A/N: I would like to thank all of my lovely followers and reviewers for keeping up with this story! It is very appreciated!
Heads up for upcoming chapters: Chapter five, which should be up sometime in the next three or four days, is shorter than these previous ones at only three thousand some words. That is because I originally wrote chapters five and six combined with the word count amounting to over nine thousand words, which I consider too long for a fanfiction chapter. I tried to divide them as close as possible into two separate chapters, but because of the way the scenes fell, I had to leave one shorter than average and the other longer.
Trigger Warning: This chapter contains strong mentions of sexual assault. Obviously, as the story is rated T, there is nothing explicit; however, take it to heart if it may bother you.
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Lucy's face drew near to him. "Good morning, my sweet," purred the pretty blonde, her flaxen hair falling over his face and tickling his cheeks. Sweet minted breath wafted into his mouth and nose as she exhaled through luscious pink lips. "Did you sleep well, Ben?" Her nude body cradled against his, her curves falling into his muscles. His breath hitched. "Ah, there's no need for that. You know we're married now, love—not to worry." One seductive long finger traced his face down his cheekbone. "What stubble for such a barber. What'll the customers say, eh?" She giggled. "Anyway, the sign's turned and everyone knows we're closed. I thought maybe we could go out for breakfast, then…"
Her skin tone began to shift from fair to slightly darker with a dusting of soot under the eyes, laugh lines deepening around her mouth, lips shifting from pink to sheer red and azure eyes darkening to milky chocolate. The blonde hair kinked upward and changed to brown, and Mrs. Lovett kissed his cheek. "Then we'll move down to the seaside, won't we, Sweeney? If the business stays this good, respectable business we got here, Mr. Todd, just got to get the judge out of the way, that nasty bugger, then we'll all be free—"
She shrank down into a baby with its jaws parted and it wailed, and he wrapped his arms around dear little Johanna, and she grew again back into Lucy with her mouth wide in an O unable to breathe. Her neck split open like he'd slashed it and blood poured against him and around him, eyes peeled to the ceiling. The O of her mouth extended. Popping and crackling met his ears as her jaws broke, and then silence resounded. Her lower jaw touched her chest. The gaping hole of her mouth bled around the stretched lips. Silence, complete silence that filled his chest as he scrambled back across the bed away from her. Where was his razor?
A shriek pierced the air of his sleep budding from Lucy's mouth, and he shook upward from his sleep with a gasp and chilled sweat all over his torso. The scream didn't cease into his wakefulness. "Ah!" He covered his head with his hands a moment and shrank into himself. Terror clutched his insides for the moment that the paralyzing thought passed through—that his nightmares had come alive to haunt him.
Then the shriek ceased, and after a pause long enough for a hearty breath, it began again, and he froze in his bed at a more horrifying realization. "Mrs. Lovett." He started up from his bed, clothed in his thin sleeping shirt and yesterday's bloody black pants, a razor still in the pocket. He grabbed another razor from the desk and lashed down the stairs, barreling without a glance into the pie shop. "Mrs. Lovett!" he shouted. The snow flurried in a cloud kicked up by his bare feet.
"Mr. Todd! Help!" wailed Toby. His hands and feet were bound and he sat in the parlor floor with a failed gag wrapped around his neck.
Swinging around the corner, a young man, no older than twenty, stood sentry outside Mrs. Lovett's door. "It's the barber!" he cried, and Sweeney rushed at him, and he ducked into the open bedroom door, narrowly missing the back of the youth's neck with the swipe of his razor. "Get off it and let's go!"
A masked man rolled from on top of the bed, from on top of Mrs. Lovett. She shrieked again. The man's bare ass gleamed in the window as he struggled to pull up his knickers. Sweeney watched his dick flop in the air. Consumed in rage, Sweeney pounced, ready to seize the man by the hair and slit his throat, but the fat man shoved the youth at him. The teen fell forward onto the razor and slammed into Sweeney so that they both tumbled unceremoniously onto the bed, bounced off of the loose mattress, and rolled onto the floor. Blood poured out of the kid's mouth. He struggled to stand, to speak, when Sweeney shoved him off and snatched the gleaming blade free of the gaping wound, but he collapsed again. Droplets scattered crimson off of the sharp edge of the razor and onto the floor.
