Author's Note

New Year's Resolutions:

1. Reply promptly to kind reviewers and kind pm's

2. Review the writing of others as immediately as possible

3. Go back over all those wonderful stories I have always meant to comment on

4. Update all my own stories within the one moon cycle

5. Do not start a new story until I have finished a current story

6. Aim to have COMPLETE next to a current story before the end of NEXT year!

7. Stop the need to apologise profusely before the start of every update

8. Attempt to achieve any of the above

I am obviously a work in progress, as much as my stories are. Thank you for your support this year!

With love to all Anne-girls, readers and writers alike, and especially to my lovely own Patty's Place girls. You know who you are x

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Love,

MrsVonTrapp x

Chapter Eleven

'But what can guard thee but thy naked love?'

David roared past the sign welcoming him to Avonlea, thinking his heart would explode with panic and fear, looking down at his phone and the map he had pulled up for a read on where this blasted lake was.

He chased the lake all along until he reached an old little caravan as ticket office, diving the car towards it and nearly skidding to a theatrical halt in a shower of gravel and desperation.

The kid at the window looked up as if he was an axe-wielding madman.

"Did a girl hire a boat off you?" David demanded breathlessly without any polite preliminaries. "A redhead girl?"

"Yeah… " the guy eyed him warily. "Um, about two, no… – hey, she's gone over time!"

"Where is the bridge?" David hissed.

"Huh?"

"The bridge! Which direction?"

The kid pointed back behind David's shoulder.

"I need a boat. Do you have a little speedboat, or anything with an engine?"

"Yeah… but it's the owners'. It's not for hire."

David threw a fistful of notes at him, his face and tone grim.

"It is now."

The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour… *

Of all the stupid… insane… ridiculous…

She felt her misery keenly, and supposed her other self had as well. She had seen a boat out on the water… why hadn't she foreseen this?

There were no sounds barring the lapping of the current against her increasingly frozen form, and the insects making bothersome enquiries as to the possibility of her skin as meal. She felt she was all alone, poised on the edge of civilisation. Why didn't somebody come? Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so tired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Anne looked at the wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and shivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome possibilities to her. *

She could drop into the water. That's what he had said. Drop into the water like a pebble plopped over the side… would she sink like a stone to the bottom, too? Would she leave this earth as Ophelia had done? "Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up … but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch … To muddy death." **

Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her arms and wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the bridge… *

Anne blinked in confusion, sure she was hallucinating. A row boat? Gilbert?

There was an impression, and then it was gone, as if sunlight dancing upon the water.

But there was a definite noise… a low buzzing, growing closer… until a man in a boat, another sort of boat, came into view, steering a motor with great speed, hazel eyes trained on her as he neared.

The soft knock on the door introduced a head of brown curls, giving way to roguish hazel eyes above a fine, straight nose and an irresistibly impish grin, followed by a rather splendid chin that rested on the doorframe, before perfect lips asked their teasing question.

"How's the mermaid?"

Anne sighed, coloring automatically. "I'm fine. I look like an idiot, but I'm fine."

"Actually, I'd have said more of a drowned rat," he offered, shoulder now replacing chin to lean laconically, as of those first days she had known him. "But you've had a fright today, so I won't argue."

Pale fingers worried the bedspread she perched upon in her room at the Green Gables Guest House; a pretty patchwork pattern of Island motifs, from apple trees and red roads to lighthouses and sandy shores overlooking the gulf. She swallowed the mortification that fuelled her in the wake of her rescue.

"And how angry is everyone with me? You can tell me, David."

His eyes faded in mirth, and his brows drew together as he stepped into the room and closed the door.

"No one's angry with you, Anne."

"But… the emergency services guy… and you… and your dad came too… and the boat…" she wavered, voice tremulous.

"For starters, trust me, those emergency services guys spend the entire summer fishing people out of the water or plucking them from cliff faces. The stupid kid at the boat hire and his boss let you take out a craft with a damned hole in it and they will be grateful my dad doesn't sue the pants off them. Your mom is just relieved you're OK, as are my dad and I, so don't worry, Anne. Please."

"You're not angry? I dragged you away from your studies and halfway across the Island to – "

"Listen to me, Anne!" he crossed over to the bed, eyes firing as they looked into hers. "I spent an hour of my life afraid you were drowning in some bloody lake in Avonlea. That kind of took the edge off any inconvenience on my part."

