The Other Ingleside Twins
4.1 A Dark Visitor

Rat-a-tat-tat

Anne lifted her head from the pillow. The knocking on the door had been going on for several minutes, or was that just the pounding in her head resonating with the sound?

Rat-a-tat-tat

There it was again, accompanied by what sounded like muffled shouting."Gilbert must be out on his rounds", she thought, "there's no one else to answer it." Susan was, she knew, still away, having been away since…well several months , helping her cousin Sophie who'd twisted her ankle. And Marguerite, well Marguerite the French Tahitian maid who'd come to help while Susan was away hadn't been back since the night of the storm. Not even the children were home, scattered out as they were with friends who'd taken them in to allow 'poor Anne' time to recover from the illness that had kept her bed bound for so long now.

Rat-a-tat-tat

Moving slowing to minimise the pain in her head, Anne swung her feet out of the side of her bed. She sat there for several moments rubbing her swollen belly, thinking that even though this would probably be her last, how glad she'd been in three months' time when her child bearing would most likely be over. She reached for her kimono and stood up. Grabbing furniture to steady herself she wrapped the gown tightly around her and made her way slowly to the door and down the stairs where the insistent knocking was still happening. As she moved down the stairs, the shouting became clearer and she realised that it wasn't muffled, just French.

"Anne."

She jumped at the sound of her name and turned to see Gilbert sitting in the parlour, his clothes crumpled from a sleepless night, his hair ruffled from long hours of his fingers running through it in stress.

"Don't answer it," he said.

Rat-a-tat-tat

Anne gave him a look as if to say we can't ignore it, it could be important.

"It's Maurice, Marguerite's brother," he said simply.

"Then we must answer it," Anne responded in the same matter-of-fact tone, "whatever else you've been, you've never been a coward.

Gilbert flinched at her words, leaning back into the sofa so that he couldn't be seen from the front door as Anne swung it open.

Maurice's tall, dark, muscular frame blocked the sun and cast a long shadow into the hall. And yet, Anne barely noticed him. All her attention focused on the small baby in the basket at his feet. The skin had a natural warm honey glow, as if sun-kissed, and under the baby cap she could see dark curls sprouting out. Staring back at were a set of familiar deep brown intelligent eyes. Anne had never seen that baby before, and yet she would know those eyes anywhere. Their curiosity revealing secrets she had long suspected, secrets her husband was pressed into the sofa in their parlour now, trying to avoid.