Part 1:

Posted on August 18, 2008

It was a pity, thought Anne Elliot, that her father was a man who never took up any book if he could possibly help it. On the one hand, this meant that the family library was in disrepair, uncatalogued and difficult to pack. On the other, it meant that Walter Elliot was a foolish, self-centered, and ill-informed man who was now selling off the last of the land that his family had owned for the last two hundred years.

The truth was, Anne knew, that her father really had exceptionally little interest in anything further than his own immediate family, and only then in the abstract that they were Elliots -- she didn't think her father actually noticed his daughters as people. His bible was the local paper from their town, Kellynch, in southeastern Pennsylvania, which still treated the Elliot family as celebrities despite Walter Elliot's distinct lack of practical importance in the town, save as the latest -- and failed -- scion in one of the most important families of the county.

Where the library had gone untended, Walter's private archive of photographs or newspaper clippings depicting the Elliot family had received endless attention. He took the words contained in such articles as fact: if the local paper called him an important member of the community on occasion, he would believe it indefinitely. And the paper had bestowed local importance on him, and he did continue to believe in it, long after his halo of novelty had been tarnished with local disappointed hopes.

Walter Elliot (37) has announced that he will be bringing his family to the the great house at Kellynch Farms, and will make his permanent home there. This is excellent news for a community still reeling from the death of Elliot's father, former Kellynch mayor Gregory Elliot (71) who died just this last spring. The Elliot family has held the Kellynch farms for close to two hundred years, and their influence has been felt deeply in the realms of local philanthropy and politics.

"I am delighted to be moving back to Kellynch," Walter Elliot told this reporter. "The Elliots belong in Kellynch, and I know that the neighborhood will be a wholesome place for my wife and I to bring up our daughters Elizabeth (6), Anne (4), and Mary (3 months). I look forward to becoming a part of Kellynch once more."

Elliot has been living in New York City for the past seven years, where his wife, Anna Edgar Elliot, is an attorney.

But those days had long since passed.

The glory of a new generation of Elliots -- which had included an inheritance of hundreds of acres of land and a handsome house, as well as a tidy nest egg -- more attractive than any had been in recent memory, had burned bright... but had burnt out quickly. As Elliots had been the mayors of Kellynch on and off for over a hundred years, Anne knew that her father had felt that he should have no trouble at all stepping into his father's shoes on this count. Sadly for his political career and catastrophically for his daughters, Anna Edgar Elliot had passed away shortly after he had won the mayoral primaries and, instead of this helping him along with the pity vote, this proved to Walter's constituency just how much his policies had been formed by his wife, and just how little he knew anything at all about them.

Without his wife's generous income as a highly-regarded New York-turned-Philadelphia lawyer, the nest egg had soon been spent. When his daughters -- Anne and her sisters Liz and Mary -- were teenagers, Walter Elliot had sold the first large section of the Kellynch farms to a real estate developer, having absolutely no interest in keeping the land up as a farm as his predecessors had. The four Elliots had continued to live as one of the first families of Kellynch on the proceeds of this sale for some years, until funds started dipping low enough to cause alarm to the Elliot's banker.

Anne had been one year into law school at the University of Pennsylvania when her father's lawyer had called to plead for her assistance in introducing some economy into the Elliot household. She had, naturally, failed in this endeavor; her father never listened to any advice that he didn't agree with, and certainly not any advice from the meekest of his three daughters. Anne had done the only thing she could think of doing to help: she had removed herself from any financial dependence from her father, and had begun to work two part time jobs in order to pay for her law education. It had been a hard couple of years for her, but at least the family had been able to keep the beautiful old house at Kellynch. Until now.

There was nothing for it now: the turn in the housing market had made Walter Elliot's dream of developing a private residential park on his remaining property impractical and unprofitable, so the house and the final lands had finally been sold to one Henry Croft, the high-end farmer's market magnate and darling of the organic-farming world. -- And here Anne was, less than a year out of law school, past the bar exam, debt-free, and about to take up a full-time position at a fairly prestigious firm, her future bright ahead of her... but with all of the joys of her past, her home, gruesomely wrenched from her.

"And, Anne dear, I was rather hoping that I could convince you to go along with them," Mrs Musgrove said, ending her soliloquy in a wheedling tone. Anne smiled as she listened to the older woman phrasing her wishes as a request: as one of the wife of a wealthy horse-breeder and one of the actual most important people in town, there really was no saying no to Mrs Musgrove. Especially when her proposition was quite an attractive one to an exhausted soon-to-be-practicing lawyer who hadn't taken a vacation day since Christmas.

"Let me get this straight," Anne said sensibly, tucking a strand of her neat brown bob behind an ear, and repeating Mrs Musgrove's request aloud. "You want to pay for me to travel in Italy with my sister, your children and your niece?"

"Yes, dear. Sicily. I know that they're all now supposedly responsible adults -- with the B.A.s to prove it! -- but I'm really not entirely sure that I want them going all that way away on their own."

"And yet you're paying for them to go?" asked Anne, amused despite herself.

"Well, I thought it would make a nice graduation present for Mary and Louisa and Hayley. And naturally Charles decided he wanted to go too. It's just that you know that while Mary and Hayley are sweet girls, they really haven't the sense God gave a goose, and Louisa's too impulsive for her own good. And Charles... well, he's a good boy, but that sister of yours has her wrapped around her finger -- dear girl! -- which can make him less than dependable. I'd just like to know that there was someone there with a head on her shoulders keeping an eye on them. And it would be such a nice vacation for you, too, dear," Mrs Musgrove added, leaning over the white picket fence that surrounded the Musgrove's large home and patting Anne's arm in a maternal fashion. "I can see that you are plum worn out from working so hard for so long! Two weeks in the Mediterranean would do you a world of good!"

It was impossible not to smile when confronted with a such good-natured woman. Having lost her own mother years ago, Mrs Musgrove was probably the closest Anne had had to a mother figure since. And, furthermore, the proposition was not at all unwelcome: Anne could easily quit her temporary job as a legal aid a little early, and it would be no bad thing to have an exotic vacation -- at no expense to herself -- before she dove into the sixty hour work-weeks of private law practice. Putting up with her sister and her younger neighbors would be a small price to pay.

"I'd like that," Anne said, leaning forward to give Mrs Musgrove a hug. "I really would. It would be no trouble to keep an eye on the girls and Charles. And you know I majored in classical studies in college? I can't think of anything nicer than touring the ruins and beaches of Sicily."

And what better way to start moving on with my life -- distracting myself from the fact that my father has just sold my mother's home -- than going abroad?

Given Anne's company, however, there seemed to be little hope of entirely putting her past to rest. From the very moment she met up with the rest of her group at the gate in the Newark airport, she was instantly overwhelmed with memories of a fairly happy childhood, playing with the children from the other "important" local families. Walter Elliot had been careful in choosing his children's playmates, and Charles and Louisa Musgrove's equine fortune and the political connections of Hayley Auper-Cross (whose father had gone on to become a popular mayor and later a state legislator) had been among the few qualities Walter had equated with his own lofty heritage.

Mary, Anne's younger sister, had been the primary beneficiary of these friendships. Her older sister, Liz, had retained enough of her memories of living in Manhattan to be distinctly resentful of having to move to rural Pennsylvania and had resisted making friends locally. She soon clamored to be sent to a private boarding school along with her old New York playmates and happily left her mother, her father, sisters and gorgeous new home behind her. Anne had been open to making local friends but, after her mother's death, her father had quashed most of her young friendships, deeming them unsuitable. She had been left to spend her childhood years playing with little Charlie Musgrove, two years younger than herself, and was then soon shipped off to boarding school -- a less expensive and closer one -- herself.

Still, Anne's solid good sense and kindness had been much appreciated amongst Mary's friends. No one was so good, so capable as Anne at mending torn trousers, bandaging knees, locating lost belongings, sharing last sweets. And Anne had liked being appreciated, as she was not appreciated by any of her other remaining family.

"Oh, it is so good to see you!" a striking brunette cried, impetuously charging forward away from a massive stack of carry-on luggage, the girl's cousin and her best friend in her wake, with Charles Musgrove left to stand desolate by the bags lest some airport authority decide that they were packed full of illicit items.

"Anne!" squealed Mary, also dark-haired, pushing Louisa out of the way. It had been a few weeks since the three younger girls had all graduated from Bryn Mawr College, but Mary was clearly firmly stuck in her old high school competition with Louisa for attention. This sometimes meant that Mary adopted hypochondriac tendencies, other times, such as this one, it meant that Mary adopted a complete lack of restraint, very unbecoming to the lofty heritage of her alma mater.

"Hi Lou, Mary, Hayley," Anne said, saluting each one in turn. She satisfied, with great patience and for nearly half-an-hour, their questions about her train ride to Newark, her last day at her job, the details about her new job, and their itinerary once they were in Italy. At length she disentangled herself from the exuberant fledgling graduates and walked over to Charles, her erstwhile childhood friend and the man very likely to soon become her brother-in-law.

"Hello Charlie," Anne said, smiling and giving Charles a peck on the cheek.

"You look wonderful, Anne," Charles replied, enveloping her in a bear hug. Their childhood friendship had once blossomed into love on Charles's part, but, when Anne had politely declined to change their relationship, they had grown closer as friends. Then, two years earlier, Charles developed an interest in Mary, who had welcomed the attention enthusiastically, and the friendship had again weathered the storm, despite Charles's newfound inability to say no to anything that Anne's flighty little sister wanted.

"It's so nice that your father gave you time off so you could come along," Anne commented as they sat down in front of the gate's desk. There was ominous movement going on there, suggesting that the flight might actually board someday. She glanced over at Charles with a smile. He was now, at twenty-four years of age, a full partner in his father's operations, and more and more absent from her life.

"Mary wanted me to come," Charles said simply. "Though I'll freely admit that I thought it all sounded fun. I've never been to Italy. Have you?"

"No," Anne owned. Although she had been eager to attend a study abroad program in Rome during her undergraduate years, her old boarding-school-roomate and best friend, Suzanne Russell, had convinced her not to go so far while Mary was still in high school and very much in need of a guiding parental hand -- a guiding hand which Walter Elliot was not qualified to offer. That had been the first time that Suzanne Russell had persuaded Anne out of something she had wanted very badly. It was also not the last.

An hour later, Anne was in the air, seated between the window and a sleeping Hayley Auper-Cross -- the girl had a desperate fear of taking off in a plane, and as a consequence always took a sleeping pill as soon as she had settled into her seat. It was just as well, really: getting some sleep on a trans-Atlantic flight was no bad idea.

Except... when Anne mimicked her younger friend, closing her eyes in light sleep, she inexplicably dreamed of Frederick. She woke herself promptly, settling Hayley's fluffy blonde head back on her shoulder, and turned to stare out the window. It wasn't fair. If she was going to move on with her own independent life, removed from her home and her father, she didn't want to be troubled with thoughts of him and her past failures. She deserved to not be haunted by the memory of her former college boyfriend and would-be fiancé. She deserved the right to start her life afresh, free of the mistakes of the past, especially now that she had to leave behind the brighter moments behind.

"Fourteen days of glorious sunshine!" Louisa enthused, as the plane from Rome to Palermo touched town. The Kellynch group had now been traveling for some hours, but even half a day of airplanes and layovers in airports seemed unable to dampen Louisa Musgrove's spirits. Anne, exhausted from a fitful night on the plane, had to admire her.

"I'm so pale," Mary complained, stretching an arm out in front of her and examining it. "It's not my fault I had nervous headaches for half the term, but sitting in a darkened room does nothing good for one's complexion. I can't wait to see these beaches."

"I practically died thinking about the food," Hayley cut in, perfectly cheerful as the plane landed. She thrust a guidebook that she had been holding into Anne's hand. Anne admired the pictures on the page, each heavily featuring dishes based on Sicily's edible abundance of fish, aubergines, peppers, lemons and oranges.

"So unlike home," Louisa agreed, craning her head around to look at Hayley's book. "So, Anne," she added, thoughts of home cooking turning to thoughts of her home town, "now that your dad is selling the Hall, is it true that he's moving to New York?"

"Yes," Anne answered quietly. Having her father waste the proceeds of the sale of the hall on a Manhattan apartment had not been her idea, but her father had been adamant that he wanted to live near his favorite daughter, and Liz had thrown her lot in clearly with the New Yorkers. And no Bronx or Brooklyn apartment would do for an Elliot.

"I hope I shall get up to New York soon," Louisa said. As a double major in English and Economics she had dreams of a big city life, though her parents were loath to see her go 'so far.'

"Wouldn't I be all alone if you left!" Mary protested, disregarding the fact that she was only still living in Kellynch because she had moved in with the rest of the Musgrove family, including her boyfriend.

The voice of the captain interrupted, welcoming them to Palermo in Italian, and Anne somehow managed to herd her charges off the plane. She was beginning to think that Mrs Musgrove might have had a point in asking her to come along: the girls were remarkably ready to let her deal with the details of their journey, as was Charles --although to be fair they might have coped well on their own if forced to... though they lacked even Anne's extremely basic Italian.

After a little while the five young people found themselves on the streets of Palermo, the hubbub of the busy city swirling around them. It was all they could do for a moment to stop and stare, pointing out the palm trees and glorious colors to each other with great excitement. Compact European cars and motor scooters swirled past them on the busy streets, a delightful array of colors and shapes -- so different from those in Kellynch. Tall palm trees spanned up towards the sky lending a thoroughly tropical look to the world, and the hot Mediterranean sun poured down relentlessly in a display of pristine weather. The buildings were tall and from a full range of historic periods -- medieval to pre-War to contemporary -- and beautiful, and the streets were often narrow, or else wide boulevards well-populated with a swirl of activity. The city was crowded: tourists and natives alike thronged in the streets, pausing at outdoor markets, by ancient, medieval or modern monuments, or simply walking quickly from one place to another. It was gloriously different, it was delightfully exotic, it was incredibly intoxicating. Especially for five young people who had grown up in Kellynch, Pa.

It was already midday -- though still before the siesta -- and they had a few hours to kill before they were due to meet their tour bus. Anne located the travel office that ran the tours, arranged to leave their luggage there for the bus, and easily located a pleasant outdoor café with open tables. Finally relieved of the physical burden of her luggage as well as the emotional burden of taking responsibility for her friends while they ate, Anne ordered a glass of an amazingly clear white wine hailing from the slopes of Mt Etna. She thought it appropriate, now that she was in Sicily.

She observed the life and the people around her with unconcealed interest. Here she was, at last, in one of the countries whose ancient culture she had studied with such enthusiasm as an undergraduate. Here she was at last, far away from the pain of seeing her old home in the hands of new owners, far away from the places where she most felt her mother's absence, far away from her disappointing father and ambivalent older sister. In a thoroughly new world, where no one had ever heard of Frederick Wentworth -- because goodness knew Anne had never been one to share her love life with her family so Mary and her friends didn't know -- or his refused proposal of marriage.

The sun was bright, the birds were singing, and the food was delicious: sweet peppers, fresh shellfish, luxurious pastas, fascinating cheeses. It was a meal gratefully and excitedly consumed, along with the refreshing dessert wines afterwards. More relaxed after the lovely meal, Anne swept her sunglasses down onto the bridge of her nose and leaned back in her chair, simply soaking up the atmosphere. It was no bad thing to run away from the past, she concluded.

"Do you mind sitting all on your own?" Hayley asked Anne kindly, leaning across the aisle of the bus. They were still settling into their seats and, while not all of the other passengers had arrived yet, it looked as if Anne would have an empty seat beside her.

"No," Anne said. She didn't mind, really. As much as she loved the others, and as much as they cared for her, she really was an outsider to their close-knit group. Her age, her more aloof nature, her schooling, her recent absence from Kellynch as she lived and worked her way through law school in Philadelphia... time and circumstances had prevented her from being one of the charmed inner circle with these girls, but Anne didn't really mind. As much as she liked Charles and the three girls, she knew that they lacked the steady common sense and well-informed, well-controlled ambition that Anne felt to be necessary qualities her in closest friends.

"Oh, that would actually work really nicely!" Mary exclaimed, leaning forward over Anne's seat and stashing a handbag beside Anne. "There's not enough space, but I don't want to stick it up on the rack..." Louisa and Hayley soon followed suit, and Anne was left sitting half-hidden behind three enormous handbags. She glanced around the bus, hoping that the other occupants wouldn't mistakenly think that she owned all three bags.

There were some twenty people on the bus so far, a perfect mixture of older, retired types and younger, college types, all from Anglophone countries. At twenty-six Anne felt herself to be a little awkwardly between the two ages, but she decided that it didn't matter: she was here for her Kellynch friends, and here to treat herself to some sun and food and archaeological ruins. What did it matter that she was neither quite still in her first flush of youth nor fully an adult?

She flipped down her sunglasses again, isolating herself even further, and watched the final half-dozen or so passengers trail onto the bus: another retired couple, a college-aged couple who, from their body language, were probably siblings rather than lovers ... and a pair of males in their later twenties. Anne sat up in mild interest, curious about this aberration from the pattern of the other passengers.

The first older young man had pleasing features but was otherwise rather unremarkable from a cursory examination, save for the odd occurrence that he paused and embraced the tour guide warmly, breaking into a startlingly fast stream of Italian. Some mutual back-slapping took place and then that first of the men passed down the aisle towards one of the few entirely empty seats a little past Anne and her friends, nodding quietly and soberly to all of the passengers as he went. Anne didn't quite know what to make of the two contrary attitudes -- boisterous familiarity with the guide and solemn politeness with the other passengers -- but she was distracted from dwelling upon this much, as she now had a clean view of the second young man. She recognized his face immediately; it was a face she would have known anywhere.

She immediately turned away, her already usually pale cheeks paling further, and averted her face so that, along with the shelter offered by the sunglasses and the handbags, he might not recognize her. What was Frederick Wentworth doing in Sicily, on a tour bus for college students and retirees? What a place to meet the man one had loved and mistakenly refused and then lost some five years earlier... a private tour bus where the company would be limited and the quarters tight.

She held her breath as he walked down the bus aisle, his gaze indifferently taking in the other passengers. Her heart nearly stopped when he paused momentarily a little in front of her seat, but she breathed again when he passed. She dreaded meeting him again, remembering their last meeting all too well even after all this time.

It had never been Frederick's idea to come to spend his two weeks of vacation on a bus tour; it had been Jamie's. It was Jamie's maternal family who ran a Sicilian bus-tour outfit, Jamie's family who had offered their dear nephew/ cousin two of the empty seats from the upcoming mid-June tour. And it had been Jamie who had convinced his law school roommate to come along with him, when his long-time girlfriend, Phoebe, had unexpectedly left him.

So, Frederick now blamed Jamie.

It had taken all of a second for Frederick to recognize the young woman with the sunglasses, even with all of the changes that five years had wrought on her: her too-slender arms were still too slender, her hair still soft a brown -- though trimmed dramatically since her undergraduate days. He would have known the absurd position that she twisted her crossed legs into -- the top leg then twisting under the bottom in a way that had always looked uncomfortable -- anywhere.

But while recognizing Anne Elliot had been easy, figuring out what he felt about her unlooked-for appearance was impossible. Five years ago, Frederick would have embraced the opportunity to see Anne again. He'd dreamt of such a serendipitous meeting hundreds of times in those first few years, of having a chance to prove to her that he was the man for her, the love of her life. And then... he had grown to accept her callous refusal. He had offered her his heart and she had thrown it back at him ... it was her right to make that decision and it was now his right to move on with his life afterwards, away from her fickle heart and weak spine.

