But list, O list,- so soft and low
Thy lover's voice tonight shall flow,
That, scarce awake, thy soul shall deem
My words the music of a dream.
Thus, while no single sound too rude
Upon thy slumber shall intrude,
Our thoughts, our souls- O God above!
In every deed shall mingle, love.

Edgar Allen Poe, Serenade

Margaret pulled the chain off her neck and held it tightly in her hand. She looked down at the key, nestled tightly between an old cross her father had given her and a locket of mourning with the names of her parents on either side. The only place left in Milton that was hers, and hers alone. She unlocked the door and stepped into the hall, breathing in her old home. It still smelled like old books and her father's musty unworn jackets, and her mother's favourite perfume, and for a moment, she was back there. Back when she was the closest to happiness, when everything was fine, and the only dark spot on her life was a brooding man whom she claimed to hate, but who for some reason she could never shake from her mind. She drifted back to the present as she realised how stale those once fresh scents had become and how happy she'd been in the past few weeks.

"Of course." She breathed, "It had to be something."

She set about moving some of the furniture sitting idle in the kitchen so she could make herself some tea, but soon forgot the task and simply slumped at the table instead. She could almost imagine what her father would say if she asked him what to do. He'd make her a cup of tea and they would talk quietly so as not to disturb her mother as he discussed the moral conundrum and the personal impact of any action taken.

"Well Margaret, what do you think is the most honourable thing to do? Mr Thornton is a clever man, I'm sure if you spoke to him and explained the situation, he would understand."

"But how would I speak to him father? Stephens said…"

"That is something you'll have to work out for yourself my dear, but if I was still alive, you know I would never allow you to do this – it is far too dangerous to try and "go it alone" so to speak, and you need someone in your corner my dear."

"But you're not… you're not here anymore, and I can't come to you for help."

"Oh Margaret, just because I'm not there doesn't mean I cannot be of help. You knew me well – you know what I would do."

"No I don't! I'm all alone and the one person I need most is the person I have let down in order to protect!"

Her mother would have heard the outburst and come wafting down the stairs, light as a feather.

"Margaret? What is all this noise?"

"Mother, I do not know what to do."

"Sweetheart, if that man loves you he will find a way to you no matter how far you run or how well you hide. And if you love him, you won't be able to stay away for long – you can't bear hurting him, can you?"

"No. It hurts, Mother. I cannot bear to think of him so pained."

"Of course not dear, that is why I followed your father here, believing it the right decision. I could not bear to see him so unhappy in Helstone. And he could not bear my death. He was more at peace when he died than when we left for Milton – because he knew he was coming home to a loving wife who'd missed him all that time. We both of us understand how difficult either side of this conundrum is, but it is you who must navigate your own path."

"Mother, I cannot do this by myself any longer! I am so alone…"

"I'm sorry. That is my fault." Frederick's voice pierced the aching silence and she flinched when she saw him in the doorway.

"No, Frederick, it is not any fault of yours, you did the right thing-"

"But if I had not, perhaps I would still be in England with you, then you would not have to battle this alone."

"You had your own battles to fight." Margaret said with conviction and then her eyes fell upon someone leaning in the doorway, coughing. "Bessy?"

"I knew you and Thornton would get together." The wry tone was unmistakeable.

"Bessy." Tears clung to Margaret's lashes but they did not fall, "Bessy I miss you so much. You were my only friend in Milton."

"No longer though, I see. You found good company with my father, and Mary. Thornton treats you well, as he should, and even Old Battle-axe Thornton seems to have warmed to you a little. I suppose you'll not have conversation quite so intellectual as we used to share," she joked, "but you'll manage without me, as you have been."

"I could use some of our intellectual conversation about now." Margaret noted and Bessy chuckled.

"You know exactly what I'd say." She said pointedly.

"Yes, I suppose I do."

"Well get to it then, I don't have all day." Bessy beamed.

Margaret nodded and turned away from her family, but she paused at the edge of the stairs for one last glance back at them. Bessy was grinning from ear to ear, and her father had his arm around her mother's shoulders. Frederick was sitting up straight, looking proudly at her, but she could still see the guilt around his eyes. With a jolt, she realised that someone had been hovering behind her the entire time. Mr Bell was laughing merrily in the seat she'd just vacated, eyes twinkling as they usually did, like he had a secret only the two of them could share.

Margaret woke with a jolt. She'd fallen asleep in her chair with her head resting on the kitchen table, and she stood carefully to avoid feeling dizzy. The dream had been so vivid, so real, that she wondered she had not had an out-of-body experience. She was struck again with the loss of so many people she loved, but as usual she bore it with barely an outward expression of grief. She'd worn black as was the custom, and she had the funerary locket for her parents, but she always appeared composed. She had barely cried at any of their deaths, and it began to feel like her eyelids were no longer holding back droplets, but floods. She could not falter, for if she did, she might never get up.

