Chapter Text
Gilbert is silent his first few days in Avonlea.
Marilla, after momentarily freaking out at the idea of having to house secret royalty at Green Gables, had put him up in the spare room with fresh sheets, several candles, and the best pillow they had in the house. Gilbert had spent most of his time in that room since; he hadn’t come down for any meals, hadn’t gone outside, hadn’t even really explored the farm.
To Anne’s surprise, Matthew and Marilla say almost nothing about it. Matthew stumbles around the entire idea at first, referring to Gilbert unsurely as “the boy,” often asking Anne if she had seen “the boy” that day or what she knew about “the boy.” Marilla, on the other hand, continued on as if they were living a normal life, not mentioning anything about Gilbert, even though she brought a tray of food and water up to him at every meal. She walked around the house tense though, her body and face never relaxed. Anne caught her reading the Queen’s letter over and over again at the kitchen table during nighttime, the parchment placed in Marilla’s fingers and her mouth pursed tightly.
And Anne never saw Gilbert at all, except for too quick flashes of him as he closed his door when she happened to be in the hallway, or when she was walking on the backside of the house and caught a glimpse of him through the west gable window.
It was as though a ghost had moved into Green Gables, and he haunted Anne’s mind constantly. She wondered what it meant for Diana, how long he was going to stay. She wondered what he did in that room all day, locked away from the outside world, from the sun. Sometimes she thought about going across the hall and knocking on his door, but something always held her back.
On the fourth day of his stay, Anne walks downstairs to have breakfast and sees the normal sights of the kitchen table, bare and ready for a morning meal, and Marilla bent over a pan sizzling with eggs and ham.
“Good morning!” Anne says cheerfully, but when Marilla turns around, Anne immediately goes, “Oh no – has something happened?”
Marilla had been looking overwhelmed ever since Gilbert arrived, but this morning she seems especially frazzled. Her eyebrows are drawn together in thought and gray wisps of hair are falling out of her bun, framing her face to make her look like a madwoman. She just shakes her head at Anne and glances toward the window of the kitchen, the one that looks out to the barn and the pasture. “I just don’t know what to make of him.”
Anne steps toward it and sees Matthew and Jerry already at work for the day. She thinks it’s odd for them to start so early, and she’s about to say as much when she realizes with a start that the boy out there is Gilbert. Gilbert in his expensive trousers, helping Matthew carry buckets full of feed into the barn.
“He just woke up this morning and asked to help out,” Marilla mumbles, absolutely perplexed, as Anne steps closer to the window, squinting her eyes like it might all just be a trick of the light. Marilla stares down at the pan and mutters, “I hope he doesn’t mind eggs for breakfast. I don’t know what it is that princes eat.”
“Marilla, you’re cooking is stupendous! I’m sure he can handle eating commoner food for a few more days.” Anne says, watching Matthew and Gilbert make their way back to the house.
Marilla shoots her a look. “Anne, I think he might be here longer than a few days –”
The sentence is cut short as Gilbert and Matthew make a ruckus coming through the front door. When Gilbert steps into the kitchen and sees Anne, he gives her a cautious, almost apologetic smile. He looks rough around the edges, but better than she expected, somehow. The lack of sleep is evident on his face, but his eyes seem bright anyway as he nods toward her. “Good morning.”
Matthew comes in from behind him, a smile on his face that surprises Anne with its cheer, and claps an encouraging palm onto Gilbert’s shoulder. “Anne – could you show Gilbert around the farm before you leave for school? Jerry won’t be in today.”
He says this so casually, as if Gilbert hasn’t suddenly just appeared out of thin air. Anne slowly nods, looking between Matthew and Gilbert wildly as Marilla starts to bring over the sizzling pan of food. “Anne!” She tuts, “Would you set the table please?”
Gilbert is the one to react first. He starts toward the cabinet and says, “I can do that, Miss Cuthbert –”
“Oh, nonsense, it’s Anne’s job. You’re our guest, Prince Gilbert.” Marilla shoots him a polite smile and her voice takes on a light, airy tone that she only uses in front of guests.
As Anne fills her hands with plates and cutlery, she sees Gilbert cringe a little. “Just Gilbert is fine. Really.” He promises with a nod, sitting down at the table bench and shooting an apologetic look at Anne, like he’s really sorry he couldn’t help.
Anne is absolutely baffled by all of it: Gilbert’s sudden presence, the way Marilla talks cautiously and so politely the whole meal, how Matthew seems quite keen on Gilbert’s help around the farm as though he doesn’t already have both Jerry and Anne. And Anne stays uncharacteristically silent the whole meal, like if she watches them all enough it will start to make sense to her. She cannot shake the way that Gilbert’s existence has suddenly shifted everything in the house, just like it had at Diana’s castle.
When they’re done with breakfast, Anne gives Gilbert a very curt tour, walking about five feet in front of him the whole time and pointing out the places around Green Gables easily: chicken coop, barn, stables, crop field, well, shed. By the time she’s done, she has to herd the cows into the fields behind the house and so Gilbert just comes along with her.
As the two of them stroll through the rolling green plain, they walk in silence with a large gap of space between them, Gilbert with his hands stuck in his pockets, Anne desperately trying to not feel awkward about the entire situation. She watches Gilbert from afar as he walks up to one of the cows roaming around and circles it for a moment cautiously before he looks back at Anne.
