"Doctor!" Alison's voice, and none too happy. "Did you know about this? Have you seen what they're making me wear?"
He turned, and if she hadn't been too preoccupied with her own issues she would have seen him wince, and touch his fingers lightly to his brow. She was securely laced into a long, formal white dress, ribbons, buttons and lacy frills tied into its unwieldy cotton bulk at every extremity. She stood in front of him, fists on hips, her beaded locks sprawling incongruously over the flounces at her shoulders.
"Pretty," he said quietly.
"It's a death trap, is what it is," she stormed. "I'm half suffocating, I feel like I'm being attacked by a pack of mad blankets. And that girl, the maid, Jenny. Innocent looking little thing, isn't she? Well, she's a maniac, she tricked me. Told me to breathe out, then knotted the strings up the back and half crushed my ribcage. She must have fingers like steel cables!"
The Doctor listened impassively to her rant, nodding agreement to the principle without much sense of sympathy. When she'd finished he paused for a moment and then shrugged.
"Oh well."
He looked past her at the door to the hallway, and with an exasperated snort she abandoned the point and turned to see what he was looking at. Into the room to join them glided a walking porcelain statue.
The young woman's skin was frighteningly, unhealthily pale, and the pink blush which had been applied to her cheeks heightened the effect rather than concealing it. Even so, she was astonishingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful, the glacial perfection of her features complemented by icy blue eyes and gleaming silver-blonde hair. Her slender fragility garbed in a dazzling, richly embroidered high-collared gown of stiffened silk, her very entrance seemed to transform the dark and cosy drawing room into a fairy tale palace. Alison wouldn't have thought it possible, but she suddenly felt sloppily attired in her own simple dress, and asked herself how these people could have ever taken seriously the story that she was any sort of princess.
The new arrival smiled. Sort of. The breaking of her chilly composure just made her look sad.
"Good evening," she said softly. "You must be the Doctor, and the Princess Alison. It's so nice to have visitors for once."
The Doctor stepped forward, took her limply extended, white gloved hand, and raised it to within an inch of his lips.
"Charmed."
Alison took the proffered hand in a grip she knew was too firm, too clumsy.
"Hi," she said awkwardly.
The Doctor sighed.
"I must apologise for the princess," he said. "She was educated by a certain missionary in her homeland, a man of great energy and principle but little refinement. I'm afraid this also accounts for her rather eccentric dialect of English."
"Don't overdo it, Doctor," Alison muttered.
The young woman looked a little lost, and attempted another smile. She withdrew with a sense of, if not relief, then simple tiredness, when Carstairs bustled in behind her.
"Ah, excellent," he cried with hardworking jollity. "I see you've already met. Sorry I wasn't here to introduce you properly, this is Charlotte, my daughter in law, an addition to the family any father would be proud of, I'm sure you'll agree."
"Mm-hm." The Doctor eyed him with interest. "And will your son, the lucky man, be joining us?"
"Er, no." Carstairs seemed to speak more quickly with every sentence. "I was hoping perhaps you'd escort Charlotte in to dinner. Princess?" He offered his crooked elbow to Alison. "Will you permit me?"
Alison hesitated, restrained herself from taking a defensive step back, and lifted her hand tentatively, supposing she was meant to thread it through his arm somehow but wanting to get the angle right. Could she get away with waiting until the Doctor paid Charlotte the same courtesy and then copying what she did? It would mean leaving Carstairs hanging for a while, standing there in that strange teapot-like posture...
There was an earsplitting shriek of terror from upstairs and the tableau switched, all four of them staring wide-eyed in the same direction. Alison wiped the relieved grin off her face.
"Bess!" roared Carstairs.
Like a charging bull he shouldered the startled Doctor aside and blundered out into the hall and up the stairs.
"Now we're getting somewhere," the Doctor muttered, and flew after him.
Alison followed. She ran out of the room, across the hall and to the staircase, where she immediately tripped over her skirts and fell flat on her face. Pushing herself up on her palms, she looked to the side and found Charlotte observing her wanly from the drawing room door.
"Oh..." She stifled her curses and dragged the great mass of material out of the way to go clambering up the steps.
--------------------
She had been left far behind by Carstairs and the Doctor, but was able to track them easily by the sound of a blubbering, hysterical voice, and she found them crouched by a vast four-poster bed in a bedroom the size of her old flat. The woman huddled with the covers drawn up to her chin was middle-aged, her hair in disarray, her lined face made more so by furrows of exhaustion and horror.
"Bess! Bess!" said Carstairs urgently, pushing closer. "Are you all right? What happened? Another nightmare?"
"No!" the woman managed to gabble out. "No, no, no. It wasn't a dream, I saw it, I really did, just like that night... At the window, its face, oh its face!"
She pulled the covers over her nose and squeezed her eyes shut in a fresh bout of sobs. The Doctor leaned forward intently.
"Bess?" he said. "Bess, I need you to tell me more about this thing you saw. Can you describe it?"
She collected herself a little at his words, but Carstairs stiffened and rose quickly to his feet.
"As you can see, Doctor, my wife is unwell. I'm afraid I must ask you not to upset her."
The Doctor drew back, folded his arms and looked down at the shorter man in deadly seriousness.
"You and I both know, Lord Carstairs, that there is nothing wrong with your wife. She is upset already because she has seen something very real and very frightening at her window."
"I... I'm afraid I shan't be able to join you for dinner tonight after all, I must tend to Elizabeth."
His anger and distress lending him the courage, he lifted his chin with a defiant look. The Doctor didn't stir.
"I'm here to help you," he said quietly. "I propose to do so whether you cooperate or not, but it'll save a lot of time and trouble if you just trust me now."
"Nobody can..." Carstairs halted himself in mid-blurt and pressed his lips together. "I must ask you both to leave my wife's bedchamber now."
The Doctor leaned forward, cold-eyed, all the way forward until his forehead rested on that of the recoiling aristocrat.
"Okay."
In a swirl of his coat he wheeled around and shooed Alison along ahead of him, out of the bedroom and onto the landing over the stairwell. He pulled the door shut behind them.
"Well, bang goes dinner," he remarked. "Shall we see if this mysterious Cook will do us a sandwich?"
"You really think she saw some sort of monster out there?" Alison asked.
"Oh, I don't doubt it. Omicron particle emissions, in 1888? There's obviously something strange going on round here." He retrieved a wallet-sized technological gadget from his pocket and peered disappointedly at the flat red line on its screen. "Pity they faded before we could track them down, isn't it?"
"So what now?"
He led the way downstairs.
"It's dark, and it's raining. This is no weather for going out chasing monsters. So I suggest food, then sleep, and we'll sort it out in the morning."