as status, when they are of no occupation but man-hunting and shopping to furnish homes they will spend time in only by short turns: the Riviera, London, Paris, perhaps a much-talked-about but rarely visited country home in the North?"

He did not address her unsympathetic view of the female of the species. "No, Tish has no 'country home'."

"She is rarely out of London longer than the length of a day."

"She is...quite a female." For a moment he seemed lost in starry-eyed contemplation of this-of what had drawn him to the stunning sophistication of Miss Lavely in the first place. "You think so badly of the town?"

She moved toward a far table nearby the chess set. She stopped a moment to contemplate the pieces, set mid-match. "I think that for every man that London and town society will prove the making of, it will, for ten women and girls, prove the utter ruin of."

He considered her assertion. "But not men?"

"Oh, there are plenty of men find their way to ruin, here."

"And you think me such a wastrel? And Tish a bad match for me?"

She reached the tray of cold beef and nibbles she had brought up from the kitchen, the staff always seeing to it that she never lacked during her evening-to-dawn marathons. "I can't say, truly, that I've spent much time thinking about either of you," she shrugged. Until this very night she certainly would not say that she had. "You have always been Clem's friend, and you and I rarely in company since you were sent to school and on to university. The large part of my acquaintanceship with you since then has been the occasional mention of you in Clem's letters home, and whatever gossip might currently be swirling around you."

She gesticulated toward the beef. He waved his hand to decline the snack.

"Do you always dress so," he started onto a new topic, "of an evening?" His eyes had been occasionally lingering on her daring choice of attire since shortly after his admission into the house.

"What?" The change of topic surprised her. "Oh. Well, not so that my father might see."

"But as you have said, the house is your own, the family away." He did not say it in a particularly pert way, but then again, he had a certain way where nearly anything he said might have a pert spin to it.

Something told her she ought to remind him, before things got any more intentionally pert, his eyes any more...interested...in her clothing choices, of where he was and what the true facts of the matter were. "I will be joining them soon enough. The house is not entirely empty of staff."

He smiled, as though knowing exactly what she was doing, and also as though he had not been entirely aware of what he had been doing. "And what do you find yourself doing of a night such as this, attired such as...that?"

Her eyes shot over to where it lay. "I was finishing my edits on Lord Nighten's coming address."

His head inclined to the side, curiosity growing around the corners of his eyes. "And does he take your revisions to heart?"

"Generally, I would say he is very fair-minded in his acceptance and approval of them."

"Then you say that when I hear Sir Edward on radio giving just such an address, I am also hearing your thoughts as well?" He seemed charmed by the notion.

"That may be somewhat overstate-"

He hurried on, not letting her debunk the idea. "Then I see that in future I must pay more attention."

"It is late," she began.

"Yes, and yet you are awake, having, it would seem," he referenced the tray of beef and nibbles and such, "high tea."

"It is my way," she acquiesced.

"You are often about at such an hour? Here? At home-in the study?" His lower lip butted out as he shook his head. "I had never known it."

"Well," she counseled him, "if Clem and Percival were smuggling you about the house quietly, why would you have?"

"Indeed." He looked at her.

She noted to herself that his eyes were blue, but not so blue as to be the first thing one might notice about him. She noted how his fingers so rarely sat quietly, but were instead constantly drumming or fiddling with something, though the impression of such busy activity did not give one the feeling he was not paying attention. Rather, in this moment, quite the opposite. His long gaze became too much. Had anyone else been present she would have turned to them and begun a conversation about anything to escape it.

But there was no one else present. "What?"

"Why are you so sweet to me," he asked, his stare continuing. "Letting me in, giving me food and shelter when the people who ought to do such are naught but cross and disapproving?"

She considered his question. "Perhaps it is easier to tend to a distant friend in need than an errant lover...or profligate son."

"Why call you me an 'errant lover'?"

She gave a voiceless chuckle. "Because you are but hours-if that long-of being thrown over by your Tish, and yet here you are, casting semi-lecherous glances at me in my pajamas-"

"They are very easy on the eye..."

"-like Romeo forgetting his Rosaline upon sighting Juliet at the party."

"Ah," he contested her assessment of him, "but I am hardly pining for Tish. The drunkenness, I did clarify-did I not?-incited the row, it did not come after it. Tish 'twas only a bit of fun, there. Until recently, when it stopped being fun, and started to feel more like employment."

"I think you could probably benefit from constructive employment of some kind."

His face showed surprise. "Could I?" He smiled, "and shall you be the one to give it me?"

She shot him a stinging look, without the matching emotion behind it. "Stop acting as though I am some sort of spinstery librarian, unaware of how to have a good time, and you must tutor me at how to let my hair down." Her words were somewhat cross, but she found herself in too good a mood to deliver them in the same fractious spirit.

His smile increased. "So you do know how to have a good time? Whenever we encounter one another socially it seems to me you are more often in deep political discussions with your father's aged colleagues than on the arm of deserving young men. And really, it is not fair. Deserving young men, I am told, are not entirely at a loss when it comes to political ideas and the debating thereof. Particularly with someone displaying such a finely polished set of toes."

She followed his sightline down to her feet, where her red, red toenails were indeed peeking out from under the cuffs of Clem's borrowed pajama pants. She ignored his comment, and withdrew the toes to within the safety of the wide cut of the pant leg. "Do you not miss your time in the country? Miss activity? Clear air, blue sky, and early risings? And...some version of utility?"

He sighed, collapsing his upper body into the back of the chair. "I am suffocated everywhere I go."

"Perhaps you are not looking hard enough for what you wish to find-a much needed purpose to your existence."

But he seemed somewhat through for the moment with that angle of their discussion. "What I look and see, here, is a pretty girl-a beautiful girl, actually-who is in need of a good time. Her family is away at present, though she is, herself, soon meant to join them. I can think of nothing more natural than her brother's friend stopping by tomorrow in the early evening to take her out. Assuming, of course, you will have risen from bed by seven, in the p.m."

She smiled, though she turned him down. "I have no interest in being your means of spiting Tish Lavely."

"And I have no interest in doing so," he countered. "I do have interest, I find, in having a conversation with you-very like this one-when I have not overindulged. Amazingly, I have only this night grown a yen to do something when sober. So, let us make the date. I will not drink, on my honor-I do believe, Lady, there is yet some of it left to swear by-and you may do, or not do, as you please. Drink, dance, debate politics, visit a settlement house, found a secret society to abolish world tyranny. The plan of action shall be entirely yours."

Marion did not bother to decline such a grandiose invitation, never for a moment believing in its sincerity, despite its being rendered in his compellingly charismatic way.

She saw him upstairs, to a guest bedroom, but the next day he was gone by the afternoon time she, herself, rose. Surprisingly (to herself) she felt regret at his unannounced departure. She found she had wished to have brunch with him.

Out of doors the silver roadster was gone from where she had parked it on the street. She did not have any illusions that she would see it again anytime soon.

---

1936 LONDON - the Nord Ingham Boarding Stables - Marion knew it was unusual for her to insist on grooming her own mount-much less saddling her herself. The faces of the hired stablehands here at the upper crust boarding stable nearby the Park made that abundantly clear-even after all this time of her at having her own way. They never did seem to be able to get used to it. 'The Lady' Marion, dealing with horse sweat, with cumbersome leather saddles and girths, her own hands between teeth to coax the snaffle bit into proper place-the bit that it took to bring a highly-strung, never-bred filly like Greene's Sword to properly heed her touch.

But today it was the eyes of another young man that watched the Lady as she set to her work. He was half in the shadows of a stall nearby where she had Greene's Sword (as the stablemaster had helpfully informed him Lady Marion's horse was called) tied to iron rings in the wall by ropes from either side of her bridle.

He had not been in London long, and only at the stables by the Park for twenty minutes or so, waiting for her to finish her afternoon ride and return. She was outfitted in an impeccably tailored riding habit. As she rode astride rather than sidesaddle (only riding sidesaddle when accompanied by her father), her jodhpurs were flawless in their fit, her tall boots as shined as any general's. She smelled of horse and exertion, and a heretofore-undiscovered pheromone that was decidedly female in nature, brought on by hours spent at a pastime she took great pleasure in. In short, for Marion, she smelt of happiness.

He, well, he was not quite his usual self this day, his attire less spit-and-polish, less urbane than that to which he had made himself, as an adult, accustomed. Perhaps the soft wool and corduroy he had chosen for the day's outfit kept her from immediately sensing his presence, as the country-fied ensemble he wore had him styled as more a country squire about the business of his estate rather than London's most eligible bachelor better known for squiring young ladies about the town.

It was his never-quiet hands that saw him found out, unable to keep them stilled they found coins in his jacket pocket and proceeded to tinker with them, making small jangling noises.

"Who's there?" Marion asked, into the shadows-thinking it some new stableboy, come to spy on the queer-minded noblewoman who tended her own mount.

When instead it was Robin Oxley, the Viscount Huntingdon, who stepped from the shadows she found herself without reply for a half-second, during which she surmised that he a.) was not just now on his way home from an into-the-dawn fancy-dress party, nor b.) was he drunk.

"You are a curious thing to find, here," she said, her hands keeping at the work of grooming her horse.

"Am I?" he asked, showing no surprise at her chary welcome of him. "One might say, only, that I am rather late."

"Late?" she asked, eyes on Sword's mane, pretending she had not noticed (not contemplated on) two and a half months ago when he had sat in her father's study and announced he would 'make the date', and arrive back that very evening to take her out. He had then proceeded to disappear. And now claimed himself as late. "Whatever for?"

Neither a fool, nor a blind man-despite her trying to mask her clear disappointment with him-he rose to her challenge. "What is it is said of heaven? 'A thousand years there as a day? A day as a thousand years'?" His eyes looked up at her through his brows, where his chin was tucked as though chastened. "By that reckoning, Marion, I am some many thousand years late."

Something in that look made her catch her breath-though cautiously. "How do you do that?" she asked, now meeting his eyes, though guardedly.

"What's that?"

"Render such ridiculous over-the-top things with such sincerity? It is a talent for persuasion many a statesman would envy you." The second sentence had worn, perhaps, a bit too much of her (unsuccessfully) submerged disenchantment at his disappearance that morning in Mayfair.

Something in his chest, beneath his plum-colored waistcoat seemed to inflate at her insinuation. "And so you think I do not mean it? That there is some conniving insincerity in me? That I toy with you?" His tone lost some of its happy jesting. "I am not in the habit of saying things I do not mean. Were you a man, such words as yours-" clearly in disgust with himself for where their conversation began to head, he abruptly broke it off.

"Yes," she tried not to let his unexpectedly hard-felt reaction to her (perhaps undeserved) taunt touch at her too deeply. "Many men thanked you for your quick abscond from town. It was often said at many a party how very chivalrous it was of you to leave London so that Tish might remain here, rather than be sent away to get over the broken engagement." Well, she internally corrected, perhaps not at so very many parties. She, herself, had left soon after to holiday on the island with the family. And even when in London, she was not frequently at parties.

