Disclaimer: ...what? You think I have time to write a new disclaimer every week? Do you have any idea how busy I am!? =P Fuggedaboudit.

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Episode Sixty-Four: A Nickel's Worth of Free Advice

"Who cannot give good counsel? 'Tis cheap, it costs them nothing." ~Robert Burton, "Anatomy of Melancholy"

November 3rd, 1902

Abandoned by their overseers, the servants of Bridlewood sat trancelike around the kitchen table, picking away at their breakfast and indulging in speculations that were simultaneously wild and hushed. Rumours crawled around the table in subdued voices, passed around as easily as the pot of strawberry jam. Not one mote of a reason had been given to them for the family's disappearance. Otto had returned with the carriage on the very same night that they vanished, but had also been in and out of the house a great deal ever since, running secret errands so often and so late that he spent the night elsewhere more often than not. Even Dorothy was making herself pleasantly scarce.

Sadly, Lucrezia was hit hardest by the strange goings-on, and frequently slept right through breakfast in her depression, so with no one left to serve, Duo was getting into the habit of setting out great bowlfuls and platters of food at every meal and letting everyone help themselves. As they toyed with their buffet-style continental breakfast, they couldn't help reporting what they sometimes heard while they were out and about in town.

"I 'eard someone sayin' in the post office that 'is Lordship was called back by the army, an' that 'e's takin' Miss Relena to some outpost in the desert," Elsie said in a voice full of gossipy wonder.

"I can beat that," Trowa said after a prolonged silence. "I heard from the butcher's assistant that the manor is bankrupt, and that the family's touring Europe looking for buyers."

Doris wrinkled her nose and scooped up a pat of butter for her toast. "What absolute nonsense..."

"Oh, don't go on," Bethany complained at the older woman. "If Otto won't tell us nuffink, 'ow are we supposed to find out where they've gone?"

"Well, not by listening to all the weirdos out there, that's for sure," said Duo, reaching for a second helping of scrambled eggs. "Those women from Relena's mother's bridge club haven't stopped calling looking for confirmation of the latest rumour. I swear, they're worse than the newspapers!" He set down his fork briefly, so he could gesture animatedly with both hands. "The last one wanted to know if the police had issued warrants on them for smuggling oil paintings in and out of Russia, and how long do they plan to be on the run!?"

A stunned silence descended on the table as they contemplated just how ridiculous the neighbourhood prattle was getting. Quatre looked down and prodded his pancakes. "None of that can top what I heard in the bakery between Mrs. Winthrop and Mrs. Danforth..."

All eyes were upon him. Quatre ignored it, pretending not to notice the hungry gazes being heaped upon him, thereby exacerbating their suffering deliciously. Finally, he gave in.

"Mrs. Winthrop told Mrs. Danforth that she heard from Mrs. Ridgeley that Relena was suddenly expecting 'a little bundle,' and that her brother took her away to live in a convent abroad until after...the new arrival."

Jaws dropped everywhere, except at the south end of the table, where Duo and Heero rolled their eyes at each other, and Arthur merely scowled.

"You mean...a baby?" Hilde exclaimed. "No way! Not a chance!"

Trowa shook his head slowly. "I don't know...you hear about that sort of thing in other families..."

Elsie leaned forward, dangerously close to squashing her sausages with her flabby bosom, and stared directly at Heero. "Would she actually do a thing like that?"

Heero paused, bitterly indignant about having his French toast with marmalade interrupted. He stared back, fiery-eyed. "Why are you asking me?"

"Well, you two was engaged, an' all..."

"As I have already explained, several months ago, if memory serves," Heero growled, tightening the grips on his knife and fork, "that so-called engagement was a blatant misunderstanding on the part of Her Ladyship, and I was merely humouring her. That hardly makes me an expert on either her moral code or her nocturnal exploits. Now, if you don't mind..." The opposition flattened, he went back to his meal in relative peace.

