A/N: This was supposed to be a one-shot based on a crazy idea I had one evening rewatching Episode 3 while working on the next chapter of As Time Goes By. It gained a life of it's own. I'm not abandoning my other story, and I must beg those familiar with my other works not to judge me too harshly for this one. It's completely AU and the characterization is going to be slightly off due to the drastic emotional turmoil that this situation causes. It's primarily series based but my complete devotion to the book's characterization is going to heavily bleed through, especially in Mr. Thornton. Mr. Bell is completely based off the series. Please be warned that, unlike my previous stories, there are going to be themes expressed that are for a mature audience, but nothing graphic. I would like to thank my amazing reviewers, and those that follow me as an author. I hope this doesn't disappoint. I would also like to ask for you indulgence in the fact that I do not have a beta, so I would appreciate if you might mention glaring typos or word omissions that I may miss, and as always, please review. Of course, there is the obvious disclaimer: I do not own the world and characters created by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskill.

The vast universal suffering feel as thine:
Thou must bear the sorrow that thou claimst to heal;
The day-bringer must walk in darkest night.
He who would save the world must share its pain.
If he knows not grief, how shall he find grief's cure?

Sri Aurobindo

There was nothing for it. He had promised his dearest friend that he would take care of her, and to that end, he would be damned if he allowed her to be carted off to London by relations who had absolutely no appreciation for that breathtaking mind simply because it was housed in a feminine body. He had ground his teeth but remained silent when the breathtakingly obtuse Mrs. Shaw, a paragon of the Ladies of London society, protested against Margaret saying farewell to the friends she had acquired, as if her 'old friends' should be the most important. He could still taste the blood from where he had bitten his tongue to refrain from defending poor Hale's decision to come to Milton and he had finally snapped over the admonishments when Margaret had insisted on keeping her father's books. The glare he received from that woman when he had stepped in could have curdled milk!

"Worry not, my dear Margaret," he had said, grasping her hand and patting it nervously. "I shall take the books with me to Oxford! There, they can rest near their owner."

The knowledge that Margaret wished her father's body to be returned to Milton, to be laid to rest beside his wife, was something impossible to realize since she could not afford to make the arrangement and obviously felt it an impertinence to ask it of him. His irritation with Mrs. Shaw had originated in overhearing his goddaughter make the request of her only to be met with astonished rejection.

"Your father should have died in Milton if he wished to be buried here," she had callously proclaimed, to the additional pain of her niece. As if that was not bad enough, she had the temerity to add, "Honestly, Margaret, I do not know what has gotten in to you. This rebellious independence with these presumptuous demands must not be brought into my home when we return to London! I expect the Margaret Hale that I helped raise into a proper lady, quiet and obedient. You must dispense with these wild notions at once! I understand that you are grieving, my dear, but you must focus on the truth that you have suffered greatly because of Richard's decisions and pull yourself together."

When Mr. Bell offered to seek a situation where Margaret might remain with him and spare Mrs. Shaw the inconvenience, he was regaled with Mrs. Shaw's ridiculous notions of impropriety; a bachelor scholar with no ties of blood relation, indeed. He did not care that some girl named Edith demanded Margaret's presence, nor how distressed this Edith person was in her time of confinement by this 'unfortunate business'. He certainly did not care for Mr. Henry Lennox and how glad he would be to have Margaret back in London. Margaret did not look pleased by this statement either. The fact remained that Mrs. Shaw effectively made carrying her back to Oxford with her father's books out of the question if she was to remain in good standing with the few relations she had left.

Again, there was nothing for it. He was simply going to have to marry the poor girl!

Getting Margaret alone to discuss his plan had been difficult. Mrs. Shaw hardly left her side, preferring to nap on the sofa while Margaret stared listlessly at the wall from the chair her mother had preferred. Whatever comfort she had derived from her aunt's presence had fled after the argument and she returned to much the same state as before that lady's arrival. Mr. Bell was hiding in the study after tea when she suddenly glided in like a pale ghost, pulled a chair close to the fire and curled herself within it, staring into the flames.

He desperately hoped that, even if she refused the plan, the very idea might shock some life back into her. Those dull, glassy blue eyes alarmed him greatly. Taking a deep breath and pulling his chair by the fire in front of her, he made short work of stating his case, unsure if she even heard him.

