A/N: This is being written as a birthday present for my sister :) I expect it to be about ten chapters long, so bear with me, I'll try and get them out as quickly as possible. There will be romance and snappy dialogue, never fear, this chapter just ended up being a lot of exposition. Enjoy, and let me know what you think! I 3 reviews.
Set directly after the end of Season Three, so obvious spoilers for that. All rights belong to the creators.
England is cold. Miss Fisher had forgotten this. Or rather, she had forcibly repressed the memory in favor of sunny seaside Christmases and a dusting of snow in July (if you knew where to look). Crossing the equator had brought out a Northern Hemisphere November in increasingly impressive force, and she'd been adding layers at every stopover since. The last fuel-up had seen the addition of a fierce shearling lined jacket and glove set. Phryne accentuated the positive and focused on how fabulous her coat was, and how bracingly exciting it was to fly in sleet.
Her father had no such positive attitude, and had been complaining steadily since Dover.
They reached the ancestral pile of the Fisher family around tea time on an especially murky day. Phryne knew there were fields nearby that could serve as an impromptu airfield out of season, but she reached the house first and didn't fancy a slog back through the muck after. The front lawn, she decided, ignoring her father's protestations, would do very nicely for her purposes.
Which were, in order, to land without dying, get her father through the front door (also without dying), to make an entrance, and to get some hot tea as soon as humanly possible. Preferably tea with whiskey in.
Items one and three were accomplished in one go. A large yellow aeroplane arriving on the lawn brought the whole household out to gawk. Baron Fisher, whose flair for the dramatic was no less than Phryne's, even while airsick and seriously displeased, swung himself from the fuselage before the propellers had even slowed and strode across to the marble steps where Lady Fisher stood.
"Margaret," he said, loud enough for the servants to hear, "If you'll still have me, I've come home."
Lady Fisher stared at her husband in mild disbelief, looked past him to where Phryne was deplaning herself, and then back to the Baron.
"Margaret?" he repeated, much quieter.
"Yes, all right," she said. The last consonant was lost as the Baron leaned down and kissed her thoroughly.
"And now if you'll excuse me, my dear," he said, "I am going to go inside and be violently ill."
The servants parted before him and then turned back to Phryne, to see if there would be a second act to the afternoon's entertainment.
Phryne shook her hair out after the flying helmet and approached. "Hello, Mother."
Lady Fisher regarded her daughter for a moment, with what anyone else would have classed a cool eye, but Phryne recognized as the appraising glare of her childhood and adolescence. Checking to see that all the pieces were there, both inside and out. Finished, she stepped forward and wrapped Phryne in strong hug. Phryne smiled into her shoulder and hugged her back. She knew her mother's quiet voice and reserved air masked a passionate heart and caustic wit, first forged in opposition to her sister Prudence's overbearing presence, later sharpened on the harsh streets of Collingwood. It was one of the few weapons known to lead the Baron back in line, and woe betide anyone who crossed her—or her family.
"Are you going to be leaving that there?" Lady Fisher asked, nodding to the plane.
"I think it looks good there. Where would you like me to put it?"
"The neighbors' lawn, for a preference." She nodded to two of the servants, who hustled into the mist to retrieve the luggage from the plane, and walked with Phryne into the house.
"What have the Wardlow's done now?" Phryne asked. "Surely they can't run chickens in the winter."
"News travels faster than aeroplanes, Phryne." Her mother retrieved the unread paper from the front table and handed it to her. "Last I checked, we'd migrated back to page six. We were on the front."
Phryne pulled her gloves off with her teeth and angrily flapped the paper open. She didn't bother to read past the words, "The Fraudulent Fishers Are At it Again!" before slapping it down in disgust.
"Utter nonsense!" she said.
"Is it, though?" Her voice was tired, and for the first time Phryne noticed that her mother's usually impeccable posture was sagging. She looked resigned, and it brought the memories of Janey's disappearance flooding back. The defeat that set in, after weeks of searching and fighting for the attention of the police. The depression that set in after that. Phryne shivered, and tossed her hair back.
"I don't know about you, Mother, but I think we need tea before anything else. Strong tea."
The servants hadn't made it back to the kitchen yet. Lady Fisher waved Phryne into a seat and set about making the tea and rustling up some biscuits.
"I haven't accepted an invitation in weeks," she said. "Barely left the grounds. I dare not go to London."
"You can't let silly gossip stop you from living your life," Phryne protested. "Why, if I listened to every rumour that went around about me, I'd never have time for anything else."