Robin scoffed at her gossip. "I did not leave for Tish's sake. Though I daresay she would have far preferred a trip to some fashionable location on the Continent as reward for throwing me-and our relationship-over." Again, that coming-on hint of hardness in his voice. "You will know, of course-as you did then-that we two were never engaged."

"No, of course," she backpedaled. "I mis-spoke. Not engaged. Very well. Then for whose sake did you leave? Your own? To go cry into your cups? To dance the nights away with new-more diverting-girls? Or have you met someone?" She worked now to keep her voice light, teasing (though she was curious)-lest she reawaken the righteous temper he had let flare to her but moments ago.

"Yes," he agreed. "Matter of fact I did meet someone..."

"I wish you all joy," Marion replied (perhaps a bit too rushed to sound genuine) as she removed the finishing cloth from her tack kit. It was at this moment that she felt within its negligible weight something else, rather heavier than simply a light cloth. Something knotted there. Without looking at Robin, she opened the cloth as much as she could to locate the knot-which had been tied around a (necessarily) small, horseshoe nail ring.

She smiled to herself, and involuntarily. She had not seen such a fanciful creation since she had been a child at their country home, Lincoln Greene, when the friendly village smithy there used to fashion her one from time to time as he was about shodding their horses and she, fascinated, had looked on.

Recalling Robin, and the stables she now stood within, she shook her head for a moment to clear it from the cobweb of unexpected memory.

"That is," she began again, looking up from the ring. "How did you know to find me here?"

He had a look on his face of intent interest-none of his considerable charisma and focus dimmed by any alcohol. She caught a twinkle in his eye as he moved it from the horseshoe nail ring to her face. He did not answer for a moment, then shrugged. "Mitch asked Cora."

That did not ring true. "I have not spoken to Cora since...well, perhaps since forever," Marion shot him down.

"Very well." He did not mention (though it would have either been grimly or teasingly done had he mentioned it) that when he arrived the stable hands had (due to his casual attire and request for the Lady Marion) taken him for the man of Geordie Wellington, a chap-he was informed by same stable hands-that had on several occasions arrived to ride out with Marion in the past month. "I asked Clem," Robin confessed, "and he said I could find 'Tigs' here, at this time or thereabouts any day of the week. Whom, by the by," he began a grin, "is Tigs?"

"Where has this come from?" she asked, raising the ring to the light and deflecting the question, not wishing to give him further reason to find fun in her.

"Well, I made it for you, if you must know," he said, and she could not miss the pleased-with-himself-ness about the corners of his eyes.

"And when have you been close enough to a forge or stable to find such a thing as a horseshoe nail-much less know how to go about crafting it into anything?" A grin was growing (despite her trying to stifle it) to match his own.

"Three months," he reminded her, "is a goodly enough time to half-apprentice to a smithy. In fact, to many a country laborer at work on a great estate. The things one might learn are truly...educational."

Here she let her suspicion show through, even through the grin. "Whyever would you do that?"

"'Twas a great lady, once-a powerful schoolmarm-like unto Diana herself, scolded me for my worldly waywardness, wondered if I oughtn't have a vocation of some kind."

Her face showed that he had nearly-nearly-gob-smacked her. "And so you can shoe a horse?" she moved aside as though she half expected him to demonstrate such a skill here.

"Yes," he chuckled. "I can-though I can also report that I take no particular joy in the doing of it."

She stood, re-taking his measure for a moment. "And so you are back? From your country...education?"

He brought his hand up toward his heart in a sweeping gesture not unlike that a medieval knight might have invoked to illustrate earnestness toward his liege or lady. "To make good on my word to you, if nothing else."

"And how might you do that?" she asked, wondering how he could possibly answer, the knot in the cloth and the ring it bore clutched tightly in her hand as though she feared misplacing it.

"I've with me the best hamper that may be ordered at the Tripp, packed by the most-generous man on staff there, that may well hold the answer," he predicted, lifting a picnic hamper from the shadows to the height of his shoulder.

She could see a ground cloth and the neck of bottle of wine peeking out from under its woven lid.

He willed himself not to contemplate how many similar (though inferior, he was certain) hampers she might have shared with this chap Wellington in his absence.

"What? Now?" Marion asked him, looking 'round. "Here?" She had rather expected something more along the lines of a nightclub, at a very different hour, dancing, champagne, a floorshow. Bonchurch-surely Bonchurch was always by his side at such times. She had expected Bonchurch. And time to primp-and then fret over the primping. A gift of flowers upon his arrival. A chat with her parents. A drink he would share, perhaps, with her father. Something structured. Something ordered and controlled-and (as he, himself was not) predictable.

"Now?" he repeated her question as to the suitability of the time. "I have not forgotten the powerful appetite a mind like yours carries in its stomach," he teased her. "And why not here? I am told there is a nearby Park," he said, lightly sardonic, as they stood on the very obvious edges of it, "which could prove most pleasant."

"Only the two of us, then?" she asked, knowing what her father (and mother, and many others in their social circle) might say to such an impromptu and unchaperoned tryst (for surely that is the word they would use for just such an occasion).

"Of certain only the two of us," he assured her, his smile growing perilous-though quickening to her heart. "I've food for no one else, and what's more-whyever would we want, or need, further company? Have you not thoughts enough on the pound versus the krone? On the present state of the Spanish nobility? Do you mean to suggest we must invite others along to be assured of truly stirring debate?" His mouth stayed slightly open, as though his jesting had not entirely concluded, his tongue running along his teeth and gums within his mouth, occasionally becoming visible.

"Shall I not change?" she asked, looking down, thinking (only a small part of her) to return to Mayfair, and get changed, in the doing somewhat altering or appending the (to many) shocking proposal of an intimate picnic lunch in a mostly-wooded Park with a most notorious playboy.

"Change?" he echoed her question, a naughty smile of intense mischievousness blooming about his open mouth. "Good heavens, Marion. Why would you ever want to do that?"

---

London's West End, 1936 - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - the roof - The night had enough stars to preclude the need for light from even the slimmest of tapers. The earliest touch of a London autumn in the breeze wafted along above the tony town homes of those many among the well-established aristocrats whose lives (and tastes) favored this reserved, revered, part of the city.

It was something of a different view from up here: even Lady Nighten let be her own roof, trusting it to the chimney sweeps and other workmen the household staff engaged to maintain the top of the town house satisfactorily.

He had found Clem's man, Percival, agreeable (though not overly-happily so) to helping him carry the gramophone and several records up the stair as it narrowed and passed through the servants' quarters, and then let out onto the roof. The blanket (for sitting, stargazing or spooning-as the evening-and Marion-provided the opportunity) he did not further tax Percival's scruples with fetching. He supplied it himself.

Robin Oxley thought of the time as evening-though, with most things Marion it was, rather, late. So late one might choose, instead, to call it early.

Her heart had beaten so thumpingly in his leading her out of the library and up the stair, past bedrooms of her sleeping parents and her brother-then, one flight further up, of the staff-he could feel her pulse in the thumb of her hand where it held to his.

Pleased, he smiled into the darkness before them at her game-ness in letting him lead her on so. Obviously she suspected that she was most likely being taken somewhere for dealings quite lurid. And yet she kept faith with him, never pulling away, nor letting go his hand-nor starting into a scolding before her suspicions were confirmed.

As on many a night when he showed up unannounced while she was at one of her speech vettings, she was done-up in a set of Clem's silk pajamas (Robin wondered-did old Clem ever get the use of them?), dressing gown on top, and bare of foot. As she had not slept, her hair showed no such tousling, and remained as prettily coiffed as it (doubtless) had been when she went down, earlier in the night, to the family at dinner.

He could almost smell adventure in the moment as he pushed open the door to the roof, and pulled her out into the night beyond. At this level, a night without eyes of any kind, much less prying ones.

He knew she felt close enough to her own family, her own world, below, to feel somewhat safe from him-from his (though he would never acknowledge-nor buy into-it) semi-scandalous reputation. She was but steps away from where she might raise the alarm. And yet she was worlds away from the expectations and strictures that lived below- (and above-) stairs.

In future he would kick himself for not being able to recall (had he even been able to note it then, at the time?) the song that had been playing as they danced, keeping to the blanket, due to his usually dependable foresight's proving somewhat dim in the matter of her bare feet's comfort in regard to the rooftop's unwelcoming surface.

Starry nights afterward-particularly after she had sailed for America and he had taken up with His Majesty's Army-he would lie on his back, watching the heavens, thinking of roofs and wishing (sometimes fooling himself into thinking that) he could recall, if not the words, the song's tune. As though that melody might re-conjure that moment for him, that feeling of delicious inevitability. That instance when he had looked down to her and said, "Marion, I'm going to kiss you now."

And she had jerked sharply away from his chest, where her head had been resting in the dance hold, her eyes for a moment filling with ferocity in that light.

"What sort do you think I am that you need to cable me of such an intent?" she had bit at him, appalled, and about to re-accuse him of treating her as someone far more timid and retiring than she really was.

"Clearly," he set to explaining, bemused, not releasing her from the hold-though stopping in his dancing, "I was only giving you fair warning so that you might not dive again, headlong, into quarrelling or debating. But as it is far too late for that, and the moment nearly spoilt..." His tone held no reprimand, though, as he brought his lips to hers (still open and milliseconds away from protesting at him further).

It was such a light kiss, such a perfectly formed and executed kiss. One might call it 'textbook', but only if one were at teaching the Classics.

As he pulled away, even before her eyes opened, he knew women well enough (for in such a moment, even Marion was not so different from her fellow sisters) to see that it had stirred within her an hunger for more. More of the same, and...more along the continuum of intimacy.

Certainly he could have pursued it, could have (with quite little effort) nudged his way toward taking more without fear of going beyond any bounds in that instant that she any longer wished (or planned) to maintain.

But he did not.

He had decided that he would let it stand: their first kiss, just that. One, single, flawless kiss. There was no need to borrow from tomorrow to satisfy himself today. With Marion there would be tomorrows. He would see to it she would be the most-kissed woman in all of London-in all the Kingdom.

Tonight? Tonight was for the stars, for dancing and embraces, and bare feet on blankets, and that song...that blasted, ridiculous, unmemorable song.

---

England - 1937 - Kirk Leaves, the Country Estate of Earl Huntingdon - the barns - The hour was unthinkable, insofar as a time to find oneself occupied in a barn, and not at a hot gaming table or dance floor or seated in a small and exclusive nightclub with something quite bubbly in stemmed crystal. Certainly none of his London mates would believe it. Would believe any of it, he and Lady Marion Nighten, even had he kissed and told (which, they had all gone on record recently to scold him: they could not understand why he had not).

Marion turned back toward him from where she reassessed the mare's progressing labor. She smiled.

