Chapter Twenty Four
A Fortnight of Halcyon Days
Part Three
Author's Note: Thank you firstly to everyone for their truly lovely response to the previous chapter – particularly regarding a certain hazel eyed young man's quoting of what you correctly noted to be 'The Princess Bride'. If you haven't seen it (or indeed read William Goldman's novel) please do so. You won't regret the time spent with Westley and Buttercup, and if you ever want a visual for my Tom, you could do worse than pay attention to THIS filmic farm boy… after all, Tom in the asylum had a go at imaginary swordfighting, and his favourite book isn't 'The Three Musketeers' for nothing...
With thanks to all the wonderful reviewers who remain so faithful (and so patient with me as I get back to you so slowly) and to many new reviewers whose comments are equally thrilling.
And very, very grateful thanks to elizasky for her brilliant beta read of this chapter and the next.
This chapter now will be the third of FOUR and you won't have to wait long for the next update – I assure you!
We are going to really motor along with our narrative now and have some exciting times ahead!
With love
MrsVonTrapp x
Adela Blythe wondered if it was still acceptable to remind one's son of appropriate behaviour in church, being that the son in question was a tall, broad shouldered, strapping twenty-one; a former schoolmaster and current Redmond undergraduate and, the good Lord help them all, a future medical doctor, if hard work, good luck and Providence had anything to do with it.
Gilbert sat on the edge of the polished hardwood pew beside her; all jangling knees, tapping feet and drumming fingers; his entire body a marionette on a stick, unable to be stilled or directed. She had tried several clearings of her throat and pointed looks to which he had remained annoyingly oblivious, particularly as his attention was almost solely focussed on the girl with the strikingly-hued hair and the excellent posture opposite them but one, who stared ahead as if transfixed by the rather dull sermon, except for the occasions when she would incline her ear to catch some smilingly whispered aside from Diana Barry.
They had been introduced before church; the lovely Miss Barry, who was her father George all over but for her tight-lipped mother's lustrous, thick hair, firstly making apologies for her own absence that afternoon due to preparations for the picnic gathering at Orchard Slope the day after next, and then Miss Anne Shirley herself stepping forward with shining eyes and blushing smile, handshake as firm as her husband himself had found it.
Adela was more than curious – nay, even anxious – to meet this famed girl at last; she of Shakespeare and framed pictures of Catholic saints and illicit trips to Summerside. Well, she was exceedingly pretty, as John had observed, with unusual looks that, broken down into individual parts, were somewhat overwhelming, but presented together transformed her into a picture of youthful vigour and charm, with intelligent eyes and rich humour in the quirk of her lips. She was tallish and slight, with a trim figure to rival her own, and though her dress was lacking a little flair and adornment, the mint green suited her wonderfully, and set off a pearlescent complexion and that rather remarkable hair. She fixed her gaze on herself and then John, only daring to dart a glance up to Gilbert at the last moment, and when those grey eyes met the hazel of her son's the green flared instantaneously within them, and Adela was transfixed by the metamorphosis; in that moment, Anne Shirley was beautiful.
And Gilbert was quite smitten, she saw at once, with a mother's unique ache; for the better, Adela prayed, and not for the worse.
After church they congregated in the promising sunshine, watching Anne farewell the Barrys temporarily and thank the Cuthberts and Tom Caruthers again for her visit the previous day; Tom's own affection for Miss Shirley clear to see and now it seemed the fast growing, flaxen haired twins could be added into the bargain. John and Marilla Cuthbert made their own usual overpolite greeting to one another; it had been tremendously awkward to see Marilla in the years when Adela herself had been a young bride and then a new mother; the coming of her own strapping boy to Green Gables had been such a relief to the Blythes, too, in ways that were keenly felt if rarely overtly expressed.
Gilbert directed Anne Shirley to their buggy with an unashamed grin, and they all enjoyed a long, chatty ride back to the farm, Gilbert then escorting Anne to the house and over the threshold with such ceremony that John, walking with her behind them, smirked and rolled his eyes to the heavens, to such an exaggerated degree that Adela had to dig him in the ribs in warning.
"This should be interesting," her husband breathed in her ear, his blue eyes dancing in merriment.
"For goodness' sake, behave yourself!" Adela whispered furtively, although the smile he had drawn from her rather took the edge off the admonishment.
