As a rule, Thomas Carter did not dream. Which was probably for the best. The things which were likely to haunt the nightmare edges of such a life as his were surely too strong to have been merely consigned, pleased to observe the borders of the dreamworld.

He slept soundly (often, it seemed to the others, effortlessly) and awoke with the fully-functional capacity of a man conscious for greater than a quarter of an hour. He could sleep anywhere, at anytime, and his mind seemed - of its own doing - during that sleep to continue on about its business discerning threat from non-threat; the loudest farm-based sounds disturbing him not at all, yet the slightest whisper of danger - of discovery or peril - and he was on his feet, as ready for a fight as a knight fully mailed and armored.

As a rule, the Gypsy slept the last hour or so of his allotted nighttime freedom, the time immediately before and just as the dawn was breaking, with his back to the back of the sleeping Thomas Carter. It was an arrangement none of the unit questioned, it having grown ever-more obvious over the past months the boy's attachment to the (still) largely taciturn pilot.

The need to bed-share (assuming one wished to sleep abed) ensured that nothing was thought of - and no inferences made - of the frequent occurrence, only, were either Carter or Djak needed at that hour, any among the unit knew to look in the upstairs bedroom, the one that was not La Salle's, and there they could be found.

Even Carter had come to expect the nearby warmth and grown-familiar scent of the sleeping Gypsy upon his morning wakings.

Carter came to himself shouting, screaming for a medic in what rudimentary Finnish he had learnt during his time in the Winter War, there. Though he did not immediately know why he screamed, it was but a moment before he saw the inciting cause: blood, on his hands. Pedersan's blood. There would be a spill of it on the snow at his feet, of course. Just as there had been. And by the time he had called for a medic it would be too late: the Soviets would be coming, having lapped and encircled the Finns' attachment, killed most of them, and be sweeping forward from the rear to collect prisoners: Him.

Too late, again to be prisoner.

And of the Soviets - his greatest enemy, the Russian people turned against their gospodeens, their tsar, against themselves.

At this, his mind stuttered; but there was no snow on the ground here. In fact, he was in a house - in the recognizable, relative safety of La Salle's farmhouse. But still, Pedersan's blood upon his hands, in response to it his own live heart threatening to beat itself free of his ribs and burst forth out of his chest.

And he could...remember...things. Abandoning the bomber in mid-air, the treacherous jump into Channel Island water that not all had survived. He could remember those of his flight crew left alive and snatched, dripping from the Swinge, only to be shot point-blank as they stood abreast, beside him. Felled like goofy, insubstantial targets in an Atlantic City shooting gallery run by carnival barkers on the pier. He alone left standing, and that only at the twisted caprice of a German named Vaiser.

At that memory, and the inconsistency of Pedersan's blood appearing on his hands in the present, his mind returned him to his one rote, grounding task of recitation.

"Twenty-two;" he thought, "one card too many, dealer wins. Six-five-four; countdown to escape. Eight thirty-two;" the New Jersey house number to which he sent no letters. "Thirty-six;" his age when he had stopped counting the men he had personally killed. "And Zed, for Zara..." he willed his mind to recall the photograph Babushka had sent to him of her, now left behind in his RAF footlocker in England. Her hair white in the dual-tone image, her face eerily out of focus, as though she never stayed still long enough to be captured by the camera. "Zed, for Zara."

By the time Carter had arrived at Zara, though he was still a-tremble with hyper-vigilance, he was able to take in his surroundings more fully, able to look back to the bed he had vacated, see (and recognize) the Gypsy boy lying there, blood upon him, smearing upon the sheets. A mess, a wounding, certainly, but not enough to signal a hemorrhage, or imminent death.

The words now came to him in English, and he called for Johnson, who had slept indoors, and not out at the mines overnight. "Medic! Medic!"

GUERNSEY - Mr. Thornton's Cottage - Mrs. Robert Oxley, wife of the (for all intents and purposes deceased) Viscount Huntingdon - the Lady Marion Nighten what was - paced with antsy gait about the small stone cottage she had come to share with Mr. Thornton.

They were a strange match, she knew, Thornton and herself. But she had need of him. And she tried to work so that he would have need of her. She was happy, here. Happy with the little things this cottage could afford her. Mr. Thornton not only let her care for herself, he had actually fallen to teaching her how to do so. How to manage all those daily tasks that, during her life until now someone (often many someones) had managed for her. And in doing so shortly she realized that not only was she in love, somehow, in the midst of war and disaster (even, of grief) - but that she was happy, in a way she had never yet fully been.

