Guernsey - The boat trip from Alderney had proven an awkward one, to put it generously. Before putting out to sea, the German Army matron chaperoning Eleri Vaiser had been summarily dismissed to join with her fellow women working the barracks at one of the camps, until a ship might take her back to the mainland and her further orders there.

Without the matron there proved to be no buffer, no translator between the Kommandant and his deeply estranged daughter. And certainly Marion was not feeling up to such a social task at the moment.

The Kommandant, who apparently took quite a shine to being out on the water, more or less ignored both Eleri and Marion, choosing instead to chat intermittently with his chauffeur near the bow, if he spoke at all; Eleri and Marion banished to the stern, Marion closing her eyes as often as possible, wishing for sleep, but the sun reflecting off the waves, like light on crumpled cellophane, made even such a task on the whole, unpleasant.

Sark - Farm of Blind La Salle - Robin had sent Wills and the Gypsy to the detached washhouse with the lice-cure. The outbuilding held what there was of indoor plumbing on the un-mechanized farm; a sink with taps, an all-but antique water closet, and corrugated metal tubs of various sizes used for the washing of clothes-or bodies.

There was a small pot-bellied stove on one end to allow for both the necessary heating of water, kettle by kettle, and also for heating the space to make bathing less frigid.

Carter had taken his treatment in the kitchen, pumping water for himself at the well near the barnyard and heating a single kettle of it on the cast-iron range.

But Robin had prescribed no such similarly lax treatment for Wills and Djak. "See to it the boy gets a thorough dousing, head-to-toe. And if you have been at obeying my orders in keeping closest proximity to him? By all means, yourself as well."

Wills had tried to object and stall for time, "but without Carter how am I to persuade-?"

"Need I remind you again," Robin told him, "you are the communications officer. Go. Communicate. You have forty-five minutes before people begin to arrive and you must get him hidden. Be thorough, but quick." And Oxley had walked away to see to the modest early-afternoon chores nearest the house.

It had not proven difficult for Wills to get the boy to come with him into the washhouse, but he seemed to be finding out that this Gypsy did not care for getting clean.

He had helped Wills stoke up the fire and heat two good four-gallon kettles of water to boiling, to be diluted with cold from the tap in the largest tub which they had, as a team, pulled out into the center of the floor. Beyond that, Djak had not stirred, much less begun to prepare himself for the delousing.

Wills moved to the toilet to relieve himself of excess piss before the coming tub-soak. Knowing he was going to undress shortly anyway, he had kicked off his boots in one corner of the room, and casually let drop his trousers and unders to his ankles while he stood at the edge of the porcelain bowl.

He had not noticed the boy's wary reaction to this.

"Well," he said, knowing Djak could not understand him, but keeping up a friendly chatter anyway, "let's get you sorted."

He kicked off what was left about his ankles, not yet removing his shirt, and, bare-bottomed, moved toward where the boy stood in the opposite corner of the room.

Djak had yet to remove a single item of clothing. Not that the boy had many. And what he was wearing (if it had once been of a color, any color, it could not be guessed at now, resembling nothing so much as 'dun') was so worn with constant use it was close to shredding, thin as tissue paper in some spots.

One did not change clothes in the camps; one was lucky, in point of fact, to have a complete set. At Treeton, socks (in any condition) were as much currency as gold, any underclothes purely mythological, and actual belts or braces long ago left behind with fond memories of the halcyon past.

"Shirt off," Wills said, using his first finger to gesture to the garment needing removed. "Robin has spoken. It'll be the full treatment for us."

The Gypsy's eyes flashed a fear of recognition at the name of Robin, which he had already learned stood for Oxley, the perceived 'rom baro' of the unit's clan.

Although the boy recognized the name, Wills had never seen him react to it with such alarm. It was only a sort-of bath, after all.

"We haven't much time," Wills announced, again fighting frustration that Carter was not present to smooth the situation. "Here, let me help you." He reached for the hem of Djak's tattered shirt, and bedlam erupted.

The boy turned into seven of himself, each wilder than the next, each impossible to get a hold on: arms, legs, all wild as windmills, struggling to get free and avoid (what Wills assumed was) the coming lice-down and bath.

Wills' hand still had the shirt's hem. He increased his grip on it, trying to keep himself from being injured, and at the same time trying to prevent himself from hurting the boy.