He stood above her, noting the suspicious welling in her eyes before expelling a long breath and slowly lowering himself to the edge of the bed.

"You know, this room would fit into my one twice over," he shook his head sorrowfully, attempting anything to lighten the grave, guilty look that had come over her.

That brought that little pointed chin up, he was pleased to note, almost on cue. "I like it! It's – "

"Quaint and charming?" he cocked an amused eyebrow.

"It's atmospheric… and… evocative… and…"

"…claustrophobic," he finished wryly.

"It will be if I lock you in the wardrobe, Mr Blythe!" she huffed.

"I can think of worse things than being locked in your wardrobe at night, Miss Ford," he sniggered softly, risking a darkening glance at her.

She flushed and rolled her eyes, and he noted her nervous fingers drift, adorably, to the quilt again.

"I… I never got to properly say… thank you…" she stuttered, eyes again downcast, not wanting to think of the other long ago words of gratitude that had remained selfishly, stubbornly unsaid…

There was a long pause. "Here this now… I will always come for you." ***

The quotation had the desired effect; the previous week they had spent an overcast afternoon back at Ingleside, going through Rob Blythe's shockingly extensive 1980's film collection and riffing on the remembered dialogue. Anne spluttered now, in surprise and delight, her visage immediately transformed.

"But… how can you be sure?" *** she answered throatily, eyes lighting.

David's mouth seemed to have difficulty with the words. "This is…" he stopped awkwardly, "well… do you think this happens every day?" ***

She would have been disappointed in the omission, but for the flush that found his cheeks, and the quick way his manner had turned from blithe to bashful.

"What is this, David, so you think?" she asked softly.

He stared at his hands. "I don't really know…" he gave a chastened grin. "I think I'm still trying to figure it out."

"So this is not…" Anne gulped, determined to follow through with the thought, "some, um, sort of summer fling, or…?"

His head whipped towards her, instantly horrified. "Is that really what you think?"

Anne recoiled at his flare, but persisted. "I wouldn't blame you… Really, I wouldn't! You are this college grad and med school candidate and I'm just some clueless high school girl who needs to be fished out of lakes and who goes home in a bit over a week!"

He turned to her fully, scowling at her with dark displeasure. "Please tell me Anne that is seriously not how you see yourself!"

"I don't know!" she leapt from the bed, arms hugging her middle, flinging away any pretence of composure. "I can't match it with all your college girls, let alone anyone you might meet at med school, and – obviously you'd find girls like that Gillian to be – "

"Gillian? How did she get into this conversation?"

"Gillian. That gorgeous girl on Facebook who always tags you."

"You mean Gillian my ex-girlfriend who continues to taunt me?"

"You must still care for her, David! Or otherwise you'd – "

"Otherwise I'd unfriend her? And let her think her little games had gotten to me?"

Anne gaped and then closed her mouth, having not quite considered it from that angle. "Oh."

David looked up at her sharply. "Did you think… I was spending time with you… and still running some sort of thing with her?"

Anne colored fiercely.

"Wow. Thanks, Anne."

She tried to formulate an answer for several moments. "Sorry." She turned away towards the window, a little shamed. "It's just that… me… and my mom… well, we're just not used to… well… Blythes, I guess."

She heard his soft snort, but was too busy blinking back her tears.

"OK… he answered quietly. "So that explains some things… but not really why you wouldn't think I was serious about you, Anne."

She couldn't betray herself by letting him see her burning face.

"I think you… you… you've been sort of… holding back with me…"

"Sorry?"

"Well…" she blundered on, miserably, "you've never even tried to… to… sleep with me and – "

"What?"

"I just thought… you mustn't have been as interested in me to… to not even broach the subject or to…"

"Hey! Anne! Back up!" He reached for her hand to have her sit with him on the bed, holding it firmly and giving her a very assessing look, tilting his head to the side. "You think I haven't wanted to sleep with you because… I haven't wanted to sleep with you?" he couldn't help his slow grin.

"I'm glad you think this is funny!"

