Author's note: I had written the whole of "Gerry Wimsey falls in love" before remembering that Dorothy L. Sayers writes his name as "Jerry". My only excuse is that, when he introduced himself to Dorothea, she was picturing the name as "Gerry" and by the time she realised that his family spelt it differently it was firmly in her head (and mine) as Gerry.

List of some Ransome and Sayers characters for the convenience those who less familiar with the "other" fandom

Gerry (or Jerry) Wimsey – The Viscount St. George. Only son of Gerald, Duke of Denver and his wife, Helen. Graduate of Oxford University. (Christ Church) Spitfire pilot. A childless dead hero.

Dorothea Wimsey, nee Callum. Also a graduate of Oxford University (Shrewsbury College). Has been working at Bletchley Park. Gerry's wife for a month. His widow for five years. Not, alas, the mother of his child. A fact for which she will never be forgiven by:

Helen Wimsey, the Duchess of Denver. Gerry's mother and wife of:

Gerald Wimsey, Gerry's father, Duke of Denver and brother of:

Lord Peter Wimsey, Oxford graduate (Balliol), man-about-town, noted book collector and amateur sleuth. Presumably not a hero to Bunter, his valet, although anyone looking through Bunter's private mementoes might be excused for thinking he was. Lord Peter is married to:

Lady Peter Wimsey, better known as Harriet Vane, best-selling detective novelist and also a graduate of Oxford University. (Shrewsbury College). Gets on well with her mother-in-law:

Honoria, Dowager Duchess of Denver, sister to Paul Delagardie, (aged and wealthy connoisseur of women and wine,) and mother of Gerald, Peter and:

Lady Mary, wife to Charles Parker, mother of Charlie (Charles Peter), Polly and Harriet Parker, an ex-communist, and in her youth much admired by:

James Turner, alias Captain Flint, alias Uncle Jim, alias the house-boat man expelled from Oxford Univeristy, "always off somewhere aboard, just when he would be really useful". Brother of:

Molly Blackett, who lives at Beckfoot, widow of Bob Blackett and mother of:

Peggy Brading, nee Peggy Blackett, until recently a WRNS officer. Wife of Jim Brading, mother of Susie Brading, Amazon pirate, first mate and part owner of Amazon (a sailing dinghy) and sister of:

Nancy Walker, nee Nancy (Ruth really, but pirates are meant to be Ruthless) Blackett, also a WRNS officer until a year ago. Mother of Jane Walker and Captain and part owner of Amazon. Amazon pirate and Terror of the Seas (well, the Lake anyway). Wife of:

Commander John Walker, owner and Captain of Swallow, a sailing dinghy (also commands a Royal Naval vessel which does not appear in this story.) Older brother of:

Susan Walker, First Mate of Swallow. Eldest sister of:

Bridget Walker, living at Beckfoot and younger sister of:

Roger Walker, RAF pilot, able seaman of Swallow and younger brother of:

Titty Callum, nee Titty Walker, able seaman of Swallow, wife of:

Dick Callum, Cambridge graduate, brother of Dorothea, Captain of Scarab (a sailing dinghy) enthusiastic bird-watcher and amateur geologist and friend of:

Tom Dudgeon, also a keen bird –watcher. His mother, Ella Dudgeon is a friend of:

Mrs Barrable, also a resident of Horning and former governess to Mrs Callum, mother of Dorothea.

Prologue:

The Viscountess St. George was homeless, unemployed and widowed. She had been a widow for five years, after being a wife for less than 2 months. She had been unemployed for two days. She could not have said how long she had been homeless.

Perhaps she was not yet homeless. She had a bed to sleep in tonight, at any rate. She had handed in her fortnight's notice to her landlady, who would happily have continued to have a real live Viscountess as a permanent feature of her doily-filled parlour without attempting to raise the rent. Perhaps Dorothea had been homeless since the Blitz. The bomb that had killed the neighbours had destroyed the brick-built house in London, the only home she could remember, completely. Perhaps that house had ceased being her home the morning she had left it in her best white afternoon frock and her mother's veil.

Gerry had been late. She had only had to wait for ten minutes with her mother and Titty in the Victorian parish church, but that had been long enough for Dorothea to begin to worry. Gerry had breezed in, charming even in apology. Fifteen minutes later she was married to a Duke's son with slight traces of grease under his fingernails from mending the chain on his motorcycle. Fifteen minutes after that the five of them (Gerry with clean fingernails, now.) were sitting down to a cold lunch. It had been the last time she had eaten in that dining room, Dorothea realised. By half past two her new husband had borrowed ten bob from Ronald Ashwell for petrol and Ronald had borrowed five bob from Titty to be sure of having his train fare back to the base. Half an hour later, Gerry and Dorothea were well on their way to a comfortable country inn not too far from the airfield. Next morning Gerry was in the air and Dorothea was on her way back to Bletchley Park. A month later, she had sat in this fussy parlour, while Harriet Wimsey had told her the news that turned the dreamlike, whirlwind romance into a nightmare.

Nightmare and dream alike seemed unreal now. The occasional reminders of what-might-have-been were as unreal as the signals from Mars had seemed, that first snowy winter at Dixon's farm. Dorothea's world seemed to have shrunk to a few rooms (huts really) and an endless stream of information to be filed, checked, cross-referenced, indexed and correlated. Signals still arrived from the Martians, almost as regularly as letters from her mother. Those seemed real. The rarer letters from her mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law did not. The slightly more frequent ones from Harriet occupied some sort of intermediate level of reality.

And now, suddenly, she had come to an abrupt stop. The interminable procession of days (and nights) where her duty was plain and her next actions were inevitable had ended. She had to decide what to do with the rest of her life. She had a choice. The last time she had made a big decision, she had agreed to marry Gerry. She had loved him. She hoped she had made him happy. She thought she had. She would have stuck by him whatever happened. She had mourned him sincerely and thought of him daily. If, somewhere in the back of her mind, Dorothea Callum, Oxford graduate and generally credited with having "a good head on her shoulders" had realised that her life with Gerry Wimsey might have had more thorns than roses, and that the future Duke of Denver was unlikely to have remained a faithful husband, Dorothea Wimsey was too loyal to ever mention this realisation to another soul.