“Can I pet him?”
Anne tries not to laugh at the question. “Of course.”
He reaches his hand out and the cow moves away tentatively, only to come back a moment later to push up into Gilbert’s outstretched palm. “I’ve never been to a farm before,” he says like an explanation, and then looks out to the far-off mountains, the spread of green in front of them, the pine forests and the Lake of Shining Waters. “It’s beautiful out here."
Anne frowns. “They don’t have farms where you’re from?” She asks, bewildered at the idea.
“We do, I’ve just never been out to one.” He smiles down at the cow he’s been petting. It tries to sniff his face and he laughs.
Anne wonders if, like Diana, he’d been governed by strict rules of where he could and could not go as prince. The thought makes Anne shiver; she cannot imagine living in a castle so high up that it can see all the world around it, but being disallowed to explore any of it. It seems cruel to lock up your own precious royalty forever and ever - especially Gilbert, who now they don’t seem to want back.
Anne studies him for a moment, the way the spring wind tousles his hair. “How can a country not want their own prince?” She blurts out before she can stop herself. The sentence doesn’t come out right, a classic case of Anne Shirley mincing her words, but she struggles to think of the right way to correct her words.
Gilbert doesn’t seem to mind. He turns back around to walk with her down the slanted hill of the pasture, sticking his hands back into his pockets. “It’s not the country – it’s my father’s court.”
Anne frowns again. “They don’t think you’re fit to rule?”
He gives a rueful laugh. “They just want the power for themselves. I mean, it’s perfect for them, isn’t it? My father died while I was out of the kingdom, and that left a gap of power. Why give that back up to a seventeen year old boy?”
“Because it’s your birthright,” she argues for him, but Gilbert just squints out at the rising sun and doesn’t say anything. “Why did your father have people working for him who would do that to you? What kind of –”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
Anne flushes in embarrassment and clenches her fists at her side in a huff. “Sorry I’d like to know more about the boy who’s suddenly staying in my house!”
Gilbert laughs in surprise at her reaction. “It’s not a bad thing!” He argues, but Anne has already turned away from him, taking a more brisk pace on their walk down the hill. He calls to her, “Bash – my father’s advisor – thinks they’ll mellow out soon enough and come to their senses. He’s just worried. Kings have been killed for less, I suppose.”
The morose tone of his voice springs guilt into her chest at bringing the subject up, but she keeps heading down the hill, hearing the crunch of his steps not far behind her. “How did your father die?” She asks, her voice suddenly softer than it had been before. She steps over a down part of the fence Matthew has yet to fix and back into the flat farmland of Green Gables. “They didn’t… kill him, did they?”
Gilbert sighs. “No, he was sick.”
She turns back around to him. “I’m sorry. I know how –”
“It’s alright,” he says immediately, cutting her off so abruptly it shocks her. He shifts from foot to foot awkwardly, like he’d rather talk about anything else. “You’re off to school?” He asks her with bright eyes, like their previous conversation hadn’t been happening at all. Instead, he looks her up and down as though to assess what a country girl might deem appropriate to wear to class. Anne nods at his question, despite how red her face becomes under his gaze. “Your hair looks nice.”
Anne bristles at his compliment and touches the ends of her braids self consciously. The only thing she’d done differently today was tie them with a little bow. Is he trying to butter her up because he knew she wasn't fond of him? Perhaps he’d gotten some inkling that Anne had been talking him down to Diana, discouraging her from marrying him, and he was trying to persuade her approval.
Anne finds it improper for a boy of his stature to be saying things like that to a girl like her, and the thought makes her blush even more. “What a scandalous thing to say to a girl you’ve just met!” She tells him with wide eyes.
Gilbert blinks in shock. “What – I just meant that it looks nice!” He says, baffled and appalled, “I’m not trying to –”
“Oh, save it,” she sniffs at him and turns around in a flurry to hurry back inside the house. “I’ve got to get to school!”
“Anne!” He calls to her back, even as she swiftly enters Green Gables to snag her slate without turning back to look at him once.
Marilla, already preparing for baking pastries that day in the kitchen, turns to Anne with her eyebrows drawn together in bemusement as her daughter stomps around the room. “Was Gilbert shouting for you? Is he alright –”
Anne jolts around the room, grabbing her coat and boots and pack. “He’s fine,” she says without preamble, and then leans up to quickly give Marilla a kiss on the cheek, “I’ll see you this afternoon!”
She sprints out of the front door and toward the start of the trail that will lead her to the schoolhouse before Gilbert even reaches the porch of Green Gables. Even though Anne doesn’t turn back to look, she feels his eyes on her until she disappears into the treeline.
Gilbert, true to his word, takes to doing errands and odd jobs around the farm quite well. He fixes the downed fence Anne had noticed and he learns how to take care of the animals. Some mornings, Anne will wake up and open her window, eager for a large breath of fresh air, only to see Gilbert’s little silhouette in the open barn doorway or perched on the pasture fence, awake far earlier than anyone else in the house.
