"Written by Sarah Waters" "Subtitle made by Bonnie_Lass" "Thank you, thank you." "Thank you Mr Ways, and Mrs Stiles." "I hope it will not be too long until we meet again, Miss Lilly." "I hope not Mr Rivers." "Until tonight, don't be late." "All that long day" "I packed, secretely." "Getting ready to escape from Briar to the wedding at midnight." "Why don't you wear this dress, Miss?" "It's your wedding night." "No, I gave it to you." "I'm quite happy with this one, thank you." "What are you thinking?" "I was thinking this was the one you were doing when he proposed to you, Miss." "Six hours to go." "Time and time again I nearly told her he was a villain." "Her uncle would have had me locked up." "And for what?" "I could hear Lant Street laughing." "Me, in love with a girl!" "I'll se wether it's clear out there, Miss." "I'll get your bags." "Maud?" "Maud?" "What the devil is going on?" "Who's there?" "It's only me, uncle." "Don't wake everyone else up." "This way." "Quickly, quickly Miss Maud." "This way." "...." "As he will answer on that dreadful day of judgement that the secrets of our hearts should be disclosed." "That if either of you know any inpediment why thee may not be lawfully wedded in matromony, thee do now confess it." "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" "Will thou have this man to be thou wedded husband to live together after God alternets to his holy state of matromony." "Will thy obey him and serv him, love, honer and keep him in sickness and in health and forsaking all other, keeping only onto him so long as you both shall live" "I will." "The ring, like everything else, was bad." "He hadn't even bothered to get a gold one." "We went from church to a nearby cottage." "Where I prepared her for her wedding night." "Look at me." "It's cold, Miss." "Let's get this on." "Look at me, Sue!" "Come here." "You did it before, to the sake of tonight." "We were not dreaming, were we?" "It was just to start you off, Miss." "Were we..." "Please, Miss..." "I have to feel you on me as I can feel your lips on me." "I want to feel you inside me." "She wants you to dress her." "Mauds' discovered the meaning of true love, Sue?" "It's already half way to the mad house." "Now you must finish her off." "Here, please see to Mrs Rivers Susan." "She's not well at all." "Morning, Sir." "Morning." "I'm really rather worried about her, she's talking so strangely." "Morning, Miss." "You're not well enough to travel, my sweet." "But I'm perfectly well." "A few days of help will put colour on those cheeks." "I hate it here, I..." "Morning, Madam." "Everything fresh?" "Those eggs haven't been out of the hen five minutes." "She certainly hate me." "Oh, Maud." "And I hate her." "Darling." "If I thought it would help I would carry you to the station to my house in London." "There is nothing I want more!" "Look at you." "I'm affraid." "What is there to be affraid of, my sweet?" "She ate almost nothing." "Took more and more drops." "A week of that she cracked easy." "She thought he wouldn't want her, looking like that." "But it was exactly what he did want the mad house doctors to say." "The only thing that amused her was to dress me in a fine ladies clothes just as she had done at Briar." "There you are Sue." "Oh!" "I knew it!" "That colour just matches your hair." "Your eyes!" "Your quite a beauty." "Look." "It's Mr Rivers, friends from London, Maam." "They've come to meet you." "Is it this afternoon?" "I had forgotten." "Maud, Maud!" "Visitors from London." "Will you recieve them dear?" "Not just now, Richard." "Susan, can you spare me a moment?" "Don't let them hurt her." "Hurt her?" "They won't hurt her, she's money." "These men are scoundrals." "But they are medical scoundrals." "And they won't take her today." "And they won't take her at all unless they are sure she qualifies for their care and attention." "You know how to answer their questions, don't you?" "Do I?" "Don't make game of me Sue, not when we're so close!" "More?" "Do you want to go back to Mrs Sucksby with nothing?" "We're friends of Mr Rivers and would like to ask you a few questions about his marriage, his new wife." "My mistress, Sir?" "Your mistress." "Just refresh my memory." "Who's your mistress?" "Mrs Rivers, of course." "I'll say, what was Miss Lilly." "Thank you." "Mrs Rivers, what was.." "Who was Miss Lilly." "And you are?" "Her maid Sir." "And your name is?" "Susan Smith." "You seem to hesitate." "That is your name?" "You're quite sure?" "If I know anything, Sir, I know my own name." "And how did you meet your Misstress." "I was with Lady Alice Stonely of Kirtston Cresent , Mayfair." "When she went abroad.." "She's.." "She's grown so.." "Sad." "I'm affraid she'll do herself harm." "Thank you." "You'll keep her safe so much." "We will." "She's so kind." "So good." "So loving." "You will keep her some place special." "Where no one will hurt her." "There, there." "You mustn't be so distressed." "She's been very lucky to have such a good and faithful servant." "Very lucky indeed." "Now, if