"Poverty wants much; but avarice, everything." ~Publius Syrus

May 15th, 1902

           Relena was rarely one to turn her nose up at an enthusiastic guest, but to be perfectly honest, she was getting just the teensiest bit tired of Mrs. Maxwell. Her topics of conversation didn't seem to variate from money and influence, and she had been recently preoccupied with asking Relena all sorts of questions about getting around in the city. Several times, Relena had offered the use of her personal carriage if there was someplace she needed to go, but each time, it was politely refused. The poor girl just didn't know what to make of it, and when Marcus suddenly turned up on the doorstep asking if she'd like to be whisked away to spend the day on his estate and meet his family, she jumped at the chance.

           Tingling all over from the boy's exceedingly pleasant spontaneity, Relena put on a jolly floral travelling dress with a fringed silk shawl and skipped merrily out to his awaiting carriage, giddy with anticipation. They drove east, out of the city limits and away from the persistent London fog, to a suburb in Essex county in which sat a charming Tudor estate, comparable in size to Relena's own Sutherby Hall in Hampshire, but with a great deal more activity. There were gardeners, grounds keepers, a whole team cleaning the outside of the building, two men exclusively employed in trimming dead wood off trees, and another three who did nothing but rake the gravel back onto the path when it got scattered onto the grass.

           Relena was truly in awe. "I can't believe how many servants you have for one house! We've only just been managing with a skeleton staff, but if we had this sort of help, Bridlewood would sparkle every day, from top to bottom!"

           Marcus chuckled with false humility. "Well, I won't lie to you...Daddy relegated a few workers from the home farm to tidy up the place because I knew you were coming."

           Relena sat back and gave him a coy smile. "You only asked me this morning, and I might have said no," she reminded him.

           "Might have, but didn't," Marcus said with a grin. "I must confess something to you m'lady. I have psychic abilities." Relena laughed, and Marcus had to fight himself not to laugh as well. "It's true! At this exact same time yesterday, I awoke from a dream and had a vision...a vision of you saying, 'Why, yes, Marcus darling, I'd simply adore a trip to the country to meet your parents!'" On the last phrase, he clasped his hands, batted his eyelashes, and crooned away in a girlish falsetto that made Relena giggle even more.

           While she laughed, the second part of what he said struck her, and she gasped. "Meet your parents!? I'm meeting your parents today!?"

           "Naturally," Marcus purred in his most confident tone. "I know how you panic over social engagements, that's why I sprung it on you quickly so you wouldn't have time to work yourself up into a hysterical frenzy over what to wear. Brilliant, I thought."

           Relena gave his arm a little slap and smiled. "You're incorrigible." But then, that was what she liked about him. Really, really liked about him.

           The carriage dropped them off at the front steps, guarded on either side by two imposing stone lions, and right on cue, Lord and Lady Wyndham emerged and pranced elegantly down to meet their son and his Lady fair. Marcus made some very grand introductions, and there was much bowing and curtseying throughout the land. His Lordship was tall and well-built, with a closely cropped salt-and-pepper beard and a fatherly smile, reminding Relena very much of her own dear father. His wife was equally charming in appearance, with fluffy hair the same tawny brown as her son's, drawn up into a pompadour with a pearled clasp surrounding the bun. She wore a simple lace tea gown and little jewellery, sharply in contrast to her husband's deep brown tweed suit and black riding boots. Relena couldn't help but be humbled by their very presence.

           Lady Wyndham was the first to reach out to Relena on an intellectual level. "I do hope we have time to show you around the estate, my dear," she said in a posh but unassuming accent. "This house gets rather busy on weekdays. My husband teaches a small riding class some afternoons, and I'm hosting the weekly meeting of my bridge club for lunch. Do you play bridge?"

           "Oh, yes indeed, M'lady," Relena said brightly.

           Her Ladyship smiled. "Splendid! Perhaps you'd like to join us. If you blend in with the crowd well enough, I might be inclined to sponsor you for membership."

           Relena beamed, but before she could verbally display her gratitude, another offer came flying at her from His Lordship. "Now, you cackling hens mustn't hog the poor girl all day! She might fancy joining my riding class instead! Do you ride, my dear?"

           "Hang on, you two!" Marcus interrupted. "I wanted to take Miss Relena out for a boat ride on the river before tea. You know, the folk from the next town are having their toy ship regatta this afternoon, and I wouldn't want either of us to miss it!"

           Lady Wyndham clucked her tongue at the boy. "Have you forgotten that you volunteered to help with the croquet match on the south lawn? It's the gentlemen staff versus the housemaids, and they were counting on you to referee."

           They were all smiles as Relena's head spun with the myriad of possibilities. "My goodness...there's so much going on...I-I don't know what to choose!"

           Lord Wyndham chuckled warmly. "That's the difficulty in living with the Wyndham family, child. There's always a million and one things to do, all of them wonderful!"

           They graciously herded the speechless girl into the house for some light refreshments while she thought about how to spend her day. Compared to Bridlewood, it was a magical fairyland full of activity, and she was envious of the Wyndhams. They had an enormous, well-behaved staff that kept the estate in top condition and still had time for high-class leisurely pursuits, and the community breezed in and out constantly, bringing with them hobbies, events, chatter and home-baked treats from country ovens. It was the way Bridlewood had been a long time ago, in the elder Lady Peacecraft's day, and Relena found that she felt far more at home in a happily busy environment than she did in her dusty little hutch in West London. Right away, she felt like she belonged.

           Duo had been trying very, very hard to get along with his mother and get to know her as a person, but it was turning out to be extremely taxing to his normally electrified spirit. He was being given all the reassurances of affection anyone could ever ask for, but what he really wanted were answers, and an apology wouldn't have gone amiss either. Under the pretense of challenging her to a game of cards, he cornered her in a second-floor games room overlooking the front of the house and attempted to get those answers.

           They sat at a small card table in the corner of the room, surrounded by dark wood panelling and green wallpaper, with a dartboard to their right and a rack of pool cues to their left. As he cut the deck of cards between them, Duo noted that Fiona was still carrying her purse around; it seemed that she was never without it, as if it had been permanently welded to her arm. He thought that was a trifle odd, but ignored it for the time being. "Mom?"

           "Yes, sweetheart?"