She trudged upstairs and sat in the study, surveying her father's books and wondering how on earth she was going to get herself out of this particular situation. She tried to push the vision of John, inconsolable and enraged, out of her mind, but it hovered over her like a vengeful spirit.

John was striding through the streets, wracking his brains for any hint of where his fiancé could be: anywhere that she might go, other than the Higgins'. He was wandering aimlessly, head down and barely glancing up at his surroundings, so deep was he in thought.

He could almost hear his father, "Son, come on, you should know this! You claim to love this woman, surely you know where she would go? Where she feels the safest?"

He rolled his eyes and tried to shake the memory away, but he found his father's voice was always the one in the back of his head whenever he needed it.

"Where would you go, if you were running away?"

"Margaret. I'd go to Margaret."

"And where would you go together?"

"Anywhere she wanted. Somewhere quiet, with no-one we know anywhere in sight and no chance of disturbance, somewhere like…" He trailed off as he realised where he was standing, "Home."

He saw no sign that anyone had been in the house since Mr Hale had died, but then he hadn't ever expected to. All the curtains were drawn and the front door was locked, but he had a feeling deep in his gut that Margaret was here. He knew that if she heard him knocking or breaking a window that she might run away, so he had to think carefully. He tried the window to the lower sitting room but it was locked and he knew he couldn't pick it. An idea struck him and he walked down the street and around the side, to the servants' quarters. He sent up a silent prayer as he tried the handle, and miraculously, it twisted silently and swung open.

Thornton crept quietly through the room to the door to the kitchen, which had only a bolt with no lock attached. He noticed the slight warmth of the kettle and hoped that it was not simply homeless squatters or his own helpless imagination.

Margaret had begun one of her father's volumes of Aristotle, and was thoroughly engrossed in it when two black boots appeared in her peripheral. Her eyes rose up to find John Thornton occupying the doorway, a look of pain and anger on his face. Her heart simultaneously lifted at his presence and dropped at how hurt he appeared, and it ended up residing somewhere in her throat, restricting her breathing. The book clattered unceremoniously to the floor as she stood as though to run, though she couldn't have said whether it would be into his arms or as far away as possible.

"John?" Was the only word she could manage, and it sounded tiny in the huge chasm of space between them.

"Where the hell have you been?" He started, rage building even as he tried to quieten it. "What on earth is going on!? Why would you do this?" There was a desperate edge in his tone that she couldn't have ignored if she tried.

"I'm sorry, I just…" She had to protect him, "I couldn't do it, I cannot marry you." Her voice wavered and she prayed that he didn't notice.

"Margaret, what is really going on here?"

"I told you I – I – I do not love you, and I have never felt that way." The words tasted so bitter in her mouth that she almost choked on them and she felt her face grow hot. She would not cry.

"Margaret, please!" It wasn't a question, "What have I done? What could possibly be so bad that you would disappear from everyone's sight for three days, and only tell Nicholas Higgins why?"

"Nicholas told you?" Margaret's hands clenched into fists to stop the tears.

"No. He told me you were safe and that I should stop looking for you, because you didn't want to be found. Why? Why don't you want to even see me? You can't break our engagement off in person? What is going on?"

"I can't…" She whispered.

"You can't what?" The anger was dark in his eyes and she found herself flashing back to their first meeting. Unlike then however, now she knew him too well, and she could see the grief and fear and pain that fuelled the fury, "You owe me! You owe me at the very least an explanation, Margaret."

"I owe you nothing." She hissed, trying to fall back on the haughtiness he had once believed she possessed.

"For goodness sake Margaret, tell me what is going on!" His face was stone and the iciness in his tone made the temperature of the whole room drop.

"Step away from the door and let me pass, I do not have to remain here with you, and I do not wish to." She said sharply.

"No." He crossed his arms and didn't budge, "Do you love me or not?"

"If I say what you want to hear will you allow me to leave?"

"No." He said steadfastly but doubt crossed his face and it cut through her like a dagger.

"You cannot keep me here!" She snapped and crossed her own arms in defiance.

"So start explaining." He muttered. She maintained eye contact, refusing to blink in the face of her fiancé's stubbornness.

"It hurts…" She whispered. She wouldn't cry; she could stand tall against the throbbing ache of seeing him, of knowing how much she'd hurt him.

