Nearby Barnsdale and Mr. Thornton's Cottage - Robin Oxley chuckled to himself as he stowed his (next-to useless to his unskilled hands) masonry kit of tools among a by-now well-known copse of trees midway between Barnsdale House and Thornton's small patch and cottage.

It was the best of times, he thought. It was the worst of times.

Marion Nighten now Marion Oxley. Finally, and evermore. And yet...Nazis in charge, the world surrounding Marion and him (both immediately, and the world at large) on the frightening cusp of sick, twisted domination by Germany's thousand-year Reich.

Marion, his family. He snickered, pleased with himself. When he had first landed here, shipwrecked, he was Robinson Crusoe (at least he thought of himself as such), shipwrecked, alone, abandoned, left to find his own way, the unit his only hope, his Friday.

Perhaps, in many ways he had been Robinson Crusoe, washed ashore upon the wreckage of his worthless earlier life, a casualty of privilege without responsibility, of his understanding (sooner, than perhaps did his peers) the meaninglessness of his own existence, the lack of effect he might have upon the world around him. Noblesse, without the authority, even, to practice at oblige.

Yet here he was, stripped of all he had come to know and depend upon, rebuilding himself, becoming instead, surprisingly, Swiss Family Robinson. For surely he had found his family; the unit, but also La Salle, the Gypsy boy Djak, dependable Thornton, and of course, always at the center, Marion.

Nearly within range of the well-hidden and grown-secluded cottage, he was closer to the Barnsdale estate - and even to its house - than might be expected. From here, above the treeline and across the distance of the middleground (obscured by the trees of the small wood), he could even glimpse snatches of the top story of the estate's house, and more so of its flat-style roof.

He allowed himself a moment of speculation. What would life be for him, with Marion still at Barnsdale? Her 'wedding' growing ever-nearer? Her person rarely able to be found alone, her guard unable to be dropped?

'Twould be less of a marriage that they two were able, even now, to delight in. 'Twould be skulking about like thieves in the dark of night - denied, even, the moment of relaxation and intimacy afforded one by falling asleep (no longer on watch, no longer in fear of imminent discovery) in his lover's arms. Then, were Marion yet at Barnsdale, the subject of whether they might even now be married looked more and more of an unattainable pipe dream.

Steps away from the narrow break in the trees that opened out on Thornton's, he considered Barnsdale's roof, considered the disappointing loss of Marion's easy access to it where the use of Le Moulin as a signal was concerned. How that roof had, as had a Nighten roof in times past, done him certain favors.

London's West End, 1936 - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - the roof - The night had enough stars to preclude the need for light from even the slimmest of tapers. The earliest touch of a London autumn in the breeze wafted along above the tony town homes of those many among the well-established aristocrats whose lives (and tastes) favored this reserved, revered, part of the city.

It was something of a different view from up here: even Lady Nighten let be her own roof, trusting it to the chimney sweeps and other workmen the household staff engaged to maintain the top of the town house satisfactorily.

He had found Clem's man, Percival, agreeable (though not overly-happily so) to helping him carry the gramophone and several records up the stair as it narrowed and passed through the servants' quarters, and then let out onto the roof. The blanket (for sitting, stargazing or spooning - as the evening - and Marion - provided the opportunity) he did not further tax Percival's scruples with fetching. He supplied it himself.

Robin Oxley thought of the time as evening - though, with most things Marion it was, rather, late. So late one might choose, instead, to call it early.

Her heart had beaten so thumpingly in his leading her out of the library and up the stair, past bedrooms of her sleeping parents and her brother - then, one flight further up, of the staff - he could feel her pulse in the thumb of her hand where it held to his.

Pleased, he smiled into the darkness before them at her game-ness in letting him lead her on so. Obviously she suspected that she was most likely being taken somewhere for dealings quite lurid. And yet she kept faith with him, never pulling away, nor letting go his hand - nor starting into a scolding before her suspicions were confirmed.

As on many a night when he showed up unannounced while she was at one of her speech vettings, she was done-up in a set of Clem's silk pajamas (Robin wondered - did old Clem ever get the use of them?), dressing gown on top, and bare of foot. As she had not slept, her hair showed no such tousling, and remained as prettily coiffed as it (doubtless) had been when she went down, earlier in the night, to the family at dinner.