In an instant, the shirt tore, or, more aptly, disintegrated in Wills' strong hands. His mind registered that he had done it: he had managed to remove the first impediment to the bath. He wondered if he might get away with simply throwing the boy, still in his trousers, into the tub, going about it that way.

Immediately his brain stepped on that thought, informing him something quite cold and sharp was now very alarmingly laid across his upper thigh. Very near...Oh shite, it was a knife. Not one of Abby Rufford's dull-bladed table knives. No, a large, fully-functional knife meant for butchery.

Wills stopped breathing entirely. Very, very slowly he raised his eyes to meet Djak's. In their gradual raising, they tracked the boy's dusky skin tone up Djak's now-bared abdomen, over his navel and up toward the skirt of his ribs. And there was Wills' answer: two perfectly vehement answers to what was going on.

He saw Djak-he saw her-look to the nearby kettles on the boil, Wills' mind filling in the notion clearly forming in hers: if the knife did not make her point, surely the scalding water would.

His hands (with which had so determinedly been trying to get a grip on her), he raised slowly to show that they were no longer any threat. (Truly, he cared not if she were lice-infested for the rest of her days if only he could be allowed to move his vitals clear of her knife's threat.) Again, slowly, he backed away, over toward the water closet, and his cast-off trousers.

Thanks be to goodness, she let him.

He could not take his eyes off her, and not only because he felt it smart to keep them trained on the dangerous knife she brandished.

She stood like a wild thing, an innately noble thing, not a visible ounce of modesty or embarrassment about her in her denuded state.

It had been well over a year since he had seen a topless woman in the flesh. Certainly the sight of her youthful allotment would more than suffice for another twelve-month. Already, he knew, the image of her there was burned forever in his brain. For a flash he was quite thankful of the scare with the knife. It would certainly help him keep his cool until he could get his trousers back in place, not frightening her any further.

He bent over and grabbed for them from where they lay on the floor, his hand scrabbling for a paper he had folded into one of their pockets. It was the beginning of his syllabary of Romany words, transliterated into his approximation of English. He spoke a poorly rendered, 'I do not know', trying to explain that he had in no way meant for him-her to think he was about to attack her, pantsless, aggressively pulling off her clothing; to explain that rape had not been anywhere in his mind.

She stood immobile, her stance constant from the moment he had backed away from her, like a warrior practicing at stillness, the knife raised in one hand, yet on the defensive (if stepped down from the attack). Her shoulders were squared, proud, uncowed by the bareness of her upper body, this wrinkle in their encounter seeming to discomfit her far less than it had him.

There was no blush, no shame about her. As he hastily pulled on his trousers he thought of a marble he had seen once in a gallery, of what was supposed to be the rendering of an Amazon. She had not the height of that woman in marble, nor the plump (rather than logically muscular) build of the statue, and Djak's breasts were a well-balanced set, not the single one that imaginary archeress had worn. But there was something in her dark eyes (so dark it usually seemed impossible that they might be able to register any change in emotion), the fierceness, the potential ferocity that she shared with that artist-conjured Amazon.

'Her', he said in some approximation of Romany, consulting his crib sheet, falling back on using the feminine possessive pronoun because he could not, with his scribbles, locate the sound meaning 'girl' quickly enough.

'She', replied Djak in exacting Romany, claiming the gender she owned. Agreeing, for the moment, to believe Wills Reddy, that he had not intended harm for her, though there was no way (even with this misunderstanding nearly straightened out), not even at the demand of the rom baro, that she would willingly bathe herself in front of a man.

She had no idea how to ask him for another shirt, a covering of some kind. As much as she was glad the flier, Carter, was not here, had he been, things would certainly have run more smoothly.

Wills had his trousers back in place. She had lowered the knife some. He held up his hand as if to tell her to wait, and removed his shirt over his head. Up came the knife at his further undressing, but he extended the garment toward her. Slowly she reached out her free hand and snatched it from him, not putting it on, simply holding it.

He made motions with the crockery bowl of remedy Stephen had mixed up, showing that she should apply it to herself all-over, and then exited the door, never turning his back on her.

Once outside, Wills, despite the cool of being shirtless out in the October air, slumped down the slatted wooden door, heard it being latched from the inside and marveled at what could possibly go wrong next.

Just steps outside of the main barn, Robin stopped short upon sighting him. "Lost yer shirt, Lavender Boy?" he joked, aping Royston's broad speech.

