GUERNSEY - path from Barnsdale to Nightwatch Windmill - earlier that night - Eleri Vaiser could feel the desperate pressure of her own nervous palm in her father's chauffeur's far-more-composed one once he had taken her hand to pull her into the estate's small woods and out of the revealing moonlight. Not letting go, he ran after the man leading them easily, as though such post-midnight streaks were commonplace to him, her being the only thing at present holding him back.

She was not used to the night. Not used to tree roots and shadows and the way her heart had set up pounding when he had told her Lady Marion was hurt. Alive! it had leapt. Lady Marion alive! And found! Only to be followed by; 'hurt!' And that somehow, amazingly, in all of this she was needed. How, she could not quite fathom, but help she certainly wished to.

She tried to concentrate on the shadow of the crest of his left shoulder (the shoulder whose hand gripped hers). It did her no good to try and sight her feet, hoping to move them with greater efficiency through what underbrush there was. She had still fallen several times. That is, she would have fallen - face into the ground - had his grasp of her hand not jerked her back up before she met with the forest floor.

"Step lively, now!" he had encouraged her, taking a half-second to throw the words over his shoulder - only a half-second so as not to lose sight of the other man. She wondered if he knew the growing pain - like a muscle burning - in her shoulder at his brusque (but necessary) treatment. Wondered if he would be concerned, or perhaps enjoy having brought it about.

They bounded through further trees, over a turnstile, past a quick-running brook and across several fields, unexpected rabbit holes and occasional rocks large enough to twist an ankle jostling her young bones even further.

She found sleep harder to throw off than she would have expected, her pell-mell progress to the spot where Lady Marion was seeming more like the extenuation of a particularly vivid dream. It made her brain fuzzy, not quite its steel-trap self.

The man leading them ducked into the cellar opening of a particularly dilapidated stone-based windmill. She had seen its like before on the island, but had been told, she recalled, that few if any of them were still in working order. Certainly that was the case with this tumbledown edifice. But as they proceeded down the stairs behind their guide, and Mr. Allen dropped her hand so that he and she might use both theirs on what there was of railings, she could see a glow of low light coming from within the cellar. And once to the bottom she noticed both their guide and Mr. Allen had to stutter step and half-leap to avoid some large obstacle.

When she did see what it was that impeded their way she was not sure to be more taken aback by the fact Lady Marion seemed to have obviously sustained a gunshot wound, or that she was being held, quite intimately, in the open embrace of a rough-looking peasant man, her back to his chest, her cheek against the work-a-day weave of his jacket's shoulder.

"Come along," Mr. Allen said to the seated man, relieving him of his place, "Miss Eleri's here, now." Mr. Allen's eyes indicated to her that it was her job now to take up a similar position, supporting Lady Marion.

"Mind her as best you know how," he instructed, for a moment turning his fullest attention to her. "See that she drinks but doesn't move about. And don't disturb the wound dressing."

Eleri looked up at him, at his reliably well-groomed appearance, his buttermilk linen long-sleeved shirt (for the Occupation, richly) sporting enough fabric to supply matching breast pockets with button flaps, his fashionable, high-waisted trousers cinched, even, with a belt. A touch of class, that, for these islands, where she had (again) been told that the reason so many island men were seen in crude belts fashioned of rope (or braces made similarly) was because leather had become ever-more precious. That some (she could hardly imagine it) were boiling it for food. A dinner of belts and shoes. It sounded impossible. But even now, here was that rough-looking peasant man, his jacket peeking open enough to show a flash of a rope brace. No doubt it still smelt of the fishing vessel where it had likely originated.

Now that he had instructed her, Mr. Allen fell to having a discuss with the two other men, all three ignoring her as though she were not even present. Lady Marion remained asleep.

The man that had proven her guide was hard to puzzle out. His face was not easy to see in the lowlight, but she did not think she knew him. He was wearing a very strange version of a uniform, she thought, though for what profession she could not guess, its top coat switched about as if to deliberately conceal whatever clue it might give her.

As they argued she took a moment to survey her surroundings. (Their dialogue was quite rapid and it was no great challenge for her to disengage her French/German mind from the need of translating it.) It was a smallish space, this half-cellar. She saw a record player, a stack of several records, and some small crates and glass jars of canned goods. There really was no space more comfortable to transfer Lady Marion to.