Gilbert surveyed their farmhouse with pride as he seated Anne at their kitchen table; it had never looked better, and though they lived as modestly as most local families he had always thought there was a warmth and charm about their home in particular, and an unfussy elegance to the stylings and furnishings that contrasted favourably to the try-hard ostentation of the Barry or Andrews residences. He could read Anne's own approval in her sweeping grey-eyed gaze and her ready stream of compliments, which promptly extended to the hot luncheon his mother had so painstakingly prepared. He sat, rapt and adoring, as his mother and Anne were soon trading all manner of excited exchanges, including some fulsome back-and-forths regarding their shared favourite literature, with a sideline into their pre-eminent literary heroes that had him grinning and his father laugh-coughing into his napkin.
"Well, ladies, excuse we two," John chortled over his potatoes, "but Gil and I here are only mere mortals, both sons of farmers, and we can't be competing with your Darcys and Wentworths and whatnots over our Sunday roast. It's not exactly aiding our digestion."
Anne blushed prettily at being so caught up in company, but his mother merely shook her head and bestowed a bemused smile.
"See where Gilbert got his audacity from, Anne?"
Anne grinned and then bit her lip, whilst he endured his own round of newly embarrassed coughing.
"Actually, Mrs Blythe, Gilbert once assured me he inherited his charm from his father," Anne gave merry and newly adventurous reply, making Gilbert to her right color at the memory and made his father chuckle amusedly.
"Is that so, Anne?" John Blythe answered, sending a look to his son. "Well, I'm afraid he probably played up both my attributes and his own."
"How did we get onto this subject?" Gilbert rolled his eyes, fighting his blush, and this time it was Anne's turn, it seemed, to stare back at him delightedly.
"Gilbert told us that you are both recipients of scholarships this year, Anne," Adela offered in rescue. "Congratulations! That's really wonderful news, and very impressive."
"Thank you, Mrs Blythe – I feel very fortunate. It will be a tremendous help going into next year." Anne's countenance clouded, and she turned to Gilbert in question. "You have the science scholarship? You didn't tell me that!"
He found himself reddening anew at her enthusiasm, and the pride for him sparking the green in her eyes. "I only picked up the letter as we headed out from Redmond," he murmured to her, inclining his head slightly as if in private aside. "There hasn't been time to tell you."
"Oh, Gilbert! That's marvellous!"
"Well, it's encouraging, but it's small fry compared to yours, Miss Thorburn," he grinned for her.
"Not a word of it! Well done!"
"Thank you, Anne," he stared at her for a too-long moment, and both then turned their flustered attention back to the table, to find both his parents viewing them with knowing curiosity.
Talk moved to safer topics; the Patterson Street visit to the schoolchildren; subjects in their courses for the following year; sights still to be seen within Avonlea; what the Blythes farmed, including more information than one may have necessarily required from Mr Blythe senior on their different varieties of apple, transfigured mouth-wateringly to the wholesome pie they enjoyed for dessert.
"I was actually hoping to show Anne the orchard, and then perhaps some other places," Gilbert ventured as their meal came to an end.
"Yes, by all means," John nodded encouragement, "you two should get out to enjoy the rest of this fine day."
"If you'd double back to us before taking Anne home to the Barrys, though, Gilbert?" Adela added. "I'd like to pack some things for Anne to take with her."
There were few occasions when Adela and John had been thanked so profusely for their hospitality, or with more touching sincerity. They both extracted a promise for her to return to them again before Anne finished her stay in Avonlea, and then watched as their son led their visitor though the back door and out to their orchards beyond, viewing them through the kitchen window with not a little wonder, and noting how their conversation struck up anew to light both their faces as they headed through the gate Adela had paused to watch a young John Blythe at nearly a quarter of a century before.
"Well…" John sighed. "I've half a mind to wish Gil had eloped with her to Summerside."
"Oh, John, of all the things to say!"
"And here I was thinking you liked Miss Anne Shirley!" his eyes twinkled down at her.
"I do," Adela answered pensively, not taking her own eyes off the young pair as they slipped away from view. "I'm worried to think how much. And I wish that she wasn't quite so perfect for him."
"Well, love, now you've lost me."
"There's such a long road ahead for them, John. They've both only just started their studies. If their feelings were to… develop… well, it will be years yet till Gilbert is in a proper position to marry. The timing would have to be spot on. A married woman can't complete her studies, I should think, and she couldn't even go back to teaching. And what if there was some sort of falling out, or…?"
