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“Anne, no!”
The girls at the orphanage always said she could never keep her yammering mouth shut, and that one day, one day, she’d say something to someone that would finally put her in her rightful place, and they couldn’t wait to see it.
If any such time were to occur, Anne supposed today would be the day. She’d long known Gilbert was above her in terms of society’s value—as a boy, as someone with known parents, as someone who was to be a doctor, and now, as someone who was to marry a rich heiress and go to the Sorbonne, not live out his days on Prince Edward Island like the rest of them were destined to. In fact, she was about to speak so very out of turn that she might as well be Rachel Lynde herself.
Yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
She was in love with him, yes, but she also wanted to crash another slate over his head. How dare he blindside her with this?
“Anne!” Diana shouted again, sounding a universe behind her, voice caught in the rare summer wind that seemed to match Anne’s temper.
Anne did not deign to answer; she was filled with singular purpose that Diana could not stop, no matter how hard she tried. She merely picked up her pace, still a stride but stride as big as her long sticks of legs would allow. Her blood pulsed, propelling her forward. If there had been a way to fuel trains on fury alone, Anne imagined she could power every train in the entire world.
“Anne, you can’t—!” Diana tried again. Her voice was clearly winded, and slightly further away than before—but not nearly enough so.
Anne was so very glad to be bosom friends with Diana again, she truly was, but Diana was being a thorn in her side at this moment. (Admittedly, Anne had charged out of the house immediately after her revelation, leaving Diana with nothing to do but follow, but that was irrelevant.)
On a whim, Anne veered sharply off the path and into the woods, knowing that for all of Diana’s escapades with her these last years, she knew very little of the brush compared to Anne—and as such, would find it a chore to follow, or at least a delay. Diana gave a whimper of protest somewhere in the distance, and Anne, deciding that she needed yet another buffer between them, splashed across the creek with inelegant stomps and kicks that left her dress muddied and even splattered pricks on her face. Hopefully Diana would worry about her mother discovering the state of her own dress and be deterred.
How dare he! How dare he!
It was only a short way from the Blythe-Lacroix household from there. After weaving through the maze of trees, vaulting one erupting root with an angry skip, and sending an entire flock of birds flying at the racket, Anne burst through the trees with a rush as though coming up from water. The house was a speck on the hill in the distance, but Anne forewent waiting until she reached it, immediately shouting, “Gilbert Blythe!” with every piece of air she had in her lungs.
Her shout was lost in the wind, but Anne was not deterred, continuing to storm forward, breaking into a full-out run. “Gilbert! John! Blythe! I want to talk to you!”
The person who responded was not the nuisance in question, however, but Bash. He burst out of the shed and spun around wildly, hands up and eyes searching. His expression only slightly relaxed when he saw Anne charging in his direction, and he rushed forward to meet her, brown eyes full of concern, darting all over her figure at the dirt and sweat and general state of dishevelment, but Anne couldn’t find it in herself to care.
“Anne? What’s botherin’ you?”
“I have something to say to his royal highness!” she shouted, aiming the last bit at the house.
Bash winced, but turned and followed her gaze, his expression morphing into something indiscernible.
“Uh, Blythe?” he called warningly. “Better get your skinny self out here!”
There was no response. Anne inhaled deeply to shout again, but Bash held out a staying hand, and she desisted.
Without even looking back at Anne, he fled into the house.
A moment later, the door opened once more, with Bash shoving a thoroughly confused and barely-dressed Gilbert outside. His voice was a low murmur, but she heard the end of what he was saying. “-seems like you didn’t work it out much as you thought you did. Go, now.”
He told Bash? Anne bit her lip so hard she nearly drew blood. Must everyone in Avonlea be perpetually aware of her humiliations each time they happened? Was it not enough to experience them once, without being forced to relive them in others’ words for the rest of her life?
“But—” Gilbert protested, but Bash gave him another shove. He stumbled forward and the door shut behind him with a sound like a thunderclap, leaving Gilbert’s confused gaze with nowhere to go but towards Anne.
“Anne?” he started, taking a tiny step forward and having the nerve to look hesitant as he did. His eyes darted to her clothes, as Bash’s had. “Are you alright?”
For a moment, she could do nothing but stare at him, chest heaving with adrenaline and exertion, despite having carried herself over here to do nothing but shout. Those eyes she’d been mooning over her were entirely focused on her—and then, that’s when it hit Anne all over again that it wouldn’t be that way much longer, because of the Sorbonne and Winifred Rose. She found her rage—and her voice—once more.