And then she heard it. A particularly brief - but unmistakable - moment of phrasing that told her who the third man was. The mystic Joss Tyr. It was nearly at this same moment that she sighted the microphone and the wires climbing up the rickety stair toward the outside that surely must signal they were crawling toward a transmission antenna.

Eleri managed not to gasp at her discovery, the gears in her mind turning far too quickly to stay shocked for long. No one had said how Lady Marion had come to receive her wound, but Eleri thought now, no one would need to. It was apparent that Joss Tyr, Joss Tyr was the outlaw known as the Nightwatch, and this windmill was his hideout. Somehow (she could not say how) the Lady Marion must have stumbled upon it, and in defense of his secret identity - and of his very life if he were found out - Tyr had shot her.

Thankfully, not mortally so.

Eleri did not know how the second man, the peasant man figured into things. Perhaps he owned the windmill. She found she would rather not think too closely on him, on the edge of danger that had swum in his eyes as he cradled Marion, on the way that even now he kept looking back to her, even amidst his arguing.

And how did Mr. Allen fit into this? She had never had any reason to think he knew Joss Tyr more than simply on sight - as did most residents of St. Peter Port. He was her father's chauffeur, his employee, yet he did not seem to be doing any job of which Heinrik Vaiser would approve, much less tolerate. He held himself with, she thought, a greater level of competency among these two other men, here that he would usually. As though he had no doubt he was their equal. Of the peasant man, she did not doubt - but of Tyr, a German Count? A psychic touchstone to the World beyond? Closest companion to OberAdmiral Prinzer?

Lady Marion stirred. "Eleri," she said, as though saying a 'hello'. "Good. Call Allen over," she asked, wincing slightly and tensing with the pain of speech and being bedded on a hard-packed floor.

"Mr. Allen," Eleri said it like one clearing her throat, not certain it would be heard over the men's rapid, deliberate words. But he turned back, and seeing Marion awake, walked away from the others and went down on one knee, the better to speak with her.

"I need him alive," Lady Marion began without preamble, her eyes boring into Mr. Allen's, as if her very expression might make a point. "When you are away, ask - ask what he has proven he is able to do. Such peculiar talent might serve us in future."

"And you fear," Mr. Allen turned back to look at the rough peasant man, "he will not be permitted to live out the night?"

Lady Marion tried to hold in a cough, Eleri felt her lungs tense in the attempt. "There are already too many bullets sunk into the wrong people tonight. Swear to me you will prevent another."

Before Mr. Allen could make his vow, the peasant man stomped over, also having realized Lady Marion was conscious. "What's this?" he demanded, half-belligerent. "What plans could you two possibly have to spin without my knowing?"

And again, the accents seemed to become thicker, the speed of the argument increased, and Eleri was left with two questions: what on earth would cause Lady Marion to need the help (of all people) of her father's feckless chauffeur; and, had Lady Marion, in the end, gotten her way?

Present time - SARK - Blind La Salle's tenement - Upon entering the farmhouse by its front door, Robin walked directly for the closed-door parlor and seated himself within it, sending Allen to call for John, Wills, and Royston. The briefest encounter with Stephen in the barnyard had quickly put a face to the problem Carter had referenced, Robin's mind at present so singularly fixed he had gotten only what he had wanted from Stephen before stalking away, desiring to hear no other news at present.

The three men summoned entered fast upon the heels of one another, each seeming to have in their eyes something to tell him, but his demeanor gave them momentary pause.

"Marion has been shot," he informed them, bristling with full-on commanding officer mode. "She rests at present in the mines with Carter. I am sure you can see that I am most anxious to return there as soon as can be. But I find that issues of my men's conduct return me here, and keep me from a far better duty than this, of sorting out a clutch of Georgie Porgies."

Without referencing what had occurred, he demanded simply, "who knew?", his eyes flashing from one man's to the next.

A slight creak was heard from outside the door that exited onto the hallway, signaling an eavesdropper, and Robin's eyes slid over to Allen's. "Take her off somewhere she cannot overhear, Dale. I will speak with her later," and the double use of the feminine pronoun could leave no doubt in any man's mind of what Robin had asked them about.