And so, perhaps there was something not so awfully awkward in this moment, if Wills' discomfort, his chilly chest and his embarrassment in the wake of Djak's newly-discovered secret could somehow yet bring a smile to Oxley's of-late grim set of mouth.

Robin walked back in through the wide barn doors, one propped open to make chores easier, to the empty-for-now stables he had been spreading a fresh layer of straw down in, one never finding oneself with nothing to do on a farm (so he was learning). He needed busy work for the moment, of any possible kind, sod John and his worry of allergies and stitchings.

No, he didn't mean that. What he meant was sod Mitch. Sod Marion. Sod the islands, sod the war. Just, buggering sod it all. Why did Bonchurch have to go and agree to return Marion? Why did Marion have to lobby for him to do it?

If she had not, he, Robin, would have been on Alderney right now. He would be accepting whatever punishments they chose to throw Mitch's way-all rightfully his. It was him responsible for the enormous brodie of a non-plan that had gotten Marion traumatized and injured. Him who sent Dick to his death. Him who just kept agreeing to (if not himself devising) continual missteps in the still-not-complete attempt to re-establish post-operation equilibrium.

Marion had asked him to step outside this morning, to speak in private after breakfast. Naturally he had assumed she wanted a moment alone, where they could revisit their nostalgic intimacy of the night before.

Once they were to the side of the barn by the chicken coop, concealed from the house, she made it abundantly clear (with an almost managerial level of dispatch) that she had something quite other in mind.

Send Mitch to hand her over? To deliver her again into the arms of the devil? Why should he?

"Why do you fight this so hard?" she had asked, pent-up frustration evident in her voice. She pulled at the borrowed jumper of Robin's she wore, trying to claim more warmth from it. "This is not a medieval tournament, where Mitch has won the joust, and so won the fair lady to boot."

"No," he had stormed back at her (chagrined now to recall his loutish behavior), "'twould not be so easily done, for I declare, Marion, you are the hardest woman to win in all England!"

"You have forgotten, then," she had bit back, as he tried not to notice her injured wrist when she used her fingers to try and tamp her hair behind her ear from where it kept catching in the wind of the day, "we are not in England. Not any longer. The rules have changed."

"And so you mean to go through with it."

"What?" she had asked, reasonably, "Going with Mitch to the garrison? Yes."

"Wedding Gisbonnhoffer."

They would have been standing in utter silence had the wind off the sea not picked up, carrying away the barnyard noises all about them, replacing them with a racket of its own making.

"This is not England, Robin," she had reiterated. "Not anymore. You are no longer the son of an earl, no longer with such privileges. And my status as a lady, daughter of Lord Nighten? No longer a protection, a guarantee of deferential behavior. Rather, a target." Her eyebrows flicked up. "Gentility is now but a cruel joke, here. Any rights I have are those the Reich chooses to give to me. Or, as easily, chooses to take. What options have I? He will have me if I consent or if I do not. If I do not consent, I will be his by force." She had seen him look away for a moment at her baldly outlining the truth of it for him. "By force, and not even, then, in wedlock. Would that suit you better?"

"I will kill him," he had said.

She had half-rolled her eyes, not counting his threat as a valid line of reasoning. "You are not a woman," she had told him. "You do not understand."

He had scoffed, refusing to believe gender played into the issue. "What is there possibly to understand? That he will hurt you? That you speak of-God help me, Marion-rape to me as you stand here like it is the order of the day? Batting not so much as an eyelash as you outline the bleakness of your future? Chosen or not?"

"Things are not as they were at home, Robin. I say it, but you do not hear it. Were there twenty Islander men to attempt to protect me from him, even armed, they could not. He has an entire occupying force on his side. I have caught his eye, and he has chosen me. I cannot simply run away somewhere he will not find me, I cannot change my identity, I cannot hide in the woods, nor leave the islands at will. There is my father. And there is the impossibility of resisting. My wedding Geis is inevitable. The sooner you reconcile yourself to it, the sooner we can, I think, stop fighting unwinnable fights."

"I will kill him, then," he had said again, his blood on the boil, meaning it no less than he had the first time.

She half-laughed, choosing to see foolhardiness in his vow. "Is my happiness in life, my safety so important that you would value it over the lives of twenty-five innocent Islanders, then?"

He had not responded.

She drove forward, testing him. "Over the life of a single, innocent person?"

