After promising this reunion for so long I am nervous about posting it; such is the nature of a slow build up to an important event! I hope I have done justice to it. Thank you, as ever, to my generous reviewers, and thank you to my faithful readers – with an especial welcome to anyone who has discovered this story recently.

There is certainly a 'Part Three' to this section, but it may bear its own chapter title.

With a little wink back to mavors4986 and any other fans of Marty McFly x

Chapter Twenty

Young Gentleman Callers

Part Two

"I'm really not so sure about this…" Fred grumbled uncharacteristically, worry clouding his pleasant, blunt features. "It doesn't seem quite fair to Gil. As if we're keeping something from him."

Diana tucked her arm into his, smiling at him indulgently.

"Keeping what from him, exactly? The fact I almost burnt the plum puffs?"

Fred emitted a long breath, made frosty on the late afternoon air. They had wandered for a good half hour, traversing the streets, and were now on the edge of Kingsport's great, handsome park, made quiet and still in the winter gloom. Fred could well have thought of a more relaxing and convivial way of spending precious time with Diana after a long week; one which involved the lady in question, a roaring fire and the sofa in the sitting room; plum puffs optional. And now they had vacated the premises in anticipation of the most unlikely combination of Anne… and Tom Caruthers.

"Anne did tell him, you know," Diana reflected. "I knew from her face as soon as she came in. And Fred, keeping secrets is different to needing a little privacy. Gilbert knows she is meeting an old friend. He knows now that it's Tom. It can't be easy for her to be juggling his reappearance with what's happened with Gilbert. The timing after the last few weeks couldn't be worse, really, but that's not anyone's fault, least of all Tom's."

"I can't believe she knew him all this time…" Fred shook his head as if to clear it, directing them along the path which meandered towards the gazebo. "It's like something out of a novel. And not a very good one."

"Oh, Fred!" Diana chided. "Friends separated for years, now reunited… Gil patiently waiting in the wings… it's a wonderful story, really! Their destiny has brought them to each other." Her enthusiastic tone and her delighted smile proclaimed her sincerity.

"I guess you couldn't expect anything ordinary of Gil… or Anne," Fred rolled his eyes. "We must seem pretty boring in comparison."

"Who are you calling boring, Fred Wright?" Diana protested, laughing.

"Well, me, I guess," he admitted, sheepishly. "Boring. Conventional. Stuck-in-the-mud."

"There was nothing conventional about you coming here to Kingsport!" Diana argued loyally. "There was certainly nothing conventional about your speech to my mother. It wasn't stuck-in-the-mud. It was… heroic."

Fred colored and smiled faintly at this, but his sombre mood had somewhat taken hold.

"You always say lovely things, Diana…" his low voice became very low indeed, and he took a great interest in the neat flowerbeds and shrubbery. "But I look at the other girls. Phil has suitors left, right and centre, as does Ruby; Jane is engaged to a millionaire; Pris seems to have a good time whatever the circumstances; Anne has Gilbert and now Tom paying court to her… and you… well, I feel you've been stuck with the door prize."

The bright flash to his cheeks had nothing to do with the cold.

Fred wouldn't look at her, couldn't look at her after such a confession. He expected her soft, reassuring murmurings; even her hand tighter, somewhat consolingly, on his arm. He did not expect her next words.

"Kiss me, Fred Wright!" Diana exclaimed suddenly.

"Diana?" he stopped and turned, eyes wide.

"Kiss me, Fred, and I'll show you how much of a prize I think you are!"

Fred's shock and surprise at this audacious invitation could not be given adequate expression in his rather strangled reply.

"Here? Out in the open?"

"Are you too conventional for that?" Diana challenged with a too-bright smile, her color high.

Fred knew they had passed by an older couple seated on a bench; there was a young family chasing a child around the grass just ahead of them; there were assorted townsfolk milling about; there would be people able to see their scandalous behaviour from the gazebo. But all Fred saw were Diana's lovely bright dark eyes; all he heard were her words about high romance beating about his brain; all he felt were his own passions pushed down, struggling against his constantly creeping feelings of inadequacy.

He leaned in and kissed her gently but firmly. And too briefly. Closed-mouthed and as romantic as his father bidding his mother goodnight.