But that didn't stop the unwelcome ghosts of memories from flying up into his face at the sight of her.

He had been so excited, coming back to his apartment from the jewelry store, a ring burning a hole in his pocket. He and Anne had been dating for some twenty months -- almost ever since they had met, in that seminar on Roman laws and oratory, back at the start of his junior year at the University of Pennsylvania -- and now, he was convinced, they were ready to embark upon the next step. He would be graduating in two weeks, and though he was heading fully across the country for law school in California in the fall, he knew that he could never break up with Anne. ... He wanted to marry her.

He knew that he was young, only twenty-two years old. He knew that they would have to wait to get married, especially as Anne still had another year of her undergraduate program to go. He wouldn't mind that, he wouldn't mind being so far away from her, however, if he could only know for certain that they had a future together. So he had bought the ring.

She'd appeared over at his apartment a little while later, letting herself in with the key that he had given her. She looked bright and fresh in a sun-dress, her long brown hair in a plait, and her arms full of books. She'd smiled at him, and laid down the books on his sofa with a small laugh and a teasing comment about how unfair it was that he was done with his work for the year.

He'd driven her down to the Schuylkill River in his battered old car, and parked in one of the tiny lots on the western shore. It was quieter there, on that bank, and they had wandered peacefully down the shady lanes, warm in the dusky light of late May evenings. He'd proposed to her, explaining all that was in his heart, all of his love for her, all of his need for her to remain in his life. She'd been surprised, but had been pleased and had actually interrupted him in order to say yes. He'd given her the ring, and they had spent a beautiful evening together, dreaming of their life together to come. He had never been happier.

And then she had appeared back at his doorstep the next afternoon, the ring in her palm instead of on her finger. She had been incoherent and very unlike herself, trying to explain that she thought that they had not better take such a definite step just now. That maybe they should see what it was like when they were apart, to get some perspective before making such a bold leap.

He suspected that the words were not her own, that Anne's best friend, a disdainful pre-med student who had never liked him, had implanted these argument's in Anne's mouth. And this had angered him.

He knew what it would be like to lose her from his life: awful. They'd fought over it -- and she'd maintained her uncharacteristic stance -- and in the end Anne had strode out of the apartment in tears, the ring and his key left on his coffee table. He had been too proud to seek her out for almost a week, and when he had, he discovered that she had disappeared, gone home to a home that he had never seen, to a family that he had never met. He understood that she had deliberately walked out of his life.

Until now.

"Don't look like that," Jamie was saying in his ear, seated easily in the seat across the aisle from him. "I'm the one who has had his heart pulled out and tramped on. You are having a free vacation."

Frederick just gave a snort, given his recent recollections of his own heartbreak at the hands of a ruthless girl, but forgave his friend, recognizing that they were each in the same boat -- though while Jamie was still brooding over Phoebe, Frederick's feelings had long since turned from hurt to anger to -- he hoped -- indifference. Of course he was unsettled by her reappearance in his life, but that didn't mean that she need have any place in it again after all these years. And this knowledge strengthened him.

He allowed Jamie to point out local landmarks as the bus lumbered its way towards the Cathedral. The bus was to make several stops around a few of the highlights of Palermo before it set off on its counter-clockwise circuit of the three-cornered island.

"Move a little to your right," Louisa whispered to Hayley, as the small crowd of bus passengers closely circled their guide on the pavement as if he was a prophet.

"Why?" asked Hayley, coming back to attention after admiring some of the architecture about her.

"Because the guide just said that he's going to break the ground into two. And that half has way more younger people. I don't want to be in the tour group with all the senior citizens -- their fanny packs!"

Hayley shuddered as she observed this fashion faux pas and moved a few feet to her right, to stand close by Mary and Charles. Anne watched them, but didn't much mind when the guide did split the passengers neatly into two halves -- with her friends and most of the other young people in one group, and herself and the senior citizens in the other. At least she wouldn't have to be in a small group with Frederick. She hid herself a little behind a portly woman with blue curls and a large camera, and waved off her friends and their temporary guide as they set off into the Cathedral.

There were worse things than being fussed over by a dozen kindly older people, and she welcomed the chance to enjoy Palermo without the specter of the past playing fast and loose with her in front of her sure-to-be-curious friends.

Her friends came back from the day's excursions delighted with their new acquaintances, and with their sightseeing in general. The group of young people had had a marvelous time at the Cathedral, at the Palazzo dei Normanni, the Piazza Marina with its giant fig trees. There had been easy banter and laughter and even some singing among the fourteen passengers in the Musgroves' group. As Anne's luck would have it, they were particularly enamored with Frederick, whose charm, handsome looks and easy address recommended him even over his friend James Benwick, he of the fluent Italian.

"Oh, I was so surprised," Mary was telling Anne, as the group settled into the bus again after a busy day in the city. "You never think that you'd meet a neighbor all the way across the world like this, but Fred Wentworth actually lives in Philly too!"

Never mind that Frederick hated being called Fred, and that Mary had never lived in Philly, though she'd come as close as the Main Line during her college days. What actually struck Anne most was that Frederick was apparently claiming to live in her city. Did he actually live and work there -- or was he just making a reference to having once lived there? And why had he returned there, if he had returned there, after she had ruined his last weeks in that city so thoroughly before? What did it mean?

"He's gorgeous," Louisa added, leaning across the aisle towards Anne, and speaking in a loud undertone. "Tall, dark and handsome... like out of a book. And those baby blues! Don't you think he's gorgeous?" Louisa asked Hayley.

"Definitely," Hayley agreed. She had a boyfriend back home, unlike Louisa, but was neither blind nor insensible to Frederick's brand of charm.

"And the most gorgeous manners," Louisa sighed. "He actually holds doors open!"

Anne could well believe it, remembering her own astonishment with that nearly-outdated courtesy, some seven years earlier.

Mary was feeling left out, and leaned forward again to share her own anecdote about Frederick with Anne. "I found out that he was at Penn when you were!" Mary announced triumphantly. "I asked him if he had known you, explaining your name and your year at school, and he said he had known you a little! ... He said that he wouldn't have recognized you if I hadn't pointed you out, though," Mary added.

Wouldn't have recognized me? It was sad to think that the memory of their relationship could have faded from his mind -- surely he'd at least remember her for the bad times, if not -- she hoped -- the good ones. But then, whether he had recognized her or not, he'd hardly have gone on about their past together to her friends, who quite evidently had no idea that he had ever existed prior to this day.

Her past decision to keep her relationship private had been flung back in her face, and Anne knew that she deserved it. Five years had passed and each of them had dirty, painful scars after their unpleasant parting, her unforgivable weakness in returning the ring to him. Nothing could be as it had been before... she had once dreamed of meeting Frederick again... but no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

It was too late now. She and Frederick were not the same as they had been and their relationship could never be easy again. She'd just have to bite the bullet and strive for some sort of tolerance from him... for she wouldn't be able to avoid him for much longer on a bus of this size.

Part II:

Posted on August 24, 2008

From this time onward Frederick Wentworth and Anne Elliot were repeatedly in the same circle. They were soon dining in company together as favorite accessories of the Kellynch contingent -- for no excuse on the part of either would have been heard by the exuberant younger crowd. And this was but the beginning of other dinings and other meetings, though all in the large group of the Musgroves, Mary, Hayley, Frederick and his friend, a group in which Anne felt something of an expendable seventh wheel, though a group to which she stuck to doggedly in the memory of Mrs Musgrove's patronage.

Whether former feelings were to be renewed must undoubtedly be brought to the proof: former times were of necessity brought to the minds of each; they could not but be reverted to; the two could not speak of their own still-young lives and plans for the future without referencing times past. In their very first meal that first night together, she heard Frederick mention incidents from his senior year at Penn -- a senior year that she had been intimately acquainted with -- and while his voice remained steady and his eyes focused on an adoring Louisa Musgrove, Anne knew that he could not but be thinking of her and them as he spoke.

They never once spoke directly to each other, though there were many hours spent together, except in distantly polite and impersonal civilities. How odd this was, after they had been through so much and so much time had passed! But now they were as strangers -- worse than strangers, for they never could become friends again.

Frederick did not think that he wanted to be Anne's friend after all this time. While her gentleness, good sense, firm morals, and intelligence had attracted him from the moment he had met her in that class six --nearly seven -- years ago, he now knew that there was a flaw of fickleness that complicated Anne's good qualities. He found it easier to spend time with Anne's new friends -- or old friends, he supposed, though he had never met any of them back then -- as they were so refreshingly uncomplicated. It was odd: they were so unlike Anne's other friends from her undergraduate days, who had cared deeply about their schoolwork, held great ambitions for helping society, and had been involved in causes or purposes larger than themselves. These young people... mostly enjoyed floating on through life.

Perhaps these were the sorts of people he actually needed in his life: simple, friendly, open people, who cared more about themselves and their own small worlds than about the opinions of others. Who valued happiness above over-anxious reasoning, and the joy of the present moment over the potential clouds of the future.

He deliberately asked Louisa to come walk about Palermo with him that evening, smiling in the knowledge that she was in no way Anne.

After another day in Palermo environs, the bus began its way toward the open roads and its counter-clockwise sweep of the island, stopping first however at Monreale, the site of an exquisite Arab-Norman-Byzantine cathedral. Here the occupants of the bus spilled eagerly out into the sunshine, looking about themselves with eager curiosity and snapping photographs of most everything they saw, most everything still looking exotic and exciting to their eyes. After a long walk from the parking lot up the hill to the cathedral, past dozens of shops and booths catering to the thousands of tourists who would visit this site each year, Anne soon found herself standing inside a pillared paradise, the cloister of the abbey attached to the cathedral.

"Ooh!" breathed the girl beside Anne, her eyes first scanning the pink tower of the cathedral rising up about the cloister and the emerald expanse in the middle of the open center before staring up at the twinned pillars that supported the roof of the portico. These were delicate, each patterned differently, with whimsical capitals on top. The tour group had scattered about the space, snapping pictures of one another and the architecture. Anne figured that she might as well introduce herself to the girl, in the interest of having another friendly person to talk to as well as in the interest of simply being nice.

"Would you like me to get a picture of you on your camera?" she asked the girl kindly. It was the twenty-year old who had gotten onto the bus shortly before Frederick, the girl with the brother a year or two older.

The girl flushed a pretty pink, which set off her golden coloring beautifully. "Would you?" she asked, her voice betraying her as a Canadian. "My mother would love that. I'm Claire Smith by the way."

"Anne Elliot," Anne replied, taking a camera from the girl and smiling. She paused, gauging the best shots to take, using her art training from years of private education, and took several pictures of the golden girl.

"Thank you," the girl repeated, smiling brightly. "I would have been too afraid to ask -- my brother has wandered off again, and I still don't know anyone. You seem to have lots of friends," she added a little wistfully.

"I'm here as designated chaperone to my sister and some friends from home," Anne explained, choking up a little at the word home. It wasn't, not any more. She noticed that the group was starting to move out towards the cathedral itself, and she smiled again at the lonely young girl. "Shall we head inside?" she asked, holding out a hand to gesture that they should walk together. Claire Smith made a show of dimples and came along.

The inside of the cathedral was majestic enough after the largely-plain exterior to make Anne quite literally catch her breath as she entered.

"Oh my!" breathed Claire, equally impressed. All about them was a massive building, with massive pillars, beamed and walled in gold, with biblical stories, saints, Norman kings and a giant Christ Pantokrator picked out in impressive Byzantine mosaics.

After taking a few minutes to simply absorb the amazing art and architecture, Anne began to wander about in an attempt to take photographs. The building was so large that she had to take the time to set all of her camera's settings manually to offset the shadows, but she was well-pleased with the shots she was taking even if they took some time. After some twenty minutes of work all about the cathedral, she found herself quite within earshot of Frederick, Louisa and Hayley, and listened with some interest when she realized that he was quietly and authoritatively giving them a lecture on the Byzantine presence in Sicily.

"... seventh century," he was saying. "But it took until the tenth century for the armies from North Africa to conquer the island, and then the Normans took over in the eleventh century. So this is a..." He consulted the information packet distributed by the bus tour. "... a twelfth century church, I believe? But you can see the influences of all three cultures, since they were all still so much a part of the collective consciousness."

"You know so much about it," Louisa commented, clearly impressed. "You weren't an art history major like Mary, were you?"

"No. History. But modern history."

"So you wouldn't know what those letters and words mean, then?" asked Hayley, pointing at a mosaic of the cathedral's benefactor, Norman king William II of Sicily.

"A word here and there," Frederick said quietly, his eyes focused on the letters. "I didn't take classics myself, but I once knew someone who did."

Anne, standing as close as she was to them, heard the comment and understood it as a reference to herself. Though she was far from imagining that she and Frederick had any future left together after all that had transpired between them, the words still stung: once I knew someone who did. She turned and rapidly walked towards the door, figuring that she had enough photographs, that what she most needed was a little space, away from the excited crowds of fellow tourists -- especially since her charges were all currently well looked after. She'd wait by the bus, and perhaps get a few shots of the views off the mountain that the town was perched on. She did not want to hear herself spoken about in the past tense, even if her relationship with Frederick was doomed to be something definitively done.

She blinked a moment in the hot, bright sunshine and glanced momentarily at her watch. There were still a good twenty minutes before the group was due back on the bus, so she set out alone, eager to enjoy this brief time alone.

"Signora! Signora! Ricordi! Ricordi!" Anne was shaken from her reveries by a small mob of Italian youngsters, apparently intent upon selling her a variety of souvenirs.

"No, grazie -- non desidero nulla," she protested, trying to politely push them away, but they pressed on, adding flattering words and pressing her to come look at the souvenirs they had to offer. Swamped within a crowd of about eight or nine young teenagers, she was incapable of escaping their aggressive marketing and was half considering giving in and buying some bauble from them when she heard an unexpected voice from behind her.

"Andatevene! Lei non desidera nulla." Frederick's Italian was rudimentary and halting but his voice was commanding and he was tall and powerful enough to wade through the small crowd and lay a proprietorial hand on Anne's arm. The young entrepreneurs scattered immediately in search of some other customer.

"I trust that you didn't want anything?" Frederick asked, instantly removing his hand from Anne's arm and barely looking at her.

"No. Thank you." Frederick nodded and then strode back up the hill to where Louisa and Hayley were inspecting ceramic trinkets at a stall. In a moment it was as if the incident had never happened.

Frederick said nothing to Anne when he appeared on the bus some fifteen minutes later, and Anne correctly concluded that he still wasn't on speaking terms with her. She wasn't much surprised -- having walked out of his life the way she had, he was well within his rights to avoid seeking her company, mountain-side rescue or not. She turned her attention to her copy of the itinerary, purposefully ignoring the easy banter and laughter between Frederick and her friends only one row back.

The bus next dropped them off in the archaeological park at Segesta, where there were the ruins of a Greek temple and theater.

"Anne, you studied classics," Mary said, suddenly remembering this fact as the group trooped off of the bus. "You can tell us all about these ruins." She smiled, pleased to have a relative expert for a relative.

"In a general sense," Anne agreed tentatively, finding herself swept back into the Kellynch company's inner sanctum as they remembered her existence. "Though I'm sure the tour guide knows miles more than me!"

"Tosh," Louisa said, linking her arm through Anne's. "I'm sure you know loads of things. And two guides are better than one." And so Anne found herself called upon to give what little additional information she could give about general ancient Greek customs, society, and architecture while the tour guide chatted authoritatively about the mysteriously half-finished temple and the orientation of the Greek theater. She was glad when the guide dismissed them to eat from bagged lunches; her classical training felt far away and she was a little uncomfortable referring to lessons she's learned during her time with Frederick, with Frederick standing nearby. She didn't know how he managed such serenity when he referred to those years.

The recent graduates soon grew weary of classical history, however, and quickly turned their attention elsewhere by the time the group was done eating.

"Let's take a walk," Louisa suggested, seeing that there was still ample time before the bus departed again. She cast a speculative eye over towards Frederick, who had been eating with his friend Jamie at the end of their picnic table. He looked up and gave a small smile, indicating that he'd go along with the plan though his friend declined the invitation.

"Ooh, a walk would be nice," Hayley agreed, quite willing to go walking with her cousin and the handsome young lawyer.

"I'd like a walk too!" Mary insisted, determined not to be left out, despite her general lack of enthusiasm for extraneous exercise.

"A long walk," Louisa clarified, not wanting Mary to start complaining halfway through and also not entirely pleased with the idea of too much company when she was hoping for another tête-à-tête with Frederick.

"Why does everyone assume that I don't like to walk?" Mary protested. "I love a walk. A walk would be absolutely perfect before we get back on that bus again! If you're walking, then I'm walking. And Anne and Charles too, of course," she added, making their decision for them without a second thought.

Louisa nodded, accepting that a larger group would mean that smaller sub-groups could more easily exist, and scanned the archaeological park map for a minute, determining a route. She decided that they would head back towards the theater, to explore it further. The group set out and Anne managed to lag behind the others a little, talking to Charles, and studiously avoiding having to be near Louisa and Hayley as they flirted with Frederick -- she might have no designs on Frederick herself these days, but it was still scarcely a comfortable sight to see herself replaced in his life by girls rather younger and sillier than herself.

What she hadn't reckoned on, however, was the way in which Louisa's exuberant, impassioned voice carried on a wind that was blowing towards Anne, Charles and Mary, especially after Hayley dropped back to join them, leaving Louisa and Frederick alone together.

"I think it so brave of your sister to have given up her career to help her husband expand his business!" Louisa was exclaiming, "And obviously it has had it's rewards! I look forward to meeting her, to telling her just how much I admire the hard work she did on behalf of her husband -- and the sentiment that brought her closer into his interests! If I were married, I should go anywhere, do anything to help the man I loved!"

Anne was perturbed for a moment at this discussion of Louisa meeting Frederick's sister -- something that she had never done herself, in all the time they had been together -- and then, with a start, put two and two together from the deep recesses of her mind, and realized just who the husband was whom Frederick's sister had devoted her professional and personal energies: Henry Croft, the man who had just purchased the house at Kellynch. ... No wonder Louisa was likely to meet Sophia Wentworth Croft. ... But this left her more perturbed than ever: not only had Kellynch suddenly ceased being her home, but now it was potentially Frederick's.

"Would you?" Frederick was saying to Louisa. Anne couldn't help but tune back into their conversation, it was too relevant to her own history with Frederick for her to ignore. "Would you, with all of your ambition and the shining promises of a career for yourself, throw those promises aside for more shadowy rewards alongside the man you loved? Would you value those shared interests and hopes over your own?" The questions were not entirely hypothetical; Anne knew that Frederick was somehow testing to see how similar Louisa was to herself -- likely in the interest of discovering just how less fickle Louisa was.

"Yes," Louisa maintained boldly. "Yes, I think that I would."

"Then I salute you. You have the strength of character, the determination of will on your side -- without the all-too-common flaws of fickleness and self-doubt! If you stay true to these your principles and the pursuit of them, then I can't but believe that you will outstrip your peers in both success and -- more importantly -- happiness. Fortunate, fortunate Louisa Musgrove!"

There was silence for a moment as Louisa clearly had no idea how to respond to such a speech, but then she spoke up again.

"Aside from feeling that it would be the right thing to do," Louisa began, "I can't help but think that working towards happiness -- and especially a mutual happiness -- is considerably more rewarding than simply working towards success in itself. Take a look at Anne, for example: she's going to have a wonderful career and all, but I wouldn't trade places with her for the world -- always so silent and alone! Clearly the important thing is to try to fill your life with love and happiness, instead of simply trying to forge ahead at a professional level without ever having anyone to share your success with... aside from her family, in Anne's case -- but I don't think that they notice her very much."