On his left, Duo quickly covered up a smirk with one hand. It seemed that Heero hadn't slept as soundly as he let on earlier that morning. In retrospect, that was a lovely memory to revisit, and Duo was suddenly daydreaming while the rest of the staff argued over Relena's character...

~~~~~~~~~~

The sound returned around two in the morning, the dinging, clanging, annoying sound that had savagely ripped apart every shred of sleep to be had in the room for the past three hours. Duo had tried everything, from pleading to bribery to stuffing a pillow over his head, but every defence was useless. Shadow was playing with her little jingle ball under the bed.

Inside Arthur's hand-carved wooden lattice sphere, a bright silver bell was being batted around, with clunks and rolls and dingles and jingles, and the chef just couldn't take it anymore. He sat up, tossed the pillow to the foot of the bed, and leaned right over the side with his braid dusting the floor next to his slippers. "Knock it off!" he whispered violently.

The jingling stopped. Duo retrieved his pillow, leaned back into it, and sighed. Not five minutes later, the jingling started up again. Duo dragged the pillow over his face and groaned into it, then sat up and glared at Heero, irrationally angry at him for not being in a similar state.

Heero appeared to be snoozing quite peacefully, rolled over on his side facing away from Duo with both hands tucked under his pillow for warmth. He had once told Duo that he was capable of invoking two different modes of sleep, labelled 'safe' and 'danger,' each with their own depth and reaction time to external stimuli. Since he had every reason to feel safe in his own bedroom, he generally slept in 'safe mode,' meaning that Shadow and her jingle ball had a better chance of waking the dead. Right at that moment, Duo was terribly jealous of that ability.

After ten more minutes of happy kitty noises, it was clear that until Shadow went to sleep, Duo wasn't about to get a wink either. He was bored. He was lonely. He leaned over his companion and gazed spitefully at his serene expression. "Heeeero," he whispered. No reply. He tried it again, a little louder. "Heero?" That failed as well, so Duo took the rather extreme measure of shoving the boy in the shoulder, hard. Heero awoke with a start and clutched the edge of the mattress frantically, thinking for a split second that he was about to slip over the edge. As he regained his bearings, Duo looked at him sympathetically. "Can't sleep, huh?"

Heero propped himself up into a slouchy sitting position and gave Duo a drowsy, bleary-eyed 'Baka, nanda-yo!' glare. Duo smiled involuntarily. Heero looked so adorably scruffy first thing in the morning, and even more so in the middle of the night. Those chocolately spikes that never saw a barber's chair, and that were such a deep brown as to be a half-shade away from black, flew comically in all directions until they were traditionally ruffled into their favoured shape on the way down to breakfast. It was a source of unending speculation for Duo, at how Heero could stand in front of a mirror, attacking the front of his hair at random with a pair of scissors and have it come out looking like a turkey's tailfeathers, and yet cut the hairline at the back of his neck in a perfectly plumb line even though he couldn't see it. Duo put it down to some kind of programming glitch incurred while his keepers were teaching him to be self-sufficient.

Heero was about to growl out an inquiry as to why he had been so rudely jostled, when he heard the jingling, and groaned. "She's not tired of it yet, I take it?"

"Nope." Duo half-hugged and half-flopped forward into his pillow. "Man, I'm gonna kill Arthur next time I see him..."

"You've been saying that a lot lately, but I notice Arthur's still walking around unharmed."

"How can you sleep right through that?" Duo asked after some playful 'rowr' noises seeped up from underneath them both.

Heero shrugged. "Practice."

"You couldn't...maybe.....teach me how, could you?"

The ambient moonlight was just bright enough for Heero to see that 'angelic mouse' look on Duo's face, the one he just couldn't resist. "Lie down," he muttered through a slight smile. Duo eagerly and quickly repositioned himself on his back, making almost as much noise as Shadow. "The first thing is to be quiet."

Duo grinned. "Sorry."

"Now, what part of your body moves the most when you do nothing but breathe?"

The odd question left Duo staring at the ceiling. "Gee, uh...I never thought about it before."

"Few people do," said Heero, "but the answer depends on your state of mind. What does Otto look like when he's hunched over the book of accounts, trying to make the columns add up?" Heero took a large breath and sighed it out quickly, expanding the top half of his ribcage with a heave of his shoulders. "How much effort does that take?"

Duo tried it, still lying down, and had to work pretty hard to inhale that way against the friction of the bedcovers.

"And what does Shadow look like when she's stretched out asleep in a beam of warm sunlight?" Heero gently tugged the blankets partway off Duo and, quite calmly, rested a hand right on the boy's abdomen. "She breathes from her belly, and nothing else moves."

