Dear Readers

There were a few glitches on the site the last time I posted which have happily been rectified, but it meant that for the benefit of readers I posted Ch 2 twice, both in the Ch 2 upload and at the start of Ch 3. If you somehow missed reading Ch 3 'Paradise Lost' please do so first!

Thank you to everyone who has so far mused over the real story behind Anne and Gilbert's parting. I have loved your theories! This was one of the first chapters I wrote and I am eager to share it and to hear your thoughts.

With love

MrsVonTrapp x

Chapter Four

Heart of Darkness

Kingsport

July 1887

Anne dressed as carefully as possible, taking additional time with her hair and preparations. She chose a smart, spring green ensemble with a deep pocket in her skirt, and it was here, after a moment's reflection, that she placed the shining, brilliant diamond, fastening it securely, unable to wear it on her finger since the moment she had learned Gilbert was ill.

The outfit was her own, but the dressmaker had taken her measurements within days of their engagement, and Mrs Gardner and Roy had overseen a parade of expensive fabrics, embellishments and accessories, the former also trying to advise her on her hair and even scent. That had been the first, uneasy inkling they wished to remodel her, and the gentle qualms she began to feel became stronger and stubborner as the days progressed. There had been the too-short engagement leading to the too-soon wedding, despite her weak objections. Then, the absence of any of her friends as matrons of honour (Diana discounted as a new mother, glowing and radiant the one time Anne had visited her and baby Fred, and Phil apparently a too-recent bride for their liking), instead depositing Roy's sisters Dorothy and Aline in their place. The grand reception was booked before she even knew its location, let alone seen and approved it, and her original dream of a smaller, more intimate ceremony as the first bride of Green Gables was openly derided as an impractical, even idiotic notion, given the growing guest list on the groom's side and their need to travel days to a tiny rural hamlet, rather than up the road to Kingsport's own grand cathedral.

Anne had fled home to Avonlea in relief.

Gilbert's illness and near-death had crystalized her own growing awareness, even before she'd left Kingsport; that Roy was not the one for her. The realization that Gilbert was, after her long years of self-denial, came not only as a revelation but as a beautiful, humbling truth.

Now it was only for Roy to learn it too, and to understand.

This time, she found the Gardner mansion an imposing edifice akin to Jane Eyre's first glimpse of Thornfield Hall; gloomy, even in the summer sunshine, and clearly unwelcoming. The butler admitted her with a cursory politeness and she was led straight to the sitting room, where Mrs Gardner was at her writing desk and her son standing ramrod straight, facing the fireplace.

He turned slowly, his look to see her not the welcoming one she had anticipated, but something speculative and even troubled, though he strode across to give her a soft, passionless peck on the cheek.

"Anne."

"Hello, Roy."

"We thought to expect you last Tuesday."

"I'm sorry for my delay."

"You missed several lunches with important friends of ours, Anne," Mrs Gardner all but chastised from her perch. "They were most disappointed."

Get used to disappointment… * Anne thought waspishly, before remembering herself.

"I regret causing anyone disappointment, Mrs Gardner," she instead replied cooly, crossing over to obediently kiss the woman's cheek in greeting.

"Well, you're here now," Roy took her hand, at last showing a glimpse of that velvety smile. "And we still have much to plan."

"Yes… I'd like to speak with you, Roy," Anne steeled herself, flicking a glance at his mother and lowering her voice. "May we do so in private?"

"A walk sort of private, or my office sort of private?"

"Your office, thank you."

Roy's office was her preferred room in the house; unstuffy and elegant, with a sunny aspect overlooking the landscaped back garden and several comfortable chairs facing a generous antique desk. Worryingly, Roy took the chair behind his desk rather than join her in front of it, as if she was business he was conducting, now that his studies were complete and he was marshalling all his energies into maintaining all the Gardner family enterprises.

"So, Anne, you have the floor." He often liked to use her old debating parlance.

Anne rung her gloved hands, sitting to face him, landing with an unladylike thump in the chair. Her worry beaded her brow, and she wished he would offer her some water.

"Roy, I don't know how to say this… and I'm so very sorry… but I must end my engagement to you."

She hadn't meant to say it so baldly, as if his offer of a life together and the previous two years hadn't counted at all. Her grave grey eyes raised to search his, finding him stilled… but not shocked.

"Is that so?" he finally answered quietly.

"I'm desperately sorry, Roy," she continued miserably. "But I can't be false to you, and I've examined my feelings closely of late and I just can't continue on. I thank you for the years of our courtship, and I thank you for the honour of asking for my hand, but I… I… I cannot marry you."

He stared at her with an unnerving intensity, his brown eyes darkening so they almost looked onyx.

"Usually when one cannot marry a person, it is customary to offer a refusal in the first instance," he answered with unnatural calm.