           "When are we going to have a serious discussion about what happened when I was little?" As he spoke, the woman's face frosted over quickly, but Duo was at the end of his rope, and had to keep going. "You must still think I'm five years old, because you haven't sat down with me to have a real adult conversation once yet. I'm not trying to complain since you did come all this way to see me, but I think I deserve an explanation."

           Fiona slapped on a fake smile and shrugged her shoulders in a huffy, exasperated manner. "Accidents will happen, darling."

           Duo gaped. "'Accidents will happen'? You left me in a train station! You went home and forgot about me! How do two normal, grown-up, even superficially-intelligent people leave their firstborn in a train station!?"

           Fiona gritted her teeth through the smile. "I don't know, sugar. I suppose I thought you were with your father, and your father thought you were with me. I told you we were having marital problems, so it shouldn't be that surprising that we didn't talk much after that vacation."

           "Yeah, but still! Wouldn't either of you have been interested in seeing me for my birthday? Or Christmas? Then you each would have written to the other and found out that neither one of you had me!"

           "I've got you now, sweetheart," the woman purred, reaching across the table to clasp his hands with both of hers. "Isn't that enough?"

           Duo gazed longingly at her, wanting it to be true, but he really wasn't fooled that easily. He ripped his hands away, sending the cards flying in all directions to cover most of the table and some of the floor. "No, it's not enough! You don't know what it was like for me, growing up all alone, bouncing from orphanage to orphanage with no home and no family! No law-fearing English family wanted to adopt an American kid in case there was an international custody fight down the line! I ended up running away because I couldn't take being the oldest boy in a home for abandoned toddlers and unwed mothers!" He sat back and folded his arms, frowning bitterly. "And stop calling me 'darling,' and all that other stuff too. I'm not a kid anymore. You grow up pretty fast on the streets, especially when you have to steal to eat and defend yourself against bigger kids with bigger appetites."

           Digging out some specialties from her bag of tricks, Fiona got up and strode morbidly to the window, putting on her 'victim of severe depression' routine. "I should have guessed you'd regret seeing me in the end," she sighed miserably. "After all, I was a terrible mother...and I'm probably just a terrible person to begin with..."

           This time, Duo wasn't buying it. "Oh, no. You're not pulling that guilt-trip stuff on me. You've been doing that ever since you got here. Every time I try to get serious, you either treat me like a baby or manipulate me with guilt, and it's not going to work anymore! You owe me big time! You owe me for taking away my childhood, when I should've been living like you, in some fancy house with a huge yard and all the food you could eat, not sleeping in an alley and washing down stale bread with filthy rainwater!"

           Fiona leaned against the window and sighed, showing her frustrated scowl only to the street below. "I know you're upset, angel, but you're just going to have to learn that life doesn't always turn ou--" She froze in mid-lecture as something in the street caught her eye and held onto it with a death grip. Striding up the front walk from a small carriage, slightly cloaked by the lingering fog of early morning, was a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark hair and an expensive suit covered by a trench coat. All the work she had been putting into Duo over the past week, slowly trying to endear herself to him with the hopes of eventually coaxing him to take a certain trip downtown with her, had just gone out the window. She couldn't wait for Duo to see her side of the financial story, she had to make that trip immediately. Furtively, she swallowed. "Darling, I'm a bit hungry after all this pleasant arguing. Couldn't we continue this downstairs in the kitchen? Now?"

           Very definitely caught off guard, Duo shrugged. "I...guess so..."

           "Perfect." Fiona grabbed Duo by the arm and led him very quickly to the west stairs just as the doorbell rang. Instructing her son to ignore it and keep moving, she yanked him down two flights of narrow steps to the kitchen, but still didn't feel safe. "On second thought, it's such a beautiful day out, why don't we go for a ride somewhere?"

           "Mom, what's going on?" Duo asked as calmly as he could.

           "Nothing, dearest, I just think it'd be nice to get some sunshine."

           Duo snorted out a laugh. "What sunshine? We've been fogged in since five this morning!"

           "Still, let's go for a ride," Fiona insisted, pulling the boy towards the back door. "The air's probably fresher outdoors anyway, and a growing boy needs fresh air."

           "But I can't leave! I've got work to do before dinner!"

           It was of no consequence. Duo was just barely under the level of being forcibly dragged out the door, and couldn't figure out why, but out of overwhelming curiosity, he didn't protest too loudly. After all, maybe she realized what kind of attitude she had been displaying all week, and had a nice surprise waiting for him to make up for it. Maybe.

           At the front door, Heero was confronting a visitor he wasn't too sure about. The tall dark stranger asked very pointedly to see a certain member of the staff, but the ever-alert butler wasn't about to let him into the family fold that easily. Things just weren't adding up here...and he didn't care for the man's attitude, either. "I'm afraid I can't interrupt him while he's working unless I know the reason for your intrusion," he said in his 'perfect spy' voice.

           "You'll interrupt him, and you'll do it now," the man insisted with a very definite American accent.

           Heero folded his hands behind his back and watched Hilde creep away out of the corner of his eye, knowing that she'd take care of informing Duo while Heero did all the stalling he could. The chef didn't need any more shocks to his system, in their opinion. "I'm sorry, I can't do that."

           The broad-shouldered man huffed in annoyance and leaned forward in a menacing way. "Then can you tell me if a woman's been here to see him? A red-haired woman with too much makeup? Can you tell me that?" The boy just stared back at him with an icy-cold glare. The man was rapidly losing patience. "You're useless!" he snarled. "Let me talk to your manager!"

           Heero continued to glare. "He's indisposed."

           In the middle of their standoff, they heard a peculiar noise coming from the direction of the street, a quick, strong whistle that lifted in pitch and faded to nothing as it mingled with wooden wheels clattering on the cobblestones. The stranger tilted his head when he heard the whistle. It wasn't a London noise, it was a New York noise, and he knew it well. He rushed away from the door and down the front walk to have a hurried look around, and to the left, a hansom cab was stopped across the road facing south. Two lithe figures were climbing into it, and the stranger discovered that the thing he was searching for was right in front of him. He ran down the walk, jumped into his own hired carriage, and just as the hansom cab was pulling away, ordered his driver to pursue it.