As little as he wanted to talk about Anne, Frederick found himself fascinated by these comments. Was the reason that Anne had never introduced him to any of her family been because she hadn't wanted him to see them slighting her, taking her for granted? Did it imply that it hadn't been an early-warning sign that she was ashamed of him, as he had assumed all of these years? ... And, even more importantly, what did Louisa mean exactly by Anne being silent and alone? Yes, he had noticed that she was considerably more reserved than she had been, even from her quiet undergraduate days, and that she was clearly always on the fringes of this group of her friends -- but he'd put all that partially down to the fact that her friends were so much younger and clearly long-time contemporaries, and the fact that Anne might well be uncomfortable in his presence, as he was in hers. He had to ask for clarification.

"You mean that all while Anne was doing so well at such an impressive law school, and finding a job for herself, that she never had anyone in her life?"

"No, I don't think that she did!" Louisa replied with a laugh. "Poor dear thing. But then she was working two jobs through most of it, and probably didn't have any time. I know that Charles had a thing for her back then, but he rebounded with Mary quickly enough."

"You mean that Anne refused him?" He wondered what that meant, too. As far as he could tell, Charles was a very pleasant, kind, and reasonably attractive fellow, the sort that he imagined girls would like -- kindness, sweetness and dependability mixed with bright future prospects, a healthy trust fund, ready devotion and a pretty face. There was nothing about him that Anne shouldn't have admired, at least, especially if they were old friends -- as Louisa had said that they were. ... He had to stop talking to Louisa about Anne -- they always seemed to come around to her each time they talked -- but he let Louisa answer his question, relishing the further few tidbits of information she had to tell about the intervening years in Anne's life. A small piece of him was glad that she had not gone forward after that day with ease.

"Oh, yes! They were always so friendly, especially after she first graduated from Penn, but she never went for him in that way. I often wonder if it was that friend of hers, Suzanne Russell, who convinced her to hold out for someone better -- it's just the sort of thing that she would do. She's convinced that Anne has a bright future and is determined to keep a fairy-godmother eye over Anne's life decisions, seeing as it's thoroughly unlikely that Walter or Liz would."

And there is was in a nutshell: he had suspected that Anne had not been speaking her own sentiments when she had handed him back the ring, and here was the proof. Likely he wouldn't have been Suzanne Russell's ideal choice for Anne -- a cumbersome long-distance relationship with a boy who had grown up in the wrong part of town, when Anne needed to be making the most of her networking connections? He had met Suzanne Russell in days past, and suddenly Anne's behavior all made sense to him: it wasn't her fickleness that was the problem, it was her weakness. Her unfortunate ability to be persuaded.

He didn't know if that made anything better. He changed the subject.

Anne had forcibly removed herself from earshot by this time; though she had heard nothing unpleasant about herself, she had heard a great deal more than she had wanted to -- and she was not pleased to find herself the subject of conversation between Louisa and Frederick. To have been the object of such indifferent, pitied interest!

She feigned great curiosity in the view, dropping behind even Charles, Mary and Hayley so that she could have the solitude to take some pictures. Framing the photographs, composing their content was soothing and she soon felt composed enough herself to face the others again. She tucked her camera back into her messenger bag and hurried along the path towards the theater.

In her haste, Anne managed to turn her ankle as she tripped over a knobby root, and ended up joining her friends only at the ruined theater, the ostensible object of their walk. The others hadn't seemed to have missed her or noticed her limp, but recruited her services as a photographer nonetheless as the girls posed in exaggerated positions, their interpretations of the ancient plays that had been performed in the space two thousand years ago. Frederick and Charles looked on, amused, until Charles looked at his watch and called out that they had better start back, as it was later than he had thought.

"They'll scarcely leave without us," Louisa noted, as the girls scrambled up from the orchestra back towards their friends.

"Better not chance it, though," Hayley said sensibly, saving Anne from making the obvious comment. "Your mom would be livid if we got lost!"

"I don't want to be left here!" Mary added, wailing a little. "It's hot, and I'm tired. I want to go back now!"

"We'll head back right now," Charles promised coming forward and taking Mary's arm. "We have to head back right now." The whole little group headed back towards the path, Anne lagging behind a little again, this time from the pain of her ankle after climbing up the theater rather than from any desire to avoid overhearing Frederick. Indeed, Frederick was still well within earshot this time, lagging or not, walking alongside Hayley and chatting in a friendly fashion about the rest of the day's itinerary.

They had gone about a quarter of the way back to the bus when Frederick turned around without warning, walked back towards her and addressed Anne directly for the first time since the incident on the hillside.

"You're hurt," he said, the only one in the group to have noticed. Hayley glanced at Anne in surprise, startled to discover that Frederick was right.

"It's nothing," Anne protested, increasing her speed despite the pain.

"You're lying. You're walking oddly and I can tell that you're in pain. If you walk fast enough to get back to the bus in time you're going to do even more damage. You can't possibly want to hobble around for the entire rest of your vacation?"

"Well, what do you propose?" Anne asked, a little desperately, annoyed with Frederick's imperious interference and not enjoying his supercilious attention at all. It would be one thing if he was speaking kindly to her, but there was a dearth of warmth from his voice. Only cool, level-headed reason. "I'm not exactly doing this for my own amusement."

Frederick gazed at her for a moment and then approached her purposefully, swinging her up in his arms easily in a gesture that would have been reminiscent of their long-past days together, if only there had been the slightest hint of tenderness in it at all.

"Louisa is probably right," Anne said, once she had overcome the shock of finding herself in Frederick's oddly impersonal arms, "I think that the bus would have waited."

"Not if we're to make our tour time for the castle at Erice. Jamie tells me the guide is obsessed with keeping his appointments." He made no more conversation towards Anne, no further explanations or excuses, but instead turned to Hayley, who had waited for them, and talked blandly to her about everything his friend Jamie had told him about the day's last destination, a medieval town on the site of an ancient shrine to the goddess Venus.

Anne couldn't listen to him, she was still confused by his actions. One minute he was distant and cold -- and flirting heavily with Louisa to boot -- the next minute he was always present, always keeping an eye on her, noticing whenever she was in trouble, sweeping in as the knight-in-shining-armor -- albeit in a somewhat ungratifying way. She was confused and turned over ideas in her mind again and again as she awkwardly lay in Frederick's arms, with Frederick ignoring her proximity completely. She could not ignore his.

He smelled the same as he had smelled all those years earlier. He sounded the same as well -- both his voice, and the slightly irregular heartbeat caused by a heart murmur -- but the smells confused her sense of reality, of time, more. She knew that researchers were always linking the sense of smell and memory, but for the first time she knew exactly what they meant: everything from the faint remnants of Frederick's aftershave to the lingering smell of his laundry detergent in his clothing woke up long-lost memories of their time together. Had she really walked away from all of that by giving him back the ring? Why had she walked away from all of that? Because Suzanne had convinced her that twenty-one was entirely too young to be engaged? That California was too far away? She could have just insisted on a long engagement. She had loved Frederick, and had wanted to marry him. And hadn't been thinking clearly at all when Suzanne had played upon the deeper recesses of her logic.

And yet, five years later, here she was, being carried by Frederick across a windswept field in Sicily. But not in the way that she might have been. She didn't know why Frederick was being so vigilant on her behalf -- probably it was more his sense of gentlemanly duty than any particular regard for herself -- but it wasn't from any warm feelings. He was helpful, but not friendly. He was solicitous, but also indifferent. His actions were speaking, and they were saying that while he could not entirely forgive her that he was not unfeeling. Though he condemned her for the past, and considered it with resentment, was largely indifferent to her and well on his way towards winning the whole-hearted attentions of another, he could not sit back and watch her suffering. It was a reminder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, unacknowledged friendship; it was proof of Frederick's own good heart, even if it was no longer hers. She wasn't sure if such proof of Frederick's feelings brought her pain or relief, but she guessed that she felt both.

"What on earth?" Louisa exclaimed, as Frederick, his burden, and Hayley came into sight of the bus. Louisa, Charles and Mary had clearly been waiting for the others for some minutes, and started with alarm when they saw Frederick carrying Anne. He set her down just by the door of the bus and quickly beat a retreat for himself, retiring to his seat along with his friend Jamie, who had a particularly questioning look on his face.

"Anne twisted her ankle or something," Hayley helpfully told the others, who were milling around outside the bus. "And we weren't going to make it back to the bus in time, Frederick thought. Do you suppose that there's any ice around?" Hayley cast a dubious eye around the hot, dusty car-park.

"I've got one of those instant ice-pack things," Claire Smith offered, approaching the group for the first time.

"Oh!" said Hayley.

"Would you mind?" asked Louisa.

"No, of course not." Claire went off to the luggage compartments under the bus and wrangled with the tour guide to help her retrieve her bag.

"Who was that?" asked Louisa, gazing off in Claire's direction.

"Claire Smith," Anne replied, standing awkwardly with her weight on her good foot. "I met her this morning."

"Oh," said Louisa. "She seems nice," she added vaguely, and then smiled at the young girl when she returned with the cold-pack. Not to be outdone by a perfect stranger, Mary suddenly remembered that she had a collapsable cane in her luggage -- the product of her hypochondriac tendencies -- and went off to find it while the beleaguered guide looked desperately at his watch in quiet resignation.

As it happened, the tour group made it to the Norman castle in the ancient mountain-top town of Erice in time for their tour. It had been a pleasant drive: the roads had been blissfully clear of traffic, the passengers had generally been in a good humor, and Anne had been well-entertained by a friendly and chatty Claire Smith moving into the seat beside her. She'd enjoyed the pleasant interval of gossip, especially as it was so beautifully free from any sting of her past with Frederick or her loss of her Kellynch home.

The passengers disembarked willingly enough, however, and were soon standing enthralled while their guide, assisted by a guide from the castle staff, told them about their surroundings. The castle was built from light, rectangular stones, and looked remarkably stark for a foundation housing the ruins of an ancient temple devoted to the Roman goddess Venus Erycina. The guide proceeded to describe one genesis myth about the goddess, which suggested that she was born in the surf in the ocean nearby, and then described the rituals and traditions classicists and archaeologists had pieced together about the goddess's worship. Anne found herself uncharacteristically disinterested, not currently very sympathetic with the goddess of passion and love after all that she'd been through in the company of her ex-fiancé. From where she stood, love caused more trouble than it was worth and left a mess behind afterwards to boot.

She heard a muffled snort and looked over to one side, where Frederick's friend Jamie was standing, a slightly grim look upon his face. Surprised to discover someone else clearly in the same mood that she was in herself, she ended up catching his eye as he looked about at the rest of the tour-group, who were listening raptly and tittering about the ritual service-women associated with the temple. Having shared this sympathetic look between them, it felt natural when Jamie fell into step beside Anne as she hobbled her way to the next spot of interest within the castle, cane in hand.

"I don't know that we ever properly met each other," Jamie said to Anne, after they had been walking together for some minutes. "I'm Jamie Benwick."

"Anne Elliot," Anne replied, holding out the hand that wasn't using the cane.

"Yes, I'd gathered," Jamie said in a perfectly friendly fashion. "It seems that you and I have both been hovering at the edges of the same group for two days now. I trust your accident hasn't impaired your sightseeing too much?"

"No," Anne owned. "I might not want to climb any mountains just now, but I'm managing quite well."

"I'm glad. My Italian relations own the tour, and I know they'd be upset if you couldn't enjoy their itinerary."

"You didn't look very amused yourself just now," Anne said softly. At heart her best quality was her unstinting kindness, and it troubled her to see the mystifyingly jovial-then-silent Jamie turn to his silent moods.

He gave a grim laugh. "I was hoping that no one had noticed, but I saw that you had. You didn't look too enamored yourself with the stories."

"I've heard many of them before. I majored in classical studies."

"Not classical languages?" Jamie asked without much curiosity, evidently steering the conversation away from whatever had been troubling him.

"It was the same thing at my school. Languages and Civ were different tracks within the same major."

"And where was school?" asked Jamie lightly, maintaining the wall around whatever was troubling him.

"The University of Pennsylvania," Anne admitted after an imperceptible pause. She was certain that Jamie would know that Frederick had gone there as well.

"Oh! Frederick went there too."

"I know."

There was silence for a few moments -- Anne was pleased that Jamie was the first person not to ask if she had known Frederick back then -- and then she made an effort to revive the conversation. They had been left alone in a corner of the castle as the rest of the group dispersed to explore its nooks and crannies, and neither one of them seemed to have much interest in the ruins of the temple to Venus at this moment.

"If your family owns the tour, do you come to Sicily often?"

"No, not really. Sometimes. My aunts and cousins have been getting a kick from the low value of the dollar against the euro -- lately they've been coming to the States when they want to see my mother. Though they live in a Mediterranean paradise, they still seem to like visiting suburban California, for reasons I cannot comprehend."

"So you just came for fun?"

"That, and I decided that I deserved a treat after passing the bar exam -- this time around. My uncle was only too pleased to combine that treat with a visit from me... and here I am." He then paused and seemed about to add something else, but shook his head and gave Anne a smile. She smiled in return. Quite a group of fledgling lawyers on this trip, between herself Frederick and Jamie!

"Congratulations. I passed a few months ago."

"Congratulations yourself. I see you had much the same idea as me, then."

"I was offered the trip, and it was an opportune offer. I couldn't refuse." A brief hint of sadness crossed Anne's face, remembering the sale of her beloved home, the loss of her greatest connection to a happier past. Jamie noted the look and took Anne's arm in his, offering it as an alternative to her cane, which he tucked under his other arm.

"Come on," he said gently. "We've come all this way and we're here in a castle, amidst Greek and Roman ruins, dammit. Come tell me all of the relevant fanciful ancient myths you know, and I'll reciprocate in Italian folk-tales."

By the time Anne and the others arrived at their hotel -- which was in that same little mountain-top town -- an hour or so later, she had gained rather great insight into the character of Jamie Giuseppe Benwick. They had walked about the castle slowly, in deference to Anne's ankle, sharing old fables and personal memories, each finding the other a remarkably sympathetic listener.

Jamie had evidently found Anne so sympathetic that he finally admitted to what had been preoccupying him these last few days, to make him fall so rapidly between moody contemplation when he should be enjoying himself.

"It's a girl," he had owned, as they perched against a medieval wall, Anne's short hair ruffled by a strong wind. "My girlfriend of three years. My ex-girlfriend, rather. She was supposed to be here with me, instead of Frederick -- all expenses paid getaway with the girl of my dreams. And while Frederick's great, he's not Phoebe, and he doesn't come close to the girl of my dreams. And while I certainly don't resent him spending his time with your friends, flirting more often than not, it doesn't exactly help matters either..."

This confession had hit rather too close to home for Anne. After all she, as the girlfriend of two years, had walked out on Jamie's friend just five years earlier.

"Time's a great healer," Anne had suggested cautiously, anxious to stay on the consoling side of the conversation rather than the commiserating side. "A few years can do a great deal. And new places."

"You speak from experience."

"I've... had a premature break-up as well," Anne had admitted. "A heart-ache of my own. But that was a long time ago. I'm all over it now." She had quickly switched back to the lecturing track, eager to stay away from her own fraught history, especially as it involved Jamie's friend. "But I think you're doing exactly the right thing," she had said with a jocularity she didn't feel. "You didn't let Phoebe's absence prevent you from enjoying your vacation. I know it's not perfect, but this is the perfect opportunity for you... the chance to make new friends who know nothing about your loss, the chance to fill your days with sightseeing instead of gloomy memories."

"Tell me more, O wise one," Jamie had said, a small smile on his face as he observed Anne's earnest expression. The conversation had continued in this vein for some time, Anne feeling like a larger and larger hypocrite with every word. -- Here she was, giving relationship advice in an authoritative tone, when she was the last person in the world who should be doing so! She had been glad when the conversation shifted slightly, and she was able to explain away her own earlier sadness on the loss of her home, which did have a great deal to do with her current emotional morass.

Needless to say, such baring of souls resulted in a certain amount of psychological intimacy, and it seemed perfectly natural for Anne to sit beside Jamie at dinner and to converse with him while the rest of her friends -- and Frederick -- chattered amongst themselves. She admired Jamie's honesty in admitting to the cause of his sadness, his ability to share what he felt, and the kindness in his character that caused him to seek to cheer her up, even as she sought to cheer him. And she enjoyed the great wealth of his cultural knowledge, which furnished humorous anecdotes, folk tales and songs on a moment's notice.

Their conversation was remarkably lively -- especially given Jamie's brooding quiet of the last few days -- as the evening wore on, and the others looked over at them more than once, gazing in surprise and wonder at the two heads bent close together earnestly and in perfect amicability; the two quietest members of their set talking to one another at full throttle. But Frederick was the only one who frowned at the sight.

Part III:

Posted on September 1, 2008

The next day saw the tour group onto a small boat headed towards Mozia, a ruined ancient Phoenician city on the island of San Panatleo, just off the western coast of Sicily. It was a brilliantly sunny day and the entire group was in good spirits throughout the short boat-ride over, having enjoyed a merry morning sampling the famed vintages of Marsala. The cooler sea air was also welcome in the growing heat, and had anyone been examining Anne closely, they might have noticed how well the oceanic winds brought color to her cheeks and the salt breeze a sparkle in her eyes.

She was finally beginning to enjoy herself. Her new friendship with Jamie Benwick had only grown since the day before and he proved an admirable audience to her enthusiasm about the ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians -- especially as most of her friends couldn't care less and wouldn't have been able to tell the Punic wars apart from one another if their lives depended on it. Jamie didn't have an overwhelming interest in the Phoenicians either -- and if anything had a slight dislike of them -- but he was a good sport about listening to Anne's descriptions of ancient wars and cultures, and even occasionally chimed in with a remembered anecdote or two of his own from his rather greater past travels across the Mediterranean.

They continued to talk when the boat moored and he served as her escort as the group was ushered into the island's charming little archaeological museum -- right up until Anne's antique interests caused her to linger much longer by certain pieces than he wished to. At this point, he politely asked if she would mind if he joined some of the others for a little while. Anne had her cane with her and was rather eager to enjoy her time amongst the artifacts, so readily gave her assent. Jamie soon disappeared and Anne was left alone to wander happily amongst the bizarre and beautiful objects of millennia past.

Her solitude lasted only so long as she remained in the museum. As soon as Anne emerged into the bright sunlight, she was cornered by Hayley, who had apparently had a phone call with her boyfriend late the night before and wanted to share this fact with everyone she knew. Anne bore with the cheerful chatter as the two walked towards the ruins of the city, Hayley going slowly out of consideration for Anne's ankle.

"... And I said that I think he should go to business school somewhere interesting. After all, he'll want someplace interesting after this internship in Pittsburgh is done with. Maybe California? The sea here is so pretty! I think Henry would enjoy living near the ocean -- I would enjoy living near the ocean! If I marry him, should I keep my own name, do you think? I like the old tradition of changing one's name, but Hayley Hayter is a bit unfortunate, don't you think?"

It was a constant flow of inconsequential prattling, but Anne slowly began to enjoy it. She and Hayley might have never been close, but Hayley was a good-hearted girl who seemed to genuinely appreciate Anne's opinions and advice. To be perceived as such a treasured dispenser of wisdom was more than a little alluring, so Anne soon began to actually listen to Hayley.

