Author's note: Thank you, thank you, for the review you've taken time to write and create. I am so glad you are enjoying the story.

A return to the plot was in order, after two gratuitous chapters. I hope you enjoy it.

Please keep reviewing, if you'd like, and enjoy it most of all.

He slid the lock open on the door and pushed his head out into the gap. Lurch stood, silver tray in hand, almost nose to nose with the old wood.

His filmy eyes were mournful as he offered the bottle of wine up.

"Don't look at me like that old man," he hissed, taking the tray from him and stalling the closing door with his foot.

Lurch groaned and shook his head, his neck cracking under the weight.

"Oh don't be so judgmental," he pulled the tray in to the room and let the door fall closed.

"They don't like me."

She said it almost instantly.

He set the tray down on the dresser and turned to look at her. She was pale against the fire. She was already a queen, regal and elegant, in a throne of velvet.

"It isn't that," he said, and he really meant it.

She smiled, but in it there was desolation too.

"It's me," he went towards her, "It's me who is their focus of concern."

She pulled his robe tighter around her body – it was loose and too long but she'd adopted it anyway – and tucked her legs under her. He brushed a hand over her shoulder and settled in the seat across from her, setting out the wine glasses he'd poured just before the hearth. The smile was still there as she turned her face towards his.

"It's me," he continued, "They're worried about me, my inheritance…my reputation."

"Does it worry you?"

He shrugged, "Do you think it's worrying me?"

Her mouth quirked up.

"In private savings alone I could see me….and you, through a thousand winters. And they would be winters lined in fur."

She nodded and was silent for a moment.

"But it isn't just money, is it?" She asked.

He'd realised her cleverness over the last few days, the way she knew intimate details of him that he himself was yet to discover. It extended beyond the physical, much to his delight and discomfort, and she seemed to be able to calculate everything he did before he did it.

He pressed his fingers to his lip, smoothed them over his moustache.

"No, no it's not," he murmured.

"Your name…everyone knows, means everything, everything, to you," a pale hand extended out to motion around the room, "And this, the house of your childhood…they could write you out of this."

He nodded, "But yet…"

She awaited his words, her eyes on the fire always. When he did not speak she turned to look at him.

"Yet?"

"Yet here, with you, it matters less," he answered, "And it will always be my name. And if you would agree, it would be yours."

"I can't," she said simply, without irritation or cruelty, "Because I can't make a promise to you and I can't keep it."

"If I can help you keep it, Morticia, would you?"

She smiled coyly, "Of course."

"Then I will find a way," he whispered emphatically, leaning forward into the light of the fire.

She nodded again, "My sister though…"

The silence of shame descended over them, heavy and stilting in the acrid air of the room.

"Well, there is that," he nodded, settling back.

His resentment was full and wholesome and Ophelia, in the hours he had loved and been loved by her sister, had receded to a villainous side-show, a pestilence to be overcome. In the calm, cool moments following the passion he'd suddenly discovered, she would come to him in her pale fullness, her pink lips jutting out in that effected pout that was so opposite to her sister, and then she would claw at him, drawing spurting blood until he lay at her feet, dead.

Despite how good it sounded, and despite how fantastical it would have been at Morticia's hands, it was contorted into a nightmare when Ophelia was involved.

"Easily forgotten here, and now," she whispered.

He felt a grim smile alight on his own lips, "But not out there."

"No," she answered, "Not out there where you are betrothed to her."

He paused in the quiet, his brain working over.

"How does it make you feel? I mean this, us?"

She considered his question, he could see it in her eyes as she looked in to his.

"Shocked."

He gave her a questioning look.

"What I – what we are doing – is something I never thought I would do," she continued, "And it is a simple as that. Love, loyalty, sorority does not even come in to it. I don't even know how to feel those things when all I feel is shock."

"Is it better, or worse, to feel that way?"

She shook her head, "Well, you are the one to ask."

He laughed darkly, "Touchè."

"Does French work the same way when you use it?"