           Heero could only watch from the front step as the man's driver executed a sharp u-turn that made the two horses pulling the carriage whinny in protest, making up a two-vehicle parade travelling down Whittington Place at a tremendous speed. At the right hand corner of the house, he spotted Wufei, who had apparently seen Duo being pulled along and followed to investigate. Clad in his royal blue sleeveless shirt and billowy white workout pants, Wufei looked up at the front step with a questioning gaze, and Heero made a snap decision, pointing firmly down the road. "Follow them!" he shouted, and without a moment's hesitation, Wufei sprinted after the carriages and gave chase on foot. Almost immediately, a bell rang from somewhere in the house, calling Heero back to duty, and he was grateful that he finally had dependable allies to whom he could delegate such tasks.

           The cab Mrs. Maxwell had so expertly hailed was a bit fancier than the usual model, and had a little glass window in the back, which was really a superfluous frill, as it was difficult enough trying to twist around to look through it while one had a wooden cabinet closed over one's lower half. Nevertheless, she twisted around and looked out that window every hundred feet or less, to see if they were being followed. To her dismay, the carriage she had seen lingering outside the manor was right on their tail, and closing fast, as it was being pulled by two horses while her vehicle had only one. She banged on the roof of their comfy cave and yelled at the driver. "Can't this thing go any faster!?"

           The driver either didn't hear or chose not to, but Duo was in a far less forgiving mood. "Ma, this is ridiculous! I know something's wrong, so there's no point in hiding it! Just tell me what it is!"

           Fiona went rummaging through her purse instead of answering right away, and pulled out a folded piece of paper bearing what looked like a hand-drawn map with driving directions. "You love your Mummy, don't you Pookybear?"

           Duo winced and banged his head on the wall of the cab. "Yeah, yeah..."

           "And you wouldn't let anything come between us, would you, darling?" She unfolded the paper on her lap with one hand and pulled her baby close in a tight hug with the other, not noticing the way he squirmed in her iron grip. "Ohhh, I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful, loyal son like you!" In the same breath, she banged on the roof again, barking out instructions. "Next left, driver! And pick up the pace!"

           Duo felt terribly uncomfortable in her embrace, and wriggled out of it at the first opportunity. Fiona barely noticed, and kept directing the poor fellow seated above them on which turn to take down what road, until they were halfway across town. Wondering what the hurry was, Duo looked over his shoulder and saw a carriage not far behind, with a man leaning partway out the window and yelling at his own driver. He turned back to his mother with worried eyes. "Who's that back there? Are we being followed?"

           "Never mind that, sweetheart. Everything's going to be just fine."

           That was the end of the conversation as far as either of them were concerned. Mrs. Maxwell continued to point the driver down narrower and narrower streets to some particular destination, hoping that the bulky carriage couldn't follow, but still it persisted. The two vehicles stuck together like a minuscule train rolling through the sidestreets of London, until the cab stopped outside a tallish building with a mass of people milling around it. The place looked vaguely familiar to Duo, but he didn't have an opportunity to think it over, as Fiona hastily told the driver to wait and then hauled her son forcibly out onto the road, running towards the building with a firm grip on his arm.

           Not two seconds later, the carriage with the angry man in it pulled up just behind the hansom cab, and the gentleman leapt out before it even came to a full stop, sprinting after the woman and boy, and shouting with great fury. "Fiona!"

           Duo could hear his outraged cry, and was worried when he didn't see his mother make any effort to answer him. She dragged him along, ducking and dodging her way through a crowd that grew in density the closer they got to their destination. Soon, Duo realized where he was, and instantaneously, his heart began to crack in several places. Oh, no. Oh, please, God, no.

           She had brought him to the racetrack.

           The house was quiet. Relena was out, the servants were busy, and Dorothy was off in her own little world. At long last, Heero had the opportunity to do something he had been itching to do since Mrs. Maxwell arrived--take a peek inside her luggage.

           With a delicately-balanced combination of care and haste, he shut himself up in her guest room with a couple of straight pins from Relena's sewing basket, dragged out every last piece of matching crocodile travel gear, and methodically picked open every lock. Normally, he would have relied on Duo to perform such a task, for he was much better at it, and faster, too. Fiona's recent actions, however, not only deprived Heero of his assistant, but concretely convinced him that a detailed search of her belongings was in order.

           Most of what she had in her bags was fairly ordinary, and there seemed to be nothing incriminating. Very expensive clothes, shoes, hats and gloves abounded, but strangely, there was no jewellery, no large amounts of cash typical of a long holiday overseas, no valuables whatsoever. There was also no trace of the wristwatch that had once graced her arm, leaving a pale band of lily-white skin as the only evidence of its existence. Peculiar as it was, though, it was hardly cause to suspect her of any wrongdoing.

           Then, just when he was about to give up and go back to his dusting and polishing, he saw it. A square of newsprint folded in half and tucked under the lining of the largest suitcase, peeking out just enough to be spotted by the keenly intuitive eye. He slid it out of its hiding place, opened it, and saw that it was an excerpt from a recent edition of a New York newspaper, top right hand corner of page 23. The topic of the article was sickeningly familiar.

           It was then that Heero got a terrible feeling about Fiona Maxwell.

           The red-headed woman continued to pull the braided boy along at a speedy pace, not at all mindful of how quiet he had become. They ran at full gallop through the racing complex, cutting a two-foot-wide swath through the crowd, which gasped and yelped and shouted nasty warnings as they shoved past, and then repeated their cries as a tall, lanky gentleman dashed down the same path. Fiona ignored the man's furious shouting and hauled Duo all the way up to the betting wickets, shoving aside everyone in line at the first one she happened across and presenting Duo to the man at the window with both hands clamped onto his shoulders. Duo just looked down sullenly.

           "This is an emergency!" Fiona snapped, rapping on the window hard enough to drown out the angry protests of the other people in line. "Do you have an unclaimed betting slip there for a Duo Maxwell?"

           The clerk at the wicket, a skinny beanpole with thinning hair, a neatly trimmed moustache and tiny wire-rimmed spectacles, tried to utter something to the effect that he hadn't finished dealing with the previous customer, but the tall gentleman that had been chasing after the pair suddenly burst through the discombobulated remnants of the line and smacked the glass with his own huge hand. "My name is Clayborne Warrington Maxwell the Fourth, and this is my son!" he yelled at the clerk, grabbing the nearer of Duo's arms and glaring at Fiona.

           "No, he's not!" Fiona snarled. "You gave up any rights you might've had to him a long time ago! He's mine, now!" She turned back to the clerk, eyes blazing. "Thirty-five thousand pounds, was it?"