Absolute arrows shot through his country coat and into his heart. From where he leaned against the stall's railing, he grinned back.

"You can go inside and sleep," she told him for the third time. "I will not think the less of you."

"I have no intention of leaving this spot until you have your foal."

"My foal? You make it sound like I am the one giving birth."

"I am not entirely convinced you are not."

"It is a good mating..."

"Yes, I know. Marion."

"Yes?"

"Come sit with us."

"Just now?"

"Yes," Robin responded, "even I, who know so far less of horses, may tell you it is several hours yet before you will be blessed with a new arrival. Sit. I have had them make up some tea." He indicated the Thermos with his booted toe.

Marion moved toward him, her hand clearly disinclined to depart from the back of the mare.

"You mustn't worry her to death," Robin advised her. "She knows her job better than either of us. It is, after all, Cordelia Anne's fifth labor, all successful deliveries to this point."

Marion accepted the metal lid cup and drank.

Robin dropped himself to the straw-strewn floor of hard-packed earth and maneuvered his hands to get her to come with him. He found a way to lean his back half against the boards, half against a straw bale. Marion, who had consented to sitting, found herself and her cuppa within his open legs, her back to his chest and his arms winding about her, as if intent upon securing her in this spot.

"I am glad your father has agree to part with the foal."

"I seem to recall that Lord Nighten made quite a ridiculous offer for the unborn. Seems his spoiled rotten daughter-terrible tyke, no doubt-simply had to have it, or she would throw a fit."

Marion jerked her shoulder back into him in a move that telegraphed annoyance at his playacting, but had no heft behind it with which to truly injure him.

"Marion," he said, his voice pitching lower as his lips were quite close to her ear. "The Earl is away," (she knew this), "after this blessed event we might...easily choose to pursue an unprecedented event of our own, back at the manor, or," he shrugged, "here, if you would prefer." He felt her breath catch with his salacious proposition.

She set the now-empty Thermos lid cup down among the straw and turned her head half-way toward his, kissing him into relaxing his arms enough that she might come all the way 'round. "Robin Goodfellow," she told him, kisses coming in between her words, "I," kiss, "should very much like," l-o-o-onger kiss, "to accept your offer," kiss. She pulled her face abruptly away from his, ensuring they were eye-to-eye, "but I say this not because of propriety, nor even on moral grounds: I am not getting up once I lay down. I know myself, I know my heart, and it would know no happiness in stolen moments of 'playing house'. My heart was not made for such...practicing."

"No matter how earth-shattering?" he asked, his eyes sparking at the gaze of hers. "How inconceivably magnificent such moments might prove?"

"...and so I must refuse." She kissed him again, to the point that if he had not known her so well (far better than any girl he had ever kissed to-date), he might have thought her an incomparable tease, a cruel flirt, for parts of him ached that had nothing to do with the hard-packed floor his bum rested on. But he knew her well-enough to know that the kiss was meant to salve the rejection, though in her innocence of such matters she likely had little understanding that to a man such palliative medicine rather worked the opposite.

He kissed her back, but briefly, attempting to reposition his hips at a less provocative angle, and agreed to re-shelve his suggestion for another time. "Come then, at least sit by me. For I am for a nap. And sleep, no doubt, proves sweeter in your embrace."

She began humming the tune of a song from Shall We Dance, the newest Ginger Rogers-Fred Astaire film. He knew she wouldn't take her eyes off the mare, but twelve feet away. He knew he was far from the forefront of her mind in this instance. As she let him fold her again into his arms, her head resting back onto his shoulder, her arms wrapping about his neck, he could not likely have been any happier.

---

"They all laughed at Christopher Columbus/When he said the world was round/They all laughed when Edison recorded sound/They laughed at me, wanting you/Said I was reaching for the moon/They all said we never would be happy..."

France - late Spring 1937 - "But ho, ho, ho/Who's got the last laugh now?" "She will have found it now," Robin said to his father, in unintentional non-sequitur, so deeply enamored with his own thoughts at the moment, and their happy focus of Marion.

"Eh?" the Earl asked from behind his paper on the train to Paris. They had their compartment to themselves for the moment.

"I have left word, asking her to marry me."

"What, Tish again?" his father asked, not even bothering to lower the newsprint pages to look his son in the eye, of so little interest his son's vacillating love life and without-a-care ways had become to him.

"Murder, Father!" Robin exclaimed. "Tish is-Tish was-ages, a lifetime, an aeon, an epiphany ago."

The Earl sighed, closing his newspaper and folding it into his lap. "Dash it all, Robin, I read not enough of the society pages to keep abreast on your present paramours. Who, then, is it to be this time?" But wait. Something seemed to sift to the front of the Earl's mind, away from where he had been only a moment ago contemplating the bond market, and the unsettling international situation on the Continent. "Did you say 'marry'?" This was, then, rather something more than simply a new pretty face. Certainly it would potentially prove so to his pocketbook where his son's allowance was concerned. After all, he could not conceive any engagement of Robin's going beyond just that: engagement. Until the idea lost its shine for his son.

"Yes, Sir. I have left word with Marion Nighten, that we-rather, I-shall be returning from our holiday to have words with Sir Edward, and offer her a ring."

"Marion Nighten?"

"Well, don't blow your wig or anything, Father." Robin studied his father's expression. "You don't seem a bit pleased. You do not approve?"

"Approve? Hardly. Marion Nighten. You may note that I quite strongly disapprove."

"I cannot think of on what grounds."

"Grounds? That she is a damn sight too good for you. That she has not enough of Lady Nighten's silly ways, and far too much of her father in her."

"But you have always held Sir Edward in high regard, have you not?"

"The utmost, certainly. But he is a man, a lord, and has a seat in Parliament; his mind and passions well-suited to it. Marion is a girl-a woman-bright, promising, with the strength of her convictions and the intelligence to get them heard. And you tell me now that there is enough possibility that she might accept my foolish, foppish, fickle son as her husband that you have laid the groundwork for asking her? (For I cannot think even you would have gone so far down this path if you knew your offer hopeless of being accepted.) You will be the ruin of her. And in a short while you will grow to resent and despise her ways. So absolutely I am resolute in my disapproval."

"You like her," he almost laughed aloud at his father's thinly veiled (yet somewhat dispassionate) outrage. "You disapprove on the grounds that you like her."

"Wherever there is a quick mind, an informed intellect, and an admirable desire to enlarge one's sphere of influence, how could I not? Of course I like her." The Earl went on, suggesting other less-permanent outlets for his son's newest passion. "Have her to tea, bring her to supper-take her to one of your ridiculous nightclubs-if she will go with you-but do not, I counsel you-do not treat her like one of your other London girls."

"No, Father," Robin pledged, indulgent humor playing around the corners of his eyes, though the Earl had gone back to his paper, "I have absolutely no intention of doing so."

"They laughed at me, wanting you/Said I was reaching for the moon/They all said we never would be happy..."

---

London's West End - late Spring 1937 - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - (Earlier that same morning that Robin and his father are on the train to Paris.)

It was unusual that Marion was up so early. Certainly she was not sure what had called her at this hour to forsake her bed. There would be nothing truly exciting in the city for several weeks. Robin and the Earl were off to a Spring holiday in France, as was their custom.

She, herself, was planning an escape to the country later in the week to see how Saracen's Beau was coming along. It was meant (to appease her mother) to be only a short trip away from London and town, but Marion had the distinct feeling that she was going to scheme to get herself more time, despite Lady Nighten's assured objections to such an idea, but, better to ask forgiveness than permission in such matters, Marion had long ago learned.

Since Robin had been calling regularly at the town house, Lady Nighten could not have been more keen on her daughter (her sometimes bookish, leaning-toward intellectual daughter), and her daughter's new beau, seen by many as the catch of all London. Marion knew her mother well enough to tolerate the new attentions (and heavens knew Robin was charming enough for fifteen beaux when he wanted to be), but she found she had little desire in Robin's absence to venture into society parties and parade about as the (seen as) less-charming half of a talked-about couple.

The country, then, it would be.

She nipped into the study on her way down to the kitchens to see if her nibbles from the night before had yet been removed. Sadly, they had. As she turned to go, the tall tree that was so well-framed by the study's eleven-foot windows caught her eye, or rather, something in it, very, very far up, perhaps ten-foot up the window glass, did.

The robin's nest she and Robin had been speculating on but a week ago seemed to have gained a new occupant, a...an interesting 'something'.

She strained and stretched and even brought the rolling library ladder as close to that window as it might go to get a better look.

What little she could see did not satisfy her. She needed to get closer. But how? She forsook the study and flew up to the third floor like her heels were winged. In her bedroom she flung open the sash on her window (on the same side of the house as the tree in view of the study) and without allowing herself a second thought she climbed out on one of its sturdier branches and to its strong trunk, trying to tell herself it was far too early for anyone in Mayfair to be watching the trees at a third-story level, and that the mature trees' own branches shielded her well-enough from any view but the most probing.

She shimmied down to the branch in question, just within sight of the study, for a moment enjoying this new view of one of her favorite places, like looking into a shadowbox room, or a playhouse; her father's desk, the leather arm chairs, the chess set, the way the early morning light glinted off the crystal decanters of port and scotch.

And Clem. Clem! Ah, her brain told her to startle. There was Clem, walking into the study. She immediately grabbed for the nest's contents before she had taken time to test its branch for weight-bearing. It snapped.

She slid and scrambled, unable to use both hands to try and save herself from falling, as one hand held the nest's precious prize.

She must have made a noise. Clem had gotten the study window open, somehow, the lower third of it all that was made to do so (precisely why she had had to go up two more floors). And somehow he had her before she had scraped and tumbled all the way down the tree and to the ground; his hands full of her (that is, his) dressing gown and some of her hair (ouch).

He dragged her into the study, where once she got her breath she noticed that she seemed to be shedding bits of branches and early Spring buds onto the carpet.

"Marion?" her older brother asked, unable to conceal his perplexed amusement. "You twit," he chuckled in delight, "What on earth are you doing?"

And suddenly her father and mother were also there. But far from delighted, or amused. She must have made a noise as she fell-did she cry out? Or had they only responded to the sounds of her falling down the tree?

Her mother looked horrified, no doubt cataloging the possible witnesses: servants upstairs and downstairs, deliverymen, anyone on the street, their neighbors.

Her father spoke, a rumble in his chest, a delicious sound of indignation that added a wonderful color when he was delivering speeches. Less delicious to hear just now. "Marion," he began with the first affront he took note of. "What are you wearing?"

She looked down to the quite-nice-before-her-tumble set of Clem's silk pajamas and matching dressing gown.

It was only the anticipation of looking closer at the nest's contents (now in her closed fist) that carried her through the scolding to follow.