He surveyed her for a long moment, his voice lowering, and his tone turning gentle. "Anne… you're wonderfully gorgeous. Frighteningly intelligent. Achingly sweet. Of course I want to sleep with you. That isn't the issue."

"It isn't?" her face reddened magnificently at his praise, and the admission.

"No."

"Then… what is?"

He let out a long sigh, his brown thumb tracing a slow pattern over the flesh of her hand. "Anne, you're seventeen."

"Excellent observation, doctor."

His mouth quirked, but his hazel eyes were grave.

"Anne, I'm nearly twenty-one."

"Again, David, these are very obvious points."

"We've had… a very… intense time together – wonderfully intense – but – "

"Now you're sounding like my mother!" she rolled her eyes, and then turned to him sharply. "Or like… your father." Her grey eyes narrowed at the thought.

He followed the thread of her accusation, suddenly scowling and extracting himself, stomping over to the window to stare moodily at the landscape blanketed by the blaze of the setting sun. He leaned a long hand up against the window sill, sighing again, before turning and perching awkwardly upon it, shoving his hands in pockets dejectedly.

"Anne, I could be anywhere these next few years. I'll probably work a year and then be off to whichever med school may have accepted me – if any of them do."

"David – I know that! We've talked about that already…"

"Yes, I know. Anne, this has been a beautiful, enchanted sort of summer. Just magical in every way and… I don't want to ruin the magic by doing something we both might regret."

Her lungs began to pain in an attempted tight breath. "Who says we would?"

"No one… It's just that… it might be easier, for us, to wait… or to just consider whether… well… what if you meet someone, this coming year? Someone locally, in Toronto? Someone you can hang with every day, and go to prom with, and want to… do things with and you get to wishing you hadn't… done them first with me…?"

"David, I think you are seriously overestimating the guys in my acquaintance back home, and as for… what do you mean, 'do them first' with you?"

"I think you know what I mean by that, Anne," his voice was low, his expression suddenly shuttered.

Her eyes flew wide, and there was a horrifying heavy-breathing silence whilst she processed this.

"You don't mean to suggest that you think I'm… I'm…" she spluttered, furiously aghast. "Because that is such an insulting thing to presume! I know plenty of girls back home who are seventeen and not… and not…"

"Anne, of course…" his reply was wary, trying to tread carefully. "It's just that you don't strike me as someone to approach that sort of thing… casually."

"Are you worried I'll turn into some sort of stalker girl, harassing you on all your hot dates with all your college girls?"

"No, Anne!"

"Is this about what happened today? With the boat? You think I'm not mature enough for you?"

"Anne, please don't get upset…"

"Who's upset? You've just called me too young, too immature, too inexperienced and too much like hard work to continue something with whilst you're off playing hot shot med student somewhere across the country!"

"For God's sake, Anne! I knew this was a bad idea to try to broach this now! I'll leave you until you've calmed down."

"Oh, great! I'm hysterical now as well!"

"Yep, way to prove that point!"

"Well, thanks for stopping by, David! I won't keep you!"

"I was so leaving anyway, Anne, but yeah, thanks for the chat. Later, then!"

He gave an imperious shake of the head that really made her want to hit him over it with something – her fingers fairly itched with the trace memory of such an object in her hand; a square or a rectangle, thick and heavy and substantial.

And then he was gone.

She heard her mother and Rob come in an hour or so later, after a walk post-dinner taking in the picturesque surrounds, and feigned sleep when her mom came up to check on her. She'd had long practice at lying still and breathing evenly in bed as a girl, or remaining unobtrusive as she huddled on the stairs, clutching the bannisters with white knuckles as she listened to her parents fight, with hiss and gasp and smothered cry, which was always so much more terrifying than shouting and slamming doors.

This time there wasn't her father's angry excuses or her mother's tearful pleading, but otherwise the script was the same; her mom creeping up to her room, to stare at her with what Anne could only imagine was a forlorn weariness, leaning to stroke her hair and gift a kiss to her forehead, her scent and her sadness lingering in her room long after she had gone.