"Oh, Dela, love," John chuckled, his arms coming reassuringly around her waist, his chin resting in her hair. "Aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves?"
"Perhaps…" Adela's smile tried to be wry.
"And you know, you weren't this worried about the prospect of losing me back in the day," he grinned.
"Well," she huffed. "That's because you were an infuriatingly closed book back then, John Blythe. I wasn't to know how mad you were for me, until…"
"Until…?" he turned her into him, raising an eager eyebrow.
Adela had never quite been able to articulate the way John's face as he turned to her that long ago day, thinking he had spoken out and lost her, changed something deep within her. That vulnerability and passion, that risk taken, those still waters running deep, so much deeper than she could have ever fathomed.
Gilbert, though, was a very open book – too open, she sometimes feared – whom, the youthful worry over his father aside, had not yet known the sharp stab of risk; the terrible throb of a missed chance; the dull ache of letting go.
"Until… you so comprehensively put your foot in it," she recovered herself, smiling up at him teasingly. "I knew that, for a man of such few words, you must have felt something, to come out with such a speech to me, Mr Blythe." *
"Well, I definitely did feel something," he pressed slightly closer to her, his mouth quirking and his eyes lighting mischievously. "And you know, Mrs Blythe, I believe you deserve a rest upstairs now, after all your efforts for today."
"John!" Adela recognised the inflection in that deep voice all too well. "We couldn't possibly! There's the dishes… and Gilbert and Anne Shirley…. and…" her protest petered out feebly.
John had already taken her elbow.
"The dishes can most certainly wait. And as for those two youngsters, we'll be lucky if we see them again before dark."
It didn't take very much persuasion for Adela to follow her husband, hand in hand, up the stairs.
Anne stared up at the modest building, auburn brows knotted in puzzlement.
"The schoolhouse?" she queried, turning to Gilbert beside her in the buggy. "This is our special destination in Avonlea?"
"It is but a stop on our onward journey, Miss Shirley," he leapt from the buggy, securing the reins and giving Bess a carrot for her trouble. He handed down Anne with a flourish, the bemusement as she smiled at him showing very green in her eyes.
"I'm sorry to inform you that Diana has pointed out the schoolhouse already, Gilbert."
"Ah, but does she have access to the secrets inside?" he waggled his eyebrows suggestively. When Anne continued to look doubtful, he placed long, brown fingers between a crevice around the corner from the door, producing a spare key. "Voila!"
She laughed at him seeming indeed more schoolboy than former schoolmaster in the moment, and he directed them inside, closing the door firmly.
After the busy main street of the village as they trotted through, the quiet hush of the schoolhouse reminded her of the private train carriage on the way to Summerside; an interlude out of time. And then, as now, she was too-aware of his soft breathing and his feet shuffling and the swish of material as he thrust his hands into his pockets. She looked around with interest, processing the stale air of childhood sweat and many summers, seemed baked into the walls and desks and floorboards, even as the crisp sweetness of the Blythe orchard lingered on his skin as he stood beside her.
"I thought about what you told me yesterday," he offered quietly at her ear. "About how you might have come to Avonlea. About how you might have sat across from me, and whether we might have been friends. So I wanted… just for a few minutes… to give you the chance."
That you took your chance, and used it well… the old vow, she and Tom's, came to her, unbidden.
"Gilbert…" she turned to him, to see him watching her with careful eyes. "That was a lovely thought. Thank you."
"It's not too strange?" he worried suddenly. "Or too sad?"
"No," she shook her head. "It's good to be able to picture this, at last." She took tentative steps forward, walking slowly along the neat lines of desks, her pale fingers travelling along wooden lids and idly circling empty inkwells, and even tracing a stray slate, abandoned in the rush towards the holiday break. She turned back to him, her smile light.
"And where did young Master Blythe sit?"
He gave her a grin, walking slowly away from her to the farthest row, stooping to sit midway back, not entirely successful in enfolding his long legs under, nor in wedging his torso and shoulders into the available space. He awkwardly positioned himself and sat expectantly, his hands neatly clasped in front of him.
Anne bit her lip to stop her laughter at this incongruous spectacle.
"Not exactly built for football captains."
"Er, no," he squirmed, looking a mite sheepish.
"And where would Anne Shirley have sat, do you think?" she asked tremulously.
His eyes gleamed. "Why, Miss Shirley would have been found in the close company of Miss Diana Barry, I should imagine. Which makes you directly across from me, and one forward. Like in church," he added with a sly smile.
