Okay! The first chapter was a short one, more like a prologue. From here on out, the chapters are going to get considerably longer, so I'm probably going to pace myself a bit in between postings. But now, we meet up with Maggie - and get a healthy dose of exposition.

Chapter Two: "Dear Donnie…Dear Maggie…"

Maggie Clarke's home, St. John's Wood, London, Feb. 28 – five days earlier

The burgundy leather suitcase lay open on the bed in the master bedroom in Maggie Clarke's house.

Maggie crossed to and fro between her wardrobe and dresser and the bed, adding items of clothing to the suitcase, and trying to ignore the increasingly nagging voice inside her head.

"Don't be silly, Maggie," her friend Beryl had said when they'd met for tea a few days before.

Maggie added a few turtlenecks, a silk blouse and her favorite walking shoes to the suitcase.

Beryl had added her customary three lumps of sugar to her tea, clattered the silver spoon around in the cup and wagged the spoon at Maggie like a teacher lecturing a disappointing pupil. "Nothing good ever comes of trying to revive an old love affair. And yours never even got started, besides that one kiss at his going away party."

Maggie checked the contents of her jewelry pouch – a few necklaces, several earrings, a couple of silver hair combs – and put it into the suitcase's outer pocket.

"He's changed! You've changed! Think of what the years do to a person!" Beryl had prattled on. "And doesn't he talk to corpses? I'd make inquiries into his mental state if I were you, Maggie Clarke!"

Maggie closed the suitcase – or rather, slammed it shut.

Put a sock in it, Beryl, she thought darkly.

She straightened up and stretched her arms over her head, working the kinks out of her back as she looked around the room.

She'd called the house in St. John's Wood home for about six months. After Angus's death, she'd immediately sold the Clarke house in Beaconsfield – ignoring the howls of protest from some of Angus's relatives – and moved to London when a friend told her that the house just off the St. John's Wood high street was going up for sale.

Maggie lifted the suitcase off of the bed, set it by the door and headed downstairs to her library and study.

Her desk – a finely carved Victorian-era walnut desk that she had acquired nine years ago during one of the quieter auctions at Christie's – was arranged so that it faced the window overlooking the street.

The rest of the room was tidy but the desk's surface – the part that wasn't taken up by her laptop and printer – was a litter of papers and odds and ends. Legal documents. Letters from different auction houses and groups for whom she acted as a consultant. A scattering of her business cards: "M.J. Clarke, licensed appraiser of antiques."

For you see, several years before, Maggie had started to embark on a new career path, one that was less stressful - and much more rewarding - than dealing with the machinations of Angus's business.

She sat down at the desk, powered up the computer and checked her email. She found the confirmation emails from British Airways and Amtrak, printed them out and tucked them away in her purse with her passport. Then she turned her attention to the five new messages in the inbox.

There was one from her niece Bryony. Two were from her solicitors, Campbell and Croasdell. One was from her old friend Julia Bradley, who now lived in the D.C. area and wanted Maggie to come visit her at the antiques shop she owned there.

And there was one email sent from a very familiar NCIS address.

Maggie clicked on it and read it, smiling at the latest anecdotes that Donnie shared from his work as the team's chief medical examiner.

Tony had publicly called Gibbs "old-timer" and earned a rather resounding smack upside the head for it. McGee was working on another novel under the nom de plume of Thom E. Gemcity, and trying hard to keep it a secret from Tony. Abby had offered to look after a friend's ferrets, and then had spent an entire afternoon chasing the little rascals all over the building.

What interesting people you work with, Donnie, Maggie thought.

"As for Mr. Palmer and myself, we try to do what we can for our guests. They always have a lot to tell us; it's simply a matter of listening properly," Donnie continued in the email.

Guests. That was a rather interesting term that Donnie had for the myriad corpses that ended up on his autopsy tables during the average week. But also rather touching; he remembered that they'd been living, breathing people once.

Why, she remembered when the London coroner had talked to him during the postmortem on…

Maggie shook her head sharply, trying to head off that train of thought before it entered the station.

Rare were the days that she didn't find herself reflecting on the forces of chaos that had taken Angus Clarke out of her life – and brought Donnie Mallard back into it.

She and Angus had been Mr. and Mrs. Clarke in name only for the last ten years of their marriage, a union that never should have taken place to begin with. In September, she finally decided that she'd had enough and gone to her solicitors to have the divorce papers drawn up. But the discovery of Angus's body in the river, while saving her the expense of a divorce, had been unexpectedly painful.

At the end of the day, however, Maggie Clarke was a free woman. And she'd been rather surprised to learn that Donnie had never married.

They'd gone their separate ways, he back to Washington and NCIS, she to continue carving out her new life in London. But they'd exchanged phone numbers and email addresses during that last moment together by the Thames, and the two of them had regularly kept in touch.

There had been plenty of letters and emails, and the occasional phone call. Most of it was of the "hello-darling-how-was-your-day" variety. And there had been gifts and cards in the mail during the holidays.

But Maggie and Donnie had, for the most part, avoided talking about Angus and the confrontation with Gareth Godfrey. It was still too difficult.

That wasn't the only subject they were tiptoeing around, for that matter.

And then came the email that she had sent him about a month before.

"Donnie, I'll be coming to New York on business in early March. I'm not sure what your timetable will look like, but would you like to get together sometime, either there or in Washington?"

The reply had been almost instantaneous, winging its way across an ocean and five time zones. "Maggie, my dear, I am overjoyed to hear that you will be gracing this side of the Atlantic with your presence. If I might tempt you to join me for a few days here along the Potomac, I can recommend any number of museums and parks to visit, and the Acela is a good fast train."

"Donnie, you haven't changed a jot," Maggie had replied. "You would recommend taking the train instead of flying." And who would have thought that he'd come to treasure that wretched bow tie she'd given him?

He still loved her, she could tell. And she'd admitted that she'd loved him first and best. But something was holding both of them back, and it wasn't just the geographical distance.

Is this how it's going to be? Maggie wondered with more than a touch of melancholy. A long-distance romance with all our words of love exchanged via email? Is it even a romance or just a fond friendship?

Who are we to each other?

Maggie turned off her computer and gazed out into the deepening late winter twilight. It was a conversation that she and Donnie were going to have to have sooner rather than later.

xNCISx

Reviews welcome! (Ducky and the gang will be along in the next chapter.)