Igenlode Wordsmith

I finally got round to proof-reading/editing this; it was actually complete at the end of April, *before* I even started on What's in a Name, but with the rush to complete the competition entry in time plus the knowledge that there was next to no potential audience for Colette-fic, I didn't have much motivation to work on it. (Plus the dispiriting discovery that the script of the film had apparently used large chunks of the original dialogue verbatim...)

I'm still not quite certain if the irony of the title works better -- or, rather, is more apparent -- if I use "White Knight" or "The White Knight", but I tried it with 'The' and it didn't look quite right, so I'm going back to "White Knight" for now. And at 5,500 words I think it will work as a rather long one-shot... even if "If I Were Vicomte" has *four* chapters in that same length!

White Knight

World-weary Gaston Lachaille sees himself as perfectly positioned to offer a solution to Gigi’s situation. He misjudges things in more ways than one.

When Gaston Lachaille had returned at length to Paris, still nursing his wounded amour-propre and the cuckold’s horns bestowed upon him by the perfidious Liane, it was to find Gigi dressed up like an organ-grinder’s monkey.

He had not, in that first moment, been able to imagine what old Madame Alvarez could conceivably have had in mind to allow it. The contrast between the scapegrace urchin he remembered and the gawky adolescent plucking at the collar of her new-found finery had been too great for anything but an almost physical recoil. ( Read more... )