Edith and Marigold both stayed at Strallan House that night.

Dr Hunter had been and gone - a kindly Scot who had examined Marigold efficiently and asked a lot of incisive questions, before prescribing a month of bed-rest and promising a letter for her superiors. Afterwards, Marigold had been escorted upstairs to a proper bedroom for yet another nap, leaving Edith and Anthony together in the library.

Still: "We can't impose…" Edith had tried to protest, but Anthony had very gently pressed her back into her chair and knelt at her side.

"My dear, Marigold needs to be looked after, and so do you. Let me, hmm?"

After that, there had been nothing to do apart from nod and allow Anthony to ring the bell, and ask Stewart for dinner and bedrooms. "Thank you, Stewart," Edith murmured tiredly.

He bowed deeply. "A pleasure, my lady. Might I fetch you a drink, my lady, and have the maid run you and Assistant Section Officer Crawley hot baths before dinner?"

"Stewart," Edith said fervently, "that would be wonderful."

Anthony's household had always been remarkable for their efficiency, discretion and apparent clairvoyance when it came to the needs of their employer or any of his guests. Not even wartime, it seemed, could change that. Stewart himself had escorted Edith up to the bedroom which formed the other half of Anthony's suite of rooms, ran her the regulation five inch bath in the bathroom which divided the two bedrooms from each other, and set a reassuringly large measure of whisky on the bathtub caddy.

"Might I fetch you anything else, my lady?" he checked, as Edith poked her head into the bathroom with some relief.

Edith shook her head. "No, thank you, Stewart. Is Miss Marigold - "

"Being looked after by Jane, my lady - a most efficient young woman." Stewart twitched the towel straight on its rail and stepped back into the bedroom. "Might I suggest an early dinner, my lady, at half past six?"

"Perfect, thank you." As Stewart shut the bedroom door behind him, Edith sank down onto the ottoman and began to take her shoes off. "I feel as we've… invaded and colonised," she told Anthony, somewhat guiltily. "Stewart ought to have asked you about dinner, not me."

Anthony was rooting through the wardrobe, searching for something for her to wear, and only hummed briefly in reply. At length, he turned around, arms full with a quilted dressing gown in burnt orange satin. "I'm not the one who'll fall asleep in their soup if we leave it any later, though, am I?" he pointed out. At Edith's smile of acknowledgement, he set the dressing gown down on the bed and squeezed her shoulder. "Shall I stay? You look about to drop off where you're sitting."

"What a scandalous prospect," Edith smirked with a faint trace of her usual mischief. "Yes please."

There aren't many things that a hot bath and a stiff drink can't help to cure; that was certainly Edith's view of the situation. Still, she couldn't help fretting about Marigold: she'd looked so tired and… lifeless, somehow, and as much as she trusted Anthony, she had no idea how she was going to help.

"You're very quiet," Anthony observed softly, leaning against the doorway. Edith sat in the tub, knees drawn up to her chest, glass in one hand, eyes glazed over and unfocused.

Edith looked up, slowly, dazedly. "Just thinking." As Anthony advanced inside the bathroom, she wondered, "Will she be all right? Have I been… blind, not to have noticed before now?"

Anthony bent and kissed the place on her forehead where her eyebrow met the bridge of her nose. "No, my dear. Your daughter is as stubborn as a recalcitrant mule, just like her darling mother - and exceedingly good at starching that upper lip of hers." He shrugged. "And let's just say I'm not… unfamiliar with what that feels like. So you mustn't blame yourself." He reached for the warm bath sheet, shook it out one-handed, and helped Edith wrap herself in it as she hauled herself up and out of the water. "What you really ought to do, in fact, is let us give you and Marigold a good dinner and warm beds to sleep in. And then, in the morning," he promised, "I'll fix everything."

Edith nestled against his shirt front, tucking her wet, bare feet in between his own shod ones. "It oughtn't to feel so good to relinquish control," she confessed, "but God, it does."

Anthony tutted and chafed her damp shoulder with one hand. "Not relinquishing control, my dear. Just letting someone else share the burden for a change."

The dinner was an exceptionally good one, despite rationing: plenty of fresh Locksley vegetables, sent up to Town by train, supplemented by two fine, fat rabbits shot in Anthony's woods, which had also made the journey. Edith was pleased to note that Marigold - curly-haired and ruffled after her bath - was making up for lost time where appetite was concerned; indeed, her daughter looked all round much calmer than she had done earlier. Perhaps Anthony is right. All she needs is time to rest, and someone to talk to. Whatever would we have done without him?