After a little while they settled on a bench, the pain in Anne's ankle having finally overcome her enthusiasm for the Phoenician ruins. Hayley kindly offered to take a series of photographs of the bits of the ruins Anne hadn't been able to explore, and Anne was only too pleased to accept the favor. But even after Hayley had left, once again, Anne wasn't left alone for very long.

"Ooph. You definitely have the right idea, Anne," Louisa commented, coming to sit beside Anne in Hayley's vacated seat. Frederick stood in front of them awkwardly for a moment before Louisa gestured that he sit on the other side of her. He did so in silence as Louisa turned to chat with Anne.

"You probably got a lot more out of all of this than we did," Louisa continued gaily. She seemed to have enjoyed herself, whether or not she had been able to appreciate these signs of the ancient Phoenician empire.

"I had a seminar on the Phoenicians and Carthaginians during my senior year at Penn," Anne agreed. "I became a bit enamored. Did you at least like the pieces in the museum?"

"Oh, absolutely!" Louisa enthused. "The statue of that youth? My goodness he was pretty -- and to think that such a piece was able to survive for so long!"

"It is pretty amazing," Anne replied with a quiet smile. She was on the verge of asking another question when Frederick piped up.

"There's Jamie and the guide waving down there. I think it might be time to head back to the boat."

"Oh, especially if you're still not walking well, Anne," Louisa agreed, gazing between her two older friends. "Let's head down now. I'm a bit tired of ruins anyway."

"There are more to come this afternoon," Frederick pointed out with a smile.

"But at least they'll be different ruins!" Louisa's good humor was infectious, and somehow she made the slow trip down to the pier considerably less awkward than it might have otherwise been -- what with Frederick, Frederick's ex, and Frederick's newest conquest.

Only about half of the tour group had assembled by the boat when Anne, Louisa and Frederick arrived. The would-be passengers milled about together, murmuring about lunch and eyeing the other parties on the quay with mild interest.

One of these unknown figures deserved some of that interest, as he really was quite a handsome man. Tall, dark and handsome, with eyelashes any woman would die for and a shirt of immaculate cut, he seemed a little out of place sitting there idly on one of the few seats on the quay. He stared about himself with a look of patient boredom but rose quickly as Anne and her two companions approached, Anne using her cane.

"Please, you seem to need this seat much more than I," the beautiful gentleman said, displaying manners as perfect as his appearance.

Anne looked about her with a slight expression of surprise. Evidently the beautiful man really did mean her and she accepted the seat with a smile of grateful thanks, Louisa and Frederick coming to stand a little to one side of her. The beautiful man lingered a little, not moving on, giving Anne a look of unqualified admiration as she settled herself onto the seat. Anne smiled back at him shyly; Louisa gazed at him with confused interest; and Frederick began to frown a little, turning to study Anne's flushed face with an unreadable expression, a strange glint of surprised recognition in his eyes as he observed Anne.

"Nice day to be sightseeing," the beautiful man commented.

"Yes," Anne agreed, taking on the role of group spokesperson with her usual quiet dignity when neither of the others seemed inclined to speak. "It certainly is."

"Have you come far?" the man asked conversationally.

"Today we started from Erice."

"Oh, of course! I know it. I came from Marsala myself."

"We were there this morning, for a little while."

"Did you --" The beautiful man had noticed some movement in the crowd of Anne's fellow passengers. "Is that your group?"

"Yes. I'd better join them. I don't want to find myself stranded here."

"Then let me help you onto the boat." Despite Anne's protests and the unveiled curiosity of her friends, Anne soon found herself being handed onto the boat by the handsome stranger, and settled into a seat. He gave a jaunty wave to her as he turned to go and soon disappeared off onto a path half-obscured from Anne's current line of vision by a series of aloe plants. She shrugged and turned in time to see Hayley running back onto the boat, a camera in hand.

"Oh my gosh, I thought I might have missed the boat! I took a million pictures, Anne -- I'm not sure exactly of what, but I figured you could figure that out. And who was that guy just now? Because I swear, he looked exactly like William Eliot!"

"I think it was William Eliot!" Mary suddenly piped in, coming to sit close by Anne and Hayley. "Did you get his name, because seriously I can't believe that I didn't get a chance to meet him if it was!"

"Who?" asked Anne, a little confused, wondering if they meant a second cousin of hers, but concluding that that William Elliot was about forty and balding and looked nothing like this Adonis. "No, I didn't get his name. He just offered me a seat so I didn't have to stand, and then helped me on the boat. I know nothing else about him."

"I really think it was him," Mary maintained, continuing her mysterious conversation with Hayley across Anne. "You know that his character has been given a short hiatus so he could have a break from all that filming! -- In a coma, I think. But I missed the episode where they explained it."

"William Eliot is one of the stars of Lover's Lane, the soap opera," Hayley finally explained, seeing Anne's confused look.

"He plays an absolutely dreamy doctor on it. If that was him, he's even more attractive in person!" Mary added.

"Wait a minute, I have a copy of People in my bag," Hayley offered. "There's a picture of him in it -- let's see if it really was the same guy." She dove into her large handbag for a minute and returned triumphant with the glossy magazine in hand. After a moment of rifling through the pages, she spread the magazine out on Anne's lap and stabbed a finger at a medium-sized picture that accompanied a column's worth of interview.

"Wow, it seriously was him," Louisa said, coming to crowd around Anne as the guide tried fruitlessly to account for all of his charges. She had no great love of soap operas, but she was nonetheless impressed that she'd just met a minor celebrity and that he'd been nice to her party.

"It does look like him," Anne agreed. She, too, was not particularly impressed with either the soap opera genre or the mere glow of celebrity, but she had appreciated the man's kindness. To now discover that he was a star in his field just made his random acts of politeness so much more valuable -- she gathered that self-centeredness was generally rampant among the world's show-business celebrities.

"Oooh, I'm so jealous," Mary moaned, pulling the magazine off of Anne's lap and into her own. "Why don't I get to meet gorgeous TV stars?"

"Because you've got me?" Charles interrupted, with good humor.

"True," Mary admitted. "Hey, what if you got a haircut just like the one William Eliot is wearing in this picture...?"

Anne mercifully tuned out of the conversation and stared out behind her onto the blue expanse of the sea as the boat finally moved away from the pier. She didn't know precisely what to make of the whole incident, but she was nevertheless flattered by the fleeting attention that the soap actor had paid her.

Across the boat three pairs of eyes regarded Anne: Frederick brooded gazing between Anne and Louisa, Jamie Benwick smiled looking between Anne and Frederick, and Claire Smith flicked her focus between Anne, Hayley and Mary, her sweet face contemplative with unknown thoughts.

Over a picnic lunch on a sandy beach at Selinunte -- the ancient coastal town that served as their next destination -- Frederick found his gaze focusing on Anne again. He didn't know why he should be any more interested in her and her actions now than a few days earlier, except perhaps he was realizing that the girl he had known and loved was not completely gone. Changed, yes, but not gone.

That smarmy actor had been quick to recognize the Anne Frederick had known -- the sea air and Anne's enthusiasm for the Phoenician ruins had combined to bring a light and a joy to Anne's face that suited her, that reminded Frederick of the Anne with that gorgeous enthusiasm in that Roman court and oratory seminar all those years ago. And yet, Anne had certainly grown, matured -- he could see why that ridiculous pretty-boy had paid such marked attentions to Anne: she had been looking happy, healthy and beautiful in addition to still possessing her new maturity and her old quiet elegance and air of understated intelligence. For goodness sake, even Frederick had admired Anne in that instant, even after all she had done to him.

And Jamie had apparently recognized Anne's good qualities as well.

Frederick really didn't know how he felt about that development either, though he was inclined to think that it wasn't necessarily a very good thing. After all, Jamie had just been hurt by a woman who had walked out on him, and Anne had the propensity to walk out on the men she claimed to love. And, furthermore, neither Jamie nor Anne was the short-term fling type, but they lived on opposite coasts -- and Anne was against serious long-distance relationships. Yes: no good could come of it at all. He frowned a little as he watched Anne and Jamie sitting, talking pleasantly together a little ways down the beach.

"How can you be frowning over this heavenly prosciutto?" Louisa suddenly asked him, digging an over-friendly elbow jokingly into his side. He'd forgotten that she was sitting there next to him and quickly schooled his features to hide this fact before replying to her amiably,

"I'm sorry, I was miles away. It's very good, isn't it?"

"Absolutely. I'm glad we've got so many picnic lunches, it's so much fun to take really good food, and to eat it out somewhere pretty -- like this beach, or some park."

"You should be sure to tell Jamie so he can tell his uncle."

"Oh, I will!" She dusted off her fingers and reached into her shoulder bag, which contained a printed copy of the trip's itinerary. "More ruins! You were right."

"Most days have ruins in them," Frederick pointed out.

"I have noticed that," Louisa playfully agreed. "Maybe I should have made my mother book a tour in Northern Italy... somewhere nearer the big cities, and there could have been some shopping too..."

"Ah, but then we never would have met," Frederick said lightly. -- And then realized that flirting with Louisa had suddenly become a lot less fun than it had been. What was wrong with him?

"Oh, you," Louisa laughed. "Fair point, fair point." She crinkled her nose as she gazed into one of the remaining containers of food that had been spread out on a blanket near them. "I really have no idea what that is, do you?" Frederick shook his head and offered her an orange.

"This looks safe," he said.

"Absolutely," Louisa said vaguely, tucking into the orange and a guide-book simultaneously. "Huh, these are really going to be pretty impressive ruins," she admitted after reading a little. "Well, I guess I'm game, and I'm sure Anne will be over the moon!"

The archaeological park at Selinunte was an impressive one: it was filled with the ruins of no less than seven temples between the acropolis and the surrounding areas, and excavations hadn't even ceased yet. Louisa had been right, Anne was over the moon about it all.

She took her enthusiasm out on Jamie once more, though he still maintained his vague anti-Phoenician stance as Anne read aloud from a guidebook about the razing of the former Greek city they were standing in.

"Maybe it's my Italian blood," he said, shrugging, after taking a picture of Temple E, a fine example of Sicilian Doric architecture. Anne laughed at him and lined up a picture herself.

"You don't admire the Phoenicians at all? They were the first people to really use an alphabet! They were skilled at creating dyes, weaving, making glass -- and even better at trading and sailing."

"And they razed this city," Jamie pointed out, turning Anne gently around so that she would be in one of the photographs he was taking. "Smile. Thanks. And I never really got the thing with the elephants."

"That was Carthage, which was pretty much made up of the descendants of Phoenician ex-pats -- the Phoenicians proper had pretty much been conquered by that time."

"I cheer for the Italians every time."

"They weren't really Italians then, though," Anne pointed out as she took Jamie's arm to help her walk to another side of the temple. "There were Etruscans and there were the Romans... and I thought that Sicilians weren't too keen on Rome and the north of Italy!"

"Well, I'd rather cheer for Rome than for some random people from Tyre and North Africa who think that its a good idea to send elephants through the Alps," Jamie said genially. "Am I going too fast for you?"

"No, this is fine. Thanks." Anne's ankle was still tender as she'd had to do a fair bit of walking since she'd hurt it, but she appreciated the care that Jamie -- and Hayley and that William Eliot -- had demonstrated towards her because of this. The pair slowly rounded the corner of the temple and came into sight of Temple F, yet another Doric temple, that was completely in ruins unlike the building they had just been photographing. Because of its ruined state, however, some of Anne's fellow tour-passengers were having fun scrambling on the outer pieces... it was rather like a jungle gym crossed with a jigsaw puzzle.

They slowly drew up closer to the temple and Anne and Jamie both set about photographing the ruins and their friends, who were among the climbers. Louisa in particular seemed to be enjoying herself: she had climbed up the tallest of the piles of crumbled masonry and was smiling brightly at her friends below, enjoying being photographed on her sunny perch.

"Be careful," Charles called out to her. It would never occur to him to climb on ruins and he had a vague notion that it might be unsafe as well as unseemly.

"Tosh!" Louisa called. "I took gymnastics for years, I've got great balance." She leapt from one piece of broken column to another, balancing skillfully as she landed. "Hand me up my camera," she instructed Frederick, who had been standing a little ways beneath her. "There's a gorgeous view, with the other temple framing it nicely," she said cheerfully. "And I can't wait to get a picture of the lot of you standing down there like dorks."

She took her pictures and then tucked the camera into the bag she had slung across her shoulders, and looked back down at her audience. "All right, all right," she said, catching sight of her brother's anxious gaze. "I'll come down. ... Catch me, Frederick!" she called suddenly and -- with no more warning -- leapt lightly down from her perch and into Frederick's arms.

-- Only, he hadn't been quite ready for her and he stumbled forward over a small, broken piece of masonry as he struggled to regain his footing to receive her weight. She and he fell, both, Frederick landing on top of Louisa. He rose shakily to his feet. ... She did not.

There was no wound, no blood, no visible bruise; but her eyes were closed, she breathed not, her face was like death -- the horror to all who stood around!

Frederick immediately dove back down to Louisa's side and knelt there, touching her lightly, trying to ascertain what was wrong without moving her. He was completely white with shock.

"She's dead! She's dead!" Mary cried, catching hold of her boyfriend and contributing, with his own horror, to make him immoveable; and in another moment, Hayley, a little to the side of the others, sunk under the conviction and lost her senses too, and would have fallen into the dirt and rubble herself had Jamie and Anne -- her ankle forgotten in this moment of fear -- not had the presence of mind to rush forward and catch her between them.

"Is there no one to help?" asked Frederick frantically, words finally coming to him.

"Go to him, go to him," Anne urged Jamie. "I can manage with Hayley. Look at Louisa -- please! -- and call a doctor!"

Jamie obeyed and Charles at the same moment, disentangled from Mary, likewise surged forward towards Frederick and the immobile girl. They examined her briefly, inexpertly, determining that she was indeed alive, and decided that they had better summon an ambulance immediately. Charles and Frederick gazed at one another in horror, realizing that they hadn't the least notion of how to deal with such an emergency in a foreign country.

"Jamie," Anne said firmly, having brought Hayley to and propped her up against one of the masonry fragments. "Jamie. Get the guide, call an ambulance."

"Of course!" Jamie leapt to his feet and went tearing off down the hill towards the area where he had last seen the guide. After what seemed like an eternity, Jamie and the guide returned, reporting that an ambulance was on its way and collecting more detailed accounts of what had happened from Louisa's thoroughly shocked friends.

It could scarcely be said who of the three most competent witnesses was most appalled at the surprising accident: Frederick, Anne or Charles. Charles, while more lucid than either his cousin or his girlfriend, was reeling hard under the fact that his dear sister had been knocked unconscious from the fall and might have unknown serious injuries. He stood mute as he watched the guide -- who had some basic medical training -- examine Louisa, unable to quite offer comfort to either himself or Mary now that Louisa's welfare had been taken from his hands; some of the darkest of the fears he had harbored for the gaily perched Louisa had come true.

Frederick seemed to feel the weight of the accident all himself, knowing that had he been a little more aware, had he not fallen forward that Louisa might have been awake and laughing with them just at that moment. Anne could see that he would far rather be unconscious himself, that he blamed himself, and she supposed that he was quite reasonably terrified to see the girl whom he'd been chasing for the last few days lying immobile at his feet. -- And as such, Anne realized that, regardless of her history with Frederick, because of her history with Frederick and the knowledge of his character that that brought her, she needed to be the one to offer him some comfort. She stopped a moment and held his hand reassuringly for a few minutes as she flitted between the others and was relieved to see him tear his eyes from Louisa's still body and steady his breathing a little.

Anne attended to each of the others with all of the strength and zeal and thought that instinct could provide. Her competent actions were, however useful and necessary, simply a front for the deep fears welling up within her: she had, after all, been sent on this trip to watch over Louisa and the others... but had she been really watching out for the impetuous girl? To stave off questions of culpability, Anne surged forward, hobbling between Hayley, Mary, Charles and Frederick, dispensing firm consolation and advice.

Frederick and Charles both gazed over at Anne, looking to her for direction as -- at very long last -- the ambulance men arrived. Anne gestured that Frederick and Charles should move away from Louisa as the medics examined her and they backed off quickly, coming to stand near Jamie, who, along with the guide, was explaining in rapid Italian what had happened.

Louisa was transferred to a stretcher, where her eyes flicked open and she gazed about herself for a moment. She murmured about her head and raised a hand to her temple, but then closed her eyes again and sank back into unconsciousness once more. This proof of life and comprehension, however brief, did a good deal to relieve Louisa's worried comrades; with the Kellynch contingent and Frederick a trifle calmer as the competent medics did their work, Jamie finally turned to Anne, Frederick and Charles and addressed them about what they ought to do next.

"They'll take her to the hospital now," Jamie said. "They think she should be all right, but they need her to remain conscious, and they need to run some tests to make sure that she'll be all right. They're going to take her to Marsala... I'm going to go along shortly in a car our guide has managed to borrow from one of my third cousins, as Louisa doesn't know any Italian and my uncle would want me to make sure that she's all right... someone she knows better should come too. But not all of you, I'm afraid."

This opened up Pandora's box.

Charles was determined that he should stay with Louisa. "She's my sister." he proclaimed stoutly. "My parents would never forgive me if I didn't stay with her." He neither would, nor ought, to go and Jamie and Frederick nodded their assent to this plan.

Charles continued, however. "I'm sure Louisa would like to see you when she wakes up again," he said to Frederick, kindly thinking of Louisa and Frederick's growing friendship with one another. "You've got to come."

Charles would not hear any of Frederick's faint protests and, as Frederick did want to be assured that Louisa wouldn't suffer permanent damage on account of his part in the accident, he soon agreed to come to the hospital. This left the possibility that perhaps one of the others should come along as a third member of Louisa's support group, and the others each weighed their claims to that place.

"Louisa's my cousin," Hayley said faintly, though she was soon persuaded that Charles would manage without her and that hospitals only made her very nervous.

Frederick and Charles then looked at Anne, both knowing that if any of them would be of use in the hospital that it would most certainly be Anne.

"Will you go?" asked Frederick, addressing the question directly to Anne and offering her the knowledge that he wanted her to be there with Louisa. "No one is so capable as you, Anne."

Startled to receive a direct compliment from Frederick, Anne paused a moment while coming up with the words to agree to the proposal. Mary cut in more quickly, though.

"What right has Anne to go, what is Louisa to her?" Mary exclaimed, tugging on her boyfriend's arm. "Louisa has been my best friend these last twenty years, not Anne's! ... I should be there when Louisa wakes... Anne can look after Hayley."

Charles soon caved to Mary's insistent logic, and Jamie and Frederick could not hold out once Louisa's brother had given his consent. It was decided: Mary, Frederick and Jamie were to go along with Louisa to Marsala and would rejoin the tour in a day or two, whenever Louisa was discharged. Anne and Hayley were to head back onto the bus and to continue with their vacation as best they might.

A few moments later, these plans decided, Anne found herself unexpectedly walking back to the bus with Frederick as he went to retrieve his bag. He was quiet, distracted, and they were almost to the parking lot when he finally addressed her.

"It's all my fault," he said in a low, anguished voice. "It's all my fault! If only I had been firmer with her, instead pandering to her youthful whims more often than not... She was so eager, so resolute in her impetuous actions -- poor, sweet, foolish Louisa!"

While most of Anne's heart reached out to Frederick in this moment and her free hand reached again for his, a small piece of her was thinking: your earlier applause for Louisa's firmness of character and steadiness of will may have been a little misjudged! It seems that there can be such a thing as too much steadiness and resolution. It was, it appeared, a far better thing to be of a persuadable temperament than an implacable one... or at least there were far greater chances for happiness if one was less than resolute on occasion... provided one picked one's occasions properly.