Though she had someone to return to downstairs now… and the sadness that had once followed her had drifted away like the tide called towards the gulf back at the Glen, the moment her mother had met Rob Blythe. Rob had already farewelled his son for the night, with David's room along the end of the hall to hers, and another one besides, with two downstairs. Anne had listened to their exchange of soft male rumbles with her heart in her throat, able to distinguish David's cadence even at a distance, desperate at the thought her affronted temper and broken pride had chased him away. There was an especially big room on the ground floor with a four-poster bed that her mother had taken one look at and had loved on sight, and Anne saw them both now, her mom and Rob, watching with a fascinated, red-cheeked wonder from her hidden vantage point on the stairs as they lingered by the bedroom door, holding hands and whispering in a manner both lightly joking and incredibly intimate. There seemed to be some debate over where Rob would retire for the evening; he gestured with high drama to his own room and even up the stairs, murmuring something that had her mother in fits of giggles, even as she nodded sagely in a flirtatious manner that had only rebirthed itself since their arrival in the Glen. And then she leaned in and up to kiss Rob with a lingering passion that trapped the breath in Anne's chest, and Rob wrapped strong, Blythe arms around her, and their kiss continued through the door until it closed behind them, and Anne was left staring in wide-eyed amazement.

She sat in her undiscovered hideaway, shaking, unsure if she felt grief for her father or guilt for herself or even gratitude that, of all the many someones who could have happened across her mother in that bar, it had been someone like Rob Blythe.

And of all the many someones who could have encountered her under a tree in the improbably named Rainbow Valley, that it had been David.

And really, that it had always been David, in whatever incarnation.

She blinked back her miserable tears.

And then she swallowed and rose carefully, pulling her hair free of its clasp, puttering along the hall to knock on a door.

Later, he would wonder whether it had all been a fantasy; a fever-dream. David isn't sure if he hears a knock or if it is just wish fulfilment, but he opens the door regardless, to see a white-faced waif with flaming hair and red-rimmed, shadowed grey eyes.

"David… I'm sorry…" Anne gasps, tears spilling over flushing cheeks. "I'm sorry!"

He blinks slowly. God, she's beautiful. The surprise sentiment echoes in his head, reverberating like a stone thrown into a chasm. They are words that shouldn't be in his head, or anywhere near this moment, for she needs comfort, not seduction, but it comes, unbidden, as has she.

"Anne…" his voice, husky and disembodied, hangs suspended in the air. "Anne... honestly. It's OK."

"Can I… come in?" she pleads, though the thought of her asking for admittance is laughable; he is already grasping her hand and pulling her inside the room, closing the door behind them with a nod to privacy rather than passion. And then his eyes bulge to see her slide the little lock across and pull the catch in the door knob as well.

"Anne…" he has already heard the automatic protest in his voice, though his body registers no such resistance the moment her slim arms find themselves around his neck, as they had today when he had fished her out of the lake, scared and soaked and shivering.

Her hot tears dampen his t shirt, and she clings to him now as of then, and his arms snake around her and hold her as close as he dares, wishing for very, very many layers between them and not some floaty dress of hers and t-shirt and cargo shorts for him and altogether still much too much flesh.

"Anne…" he sighs into her hair, maddeningly fragrant, as of lilies again now and not, as before, of the pond they might be found in. He wishes he could offer more except this feeble repeated bleating of her name.

"I just… wanted you to know that," she draws away from him, sniffing, searching his face. "That I'm sorry. I was stupid and embarrassed and I never said sorry enough times… before."

"You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for, Anne!" he reaches a large hand to her cheek, cradling it and her tears. "I'm the one who was stupid! Confusing you and having you think I don't care and… well… everything else. I never wanted to do that… I just wanted to… I guess… protect you, is all… And I know that was unfair too, and condescending and…"

"Protect me?" she asks, her surprise quirking her lips. "From what?"

"From whom," he feels the frown on his face. "From… me."

He might have expected her to back away at that - it would be better all round if she backed away from that - but he is well used to underestimating her, and this particular moment is no exception.

"I'm not… afraid of this, David. Even though you… well, you weren't wrong. About me." She views him steadily, fighting her blush in the low light of the lamp, which washes an otherwordly golden glow over her; and Juliet is the sun. ****

His throat muscles are squeezing his larynx, making the confession a rasp. "And you weren't wrong… about me, either. I… I have been holding back – "

"Why?"

The warm, knowing chuckle escapes him. "Oh, Anne, if you don't know why, then we really shouldn't be having this conversation."

