Every chair in the drawing room was filled, but the room was heavy and still with silence. No one dared speak above a whisper. Even the lawyer, reading the will, was barely more audible than the parchment rasping under his hands.

But even in the silence and the stillness there was joy, Laura thought. Joy, hidden under the dabbing of black handkerchiefs to faces. Glee suppressed by a tightening of the lips. And anger too — a quick motion controlled, a narrowing of the eyes.

Laura sat back in her chair near the lawyer's table and watched the room from under the obscurity of her veil. The will held no interest for her; she already knew her husband would have left her nothing. But she was fascinated by the emotions surging beneath the stillness of the room. Joy for those who received. Anger for those who did not. But sorrow? Was there anyone here who felt sorrow? Had anyone here loved her husband?

She knew her father, sitting impassively in the back row, had not. For the past two years, he had refused to lay eyes on Laura and her husband, bearing them both a grudge for their scandalous elopement. Even now, he refused to let his eyes meet hers across the room. She could not understand why he had come. To spit on Mr Maidstone's grave? Or perhaps he thought she would inherit a slice of Mr Maidstone's fortune. If so, he would be disappointed.

She followed her father's gaze to the lawyer and lit thoughtfully upon the man sitting beside him. Mr Percival, her husband's friend and executor, might have liked him, she mused. There was no joy or anger in his face, only a strange uncertainty. She thought it signified guilt. It would only be natural, if he had held Maidstone in any regard, for him to feel something of that emotion. But perhaps, she thought cynically, it was only that he had a stomach ache. His digestion never had been good.

Her gaze drifted further and became cold as it landed on the most prominent chair in the room.

Frederick Maidstone, her brother-in-law, certainly had not loved Mr Maidstone. Whenever the lawyer read out another factory or business now under his control, he would pass his handkerchief over his face to hide his twitching lips. But the will was coming to an end now, tailing rapidly through a number of small bequests to servants or lesser relatives, and Frederick had managed to assume a sombre expression at last.

The lawyer cleared his throat. "...And finally to my wife, Lady Laura Maidstone" —Frederick smiled again and Laura felt a flicker of alarm— "I leave a single shilling..."

Laura stiffened. A sudden hush of murmurs echoed around the room.

"...to be given her immediately upon the reading of the will. Signed, Mr Thomas Maidstone. Witnessed, Mrs Chamber, Mr Chamber."

Laura stared dumbly at the lawyer. She had known Maidstone hated her, but she had never expected public humiliation. Then even in death, her vile husband would find ways to wound her.

The lawyer turned to Mr Percival. "We should fulfil the last bequest now."

Mr Percival looked a little shame-faced, but rose from his chair and came over to stand in front of Laura. His eyes would not quite meet hers, and there was a pink tinge to his normally pallid cheeks.

"Lady Laura." He held out his hand. There was something in it, bright against his black gloves. "Your portion."

A shilling, new-minted and gleaming.

At the back of the room, her father stood up abruptly from his chair. "Is it necessary to do this now?"

"It is as Mr Maidstone wished." Mr Percival hesitated. Laura hoped he wasn't going to say anything stupid, with everybody watching. But he only muttered awkwardly, "My condolences, my lady."

She reached out and closed her hand around the shilling, hiding it from sight. No one in the room dared speak.

Then, in the silence, Frederick sniggered.

The old flame of temper, always ready to leap to action, flared inside Laura. She hurled the coin at his fat, grinning face. It missed, snapping against the wall behind and clinking to the floor, where it spun on its edge a moment, before falling flat. A woman in the crowd gasped; Frederick only laughed once more and bent to pick up the coin, which had fallen next to his foot.

"Why, thank you, dear sister," he mocked. "Thank you kindly. I shall put this to good use."

"You may pay Charon with it," she snarled, "and go to hell!"

Before anyone could say anymore, she turned and strode from the room, her black silk snapping against her heels. Behind her, the mourners broke out in whispers, and Frederick broke down into laughter.

Outside on the front steps, Laura stopped, chest heaving, and leaned against a pillar. Her rage died, and died as quickly as it had sparked to life, leaving her drained and frightened.

Where was she to go from here? The husband she had loathed was dead, but she was not free. Could not be free while she stood, without a penny in the world, a home to go to, or a friend to trust.

Frederick would never support her. He had hated her and she had hated him. Nor would any of her female friends be able to offer her help. Their husbands would either not stand to have a woman of Laura's reputation in the house — or be dangerously willing for it. Mr Percival might want to help her, but he was in no position to offer her financial support, and that was the only support she would wish to ask from him. And her father...

There was the sound of a footstep behind her, and she turned to see the very man. He had his cloak on, was holding his cane and top hat in hand. He regarded her impassively for a long, silent moment, then turned away and walked slowly down the stairs. On the gravel drive, he paused. His carriage was approaching, the coat of arms freshly gilded and glinting palely under the weak November sunlight.

"I suppose you had best come with me," he said, not looking at her. "Run in, and fetch your most vital belongings. The rest can be sent on. I do not wish to linger."

Not even a greeting. Not a single word of hello or how do you do. Laura stared at the shining, balding patch on the back of his head.

"Quickly now."

