Extra scene -

One of you requested to see Maddox and Caroline in their sort of unintentional courtship stage, which for story purposes, had to happen off camera. While shamelessly plugging my new fic, "The Price of Family," (which does have a lot of Caroline and Maddox), I give you a small bit of it. Sorry, but it comes in the middle of a conversation.

"Have you read Boccaccio?" Miss Bingley said, obviously a challenge.

"Yes. I mean, yes, of course. The Demeracon is ... required reading. Or-Or it should be." He scratched his head nervously. He didn't know why she was talking to him, or paying him any attention, but he decided he was perfectly fine with that. "But – if we have to choose story collections, I must profess being partial to Chaucer. Despite – well, despite Boccaccio's very obvious merits."

"Personal preference, then."

"Yes." He could not look directly at her, like she was the sun, and he would go blind. Well, blind-er.

"Most men who went to University have read Chaucer," she said. "Or claim to have read Chaucer. But not since."

"I have not – well, it's not that I wouldn't – you see, I have a copy of the Tales, but the print is uhm," he hesitated to admit it, "too small. For me. Now."

"Oh." Because it seemed, even a fine lady didn't know what to say to that. Oh G-d, he'd embarrassed her, and now he'd never be forgiven. Ladies did not like to be put in uncomfortable situations. He wanted to hit himself, but he honestly could not think of a way that would make the situation more awkward. Then, to his great surprise, she continued, "I think we have a copy in the library."

"You – you do?"

"Yes," she said, as if wondering aloud why it was in question. "I don't know if it would suit you, but you could certainly peruse it. Let me get it for you. I don't know what Mr. Hurst would do if he discovered you out of shouting distance."

He could interrupt her and tell her that there was no chance that something could go wrong with some salts and Mr. Hurst, for all of his grumblings, would ever need him during his foot soak, but Maddox did not want to interrupt her. Besides, he was captivated by the swirl of her gown as she went back down the hallway. Why did she always have to be so exquisitely dressed? It was positively confounding. In fact, he probably just stood there in a stupor until she reappeared with an ancient but properly bound copy of The Canterbury Tales. "I apologize – it seems to be in Old English."

"That's fine. I read Old English." It had a different character set, but that was not a major hindrance. He removed his glasses, setting them on his bushy hair, which he kept long in the front for this purpose, and held the book up close. "This is quite - quite readable."

"Since you're the only one who can read it who is likely to ever be under this roof, aside from perhaps that bookworm Mrs. Darcy, you might as well take it," she said. "Charles will hardly notice. I doubt he knows where the library is."

"Thank – wait, you mean...?" Surely, she wasn't giving it to him? She was just letting him borrow it. "I'll return it."

"Are you deaf as well as blind?" her voice was dismissive, but there was a playful smile on her face when she walked past and away.

Careful with it as he would be with an ancient, gilded copy of the bible, Doctor Maddox wrapped it in towels and kept it by his side as he approached the bar, setting down his bag. "A drink, please, Philip."

"Aye, yeh sound like eh king when you call me that," said the hulk of a barkeep. He was a giant man with an bald head and an intimidating scar running down its side. "Makes me uncomf'rtble. King's batty."

"I apologize," he said. "Phil."

"But yer a doc, you must know that," the barkeep said as he set down a mildly clean class in front of Maddox and began to pour. "Got a reason?"

"For the king's insanity? If I did, I'd be the wealthiest man in England by now. And then I could afford ... " He looked down. "No no, don't put the bottle away. Don't waste your efforts. I intend to get soused tonight if at all possible within my limited means."

"Depends if you'll be wantin' to drink somethin' decent. Yeh'd have to go elsewhere for that," Phil said with a crooked smile, crooked because half his teeth had been knocked out and his jaw line obviously broken in the past. "Here, yeh know i'son me. What account of the thing."

"It was nothing."

"Hey," said Phil, somewhat defensively. "I ain't got much brain left, but it's all thanks to yeh. So drink up."

True, he had performed impromptu brain surgery on that very bar while the fight between patrons was still ranging and even took some glass shrapnel in his shoulder for being in the proximity, but that the doctor any prouder of his accomplishments. "Thank you." And he downed one, then a second glass of whisper in the space of a minute.

"Mabbe I shoulda been discouraging,'" the barkeep said. "'s twelve in the mornin'."

"And very late in India. So keep pouring, good man."

Phil poured him a third, than fourth glass. The doctor, not a regular beyond something to wet his throat, was red-eyed already. "Somethin' botherin' yeh, doc?"

"Brilliant deduction," Maddox said, something he wouldn't have if he wasn't staring down his fifth glass of whiskey in five minutes. "The worst possible thing has happened to me."

"Besides loosin' your fortune 'cuzeyer bruther, bein' destitute, and putting up with snobby patients or ones that can't pay you?"

"Besides," he said, twirling the glass around, so the whiskey made a sort of wave. "Philip, I am completely and utterly in love."

"She a whore?"

"No!"

"She all diseased?"

"No."

"She the Regent's wife?"

"No. But she might as well be." He slammed the glass down on the table, spilling some of the drink on the bar, but Phil hardly seemed bothered.

"So she's rich?"

"You make it seem like a bad thing, to have money. It doesn't make her a bad person. It just makes her beyond ... beyond my – reach." He swallowed. "No offense to your fine patronage, Philip, but she won't take the Town doctor who makes a living patching up drunks and whores."

"Then she's a prig."

"No, she's a fine lady!" he shouted, to his own surprise, and banged his fist on the table so hard it smarted. "Ow."

Phil laughed. This obviously wasn't the first drunk he'd seen do that. "If she won't take you 'cuz of yer money, then she's a stuck-up coot."

"I don't – I don't know that."

"Yeh haven' asked?"

"No!" he said, shouting again. "No, of course not!"

"Then yer as stupid as she is."

It took another few drinks, passing out on the bar, and a bad headache the next day that he had to hide from his various patients before it dissolved to realize that Phil was probably right.