Author's Note
Apologies for my delay and thank you to all who have followed and reviewed. I really appreciate it!
Love
MrsVonTrapp x
Chapter Four
I'd nearly forgotten that I've got to grow up again
"How did you sleep, Anne?" Pris enquired as the Patty's Place girls crowded around her the following morning after the impromptu in-house boxing tournament, not to mention the little matter of her non-engagement (the third one, alas, including Charlie Sloane… or should she be also counting Billy Andrews by proxy and Samuel of the Peppermints from Valley Road?!)
"I'm fine thank you, everyone. Really."
"Did you see Gilbert off this morning?" Phil prompted hopefully.
"Yes, both Aunt Jimsie and I saw him off with a small package to eat on the way back to his boarding house."
"Did you have a helpful talk about it all, then?" Stella, impatient, cut straight to the chase.
"Yes, rather," Anne murmured in non-committal fashion. "I asked after his injury, and he answered he was fine."
Pris rolled her eyes. Phil crossed her arms before her, most aggrieved, and Stella might actually have scowled at these clearly inadequate responses. But Anne, in beautiful, determined state of denial, had retreated to haughty Queen Anne-ness and would not be drawn into further comment.
She instead concentrated on boiling the tea and preparing their toast, not wanting to acknowledge the silent conversation of raised eyebrows and shrugged shoulders continuing on her periphery.
"Well, I've a mountain of things to sort out before we leave," Pris sighed later as they finished up, pushing herself slowly from the table, all of them a little forlorn to be counting down their remaining time together to mere days. "And annoyingly, I've just discovered at least three books I need to take back to the library."
"Oh I have a few, too!" Phil lamented.
"Yes, so do I," Anne added, absently, hand propping ivory cheek as she sat, her attention seemingly absorbed by the lace tablecloth.
"Well," Stella ventured, "why don't we all make an outing of it? We'll do some more packing and then stroll to the college, taking a picnic with us. We'll set ourselves up on the lawn with sandwiches and lemonade and say goodbye to Redmond in style."
"That's a marvellous idea!" Pris nodded, and Phil clapped her hands together in her eagerness. "What say you, Miss Anne?"
Anne, suddenly pensive, looked up as a deer caught in the crosshairs.
"Darlings, I really don't know…" she hedged, coloring. A day ago she had anticipated striding all about Kingsport on the arm of her new fiancé, and now she couldn't even bear the thought of creeping back to college to avoid some library fines.
"I leave tomorrow…" Phil began mournfully, "and the rest of you two days after. I'll see you at the wedding, of course, but it won't be the same. Please come, Anne!"
Caught in a reverie, Anne suddenly turned to the beloved friend she would soon be bridesmaid to, unable to deny her – and all of them – these last precious moments together.
"Of course I'll come," she smiled widely, though the action did not reach her tired, shadowed grey eyes.
Anne would have cried conspiracy, if she had all her wits about her; for the girls to take such a circuitous route through the college to find the perfect patch of lawn, only to settle themselves within shouting distance of the male boarding house, really did beggar belief. She may have called them out for this clear show of manipulation, if only she had noticed in time, but had been far too involved in avoiding any curious – or catty – gazes of conjecture from the other stray students they encountered to properly notice, and once settled knew she would only magnify any possible further humiliation by drawing attention to the possibility – and proximity – of it.
That Gilbert would materialise was therefore a sad certainty, and indeed it was merely a matter of time before his recognisable, broad-shouldered form could be seen gallantly helping to haul hefty trunks and all manner of luggage in aid of a succession of friends towards a series of waiting cabs. Anne was furious with herself to have noted him almost immediately, but it took his second trip before Stella saw him out of the corner of her eye, nudging Pris and Phil either side and seconds for the latter to stand and wave enthusiastically, beckoning him over despite Anne's desperate, panicked protests.
Gilbert came towards them at a slow jog, his footballer's physique still evident despite abandoning any play the last year due to his concentration on the Cooper. The startling color streaking the centre of his face hardly, annoyingly, detracted from its handsome features or from his wide, surprised smile.
"Hello, ladies," he greeted warmly.
"Hello yourself, Gilbert. How's the war wound?" Phil smiled her crooked smile up at him.
"I'm bearing up," he decreed solemnly, though his eyes twinkled brightly in contrast to the dark smudges beneath.
"We're glad to hear it."
"Will you take some lemonade, Gil?" Stella offered.