She sighed, shrugging her shoulders helplessly.

"It's been a growing realization, Roy. I'm sorry I could not understand myself sooner."

"You mean, could not understand your feelings until you went back to Avonlea, and had everyone's opinion in your ear."

Her mouth dropped open. "Roy, I assure you, that is absolutely not the case! This has been completely my decision, and my family have been nothing but supportive of our engagement!"

He leaned forward, his lips a thin line.

"And do they support you now?"

"Yes… yes of course…" she faltered, surprised by his clipped tone. "That is nothing against yourself… they only wish for my happiness."

"Your happiness, at the expense of everyone else's?"

"No… that's not it at all…" he was willfully twisting her words, and she tried to hold onto the thread of her explanation.

"Because it occurs to me, Anne, that you were perfectly content to marry me, up until you went to the Island three weeks ago. And so logic follows that something happened whilst you were there to alter these… feelings… of which you speak."

He announced the word feelings as something almost distasteful; he who had sprouted poetry and romantic sentiments to her for two years. She looked to him in confusion, unable to reconcile this Roy with the one who had so gallantly courted her.

"Roy…" she breathed.

"Would you like to tell me what happened on the Island, Anne, or should I tell you?"

"What?" she yelped. "Whatever do you mean?"

"As you wish," he stood, and reached for a thin file on a low shelf. She noticed it was lying on top, as if waiting at the ready.

He sat back down and drummed his long, elegant fingers against the desk, the file remaining closed.

"Tell me, how does Mr Blythe?"

Anne was so shocked she audibly gasped. She had not breathed a word about Gilbert or his illness to anyone. No one in Kingsport, even Phil and Jo hardly back from their honeymoon, would even know he had been so sick.

"I… I don't understand you, Roy…"

"Anne, I'm afraid, I think you do."

"What of Gilbert Blythe?" she blustered, completely at sea. "He is in Avonlea, too – is that what this is about? You didn't trust me to return home with him there?"

His dark eyes narrowed, and the effect was unsettling.

"You've talked about not being false with me, Anne… you've talked about truth, and now you talk about trust. I would say that you are not as familiar with the definitions of those words as you believe you are. Or is it usual practice to live night and day in another man's home tending him whilst engaged to marry another?"

Her eyes widened to saucers.

"How do you know that?" she whispered, completely unnerved.

"Well now, that is the question, Anne. Certainly not by your admission, it would seem."

At this juncture he flipped open the file, which contained several typewritten pages as if a report, and most startling, on some additional pages were sketches of worryingly familiar landmarks… one of them, even from upside down, bore a distinct resemblance to the exterior of Blythe Farm.

Anne felt her heart squeeze painfully.

"I have a man," continued Roy. "He has done work for my family for years. We have many dealings with businessmen out of town, and it is good to know if they are of sound character, and their businesses solvent, and so before any deals are struck we send him out on our behalf, in order to make certain… enquiries."

"You mean an investigator…" Anne quailed, and then, joining the dots, "you had me followed?"

Roy chuckled amusedly at her horrified reaction.

"I forget you are still new to the workings of families like ours, Anne. When you agreed to my proposal you became part of this family. And by extension part of me. I have a name and reputation in this community, and it is also my responsibility to safeguard the name and reputations of my mother and sisters. And my future wife. I merely had you accompanied from here to Avonlea without your knowledge. The rest was, evidently, completely your doing."

"Roy, I don't know how you can sit there so calmly and justify this! You had me followed to my hometown, watched night and day by some stranger and then reported on as if some criminal! How do you see that as an inducement to me marrying you?"

He smashed his palm down on the desk in a lightning strike of anger, and she jumped at it.

"And how does playing nursemaid to Gilbert Blythe in full view of the entire village and lying about it whilst engaged to me an inducement for me trusting you, ever again?"

"Roy – nothing happened between Gilbert and myself! He nearly died! I went as an old friend to help tend him and assist his parents, who were there every second, and the live-in nurse!"

"Oh, yes – we know all about the nurse! She was most informative."

Anne, too shocked to speak, covered her open mouth with a gloved hand.

"She told my man – for a handsome fee, naturally - everything we wished to know, including that you didn't really care to wear my ring at the time – or now, as I see," he offered scathingly.

"No indeed, for with my changed feelings I felt a fraud to wear it, Roy!" Anne wrenched off her gloves as proof, and then reached into her pocket, extracting the ring and placing it with shaking fingers on the desk. "If you don't trust me and feel I have so besmirched your family's good name, then I feel you'll be pleased to accept my return of your beautiful token and relieved I have asked to be released from our engagement. Clearly you can see that you don't belong in my life…* and I certainly don't belong in yours. I hope you will accept my apology in time, and to your mother, and to Dorothy, I send only my very best wishes. As for Aline, I really don't think she will care one way or the other. I'm very sorry things have ended in this way, Roy. Goodbye!"