He could almost smell adventure in the moment as he pushed open the door to the roof, and pulled her out into the night beyond. At this level, a night without eyes of any kind, much less prying ones.

He knew she felt close enough to her own family, her own world, below, to feel somewhat safe from him - from his (though he would never acknowledge - nor buy into - it) semi-scandalous reputation. She was but steps away from where she might raise the alarm. And yet she was worlds away from the expectations and strictures that lived below- (and above-) stairs.

In future he would kick himself for not being able to recall (had he even been able to note it then, at the time?) the song that had been playing as they danced, keeping to the blanket, due to his usually dependable foresight's proving somewhat dim in the matter of her bare feet's comfort in regard to the rooftop's unwelcoming surface.

Starry nights afterward - particularly after she had sailed for America and he had taken up with His Majesty's Army - he would lie on his back, watching the heavens, thinking of roofs and wishing (sometimes fooling himself into thinking that) he could recall, if not the words, the song's tune. As though that melody might re-conjure that moment for him, that feeling of delicious inevitability. That instance when he had looked down to her and said, "Marion, I'm going to kiss you now."

And she had jerked sharply away from his chest, where her head had been resting in the dance hold, her eyes for a moment filling with ferocity in that light.

"What sort do you think I am that you need to cable me of such an intent?" she had bit at him, appalled, and about to re-accuse him of treating her as someone far more timid and retiring than she really was.

"Clearly," he set to explaining, bemused, not releasing her from the hold - though stopping in his dancing, "I was only giving you fair warning so that you might not dive again, headlong, into quarrelling or debating. But as it is far too late for that, and the moment nearly spoilt..." His tone held no reprimand, though, as he brought his lips to hers (still open and milliseconds away from protesting at him further).

It was such a light kiss, such a perfectly formed and executed kiss. One might call it 'textbook', but only if one were at teaching the Classics.

As he pulled away, even before her eyes opened, he knew women well enough (for in such a moment, even Marion was not so different from her fellow sisters) to see that it had stirred within her an hunger for more. More of the same, and...more along the continuum of intimacy.

Certainly he could have pursued it, could have (with quite little effort) nudged his way toward taking more without fear of going beyond any bounds in that instant that she any longer wished (or planned) to maintain.

But he did not.

He had decided that he would let it stand: their first kiss, just that. One, single, flawless kiss. There was no need to borrow from tomorrow to satisfy himself today. With Marion there would be tomorrows. He would see to it she would be the most-kissed woman in all of London - in all the Kingdom.

Tonight? Tonight was for the stars, for dancing and embraces, and bare feet on blankets, and that song...that blasted, ridiculous, unmemorable song.

SARK - La Salle's Washhouse - Carter was disappointed to realize that, despite the incident with the blood being logically explained, he still struggled somewhat to keep himself upright, to regain anything of calm. He washed his face in the bracingly cool water again, his hands already well-scrubbed of Djak's blood.

The memories of Pedersen - of impending capture - were not even like that, like memories should be. Rather, they were fears, as ever-present, as wholly consuming as any fear (if intense enough) might be. They simply did not exist in the past. They were as present as his blinking eyelid, as the Jersey cow's audible protests coming from the barn that she was now past needing milked.

There came a knock at the latched door, and though he knew whom it must be, he went to answer it. It had turned into the time of day, after all, when an escaped prisoner (and one so clearly obvious, as was the Gypsy) could not afford to risk being out and about where they might (though the chance was slim) be seen.

He unlatched the door and she walked inside. Almost immediately, with obvious determination, he stepped out to the other side of the doorframe, into the barnyard, though he did not pull the door to behind him.

1944 - February - "How do you bloody do that?" Reddy had asked him following a lesson with Djak.

"Do what?" Carter asked the younger man, not getting his meaning.

"You know - know what he's thinking." Reddy was obviously expecting some sort of directive to be shared that might aid his own communication with the boy.

Carter incrementally shrugged. "I don't know what he's thinking."

"You don't?"