Paying the wounded man no heed, he sprinted again through the parlor and after the perpetrator. "Get back here, you scum!" The blimp of a man stumbled over the door jamb, and Sweeney seized him by the hair, this time not missing his mark. From the mask, darting, beady eyes glinted. He raised his razor again, but the man kicked off from the wall. The door latch broke, and they plummeted together onto the snow. The enemy grabbed Sweeney by the back of his shirt and threw him down the stairs. His head slammed onto the concrete, and everything darkened for just a moment, but a moment enough for the attacker to be out of the reach of his hand and his blade.
His eyes blinked blearily up at the moonlight. A shadow passed over him, and fast footsteps followed. "Toby," he whispered.
"Don't worry, Mr. Todd!" bellowed the boy. "I'll get him!" His bare feet sprayed up a fine dusting of snow, a meat cleaver in his right hand.
"Toby, don't—" The boy was already long out of sight, vanishing into the December night. "Oh, god above, guide my path." Pushing himself up onto his knees, the world spun, but he persevered. "Mrs. Lovett!" he called, voice broken while he reached for his razor. "I'm coming!"
Another scream. He tried to rush, but he kept tripping and staggering. "Get off me! Get off me, you nasty little ratbag!"
The youth crawled onto the bed. "Please," he whispered, blood draining from his pale face. "Help me, missus. Please, help me."
Sweeney grabbed him from behind and slit him ear to ear. The blood sprayed over the bed and the walls and Mrs. Lovett's frightened face and Sweeney's arms and face. Then, tossing the writhing body onto the ground, he kicked it and stomped on its face until blood ran out of the ears and all movement ceased from it. He shook all over, his hands and his toes. He reached for the wall to lean on for support. A long silence passed between them, him afraid to look at her at all. Then, his hoarse voice managed, "You screamed," but it quivered so badly he was hardly articulate. He willed his lips and tongue to still. "Like I asked you. Good girl."
She buckled at the neck and buried her face in her hands, hair tumbling around her head. A strong shudder passed through her, and then she sniffled. He fumbled for her in the darkness and found her shoulder with one firm hand. With surprising force, she snatched him by the front of his wet shirt and pulled him to her. "Mrs. Lovett," he tried to coax. She wracked harder and burrowed her face into his chest. A wail muffled into him. "Mrs. Lovett…" He didn't know how to comfort her, what he could even begin to offer her. "Are you hurt?" She clutched his shirt and didn't answer, breath heaving. Then she sobbed again. He lowered his voice, and sang softly to her, "Mrs. Lovett, what a charming notion, eminently practical and yet appropriate as always. Mrs. Lovett, how I've lived without you all these years I'll never know."
She sniffled and snorted and squirmed, and he loosened his hold on her to give her plenty of space to move. He continued, "Nellie," in a soft tone, and using his hand, he tucked one curl behind her ear. "Tell me something."
Lifting her hand, she wiped snot and tears from her own cheek and left a bloody smear in its wake. "I'm alright," she choked. A few more tears fell. "I'm alright, he didn't—'e didn't get to his business, just scared the—" She paused and swallowed hard. "Scared the devil outta me." She pinched her fist tighter around his shirt like a baby clasping a pretty trinket, reluctant to have it taken away.
With his thumb, he dashed another tear away and left another red smudge on her face. Her gown hung from her shoulders, the buttons broken and the corset underneath ripped open in the back. She had teeth marks on the side of her neck, and her lips were swollen. "It's alright now," he whispered, and he hoped the words meant something to her.
She wiped off her mouth. "He tasted like lard and dirt," she spat. Another shudder passed through her, and he realized dimly that she was cold—that he, too, was cold, drenched to the skin from his roll about in the snow, his feet burning from plunging into the icy hell completely bare. "Did you see his eyes?" she whispered after a moment.
"Yeah."
"I did."
"What do they look like, to you?" Goosebumps erupted over her neck and shoulders, and she massaged the darkening bruise where he'd bitten her.
"What they look like to you?" he asked in turn.
"Looked like that slimy beadle's to me." She swallowed hard. "Looked a lot like that slimy beadle's to me, if that ain't too bold an accusation to make against a man."
Sweeney was silent for a long moment. Then, he sighed. "I thought so, too." The harrowing expression on his face darkened as his vengeful eyes brightened. "I'll be ready to off the porker if he shows his greasy rolls of neck fat around here again. Lop off his pecker if I get the opportunity while he's still there, squirming."