Happy to keep a modest house. Happy to cook meals (though even with Robin's assistance and generosity their provisions were often as scarce as other Islanders'), to sweep and mend. To tend to ordinary, run-of-the-mill chores like a person whose absence in doing such would be noted, would be missed. Happy to be of use.

The affection between her and Mr. Thornton, born long ago when she was but a child, remained understated, but in their time of being thrown together had grown exponentially.

The only fly in her ointment was, that, of course, she would much rather be keeping house for herself and Robin. But she could not simply absent herself from Guernsey, flee to Sark and La Salle's to be with Robin. If she did so, there would be no Nightwatch. If she did so - left Guernsey - Geis (and through him, other soldiers) would come looking for her. (And in finding her, doubtless find also the unit.)

Oh, she had hoped that he mightn't come looking. Had wished, and on occasion in the first weeks after the fire tried to sell herself on the idea that he would let be. And he had, for a time - whether because he could not locate her, or because he could not bring himself to face her, she did not know. Thornton had brought home island gossip that Barnsdale's Lieutenant had left directly after parting with her at the fire and not returned to the island for several weeks, concentrating on his duties at the Alderney camp.

No longer under Geis' protection, she had stayed put at Thornton's, never traveling into town, and other than town, finding she had no place else, really, to go. (Other than her nightly visits to the Nightwatch windmill.)

If there was a need to travel, Mr. Thornton gladly took it upon himself, bringing home what news and gossip he might have run across with him. The rest of the Nightwatch was rounded out by listening, when possible, to BBC radio, and choc-full of news visits by Robin, wherein he shared information between kisses, and exploits between caresses.

She had not seen a German soldier in three and a half weeks when, alone at the cottage, out-of-doors with their meager washing (soap for the task all but non-existent - but three changes of clothes between them), she looked up from the metal tub, her sleeves rolled to the elbow. She heard hooves near the north side of the cottage - nearest the little-used path that, in better and brighter days, friends would have walked to visit.

Uncertain what to expect, she held her position (Mr. Thornton at present gone fishing in a nearby stream). She heard a dismount, and the sound of a horse being led 'round the back of the cottage toward where she was.

Her heart froze in its beating when she recognized Geis as the unexpected visitor.

"Marion," he said, upon sighting her - if at all possible more stiffly than usual.

She would have expected his eyes to have trouble holding their gaze with hers, after all he had brought upon her head, but instead of glancing nervously about, anxious as a hare, they seemed to bore into her own. And she was certainly of no mind to timidly look away from him.

"I have...been looking to find you," he told her, as though this might prove something pleasant or comforting for her to know.

She said nothing, standing with the washtub and several feet of open grass between them.

He soldiered on. "I will not prove myself so foolish as to ask you to return to Barnsdale, nor to require you to do so." His voice modulated for a moment into a less-pleasant range, "though, certainly, I could." Still, the bore of his steady gaze. "You will come back when you are ready," he told her.

Her brain picked at her quietly, at this illogical meeting. He believed her married, black of heart and attempting to dupe him. He had burnt her property, brought about the cause of her father's death, made her watch as he cruelly killed one, and torched other animals she loved. Whyever would he want her back? Why not simply rape her here and have done with it? If that were what he wanted? It had been clear the night of the fire he thought her now a manipulative, faithless trollop.

She no longer thought of him as any version of a gentleman, no longer expected deferential treatment or patience from him. They were alone. Her 'just-in-case' gun was within the cottage. Other than the washboard inside the tub she had little with which to resist him. He could physically overpower her using only half his strength.

She wondered - had he truly forgotten all that had passed so very poisonously between them? Had his mind simply re-ordered the world, abridging over that part? Or was it more like a play? Each with their part to learn? A play wherein he actually managed to woo her into consenting? A plot wherein he expected to see her willingly climb into his bed?

Certainly, if he recalled burning the animal barn he now offered no apologies for it.

"I brought you this," he said, extending the reins of the saddled horse toward where she stood, still silent. Thinking she mistook his meaning, believing that he wished her to go for a ride with him, he re-spoke. "That is, the horse. It is for you. For you to have."

It was a borderline sorry-looking creature, but then, with food for the Islanders as scarce as it was, it was unlikely one could find a beast (one not destined for the cookpot - and the German cookpot at that) able to be kept in much better fettle.

She watched as he let the reins go limp when she did not step forward to take them, let them hang to the ground where the creature stood.

