Hi, and here is another chapter and the last for 2020! I hope you enjoy this chapter and i will do my best to get the remaining six to you sooner rather than later.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine just the character of Arthur.

Note-I do realise that throughout this story i have made mistakes both with langugae and with historical information. I am trying my best so any inaccuracies i do apologise for and thank you for pointing out. Same goes for spelling and grammar.

Please Read and Review.

Silver And Grey

Chapter 11-Words

William Elliot meets Arthur just as Captain Wentworth arrives. Anne and her father have a conversation about family and friends and Anne vents her feelings to the ever patient Mrs Smith and Arthur makes an rather surprising comment—again some cutting up and removing of scenes/events within the film and book.

Anne had written to her steward to tell him to cut her father's expenses in half the day that Lady Dirimple had come to town. Elizabeth had bought a dress with real gold thread without any thought of the cost and Anne's temper always on a tinderbox with her family had snapped.

She had written that she would cover rent and nothing more. It was high time her father and her sister learned to economise the hard way. And if that meant less champagne for her father and less hair ribbons for her sister then Anne was more than alright with that outcome.

Carefully she made plans for her and Arthur to depart. It was scheduled a week from now which she was sure would be enough time for her to get out of Bath before her father knew his purse had been cut in half. All Anne wanted personally was to get back to her house in Kent before the engagement of Frederick to Louisa Musgrove was announced. She was not sure what propriety ensured, weather or not she would be invited but she was sure she could come down with a convincing cough. Certainly nobody from her family would mind and she was certain that Frederick would not want her there as he began his new life, so free (as he had often said) of her.

What she was going to do about William Elliot was another conversation she had to have with herself as she stared at the cover of her bed and wished that sleep would come sooner rather than later.

He had been most attentive and Anne would not deny that she was unfeeling in this matter. She was young and for all she knew the lack of a second child had been George's problem. And Anne wanted a second child, she wanted one desperately. And to do that she needed a husband.

And even so, she had a large fortune, a son who would need a father and a house which needed a master. William Elliot too had a good fortune and would deliver Kellynch to her—sure as she was that her father was not going to give another heir—certainly not a son. After three grown daughters she was not sure what a younger, pretty woman would or could do.

And a part of Anne, a wicked, dangerous part no doubt could not help but grin in glee at the thought of what Elizabeth would make of her playing Lady of Kellynch

Perhaps it was time to look towards a future.

A future without either of the ghosts of the men that she had both loathed and loved.

Without Frederick, without George.

Of course there was the issue of Arthur but she thought that she had arranged it well.

William, Mr Elliot had arranged to meet her to escort her to luncheon and Anne had assure that Arthur was with her. She had told Arthur she was meeting a distant relation and that he was to be on his best behaviour and he had nodded and agreed with her (or as much as an eight year old could do so) and she had nodded and ensure she had him in her direct line of sight when she had met William—Mr Elliot in the room where he was to take them for the carriage ride before lunch.

It had of course gone horribly wrong.

In Anne's life, what else was new?

Frederick had asked where she was at the house he knew the Elliot's to be residing at—thank the Lord that it was not the Baron, Lady Russell (whom he could not forgive or forget) or the stupidest of stupidest sisters (Elizabeth) who had answered the door. It had been a footman who had told him that Lady Paget had taken her son to the tea rooms.

Frederick had thanked him, passed him a coin for his silence and then had hurried in the direction that had been proposed to him. He had arrived to see Anne her hair tied up in a loose knot at the back of her neck, her bonnet in her hand talking to her son who—

"Captain Wentworth!"

That was the boy, Arthur who dressed in what could only be his Sunday best and looking uncomfortably so (and Frederick could remember the feeling only too well). Despite his mother's look of utter despair he dashed across the room and then bowed as if to remember social standing. Frederick gave him the mock bow back with a smile and then winked as the boy threw his arms around him.

He hugged him back and felt something shift a little within him despite the surprise. Anne did not check him, indeed she said nothing and Frederick thought that meant that he could hug the boy back—he found he wanted too despite it all, and despite his own feelings on children—which was to say—not many. He found that he wanted this to continue. That he wanted this little boy to hug him and hold him and want him to be in his life. He had never been what one would call paternal figure and he found that he was anxious to be one in this case. He wanted to be a parental figure to Arthur Paget. A father figure perhaps. Was it so bad to want that? Frederick did not think that it was.

And then there was Anne who looked at him hugging her son with wide eyes. She either did not know about his engagement or lack thereof—of she did not care. Considering how he had acted when he had been in her presence he could not blame her for considering the second option.

"Lady Paget" he said with a bow as Anne curtsied and Arthur took a step backwards.

"Captain Wentworth. Permit me to congratulate you on what I believe to be your engagement"

Ah.

"Forgive me, Miss Elliot but you must misunderstand. I am not to be engaged to Miss Musgrove. Indeed she is happily engaged to our friend Captain Benwick"

Anne blinked. She seemed to be having an internal conversation about weather or not she wanted to say what she really felt. Frederick wished she would say something…hell at this point anything would do but after an age she said…

"I wish them all the happiness in the world"

"As do I" Frederick rushed to reassure her.