           "Thirty-four thousand, six hundred and fifty!" Clayborne corrected haughtily. "And as the boy's legal guardian, I'm eligible to collect his winnings for him. Now, make with the cheque-cutting, and don't post-date it!" Mr. Maxwell already had his pocketbook out, ready to accept the money in whatever form it took.

           "I can do better than that!" Fiona countered, digging into her purse with one hand while still clutching Duo's opposite arm with the other. "I can prove that I'm his mother, whereas this gentleman has nothing whatsoever on paper to indicate that he's any relation at all! Then the two of us can collect the winnings and go home to America and never have to worry about being poor again! You'd prefer that, wouldn't you, darling?" She leaned down close to the boy's ear, but he continued to stare down in defeat.

           "Why didn't you tell him how destitute you are right now?" Mr. Maxwell shot back. "I notice you pawned all your jewellery to buy that new dress you're wearing...or did you find another fancy-man to supply you with liquor and pay for your manicures!?"

           "If I'm destitute, it's because you made me that way!" Fiona roared.

           Finally, the ruckus caught the attention of the manager, the same gentleman who had refused payment on the wager more than two weeks previous, and he sauntered over with his eyebrows perched snidely on the upper portion of his forehead. There was an argument in full swing between the couple, and it took several taps on the window with the end of his ball-point pen to call them both to attention. "Now then...Madam...do you mean to say you have the young man's birth certificate?"

           Fiona flinched and hesitated. "No...I have his adoption papers."

           Duo's eyes snapped open, though he continued to look down.

           "Are you even aware of the legal age of adulthood in England, Madam?" the manager asked with extreme patience.

           "Well, no, but I'm sure he comes awfully close...here, see?" She slapped the paperwork down like it was some sort of holy text. "I adopted him as a baby in the autumn of 1885, and--"

           "We adopted him, you mean!" Clayborne interrupted.

           "Oh, what does it matter!?" Fiona wailed. "As if you ever lifted a finger to help raise him!"

           "The whole thing was my idea! If it weren't for me, we wouldn't even have a son! Lord knows you never did anything to produce a family for us!"

           "You never wanted a family, you just wanted a place to stash the profits from your bankrupt printing press before you were audited! Daddy's little trust fund, that's all he was to you!"

           "All he was to you was an annoyance! That's why you squandered every dime the mill made on nannies and nurses, to make up for your own guilt over failing me as a wife!"

           "This has nothing to do with--"

           Before Mrs. Maxwell could finish her attack, and much before her husband could launch a counter-attack, Duo's face tightened into a scowl, and he jerked his arms savagely out of their greedy hands, backing away from both them and the window. "You couldn't even be bothered telling me to my face that I wasn't really yours," he spat solemnly at his 'mother.' "I had to hear about it like this, while you're about to get what you were really after all the time."

           "Darling," Fiona cooed with a smile, "I didn't want to upset you, can't you understand that? I wanted my visit to be nice and relaxing. Little details like being adopted would only have made things awkward between us, and besides, I was working up to telling you eventually...things just got a little rushed because certain lowlifes decided to butt in where they weren't invited!"

           "Don't listen to her, champ," Clayborne said in a much kinder voice, also using a sugary pet name Duo had never heard before. "I wouldn't have lied to you like that. I would have told you everything you needed to know up front, because you deserve the truth, and the only way to get the truth is to stick with me. So, how 'bout it, sonny boy?"

           "Oh, please," Fiona scoffed. "If your so-called father cared that much about you, he would have come to see you first, wouldn't he? But I was the one who rushed over here to find you, as soon as I knew where you were! Why didn't he show as much effort to get here himself?"

           Clayborne snarled at his wife. "Maybe because someone falsely told immigration that I was a cocaine smuggler from Central America, and maybe that's why they kept me for questioning as soon as I stepped off the boat! They stuffed me in a prison cell for days while the U.S. embassy verified my identity with the State of New York!" Fiona didn't have a smart-alecky answer for that, and just stuck her nose in the air away from her husband.

           Neither one of them noticed that Duo had made his way back to the clerk's window and was having a muted conversation with him. Behind them both, the Maxwells continued to bicker and argue about why they adopted a child in the first place, who's fault it was that he got left behind, and of course, who got to keep him, and his money. At the end of Duo's exchange with the clerk, the manager tapped on the window again and cleared his throat. "Excuse me, sir, madam..."

           The Maxwells put their argument on 'pause' and glared at the man.

           "You may be interested in knowing that young Mr. Maxwell here has just relinquished any legal claim he might have had on his winnings, if he could have proved his age."

           Duo looked his adopted parents in the eyes and only broke the stare briefly to point off to his right at another of the ticket wickets, where the gruff, pudgy clerk with the undergrown beard was dealing with other customers. "Give it to that guy," he told the manager over his shoulder. "He picked the horses anyway. I don't know anything about the game."

           "As you wish, sir..." The manager bowed deferentially at the waist, though still betraying a note of weariness for the boy and his family in his voice, and went to tell the man the good news.

           Duo's glare intensified as he gazed at the shocked faces in front of him. He folded his arms and walked towards them. "Now...who's still interested in spending some quality time with their son?"

           The Maxwells were not amused. Mrs. Maxwell sneered a vile, hateful sneer, and with the whole world watching, swung her right arm back and slapped Duo hard across the face. He recoiled, clapping a hand over the stinging spot while she vented her frustrations. "You idiot!! You just threw away the most money we'll ever see! If I'd known what a-a...spineless, slow-witted moron you'd turned into, I wouldn't have wasted my money coming here!"

           "Excuse me, whose money?" Mr. Maxwell snorted. "Since I was coming here anyway, not only have you wasted my money, but you've wasted twice as much as necessary! Frankly, I'm just glad I don't have to support either one of you two moochers with alimony payments!" With that, he turned his back to them and made for the exit at a lazy pace.

           "Don't you walk away from me!" Fiona shouted in a gravelly voice, already hoarse from screaming. She snatched her husband by the arm and spun him around, assaulting his ears with a fresh volley of complaints and insults. Clayborne returned the favours twice over, and the pair of them grew louder and louder until a couple of police constables had to shove through the crowd and separate them, seconds before it would have come to blows. The only other sound strong enough to pierce the din was the ecstatic hollering of the clerk who had been named the beneficiary of the winnings, and had to 'run home an' tell the missus' right away. Far at the back of the crowd, and withdrawing quickly, Duo slunk away from the scene, still holding a hand over his face where he'd been struck. On the other side, trying to cut through the crowd to reach him, was Wufei, but the throng was much too thick to squeeze through, even for someone with his small frame. He watched Duo disappear from view and was unable to catch him; all that was left for him to do was make a full report to his superior, which he wasn't particularly looking forward to.