After taking a moment to get over the electric giddyness of being touched, Duo tried breathing using only those muscles located under Heero's hand, and to his surprise, it was a lot easier. He took another deep breath and nodded. "Is that all there is to sleeping through noises?"

"No, but that's where it starts. Whenever you're under stress, good or bad, you automatically tend to breathe using your upper chest and shoulders, but if you force yourself to breathe with your belly, you can actually calm yourself down. Once you've mastered that, start focusing on the pattern of your breathing, and eventually the background noise will fade away. Try it now."

Heero took back his hand, covered Duo up again, and propped his head up on one elbow to watch his progress. Duo pressed his head back into the pillow for a second, then closed his eyes and did what was suggested to him. As he paid close attention to the flow of air in and out of him, he counted slowly, until he forgot the order of the numbers. Then his mind wandered to moments in the past when he was equally relaxed, then, without even realizing it, he could no longer hear Shadow or the jingle ball. Within minutes, Duo was fast and very soundly asleep, and he wouldn't know until the morning that he had just been taught the basics of meditation. He wouldn't realize at all that Heero had curled up close to him as soon as he drifted off, and wrapped an arm around his waist without stirring him in the slightest.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

"...unnerstand that never, never in the hist'ry of this house has the family jus' up an' vanished like that." Arthur's stern but rarely-heard voice cut into Duo's daydream, but not without the help of a vagrant foot knocking into his under the table. It came from Duo's right, so he looked in that direction and found Heero staring at him questioningly. He quickly smiled back to reassure him that all was well, then picked up the syrup jug and took it over to the pantry for refilling.

"Well, I dunno," Elsie moaned. "The whole thing smells like Monday morning at the fishmonger's."

Doris smacked the back of Elsie's hand in a motherly fashion. "I don't think we should be sitting here finding fault with them. If we simply ignore the waggin' tongues down our road, we'll see that we haven't been treated as badly as we think. The family has a perfect right to go where they want, when they want, and informing us of their every move is merely a courtesy." During Doris' speech, Duo poured syrup into the jug up to the top, but caught himself snatching a look at Heero, and the syrup slightly overflowed. He caught the drip on his finger before it hit the floor, and coincidentally enough was looking right at Heero as he licked it off without thinking. Heero lifted his coffee cup to hide a crawling smirk, and Duo retreated farther into the pantry to fight off a serious giggle fit, without even knowing why he was laughing.

After Doris was finished telling the staff off in general for giving in to gossip, most everyone found that they had eaten their fill, and began drifting off in other directions. While Duo was still recovering in the pantry, Quatre slunk up to him, looking over his shoulder, and tapped Duo on his. "Can I talk to you?" he whispered.

"Sure, go ahead!"

Quatre quickly shushed Duo and looked over his shoulder yet again. "Not here. Can you meet me out back, in the stables? Sometime before lunch when everyone's busy?"

Duo blinked at the peculiar request, and helped himself to another drip or two of syrup while he thought about it. "Okay..."

"Thanks," Quatre said gratefully, "and please don't tell anyone either."

The gardener vanished as quickly as he had appeared, and Duo didn't know what to make of it. Quatre was a loyal friend, though, and it was a relatively small request that he had every intention of granting.

**********

In a part of the city she didn't fully recognize, Dorothy stumbled out of a chemist's shop, then paused on the sidewalk to shake a couple of newly-purchased pills out into her hand and quickly swallow them bare. She wasn't entirely certain what happened after the party broke up the night before at some random debutante's house, but judging by the headache she awoke with in the girl's front parlour, along with a half-dozen other party-goers, Dorothy reasoned that she must have had some decent fun. Now the problem was what to do next.

She had been trying hard to avoid Quatre while she thought about his offer, or rather, his ultimatum. Bouncing from house to house and mooching off the other members of her class could only sustain her for so long, however; a decision had to be made. As she wobbled slowly down the cobbled streets trying to walk off the rest of her hangover, she took a folded piece of paper from her purse and looked at it yet again. Stepping in between Hassan and Treize felt an awful lot like doing Quatre's bidding like some sort of fluffy pet, but if her only alternatives were going broke or going back to Italy in disgrace, perhaps it wasn't so bad. She turned down the very next street she recognized and headed in the direction which she hoped would take her to Lady Une's neighbourhood.