He gets along with Jerry swimmingly, something Anne doesn’t realize until she gets home from school the next week and spots Matthew working in the fields. She bumbles toward him, excited to tell him about her day and how Miss Stacy has given her extra assigned reading outside of school, but as she gets closer, she hears laughing.
Gilbert’s there, only a row over helping Matthew weed, and next to him is Jerry. Both of them are in boots with their shirts rolled up to their elbows, and Jerry’s face is scrunched up in laughter at something Gilbert’s saying to him. Gilbert grins at him, and Anne can just see the smudge of dirt on his cheek. He looks perfect there, like he’s always lived here, like he belongs. Nothing like a prince, his knees deep in mud and dirt.
Anne frowns at the sight of it all. Jerry never laughs with her like that when she helps out. He only rolls his eyes at her comments and shakes his head like she annoys him, and even when she does try to help out with the more intense chores of the farm, he always tuts at her that she does it wrong. But Gilbert – who had never stepped foot on a farm before last week – somehow manages to do everything right?
“Oh, Anne!” Matthew says cheerfully upon noticing her. When the boys swivel their heads and catch her in the act of mindlessly staring at them, she looks away quickly. “Marilla said there was a letter inside for you from Diana.”
Anne’s chest warms exponentially at the sound of just her name. “Really?” She asks in excitement, and before even receiving an answer she skips off toward the front of the house, thinking about Diana sitting at her vanity in a long, flowing dress, writing to Anne as the light drifts into her room from outside.
As she dashes inside the kitchen and zeros in on the unopened letter on the table, Anne has just enough time to go, “Hi Marilla!” before she’s running upstairs, clutching the envelope in her hand.
“ Anne! ” Marilla yells up at her in annoyance, “You’re tracking mud all over the house! You better clean up later –” and then Anne doesn’t really hear the rest of it because she’s falling onto her bed and tearing the wax sealed envelope open in haste.
Her fingers draw lines over Diana’s inky writing, the way she flicks her letters so sharply up and down in cursive. Even the sight of Diana’s handwriting is enough to make Anne miss her tremendously.
The letter is not all that exciting, simply just a reply to Anne’s from earlier in the week, but she tells Anne that her birthday ball is still on – Will you invite the girls? Mother said you can bring guests. I am excitedly awaiting their answer – and then asks about Gilbert. The state you’ve described him in has me worried, although I suppose it’s natural he should feel like this in his situation. Goodness, isn’t it all so terrible? Sometimes I feel so selfish as I sit here, planning out the stupid details of this ball, imagining if Gilbert will think I look nice in my dress, and then I remember that his father is … (There’s an inky scratch here, where she’s crossed out the word dead as if it held too much weight on the page) … gone. I long to make him feel better, but he’s too far away from me. You’ll keep him company, won’t you? You’ll make sure he’s okay?
Anne reads these words and frowns, thinking of how the two of them orbit around each other quite constantly, never getting close enough to touch. Anne doesn’t mind it; she’s not sure what she would even say to Gilbert if she was faced with being alone with him for longer than a minute, and the conversations they have had in the almost two weeks he’s been here had only been short and curt. But everyone else seems to love him and welcome him with open arms for reasons Anne can’t understand.
She wanders to her window to look out at the edge of the field, as though watching Gilbert work might reveal to her all the answers she’s looking for, but reading the letter has suddenly recharacterized Gilbert in her mind as the boy who’s come to take Diana away from her, not just some kid who’s staying with them for a while. A burst of anger forms in her chest upon seeing his little silhouette weed in the field, and Anne has to look away before it consumes her.
She huffs and flops back onto her bed, snatching up the piece of paper to hold above herself. The next few sentences are the last of the letter. Even though I’ve only known Gilbert a few weeks, I’m shocked by how much I miss him. The castle feels a little emptier without his presence. I’m excited to see him again after all of this and remember the warmth of his face.
At the end, like an addendum, is, I miss you too, of course. Write to me soon, won’t you?
It finishes with Diana’s signature and an inky heart next to it, meant for Anne even though it doesn’t feel like it. Diana hadn’t said anything in the letter about the next time Anne might be able to visit her, if she was still allowed to, hadn’t such much about anything at all beside Gilbert.
Anne lets the paper drift to the floor. She lies on her back and stares up at the ceiling, suddenly feeling the terrible weight of Gilbert’s presence bearing down on her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. It’s not that she hadn’t remembered what Gilbert had traveled here for in the first place, it’s just that she had thought maybe plans would change considering everything going on in Gilbert’s life, maybe he would want to go home first and settle everything before he started claiming a wife.
The thoughts makes Anne’s blood run cold, and she pushes it out of her mind as she brings herself up and out of bed, bounding downstairs loudly in her boots.
When Marilla yells at her again about the mud, she's thankful for the distraction.
“Girls, I have something –”
“Ruby!” Jane admonishes, cutting Anne off. Jane reaches across their circle to flick Ruby in the shoulder.
“Ow! What?” Ruby whines, rubbing her arm.
“Stop swiping your fingers in the honey pot! It’s disgusting.” Jane says, pointing to the way Ruby has one fingertip in her mouth currently when only moments ago it had been dipped in the honey Anne had brought for them for lunch.
Ruby pouts at Jane, crossing her arms. “Well, maybe if someone hadn’t eaten all the bread, I’d have something to put the honey on!”