Anne followed these instructions, sitting to mimic his pose, if not his hunched posture.
"Like so?" she called, staring ahead with admirable composure.
"Just so…" he breathed, caught by the image of her before him, red hair burnished by the stray shafts of sunlight, pale neck swan-like and graceful, narrow shoulders and back straightening imperceptibly under his perusal.
Anne turned slowly, leaning, arms folded and pointed chin propped upon them, on the desk behind her, looking back to him.
"And what sort of scholar was young Master Blythe?" there was a trace of coquettishness in her manner now.
Gilbert extracted himself from his prison, standing with relief, rolling the aforementioned shoulders and then leaning against the desk he had vacated.
He paused to contemplate the question, and then gave a smirk. "Obnoxious."
"Surely not!" Anne smiled indulgently, and shook her head to emphasize her disagreement. "I think… Curious. Driven. Determined. Outstanding, obviously. But perhaps also… a little bored?"
He looked wistful. "You have me perfectly pegged."
Anne's own look was gentle, and then she stood in the one easy, fluid motion, hands clasped behind her back, continuing the walk right to the front of the class, and the single step leading to the raised platform of the teacher's sacred domain of desk and blackboard. She perched on the edge of the desk he himself had sat at for two years with a challenging, impertinent air.
"And what of Mister Blythe, Headmaster?"
Gilbert paused, a fleeting look of pain shooting across his face. He shoved hands again into his pockets.
"I'm afraid… impatient."
"With your students?" she queried disbelievingly.
"No…" he struggled to articulate the thought. "With myself. With life. I regret I didn't have your talent or your imagination, Anne, to make lessons inspiring. Remember my mathematical formula for reading poetry? I was only half joking about that. I'm ashamed to say teaching for me was… a means to an end. Just a way for me to earn enough to beat a path to Redmond."
His hazel gaze flickered up to her, trying to gauge her response to these revelations, before continuing.
"Of course, I cared about my students, and did my best to help them succeed… Perhaps if I'd had a colleague like you, who was passionate and eager, I could have been guided by your example, and I could have done better…" he frowned, dark brows drawing together. "I found it enjoyable enough, but I also found it frustrating. I was already behind my peers, age-wise, having been away in Alberta for those years with Dad… and my time teaching was just going to delay things further… I just couldn't wait to get to Redmond and have my life finally start."
He stared at her now, stock still at the desk, her expression indecipherable.
"Sorry, Anne…" he raked his hand through his hair. "Thinking of what you went through to get to college yourself… that was selfish and self indulgent."
"No…" she shook her head slowly. "Just honest. And human, Gilbert. And you are an excellent teacher – I see how you tutor some of your classmates, and you were wonderful with those children from the Patterson Street school. You just needed to feel passionate about something, too. To feel you were in the right place, finally. Everyone wants that."
"And you, Anne? In Avonlea? Are you in the right place, finally?"
He wished his voice hadn't emerged as so strangled and grasping. He wished he didn't ask that question and think of her and Tom.
Anne's smile was a wavering, tremulous thing. He watched it settle itself into a brave upward curl as through an act of will. She hopped off the desk, looking about her with eyes both curious and forlorn, as if now weighing what-could-have-beens in the balance; as if trying to imagine her shadow self here, in the little schoolhouse in the little village, and all the differences in her life that would have implied.
"Who can tell?" she shrugged delicately. "Maybe it's but another stop on my onward journey. But I am loving it here all the same."
"Take a walk with me – a ramble back through the woods beyond the marsh. There should be something there I want to show you…" ** Gilbert had offered as they drew away from the schoolhouse back into the waiting late afternoon sunshine.
Woods? A marsh? Anne was intrigued but perplexed. "Should be!" she tittered. "Don't you know if it's still there?" **
He had only given a secret smile in reply, hazel eyes alight; frustratingly enigmatic.
Anne settled back into the buggy as they criss-crossed through the village again, trying not to notice the many looks they garnered; the tipped hats of men and the enthusiastic waves from young women and the speculative glances from various matronly ladies milling about outside the General Store. She was used to this reflected attention when in Gilbert's company at Redmond, most especially after the football fundraising dance and then, awfully, those weeks after Summerside, but this was both less personal and, conversely, more confronting. She wondered, for the very first time, how she would have fared being thrust into this small community all those years ago, with her too-red hair and her too-talkative nature and her fanciful imagination and her uneven temper. She was known at the high school in Summerside and she was becoming known at Redmond, but it had been, for the most part, at her own pace and on her own terms. What would have happened to little Anne Shirley here in little Avonlea?