He read it in her eyes; her smile which couldn't hide her disappointment. She had wanted Gilbert in that moment and he had given her himself. It was a very poor substitution.

"Well, there, then…" she whispered huskily, and drew back. "Do you… think we should make for the gazebo?"

She did not answer but began walking, whilst he remained rooted to the spot, stuck to the path like a limp wet leaf, or thrown there like a toy so old and dated that no crying child would bother to go back to reclaim it. He thought miserably of all the kisses he had longed to give her though all the long years; of the dark, sometimes disturbing passion for her that kept him tossing in his bed at night; of the dreams that saw him recast himself as the taller, better looking swain of any number of histrionic romances, where the hero swept in, knocking types like him aside in his hurry to claim the girl who had waited for him.

He had waited for her. Did he not have the courage to make her glad he did?

Fred took quick strides and grabbed at her arm at a stretch, pulling her back to him awkwardly. He stood eye-to-eye to her and their foreheads bumped. His lips on hers this time didn't even feel like his; they were not respectful and steady but hot and seeking, as if he was trying to find the part of himself in her that made him deserving of such a kiss in the first place. Something wound so tightly within him unravelled and broke as she yielded to him, first in astonishment and then in a growing ardour. She clutched his shoulders as she welcomed his mouth to this fevered trespass; to this white-hot messy inexpert grasping of breath and tongues and aching.

He withdrew, shaking as much as she. He readied himself for a sound slap.

It came, not from the dark haired beauty breathing heavily before him, but from the grey haired matron who gave them such a disgusted look as she passed she may as well have reached up to batter his cheek with her hand herself.

He should say he was sorry to Diana for insulting her in such a way. He should beg her forgiveness. Only her look to him made it difficult to feel the appropriate remorse; when the hot blush to her creamy complexion rivalled the new red rawness from his stubble around her mouth, and her ruby red lips made blood red by the attentions of his curled upwards in something that looked too pleased to be affronted.

"Fred Wright…" Diana finally managed, slowly coming to her senses, linking a slightly unsteady arm again through his. "Please be a little boring like that more often."

Tom felt that his soul could only survive in the country now, but his body betrayed him; it remembered the rush and the tear and the people and the pace as the young city boy he had been; the smells and the sights and the noise and the nervous energy. He felt his heart pump encouragingly in time to the steady pace he set in making his way from the college, through the town and out to the rather monied streets beyond; several women smiled at him for the bouquet he brandished; he could have chosen yellow roses for friendship, he knew, but had reckoned that part was largely pre determined; so now he was as hopeful and expectant as his blush pink blooms.

'Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me…' *

As he neared he slowed, and his fear fluttered deep within his chest. He rounded the corner, checked the name twice, and then turned onto the street where she lived. Not some nameless Girls Home he would never discover; he had written to four Homes for Girls dotted across the mainland over the years, without success. She lived here. Not in some shack where a hard woman had too many twins; not in the bed by the window across the other side from him in a draughty dormitory; not on a farm in a little east gable room; not even, this moment, in another room alongside a series of rooms at the edge of the college; but… here.

Here.

'Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then…' *

He halted at the house; gulped at the gate; paced down the path; directed himself to door.

'Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,

And the woman calling.' *

He paused, his hand raised. She was on the other side of it. She was here. She was…

The door swung open without prelude or preamble. He didn't even have time to knock.

She was standing right before him.

There had been over seven long years lost, but time stood still as if having a final laugh at their expense. He saw the large, shining grey eyes of his imaginings; the red hair darkened to a bright, burnished auburn; a pale face aglow with excited expectation; a generous mouth widened in wonder. All the boys he had been – the bereft orphan; the comrade-in-arms; the awkward adolescent; the shy young man – crowded around him as if to better take in the sight of her. Was she really here? Was she indeed real? Was she really staring as he stared, disbelieving and exultant in the same breath?

He should attempt to say something, for she seemed incapable. He had rehearsed any number of pretty speeches, but the words fled him, as they so often did. All he remembered was their vow.

"I promised I would find you, Anne."

She seemed to disassemble at the sound of his voice; as if she was only held together by their unbroken silence, and that once he had bridged it she could do nothing but crumble before him, her body spent on a sob.