“I had two pieces!” Jane holds up two fingers, as though Ruby might not know how to count. “Only two!”
“They were the largest pieces,” Josie says casually,
Jane rolls her eyes. “Oh, you’re just putting fuel into the fire, Josie.”
Anne groans. “Girls –”
“I think we should all just get along and remember to thank Anne for the food she’s brought us,” Tillie says, smiling toward Anne sweetly. “Thank you, Anne.”
“Yes, Tillie, it’s fine, but I have –”
Jane pipes up with, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t even bring food for each other if we can’t share it properly!”
Ruby leans toward Jane, her face all scrunched up. Anne supposes she’s trying to look menacing, but all it really does is make her look more adorable. “Just because you hog all of the meal doesn’t mean that the rest of us should be punished –”
“Girls!” Anne shouts loud enough for the whole schoolhouse to hear. The boys in the corner tittle with boyish laughter at the four of them. All the girls shut their mouths with a clink of their teeth, their eyes big and startled at Anne’s outburst. Anne sighs. “I have something important to ask of you, something much more important than honey and bread.”
Josie snorts, taking another bite. “I can’t imagine there’s anything happening in Avonlea that is more important than our –”
“Princess Diana wanted me to invite you all to her upcoming birthday ball.”
Josie almost chokes on the food in her mouth. “ What? ” She splutters.
“The – the princess ?” Ruby practically squeaks, looking at Anne like this is an impossibility. “Us? ”
“Oh, Anne!” Tillie says joyfully, clutching a hand to her chest, “Are you serious? What did you do to convince her to let us come?”
“Nothing! I’ve just told her many stories about you all, and she’d like to finally meet you.” The thought warms of all her friends being in one room warms her heart. Sometimes, she can easily imagine Diana sat right here in the schoolhouse with all of them, gossiping away during lunch time.
“I’ll have to get a new dress tailored,” Jane murmurs, her eyes staring blankly ahead like she is now overwhelmed with all the possible prep the event will take. “I’ll have to buy new shoes! And stockings!”
“I think I’m dreaming,” Ruby says, her face suddenly pale, “Someone pinch me.” When Tillie does, Ruby lets out a startled, “Ow!” and slaps her hand away.
Anne just laughs fondly at the sight of all them. “So I can tell her yes?”
“Duh, ” Josie says, smiling wider than Anne has ever seen her do, “What kind of girls would we be if we didn’t go to the princess’ ball after being personally invited?”
“Oh, do you think my parents will let me go?” Tillie worries suddenly, holding her face in her hands.
Josie snorts. “I’d like to see your parents say no to the heir to the throne.”
Anne grins brightly at all of them. “Well – I’ll write to her soon and let her know that you all are expected to come. She’ll be very excited.”
"She’ll be excited? I’ll just about die on the spot when I meet her! Oh, I can imagine it now,” Ruby sighs dreamily, “How wonderful she’ll look in her dress – Anne, have you seen it yet? And my goodness, I can’t imagine how many boys will want to dance with her – maybe there will be boys who want to dance with us.”
The four of them giggle. “ Royal boys.” Tillie remarks, wiggling her eyebrows up and down, and then they giggle some more.
“Sons of Dukes and Duchesses – maybe even princes if we’re lucky,” Jane adds, nodding enthusiastically at this vision they’ve all procured in their heads.
“Princes aren’t quite what they’re cracked up to be,” Anne murmurs, but none of them seem to hear her.
“Oh Anne,” Ruby says, gazing at her from across their circle, “I don’t know how you do it. If I were friends with Princess Diana, I would spend every moment kissing her feet and asking her to introduce me to all the handsome boys she knows.”
A weird, funny feeling sprouts in Anne’s chest at this idea one dimensional idea of Diana. “Well,” Anne says, playing with the ends of her braids to have something to distract from the sudden open chasm in her stomach. “It’s not all as glamorous as it seems. She’s just a normal girl.”
Josie lets out a little hysterical laugh. “Yeah, and I’m the long lost heir to a faraway land.” She shakes her head. “Anne, you really don’t get it, do you? How lucky you are to be friends with someone like her?”
Anne feels her face go red. “Of course I know how lucky I am,” she says adamantly, “Of course I –”
It’s then that Miss Stacy rings the bell outside the school house and marches in, a grin on her face as she idly wipes her hands on her skirt. “Girls!” She says cheerfully, smiling at all of them as she rounds back to her desk, “Ready to get started with afternoon lessons?”
The four of them reply in unison, “Yes, Miss Stacy,” but Anne sits statically, her face still flushed in frustration.
She replies to Diana that night, and for a moment - a brief, terrible moment - Anne almost writes that the girls cannot actually make it for her birthday. The idea of the four of them eating Diana up with such a ravenous gaze makes Anne sick to her stomach. She has to share the image of Diana with the entire country, but the real Diana, the girl who takes Anne’s hands and twirls her around when they dance in her room or the girl who reads silently with her in the sunshine, their feet tangled together on the grass, that girl is the one she won’t give up. That’s the girl Gilbert is trying to take from her, and for a moment, the idea of having to share her with four other people seems too much.