She gives into her blush and her newly-knowing smile.

"The mystic deliria, the madness amorous…" ***** she quotes softly, all eyes and lips and translucent skin.

"I didn't know you had been sneaking Whitman at Ingleside when I wasn't looking, Anne," he can't help his surprised, delighted grin.

"I didn't have to," her own response is too pleased with itself; the self-satisfied smirk he fondly remembers all the way back to a meeting under a tree in Rainbow Valley. "It's downloadable."

He arches a dark brow. "I know." His breath hitches, slightly, as her slim white hands slide down his neck and find his chest, tracing a path with fingers and then nails, her actions as newly audacious as her words. "That Whitman is pretty salacious stuff," he remarks; whether for her or for himself he's not entirely sure.

She smiles almost serenely, and he wonders how much of it she has actually read. All he remembers himself, in that tiny part of his brain not crammed to capacity with MCAT revision, are a few choice words or phrases. Whitman wrote of the Children of Adam, but she is most definitely a daughter of Eve; all glow and glimmer, sparkle and sheen, impish faerie turning temptress before his startled eyes.

"… the utter abandonment…" she completes the quote to the accompaniment of fingers playing upon his t shirt, tracing the taut abdominals beneath. God damn it. How is he meant to remember any codes of chivalry… his Dad's old, outmoded three button rule, ****** when there are no buttons to start with?

"…the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day…" he adds hoarsely, entering the fray, just to test her response. It is a line that has stayed with him, in the lonely hours between saying goodbye to her of an evening and seeing her again the next day. Her reaction to this is almost more than he can handle. Her pink lips part and her eyes flare green, as if someone has flipped a switch to illuminate them from within, and she presses herself against him, mouth reaching up towards his.

"Anne…" he groans, his hands on her forearms, unsure if he is attempting to deter or encourage. This is a dangerous game already and becoming more so. "I don't think we should be doing this…"

Her throat works hard for the words. "You don't want to do this?"

He swallows noisily. "That's not what I said."

"What if…" she gulps, "you weren't holding back?"

He swallows again but can't find an appropriate reply.

"Will you kiss me, David, just once… and not hold back? Just so… I know what I'm missing."

The request is really an extended breath, and he draws his own in, sharply. Oh, no… this is bad… this is a very, very bad idea, right up there with the very best of bad ideas…

But the Blythe control in him, the one kept on a very tight rein with her, and the control that inevitably his father is downstairs abandoning right at this very moment, slackens, as if a soldier to attention relaxing his posture. He draws out his own breath, long and slow and laborious.

"Please," Anne whispers, and he knows he has lost. Is lost. Or rather, that she has won.

"O let me be lost if it must be so!" he breathes the words over and into her mouth.

He presses her into the door; she is pliant already, bending herself to his body and his will. Her hands find his shoulders and grip them with a clawing desperation, but he can only concentrate on plundering her mouth, plunging tongue deeply, drawing himself into her. He knows he can't… won't… shouldn't… give anything but this kiss, and so he will give everything to her in it… and then he feels her breasts pushed against him and then he has thought of her breasts and can think of nothing but her breasts and his hand which shouldn't mustn't can't does indeed realise it can… his broad brown Blythe hand drops from the door, migrating slowly, journeying from her slight shoulder, across collarbone and down to breast, his palm brushing the soft peak with a delicacy that still makes her gasp sharply inside his kiss.

He wrenches his mouth away. "Sorry, Anne!" he bites out.

"Don't stop!" she breathes raggedly.

He looks down to her feverish face, made beautiful to him so many times, but perhaps never quite so much as this time, and there is something so mesmerically familiar about the pulse he can almost see at her throat, and he presses his lips to this instead, to the carotid artery beneath her jaw that quakes at his touch.

There is a sound she makes that is trapped between a moan and a sigh; a catch to her throat that connects immediately to his own pulse points, all eight of them, one in particular…

She leans her body into his hand which cups her, covers her, thumb breaking away to trace its own lazy circle, which in turn grows more insistent, meeting and encouraging her quick breaths. He draws his hand away to travel down and grip her waist, thinking he might try to slow things now, whilst he still has any coherent thought in his head, let alone any will to follow it.

And that's when Anne's hands move from shoulders to neck to ever upwards… into his hair, and her shaky request sounds loudly in the night stillness.