“You had no right, Gilbert Blythe!”
If it was possible, he looked even more bewildered at the outburst, and Anne simply couldn’t believe he had the gall, after what he’d said to her.
He frowned, one hand held up as though addressing a spooked, rearing horse. “Anne, I don’t know what’s going on, but if you just—”
“Don’t talk to me in that condescending tone, it’s insulting!”
“What—Anne—I’m not—”
“I just have one question! Did you even think, for one second,” Anne steamrollered over him, surging forward to jab at his chest, and trying not to think of how the touch alone warmed her, “before you came to me last night?”
Gilbert ducked his head, cheeks reddening, starting to shrink away. Anne felt a bite of satisfaction: finally, an ounce of shame!
“Of course I did. It’s all I thought of for as long as I can remember,” he said quietly.
Anne blinked, but shook it off quickly, looking him up and down with narrowed eyes. “Clearly not enough, then, otherwise you might have realized you would completely ruin my night—my day, my week, my entire state of mind!”
His interest remained on the dirt between their feet. “I know. I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I ought to have realized you didn’t—”
“Yes, you ought to have!”
“Anne, I—”
“Do you know how much it hurts, Gilbert, to be the whipping boy your entire life?” Anne’s voice had fallen to a hush now, matching his, and she was startled to realize it was trembling. Without her notice, the anger abated in seconds, replaced by such profound sadness that her body shook. “With a life like that, everything is your fault. The Hammonds’ millionth baby got a scrape? ‘You stupid girl, you should have watched him better!’ Marilla’s broach goes missing? ‘The orphan wretch must be the thief, let’s send her away, back to the orphanage where she’s never been wanted a day in her life!’”
With every word she spoke, Gilbert’s expression grew more and more stricken. Anne knew in the back of her mind that she was shrill, and rambling, and getting away from the point, and saying things she never wanted him to know, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“You know too much about s-sex, even if it’s barely anything at all?”—Gilbert looked away, clearly startled, cheeks going even redder, before his eyes snapped back to her as though magnetized— “‘Must be a whore, then’—even though I was just thirteen!”
Now he was just staring openly, hand dropping to hang slack at his side.
She screwed up her face, trying to will the tears back until she could finish this, but it was a losing battle; one had already escaped and started running down her cheek. “I expect it from everyone else. Even Marilla and Matthew did it, when they first met me. It makes sense. I’m easy to blame. And people get better, and they learn, and I forgive them, because if you don’t forgive people then you’d never get anywhere even if you didn’t have my rotten luck. But even after all we fought, you never did it in the first place, you never assumed the worst of me, and that meant so much. And I just—I never expected it from you.”
“Anne,” he murmured, reaching forward and gripping at her shoulder; they were suddenly much closer to each other, his breath ghosting on her face even as she refused to meet his eyes. Despite herself, Anne’s heart stuttered at the contact. “I want to help you, I really do, but I have no idea what you mean. Please, tell me what I did?”
“I just said what you did, you idiot.” Would she have to wallop him on the head to get him to admit his misdeeds?
“Tell me again,” he said, gentle. “Help me understand.”
Anne squared her jaw, tilted her head up to look him square in the eye even though their noses were almost touching. If she was going to ruin everything, might as well do it in a way where she could see his reaction. “You told me that I was the only thing holding you back from all of your dreams.”
She forced her eyes to narrow, still blocking out the tears, though that was growing more and more futile, with some escaping already. “You told me that, while I was drunk on the Barrys’ moonshine, I had just completed the most stressful exam of my life, and I was so happy that I felt like I was flying.”
Gilbert’s eyes widened, and he took a staggering step back, but Anne wasn’t done, and the absence of his warmth on her shoulder twisted her heart angrily and made her keep going.
“How do you think that feels, Gilbert? I’ve spent so much of my life fighting for everything that I have, and all I want is for you to be happy. I would never do anything to hold you back, do you understand that? And you just—you just put that on me, out of nowhere—”
“No, wait, that’s not—that’s not what I meant.” He was back in front of her again, and his hands were on either side of her face, thumbs brushing at the tear tracks.
“It’s what you said!”
“I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Anne.” He was scrambling, hands fluttering everywhere, but hesitant, not actually touching anywhere but her face, where they kept returning anxiously.
“You confused me!” she choked, eyes swimming, staring at nothing. “You made me feel as though…as though any choice you make will be my fault! You come to me, and you look at me like you did, and you just—you just—I may not compare to an entire life in Paris, but I do not deserve to be treated this way!”