"Will you be all right?" Frederick suddenly asked, holding Anne's hand tight in his for a moment. "We're leaving you alone, and you were supposed to be the guardian eyes for your friends..."

"I understand why I'm not coming along," Anne said, keeping her voice calm and soothing so as to comfort him. "I can take care of myself."

"I know that you can."

They were then swamped by curious and anxious members of the tour group, who had been suffering from wild rumors for the last twenty minutes or so. Soon Anne was occupied with setting the story of Louisa's accident right -- Yes: the medics thought she would be fine. No: she was not dead, or spilling blood all over the ground -- and she missed the moment when Frederick disappeared. She was shortly rescued by a solicitous Claire Smith, who wanted to hear the inside story for herself and was also anxious about Anne's feelings and ankle both, and Anne gratefully settled into a seat beside the younger girl.

Continue with their vacation as best they might. It was easier said than done. Hayley took some of her sleeping pills as soon as the group reached their hotel in the southern Sicilian city of Agrigento that evening, leaving Anne the task of calling Mrs Musgrove back in Kellynch to make sure that she understood whatever muddled explanations Charles and Mary had already told her over the phone.

Despite a quiet, friendly evening in the company of the kind Claire and her cheerful, outgoing older brother Wallis, Anne found her thoughts miles away. Some job she had done in keeping an eye on Louisa...

Part Four:

Posted on September 7, 2008

Anne woke from a restless night to see the bright morning sunshine lighting a spectacular view of the city of Agrigento outside her window. Ordinary people walked and drove through the streets outside the hotel, living their ordinary lives quite cheerfully, never knowing that a girl named Louisa had had an accident miles away in Selinunte. Anne, inside the quiet room, was only too aware of this fact though, and wished with all of her heart that she could be in Marsala with Louisa and the others, wished that she could somehow do something for the girl who was supposed to be in her care. Guilt -- an all-too-familiar sentiment for Anne -- rested heavily upon her shoulders and the furrows in her brow deepened as Anne struggled to accept that she was here and the others there.

Hayley stirred in the bed across the room and awoke, rubbing her eyes lightly and casting about herself as she took heed of her surroundings.

"Good morning, Anne," Hayley said in a cheerful enough voice. Then the memories of the day before clearly came back to her. "Has there been any word?" she added, asking anxiously.

"Not that I know of, but as neither of us have our own phones with us they'd have to leave a message with the desk."

"Oh," Hayley's mouth formed a small circle at Anne's clear-headed logic. "Of course." She swung her feet around so that they touched the floor, setting aside pointless worrying for momentary useful distractions. "Mind if I take the first shower?"

Anne nodded and began to pack up her things into her suitcase once more. She hated not having access to all the latest news, but until there was word from Marsala there was really nothing she could do. Continue with their vacation as best they might. So far that wasn't very well at all.

It was very fortunate that Agrigento was home to some of the most spectacular ruins Anne had encountered so far: they actually succeeded in keeping her from spending all of her time brooding. After a breakfast of coffee and fruit and croissants with Hayley and Claire and Wallis Smith, Anne felt rather restored and much more herself, rough night or not. She soon consented to look over the day's itinerary for the others, and found herself interested as Hayley read aloud from her guidebook about the sites that Anne had identified.

And so, a mere thirty minutes later, Anne found herself in an archaeological park once more. This time, however, there was no Louisa, no Frederick, no Jamie -- and somehow this made things easier. For a short while, at least, Anne would be able to distract herself from the continued lack of fresh news from Marsala, and without the awkward overtones of her past with Frederick or Louisa's accident.

And, so temporarily relieved of some of her greatest cares, here were funds of enjoyment! Here -- in Agrigento's Valle dei Templi -- at last, were the pure joys of the classicist set loose amongst ancient monuments! Here, too, were people wholly unconnected with Anne's ill-starred distant and recent past.

"I thought it might be you," a rich baritone voice said to Anne as someone came over to where she was standing taking photographs of the spectacularly-preserved doric Temple of Concord. Anne turned around in surprise, not recognizing the voice.

"Oh!" she said as she, startled, recognized the speaker. It was William Eliot, the soap star whom Mary and Hayley had gushed over so, who had been so courteous to her on the quay at Mozia.

"We were never properly introduced," the handsome actor continued, his smile showing perfect teeth and genuine warmth. "And since we've come across one another again, I feel that Fate wants us to become acquainted. Or, at least, I'd like to know you. I'm Will Eliot." He held out a hand, which was connected to a beautifully bronzed arm and had immaculate nails -- far nicer than Anne's own.

"Anne Elliot," Anne said, letting her camera fall back down onto her chest and shifting Mary's cane from her right hand to her left.

"What a coincidence!" William Eliot exclaimed, flashing his lovely smile again.

"I understand that you spell your name with one L, though," Anne replied, smiling quietly.

He looked startled for a moment, but then smiled again. "And you use two, I take it?"

"Yes."

"I was pretty sure that you didn't know who I was, the other day," William Eliot added ruefully, after a moment.

"I didn't," Anne answered, looking up at her new acquaintance with some curiosity. "My friends recognized you."

"I'm glad you, didn't recognize me," William Eliot said, laughing. "Being in the spotlight -- even such a minor spotlight -- is all very well, but it's nice to get away from it every now and then. Well, if you already know all about me, tell me about yourself -- and tell me how you hurt yourself. You quite caught my imagination when I saw you walking the dusty paths of Mozia with that cane, I've been imaging all sort of crazy stories ever since. Do tell me that you were kidnapped by pirates and carried off by Arion's dolphin..."

"Nothing half so exciting," Anne said with a small laugh. It was strangely wonderful to simply enjoy an innocent flirtation with a handsome stranger she'd never meet again -- she hadn't done anything of the sort in ever so very long -- and she was intrigued by his easy classical reference to the Greek Arion, who had found rescue from a pirate-laden ship on the back of a dolphin. In her prejudiced mind she had never thought that soap opera stars would know much about ancient mythology; once again William Eliot was pleasantly surprising her. She smiled at him suddenly, her face lighting with honest pleasure at encountering such an agreeable conversation partner -- and one with whom there were no troubled waters about Frederick and her abandonment of him all those years ago, as there had been with Frederick, Jamie, and even her friends from Kellynch. "I tripped and turned my ankle a few days ago."

"I'm sorry," the actor said, genuinely apologetic on Anne's behalf. "What a rotten thing to happen to you when you're on vacation! Do let me offer you an arm." He held out his arm gallantly and Anne took it, afraid that it would be rude to refuse. William Eliot began to lead them along the path towards the ruined Temple of Hercules, a little ways away.

They had barely started down this path when the cry of "William Eliot!" was voiced. Anne looked up, half expecting to see some crazed soap fans wanting an autograph, but was surprised to only see Claire and Wallis Smith instead, both walking forward with warm smiles of friendly recognition. William Eliot seemed slightly less pleased to see the pair of them, but he shook their hands in an amicable fashion before making some excuse early off in the conversation and walking away with Anne, leaving her two new friends behind. Anne wondered a little at the exchange but was soon distracted by her charming companion's conversation.

There could be no doubt of his being a sensible man. Ten minutes were enough to certify that. His tone, his expressions, his choice of subject, his knowing where to stop -- it was all the operation of a sensible, discerning mind. He soon turned the conversation to Mozia, wanting to compare opinions respecting the place, but especially wanting to speak of the coincidence of the two of them following similar itineraries on their journeys. From here it was natural to turn to the journeys themselves, with William Eliot telling Anne more about his own odyssey -- which was being undertaken via motorcycle -- and Anne telling him more about the stops on her bus tour, most of which Eliot had already seen himself.

He was quick to catch Anne's one small reference to the near-tragedy that she was still reeling under from the day before, amidst her descriptions of what she had seen at Selinunte -- and nothing would do but to hear the details. He was, once again, all solicitude and he surprised Anne by showing a remarkable sensitivity to how the accident was affecting Anne and her friend Hayley. Aside from Claire Smith, none of the other bus passengers had spared a thought for this since Frederick, only wanting to hear of the gory details of what had happened to Louisa.

By this time she was quite in charity with the handsome actor, and they moved easily to talking about their own lives: of Anne's hard work and determination as she struggled to earn her degree without taking on debt, of her love of classical cultures, and of the terrible loss of her beloved home; of William Eliot's desire to move from the relatively disreputable field of soaps towards more dignified and intelligent roles. She was rather surprised when she finally looked at her watch and saw that she was nearly due back at the entrance to the park for her group's tour of the archaeological museum, and bid a friendly but reluctant farewell to her new acquaintance.

"You may not be shot of me yet," Eliot replied with a smile. "You said that you were headed to Piazza Armerina tomorrow -- and while it's a tourist trap, I couldn't possibly see Sicily without a visit to the famous mosaics in the Roman villa there. So let's say farewell just now, and not goodbye." He gave Anne a friendly peck on the cheek and thanked her for her conversation, handed her back her cane and the bag he'd been carrying for her, and waved her off with a smile.

"Domani, signorina Elliot!" he called, waving Anne off. "Tomorrow. I'll be seeing you."

"Oh my gosh!" Hayley cried, coming up behind Anne. "That's really him: William Eliot. He is so gorgeous. You have to introduce me to him!"

But William Eliot had disappeared once more, and the guide was already herding the group onto the bus.

"Well, maybe tomorrow," Anne said. "He's headed to Piazza Armerina as well."

There was a short message awaiting Anne and Hayley when they returned to the hotel that evening for dinner: Louisa had been declared to be fit to leave the hospital, and would be released that very evening barring any unforeseen problems; the Musgroves, Mary, Jamie and Frederick would meet up with the tour at either at the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina or at the excavations of the ancient Greek town of Morgantina, the next day's two stops. Anne thought that she was largely relieved at the news: Louisa had suffered no lasting damage and would be fit to continue her trip; Anne's lack of vigilance had not caused irreparable harm.

But the news also made her a little apprehensive; she'd had such a nice morning with William Eliot, enjoying his easy, well-informed company, though she knew that there was no future for their friendship. She had had honest and pure enjoyment of her trip for perhaps the first time since she'd first seen Frederick again, and she was apprehensive about diving back into the complicated waters of her former relationship with Frederick, her position as in loco parentis for Louisa (Frederick's apparent new flame, moreover), and her friendship with Jamie (which was itself clouded by Anne's knowledge that she had acted just as Phoebe had acted, and by her knowledge that Jamie would condemn her if he knew about her history with Frederick -- Jamie's best friend).

All in all, wasn't it just easier to have a friendly, flirting morning with a wandering soap star? Why did the people that Anne knew have to be so complicated?

After several hours of inconclusive thoughts, Anne succumbed to her frustrations and pulled out her calling card; as much as Suzanne Russell had hurt Anne's relationship with Frederick all those years ago with her bad advice, Anne was desperately in need of some sort of perspective, and she needed to sort out her thoughts with someone who knew about Frederick. She dialed her best friend's familiar number and waited as the phone rang on the other side of the Atlantic.

"Hello?"

"It's me," Anne said. "Did I wake you?"

"No -- though it is two a.m. here, you know. I'm too exhausted for sleep. I had the world's longest shift."

"Life as a medical intern treating you roughly?" Anne asked with a smile.

"Life as a leisurely vacationer treating you well?" Suzanne countered.

Anne paused, unsure of how exactly to answer that.

"I see," Suzanne inferred. "Apparently not."

"I don't know," Anne said. "It's gorgeous here but... I don't know."

"I assume the precious Kellynch infants are giving you trouble."

"In a way. Louisa had an accident, but she's alright now."

"An accident? What kind? Are you okay?"

Again, the rare pleasure of someone thinking about Anne. Anne smiled, glad that she had made the call, and continued. "She had a bad fall, off a ruined piece of column. It was a bit of a shock, but I feel much better now that I know she's fine."

"Doric or Ionic column?" Suzanne joked, trying to distract her friend from whatever melancholy seemed to be gripping her. Late-night calls were not unusual between the two friends, but Anne was usually too considerate to call anyone at their equivalent of two a.m.. Clearly something was up.

"Doric."

There was silence for a minute while Anne tried to figure out a way of explaining her renewed acquaintance with Frederick Wentworth, and while Suzanne Russell tried to figure out the best way of breaking the most recent news about Anne's former home to the girl. Suzanne, choosing to speak bluntly, found her words first.

"The purchase went through today," Suzanne said flatly. "And your father has officially taken up residence in New York. I thought you'd want to know."

"I do. I -- hate it. But I do. Thank you." There it was: her home was irrevocably no longer hers, and her father had done away with his family's proud heritage in one fell swoop. But the news actually helped: it was like hitting one's thumb with a hammer in order to avoid thinking about the pain in one's head. It wasn't perhaps the best solution, but it did help distract Anne from thinking about how to survive another week or so with Frederick and Louisa.

"How are the others? -- Aside from Louisa, I mean," Suzanne continued, offering Anne the chance to delay whatever it was she seemed to be having difficulty saying... or an opportunity to discuss it, whichever Anne wanted.

"Charles and Mary went to Marsala -- to the hospital with Louisa. Hayley's fine... she's been pining since this morning, though, since she didn't get to meet this guy she wanted to."

"What guy?" asked Suzanne, interested.

"A guy I met in Mozia, the other day. He's an actor on a soap opera, I'd never heard of him but apparently Mary and Hayley are two of his biggest fans."

"A soap star is on your bus tour?"

"No. Sorry. He's just traveling, and I met him."

"And Hayley is still pining, after you met him a couple of days ago?"

"I met him again today."

"Did you?" This was interesting. Anne hadn't even mentioned a guy to Suzanne since that Wentworth debacle all those years ago. It was high time, and Suzanne was anxious for details, imagining that Anne had formed some sort of tendre for the actor, since she was mentioning him. "How'd you meet?"

"The first time he offered me a seat -- I've hurt my ankle... I didn't tell you, I suppose. But I've been walking with a cane. And he offered me a seat."

"That's a meet-cute. And today?"

"Came up to me in the archaeological park and introduced himself. We talked. I might see him again tomorrow. I don't know."

"That sounds promising... and who is this charmer?"

"His name is William Eliot. With one L."

"You don't say!"

"You've heard for him? I thought you hadn't had time to breathe since you since way back before med school."

"There's this girl who keeps leaving Soap Digest in the on-call room at work," Suzanne explained. "Sometimes I read it when I can't sleep. William Eliot... well, he's certainly pretty, I give you that! What's he like?"

"Intelligent."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Then go for it," Suzanne advised.

"Excuse me?"

"I said that you should go for it."

"I don't think it's like that." Anne had enjoyed Eliot's company, but she certainly hadn't thought of him like that.

"Then what's it like? You keep on encountering this guy, and you may encounter him tomorrow... you're abroad for a short time, he's presumably abroad for a short time... Anne, this is a classic recipe for a summer fling. And you need a summer fling, my dear. And what's there not to like about this guy? He's a stranger, so you don't have to deal with your... emotional baggage... and he's gorgeous and you say that he's intelligent, and he seems to be into you if he introduced himself out of the blue after only seeing you once before, and he wants to see you again. From what I've read, he's an up-and-comer, very hot right now on his show -- chances are he's only headed upwards. Biologically and sociologically, I think he sounds ideal. So go for it."

"I'll think about it," said Anne, taken aback. Maybe if Frederick hadn't been on the trip, she might have taken Suzanne's advice and taken advantage of William Eliot's presence as a way to prepare herself for finding someone new in her new, post-Kellynch life. ... But with Frederick there? There might not be a future for them but there sure as hell wasn't a future for Anne with anyone else while Frederick was staring over her shoulder -- to even try would be supremely awkward and Anne hated awkwardness. Besides, while she had enjoyed a flirtatious conversation with Eliot and had been impressed by him... she didn't know him, and being who she was there was no way that she'd risk opening her heart to someone she didn't know well enough to trust.

And that reminded her: why had Eliot blown off the Smiths earlier today when he appeared to claim an acquaintance or certain degree of familiarity with them? So distracted by new thoughts and dilemmas surrounding William Eliot, Anne completely forgot to tell Suzanne about Frederick before the call ended. ... But it was probably just as well, since Suzanne would only have advised Anne to steer clear of him, and that would probably be impossible once he returned... in all likelihood on Louisa's arm.

If Anne had been impressed by the ruined glories of the Valle dei Templi in Agrigento, it was nothing to how she felt once she was ferried along to the crowded but incomparable wonders of the ruined third or fourth-century Roman villa at Piazza Armerina, the Villa del Casale, where all the floors were paved in beautiful and delightful mosaics and the air of the past was so tangibly present. Indeed, even those who had already had their fill of classical sights could not but gape in wonder as they wandered the expansive structure, ogling the floors far beneath their feet.

"It's so clever!" Claire Smith gushed to Anne, coming up to her older friend with a small smile. "Just think -- this was all built over 1600 years ago, and they had real plumbing and hot water!"

The two young women were standing together by the frigidarium, the cold baths of the Roman complex, a wide expanse of marine-themed mosaic before them.

"It's pretty incredible," Anne agreed. "But it's really no more impressive than aqueducts, or the barrel-vault or the dome -- the Romans could afford to be awfully clever."

"I supposed they could," Claire said, but her attention seemed to have wandered from the classical past towards other thoughts. She paused a moment, and then cleared her throat a little awkwardly and addressed Anne again.

"Anne?"

"Yes, Claire?"

"I was just wondering."

"Yes?" Anne knew the feeling of wanting to say something and not being able to find the words -- example: her failed conversation with Suzanne the night before -- and put a gentle, encouraging inflection to the words. The pretty young girl smiled and blushed and pulled herself together.

"I'm sorry if I'm being impertinent but... you seemed friendly with William Eliot yesterday."

"We had a friendly talk, I barely know him."

"Oh, yes. Of course. Good. That's good. I was just wondering." With those incoherent words Claire smiled again, seeming to have a load off her mind. The two girls turned and headed towards the open peristyle, with its pleasant expanse of grass and its crumbling pool, stopping every few yards to take photographs. Anne had now done away with the cane -- it was too troublesome when she wanted her hands free so that she could take photographs, and while her ankle was still tender, it was much improved -- and enjoyed the (albeit slow) freedom that this afforded her. Claire soon caught up with her brother, leaving Anne to leisurely peep into small room after small room in her explorations of the fascinating villa.

Buon giorno, signorina Elliot," a now-familiar voice hailed Anne, coming up behind her.

"William Eliot," Anne replied with a small smile. She was pleased to see him again, but was a little confused by her conversations about him with both Suzanne and Claire, which had complicated her pure appreciation of his company. She liked him a good deal, but she really didn't think that she wanted anything to do with him in that way. At least not here, at least not now.

"Stunning, isn't it?" Eliot said cheerfully. "The crowds are a bit intense, but I think I've been well-rewarded for putting up with them."

Anne decided not to take his comment personally, as she suspected it might have been intended to be, and instead gazed out at the massively long hallway that they'd just come up to, which was paved from end to end in mosaics depicting some sort of exotic hunt. Here was scope for the camera's attention indeed! She busied herself in the business of photography for a few moments before turning back to Eliot.

"I can see why everyone wants to come here, but I can't help but wonder what it would be like to only be here with other classicists... what a rich history this place has had! What a lot it has to tell us about the people who lived here! I understand that the artwork is extraordinary and I'm certainly thrilled to visit it any which way I can -- but oh, for seeing this place with a small group of the classically-inclined!"

