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Upon meeting Katie under such terrible circumstances, Demelza had meant every last word of support she'd offered, knowing it was the least she can do. Tintern Abbey won't let her return to work until mid-January at the very earliest, a request to which she had very reluctantly agreed, and so now she has nearly two months to fill with nothing but her children.

She loves them terribly, she absolutely does, but Demelza is a woman used to working. She had perhaps gone from being a miner's daughter to a gentleman's wife, but she'd married a wonderful and peculiar gentleman in that he had engaged in just as much work -- and often, considering Jud and Prudie, a good deal more -- as did his servants. Demelza had fallen into that life easily, first as his hardworking scullery maid and than as his equally hardworking wife.

Life in Darrow is easy by comparison. She certainly doesn't dislike it, she finds this place to be quite lovely in every aspect, but she does miss the work of the homestead.

And so she must fill her times in other ways. For this afternoon, that is meeting Katie and her young son at the park with Julia and Jeremy in tow. Jeremy is far too young to play, just barely over two months old himself now, but Demelza hopes Julia is enough to help entertain Katie's son. She speaks a fair bit, though some of it is still nonsense, and she's quite active, running and jumping, but Demelza knows there are many abilities she's not yet mastered that Katie's son will have long since learned.

But if he's as kind as his mother, Demelza is certain all shall get along well.

She's pushing her stroller along carefully, both her children dressed warm against the chill, the stockings under her own long dress now ones made of warm wool, and she smiles when she enters the park and catches sight of Katie.

"Hello," she calls, pushing the children in her direction.

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She supposes she shouldn't, that perhaps it's an awful thing to feel a connection based on, but when Katie admits her first husband was the same, Demelza feels a surge of companionship, of comfort. It's awful that anyone has suffered at the hands of someone who claims to love them, but there's comfort in knowing they're not alone.

Others have suffered, too. Others have lost bits of themselves as well.

"I'm that sorry," she says and she means it in the way only someone else who's seen the same sort of anger possibly can. "My father tried to come and take me home. He brought men from our village and they attacked Ross. Said all sorts of awful things about him havin' taken in a child, that they knew what he really wanted me for, but he never once did nothin' untoward. He never touched me, not until I was older and I... I went to him first. I loved him so much. But that day when my father and the miners came, he fought to keep me at his home where I'd be safe and not because of anything I was givin' him, just because it was right. People like him make all the difference when sometimes you might think... maybe you did somethin' to make 'em that way."

"You never did," Katie says, reaching over to touch Demelza's hand. "It's just how they are." It's easier to believe now than it was when she was still married to David. Even knowing she didn't deserve it, she couldn't help sometimes wondering if maybe she did, if there was something wrong with her instead. He tried to make her believe it, told her it was only because of things she did or because he loved her so much and she was hurting him. He'd get so upset sometimes after the fact that sometimes she thought it must be true.

Sometimes that's the worst part of it. Not that he hurt her, but that he undid her own sense, turned her against herself like that. Not that she couldn't trust him, but that she couldn't trust herself.

"But there are still good men in the world. Your Ross. My Russell. Ross sounds like a wonderful person. It's no wonder you love him so much."

But her Russell is gone and that's so unfair Demelza can hardly stand it. She can't begin to imagine how Katie faces it every day when she has never even known the man and she finds her chest aching and her throat tight when she thinks of that loss.

Should it happen to her, she'll go on out of necessity. She'll push on for her children and she realizes in an instant that is what keeps Katie moving forward as well. Her Jamie.

"I think 'ee'd quite like Ross," she says. "He can be terribly rude to some, but tis only that he's not the sort of suffer fools. Surgeons, though... I mean doctors, especially doctors who are smart and who are always open to more learning, he quite likes them. Finds them very respectable. He'd not be rude to you."

And now that she's promised it, she must make sure it's true.

Katie laughs, nodding at that. She'd rather that kind of rudeness than the sort she knew from David, where he simply didn't care about other people and didn't know how to pretend to be like them or to give a damn. "I can handle it," she promises. "I like people who are blunt."

She wants to believe the best of people, and she still, in many ways, does. But she's lived too long not to have woken up to a few things in the end, and that includes the fact that not everyone is what they seem to be. She'd rather someone be who they are, even at the cost of propriety and politeness.

"And besides, he must be pretty great to have won your heart."