"I will come again," he said to her, to the great silence that was her, turning then to re-round the cottage, collect the mount he had ridden here, and depart.

As he retreated, riding at a walk through the close-grown forest about Mr. Thornton's cottage he found himself slightly shocked at their encounter. Had he not known he was looking for Lady Marion Nighten he might have given her up for some strange washerwoman altogether. The clothes she was wearing were far from pressed or spit-spot. The scarf about her head was faded cotton and tied as the older women of the local peasantry tended to wear them when about their chores.

He had caught sight of her forearms, bared for the task of washing. There were surprising (and unseemly, he thought) muscles forming there. Yes, most of all he could not believe what a difference the space of three weeks and some days and wrought in her physically. The pretty plumpness of her cheeks was fading, and if her clothing was any indication, the roundness of her figure was starting to deconstruct as well. He mulled it over, how she might be taking to her new, post-engagement-to-him life.

A half-cocked smirk threatened to glance across his face. Yes. Perhaps she would be back at Barnsdale, its warm meals, warm beds - sooner than even he might expect.

Marion waited until Geis' mount's hooves could be heard no more, nor its movement through the forest away from the cottage, and (before she could stop herself) dashed toward the poor creature he had given her, racing to its saddlebags in the hopes that victuals of some kind might reside there, the ever-present hunger of one under harsh Occupation causing one to care little where food might have come from. But though the well-fashioned leather bags looked plump from the outside, they were utterly bare within, and instead of Gisbonnhoffer supplying her with food for her table, he had, instead, gifted her (and Mr. Thornton) with an animal equally in need of something to eat.

Marion could not help but pacing the small space of the narrow cottage. Mr. Thornton had rather deliberately let her know this morning that he would not be back until before curfew. A generous offer, as he knew (as well as did she) that Robin was expected today - a rare enough treat for a wife who would have gladly had him in her company every day. And so the cottage was to be theirs alone for several long hours. She found herself hoping (despite the very primitive toilet she had managed to accomplish on herself) that perhaps he would have a bar of soap with him, and she might allow herself the luxury of both a bath and a wash of her hair. It was rare, since the night of the fire, for her to think of the luxuries of Barnsdale, but never had the cabinet of exotic and rich-smelling soaps and lotions in her private bath there called to her more than when she knew her husband was on his way for a visit.

Her eye caught on the horse from Gisbonnhoffer's tack stored now in one deep corner of the cottage. Today she would have to share with Robin the details of Geis' second visit in the last five months. Of course she would, it would not do for him to find out from someone else, though certainly it was a task toward which she looked not at all forward. She had only just managed to keep him from pursuing Geis with murder in his eye following the German Lieutenant's discovery of her at Thornton's, and the gift of the horse.

As for the tack, it was a well-made saddle, she mused, the workmanship quite fine. In another time she knew she would have felt herself compelled to search out its craftsman, invest in other things he would have made. Commission a custom tack for her very own.

1936 LONDON - the Nord Ingham Boarding Stables - She knew it was unusual for her to insist on grooming her own mount - much less saddling her herself. The faces of the hired stablehands here at the upper crust boarding stable nearby the Park made that abundantly clear - even after all this time of her at having her own way. They never did seem to be able to get used to it. 'The Lady' Marion, dealing with horse sweat, with cumbersome leather saddles and girths, her own hands between teeth to coax the snaffle bit into proper place - the bit that it took to bring a highly-strung, never-bred filly like Greene's Sword to properly heed her touch.

But today it was the eyes of another young man that watched the Lady as she set to her work. He was half in the shadows of a stall nearby where she had Greene's Sword (as the stablemaster had helpfully informed him Lady Marion's horse was called) tied to iron rings in the wall by ropes from either side of her bridle.

He had not been in London long, and only at the stables by the Park for twenty minutes or so, waiting for her to finish her afternoon ride and return. She was outfitted in an impeccably tailored riding habit. As she rode astride rather than sidesaddle (only riding sidesaddle when accompanied by her father), her jodhpurs were flawless in their fit, her tall boots as shined as any general's. She smelled of horse and exertion, and a heretofore-undiscovered pheromone that was decidedly female in nature, brought on by hours spent at a pastime in which she took great pleasure. In short, for Marion, she smelt of happiness.