It was useless speculation, now, as it had been that moment in the schoolhouse, and counterproductive to enjoying the glories of the day; the companionable quiet of sitting next to Gilbert, until the excited exclamations burst from her over lake and then laneway, and Gilbert's grin became more pronounced the closer they came to their mysterious destination, until they paused on the edge of a woodland area, three times as large and twice as dense as the little wood behind the Girls Home.
Anne stared ahead of them wonderingly. "That looks a little spooky!" she laughed.
"No ghosts here Anne, I can assure you," his deep voice held the hint of a smile, but his eyes were earnest on hers.
They were soon sauntering through the shadows **of the trees, avoiding the thick roots and overgrown tangles of the forest floor, noting the pungent, earthy smells that wrinkled their noses, laughing when a small, unidentified creature skittered close to her and made her yelp in surprise. Beyond their forest sojourn, the hills were basking in an amber sunset radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose and blue. The woods around the head of the marsh were full of purple vistas, threaded with gossamers. Past a dour plantation of gnarled spruces and a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found the 'something' Gilbert was looking for. **
"Ah, here it is," he said with satisfaction, **and perhaps not a little relief. "Can you guess at it, Anne?"
She stared, contemplating, her hair caught by the setting sun in bronzed blaze, her mint-green dress an echo of the lush new-spring foliage, her grey eyes seeking out what he so desperately wanted her to notice. She saw a tree; a lone sentinel, all white with blossom, in the very midst of pines and beeches; ** proudly incongruous. It was not a cherry tree, that was for certain, but definitely a fruit-bearing variety, and she smiled suddenly, not needing to think on what sort of specimen would have him bring her all the way out here.
"An apple tree?"
"Yes, Anne!" his look was all excited schoolboy, as before, and charmingly appealing. "A veritable apple-bearing apple tree… a mile away from any orchard. ** I was here one day last autumn, before setting off for Redmond, wandering about, and came across it quite by chance. Perhaps, being the son and grandson of an orchardist, in finding it I was arranging a point with my destiny," *** he slid a careful look to her, to have Anne pause and frown, turning to him briefly, and then back to the object of their scrutiny. "Well, regardless, back then it was loaded… the apples were good, too – tawny as russets but with a dusky red cheek. Most wild seedlings are green and uninviting." **
Anne looked down at her dress in amusement. "Am I to infer something from that remark, Mr Blythe?" she teased.
"Well, you are as beautiful as any dryad, Anne," Gilbert responded seriously, low-voiced and without artifice.
She turned rather red-cheeked herself at his clear admiration, focussing her attention on the tree, patting its trunk and musing on its situation.
"So this is… the apple tree you mentioned. In Summerside," she ventured unevenly, her mind too eager to conjure the memory of their moonstruck madness ** under another unlikely-placed example.
Hands thrust into pockets, he walked to stand beside her. "Yes, Anne… I've thought about it frequently, since, and… I've thought about you."
Newly flustered by his proximity, her tone was more brittle than she intended. "So I'm not a wild rose or some such, but a rogue wild apple tree?"
He placed his own large, brown hand on the trunk, resting it beside her pale one.
"Well, you see…" he swallowed, seeming to choose his words carefully. "I thought of this tree, sprang years ago from some chance-sewn seed, transplanted to an unknown environment, and how… and how it has grown and flourished and held its own here all alone among aliens, as it were… Brave, determined ** and strong. How it had to adapt and fight to survive. How it flowered out of sight for so long, unappreciated and undiscovered. About how… it had to grow high… it had to reach up to the sunlight. ** About how… o Dryad, the tree is the same as… as you are."
She had gone shockingly still beside him, and then dropped her hand. He immediately quailed. Had he overstepped the mark? Had he horribly miscalculated? Should he have stuck to the safety of a wildflower, or even that thought he had first meditated upon at Summerside, and that came to him again just now in the gloom of the forest, that as she walked along, in her light dress, with her slender delicacy, she had made him think of a white iris. **
Mistrusting himself now, he immediately backed away from his assertions, physically and otherwise, stumbling away from the tree, and from her.