we could see.." "This way, doctors." "As you can see doctors, the case is quite severe." "We will send the carriage out tomorrow afternoon" "Mr Rivers, rest assured, it was the right thing." "Your eyes are a little brighter." "Are they?" "Don't you think so Susan?" "Oh, such a fool." "You only wanted a little company to bring you back to life." "You were right." "You need London." "London?" "What do you think Maud?" "Christine Graves is so eager for us to join them in Chelsea, they're offering their carriage to take us there tomorrow." "Tomorrow?" "So soon?" "Tomorrow we're going to a great house, with fine quite rooms and good servants." "Just for you." "She was so taken with me in that gown she wouldn't let me change it." "I kept it on to make her happy." "Good day Mr Rivers." "Miss Smith." "Mrs Rivers." "Mrs Rivers?" "What?" "Don't struggle Mrs Rivers." "We're here to help you." "It's not me you want, it's Mrs Rivers." "Tell her gentleman." "Tell her!" "Still the same sad old fiction." "I'm not Mrs Rivers!" "I'm Susan Smith!" "Of Kirtston Cresent , Mayfair?" "Yes!" "There's no such place, Mrs Rivers." "You know that." "Don't struggle or you'll ruin your hat and dress." "You bloody svine!" "You're filth!" "There is no place for wash like that out here." "Mrs Rivers!" "You stupid sods don't you see what he's gone and done?" "Let me go, let me go!" "It's not me you want it's.." "What are you staring at Mrs Rivers?" "Surely you know your own maid?" "Oh my own poor mistress." "That bitch." "That bitch knew everything." "She had been in on it from the start." "No!" "No!" "Maud!" "Maud!" "Maud!" "No!" "Poor Sue." "She thought she knew me." "She thought me innocent." "But I was worldly in ways she never suspected." "I knew everything." "And yet nothing." "Remember that to my story that follows." "To understand how I could do such things" "I must go back to the day Mr Rivers first came to Briar." "He said he was a member of parlament so I trusted him." "He told me he wished me to meet another member." "His member for love." "He locked the door," "I pleaded for my maiden..." "The words are common place but they deserve the frontest piece." "Show them Maud." "The execution for the member of love." "The delicate rendering of the crimson tip." "I don't have to borrow, very rare." "I had it as a young man it was, it was sold in dificultly." "For a shilling." "I would not part with it now for fifty pounds." "But having slipped the bolt off the door.." "A curator of poisons, as my uncle described it to me." "I was twelve years old when he began inoculating me with poison." "Grain by grain, scruple by scruple." "So I should be immune to what I read." "Be his librarian." "And when he lost his sight, his eyes." "So they came together." "The romance might have been somewhat unusual, but that gave it all the charm of the unexpected." "And there, as the red sun tinges the sky, and a tantrum of birds inheralds the night, we must leave them." "You don't care for your uncles subjects?" "I'm his secretary, it's a matter of total insignificance to me." "I find it rather curiouse to find a lady so cool and unmoved by something designed to stir the emotions." "Most ladies in those books and paintings seem to me to be singularly unmoved by it." "You are very uncommon, Miss Lilly." "So I understand Sir." "Miss Lilly." "Dear Miss Lilly, we need to talk." "It's about your mother's will." "I know nothing of what I read from those books, Sir." "I've not come for that, Miss Lilly." "I can get that in the street corner." "I'm here to help you." "How much do you think you'll recieve when you get married?" "A few hundred." "Forty thousand pounds." "Who told you such nonsense?" "Hawtrey." "You're the talk of the shady book shops in London and in Paris." "Your readings and the favours men imagen follow them." "Your uncle is a villain, Miss Lilly!" "And you are not?" "I came her to seduce you." "Secure your fortune." "But I saw what life has made of you and I knew it wouldn't work." "To a woman like you it would be an insult." "Instead I want to free you." "You are very gallant, Mr Rivers." "Suppose I don't care to be freed." "I think you long for it." "Go please, go!" "Good afternoon, Miss Lilly." "Good afternoon, Mr Rivers." "Will you marry me?" "How dare you?" "He's lively today, ain't he Mr Rivers?" "Not as lively as me, Charles." "I swear I will not touch you after the ceremony, we will go our separet ways." "Why would you do such a thing?" "For half your fortune." "I'd tell him his idea was nonsense." "My uncle would persue me." "Not if he thinks you're in the mad house he wispers." "But it would not be me who was locked up." "His plan is to install a new maid a compliant chaperon." "A thief who will think she's cheating me." "Instead we will cheat her." "She will take with her into the mad house all the taint of my mothers madness, my uncles filth, my very name." "He is right." "I would be free." "I return to London in three days." "I must secure the maid when I go back." "We will