"North & South: John Thornton, Love Lessons", Ch. 37 (PG): Fanny Arrives Home in Milton Seeking Consolation, March 14, 2014 Gratiana Lovelace
(An original fan fiction copyrighted by Gratiana Lovelace; All rights reserved; Based on the Elizabeth Gaskell novel, North & South and its 2004 BBC adaptation; No copyright infringement intended)
[I will illustrate my story using my dream cast from the 2004 BBC production of "North & South" and other actors for additional characters: Richard Armitage for John Thornton, Daniela Denby-Ashe for Margaret Hale, Lesley Manville for Mrs. Maria Hale, Tim Pigott-Smith for Mr. Richard Hale, Sinead Cusack for Mrs. Hannah Thornton, Jo Joyner for Fanny Thornton, Brendan Coyle for Nicholas Higgins, and Graham McTavish as Dr. Cameron Ogilvy, Holliday Grainger for Angharad Ogilvy MacIntosh, Simon Woods for Baird Ogilvy, and Emma Ashton as Mrs. Dillard, John Light as Henry Lennox, Tim Faraday as Watson, and Gillian Anderson at Carlotta Quint Watson, etc] [(1) story logo]
Author's Mature Content Note: "N&S: John Thornton, Love Lessons" is a story with mature themes of love and relationships set within a period drama of the 1850's and beyond. As such there will be heartfelt moments of love and sensuality (S)--as well as other dramatic emotions, including some violence (V)--and I will rate those chapters accordingly. If you are unable or unwilling to attend a movie with the ratings that I provide, then please do not read that chapter. This is my disclaimer.
Author's Recap from the previous chapter: Fanny Thornton abruptly left London to return home to Milton by train as she ended her association with Baird Ogilvy via her courteous note and the return of his mother's cameo ring. It broke Fanny's heart to do so, but with Baird's anger toward her sometimes single minded focus upon herself and her needs, his embarrassment with her admittedly frank words with the Duke of Wellington at the charity ball, and Baird's absence from her life for two days, Fanny felt that she had no choice and that she had lost him already.
Ch. 37 (PG): Fanny Arrives Home in Milton Seeking Consolation
So on this last Friday in March, the 28th--and after a several hours morning train ride from London to Milton in a drizzling rain and cloudy skies with no conversation from her begrudging chaperone, the Hale's maid Dixon returning from a visit with family--Fanny Thornton returns home to Thornton Manor a chastened young woman after ending her relationship with Baird Ogilvy. They arrive in Milton about half past twelve noon. Fanny hires a carriage--since no one at Marlborough Mills is expecting her--and she drops off Dixon at the Hale's home in Crampton. Fanny asks Dixon to give the Hales her kind regards, but she does not stop in to pay a visit. Fanny wants to get home as soon as possible so she can seek consolation from her sister-in-law Margaret, and also from her brother, John. And like the little girl still somewhere deep inside her, the still not quite twenty-one year old Fanny wants the comfort of being in her own home again--where all is familiar and comforting.
However Fanny arrives home to find Thornton Manor empty--no one to talk to or to console her about Baird. Her brother John Thornton is at work at his mill office, of course. And the manor staff inform Miss Fanny that Mrs. Margaret Thornton has been at the Mill's day school and nursery all morning, and that her plans were to eat lunch with the children. Since there is no luncheon at the manor--and she is not hungry anyway--Fanny changes out of her traveling attire and into a simple sparingly ornamented purple day dress without a hoop skirt and she walks across the bustling mill yard to the Mill school in a little building behind the main building, where her brother, John's Mill offices are located.
As soon as Fanny enters the school room where the children and their teachers and minders are just finishing eating their mill provided hot lunches courtesy of the then Hannah Thornton's suggestion, Little Lissa Dillard jumps up and rushes to her. Margaret looks up at Fanny quizzically for her being home a week before she is expected.
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"N&S: John Thornton, Love Lessons", by Gratiana Lovelace (2013-2014) (Done)
FanfictionJohn Thornton has an eager mind, starved for intellectual stimulation. But what John could not have foreseen was that just as his mind needs nourishment, so does his heart. Mr. Hale's proud, beautiful, kind, stubborn, and compassionate daughter Mi...