"Well, thanks very much!"
With a darting glance at Anne, he positioned himself carefully, at annoying ease with the world despite the experiences of the previous evening, laughing with the girls and asking thoughtful questions about their upcoming summers. Really, did he have to smile in that charming way or pass a hand through those tantalising curls that now so tormented her? Did those hazel eyes have to flash with feeling every time she opened her mouth?
She now found every endearing quality of his, newly rediscovered, to be as if a personal affront, because it reminded her of her tumultuous swirl of feelings, too raw and painful for her to acknowledge, let alone assess. It was one thing to refuse Roy; it was quite another to be forced to reconsider Gilbert in the merciless glare of this new light.
"I'm glad to see you today, Phil," Gilbert was now saying, having polished off most of the remaining lemonade and the bulk of the unclaimed sandwiches. "If you wait a moment I'd love to give you and Jo a little something as a wedding gift, as well as my very best wishes. I just have it up in my room; it won't take a moment…"
"Ah, Gil! Just you wait!" Phil's merry brown eyes grew wide, and her lovely face took on a wondering expression. "We… that is, the guest list… Well, Mother was so exacting about numbers, and we were so sorry to be unable to invite you. But Anne is clearly no longer going to be accompanied by Roy, and so there is a spare seat free as her escort at the reception!"
"Oh, yes, you're right!" Pris smiled broadly.
"It's positively Providential, as Anne would say," Stella grinned encouragingly in her direction.
Anne, incredulous, speechless and in growing mortification, could only answer with stupefied silence. She knew the real reason Gilbert hadn't been invited had nothing to do with Mrs Gordon and everything to do with sparing her any awkwardness in meeting Gilbert in such circumstances with Roy at her side. Gilbert must have realised this too, for he was no fool, and yet as his eyes swung back to her, attempting to decipher her reaction, his demeanour softened even as she held herself so stiffly.
"That is so very kind of you, Phil, and I would be delighted, but I wouldn't presume to know Anne's own intentions regarding a new escort, or even any escort at all…" he demurred.
Oh, how well he still knew her! She hadn't gotten as far as to think of the wedding, having so newly abandoned any such plans for her own; in all likelihood she would have boldly appeared in Bolingbroke under her own auspices and propriety be damned.
"Oh, Gil, you must come!" Phil pleaded. "I would love you there of course and Jo will be so happy and thrilled!"
This of course irrevocably sealed the deal, and they both knew it, but he still asked the question of her with his eyes, and her helpless small smile and shrug of slight shoulders indicated her exasperated acceptance of yet another series of machinations clearly beyond her control.
"Well then, how lovely it can be settled this way," Anne replied as graciously as she could. "And I'm sure Gilbert may borrow some powder from you, Phil, if he still finds himself sporting such an arresting look come your wedding," she added with wry, brave tease.
Gilbert grinned with maddening attractiveness to the accompanying laughter bubbling around him, but his smile to her was of grateful relief, too, and something else intangible and so elusive these past years, and yet so indispensable to her once that it pained her to now note it again… that particular quality to his gaze… the admiration of her she had thought long fled.
"Gilbert John Blythe!" his mother admonished not five seconds into their journey home from Bright River. "Is this what they call a college education?"
"Now, Clemmie," John Blythe warned mildly, suppressing a smirk and clicking the reins. "He's only this moment arrived home. Let the boy catch his breath, and I'm sure he'll explain."
"I look forward to it," Mrs Clementine Blythe huffed away her exasperation, which soon gave way to relief that her precious son was not, despite dire appearances, unduly wounded, mortally or otherwise.
"Ma…" Gilbert put an arm around her, drawing her close, and imploring with hazel eyes brighter than ever above the brilliant, awful contrast of a great galloping multicolored bruise, which in the intervening days had stretched down along nose and fanned outwards under one eye. "I'm alright. More than alright. There was a slight… misunderstanding… with another fellow that I'd never met before in my life. It was apologised for and forgotten about. It looks far worse than it is, believe me."
"What a shameful way to behave! And you the Cooper Prize recipient!"
"To be fair, I don't think he was informed of that at the time," Gilbert answered mildly, biting down on the chuckle that instead escaped from his father's lips.
"Well, glad to have you home in one piece, son," John looked over to his progeny and pride of his life, thinking that for all the lad looked like a sideshow exhibit, there was a light and lightness to him that clearly hadn't been evident during his last sad, sullen visit home.