John and Wills raised their hands with a slowness that tracked as reluctance, the expressions on their faces points on a continuum of grim.

Royston half-boisterously announced that he'd, 'had no (and here there was a generous degree of colorful swearing) idea'.

"And what have you two to say for yourselves?" their commanding officer asked.

"Her, I like," said John, surprisingly speaking up first.

"I think I love her," Wills nearly overspoke his more taciturn comrade's declaration. His face did not blanch, but his eyes seemed momentarily to petrify, neither blinking nor moving, like the glass substitutions in a hunter's mounted trophy head. This was not at all what he had planned to say in his defense.

"You love her," Robin spoke his own words back to him.

It took Wills a moment to re-find his voice. "Well not, you know, not immediately. Not right away. Just, you know, it - sort of snuck up on me."

Royston slapped one hand almost-injuriously on Wills' back. "Lad's not seen a girl, much less had one of his own in what, nearly a year? 'Tis only science that he's got 'imself with his head turned 'round 'bout this."

Robin coolly allowed the interjection, but did not reply to it. "And have you told her this?"

"No. Absolutely not."

Robin considered a moment. "John, you are needed to examine Marion at the mines. Wills, it will be the mines for you, also."

Silence again fell, but the temperature of the air settling about Wills rose by several degrees. He had been entirely honest, he had been honorable. And yet he was to be sent away to the mines? Banished as punishment?

"But what of you, and Marion?" Wills found himself precariously attempting an argument of one-for-one rationale. "I have told Djak nothing of these feelings of mine. I have never acted upon them," he took a half-step forward, out of the line. "We none of us has ever interfered with the courting of the two of you."

It was a risky moment to tweak at Robin in such a way, Marion hurt and his temperament torn in several unpleasant directions. He managed with some difficulty to restrain himself from a worse response, and only answered Wills in words.

"Marion is not a refugee, a displaced former slave worker and prisoner in hiding, in her mind no doubt beholden to us all on some level for her very life whether we accept such a responsibility or not. Your close proximity to Djak -

"Seraina," John interjected in a knee-jerk attempt at helpfulness.

"Seraina - here, your status as her teacher, as a man she respects and of necessity shares the company of - we cannot be sure any of this is truly of her free will. Her will, after all, has not long been her own. And even now she must live, largely, as we dictate. The feelings you have inadvertently confessed (for I don't think you meant to reveal them here, in this forum) make you a powder keg in a match factory, Reddy." His mind was made up. "You will board at the mines, until I can better sort this."

For a moment, Wills looked as though he might (just like that powder keg) blow.

But behind Robin, where Allen had returned to the room to stand, Allen's brows drew together in concern and he mouthed the word, 'go', and recalled Reddy to himself, and Wills turned to leave the room, Johnson fast on his heels before a commensurate punishment could be handed out to him.

Royston managed to look quite pleased with himself for escaping the scolding scot-free.

Allen leaned over, his mouth near Robin's ear, and told him, "there is a delivery for you, in the kitchen."

GUERNSEY - above Ginny Glasson's shop - As Joss Tyr let himself quietly in to the blacked-out street-level shop, the public area within, with its several chairs for waiting customers and familiar, mirrored workstations were also darkened.

Still, even in his intense exhaustion he spotted the eyes of the proprietress for whom the shop was named, sitting in the dark alone, waiting.

She said nothing audible, but even across the distance, in the black, he could clearly read the same message he would have telegraphed to her had she arrived similarly: 'imprudent'. It was not an assessment with which he could argue.

He took a moment to rest against a stretch of flat wall nearby the curtain that cordoned off the storage area for the shop and the stairwell to the upper living quarters, and watched as she crossed the room toward him, silent, controlled, long accustomed to operating after dark.

She looked at him and wisely swallowed the words she wished to speak - that she would have asked anyone but him: can you make the stairs?

Instead, she let him tread them without assistance, walking (with frequent, necessary pauses) several steps behind him. From there, at least, to catch him should he fall. Which, he was not so confident he mightn't.

Painstakingly he made his way to the bedroom where he was expected by all those in power to have been resting since his farewell show...imploded, and this space had been commandeered for his express use.