           After putting all of Mrs. Maxwell's luggage back where it came from, Heero didn't know what to do with himself. He was paralysed with worry, a truly unfamiliar feeling to him, but one that he just couldn't shake. The woman's true goal in England was horribly clear now, and she probably had Duo alone somewhere in the city with no escape, no witnesses, and...

           Heero berated himself for giving in to such a weak entity as fear, and marched down the main staircase looking for something productive to do. On his way to the parlour to ascertain the condition of the carpets, he heard the telephone ring, and Hilde's sing-song voice shortly afterwards. She gasped, and sounded concerned, drawing Heero out into the hall to listen more closely.

           "...she what? ...Holy mackerel! Is he all right? ....o-okay, I'll get him! He's around here somewhere!" Hilde put the receiver and the earpiece down quickly and dashed around the corner, running straight into the person she was sent to find. She and Heero collided and bounced lightly off each other in front of the staircase, and she pointed him immediately down the other hall to the Chippendale table with the telephone on it, stumbling for words along the way.

           Heero brushed past her, picked up both pieces of the instrument, and looked in every direction for eavesdroppers before answering the call. "Yes?"

           "Yuy," a tinny voice sighed over the line. "You're not going to believe what happened."

           "Is Duo alright?"

           "As far as I know, he's in near-perfect health."

           Heero squinted. "Didn't you find him? Where is he?"

           "I found him, but..." Wufei hesitated. "Before I give you the details, where do you keep your sidearm?"

           The squint deepened. "What?"

           "Your gun! Where do you keep it!?"

           "...in a drawer upstairs."

           He could almost hear Wufei nodding thoughtfully on the other end. "Can you lock this drawer?"

           "I don't have time for this," Heero griped, "someone could walk past any moment!"

           "Can you lock it!?"

           "Yes! Yes, I can lock it!"

           "Excellent," Wufei said, "because we don't need any unnecessary bloodshed, and I'm not going to tell you what happened until you do."

           Heero bristled, tightening his grip on the poor telephone. "Agent Chang, I still outrank you," he growled in a viciously superior voice. "I order you to carry out my instructions. Now, tell me!!"

           Wufei told him. When he was finished, Heero put the phone down very calmly and gently. Not far beneath the placid veneer of total relaxation boiled a river of rage so hot and unforgiving that it threatened to incinerate everything in its path if unleashed onto the world. The very next thing Heero did was run straight upstairs to lock up his gun.

           Gliding along in one of the Wyndham family carriages, with its purple velvet upholstery and pure white stallions out in front, Relena and Marcus rode through London on their way back to Bridlewood after quite a fanciful day. "I had a lovely time at your house, Marcus," the shy blonde girl said quietly with a coquettish smile.

           "I'm glad," Marcus said, not very loudly either. "Mum and Dad really like you, I can tell."

           "I like them too," Relena replied. "Your whole estate is so lively and fun, I almost hated to leave! I hope...maybe...we can do this again sometime."

           The girl's pale hand drifted across from her lap to rest atop Marcus' hand, which laid very casually between them on the bench seat of the carriage. Almost imperceptibly, Marcus blushed. "So do I, m'lady."

           Like all good things, the blissful carriage ride came to an end in front of Bridlewood Manor, and Marcus stepped out and jogged around to Relena's side of the coach to offer his hand as she stepped down onto the pavement. They stood with their hands unconsciously joined for a moment or two, unwilling to separate and have the fairy-tale end so abruptly. Relena looked up at her beautiful home and compared it to the mental image of the Wyndham estate, deep in Essex County. "My house looks so quiet compared to yours," she remarked. "It's going to seem like a museum after seeing how busy your whole family is."

           They both looked up at the graceful solitude embodied in the old brick home and took some time to appreciate its serenity, but on the inside, things were just as far from serene as they could possibly be. There was a rather impressive ruckus happening on the second floor, as an extraordinarily angry Heero stomped up to Hilde and shoved a key into her hands, telling her not to give it back to him until at least the end of the day. He went on for a bit after that, making sharp gestures with tightly balled fists and railing bitterly at the walls.

           "Shinjirarenai! Ano ama! Ii kagen-ni shiro-yo!"

           Hilde didn't know what any of it literally meant, but the abject fury he displayed transcended all language barriers. "Um...how long do you want me to keep this?" the girl squeaked, holding up the key to his top dresser drawer.

           "Until Duo gets home, or until I calm down, whichever comes first!" Heero barked. "Do not give it back to me, no matter how much I beg, or no matter how graphically I threaten you!"

           Hilde swallowed.

           Still pacing frenetically, Heero cracked his knuckles over and over. Stopping on the proverbial dime, he spun around and walked briskly around the top of the main staircase to the east side of the second floor, facing the street, where Mrs. Maxwell's room was located. Hilde followed out of worry that he might do something ridiculous in his temporarily insane state, like set the wardrobe on fire, but she also followed because she found his display of energy to be rather exhilarating. The worry returned when she witnessed him hauling all of Fiona's bags out from their hiding places and flinging the contents of the dresser drawers into them.

           Hilde kept what she hoped would be a safe distance. "...what are you doing, exactly?"

           "Helping her pack!"

           "Uh...okay." It was best not to argue. The furious butler was stuffing the bags full and snapping them shut with such force that the clasps might have flown off and taken out an eye if Hilde got any closer, so she just stood by and watched the spectacle. Soon, every last scrap that was owned by Fiona Maxwell was secured in her matching crocodile luggage, albeit with some scraps sticking out the sides a little further than other scraps. Next, to Hilde's undeniable shock, Heero hefted up the largest and heaviest of the suitcases, and side-stepped menacingly towards the window, with the clear intention of flinging the suitcase through it.

           At that point, Hilde had to intervene, if only for the window's sake. She raced ahead of him with her arms in the air. "No, no, wait!"

           Heero paused and growled, obviously frustrated.

           Hilde unlatched the window sash and pushed it up, leaving a reasonably clear path between the suitcase and the lawn. She stepped aside. "Okay, go ahead!"