"YES!" he had said, his word harsh, agreeing before he knew he would.

"It is that important to you, that I be well, and happy?" a frown had creased her brow, painted it with confusion as well as disapproval at the immoral choice his gut had made for him. "And is yours? Your safety and wellness, is it tantamount to the life of an innocent? Is it worth that?"

"Never!" he had shouted, his voice instantly carried off on the still-churning wind.

They had both stood in the wake of his declaration for some moments, neither saying another word.

The wind had begun to settle some, and she had looked back toward the farmhouse. "Married to Gisbonnhoffer or not, I will carry on as I do now. I shall look after father, assist Islanders less-fortunate whenever possible, and broadcast the Nightwatch. And for now, I will travel to the German garrison with Mitch as my escort." She saw he was about to protest. "If you cannot stop it," she told him, referencing her coming marriage, "then do not speak of it. If you care about me, then do the right thing: let me go. With Mitch, now, and later," she had refused to let herself be shaken by referring to it, "with Geis. You have seen, with Stephen, a small corner of what he is capable of when he does not get that which he wants." Her eyes had wandered away from his during some portion of this speech, only at the end again seeking his out. She pulled at the jumper of his she was wearing, getting it over her head and off. She held it out for him to take.

He did not move to take it. "I live in the woods," he had told her, trying to illustrate that he thought it was possible, that eluding her version of the inevitable could be done. "I have changed my identity."

He had been able to tell from her face that she did not wish to speak on the issue further, but still she told him, "You are a ghost here. They do not even know for whom or for what they look. A missing box of ammunition here, a platoon short on rations there, a lost code book, a landser whose long leave resulted in the spilling of important secrets to Allen or one of the others that you later add to your growing cache of intelligence gathered while on the islands...They could pass you twenty times a day and not know you for their enemy."

"They're probably so dumb they could pass John twenty times a day and not recognize him from one day to the next," he attempted irony.

She had continued, "the 'forest' in which you live, Robin, it is a place outside society, outside, even, the Occupation. Were I to try and join you there, it would only expose you to him," (she did not repeat Gisbonnhoffer's name), "and then not only would I be in the same quandary I am now, he would have you as well." Her voice slowed. "And then I would kill him," her eyes became deeper than forty wells, "and willingly taint my soul with the lives of those twenty-five others."

His mind could think of no way to respond to this, other than grabbing her and holding her tightly to him. He forbore. "I wish the sun had never risen on last night," he said, recalling their charmed time together among the animals.

"Yes," she had said, but not entirely as though she was agreeing with him, only acknowledging his statement. "Perhaps it has not done so over England. Perhaps England is still free from such a dawn as comes here. To us."

Marion had not told him (she never did) that she had no confidence that she would live to see the day she would marry Gisbonnhoffer, no confidence that if she did live to that she would survive to see the war ended with England the victor. Or, if she did, that the Islands (and the people thereon) might not, in the end, be ceded to Germany, her nightmare never ending, rolling on and on until her body gave up (as on some days, she thought, her spirit already had).

Robin had not told her that the thing that frightened him so much was that what she claimed could not be avoided, the joining of herself to this Nazi Lieutenant by marriage vow, once entered into, could never truly be undone.

"Visit the Nightwatch, when you may," she had told him, her last words before she was gone.

Hours later, now, news of Mitch's detention still swimming in his thoughts, Robin brought his foot within an inch of an empty milking pail, cocked back his lower leg and gave it a sound kick of which any good footballer might approve. When he found it again, where it had launched, over by the sacks of feed, he was sorry to see it had not retained so much as a dent to commemorate his fit of (he thought, very justifiable) temper.

Guernsey - Barnsdale Estate - Marion was rushing down the servants' stair into the kitchens, hoping, quite wildly, in fact (she had almost forgotten her poor feet) that she might catch Allen before he left Barnsdale to drive Vaiser back to the harbor and caught the boat with his employer back to Alderney. She tried to keep her clattering on the steps to a minimum, but it was a tight space; undecorated wooden walls, well-traveled wooden steps whose wood shone with the marks of frequent use, and it had a decided tendency to echo.

It would not do to meet with a servant on the stairs, though she was prepared with a healthy list of excuses for her being caught here to share with them. Still, she would rather not have to do so, as it would delay her finding of Allen, her only channel to Robin and Co. at the moment.