"I'll not take your comments personally," Eliot said with good humor, "since I know that you don't meant them as such. And I can certainly see your point -- it must be frustrating to share this moment of historical reality with the teeming masses of summer tourists, at least one-third of whom are thinking about the gelato-stand down by the parking lot. But is there not also something to be said for sharing this wonderful experience with those for whom the classical world was always something remote, to see their astonishment as they see how people thousands of years ago lived? That should be decidedly good company for someone like you -- and what satisfaction!"

"It is certainly satisfying, though a little piece of me has been longing this whole trip to just explore all these ruins with people who've had the same classical training that I have... clever, well-informed people who are willing to challenge my assumptions instead of taking it for granted that I'm some sort of expert, simply because I had a bachelor's degree in classics from roughly four years ago."

"That, my dear, is not good company for you. That would be the best. But I'm afraid that you'll just have to put up with me, and my half-educated notions -- though I promise not to take your word as great authority. Come: let us admire these mosaics together, and come up with some hypotheses about ancient gladiatorial games from the animals depicted in this mosaic..."

He was charming -- too charming -- but Anne succumbed to the pleasure of his company. She might not want anything more than a few pleasant hours of conversation with him, but she figured she deserved to take those hours while she could, to pretend that she had no worries, no questions, aside from her intellectual curiosity for just a little while before Louisa and her friends reappeared to complicate the scene.

"Yoo hoo!" Mary's voice was loud and excited, and hailed Anne as she and Eliot reached the far end of the hall of the Great Hunt.

"Who's that?" asked Eliot, looking over as Anne turned.

"My sister."

"The younger one, yes?"

"Yes. She's a fan, I'm afraid. Would you mind very much being introduced to her? It would make her day, but you can just say the word and slip away if you'd prefer."

"For you, my dear girl, anything. I've had such a pleasant time forgetting who I am, talking with you, that it's high time I paid my dues and suffered for my art." He squeezed her hand in a familiar fashion and took Anne's arm to support her while she walked gently over to where Mary and Charles were standing. He smiled and stood back as Anne hugged each of them in turn, asking them about their journey from Marsala and Louisa's health. They were voluble on the former, a little vague on the later, though they shared an amused glance between them. Anne was curious to question this look, but Mary had already changed to subject to a far more pressing one, asking to be introduced with William Eliot. Eliot obliged charmingly, submitting to have his picture taken with Mary, though he insisted that Charles take a picture of him with both Elliots on his own camera as well.

When this was done, the small group continued on their way, ending up by the famed bikini-girls, a mosaic of ten female gymnasts exercising in astonishing garb. Eliot and Charles soon entered into a friendly, jocular conversation about the mosaic as they took pictures and after Anne had snapped a shot or two, Mary pounced on her.

"You'll never guess."

"Guess what?"

"Oh come on, you have to guess."

"You said I'd never guess."

Mary yielded to this logic, wanting to spill her news. "Louisa and Jamie."

"What about them?" Anne asked, confused. Mary was never particularly eloquent when she was excited, but here she was being especially cryptic.

"They're now a couple!"

Mary was right, Anne never would have guessed. She was stunned. "Our Louisa and Jamie Benwick?" Anne repeated the names, making sure that she had heard correctly.

"Yes!" Mary was jubilant at having been the one to break such astonishing news to her sister.

"What? When did that happen?"

"At the hospital. Louisa woke up to hear Jamie yattering on in Italian to the nurse, and apparently she was impressed. Had you any idea? I mean, we all thought he might have a thing for you since you spent so much time together!"

"No, I don't think he did," Anne said, shrugging. If he had, she had never seen any sign of it -- they'd always been friendly rather than anything else. Mostly, she was confused: she had thought that Frederick was the one with an interest in Louisa, and surely Jamie wouldn't have swooped in on what -- to put it very crudely -- must have been his best friend's 'turf'?

Jamie Benwick and Louisa Musgrove! The high-spirited, joyous, talking Louisa and the dejected, thinking, feeling Jamie seemed polar opposites to Anne's mind at first. She wondered at how they had come together -- even if it was just for the duration of this trip -- and then she realized that Jamie likely needed someone as fresh and jubilant as Louisa to distract him, to help him move on. And Louisa could certainly use someone with Jamie's steady good sense to help her mature. ... All in all, as odd as the coupling had initially sounded, Anne began to see that it might actually be a very good thing for the both of them. ... But what of Frederick?

She worried about Frederick. What must he be feeling? She hoped that he had perhaps quitted the field, had given Louisa up, had ceased to love, had discovered that he did not care for her in that way. Anne could not endure the thought that Frederick might be hurt once again -- in a treachery nearly as bad as her own towards him -- by ill-usage between him and Jamie. She could not abide the idea that such a friendship as theirs should be severed unfairly. But as long as Frederick lost no friend by this... surely there was nothing to be regretted in such news?

Indeed, Anne had the faint suspicion that she felt anything but regret at hearing such news. Her heart had begun to beat in spite of herself as she realized the implications of Louisa's choice, and she knew from the heat she felt that some color had risen to her cheeks. She had some feelings that she was ashamed to investigate -- they were too much like joy.

"Has Mary been telling you the big news?" Charles asked Anne jovially, coming to walk beside her as the next batch of tourists clambered towards the tiny access point for the bikini girls mosaic. Anne and her friends moved on, peeking into some of the still-as-yet-unseen rooms of the villa.

"Yes," Anne said, after looking around to see Mary raptly drinking in every word as Eliot chatted with her about his fellow cast members on his soap. As long as she didn't have to play hostess to Eliot, she was dying to gain further news of Frederick. "I was very surprised. Did any of you know anything about it beforehand?"

"No, not at all! We all thought that Frederick would be the lucky fellow. As it is, he doesn't seem to have taken it too hard at all."

"No?" Anne hung on the words.

"No. He's been remarkably cheerful about the whole turn of events. But then -- Frederick doesn't seem like the sort of guy who whines or complains; he has too much spirit for that. If Louisa likes another fellow better than him -- so be it, he seems to feel. He and Jamie have still been as friendly as ever."

"I'm glad." Anne was. She was grateful for every morsel of news she was hearing, it was exactly as she might want for Frederick -- to not feel ill-used by either another woman or by his best friend. He had suffered enough in his young life as it was -- and at Anne's hands.

"You wouldn't guess from the way that he talks that he had ever cared especially for Louisa -- which I might find a bit insulting after the way those two were behaving, given that she's my sister, if it wasn't for the best."

Anne smiled at Charles's contemplated indignation. "You're a good brother," she said, giving him a one-armed hug. "I look forward to having you as mine."

Charles returned the hug and turned his attention to what he saw as the man in Anne's life.

"So, you've picked up an admirer?"

"An acquaintance," Anne corrected with a small frown. She didn't want Eliot as an admirer, and she'd prefer not to give anyone the idea that she did. "Mary looked like she'd gotten all of her Christmases at once, the way she looked when I introduced him."

"Well, she loves her soaps. Hayley too. Hayley was gushing about how he was here, when we ran into her earlier, back by the entrance. Apparently the moment she caught sight of him she introduced herself and demanded an autograph. Hayley couldn't shut up about it, and about how you'd made such a conquest of her favorite TV star... Frederick escaped but I was forced to bear the brunt of it while Mary demanded every nauseating detail. -- I hope that soap-opera fandom doesn't run in the blood, or else any kids Mary and I might have some day will be screwed."

"Frederick's back?" Anne asked lightly, hoping not to draw much attention to herself with the question. Ever since she had learned that Frederick had been cast aside by Louisa, her heart had been quickening, and she wanted to be assured that he was all right -- after all, she'd cast him aside years ago, and she was anxious lest he feel some repeat of the pain that he had felt then. -- Yes, that must be it.

"Yes. I dare say he's somewhere about... didn't want to tour with the lovebirds either, so he's likely wandering about on his own for a change. Do the guy some good, not to be surrounded by cooing females for a bit. Speaking of which -- I feel that I ought to reclaim your sister..."

Anne was momentarily left alone to her thoughts, confused as they were. Her mind was in a turmoil: Frederick was alone, Frederick was free; Suzanne wanted her to go after Eliot; Eliot may or may not want to go after her; Louisa and Jamie... Needless to say, though much of the cast of players was the same, the world had somehow inexorably shifted. ... And she needed to know exactly by how much, and what she was supposed to do now.

"Your sister tells me that you're all headed towards Morgantina after lunch," Eliot said, coming up and interrupting Anne's thoughts. "Think your guide would mind if I followed the bus?"

The whole puzzle wasn't getting any simpler

Part 5:

Posted on September 15, 2008

Eliot did follow the bus, all the way to the next stop, at the excavated ancient city of Morgantina. He even managed to ingratiate himself enough with the tour guide to find himself invited to join in the group's picnic lunch on the verge outside the excavation. -- By this time Anne was beginning to weary of his company, charm or not, especially as Mary and Hayley's presence had rather a dampening effect upon the level of Eliot's conversation. The two girls were desperately curious about Eliot's experiences on his soap opera and repeatedly pelted him with questions about it and the various minor television stars he had encountered in the course of his work; these were not topics that interested Anne much, what she had admired in Eliot was the way in which he surpassed the cliches of his genre... not his life within in the genre itself. Without the spark and glow of his transcendence he became simply another man, and not an overwhelmingly interesting one at that.

Anne therefore spent her lunch purposefully in the company of Claire and Wallis Smith, who were resolutely sitting on the opposite side of the group rather a ways away from Eliot and his devoted fans. Once more Anne spared a fleeting thought to wonder what the story behind the Smiths and Eliot was, but she found herself distracted from this minor puzzle by her first glimpses of Frederick since directly after Louisa's accident.

He, like Anne, had chosen to distance himself from most of the others of the Kellynch contingent. He was sitting some ways away from Anne, apparently talking to Jamie and Louisa with perfect complacency. Anne watched him from afar, scarcely managing to keep her attention fixed on the Smiths' friendly conversation, and was pleased to note that he didn't look any worse for wear after his experiences with Louisa. Furthermore, his friendship with Jamie did seem to be genuinely intact, she was happy to note. This vigil was not pleasant, however: all throughout the meal he made no glance in Anne's direction, though occasionally he looked over at where Hayley, Mary, Eliot and Charles were sitting. Apparently, Anne noted with a touch of regret, despite all that had happened, Frederick seemed to be no closer to forgiving Anne than he had been in the days before.

After a time, the group finished their picnic lunch and tidied away their leavings. The guide led them within the boundaries of the excavation, and Anne listened in merciful silence as the guide told them more about their latest destination. Real life was complicated. Ancient history wasn't.

Morgantina had been settled by people from Latium about three thousand years earlier. Then had come Greek colonists, and then the city had continued to grow in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Anne enjoyed the lecture, was happy to gaze about as the guide led the group around the ruined market area and colonnade of the stoa, the remnants of the theater, the agora, the gymnasium. And not only were the excavations fascinating to a trained now-amateaur classicist such as Anne: having a proper guided tour meant that she also didn't have to talk to any of her comrades, did not have to choose sides -- choose a place -- amidst the still-uncertain terrain of this post-Jamie-and-Louisa, post-Eliot world.

Mary had no such compunctions about listening in merciful silence, however. By the end of the tour she was beginning to become restless and stole over to where Anne was standing, off to the side near the retired members of the tour group who had so embraced her on her very first day.

"Isn't Will Eliot wonderful?" Mary enthused. "He's going to get Andy Moore-Wood and Stella Leem to send me autographs... my absolute favorite soap stars... aside from Eliot, of course. He's said that he'll come to Syracuse with us this evening!"

"Oh," Anne said. She didn't know what she felt exactly about that latest development, but she didn't think that she was particularly pleased by it. She was tiring of Eliot in his soap-star mode, and she desperately wanted the group to settle back again so that she could figure out the new social dynamics -- if there were new social dynamics -- between herself and ... well, Frederick.

There it was. She wanted to improve her relationship with Frederick. Could anyone blame her? She wasn't sure precisely what improving her relationship with Frederick would entail, but she knew that this was what she wanted. And she didn't much care for the distractions of Eliot -- who was being treated as Anne's possession because she had introduced him into the group, despite all of the time he was also spending with his fans -- while she was working towards this complicated goal.

Anne was spared further conversation with Mary by the guide's dismissal of the group to explore the excavations on their own. Anne took full advantage of this opportunity to state her intention of making a very complete photographic record of the ruins, and escaped away from the group to explore on her own, camera in hand. This, too, would give her the opportunity to think.

She found peace, for a time, out there on her own; the ruins of the town were expansive, and provided a great deal of personal space. She soon found herself completely alone -- a happy and rare occurrence on a busy bus-tour -- and sat down by a pair of what seemed to be yucca bushes, surveying the ruins about her in pleasant, quiet solitude. She saw Eliot in the distance, continuing to exercise his extraordinary charisma on her friends; she saw Claire Smith taking a photograph of an elderly couple in front of a piece of the marketplace; she saw Jamie and Louisa lightly canoodling in a corner. Then, she saw Frederick walking a little ways away from herself, looking about himself with interest at his surroundings. He caught sight of Anne, and held her gaze for a moment, a startled expression on his reddening face. It was an electrifying gaze, one which gave her agitation, pain, pleasure -- a something between delight and misery.

And then it began to rain, lightly, not enough to bother Anne much, but enough to make her shiver a little with the loss of the hot sun. Frederick noted the shiver and walked decisively over to her, shedding his light summer-weight jacket as he came.

"You're cold," he said, tentatively, holding out the jacket. Anne wondered a little at his tone: he had marched over to her on at least two prior occasions on this trip and taken control of her in her distress, but on those occasions he had had such ease, such command! Here he was hesitant, uncertain, cautious. Something had changed.

"Not very," Anne said. "Mostly just getting damp." But she took the jacket, determined to accept Frederick's overture, determined to take advantage of this opportunity to sound out his mind.

"I see you no longer have the cane," Frederick said uncertainly as Anne slid her arms into the sleeves of his jacket. The jacket smelled lightly of him, and she was again disturbed with long-past memories as she inhaled the scent.

"No," Anne replied, collecting herself. "I'm still taking things a little easy, but I've gotten rid of the cane."

"I'm pleased to hear it."

"Yes. ... Are you glad to be back on the tour?" Anne asked, after a moment, unsure how she, with all of her past history with him, could ask Frederick about whatever had happened in Marsala since their last meeting.

"Yes," Frederick said, seemingly a little startled by the question. "Yes, it is good to be back on the tour." His tone betrayed no hint of his feelings on his recent absence. "I'd have been disappointed if I'd missed the mosaics this morning or these ruins here, now -- very impressive."

The rain grew heavier as the pair of them stood there, awkwardly conversing. Anne caught sight of many of the other passengers heading back towards the relief of the bus, and Frederick followed her gaze.

"Let me help you back up the hill," he offered, holding out an arm, his eyes flickering towards Anne's ankle. Anne nodded, accepting the offer, and took hold of him, grateful for the support as parts of the path turned muddy in the sudden downpour. Frederick laughed -- for perhaps the first time in her company since Anne had seen him in Sicily -- as water streamed down his face, Anne smiling guiltily up at him as she stayed dry under his jacket. In that moment they were friendly, and more than friendly: close.

It was a moment disturbed too suddenly.

"Anne, there you are! I've been wondering where you had wandered off to... examining ruins just isn't the same without your wonderful commentary -- authoritative or not." Eliot smiled at Anne with an expression that denoted a reference to some private joke, and then added practically, "And your sister has asked me to help you back to the bus."

Frederick saw, with a frown, that the newcomer was that pretty-boy actor who had been vamping Anne's friends left and right all day, the man who had so considerately offered Anne a seat back on the crowded quay in Mozia and admired Anne so openly... just days earlier, though in a way it seemed a lifetime ago. The actor's admiration was still apparent, and he easily detached Anne from Frederick's arm without a glance to spare for the other man, taking hold of Anne in a thoroughly familiar and proprietorial fashion that was new -- and unwelcome -- to Frederick. Frederick was left dumbfounded as Anne was spirited away from him underneath the protection of the other man's umbrella. Anne looked back with an expression of confused apology, feeling duty-bound to follow Eliot to her sister as much as she wanted to remain with Frederick -- but she made a gesture for Frederick to accompany them, and Frederick followed, determined not to let this Eliot fellow have his own way entirely.

Eliot kept up a steady chatter as he guided Anne capably up the muddy hill, towards the wide expanse of the upper agora and the bus beyond it. Anne would have been much obliged to her new acquaintance if he would have walked by her all the way to the roadside without saying a word. She had never found it so difficult to listen to him, though nothing could exceed his solicitude and care. He was, if anything, being even more charming and pointed in his attentions towards Anne than he had been the day and morning before -- could he perhaps really have intentions towards her, and feel threatened by Frederick enough to avoid his acquaintance so directly by cutting him in the way that he had? -- but somehow Anne had become immune to the actor's charm after seeing Frederick again. She knew now what was in her own heart: she wanted to restore her relationship with Frederick -- if such a thing were possible -- not just improve it.

Back at the bus, the guide was declaring that the group would move on to Syracuse a little early, since the radio suggested that the storm would be of some duration now that it had come. Anne was a little disappointed to have to leave the fascinating remains of the ancient town but, as she had little desire to wander them in the now-heavy rain, she accepted the wisdom of this plan.

Eliot saw her to the door of the bus and gave her another peck on the cheek before disappearing towards the place where he had left his now-wet motorcycle. He would wait for the rain to pass, and Anne was glad that he, as an outsider to the bus tour, would not be following with them directly, for all of his renewed declarations that he'd look up the Elliots and Musgroves that evening in Syracuse.

As Anne walked cautiously towards her seat, mindful of the slippery rubber matting on the floor of the passage between the seats, she noted for the first time that Louisa's choice of Jamie had additional consequences to the fact that Frederick was now, apparently, a free man; this coupling had subtle influences on the seating arrangements. Jamie had now usurped Hayley's seat, and Hayley had moved into the formerly-empty seat beside Anne, leaving Anne with a seating partner and Frederick with none. Anne ordinarily would have been pleased with this development -- she liked sweet, silly Hayley a great deal and would have enjoyed speaking sensibly to her -- but she soon began to wish that she was sitting alone... or nearer to Frederick. There was so much to be said, to be sorted through, and Hayley just babbled.

Mary and Charles were babbling too, behind Anne and in front of Frederick.

"Will Eliot seems awfully taken with my sister," Mary was telling Charles proudly. "I say: good for her!"

"Anne says not," Charles countered in a low voice, taking care unlike Mary to speak in tones that Anne wouldn't be able to hear -- and, consequently, in a tone that Frederick could not hear either.

"Well, I think that it's pretty clear what'll happen," Mary continued in her brash voice. "He's following us to Syracuse! As much as I love him on his show, I can't think that he's coming all that way just to hang out with some fans," Mary rebutted in a rare show of logic, in her strident voice. "Of course he's coming so he can spend more time with Anne. He talks of almost nothing but her with us, and Hayley says that he spent all day with Anne yesterday. Just think! Just wait until I tell everyone back home that Anne's landed a TV star!"

"If that's what Anne wants, then I think she deserves it," Charles conceded, compromising between Mary's strong logic that Eliot felt something for Anne and Anne's declaration that he didn't -- or at least that she felt nothing in return. "She's a lovely young woman who has worked very hard and deserves a bit of happiness." He hadn't been the one for her, as he'd long since seen, but it didn't mean that he didn't still have a soft place in his heart for his sister-in-law-to-be, as one of his oldest friends.