"I simply assume he is thinking," he looked into the querying eyes of the other man. "Just because a person doesn't speak the dominant language, or doesn't express himself in it well, doesn't mean he's an idiot - or some sort of mascot or pet. Djak's a quick study. He's good at following orders, and as far as I can see he has more than earned his way in here with the rest of us - enlisted or no. That's all. Just acknowledge him as an intelligent human being - with a capacity for wisdom. Don't waste your already lackluster brain power," and here, had Carter been someone else he might've attempted to tousle Wills' hair, "trying to read his mind. That's what a Gypsy fortuneteller's for."

"Right," Wills agreed slowly. "But you have something between you. I don't know what it is - how to name it, but there is a connection."

"Hmm," Carter dismissed Reddy's moment of insight. (For certainly he, himself, saw no such thing at work.) "Then ask the boy - when your vocabulary's grown broad enough. See how he answers."

"You are angry with me," she, Djak, said, her eyes asking six other questions Carter could not seem to translate.

The morning sun fell into the washhouse doorway, highlighting the Gypsy, the slant of it along Carter's back warming him with its ray. He found he did not know where to begin, and that, rather, he would prefer not to experience this conversation whatsoever.

He had never thought of himself as being any good at explaning things. "It is only that I do not see how, when you knew you might be safe here - you knew that I would protect you from the others, if need be - that you did not tell the truth." He watched her closely to assure himself that she had not also kept possible infringements to her dignity by others in the unit from him.

"The truth?" she asked, shaking her head and lifting her brows. "I never said I was a boy. It was all of you that assumed it."

"And at the camp? What of then?" he asked, curiously. "How did you manage it?"

"I had a brother," she said, her eyes for just a moment flitting away from his. "My twin, Djakob. When he was killed - I will not say when he died - I took his clothes, and took to living with the men."

She thought of Djakob, of his death. Of how it had come about after years of privation and violence by their German captors. Thought of how it was her face he wore that day - and how now it was his she saw every time she encountered a mirror. "Men were allowed jobs around the camp, making it easier to attempt escape."

So, a clever, unplanned switch. He would expect no less of Djak - of her. "And the other men in your barracks? Were they your countrymen? Your people? And they protected you from being found out?"

"No." It was a wall of a word. A near-impasse. "They treated me like their _" and here she spoke a word he had to assume was Romany, though the sound of her voice as she said it caused him to need no translation. "And so they hid my secret for that purpose. For two and a half years."

The crows' feet grown about the corners of his eyes contracted at the news. "And so your plan betrayed you, instead of protecting you?"

But she disputed his conclusion. Her shoulders straightened, her jaw re-set. "I am here, am I not? I was given the job of emptying your bucket, was I not? I befriended Anya Grigorovna, did I not? And helped to engineer your escape. I am free now of the camp, am I not?"

"At such a cost," he said, not a question, not an accusation. Only, an acknowledgment.

"Thomas Carter. You would have done the same. If it were to mean escape. I saw your eyes. I see them still. You would have done anything."

He wanted to be able to say (as surely an humane person might), 'yes. I would have done the same. But I would not have you put yourself at risk so.' But he could not. He knew too well that anything - that whatever - it took to escape captivity he would do. Had done. And he would neither judge nor mourn another having done the same.

"Is this why you are angry with me?" she asked him, trying to understand his frame of mind, and in doing so, coming at the question from her own, Rom-shaped perceptions. "With me, as a woman? That I am despoiled? That I am unclean - though I did not imagine it would be so - at my own hands?"

Carter shook his head in vigorous disagreement.

She looked at him, still not puzzling him out.

He looked at Djak - at her - now, of course, wondering that he had not discovered it earlier, her true gender seeming quite obvious today.

"What are you called?"

Her chin resettled from her emotion-gripped state, and she spoke the word she had not heard, nor said aloud since the death of her brother. "Seraina."

"And so that is your signature in La Salle's buried ledger."

She nodded.

"You cannot sleep a bed with me anymore," he said.

"Why?" she asked, hurt by his turning her away, by the disquiet behind his eyes. "I have not changed. You have not changed."