"Do you think… we might be more comfortable… on the bed?"

Her words have the tone of the old Anne who has teased and tempted, and the light lilt of this intoxicating new Anne, whom he didn't quite know lived within her.

"We would be…" he agrees. Should be can be… "But… Anne…"

"You don't think I'd survive any more no holding back?"

"I'm not sure…" he acknowledges wryly, and perhaps not quite steadily. "All I know is that I wouldn't."

Her smile is perhaps the loveliest thing he has ever seen in his life; not a girl's smile, now, but a woman awakening.

He uses the pause to reach up for one of her hands, pulling it from the tangle of his curls to kiss the palm, lacing his fingers through hers and leading her over to the bed. They sit demurely, the air heavy between them, his thoughts running as rampart as his heartbeat, and his thumb brushes another pulse beat, at her wrist, and he feels her heart skittering forward as he lunges to catch it.

One day… one day… he vows to find each and every one of her pulse beats, and treasure them in turn.

"This is not a summer fling…" he growls, low. "I want this to be the beginning of something, Anne… not an ending. I don't want to sleep with you as some sort of goodbye, because you're leaving soon. I don't want to start something with you that I couldn't finish."

She is all eyes at this, gripping his hand tightly.

"And I've got the MCAT in three days…" he sighs. "If I have you in my head… there will be no room for anything else. But after… there is a whole lot of after for us, Anne. I don't want us to rush through the now."

There is a glimmer of brightness to those grey-green eyes, and her smile is tremulous.

"There is… an after for us?"

"Absolutely."

"And… all those college girls?"

He steadies himself, now, so that he might give her an answer that is likewise.

"Well… there's only one future college girl I'm interested in."

She pauses to ponder this, before flinging her arms around him again, but there are no tears now; just a grinning joy in her that he catches and gives back to her in his kiss.

"Are you… absolutely sure… you wouldn't survive any more attempts to not hold back?" her teeth gnaw her bottom lip. "Even just a little?"

His chuckle is throaty and amused, and he catches her palm to kiss it again, but thinks better of it, and lays his palm the length of hers; brown on palest white.

"And palm to palm…" he begins, reverently.

"…is holy palmers' kiss," ******* she finishes, blushing magnificently.

His actual kiss is again at her jaw, and all he can think is all the times in this coming year he won't be just down the hallway in the next room, but far away, wishing for this moment again and again, when he did not hold back and gave her the choice not to.

He does not have buttons, but she does… three buttons, ironically, where the bodice of her dress – another floaty, romantic whisper of cotton and girlhood – would give way to the flawless flesh beneath.

"O trespass sweetly urged…" ******* he hears her invite, breathlessly, though all he knows is the emerald awe of her eyes, and all he feels is his own pulse now, pounding.

There are three buttons, and then there is soft, luminous skin, and then there is nothing but the bed beneath them, and the fact of him only held together by an old promise and fast-fraying chivalry, and the new wonder of the long, long hours till morning.

Chapter Notes

The chapter title is again from Robert Browning's epic poem Pauline. There will be many references from this beautiful work in the future!

*Anne of the Island (Ch 28) of course!

**William Shakespeare Hamlet (Act 4 Sc 7)

***The Princess Bride? I hear you howl. Again? I know, I know. But it is a through-line that I want for these two characters and I wrote all my Westley-Buttercup related riffs ages ago, both here and in The Land of Heart's Desire, when this was also written (it's been sitting around for a long time!) Please bear with me. There will be a mutton-lettuce-tomato sandwich for you at the end of it, I promise x

And if I needed any excuse, the recent passing of William Goldman is excuse enough. Thank you, Sir, for giving us Westley and Buttercup and As You Wish and Rodents of Unusual Size. And kissing.

****William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (Act 2 Sc 2)

*****Walt Whitman, 'From Pent-Up Aching Rivers' in Book IV Children of Adam, Leaves of Grass (1892) which is what Anne and David quote from throughout this scene.

Some readers with memories like elephants may remember this is the poem that Anne started to read back in Ingleside before interrupted by David, and the discovery of a certain letter.

******elizasky's Third Button Rule. See previous chapter. And all over this site!

*******William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (Act 1 Sc 5)