ππππ πΈπππΎππ (thornback) wrote in sanditon,
"Yes. I shall." Anne was not one to assume the mantle of carelessness, but she did not mind it now if it meant sparing her sister further from Captain Wentworth's private reproaches. It was not that the captain would ever speak his thoughts aloud on the subject of Mary's words and conductβit was only that many of his expressions had not changed overmuch in the intervening years, and that Anne occasionally thought she read perfectly what he was thinking.
What this might say about her own carefully-applied attentions when they were in mixed company, she did not wish to explore.
And she did not make a study of his face now, for her gaze was trained outward, quietly observing their surroundings as they crossed the town perimeter. As they walkedβthe captain ever attentive to his pace, Anne ever attentive to her strideβshe could not help but be conscious of other couples strolling arm-in-arm, taking in the identical sights, and how gay they all seemed to be in doing so. She wondered if they, too, drew assumptions upon seeing her on the arm of the captain. In the coming days, would these same eyes spy Louisa Musgrove in place of her? Anne could not help suspecting the affirmative.
Perhaps it was this meditation, and thinking that she occupied a place not her own, that caused her to withdraw without ceremony as soon as they arrived outside the hotel. She did lift up her eyes, however, to meet Captain Wentworth's evenly beneath the shadow of his hat. "Thank you." Her gratitude to him felt somehow inadequate, but perhaps the peculiar hush in her voice gave it more power, for it seemed both an acknowledgement of their history, and of what it must have cost him to be in sustained company with her.
But Anne did not find she regretted her time with the Captain; in fact, she found quite the opposite. It seemed a small rebellion to her that she could not find it in her now to regret anything that had come to pass that afternoon.