It was a long, arduous walk, but it paid off when Dorothy saw the ivory gates that separated Une's estate from the road, and she realized that she was headed in the right direction after all. Half a block from the grand, sprawling house, she smoothed out her hair and danced a powder puff lightly over her face, just enough to make herself presentable before taking her slightly scuffed shoes up the front walk to ring the bell.

The snooty butler who had once carried Dorothy out over his shoulder greeted her icily, and left her in the foyer to announce her presence to the lady of the house. Without much of a delay, she was shown into the sitting room where Lady Une was already entertaining some visitors, three ladies from the neighbourhood with whom she was playing cards and keeping score on dainty rose-printed notepaper. She didn't even look up as Dorothy entered. "Have a seat, darling, and I'll be with you in a moment. I'm sorry, we've already started this hand, but maybe we'll deal you in on the next one, hm?"

Dorothy smiled cattily. "Of course, m'lady...whatever you think best." She wandered over to a blue velvet chaise longue and perched on it, making Une slightly suspicious at how agreeable she was being, compared to her last visit.

"Would you care for a drink to tide you over until I finish?" Une asked in an overly-pleasant tone.

"No, thank you," Dorothy declined. "I'd wait until the three of us could be alone in order to discuss business anyway."

"The three of us?" Une sang, raising an eyebrow. "If you're referring to my intended, he's out."

Dorothy frowned. She had waited all week to come to this decision, and she wasn't keen on waiting any longer to get it over with. "Out?"

"Yes...gone for the afternoon, to see his niece in the country." Une's cold and distant tone, plus the way she looked continually down at her hand of cards, were clear indicators that she disapproved strongly of Treize's absence, especially when Relena was the cause of it.

Gnawing on her lower lip in thought, Dorothy asked herself one more time if this was what she really wanted, and one more time she couldn't think of a reason to refuse. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and leaned back casually. "That's alright...I'll wait."

The girl's confident tone made Une look up at last, and she found Dorothy's smile unsettling. Whatever she intended to bring up in this future conversation must have been huge, and all through the rest of the card game with her acquaintances, Lady Une's curiosity consumed her until she was counting the hours until Treize's return, for Dorothy wouldn't let one syllable of her speech slip otherwise.

**********

Quatre's cryptic request left Duo tingling with curiosity for the rest of the morning, and all through the preparations for lunch. While the others gathered around the table once again, Duo donned his winter coat and told them he was just stepping out to fetch Quatre in from the garden. It was near enough to the truth, and even though the hesitance in Duo's voice alerted Heero that something was amiss, he trusted Duo implicitly, and was content to let him go unquestioned.

Duo knew before he left the house that he and Quatre would probably be awhile, though he didn't know why. He was already thinking up excuses for their prolonged absence, and had tossed half of them out by the time he got to the stable. Each of the horses received a friendly pat on the nose to say hello, but Quatre was nowhere to be seen.

"Psst!"

Duo looked from left to right, then back again, but a few bits of falling straw finally made him look up. Quatre's snowy head was poking out over the edge of the hayloft. Duo gaped instinctively. "What're you doin' up there?"

"Just come up here, would you?" the gardener pleaded, beckoning wildly.

With a blank look and a shrug, Duo climbed the rickety wooden ladder, being careful not to trip over his own coat, though he was glad to have it. The temperature was just low enough for a person to see their own breath crystallize in mid-air, and Duo was happy for the horses' sakes that they had big, thick blankets slung over their backs. He hauled himself up into the loft and plopped down next to Quatre, dislodging more hay that fell in a bulky pattern on the floor, then folded his hands in his lap and waited.

Quatre met his eyes less than easily, clutching his coat closer around his shoulders. "Thanks for coming. I, uh...just needed to talk to someone, and you only have to be in that house for five minutes before you start running into all the wrong someones. I thought maybe...well, you'll understand."

Duo looked innocent, but sounded unnaturally serious when he finally spoke. "Understand what?"

Quatre played with his coat, tucking his hands up into the sleeves and rubbing the metal buttons together. "I'm sorry to drag you up here, but this is where I do my best thinking. I've been trying to figure something out for myself, but I've hit a wall, and well...I think you can help me better than anyone else around." There was a long pause, during which the clinking of buttons gradually ceased. "How do you know when you're in love?"