"Well, you know, Anne…" he joked now, miserably. "You said about how I should stay away from metaphors. This probably proves it. I'm sorry, that was ham-fisted and no doubt insulting, though I never meant it that way, I just…"
"Gilbert…" she offered quietly, so quietly, but he was beyond hearing the protest in her voice, and blundered on.
"I wish to be a better man than I have been, than I am…" ***he muttered vaguely, passing a hand through his brown curls distractedly and half turning from her so that he did not note her head snap up, as if in recognition. "But maybe first I need to concentrate on being a better student. Or a better judge of what is appropriate, especially when it comes to you. I'm obviously just Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears… neither see(ing) the rocks bristling not far off… nor hear(ing) the… ah… the breakers… boil at their base…" ***
Anne's eyes were wide and astonished as she turned to him.
"Gilbert… that's… that's from Jane Eyre," she gulped.
"Yes, I know," he sighed, veiling his gaze from her. "And I've failed in that, too."
"Failed?" Anne echoed faintly.
"I wanted to read it, after Summerside, because it meant something to you. And maybe that… it would give me some more insights, into your thoughts, into your character…" Here he paused, before ploughing on relentlessly, lest she be able to interrupt his scattered observations to call him out as an insensitive clod. "But, you know, it's just so bleak… I'm finding it hard going. First that dreadful aunt, then that Lowood place, and now she's at Thornfield… I've lost the plot of it a bit. I wanted to finish it and include it in the donations for the Patterson Street school, but I just got so busy… so I picked it up again last night, after what you said in the field yesterday… and I don't know, Anne, I'm not really concentrating on it well. Is that Grace Poole a maniac or just a red herring? And…"
"Gilbert…"
"… and then there's Rochester. He's pretty insufferable. I would have drowned him in the bed, for sure. I don't even know if he likes her or if he just likes the sound of his own voice…"
Anne muzzled a flash of a grin, even having to bite down on her lip. "He likes her. At this point he… he's scared just how much. And there are certain… impediments… ahead for them. So he might… try to keep her at arm's length, for a time. But he's drawn back to her, time and again, because…"
"Because…?"
"Because…" she faltered as those hazel eyes, despairing and now questioning, finally swung back to her. "Because they have a… cord of communion ****between them. As if they're… bonded."
He nodded slowly, not daring himself to speak, but his look to her managed to be both dispirited and hopeful.
"Gilbert…" she took a tentative step towards him.
"Anne, I'm sorry about…"
"The metaphor was lovely, Gilbert."
"It was?"
"Yes, and… insightful. And I certainly don't mind being compared to a tree."
She could see him swallowing carefully. "Oh. Well. That's… good."
"And you don't have to like Jane Eyre, you know."
"Well, I don't dislike it…" he finally risked a half-smile.
"It gets better…" she offered, hesitatingly, not really sure what they were actually talking about anymore.
"Good to know…" he answered himself, absently.
They stared at one another for long moments, at the point of some unspoken impasse. They had arrived at this moment before.
"Gilbert…"
"Anne?"
"Would you do something for me?"
His eyes drank her. And there she realised the thing that she most wanted to do, she couldn't for the life of her do, if he was watching her.
"Of course. Anything."
"Would you… close your eyes? For a moment?"
"Do I need to count to ten?" he offered, and then grinned something of his old grin at her exasperation. "I'm sorry, Anne," he then complied without demur.
He felt the hesitation in the air, humming, and then the touch, soft as the brush of butterfly wings, of lips warm and trembling.
"Thank you for being the first to recognize me. And to… to… to like what you saw." *****
His eyes snapped open at her breath near his; of her words, whispered as if on the wind.
"I presume that's…?" he asked huskily.
"Yes," she breathed. "You're not up to that part, yet."
"Actually…" his look to her was the very definition of smoulder, and he caught her hand in his before she could step away, "I've skipped ahead a little. And I think I remember that quote differently…"
"You do?" she responded unsteadily.
"Yes. I very much believe that… Jane says… that he loved what he saw."
"Really?" she breathed, averting her eyes to the ground, the fierce blush hot upon her cheeks.
"Yes. Really. And the amended quote is true of me, Anne."
She might, any second, back away from the moment again, and they would be right back where they started; this dance in circles; a too-brief waltz with her like that very first one, out in the dark, as the shadows rippled across her luminous face, and he realised he had lost himself to her.
He gave the assertion back to her, now, a hundred-fold.
"Anne… I love you."