"Oh, Tom!" she reached up blindly, connecting with the strong arms that came around her without hesitation.

Anne held fast to his arm as she directed him inside, raising the grey eyebrows of a small, plump personage whom he could only surmise was the landlady, who seemed to expect him, if not the tears Anne was hastily wiping with her hand.

"Would you like tea in the sitting room, Miss Shirley?"

"Oh, yes, thank you, Mrs McKenzie, that would be wonderful!"

"Will Miss Diana and Mr Wright be back soon?"

"I am sure they will not be too long. May I… may I introduce to you our mutual friend… Mr Tom Caruthers."

Tom's hand was offered automatically, and he was grinning inside at the thought of Anne introducing him to anyone, landlady or otherwise.

"Good afternoon, Mrs McKenzie. Thank you for, ah, allowing Anne to receive me."

The good lady's face broke into a smile.

"It's no bother, I'm sure," she responded in her soft Scottish burr. "And good welcome to you, Mr Caruthers. Have you travelled far today?"

"From PEI, ma'am," he answered, glancing meaningfully at Anne.

"Well, it is sure merry company when you young Islanders get together. My friend and Miss Diana's great aunt, Miss Josephine Barry, did give me fair warning, I must say. Well, Miss Shirley, I will start on the tea, but if you would please keep the sitting room door ajar till Miss Diana returns."

"Yes of course, Mrs McKenzie," Anne's pale face shot through with color, though Tom studiously ignored it, assailed by the memory of another long ago tea service in another parlour, clenching his teeth against the thought, and hoped it was not something tarnishing Anne's recollections at this moment.

Anne directed him through to a very pleasant sitting room, complete with pretty furnishings and an inviting fire. They stood awkwardly before the partly open door, and he finally remembered himself, offering his roses.

"For you, Anne," his voice was huskier than intended, and had dropped an octave in the moments since his greeting to Mrs McKenzie.

Anne stared at the flowers and then up at him, her expression one of wistful delight.

"Oh, Tom, thank you. They're lovely!" she cradled them reverently. "You… you guessed at my favourite color."

He smiled shyly at this. "Pink… seemed right for you, somehow," he managed, his throat dry.

"Despite the hair?" she smiled back, her tone wry.

"Well, your hair looks pretty well nut brown in this light," he joked faithfully, invoking her old standard hope, and the surprised bubble of laughter from her was a music to him.

"Tom Caruthers!" she took a swipe at him with her free arm, making him chuckle. "We'd better sit down. You've grown so tall I'm getting a crick in my neck just looking up at you."

His eyes twinkled at this. "I was always tall you know, Anne."

"Well yes," she parried, "but that's no excuse."

They laughed quietly together as they sat on the sofa, the hopeful stabs at humour a welcome relief from their tension. Anne's eyes roamed over his face.

"Is this real? Is this actually happening?" she asked breathlessly.

"I've…I've been asking myself the same."

"Did you… have a good journey?" she struggled for a question.

"Yes… and no," he admitted, sheepishly. "I, er, always get sick on the ferry."

"Oh, Tom, no! That's awful!"

"It's me and Charlie clutching the outside railing, I guess. Or so I've heard; I've never travelled with him. Ah, that is…Charlie Sloane…" his brow furrowed mid explanation. "But then you know him, don't you? You know all of them."

"Yes…" she nodded, amazed.

'That is fantastic… and so strange…" he gave a puzzled smile.

"I know…" she acknowledged ruefully.

"You and Diana have become good friends? You know that she gave me your letter?"

"Yes…" Anne's eyes cast down. "Diana has been wonderful. She… she knows all of it, Tom. She's the only one who does."

He struggled for composure. "All of it?"

"More or less…" Anne's cheeks pinkened again. "Or as much as I could bear to tell her."

The memory intruded cruelly; having Anne beside him made the old nightmare hideous and vivid, almost alive, like a monster long buried come back to life. He reached for her hand instinctively, and felt her pale palm press into his.

"I saw Martha, once," he ventured, his voice uneven.

"You did?" that brought her depthless grey eyes up to meet his. "How?"

