"Lizzie! Lizzie! If you don't open this door I'll break it down myself!" Mary yelled, pounding her fist against the door to her friend's room in fury. "Elizabeth!" Mary gave the door a violent kick, smashed her toe quite badly and fell onto the floor clutching it and resisting the urge to curse loudly. She restricted herself to a few choice words under her breath, and felt a little better.

"I heard that, Mary," said Lizzie from the other side of the door, her voice muffled. "I may have to have words with your uncle."

"You'll have to come out to do that," Mary reminded her reasonably. "Open the door, Liz. I'm not going to drag you down to dinner- I just want to come in."

There was silence.

"Please?"

Slowly there came a fumbling with a key in the lock and the door opened a crack.

"Did you just say please?" asked Lizzie, peering around the door.

"Of course not." Mary stood up and squeezed herself through the gap in the open doorway so quickly that Lizzie had no time to protest. She sat down on the bed and surveyed her friend.

Lizzie was a mess. Her hair was loose and hanging around her face so wildly that she reminded Mary more of Bertha Mason than Jane Eyre. Her eyes were red, her skin very white, and her lip still trembled.

"What did he do to you?" asked Mary, her voice calm when her insides were shaking with anger.

Lizzie sank to the floor, her back pressed against the wardrobe. She shook her head. "Nothing. He didn't do anything to me."

"So," Mary said, moving to sit on the floor next to her best friend. "What did you see him do?"

"Nothing," Lizzie said again, her eyes fixed on the carpet.

Mary sighed. "You aren't giving me much to work with, here. You didn't run up here in tears for no reason, did you?"

Lizzie's head turned, and she fixed Mary with a terrible glare. "I did not," she said, "run up here in tears. I walked, with dignity, to my room, and am refusing, with dignity, to come out of it until there is a car here waiting to take me back to the station so that I can return home, with dignity, to find myself a husband."

"How very dignified," Mary spat. She clenched her fist. "I am going to kill Colin, precious cripple or not!"

Lizzie remained emotionless. "I was too late." Her voice was so quiet that Mary almost thought she'd imagined hearing it.

"Too late for what?"

Lizzie drew her arms around her legs and rested her forehead on her knees. Her hair fell around her shoulders, almost completely obscuring her face. Mary didn't think she would answer, but she did, talking in quick, quiet sentences that sounded detached and odd, as if they were hanging in the air.

"Emmy dragged me to a party on Christmas Eve. It was where I met Mr Chester-Jones. Harry Dennel was there. I heard him saying that his sister was coming up to Misselthwaite. Taking on the nurse vacancy. Except, her real plan was to ensnare him. And now it's too late." The final sentence was a whisper again, as though by never saying it fully out loud it would cease to be true.

Mary put her arm around Lizzie in an unusual display of affection. "It's far from too late, Liz." She paused, cocking her head to one side. "Did you see them together?"

"Yes."

"Oh." Mary tapped her forefinger against her lips, thinking. "What did Colin do when he saw you?"

"He called my name, but I walked away. He obviously couldn't disentangle himself from Fran and come after me." She smacked her head gently against the wardrobe. Mary put her hand there, palm out so that Lizzie couldn't go it again. She wondered, not for the first time, when she'd become the caring one. Where was Dickon when you needed him?

"You need to talk to him," Mary said, eyeing Lizzie. "Get it all out- Colin's a bit of a coward when it comes to girls. He won't fight back."

"Are you sure?" Lizzie's eyebrow quirked up.

Mary laughed quietly, smiling. "I'm never sure when it comes to that Rajah."

There was a long silence.

"Mary?"

"Yes?"

"Colin gave me a letter once, and said that he hoped it would help me figure some things out..."

Mary looked up, her stomach uneasy. Somehow, she thought she knew what was coming.

"Can you tell me what he really means?"

"No." The word was harsher than she had intended. "I don't mean that you will never know, but... I think this is something that you need to hear from him, and him only. But, Lizzie- If he is telling you what I think he's telling you, I promise that it isn't too late. If he trusts you enough for this, it'll never be too late."