           "Put it back down!" Heero shouted.

           "Why!?"

           "Because I need to break something!"

           Hilde hurriedly put the window sash back down and ran to the other side of the room. Heero hefted up the suitcase again, and with a wild look in his eyes, took aim.

           Down below, happily centred on the front walk, Relena and Marcus gazed into each other's eyes in utter bliss. Marcus seemed to be searching for just the right words to say upon their parting, and eventually found them. "I don't suppose you'd fancy dinner tonight...I've got a private booth at this upscale art-nouveau restaurant up west..."

           Relena smiled brightly. "That would be lovely!"

           "Brilliant!" Marcus cheered. "You'll love it! They do up the most peculiar dessert there, made with fruit gelatin, whipped cream, maraschino cherries...oh, what's it called now?" He counted off the ingredients on his fingers, concentrating hard on remembering the name of the dish.

           Without warning, a large crocodile suitcase crashed through a second-floor window and landed on the front lawn with a loud clunk, followed closely by a thousand shards of splintered wood and shattered window pane.

           Marcus snapped his fingers gleefully. "Broken Glass Salad! That's it!"

           Relena's eyes bulged as she looked at the suitcase lying limply in the grass, then up at the mangled window just as a smaller suitcase from the same set flew out of it, taking with it a few shards of glass that hadn't been sheared off by the first projectile. She covered her mouth and jumped as it hit the larger suitcase and bounced, cracking open and coating the lawn sparsely with ladies' lace unmentionables. Next came an overnight bag, a makeup kit, and a folding garment bag, which was expertly rolled up and tossed through the window end-first, to make sure it fit.

           Relena gaped and dropped her hand to clutch at the waistband of her dress. Ordinarily, she would have been the last person to do something so common as to shout in the street, but she wasn't feeling terribly prim. "What's going on up there!?" she hollered.

           The torrent of luggage seemed to have stopped. Looking over her shoulder, Hilde poked her head out the window, shrugged, flashed a guilty, toothy grin, and gave the battered window frame a quick once-over with her feather duster. At precisely the same time, a carriage came clattering down the street, followed by a hansom cab. They stopped in front of the manor, and a very angry Maxwell jumped out of each vehicle, immediately shouting at each other. Relena only recognized her guest, Fiona, and was turning several shades of red by the time the woman made it to the front gate.

           By now, most of the rest of the servants were gathering at other windows in the house, rubbernecking at the strange scene below. Fiona stopped at the end of the walk and gasped at the sight of all her accoutrements spread out over the lawn. She ran right past Relena and Marcus, threw herself at the ground and began frantically collecting her things and shoving them back in their bags. The man who accompanied her looked down and smirked, as if silently thinking that was where she belonged. To complete the tableau, and finish off the last of Relena's dignity as a hostess, Heero came storming out the front door to have it out with the pair of them. Otto was hot on his heels, followed closely by Trowa. Everyone else, servants and aristocrats alike, was at the windows, gawking.

           "You!!" Heero trampled right through the mess he'd made of the luggage to tower over Fiona in a fit of rage. Otto tried to hold him back, but it wasn't easy. "Why couldn't you leave him alone!?"

           Fiona scowled and shook one of her lace camisoles at him in retaliation. "I don't know! Why couldn't he have had an ounce of common sense!? Because life just isn't fair, that's why!"

           "Hey!" Not wanting to be left out of a good fight, Clayborne came marching over to add his two cents. He shoved a finger in Heero's immediate airspace, and Trowa looped around behind him and tried to pull him away. "You knew the kid was here this afternoon! You faked me out! What is this, some kinda set-up!?"

           "Don't you flatter him, Clay, he's not worth it! None of them are!" Fiona screeched, picking up all of her bags and hanging them off her neck and shoulders so she would only have to make one trip back to the carriage. "And as for you, I wish I'd never met you, you...you...penny-pinching two-timer!"

           Clayborne shook Trowa off easily and pounced forward, landing right in front of Heero and his wife, and raising the ambient temperature by ten degrees. "And you...I wish I'd never married a barren waste of space that forced me into adopting someone else's second-hand bastard baby!!"

           The last remark wasn't directed at Heero, but it had the same effect. The boy jerked his right arm loose from Otto's meaty hand, hauled back, and punched Mr. Maxwell squarely in the jaw. Chaos ensued. Relena squeaked in fright, and Marcus stood in front of her protectively. Clayborne fell backwards onto the lawn and nearly knocked down Trowa, who expertly vaulted out of the way and jumped over the man's prone form to help Otto rein in Heero. Fiona shuffled through the mess with her entire wardrobe on her back like some sort of pack animal, and as she passed the trio of servants struggling against each other, Heero took an extra moment to remind her of how serious he was.

           "Teme kono-yaro!! If either of you ever come near Duo again--"

           "Don't worry about that, you little cretin!" Fiona shot back over her shoulder. "We've had more than enough of him and his thug friends!"

           Clayborne was just picking himself up off the lawn and saw the look of protective insanity in Heero's eyes. He smudged off the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand and smirked, chuckling. "Oh, yeah...I see how it is between you and him...well that's just fine!" He began backing up towards his cab and certainly didn't take the time to introduce himself to her Ladyship as he passed her by. "You two fruitcakes can have each other!"

           The Maxwells retreated to their separate vehicles and drove away, never to return. Heero calmed down considerably, and Otto and Trowa slowly let him go. He shrugged Otto off and glared at him, but Otto was almost smiling back, quite pleased that the whole circus had taken place right in front of Relena; there were bound to be repercussions.

           Seething with her own variety of mute, ladylike rage, Relena stepped out from behind her Marcus-shaped duckblind and walked slowly towards Heero. The others instinctively backed away, guessing that she was far beyond her normal point of saint-like patience. Sure enough, she stopped in front of Heero, narrowed her eyes like a hunting lioness, and slapped him as hard as she could. As his head jerked to the side from the impact, it wasn't just a slap, but a bucket of cold water and a megajolt of electricity as well. It did something to stabilize him.

           "How dare you embarrass me like that in front of guests!" Relena gushed in a harsh and venomous whisper. "And what were you thinking, breaking my window!? And throwing peoples' luggage out like sacks of trash!? You've got a lot of explaining to do!"