She was too cowed, too exhausted, too frightened to refuse. And besides, there was nowhere else for her to go. She muttered a vague assent and ran indoors to stuff a few favourite dresses and trinkets in a net bag. There was little that truly belonged to her now, and it didn't take long. When she got back downstairs, her father was already in the carriage, with the door open and the groom waiting to hand her up.

It was a long and silent coach-ride home for the two Brockets. They had never been friends. Laura had grown up under the gentle instruction of governesses and nursery maids and companions, rarely even seeing her father until she was just old enough to be considered a woman. And then she had discovered that she did not like him, and he had discovered that he did not like her. He was not fond of the company of women to begin with; he considered them stupid. His daughter could not convince him she was otherwise. She resented his prejudice and scorned his discipline. In return, his discipline grew stricter. He became an order-giver; she became an order-defier. Stubborn and contemptuous, he had sought nothing but to control her. Mutinous and angry, she had convinced herself she even hated him.

But she didn't know then what hatred truly was.

Mr Maidstone had been pleasant when she first met him. It had been easy to believe herself in love with him. Or perhaps she really had loved him — the image of him that she had created. So easy to create it, when she saw him for intervals of only a quarter of an hour at a time. A pleasant dance, a few minutes of his sharp, cynical wit —how droll she had thought his cynicism in those early days— and then a smiling goodbye. And days, weeks, before their next meeting, in which to gloat over her memories, relive his wit, and daydream of the meetings yet to come.

It hadn't been long after their elopement that the image had started to warp. It had started in a very small way. He had been saving a piece of brisket for his supper, and it had gone missing. Insignificant, really. But it had been enough to make his cynical wit turn upon her. His smiles had grown smug and angry.

"I know you ate it," he said. "You cannot lie to me. And I don't mind. I really don't mind. But you must know that I know when you lie."

Her protests of innocence had been met with nothing but more smiling, smug anger: he did not like that she lied, he knew she lied, how deceptive a woman he had married.

She had found the servant who had stolen the brisket. The servant had confessed, and she had fired him. Chidingly, indulgently, Maidstone had turned to her afterwards:

"What a fuss you make of these things. There was no need to fire the servant. It was just a bit of brisket."

Until it was a stain on his best coat. The shillings he had lost while coming home drunk. The sherry he did not remember drinking. Conversations she had had with his gentleman friends.

He never would believe her. The more she protested her innocence, the more he thought her a liar. The more he laughingly made jokes to his friends about his duplicitous wife. The more his friends believed him.

And after the baby had died...

It hadn't been her fault. It could not have been anyone's fault. But he blamed for it. And that was when he had stopped loving her at all. That was when his laughing jokes had become savage and angry. When his disbelief had turned to resentment, his resentment to anger, his anger to blows.

Laura found the view outside the carriage glass blurred and blinked. No. She would not cry. He was dead now and could hurt her no more. Mourn his death? She would celebrate it. Her gowns might be black, but for the first time in two years her soul and heart were white and flying.

The view outside the glass proved to be familiar and she turned to her father in surprise.

"Why, we are in Leamont already. I've not been marking the time."

Her father looked up from his newspaper. "So we are. And how do you find it, after all this time?"

"I find it well." She turned her eyes again to the sloping fields, streaked with gold from the afternoon sun slanting through the trees. "Yes. I shall enjoy being home very much."

More than she had ever enjoyed it before. She hardened her heart against her former self. How ungrateful she had been. How stupid. Her father might have given her orders, but he had never laid a hand upon her. She was safe now. Safe in the place in which she had been born.

"I am glad you feel so," her father replied, rather properly and distantly, as though trying to remember his manners. "Here. We are almost there."

He folded away the newspaper as they rounded a clump of laurels and the house came into view. The sun lay behind it, gilding the edges of the roof and chimneys. She'd forgotten how beautiful it was.

"I must thank you, Father," she said softly. "For bringing me home. For supporting me, when Mr Maidstone would not. I will be a burden to you now."

Her father looked surprised. "But you are of use to me, my dear. Do you not know?"

A glow of relieved gratification washed over Laura. Her father had never said anything so kind to her before in her life.

His next words drained it away again.

"You'll marry again. Forge a new connection. I do not underestimate your worth, my dear. A woman of your looks and birth, proven fecund, but unencumbered by a child, and still young enough for six or seven more... You still have value indeed."

Laura's voice shook. "I do not think I will marry again, Father."

"You think you will not. And I know you will." Her father's eyes met her own for the first time in two years, and she saw now that they were as disdainful as ever. "It was not for charity that I brought you here, Laura. Do not ask me for that. I will not give it."

For a moment, the whiteness of her soul darkened. But Mr Maidstone had tempered, if not her defiance, her expression of it. She gazed mutely through the glass. Marry? To another man who might prove to be just like Mr Maidstone — or worse?

She would rather die.

__

though this is a sequel to Lady in Rags, and references several characters and events in that story, it can be read as a stand-alone.

Richard's story finally begins!!! With the disreputable Brockets, who were mentioned in Lady in Rags, and may not be entirely as bad as Neil believed. Or might, in fact, be worse. We'll see. Happy Valentine's Day, my lovelies!