"What hurts? Being engaged to me? Living in a house with my mother? What is it? WHAT CAN I DO?" He shouted and she flinched, "What could possibly hurt as much as having our engagement broken via a LETTER? And then realising that everyone else must know you better than me, because none of them believed it, but I did. I believed everything you said in that letter and it tore me apart! What could possibly hurt as much?"

"Hurting you that much!" She snapped back just as loud and caught the shock as it glanced across his face. "It hurts! It's agony to see you so pained and angry and to know that it was my doing… That is what hurts! It's killing me!" The weight of everything collapsed down hard onto her and she felt her knees shake with the burden of it, but she was determined to hold her ground. Until she couldn't anymore.

"Then why would you do it? Why would you say those things?" John's anger lessened and she could see the fear in his eyes and it broke her.

"Because they're true." She tried, but she knew it wasn't working anymore.

"Are they?"

There was a long, terrible pause.

"Bastard." She whispered, a tear teetering on her lashes.

"Is that why you left me?"

"No!"

"Do you expect me to just walk out of here without explanation?"

"No!"

"Do you love me?!"

"YES!" She bellowed, "Of course I love you! I wouldn't be doing any of this if I didn't lo-" and finally, finally, Margaret Hale broke down. "Please John, please just let me leave. Just go away, please! He'll hurt you, please just forget me, please John! Just let me go."

"No! Don't you understand, I can't do that?!" John yelled and she sobbed, clutching at her dress.

"You don't understand–"

"No, I don't! I don't understand anything that's been going on, because you HAVEN'T TOLD ME!" He roared and Margaret's resolve collapsed.

Everything she had been holding in, since Bessy, since her mother, her father, all of it – it all came crashing into her and she just couldn't stay upright against the onslaught anymore. Her legs buckled and she leant heavily on the wall for support, wrapping her arms around herself. All the anguish of not being able to touch him, all the stress of the past two days, everything that had transpired between them, it was surrounding her, enveloping her, suffocating her. It was all too much. She loved him too much. She missed him too much. The floodgates burst and tears began cascading down her face, "I can't do this anymore! I tried…" She cried out and John took a hesitant step forward.

"Then don't. You don't have to. We can work this out, we can do this together." His gaze had gone from furious to anxious and she couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye.

"I can't, I can't let you, I can't," She was on the verge of hysterics and John's heart was breaking all over again.

"Tell me!" He implored.

"He's deranged!" It burst from her mouth before she could stop it and then she found herself ignoring reason, "He'll kill you! He kidnapped me, he forced me to write that letter, he wanted to punish you and I helped!"

"Who?" He asked calmly.

"I never wanted to hurt you, but he said… he said… and I just didn't think, I was so afraid, I couldn't bear the thought-"

"I can take care of myself Miss Hale. If you can't trust me to protect myself, how can you trust me to be a suitable husband?" She could hear that hurt tone again and she wrung her hands.

"That is not the issue-"

"Then explain it to me!?" He thundered.

"I would do anything to avoid hurting you-" She started.

"What, and saying you never loved me doesn't HURT?" His rage had returned and was building again. "I'd rather have DIED than had you say those words to me!"

"And I'd rather have died than said them! I offered. I begged him to kill me but he refused! He just kept saying that if I didn't break it off you would die and I couldn't do that to you. I can't be the reason you're dead, I can't. You're all I've got left!" Margaret screamed, and the volume of her cries was so unexpected that he almost winced, "Everyone important in my life, everyone I've ever loved and held above others is gone and when the Mill failed and I saw your mother and I saw how frightened she was, I was so scared. I was so terrified that I was too late and I would never get to tell you how I felt, and then, of course, I never said it anyway. I just… I thought that I was cursed, foolish as it is; I believed somehow that if I said the words then it would all disappear like some horrible nightmare and I couldn't take that! But of course, the words didn't matter; I didn't need to say them, I just needed to be in love with you for the universe to conspire to take you away. He was going to take you away from me – he was going to take you away and make me WATCH!" the hysterics were in full swing now and she slid down the wall slightly, sobs wracking her body.

John's stomach churned unpleasantly: he'd never seen her like this. In fact, he could have put money on the idea that no-one had ever seen Margaret Hale this way, so unhinged and afraid. He knew the strength she prided herself on, and the inability to express her feelings that could rival even his own repression.

"Margaret," he said softly, all anger forgotten, and she covered her face with her hands.

"Don't! Don't say my name like that, please."

"Like what?"

"Like you forgive me."

"Margaret." He tried again.

"No, stop! I don't deserve it."

"Margaret."

"Don't!" She cried out, and threw her hands down as though to run out of the room, but he was directly in front of her now and he grabbed her wrists as she moved, holding her still.