"But you have," he dissented. "You are Seraina again, no matter if anyone goes forward calling you by that. The woman Seraina is not to be treated, nor to treat things, like her brother Djak." He thought of his younger life, of the deference accorded females. The need to ask permission for the smallest thing in their presence: for a man to light a cigar or cigarette. The standard of behavior with a woman was simply...different. More civilized. More genteel. She was not Viola, and he knew himself better than to think he might be (or even aspire to) Orsino.

"Do you expect me to then take over all the cook chores? To wear frocks, and insist the lads open all doors for me?"

"You know, Seraina," he tried out all three syllables of the new name, "better than do I - than do the others - that there are separations in life: keeping the clean from the unclean, the Rom from the outsiders, the pure and holy from the base. A woman is not a man - nor a boy. A set of trousers does not change that. Women and men do not lightly share beds - no matter that they may have done so before - that they may have impurity in their earlier histories."

She heard him as he spoke, acknowledged the truth in his logic. Were she with her people, experiencing her womanly bleeding, she would not even be permitted into the presence of a man. As she spoke to affirm what he had reasoned out, she could already feel herself begin to mourn what they two had shared, and to fear if she were set to encounter similar responses from the other lads.

"Women and men do not simply partner each other as closest friends. No," she agreed - she had to agree, "you are right." But she found, to her surprise, something inside her wanting to ask, then, if there mightn't be another direction in which they could steer their tight-knit relationship. She did not wish to lose it.

But she knew him too well, knew the callus of his heart (though slowly these past months at sloughing off) was not tender in such a way - perhaps would never be so.

"But we are not strangers," she asked (more like declaring it), needing him to reaffirm their connection. To give her something before she must close the washhouse door on him and clean up for what he had so clearly outlined as her new life.

"No," Carter agreed, mildly. "Not strangers. But no longer bedfellows." He shook his head with the heaviness of sadness, of melancholy for Djak, the Gypsy boy he had lost. "No longer mates."

GUERNSEY - Mr. Thornton's - She had been to have her hair done. It was the first thing his mind took note of. Not that he had ever minded (and in fact, he had grown a bit fond of) the scarves she had found of the late Mrs. Thornton's that she had learned to wrap about her head as the older local married women did. She had also taken to wearing one of Thornton's wife's house frocks. It was ill-fitting, and Marion - though rather expert at purposeless needlepoint - had yet to get the hang of tailoring clothes.

He felt a half-moment of guilt that her hair having been styled should give him such a charge, such a rush upon seeing her, but he could not deny that it did. And not entirely for himself.

He was no fool to the fact that her circumstances here (all that he could offer her, and that - not even of his own making, but of Mr. Thornton's) were starkly contrasted to those to which she was accustomed. He knew the fairer sex well enough to know that even those reconciled to the most austere day-to-day life enjoyed times of being pampered.

The eagerness of the smile she gave him as he walked through the cottage's wooden door could not fail to bring one to his own face. And like that, that blasted, un-recallable song from eight years ago popped right into his head, needle set to the groove. "My story is much too sad to be told/But practically everything leaves me totally cold./The only exception I know is the case/When I'm out on a quiet street/Fighting vainly the old ennui/And I suddenly turn and see, your fabulous face." He smelled the scent in her hair as he double-stepped to cross the room faster to her, catching her into his arms, having torn his jacket from his shoulders and chest, throwing it aside before reaching the half-way mark.

"I get no kicks from champagne./Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all/So tell me, why should it be true?/That I get a kick out of you?"

Robin was so distracted over recalling the song and its lyrics, his mind forgot to grow suspicious over how she might have come by getting her hair set, much less her decision, after long months, to venture into town.

Even so, she stopped kissing him and pulled slightly away to tell him. "Geis has visited again."

"You are unhurt?" he asked, though his eyes easily took in her figure, her skin, and the cast of her happy face, and gave him the answer.

The mention of Gisbonnhoffer was ever a wet-blanket between the two of them, and Robin knew Marion would not have brought the German Lieutenant up at such a time if there were not something significant to tell, so he resettled his ardor (momentarily), and sat with her on the edge of the country bed as she recounted their recent meeting.