"There's a chess club, at my station," Marigold smiled, "but don't you find, sir, that once you know how someone plays, it rather takes all the fun out of it?"

"Absolutely!" Anthony gestured in emphatic agreement. "My brother-in-law gives me a game now and again, and I've got a few going by letter with friends, but it just isn't the same as… fresh blood. You'll have to do me the honour, before you leave."

"Rather! After dinner?"

"Why not? You wouldn't mind, would you, darling?" This to Edith, who had been watching them with some amusement. For two people who not five hours' before had been at daggers drawn with each other, Marigold and Anthony were getting on like a house on fire. Is it because they're both in Intelligence? Edith wondered, and not for the first time marvelled that she could say such a thing about her own daughter. I suppose it is. I suppose… there are always going to be parts of her life that Anthony will understand better than I ever could. She swallowed away a pang of jealousy at that, took a sip of her wine and reassured them, "Not at all. But I warn you, Anthony, she's fiendishly good - much better than I ever was."

"Heavens!" Anthony winked. "I'm looking forward to this."

"Well!" Marigold sat back in astonishment and looked down at the routed remains of her troops on the board.

"Yes," Anthony said apologetically. "I think that is checkmate, you know."

"You're right." Marigold shook her head and tipped over her king. She frowned, trying to puzzle out what precisely had happened, and then hazarded, "Something to do with where you put your castle four moves back, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Anthony nodded. "Rather nifty little trick, isn't it?"

"Positively devilish, sir. You'll have to teach me." She stopped, ducking her head to hide a blush. "If it's not too much trouble?"

"Not at all. I enjoyed that."

"So did I, sir. Well…" She stood, yawned and stretched, rather obviously. "Heavens! I oughtn't to be so tired still, but I'm sure I'll be asleep as soon as my head touches the pillow! I'll see you both in the morning. Goodnight, Mother." Marigold kissed Edith's cheek, and then, with a little hesitation, Anthony's too. "Goodnight, sir. And… thank you."

"Goodnight, my dear."

As the door shut behind her, Edith looked up from her book and chuckled. "I adore my daughter, but she has all the subtlety of a drop-forge hammer."

"Hmm?" Anthony frowned, gathering together the chessmen.

Edith opened the drawer under the chessboard and helped him put them away. "She was just reassuring us that if we wanted to share a bed tonight, there wouldn't be any unwelcome interruptions. Not from her, anyway."

"Ah. I see." Anthony came up behind her, resting his hand on her hip. In the mirror over the fireplace, their eyes met. "And… do you?"

"I'd certainly like you to hold me - but I'm not sure I'll have the energy for anything else." Her eyes crinkled in apology. "Sorry to disappoint."

Anthony kissed her cheek. "Nonsensical girl. Come on, let's turn in."

"So… do you think it's a sensible plan?" Anthony wondered. Marigold had slept late, and was still in bed, eating her breakfast on a tray, while Anthony and Edith had breakfasted early in the morning room and then decamped to the library.

"Yes. I really can't thank you enough," Edith said as Anthony handed her a cup of tea. "You've arranged everything so beautifully."

Anthony sat down next to her and set aside his own cup. "Edith, if there is one person in the world I absolutely refuse to be thanked by, it is you." He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it, gently. "I want you to be my wife - and you'll have to forgive me if my deeds, ah, pre-empt the words."

"And you're sure you won't mind us going to stay at Locksley?"

"Absolutely not - if you don't mind a legion of Land Girls and two hundred small boys half a mile away. Besides, it's not me doing you the favour, really, is it?"

Edith chewed on the end of her nail absently. "But Mrs Cox really doesn't mind?"

"She says she'd be happy to, and that God only knows why it took us so long to telephone and ask her." At Edith's faint smile, he reminded her, "Darling, you know what she's like - the woman's lost without a poor soul or two to coddle, and since she's retired, she's made such a go of the old coach-house. She has her niece there to help her, and it's quiet, and that's what Marigold needs just now, I think."

"You're right, of course." Edith drummed her fingers on the arm of the sofa, thinking. "I'll ask Cynthia and Geoffrey to mind things for me at the magazine, take a leave of absence…" She stopped and reached for Anthony's hand. "I'll miss you."

"And I'll miss you. But Marigold has to come first - and the last thing either of you needs just now is another person to fret over." Edith squeezed his wrist in thanks.

"You're rather smashing, do you know that?"