She pauses writing the letter, goes downstairs to grab a glass of water and stick her head into the foyer where she glares at Gilbert’s head with a heated gaze, and then when she comes back upstairs, she looks at the piece of parchment for a rather long time before she picks up her pen again and dips it in ink.
The girls have told me that they would all love to come to the ball! They were so excited at the idea and I was too.
I miss you very much, and I can’t wait to hear from you next.
It’s a cool spring day, the type of day that fairy tales start from, where the birds are out and singing, the grass is greener than it’s been in months, and everybody’s laughing like they’ve just remembered how to.
And Anne cannot enjoy any of it, because Gilbert is side-by-side with Marilla in the kitchen learning how to make bread. The two of them are smiling happily and Marilla is being more patient with him than she’s ever been with Anne, and Anne hates him for it. Anne hates him for all of it, everything that he represents and is here to do, and the anger is thick like sludge in her throat, unable to dissolve and only grows heavier and heavier with each glance at him.
She glares at the back of his head as he stands next to Marilla, and Marilla leans close to him to show him how to knead the dough.
“Like this?” Anne hears him ask.
“Yes,” Marilla says with shining approval, “Exactly! There you go.” She steps away for a moment to go get something on the other counter, and Anne can see the small little smile tucked in Marilla’s face. Anne hates it. She loathes it.
“Why so grumpy, eh?” She swivels around to find Jerry grinning at her as he carries a large pale of milk into the kitchen, Matthew following shortly behind him. Jerry then notices Gilbert in an apron at the counter and his eyes brighten with the possibilities of teasing Anne. “Are you upset Marilla has found a helper in the kitchen who won’t burn everything he bakes?”
Anne is this close to sticking her ankle out and tripping Jerry so he falls flat on his face as he walks forward, but that means that so would all the milk he’s carrying. “I’ll have you know that I am a good cook, just not a good baker.”
“I asked her if she wanted to help, but she said no,” Marilla sniffs, throwing a pointed look at Anne as she walks back over to help Gilbert again.
Anne had said no. Of course she had. Why would she want to spend the afternoon elbow-to-elbow with Gilbert?
“And I’ll have you know that I am not grumpy,” she tells Jerry pointedly, crossing her arms and huffing in a way that could be described as nothing else beside grumpy.
Anne catches Gilbert start to smile at her, as though he finds her act endearing, but she glares at him so hard that it falls away from his lips instantly. All he’s left with is brows furrowed in confusion.
“Jerry, why don’t you stay for dinner tonight?” Matthew suggests as he hands Jerry his pay for the day.
Jerry blinks, surprised. “What?” He looks around at all of them. “Are you sure?”
Gilbert turns around to smile sheepishly. “I’m afraid I’ve made enough bread to last the whole spring and summer, so we have food to go around.”
“That does sound quite nice,” Marilla replies, shocking Anne most of all with her chipper attitude, “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a feast in this house.”
Jerry’s smile is toothy and blinding. “Thank you!” He exclaims, and then rushes over to Gilbert eagerly. “Can I help?”
He, Gilbert, and Marilla get lost in preparing and cooking for the meal, the three of them shuffling around the kitchen happily as Anne slouches in her place at the table bench. It’s Matthew who notices her and leans down to give her a kiss on the forehead.
“You alright?” He asks in a low voice so none of the others might hear him.
Anne looks up at him, his kind face that smiles easily down at her, and she takes one of his hands in her own. It’s wrinkly and calloused from work, and his thumbs shake a little when they rub across her knuckles, but it has her feeling thirteen and young again, like she’s seconds away from crumpling into his chest and crying.
She’s not sure what to say. It feels a shame to waste a night like this, where everyone around her is in such high spirits, drowning in her own pool of sorrows, but she can’t seem to come up for air. She keeps thinking about that letter Diana sent to her last week, the words following her around like a ghost, how she sounded only like an echo of the girl who was Anne’s best friend. Anne can’t stop feeling anger rise up in her chest when she looks at Gilbert for all the things he represents, and most of all, she’s upset that nobody else is able to see it.
Anne could say all of this to Matthew, and he would nod kindly and listen, but it would worry him, she knows, and that’s the last thing she wants.
She squeezes his hand. “Just tired,” she admits, and then tries for a smile. He smiles back, pats her on the back, and then rouses her up.
“Come on, come help me check the animals before the sun goes down,” he tells her, and they go outside, hand-in-hand toward the barn, where Anne finds that it’s easier to breathe.
“You did what ?” Jerry asks with big eyes, his mouth gaping open. All the food he’s just stuck in it might as well be seconds from tumbling out.
“It was like a Grand Tour,” Gilbert explains, cutting his meal into little pieces with such proper manners his royalty is almost an eyesore for Anne, “It’s like a rite of passage for when you come of age. My father went on one when he was younger, so he sent me and Bash on a ship to see the world.”
“Wow,” Matthew mumbles, spooning up peas and carrots.
“I cannot even imagine that,” Jerry says, his voice so obviously full of wonder. “What was it like?”
“It was great,” Gilbert says joyfully, a flash of a smile gracing his face like he’s remembering every single detail, “I’d never really left the kingdom before. It was like I was a little kid again, and all the world seemed so big.” Gilbert pushes the food on his plate around. “It was the best present my father ever gave me.”