"Glad to be back, Dad," Gilbert grinned, holding fast to his smile.
Down the beloved red roads of home, over the lush rolling hills bathed in a golden sunset and towards Avonlea, Gilbert felt secure in his studies and for the first time, able to fully contemplate the future. There awaited him a summer like no other, of endless promise and possibilities drifting down to him on the perfumed air. He leant back in the buggy and took a long, deep breath, drinking it in.
The beloved residents of Green Gables had enjoyed a merry evening reunion with Anne upon her triumphant return, agog at descriptions of the stately splendors of Convocation and a highly edited version of the dance that had followed it. There had been a lively summation of the academic achievements of the Patty's Place girls and their proffered good wishes to all, a breathless update on Phil Gordon's bridal extravaganza to come, more general lamentation for the fallen Snow Queen, and as a final aside, almost lost in the quick round of news, the announcement that Anne had politely refused the marriage offer of one Royal Gardner.
Amassed around the supper table, there fell a shocked silence.
"You mean, you're not marrying the rich fellow?" Davy now puzzled, seeking clarification the older women, patently bewildered, seemed unable to offer themselves. "Then who will you marry now?"
"Davy, it's not a matter of substituting one man for another," Anne explained with calm resolve, though she wrung her hands under the table. "I simply refused Roy and we have gone our separate ways. I certainly don't see why I must have a husband at all, frankly. A girl can certainly make her own way these days."
Dora brightened at such words, feeling that any future marriageable prospects the Avonlea schoolhouse had tossed her way, even at her own still-tender years, were barely up to scratch. Rachel's dubious expression seemed to imply she was swallowing invisible lemons, possibly whole, and Marilla's confused visage tried to seek answers in Anne's pink-tinged cheeks and grave grey eyes.
"And you're at peace with your decision, Anne?" Marilla worried.
"Absolutely, Marilla. I wish Roy the very best but unfortunately, in the end, he was not the one for me."
"That makes a very long list of those who were evidently not for you, Anne," Rachel felt leave to grumble. "This is the havoc a college education wreaks, mark my words."
"If Anne has decided this is her course then we will respect her decision," Marilla announced to the room, though her warning flash of blue eyes was to her friend.
"What are your plans now, Anne?" Dora offered a veritable lifeline.
"It's lovely of you to ask, darling. I've actually been offered a very important position, at the high school in Summerside. As principal. I've the contract with me as we speak, to look over."
There were surprised yet genuine congratulations readily on offer.
"You'd go as far as Summerside, love?" Marilla asked, conveniently forgetting she could well have lost her girl to the wilds of Kingsport not five minutes before.
"It is still on the Island, at least…" Anne explained falteringly, "though of course it would be a wrench to leave Avonlea again…"
What she didn't explain was how uneasy a process it was to be considering Summerside at all, when she had felt sure her future lay across the St Lawrence in the beautiful, genteel city that had already hosted her for four years. She had applied as much out of professional interest as anything, curious to see how far her new qualifications might take her; pleased and flattered to be offered such a notable position in such a prestigious school. But now her vanity was having the last laugh, for she had upended herself and her life and now hardly knew which way was north anymore, let alone how she might stay the course for all the puzzling, uncertain years ahead. She had known with a sudden, blinding certainty that Roy did not belong in her life, but what, now, was her life meant to look like?
And who might belong in it instead?
That question she would rather not contemplate, but she was unable to stop the complex play of emotions flicker like shadows across her face. Marilla saw and noted them before Anne attempted to school her features, filing away her concerns for later.
"Summerside would be one thing, Anne, but this Bolingbroke wedding is something else," Rachel noted, changing tack with a look of stern seriousness. "After regaling us with how fine and mighty this society event will be, you certainly can't go galavanting around Nova Scotia unaccompanied, that's what."
"It's no matter, really," Anne offered, affecting an airy unconcern. "I've been to plenty of weddings by myself; Diana's; I have Jane's upcoming; and I'll have Alice Penhallow's at the end of the summer. I'm hardly going to cause a scandal, Rachel."
Rachel Lynde's pursed lips expressed her sentiments quite clearly that, after sensationally refusing this Kingsport swain, she was causing more than enough scandal already.
"I'm in the bridal party… I'll hardly be alone for a moment…" she continued to protest.
For several beats the two older women regarded her, till she could no longer stand it and threw down her unlikely trump card.
