I HAVE REALISED THAT I CALLED THE EARLS SON EDAWRD IN ONE CHAPTER AND HENRY IN ANOTHER. HAVE SINCE DECIDED HE WILL BE EDWARD.

SORRY FOR THE WAIT. I HAVE BEEN DROWNING UNDER A LEVEL WORK.

BE NICE!

THIS CHAPTER GOT REALLY DARK REALLY QUICKLY SORRY!

Although at first preoccupied, both Elizabeth and her elder sister enjoyed the first half of the play. As the curtains closed for the interval, the four occupants of the box rose and moved towards the exit. Mr Darcy placed his hand on the small of his fiancée's back guiding her out into the hallway, his head bent so that he may hear what she has to say concerning the particulars of what she had just viewed.

Almost immediately after leaving their box and stepping out into the richly carpeted hallway, the murmuring started. The two couples made their way past the gossiping harpies and their daughters to the stairs. But when one matron made a rather harsh comment much louder than she had meant to, Mr Darcy was unable to keep from spinning on his heal to face the now terrified woman.

Before Fitzwilliam Darcy's famed short temper could be put on display for the entire ton to see, Mr Bingley let go of Jane's arm and stepped around Elizabeth. He firmly grasped his friends upper arm and sharply tugged trying to gain his attention. "Darcy stop," he muttered, still not letting go of his friend. "What will they think of Elizabeth?"

Snapping out of his rage induced trance, he turned towards Elizabeth who was staring at him disapprovingly over Mr Bingley's shoulder. "Yes. Yes you're right Charles." He sent a small smile towards his fiancée in an attempt to quench her growing anger.

When the group finally made it to the relative privacy of the stairway, Mr Darcy said to Lizzie as an apology of sorts, "I love you."

"I know," she said quietly, "but I'm still angry." She still had not looked him in the eye since they had turned away from the woman.

"I'm sorry I acted in such a disgraceful way, but she... what she said, it just angered me so much. I mean how could she say such things about you when she barely knows your name."

Elizabeth reached to grasp his hand to stop his rambling. "Fitzwilliam," she began, "you don't have to explain yourself. I was only planning on not talking to you for another twenty minutes anyway." Her frown had been replaced with a teasing smile as she watched her love's brow furrow as he tried to comprehend what she had just said. "Now if we are finished here, I think it is time that we joined your aunt."

They descended the stairs in a comfortable silence and joined the Earl of Matlock and his family. Harriet had still not left her husband's side but was looking more composed than she had when she had been led away by the Viscount before the show. "I hope you are feeling better," Elizabeth said quietly, hoping to start a conversation with the reserved woman.

"Yes, thank you." At hearing his wife speak in a voice above a whisper, the Viscount turned from speaking to his cousin to look down at his meek wife who was speaking to Miss Elizabeth in a louder voice than he had ever heard her use outside of their home.

Harriet Fitzwilliam was a small woman in all respects, in stature and in voice. The first time the Viscount had met her, was at a ball, three years previously, he did not see or hear her utter a word the entire evening. Even with her lack of conversation, he was drawn to her and the spark of life behind her wide blue eyes. As Harriet's mother was a prominent matron of the ton who was known for her inability to keep her opinions to herself, it was a mystery as to why her daughter was so timid.

When the Viscount finally requested an audience with her father after a few 'chance' meetings as well as several balls and dinners where the two had shared quiet but intelligent conversation, he finally was able to understand his beloved's troubles.

After having stated his intentions the grotesquely large man on the opposite side of the ghastly, faux mahogany desk, Harriet was called into the study. As soon as his daughter entered the room, the ugly man's entire demeanour changed. A smirk spread across his previously stony features and there was a predatory gleam in his eye. It was in that room, in the stifling heat of the fire, that the future Harriet Fitzwilliam first hid behind Lord Edward.

And three years on, she had not yet revealed the full extent of her father's abuse, and her husband did not push her for information she was not willing to give.

"From my previous encounter with your sister and her friend, I have found it quite impossible to take anything they say very seriously," continued Miss Elizabeth. A small smile spread across the Viscountess' lips as her new found companion voiced what she had been too afraid to say since she had first met Lady Juliana. "I mean no offence Lord Fitzwilliam," she added when she saw that he was looking at her from behind his wife.

It was at that moment, Lady Juliana Fitzwilliam left the group of young ladies she had been speaking to, to make her way over to the group. "Elizabeth, darling, I was hoping to introduce you to a few of my close friends. They have been positively dying to meet you." Mr Darcy who had been relatively relaxed, stiffened at the use of his fiancée's Christian name and was ready to jump to her defence if she displays the slightest sign of discomfort.

Elizabeth on the other hand, only smiled serenely and said, "I am honoured that you would think of me, but I think that I have quite had my fill of new people for tonight." Lady Fitzwilliam's mocking smile, slid from her face only to be replaced by a grimace more suited to a murderer than the daughter of an earl. On seeing that she was getting very little out of her cousin's country chit, she spun on her heel and flounced back to Miss Taylor, to continue her gossiping. As she left Harriet's white knuckle grip on her husband's sleeve loosened slightly. As his wife relaxed, Edward did as well.

After realising what her father had done to her for all those years, he had promised to protect her, but by bringing into his life, he had introduced her to his harpy of a sister and her friends. But this woman who his cousin had brought back from Hertfordshire, had put his delicate wife at ease in a way that no other had.

As the bell rang for the second half, both Lord Edward and Mr Darcy had to practically drag the women away from each other as they hurriedly made plans for Jane and Elizabeth to call on Harriet tomorrow. They eventually made it to their seats, just as the curtain rose and the orchestra played their first notes.

As quiet settled amongst the audience, Lord Edward took his wife's delicate hands in one of his own, turned his head to press his lips against her temple and whispered, "your safe now. He'll never touch you again." In the darkness of the theatre, no one saw the Viscountess turn towards her husband and rest her head into his shoulder blade, as he traced patterns on the skin of her arm left bare between her gloves and the sleeve of her dress.

Her father and what he did to her would never leave her. But with her husband, the man who had saved her, in that darkened theatre, she knew it didn't matter. It was in the past. As Henry said, he couldn't touch her.

For now.

YOU ARE ALL WONDERFUL XXX

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Just in case Harriet's story seems familiar