Anne, feeling vindicated enough to sweep out with what little dignity she still had remaining, stood quickly and made for the door.

"You really think things will end in this way, Anne?" Roy's silken voice was threaded with steel.

She had reached the door and turned the knob, to find, to her astonishment, it was locked.

"Open this door at once, Roy!" she gasped, increasingly unnerved by his behaviour.

"You expect me to let you walk out of my life with barely five weeks until our wedding?" he rounded the desk, looming large in front of her.

"How could you want to go through with any of it now, Roy? Don't be mad!"

It was entirely the wrong thing to say, and he flushed scarlet.

"All this time – for hours I paced this floor this morning, when my man came to me after you had retired for the night at Spofford Avenue. He told me everything, and came back with the written report and a signed note of affirmation from the nurse a few hours before you arrived here. It paints you in the worst possible light, Anne, and still I would have married you! I was prepared for you to come and confess about your time in Avonlea, and with Blythe, and let it be over and done with! But all you have done is trampled everything beneath your feet, made a mockery of me and those two years courting you, insulted my family, and left us with all the arrangements made and the invitations even sent – the perfect wedding and no bride! Well, I won't stand for any of it!"

The last was shouted so loudly his voice seemed to shake the walls, and Anne cringed, terrified, shrunk little against the door. Roy gave her a look of fury before stalking back behind the desk, breathing heavily, attempting to control himself.

"You want to be released from our engagement, Anne? You want to run from our wedding and instead straight back into Blythe's arms? Well then, fine. Just be prepared to pay the price."

"W-what do you mean?" she fought, and failed, to steady her voice.

"I mean exactly as I say," he withdrew a notepad and began to read from it. "You will first be sued for Breach of Promise."

Anne's head began to pound, and she opened and closed her mouth, absolutely flabbergasted.

"Breach of Promise? Roy… there are hardly any Breach of Promise suits these days, and they are almost always brought by the woman."

"Oh really, Anne? Well, you have always wanted to be a trailblazer. Ours will be a valuable test case."

"You can't be serious…" she murmured, surveying him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

"I can assure you that I am," he flicked a glance at her, jaw tight and eyes as flint. "Now, Item Two, related of course to Item One, would be recovery of all monies expended on the wedding that wasn't, since you are the one defaulting on that agreement, and all gifts such as your new wardrobe that were conditional upon our wedding taking place. That would also involve the booking deposit for the reception venue… the printed invitations… the material and labour for the half finished wedding gown… the engagement notices in several papers… to whom will I make out the bill, Anne? You or Miss Cuthbert?"

"Roy! You're upset, I see that, and I understand! But this whole conversation is nonsensical!"

"And Item Three," he continued, ignoring her, "Gilbert Blythe will be named as co-respondent in any proceedings brought against yourself."

Anne leaned against the door, feeling she might slide down to the floor, her legs barely able to support her. She was trapped in a surreal nightmare – one in which Roy lashed out like a wounded animal, looking to hurt and maim in turn. But Gilbert on his sick bed, still recovering, brought into this, too?

"Roy – I have told you! Gilbert is a friend! He has nothing to do with this!"

"A mere friend, you say? Did you not just come from tending him in his home – indeed in his very room? Did you not wear his flowers at Convocation? Did he not, as was rumoured at the time, actually propose to you two years ago?"

"I had virtually not spoken to him in two years!" she argued desperately.

"And yet, you come straight from his sickbed to tell me your feelings have changed, that you insist on breaking our engagement, and expect me to believe he's not involved at all? Well, then, he can answer for himself, starting with the Cooper Prize Board!"

"Roy!" Anne cried, dashing at sudden tears of fear and frustration. "You can't besmirch his name in that way! It would ruin him! He can't take his medical degree without that scholarship!"

He gave her a hooded glance, throwing down his notepad in disgust.

"Then am I just to make this all go away?" he waved a hand between them, as if a magician's wand.

Anne stared at him for long moments, attempting flattery as a last attempt to reach him.

"It's in your power to make it all go away, Roy," she all but whimpered.

He was working his jaw furiously, and when he looked up at her his eyes were blistering.

"No, Anne. It's in yours."

She breathed raggedly. "I don't understand…"

"Leave. Leave Kingsport. I absolutely never want to see you again or think I will encounter you at every turn."

She nodded, immediately acquiescent. "Of course."

"If you stay away, I will absorb all the wedding costs."

She gulped, thinking of Marilla, and of safeguarding Green Gables against the small fortune he would have demanded in reparations.

"T-thank you."

"And you are never to see, speak to or directly contact Blythe again, before I myself am married, however long that may be."

