There was something dark and terrible about Lord Eastwind, she knew very well. She could not trust him, not ever. And yet, there was also something very intimate and familiar. Sometimes, when the candlelight fell a certain way, and his profile turned from her, she recalled faint glimmers of dear memory, oh so long ago. It was in the way his dark locks of hair curved gently and fell from the back. The hollow almost delicate line of his cheekbones. The manner in which his fine lips curved and the sweet corners formed around his mouth when he smiled that faint ever-subtle smile. The well-defined brows shadowing those startling eyes. . . .

If he ever caught her watching, he did not make it known. Instead, he continued to speak in a voice that was impossible to ignore—like dark profound music, just barely hinting at distant, fierce, unknowable light.

Fanny decided that, whoever he truly was, whatever effect he had on her, it made him this much more dangerous.

Not only at home did Fanny’s value increase, but at the Parsonage too. In that house, which she had hardly entered twice a year since Mr. Norris’s death, she became a welcome invited guest, and in the gloom and dirt of November, most acceptable to Mary Crawford. Her visits there, beginning by chance, were continued by solicitation. Mrs. Grant was genuinely eager to get any change and entertainment for her sister, not realizing of course how much discomfort it would cause Fanny to be in Miss Crawford’s supernaturally dangerous company.

Fanny, having been sent into the village on some errand by her aunt Norris, was overtaken by a heavy shower close to the Parsonage. Being descried from one of the windows endeavouring to find shelter under an oak just beyond their premises, she was forced, not without reluctance on her part, to come in. When Dr. Grant himself went out with an umbrella, there was nothing to be done but to get into the house as fast as possible.

To Miss Crawford, who had just been contemplating the tedious dismal rain, and the even more dismal chance of seeing a single creature beyond themselves for the next twenty-four hours, the sight of Miss Price dripping with wet in the vestibule, was delightful. The value of an event on a wet day in the country was most forcibly brought before her. She was all alive—insofar as much as she could ever be alive again—directly, and among the most active in being useful to Fanny, and providing her with dry clothes.

Fanny, after being obliged to submit to all this attention, assisted and waited on by mistresses and maids, was also obliged to be fixed downstairs in their drawing-room for an hour while the rain continued.