He sat heavily upon the bed, the frame and its springs protesting.

She lit two candles, not risking the brighter lights.

He looked at his boots in a state of wonderment, curious as to whether he had the strength left to take them off.

She did not tell him he was filthy, did not tell him that the costume uniform might well have to be burned as it would never rebound in the wash from such harsh use. She stood, waiting, as he struggled with the boots, his lost prosthetic, the shorn wooden fingers from the other, impeding his success at every turn. Yet she offered no help.

Just as he nearly had them off, she turned and began to assemble several things on the bedside stand. The wrecked make-up on his face, attempting now to slough off into his eyes blurried his vision, and he could not tell what they were.

The boots were off.

The uniform coat he felt her fingers working to unbutton until he was down to a sleeveless undershirt. He heard its muddy weight hit the floor. He felt, more than saw, her own hands once done with his coat move to her nightdress, untying its front, until, like him, she was bared. Only, no half-modesty of a sleeveless undershirt for her.

Then, with consummate tenderness in her touch and grip, she rested the side of his face that could tolerate such pressure against the bared flesh of her breasts and abdomen as he sat upon the bed, and she stood beside it.

Slowly, like the lightest gust of an unseen breeze, he felt her begin the process of removing his destroyed-by-the-night face paint, a service he had never accepted from her before. He brought what there was of his hands up to the warm skin of her back, giving it one questing stroke, and rested them there near the hollow above her spine's base.

He rather thought, in that moment had someone sculpted them, the scene conveyed would have been far more Mother and Child than two lovers embracing.

He thought of his mother - of Werner von Himmel's mother. Thought of how he could not imagine her welcoming such a son - these dregs of what was left of her son - much less offering him any such warmly, intimately compassionate gesture. She had never been such a mother.

"Gin," he asked, after some minutes had passed, the side of his face still warmed by her skin, "How can someone so cold inside burn with such fire?"

She didn't answer, but began slowly removing his glued-on wig.

"Marion Nighten has been shot," he offered her, though too quietly to be conversational. "It would appear she is the Nightwatch." For a moment, he felt her trained hands cease in their work. "And the old man Thornton. He has been killed by the Whichman." He took a moment to consider, and added, "The Nightwatchwoman, I think, will live."

Here he felt an almost determined renewal of her ministrations, though they did not increase in pressure or spark any additional pain or intended discomfort in him.

"Julian Thornton?" she asked to the air above his head.

He knew he did not have to confirm it.

"As a child he had...a radio set. And when my mother's sister moved to Sark she would go to a neighbor's house there, and my mother would take all of us to Thorntons' and they could have a sort of conversation over the radio. He always found such inventive ways to entertain us, though his and Mrs. Thornton's children were long grown and moved to the mainland by then." At this her voice threatened to catch, but she kept it level. "Sacre, but he was un bon bonhomme."

"He was keeping Lady Marion all these months." He did not have to add more, in truth he would not know what more there might be to add. At this intersection of disclosure and succor the surprising appearance of the Kommandant's driver and the other man did not seem to fit. "I do not know the last time I felt so close to being human," he said, feeling as though he had not quite found the exact words he wished to express himself with.

The confession hung there between them in the candle-wax filled air. He moved to clarify himself. She was finished removing the make-up from both sides of his face, now, and he found himself (as usual) wishing for a pillow to place the scarred side against. "Frail," he explained, "vulnerable."

His trousers came off more easily, assisted by gravity before he brought his legs up and into the bed.

He sighted the tempting outline of her nude figure against the candlelight just before she snuffed both out.

"Don't worry," she told him, her voice pitched as though telling a child goodnight; quiet, calm, re-assuring. "It won't last."

He marveled that, even in her obvious-to-him emotional state over the old man's death, she always knew just the right thing to say.

He thought to tell her that Avia was alive, but exhaustion finally got the better of him, and he drifted off too completely and too quickly to speak further, and the sole good news of the night would have to wait for daylight.

SARK - Little Sark Mines - Johnson had not yet made his appearance.

Marion came-to to feel Carter attempting to investigate and change her bandaging, making use of the unused towel Allen had snatched with such foresight from Barnsdale.