He laughed, "Sadly, no. It is you, my love. Never has it sounded so…vital."

She stood up slowly and went towards the dresser. He hadn't noticed it lying there before, but when she turned around she was cradling his riding crop between curious fingers. He'd only ever used it for riding the vicious stallion who lived on the edge of the land, but she seemed to have quite alternative ideas. He wasn't even irritated that she seemed to have raided his drawers.

"A distraction?" He murmured, standing slowly and moving towards her.

"An experiment," she slapped the crop gently against her palm.

He grinned and pulled her towards him.

-0-

She had Lurch, with curious eyes which glanced over her in the mirror every few seconds, drive her home. She wasn't riled by it; once she saw those faintly blue, soulful, panicking eyes she realised it was not disgust but concern that motivated him.

"You must trust Mr. Addams," she said as he helped her out a block away from her home, "And you must trust me."

The rumble came from deep within his chest as he nodded his head, though whether it was in agreement she wasn't sure.

She walked slowly, despite the brevity of the distance, but she eventually had to concede to returning home. Confronting her parents was not a concern – she'd been economic with the truth so regularly in her dealings with them - out of pity and respect and the desire to lead a private life – that being duplicitous with them was second nature to her. No, it was her sister; her doleful, orb eyes that pulled you in and spat you out just as quickly. Her flitting rage which she focused on one thing until she burned it to cinders, then moved as swiftly on to the next. Morticia had known her rage, perhaps not in its purest form, and she didn't fancy knowing it any more intimately than she already did.

Of course, her struggle to mount the moral high-ground had crumbled to dust in the back of his limo and now she was complicit in a betrayal so huge that it was unbelievable. And that was what made it easier; it was so simple to deny because it was so simple to ignore out of disbelief.

And so she was in an agony of passion instead, which winded her with its unexpected strength. She couldn't think for blushing, couldn't imagine the cries and murmurs and pants of excitement had come from her own scorched larynx, she couldn't believe that, underneath him, she was as undone as she'd ever been.

She could not believe she was suddenly, irreversibly, desperately in love.

The foyer was quiet, as always, because their old butler couldn't reach to the door in time. She slid in and nearly made it to the top of the stairs before she heard a voice behind her.

"Morticia?"

It was her mother, her silent, older, greyer mother. She loved her like she should but she did not admire her, did not wish to lead the life her mother had. She'd been a victim of arranged marriage and had turned to books and potions and cooking to fill the void that a lack of true love had made in her. It had aged her instantly and now she was a wisp of the woman she'd once been.

She turned on the stair, "Mother?"

"You have been with Carmen, all this time?"

Morticia nodded casually, aware her ability to lie was almost professional. Her mother seemed suspicious though and she started to regret her lack of planning; she'd phoned a day ago to say she'd be staying out and it was as good as that and nothing more.

"You do understand that this doesn't do well for your reputation?"

Her mother was gentle with her question, her crooked fingers ghosting out to reach for her though she was an entire staircase away.

"Mama, I was simply with my friend," she said delicately, the lie already weaving itself into her reality.

Her mother looked at her, "I worry about you Morticia."

She smiled in answer, "There's no need."

"Well, I am not convinced of that," her mother began to climb the stairs as she spoke, "And I've always been good at predicting you."

Morticia nodded and set her hand on the banister, "A mother's job."

"Don't be flippant darling."

She touched her mother's shoulder softly, "Mama, I don't know what you're accusing me of."

Her mother laughed but it was dark and uneven, "Nor do I, I suppose."

"Well mama, how then can I assure you?"

"You can't," her mother laughed then touched her cheek, "And you know me, I worry."

"I do know you," she nodded, "But mama, I don't think you do know me."

"Morticia," her mother followed her down the quiet hall as she moved away, "I don't think anyone does."

She turned to her mother at the door, "Oh I wouldn't go that far."

"See," her mother turned away as she spoke, "It's comments like that which worry me."

She watched her go, the feeling of being exposed unsettling, then turned into the room.