He, well, he was not quite his usual self this day, his attire less spit-and-polish, less urbane than that to which he had made himself, as an adult, accustomed. Perhaps the soft wool and corduroy he had chosen for the day's outfit kept her from immediately sensing his presence, as the country-fied ensemble he wore had him styled as more a country squire about the business of his estate rather than London's most eligible bachelor better known for squiring young ladies about the town.

It was his never-quiet hands that saw him found out. Unable to keep them stilled they found coins in his jacket pocket and proceeded to tinker with them, making small jangling noises.

"Who's there?" Marion asked, into the shadows - thinking it some new stableboy, come to spy on the queer-minded noblewoman who tended her own mount.

When instead it was Robin Oxley, the Viscount Huntingdon, who stepped from the shadows, she found herself without reply for a half-second, during which she surmised that he a.) was not just now on his way home from an into-the-dawn fancy-dress party, nor b.) was he drunk.

"You are a curious thing to find, here," she said, her hands keeping at the work of grooming her horse.

"Am I?" he asked, showing no surprise at her chary welcome of him. "One might say, only, that I am rather late."

"Late?" she asked, eyes on Sword's mane, pretending she had not noticed (not contemplated on) two and a half months ago when he had sat in her father's study and announced he would 'make the date', and arrive back that very evening to take her out. He had then proceeded to disappear. And now claimed himself as late. "Whatever for?"

Neither a fool, nor a blind man - despite her trying to mask her clear disappointment with him - he rose to her challenge. "What is it is said of heaven? 'A thousand years there as a day? A day as a thousand years'?" His eyes looked up at her through his brows, where his chin was tucked as though chastened. "By that reckoning, Marion, I am some many thousand years late."

Something in that look made her catch her breath - though cautiously. "How do you do that?" she asked, now meeting his eyes, though guardedly.

"What's that?"

"Render such ridiculous over-the-top things with such sincerity? It is a talent for persuasion many a statesman would envy you." The second sentence had worn, perhaps, a bit too much of her (unsuccessfully) submerged disenchantment at his disappearance that morning from Mayfair.

Something in his chest, beneath his plum-colored waistcoat seemed to inflate at her insinuation. "And so you think I do not mean it? That there is some conniving insincerity in me? That I toy with you?" His tone lost some of its happy jesting. "I am not in the habit of saying things I do not mean. Were you a man, such words as yours -" clearly in disgust with himself for where their conversation began to head, he abruptly broke it off.

"Yes," she tried not to let his unexpectedly hard-felt reaction to her (perhaps undeserved) taunt touch at her too deeply. "Many men thanked you for your quick abscond from town. It was often said at many a party how very chivalrous it was of you to leave London so that Tish might remain here, rather than be sent away to get over the broken engagement." Well, she internally corrected, perhaps not at so very many parties. She, herself, had left soon after to holiday on the island with the family. And even when in London, she was not frequently at parties.

Robin scoffed at her gossip. "I did not leave for Tish's sake. Though I daresay she would have far preferred a trip to some fashionable location on the Continent as reward for throwing me - and our relationship - over." Again, that coming-on hint of hardness in his voice. "You will know, of course - as you did then - that we two were never engaged."

"No, of course," she backpedaled. "I mis-spoke. Not engaged. Very well. Then for whose sake did you leave? Your own? To go cry into your cups? To dance the nights away with new - more diverting - girls? Or have you met someone?" She worked now to keep her voice light, teasing (though she was curious) - lest she reawaken the righteous temper he had let flare to her but moments ago.

"Yes," he agreed. "Matter of fact I did meet someone..."

"I wish you all joy," Marion replied (perhaps a bit too rushed to sound genuine) as she removed the finishing cloth from her tack kit. It was at this moment that she felt within its negligible weight something else, rather heavier than simply a light cloth. Something knotted there. Without looking at Robin, she opened the cloth as much as she could to locate the knot - which had been tied around a (necessarily) small, horseshoe nail ring.

She smiled to herself, and involuntarily. She had not seen such a fanciful creation since she had been a child at their country home, Lincoln Greene, when the friendly village smithy there used to fashion her one from time to time as he was about shodding their horses and she, fascinated, had looked on.

Recalling Robin, and the stables she now stood within, she shook her head for a moment to clear it from the cobweb of unexpected memory.

"That is," she began again, looking up from the ring. "How did you know to find me here?"

He had a look on his face of intent interest - none of his considerable charisma and focus dimmed by any alcohol. She caught a twinkle in his eye as he moved it from the horseshoe nail ring to her face. He did not answer for a moment, then shrugged. "Mitch asked Cora."