Tom swallowed carefully. "I went back to Hopetown every year, from when I was about fifteen or so, to visit my mother's grave… just the trip in a day, there and back. I… I went to the asylum, once, when I was eighteen. When… when I was sure that…"

"They couldn't touch you," Anne finished quietly.

He swallowed again. "Yes," he agreed shortly. "Once no one had legal claim over me anymore. Because… you probably remember… I had no papers signed. I was never formally adopted."

"Yes," Anne's voice had become harder. "They rather impressed that upon me. Or at least, Mrs Cadbury did."

"Mrs Cadbury has quite a bit to answer for," his tone was equally dark. "And yet…"

"And yet…" Anne faltered. "I can't blame her. She was trying to protect us, in her way."

There was a pause. "Well…" he blew out a breath. "She's not at the asylum anymore. Not Matron or anyone. Just Cook and Martha. Martha was due to be married when I saw her."

"Oh, how lovely!" Anne smiled hugely, and then bit her lip. "That makes… that makes me feel slightly better, to know that she might be happy."

Tom nodded, looking down at her hand in his. "It's why you didn't write. Mrs Cadbury and… all of it. I know that."

"You do?" Anne's voice caught on the question. "Because, Tom, I was never sure if you thought that I just forgot you or…"

He squeezed her hand, offering the reassurance of today and times past. "It's all right, Anne. Martha sent on your letter to me. It was… I can't tell you… what a difference it made. Just to hear from you that once. I know you never forgot about me. I never forgot about you, either."

Her tears watered their joined hands, and when Mrs McKenzie found them, it was to see young Miss Shirley sobbing in this new visitor's arms, his own kind, pale blue eyes betrayingly moist.

"Now Miss Shirley," the older lady clucked, not unsympathetically. "Haven't we had enough of all those tears this week?"

"Sorry, Mrs McKenzie," Anne gulped, somewhat contrite, avoiding the query in his look to her. Anne had been crying all week?

Anne busied herself with the distraction of arranging the tea, composing herself anew with every anecdote about Diana's plum puffs and other kitchen near calamities.

"Marilla is known for her plum puffs, actually…" he offered carefully.

"Mar- Miss Cuthbert?"

"Yes… she's an excellent cook. Most women on the Island are. They're quite noted for it."

"Well, she certainly did a good job with you. You're the picture of health, Tom. Just an I imagined you to be. You've grown up so fine and strong and …" her words faltered, but her eyes continued their admiring assessment. "Your mother would have been so proud of the man you've become."

He was annoyed, but unsurprised, to feel himself blush severely.

"That's… that's really… very generous of you, Anne. I just… well, I hope that…"

"Yes?"

"No. Never mind," he shifted uncomfortably, thinking he might self combust.

"Tom…?" she nudged with gentle encouragement.

"Well, I just thought… I hoped that… not to put words into your mouth or anything but… that you would, well, be proud of me, too."

If he had turned he would have seen her delighted, fond grin.

"I am enormously proud of you, Thomas Caruthers, Esquire. More than I can ever express to you."

His small smile broke through the surface of his embarrassment.

"It goes doubly for you, Anne," he murmured, taking great interest in the steaming liquid she had passed to him.

He glanced back to see her brows raised in question.

"That is…" he struggled anew, "you yourself have turned out… well, tall and stylish and… beautiful."

Anne's face morphed to crimson.

"A teacher, and eventually a college graduate. I'm so proud of you too, Anne."

"If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything... I guess. Thank you, Tom. That means the world to me."

There was a very long pause. Anne drank her tea as he drank his, revived and emboldened by the warm, fragrant liquid. "I can actually see you as a teacher. You were always very good with the younger children, reading to them and instructing."

She laughed gently. "I think you mean I was very good at bossing them! And you!"

"You only bossed me about once," he risked a sly smile to her.

She considered this for a moment. "Ugh! The Headless Horseman!" she groaned. "Not one of my better ideas."

He was laughing warmly now. "No, but it turned into one of my better memories…"

"Oh, Tom, I can still picture you, galloping about the dormitory, unable to see a thing!"

"I couldn't see anything, that's for certain, but I could hear everyone's screams well enough!"

Oh, Tom, don't!" Anne laughed too, her expression horrified. "It was a nightmare! The younger ones couldn't sleep for days!"