She had stopped on the main floor landing, just by the door beyond which lay the official 'upstairs' portion of the house. She paused to check for other traffic on the stairs as she leaned against the at-present empty buffet countertop built-in here. Built to accommodate anything from food to tea to linens that needed a momentary place to sit on their way into the house proper. The door was set back in a deep, nearly closet-like cubby the width of the generous doorframe, and a good two-and-a-half foot deep. Even this unimportant (only seen by servants) niche of the house had beautiful carvings in the wood paneling, classical medallions honeycombing the short passageway from stair landing to door.

Her fingertips ran nervously over the indentations of them as she held her breath to listen.

She saw him before she heard any sound of him whatsoever, her heart startled at the sight of him, so instantly there, with no noise to indicate his coming. Allen. "Good," she said, her voice slightly breathless with the surprise of him.

He raised one leg up to the modest landing and toward where she stood, his footfall soundless in its impact. The light in the stair was low, as it was late in the day, but not yet late enough to engage the blackout curtains and lights. She could not read his expression, or the cast of his eyes. She did not know she needed to.

"Marion," his speech was rushed, she thought from rapid ascent of the stairs. "It's good..." he said, his lips on her mouth before she realized what was taking place.

Her mind balked at the unwanted intimacy, but only for a moment. She pulled her face away from his. "Allen?" she asked, obvious she needed clarification for his unexpected action.

"Wot, Pet? C'mon," he attempted to cajole her, "a friendly gesture, a welcome-back, that's all-you've been missin' for days, haven't you? With us beside ourselves in lookin' for you? And now, here you are, in the flesh. Just a friendly gesture. A little smack on the old kisser, a little 'how-d'ye-do'."

Her eyes flashed a look that told him she would overlook such an act of 'friendship' just this once. "Geis has promised he will release Mitch today," she told him, quickly attempting to move past his social misstep to important matters of the now.

"No doubt all will wonder and marvel at how you managed that," he told her, more than a small spark in his eye as he looked at her. "Brilliant!"

Her eyebrows registered dismay, her tone, slightly righteous. "Well, I asked him, of course. He knew he had no reason to take Mitch in the first place. He only did it to appease the Kommandant over the loss of Carter. The Kommandant, who has now, with Eleri, had to rapidly move on to more important things."

"Brilliant," Allen echoed himself, his tongue to the underside of his top teeth as he smiled at her. When he looked at her, here, now, in this low lighting, among this usually servants-only environment, her shorn hair altering the look of her so that she became more like a girl Lady Marion might have as a distant American cousin; beautiful, but less regal, less unattainable, it was here he could imagine her in the voice of the Nightwatch, courageous and bold to a fault. Had the face of this woman (this new woman before him) been on an enlistment poster he would have gladly joined up before Poland had even fallen.

The forgiving light concealed for the most part her cheek stitches and her now-healing trauma from the gag she had worn.

He was not so twitterpated that he didn't know that he was never going to get another chance like this again, that if he wanted to go all in it was now or never. Allen Dale wasn't a crack confidence man for nothing.

He did not give her a moment to object. He did not bother, as he might with another girl, another situation, to turn on the full Allen, to first take her hand in his, interlace the fingers, thumb stroking the well of her palm; let his other hand's fingers play along the slope of her neck, her earlobe, a fleeting visit to her collarbone, couldn't-miss caresses like the soft beating of butterfly wings.

But this was his moment. His moment, not with the real Marion. That, of course, wasn't gonna happen in this lifetime. No, this was his moment with the Nightwatch, with the woman he had spent countless nights lying awake imagining, loving as much as a person could love a disembodied voice, an unknown partisan, an ideal.

As much as his first, ill-timed kiss only moments ago had surprised her, he knew, this one stunned her far more. It was that 'what is going on, here?' gap in her reaction time that he took full advantage of.

Both her hands flew up like she was the victim in a bank hold-up, and he managed to get his left arm underneath an elbow and about her waist as he kissed her with all the intensity, all the longing he had been saving up those many nights for the unknown voice on the other end of the wireless. Even so, the moment of the kiss could have lasted no longer than ten seconds.

The door from the main house opened in on them. It nearly cracked into his hip. It had been pushed open by Eva Heindl. Her eyes quickly registered the identities of both people in front of her, as well as what appeared to her to be their consensual embrace. Without saying a word, without making a noise of any kind, she stepped back into the main house and let the servants' door close, restoring their solitude.

