Rural Scotland - Louise La Salle took in a rare moment indoors, away from her work and field chores in the WLA, the Women's Land Army, where she helped on a local farm raising food and tending animals to meet the growing British need for provisions among both the military and the general population.

Her hands moved deftly at her needlework, content with the activity of their appointed chore. She smelled the familiar supper-makings coming from the kitchen, finding herself wishing they were close enough to the sea (they were not) to enjoy fresh fish.

When she had left Sark she certainly had never dreamed that being evacuated from there would keep her away from the island as long as it already had, much less that she would be able to so easily find work in Britain, and war work at that. Though, certainly, the biggest surprise of all had been that of Little Stephen, who, unbeknownst to her at the time, had also evacuated Sark with her, a tiny, barely conceived stowaway within her (in-the-past, unreliable) womb.

But here he was playing on the floor at her feet while she saw to the farmer and his wife's mending, a strong, chubby lad of two-and-a-half, with his father's russet-to-ginger hair, a decided Scottish accent already creeping into his ever-growing vocabulary. Sometimes her Norman-accustomed ears actually had to consult the farmer's elderly wife who watched over the child during the day, as to what Little Stephen was trying to say.

Of course, no true need for the 'Little' distinction, his father Stephen being miles upon miles away, entirely ignorant of his toddler son's existence.

Louise thought of what she might give, might trade to be able to send Stephen news. Two sentences. No, one sentence. She had written, as was custom, through the Red Cross, prayed for her letters' delivery, but though they had not come back marked undeliverable, as she heard nothing in reply of them she felt certain they had not been received, the community of Sark being of such a caliber that she knew had anything happened to Stephen a neighbor would have accepted her letter and replied to her in his stead. At the least, Dick Giddons would have posted her a Red Cross-couriered reply.

Since Stephen's sight had gone fully-dark they two had never had an occasion for exchanging letters between them. He could write, some small amount. His letters proved clumsier in their formation than when his vision had been good. Even so, they were legible. But since their marriage the La Salles had never experienced separation of any kind that would have caused them to depend upon written correspondence.

No, Louise changed her mind. She would not bargain for the ability to get news to him. She would be selfish. It was news from him that she so desperately craved.

He had to be able to assume that having arrived in Britain she was well and good. She, on the other hand, had no such assurances about his welfare in the wake of Occupation.

Had it not been for the unexpected appearance of Little Stephen she would have spent all her nights in Scotland re-examining her agreeing with Stephen that she must evacuate. As it was, even with Little Stephen she often fought with herself when the lights went out: even if things were bad on Sark, did she not best belong where her heart also did? Did a son not need a father more than the safety and protection strangers might provide him? Might they three not have been safe enough on the farm? On Sark? Keeping their heads down, enduring through this war, but as a family, rather than suffering all this; years of separation and precious time lost over the Jewish ancestry of a grandmother best-remembered (if remembered at all) by a framed needlepoint hanging in the entryway of the La Salle farmhouse? Her beloved house, her and Stephen's house so far away, their home from which she received no news?

She looked down to the sock she was darning. It was the farmer's. She did not want to be at mending another man's clothes. Nor did she want, as she would do after the evening meal, to be knitting sweaters and sundries for strangers, with Scottish wool. She wanted Sarkese wool on her needles and in her purls. She wanted the day's catch on her own kitchen table, and Serquiaise words in Little Stephen's mouth.

Louise caught herself before the momentary bitterness spilled over into her expression. "Oh, Lord," she prayed, twisting at the slender golden circlet on her left hand, "do not let me scorn the blessings of our safety here. But, oh Lord, do, please do, let him send word."

ENGLAND - Kirk Leaves, the Country Estate of Earl Huntingdon - Wadlow the butler must surely have been nearly apoplectic upon hearing the news. Downstairs, anyway, his shock must have been apparent, whether he chose to register surprise Upstairs or not: The Earl to entertain two women, on two separate occasions within less than a single week of one another? The house had doubtless been thrown into upheaval.