"I couldn't sleep for days!" he retorted. "Once Matron and her birch switch finished with us. My backside killed me."

"Tom! Stop it!" Anne was wiping tears of laughter this time, and had to relinquish her tea. "No wonder I could never use the cane on my students! I tell you, the Girl's Home at Summerside would never have allowed that sort of business. No shenanigans there, let me tell you!"

Her giggles faded even as Tom himself grew quiet.

"Summerside?" he queried, his sandy brows knotted together and his look suddenly searching. "The Girls Home they sent you to was in Summerside? On the Island?"

She looked back to him. There was something in his tone that had become a little strangled.

"Yes…" she answered uncertainly.

"You were on the Island, the other side of PEI, all this time?"

His handsome fair face had paled, all remembered merriment subsided, and his light blue eyes were aghast.

"Yes…"

"I don't believe it," he murmured, placing his tea down carefully. He stood up abruptly, hands in pockets, and began pacing the room agitation.

"I searched for you, Anne!" he explained bleakly. "I wrote to nearly half a dozen Girls Homes, all over the mainland. Without any luck. You had just disappeared into thin air. I never thought… I never thought… they would send you to the Island, too."

"Tom!" she gasped, scurrying to explain. "It wasn't deliberately that way. It's just that my mentor and my friend, Katherine, the one whom I wrote to you about… well, she was an acquaintance of Mrs Cadbury's. She worked at the Home as a tutor. It was a better establishment than most, with a good record in educating the girls there. Mrs Cadbury did try to make it up to me, in her way. I would have ended up a serving girl if I'd stayed at Hopetown."

"You could have ended up safe and cared for on a farm, Anne…" he choked out, having stopped before the fire, looking away from her. "You had to fight so hard for all your opportunities. I just got mine handed to me."

"That's not true, Tom!"

"Isn't it? All the chances you've had you've made yourself. Because your best one was stolen from you!"

There were long minutes of shocked silence. Well, he thought despairingly. This is it, then. The one thing he regretted, the one thing that still ate away at him. If she couldn't forgive him for it then there was no future for him that could feature her.

"You think you took my chance from me?" her voice, soft and steady, floated across to him.

"You know I did, Anne," he stated gruffly, staring into the flames, tall body arched in agony.

He heard a rustle of skirts, and then her hand was on his arm.

"Look at me, Tom."

"Anne…" he protested, though he reluctantly turned to face her.

"You listen to me, Tom Caruthers," she scolded in a way that would have made any schoolmarm impressed, and her eyes grew greener under his gaze, sparking with new fire with every word.

"You didn't ever take my chance from me. It was never mine to have or yours to take. It was always meant to belong to you, just like you now belong to Green Gables and Avonlea and the land and livelihood you have safeguarded for the Cuthberts. I like to think I'm capable of many things but I would never have been able to run a farm…" she paused, taking a heavy breath.

"Instead there was a different path for me. It wasn't any better or worse, just different. But I've had my own opportunities too, and I've been fortunate in them, just as you have. I might never have become a teacher without going to the Girls Home. I might never have ended up here at Redmond, or met up with Diana and the others which led me again to you, with my own choices and experiences and chances under my belt. So you had better be mindful of that, and not ever mention it again. I won't hear of this guilt from you ever, Tom! Can you really think that any of that matters anyway after what you did for me?"

She shook before him, a slight pale taper of her own fire; her eyes blazing with a passion that nearly made him stagger backwards.

"Say it after me, Tom," she demanded as of old. "We both took our chances. We both took our chances and used them well."

His eyes burned in their sockets. Damn it, he would not cry in front of her.

"Tom!"

His throat worked painfully, trying to dredge up the words.

"We both took our chances and used them well," he rasped.

"That's better," her tone was still schoolmarmishly firm, though her expression softened to all its remembered loveliness, like the petals of a flower unfolding towards him.

His strong body had carried many burdens in his young life, but this was one he was all too willing to put down. He felt the sudden release of the weight, and his throat throbbed even as his slumped shoulders squared themselves.

He could deny her nothing in that moment, not even his tears.

They held each other as they had as children all those years ago; each a lone buffer seeking to protect the other from the world.