"It's different when you're younger." Lady Fisher sank into the chair opposite. "I've lived a gossip page life, Phryne, even if it never was as flash as yours. Which I do follow, by the way. And which I have questions about." She smiled, and Phryne laughed in delight at the flare of spirit. "Being one of the Melbourne Stanleys guaranteed it almost from birth, and then marrying your father, then inheriting all this..." Her voice trailed off as she took in the vast kitchen around her. "I've rolled in accusations of being over-privileged and undeserving all my life, in one way or another. And just when I'd settled into what I thought could be a relatively scandal-free old age—barring any contributions from you, of course—our title gets called into question once again, and my marriage becomes the subject of every tea table maven from here to Yorkshire. Meanwhile, I'm stuck in this house, listening to the servants gossip and wondering if I'll have the money to pay them at all."
Phryne reached across the table to take her hands. "I am so sorry, Mother, truly I am."
"Oh, don't apologize to me, Phry. I know you've done your level best. You always have." She leaned in to mock-whisper, "But if you could just relocate that beautiful aeroplane to the middle of Lady Wardlow's winter garden, that would be splendid."
Lady Fisher took her strongly doctored tea and vanished into the recesses of the upper floors to suss out her husband, leaving Phryne to herself in the front hall. Jane, who regarded scandal as a foreign concept invented by people without enough to do, was visiting a friend overnight and was due back tomorrow. She had been spending the year with her adopted grandmother, after her year abroad and before she returned to Melbourne to live with Phryne and attend a progressive girl's high school. Either Lady Fisher had kept her growing troubles to herself, or Jane had been under strict injunction not to tell, because Jane's weekly letters home had carried no warning of the catastrophe that was her father's latest "adventure." Whichever it turned out to be, Phryne didn't blame her; she only wanted to see her again. The large house was too quiet. Staring servants glided silently by in the shadows. She missed her chosen family in Melbourne. She remembered why she'd left this place.
The butler, Mr. Shields, appeared at her elbow. "A telegram for you, Miss Fisher. From Melbourne."
"Speak of the devil," she said, taking the slip of an envelope off the proffered tray.
"Eugene Fisher found guilty all charges stop Executed for murder this morning stop All condolences to your family stop."
Phryne turned it over, then checked the envelope. "Is this all that came?"
"Yes, miss. And the evening paper."
She glanced over the paper with a sinking feeling. Her suspicions were confirmed. The Fisher family was front page news once again—below the fold, at least.
"Will that be all, miss?"Mr. Shields' cadaverous presence was another staple of the household, with his shoe-black hair and ageless expression of supreme distaste for all things. They had terrorized each other in equal measure whenever Phryne had been home from school. She rather thought he came with the house and would remain so for eternity—and possibly beyond.
"It's quite enough, thank you, Mr. Shields."
"Very good. Miss," he said, and disappeared into the house once more.
Supper that evening was silent and separate. Phryne dressed and came down, only to find the dining room empty. She found her way to the kitchen from memory, to be met with a wall of indifference from the cooking staff, who informed her that her parents were dining from trays in their respective rooms. Too tired from non-stop flying to do more than accept this, Phryne requested her own tray and returned upstairs. She slipped into pajamas and her black silk robe and sank back on the bed. This house cowed her, and she didn't like that feeling one bit. The staff either didn't know her or they knew her too well, and seemed disinclined to make friends in either case. She turned on her side. She would never admit it to anyone, but sometimes all her gallivanting could be a bit exhausting. Especially when there as no one to gallivant with.
Her eye fell on the Melbourne telegram, propped up on the bedside table. It wasn't signed, but she knew it had to be from Jack. It had been sent today, which meant he was still in the city. Of course he was. He would have had to wrap up the case, give evidence, fill out mountains of paperwork, no doubt. All part of being the diligent, honourable man he was. He had said he would never ask her to change, and she could do no less than grant the same to him. No matter how much she wished he had simply dropped everything and followed her.
She closed her eyes. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, she would get up, lock her parents in the conservatory if that's what it took to get them to work things out properly, fix whatever nonsense the Wardlow's were spouting at her mother, and show the world the Fisher's didn't give a bee's sting what other people thought of them. Tomorrow perhaps the cold rain that had started at sunset would let up. Tomorrow.
A knock sounded at her door. "Come in," she said, expecting her dinner tray.
Instead, Mr. Shields swung the door open and intoned from the doorway, "There is a bedraggled—person, at the door, asking for you. Shall I send them away?"
Phryne sat up and frowned. She hadn't told any of her old acquaintances she was coming, and news of her arrival couldn't have traveled that fast. "Who is it?"
"I'm sure I don't know, miss," Mr. Shields said, with towering disdain. "I believe it may be a man."
Phryne frowned and brushed past him, padding barefoot down the curving main staircase. A wet brown figure stood just inside the door, dripping onto the inlaid parquet floor. It looked up as she reached the bottom of the stairs. Phryne caught sight of the face beneath the hat brim and a breathless smile spread across her own.
"Shall I send him away, miss?" Mr. Shields repeated, behind her.
"Don't you dare," she replied.