A/N Thank you, thank you, thank you for the reviews. They're very appreciated.

"Anthony!" The voice was almost lost on the wind. He popped his head over the wall and waved wildly in Maud's direction. She saw him across the field and set off towards him, swallowing up the ground with long strides. Her walk matched her personality: determined.

The weather played havoc with her short hair and for several moments it covered the entirety of her face. Pushing it back, she jammed a hat onto her head.

Picking a stone from the pile he brushed off the surface and set it in place. Stepping back, he adjusted it closer to the one next to it and tested to see that it wasn't too wobbly.

Maud reached him.

"Good morning." She said with a puzzled expression.

"We're not meeting today, are we?"

The routine dictated that half of the last Saturday of every month belonged to Maud, so she could go over the accounts and the business plans for the hotel. When Anthony declared his intention to save Locksley from sale or ruin, Maud had declared her intention to help. He scoffed and said a Cambridge mathematician turned City trader did not need assistance with business, but she hadn't listened. Every month, even as she berated him over some matter or another, he was thankful for that fact. Her help kept him in line and, often, kept up his enthusiasm for his gargantuan task.

"No, it's not today." She responded absentmindedly, her concentration was elsewhere. She frowned at the parcel of rocks on the floor and looked with trepidation at the half-built wall beside him, "what are you doing?"

He bent down to get another stone, "dancing the Macarena." He replied with a small, private smile.

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm building a dry stone wall."

"Well, yes. I can see that much, but why?"

"I'm pitching in." He set the next stone in place, standing back to see that it was approximately level.

"I see." She said the words in such a way that suggested she didn't see at all, as though she was slightly concerned he'd gone round the bend. Although, the wall-building version of madness was infinitely preferable to the last incarnation of madness she'd seen him through, the one where he couldn't get out of bed from one day to the next.

"Do you remember coming here to meet my parents after Michaelmas term in second year?"

She nodded, "I do."

"My Father had us out building with him."

Her eyes widened with surprise. She smoothed the look away almost immediately.

"We spent a couple of hours working and then you and he had a blazing row about how pointless an exercise it was and how his time would be better spent managing the farms." She handed him the next stone.

"He said there were few tasks in life one can undertake and conclude with an absolute sense of achievement at the end because they are, in fact, finished."

"I believe you countered with 'raising a child'."

"I did!" He slapped his hand on his thigh and smiled, "And he said one was never finished raising a child."

"I seem to remember that setting off another row about him not acknowledging that you were now a grown man."

"Yes." He nodded, "it probably would've been easier to take me seriously on that score if you hadn't dyed that strip of blue through my hair."

"You asked me to! You were in that Adam Ant phase."

"Please don't remind me." Anthony patted the top of his wall, "Anyway, I understand now, what he meant. Life feels a bit like an endless parade of the unfinished. I need to achieve something. And fixing this wall needs to be done and I intend to do it."

The ravages of the northern weather, a rogue bull, a large tractor and the simple passage of time had punched a hole in the dry stone wall surrounding this particular parcel of land. It was Charlie's intention to use it for the sheep during the next year.

He carried on building and Maud laid a stone of her own, remembering the tutelage she'd received all those years ago.

Quietly, eyes focused on setting her contribution in place, she asked, "Do you know that's the first time you've mentioned your Father to me in - "

Anthony answered, "seven years?"

Maud leaned against the structure, tentatively at first, not quite trusting what he'd assembled and then letting her whole weight lean back when she realized it wouldn't crumble away, "about that."

"I try to avoid the topic, but, I gave his old desk away last week and I was reminded of him at the Harvest Festival on Thursday. And dry stone walls always make me think of him." He stood and stretched out his muscles, "Oh - don't look so worried Maud - it's not so very strange to find myself ready to talk about him, is it?"

She was absolutely still for a moment and then launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tight, "No."

His arm rested stock still by his side, half came up to wrap around her waist and then dropped down indecisively. He didn't relax into the embrace, he couldn't. It was a moment straight from their past, their physical intimacy had always been rigid and awkward.

"Sorry." She mumbled into his neck before stepping back and brushing the dust from her coat, "no, it's not strange. It's good, it's very good."

"It must be good." He said gruffly, "I'm trying to remember the last time you hugged me."

"Probably around the same sort of time we last talked about your father."

"I suspect you're right." He walked around the other side of the wall to check its strength from both directions, "How's Libby?"

Maud gave the same answer she'd been giving for the last eighteen months, "good." The voice was airy. Too airy. It was a lie. He knew it and she knew it, and what's more, she knew that he knew. That was the advantage, or disadvantage, of thirty years of friendship. No matter how broad the smile or how many teeth she bared when she gave it, he was very aware that things were not 'good'. He was also aware that she didn't want to talk about it and so he let the fiction exist between them. She'd unravel it when she needed to, and not before.

"Right –" She said, brusquely, "- enough sentimentality. I received the latest financial plans for the hotel."

In the blink of an eye, Maud transitioned to hard headed businesswoman.

"I sense this isn't a conversation for the top of a windy field."

"You sense correctly."

"Car's over there. We should go to the estate office, I've got all of the plans there and Bates's latest blasted quote for the glass extension."

"John's a good man. He'll be doing you the absolute best deal he can."