This time it was not Mrs McKenzie but Diana and Fred, flushed and smiling from their walk, who found them complete in the comfort of their compromising embrace.

Fred shook his hand in greeting and clapped him on the back, his expression guarded but his tone warm, attempting to cover his clear surprise over the scene they had just stumbled upon.

"We finally got you to Kingsport," he offered. "Or at least, Anne here did."

"It's lovely to see you, Tom," Diana interjected, looking from Tom to Anne and definitely not risking looking at Fred. "I'm so pleased you and Anne were able to meet again after all this time."

"Thank you, Fred, Diana," Tom was still flummoxed from having had them come across he and Anne in their close encounter, and he hoped the emotion of that moment wasn't quite as evident to them as he still felt it himself.

"Thank you both, for allowing us to meet up here," Anne added, her grey eyes very red rimmed now, and Diana went across the room to her to take her hand reassuringly.

"Are the plum puffs edible?" Diana asked with a smile.

"We presume so!" Anne forced a little laugh. "We haven't quite gotten to them yet!"

"Well, I'll arrange a fresh pot of tea, and we can all decide for ourselves."

They sat down as an amiable if somewhat atypical foursome, chatting about safe topics far removed from the conversation that had proceeded them. Tom was characteristically quiet but not overly so, and Anne was there to gamely add details and diversions in her animated way. Tom found himself looking at her in some wonderment, as if she were an enchanted creature who had just flit past him and stopped to entertain him awhile; a fairy sprite; one false move and she would be darting off with an apologetic smile and a flash of silver wings to match her eyes.

Fred looked on at this looking, frowning imperceptibly to himself.

"How long are you able to be with us, Tom?" Diana asked after a lull in conversation.

"Ah, I leave on Wednesday," he offered, catching Anne's delighted grin.

"You must come and see all of Redmond, Tom!" Anne insisted.

"You are welcome to come to the business college too, to sit in," Fred offered. "We are going through some new bookkeeping methods this week that might interest you."

He broke out into an incredulous smile, shaking his blonde head.

"Traipsing about not one but two colleges. Great Scott! I'll begin to get ideas!"

"Well, I can add my cooking school to that, but I don't think that would interest you quite so much!" Diana joked wryly, leading to a loyal defence from Fred and admiration of her plum puffs all round.

"I've not got much to show you back in Avonlea but a few cows and some farm machinery," Tom lamented.

"I've never seen a cow up close," Anne mused, giving him a careful, encouraging smile.

"You should come to Avonlea!" Diana steepled her hands together, as if struck by some divine inspiration. "You could come for Easter to Orchard Slope with me and stay the entire term break!"

"With you? To Avonlea?" Anne wondered a little fearfully.

"Oh, Anne! Do say you'll come! The weather will have turned by then and spring on the Island is quite lovely! We can call on Jane and Ruby and show you all our old haunts! And all the cows you like!"

Tom cleared his throat. "And G-Green Gables…" he almost stammered out the name. "All at Green Gables would be so very happy to meet you. To have you there… at last."

Anne's eyes swept to his at this, auburn brows raised in silent question, and Tom gave a sad little smile and a firm nod.

"If you… if you are sure, Diana… thank you. That is so generous. I'd be so delighted to come."

That set Diana off for another enthusiastic ten minutes, until it was time for both Fred and Tom to take their leave. Tom and Anne left the courting couple in the sitting room and made their way out to the front door.

"I won't be taking up too much of your time?" Tom queried, a frown of uncertainty marring his strong, handsome features. "To see you tomorrow and then again with everyone here on Sunday?"

"We have lost rather too much time," Anne's look was resolute. "I don't want to take another second of it for granted." She quirked a lovely smile at him. "I've been waiting a long time to be able to say it, but I will see you tomorrow, Tom."

His grin was blinding.

"I shall see you tomorrow, Anne."

The man who was definitely Tom Caruthers shrugged on his coat, took Diana's hand in thanks as she came out to farewell him, held Anne's hand rather a while longer, squeezing it tightly, and walked out with Fred down the path, through the gate and out again to the street.

"That seemed to go very well then, Miss Anne," Diana gave a pleased smile as they watched both men depart.

"Oh, Diana…" Anne sighed, shaking her head. "I'd say pinch me, but if I've dreamt this I don't want to wake up!"