"Oye, can we not talk about peckers right now, Mr. T?" She arched an eyebrow at him distastefully. Then, she loosened her hand from the front of his shirt. Her limbs quivered, but she didn't shed another tear. Nerves of steel, he thought. Then her words repeated in his mind: "I'm no stranger to being manhandled." He swallowed hard and averted his eyes from hers. His hands also quivered, and she patted the back of his hand and gave the thumb a slight squeeze. "The body," she said after a moment.
He looked back to her. "What about it?"
"We gotta get it downstairs, what before Toby sees and finds out what we been doin' with them." She struggled away from him, swaying on her feet. He fumbled after her, both bumping into each other dizzy with panic and sleepiness, Sweeney struggling to squint through his bleary eyes. The scraped side of his face burned in the cold air.
Voice gruff, he said to her, "Get the cellar door and I'll throw him down the stairs." He plucked the thin frame of the youth up by the arms and dragged it backwards. A bloody streak followed it on the floor. Several times, Sweeney paused and staggered, and once at the door frame, he almost plunged after the body. Mrs. Lovett grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back.
The faint firelight allowed her to examine him after they closed and locked the cellar door. "He knocked you one good, didn't he?" she whispered, tracing the scraped part of his face with her forefinger. He winced. "Let's sit in front of the fire and warm our bones. You're all wet." She strummed at his soaking shirt as he placed his hand on the small of her back, and together they lurched into the armchair, nestled in front of the shrinking flares of embers like spoons. Her dress kept slipping down, and she kept pulling it back up. He tried to pull the strings of her corset taut for her, but they were ripped irreparably. "Don't bother. Gonna have to pitch the whole lot in the morning anyway." She dragged it back up over her bosom.
For Christmas, he would buy her a new gown. She had such limited clothing, anyway, and then this? It wasn't fair.
Limping footsteps struggled into the shop with puffing breaths. "Mr. Todd? Mrs. Lovett?" Toby's voice quaked. "I—I caught him, he threw me right good, he threw me by my hair." He slogged into the parlor and paused at the sight of them in the armchair. "Mrs. Lovett?"
"Come here, Toby, love," cooed the shopkeeper. One of her cold hands squeezed Sweeney's to keep him quiet and his expression soft. The child hobbled into the room, his feet blue from the snow. "Sit in front of the fire and warm your little feet, son," she soothed. "Nothing's gonna harm us now." She glanced out of the corner of her eye to Sweeney and tried to smile in reassurance, but it looked like more of a grimace. Her head lolled over to rest on his shoulder, and a long sigh passed through her lips, eyes drifting closed.
After a few minutes of rubbing his feet, Toby lowered his head, and Sweeney sensed the boy would start to cry, so he interrupted, "Toby, will you warm some water so that Mrs. Lovett can wash her face?" before the boy could snivel and embarrass himself. The lad hopped to his duties with a slight limp on his frigid feet, and Nellie didn't stir, either asleep or too preoccupied to care. He smoothed her hair behind her ear again. Kiss her. The urge arrested his insides so he had to avert his eyes to keep from following it.
She shifted and curled closer to him, her delicate, delicious body pressing closer to his. "I'm fine," she whispered, parting sleepy brown eyes. "I tell you, a good manhandling never hurt me in the past—never will in the future, I don't suppose." She puckered her split lip at him. He couldn't tell if it was smeared red with blood or still swollen from the other mouth forced upon it.
"That was more than a little manhandling," he said slowly.
He worked hard to hold her smooth brown gaze, but she deterred their interlocked gazes and instead mumbled, "Not the worst thing that's ever happened to me under this roof," while staring hard into the fire.
When she stared into the flames, it cast her brown eyes amber with the blaze, giving her all the more alluring aura, but ambivalence twisted inside of her so that he wasn't sure what to touch to comfort her. "What do you mean?" he murmured, trailing his index finger over the back of her hand.
One hand busied itself with a dangling string of her dress. She didn't try to snip it off; she fiddled with it, uncertain. Her eyes cast away from him, she spoke softly, and he listened with rapt attention. "Well…" She cleared her throat. "Albert and I married when I was seventeen, but he was much older than me—I suppose you knew that—by twenty-five years. My father's second cousin, married out of convenience more than anything else." She exhaled in a reluctant puff, like she didn't really want to speak at all. But he didn't offer her to stop, nor did he encourage her to continue. She did so without his prompting.
