Y'all don't know this fandom, and I'm using OCs anyway, so treat it as origific. Credit where credit's due to Anne Walsh, author of the Chronicles of Glenscar. I can't wait for A Widow in Waiting to hit the bookstores so I can babble about it publicly.

Also, DW's new update page is made of the shiny.

Title: The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It's all over the papers: Rachel Keenan as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, back on the stage for a select few guests after a sudden, long illness.
Pairings: OFC/OMC.
Warnings: Character death.
Word Count: 360

It's all over the papers: Rachel Keenan as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, back on the stage for a select few guests after a sudden, long illness. The names of the guests aren't publicized, but when she looks out into the tiny crowd, Orson Ashley, Lord of devil-only-cares, is among them.

She keeps her eyes on Ashley throughout the performance. Every time she looks, his eyes are fixed on her, hungry, evincing ever-increasing delight.

Afterwards, she accepts small gifts from her admirers. Flowers and fruit. Ashley offers a necklace, and she refuses demurely. He blinks, and she realizes she's made a mistake. She hurries to persuade him not to be insulted.

The evening ends with Ashley escorting her to his townhouse. The moment they're alone, no servants in earshot, she kisses him. The night proceeds quite agreeably from there; 'agreeably' here meaning she hates every moment, but it's going exactly to plan. Grasp here, twist there, snap that, and that of course is when Ashley catches wind of what she's up to. He shoves her off him and opens a drawer, no pause to remedy his nakedness, and pulls out a knife. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," he snarls, advancing.

She delivers a high kick that breaks his nose and his attention, then snatches the knife away. "The verse says 'poisoner'," she informs him, blade inches from his bollocks. "Swear on your sacred honor to do one thing for me and I will leave you alive and...intact."

"Anything," Ashley says, as she'd known he would.

She stops persuading him that he's seeing Rachel. "Give my sister back her magic."

An impossible task twice over, of course. Leah Keenan drives the knife into Ashley's thigh; that will give him minutes to repent. Now to find somewhere to clean up, then send a letter to her caravan to assure them that Rachel's avenged, then back out in London to resume her self-appointed task of cleaning magic out of the gentry. They can't be trusted with power of any sort, and Leah might not be able to strip them of all power, but she can do this much to protect her people.