"But I don't even know what he's telling me!" Lizzie's voice was angry, frustrated. "What if he tells everyone? What if he's already told her?"

"He hasn't," said Mary, completely sure. "He's never told anyone else. You're the first." She shrugged. "And you'll probably be the last." She stood up, stretching her arms. "Now, are you coming to dinner or not?"

Lizzie sighed. "How long have I got?"

"Twenty minutes."

"I'd better unpack."


"Lizzie-"

Colin wheeled himself back from Fran in disgust. His cheeks were red, his eyes wide, and his heart was pounding furiously. Fran sat up startled, her lips pushed into a pout.

"Well, that was unfriendly!"

"Sorry," Colin muttered, wishing she would disappear before his very eyes.

"Oh, not you Colin! Elizabeth! She didn't even say hello!"

"You know her?" He was momentarily sidetracked.

"Everyone knows everyone. Surely you haven't been away from society for so long that you have forgotten that? Honestly!"

"And what do you think of her?" he asked, fingernails digging deep into his palms. Careful Colin, careful.

"Oh, Lizzie Templeton's an odd one, I have to say. Aloof, sarcastic, destined for spinsterhood."

You're wrong. She's engaged. More than you are. You don't know everything, do you Fran?

She continued, oblivious. "It's a shame she's so plain- it wouldn't hurt her to have one good characteristic." Fran laughed- a high-pitched giggle. "I shouldn't concern yourself with her."

"Who should I concern myself with then? You?"

She giggled again and thrust herself closer to him, her eyes boring into his. "If you like," she said, and her breath tickled his face. She was so close that he could smell her perfume- sickly sweet and floral. Flowers should be smelt fresh in a garden, not dead and synthetic on the skin of a human. The idea repulsed him.

"I could never concern myself with you," he snarled, eyes blazing. "And do you know what I think of you and your family? I think you're scheming and manipulative, and you sicken me. You and your nasty coward of a brother."

Francesca Dennel stood up, her eyes narrowed to almost invisible slits. She was not mousey at all now, her lips pressed together and twisted into a foul sneer, her eyes mocking and contemptuous. "My brother may be a nasty coward," she said, voice dripping with menace, "but he is not a pathetic little cripple like you. You have nothing but your wealth, and even that cannot buy you a wife and a family when your house is as dismal as this one. People will take one look at your madman of a father, still grieving for your dear dead mother, and will never come back. Even Mary is leaving, marrying her precious cottage boy- wait 'till I tell them that one in London! And you will be left entirely alone, shut up in your room, with no-one but your servants. Then even they will leave, and you'll die, a lonely, pathetic little cripple." She stepped back from him. "Good luck, Colin Craven. You'll need it."

Colin sat for a long time after she was gone. An hour passed. Or maybe it was two? He heard the front door slam, and watched a cloaked figure drag her suitcase out and into a waiting car. Rain was pounding against the glass of the window, obscuring the figure so that he could not tell who it was. Lizzie, probably. Leaving him forever. His fingers gripped the book on his lap, and he ran them down the edges of the pages.

"Ow."

Blood smeared on the page, and Colin looked in surprise at the paper cut on his finger. A red smudge was obscuring a word. He read the sentence. Blanche. It was covering 'Blanche'. Colin shrugged and closed the book.Why was it that the tiniest wounds hurt the most? He put his finger in his mouth. Strange that, he thought, how people automatically put their cut fingers in their mouths. It didn't taste great.

Far off in the distance, a gong rang. A gong? Why was there a gong? A faint growling was coming from Colin's stomach. Oh, dinner. The dinner gong. What was the time? Seven o' clock? Already? He thought back to his earlier conversations. He'd been sitting here, thinking, for four hours.

But in those four hours, he'd thought about a lot. And he'd finally decided something.

It wasn't too late.

Ahh, I've enjoyed writing this chapter too! I've been waiting to really hate Fran for a while now, so this was satisfying. Please leave a comment if you enjoyed this chapter, have any thoughts, or just a suggestion! Thanks for reading! :)