It proved to be a tiny indigo-glass bottle, hardly larger than her thumb, stoppered. Inside was a tight roll of paper. She uncorked the vial and the message fell into her waiting palm. She recognized it as a revision of an old nursery rhyme. It read, "There came to your window this morning in Spring/A sweet little Robin, came to hear you sing; The tune that you sang it was prettier by far/Than any he'd heard on flute or guitar. His wings he was spreading to soar far away/Then resting a moment seemed sweetly to say-Oh happy, how happy the world seems to me/Awake, little girl, and be happy with me!"

Below this was written, "In my absence I leave you this assignment: Practice saying, 'yes'. And try to get Sir Edward to join in the lesson as well. When I return, upon your 'yes' I mean to speak with him in an effort to also collect his. Marion, you may be sure of me. You always may be sure of me. -Robin" The 'always' was underlined four times.

She was amazed to note how sure she did, in fact, feel.

---

Late Summer 1937 - Upon receipt of the note delivered from the Tripp Club, she had flown from the house like an exultation of larks, her mind and person similarly as scattered. Robin. Home from holidaying. Robin. In London. As was she. Robin!

Though there had been an obvious threat of summer rain when she departed the Mayfair house's front door, she had paid the weather no note, her heart too light to imagine burdening it down with anything at all, even an umbrella on the arm.

She was an emotional wreck, but far too happy to let it worry her. She was elated, she was a ball of nerves. She felt a piercing fear that she could no longer recall what Robin looked like. Perhaps she had best turn around and return to study his portrait one last time before setting off.

Nonsense! Such was her hurry she could not wait for the car to be brought 'round for her use, and got herself down the street, to the corner as quickly as possible, and managed (quite shockingly, even to herself) to hail a cab.

She saw the ancient obelisk's point-jutting over sixty feet into the London sky, even in the overcast weather-before she saw him, waiting, pacing at the base of it.

Her heart quickened with recognition. No longer any fear, there.

Only minutes before her arrival on scene, the heavens had opened, and poured down a rare, warm summer shower, so committedly that his coat and clothing were past being soaked. He had no umbrella on his person, but certain that his roadster was nearby, and unwilling to merely watch him from over a distance a single second longer, she burst from the cab, without even the driver's assistance in stepping onto and down from the running board, and dashed to Robin so quickly she was confident the pelting raindrops could not even have found purchase upon her.

Once he saw her coming, Robin waited for her to come to him, letting her rocket herself into him, into his arms, as he relished the nearly-empty streets-courtesy the downpour-and the unabashed public display of affection it won him on Marion's (usually reserved) part.

Instantly, he buried his soaked face and hair into her neck, the splash of scent she had applied there before departing not wasted on his senses.

"Why here?" she asked-his head still to her shoulder-dying to know. "Why would you not come at once to the house?"

"Let me look at you first," he said, pulling away from their embrace, holding her at arm's-length, his eyes having to squint slightly to see in the continuing onslaught of rain.

Instinctively she brought her hand up to try at smoothing her hair. As it had done shortly for him, no observer could now accurately tell how long she had herself stood in the warm downpour, so soaked-through she was already, the starch in her blouse a mere memory, the fresh flower on her collar both wilted by the rain and falling apart from their embrace, her impeccable nylons splashed over with the street's dirt and grime. The rolls of her stylish hairdo dripping rain onto her forehead.

"You are a picture," he told her, utterly captivated by the look, the arrival of her. "Were Wren here, I would commission your portrait."

Even in her joy at seeing him, a small crease graced her brow, and she reminded him hesitantly, "but he was an architect."

"And it is building I have on my mind," he offered in rejoinder. "Why here, you ask? Why meet here after these weeks separated by the Channel? Because I found I wished to erect a monument to the happiest day of my life."

Through the rain he winced up, trying to sight the obelisk's point.

"The happiest...day of your life?" she asked him, her heart flipping at what such a declaration might forebode.

"But I did not long for the woodlands, or countryside, which despite their beauties are too far away. And certainly, there is little enough room for wild, untethered happiness in a drawing room. I need my monument, my touchstone, to be nearby me at all times. Here, in London. Where it might be frequently visited, even sighted over a great distance. It had, of course, to be pleasing to the eye, large, and as close to eternal as anything in all Britain might be."

"And so we are here."

The rain slackened a bit.

"I could not have found a more perfect memorial for this moment had I designed and carved this stone pillar myself, Marion, and yet, I find myself shaking-having nothing to do with the damp and the rain. Only, I find (mostly shockingly to myself) I am afraid. Frightened by happiness. Frightened by acknowledging a happiness so intense that even in this moment I fear what might come were it ever taken away from me."

It was hard to say how it had come about. She had hardly noticed as her head had to bend to keep him in her sights as he moved onto but a single knee placed to the pavement.

"My dearest; I have no desire to spend even the length of a dance in the arms and company of any other woman." He popped up and took his hand to smooth back a stray hair of hers, always taunted into frizz and curls in humidity. "Curly locks," he began, and surely, as any schoolchild, she knew the rest by heart. "Wilt thou be mine?" He left off his quotation before getting to dishes or swine, or the promise of a lifetime of idle embroidery.

"Yes," she told him in English, nodding her head, continuing on by verbalizing her mental list of the seventeen other languages she had researched in his time away, giving vehement 'yes'es in every one.

By the time she got to Swahili, and began again in the dead Gothic tongue, he had had enough, and stopped her mouth, and its verbosity of affirmation, satisfyingly, with his own.

She did not squirm, nor did she try to cut his kiss short, despite its being publicly administered.

Each tasted the rain on the other's lips.

"Oh, yes," Robin said, remembering, fumbling in his pocket, his searching of it complicated by the wet fabric not wishing to comply and part, but rather to adhere to itself. "I had forgotten."

As he searched, he look at Marion's face. "'A Robin and a Robin's son," he recited, meaning his father and himself. "Once went to town to buy a ring/They could not decide on clear or blue/And so the Robins brought both back home to you'." His fingertips located the unboxed ring and managed to pull it forth, bringing the inside-out pocket lining with it. "I daresay Father did not approve, and the House of Cartier only just, but I chose blue for your eyes, and a quadrumvirate of diamonds. One for each of our children," he prophesied, intently holding her gaze.

He squinted up into the clouds still very present overhead. "My car is still at Kirk Leaves, in the North Country," he apologized with a shrug and chuckle. "A ceremonial dousing was not meant to be an integral part of the day's celebrations."

"I do not care," she told him, shaking her head to make the drops fly out of her now-dissembling hair. "Fair weather or foul," she slipped into quoting MacBeth, "when shall we two meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

"An ill omen, surely, my love," he cautioned her, but with a bold smile at his lips, "to speak words of such a bloody play on this day of all days. But, I will, as you shall have it. No matter what may come, this shall be our forever rally point, our memorial to happiness: Marion's Needle. Like you it?" he asked, attempting to show it off to her with an outthrust arm, his other firmly about her waist.

She laughed at his theatrics. "It is the way you sell it," she agreed. "But I far prefer, 'Robin's Needle'."

"Hieroglyphics and antiquarians be damned," he declared, "had I my trusty penknife I'd have our initials cut into it within the hour."

"Shhh-" she giggled, wary that someone (though the pavement traffic was nearly non-existent) might overhear his threat to deface the ancient Egyptian obelisk that, in point of fact, significantly pre-dated even Cleopatra's storied reign.

---

LONDON - Lord Nighten's Mayfair Townhouse - Late Summer 1937 - "Chin up, Tigs," Clem was urging her, the rumble laughter dancing about in the bass timbre of his voice. "You look positively green about the gills!"

They were at the dining table, a small but formal party which included the Earl of Huntingdon and his heir the Viscount. Clem was at her elbow. Her gown was satin, a cool mint-nearly silver-green.

Therefore a green complexion might at least be pleasing to the eye in such a situation. Despite what it might say of the state of the mind resting behind it.

"I say," Clem barked with the early on-set of celebration, his glass already raised even as he was standing to join Robin Oxley who had already stood for making his wholly unexpected announcement, "bold as brass, Rob! Or shall I say, now, 'Brother' Goodfellow?"

Marion felt more than saw her mother's brows draw together in distaste for Clem's repeated usage of common slang. Cockney rhymes had no place at Lord Nighten's civilized table.

Inured to his mother's disapproval in this particular habit of his, "To Tigs and Goodfellow!" Clem sang out.

"To Marion and Robin," Sir Edward said, his tone deliberate and crisp with propriety as he interjected the more appropriate names of the couple whose engagement was about to be toasted, his glass raised.

Robin Oxley's face, having burst into redness and unaccustomed near-flummox the moment he got his news out, maintained its high coloring above his impeccably starched white collar and tie.

Marion watched only him as the others toasted.

He looked to her as though he had just taken the Argent Arrow, soundly trounced the challenger in the Tripp Club's storied cricket match. And surely the men at table were congratulating him in similar fashion.

She felt more like she had been struck without warning by an arrow-pinned into a situation she was not expecting, for which she was not fully prepared.

Not yet.

Robin's eyes searched hers out repeatedly, wishing to join with hers in this happy moment, but each time she refused to make hers available to him. Only returning to look at him when his attention was settled elsewhere.

Upon the conclusion of the toasts, the men of the party bore him away like a national hero into the smoking room, laughing, still congratulating, and Clem slapping his back so much it was sure to bear the bruises of impact tomorrow.

She was left in the far-more sedate parlor with her mother, the Earl's dinner partner (invited by her mother to keep numbers even) Lady Lytton, and Clem's present paramour, French-born Lise Montrose.

It was short moments before Marion realized, swirling about her, that although their conversation revolved around her, around her wedding, it did not include her in any way.

In fact, Marion had never felt quite so superfluous to any occasion in her life.

She sat through what seemed like three-quarters of an hour of it, but which might have been nothing more than ten minutes all told, marveling at this French girl who had more ideas about bridal style and betrothal presentation than any unengaged girl really ought be possessed of.

Marion excused herself as if to the powder room, intending to walk just about anywhere else within the house-most preferably several floors away.

She had gotten as far as the second floor, beyond the large for-show stair, and down a hall. Even so, it was a main hall: wide as rooms in a poorer family's house, ornamented here and there with furniture for sitting, potted plants and objets d'art for observing. It was, of course, the standard by which all other passageways in Mayfair townhouses were to be measured (and in comparison found wanting), the arrangement and placement of the furniture, and the art on display overseen closely by her mother. But Marion felt the need to locate herself somewhere more intimate, the walls closer, the ceiling lower. Less art, less formality in the cushions upon chairs. None of the doors in this part of the house would give her that: she must ascend higher. Such a room as she sought would leave her feeling cozier: less alone, less like someone perhaps cut loose and soon to be adrift. Closer quarters would feel of a smaller world, a world more able to be managed.

---

Shortly, she heard a sound, the sort of sound no Nighten staff would ever make. In response she stopped dead-center in the upper-floor hall.

It was not a loud sound. It was both the sound of someone practiced at sneaking about, but also practiced in knowing how to sneak about this very house. Usually with the help of Clem's man, Percival.