"Al knew what he wanted from me. A housewife and a mother for his children. I would have played the part, I suppose. Fit half of it, anyway. But," another wistful gust left her parted lips, "my womb was as barren as the Sahara Desert." She quivered at the hands, and he squeezed her fingers to try to soothe them with warmth. "Al wouldn't have any of it. Couldn't believe he'd been so shorted. But he couldn't divorce me. Neither of us had the money, and he didn't dare cross my father. Blamed himself, he did, for the plight. Sure, blamed me, too, but he didn't believe in a such thing as a girl who couldn't carry a child. And—well, let's just say he sometimes had problems getting it up."
Sweeney fought very hard with himself not to snort derisively at that remark. The portly Albert Lovett, unable to get a rise from his own wife. It fit well with the story, he thought.
"So he paid off two of his friends to take care of the problem. If he couldn't knock me up, some other man could." She picked at her fingernails. "So they came around while I was baking pies one morning, while Al was at work. I didn't know nothing of it. Would've run away if I had—wasn't daft, even as a child. I knew better than to bother with men who have that demon in their minds. Dragged me back to the bedroom kicking and screaming like all of hell. But if anybody heard, they sure didn't give no indication of it."
She looked away from the fire back up to Sweeney's face. "I decided that night that I wouldn't scream no more. Doesn't matter how a peasant woman screams because there's no one there to listen. Law only protects the rich and offs the poor. Any fool knows that. Not worth sacrificing my pride if it will save me nothing at all. Better to bear the burden silently."
Jaws tight, he lifted her chilled hand to his lips and pressed his lips to the back of it. They left a damp imprint with pink tinging where he'd scraped them on the ground outside. "You screamed tonight. That's what matters," he whispered.
Slow, she nodded, leaning closer to rest her head on his shoulder once again. "You came for me." She settled there beside him, eyes still slanted open and her hand loosely squeezing his. "I wasn't sure that you would," she admitted. She moved her dark eyes up to his, lips puckered slightly until they brushed his stubbled cheek just at the corner of his mouth, testing him. He didn't move away from her.
Toby hobbled back into the room. "I've warmed some water and put it in the basin for you, ma'am."
They split. Sweeney stood and pulled his hand from hers. "Come along, boy. Let's give Mrs. Lovett some privacy." He made eye contact with her once, and she nodded with a grim smile on her face, probably hoping to assuage the boy's fears and worries. She mouthed to him, "Gin," and he rolled his eyes, though he nodded anyway.
He led Toby into the dark wood-floored shop. Their bare feet didn't clomp onto the wood the way the sound echoed when they wore shoes. No sooner than he began to rifle through the cabinets in search of a gin bottle, he regretted leaving her—he regretted putting himself in this compromising position with the boy. He didn't like children. He had never liked children. He didn't get along well with them. True, he had had Johanna as a baby, but babies were different than children. A baby demanded few things. Children required socialization and playtime and adequate food and shelter and physical touch, and any lacking of those things could make a child grow into a barmy adult. He couldn't stand that sort of responsibility.
Clearing his throat, he found the gin and two shot glasses. "You alright, kid?"
"Yessir." Toby's pouty face stared at the wall for a long, tired moment, one hand running through his short, coarse hair. "I jumped on him. He threw me. Could've held on, but I was trying to get the cleaver in him. It didn't work." He paused a moment to drink from the glass that Sweeney pushed his way. "I thought I knew his eyes, sir," he whispered after a moment. "Them eyes, I think I've seen them before somewhere. Can't place it. They was real mean eyes." The child didn't down it all at once. He sipped the way some men would tea or coffee, like the burning taste didn't distract him at all, like he savored it. "Mr. Todd, sir?"
"Yes?"
"I thought you comin' down here was real brave-like. Like Odysseus from that story they told us at the spike. There's a big ole cyclops in here and you don't even care if it's between you 'nd Mrs. Lovett. Going on a quest to get your way back. Odysseus, he's a real hero. I wanna be a hero like him one day. Like you."