That did not ring true. "I have not spoken to Cora since...well, perhaps since forever," Marion shot him down.

"Very well." He did not mention (though it would have either been grimly or teasingly done had he mentioned it) that when he arrived the stablehands had (due to his casual attire and request for the Lady Marion) taken him for the man of Geordie Wellington, a chap - he was informed by the same stablehands - that had on several occasions arrived to ride out with Marion in the past month. "I asked Clem," Robin confessed, "and he said I could find 'Tigs' here, at this time or thereabouts, any day of the week. Whom, by the by," he began a grin, "is Tigs?"

"Where has this come from?" she asked, raising the ring to the light and deflecting the question, not wishing to give him further reason to find fun in her.

"Well, I made it for you, if you must know," he said, and she could not miss the pleased-with-himself-ness about the corners of his eyes.

"And when have you been close enough to a forge or stable to find such a thing as a horseshoe nail - much less know how to go about crafting it into anything?" A grin was growing (despite her trying to stifle it) to match his own.

"Three months," he reminded her, "is a goodly enough time to half-apprentice to a smithy. In fact, to many a country laborer at work on a great estate. The things one might learn are truly...educational."

Here she let her suspicion show through, even through the grin. "Whyever would you do that?"

"'Twas a great lady, once - a powerful schoolmarm - like unto Diana herself, scolded me for my worldly waywardness, wondered if I oughtn't have a vocation of some kind."

Her face showed that he had nearly - nearly - gob-smacked her. "And so you can shoe a horse?" she moved aside as though she half expected him to demonstrate such a skill here.

"Yes," he chuckled. "I can - though I can also report that I take no particular joy in the doing of it."

She stood, re-taking his measure for a moment. "And so you are back? From your country...education?"

He brought his hand up toward his heart in a sweeping gesture not unlike that a medieval knight might have invoked to illustrate earnestness toward his liege or lady. "To make good on my word to you, if nothing else."

"And how might you do that?" she asked, wondering how he could possibly answer, the knot in the cloth and the ring it bore clutched tightly in her hand as though she feared misplacing it.

"I've with me the best hamper that may be ordered at the Tripp, packed by the most-generous man on staff there, that may well hold the answer," he predicted, lifting a picnic hamper from the shadows to the height of his shoulder.

She could see a ground cloth and the neck of a bottle of wine peeking out from under its woven lid.

He willed himself not to contemplate how many similar (though inferior, he was certain) hampers she might have shared with this chap Wellington in his absence.

"What? Now?" Marion asked him, looking 'round. "Here?" She had rather expected something more along the lines of a nightclub, at a very different hour, dancing, champagne, a floorshow. Bonchurch - surely Bonchurch was always by his side at such times. She had expected Bonchurch. And time to primp - and then fret over the primping. A gift of flowers upon his arrival. A chat with her parents. A drink he would share, perhaps, with her father. Something structured. Something ordered and controlled - and (as he, himself was not) predictable.

"Now?" he repeated her question as to the suitability of the time. "I have not forgotten the powerful appetite a mind like yours carries in its stomach," he teased her. "And why not here? I am told there is a nearby Park," he said, lightly sardonic, as they stood on the very obvious edges of it, "which could prove most pleasant."

"Only the two of us, then?" she asked, knowing what her father (and mother, and many others in their social circle) might say to such an impromptu and unchaperoned tryst (for surely that is the word they would use for just such an occasion).

"Of certain only the two of us," he assured her, his smile growing perilous - though quickening to her heart. "I've food for no one else, and what's more - whyever would we want, or need, further company? Have you not thoughts enough on the pound versus the krone? On the present state of the Spanish nobility? Do you mean to suggest we must invite others along to be assured of truly stirring debate?"

His mouth stayed slightly open, as though his jesting had not entirely concluded, his tongue running along his teeth and gums within his mouth, occasionally becoming visible.

"Shall I not change?" she asked, looking down, thinking (only a small part of her) to return to Mayfair, and get changed, in the doing somewhat altering or appending the (to many) shocking proposal of an intimate picnic lunch in a mostly-wooded Park with a most notorious playboy.

"Change?" he echoed her question, a naughty smile of intense mischievousness blooming about his open mouth. "Good heavens, Marion. Why would you ever want to do that?"

...TBC...

A/N: The immediately prior 1936 Robin/Marion London flashback, which takes place at the Nighten's Mayfair townhouse, can be found in "Don't Go Walkin' Down Lover's Lane", Chapter 3.