The Earl, after all, did not entertain. Certainly not since the viscount, Master Robin's death. Nor did he generally receive visitors. Were it necessary to make a call he did so, calling in at the house of those with whom he needed to visit.

The staff and manor of Kirk Leaves had simply gotten out of the habit of a social lifestyle. The Earl traveled to London regularly on business, but gone were the trips to France, or other trips to the Continent on business-or pleasure. Gone were the country house parties thrown by the young master, his weekend visitors brought in wishing to hunt or shoot. Gone were the worries of how to plan for possibly unevenly matched numbers of men to ladies, gone were the logistical problems of how to modestly house the single ladies away from the men's bedrooms. And generally gone was the permanent gaiety of the young master when in residence, and the staff's held-breath anticipation of it.

Kirk Leaves was still a well-oiled machine, but an ever-increasing automaton, a house less alive, less lived-in, now more muted, entire wings closed up from lack of use.

Yet the Earl carried on, much, to many observers, as he had before. But, to keener observers (though there were not many), his life had lost something of surprise, of curiosity, of...possibility. He lived as a widower with no children...who was his age plus twenty years more. A man who had come to be defined among the public (possibly, even in his own mind) by the relationships he had lost to death's hand, rather than by the relationships he sought to cultivate among the living.

All-in-all, most anyone would remark, he was on the whole entirely as he had been before his son's reported death. Steadfast. Nothing about Huntingdon had changed; his thoughts and views proved constant, his emotions steady, his personality pleasant and agreeable. It was only that the forces of life, of joie de vivre, the possibility of the unexpected...it was only that the seed of the spontaneous-against which he might have railed at the time-had abandoned him, and encountered him, and he it, no longer ever at all.

Nor did he seem to note such as being true.

And so it was as Wadlowe had told the housekeeper; two ladies to two separate teas within a fortnight of one another? A comparative marathon of Society.

Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, sat in the conservatory as he awaited the lady for the second tea, reflecting on the room about him, built for his wife, but cobbled onto the country home rather gracelessly, conservatories not having been en vogue at the time the manor's original sturdy architecture had been the order of the day. And so it was an uneasy marriage of forms.

Kirk Leaves was a man's house, with the fragile glass and metal fittings, the filigree and hothouse flowers of a conservatory wedded to its bulk awkwardly at best.

As he contemplated the delicate, perfectly appointed table set nearby him, the one that would hold the coming tea service when his guest arrived, he found his mind circling back to the other tea guest he had hosted several days before.

He had not encountered Lady Nighten for nearly two years, their social circles being so vastly different, hers moving like a whirligig, his more like sludge on a waterwheel, and women not being permitted entry at his club, his primary social outlet.

He was never certain if the years had been kind to Lady Nighten, who was neither as old as him, nor as her one-time husband, Sir Edward. Never certain of inherent kindness in the passage of time toward her, or if she, herself, had certain powers, cream, therapies and such, to combat them. Either way she looked better than most females who were staying in London to endure the Blitz.

But then, she had always been a head-turner, from the moment she had first been presented at Court. And how the tongues had wagged when she had accepted Edward's offer of marriage. Even in those days, such an age gap was remarkable.

Her hair was still quite dark, like her daughter's, like her son's. Her face, where wrinkles did show, only in the most tasteful spots and amounts.

As they were seated and she was pouring at his request, she spoke. "I have not been to the country in some time, certainly I have seen little of Kirk Leaves these past years." She smiled across to him. "One forgets what lovely grounds you have here."

He noticed she did not ask to what she might owe the honor of a tea invitation. But of course he knew better than to expect such boorish manners from her. "And where do you stay, in London? I sent my note 'round by way of Clem at the Mayfair house."

"Oh, yes," again she smiled, "I am there. Clem's wife is rarely home. I am ensconced somewhat like...a, hmmm...visitor, staying at Clem's wishes, I suppose. I have my old rooms, of course."

"So very little has changed for you?" of course he meant, 'since the divorce'.

