If I Don't, She Will

I've spent several hours fiddling with this when I should have been otherwise engaged... apparently I have an inherent weakness for canons with blatant plot holes of improbability!
(The Crimson Peak fanfic archive is even smaller than the Love Never Dies one, alas.)

At least Alan now has a character; it's amazing what putting yourself into somone else's shoes can do for your perception of them as a three-dimensional human being ;-p

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If I Don’t, She Will

Dr Alan McMichael confronts the prospect of the knife, at the hand of a man he has no reason to trust.

(Author’s note: in English usage, a baronet’s wife bears the title of ‘Lady Sharpe’, but his sister has no actual right to any courtesy title at all... so one can choose to assume that Lucille is sending a not-so-subtle message about their relationship at the ignorant Yankees’ expense :-p)

He’d come here to rescue Edith. He’d come here to take her away from the husband who was no husband and his sister who was no sister — and hadn’t she called herself “Lady Lucille”, and openly, mocking American naïvety as the fresh love-marks on her neck mocked at Edith’s stolen wedding-ring? He’d come here full of crusading passion to rip down the veils of deception and to bring Edith back into safety and sunlight. And now it came to him instead in blind disbelief that he was going to die.

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