Child, if you only knew. A smirk cracked his lips, and he swallowed his shot of gin to disguise it. He gulped it hard and loud. "I'm glad you think so highly of me," he replied instead, tone dry and sardonic. Toby didn't appear to notice. He traced the rim of the glass with his forefinger. All the problems stacked themselves in his head. Cleaning up the shop and the clothes, hiding the mess from Toby, his bloody face and dirty razors, Mrs. Lovett's torn clothing. He wanted to sleep. But after his nightmare, he feared returning to his bed as well.
The boy interrupted his reverie. "It ain't just me. Mrs. Lovett looks at you like you're the whole wide moon, or Jesus, or something, no blasphemy intended." Sweeney poured him another shot, but his eyes had brightened with interest, and he didn't impede the boy's speech. "Sorta like she touches gold whenever she looks at you, like she gets this idea she's touching something precious. Kinda greedy-like but also real soft-like. She thinks you're the best stuff on earth, she does. Like she cares an awful lot for you." Toby paused to gulp from his gin, then he continued, "I thought you was real scary when I first saw you, but then, Signor Pirelli scared the devil outta me, and I thought anybody willing to cross him had to be barmy. Awful glad he run off, I am. But then Mrs. Lovett didn't chase me off, and she likes you, and I figure any friend of Mrs. Lovett's can't be no enemy of mine, and it turns out you're a real hero-like."
Toby's voice slurred off at the end as his speech became a little less coherent, and Sweeney closed the lid on the bottle, lest he poison the boy with the gin flooding his system. A real hero-like. He sighed. An unsettling fondness stirred within him, not one that he cared to examine while he was exhausted and battered. "Then I'm glad you're not afraid of me," he said. Might be better for you if you were. But as long as Toby wasn't afraid, he wouldn't grow suspicious. As long as Toby trusted them—both him and Mrs. Lovett—he could remain ignorant. But what would happen as years passed? Toby would grow into a teenager, and then a man, and eventually, he would catch on.
If the pattern continued, Toby would certainly need to die. Sweeney ground his teeth. He'd never in his life hurt a child, and he didn't intend on starting now. The oblivious lad jarred him once again from his muddled worries, this time probing, "Why would someone want to do that to Mrs. Lovett?" Big eyes peered upward at him, nervous and a little ashamed. "Why would a man want to hurt her?"
Sweeney wanted another shot. He didn't take it. "Some men feel entitled to the world around them. The women, the good jobs, the nice clothes, the best food. They think they can take what they want and leave the mess at the curb for the rest of us to clean up." He glowered at the empty glass. "Once you're so rich, you can afford to be careless and retreat back into your money without a worry."
"I don't ever want anyone to hurt Mrs. Lovett." Toby's brow fuddled in the middle. "I don't want anyone to hurt anybody just because they think they can, or they ought to."
"Me neither, boy." I don't want anyone to hurt Mrs. Lovett. For the last part, he could not attest. How many lives could he claim in a day? It varied on how many wandered into his shop.
Toby started speaking again, something almost unhinged, that he hoped one day a woman would look at him that way, and then he slumped over with his face on the counter, dropped asleep. When his body swooned, Sweeney tried to prop him back up, and when that failed, he awkwardly gathered the child into his arms and stumbled to Toby's cot, depositing him on top of it. The sleeper didn't stir, so he pulled a blanket over him and left him there.
For a moment, he stood, directionless, and then Mrs. Lovett's voice chimed, "Sweeney!" and he flinched at the usage of his first name, the name he'd given himself but had seldom heard. He returned to her in the parlor, where she stoked the fire. "Did he fall asleep?"
"Yes."
"That's good." She sighed and stepped back from the heat of the dancing flames. "I was worried he would fight it. Be afraid to go back to sleep. But I suppose he's probably faced worse things in the dark. I suppose we all have." Once again her face and hair were clean, but her face carried a tormented look of mixed fear and exhaustion. "Come here by the basin. I'll wash your face for you." She took his arm and pulled him, and his wearied feet followed her lead to one of the wooden chairs. "There." She continued to tug her gown up over her chest, and it continued to slip back down, the strings and buttons broken beyond all repair. He watched with a drained fascination.
She sponged the water up out of the lavabo and washed his face. The water already was discolored and tasted like blood. He knew the taste well. It entered his mouth often. "There's my handsome barber. A little worse for wear, perhaps, but—well, I guess we'll have shop closed tomorrow, anyway." He hardly heard the last part. Handsome. A warm sigh floated to her lips, and she hovered behind him, hands on his shoulders, for a moment before she requested, voice particularly girlish and weak, "Will you stay down here for the rest of the night?"