"That's rather scant comfort, Maud, when you're facing a hefty five figure bill." He held up his hands in mock triumph, "it could've been six figures! Lucky me! Why are you smiling? This is not funny!"

"I agree, but –"

"But, what?"

"That's the second joke you've made this morning."

"Why do the women in my life seem to think I can never make a joke?!"

"Because you never make jokes, not – " She looked down to the ground and back up at him, shaking her head a little, "well, you haven't recently."

"Oh, God, you're not going to hug me again?"

"Heavens no." She pointed to the floor behind him, "Don't forget the keys."

On turning around to retrieve them a bolt of gold in the distance caught his eye. A brush stroke across the increasingly greying sky. Over the brow of the horizon she came full into view. Edith.

Her hair was casting about her head like sandy waves in a storm. Around her neck was the thick wool of his blue scarf, the ends streamed out behind her, dancing with the wind. Her upper torso encased, he realised ecstatically, in his oversized coat. The cuffs were rolled up, exposing two bolts of the green striped lining. It hung down almost to mid-thigh; a Yorkshire parody of a Mary Quant mini-dress, although Edith's legs weren't bare. She was wearing jeans, he murmured a note of disapproval – if it rained they'd take on every iota of moisture and weigh her down, wet and heavy. The feet were a testament to good sense – sturdy walking boots, likely borrowed from Anna. She was someway in the distance but he could see that the exertion had flown kites of red into her cheeks.

Approaching a hedgerow, she hopped up over a stile and jumped down on the other side. The field she landed in was carpeted by heather. It appeared as if she was floating on a purple cloud. Probably assuming she was all alone in this quiet part of the world, she threw her arms out and spun. The sight was a reasonably common one in these parts, walkers climbed the hills and in ecstatic delight at the end of their exertions grasped at the most apt cultural reference. She was Maria Von Trapp.

An absurd idea occurred to him. He wanted to run. It would've made sense if he'd wanted to run away. But he didn't. He wanted to run towards her, to fold his arms about her waist and lift her clean off the ground.

There were certain times of the year when Locksley was a lovely place. The end of Spring and into Summer, it was very pleasant, bordering on idyllic. But most of the time Anthony thought of it as a harsh place. Cold and damp, forever making things more more difficult than they might otherwise be in another part of the country. He supposed that was part of the appeal of it for him. Better to feel the pain of doing something challenging than to feel nothing at all.

But with Edith in the middle of that field, twirling with abandon - all at once, the sun was on his back and he was laughing. It was summer at Locksley, and he was young again. The whole place was beautiful.

Maud's voice cracked through his reverie, "Anthony?"

The moment was like awakening from a deep sleep, he blinked heavily and wondered if he'd laughed out loud, entirely unsure what had been real and what had been imagined. Perhaps Edith wasn't there at all, maybe she was just a figment of his ever-addled brain. He groped at the ground for his car keys and turned back to Maud.

Her eyes were narrowed and she jerked her head at the space behind him, where he knew she must see Edith too, "Who's the girl?"

Girl.

And wasn't that precisely the problem?

He shook his head, did a capable imitation of a shrug, "No idea." Her eyes were still narrowed. He smoothed out his expression as much as possible and asked the next question in the most even tone he could possibly employ, "ready to go?"

It had been a little too nonchalant, closer to homicidal sociopath than he would've liked. But she either believed him, which he doubted, or realised this was not the time to pry.

As they walked back to the car, surreptitiously, he glanced over his shoulder. She was gone.

The wind bit into his face and he was cold.

Maud berated him for three hours on the decision he'd made to slash the marketing and PR budget in order to pay for his glass ballroom. She threw around corporate buzzwords and accused him of being short-sighted. Never a woman for lack of preparation, she'd approached Bates about downscaling the plans to save money. Anthony was resolved, however, but allowed her to take his papers away to see if she could find an alternative solution before their regularly scheduled meeting in a few weeks' time.

By the time he got back to the house he was ready to put his feet up in front of the fire with a copy of the FT and The Spectator. Backing into his study with a steaming cup of tea and the publications under his arm he intended to do exactly that.

He stopped short on finding Edith Crawley fast asleep on his sofa. The fire was already roaring and her boots sat in front of it, thick walking socks thrown over the guard. On the coffee table, next to his chess board was her laptop and mobile phone, along with a thick bundle of papers, which on closer examination had a title page – Edith Crawley: Draft Thesis.

In slumber her features were particularly delicate. Lips in a small pout, hands folded beneath her fine chin. Cheeks like peaches, still flushed, presumably from the fire, rather than her exertions.

For a moment he watched her and waited. Waited for the anger to creep up and out, for the annoyance show itself. He should want her out. Shake by the shoulders and show her the door. This was his space. His retreat. She'd invaded every aspect of his life, of his psyche, she wasn't allowed to have his study too.

But it never came. There was gratitude instead, and pleasure. He was glad to find her here, where she was never expected and yet so entirely right.

He tried to talk himself into the emotions. Reminded himself of Maud's earlier assessment - she's just a girl. And you're not a man who can twirl her around. But he couldn't manage to drum them up.

This was a little gift from the universe, and he decided to accept it, even if it came with hidden consequences.

From the bottom drawer of the bureau he retrieved a blanket and covered her resting form with it. She wriggled in her sleep and murmured.

He retrieved her thesis, setting aside his usual Saturday papers, he started to read that instead.