Frederick overheard the exchange in silence, acknowledging with a twinge of jealousy that the appearance of this Eliot figure had forced him to recognize just what that twinge was. Jealousy. He should have known. He should have known from the moment that he'd met Anne again that all was not finished between them, that his feelings had not passed to anything even close to indifference. Jamie's recognition of Anne's more admirable qualities had first suggested this to him, and the comparison between Louisa's immature, impulsive actions and Anne's sensible, caring ones -- even to him after he had flirted purposefully with Louisa, her friend, in front of her face -- back at Selinunte had only brought the matter into greater recognizability. -- After all, hadn't he been splitting his attention between watching Anne and Jamie when he should have been focused on Louisa on her dangerous perch? -- And now (as also this morning at that Roman villa, and on Mozia before that), seeing Anne being admired by that picture-perect specimen of masculinity, a specimen who had never been rude to Anne as he had been, clinched it. He knew what he wanted: he wanted Anne. She -- with all of her sweet goodness, strong sense, and gentle beauty -- was, perhaps, all that he had ever wanted, confused though he had been.

The rain finally let up by the time the group reached the south-eastern city of Syracuse, that ancient metropolis that conjured up powerful memories for Anne of ancient history courses back at Penn. This fascinating place had grown and evolved repeatedly over the nearly three-thousand years it had been in existence: it had originally been a Corinthian colony, then a Greek city of its own right that prospered and flourished under the fifth-century B.C.E. despots Gelon and Hiero to such an extent that it was (unsuccessfully) assaulted by the Athenians and the Carthaginians around the turn of the next century. As the different Mediterranean powers grew and waned and waged war amongst one another, Syracuse -- that bright city that gave birth to men such as the great scientist Archimedes -- became a point of contention between Rome and Carthage in the third century, and this -- the ancient capital of Sicily -- had ended up a Roman provincial town, later to be razed by the Arabs in the ninth century C.E., over a thousand years later.

A long history, and a proud history, one which raised Anne's thoughts from their endless chasing cycle between Frederick and Eliot and herself. So distracted back into her school days, Anne could hear the lecturer's voice, even, as she glanced about her at the road signs that evoked the ancient names Corso Gelone, Riviera Dionysio il grande... And they were still only on the mainland, they wouldn't even go to the ancient "inner city of Syracuse" on the island of Ortygia until the following day.

His plans thrown into slight confusion by the bus's early arrival in Syracuse, the guide quickly adapted his plans, splitting the alphabetical list of the tour group neatly into two and sending each sub-section to a different historic site, so as to not overwhelm either -- strange as this seemed to Anne when she saw the sheer size of each site. Having arranged for an additional guide while they were still driving, their guide cheerfully deposited those with surnames N-Z at the great ancient theater of Syracuse, where the dramatist Aeschylos had premiered some of his great tragedies, and then led his remaining flock to a different section of the archaeological zone, to show them the famous latomies, or stone quarries, which had been used as prisons for centuries. Anne was both relieved and disappointed with the arrangement: while she needed to see, to talk with Frederick again, she also felt the relief of not doing so quite yet when the weight of her feelings for him had only so recently come so fully to the surface.

She thought that she enjoyed the afternoon's sightseeing. She had the pleasant company of her sister and her friends who, once removed from Eliot's irritatingly-charming presence, returned once more to their good-natured, self-absorbed selves, uncowed by any glow of celebrity. And the latomies were both eerily beautiful and fascinating, and the theater quite as impressive as the classicist in Anne could hope for.

She was forced to wait to see Frederick again until that evening, when the the weary travelers were finally herded towards their supper, at a well-appointed family-owned restaurant instead of in their hotel's dining room.

"The owners are family friends of Jamie's family," Louisa explained to Anne and the others, in a rare moment when Louisa had surfaced from her whole-hearted absorption in Jamie. "He says that the food is amazing -- or at least that it was when he last visited, which was about eight years ago -- and that our guide tells him that the owner's daughter and nephew will provide live music throughout the dessert course. Isn't that nice?"

It was a very nice meal, though once again Anne found herself physically separated from Frederick, this time by some three other of her friends and an expanse of heaping plates. She was beginning to feel that there was some conspiracy to keep the two of them apart when -- finally -- the time for the dessert course arrived and, with it, the promised live music. The tour group naturally rearranged themselves and their tables in the large private room they had had reserved for them that evening, so as to better admire the pretty young woman with the clear soprano voice and the silent young man with the mandolin who appeared before them. In the shuffle those three seats between the two young lawyers suddenly emptied out in favor of a lone settle across the room, leaving nothing but open space and empty seats between the two.

Frederick looked over to where Anne sat and she smiled at him in such a gently inviting way that he could not help but to smile back. By some unspoken agreement they each shifted centrally so that they ended up sitting beside one another, their own seats now turning into an empty buffer between them and the anonymous other members of their group just beyond.

She made some comment on the music -- which was sweet and surprisingly good for coming from such young amateur musicians -- and he replied with an observation on the meal that they had just consumed. Another pleasantry, and then one more, and then Frederick edged a comment towards the complicated void that both knew desperately needed to be addressed.

"I've hardly seen you since you returned from Marsala, what with everything," Frederick began, cautiously, "and I haven't really had the chance to ask -- how did you cope, after we left you? I know that it was a terrible shock, the... accident, and all the more so for not overwhelming you in the moment, as I fear it did for all of the rest of us." Sweet, competent Anne had, of course, thought of the others instead of herself, and he had long wanted to be certain that she had suffered no ill consequences of Louisa's and his own foolhardiness.

"No, no. I managed. Knowing that Louisa's health didn't suffer was a great comfort."

"Of course." There was a moment of silence, as each listened to the sweet songs that were flowing over them in courses of ardent Italian, and then Frederick was moved to speak again.

"It was a terrible moment, a terrible day!" He passed a hand over his eyes for a moment, as if his memories caused him some distress, and Anne was moved to lay a reassuring hand on his arm, in an echo of the gesture she had made towards him in the aftermath of the accident. He looked at her small, slender, light hand and gave Anne a heartwarming smile. "But I suppose that it produced some consequences which must be considered quite the opposite of terrible." He remembered Anne's kind, competent handling of the situation, and the joy that he had felt when he observed Anne's thoughtfulness towards him, even after all that he had done, in that moment. And the accident had had useful consequences in a more dramatic way, as well: he was freed of his idiotic pursuit of Louisa, was given the opportunity to change his attentions towards Anne without the stigma of being called fickle... something that Anne would never have looked kindly on. "When you had the presence of mind to send Jamie for an ambulance, you could have had little idea that he would soon become one of those most concerned in Louisa's recovery."

"Certainly not." Anne studied Frederick's face closely, looking for some indication of his thoughts on the coupling. He didn't seem disappointed -- rather, relieved. "I hope that they'll be happy together. I'm very fond of each of them."

"Yes," Frederick replied, not quite meeting Anne's eyes for a moment. "I like both as well -- but their likability does seem to be where the comparison ends. I, too, hope that they will be very happy together and am pleased that they found one another. They are fortunate: they have only their own present happiness to think about as they learn to love one another... no pressures of the future --" And here Frederick cut off, flushing faintly himself as he observed Anne's darkening cheeks. The shame of her past actions towards Frederick had come up now, and she had no notion of how to excuse them to him, even after all this time. He did not press the issue, however, and instead cleared his throat and continued on a different track.

"I hope that you will not be offended if I say that I think it something of an unequal pairing, though. I know that Louisa is your friend, and as friendly and lively a girl as one could hope to meet; but Jamie has always been something more. He is a clever man, a reading man, who has travelled and is no stranger to foreign cultures and ideas... I wonder a little at his settling on Louisa, who is still so young, and... foolish... especially when this all came from nowhere! A man like him... broken-hearted after his girlfriend of over three years had left him... Phoebe was such a clever, capable, beautiful, self-reliant young woman... his attachment to her was very strong. He had thought of marrying her, down the line. A man does not recover so quickly from such a devotion... he ought not to... he does not."

Though ostensibly the pair of them were discussing Louisa and Jamie, both knew that the conversation also covered deeper ground. Frederick shut his mouth abruptly after his speech, aware of just what he had said, and Anne paused a moment after he had finished, having heard each word clearly though the music and other conversations swelled about the room around them. She was struck by his words, gratified by them, confused by them. She felt her breaths in her chest coming quicker and shorter as she sifted through his meanings -- for there were meanings, in the plural.

As this new silence stretched between them, Anne knew that she needed to keep the conversation in this ballpark, but she equally knew that she could not enter into this subject... not yet. She laid out her next words carefully so as to keep them both on the topic of her friends' stay in Marsala, and appealed again directly to Frederick's experiences while there.

"I suppose you spent a good bit of time at the hospital there?" she asked.

"Some. Louisa was supposed to be resting, and there's not much interest in hanging around a foreign hospital when you have nothing to do there. I waited there initially -- being responsible as I was for Louisa's injuries. It had been my doing, solely mine. She would not have been obstinate if I had not been weak, and she would not have fallen so hard if I had caught her... or even not fallen on her. But when it appeared that she would be all right... there was little for me to do, so I mostly wandered about Marsala, while Jamie helped Charles take care of the practical matters in the hospital. It's very pretty there -- the stop we had there on our tour was so brief. The more I saw, the more I admired it."

"I should like to go back some time," Anne observed. "Really, to see everything at a more leisurely pace. Selinunte too."

"Would you? I should have thought that you'd hardly want to revisit a place with such unpleasant memories." Frederick was a little surprised, though he supposed that he need not have been... Anne had always been strong, and it seemed that her life had held enough unpleasant memories to make flight from them impractical as well as unnecessary.

Here was Anne's opportunity to say some of what she needed to say to Frederick, under the cloak of their general conversation, as he had spoken earlier.

"The moment was certainly unpleasant... but when pain is over, the remembrance can become a pleasure. One does not love a place less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering..." Anne trailed off, choking a little. She did not love Kellynch any less for her mother's death there, and she had continued to live and thrive (in a fashion) in Philadelphia even after everything with Frederick there... Frederick seemed to catch some of what she was saying beneath her words, and reached to hold her hand, which still lingered on his arm, within his own. He opened his mouth to speak, but was rudely interrupted by a pleased squeal from Mary, just across the room, and the happy whispered greeting that accompanied it.

"Will Eliot!"

Indeed, Eliot had arrived, inviting himself once more into their midst at, apparently, the bequest of Mary, who had left directions to the group's location for him at their hotel. Frederick dropped Anne's hand as his face went roughly blank, and Anne frowned very slightly, not pleased to have Eliot nearby while she was having this interesting, almost too interesting, conversation with Frederick. She was learning so much... about Frederick's feelings on Louisa, on Louisa-Jamie, on... in coded form, herself. She was especially not pleased when Eliot slid, cat-like into the empty seat beside Anne. To be fair, this one of the only empty seats in the room, but her nerves grated as Eliot claimed her attention so cavalierly once more, still treating Frederick as if he did not exist, still paying no heed to the obvious signs that Anne and Frederick had been conversing together.

"You look lovely this evening, signorina," Eliot said suavely, bowing briefly over her hand in an exaggeratedly polite fashion. And Anne did: her conversation with Frederick had brought a bright glow to her cheeks and a soft light to her eyes, she looked as beautiful as she had all those years ago, when she had last been in love, though in a more grown-up way that only made her all the more appealing.

Anne blushed, feeling Frederick's eyes on her, and made some off-handed comment about the listening to the music, trying to avoid direct conversation with Eliot while she only wanted Frederick's company.

The concert ended in about another quarter of an hour, during which time the group had finished off their desserts and the excellent selection of wines that had accompanied them. As the musicians finally stole away after a hearty round of applause, Anne's friends stirred and began to look around themselves, stretching as they rose. Mary was the first to bound up and run over to where Eliot, Anne and Frederick were sitting.

"Ooh, that was nice... but I could use a bit more excitement to end off the evening. Fred, can you hand me my bag? I think I left it under that seat. Thanks. Anyway, Eliot knows a nice bar, don't you? We all made plans earlier to go check it out, Eliot and Charles and Hayley and Louisa and Jamie and me. You'll come too, Anne. And Fred?"

This time Anne began to resent her younger sister's presumptuous assumption that Anne would always be at her beck and call. Is this what happened when one was kind and friendly and unassuming? ... She supposed that it was. She made some comment of protest, suggesting that she was very weary, and would like to go back to the hotel instead.

Eliot responded by turning up his charm, as one would turn up a burner on a stove. "They brew an excellent pot of coffee there," he said coaxingly. "My treat. We'll fête you like a queen, if only you'll shine your company on us. And it really wouldn't be the same without you," he added in a low voice.

There it was, Eliot most definitely did have some sort of designs on her. Anne increased her protests, but the others of her friends had arrived and added their own good-natured entreaties to her own, appealing to her generous nature. As frustrated as her generous nature was, it was eventually forced to concede, and she received Eliot's pleased arm about her waist as her reward. She turned to Frederick, trying to slide a little out of Eliot's half-embrace. She didn't think that she could be so outrightly rude as to tell Eliot to keep his hands to himself in front of all of her friends, as much as she wanted to.

"You will come too, won't you?" Frederick's presence would, indeed, make the whole excursion much more bearable, especially if they might be able to resume their fascinating conversation.

He looked from her to Eliot, to Eliot's arm, and frowned. "No," he said. "No, since I have been away, I must sort myself out again for the rest of the tour." He rose suddenly and excused himself, and was soon lost amongst the groups of older tour members who were headed towards their beds instead of out into the night.

Anne, though hurt at Frederick's desertion, was struck by what must be the explanation for it: as much as Eliot might be jealous of Frederick's attentions and deal with them by cutting Frederick and ignoring him, so Frederick must be jealous of Eliot in return. Jealous. She wouldn't have been able to entirely believe such a thing a week ago... a few days ago... even an hour ago, but there it was for her to recognize clearly. Frederick had absented himself because he had no interest in seeing Anne being treated so familiarly as she was by Eliot.

And so, Anne began to boil with further resentment at Eliot. He might be handsome and charming and interested in her and pleasant to her friends, but he was preventing Frederick from being there with her, and no list of virtues could excuse that in her book. Furthermore, Eliot's suave company grew stale when Anne compared it to the invigorating company of Frederick... how could she possibly be interested in Eliot's compliments when there was a man such as Frederick in her life once more?

As the weary evening drew on, Anne found herself retiring into herself more and more, even as her friends made merry around a table in the Syracuse bar. It was with great relief, then, that Anne piled into a crowded taxi with her friends and headed back to the hotel. She even suffered Eliot's over-elaborate farewell that evening -- he wasn't certain that he'd be able to stay on in Syracuse the next day, and if he didn't see her again in Italy, he promised to look her up in Philadelphia... though she made a point of omitting to pass on her address there to him -- glad to be released from his, and her friends' company. She didn't even take much notice when Eliot's goodbye peck lasted longer than it had before, her thoughts stories above where he stood. Her thoughts were all for one man: for Frederick, and the urgent need to disabuse him of any notion that Eliot's attentions were welcome... and assure him that his attentions were.

Part 6:

Posted on September 22, 2008

Anne awoke early the next morning determined to speak to Frederick. She therefore wasn't surprised when she heard a soft, cautious knock on her door the next morning -- surely Frederick must feel the same way?

It wasn't Frederick at the door, however, it was Claire Smith.

"Claire?" Anne asked softly in surprise, as she opened the door. Claire smiled weakly, glancing from Anne to the sleeping form of Hayley in the next bed.

"Do you have a minute?" she whispered to her older friend. "There's something I need to tell you."

"All right," Anne said. She slipped a long-sleeved shirt over her camisole and stole out into the cool hallway, following Claire to the relative privacy of a low couch surrounded by ferns on a wide balcony off the floor's main lounge. Claire looked agitated, as she had the day before, and Anne was determined to let the girl say whatever it was that had clearly been bothering her for some time. "Yes?" she asked Claire, when the two of them were settled.

"Its about Will Eliot," Claire began, swallowing.

"What about him?" Anne asked cautiously. Had her outwardly-polite toleration of Eliot and previous familiarity with him really caused everyone to consider the two of them an item? If so, then Anne really would have a lot more work cut out for her in regards to conquering Frederick's jealousy than she had initially planned. She frowned. Claire took the frown to be in reference to her own comment.

"I know that the two of you are close," Claire began, faltering under the frown. "And it's beginning to look as if the two of you are something of... well, an item."

"No," Anne protested lightly. "Not really! I know that he's been following along ever since he introduced himself to me... but no, not really! Nothing like that. I'm not interested in him."

"Oh!" Claire exclaimed, her concerned expression smoothing.

"You seem glad."

"I am, I am!"

"Why?" probed Anne, still baffled by the girl's bizarre behavior.

"It's well..." Claire paused and flushed a dusky red. "It's well... we, my brother and I... we met him when we were in Palermo."

"I had picked up that you knew him and I assumed not from the television, given that I don't think that you watch our soap operas in Canada, do you?"

"I don't, at any rate," Claire said, shrugging. "So I hadn't encountered him onscreen. But there he was, in Palermo, this honest-to-goodness Adonis... and you know how charming he can be."

"Of course."

"Well, Wallis and I were there a few days early before the trip -- cheaper airfares -- and we met him when we were out one night. My brother makes friends easily, but I don't speak any Italian, so it was rather awkward for me. And then he came up and introduced himself and was completely charming."

"I know the feeling," Anne agreed, remembering how flattering Eliot's company had been when she had been all alone and in need of some intelligent conversation.

"Well, even though he's rather a bit older than me... he was saying all the right things and was just so... perfect. ... And one thing led to another."

"I see."

"And since Wallis was busy with his own plans, and I didn't know anyone else... one thing kept on leading to another. For the whole time before the tour started, we were never out of each other's company. And then he saw me and Wallis off to the bus -- he knew that we were on that bus -- and we left for our tour, and he must have left on his trip."

"And then he ignored you later on?"

"Yes. You saw it. He must have known that I was there, when he saw the bus -- at least in Agrigento, even if he didn't see me in Mozia -- we came up to him and everything. And he just blew us off. It happened other times too, when you weren't around. He was just passably polite to Wallis, but he's pretty much ignored me... it's as if nothing ever happened between us. But it did. So... I thought I should warn you. That even though he's so perfect... he's not. He might talk all about how he feels stereotyped from his role on his soap, that he's really so sensitive and intellectual... but he's actually capable of being quite callous too. I wanted you to know that you shouldn't fall for his act -- if it is an act with you -- because there's no way of telling how serious he is, or even what he's really thinking."

"Well, I assure you that I'm not interested in him... he certainly is charming and says all of the right things... but he's not... my type."

"I just worried," Claire explained, "because I saw the two of you together last night, in the lobby. And heard him saying something about seeing you back in Philadelphia. So I thought maybe things were already serious between the two of you... but maybe he would actually look for you again... a beautiful, mature, clever, elegant woman like you with a career... when he didn't spare a glance back at me... the young easy mark... but I needed to at least tell you just in case he repeated his actions. Forewarned is forearmed. And I'd hate him to break your heart in the way that he broke mine."

"Oh Claire," Anne surged forward and took her young friend in her arms, feeling all of the girl's pain. She remembered the pain of a broken heart, even if the circumstances were so very different... the object of those affections so very different, and she became even more annoyed with Eliot. Who did he think he was, pursuing Anne in front of Claire? It was just as bad as Frederick initially pursuing Louisa in front of Anne, though with perhaps more deliberate perpetuation and much less cause for a grudge. And now Anne was never even to know whether Eliot had indeed liked her, or was just looking for a conquest... and he had left her in an awkward place with Frederick, regardless. "I assure you, nothing has happened between us, and I have no intention of ever seeing William Eliot ever again, and am completely happy in that decision."