He had come, again, on horseback. The narrow paths to Thornton's, after all, unassailable by auto. At least they had become even more so since the Occupation.

And indeed, horses were the first words out of his mouth. "Where is my gift?" he asked her, his brows drawn, his eyes casting about for a secondary structure large enough for it to be quartered within.

"Sold," she told him (her first word to him since he had left her by the burning barn), having determined after his last visit that if he were to continue calling on her that if she did consent to speak with him that gone were the days of charming him, of treating him with anything other than the contempt and disgust she felt for him.

"Sold?"

She looked at him as though he were a child. "We have nothing of value, here," she spoke of Mr. Thornton as though he were her family. "No money - little enough grass. Surely no way to feed and stable an animal that can give us nothing in return, neither milk nor eggs nor..." she hesitated to say it, for even in her reduced state she would not have been able to bring herself to do it. "Meat."

"You sold it? To someone as...for...meat?" He tried to shrug off the clear smack to his ego, muttering something about the bestial habits of the islanders. He cleared his throat. "I wish to see you, Marion," he skipped ahead to the reason for his visit.

"You are seeing me now," she told him, tucking a strand of hair back into her scarf as she continued with the pitchfork to add from her wooden barrow to the manure pile from the single goat that they did have.

Geis' nose wrinkled in revulsion. "Not here," he nearly felt the need to hold his handkerchief to his nose.

"Not at Barnsdale," she told him, her back growing straighter with the refusal.

"No," he assented. "I wish you to join me at Cabaret Alstroemeria. Tomorrow night is to be the final performance of the psychic Joss Tyr, and the OberAdmiral is throwing quite the party for his little pet before they vacate Guernsey to return to Prinzer's preferred home base of the waters surrounding Jersey."

"I'd rather not," she told him, stopping in her work to face him, leaning against her pitchfork.

"I see what is going on," he told her, impressed with his own insight. "You are ashamed of your hair," he settled on pointing out one of the many things that now kept Marion from (as she once had) easily mingling with the German military elite. "You must go and see Ginny Glasson. She has been told to expect you. And to put whatever services you require onto my account."

Her head tilted ever so slightly at this.

"I also have a gift for you," though he hated to give it to her in current state, he held out a brown paper package. He was relieved that she did take it from him.

Realizing the present condition of her hands, Marion tore only at a corner of the paper, quickly recognizing one of her favorite fancy dresses from her abandoned armoire back at Barnsdale. The weight that fell to the bottom of the package assured her that shoes to match had also been included.

She did not attempt to hold back a sigh in reaction to the fact that the clothing (fancy frock and high heels) that he had brought her would, at present, only serve her if she accompanied him. Certainly they would prove of no use to her in her life here.

But what he heard, rather, was a sigh of longing - of a wistfullness for her other pretty things.

"Herr Geis," she told him, "you bring too many gifts."

"You say you do not need gifts," he scolded her gently, a smile pulling at his mouth, "but you need a protector. The world - these islands - are not safe for a woman alone. You will not go hidden here forever."

"Yes," she did not conceal her hesitance at answering him. "You have heard the old saying, 'if you have wronged somebody, do not be proud, offer them friendship. If they reject you, offer a second time, and a third, until they accept.' That is what you must intend to do, I see."

He watched her (she knew he watched her) as she weighed his request. His eyes settled on her hand, and the unfamiliar band she did not even try to hide, upon it. "A gift of jewlery?" he asked, his tone turning arch, "long ago, from your husband?"

She scoffed lightly, through her nose, at his immediate assumption and accusation. "And if I told you he were still here? Not truly gone from these islands?" she challenged him. "I shall wear it tomorrow evening, to the Cabaret show," she told him, by way of agreeing to his invitation. "We've neither of us anything further to hide, yes? In fact, why not wear your own, Geis - or haven't you got one?"

"He will keep giving," Robin announced, as she finished relating the incident. "Though it boggles the mind and boils the blood to think that he brings you your own, rightful property - your very clothes - and calls them a 'gift'."

"I do not see a way around him," she confessed. "Were we to shoot and kill him, we shoot and kill twenty-five Islanders as well."