           Heero kept his head down a bit, looking up at her through his mussed-up bangs. "M'lady, once you've heard what they've done, you'll--"

           "I don't know if I even want to hear it, if this is the result!" she barked quickly, cutting him off like the naughty subordinate he was. "I can't accept that anything in the world would excuse you for what you've just done! Mrs. Maxwell was wealthy, well-connected, and practically a member of the family, and she'll never want to set foot here again! Nothing justifies this!" Already feeling her face and neck redden from the humiliation of it all, she added a few more inches of fuse to her temper and folded her hands, tossing her hair back with a haughty, carefree expression. "I shall have to think long and hard before I decide what to do with you. Until then, I suggest you keep to your duties and stay well out of my way." With those parting words, she sailed effortlessly up the front walk to the house, and Otto was there to hold the door open for her as she went inside.

           Marcus, thinking he might be of some use comforting her after her ordeal, strolled up as well with his hands in his pockets, stopping beside Heero to offer his unsolicited opinion. "Smashing right hook," he complimented him.

           Heero pulled his jaw back into alignment with one hand and glared noncommittally at thin air. "Thank you."

           "There've been a few chaps I've wanted to beat some sense into over the years," Marcus said, making friendly conversation as if nothing untoward had happened. "Could you teach it to me?"

           "Maybe later."

           "Right-o." The young man sauntered up to the house and disappeared, happy as a clam.

           That left Heero and Trowa alone on the front lawn with the faces at the windows gradually turning away one by one, as the party appeared to be over. Trowa felt eyes on him, looked up, and saw that Quatre was the only one who hadn't returned to his duties. The gardener appeared weak and tired after absorbing so much negativity through the glass, but neither he nor Trowa was about to leave Heero alone until they were sure he was himself again. Trying to look supportive without being judgemental or nosy, Trowa helped by picking up bits of shattered glass off the lawn. Heero just stood there, trancelike, and stared at nothing.

           Then, out of the mists from which the carriages had appeared, came a running boy dressed in blue and white, and severely out of breath. Having worn himself out following the Maxwells back from the racetrack on foot, for it seemed to be a good idea at the time to get some exercise, Wufei stopped next to Heero and bent over, bracing himself with his hands on his knees and gasping for breath. Once he had enough air to form words with, he did so. "How did...it go?" he huffed between pants.

           Trowa gingerly dropped some glass shards in his trouser pockets and began picking up a new batch. "Not great."

           Wufei nodded and straightened up at last. "Where's Duo?"

           Heero snapped to attention, eyes wide. "Couldn't you find him?"

           "I couldn't get through the crowd," Wufei explained. "I just assumed he'd be coming back he--" Before he could finish his sad tale, Heero turned on his heel and walked briskly down to the street. "Where are you going!?" Wufei called after him.

           "To look for Duo!"

           "But he could be anywhere by now, and it'll be dark in a few hours!" Trowa added.

           Their shouts fell on deaf ears. Heero turned up the street and walked away into what was left of the fog, intent on finding his friend and bringing him back safely before he did anything foolish.

           From a little after lunchtime to a little before dusk, the fog had dissipated nicely, but after the sun set and the air cooled, it came right back again, clogging up the air and filling every street with a thick layer of low-flying clouds. It was the perfect time to hide, Duo thought, for it would be almost impossible for him to be found in such a mess. After leaving the racetrack, he wandered down a crooked line that stretched across town to a destination far from Bridlewood, for he knew Fiona would have to stop there to pick up her belongings, and he didn't want to see her, or her husband, ever again. Not having a single penny in his pocket, he was forced to skip dinner, but he didn't have much appetite anyway, and concentrated on simply putting one foot in front of the other until he got to where he was going.

           He ended up a little ways outside town, where a recently-reactivated railroad track crossed a dried-up creek bed at an altitude of two hundred feet or more. This was where he and Heero had completed the last of their daredevil stunts, where they were nearly killed running from an oncoming train, and where he kissed Heero for the first time, though briefly. While he was in no fit emotional condition to listen to his common sense, he walked out to the middle of the bridge, sat down, and dangled his legs over the side, staring down at the rocks below. It was just barely light enough to see, but the fog magnified what little light there was from the stars, making the jagged stones and tiny trickle of water reasonably visible. He gazed vacantly at the deadly rocks, thought about how easy it would be to slip and fall, and curled up into a ball on the tracks, wrapping both arms around his tucked-up legs and resting his chin on his knees. In the time he sat there, the fog became so thick that he could no longer see either end of the bridge or the rocks below, although the air around him was beautifully bright.

           After a long while, Duo heard the soft squishing crunches of shoe leather flattening out wet gravel. It got closer and closer, until Heero crouched down out of nowhere and sat quietly next to his friend. He let his feet dangle tiredly below the bridge and propped himself up heavily with both hands on the blackened steel rail, waiting a considerable amount of time before breaking the silence. "You weren't easy to find."

           Duo didn't answer right away. Heero was sitting on his right, and couldn't see the faint reddish-blue bruise on his left cheekbone, but Duo gathered that he must have heard all about what happened to have even come looking for him in such an odd place. Eventually, he gave in to his emotionally needier side and leaned heavily against Heero, dropping his head down on his shoulder with a sigh. Heero responded right away, swinging his left leg up around Duo's back and wrapping both arms around his chilled form, drawing him close from an oddly comfortable angle. Once he had a firm hold on the boy, and knew that he couldn't possibly fall, Heero shut his eyes and breathed in the foggy air in a slow, rhythmic pattern, creating an almost meditative state, with the tip of his nose just barely brushing against Duo's dew-soaked hair.

           "I was kidding myself, wasn't I?" the chef asked after a long pause. "Must've been pretty stupid, even thinking for a second that anyone would want me just for me." Heero let out a tiny groan and squeezed Duo a little tighter, and the braided boy smiled. "Yeah, I know...I'm just whining, pay no attention to me."

           Heero opened his eyes and propped his head up against Duo's, staring down along the same path into the mist. "Wufei was at the racetrack. He told me what happened. She had the newspaper article about your winnings in her luggage all along."

           "God, why did I even try to be friends with her!? The whole visit was one bad omen after another. I should've seen this coming..."

           "None of this is your fault."

           Another lengthy pause followed, during which Duo pondered the truth of that statement. He had often heard that sort of thing said to someone who had actually done something to deserve their fate, in the interest of sparing their feelings, but he could find absolutely nothing wrong with anything he had said or done. He was guiltless, but there was no immediate remedy for the hurt he felt, therefore there was no justice. "You're right. It isn't my fault. They had this planned almost before I was even born, so how could I have changed any of it?"

