"…So I really think that we should - "

Anthony stopped and looked up from his desk, past the abandoned tea tray. Mrs Crawley stood at the window, cardigan clutched about her, watching the rain hammering against the panes, a relentless drumming noise that had accompanied their work for much of the afternoon. The sky was leaden, gusting to inky black on the horizon. They'd turned on the lights at least an hour ago, but Mrs Crawley had kept the curtains open, looking for any sign of Pip bicycling up the drive.

"So," Anthony pressed on, "I really think that we should hire a dancing bear - he'd be an excellent first footman."

"Mmm," she replied, not turning round.

Anthony felt a smile tugging his lips at her obvious distraction. "I can see it now - he'd look very elegant, fur all brushed, starched collar… of course, he might be a little tall for a footman, but times are changing."

"Mm- pardon?" Now she turned around, a confused little frown creasing between her eyebrows momentarily. Then her face cleared and a faint smile graced her eyes. "You're teasing me, sir."

He lifted one elegant eyebrow. "Fair repayment for distraction while on duty, I think?" Mrs Crawley went a little pink about the cheekbones, tugging a little at the hem of her cardigan. His expression softening, Anthony asked, "Care to share what's on your mind?"

That unhappy little frown was back, he was sorry to see. Anthony was quickly realising that he hated to see Mrs Crawley unhappy or sad. Despite everything she had endured, the suffering that had been meted out to her, she was such a cheerful soul, so bright and lovely to have about the place, so quick and clever…

She sighed heavily, brushing away a loose golden curl that had slipped from her tightly pinned-up arrangement, and confessed, "I think Master Pip should have arrived home by now."

Anthony pulled out his pocket-watch and clicked open the exterior case, frowning down at the face for a moment. True enough, the lad was usually back by tea-time. Still… "He might have gone off with a chum. He might have stopped when the rain got too hard, found shelter somewhere along the way." He smiled lopsidedly at her. "He might very well have got himself into a scrape with a master and been kept behind for a thrashing." Mrs Crawley winced and Anthony rose and rested a hand gently on her shoulder. "It happens," he sighed.

"Well, perhaps it shouldn't!" she sniffed out angrily, and Anthony saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. Carefully, he removed his hand.

Mrs Crawley looked away. "Sorry, sir." She exhaled loudly. "This… just doesn't feel like Master Pip. I - I can't explain it, I know I'm - I'm overstepping the mark, but…"

"Not at all. I'll telephone Ripon Grammar," he offered quietly. "See what's what."

Edith returned to her seat at the desk. As Sir Anthony lifted the telephone, she gnawed a little absently at her thumb. "Hello, operator… Ripon Grammar School. Thank you."

There was a long silence. Edith shuffled uncomfortably in her chair and Sir Anthony shot her a brief, sympathetic look. "Ah, Holloway… Strallan here… Yes, that's right… Look, Phillip hasn't arrived home yet and we thought that he might perhaps have been kept behind…" Sir Anthony's expression darkened, and Edith felt the sudden, almost painful leap of fear in her belly and up along her breastbone. "I see… No, thank you for your help… Of course. Goodbye."

He set the receiver down heavily. "Pip left at the usual time, with the other boys. Does he - have a regular chum whom he bicycles with, do you know?" Her employer looked suddenly shamefaced. "I know… I haven't been here for tea as often as I used to be, just recently." Tea with Virginia had become a comfortable, regular ritual over the last couple of weeks. It was… pleasant, to talk with someone who remembered his youth. To spend an hour or so a week talking with someone who did not rely on him for her daily bread. No matter how kind or engaging or clever Mrs Crawley, for example, was, he still would have felt uncomfortable discussing Maude, or the Gervases, or his adorably exasperating sister. One did not burden one's secretary with all the details and troubles of one's personal life. And, in his turn, he felt that he was in Virginia's debt, for the grace and kindness she had shown when he had married Maude. She, too, he sensed, needed someone to talk to, and he was happy to be that person. Now, however, he could not help the sense of shame that was rising inside him.

Mrs Crawley did not meet his eyes. She shook her head. "I don't think so. Sometimes Andrew Hamley, but he's in hospital at the moment - appendicitis." She shot him a look full of distress and surged up from her seat as if she could not bear to remain still a single moment longer. "Sir, I'm going out to look for him."

Casting a look outside at the weather, Anthony protested, "It's raining cats and dogs out there!"