He grabbed her hands with intensity. "But how can I agree to send you with him? To let you go? As little then as stood between him and what he wanted - that thin veil of formality in agreeing to marry you - there is even less impediment in his mind, now."

When she spoke, she felt like an old woman, explaining the inevitability of death to a small child. "And if I tell him, 'no', what do you think prevents him from having his way, then?"

"You do not understand," he said it quickly, dismissively, the man - the soldier - used to giving orders threatening to make an appearance. "I cannot risk you so."

She met his emotional response with reason. "Can you think of any other way 'round my accepting him?"

Silence fell as he searched his mind.

"No," defeated.

"Then we must risk me," she told him, a faint smile of apology about her lips. "As we risk you every day you are upon the islands. What can he have of me, truly? I will give him nothing, for my sum, my total, is yours entire. And I am convinced that in this he does not wish me violence. Violence toward others, toward things to broker my capitulation - possibly. But it is the single small grace of this situation that for the moment, if I play along, what he wants from me is participation of my own free will. To kindle tender feelings toward him through his giving me gifts. For me to think him kind. To feel that he is wooing me into changing my mind - into winning me over."

"And when that changes?" his eyes had gone from frustration bordering anger to barely held-back despair.

She did not want it to, but found her own face changing to mirror his own. "I can only say that I do not see it changing tonight." She held onto him.

And he to her.

"What shall we do to preserve this expensive hairstyle, then?" he asked her, now that he knew Gisbonnhoffer had paid for it, and would be expecting it to be on display this evening.

"Tear it out," she told him, between kisses. "Don't leave me with a roll or a hairpin left in it. Dismantle it. Destroy it. Shave my head like Samson to have it off me. Only, do not stop kissing me."

"Do you really mean that?" he asked, narrowing one eye.

A beat passed when her lips paused in their devouring of him. "Well, perhaps not...entirely. But the jist of it, certainly. Ravish me, Robin Oxley, until I cease to recall what a hairstyle is."

"Fair enough," he agreed, quite willing. "What say you then, Ladies' Choice?"

She had him rolled onto his back before he noticed his trousers were undone.

Barnsdale - Carriage House's 2nd floor Chauffeur's Quarters - Quite nice up here, Allen always thought to himself of the two small-scale flats located above the auto garage at Barnsdale. Of course, Gisbonnhoffer's young guards did little to keep the place tidy (much less presentable), and the household staff, not tasked with cleaning beyond the house (and several outbuildings that serviced the house) proper, did nothing to allay the clutter and disarray.

It was always a dependable spot to look in when trolling for wagering sports of any kind, and today was no exception. Besides three off-duty Jerries, a young Island Constable he had not met before was throwing dice. Rowan, his name was, and seeming to be as new to dice as he was to the Island civilian constabulary force.

Allen was more than happy to oblige taking the young chap on, and, in short order, taking quite a bit of his money.

As he picked up his winnings from the pot, Allen half-noticed a slip of plain paper stuck in and among the scrip and Reichmarks - and even several bills of the old Guernsey currency (valued only by the staunchest of Islanders). But the dice were hot, luck was his benevolent mistress for the moment, and he took time to neither count his winnings before playing on, nor notice the young constable - now bereft of any bankroll to play further - slink away from the carriage house and back toward his duties in St. Peter Port.

ENGLISH CHANNEL - waters around Sark - Roger Stoker trod as quietly as he thought possible toward the submarine's command center, hoping to located Legg and get a more-accurate quote on their arrival time.

Naturally, Legg had instructed that silence at any cost must be observed once they were in Jerry-controlled waters, and Stoker knew he was not to be set loose of the sub until full-dark at the earliest. (Assuming the waters they were in were clear enough of Jerries to risk surfacing.)

But knowing such specifics, he found, could not truly quell his anticipation. He had packed and re-packed his knapsack. Dressed and re-dressed himself twice to be sure everything was on target.

After all, after such a long time in its planning, he owed it to Operation Pellinore to get everything just right.

Tonight, if he were to hear the Nightwatch (and certainly he hoped he did) it would be live. Live, and in the company of the best dead men he knew.

...TBC...