never have this chance again!" "It would be foul." "Putting a girl in the mad house." "The girl's despicable, a thief." "She would do it to you." "Mr Rivers?" "Mr Rivers, Sir?" "Ah Charles, thank you." "My uncle will be here at any moment." "You must not open that." "You belong out there!" "Not locked up here with this filth!" "Go!" "There was an obsticle to Mr Rivers plan." "My maid Agnes." "The way he painted that fruit, Miss." "You could eat it." "He has an eye for it." "And for you Miss." "Are you all right, Miss Lilly?" "I think she may have twisted her ancle, Sir." "Really, Agnes." "I have not." "Oh well, we must take no chance of that, Miss Lilly." "It's treacherous ground here." "Allowe me to assist you." "I cannot just dismiss Agnes." "Leave it to me." "Agnes, every time that I've looked into her eyes," "I was thinking of you!" "Mr Way, Mr Way!" "Agnes!" "I was shaken by what we had done to Agnes." "But my uncle had trained me to well to feel it for long." "Mr Rivers returned to London." "Recommending the new maid, his character was as false as her courtesy." "Here is the evil little fingersmith who's going to make us rich." "Remember, she has to become you." "And you her." "You have one month until I return." "Is it all right, Miss?" "Very satisfactory." "She has come to Briar to swollow me up." "Lika a clutch of eggs." "What London ladies do at this time of day?" "Make visits, to other ladies like you Miss." "Ladies like me?" "There are no ladies like me." "But I grew used to her, to her life, her warmth." "She was not the gullable girl of a villaineers plot." "But a girl with a history, with hates and likings." "Yet to escape from Briar" "I must despise her." "Must decieve her." "Miss." "Miss." "It's not bad news, is it Miss?" "Mr Rivers is coming tomorrow." "Oh lord!" "I must change our dresses." "This one for sure." "I want you to have that." "Me Miss?" "But this is your best dress?" "I want to show Mr Rivers that.." "That I do so much approve of you." "Of his choice." "Oh Miss!" "That's one of the nicest things any one's ever said to me." "But really, I can't." "Sue." "She looked so beautiful." "I had to keep telling myself over and over again what she planned to do to me." "To go on." "Oh my godness Miss!" "I look like a real lady." "She changed even my uncles books for me." "I thought them dead but the words came suddenly alive." "Full of meaning." "She must think we love one another!" "Oh damn it, Maud!" "There's another hour gone." "In two days I will leave." "And I will never see you again." "Wake her up, she'll burn." "Let go of me." "I've lost half for this." "Lost it to a wretched little fingersmith." "Let me.." "She'd laugh in your face if she knew." "If I told her." "You mustn't." "I agree." "But do you want to stay here forever?" "Appear to love me." "Marry me!" "I can't." "Maud!" "Miss Maud?" "Please." "Miss Maud?" "She's coming." "Tell me.." "Tell me a way.." "Tell you what, Miss?" "Tell me, on her wedding night, what must a wife do?" "Aren't you a pearl." "Everything I say to myself is changed." "She has touched the life of me." "The quake of me." "But she is ashamed." "He'll be leaving here tonight Miss." "She didn't love me." "her feelings were false, part of a trap." "Why should I not trap her to escape from this foul place." "The night I escaped I needed to do one last thing." "How fast your heart beats Maud." "I told you I don't want to hurt you." "But we must show the marks of true love." "Are you by any chance bleeding to save me the pain?" "Do you mean to insult me in every possible way?" "Hold out the sheet." "The fashionable couple on their wedding night." "Sit down here Susan." "Miss Smith." "Were you ever a maid with Lady Stonely of Mayfair?" "No Sir." "That's one of poor Mrs Rivers fantasies." "Ever since the wedding night she's made up these stories." "Fiction.." "Yes." "Does she read books?" "Her passion is books." "There you have it Graves." "The over exposure of women to literature breeds unatural fantasies." "Indeed." "Unatural?" "Oh Sir, you don't know the worst of it." "It's not your shame, Susan, your guilt." "You did nothing to invite the gross intentions my wife and her madness tried to force upon you." "Is this true?" "Please, these tears speak themselfes." "Come on Susan!" "You are not to blame." "I'm so sorry you were exposed to such horrible things." "I wanted to go to her, but I could not move." "I wanted to say he's lying, you're fools!" "Speak, damn you, speak!" "Oh my own poor Misstress." "My heart was breaking." "That is my story." "That is what brought me here." "You were very convincing Maud." "Don't speak to me or I shall kill you." "I have betrayed her." "Mrs Rivers." "Mrs Rivers!" "Sit Mrs Rivers, over there if you will." "You see, they tricked me." "She's fit, can't do it." "Hold her steady, man!" "She may pull off her joints!" "We will not have you lying here, Mrs Rivers." "You can shake yourself and it's no business of ours." "You can chew off your tongue if you like." "We preferer them quite