"You goose!" Diana grasped her hand, the one Tom had held, still warm from his touch. "It's about time something good came of this week for you."

"Will it be awkward, do you think? Having both Tom and Gilbert here for afternoon tea on Sunday?" Anne gnawed her bottom lip pensively.

"Oh, I'm counting on it!" Diana responded cheekily. "Anything to stop Jane going on about the wedding!"

Everything was laid out for Sunday afternoon tea as prettily as the very first time Anne had attended this now weekly event at Diana's, though she had never viewed the occasion as a resident, even a temporary one. She had assisted Diana with all manner of preparations, including manifold pastries, and had made her own light, generously proportioned scones; the one talisman of her time at the asylum she had been pleased to carry with her, even though the memory was tinged by the fact the instruction from Cook had only ever come about because of the hurt and hate the Inspector had directed at Martha and she and Tom.

With a smile today, however, she accompanied the scones with a pretty glass dish filled with plum jam.

"Anne! You shouldn't waste your gift on us!" Diana had chided.

"It's not a waste! It will be the perfect way to honour friendship today, old and new." And the perfect way to merge the asylum and Green Gables, Anne contemplated.

Tom had indeed met her yesterday, for a walk around Kingsport, ending in the great park in an unconscious echo of Diana and Fred's travails. They had talked easily and without the heightened emotion of the Friday afternoon; likewise their awkwardness had melted away as the frosty ground thawing under the weak late winter sun. She had met Tom at the door, but was waylaid by his cargo, which he offered up with a searching smile, his pale blue eyes carefully gauging at her reaction.

"From Marilla," he explained, holding out two jars to her, and Anne's eyes widened at this unexpected bounty.

"For me?"

"She wanted for you to have… some of Green Gables with you."

His heart, already endangered, might have fractured at the look she gave him, contemplating this.

"They… they know about it all too, Anne. All the crazy, confused, miserable circumstances of that day… It was one of the first things I told them, that I wanted to make clear… I half hoped that… well, when I first arrived, that I might be permitted to go and bring you back with me."

"Oh, Tom… I would have never expected that you would have been able to…"

"I know," he could give a chagrined smile now, though the old pain of this confession still broke through it. "I realised that soon enough. It didn't stop me hoping, though, and wishing it, all the same."

"I think when I am able to visit and scare off all your cows with my chatter that they will be so relieved it was you whom they met off the train."

"Well, I'll be able to meet you soon, off the train, at any rate. You have to come to visit now; I have witnesses." His blue eyes held her grey ones, twinkling with the tease, and deeper still, she noted the new light of his vow in them.

Gilbert made a glum escort that Sunday as he walked Pris and Phil over from the college to Diana's; the only mercy shown him in this otherwise godforsaken week had been Charlie begging off from the expedition with a bad cold, which Gilbert knew was more likely owing to his reluctance to face himself, Anne or both in light of recent events than any actual physical ailment.

He had been preoccupied with increasingly objectionable fantasies the past two days relating to Anne and her tow-head visitor; mostly involving them both disappearing together into the night never to be seen again; the irony of such imaginings not lost on him. He had slept fitfully, worn from his week of making things right for them anew, only to have everything unravel just at the point when the tapestry of their togetherness seemed woven so tightly he could not imagine anything renting it again. He seemed destined to be almost-but-not-quite with Anne; Tom's visit and all it meant coming at the worst possible time; a cruel intrusion, as if a blundering guest had happened on the party too late, spoiling the gathering irrevocably.

Was Tom the blundering guest now, or was he? Was Gilbert himself now interrupting a song that had begun between Anne and Tom long ago, and he coming in not at the beginning but at the last verse?

This metaphor made him scowl darkly to himself, and Phil noted his look with a sharp, brown-eyed gaze.

"Gilbert," she murmured to him on one side, whilst Pris appeared lost in her own musings on his other, "You won't do yourself any favours if you start the visit looking bad tempered."

"That's because I am bad tempered, Phil," he answered in a low voice. "You've met him now. It's all Pris could talk about for the first ten minutes when I collected you."

"He does seem to be rather a dear," Phil couldn't help the tease. "And I'm still musing upon whom he most reminds me of; Cronus for the farming or Helios for the hair."