"Marion, I will follow you to your bedchamber if necessary." Robin's voice was low, but neither flirtatious nor fully-threatening. It was both patient and impatient at once.

In her present mood, her reply could be nothing but arch. Even as she turned 'round toward him, she did so only in anticipation of wheeling about again, leaving him only her impeccably straight back with which to discourse.

"Is that to be the way, then, of things from now on?" she asked, not bridling the acid in her tone, despite the fact she well knew he could not bear to be spoken to in such a way, a tone of disdain the fastest route to stoppering his ears, and his willingness to listen. "You, to make the decisions unilaterally? And me, left to swim about hoping to locate a calm amongst your wake?"

Robin let out a breath that showed this was not at all the reception he had expected to meet with. "You are cross with me!" he cried in confused surprise.

She watched his face, even though she did not mean to do so. (She was supposed to be pivoting on her heel and turning her back to him.) But it was such a face! And even in her irritation, the lines about his eyes that telegraphed that her mood had somehow hurt him startled her, surprising her in their ability to do so.

"You cannot be cross with me," he pleaded, his tone half-amazement that she was so, "this night of all nights!" There was almost an unvoiced laugh to it, but a disbelieving one.

Her response was at her lips as though she had been at rehearsing it for half of the hour past. "I most certainly can be cross with anyone whenever I feel like it."

His face came to a stop. He paused a moment as if to study this reply.

Marion stood, watching him, undistracted by their surroundings, unable (she felt) to pull back on her reaction to him, but similarly unable to execute that dramatic turn of her back toward him and walk away.

Robin spoke now like a detective in a stage mystery, as though he were in the very act of discovering the answer. "But what could there be about tonight to possibly make you cross?" he said, and she could tell he was fighting against the urge to bury his knuckles in the hair at the nape of his neck. The way he must have done when cribbing for an exam at university. But raising his elbow so was sure to put his jacket and shirttails a-jumble. And though Robin Oxley was a man with a singular ability to focus in life-and she did not doubt he was focusing just so, here-he was never one to work against the good tailoring on a dinner jacket.

She saw the way the backs of his fingers (never gladly idle) itched at the pad on his thumb.

"I have snuck away from the cigars just to be with you, to find you-that we might…be together!"

She looked at him and wondered for a moment if she ought to point out the distinct unpleasantness of finding oneself compared by one's love to a round of cigars. Even if, in the end, one did win out over the smoking. She let it pass, zeroing in on the heart of her irritation instead.

"How could you not have gone to my father before announcing us to everyone?" She could not see the hurt that flooded her own face at this question. "How could you wound his pride-his feeling of decency and appropriateness-so? I thought-I thought you and I had agreed to devise a stratagem to use when approaching him, how to handle your request. How to make him feel…included."

Her annoyance had caused her to over-speak, beyond the single first question. She did not like it when discourse got out of hand and what had, in her mind, seemed reasonable and succinct-and wholly justified-now sounded defensive and if not rambling, then long-winded.

Robin observed her as she spoke. His brow did not fully crease, but began to steeple in tension, sympathetic to her own.

He did not speak it, but she could read it in his face, his internal curiosity over the double standard she had represented to him since the day he had officially proposed upon returning from France and taking that knee at the Needle: that she was Lady Marion Nighten, a girl who did not in any way feel she needed her father's assent to her choice of a marriageable young man, and yet that she should so ardently pursue capturing it, with all the gusto and planning one might put in to a successful coup d'état. In very much a similar way insuring a smooth transition of power, keeping the country stable and economically viable. And the former leader-though blind-sided-passively content.

Then Robin smiled, more than a little pleased with himself. She could not understand why, but he seemed to feel he had captured the upper hand. "Why, I daresay he felt most included. One-hundred and ten percent a necessary cog in the process. The very spindle by which all others must be turned."

Her brow furrowed. She failed to see how springing such an announcement on her father as dinner concluded would make him feel at all involved in the making of it, for all that the announcement took place in his own home. Robin's grasp of situations was not usually so muddied.

"But without us holding that war council? Agreeing on a plan?" she railed, wondering why he could not understand her irritation in the matter.

She exhaled a scoff as she looked at him, perfect in his presentation, only that small dint in his bow knot to testify to his humanity, to prove he was not merely a walking, talking advertisement for Savile Row, or worse yet, his own newsprint photo from the society page. Charm and dash, position and rank, more than a little devil-may-care, and all the things that could get a gentleman of nobility so very far in life and yet leave him with so little substance to show for it. "Had you any plan? Any thought behind your actions? Or merely that you wished the attention, the glory of standing up at a dinner and shocking them all within an inch of their very lives at your brazen disregard for their feelings?" She did not try to hold anything back. She feared a lifetime of such disagreements. "For my feelings?"

She did not know where that last question had come from.

Her feelings? This wasn't about her feelings. It was about Robin. Choosing to behave one-sidedly. Selfishly ignoring the gentlemanly decorum that was so important to her father-in favor of speed and flash.

Speed and flash: Robin Oxley's maxim, no doubt, hidden somewhere amongst the Huntingdon flora on the family crest.

Abruptly, she saw Robin's face flow from growing confusion to understanding, like water that has been troubled but becalms instantly.

"My sweet Marion," he said, his shoulders visibly relaxing. His hands wanted to immediately reach for hers but for the moment thought better of it. "The axis about which my universe heretofore rotates. I did meet, most solemnly, yesterday afternoon with your esteemed father. In this very house. I have done nothing-behaved in no way-without his express consent." Mouth closed, his lower lips pushed into his upper, his lids lifting his eyebrows in a 'how will she take it' gesture.

"You-" she stalled out, still distracted over her own lips saying that Robin had hurt her feelings. "You were here, visiting with Father? I must have, I didn't know. I was-"

And here he grinned, enjoying the rare treat of calling her out. He glanced to the side of their standing confrontation and she could see him wishing to drop onto the nearby settee in a manner that would be a positive affront to both the fixture's pedigree and planned utility. But he did not. "You were sleeping," he teased. "Or so I was informed upon my arrival. Assuming that 'not receiving visitors' at one in the afternoon means to your staff what it does to my fathers'."

"But you met with him alone-" she stammered, finding it hard to come down from her well-kindled frustration, "and without a plan-"

"Not at all," his response was smooth, like a seasoned trainer approaching a nervous filly. He knew what he was up against now. Knew just how to combat it. "I brought my second, a man revered in his own right."

"Bonchurch?" she asked. "Who reveres Bonchurch?"

"'Twas the Earl, Marion. I brought the Earl to plead my case. To his closest friend."

She got lost for a moment, sidetracked in contemplating the unnamable frothiness that appeared in his eyes when he got the chance to counter an expectation as he just had.

"And did he?" she startled herself back into the moment. Back, she hoped, toward the well-earned righteous indignation she had been feeling toward him.

"Well, he was a bit hard on me when it came to character references-rightly so, I do not begrudge him it. But he kept the lion's-share of his reservations to himself. Bless him for that. Though he argued nothing quite so eloquently as your own mother." He went on, without pause. "The whole thing exhausted one as though we were at line-by-line-ing upon drafting a peace treaty."

"My mother?"

"Lady Nighten was a wonder. I daresay she could grease a rusted zipper with nothing but the wax of her eloquence. I daresay I have never heard her speak so articulately upon any subject in my life."

"What on earth did she say? Something about how they'd best accept you as they may never get another offer? About how pleased she was I'd settled on a future Earl?"

"She said that it would be a crime against Love, and against your own will to refuse to bless our marriage. And that Edward should be happy to know that you had made your choice, rather than him having to guess at mapping out your marital future for you. That no one had believed in her and your father's romance, and that it was their duty to in their turn to believe always in other impractical couplings. And that he should be dead chuffed you'd snagged yourself a rich Duke. I mean an Earl. And that I should drink less and kiss you more."

"Did not."

"No, but I saw the end of my drinking days in her eyes-much as I see them in yours. And it is not an unhappy vision, I might report."

"So you met with my father, my mother, and your father-was Clem there, too?"

"Murder, no! Clem? Helpful at trying to influence your father? A grim proposition, that. He cannot even get his pocket money increased. I doubt he shall have such champions on his side when it comes time for him to ask to marry-this Lise Montreaux or whomever else is to come…"

"So you found you didn't need me. That you could manage this on your own. And so you did."

"Marion-you willfully misunderstand. I did this on my own FOR you, not without you. To surprise you. To show you that I could be depended upon. That I could behave in a civil manner. That I could, if need be-if only for an hour or so-be the man your father wants to see his daughter marry. I did it for you." His eyes had begun to threaten to fill with water, so much did he want her to understand the difference between what she thought he had done, and what he had meant to be at doing.

"I love you, Marion. I want nothing more in life than your counsel and company at every turn. But this, I wished to do this for you. To prove myself not worthless, as you are so frequently encouraging me to do."

"Kiss me," she said, seeing this. "Now. Kiss me now."

"But the ring-I haven't given you the ring," he said, "and I-"

"Stop talking," she told him. "Just…stop talking."

---

The parquet dance floor at the Ritz in London, the sound and feel of other couples dancing around them. The look of Robin in his tuxedo that night danced there together, the color and scent of the orchid he brought her to wear, her favorite. The new clutch purse she brought out with her for the evening, which she had lost, and how he had gone from table to table without shame on his knees searching for it on her behalf. And how, after closing, the management and the band, so charmed by his exploits (and the clutch found-back in Robin's roadster, never having even been brought inside-her compact and lipstick yet in it) that they agreed to play one more set. Just for them.

---

London's West End, December 1938 - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - The main floor-the floor appointed so perfectly for social occasions-was literally at the apex of its existence this evening. It deserved nothing less than absolute pages of newsprint devoted solely to the perfection that had been achieved in its dressing and furnishing for this single, flawless night.

Then again, parties given by Lady Nighten were always expected to be just so. And never yet a let down among them.

Clun, the Guernsey butler (who only rarely left the island), had been tasked with escorting a nearly-full boatload of flowers (alstroemerias, freesias-even orchids) from the Barnsdale hothouse across the Channel and on to London, where they were then carefully chosen by their mistress to match just the colors and meet just the remarkable levels of bloom and fragrance to properly compliment her annual Christmas party.

The party, a subject already of some lore and myth, was given every year on the third week-end of December, without regard to numerical date. Invitations were generously delivered, but still-to those among the less endowed levels of society-viewed as scarce and difficult to come by. A marquess might expect an invitation, but so might a struggling playwright with an interesting view of the political scene-as might headmistress of a settlement house who might have the good fortune to see the Nightens as among her patrons, and upon receiving the hand-lettered envelope (always delivered by a Nighten House footman three weeks prior), only to discover she had nothing appropriate to wear.

The now Duke of Windsor had been a frequent guest in the past-with his now brother King and sister-in-law Queen since '36 (as in other things) agreeing to stand as substitute for him in such social matters when their palace schedules permitted.

