Lady March - (L.L.)

Chapter 11

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Sneaking Personality

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"You sneaky little lady!" Meg tried to hush down her laughter as Annie barged into her bedroom holding a stack of parchment. "Didn't know you had it in you."

"Neither did I," Annie's face was pink from emotion, trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she just fooled one of the sisters right in front of their eyes. She took a chaotic seat on Meg's fluffy bed.

"How did Jo not find out?" Meg asked while standing.

"I have my ways," Annie gave an innocent yet devilish smile, before handing the stack of paper for Meg to take. "I hope this helps, I kind of forgot mid-way what I was supposed to be asking for..."

"You what!?" Meg quickly covered her mouth and glanced around the room unsurely, hoping and praying that nobody heard her loud voice. She shook her head at her own insolence. She laid down on the bed clumsily, exaggerating a whimper of pain. "If Jo finds out, she'll have our heads—"

"That's only if she finds out."

Meg looked at the younger girl in disbelief, before sitting up straight and fixing her posture. She oftentimes had to remind herself to not act like an improper lady — but she just couldn't help herself sometimes; not in front of family, at least.

"How can you be so okay with this whole situation, you — we stole some of her written work."

"Yes, but it's the attempt that counts," Annie smiled to herself, happy with her knowledgeable choice of words. "Plus, it's helpful in a way, right? Knowing Jo, she would never let anyone read her work beforehand. I'm just doing us all a favor."

And with that being said, the two girls carefully read through the vast amount of stories and theatre scripts, while also immersing themselves with the work that they would possibly never be able to read another day. Other than the occasional in-home theatre plays that Jo liked to hold, there wasn't much that any of the girls had the chance to read.

Jo was a girl who disliked feedback for anything. She would take it, for sure, she just didn't necessarily like hearing it. Especially when someone were to question her ideas - she believed that nobody really had a say in something like that, not with the author present, at least.

"I'm tired of reading," Annie frowned, flipping the last page of an extremely long memoir of why Jo liked to write. It wasn't that she wasn't enjoying it, very much the exact opposite, but she hadn't been outside in a while and the weather was absolutely breathtaking during this time of day.

"Me too," Meg exclaimed, neatly stacking up the papers together. "You should probably return these to Jo."

Nodding in response, Annie grabbed a hold of the parchment and stood up from her comforting seat on the bed. She began to make her way out the door when Meg suddenly spoke up, "would you like to head down to town with me for a while? There's only a matter of time before we're greeted with more very cold snow."

With the plans in action, Annie walked around the large home in search of the original owner so she could return the paper. With Jo nowhere around, she resorted to looking for the girl outside. Not before putting on a winter coat and some mitts, of course.

Strolling carefully around the house fields, relief filled Annie when she saw Jo a few feet further away from her. Coming closer, she felt a tinge of oddness when she realized that Jo wasn't alone - Laurie was with her, and the two were -- ice-skating?

After clearing her throat slightly, she opened her mouth to call out to them, but Jo was the first to notice her. Jo ran closer, and Laurie followed closely behind - his cheeks were tinted red. She assumed it was from the cold, but the way he was looking at Annie seemed to suggest a different reason.

"Thank you for letting me read through your stories, Jo," Annie said, earning a skeptical look from the other girl. However, the confusion was quickly replaced with a bright smile after she heard a compliment of her literature.

"Oh, well, you don't have to compliment my writing," Jo trailed off in an attempt to come off as humble, but it didn't work as her scarlet cheeks gave it all away.

"But I do, Jo. You deserve all the credit. Your stories really are something else."

Jo grinned with satisfaction. "Well, I can't say no to praise, now can I?"

"Join us!" Laurie motioned towards the ice-filled ground. He added as if it were not obvious enough already, "We were skating."

"Trying to skate, Teddy," Jo corrected the boy. "This is hardly the real thing."

"Well, where's the fun if you follow rules all the time?" He argued half-heartedly, his hands on his hips. "You for one should know that, Jo." He quickly stepped away with a grin before Jo could shove at his shoulder. Leaning closer, he offered his hand toward Annie.

The girl gave him an incredulous look.

"Are you going to join us and be amazing or will you not and be boring?" Laurie exaggerated his tone of false-disgust.

She glanced the other way where she saw Meg gesturing for Annie to come to her so the two could head down to town. She then stared at Jo briefly, before shifting her gaze to Laurie. "The latter."

And then she darted the opposite way to catch up with the other girl - leaving a very confused pair of friends behind.