Marion smelled the slight scent of the laundry, there, upon it, and the fragrance struck her as foreign - having no place in these dank mines, put to work on wounds resulting from something as ungenteel as a gunshot to flesh.

"What has Robin gone to sort?" she asked him. Her breath was shallow, and at present would remain so, deeper breaths causing her pain.

Carter looked at her evenly. "The boy, Djak - is not at all a boy."

"Quite. Right," she agreed. "Are you just now all finding this out?"

He did not reply, but pulled some of her improvised coverlet down from where it had covered her to the chin.

His motion brought his face closer to hers and she was able to better study it. "You are angry."

"I am..." he finished the declaration lightly, "taken off-guard."

"How long do you imagine that to last?"

"Couldn't say," he replied, checking her forehead for fever. "You are very casual about it."

"Well, it hardly effects me."

She waited for him to say something further, but he stood to busy himself at the small camp stove cobbled into a larger cooker off in a distant corner. Finally, admitting defeat in waiting for his response, she renewed her questioning. "Does it affect you so deeply?"

He half-squinted as he replied, facing the wall so that she only saw him in profile. "I think Djak the boy had nearly convinced me we were family - of one blood."

"And Djak -"

"Seraina."

Marion attempted to shift herself (clumsily so) upon her borrowed berth. Raising herself up broke her out into a sweat. "Seraina the girl. She is an impediment rather than a compatriot?" She huffed with the effort. "In what way does she worry you?"

Carter reacted as though his answer was one any person ought to be well-schooled in. "A man (or boy) can be important to another man in a way...in a way very different than can a woman."

She considered this.

"So it is not that you are in love with her - that you feared you were in love with the boy."

Turning back to where she continued to work at best propping herself, he gave a smile, tinged with ruefulness. "I am not in love with anyone. I do not think I shall ever be. Now see," he chid her, but did not sigh, "that was a very womanish thing to ask. Djak would never have asked that. Djak would just have known."

Marion's eyes widened and rolled, but more from swallowing back the wound's sting than his words. Her words were close-bitten and staccato. "You speak of her as though she is dead."

"But that's just it," he agreed with some vehemence. "Djak is dead. I don't know in what way I can befriend the person who is left." He looked away. "I do not excel at friendship, anyway." He tried not to think of Pedersen, to ask himself yet again if the man had been his friend. "The world we inhabit does not excel at nurturing such bonds with any permanence."

She let a silence fall at that. A considered silence. Somewhere off in the distance of the old mine shaft, water could be heard dripping.

But she could not let it rest for long. With her injury, and Robin's absence, this subject was the one distraction left her. "Aren't you being rather hard about the whole matter?"

"And if your Oxley were a woman?" Carter counter-questioned, barrister-perfect.

She held back a scoff. "...I...don't think we should get on."

A nod of his head in agreement. "So you admit there is a difference."

"Very well," Marion plunged in headlong. "I admit that I have known Djak for a girl for some time now. I only briefly interacted with her while under the impression that she was a boy. And I admit that her gender change effects me not one bit. And though I see the point you wish to make, I think - if you accept it - it will also not affect you, in your relation to her. Unless you choose to let it."

"And so you are again at prescribing romance?" He gave a shallow (but genuine) smile as he sat down his cup and moved toward her. "I tell you, what Djak and I had - shared - was beyond romance. It was - well, I suppose, in a small way it was the finding, however briefly and transitorily, a home."

Well, that was certainly something - with the death of her father (and now Thornton) and the commandeering of Barnsdale by the Jerries - that she could most certainly appreciate.

Carter had walked back over to the cooker to retrieve a kettle of hot water, and arriving back at her side, placed it on the earthen floor at his feet, preparing for his impending aid to her wound.

"Do you think -" she had no idea why she asked it, much less why she asked him, or why now. Perhaps it was that she had caught in his face something of the wisdom of the world, of the decade or more of additional experience he held beyond her, beyond Robin. Perhaps only that she had found his words in their way, knowing, and her instincts told her that he would be the man to ask. Perhaps it was only that he was nearest, here in the abandoned mine. "Do you think the loss of so much blood could harm a, a baby?"

Carter's hand froze in place on her shoulder, where he was just about to pull away the wadding closest to her skin. "You are expecting a child?"