"Gilbert will be at the wedding too, now, so you needn't worry."
Insultingly, she watched the visages of both women transform at this great and glorious new information.
"Gilbert Blythe will be at this Philippa's wedding?" Rachel queried with raised brows, as if every second man now sported his moniker, and she wanted to ascertain they were talking about the right one.
"Well, that does make me feel better about things," Marilla almost smiled in relief.
Anne could well have resented this reaction, if she didn't suddenly feel that some ancient wrong had been righted in Gilbert having the opportunity to celebrate the happiness of the friends who had become his own as well. Not for the first time had she lingered on the incalculable loss of his friendship, but now saw to her shame how the other girls of Patty's Place had been deprived of it too, and he of theirs, all in defense of and deference to her. Of how she had considered herself so adult in her relationship with Roy, all the while her whims indulged as that of a child.
Her cheeks heated suspiciously at this new insight, and fairly enflamed at Davy's own conjecture.
"Well, if Gilbert's free, you might as well marry him. At least he'd be good for some football practice," the boy with the blonde mop looked about the table, appropriately pleased with his problem solving.
Little Avonlea was obviously not big enough for the both of them, Anne despaired by the fourth day of her summer sojourn.
Around every corner and emerging as if from every orifice, Gilbert was there. He was at the store when she offered to collect an order for Marilla. He was outside the post office when she thought to send a quick note to her most beloved former teacher Miss Stacey, asking for advice regarding Summerside. He hailed her as he was passing the schoolhouse in his buggy when she had stopped there on a whimsical thought to indulge her evident nostalgia. And horror of horrors, he was visiting with Diana and Fred and their nearly-due offspring when she excitedly made her way up to Lone Willow Farm.
"Anne Shirley, don't you even think to come back later!" Diana Wright warned, beautiful as ever but fearsome in the way only women at the very end of an endless pregnancy have wont or leave to be.
Anne, appearing at the open back door and flustered to see both Diana and Fred as well as Gilbert relaxed with tea around the kitchen table, had hoped to duck away again before being noticed, but the rattle of her tin of pastries gave her away long before she made the attempt.
Embracing her and kissing her soundly, Diana drew her bosom friend into the cosy scene, where she accepted Fred's own greeting and the wide, amused smile of their other guest.
"Anne, if you have plum puffs in here I'm going to name our child after you!" Diana cradled the offered tin as lovingly as any babe, and indeed seemed to almost coo over its contents. "Have a seat, darling, and I'll fetch another cup. Gilbert was just about to tell us an unconvincing story about how he came to be sporting that rather arresting bruise."
"He was, was he?" Anne couldn't resist a smirk, grey eyes dancing in his direction as she seated herself carefully beside him. "I shall likewise be very interested in hearing it!"
Gilbert's hazel eyes flashed and he gave her a covert look of warning, silently begging her to participate in his subterfuge, or at the very least not openly hinder it.
Diana, evidently feeling every pregnancy pound, lumbered around the table with more determination than grace, serving Anne and arranging some Green Gables delicacies on a plate before seating herself with relief, her husband lovingly rubbing the small of her back.
"Well, Gil, you have the floor," Fred encouraged with a knowing smile.
"Well…" Gilbert found himself searching for the right words, "it was really more a case of mistaken identity…"
"Really?" Diana leaned forward in eagerness. "And whom were you mistaken for?"
"Ah…" Gilbert fumbled, beginning to redden. "There was… ah… a gentleman who thought that… well… I had been spending time with his fiancée…"
"Gilbert! And had you?" Diana was agog, and even Fred inclined his head, listening carefully.
"He certainly was," Anne clarified calmly, hiding her smile behind the rim of her cup.
"Gilbert! I don't believe this of you!" Diana's signature rosy blush was brightening.
"Now Di, it wasn't like that at all!" Gilbert protested, throwing Anne an exasperated look. "Christine was the sister of my friend Ronald. He asked me to look after her in Kingsport because she was lonely and wouldn't know anyone. She was already engaged when I met her – "
"Christine?" Diana puzzled, frowning. "Where have I heard that name before?"
Anne, forgetting how she had moaned about Christine Stuart in her letters to her friend, flushed guiltily and tried to avoid Gilbert's searching gaze.
"No matter, Di," Anne weighed in, more as a means to now save herself, "the point is, this fiancé of that woman Christine actually accosted Gilbert and punched him fair in the nose!"