She had.

"Mr. Bell!" she cried in shock, wringing her hands and looking desperately about the room, at anything but him, bright crimson entering her cheeks and highlighting the underlying pallor in a ghastly way before the fire's warm glow. Still, her distress did not seem to reach her eyes, or if it did, some darker emotion eclipsed it.

"Come now, Margaret," he chided, "don't get hysterical. This would merely be a marriage of convenience. I could never ask you to be more than a wife in name only."

"Surely Father never intended..."

"He assigned me the task of your care, not your aunt or anyone else," tears streamed down her face, and he pitied the handkerchief that had found it's way into her taper fingers that was being violently twisted. "It won't be so bad, really! I'm an old man, my dear, hardly likely to see many more years..."

The mention of his eventual death only made her cry harder, seemed to force a retreat within herself and he patted her shoulder awkwardly, completely at a loss for how to sooth a woman in the grips of high emotion. There were no chapters in any of his books on how to accomplish this! If only there had been more female Greek poets. Surely they would have offered some instruction.

"You can keep this house," he insisted, "at least until we find one more suitable. I have a tenant that is vacating one of my properties and it would be ideal. His daughter is recently married and he wishes to return to the country. I'm sure that you and Dixon would find it pleasant and it's near the edge of town away from the merchant district. It will be far quieter, you shall not have to sell your parent's belongings, and when I visit..."

"Visit," she whispered, wiping her eyes and looking at him for the first time. "You would not be living with us?"

"Perhaps visit was the wrong word. I will certainly be here more often than is my want, but you cannot imagine that I might easily give up my bachelor ways or my glorious room in Oxford, surely! No, Margaret. You shall have to content yourself with an absentee husband and fill your days in whatever way you choose." A thought came to him and he added slyly, "except when we travel, of course."

"Travel?" A tiny spark of animation was slowly entering deep, dark eyes which had been alarmingly vacant until that point, and yet the words seemed to slip past her lips in the manner of a child slowly awakening yet stubbornly clinging to a dream.

He had baited the hook. She had nibbled. If he was patient and cunning enough, he might catch that spark and bring it wriggling to the surface.

"Yes, travel," he replied slowly. "Of course, I would not prevent you from traveling on your own. All that I have will be at your disposal. You can go to your relatives in London, on your own terms." The corner of her mouth quirked ever so slightly. "It would not be unseemly to visit your father's grave in Oxford as often as you wish. Together, we might visit the continent. I've a great longing to see Rome again."

The spark was brighter. He almost had her! He gave the line a final, gentle tug. "We might even go to Spain and visit your brother."

A great, shining light seemed to explode in her countenance, but to Mr. Bell's dismay it was the light of severe agitation.

"Frederick," she gasped, leaping from her seat, walking back and forth between Mr. Bell's chair and the fire, still violently twisting that poor little handkerchief. "He doesn't know! I haven't thought to write and..."

"It's already been taken care of," he assured her briskly, rising and taking her shoulders between his hands, stilling her movement. "I wrote to him on the train and sent it off straight away."

She raised her glistening eyes to his. Whatever she had expected from her third marriage proposal, this was definitely not it, but she could certainly see the merit. Mr. Bell painted a very pretty picture for her future, but there were also glaring flaws in the design. Glaring stormy eyes staring coldly at her out of a stern face set in marble.

'I hope you realize that any foolish passion for you on my part is entirely over.'

A different grief stabbed her, making her flinch as that voice tore through her memory as though the owner were standing in the room.

'Oh, be still, little heart,' her soul cried. 'He is lost to you and it is too late, far too late! Would Mr. Bell be such a poor choice when I have lost any hope of love before I could even acknowledge that hope? At least there is tender affection already existing between us. It is better than being so lost and alone!'

Mr. Bell watched her anxiously, watched the thoughts race through her expressive eyes, was pained at the sight of a brief but terrible emotion that caused her arms to wrap around her middle as she nearly doubled over from the force of it. When it passed, she sighed deeply and straightened, turning her eyes to back to the fire.

"Can we leave Milton," she asked quietly, "at least until your tenant departs? Please don't misunderstand; I've been very happy in this house, but I have known so much suffering here. I cannot bear it without papa!"

"Where would you like to go, my dear girl?"

"Somewhere... alive."