Marilla keeps the mood up by clearing her throat and offering a smile. “Well, that sounds lovely, Gilbert. You’ll have to tell us all your stories while you stay with us.”
Gilbert smiles back at her warmly. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a storyteller, but I’ll try.”
He sits next to Anne at the table, the two of them on one side, and it forces Anne to have to look at him more than she’d like to. She has to watch the way he pushes his hair from out of his face even though the curls bounce right back into place, anyway, and the way his profile catches her attention out of the corner of her eyes, his strong jawline and his cheeks that dimple when he grins.
Anne hates it. She hates the way his arm brushes against hers when he lifts it up to scoop peas onto his plate. She hates the way he looks at home here, with flour dusted onto his clothes from earlier in the day and freckles starting to pop out on his cheeks from working with Matthew in the sun. She hates that he looks even a little bit like he belongs in Green Gables.
Gilbert suddenly glances toward her, holding the plate of peas in his hands. “Do you want some –”
“No .” Anne declares, her eyes shooting daggers at him. “I’m just fine, thanks.”
Gilbert gives her the most baffled look. “Okay…” he says, moving to offer Matthew some instead.
Anne feels a sharp poke on her arm, and she whips around to look at Jerry. “What?” She whispers, rubbing the sore spot on her skin.
“What is your problem?” He hisses and then tilts his chin toward Gilbert.
“I’m fine,” Anne says shortly, waving Jerry off quickly so that nobody else at the table notices their conversation.
Jerry’s eyes squint, like the gears in his head are just starting to turn. “Is this about –” he starts to say, but Anne cuts him off before he can finish the sentence.
“Peas!” She exclaims, and then snatches the dish out of a bewildered Gilbert’s hands. “Jerry, do you want peas?”
Jerry looks at her warily, but he murmurs, “Yes, merci,” when Anne spoons a heaping of vegetables onto his plate. She avoids his shrewd gaze and tries to ignore everyone looking at her from around the table.
“Anne, are you alright?” Marilla asks, a wrinkle between her brows. “You’ve been acting odd all dinner –”
“Oh, I’m fine, Marilla,” Anne assures her from across the table, deftly ignoring the stares from the two boys on either side of her.
Marilla is wholly unconvinced, but she doesn’t speak up, too worried about causing a scene in front of Gilbert, Anne’s sure. She just puts on a smile and she clears her throat, swiftly moving the topic of conversation to something else.
Everybody else gets over Anne’s sore mood. While they spend the rest of dinner laughing and eating happily, Gilbert and Jerry swapping stories like the best friends they are now, apparently, Anne sits and sulks in her spot next to Gilbert, inching away from him on the table bench any moment she can until she’s almost falling off the bench.
Jerry stays after dinner to help clean up, and he and Gilbert wash the dishes while laughing merrily with each other about God knows what as Anne clears the table. She's so lost stewing in her frustration about Gilbert that she doesn't even notice that Gilbert has come to stand by her side until he clears his throat and asks, “Did you have a good day?”
Anne whips her head to look at him, blinking in surprise. He helps her gather up the rest of the mats on the table and looks up at her with bright eyes.
“What?” She asks when she realizes he’s waiting for her response.
Gilbert stifles a laugh at her confusion. “Did you have a good day? You know, at school.”
Anne is baffled at why he would be asking her something like this. The most they had ever spoken his whole stay was that day in the fields with the cows. “It was fine.” She remarks, timid.
“What were your lessons?"
“We’re studying narrative structure,” She says, putting away the cutlery and then turning around to fold up the tablecloth.
“That will be good for you!” Jerry says brightly from his place leaning against the kitchen cupboards. It seems that he’s found one of the lemon tarts that Marilla made last week and he’s snacking on it joyfully. He turns toward Gilbert and says, “Anne likes to write stories –”
“Jerry!” Anne feels her face flush, not in the mood to be teased.
Jerry scoffs in offense. “You do! I was not trying to make fun of you –”
“What do you write?” Gilbert asks, and he’s still so close to her, hovering around her side with eager eyes and a gentle voice. To have all of his attention at once is very overwhelming, Anne finds, and so she has a hard time looking him in the eyes.
Embarrassment soars in Anne’s chest at the thought of all those childish romance stories she used to spend days crafting, only to read them out dramatically to Ruby during lunch and have her giggle and blush when the two main characters eventually ended up kissing. She’d written smaller things here and there on scraps of paper in her room since that she’s sure are lost to time, but none of them had ever been that substantial.
Gilbert is waiting for an answer, but instead of giving him one, she just says, “You ask a lot of questions.” Her voice comes out sounding nowhere near as playful as his had and it suddenly changes the entire mood of the room.
“Right,” Gilbert says shortly. “Sorry.” All the softness that had just been on his face the moment before disappeared completely, and with that he moves away from her and into the foyer unceremoniously, without even another look her way.
Anne concentrates very hard on folding up the tablecloth neatly, trying to ignore the drop of shame suddenly at home in her stomach.
“What is your problem?” Jerry asks, coming up to her. “He says anything and you – you stick your nose up at him!”
Anne looks toward Jerry and says desperately, “I don’t know him, why should I tell him anything about myself?” but her voice suddenly sounds like it belongs to a stranger. Those are not words Anne Shirley would usually say, not about anyone.