He put one of his hands over hers. "Of course." Standing, they moved back into the warm parlor with the cheery wallpaper. He eyed the armchair, Albert's armchair. "You'll let me know if you need anything?"
She hesitated. "I'll stay out here with you, if you don't mind."
Hand extending, he brushed his thumb against her lower lip, hand cradling her cheekbone. "Absolutely." She leaned into his touch, bay eyes cast low. "Are you sure you're alright?" he probed, and she nodded too quickly, fear still hazed upon her expression with a low fog.
She twined her arm in his and sat in the armchair where they both fit easily. "I'm fine," she whispered. "I just… I don't want to sleep. I'm afraid of what I'll see behind my eyelids." She curled up with her legs tucked under her body, leaning against him. He lifted his arm around her shoulders, maintaining eye contact with those smooth, dark brown eyes that glowed so in the firelight. That glowed with the particular insanity he now found so wildly attractive, so undomesticated and free.
Lucy would never have looked so feral. Lucy was a tame bird. You love Lucy. The slew of thoughts plagued him, and his belly twisted, but he didn't reject Mrs. Lovett on her account. He did love Lucy. He loved her as wide as the world. But Lucy was gone. And if she saw him today, she would shrink away in fear. Like a songbird with clipped wings and blinded eyes, she would nurse the seeds out of his hand, but if she tasted the blood that had seeped into his skin, she would panic and flap her pretty broken wings. If Lucy saw him now, she would hate him, the gentle girl who shied if Albert sounded too ferocious at the downstairs wife they hardly knew.
His own voice surprised him. "There's no need to be afraid," he whispered to her. She leaned closer into him. Her breath wafted across his cheeks. It smelled of a baking pie—not a meat pie, but a fruit pie, like an apple pie, with a sweet crust. "I'll stay as long as you need me." He tasted his own blood in his mouth, felt his own heartbeat in his tongue of all places.
She felt it, too, through his chest, where she rested one hand flat. Her lips curled into a smirk. "It feels like you are also afraid," she teased, daring him to admit otherwise.
Intending on coming to his own defense, he parted his lips, but she smashed into him. Her swollen, hot lips landed on his, her deliciously plump body smoothing into all of his firm parts and melting there. She tasted like an apple tart. So pleasant and wonderful and—Not Lucy. His gut rejected him again, and he wrenched their faces apart. "Nellie," he said, yearning but reluctant, face conflicted. "I can't—" He shook his head. "I can't do this."
With surprising composure, she held her expression, her face still inches from his. The disappointment filled her eyes but nowhere else. "I understand," she said. One warm hand pressed to the side of his face. "Two broken plates won't hold gravy any better than one by itself." He didn't understand the analogy, lost in her eyes, lost in his own quandary. "I'll never be her. I know that."
"I know—" His face wrenched up. He wanted to pull away. If she weren't touching him, he could collect his thoughts, and he would decide he didn't want her. If she would leave him, he could pretend she wasn't soft and pink and hazed in the firelight with such lovely curled hair. "I know you're not her, and I don't want you to be. I don't want anyone to be her, ever. No one can be."
"You can't be disloyal to a memory, Sweeney. She's gone." She averted her eyes from him, but she traced a pattern on the back of his hand. The wise words elicited no response from him, the eyes hollow and hurt and itching for some comfort she could not provide. "We could have a life together, you and I. Maybe not how you remember. Maybe not how I dreamed. But… We could get by." She studied his face. The jaw tightened, and he still did not respond. "I'll leave if you like," she offered after a moment, no longer pushing the subject upon him. She would never amount to enough for him, even now.
He clutched her wrist. "Stay." He didn't look at her. But the single word touched her insides. She stiffened for a moment at the abrupt motion, like she braced herself for a strike, and then his tender almost-black eyes saw deep into her soul. "Please." He loosened his grasp upon her. "Stay, Mrs. Lovett."
She was Mrs. Lovett again, and he was Mr. Todd. But he wanted her to stay, and he would stay. "For you, my dear," she whispered, and resting against his supple form once again, she felt she could remain in the armchair with him forever. Even as Mrs. Lovett.
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