           Heero's left eyebrow twitched upwards in response. "Planned? They couldn't plan for you to be at the racetrack that day..."

           "No no, not that, I mean having a kid in the first place." Duo took a deep, uncomfortable breath. "I got part of the story while they were yelling at each other, and pieced it together from what I read in the manor library, back when I was on my American history kick. See, they imposed income tax on all the people to pay off the Civil War. Later on, they repealed it, but there were rumblings around the time I was born that they should bring it back to pay for public works. Well, Ma and Pa Maxwell didn't like that, because they're greedy, stingy, loveless bozos with major investments to milk profits from. Somewhere along the line, they got the idea that if they had a child, they could make a single, major, tax-deductible gift to that child, held in trust, until such time that enough people complained about the income tax law to get it thrown out again, when they could just steal that gift back. I would have been nine or ten when the tax laws came back, and I know for a fact that they were repealed again a year later, so it was a lot of wasted effort over nothing."

           Heero squinted at an incomplete picture. "But...if they adopted you for that purpose, they had what they wanted. Why did they abandon you?"

           Duo shrugged. "Parenthood wasn't as easy as it looked in the brochures, I guess. They couldn't have kids of their own, so they didn't know what to expect, and they weren't used to real work like baby laundry and 3am feedings. Hiring people to take care of me was eating up their profits, and if I got lost somewhere and was never recovered, they could just wait until I'd served my purpose as a tax shelter, have me officially declared dead, and collect on the life insurance and the investments. Pretty sweet for 'em, huh?"

           Heero felt his rage bubbling to the surface again, but was marginally able to force it back down. After all, there was no longer any immediate threat, and he had no desire to startle Duo in his already battered state.

           "I know it's over, but I can't stand thinking about the way those creeps were using me. I don't know when I'm gonna be ready to go back, not if they're still hanging around the manor."

           Heero cleared his throat and looked very guilty indeed. "Yes, well.....I wouldn't worry."

           Even without turning his head to look, Duo knew that tone of voice. He grinned for the first time that day. "Is there something I should know?"

           Heero looked shiftily to either side, as if he wasn't one hundred percent proud of his recent actions. "...they're gone, actually. I.....threw them out."

           "You threw them out!?" Duo crowed, his grin widening. "You can't throw people out, you're just the butler! Only Otto and Queen 'Leen can throw people out!"

           "I'm diversifying."

           Finally in a good mood, Duo let his right leg drop down so his arm had room to snake around Heero's waist and start squeezing him back. "What happened? You gotta tell me what happened!"

           "Well..." Heero crinkled his eyebrows and tilted his head from side to side, a bit on the sheepish side. "We...had some rather strong words to say to one another...a few suitcases flew out the window under their own power...your father hit my fist with his face and I threw them out."

           Duo tossed his head back and laughed mightily. He was still giggling and such when he pulled himself together and nuzzled the side of Heero's neck in appreciation. "Ohhh, I wish I could've seen that!"

           Heero shrugged guiltily. "Just ask anyone in the neighbourhood for the details. They all saw it."

           With a fresh wave of laughter, Duo hugged even harder, but noticed that Heero wasn't hugging back anymore. In fact, he seemed to be a bit deflated over the whole experience. "What's wrong?"

           Fatigued in a way he had never felt before, Heero settled his chin down on Duo's shoulder and spoke groggily, as if battling sleep. "I lost control over my emotions in a way I thought shouldn't have been possible. I've never felt so much anger and rage before in my entire life...it was like nothing I'd ever experienced, and that was even before I knew about the whole tax evasion scheme. If Wufei hadn't warned me well in advance, I honestly believe I could have killed someone today."

           Duo quietly asked himself if it would be really sick and twisted to be flattered by that remark, to which he replied, only a little bit sick and twisted. "It probably wasn't as bad as you think. Remember, I've seen you get angry before."

           "Not like this," Heero said. "I used to receive constant training on how to suppress dangerous emotions like fear and hatred, but I'm starting to unconsciously ignore what I learned, and I don't know if I can get that control back on my own."

           Neither one of them liked the sound of that, because it smacked of the suggestion that he should return to Lord Jeffrhyss. Duo pouted with worry. "Well, who says you can't? Maybe all you need is some more time to yourself to think things over, and maybe it'd come back to you on its own."

           "Actually, I did some thinking on the way over here." Heero straightened up a little and looked at Duo with a kind but serious face. "I was angry because of what they had done to you. I went over the entire list of everyone I've met since my mission began, and none of them...not one...could have evoked such a strong reaction in me. I don't mean for you to feel guilty, but this is all about you. I realize now that I detest the thought of anyone hurting you, and if I can just exercise some control over my emotions, then on the whole, it can't be a bad thing. It's just an inherent property of how much you mean to me."

           For Heero, this was major analytical gushing. Duo ducked his head and grinned. "...aw...don't you go makin' me blush, now, or I'll hafta hurt ya."

           "It's true," Heero said with a melodious lilt, tightening his hug around the boy. "I want you to remember that, the next time you're sulking on an extremely dangerous railway bridge thinking nobody loves you."

           Duo's eyes flew open as he replayed Heero's words in his head. Did he just say...well, no, he didn't say, but he implied...then again, he probably didn't mean.....but he almost said...almost said that he..... He smirked and lifted his head, too excited to finish the thought without losing what remained of his composure to a possibly premature shriek of joy. "Let's get out of here."

           Heero stood effortlessly and pulled Duo up to his feet with one hand, allowing him to squeeze past him on the narrow bridge and walk in front as they carefully vacated the perilous spot. While they strolled tiredly back to town with their arms hanging off each other's shoulders, Duo replayed the cosmic phrase Heero had just uttered, the first one in living memory in which he had used the words 'love' and 'you' in the same breath. Was it too much to hope for that it meant more than what it merely sounded like? Maybe. Was Duo looking forward to hearing it again in the future? Definitely. Would he do anything in the world to make sure it happened? Duo slid his arm down to entangle Heero's waist and squeezed silently, with a contented smile. Count on it, Heero. You'll say those words again.

Next, in Episode Forty-Eight: Doubts about the state of Heero's employment and an argument over a lost letter send Duo on another emotional roller coaster ride, while Relena asks herself why she can't let go of old infatuations.