The room began to spin. Never see Gilbert again?

"Roy, you can't mean…"

His face was like thunder, and he leapt to pace behind his desk as if a storm unleashed.

"I assure you, Anne, I mean that one most of all! If you pursue a relationship, it will mean that you indeed lied to me, and left me for him, which would be untenable. If he has nothing to do with this, if he is merely a friend, then not seeing him will be of little matter to either of you. If he attempts to see you or challenge me, however, in that bullish, self-righteous way of his, he will find himself plastered across the next morning's papers, with my man's report and the nurse's signed statement added to the bargain. That would be a rather nasty surprise for his parents, I should think, as well as his medical school professors. And the Cooper Board would be most aggrieved to have awarded all that funding to such a morally degenerate character. Of course…" here he paused, whether for breath or dramatic effect she couldn't say, "you would also be encouraged to take the utmost care in your visits back to Avonlea, for I'm sure you would not wish your paths to inadvertently cross and me to hear about it…"

"Roy, this is ridiculous! It is tantamount to blackmail! I demand to see that file before I agree to anything more!"

Anne crept back to her seat on unsteady legs. She sat and read of how a stranger, with no interest in her history with Gilbert or the extenuating circumstances, documented her twilight flight to Blythe Farm, and her unscheduled and often unchaperoned days and nights there. Of how she apparently ingratiated herself into the household, doing washing and other chores for the family, acting like a daughter – or daughter-in-law – of the house. Of how she had been by Gilbert's bedside during the worst of his fever and in the most indelicate of circumstances for an unmarried woman, untrained in nursing and thus unschooled as to proper conduct. Of how she had stayed throughout sans engagement ring and never acknowledged her obligations as a woman betrothed to another. Of the private conversations between she and Mrs Blythe and even, worst of all, with Gilbert himself, that the nurse had evidently positioned herself to overhear, in which Anne had discussed with most members of the household her desire to end her engagement, and worst of all… that she had claimed it was a folly and accidental, and that she hadn't loved Roy. That she had been noted conspiring with Gilbert to end it with Roy and come back to him, conducting a compromisingly passionate bedside exchange with Gilbert before she departed for Green Gables and eventually to Kingsport.

She closed the file with a wretched sob, the bile rising in her throat.

"I take it you do not refute any of these allegations?" Roy offered scathingly.

Her tearful, helpless silence spoke for her.

"Very well," he nodded. "If you wish to safeguard his reputation and character, let alone your own, then I believe we have reached an understanding…" He took the file and placed it away from her for safekeeping. "I will give you two days from now until you must leave Kingsport, after which time I will formally announce the end of our engagement, in a manner of my choosing. I trust you will see yourself out, Miss Shirley." He stalked around to unlock the door for her.

"Wait!" she gasped.

"Yes?"

"How can I take you at your word? How will I know you yourself will keep silent and not use those documents against us in the interim? Ot that you will keep your word even after you have married?"

He gave a small smile that did not reach his eyes.

"How astute of you, Anne. I may have made a businessman's wife of you, after all."

"I guess we'll never know!" she hissed.

"No, indeed," he answered sharply, walking back to reach across his desk, extracting a card. "This is the name and location of my personal solicitor. I will instruct him to prepare a contract to sign tomorrow morning. It will have all the particular – conditions – we have discussed. You of course will be free to bring along your own representative. Though I assure you, Anne – no one now wants to see the back of this as much as I."

He reached behind her to put his key in the door, unlocking it as if unlocking her cage… only for her to step out into a new one.

"Your happiness… at the expense of everyone else's, Roy?" she tossed his words back at him.

He had no reply for her, watching her from his office as she made her way back through the house, Mrs Gardner coming to stand at the entrance to the sitting room as she passed, her eyes now as accusatory as her son's. Anne felt both their gazes burn through her as she squared her shaking shoulders and allowed the slight breeze to help slam the heavy front door behind her.

Chapter Notes

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a novella published in 1899 regarding European colonialism in Africa. It in turn provided inspiration for the 1979 film Apocalypse Now. I've always found the title very powerful and evocative.

Whenever I can include anyThe Princess Bride reference, I will! It is a line from The Man in Black, before the infamous sword fight.

Anne of the Island Ch 38 'False Dawn'.

And a little correspondence…

Guest of Feb 13th (Ch 3): Thank you very much for your musings on this story – I lot I know has been explored in this chapter just posted! When I discussed Anne rejecting Gilbert a third time, I was meaning firstly the failed canon proposal, then the dance that wasn't at Convocation, and thirdly leaving Gilbert again after their conversation and her promise after his typhoid in Ch 1. So a lot of grief there for Gilbert! Thank you for reading and I hope you continue to enjoy x