Claire's relief was fully evident.

By the time that this tête-a-tête was over and Claire was restored to composure, breakfast was very nearly done. Frederick was nowhere in evidence, and Anne sighed as she and Claire rapidly tucked into the food on the buffet. She'd have to catch him some time during the day's sightseeing.

But here, too, Anne's plans were foiled. The morning's explorations involved separate trips in and around Syracuse, to the Early Christian catacombs at under San Giovanni Evangelista and to the fourth-century B.C.E. fortress, Castello Eurialo, just outside the city. Because the catacombs would be best viewed in smaller numbers, the guide asked his charges to split themselves into two smaller groups, one to start at each place. Frederick immediately sorted himself into the opposite of the group Anne was in with her friends, leaving Anne surprised and not a little hurt. She barely registered the pleasures of the catacombs or of the ruined fortress, so preoccupied was she was with cursing herself over how she had not put Eliot in his place long ago. ... It had only caused Claire increasing distress and Frederick a slap in the face. No wonder he wanted nothing to do with her.

The groups reunited on the island of Ortygia just after lunch time, where they were set loose to explore to their heart's desire until dinnertime. As the island was fairly small and the hours bright and empty, Mary soon suggested that her companions start their explorations with post-lunch gelato, a suggestion that was adopted readily. Frederick was even induced to accompany the Kellynch contingent by his friend Jamie, though he crossly remained distant from Anne the entire time, choosing to sit to the extreme other end of the party.

They were only a little ways into their cones when Mary, people-watching as she ate, let out a loud exclamation.

"Anne, you sly dog you!"

"What?" asked Anne, in genuine bafflement, as the others looked towards her.

"Why, Will Eliot! Look -- over there! And we all thought that he had to move on ahead... and here he is lingering in Syracuse. We can all guess on whose account that is."

"It may or may not be him," Anne said with carefully annunciated indifference for Frederick's benefit. "I for one thought that he had left."

"Surely you can expect me to recognize my absolute favorite actor?" Mary asked in a huff. "I'm sure that it is him. Come look," she ordered. Ever compliant Anne sighed and rose from her seat, knowing that it was pointless to argue with Mary.

"Yes, it's him," she conceded, turning back to sit down again while Mary continued to make inane comments about how sweet Eliot was to hang around for Anne. Anne, angry, turned away.

As Anne sat, Frederick rose, wiping his fingers on a napkin and casting aside the remains of his cone into a garbage can.

"I'm going to start off to the Duomo," he said shortly, not meeting the eyes of any of the party. He strode away rapidly, leaving the others a little shocked by his abrupt departure. Anne was not shocked however, she was hurt; obviously Frederick took Eliot's familiarity with her very hard and was taking out his disappointment on her now. This was very unwelcome news, and Anne's eyes followed Frederick's back longingly, not quite certain how to overcome this latest obstacle. She finished off her cone quickly, making quiet remarks about how they should all join Frederick at the Duomo. Finally her friends took the hint and the party set off towards the baroque cathedral to which Frederick had fled.

All while they walked, Anne's thoughts turned over and upside again and again in her mind. She needed to explain everything to Frederick: that she didn't care about Eliot, that she had just been being polite -- as was her unfortunate wont -- to someone who had been very friendly to her when she had needed a friend; that it was Frederick whom she cared about, even after all this time. She barely paid any attention to her friends' conversation until they addressed her outrightly, on the steps leading up into the Duomo.

"What do you think?" Louisa asked Anne, a good-natured smile on her face.

"About what?" Anne asked, having no idea what they were speaking of. She hoped that it was something to do with the impressive baroque facade of the building, or something equally obvious, as she really hadn't any idea what the conversation had been about ever since Frederick had walked away.

"Penelope. Pathetic or noble?"

"Penelope as in the wife of Odysseus?" Anne asked in confusion. Why on earth would her friends be speaking about Penelope? -- either the mythological figure or some real person whom Anne didn't know... for she knew no real Penelopes.

"Yes, classical genius," Charles confirmed, squeezing Anne's arm in a friendly fashion. "Everyone else has voiced an opinion, now it's your turn. That poster back there -- Jamie said that it advertised a TV version of the Odyssey with the a line about one of the greatest love stories of all time. What do you think? Is it a great love story, or is Penelope really pathetic?" They all looked at her expectantly, and Anne realized with surprise that they really had all been talking about a classical figure -- what a difference Jamie was making to Louisa and, by extension, the others!

They had entered the church by this time, and Anne had a few seconds to think as the group wandered around in delighted awe, gazing at the artwork and shrines. Then Anne cleared her throat and began to express her thoughts, as Louisa and Jamie at least still seemed curious.

"Do you think that Penelope was wasting her life, like Louisa here thinks, or do you side with Hayley and the cause of True Love?" Jamie probed, not revealing his own thoughts.

"I think," Anne began, "I think that Penelope's fidelity is to be admired." She smiled slightly and tried to clarify her point of view. "Yes, Penelope was left at home in Ithaca for ten years while Odysseus was off at the Trojan War -- that is a long time, and, yes, he was gone for a further ten years afterwards when she might have expected him home within one... but while she was mistress of his home and mother of his child, he must still have been so present to her. To wait ten years -- as was reasonable, as she was still hearing news of him -- she must have truly loved him. To wait ten more would be nothing. A period of separation can be easily weathered by a strong enough love... perhaps even strengthened. I think that Penelope's fidelity, while impressive, is neither impossible nor pathetic. I believe that she acted as any woman would, who had truly loved." Anne's words were impassioned with feeling beyond whatever her classical training might have been expected to have given her, and her audience seemed impressed.

"That's elegantly put," Jamie said, sitting down on a pew with Anne on one side of him and Louisa on the other. "But do you then think that Odysseus should have been equally true to her memory?"

"I find it easier to forgive him for straying, perhaps," Anne replied, thinking. "She, as a woman, lived almost entirely indoors, almost entirely among other women -- aside from her son and her suitors, of course -- it would be easier for her to remain true to the memory of her love. Odysseus was out in the world, meeting Nausicaa and Circe and Calypso... and the societal expectations for male fidelity were less. Penelope stayed true to her heart and to her position as a well-bred woman. I do grant you that Odysseus always wanted to return home to his wife, at least, he still loved her though he might have failed her elsewhere. Women have an easier time remaining faithful for longer... even when they have very little hope." So she knew only too well.

"But Odysseus toiled through no inconsiderable dangers for two decades in order to return to his wife... can you not grant him equally impressive love for her as she for him?"

"Oh, I am ready enough to believe that his love was as strong in the general sense, but she was the one who was able to keep that love alive on a day-to-day level. Their love was equal, but her fidelity was greater, though perhaps circumstances had something to do with that too -- we'll never know. He had to think about war, and politics, and being a captain of men each day... he could not think as much of his wife during these activities as she could think of him during her weaving and other more passive tasks."

"I am beginning to be quite convinced," Jamie said quietly, "that while Penelope's behavior would seem very odd to us today, that she epitomized feminine virtues and was part of one of the greatest love stories of the ancient world."

"But it's not just a myth," Anne managed to say, knowing that she needed Jamie to understand that fidelity was something true and living, even in modern society. She knew that people had the right to move on with their lives and to find new loves, but there was still such a thing and real love, a love so strong that not even time and separation and hopelessness could vanquish it. Of course there was: she felt such love still. "Of course twenty years is an awfully long time... and I'm only twenty-six so obviously I've never had the chance to love that long... but I have loved for... I mean, I think that I should love for nearly as long without a breath of hope... as Penelope did."

There was a slight noise across the arched passage near Anne's pew, and she recognized Frederick easily despite the shadows that decorated the church's interior. That he had been so nearby was a bit of a surprise to Anne -- she hadn't seen him there, and she doubted that she would have noticed him, as absorbed in her conversation as she had been, if he had not dropped his guidebook on the floor. He slid down and scooped it up, picking up a pencil off the ground too, and turned away from Anne rapidly, his face bright with some emotion Anne could not quite tell -- embarrassment? pleasure? anger?

"Done with your sight-seeing here?" Jamie asked amicably, calling out to Frederick. Frederick turned back cautiously as Jamie continued. "Because I've seen the Duomo often enough before, and I know that you wanted to see the temple of Apollo. Care to join me there?"

"I--" Frederick seemed uncertain, but then nodded and stood, waiting for Jamie. In order for Jamie to leave the pew Anne was forced to leave it first and, as Jamie passed on by, Frederick slid something into Anne's hand, even as he turned to follow his friend out of the cathedral. She looked down: the item in her hand was Frederick's guidebook.

He had already fled from the church at this point, leaving Anne to suppose that he wanted her to have the guidebook for some reason. She sat back down on the now-empty pew -- Louisa had wandered off to join her brother closer to the main altar -- and began to systematically leaf through the book looking for whatever message Frederick wished her to receive.

She was beginning to wonder if the gift of the book was merely to give her a reason to speak to him later on when she finally noticed something in the volume that had not been there when it had left the bookshop. It was quite obvious, really: a pencilled note scribbled in small handwriting in the margins of the page on the Duomo. Her breath caught as she began to read, and she was glad of the relative gloom of the building which provided some disguise to her flushed cheeks.

Anne, I can hear every word that you are saying, and I need you to know this. Your words, your sentiments -- if they mean what I think that they mean -- pierce my soul. Don't say that women are the only ones capable of real fidelity! I want you to know that my heart is as much yours today as it was when you broke it five years ago. Blind and foolish I may have been, but never inconstant, for I have loved no one else since I first met you. Can you not see this? Too good, too gentle girl! Even while I scribble this you continue to say things that leave me breathless, joyously hopeful. Will you not come and tell me if this hope is deserved? A word, a look will be enough to tell me whether I am welcome back in your life or if I should leave you in the peace that you, angel, most definitely deserve. F. W.

Such a note was not to be soon recovered from. Half an hour's reflection in solitude might have given Anne the chance to recover enough to face the others, but when she was directly addressed by Hayley some five minutes later she was quite unable to speak clearly and was still flushed with startled joy.

"Mary, do come look at Anne. I'm wondering if she has heat-stroke, perhaps." Mary bustled over to her sister, an expert in all number of minor illnesses as a venerate hypochondriac.

"You do look a bit done in, Anne," Mary agreed. "Maybe you should just sit here in the cool shade and rest a little. I'll take photographs on your camera for you," she offered kindly, lifting Anne's camera-bag from around her neck and offering her a bottle of water. Anne took a small sip of the water but protested the need to rest, suddenly conscious of the direction at the end of Frederick's note: he needed to know Anne's response. And he was at the temple of Apollo.

"I'll be fine," Anne said. "Maybe I'll just go outside and get a little fresh air."

"Maybe Jamie should take a look at her," Louisa suggested, coming to join the group. "Since he has experience with this climate."

"Jamie's at the temple of Apollo, though, you said," Charles chimed in.

"Then take her to find him," Mary suggested, giving out orders as was her wont. "If the fresh air on the way doesn't help her, then maybe he'll have a better suggestion. What do you think of that, Anne?"

She would be glad to be led to the temple of Apollo. She agreed readily. Within moments she and Charles were back out under the cloudless sky, being beaten down upon by the hot Mediterranean sun. Charles looked at a map for a moment, getting his bearings, and then set out hopefully through the crowds of tourists and vendors across the Piazza Duomo.

Fortunately Jamie and Frederick were standing together when Anne and Charles came across them, so that Charles's hail towards Jamie was heard by the both of them. Frederick turned especially quickly, apparently struck by the vision of Anne standing there in the road outside the ruins, and he urged Jamie to come along towards the newcomers.

"Anne isn't feeling well," Charles explained. "And we're not sure what precisely to do about it. If it's heat-stroke, what's the best cure?"

"I don't think it's heat-stroke," Anne said definitively, her eyes on Frederick. "If anything maybe exhaustion."

"That's entirely plausible," Jamie said, giving Anne a cursory examination. "We certainly kept you up too late last night when you claimed fatigue beforehand. I'll explain your disappearance to the guide if you want to head back to the hotel and get a nap before dinner."

"Thank you," Anne said, her eyes still on Frederick. "Would it be asking too much to ask for an escort?" she asked, meeting his eyes. Frederick took in her meaning immediately, with a slow, glad smile.

"I'd be pleased to take you," Frederick offered quickly, before either of the others could. Jamie and Charles nodded as Anne began to thank Frederick, and the two other men soon disappeared back towards the Duomo to tell the others where Anne had gone and to hurry them towards the temple.

Left alone, Anne gazed shyly up at Frederick, suddenly a little bashful in his company.

"Do you want to be taken back to the hotel?" Frederick asked after a moment, pleased beyond reason at Anne's appearance at the temple but a little worried about the references to her ill health.

"No, not yet," Anne answered quickly. "I just needed some fresh air... and to find you." In an instant his hands were in her hands, she was in his arms, their lips had met for a kiss none the less sweet for all that it had been around five years overdue.

They returned to earth at catcalls from a small troupe of Italian teenagers across the way, and the pair flushed a little at their friendly jibes, grinning in embarrassment at each other and not noticing an angry Will Eliot striding away on the other side of the park.

"I've missed you," Frederick said simply, slipping an arm around Anne in a gesture not unlike Eliot's the night before but ten thousand times more welcome. Anne reciprocated in melting gentleness that invoked further kisses from her reunited paramour.

"I've missed you too," she said, at length. "Especially when you were so close."

"I couldn't tell," Frederick admitted. "I don't want you to take that the wrong way -- but when I saw how every other male of our acquaintance could see what I'd refused to recognize again after all these years... I didn't think you'd need me."

"Always. And even if not need, I wanted you."

"And that Eliot?"

"I never had those sorts of feelings for him, if that's what you're asking," Anne replied anxiously, staring up into Frederick's bright eyes. "Whatever he felt -- I couldn't actually say what he felt -- but... last night... I wanted nothing more but to talk more with you. I was upset when you left in the way you did."

"I was jealous," Frederick admitted. He'd long since admitted it to himself, but the words sounded odd when voiced aloud. "He was physically appealing, and well-off and well-known, and had only been good to you... when I'd been an idiot a hundred times over by not even being friendly to you, and rubbing your face in the dirt with the Louisa affair."

"You're the only physically appealing I want," Anne said softly, entwining her hand with his. He could have melted right then and there. "I never asked Eliot to come along. He just came, though I know that I could have done a better job in dissuading him. And hopefully I'll never see him again, but if I do, it'll be on your arm."

"Then I wasted a whole day, not getting everything set right sooner," Frederick observed ruefully.

"I know," said Anne. "I felt every wasted minute."

"No more wasted minutes," Frederick promised. "Thank God for Jamie and his classical conversations!"

"I know," Anne replied, repeating herself. It was so odd, so exhilarating, to be able to think as one with another person again. To think as one with Frederick again.

"When I heard what you were saying... I couldn't believe it. I needed to speak to you, but I couldn't just march up to you when you were sitting there on the bench with the others... I'm glad you had the wits to figure out the guidebook, I was barely thinking when I wrote in it, but I meant every word."

He had meant every word.

"You've..." His declaration had made Anne desperately curious on one point in the note, but she hesitated to ask.

"I've what?"

"There's been no one else?"

"I've loved no one else," Frederick swore. "Believe me, I tried to find your equal, to forget you, but it just wasn't possible. My dear girl, you are irreplaceable, incomparable. And far, far too good to me."

"I hurt you, though," Anne said softly. The old guilt still weighed at her, even though its damage had largely been eased by their rediscovered feelings for one another. "I made an awful mistake. You must have been furious."

"I was," Frederick ventured, not entirely comfortable in revisiting that horrible time. "For a while. But neither of us was guiltless that day. We shouldn't have argued... we should have talked. And I should have come after you much sooner. If I'd come after you that night, would you have changed your mind -- or at least not disappeared?"

"Yes," Anne replied ruefully. "Oh, if you had shown up that night! I could only say no to you the once... I never could have managed to hold out against you... especially when I wanted to marry you. Only I was afraid. Suzanne had so many arguments... and they all made sense... but I still knew what I wanted ... and I sacrificed it to what I thought was right. But I didn't want to lose you."

"It all came right in the end," Frederick said, nursing his pride a little. He had kicked himself for wasting a whole day before learning Anne's mind, but now he was being told that he had wasted years! "We've both been idiots, maybe, but at least it turned out all right in the end."

"Louisa?" Anne asked cautiously. She feared that it might be a bit much, asking about the ex-girlfriends who intervened between their first love and their reunion, but as Louisa was her friend, she did have an understandable curiosity to know what Frederick had been up to there. No, she even had a right to know.

"More stupidity. She wasn't you, total opposite of you in character. Nothing can excuse my running after her when she was your friend, right in front of your face. I was overjoyed when Jamie told me that they'd formed an attachment -- I was a free man. And while we were in Marsala... I watched them. I watched Jamie and Louisa and your sister and Charles... and they were happy. I persist in thinking that Louisa isn't good enough for Jamie in the long run, I'm afraid, but I saw how precious happiness is, even in a fleeting form. I knew then that I needed to revisit my feelings for you, and then my jealously told me that we weren't done... or at least that I wasn't done with you. I scarcely dared hope that you'd feel the same way after all these years."

"I did. I do. Chances are I always will." It was the truth, simply said, but it deserved -- and received -- another osculatory salute, which left Anne starry-eyed and breathless. She looked about them as Frederick finally, reluctantly, drew away from her. They'd walked some ways and she didn't quite recognize where they were for the moment. Frederick saw her expression and smiled.

"Fonte Arethusa," he said brightly. "I spent a lot of time reading my guidebook last night, trying not to think about you and him out on the town."

"Arethusa?" Anne said blankly, casting around for the appropriate myth and coming up -- for once -- dry.

"A nymph. A beautiful nymph who was caught bathing in a river one day, and the river god started chasing her -- as river gods do." Frederick smiled fondly at Anne, remembering countless afternoons in his apartment or hers, while she wrestled over her Latin or Greek tales of gods and nymphs and monsters. "And she prayed to the goddess Artemis to save her, and the goddess responded by turning Arethusa into a fountain. Maybe not exactly what Arethusa had in mind, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers."

Anne laughed softly and Frederick lay his cheek on her soft hair, continuing to recite from his readings. "Apparently Cicero claimed that the fountain had amazingly sweet water, but there was an earthquake in about the twelfth century, or something, and now it's gone salt."

"It's still beautiful to watch, and to think about, though," Anne said quietly. "The same waters bubbling up after all these thousands of years?"

"Probably not exactly the same waters," Frederick corrected. "There are such things as evaporation, you know, and the sea is now all mixed in."

"Still, it's the same fountain." She paused, smiling, words rising up in her memory, words which had had such a bitter connotation to her only a few days earlier. No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

"What?" Frederick asked her, observing her private joy.

"Heraclitus. No man steps in the same river. By all rights we shouldn't be having a second chance."

"Then give me a fountain any day," Frederick continued, seeing her point. "I'm thrilled to bathe in the fountain with you, my dear, instead of washing along with the ever-stronger flow of time alone. Who needs progress and change when one can have happiness in hanging on to the past? I never cared all that much for philosophy, and now I know why... me always for your sweet serenity and your amazingly faithful heart."

Anne nodded, knowing what he was trying to say. -- And while neither of them were precisely the same person as they had been all those years ago, they each sent a little prayer up to Arethusa, to Artemis, to Apollo, to Aphrodite, to Zeus himself, for letting them revisit the waters of the past.

Finis