As the words sank in, Duo was overcome by a giddy smile. "Whoa, back up! Have you, uh...got someone in mind for this position of honour?"

"I really don't know," Quatre said, blushing. "I was hoping you could tell me what it feels like for you, and then I'd..." He stopped as Duo's expression turned from whimsical to slightly shocked. "What's wrong?"

"...nothing, really," Duo admitted with a half-smirk. "I've just never said it out loud like that. I mean, it sounds so weird...'me'..." ...in love...boy, that does sound abnormal.

"I hope you don't mind my mentioning it, and of course, I'd never breathe a word of it in public..."

Duo seemed lost in very pleasant thoughts, and didn't appear all that worried about discretion as he let his eyes drift blissfully closed. The daydream was returning.

"He really makes you happy, doesn't he?"

Duo nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"What's it like?"

"It's like.....I don't know what to call it, it's just...wonderful. It's better than 'best friends.' We're together practically all the time, we understand each other, we tell each other everything." The rush of enthusiasm swept him away and he had a long distance to paddle back before he could acknowledge Quatre's presence again. "Is that what it's like with you and...whoever?"

Quatre looked dubious. "Well...sometimes, a little. We don't hae a lot of free time together...and we don't always agree...and sometimes it feels like we're from different planets, but if we have an argument, we always try to patch it up quickly." He looked down and picked idly at some straw. "I'm just not sure what we mean to each other, because we don't seem to be as perfect together."

"Hey...nobody says you have to be perfect," Duo said with a grin. "Sure, me and Heero are pretty friendly-like on the surface, but there's a lot abuse that goes on too, y'know...he still pulls my hair and calls me an idiot, and I still smack him in the back of the head if he doesn't eat his vegetables!"

A second later, they both burst out laughing, and Quatre was again enamoured with Duo's gift for kidding around. "Oh, I wish I could laugh like that with--" He stopped abruptly, short of revealing the person's name.

Duo leaned closer with a teasing glare. "Don't you clam up on me now...c'mon, who is it? Is it someone I know?"

"...well..."

"I bet it's Bethany...she's had her eye on Trowa before, but she didn't get anywhere. Has she been givin' you the eye?"

Quatre's ears turned bright red, a truly bizarre phenomenon to behold. "...no, I-I really can't tell, not until I'm sure."

"Aaah, spoilsport." Duo drew his knees up and latched his arms around them. "Okay, suit yourself. Just invite me to the wedding, if there is one. I'll even do your catering, half-price!"

Quatre looked even more dubious than before, as that was hardly likely. "Well...thanks for listening, anyway. I feel a little bit better just discussing it with someone. Do you find it helps you to get a little outside input?"

Now Duo began to share Quatre's look of confusion, the one that was both hopeful and doubtful. "I sure don't get much of it. I mean, nothing against talking to you, you're great...but the one person I'd really like to tell...I'm scared to."

"Who?"

"Helen."

"Oh."

Duo leaned his head forward on his knees, sighing. "She's the closest thing to a mother I've ever had. I want to tell her how happy I am, and why...but I'm not sure she'd be as understanding, y'know?"

Quatre shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

Duo nodded silently. Maybe I should stop putting off writing that letter. It's kinda eating me up, not knowing what she thinks. For Quatre's sake, he sat up straight and slapped on a smile. "Only one way for you to find out if what you've got with this mystery crush is real, too. You two gotta talk."

"...yeah." Maybe talking is the answer...but then again, it could make everything worse. Oh, why is it I have such an easy time deciphering what other people feel, and still have no clue what I feel!? I'm more confused now than I was when... Quatre stalled, vocally and mentally. "...well, I guess lunch is on the table by now."

"You bet! Let's get a move on, I'm starving!" Duo happily bounced down the ladder and was out the door like a flash, but Quatre couldn't seem to make his arms and legs move so fast. He followed Duo back to the house at a slow, fearful pace, and would still be struggling to sort out his thoughts for days to come. He didn't regret talking about it, however, even if he didn't get as clear an answer as he would have liked; in all honesty, he couldn't blame that on Duo, because he never really had all the facts to begin with.

**********

All the way from London to Hampshire, the same boy was sitting opposite Treize on the train. He didn't think much of it at the time, and sat flipping through his newspaper as the countryside whizzed by at a comfortable speed. The boy was fairly nondescript and didn't pose much of a threat. He was fair-haired and round-headed, with shallow-set eyes and a cunning, contemptuous gaze, but he didn't have much to say, and kept to himself the whole journey. Treize didn't think much of him at the time, but he should have.

