Geis was to the door of her room, his hand was on the white porcelain knob. Out of nowhere-possibly, from somewhere out of the past, Marion's father stepped forward. He was in his gentleman's dressing gown, his pajamas showing only slightly from beneath it. He was quite nattily clad.

"Herr Geis," Sir Edward Nighten said, concern at what he saw before him written deeply on his face. "I thank you for bringing Marion upstairs, but, it is not seemly for you to be in such proximity to her boudoir."

Gisbonnhoffer's eyes showed his shock at finding the elderly man lucid, much less up and about.

"Sir Edward," he replied, speaking, in his surprise, with uncharacteristic deference to the English Lord and retired Parliamentarian, "I am only seeing Marion safely to her room. She has-" Geis stalled out as Marion slipped down from his carriage of her onto her own two less-than-steady feet.

"I can see," Edward commiserated with the German lieutenant. "I will handle this from here," he promised, sounding something of a stern and disapproving parent, and waving the other man off. "You had best rejoin the other guests below." Her father re-adjusted the lapels of his own dressing gown as though they were on a tuxedo jacket.

Geis looked over his shoulder at Eva who had taken the open staircase to the second floor to check on Marion. "Have the kitchen staff bring the strongest coffee they can brew, and some cheese to fill her belly and soak up the champagne. You will see to it personally that she is able to be brought back down in time for the toasts. Thirty minutes. No more."

Eva, used enough by now to being ordered around by Germans, though she no longer wore the uniform of the household staff, did as she was told, descending the stairs to the first floor serving kitchen.

Edward was already bustling along with Marion into her room and toward her bed. He did not seem to have heard Gisbonnhoffer's limitation on his daughter's recuperation.

In Edward's lucidity even his strength seemed to have returned to him.

"My darling girl," he said, seating her on the edge of the mattress. "You cannot go on like this much longer."

Marion looked at him and thought she would cry. It would not be hard to do so, her emotions already quite near the surface from her intoxication. Her dear father, here-actually here-in the room with her: knowing who Geis was, where he himself was, seeming to even be aware of the dire circumstances she had gotten herself into in these last, hard years.

He sat down on the bed next to where she lay, to tuck her in. Edward leaned toward her to help her lower onto the pillow and she grabbed him in a fierce hug like she had so often as a little girl in their London flat when he would come in to comfort her after a nightmare and turn on a light to scare the monsters away.

"There, there," he crooned, patting her in the hug. "I must speak to Robin," he advised her, "about keeping you out so late. In such times it is not good for your health."

She felt a coldness stretch over her at the mention of Robin's name. It had nothing to do with her earlier encounter with him in the maze, or any of her still befuddled feelings about it. There was no way, surely, her father could know or even suspect about their meeting.

"Do not worry," Sir Edward assured her. "I shall not tell your mother you have only just arrived home when I go back into her."

And so she was wrong. He was not lucid as to where he was. Only, who he was; a father finding his daughter has overindulged. A father who loved his child, who missed his wife. Who, even in his occluded, fractured mind hoped to protect Marion from the likes of Herr Geis Gisbonnhoffer.

"I love you," she said to him from her spot on the pillow, her hand to his lovely, darling face.

Edward took her hand in his and patted it. "Tomorrow morning I shall make you a cure for what will ail you," he promised. "It will not be pleasant, but it will give you something in common with more than one of my best men in His Majesty's Light Dragoons." He smiled, and seated himself in the cozy overstuffed chair near her bed to watch over her.

He was asleep before her, but only just.

...TBC...