The lamps were lit high in some rooms, low and muted in others. Dancing was often chief among ways to pass the time, even for the older folk. And so the music (always live) was as important (if not more) than the menu.

Gentlemen of a somber bent usually found their way to the library with its tall bookshelves and leather upholstery, a table for chess-another for backgammon-and ample cigars always available for those professing two left feet while preferring to exercise both their tongues and their ideals.

For the evening, the main stair resembled more of Harrod's-if Harrod's were located within Buckingham Palace-as a seemingly never-ending display of ladies of the ton ascended and descended it on their endless trips to primp and see to their toiletries in one of the next-floor-up lavatories available for such necessities.

"Jacob's Ladder," sighed Mitch Bonchurch from his comfortable place and unobstructed view by one of the entryway's pillars to his best mate, Oxley, who, unlike his fastidious better-half was slouched (although charmingly so) against same pillar, cigarette in his hands to keep them still until the next footman came round passing something else diverting in a glass.

Without much thought he began to devil his friend, "a ladder straight up to Heaven? These girls-ethereal beauties-floating up to claim their reward? Not that Cora Winchester, methinks." Oxley shook his head dramatically, not bothering to hide a pleased-with-himself smile that he knew Bonchurch was not at an angle to properly see.

"Not Cora-" Mitch began, spluttering before he could help himself. Though he had only ever spent small amount of time with her at best, she had always been one of his personal favorites. A nice girl, with bright ginger hair to catch the eye. A fun girl. And now, here was Robin calling that very fun into question. "Why you couldn't...you didn't...you..."

The growing purple cast of his mate's face showed him he had let the joke go on a bit too long. Any further and Mitch would have to set out loosening his bowtie.

"Easy now, my Bonny Bonchurch," he attempted to soothe. "It must have been Margo Archambault-Nixon I was thinking of. 'Course it was. Must've been. She's charmingly acrobatic they say," he teased at Lady Margo's expense. "Though one would hardly think it to look at how she chooses to package her figure up as though it were already Boxing Day, and she the charitable foodstuffs."

For a moment both he and Mitch contemplated the young lady in question, wrapped-nay, swaddled almost beyond sight-in layer upon layer upon layer of baby blue organza so that it floated about her like over-milled candy floss, leaving only her head and hands visible, the rest of her a mystery-though not one any man might particularly care to unwrap and discover.

Mitch gave a grunt, as a way of accepting Robin's unspoken apology on the matter of Lord and Lady Winchester's daughter. "And why are you not partnering Marion, anyway?" he queried.

"Last I saw of her, she, too, had ascended the stairs to adjust powder and primp-rising up into your new version of Heaven," he tweaked Mitch. "And now I await her glorious return."

"Well, it is a lovely party," Mitch declared, reaching for a filled flute as a footman's tray passed by them.

"I'm sure," Robin agreed without conviction, watching the bubbly on its journey, but reaching for none of his own. "But yet it is every party. It is the same party we have been attending several times a month since we were permitted down the staircase as lads old enough the adults believed we could behave ourselves without irreparably damaging the family honour."

He inhaled on his fag, two fingers on top, thumb holding it steady from underneath. "The only difference is that Marion is here, and that for the second year in a row I am not too ignorant to know it."

At this undeniable display of oncoming pique, Mitch pressed the flute he had only just taken into Oxley's free hand and stepped away from the pillar as a fleeting shadow of grimace crossed his face. "I do not know why you were born to nark at me so," he told his oldest and best friend. "But I've no patience for it tonight. It is a lovely party, and I intend to find for myself a lovely time." He sniffed. "Therefore, I leave you, entirely, to your fiancee's care."

Robin gave a nod, choosing not to disagree with Bonchurch's assessment of his present bilious state. His eyes had already caught onto the object that might possibly save this party, rescue this very night, for him.

Marion Nighten stood momentarily at the top landing of the Nighten townhouse stair. Her brother Clem was at her side, genteelly escorting her down the steps, though she (and he) both knew she could more than adequately navigate them by the banister alone. (Without dancing shoes on, in fact, in her younger days she had, on more than one occasion when their parents were away-at Clem's dare-successfully ascended the greater part of them entirely upon her hands.)

She looked out over what she could see of the party below not unlike a monarch surveying her dominion. Not unlike, in fact, the way her own mother might similarly appraise her own party from that very spot.

The hem of her gown just flirted with brushing the floor. It was a green so dark it was, in its folds and pleats, black to the eye. Shimmering like colors in a peacock's tail feather. It had a wide neckline that chose to sweep out over her shoulders rather than plunge into décolletage, and sleeves that barely covered the elbow, leading to a peek-a-boo effect with every bend of her arms.

Her hair held a hidden bun at the nape of her neck, concealing its true length, and row upon row of perfectly sculptured waves down either side, as though plotted specially by an architect rather than designed by a beautician. There was none of the height to her coiffure that some of the other ladies were clearly experimenting with that night. The bodice and skirt of her gown were artfully (and daringly to the days' fashion-even if her hairstyle was not) ruched, increasing the opportunity for any viewer to admire the altering color of the fabric under the evening party's variant light.

She wore nothing about her neck-perhaps expecting a present to fill that space before evening's end-but each ear displayed chandelier earrings of white gold that fell well below the lobe, nearly to her bare shoulders, graced by both emeralds and black amber-as if further challenging the eye to puzzle out her frock's true nature.

"You're looking awfully grown-up tonight, Mrs. Tiggywinkle," Clem told her as they began their descent, her upon his arm. He was sure to add the old nickname in order to recall to her mind that no matter what, she was, in fact, still his little sister.

"And you look very handsome," she shot back, using the so-standard-it-had-become-somewhat-ridiculous family line on him.

"The music is good," he replied, not falling for her niggling of him. "Progressive, even, for Mother."

"They're from the Neapolitan Club. Robin recommended them-at her request he do so."

"Come to think of it," he tried again to annoy her. "You don't even smell of horse. Chose not to ride today, did you?"

"If you say one more thing," she threatened, with some relish, "I'll throw my leg over this banister and ride it to the entryway."

He knew her well enough to know that she did not threaten such action hollowly. His eyes narrowed, and his face took on a decidedly uncharacteristic dark cast. "Well, it cannot sink the night any further than it has already been sunk. If not wholly capsized."

Marion caught her breath. "I was hoping I was the only one who had noticed."

"Well, I do not know if it is apparent to others-certainly Father would not mark it. But one knows Mother will. We must be half-a-hundred (if not two-thirds) short in attendance from the numbers she invited."

The last thing Marion wanted to think about was their at-present social decline. It was too close to thinking of her mother. A subject her mind had been unable to avoid for long since Lady Lytton's recent visit, and the startling reveal that her mother was not really at all who her daughter thought she was. That her mother was-as she saw it-a traitor to her own past who had abandoned her personal convictions in order to advance in the life of London Society, over which she now all but solely presided. No. She did not want to think of her mother tonight.

"Clem," Marion began, not entirely certain how he would take the question. "Where do you go during a party such as this? When you want to be...alone?"

She thought she felt him pause in his stepping down, but it was so brief they soon continued on.

"Alone?" he asked, his eyes scanning the crowd below for the whereabouts of his good friend Oxley. Something grumpy, and borderline disagreeable, entered his tone. "I should think Robin Goodfellow would be a far better person to pose such a question to. He has a singular (and rather notorious) habit of sniffing such places out. Or is it someone else you are wishing to find time 'alone' with? Hmmm?"

She let the dig slide. "Yes," she agreed with his assessment of Robin's peculiar skill at keeping such spots for canoodling covert, "but it is not his house."

Several steps passed in silence. "Very well," Clem said, though clearly against his better judgment. "Up the stairs, where the staff stage additional champagne and cocktails should they run out before evening's end. On a night like tonight with the attendance so low, I can hardly think they will need the use of it. Block the servant's door with a few stacked cases of champagne. The hallway door be sure to latch, but other than that I cannot think you will be disturbed."

"But you cannot be sure?" she quizzed him.

"Well, Marion," impatience was added to the growing list of things among his ever-more-evident disapproval, "if you must know, in such instances I have Percival, haven't I? He has always been most helpful to stand guard outside such rooms for me." He shot her a sideways glance. "Do not think I will be asking him to likewise cover for you."

She tried to keep a blush half-embarrassment, half-indignity from blooming on her cheeks, and failed. "Very well," she told him through the blush. "In the interest of giving the dissenting party a platform-do speak on. Is Robin not a good friend of yours?"

"The best, of course," Clem readily agreed. "And I look forward to welcoming him as a brother-in-law in time. Even now, I am overjoyed to see him as you fiancé." A cloud seemed to settle upon his brow. "But do not ask me to accept him as the chosen lover of my sister-no matter how grown up she may appear tonight."

"And why not?" she asked, equably. "You have been at playing such games for years. And with several different girls I can readily name."

Clem sighed, knowing that she would not like what came next. He stopped them several steps from the lower landing, just far enough away from the others mingling there to keep their conversation private. "You are twenty and one, Marion. And a young twenty-one at that. And no matter the vast upper echelon of Father's friends you have entranced and charmed-astounded even-with your political and intellectual sophistication (which I doubt can be well matched by many females living at present, much less others of your age) your interactions and conversations with them did not take place in social situations."

"I beg to differ-" she began.

"Very well," he countered, "potentially intimate," his voice dropped appreciably,"sexual situations. The men with whom you usually come into contact do not relate with you on a level where they see you as a female they might wish to pursue." He tried to think of how best to articulate what he meant. "You are a novelty to them. Sir Edward's trained bitch pup." He knew that was perhaps a bit too, but he could not take it back now. "'Isn't she precocious? What an unexpected place to find such wisdom, such conviction!' You are a Bluestocking, Tigs. No matter the era into which you were born. It is a rare male, indeed, wishing to both chase and bed such an unnatural stick of dynamite."

Well, she had asked for it-for Clem to tell her the truth as he saw it. And of course she respected him for it, giving it without gilding it-just as she would him, when asked. And she knew the opinions he shared with her were not his own. Knew that he loved and thought of her as much more than a trained novelty. Knew that she had his respect, as he had hers. But still, being Marion, she tried to argue.

"And what of Randall Pickering? Of Francis Wetherhugh? Of Geordie Wellington?" she asked, wishing to salvage something of her own dignity.

"Tigs," the infrequent, half-serious smile he only ever wore for her found its way to his lips, "we both know it was Wellington's family who thought it best for him to be seen involved with a girl to quell those nasty rumors threatening to surface about his very private private life." He waited a moment before finishing his rebuttal of her already-made decision. "You have had tutors from exotic places, read books (and retained their contents) enough to replenish Henry VIII's burned-down monasteries. But you have never traveled anywhere without either a parent or a nanny. Not even into the City to spend a short afternoon with friends. The level of social sophistication of women that have not been able to withstand Goodfellow-well, you haven't got it, my darling. I daresay there are women enough working in the Stews that haven't either."