Doubly-startled by being walked-in on, Marion found the control of her own hands again, and pushed against Allen's shoulders to free herself. It proved easy enough, his hold on her neither aggressive nor harsh.

At the contact of her hands on his shirt, he stepped away from her.

"You gormless-toad," she berated him, "what could you possibly think you are doing?" Her voice recalled her to herself, and she lowered its pitch and volume. "Here, in my house-" she reached for something potentially more punishing to draw his attention to, "the billet of a Nazi lieutenant to whom I am engaged-you chose to-you-"

"Assault you, Pet?" he offered, his tone more bemused than chastened.

"Insult me. Not once, but twice!"

"Not tryin' to be funny," he said, himself plenty satisfied with the outcome, a lopsided grin on his lips, "but I didn't find it insulting."

"You keep clear of me, Allen, do you hear?" she threatened. "Keep well clear."

"Settle, yourself, now," he assured her. "I've no intention of stealing any further honey coolers, nor any of your other favors, Lady Marion. It's only, I was thinkin' of the Nightwatch, is all. I didn't know it was you, 'til your kidnapping and wot."

Her indignation slackened not a bit at this explanation. "And so you have stolen what neither Robin, nor Geis, even, tried to take. All for a girl who doesn't exist. Grow up."

He shrugged, scratched at the back of his head. He was a sporting man. "If you want, we can have another go, see if you can steal it back..."

"You are an absolute, unqualified idiot, Allen Dale."

Here he smirked, charmed by her berating of him, himself so pleased her scolding could not truly touch him. "And you are involved with two men simultaneously, each with a claim on you. And yet you require a third to get your kissin' done?" He cocked his head, pretending to suss it out, "Who's the idiot now, Pet?"

It was a good thing there was nothing set out, waiting to be carried into the main house, for, glass or crystal, porcelain or victuals, she well likely might have thrown it. At him.

The lighting must've improved, if only for a brief moment, as Allen saw the destructive thoughts coalescing in her eyes, and chose a hasty retreat, though all in all he would have to claim victory for himself in their encounter, if a bittersweet one at that.

He had no plans to ever trespass so again, it was over, this was the last time. But he did find himself wondering if, with the Nightwatch's return this evening, he might not be treated to the record now spinning in his head, "You know the one I love belongs to somebody else/That's why she sings her songs for somebody else/(And even when you have your arms around her, Papa, you know her thoughts are for somebody else)/And when I hold her hands (You know)/They belong to somebody (somebody else)/And you can bet, they're not so cold to somebody else..."

His Nightwatch fascination was through, there would never be a going-back again to where he could imagine her as his girl. She would always be Marion, now (though he had never yet heard the sounds of that voice pass through her lips), the Lady Marion, set to wed the Jerry Gisbonnhoffer, ever sharing (perhaps, he was not sure, but certainly there was still something there) sparks with his commanding officer Oxley, enough to scrap with him.

Oxley, he knew, loved the girl. The entire unit (well, except perhaps for Royston, who had the peculiar talent of nodding off to sleep during stories of any duration) knew Oxley loved the girl.

Long before their feet had set on the dry land of the Channel Islands those many months ago, in those times of battles and enforced-until-it-became-second-nature camaraderie when men spoke of such things, Robin's stories, Robin's dreams, had always been of her.

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps in kissing her Allen had betrayed his friend, stolen something that was not his. "It's tough to be alone on a shelf/And it's worse to fall in love by your self." But the quick-talking spin-artist within him told him if given a chance, he could make Robin understand. He wasn't doing this anymore, alright? It was over. He would not behave so again. After all, it was the Nightwatch he had taken a run at. "But when the one you love belongs to somebody else." Another girl entirely.

Forsaking the servants' stair (which Allen used to beat his welcome-to-her retreat), Marion pushed through the door to the main house. She flinched to see Eva there, only steps away from the door where she had walked in on...

Eva looked at Marion with her clear, un-quixotic gaze. "There are some very strange things going on around here of late, Cherie," she said, offering not another word about it as she walked past Marion and through the passage to the stair, now clear of unexpected trysts, of misguided lovers, once again merely a conveniently concealed conduit between Barnsdale's kitchen and attic.

...TBC...

Author's Note: Never think leaving a review doesn't matter. More than several bits in this chapter are the result of reader reviews/questions/PMs or requests.