“Heavens, Anne, just listen. I wasn’t—” Gilbert seemed to have finally tired of her shouting, something for which she could not honestly blame him; he grasped both of her wrists and held, until Anne stilled, fixing him with a halfhearted glare which was almost certainly undercut by her sticky cheeks and sad words.
“Well?” she spat, refusing to let herself be any more affected by him, if such a possibility even existed. “I’m listening.”
“All I meant was that,” he began, then swallowed. He sighed deeply, as though steeling himself, before fixing her with a stare that could only be described as the most earnest she had ever seen. “All of the dreams in the world could not hope to compare to the idea marrying you.”
Anne couldn’t breathe.
Her cheeks warmed, and she was perhaps even more hyper-aware of every point where his skin met hers. She needed to step back, because there was no chance she had heard—that he had said…but he was still looking at her with such openness and vulnerability, and she thought that possibly, yes, she had heard him right...
She blinked several times, and miraculously, the sight before her didn’t change. Something in her mind dared to hope, maybe there was a chance this romance wasn’t so tragical after all.
Say something, she shouted at herself, but she couldn’t do much more than gape. No stories or imagination couldn’t have prepared her for this turn of events.
When she didn’t answer, Gilbert pulled one hand away to scratch awkwardly at his ear. The other remained clasped with hers, rubbing absent circles in her palm. “Winifred’s father, he promised me the entire future on a silver platter, and yet all I could think was how fast I needed to get away. The thought of any of it didn’t make me happy at all—which isn’t really much of a dream, is it? I couldn’t stop thinking of how you said I might as well have been negotiating for a parcel of land. I was meant to stay the night with them, but I took the train back here—that’s where my heart told me to go.”
The emotion was pressing down on Anne’s chest. She opened her mouth to speak, and found her throat too tight to say anything.
And Gilbert was still not done.
“I only meant to go join the class after the exams. But I saw you up there, twirling in the firelight, and I just, I realized then that I couldn’t propose to someone else without first…seeing whether you felt the same.”
“The same?” she repeated, shocked out of her speechlessness. “What do you mean, ‘the same’? You never even told me that you felt...that way...about me at all!”
Gilbert frowned. “I did. That’s what I was telling you last night.”
Anne goggled at him, hackles quickly raising again to overwhelm the odd calm his confession had brought. “You said nothing of the sort! You may have heavily implied it, perhaps, but you never actually said—and you just—I was drunk, so I didn’t want to assume! —and—let alone marriage! How was I supposed—if you’d never even—” She broke off for what felt like the umpteenth time and groaned in frustration, pulling at her hair left braid; she was making even less sense than she had last night.
Thankfully, he seemed to understand her somewhat, saying, “I thought—but you said no!”
The retort escaped her before she could think to stop it. “Well, if you had actually bothered to ask me, I wouldn’t’ve said no!”
They both stopped short at the words. Anne clapped her hands over her mouth, and Gilbert appraised her, face breaking into a smile that was equal parts smug and elated.
“So, what you’re saying is,” he mused, kicking at a rock on the ground with feigned nonchalance, “this is all a misunderstanding, and I should have spoken plainer. You do feel the same.”
Anne sighed; if he was going to gloat over this, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Yes, I suppose, a little bit,” she allowed, in her best Marilla imitation, and he chuckled. “Though if you'd spoken your intentions at all, it would’ve been nice," she added. Gilbert was honestly her very own Mr. Darcy, except with stupidity rather than rudeness. If she wasn’t so exhausted, she might laugh.
Gilbert pulled at his coat, fumbling at the pockets. After a moment he seemed to find what he was searching for, and pulled his hand out with a satisfied grunt, clenched into a fist. “Well then, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert,” he began in a much-dignified tone, “would you do me the honor of marrying me?” And then he splayed his palm.
Anne froze. That was his mother’s ring. This was a proposal, of marriage. This was happening.
This was…entirely too much, was what it was.
“No.”
“No?” The hurt in his voice was palpable. “But you just said…”
“I’m—I—sorry!” Oh, she was flailing and desperate, wasn’t she? She’d only just fixed it and she had to go and muck it all up—typical Anne! She scrambled to find the right words. “I said I felt the same, not that I want to be married. I love you, but I-I don’t want to be married yet, Gilbert. I’m sixteen, and there’s a whole world out there. Not that I expect to see very much of it, of course,” she added, “but that’s beside the point…” she trailed off at the look on his face, and tried to start over, explain herself better.