This caused her eyes to harden in their expression. She did not care for his bringing fancy women into their discuss. Nor in his placing them so close to Robin. "You speak of him so, and yet you call him friend?"

He let out a light breath. "It is one thing for another man to enjoy the company and friendship of a notorious Lothario, Marion. It is quite another for you-you-to think you might engage yourself willingly in certain activities with him and expect to be able to control or manage their outcome." And here was his summation. "I think it is a bad, ill-conceived idea for you to take such a step. For at night's end I feel certain you will not find yourself long at the top of the stair," he cast his eyes upward for effect, "but rather, quickly having descended to its bottom."

Again, his half-serious smile that evoked both that he meant what he said, and that also, he knew she sympathized with his argument, and in his own sympathy wished he could reason otherwise.

She took a breath, it always being better to have plenty of air when announcing you are about to defy someone's plan of action for you. "Then I suggest you will find yourself most surprised this evening, Brother," she said cryptically, "for I plan to shock you on more than one account."

He let her declaration stand. "Marion," he said, knowing he had well lost long before he had begun, "be sure you know what you're doing." He would attempt to persuade her otherwise no further.

A contrary-even blithe-reply came to her mind, and she did not censor herself from sharing it. "I'm sure if I don't, Robin Goodfellow will."

---

London's West End, December 1938 - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - "Do something with your life!" she had shouted at Robin, nearly adding, 'as I mean to do!' But of course she was getting ahead of herself in the memory. What had happened first had been far more cheeky, far more what one might expect at such a party than the first shot fired in a blistering, life-altering row.

It had been easy enough to get him to follow her to the room in question. Once arrived, he had been predictably charmed by its unusual contents.

"We might as well attempt a bathe in bubbly," he told her, his usual cheek dependable as ever. He noted there was already a large metal basin near the davenport packed with additional liquor that waited only to be removed in order to serve this decadent new purpose his mind had proposed.

He threw himself upon said davenport, smoking with a somewhat greater gusto, its high upholstered back for a moment concealing the fact from him that she was at carefully stacking several crates of champagne against the servant's door to ensure their privacy.

Knowing her better than to think she might take him up on his offer to swim and splash among the party's excess champagne, he addressed the ceiling as he spoke to her, his enthusiasm growing exponentially as he spoke on. "So I was thinking, my lady," he began. "I have heard you complain and moan and seen your eyes roll back into your head so often these past weeks as to cause me to fear I might never see them again properly within their orbits. What if...we managed to remove such travails from your life as endless chats with the stationer, lengthy fittings with the dressmaker-incessant worryings over seating plans and table linen? What if we just took control and eliminated such time-consuming impediments to your life? Going back to a life before this engagement? Before planning began to eclipse the 'loving' that unsuspectingly brought it all on?"

During his speech she had returned to stand next to where he still lay prone upon the davenport. "Whatever are you suggesting?" she asked him for clarification, her mind otherwise occupied, and having no understanding of what he could possibly mean.

Momentarily he looked for a place to ash his fag. Finding none he hastily (and indecorously) flicked it into the un-touched flute he had carried into the room. The champagne within it hissed and bubbled as it accepted the new visitor, which slowly floated to its delicate, curved crystal bottom. Robin slid from where he now sat on the sofa onto a single knee.

Incorrectly assuming him somewhat pickled and unable to stand, Marion lowered herself into a seat upon the sofa and tried to see into his eyes.

"Marry me now," he told her. "Sod the planning." He did not usually use such language in front of her, but then again, since their engagement became public they were not very often alone. "Sod the rest, the guests, the presents, the pomp. Let us take from all this the part which makes us happy, which is each other. Throw the rest overboard to lighten our journey."

"To-tonight?" she asked, her voice shaky, his request so unexpected-so contrary to what she had to tell him before party's end.

A level of reason returned to his tone. "Well, perhaps not tonight, but tomorrow-or before week's end. The good vicar at Kirk Leaves will gladly assist us, if your chap at Lincoln Greene objects. We have been publicly engaged, all the necessary announcements made for well over a year. You cannot-nor can they-accuse me of attempting to Rochester you to the altar before you discover my mad wife in the attic." His eyes were lit as though from behind, sparking to something inside of him that even she did not often witness. "Kiss me and say yes," he told her. In the absence of her having offered him her hand, the pair of his rested half upon the sofa upholstery, half upon her knees.

"I. I," she had not planned to struggle to get the words out. She forced herself to lean in toward his ear to finish her practiced declaration, which allowed her to render it in a much lower and softer tone. "I'm not wearing any knickers," she said, realizing as she felt one of his hands flex involuntarily near her knee that she hadn't really practiced a follow-up.

---

London's West End, December 1938 - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - A look of puzzled wonderment played upon Robin's face, but only for a moment. "Well," he asked, "where has this saucy lass been these long months of our courtship, I ask you?" his eyes cannily taking in the room's out-of-the-way surroundings as if for the first time.

"Don't worry about that," Marion attempted to assure him. "She's here now."

She reached for one of his hands, but losing her courage at the last minute, settled it benignly over her now-galloping heart, rather than upon the outer curve of her breast, which had been her original intention.

"Free of all other underpinnings as well," she added, by way of encouragement. She tried to think of the slender sheer quality of her frock's fabric, of how little lay between him and her.

But she was finding it very hard to meet his gaze. Not because she in any way feared what was to come next, what she had set herself upon a pathway toward. Rather, because within his once lit-and-animated eyes she could see (even when she wasn't looking) that there was a determination growing, a sense in him that he had just been presented with a puzzle to solve, a paradox to unmuddle. That though his hand may tremble without his direct consent, his mind was not truly yet led along, distracted and entranced as she needed it to be.

She leaned into him, at least partly to continue to avoid his eyes until they would settle into unsuspicious acceptance of what was about to take place. In doing so, her hand still upon his wrist, his hand naturally slid away from her heart and to the side in order to accommodate her sudden closeness.

She kissed him, feeling the peculiar sensation of her undressed thighs, her own skin upon her own skin, somehow signaling decadence to her.

His hand (she could not tell if it still needed her hand upon its wrist to hold it there) nearly floated across the soft, pliable ruchs falling from the neckline in the upper bodice of her frock, both touching and yet not touching her.

There was a brief flare in the fervor of his kissing her back, and sensing it she seized the moment to secure Robin's continued participation.

She took his other hand and moved it further up her leg-her thigh-along the equally sleek, frictionless skirt of her frock until his fingers were necessarily halted by encountering her torso and hip, his thumb having dipped in its journey toward her inner thigh.

Still she kissed him, hoping to kiss away the look nevertheless lingering in his eyes (no matter that they closed every now and again). Hoping that he would not make her attempt every action necessary to consummate the night without at some point also fully joining in.

He broke away from the kiss, and she felt his hands withdraw from where she had placed them. She expected those spots to turn quickly cold. Instead, they continued to give off an unexpected heat.

From his position still on a single knee, he smoothly lifted the long hem of her gown, enough to get his hand underneath it, and began to run it up the back of her (as promised) bare leg. He stopped for a moment and caressed her calf, brought his hand back down so that he might cup her ankle. As she felt his fingers arrive at the lower back of her knee, she realized (with far more understanding and finality than she had before) that there was now, truly nothing-not even so much as fabric-between him and her. Not even the nothing-to-navigate garter belt that she had removed and cast off into a trunk in her bath, worried lest even her maid see it and she be compelled to produce a reason why she did not have it on.

The length of her skirt draped over her legs, over his arms and hands within it, hiding them from view, only as it arched, the tip of her foot and toes occasionally coming into focus from underneath it.

The thought of such freedom, such unencumberedness, coupled with his elevating her leg to the height of his shoulder and kissing at its ankle brought a sound from within her she had not quite expected.

"Stop," Robin said, and she was surprised to hear a command within the sharpness of it.

What could it mean? Was this how he liked to experience such moments? It did not seem like him.

"Stop, I say," and the sharpness remained as he unceremoniously let her leg fall to the carpet, heel first.

"What can you mean?"

She managed, finally, to find her speaking voice. "How can you want that?" She was now a knot of incompletion on both physical and intellectual fronts.

The teeth of his lower jaw began to push against his lower lip. A sign she had long ago deciphered as frustration. "Because I am beginning to feel decidedly manipulated," he told her as he rose, his eyes suspiciously sliding to the side to contemplate her. "...rather than merely seduced."

"Merely seduced?" She remained sitting, her hands now within her lap, but allowed her tone to rise and meet his. "I finally throw myself at you-what you've always been at asking for-what it seems you've always wanted-and you find it 'merely' seductive?" She scoffed. "That is quite enough insult for one night." She cocked her head, waiting for him to withdrawal his accusation.

He did not.

Were Marion anyone else, he would have put one hand to the high-back davenport and leaned in as he spoke, more than slightly threateningly, but something about her-about their exchange-left his back stiff, unwilling to accommodate any inclination that might be interpreted as 'bowing' to her will-even if merely physically. "And may I, then, find it insulting that, rather than your replying promptly to my offer of immediate marriage, you choose instead-with no impetus, nor invitation by myself-to hide, yes, I think hide-what I can only assume will be your refusal by attempting to distract me with sex?" His eyes searched hers wildly, intent on truth-and explanation.

She could not believe what she was hearing. All her planning, all her hopes. Her hopes to show him she did care for him, to persuade him that she would marry him-in time. Her plan to convince him beyond shadow-of-a-doubt that what she had to tell him this night would alter their arrangement not at all. That she would give him this thing. No, that they would share this thing, make this memory, strengthen this bond. This, that would carry him through. That, (she did not particularly care to think of it this way) would placate him, until the wedding. Her own ire flared. "How dare you insinuate that this-THIS-would not be something meaningful for me. That it is not with great consideration and, and emotion that I have decided upon this."

Robin moved aside, putting the long, low table, the lone flute of champagne he had brought with him, between him and her. His body was as tense as though he had endured a spell of being tied on the rack. His hands were beyond even the calming power of juggling either lone cigarette or engraved silver case.

"Well, see, my love," he told her, though the tenderness conveyed by the intonation of 'my love' was somewhat dubious at the moment, "that is where your scheme has fallen short. After two years of saying, very firmly (and even, very fairly) 'no', it makes little sense to change your mind so utterly one Christmas night when I have not even been at play-chasing you." He paused as though she might wish to speak.

She did not.

"I did not work you up into such a state of arousal. Rather, I honorably offered to marry you within the week-if not sooner-at which time your long-held goal of, as I recall, 'not lying down until I never have to get up again' could be accomplished. And at which time we might have aroused one another, quite legally, 'til our dying days. Here," he indicated the room they occupied, "you attempt to befuddle my mind, hoping, I can only assume (and it is not a very pretty assumption) that I will not notice your failure to reply to my matrimonial suggestion."

