Laura sat at the window in the garret and stared down at the white square of snow-buried garden, caged in by the black pines surrounding. She hadn't slept all night for worrying, futilely, about Richard. What people would think of him if it got around. What he would think of her when he found out what she had said. Now, late afternoon, the snow had finally stopped, leaving deep white drifts banked up against the house, and Laura was aching with tiredness. Her eyes kept slipping closed of their own accord, and there was a strange giddy liquidness to her spine.

She wasn't hungry though, which was a small mercy. Since her father had locked her in yesterday afternoon, she hadn't had anything to eat. She wasn't naive enough to assume he'd forgotten to tell the servants to send food to her; it was a deliberate punishment. There had been water enough in the wash-jug for her to drink, however, so she wasn't thirsty.

Leaning drearily against the windowsill, she stared at the snow-bleached sky and thought of Richard. She needed to talk to him again. She needed to apologise for exposing their affair. The burden of that thought rested heavily upon her. A small voice whispered to her that perhaps, just perhaps, he would never forgive her. No, probably, very probably. And she needed him to forgive her. Somehow, she could not bear the thought of him hating her. With a pang of sorrow, she realized she liked Richard. His clumsy kindness, his inelegant good manners, his awkward well-meaning. They had once seemed laughable, even irritating, but now they endeared her.

Laura was disturbed from her reverie by footsteps in the hall. A moment later, the key turned in the lock and the door slammed open. She turned her head listlessly towards it. Her father stood in the doorway, two bright red spots burning in his pale cheeks. He looked, she realized with a tinge of unease, triumphant.

"Richard Armiger is dead."

For a moment, all Laura could do was stare at him. Her hands tightened on the windowsill until splinters of wood bit into her palms. The bright spots on her father's cheeks deepened.

"It's in The Morning Chronicle. You're in it too. Back page, or I'd have read it this morning. Fordham murdered him outside his club last night."

The hard, cold sill beneath Laura seemed to drop away beneath her.

"No. No. It cannot be true."

"It is."

"No! I don't believe it!" She squeezed her eyes shut. "You're lying!"

Her father spoke calmly, rapidly: "Blood and Horror in the West End. Body of a peer found in a London street by a member of his own class. Murderer seen running away, the prodigal son of the last Lord Farncote. Investigations elicit an altercation in his club. Members talk of a scurrilous accusation about a lady. That's you, I suppose. The end of it is, in two days, the entirety of London will be talking about how Albroke's mistress, you, got him killed."

Laura stared at her father, shocked more than anything to see the thin smile on his face. Then slowly, the smile became real to her, and the words he had said.

"I don't believe it," she whispered. "It can't be true. He— he can't be— stop smiling!"

Her father ran his finger over his lips, smoothing out the curve. But his cheek was still twitching after, as though he could barely keep from laughing.

"You're right, it's a shame, really. A shame," her father repeated, "because once your name gets into it, there won't be a man in London who'll marry you. You've ruined all my plans. Albroke would have at least been a compromise, after that. But he's dead now and I'm stuck with you."

Whatever instinct of self-preservation Laura might have had was buried under shock. She only stared at her father through a blur of tears and realized it must be true or her father would never have admitted defeat.

"What am I to do with you now?" he mused.

"Nothing. Just go away and leave me," she begged in a whisper. "It can't be true. I can't have—"

She could not finish that thought. Her father came forward and stood looking down at her. As though considering. As he had on the steps of Mr Maidstone's house. Only this time, the answer he came to was sure to be different. Marriage was no longer an option. That was her silver lining. But it came on the dull edge of the blackest of clouds.

"I'm sending you away," Lord Brocket said at last. "There's an asylum in Scotland. It'll be worth twenty pounds a year not to hear your footsteps in my attic. And maybe there you'll learn to respect the kindness I gave you. And maybe there my friends will forget about you, the daughter who betrayed me."

Laura stared listlessly at the rumpled blanket on the bed. "I don't want to go."

"You don't have a choice."

She looked up. It came to her, through the veil of her shock, that she hated her father. Hated him, as she hated Mr Maidstone, hated her brother-in-law, hated Mr Fordham. And she wouldn't quietly go away somewhere she could be forgotten about. If shame would stick to her, it should stick to her father too.

And she knew, with a cold, clear certainty, that there was only one way of doing that. And almost smiled to see the chambermaid pass through the hallway behind Lord Brocket and pause, watching, in case she was needed. It was good to have a witness.

"I have a choice," she said. "You can't take it from me." She raised her voice so the chambermaid could be certain to hear. "This is your fault, Father! You have driven me to it! Don't forget—"

But her last words were lost for Lord Brocket understood too quickly what she was doing and lunged forward to grab her. She flung herself backwards over the short slant of tile. Her father's fingers grazed her sleeve. The sharp gutter scraped her thigh. And then she was weightless, and then weighted, and falling.

The chambermaid screamed. Her father shouted her name. Laura thought she might have screamed herself, but before she could the breath was knocked out of her body and a wave of icy snow cascaded over her.

For several moments, Laura could do nothing but lie there, staring at the white sky and wondering if this was dying. Her father's head poked out from the window above, and she knew, with almost sadness, that it wasn't. It wasn't anywhere close. The deep drift of snow had softened her fall. But for losing her breath, she wasn't even hurt.

She lay very still and stared up at him, snow melting through the front of her dress. When his head withdrew into the room again, she crawled to her feet and stumbled forward, holding the wall to keep herself upright. Nothing was broken, but she didn't seem to know which was way up and which was down.

There was no time to lose. Drunkenly, she ploughed through the drifts towards the gate that led to the stables. Her feet seemed to tangle up in themselves and in the snow, but by the time she reached the gate her head had started to right itself and she knew exactly what she was going to do.

They'll know where I went by the tracks in the snow, she thought, I'll have to be quick.

Holding her skirts up, she ran into the stables, where Prince Stygnio, her father's prized hunter, was nickering in a stall. From behind her, she heard someone shout — her father.

She dragged the horse's blankets off with trembling fingers. There was no time to saddle him, but he had a halter and lead on, ready to be lead out for his daily exercise, and she was a good rider. She hooked the lead on his halter, coaxed him out of the stable, and used the trough to help her climb up onto his back.

"She must have gone to the stables," her father shouted from the garden behind. She pointed the horse towards the road, gripped him tight, and tapped his rump with her hand. He took the outer gate so sharply that she almost fell off. She clung on and righted herself. The stable-master, talking with a chambermaid under the shelter of the wall, started up with a curse and made a lunge for the horse. But Prince Stygnio was too quick for him, too excited for the exercise, and shied away from his grasp. Laura clung on desperately, her grip only spurring the horse on more. With a self-pleased snort, Prince Stygnio started off at a gallop.

The servants had swept and trampled the roads that morning, and there wasn't a horse in the county that could catch Prince Stygnio for dust. Before nightfall, Laura would be in London. And free.