The meeting in the library...and an unexpected turn of events...


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Edward Allenby and Anthony Strallan had been friends since childhood, despite the fact that Edward had attended Eton and Oxford while Anthony had been sent to Harrow and Cambridge. In the school holidays Edward and Anthony had sometimes played hide and seek at Edward's house and that was how Anthony knew about the priest-hole in the library. He wondered if he could still fit into it now that he was over six foot tall and his joints were not as pliable as they once had been, but he need not have worried.

Opposite the fireplace he found the correct carving on the bookcase to press and the door swung out noiselessly. He entered and closed the door behind him just enough so that he could make sure that he remembered how to open it again from the inside, without trapping himself, and then pulled the camouflaged door shut fully. He settled onto the seat and watched through the eyeholes disguised on the outside as the eyes of a long dead relative of Edward's, portrayed in oils.

Would Edith come? He'd excused himself from dancing with her in the garden by saying he had to go in to see some friends, when in reality he was changing from being Anthony Strallan – silly old fool dancing with a beautiful, young lady alone in the moonlight, constantly fighting the urge to kiss her – to being Anthony Strallan, the mysterious letter writer who unmasks himself and turns out to be…a silly old fool.

In some ways he hoped that Edith would not come; he fully expected this conversation to be very painful for them both. But it had to be done, for her sake. He would allow himself one last chance to address words of love to her, his identity unknown, one last bit of theatre, and then she must be told.


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Edith held her breath and opened the door. The Allenby's library was not as large as the one at home, but it was very pleasant and cosy in the dark and the glow of a dying fire. It was furnished with comfortable armchairs and old portraits, as well as bookcases. There was no one there.

Her heart fell. So, Mary was right after all.

But…but he had danced with her! In the moonlight! He danced so gracefully, and it was heaven being swept up in his arms gazing into his mesmerising blue eyes. If Anthony didn't write those letters, she felt she might die of grief.

Even as her eyes pricked with tears, she looked at the clock on the mantel. It wasn't quite midnight. She closed the door behind her with relief, determined to wait and to have faith. Quietly, she sat on the chaise nearest the fire, trying to keep calm.

Faintly, she could hear the music coming from the hall over the deafening beat of her own heart.

She was tense and nervous as a mouse; so much so that when the clock began to strike, she jumped. Then she counted the chimes…ten, eleven, twelve.

Silence.

"Thank you for coming, my sweet."

The voice was controlled and whispered, hardly recognisable. But she would know his voice anywhere and her heart leapt. He had appeared out of nowhere behind her, like a spectre. Was her obsession with Anthony Strallan driving her out of her mind, she wondered briefly. "Would you put your hand on my shoulder please, so that I know you are real? Mary said such things, dismissive things about my anonymous admirer, that I scarce believe you to be true."

So that was what had been worrying her he thought.

"What did she say?" he whispered.

"That you were just one of Archie's friends trying to butter me up with pretty words."

"No, I am not one of Archie's friends. And I certainly wasn't trying to woo you for him, on his behalf. You are worth more than a hundred Archies. I was only trying to tell you, convince you, that you are lovely."

She went to turn to him but he stopped her.

"Don't turn around…not yet please. Let me have this moment…this one moment to speak to you, not in ink and letters but in my own voice…one moment free of the choking asthma that you might laugh at me, or be disgusted that I worship you as I do" he continued in a whisper but a whisper that was becoming more and more passionate.

"You are so beautiful, Edith, as bright as the sun, as soft as the moonlight, as wondrous as the constellations…please believe that suitors will come…suitors with more nous than Archibald Campbell, and more charm and youth than Lord Penrith. Suitors who will truly appreciate you, and deserve you. Believe that please. Promise me?"

"I promise because you have made me believe it." He sighed, so close to the back of her neck that she felt the warmth of it. She shivered with desire.

"Will you promise me something in return?" she asked.

"Yes, my dear, anything, if I can."

"I know you don't think you deserve me…that you don't think it possible that I might love you, but will you promise to believe me if I say that I do love you when I turn round and discover who you are?"

There was a tense silence. Edith had manoeuvred him into a corner where he could not reasonably deny her request.

"I promise to believe you, my dearest darling. Turn around now and learn the worst."

"I don't really need to turn around, do I Anthony?"