With his speech, some of the tension had leeched out of him. But not all.

"Very well," Marion said, now rather cold all over, save the top of her head which threatened to reach the boiling point at his outraged lecture aimed at her. "I cannot marry you straightaway. There is no time." Out of the corner of her eye she caught an unwelcome glimpse of a small portrait sitting upon the mantel, of her mother as a young woman.

"But I have just said," Robin reiterated. "We shall cast off all such chaff as planning and balls, soirees and teas. The Earl's tenants do it every day, and I am assured it is quite official."

Would he not stop speaking of hurrying along their wedding? Would he not stop queering her pitch (however ignorantly), making it ten-to-the-twentieth times harder to say what she had resolved to say this night? She made her first attempt.

This was meant to have followed a very passionate, sincere, and satisfying bout of lovemaking. If possible, while still lying in one another's arms. As was, there was no way to cushion the blow, and the news she had meant to relate cheerily, with a by-the-by breeziness, (news over which she had hoped-thought-they possibly might even further celebrate) abruptly turned sour on her, naked and unpleasant as the wizened Emperor in his 'new clothes'. "No, I," having lost her preferred method of delivery, she dropped her head, unable to meet his gaze. She set to picking at a thread on the mustard upholstery of the seat. "There is no time. I am to..." she lifted her chin, resolving to be ashamed no longer, but rather than seeing him she could only meet the unblinking eyes of the young woman, her mother, in the mantel's small portrait. "I am committed to doing something that will make me more at home in my marriage."

She did not have to look at him to know that his face fell.

"I am leaving at the year's start for the American Equestrian Circuit."

If the certain frequency of high notes (as sung by an opera singer) shattered glass, the silence that followed her confession/announcement must have knit the glass in the bottles that surrounded them more tightly than any forge fire, bonded the crystal in the stemware to a strength beyond breakability. While enacting the opposite upon them. Marion and Robin: coming apart.

"With the horse," he added flatly to her declaration, his voice that of air deflating from a zeppelin, his eyes closing in comprehension of the past three-quarters of an hour.

"Yes," she tried to inject her response with excitement and anticipation, this trip something to look forward to-to be proud of, "with Beau. It is a chance-a chance for both of us," she continued passionately, indicating the horse, "to experience something. You, you cannot understand." She looked at him, dressed as sharply as any dandy, yet never exuding such sycophantish idiocy. She began to speak without censoring herself, never having planned to lay the many jealousies, the many irritations and fears she had of him at his doorstep-much less to do so tonight. "You have been to school, earned your place at university. You have the option every day to occupy a desk at a respected soliciting firm in the City (an option which you rarely exercise, save between two and four of the clock on the odd day of the month when you are not suffering a hangover). You vacation on the Continent, travel without the Earl how and when it pleases you. You have access to learning," here her voice threatened to break. "To people of note and significance. You have the world, Robin-you need but only ask and if you cannot go to it, it will be brought to you." She wondered if the tears assembling in her eyes spoke to him more of outrage or sadness. "Even my own post is first shuffled and screened through my mother or her maid before being handed to me. That they may know who is writing, even if they have not stooped to breaking the seals on such letters in several years."

He could not be unmoved by the zeal with which she spoke, letting that emotion cover over her less-than-ringing endorsement of him and his ways. "Yes, then, we shall go together," to him it solved everything. His voice quickened to match her earlier enthusiasm. "We can marry now and easily have our trunks ready for shipping-or go and buy what we best need when we arrive." He was about to smile.

"I have said," she interrupted that smile, sticking to her key points, refusing to be distracted from them. "There is no time for a wedding. There will be time when I return."

He cocked his head at this. Again at further sussing what she was up to-this grand idea (and any preparation it required) hardly springing into existence overnight, much less the execution of it. And yet he, the fiance, unaware of it-even as a distant pipe dream, much less as a coming-on fact. "I had no idea you so enjoyed such planning," he said, sarcasm growing behind his words. His eyes narrowed. "You never cared for society before."

"Society," she huffed with disgust. "As a wife," she willed herself not to look again to her mother's portrait, "what else might ever be my domain?"

He studied her for a moment, assuring himself she knew what she was saying-what she had implied before throwing it back in her face. "And is my heart, then, not enough?" he asked, his words staccato with emphasis, his eyes ablaze.

How could she do this to him? Say such a thing. The other things: his perceived sloth, his uselessness to the greater scheme of the world, his free-wheeling, spendthrift ways, his inability to stop before exceeding the line drawn at excess with drink and dame-the ridiculousness of his person. These he was more than acquainted with from any discussion with his father, from (at times) Mitch, and any number of headmasters and even other women he had taken out.

But to hear Marion, the woman who had changed his world (if not his habits), Marion say that his heart was not enough for her...that she must also pursue some personal goal-some personal glory-in a distant place, without him. Well, in that moment he knew for the first time that he must be truly worthless. Must be what people said of him and worse.

He was surprised Mephistopheles himself did not rise from under the very carpets of Nighten house and carry him down to Hades.

Marion, the only thing he had wanted in a decade, the only thing to which he had allowed himself to aspire, declaring him not enough, his heart lacking-when his heart was all he had ever had of his own to give anyone. When he was entirely committed to using it to its very utmost for her. When she had made him so happy, simply by existing. Made him invest himself into the next day, when he might see her again. Gave him a reason to wake, to think of a future.

Crumbling, now, the bricks of his foundation compromised and he had never noticed. She loved him not. Not enough. Not as he did her.

His demeanor fell, his voice grasping for explanation. "Is this what you planned to tell me as we embraced in the afterglow of your carnal designs upon my person tonight? That you are leaving me. That my heart is not enough domain for you to rule over? That you would far rather plan a wedding than begin to live a new life together?" He looked at her where she was seated nearly with hate. With a disgust borne of a man who has put his whole self upon the table only to see it rejected, and the embarrassment and hurt of such tempers his original tender feelings into something harder, uglier, and even violent. "It is small wonder you thought to dose me first with a spoonful of sugar."

She opened her mouth, but found she could not yet speak, the change in him so jarring to her.

"God, Marion," he chid her. "Do you know how much I would have hated you for it?"

"No!" she decried what she saw happening in front of her eyes, even without understanding it. "I love you Robin, I truly do." Could he not see? "More than anything!"

Spite was on his tongue. "And yet you find yourself needing a plan to do something to 'make you more at home in your marriage'?" He scoffed hard. "To me? Perhaps it is best you go, Marion. I do not doubt I shall be far from proper company in the upcoming New Year," he hinted, threatening a likely return to his prior dissolute lifestyle of excess and ennui.

Feeling that she had lost entirely her grasp on their conversation, reacting as one gasping for air might, she went with the first thing that came to her mind: outrage that he would blame any backsliding in his life upon her, upon her perfectly rational decision to take this trip. "How can you not do something with your life!" she shouted, thinking, for not the first time, of his obvious prospects where a seat in government was concerned. She felt so envious of him, of his opportunities, those already wasted, and those potentially yet to waste in future. Her head hurt from the force of it.

As he stormed out of the room to locate his hostess (her mother) from the party beyond and beg her pardon for departing early, Marion's final thoughts-through her searing headache-careered around the fact she had not had a chance to tell him-to discuss with anyone-how grave things seemed to be becoming between her parents in the wake of her father's monograph being published. That despite several politicians throughout Europe championing the ideals and clarion call it had set forth, the reception (particularly among her mother's Society here in London) was far cooler. To the point that Lady Nighten feared nothing short of shunning in her future. The low attendance at tonight's party certainly suggested it.

But Sir Edward stood firm, staunchly refusing to renege on what he so fully believed in. Their arguing the point could at times now be heard throughout the house (a sound never heard prior), and Marion had more than once caught two servants in deep discussion bandying about the word 'divorce', their voices silenced only by making her presence known.

The public face and interaction of her parents (even at the family breakfast table), once so pleasant, could now be described as 'frigid' at best.

She could hardly bear to share a room with both of them. She had begun to retreat further and further into her night owl routine, starting later and retiring later, to the point she rarely saw her family, save occasional conversations with her father alone. They two had been so hopeful for the reception of his monograph-containing not a word both did not wholeheartedly embrace and agree with. They had spoken of its being the first crack in dismantling what Germany was trying to build. They had no idea it would signal, rather, the seemingly imminent collapse of their own family.

How could she have explained to Robin that his heart-she thought his heart-was enough, but there was an 'and yet' attached to that statement?

She had been nothing short of horrified to hear her own lips question (though the notion must have been flitting about in her nightmares for some time) that once married, 'what would her life be about other than Society?' It sounded so terrible. A death knell of a type. It sounded so of something she might expect her mother to believe-if not to say.

Her mother, once a brave crusader for right, a respected political mind-who gave it up, turned her back on right and challenging the wrong. Who let a setback-several setbacks-steer her course away from risk, from her own convictions. Who came to settle for presiding over some of the silliest women in London. Society: her only dominion. A woman's bailiwick, its borders entirely domestic, appointed chatelaine to nothing beyond that to which her husband endowed her.

A woman who now risked (perhaps even looked forward to) losing her own husband, the man who loved her best, over a monograph whose set-forth ideals she fully believed. But that she could not acknowledge publicly lest she lose her ever-shaky hold upon her variable kingdom and its shallow-headed (and hearted) minions.

Lady Nighten's position was all she had. And she seemed now set to sacrifice both her own ethics, and her marriage to it.

Marion's mind returned to Robin. The taste in her mouth remained bad to her still, minutes creeping on from when he had walked out of the room, from when she had voiced her 'and yet'.

Knowing she was not likely able to uncork one of the room's many bottles of champagne on her own (certainly she had never done so before), and wishing to see no one else, she grabbed for the still-filled flute Robin had brought in with him, grabbing it off the low table in front of her. Steeling herself for the action, she drank, stopping short only from swallowing the butt-end of the fag he had cast off within it.

Ashes.

Yes, she thought, feeling here and there within her mouth the flecks of grit among the familiar bubbles. That seemed about right.

---

An English berth, an oceanliner, and a departure where the man she loved had not come to see her off. Had offered no kisses, no flowers, no bon voyage or luck to her, to Beau.

She had wondered often if Robin knew she had seen him, as she had stood on the deck with the Mertons, confetti flying, handkerchiefs waving as they pulled away from the dock, headed out to sea.

Among the crowd gathered far below-his telltale silver roadster nowhere in sight-he stood...with Mitch, of course, at his side. He blew no kisses, he didn't wave or cheer. He glared at the boat like one might at a rival Viking's lit funeral barge.

She wanted to shout to him. To will him to make eye contact with her. But she was far too far above, too distant, and if he had caught sight of her he had finished his gazing by the time she spied him. The Mertons milled about her speaking of dinner and cocktails and whether one might need one's full mink or simply a nice stole once out on the open sea.

She watched Robin, even as the dock retreated from view.

---

*And so things between them are until "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree"