Author's Note
And HERE we ARE!
Am I dreaming myself? No, indeed. We have gotten here at last! The relief!
I had a smile on my face the entire time I was writing this, and I hope it brings a smile to yours. Thank you all for your magnificent reviews, follows and favourites - and I hope you can continue to follow this for a few more chapters, because...
KISSING. Just so much kissing to be had. ALL bets are off, now!
I tinkered with this chapter so much, trying to temper my tone and my text to that of our beloved Lucy Maud's, whilst still trying to honour my own wishes - and hopefully yours - in lingering a little longer with the newly-minted lovebirds. I hope you feel it works. There is definitely a touch of the Sullivan series in here, too, as many of you have already observed. I don't forget my first love! And luckily, neither has Gilbert x
With very best wishes,
MrsVonTrapp x
Chapter Eleven
Dreaming
When Gilbert came the next afternoon he found Anne waiting for him with an eager smile, leaping up from the step with enthusiasm as soon as she saw his longed-for face, looking herself as fresh as the dawn and fair as a star, after all the gaiety of the preceding night. *
"Hello, Anne! Where's our reception committee today? I'm too used to about a dozen eyes on us whenever I call," he grinned, not at all disappointed to find her the lone resident available to welcome him.
"Hello, Gilbert," she offered a little shyly. "I'm afraid it's just yours truly. Rachel had business for the Ladies Aid and Marilla has taken the twins into town."
"Well, then. It's most fortunate that it's your services I seek for our walk, Miss Shirley."
He smiled encouragingly, unable to prevent his eyes from raking over her, drinking in her beauty anew. She wore a green dress - not the one she had worn to the wedding, but an old one which Gilbert had told her at a Redmond reception he liked especially. It was just the shade of green that brought out the rich tints of her hair, and the starry grey of her eyes and the iris-like delicacy of her skin. He was unspeakably relieved to be back before her, having spent a harrowing night of little sleep, imagining all the possible swains at the Penhallow wedding, preparing to steal her away from him just at the point when he might finally declare himself to her.
"Shall we?" his deep-timbred voice hovered on a breath, hardly believing he was at the point he had striven so long for; a knight-errant at the end of a long quest, buoyed by the promise in her smile, which might once have sustained him for an entire term at Redmond.
They began down the well-worn route, as companionably as if this was yet another of their regular rambles, neither more nor less important than any other. Gilbert, glancing at her sideways as they walked along a shadowy wood path, thought she had never looked so lovely. A tendril of titian hair escaped and caught the breeze, and he almost had to physically wrestle himself away from the longing to reach out and tuck it back behind her ear with his long fingers. Instead he asked about the wedding, adoring the lilt of her voice even if he couldn't quite master a focus on her words, leaping ahead to consider his own once they arrived at their destination. Anne, glancing sideways at Gilbert, now and then, thought how much older he looked since his illness; his lean face relaxed into a manly maturity, as if he had put boyhood behind him forever. Her heart skittered like a pebble cast across the water whenever his hazel eyes lit on hers, before seeking respite from his incomparable attractiveness in the trees and the flowers and the soft footfalls of their matched, measured steps.
The day was beautiful and the way was beautiful. Anne was almost sorry when they reached Hester Gray's garden, and sat down on the old bench with a little flustered head toss, smoothing out her dress unnecessarily. But it was beautiful there, too - as beautiful as it had been on the faraway day of the Golden Picnic, when Diana and Jane and Priscilla and she had found it. Then it had been lovely with narcissus and violets; now golden rod had kindled its fairy torches in the corners and asters dotted it bluely. Anne thought of the beloved garden as sacred link to those old days, when they as hopeful maidens had tripped and danced and dreamed in and around it; now the only maid was she, and she was weary of talk of others that are wed. ** Where once she might have frozen time, never wanting anything to alter, now she longed so for change, even as she feared what it would mean for her – to take Gilbert from her once more, back to Kingsport, belonging not to her but again to the world.
She sighed deeply, trying to instead appreciate the gift of the scene; here with Gilbert so healthy and handsome, hearing the call of the brook as it came up through the woods from the valley of birches with all its old allurement… Anne inhaled the mellow air, full of the purr of the sea; beyond were fields rimmed by fences bleached silvery grey in the suns of many summers, and long hills scarfed with the shadows of autumnal clouds; with the blowing of the west wind old dreams returned.
Gilbert paced a few moments before taking a seat beside her with an almost apologetic smile. She was aware of his quiet breathing next to her; of his hands tapping out a distracted rhythm against his thighs; of his strong profile that she wondered, errantly, what it would be like to touch; if his skin was as honey-smooth as its appearance, and what the alluring dark stubble just emerging along that jaw would feel like beneath her fingers.
Hopeless conjecture, of course. Can calm despair and wild unrest/Be tenants of a single breast? **
"I think," said Anne softly, for want of anything to fill the sudden silence, and to help beat back the confusing cacophony of her thoughts, "that `the land where dreams come true' is in the blue haze yonder, over that little valley."
Gilbert followed the direction of her gaze, before asking with a quiet fervour, "Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?"
Something in his tone - something she had not heard since that miserable evening in the orchard at Patty's Place - made Anne's heart beat wildly. But she made answer lightly, unable to meet his newly searching eyes.
"Of course. Everybody has…" she answered, in a voice that was worryingly uneven. "It wouldn't do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about…" She almost swallowed her tongue at her own helpless prattle, and the clear stupidity of introducing terms like dead into the conversation when the man beside her had almost taken his last breath. What on earth was she thinking?
"What a delicious aroma that low-descending sun is extracting from the asters and ferns…" she changed tack with a sad desperation. "I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them. I'm sure they would be very beautiful."
Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked. He looked at her flushed face and clasped hands and tormented lower lip and felt his heart might break open at her sweetness. If he had been nervous before, he drew new resolution from Anne's uncertainty. He reached out his own hand to still hers, covering both with his before lacing their fingers together.
"I have a dream," he said slowly, leaning in close enough to have his breath caress her cheek. "I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends - and YOU!"
There. There it was. Sink or swim, he at least knew he had done all that he could.
Her intake of breath was sharp, and she darted a glance to him in surprise, grey eyes flaring green in an instant as she slowly absorbed his meaning. Anne wanted to speak but she could find no words and looked away again, dizzy with the truth of his loving look to her. A moment ago she was drowning in desolation… now… now… happiness was breaking over her like a wave. It almost frightened her with its gathering strength, threatening to swamp her, and she squeezed his hand tightly, drawing on him to anchor her to the moment.
Gilbert had turned his body into hers, a broad shoulder nuzzling her slight one.
"I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne. If I ask it again today will you give me a different answer?"
Still Anne could not speak. But she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment. He wanted no other answer… but everything in him clamoured to ask his question anyway.
He dropped off the bench and onto one knee, never forfeiting his firm hold on the slim white hand in his.
"Anne… my Anne-girl…" he gulped, all his carefully rehearsed words drifting out of reach, as promises on the tide, leaving nothing but the choking certainty of his love for her. "I have loved you for as long as I can remember. With absolutely everything in me. There isn't a single moment of my life since that day in the schoolhouse that isn't tied to you. When I'm near you I tremble. When you're not near me, I ache. My heart beats faster just at the thought of you. I want nothing in this world but to love you and care for you and comfort you and support your dreams and to make you happy. I will strive every day to ensure your happiness. My friend… my love… will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"
She looked down to him, disbelieving and amazed, and then that gorgeous grin, and a little noise that might have been yelp or sob as she leaned forward and threw her arms around his neck.
"Oh, Gil!" she cried, the muffled words offered to his collarbone.
His own breath had deserted him, and it took all his strength not to give in to gravity and have them both topple over into the grass, audaciously appealing as the thought was. His large hands clutched her waist as the delighted, relieved laugh escaped him.
"I take it… this time… it's a yes?"
A girlish giggle bobbed up to join them, clasped together in the unsteady perch of his lap. Anne drew back her head, eyes shining and gaze wondering.
"Yes, Gilbert! Oh, Gil, a thousand times, yes!"
His heart not only did indeed beat faster at her proximity, let alone her declaration, but it hammered against his ribcage, demanding escape as if through a door.
Gilbert threw back his own head as if seeking confirmation from the heavens, before seizing her to him tightly, drawing them up to stand, his strong arms enveloping her and crushing her to him as he had done every night in his dreams.
"Yes…" he murmured himself, into her fragrant hair, as if he had to repeat it to make it true.
"Oh, Gil, I love you so!" Anne admitted joyfully, this time to his shirtfront.
He raised her head to his enflamed gaze, cradling her cheek in his hand.
"Say that again!" the greedy, gravelly demand was offset by a dazzling smile.
The blush swept her face but those grey-green eyes held firm.
"I love you, Gilbert."
He blinked, dazedly, fearing he would awaken at this moment, as he had so many other times… awaken to that darkened bedroom and the sweat-stained sheets and the disorientating disappointment…
"Anne…" his own voice couldn't decide which octave to settle on. "You really mean that…?"
Her look to him nearly felled him to his knees. "With absolutely everything in me," she echoed.
He wasn't dreaming, then, for his average-at-best imagination could never have done justice to such a reply, with her beautiful blushing face and her parted shell-pink lips and her eyes to drown in.
His thumb brushed the cheek it had rested upon, before flitting lightly across the lips that had pressed to his own skin so fleetingly, yet so lovingly, two nights ago. Anne's breath hitched and he felt the catch in his own throat and in the very air around them. He had dreamt of this moment, too, with the memories as fevered as anything the typhoid had helped produce… He inclined his head, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips to hers.
It was a tentative kiss, carried within it past hurts and new hope; surprisingly chaste and circumspect and close-mouthed, given the passions of the people sharing it. He was a twenty-five year old man who had kissed very few women, let alone any in this manner, and though he was familiar with the mechanics of the motion – the basics of the biology - he was wholly unprepared for the wonder of it.
When he had imagined this kiss, it had been colored first by schoolboy fantasy, mired in a maze of practicalities; what would her lips feel like? Would they be as plump and soft as they looked? Where might it happen? What should he do with his hands? Later, there would be the adolescent agony of his spurned advances, softening as he became her schoolmaster-comrade into a lovesick longing; meditating on her eyes, her smile, her laugh, her form, wondering with a pang of self-distrust if he could ever make her care for him. ***
And then… the closeness of the early Redmond years, where her nearness was tease and torment that became torture… until the sands shifted, and the more he tried to close the growing gap between them the more it became a yawning gulf… until he had overplayed his frustrated friendship; drowning himself in his attempt to quench the thirst of his suppressed desire, and his desperate need to make her his.
And now… she was his. Finally, his. And his mind… his heart… and evidently, his lips… couldn't quite believe it.
He withdrew, eyes fluttering open to stare into hers, and then in the same beat reached for her again, with the kiss this time not of the boy or the youth or the friend or the spurned scholar, but of the man who loved her… here, now, as the dream was made as real as the feel of her, soft and pliant and perfect. He pressed her to him so that he couldn't discern where she ended and he began; their very own moment of genesis, and he indeed felt as Adam, ensnared in something both ancient and entirely new.
The force of his faithful lips asked their own question, and with another little noise from her he would one day come to identify and catalogue with easy expertise, as with all the others, she tentatively opened her mouth to him, permitting the tantalising touch of tongue and the deepening of every drop of desire he now poured into her. His arms felt they could encircle her twice and still have room to roam up and down her spine, the sensitive fingers of his future-doctor hands splayed to trace every vertebrae through the clothing and corset that he felt he wanted to rip open with his teeth. The insistent throbbing within him started at his temple and travelled downwards… he knew with a wretched certainty that Fred had been as right as his name and he himself had been a fool… Anne could break away and ask anything of him in this moment and he would comply without demur… and that was before her nimble fingers, clutching the sleeves of his shirt, travelled up waistcoat to collar and neck and then detoured around his ears before nesting in his crown of dark curls, as if content to find themselves a new home there.
There were countless minutes lost to the undertow, when all that he could manage was to remake himself again through this knowledge of her. Knowing, now, as he had so longed to, that her lips fitted themselves exactly to his, two puzzle pieces connecting; that he could bend slightly and sweep her up and against him and feel his body in sensational sensory conversation with hers; that it was quite possible to forgo breathing rather than interrupt their kiss, and he was perfectly happy with the trade. Finally, with an agonised groan he broke away from her, knowing the flush that colored his summer-browned face was as bright as anything Anne's own rosy complexion offered him, and knowing he had imprinted himself on her and she on him, so surely that the heat from her still warmed him, almost as much as her dazed, dazzled look.
They heaved great breaths, once able to, and shuddered as if having just swum the St Lawrence, and then both laughed in embarrassed acknowledgement of the passion that had pummelled them, perhaps not quite believing it of themselves. Anne was mortified to think she had ever worried over a peck to the cheek and felt she owed Marilla some sort of apology, and then remembered her words about whether Gilbert was his father's son and flushed further, face in sympathy with her hair. She felt his lips - Gilbert's lips! - had set hers alight and then scorched the skin above and around them, making it tingle even as she begged to be burned again.
Gilbert bent to rest his forehead against hers in an effort to search for some sort of sanity, hands on her shoulders as if unsure if he was offering her support or seeking it for himself, and then directed them back to collapse on the bench, drawing her to him as they cooled and calmed. He knew he was made different by this momentous moment and thought he had realised, before, what it was to love her, but there was nothing equal to this... and when Anne's cheek found harbour against his heart and her arms moored themselves around him Gilbert thought he would never know a truer, more complete happiness in his life.
"Gil…" Anne ventured again, after a time. "Oh, Gil…"
"Sweetheart…" he sighed, similarly stunned, smiling as he caught her glance up to him, grey eyes growing soft at his endearment. "I've waited approximately a decade to be able to call you that," he chuckled to himself.
"Maybe you should have thought about that instead of Carrots, Gilbert Blythe," she parried a little shakily, as much out of habit as anything, her smile hugging the reminder of the old tease.
He reached out his fingers, finally, to that tendril, leaning to kiss it with a courtly reverence. "I am somewhat overly attached to that nickname," he smiled softly as he tucked the strand behind her ear, leaning over to then kiss both.
Her breath came again; a quiet quiver echoed in a thrumming hummingbird-winged pulse he followed with his lips from ear lobe all the way down her alabaster throat, and her reaction made him tremble just as he himself had informed her. "I've waited a long while to do that, too…" he murmured leadingly.
Anne clutched his shoulders for support, her eyes an emerald glaze at his amorous ministrations, trapped in a whirlpool of new sensations.
"Oh if only…" she gave a little, stuttering sigh.
"If only, Anne-girl?" he rumbled, journeying back up to meet her eyes with a quirk of his dark brow.
"If only you had kissed me like that two years ago, Gil… maybe I might have said yes then!"
His chuckle was as warm as the merry spark in his eyes.
"Remind me, darling, to tell you of a conversation I had with Fred one of these days."
"Fred?" she laughed in turn, but didn't linger on the question, being otherwise diverted. "I get to have darling as well?"
"Oh future wife, I'm just getting started."
"I think I like that best of all," her eyes shone.
"So do I." He reached for her hand again to kiss it. He traced a finger along nails and up to delicate knuckles, the secret smile forming on his face.
"Your hand is looking a little lonely there, Anne-girl. It might need some adornment, now."
Anne looked down at her small hand in his.
"Gil… we have our promise. I don't need a – "
He silenced her protest with a firm look and a gentle kiss. "Yes, you do. I want the whole world to know I'm yours, and you're mine."
She watched him dive into his pocket, extracting the little box that had kept company with him for several days. He placed it carefully in her hand, touched by the awed look she gave him.
"Gil…"
"This is but a beginning, Anne. If you feel it's not quite right, we can go up to Charlottetown together and – "
This time it was he who was silenced, by her gasp of surprise as she opened the box to see the circlet of pearls, preening proudly in the sunlight.
"Oh, Gilbert! It's… I can't… I can't believe you could have found anything so perfect!"
"You like it?"
"How could you have known to… to… choose pearls…?" she stumbled, throat thick. "The two most important men in my life have given me pearls … I have Matthew's… and now yours."
He grinned in delight, taking the ring from its bed to slide the old gold over her finger, fitting easily and so rightly he himself was amazed.
"It was my grandmother's… Ma's mother…" he explained. "Ma wanted especially for you to have it, Anne, if you wanted it."
Anne looked down at the ring, foreign and yet so familiar already on her hand, and back to Gilbert.
"Your mother wanted me to have this?"
"Yes."
"A family heirloom?"
"You are part of our family now, Anne, in every way."
"I'm so honoured to wear it, Gil. I love it. And I love you." She kissed him through a veil of tears.
"As I love you, my gorgeous girl. Though my ma did warn me about pearls being for tears…" he chuckled, lips grazing her wet cheeks.
"Well, then," she smiled wryly, "I can cry happy tears too, you know," and proceeded to give an excellent demonstration thereof.
"Do I… have a turn as well?" she asked later, a little coyly, head having long since drifted to his shoulder.
"A turn?"
"Something I've wished to do for a long time?"
"Apart from the kissing and the caressing and the general lovemaking of the last hour?" he grinned unashamedly, outrageously pleased with their time thus spent.
"Gilbert Blythe! Do I have to take you in hand already?"
Gilbert's expression, an approximation of sheepish undercut by the betraying flash of a wolfish smile, rather indicated he wouldn't mind that scenario, either. But he duly promised he would make every endeavour to behave himself.
"I haven't had much time to think about this…" her embarrassed gaze swept downwards. "But you have to close your eyes. And stay perfectly still. And silent."
"I will do my best, my lovely."
Anne turned to properly face him, noting how those long, thick lashes cast intriguing tiny shadows across his tanned skin in the late afternoon sun, and how his eminently kissable lips were apple-red from their very recent exertions. She took a steadying breath. "After you… had been so sick, Gil… you had accumulated a few new frown lines and furrows…"
He opened one eye in protest, furrowing brow anew for good measure, and closed it again at her look of exasperation.
"I wanted so many times to smooth them for you, Gil… to ease the pain and hurt they represented… but it wasn't my place. I didn't have the right. I wondered, too, whether some of my past actions were responsible for a few of them…"
"Anne…"
"Shush…" she reminded. "Now, even though they have faded and mostly disappeared as your health has returned, I… I remember them. I have the memory of them, and how they came to you. Here…" she lightly kissed the cheek she had kissed at the door to Green Gables, once marred by a track tracing the cheekbone, "and it's twin was here," she placed her lips, ever gently, to the other side of his face. "There was the line to your brow here," she caressed the now-smooth forehead that had leaned against hers, "and here…" her lips found the little line of query still above the bridge to his nose. Anne carefully kissed the crease that had lived along one side of his nose and the tiny fissures, once deepened furrows, fluttering outwards of either eye. And when she finished she kissed both closed eyes, declaring her night-vigil fear of them never looking upon her again, and finally, fingers delighting to linger on the stubble of his jaw, a fairy brush of her lips against his own, announcing the dread she had felt to never have heard them again speak her name.
Gilbert had been still as of his promise, but when he finally opened his eyes to her again, betrayingly bright, he was as speechless as she had earlier been, only capable of clasping her to him with a love for her so fierce that he feared it might break him.
"I called to you, Anne…" he rasped, face buried in her hair. "I called to you in my fever…"
"I know, my beloved…" she whispered, tears dampening his collar. "I heard you."
They lingered in the old garden until twilight, sweet as dusk in Eden must have been, crept over it. There was so much to still talk over and recall - things said and done and heard and thought and felt and misunderstood. It was a necessary coming of the tide, washing away all the old hurts and recent misgivings.
"I thought you loved Christine Stuart," Anne told him, secure now in the circle of his arms and in the circlet now adorning her finger, as reproachfully as if she had not given him every reason to suppose that she had loved Roy Gardner.
Gilbert laughed boyishly, thrilling to the feel of her back leaning against his chest, as they snuggled together on the bench that had become love seat, in every respect.
"Everyone certainly kept reminding me of that," he smirked, unseen.
"I expected her to turn up on your doorstep and turn me out every single day, Gilbert!" Anne protested, aggrieved, still, over the long-held worry over such a possibility. "And no wonder. She's very accomplished and very beautiful."
Gilbert peered around to view her suddenly solemn face, and his arms tightened around her involuntarily.
"Anne, how could you believe I would have ever preferred her over you?"
"Oh…" she sighed deeply, giving a chastened smile. "Probably the violet eyes and the rose-leaf complexion and the glossy dark hair and the – "
"Stop!" he laughed quietly, turning her properly to him so that she was almost sitting in his lap, yet again. "Let me tell you something, Anne Shirley, soon to be – one day to be – Anne Blythe…" the sought-after satisfaction of this realisation made him pause, and he looked off into the dreamy distance for a moment before coming back to her, his hazel eyes sparking with a new, fervent fire that stirred something equally new deep in her belly.
"Christine was engaged to somebody in her home town," he explained patiently. "I knew it and she knew I knew it. When her brother graduated he told me his sister was coming to Kingsport the next winter to take music, and asked me if I would look after her a bit, as she knew no one and would be very lonely. So I did."
Gilbert paused to kiss Anne's own now-perturbed brow, biting back a smile of new smugness.
"And then, I admit, I liked Christine for her own sake. She is one of the nicest girls I've ever known. I knew college gossip credited us with being in love with each other. I didn't care. Nothing mattered much to me for a time there, after you told me you could never love me, Anne. There was nobody else - there never could be anybody else for me but you…" His arms clasped her ever tighter. "I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school."
Anne reached a hand to his forehead, and then to crown, tracing the now-invisible bump that had once showed there, and then again into his curls, caressing them in a way that made his eyes flare.
"I don't see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little fool," said Anne, shamefacedly.
"Well, I tried to stop," said Gilbert frankly, blowing out a steadying breath, "not because I thought you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there was no chance for me after Gardner came on the scene. He was all you ever dreamt of – your brooding hero come to life. But I couldn't - and I can't fully tell you, either - what it's meant to me these two years to believe you were going to marry him, Anne-girl, and be told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on the point of being announced…"
"As I believed with yours, Gil!" Anne defended spiritedly, withdrawing her hand to pass it impatiently through her own. "And I have the broken chain to prove it!"
"Pardon, Anne?" he gave bemused smile, nonplussed at her outburst.
Anne started, caught on her half-truth.
"Well… your pink enamel locket, Gil…"
"Yes, I am familiar with it…" he smiled widely, "and what of this heart locket that nestled so alluringly against your luminescent skin at White Sands?"
Anne blushed at both the compliment and the coming admission, dropping her gaze.
"I wore it to the Convocation Ball, Gil. It felt as much a part of me… of us… as your lilies had done. But I walked there with Phil, and the irrepressible Miss Gordon as was couldn't stop chattering, on that occasion, about how she had heard today that Gilbert Blythe's engagement to Christine Stuart was to be announced as soon as Convocation was over, quote unquote, and had I heard anything of it, and that she thought it was true! **** And so… and so… I broke the chain, Gil, and stuffed the pendant in my pocket. I'm very sorry. It was deliberate, and not an accident."
Several moments passed until Anne risked a look back to Gilbert, whom she was astonished to see was fighting a smile, eyes glowing.
"You loved me, then, even if you didn't know it!" he offered, expression exultant.
"I was furious!" she spluttered.
"You were jealous," he crowed.
"Well… you gave me every reason to be, Gilbert Blythe, with Phil and the rest of Redmond in my ear about your so-called intentions!"
Gilbert attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to muzzle his smile, and the pride that burst forth in him.
"I'm sorry for your annoyance with me there, Anne-girl," he soothed. "But you must forgive me in taking a little pleasure in that…" the dimple at his cheek toyed with announcing itself as he traced his fingers across her throat and down further to where the locket had rested that night, feeling now instead her deep breaths, less indignant by the moment. "And don't be so hard on our friend Phil. I might have never thought you could love me until that day you cut my hair… and fell across into my lap as you do now… and looked at me then as you are doing now…"
He was finding his breaths were matching Anne's, and swallowed hard. "That blessed day… actually the night before... I opened a letter from the selfsame Phil Gordon - Phil Blake, rather - in which she told me there was really nothing between you and Roy, and advised me to `try again.' I knew by then you weren't engaged, but still, it was hugely encouraging… the doctor and my parents were amazed at my rapid recovery after that."
"Phil wrote to you?"
"Indeed."
"My goodness. I hardly know what to say. I love her dearly, but I was a little angry with her for a while. I'm afraid that my temper is still a part of me, Gil. Will you be able to stand it?"
"Oh, I think I'll learn to ride it out…" he quirked a knowing smile, fingers brushing her cheek again, with unbearable tenderness. "And what of my faults, Anne-girl? I'm sure I must have a few…" he grinned again to her gorgeous nose wrinkling at his tease. "Life is never going to be dull for us, my darling. I love all the parts to you, Anne, even the a-little-less-than-perfect ones. Because behind them is spirit and passion and challenge and fire and fearlessness. And that's why there was never anyone for me but you."
Anne laughed quietly - then shivered.
"And you for me, Gil, even if I was so slow to recognise it. But you're wrong about the fearlessness. I was never so afraid in my life as the moment I found out how sick you were. And I… I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I knew - I KNEW then - and I thought it was too late."
She blinked back tears, the memory, even now, still too raw. "Too late to tell you how I felt, and how sorry I was, and how you might have left this earth never knowing how much I really cared. What would I have done without you? Your strength and your drive, your decency and your goodness, your wonderful mind and your lovely humour and your overdeveloped sense of fairness…" she attempted a watery smile, desperate to lighten the gravity of her words, and his own contemplative look towards her.
"You forgot my dashing good looks, there."
"Surely they are taken as a given."
He laughed loudly at this, clasping him to her, his joy brimming over in an enthusiastic caress of throat with lips, before remembering himself.
"But it wasn't too late, sweetheart," he determined, her torrent of admiring words having made him flush. His hazel eyes dazzled as he continued with his trademark optimism, and his characteristically firm, quiet resolution. "Oh, Anne, this makes up for everything, doesn't it? In the end none of that matters, love, now that we have arrived here, in this moment. Let's resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us."
His kiss that became many kisses was rather the gift in itself, and Anne would later have to muse on the marvel of this faithful comrade turned such passionate paramour.
"It's the birthday of our happiness," said Anne softly, having relinquished his lips with some effort. "I've always loved this old garden of Hester Gray's, and now it will be dearer than ever."
