It was a rather dizzying sensation to be complimented by somebody with quite so many wonderful attributes and Connie felt a truly embarrassing flush spread across the apples of her cheeks that she only hoped the other woman put down to the wine she had consumed. It had not been a small quantity so it would be very easy to do. Even the smallest glance her way through the evening would have found her with a glass and, at one point, doused so thoroughly that a strangely pretty young Frenchman had been forced to come to her aid.

She felt quite odd about that whole experience and couldn’t at all put her finger on why. But it was nothing to how out of sorts she felt around this woman. The experience in the summer had certainly been intense enough to form bonds under duress but Connie couldn’t say she felt quite the same way around Professor Darrow and she had taken pains to keep herself composed.

Then the wine had happened.

”I have long suspected my mother took it quite personally” she replied in matching tones, laughter stroking each of her words as they left lips that soon turned into a warm smile. “You know, most people don’t assume I chose this life,” she said with a growing sense of pleasure rising through her whole being that for one she hadn’t been assumed to be somehow lacking. She raised a playful eyebrow. “What gave me away?”

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MJ made me beautiful