here." "Welcome to London." "How could we have done this to her?" "Believe me, she'll be better taken care of than where she came from." "Are we here?" "This is our house?" "I thought for a moment that was the Briar bell." "We're near the river." "Chelsea?" "Not quite." "Lant Street." "Wow.." "Come on or I shall leave you here." "We cannot live grand anymore until we have your money." "We'll just wait for the lawyers to release it." "Do you want to stay out here and freeze?" "Mr Ibbs." "Mrs Maud Rivers." "Very pleased to meet you, Mrs Rivers." "Do come in, make yourself at home." "Could you imagine a better night than this, Mr Ibbs?" "This is a very good night, gentleman." "A very good night indeed." "Let me take the ladies cloak." "Do beg me a pardon." "Who's she?" "I'm just going to pop that for her, Mr Ibbs." "Richard, Richard?" "Good boy!" "Marry him, Miss." "Mr Rivers loves you." "What kept me alive was the thought that Mrs Sucksby would find me." "And then I would find Maud." "And kill her." "She lived here, Sue, didn't she?" "Will you stop touching me!" "What a fool I've been." "What an idiot." "This is Sues house of thiefs, isn't it?" "Honest thieves, dear." "Get me a cab." "Handsome or haggeny?" "Don't you dare talk to me like that!" "Oh she's got a temper, ain't she?" "If you don't get me a cab" "I shall walk." "I shall find a policeman." "Never there when you want them, my dear." "Not in this fog." "Come on." "John." "Give us the bag." "Gentleman, throw it." " Get her!" " That's enough!" "If you don't let me go" "I will kill your baby." "I have come too far for this." "John!" "I mean it." "I will." "Get me a cab." "I will do it." "My dear." "I've been caring for unwanted babies for years." "At the moment I'm looking after seven babies." "Now you can make it six if you like." "Or five." "No one would miss them." "Come on, come on." "Go see to the fire, John." "Make some tea, Dainty." "Strengthen her up a bit." "We're here to look after you." "We love you." "Like it, do you?" "We heard you did." "Go on with the mark there, Betty." "My poor hands have suffered so much recently." "Mrs Forbisher, Mrs Forbisher?" "Do you want the kirk?" "Where you from?" "London." "I'm a little out of touch." "And the season's only just beginning." "Are you out?" "No I ain't." "So young." "I'm not much in." "In..." "That is the first two word I've heard you say, Mrs Rivers." "In." "Keep telling the truth like that, Mrs Rivers, and you may well be out." "Before the end of the season." "In!" "In!" "In!" "I couldn't bare to wake you, dear." "Feed the babies down stairs, Dainty." "Now.." "Oh.." "Come on now." "I can see you're a spirited girl." "But you can't imagen we meaning you any harm." "I can't imagen you mean me any kind of good when you insist on keeping me here when I so clearly wish to leave!" "Just hear the grammar in that, Mr Ibbs." "Here, let me take your glove." "Her uncle taught her to be very particular about her fingers." "Made you read a lot of filthy french books." "Did he touch dear, were he aun't?" "Oh never mind." "Better your own than a stranger I always say." "I'll get you a nice cup of tea." "You plan to kill me, don't you?" "It would mean nothing to me, but she would not allowe it." "But has she got to do with this?" "She sent me to Briar." "This is her plan, she controls everything." "How does she know about my fortune?" "From some servant?" "From her." "You're liers." "You're cheats." "How could you know my mother?" "I was born in an asylum." "Dear, oh dear." "We're not going to put that together again, are we?" "No you weren't born in the asylum dear." "You was born here." "Marianne, that was the ladies name, wasn't it dear?" "She ran away from Briar just like you only her gentleman didn't do the decent thing, not like your husband." "She got my name from a woman in the Borough that did the girls in their complaints." "Did she ever have complaints, Mr Ibbs?" "Too far gone to get rid of the poor creature." "She was terrified, poor lamb." "It was her father and her brother, uncle Lilly, they were after her." "It was why I made up a bed in front of the fire, like I did for you." "And she had her baby right here." "Oh how Marianne loved her little baby girl!" "Poor little scrap!" "Then we heard it, didn't we?" "The carriage." "Your uncle had found her." "They was hammering at the door." "And Marianne, she was sobbing." "I must name her, I must!" "But not with a name like I've been cursed with" "But a plain name." "I shall call her.." "Maud." "Susan." "As God as my witness." "She cried" "I don't want to put my baby through what I've been through." "Take my baby and bring her up yourself, Mrs Sucksby." "Poor, and honest." "She begged and pleaded and" "It would have tightened her heart to stone to refuse her so.." "Before Mr Ibbs opened the door" "I gave her the baby that I was holding." "Because she was born on the same day." "Take her, quick!" "That's it." "So your brother think she's yours." "She has the name of a lady after all." "Her name is Maud."