As the Count swept out of the train and onto the platform in Southampton in his long black overcoat with cape attached, holding his silver-headed walking stick before him like a sword, he was too preoccupied thinking about the details about the impertinent telegram he had received from Relena to notice that the nondescript boy was following him. Instructing him to show up at the country house on a certain day at a certain time for undisclosed business reasons was terribly rude of her, but something about the wording of her message intrigued him, and made him set aside his indignance long enough to give the trip a try.

He carried no luggage, for he intended to be back in London that very evening, so he was able to stalk straight past the poor saps still locating their baggage and be the first one in line to hire a carriage for the remainder of the journey. To his mild surprise, the nondescript boy reached the vehicle in question at precisely the same moment, and their hands landed on the door handle simultaneously.

The blond boy leaned back a bit and regarded the imposing gentleman with absolutely no fear. "Begging your pardon, sir...I am in rather a hurry, if you wouldn't mind taking the next carriage." He spoke with no particular accent, and had a slightly snide air, as though he had summed Treize up in six words or less and entered the account into his mental database within five minutes of spotting him on the train.

Treize sneered. "I am also in a hurry, and I would be greatly obliged if--"

"Well, in that case, the longer we stand here arguing, the tardier we'll both be," said the stranger. "Tell you what, why don't we share? I don't mind, I'd quite like the company."

"I doubt very much that you're going my way," Treize said dryly.

"Really? Where are you going?"

The question came so quickly that Treize answered before he had time to think about whether it was a good idea or not. "Towards the coast."

"Why, what a coincidence," the stranger said with a smile. "That's just where I'm going." He held the carriage door open with a smile. "After you."

It all happened so quickly. The blond boy was a smooth talker, smoother than most people Treize had encountered, and he suddenly found himself rapidly departing the train station in the boy's company, not knowing exactly how it came to be. The Count found himself forced into small talk with someone he did not wish to be heavily acquainted with, and it lasted all the way to the front gates of Sutherby House, where Treize shouted up to the driver that it was time for him to alight. With only a short word of parting to his erstwhile travelling companion, he escaped and made for the gate, watching carefully as the carriage pulled around the corner and out of sight.

Inside the carriage, languidly leaning back in his gray overcoat and nondescript suit, the blond boy opened the window and leaned out to give some additional instructions to the driver. As a result, the carriage drew up along the back property line of the Peacecraft estate, and the boy hopped out, after paying the driver double what he was owed for the ride, mostly to deny that he had seen either of them.

A few snow flurries began to drift down from the dusky clouds as the fair-haired stranger hiked across the grounds to the house, and he knew exactly which one it was from the ink drawing he had of it in his pocket. As he approached, the glass-enclosed conservatory looked to be the most vulnerable security point, and with the tip of his pocket knife jammed in the lock, he quickly gained entry. From there, he prowled around the hallways, pausing every few steps to listen for signs of life. It was one of his many exceptional talents, and he grew prouder of himself every day. Before long, he had located the voice of the man with the silver-headed walking stick, co-mingled with the voices of a distinguished young man, and a soft-spoken girl. They were all coming from the same room, and the stranger crouched just outside the doorway, taking out his notepad and pen.

"...then get on with it," the voice of Treize was in the middle of saying. "If all you dragged me out here for is to pontificate about my business dealings, then--"

"We won't keep you long," the girl's voice said. "There's just a few things my brother and I wanted to clear up about what you told me a few weeks ago."

"What's to clear up? I thought I laid out the situation in terms that were perfectly plain. As I remember...your Ladyship was floored by the news." Treize chuckled.

"And no doubt you thought my tiny brain couldn't handle it," the girl scoffed back angrily. "That's where you made your mistake, Uncle. You expected me to fall to pieces as soon as I knew the truth!"

"And you must have thought I would have stood by and done nothing," the young man's voice said with an odd calmness. "Insulting our intelligence seems to be the least of your crimes, however, which is why we requested your presence."