"Then I shall get wet," she said, matter-of-factly. "I cannot sit here and wait - I shall go mad! Sir - "

"I quite agree," he reassured her quietly. "But we shall go together, and in the Rolls."


The rain showed no sign of letting up as they drove out of Locksley's gates. Sir Anthony had put the hood up on the car, but that offered no real protection from the biting December chill. Edith shivered inside her winter coat, and not just from cold. To distract her from the horrid thoughts which were filling her head, she focused her eyes on the road ahead of them, illuminated by the broad yellow beam of the car's headlights, and on operating the lever that worked the car's windscreen wipers.

"Mrs Crawley," Sir Anthony said, breaking the silence. "I am so - "

But whatever he was about to say was cut off by Edith's sudden exclamation. The car's headlights had illuminated a green bicycle frame, twisted as if it had been hit by something much faster and larger. And next to it, lying perfectly still on his back, one arm flung out… was a tow-headed little body.

Edith was out of the car and running almost before Sir Anthony had pulled the car to a halt. She fell to her knees by his head, uncaring of the muddy puddles across the road, and reached out to brush a flop of soaked hair away from Pip's bruised forehead. A shadow fell across the light from the car's headlights and Sir Anthony knelt down on his son's other side, fingers pressed desperately to his neck, searching for a pulse. Please, God. Please, let him be - let him not be -

Mrs Crawley bent her ear to Pip's mouth for a moment and then lifted it. "He's - he's breathing, I think," she gasped, rain and tears running down her cheeks together. "My God, who could have just left him - "

Her employer's free hand, the one that was not resting against Pip's cheek, reached out and squeezed her wrist in comfort. "We must get him to Clarkson - the cottage hospital," he decided and released her to slide his arms under Pip's limp little body and lift him up. Edith risked a glance at the road where Pip had been lying, half-expecting to see blood and bone, but there was nothing there. Turning, she quickly hurried ahead, opening the car's back door and sliding in. "Pass him to me," she ordered briskly as Anthony reached her. "I'll hold him steady."

He looked at her for a long moment, assessing, and then she gave a short, reassuring nod. Let me share this with you. Let me help. Carefully, leaning half into the car, he laid Pip's head and shoulders down over her lap. Edith stretched out her other arm over Pip's scraped knees to hold him firmly on the seat, and Sir Anthony hurried around to the driver's seat.


The journey to the cottage hospital was agonising. Pip was still unconscious, made no noise, either of pain or awareness. Sir Anthony, in front of her, kept his eyes fixed rigidly on the road, and Edith was left to fret. Doubtless, she should be feeling the cold and the damp more than she was, but just now, it seemed to be the least important thing in the world. With shaking fingers, she stroked Pip's forehead, and prayed.

Clarkson was stunned when they burst in, soaking wet and carrying a still unconscious Pip, but to his credit, he reacted swiftly. Anthony and Edith were ushered out into the corridor while Pip was bustled into a bed and examined.

Anthony had sunk into a chair, his head buried in his hands. Dimly, beyond the hellish images in his head, he could hear the repetitive click-click of boot heels as Mrs Crawley paced up and down the corridor. At length, he looked up as she turned to march back towards him.

Her hair had half fallen out of its strictly arranged coiffure, her skirts were dark with rain water and mud and God only knew what else, and her eyes were red against the chilled pallor of her face. Mutely, he stood and held out a hand to her, and she came to him. He squeezed her icy fingertips gently. "You're frozen, my dear. Sit down, why don't you?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but all that came out was a fragile, choked little sob that made tears prick in Anthony's own eyes. And then she was tottering forwards, as if she could no longer hold herself up, and Anthony, bone-tired and numb, found himself reaching out for her, sweeping her into an embrace, one hand at the impossibly small small of her back, the other cradling her skull as her hands clutched at the front of his coat. Mrs Crawley turned her head, pressing one cheek against his sternum, and Anthony found himself tilting his own chin down to rest it on the top of her head as his arms tightened about her. The poor girl was shaking - trembling so violently, with cold or with shock or with both - and Anthony closed his eyes and let his own tears seep through beneath his eyelashes and run freely down his cheeks until he was shaking quite as badly as Mrs Crawley.

For a long time, they remained like that, holding each other up. Anthony thought he might have collapsed by now, without her tiny, cold hands pressed against his chest to keep him steady.

"Sir Anthony?" Dr Clarkson's voice at the end of the corridor broke them apart. "Master Pip is waking up."