She gave a small shrug, bringing her gaze back to him from where she had been admiring some camellias over his shoulder. "It would appear that as long as I wear only the legal badge of divorce, and do not attempt to court a lover or re-marry-as long as I have but one living husband-no one seems to mind, my own family being equal insofar as nobility, my title my own, and not marriage-derived."

Their tones were civil-cordial, even-he could not have said what caused him to speak next. Perhaps too much time among to-the-point conversations at his club. "And so, after all that, it must gall you to read the circulated recant they claim for Edward's, now."

Her eyes stutter-blinked. Other than that she gave away not an ounce of surprise at his very surprising, even his very leading, inquiry. "Does it gall me? No." She let a small wrinkle creep onto her forehead. "But it does beg the question...is he so determined to be reviled by whatever the prevailing winds are that now, when it does no good to anyone, now he recants?"

Well, he had best have it out. There was no going back now. Surely their decades-old acquaintance could handle the fall-out. "Which he would not do for you?"

She lightly scoffed. The Earl and she had never had occasion to discuss the matter. It was unseemly to air one's private matters, thus. No matter that he had nearly been family, that Edward would have thought, have treated, him so even without a marriage between their children. "At the time, to write, to publish in favor of war, in support of the Jewish race? It was society-suicide. Certainly no one else was willing to stick their neck out. The Duke of Windsor, Mr. Lindbergh-they were all visiting Hitler, not biting their thumbs at him."

"You disagreed with the ideals Sir Edward articulated? The meat of the monograph?"

"Don't," she nearly spat (as nearly as a Lady might spit) out the negative, "be ridiculous."

He took a breath. "No. I perhaps know the matter between the two of you too intimately to pretend otherwise, at least from your husband-that is, Sir Edward's-side. And I find myself rarely 'ridiculous'. Might I ask, this 'society' you wished so desperately to please, to refrain from troubling the waters of-is it still so important to you, yet?"

Her tone became somewhat hardened. "It is all the domain afforded me." Her eyes narrowed only slightly as they held his. "You will recall, Robert, you were present for the votes those years ago, were you not? You will recall that it was all to which a woman might legally aspire."

"And now," he referenced the monograph's recant, "when the words are revoked, it comes so at a time it does you little good, society-wise. When we are called to bang the drum, to buy our war bonds, salvage our rubber, plant our victory gardens, and thumb our nose at Herr Hitler." He looked at her, she looked at him. He felt the topic was past pursuing any further. "Do you hear anything?"

There was a wariness now to her. It was obvious she did now wonder why she had been asked to tea, she no longer troubled to conceal her suspicious curiosity. "Nothing. Silent as the cable severed between the Islands and London." Still, she could find nothing improper or even uncharitable in his questions. Her tone softened. "I think sometimes Clem may know something, have some news from the work he is in, but he shares none of it. Their names are never mentioned around the house, even, as though speaking them might call down their yet un-risen ghosts." She paused, recalling with whom she spoke. "But of course you will know something worse of that, yourself."

"Miranda," the Earl began, "I cannot lie. I would much rather have Sir Edward here for what I am about to say, and, if not, in his stead, Marion, who has always known his mind as well as anyone, if not better, I should think. As I cannot have either, I come to you. I am in an awkward position these last years, and I find I must make a decision about the whole of my estate. The title, of course, will revert to the Crown to re-dispensate upon my death, but the rest, the houses and monies, are mine to bestow as I please. I thought you might do me the honor of stepping for a moment into Edward's shoes, into his mind, and speaking with me about,-discussing with me as he might-the possible candidates."

She was flattered, but her mind instantly reverted to other possibilities. "Robert," her voice was close to tender, as she spoke to an old friend. "You are not so infirm," she paused before saying the rest, not accustomed to sharing such remarks with a gentleman, "nor yet so physically displeasing as to despair of ever producing another blood heir."

He shook his head. "I will not wed again. Let that avenue be closed for discussion."