Jerry just rolls his eyes. “It is a lot of work to hate him how you do. Just talk to him,” he tells her, exasperated and shaking his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He sounds almost disappointed in her, and the feeling sinks into Anne’s skin as she watches Jerry walk away and wave his goodbyes to everyone from the other room.
Anne swallows. She looks back down at the tablecloth, at her hands, the skin freckled even there. She hears Gilbert’s laugh, soft and muffled from where he must be sitting in the foyer, and she squeezes her eyes close like somehow that will peel away all the bad feelings from her chest.
Anne tries not to think about it all as she gets ready for bed, as though it’s even possible to completely turn one’s thoughts off. Goodness, she tries though. She tries as she puts on her nightgown, as she looks at her reflection in her vanity and undoes her braids, as she lights a candle to put on her bedside, and then sits on her bed in a huff once she realizes she can’t stop thinking.
She decides to go downstairs and snag a book from her school bag to hopefully tire herself out from reading. She grabs her candle dish and tiptoes out of her room, eyeing Gilbert’s door at the end of the hall nervously like she’s afraid he might jump out and scare her.
Downstairs, she digs through her school things and checks her coat pockets, trying tirelessly to find her book of fables that she must have misplaced, when she hears a weird shuddering noise from the other room that grabs her attention.
Anne leaves her candle on the kitchen table and tiptoes silently toward the foyer doorway to peak around the corner. She’s not all that surprised to see Gilbert sat in the plush chair by the windows; he had seemed to claim that spot since he surfaced from his room, and it wasn’t uncommon to find him there during his down time reading or talking to Marilla as she did needlepoint. Anne expects to see him with a book in his lap, his face concentrated and focused at the page in front of him, but that’s not what she finds at all.
He’s looking out the window and up at the starry sky, his jaw resting on the top of the chair’s back. Anne can only see the back of his head, his curls that look inky in the nighttime, but she stands there and studies him for a moment anyway, her hands clutching the detail of the doorway.
By the time she realizes that his shoulders are shaking unnaturally, he’s already shifted so that his profile is visible to Anne. She watches him wipe his cheeks with the sleeve of his shirt and hears him sniff. With a start, she realizes he must be crying. She's so shocked to see his tears, even though she shouldn't be. He had seemed completely fine past those first few days in the house, happy and glad to be where he was. His grief had seemed to evaporate so suddenly, Anne had almost entirely forgotten that it should be there - that it was there, she just wasn't looking hard enough.
At the same moment that she notices his tears, he becomes aware of her. His head immediately whips up to look at her, and it’s red all over, splotchy and ruined.
Immediately Anne blurts out, “I didn’t mean to – I wasn’t spying on you!” She feels her face flush, her hands curling into themselves where they’ve gone to rest at her sides, and she feels a bit exposed, standing in front of him in only her nightgown, her hair undone from it’s braids and hanging pin straight over her face and shoulders.
Gilbert just looks at her blankly. “I didn’t think you were, Anne,” he says, his voice thick from crying. He scrubs at his eyes again and looks away from her, and Anne wonders what in the world she should do.
The only time she’s ever seen a boy cry was when Billy Andrews climbed on the roof of the schoolhouse only to fall off and break his leg, but she hadn’t been close to him when the incident happened. She’d only seen from a distance as the other boys carried Billy away, his face pink and puffy from tears, and all she’d thought was how he looked like the Hammond’s infants when they cried for their mother as she held them.
Gilbert doesn’t look like that at all. He looks like the type of boy oil painters long to find in the real world for reference, red-rimmed and tragic but somehow devastatingly beautiful in his sadness. She can’t stop thinking about that for some reason, how much he looks like he’s a boy who’s just stepped out of a painting.
Anne swallows. She takes a small step toward him, her bare feet on the hardwood floor. “I’m an orphan,” she tells him lamely, “I mean – my parents – I was really young when they –”
“It’s fine, Anne.” Gilbert tells her, but it comes out quiet, a defeated whisper. He’s still not looking at her, he’s just looking down at his hands. She studies the sweep of his jaw, the bridge of his nose, his ruddy cheeks.
“But even then I still cry,” she says, stepping even closer, “I didn’t even know them and sometimes I find myself waking up from a dream about them with tears already in my eyes.” She swallows. “I – I can’t imagine what it must be like to love someone your whole life and lose them. I’m so sorry.”
Gilbert doesn’t move, not an inch. Just stares at his hands. In that moment, Anne’s sure that she’s messed it all up, that she’ll just have to silently shrink back up to her room and never look at him again the whole time he stays with them.
But then his words burst through the silence. “My father’s been sick for months.” He tilts his head up toward the moon, “I told him goodbye before I left, just in case, but I didn’t really think…” Then his mouth twists, and he just stops, the words stolen from him.
Anne whispers, “You couldn’t have known.”
“I think I should have, though,” Gilbert replies, glancing back at her for the first time since their conversation started. He looks like he’s moments away from crying again. “I knew what could have happened, and I left to come here anyway, and he died without me.”