Gilbert perhaps thought, once, that the words might have been torn from him, as if from his soul, pained and pleading. Or that they would be blurted in all the pent-up passion of his too-powerful, too-long suppressed feelings for her. Or they might have been tossed to her in desperation to prevent her from parting with him. Or they might have been presented with a flourish, heralded by a flare of trumpets, as if an extravagant gift.
Instead, they hovered gently between them, as humble truth.
Anne stood before him, grey eyes large in her face as she slowly raised it up to his, her lip quivering.
"I … I… love you too, Gil."
His answering smile was gentler and more considered than he might have ever imagined at this moment, though inside him the schoolboy and the schoolmaster wrestled for control; the former might have wanted to let out a great war-woop of victory; the latter, even a short time ago, would have spun her around in his arms. But Gilbert, who was learning wisdom, ** was scholar now, and firstasked the question that was needed.
"Well, then… my darling… before I love you senseless, will you do me the honour of permitting me to court you?"
"Yes!" the answer gushed from her, in a manner that made his heart want to burst from his body, and then, the dread-hesitation. "Oh… but Gilbert… if you could just give me a chance to talk with Tom… first. I…"
"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Anne. Of course, my darling girl. As you wish."
Whether she would speak with Tom to gain blessing or forgiveness, he couldn't say, and it wouldn't be his place to. But he couldn't think of this, now; not when his resolve to be better was being battered by his joy in the very person who had inspired him to be.
"I knew… you would do me good in some way, at some time;— I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you." *** His throat throbbed at the words, and he reached for her, bypassing her waist to wrap his arm around her completely, drawing her against the synchronised throbbing of his heart, never mind anything else.
Anne's reply was an inarticulate sound that might have been sigh or sob or swoon or all three, which was soon lost to his lips. Four long months of mindful waiting was now given over to a need to remake himself through knowledge of every part of her. His mouth could not kiss her more deeply; his tongue craving to reach every crevice and then a shuddering moan that was felt in his marrow as his tongue met hers. His arms could not crush her to him more thoroughly, feeling her corset push up her breasts against his chest maddeningly. His hands could not roam over spine and waist and hips with more resolution, as if attempting to memorise every contour of her reed-slim silhouette. She met him, kiss for kiss for kiss, lost as he was in the exchange, her answering passion a blaze of wonder to him he never wanted to try to puzzle out. Between snatched breaths he repeated his I love you into hair and cheek and throat, till her hands reached up into his own hair, fingers finding his curls, and he regretfully remembered he might still be trying to be a gentleman, though he'd long abandoned the idea of being a saint.
He wrenched his mouth from hers to kiss her forehead, his eyes startled to see how green hers had grown, and cradled her to him, trying to encourage their hearts and hormones to slow. Their breaths were loud in the sunset stillness, and she clung to him, as if his strength was the only thing holding her upright. He daren't sit her down on the grass to catch her breath or he would need to catch himself, so tempting was it to let his knees give way to gravity and to carry her with him.
After a time he trusted himself enough to pull away to look at her; he would never forget her eyes and the beauty of her blood-red lips or the way they curved up in a smile that was both sylph and siren.
"Oh, Anne, my love…" he attempted, in a tone that didn't even strive to be normal. "We might have to stay away from apple trees for a while. They seem to be our undoing."
She colored anew magnificently, biting her lip and taking a beat to answer, her inflection making the words into quotation.
"Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh!" ******
He laughed in throaty delight. "Good God those are words to live by! I'm going to have to read the rest of that book!" And then, hazel eyes aglow, he placed a brown hand to her cheek. "Any other favourites I should know about?"
She leaned into his hand, turning her head to kiss it, with a tenderness that squeezed his heart.
"Only ours."
Chapter Notes
As previously, the title is taken from Anne of the Island (Ch 23)
*If readers would like to be reminded of my little backstory for John and Adela, please see Ch. 10 Winds of Hope and Memory. This also has the snippet about what Gilbert slept with under his pillow (seen in Adela's reference to framed pictures of Catholic saints, which Anne first gives to Gilbert before leaving for Christmas with Phil in Bolingbroke).
**Anne of the Island (Ch 2) All the quoted sections of this chapter have been flipped, for Gilbert to have first discovered the tree in the autumn, and come back to it with Anne, here, in the spring.
***Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre (Ch 15)
****Jane Eyre (Ch 23)
*****Jane Eyre
******Jane Eyre (Ch 37)