"But…but sometimes I feel as if he is moving on…I want him to be happy but I feel like a man should not…move on so soon. His attachment should not be so easily removed. He should not move on. He cannot move on"

He hoped that Anne could understand what he was saying because honestly he could not. He had a sense that he was making a complete fool of himself and he wanted nothing more to do than to go back to his lodgings and smack his head into his pillow until there was nothing left. He was a naval captain for the love of the Good Lord! And yet here he was butchering a conversation with the woman he loved because…well…there was no reason for him to be doing such things.

"Indeed" Anne said staring at him her eyes a little wide—Frederick thought that she was probably thinking he was without a mind. Arthur was looking between the two of them but Frederick could not look at him because if truth be told he thought he was going to combust with embarrassment and looking at the boy was not going to help matters.

The door to the room opened and man came in shaking his hat from the rain. Frederick turned as courtesy dictated as Arthur stood with the expression of a boy who knew what he had been told to do and straightened his jacket. Frederick knew that the boy only hoped to be out of his Sunday best too soon. He too had been a boy like him once. He knew what it was that kept a boy like Arthur onside and in line when he would rather be playing outside and that was an adoration and a fear of his mother.

This man turned to Anne completely ignoring Frederick as if he was part of the wallpaper and invited Anne to dine with him. Anne with a smile that she most certainly did not bestow on him introduced her son who too gave a good bow (no hug, Frederick thought with a surge of pleasure that he did not want to think about in these present circumstances) and said in his high pitched funny little voice how pleased he was to make the man's acquaintance. The man bowed back a soft smile upon his face that Frederick knew Arthur Paget inspired amongst most people and then Anne turned to him and said— (and was it Frederick or did it sound like she really did not want to introduce them—paranoia was as welcome as jealously with the ranks of the navy after all—)

"Ah Mr William Elliot, permit me to name Captain Wentworth"

What he really wanted to do aside, Frederick bowed as manners dictated and he was pleased somewhat to see that the bow he got back was just as deep and perhaps as sincere.

Anne muttered something about a concert but before he could speak she and the boy were gone and Frederick was left alone in an empty room with a sinking feeling that perhaps after all, he had been too late.

The plan to meet Mrs Smith over Lady Diriumple had gone down as well as Anne had suspected it had. Her temper which was not in the best place after seeing Arthur to bed had been thin when her father had started winging at her to pay court to her cousin, and when Anne had snapped and said that she was sure that Lady Dirumple could do without her—as she paid one of the few in Bath without a title a call—she was surprised to see him look as though he had been suitably subdued.

Oh Anne knew that was not the end of it. Experience with her father had taught her that long and hard lesson a long time ago but she walk away from the house knowing she was right on two counts, one she had to remove herself and her son from such toxic environments as soon as possible and two and perhaps the one with most merit—she was right to cut them off.

Elizabeth Smith listened to all of this with a small smile. Once too her presence had been courted by the Elliot's and she knew first hand what it was to be dropped by them. Anne who had been mortified to her very soul when such a thing had happened, had found that there was very little that she could about it when George was such a menacing figure within her life.

"Ah Anne" she said her thin frame bent over her needlework. "I assure you it will all work out soon. Rumours abound all over Bath and Elizabeth will surely be but out that you are the centre of gossip. By the time she figures out that you have ensured she is to be without her golden thread you shall be richer by far"

Anne assumed that her friend had heard about Mr Elliot and was about to press further but such a strong cough chose that moment to rack her thin frame that there was very little else for her to do than to hold her hand and help her through it.

Her maid came soon and the visit was at an end and Anne was left on the brink of tears again that such a good woman as Elizabeth Smith was forced into a poverty not her own by the hands of men in this world and that women like her sisters would consign to do nothing but gloat.

She went to see Arthur when she got in who was tucked up in bed the sheets about his face making him look like a little owl. She pressed a kiss to his wild curls and was about to leave when his little voiced piped up.

"Are we going to see more of Mr Elliot?"

Anne paused her hand on the doorknob.

"I suppose" she said surprised into honestly. "Did you like him?"

Arthur sighed his whole body heaving the quilt wrapped around him.

"Suppose so…but I liked Captain Wentworth more. Could you not marry him?"

Anne repressed a snort at her son's bluntness and chose to ignore the flash of pain his words had caused.

It was no fault of Arthur's she supposed. And she was not going into a discussion on who she could marry, not tonight, even if that was what Arthur had thought—had seen through her thinly veiled excuses. There was a time for such a conversation but now was not it.

"Captain Wentworth my darling boy, does not want to marry me. I can assure you of that. And now is not the time to discuss this. So goodnight"

She shut the door but not before she heard Arthur's final words which reverberated despite her best intentions in her head and in her heart.

"I do not know Mama. You should have seen the way he was looking at you"

And there you go, with this chapter I wish all of you reading a very happy and safe start to 2021 and what I hope to be a better year than the last.

I will do my best to bring you the next chapter sooner than later.

Next Chapter-There is a meeting at the Concert Hall that reveals more than Anne intends. Lady Russell attempts to persuade her goddaughter. Frederick is sent on an errand.