[Song selection: "Skinny Love," by Bon Iver, and also I'm running out of sad songs so something happy had better happen soon ;) ]

The Palmers had an acceptable library for smoking a pipe and thinking, but it was clear that Palmer was no great reader. Still, sitting here gave Brandon an opportunity to be alone.

What a clatter they made-Mrs. Palmer with the baby, Mrs. Jennings with her...self, and even Mr. Palmer, finally at home in his own element, with his raucous, almost gleeful shooting, as if being finally back in his own element and away from the London crowd had caused in him a madness which only the pull of the trigger and the felling of various fowl could calm. And Marianne-her silence was loudest of everything. Brandon needed a vacation from being a houseguest.

The library contained very little to tempt him, but he had brought a few of his own books, so he squirrelled himself away in a chair in the corner, his stockinged feet up on the opposite chair, and buried his nose in his dog-eared copy of Goldsmith's Vicar, enjoying the sound of the rain pattering upon the windowpane outside and the fire crackling in the hearth on the opposite wall. He was just turning a page when the door creaked open, and his breath was arrested in his chest.

"Oh-Good afternoon, Colonel," she said.

"Miss Marianne," he murmured her name.

"Do you…" she looked discomfited, but pressed on. "Do you mind company? It's so…" she struggled for the right word, "noisy out there."

"I don't mind at all." Now I shall not be able to read a single page. Oh, God. She smells like the rain. I could drown in her. He lifted his legs down off the chair opposite him and crossed his legs in a more manly fashion, slipping his shoes back on his feet.

Marianne (he noticed, because he really could only pretend to read now, and had an acute awareness of her every movement) wandered from shelf to shelf, sighing in disappointment as he had done when each potential treasure trove yielded nothing of substance, until finally her eyes alighted upon the table next to him, and she tentatively glanced at the small pile of books that lay there. Upon opening the cover of the first, however, she realized that Brandon's own Delaford book plate had been pasted there, and she closed it quickly. "Oh!"

He looked up at her.

"I'm sorry-I didn't realize these were yours."

"You're welcome to look through them."

She hesitated, but then took him up on his offer. He felt, rather than saw, the corners of her lips turn up, ever so gently, as she picked up a copy of Shakespeare's Tragedies, and then her frown was back in its accustomed place. The two books underneath were new to her. She looked at him. He looked up. "Yes?"

"I don't want to interrupt your reading."

"It is no trouble."

"What are these?" She gestured to the books.

"Ah. Do you read German?"

"Only a little. Not well."

"This first is Goethe. It-well, I didn't like it. The Sorrows of Young Werther. You might like it, though."

"That doesn't seem very complimentary," she replied, and he triumphed to see a ghost of a smile cross her face.

"I only meant that it's very much more to your taste than mine. That doesn't mean that your taste is poor. Just different. It's been a very popular book. But all the same, I don't think I would recommend it to you just now."

"Why not?"

"Because...it's very sad."

"Is this-I think I heard about this in London. Is this the book that so many people have been-have been-" She couldn't bring herself to reference the recent rash of suicides in Germany, inspired by Werther's tragic life.

"I think you have the right idea. With all your recent suffering, perhaps it would be a poor choice."

"Oh," she said. She hung her head. She seemed lost in thought for a moment. "And what is this one?" She indicated the second book.

"That one is better. Do you know Schiller?"

"Not at all. What does he write?"

"All manner of things-plays, poetry. This is Die Raeuber. I think it's your sort of thing. I read it, oh, fifteen years ago or so, and it still holds up."

"May I-may I borrow it?"

His voice almost broke as he answered. "You may borrow anything you like."

"What is your favourite? Book, I mean?" She perched upon the chair opposite him, thoughtlessly, and he noticed that she shivered a little. He also noticed that she was even paler than she had been, and looked drawn-it seemed like more than sadness, like perhaps she had caught cold. There was a soft afghan thrown over the chair behind him, and he offered it to her wordlessly. She took it and shivered even more deeply as she placed it over her legs.

"My favourite book?"

"Do you have one?"

"Do you? A single favourite book?"

"Yes!" she replied, "The Mysteries of Udolpho!"

"And how many other favourite books have you had over the years?"

She smiled, seeming to forget everything else for a moment. "You're right-so very many. But that's not fair. What do you like, apart from German things?"

"I quite like Goldsmith," he held up the book in his hand. She took it from him, careful to hold her finger in the place where his marked his page, and their hands momentarily brushed together in the transfer. Brandon did not flatter himself that she stirred at the contact, but his own heart stopped beating for a second, two. She read for a minute. "I also like Voltaire, Swift, Pope… Shakespeare, of course…"

"Do you like Don Quixote?"

"Of course. It was my childhood favourite."

"Mine, as well. I have a difficult time picturing you as a child, Colonel." She handed him back his book, and reached for the Shakespeare. "Have you read The Man of Feeling?"

He confessed that he had not.

"You would like it, I think. Do you like sentimental things?"

You are a sentimental thing, and I am quite in love with you. "I find that they make it difficult for one to be practical," he said by way of an answer, a smile in his voice.

"That is exactly what Elinor would say." She thumbed through the Tragedies and found Hamlet. She settled down to read for a while, and he did as well. Soon, he found that the air, which had seemed to leave the room when Marianne opened the door, found its way back to Brandon's lungs, and he could breathe rather easily-more easily than ever before, actually. What development was this? He had spent a solid quarter of an hour in comfortable silence with this siren of a woman, and, though he hadn't forgotten she was there, he had been able to concentrate on his reading. He forgot for a while that he wasn't home.

"Hmm," she grumbled, coming to a part of the play she found frustrating. She tucked her legs up underneath her endearingly.

"Anything amiss?"

She quoted, "'Doubt thou, the Starres are fire, / Doubt, that the Sunne doth moue: / Doubt Truth to be a Lier, / But neuer Doubt, I loue.'" She paused. "I used to like Hamlet."

"The play, or the character?"

"The character. I thought him tortured, and I felt him wronged by Ophelia."

"Oh? And now?"

"I wonder-he never really truly loved Ophelia, did he?"

Brandon looked at her, his face filled with concern. She met his eyes firmly, unshaken.

"I think not," he answered.

"He said he loved her, but…"

"But that means nothing, does it?"

She shook her head and stared at the fire for a while. "What matters is what you do to prove it," she whispered, as if the awareness of this fact was dawning over her. She shivered again, and suddenly sneezed. Brandon handed her his handkerchief. She dabbed at her nose and offered the fabric back to her. He gestured to her to keep it. They were both quiet for a while, Marianne's eyes trained to the flames, Brandon's openly watching her.

"Miss Marianne," he said, breaking the stillness of the moment. "You are not Ophelia."

She looked at him with brows furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"You are not Ophelia. You are not a character in a novel or a play. You are real flesh and blood, and you are stronger than you think."

Her eyes filled with unshed tears. "How do you know?"

He replied, "Personal experience."

She digested this for a moment. "Thank you," she said.

Soon after, she rose, his copies of the Tragedies and the Schiller book carried under one arm, and took her polite leave. She left him there, breathless and alone with a desire for her that was palpable, almost like a second person in the room that he could reach out and shake hands with.

Brandon saw her at supper, but she was on the opposite end of the table, and they did not speak. And the following morning, her illness had worsened, and it looked as though she would have to take to bed for several days.