There was a pause as Lady Nighten considered his resolve in the matter. "She might have had a son," she said, referring not at all to a wife the present Earl might take. "The women in my family have always been very reliable about producing fine sons." And she found she could not quite get back her voice, unshaken. She widened her eyes in hopes to allow the water pooling there more room to settle and disappear without spilling over onto her cheek.

"Now that," he warned her, though she knew better than chasing that melancholy line of thought, "we must neither of us speak on further," and so as a pair they had thrown themselves with some gusto into both the teacakes, and briskly debating the available options (his first cousins, second cousins, his wife's distant family) for settling his fortune and property.

"My lord," Wadlow announced, and the Earl was popped out of his reverie by the arrival of Lady Sophie Miller, sister of Lord Bonchurch, mother of Mitch, nephew and once heir to Bonchurch.

"Lord Robert," she bustled and beamed, not as much meat to her as one tended to get the impression of. She was so fidgety and full of bustle, seeming to be everywhere at once, when she had departed one always bore the feeling that she had been larger than life-size, grander and somewhat bulkier.

But though she had a weakness for far-too-large hats, it was simply not the case. Lady Sophie was actually quite trim in her never-given-up corset, very little over-plumpness about her.

They had barely gotten through the expected pleasantries when she surged forward with the reason for their meeting together.

"I brought these," she said, reaching for an artist's portfolio that Wadlow was holding for her, "just so you might see the renderings." She slapped the portfolio shut for a moment, having withdrawn nothing yet. Her eyes grew round. "They are very moving, I must warn you. Myself, I cried over them copiously for several days before I could look at them dry-eyed."

The Earl had not forgotten Lady Sophie's being so terribly incommoded at the funeral, and in the ensuing weeks. "And these are meant as studies for..."

"A statue, I think," she answered, brightly. "Of them together as boys. Tastefully done. Certainly not in the modern style."

"No, I should say," he indulged her with his agreement, as he had in inviting her to tea. He had considerable admiration for Lady Sophie, for all her impractical, unintentionally whimsical ways. "More, you are thinking, along the lines of Nelson's, in Trafalgar?"

A crisp nod of approval. "Just so. And at its base, them grown. Bas-reliefs in bronze. The profiles, I think. Possibly, a locally-penned poem. We might ask the local paper to run a request for entries." Her eyes took on a shine with a new idea. "We could advertise in the Times!"

Here, the Earl saw that he would have to put a stopper on her fun, obviously set to spiral further out-of-control. "Might I ask, Lady Sophie, whether it might be best to, perhaps, take the sculpture (not in the modern style), and the very elegant bronze plaques, and...convert them, if you will, into simply and respectfully listing the names, and perhaps the towns of all the six?" He saw her face about to fall. "'Twould be less grand a memorial, certainly, but 'twould better serve the posterity you are so admirably desirous of commemorating Mitch to, would it not? To list him and his fellows? Heroes all, I am told."

She looked uncertain. "Well, I am sure they were, to a man, my lord. But one of them I am told was from Leeds. Some dreadful place called Quarry Hill...Leeds! Another was a Scottish miner. Ought we list such dubious origins next to our own, beloved sons?"

Robert, Lord Huntingdon, who had belly-laughed infrequently when his son was alive, and little if ever since his death, found he could not help but chuckle.

Channel Island of Alderney - Treeton Camp - Mitch Bonchurch, rightful heir to his maternal uncle's estate and title (though his third cousin at the present moment took such to be his own, now inherited, dominion) would have scoffed not a moment at any Leeds-man or former mineworker who might appear to affect his rescue from his present situation.

Although, actually, his present situation was far from understood, even by himself. He had been taken into custody by Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer this morning at the Sark harbour of Creux, but nearly, it seemed in retrospection, as an afterthought by the German.

Along with Lady Marion he had been set on a boat bound for Alderney. (Her somewhat more comfortably so, on a stretcher.) Less than an hour later they had arrived on the island, and the Lieutenant had not even lingered to see him placed in a cell, much less to question him.

With considerable agitation he paced the small area of the holding cell he had been consigned to, its location near the front of the camp; wondering, wishing, fearing, what might come next.

...TBC...