"Helios had long, curly hair as I recall," Gilbert rejoined darkly.

"Well, honey, you'd know!" Phil gave a broad, indulgent smile.

When he didn't change his countenance, she tried another tack.

"I think you need to work on rising above this, Gilbert," Phil warned. "I don't know if the jealously quite becomes you."

"I'm not jealous!" he whispered furiously. "I'm put out and annoyed and frustrated and crazy, that's all!"

"Oh, well, that's all right, then."

"Haven't I a right to be? Will no one try to see this from my perspective?"

"I do, Gilbert. I sympathise more than you know. But he is her friend. And yours. It would be like Anne stomping her foot and saying that we couldn't be friends, or becoming unreasonable because you once took Diana to a dance back in Avonlea."

Gilbert frowned, considering.

"It would be easier if I didn't know him," he sighed. "And if he wasn't so damned decent."

"This is your problem, Gilbert. Stand tall... have some respect for yourself. Aren't you a nice, decent person as well? Because Anne certainly believes you are. And I've seen occasional evidence of it, too," she smiled archly.

He shook his head despairingly. "You don't understand what I'm up against, Phil. He spends the entire year whittling away, making toys for all the poor local children for Christmas."

Phil bit back a laugh, her eyes shining merrily. "Oh, goodness!"

"Exactly."

"Toys?" Pris drifted back into the conversation. "Gilbert, are you telling Phil about the toys Tom Caruthers makes for the children in Avonlea? Oh, they're darling, Phil! An Avonlea boy moved to Carmody when I was teaching there, and he brought in the sweetest little toy soldier you ever saw."

Phil was now convulsing with the effort not to cackle hysterically. Gilbert rolled his eyes to the heavens.

"You're right, Gilbert," Phil managed after a moment, her tone drolly amused. "There's no hope for you whatsoever!"

From the opposite end of the attractive, treelined street, Gilbert noted a tall, fair, broad-shouldered man approach them with long, newly-determined strides. Gilbert watched Tom Caruthers with the observant eye of someone who hoped to one day train to use such skills in the art and science of deduction and diagnosis; he was sure to be the equal to his Uncle Dave, at any rate. And what he saw rather made his heart sink. The shy diffidence he had counted on had evaporated, it seemed, on the cool Kingsport air. Or perhaps, rather, in the wake of certain Kingsport company. Here was Tom, as calmly confident and easily obliging as he had ever seen him.

"Gilbert!" Tom's hand and smile were outstretched the moment they met at the gate.

"Wait a minute, don't I know you from somewhere?" Gilbert grinned gamely. "Hello, Tom. Good to see you. And I believe you know these two lovely ladies accompanying me."

"Indeed we have met. Hello Miss Gordon, Miss Grant." He nodded politely, smile unwavering.

"Pris was just commenting on how much she likes your suit, Tom," Gilbert offered blandly, perhaps fortunate to not be quite within whacking distance.

"Er, thank you, Miss Grant. I hope people won't tire of the same one. I tried to travel light."

Priscilla could only beam at Tom, blushing, and throw a menacing, daggered glance at Gilbert, which held appropriate promise of an upbraiding later.

"Shall we?" Phil rescued, indicating the house.

At the door there was some confusion over who should knock, and in the end it was Phil, yet again, who made the decision, shaking her head ruefully.

Unfortunately it was Miss Shirley, prettily flushed with no doubt an array of conflicting emotions, who was presented with the sight of the four of them crowding Diana's doorway.

"Hello, Anne," the two men, baritone and bass, chorused in their eagerness.

Saints preserve us, thought Phil despairingly.

Chapter Notes

As with the last chapter, my title is from Anne of the Island (Ch. 3)

"Miss Hannah gravely told me we could have 'young gentleman callers' two evenings in the week, if they went away at a reasonable hour; and Miss Ada asked me, smiling, please to be sure they didn't sit on her beautiful cushions."

*Thomas Hardy 'The Voice' from Satires of Circumstance (1914).

As previously mentioned when referencing Hardy, I have been careful to not have Tom directly quote the poems, as they are all published after our narrative takes place, and are instead used to assist in directing us to Tom's inner feelings.