Anne just shakes her head incessantly. “I don’t know much about death, but I know a lot about love,” she tells him, finding her voice once again, stepping closer and looking at him intently, “and I know that when we love people, we don’t want them to stop living their lives because of our suffering. When Marilla has headaches that are so bad she can’t leave the bed, she always shoos me away while assuring me that she feels fine, and when Matthew stresses about the farm and our finances, he always puts on a good smile so I’ll stop worrying.” Gilbert smiles a little, despite himself, and Anne continues, “I’m sure your father knew what could have happened just as well as you did, and I’m also sure that he loved you enough to ask you to keep moving forward and living your life.”
The moment descends into silence, the only sound being the crickets from outside and the distant noise of wind through the nearby forest fluttering the leaves and branches altogether. Gilbert sits there statically, all this tension in his shoulders and spine. Anne feels a chill run up her back from the nighttime cold, and she wonders how Gilbert can sit by the window, in only a bare cotton shirt and trousers and not feel a little chilly on a spring night like this.
“I just wish I could be there,” he says, his voice still ruined, “at least for his funeral.”
An acrid sense of sadness strikes in Anne’s stomach. She couldn’t imagine that; losing Matthew or Marilla and not being there to bury them. “Can I... sit with you?” She asks tentatively.
He looks at her, surprised. “Sure,” he nods and moves over to create room on the seat cushion.
Anne sits on the edge, as far away as she can from him, and twists her hands in her lap. The thick silence, stale and uncomfortable, surrounds the two of them as Anne thinks of what to say. She'd always struggled with comforting people and much preferred showing her love through actions or well thought out letters, things where she didn't have to worry about messing up and saying the wrong thing or coming off too strong.
She looks resolutely down at the carpet when she rushes out, “I just want to tell you that I’m sorry I’ve been so horrible to you during your stay here.” She spares a glance up at him. Gilbert is watching her intently, his face giving nothing away. “It’s supposed to be my job to protect you while you’re here, and all I’ve managed to do is make you feel worse.”
Gilbert shakes his head. “It’s not your job –”
“It is,” Anne tells him swiftly. “I promised the Queen that. Even outside of that, I’ve been very… insensitive to your situation. I've been immature.” Suddenly everything she had been upset at him about seems childish in the wake of his problems. “You don’t deserve that.”
Anne can feel the heat of his stare boring into the side of her face. When he asks her, “Did I do something for you hate me?” the stark honesty of his voice shakes her.
She tells him, “I don’t hate you.” She doesn’t even know him, really. She hates what he’s here to do. She hates that he’s walked into her life and so easily stolen the hearts of everyone she loves, especially Diana’s. She hates that her words feel like an admission of defeat, like somehow because she’s finally said this out loud he’ll be off to court and marry Diana by tomorrow morning and she’ll disappear from Anne’s life in a snap.
Instead, Gilbert absorbs her words and then nods once firmly. “I’m glad,” he says with enough warmth that it surprises Anne, and then he teases, his voice still a little broken from crying, “Fighting with you all of the time was getting exhausting, and I need to talk to someone about all the books I’ve been reading while I’ve been here.”
There’s a ghost of a smile on his lips, a small uptick in the corners. It’s just as friendly as that first day she’d met him and he’d smiled at her from across the castle dinner table. She jumps at the opportunity for their conversation to go back to normal, to shift back into being a hotheaded girl instead of a vulnerable little thing in front of a boy she doesn't really know. “I'm sure we have very different tastes in literature, Prince Gilbert.” She huffs playfully.
She calls him this just to see the way he scrunches his nose up in disgust, and he knows it. “Perhaps you just haven’t opened your heart up to the great classics, Anne. ”
The way he says her name lights her stomach up a bit. She presses her hands there through her nightgown, as if she could smother it, and then she quickly stands up from the chair. “Well, I’ll be off to bed now,” she switches her weight from foot to foot while looking down at him, suddenly nervous to be near him now that their bubble of vulnerability has been broken. “You should sleep as well.”
Exhaustion clouds his face even as he smiles up at her, but it’s a bone-deep kind of tired, the one that culminates after a bad night’s rest for months on end. “I will,” he assures her, and then tackles on, “...eventually.”
She nods at him and nervously pushes a tendril of hair back behind her ear. “Goodnight then.”
“Goodnight, Anne.” He says, and she turns around quickly, eager to get upstairs and into her bed, away from all of Gilbert’s… Gilbert-ness, his stares that make her feel funny and his face that is always too kind, but then he calls to her softly, almost like he would be alright if she didn't end up hearing it, “Thank you for listening to me.”
Anne turns back around in the doorway. The moonlight carves out half of Gilbert’s face and, for the first time since meeting him, Anne thinks that he finally does look like a prince, ethereal and a little grander than the ground he walks on. She almost wishes she was a painter in that moment, that she could capture this still of him in her memory and recreate it somewhere for other people to see it.
She nods again. “Thank you for forgiving me,” she tells him, the words quick out of her mouth because they burn a little shamefully on her tongue, and then she twirls around and pads her way upstairs.
She lays in bed after that, staring up at the ceiling with her mind running around and around in circles of thought, not any better than before, except now she can't seem to calm her heart down. It beats fast under her skin, a pitter-patter that matches the sound of Gilbert's footsteps as he finally makes his way up the stairs to sleep.