"Yes. No. I'm not certain. But yes, possibly."

"It is none of my business, of course - and it is certainly ungracious to ask - but do you know if it is Gisbonnhoffer's or Oxley's?"

It was not quite the question she had been expecting, but she answered it without irritation. "How very pragmatic of you to inquire. Well, it would have to be Robin's. There's no - no way it could belong to anyone else."

He visibly relaxed at this.

"But you have not told him - even of your suspicions?"

"I could be wrong. I'm not certain."

Carter looked at her as though she were someone, perhaps, to pity. "I know little enough of medical matters, much less of women's, but if you are far enough along, and lose a baby, rest assured you will know it."

"But I should not mention it until I am sure," she spoke the suggestion as though she expected him to immediately approve it.

At this, Carter gave a concerned quarter-smile. "I am not the man to try and sell on the notion of concealing a baby's imminent birth from its father. No matter how you feel about this, or how you think he will, this is of both your doing, and ought be settled likewise." He nodded his head to the side. "And soon."

She opened her mouth to ask another question, but he beat her to it.

"And no. Johnson owes Oxley far more loyalty than he does you. If you ask him, he will tell your secret husband before you have the chance to, and it is unlikely he knows anything at all of female troubles and birth, having been trained solely to keep men alive on the battlefield. Then you will still have both the question of this child and a rabid-mad husband on your hands."

She let his last sentence stand, and asked, "And so Johnson will come shortly and help keep me alive from my 'battlefield' wounding. And then, then I can seek someone out to tell me whether I am to be a mother?"

Carter sort of 'hmmed' under his breath. "One cannot say your life is not exciting, my lady."

And he took off the last layer of bandage, which had, despite his attempt at gentleness, with the drying of blood, fused to her skin, and Marion tried very hard not to scream, though no one but Carter could hear her, down, deeply below, hidden in the sheltering bedrock of Sark.

GUERNSEY - Heindl Cottage - Cow shed - "Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread..." Mitch Bonchurch had awoken before dawn that morning to hear Tony Martin crooning. But, he discovered, only in his own, solitary head. It felt like a lifetime since he had heard a record, or a radio broadcast - music of any recorded kind. Music other than that made by Eva. Not that he would, by any means, complain over her gorgeous and sweetly pitched voice, singing as she went about the cottage chores, or spent the time necessary to fancy herself up on a trip...away.

And how he did miss her those nights she was away. Not that he was any longer scared of mad, batty Hilda, or her lengthy natural regimens for curing any manner of illness one did not, in point of fact, yet have. Only there was a lonesomeness even in such a packed home, a lonesomeness even in a grown man's bed, which he had become comfortable sharing, of necessity, with Daniel. Occasionally waking to find young Seth had crawled in for a snug cuddle as well. But without the perfect rhythm of her soft breathing, without her Eva-ness, lonesomeness.

"And so I come to you, my love, my heart above my head/Though I see the danger, there, if there's a chance for me, then I don't care."

Milking the cow found him daydreaming like any country milkmaid, his cheek to the cow's flank, his hands to the task of emptying her warm, swollen-overnight udder. He imagined how it might be if he could tell Eva - tell them all - that he was actually a lord, well, would be a lord - with an income to match. Not that he thought it would matter to her. She struck him as the sort of girl to love where she loved, no matter the circumstance. But he could only tell them of the reality of his life if the world were no longer as it were (and he was certain it would not always be). Could only tell them of how happy his mother, Sophie, would be to meet them all. Could only then invite them to holiday (with an eye, perhaps, to staying longer) at Bonchurch Downs. He could put Daniel into a special school to broaden the young man's already voracious mind. Find and fund him a private tutor, even.

And he could marry Eva without thought to the fact that she had nothing to bring to a marriage, so well had his uncle and benefactor managed the Bonchurch affairs. He could marry Eva for love.

If only the war, his MI-6-engineered death, his imprisonment and separation from the unit, as well as his irregular incarceration here were not, so unforgettably - so at present insurmountably - in the way.

"Fools rush in, where wise men never go/But wise men never fall in love, so how are they to know?"

...TBC...

Author's Note: My ancient PC's word processing program is on the fritz. Therefore, apologies if you find more errors in this chapter than usual.