The blond boy heard the sound of a match being lit, conspicuously without permission, as Treize took an imported cigar out of his coat pocket and indulged himself. "I suppose the head inspector of Scotland Yard is hiding behind the curtain...as if it matters. There's no obvious evidence of my...little hobby...and anything you might have to offer the authorities would be nothing but hearsay. But go on...amuse me with your junior detective prowess." A skidding noise told the stranger that Treize had helped himself to a chair as well. He was making himself quite at home, it seemed.

"On the contrary," the girl said, "we realize that there would be little point in running to the police. From what you told me, this problem is far too large for them to deal with by themselves. Their resources would be wasted."

"So instead, my sister and I have opted to take a different approach, one that we feel will be much more productive in the fullness of time. All you have to do is listen, absorb, and answer a few simple questions...and then you'll be free to go."

"...'free to go'?" Treize mocked. "Is that supposed to be a joke?"

"Not at all," the young man stated. "While the three of us chat, a few willing volunteers from the village will be making some modifications to all the exits. The windows will be barred and the doors locked, and the only way out will be to give us the answers we want."

Out in the hall, the blond boy grinned wickedly at the cleverness displayed by the mysterious siblings, and didn't much mind the prospect of being trapped in the house along with Treize. He simply stuck to his orders, jotting down notes on everything he heard being discussed with the Count, and kept his standard-issue revolver within reach in case he was spotted during his reconnaissance. Go on, Herr Khushrenada, stall if you really want to. I'll be happy to stay here, if that's what it takes, he thought smugly. Better than disappointing my master. Certainly better than turning into a weak-willed jellyfish like that foolish coward, Yuy! I won't let my master down like he did...

**********

The day after Milliardo disappeared, a letter arrived for Lucrezia. No one knew about it but her, and she had kept it a secret ever since. At least once a day, and oftentimes more than that, she would sit in the front room where she had watched his carriage speed off into the night, and read the letter over and over again, as if sheer will could transform the words on the page. Unquestionably, the letter always remained the same.

Milliardo warned of difficult times ahead, and ultimately left the future of their relationship in her hands. If she aspired to have faith and patience, he would be eternally grateful if she waited for him, but he also suggested that if she found the hardship of separation was too much for her, he wouldn't hold her captive. To leave or to stay, it was up to her.

Lucrezia's first instinct was that it was something to do with the military, some secret mission that she, as a mere civilian, could not be privy to, but then, why take Relena? It was always possible that he dropped his sister off somewhere safe until the problem blew over, but Lucrezia couldn't believe that she wouldn't merit the same consideration in such a case. Nothing about the situation made sense, and the more she thought about it, the more lost and alone she felt.

Then, a thought occurred to her: For months and months while Milliardo was abroad fighting the war, she had begged him for trust and patience while she traipsed across Britain in secret, to avoid the long-reaching and irate arm of her family, and he had been trusting and patient. It wasn't just the fact that he had little say in the matter, being thousands of miles away, but in his few letters he insisted that she do whatever she felt necessary, and constantly reassured her that their love could endure. The only thing that had changed now was the direction in which the reassurance was expected to flow.

It was then that she decided. She would wait for him, but also try to find out what it was that he didn't want her to know, even if he felt it was for her own good. Working so closely with Heero and his little network of spies, she reasoned, she might very well develop some skills of subterfuge that could lead her to the answer through less-than-honest means.

Whatever it takes...

Satisfied that things would be looking up awfully soon, Lucrezia went up to her newly-adopted room and put the letter away. She no longer felt the need to cling to it, like the sole piece of driftwood in an endless ocean.


~~~~~~~~~~

Next, in Episode Sixty-Five: Members of the Bridlewood Eight take on a training mission to test their abilities, and pride, as always, goeth before a fall.

*looks innocent* Deary me, who could that strange blond fellow be? =o_o= Aaah, I'll bet someone figures it out before I hafta draw a picture of him. You guys are smarties. =^_^= Let's set the next eppy for *looks at calendar* November 13th, okeydokey? Gosh, more questions than answers in this story, as usual... =^_~= *evil authoress cackle*