"Oh, Gil!" Diana was appropriately horrified. "Anne, you were there?"
"It happened at Patty's Place. We all witnessed it."
This information even raised Fred's placid eyebrows.
"So this reprehensible, ridiculous man…" Anne warmed to her tale, "accused Gilbert of stealing his fiancée, which of course was a fabrication, although the stupid girl had been clinging to Gil's arm the last two years whilst he escorted her around out of the goodness of his heart, apparently, and he was soon upbraided by us all and sent packing. Phil and Aunt Jimsie were rather marvellous."
"As were you, Anne," Gilbert added quietly, having turned his head to give her his full attention.
This stopped her in her tracks, and her color rose.
"Well, you made an excellent speech, it has to be said," she acknowledged, to his soft smile.
"What happened to the woman?" Diana bleated.
"What woman?" Anne and Gilbert answered in unison, whipping their heads back to their hostess.
"Christine!"
"Oh. Well," Gilbert paused, tasting the delicious irony he was about to share. "I received a contrite, apologetic little note from Christine, the day before we left Kingsport. It appears that she, er, reviewed the situation and reaccepted Dawson's offer. She's engaged to him – again - now."
He gave Anne an eye roll for good measure at this news, making her smile widely even as she shook her head in sympathy.
"Gracious!" Diana marvelled, feeling she had definitely received her money's worth.
There were several congenial moments until Diana paused mid mouthful, in sudden contemplation.
"Gil, I just don't understand how it came to pass that you were with Anne, or at least at Patty's Place with them all, when this assault by this terrible man occurred. You said now, just before Anne arrived, that it happened the night after Convocation, and yet that was the night Anne told me, when she visited the other day, she was busy refusing Royal Gardner."
Anne tried not to let her mouth drop unbecomingly, not daring to turn so much as a hair towards Gilbert. It was mightily inconvenient that the erstwhile Mrs Fred Wright's deductive skills had sharpened, not lessened, in the transition from wife to almost-mother.
"Well, Di, you see… I had already met with Roy and was by then back at Patty's Place. And Gil came around…"
"… on an urgent errand," Gilbert offered.
"Yes," Anne nodded. "An important errand, as it turned out," she added, feeling his eyes upon her with a sudden heat that swept a blush from crown to toes.
"Just about the most important errand I've ever undertaken," he answered in a low voice, for her ears alone.
Anne kept her eyes fixed upon Diana, though they felt they were smoking in their sockets.
"Un…unfortunately, that dratted man Dawson was there," Anne continued their careful narrative, voice a little unsteady.
"And so, believing falsely I was with Christine, he greeted me in less than gentlemanly fashion," Gilbert concluded, and then to further divert Diana, added, "and Mother definitely had something to say about it when they met me at the station the other day!"
"Oh I wish I had been around to hear it!" Diana laughed, Fred joined her, and the moment of danger passed.
It was inevitable, later, that Anne depart Lone Willow with Gilbert, lest she seem entirely churlish, when he had been so friendly and solicitous during their visit and all the times they had encountered one another in the proceeding days. Something of their old comradeship had returned * since that dread night of her refusal of Roy. Now she and Gilbert walked quietly together towards Green Gables as they had done on countless occasions, with the sun high in a cloudless sky and the beat of a thousand insects' wings echoing the unsteady beat of her heart.
"I think we got away with it, back there," Gilbert grinned after a time, indicating with his dark head the cosy little farmhouse from whence they had come.
"By the skin of our teeth, I should think!" Anne smiled wryly.
He chuckled warmly, hands in pockets, upturning his face to the sun. His rolled up shirt sleeves betrayed already strong, tanned forearms, and his face, despite his bruising, now wore the beginnings of the ruddy color remembered of many summers, to deepen by degrees as the weeks passed, as in the days when he would stroll around to Green Gables to elicit an outdoor audience with her. Anne thought of those times with a sudden pang, and Gilbert looked down to see the perturbed look fleetingly cross her face.
"Anne?" he queried. "Something troubling you?"
"No…" she denied a mite too quickly, startled by his insight. "Why do you ask?"
He leaned in close to her. "You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk." ** He raised one knowing dark brow at her.
She gave a chagrined smile. ''I'm only remembering us walking together like this, in times gone, and wondering…"
"Wondering…?"
She swallowed carefully.
"When… the last time was," she admitted.