"But I'll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne," said Gilbert sadly, his face clouding. "I'd marry you tomorrow if I could. But..." he sighed, "It will be three years before I'll finish my medical course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls."
Anne laughed, much more gaily than before.
"I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU." She reached to kiss his own hand, sealing her promise. "You see, I'm quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more `scope for imagination' without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter. We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other - and dreaming. Oh, my beloved Gil, dreams will be very sweet now."
Gilbert's expression lightened again, and he drew her close to him and kissed her.
"I don't think any dream could be better than the reality of this day, my love," he determined raggedly, his kiss as passionate as a vow. "Or the reality of all our days to come."
"I guess…" Anne murmured against his loving lips, "that Marilla will be the one to think she's dreaming, seeing us come together after all this time."
Gilbert reluctantly withdrew, the gleam in his hazel eyes competing with the brilliance of his Blythe grin.
"Let's see about that, sweetheart, shall we?"
With knowing look he took her hand in his, pulling her up to stand beside him as he knew she would do, now, for the rest of their days. His long-held dream of hearth-fire and her… he could hardly believe his own happiness was hers now as well, to safeguard and to share, or that they would finally be dreaming of their life together, and not he on his own; solitary pipe dreams, fruitless and futile.
Gilbert paused to sweep a grateful glance back to the garden that had helped furnish all his future hopes. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.
Chapter Notes
*It was always my desire to work in with canon again, and I am pleased to know I have every sentence of the last chapter, Love Takes Up the Glass of Time, both here and a little at the end of this story's previous chapter, and have kept to the sequence of events as written by Lucy Maud. Whether I have been able to blend canon and my own work successfully, in structure and tone, remains to be seen! However, I really enjoyed writing this one!
Therefore, please note that everything italicised is taken from Anne of the Island (Ch 41) unless otherwise specified.
**Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from In Memoriam A.H.H., from which I've also, you may recall, taken my title
***Anne of the Island (Ch 2) slightly reversed!
****Anne of the Island (Ch 37)
And some overdue correspondence...
This has turned into a kissing book, Anne O' the Island, and no mistake! I have opened the floodgates.
I hope this has been worth the long wait, Jxuan, wow, KBsMomma, snowgirldeb, stillpink, engineerwenlock, and msfroglette
… and to MaryNotContrary, Jxuan, DrinkThemIn, Lavinia Maxwell, AnneNGil, slovakAnne, Corkrose, OriginalMcFishie, Kalewis82 and Excel, I hope the kissing lives up to the hype!
And an actual proposal. Lizzy Eastwood; you did so wonderfully well in calling that in Courage to Try Again. I HAD to have Gilbert ask, too, and I HAD to have Anne answer. I am all for non-verbal communication but let's just say the words here!
Thank you, Catiegirl and Alinyaalethia, and of course Lizzy, for your encouragement in writing alongside and incorporating canon
Sorry, Excel Aunt. I know how Alice Penhallow grieves you. We had to have her. And now she can disappear, never to be heard from again.
mavors and elizasky, I hope there are enough Blythe curls for you, here (and more John Blythe soon!) and for GreenGabledGirl, a little Tennyson :)
oz diva and marillasgirl, there will be more marvellous Marilla coming soon. And for NotMrsRachelLynde and Rachelynde, certainly more Rachel and the twins!
alinyaalethia and TLWtlw… you are making me want to write about young John Blythe! Just don't tell oz diva.
Luna White, if you are still reading, you can read all the Anne of Green Gables series (and thousands more works in the public domain) for free online at Project Gutenberg. Just do a search for the site and then search the work - books, poetry, you name it! - that you are wanting. I also hope you are enjoying the Sullivan series screening in Germany!
Speaking of the Sullivan series, TooTiredToReadEnough and the Guest posting on Ch 9 on Dec 21st - thank you for the shared Jonathan Crombie love x
To everyone else reading, and to others who I may have missed, thank you x