“You love me?” he cut in, breathless.
Anne stopped short, pulse pounding in her ears as she registered her confession. That was two slip-ups in so many minutes. Why was she always—
Wait. Why was she even bothered by him knowing? He’d asked her to marry him seconds ago. This was not a problem to worry over in the slightest; it was rather the opposite, if anything.
With confidence she didn’t quite feel, Anne squared her shoulders, glancing up once more into his now cautiously hopeful eyes, and offered a small shrug. “I suppose I am. It’s why I came over here.”
“You love me,” he repeated, awestruck, clearly not having heard a word she'd said after that.
Anne narrowed her eyes. This needed to be addressed, now, frankly embarrassing revelations notwithstanding. “The truth is, Gilbert, you know nothing about me. We can’t be married. We’ve still got college and the promise of independence. A chance to see what life is like somewhere outside of Avonlea—just like you were offered.” If Gilbert was Mr. Darcy, then she was Lizzie Bennet, declining one of the most promising offers (or in Anne’s case, likely her only offer) for personal reasons, but she simply couldn’t accept right now, all sense be damned. “And I—I’ve barely seen you all year. You’re always in Charlottetown. You didn’t even know I was drunk yesterday, or about anything that’s been happening in my life. I feel we’re barely friends anymore, or that we ever were.”
For a moment, he was silent, simply staring at her, crushed. Then he burst out, with a fervor that startled her, “If we aren’t friends, which would be a surprise to me because I thought we were, it’s only because you wouldn’t let me be your friend! I tried for years, Anne! You didn’t want to!” He paused and ran a hand through his messy curls. “Don’t mistake my words—I’m glad you have Diana, and Cole, a-and,” he waved his hands around wildly, “Jerry, and the Cuthberts—but if I ever tried to speak to you, you’d yell at me, or run away, or both!”
“There were reasons for that! Not everything’s about you, you know!” she shot back defensively. (Though she now understood that half of the time the reason was that she couldn’t behave normally around him because of her feelings. Anne was a hypocrite, but Gilbert didn’t have to know that.)
“Then tell me!” he pleaded. “If I have a chance, tell me what I have to do.”
Anne didn’t have an answer for that right now.
“How do you even know Jerry’s name, anyway?” she said instead, cursing herself for trying to avoid it, but it was a good a subject change as any, to give her racing mind a moment to think. And she was curious; most of her class save Diana simply called him ‘the farm boy’, never having seen him at school.
“I—” Gilbert began hotly, but then stopped, suddenly looking guilty. “I was curious what potential suitors you’d have.”
“Oh.” Anne’s lips threatened to betray her strange happiness at the thought that he was jealous—that someone could be jealous over her at all—before the person he was jealous of suddenly connected in her mind. “Wait, you thought—Jerry?! You thought Jerry was who I could like?” She smacked at his arm. “That’s revolting! He might as well be my brother!”
“Or Charlie!” he protested, yanking his arm away and rubbing at it. “It wasn’t a single person. It was just a…general interest.”
“Ch—my Lord, Gilbert, where have you been? I couldn’t be less interested in Charlie Sloane! What on earth could make you think—”
“You’re more desirable than you know, Anne,” he said simply, giving a helpless half-shrug.
She flushed again. This entire situation was too much to handle.
“Well,” Anne said primly, smoothening out her dress with two quick swipes, wincing at the dirt. “Okay, we’re starting to get confused again. How about we just...start over, yeah? Let’s start from the beginning.”
Gilbert shrugged, bemused. “Okay...”
“Alright.” She stuck out her hand. “Hello, I’m Anne, with an ‘e’, which I chose because without the ‘e’ is so very plain. I used to call myself Princess Cordelia a lot as well, if we must disclose everything. It’s nice to meet you.”
Realization dawning on his features, Gilbert took her hand and shook. “Gilbert Blythe. No interesting names, but I’m sure you could come up with some for me. I’ve always admired people who have a…” he paused, pretending to think. “Wide scope of the imagination. And it’s very nice to meet you too.”
Anne released his hand, ducking into an awkward curtsy and laughing, thinking back on the many times she’d said that “scope of imagination” bit in school despite all the teasing she’d received for it. She looked back up at him to find him watching with an almost enraptured expression, and she let the mirth fall from her face.
“I’ll marry you, Gilbert Blythe, eventually,” she said seriously, “but you’ll have to let me be the bride of adventure for a bit beforehand. And in the meantime, we get to know each other. Deal?”
His smile was as bright as the sun overhead. “Deal.”