She did turn round then to see him looking at her with a mixture of surprise, regret, and dread. When he saw the total love in her eyes unchanged for seeing who he was…the person she fully expected him to be…his expression changed to disbelief and incomprehension.

"You can't…care for me. No…it is not possible!"

"Why not, Anthony? You have been trying to convince me that there will be other men who will woo me because you find me attractive. Well, by the same logic I disprove all your arguments that it is impossible that I should love you, because, you see, I do. I do love you. And you have just promised to believe me."

Anthony took a step backward.

"Dear god, what have I done!?"

"You have made me the happiest woman alive, Anthony!"

His reply was despairing and frantic.

"I've condemned you. If I…if I reject you now…and believe me I don't want to…I break your heart and mine, and leave you vulnerable to every idiot like Campbell or Penrith who might prey on you. If I carry on pursuing you, I sentence you to wasting your youth and your life on a man old enough to be your father until you are so bored, frustrated, and fed up with it that I wouldn't blame you if you took a younger lover and ruined your reputation. When I die, which will be all too soon, I would leave you bereaved and bitter at far too young an age. You do not deserve either fate, my love. Oh dear god, what am I going to do?"

"But…you promised…" she murmured feeling as lost and as miserable as him.

"Yes, my darling, I did promise, and I've kept my promise. I do believe that you care for me…here and now. But I also believe you are too young to know truly what it is you feel. I don't think what you feel now is the sort of affection that lasts. Make no mistake, I treasure it as the priceless gift that it is, but I just think you are in the grip of the sort of obsession such as afflicts the young. It burns intensely, and is gone. I dare not trust the rest of our lives to it. You are so very young."

Miserable though she was at his reaction, Edith was still resourceful and practically-minded.

"If that is your concern, then I have a suggestion, an agreement between us. If we wait until, say, my twenty-first birthday when I am of age, and I can assure you on that day that my feelings for you are the same as they are now, will you promise to propose to me then? Call it a test to see if my love endures."

Anthony looked at her with admiration at her fortitude. Again she had proved just what a remarkable woman she was.

"May I add a codicil: that should you meet a young man who steals your heart away from me, one who is worthy of you, then you will follow your heart? Let me know, and the agreement will be dissolved. Do you agree to that?"

"Agreed" she said smiling, knowing that was not likely to happen.

"When is your twenty-first birthday, Edith?"

"22nd July 1916, just under two years away."

Not believing what he was about to say, not even recognising his own voice, Anthony declared "Then I accept your suggestion. If you still care for me and want me for your husband on that date and have not met anyone else, I will propose to you on the 22nd July 1916."

Edith thought her heart would explode with happiness. She couldn't quite catch her breath and her eyes glistened with joy. Despite everything, Anthony found himself in a similar state. Edith took a step forward to hug him and just for once Anthony responded. They held each other softly, joyfully weeping until Edith drew back and looked into Anthony's eyes with a serious intent and desire that could not be misinterpreted.

"No! No, I will not kiss you now."

"Why not, Anthony? We're practically engaged."

"We are not engaged, and will not be until your twenty-first birthday."

"But…"

"No! First kisses are special. I assume that you haven't been kissed before?"

She nodded.

"Your first kiss is one that you will remember forever after. It should be shared with the love of your life."

"But you are the love of my life, Anthony."

"I thought that was what our agreement was there to prove."

"You can be so…so obstinately logical, Sir Anthony Strallan!"

"I'm sorry, but better that you discover that now rather than after we are married!"

She hit him playfully on the arm and laughed.

"Touché!"

"I suspect that was the first of many such tiffs, my dear" Anthony stated sadly.

"Then we will be just like any other old married couple!" Edith replied.

"Touché!" he laughed.

They still had their arms around each other and it was becoming too temptingly easy and familiar. Anthony cleared his throat.

"Shall we go back to the party, Edith?"

"Only if you will dance the last waltz with me."

"I would be delighted" he smiled.

He offered her his arm and she took it with a radiant smile that melted all his resolution not to act the beau with her. He led her back to the dancing and whirled her through the last waltz as if they were both dancing on clouds, neither of them giving a single fleeting thought to what anyone who saw them thought.


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Thank you all again for reading and reviewing. I hope you like how things are progressing.