Gilbert was silent for long moments. "Well, probably the summer our very first year at Redmond," he considered carefully, his voice lowering. At the very least, it was before – " he cut himself off, thinking better of his next thought.
"Before…?" now Anne was the one to question, before the answer came to her as a pained stab, followed by the dull ache of realisation. "Yes, Before," she said flatly.
Before, of course, was before Gilbert's proposal; before their slow drift to estrangement; before he had come to be an almost-stranger; before she had, incomprehensibly, nearly promised herself to another.
But there was also another Before; before, when she was sure of herself and her path, and not anchorless and agonised, as now.
He seemed to read something of her struggle in her eyes, as his own darkened to contemplate the hurt still harboured in her own.
"You know, Anne, in most stories there is also an After," he smiled reassuringly, "even if the storybooks don't always tell of it."
"After?" she replied forlornly.
"Yes! After we finish our lovely, unexpected stroll today. After this God-awful bruise fades. After you charm all of Bolingbroke at Phil and Jo's wedding. There. You try it."
She couldn't muzzle a smile, Gil able to cheer her as he always had.
"After Di and Fred's baby is born…" she began. "After I survive Phil and Jo's wedding…"she gave a roll of her eyes. After she decided what to do about the Summerside position, she thought with a sigh. And then, looking back at the man who had been her mainstay, the comrade-in-arms who had been her curly-haired constant…
"After you come now for an overdue visit to Green Gables…" she announced on a breath.
Gilbert looked down at her, pausing to ensure he'd heard her properly. Green Gables and his visits there had become a sad and mournful memory, and his growing closeness with that clan yet another casualty of his ill-judged proposal. He had almost drawn a line underneath those halcyon days, as he had his visits to the young ladies of Patty's Place, burying himself in any other distraction available, mostly in his developing obsession with his studies.
Now… now… he felt that these second chances were great forgotten gifts Fate was now foisting upon him; Anne's refusal of Roy; the gradual steps towards their reaffirmed friendship; and most startling and sensational of all, the shifting sands in their relationship, charted in her every loaded look and smile and laugh, cherished in every new leading aside, and remembered in those pale fingers in his hair.
Anne, who had not wanted any part of him these two years, was now reassembling their story together piece by piece. He had finally learned to let her lead the writing of it.
His slow-dawning smile, here, now, was a thing of such beauty she herself reddened as the sunrise to see it.
"And what story shall we tell that faithful family of yours about my multicolored face, Miss Shirley?"
She shrugged and gave him a saucy look.
"Begin at the beginning, *** Mr Blythe," she grinned, the motion lighting the glorious green of her eyes.
Oh we are, Anne… he whispered to himself, hopeful heart thudding as he fell back into step beside her. Believe me, we are.
Chapter Notes
The chapter title comes courtesy of Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Chapter 4 'The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill'.
*Anne of the Island Chapter 41 'Love Takes Up the Glass of Time'.
**Alice's Adventures in Wonderland via the Duchess in Chapter 9 'The Mock Turtle's Story'.
***Begin at the beginning… and go on till you come to the end: then stop. Wisdom from the King of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Chapter 12 'Alice's Evidence'.
And some correspondence…
Thank you, sincerely, to all my reviewers and those who have been so kind as to pop into my other stories to give me a much-needed nudge! I promise I haven't forgotten you – and for those I can't reply to directly…
Astrakelly: So lovely to see you again! Thank you and hope you continue to enjoy!
Guest of Oct 22: My sentiments exactly regarding Dawson having the audacity to leave Christine with "such a hot, charming guy like Gilbert." Obviously that arrangement was sight unseen! Thank you for your lovely comment and your support of Phil and Jimsie's speeches! I wondered whether Jimsie would be quite so eloquent and self-righteous but then remembered my mandate for silliness and went for it!
Guest of Oct 23: Thank you for your lovely words of support! They are cherished! I love Gil in all incarnations but thank you for loving this version of him - he has always been "love personified" for me! As you can see I have dispatched both Dawson and Christine from the narrative – for now! I enjoyed writing him and yes, I didn't want Christine to be quite the villain here she becomes later either – Gilbert speaks so highly of her during his canon proposal. But at the same time the spectre of Christine hangs over canon at the end of AotI (and necessarily had to hang so much over my other canon-compliant story) that I was very happy to wave them off here! However, Anne witnessing a proposal to Gilbert is a glorious idea and something I hope to come back to – in a roundabout way!