"Margaret." He murmured and she gasped at his contact and his closeness and the use of her name and he let go and stepped back, thinking he'd hurt her. She was reacting instinctively though, when she grabbed his shirt and yanked him back. His forearms hit the wall either side of her head and for a moment he stiffened, shock preventing him from registering the action, but once the moment passed he realised he was inches away from her face. He was leaning on her heavily, holding her against the wall, and as he shifted his weight she wrenched him back, her hands stretching under his arms and around his shoulders, grasping him tightly. He could feel her shaking and her eyes were scrunched closed. She tucked her head into his neck and he kissed her hair, all arguments entirely forgotten.

Nearly every inch of their bodies were touching, but the layers between them felt too much and as he reached his hand across to touch her cheek she held her breath. When their skin touched it rippled ice cold agony and white hot fire until her pulse was carrying it everywhere and when she sucked air into her lungs it felt like the first time she'd ever taken a breath. He pressed his forehead to hers and she made a tiny sound of affirmation, one that deeply embarrassed her but one that John found intoxicating. He kissed her down her cheek to the soft skin of her neck and she forgot why she'd written the letter in the first place, she forgot where she was; she forgot her own name.

This was what had been causing them both so much agony for so many weeks – all of the thinking and hoping and reminiscing – it had been driving them wild. As Margaret drew in a ragged breath she became hyper aware of his hands gripping her waist and her neck as though he was never going to let go. She could feel the strength of his restraint in those painfully still hands. John's lips ignited a blaze where they roamed and he could feel her pulse through her throat, hammering erratically through the woman he loved. As he moved further up towards her lips he could feel it hastening, almost begging him to close the gap, pleading with him to make everything safe and secure again. He tilted slightly to see her, but she averted her eyes, as she always did when she was ashamed and angry and overcome with emotion. She knew how much he could read in her eyes and she hid them from him. But he wouldn't let her withhold any more secrets and he froze, lips hovering so close to her lips as to incite longing, and he waited for her to look at him. When she did, he was not disappointed.

Her eyes were wide and filled with tears and he knew immediately that she loved him, for it was etched in her gaze and he knew that she had been in as much pain as he had been the past month because he felt her heart skip a beat through his fingertips.

Her fingers raked desperately down his shoulder-blades and he made a noise deep in his chest, leaning on her more heavily even as his brain registered the unacceptable nature of their current position. Society has no bearing on this matter, he thought.

With that thought spinning through his head, he pressed his lips to hers. She had his shirt in handfuls even as she brushed his shoulders once more, pulling his shirt tighter in an effort to bring him as close as was humanly possible. Margaret wanted their hearts to touch, so that hers could communicate wordlessly what she could not say. She was so afraid of losing him, and she focussed on where his fingers brushed her hair and his thumb stroked her cheek. She committed to memory the feeling of his lips so insistently kissing hers and his arm around her waist even as it dipped dangerously low. She was sure she had ripped his shirt but at that moment she couldn't have cared less if eternal damnation began raining from the sky – she just wanted embrace the man she loved and never let go.

When he finally tore himself away and pressed his forehead to hers she had to catch her breath and she could feel him struggling to reign in his own. She tried to slide to the ground, her legs no longer willing to take any of her weight, but he sat down against the wall and pulled her into his lap. She flashed back to the first morning she had taken breakfast with him as an engaged couple and longed for a day when life was so simple. She slumped.

"I'm right here Margaret, I'm not going anywhere. Everything is going to be okay." He pulled her tighter to his chest and she sobbed into his shoulder, "It's alright, I'm right here. I'm here."

"I just can't lose you." Her voice was muffled but he could feel the loss emanating through her and he imagined that she had not let herself fully experience such strong emotion for a long time. She pushed it down and tried to get on with her life, but the thought of him dying had just been too much. He couldn't even remember what it felt like to be angry at Miss Hale, he was so struck by her emotional vulnerability in his presence, and her tears, and his own desire to wrap her up and make everything better, for the rest of their lives. He wouldn't be able to achieve that, however, until she informed him on the whole sordid tale.

"What are we going to do?" Margaret's eyes, tired and bloodshot, sought his.

"Well I only know that we shouldn't stay apart any longer. It is taking us both to the edge of derangement, and I have to know that you are safe. I propose you stay here for now and I will visit in the afternoons. I will send Dixon to keep an eye during the day and will call a few friends from the Police Force – good men who may keep an investigation while we act as we have the past three days so that this man does not become suspicious. You need to tell me everything that has transpired. I'm not letting you move until I am convinced that every stone has been overturned." His voice took on a joking tone and she couldn't help but feel slightly uplifted even while anxiety surrounded her in every lingering shadow.