Anne had always thought she was good friends with the sun. She had not expected the strong urge to burrow beneath the covers when she'd opened her eyes and found the light filling the room, cheerful, brilliant, unequivocal day, the first full day of being Anne Blythe that she had longed for these past years. Why did the rumpled bed, the pale shadows made by the linens, the real darkness promised by the underside of the down pillows, all beckon so?
Gilbert was not in the room; she was alone and she was strangely grateful for that, even as she missed him. She hadn't been able to imagine the night they had just spent in each other's arms, so the morning had been an equal blank to her, but now she thought she might have very much enjoyed waking to see his sleeping face with his hair ruffled or the smooth expanse of his back, to discover if any Avonlea summers had left freckles scattered across his sturdy shoulders. But it was better somehow to be alone with herself, still naked in every way; her nightdress had nearly made the complete journey across the room and she remembered the triumphant gleam in Gil's eyes when he had finally wrested it from her willing body, how she had laughed and then had the sound quenched by his mouth on her throat. The white muslin had become so tangled in their embrace it felt like another set of stays and she had breathed first in relief and then with a just-discovered delight, to feel it gone from her and only Gilbert's skin against her.
Diana had been right-she had said not to worry about the consummation, "it will be easier for you-- anything, everything you do will be right, he'll be so pleased, you can't help it" but she hadn't said anything of how much Anne herself would feel. Perhaps even between bosom friends that was not to be spoken of or had Diana not had the words to explain? There was true paradigm for what had happened between them although he had often held her hand in shadowy lanes and kissed her gently in Green Gables's garden, his palm against her cheek. She finally understood how God had made Adam and Eve after he had practiced with the animals, how they were the finest creatures but still possessed of such... appetites.
Anne-of-a-thousand words had been rendered inarticulate by her husband's hands upon her, left with only fragments like love and more and yours. She had not even been able to find the word "darling," had cried out softly into the night but he had known what it meant and what she wanted and had said it into her ear Darling, my darling when he was most, ultimately, insistently ardent and again when he carded through her unbound hair afterward, kissing her his old gentle kiss along her clavicle, the curve of her shoulder, the angle of her jaw, while he let one hand rest above her hip, relaxed and warmly content. She had liked to feel possessed by him and she couldn't have believed it of herself, but there was no avoiding it in the brash sunlight the way the moon had so graciously allowed. Even the stars still lit before dawn broke, who saw their repeated embrace and saw how she reached for him first, had not made her look too closely at what she had done and how eagerly. She flushed with the memory and the desire for him that it recalled right away, blushed even redder as Gilbert sat down beside her with a full tea-tray set precariously on the bedside table, a proper husband in a dressing gown, his sash squarely knotted. She could not see if he wore slippers, distracted by the sight of his unshaven jaw, the way the collar of his robe showed the curve of his neck.
"Good morning, Anne-girl," he said, bright-eyed and grinning.
"Gil, what have you done? You shouldn't have!" she said, peering more closely at the tea-pot snug in its cozy, the cups on their saucers, even the dainty silver spoons lolling on the saucer's fluted lip. He had unpacked the tea-chest and arranged it all, a task she had expected to manage as his wife, one of the first she had thought to do and here he was, serving her as she lay in dishabille, if she might count the linen sheet as her negligee.
"It's only some tea, Anne. And, I wanted to-- I used to think about this all the time, dream about it really. I... I didn't permit myself to think of you as my bride, it didn't seem appropriate to consider what I wanted for our wedding night, but this, to bring you a cup of tea in our bed this first morning, this I could imagine and I have-- for months. Sometimes I wished I had given up this doctoring foolishness like my father said and just agreed to run the farm so I could have already married you months ago... and I knew I had years of work, sometimes deadly dull ahead of me, so I would imagine this-- how you always wrinkle up your nose before you take your first sip, did you know? And you close your eyes when you smell the steam from the cup," he said happily. She drew the sheet against her more tightly to remain decent as she sat up against the pillows.
"I didn't know that," she said and the words were all her shyness, all the strange comfort of having him beside her, her best friend who had given her such transporting pleasure along with his affection, another Gilbert whom she found she loved for his dark gaze, his sensitive hands, his tenderness that had made anything awkward and clumsy only the precursor to delight.
"Darling," he began and she blushed again, the echo of his voice in the night so vivid, "Anne, are you all right? I only thought you would like a cup of tea and then in a little while, you'd want to prowl through the garden, our garden, properly, to catalogue all the flowers and find where the fairies might live. Or walk along the shore and tell me what sounds the shells make if only we listen well enough. I thought that was what you'd want," he finished, a little uncertain, his fingers absently pleating the blanket.
She was glad of it, glad that he did not know what to make of her this morning just as she didn't, that confident, friendly Gilbert could be a romantic bridegroom and yet that same roguish boy she'd known who'd rescued her from the bridge, those curious hazel eyes still charmed by her even when he admitted he wasn't sure what she was about.
"I thought I would want that too, but I'm finding, I don't... or not today, not yet," she said.
"Well, what is it you'd like to do then?" he asked equably. She thought, looked at the tea-cup settled in its saucer, the glimpse of the sea through the open window, the clouds layered above the horizon, Gilbert's hand on the bedclothes.
"I think, I believe I want to be lazy-we've never been allowed that, have we, Gil? May we be lazy together, you and I... and share a cup of tea?" Anne asked.
It would never have done at Green Gables unless she was deathly ill, to stay abed of a morning, and they couldn't spend the whole day that way, there were chores to be done and she had a dinner to get even if Gilbert had taken care of a breakfast, but to only lie with him and talk, to be comfortable together and dream together a new dream or several... She reached for the tea-cup and the sheet dropped; she grasped just how far when she saw that look again in Gil's eyes, this time, mixed with familiar amusement.
"Careful! You won't want to spill that, not as you are... and I'm not sure I'm up to making another pot. The kettle was a little tricky and I've grown tired, with all this talk, it seems I must come back to bed," he said, steadying her hand with his and taking over the carrying of the cup, raising it to her lips. She blew a little to cool it and then took the sip he offered, heedless of where any of the bed linens were, deliberate as she looked at him over the cup's rim.
"Oh, I thought was in love with Anne Shirley, but it's nothing to how I feel about you, Anne Blythe," Gilbert said, his voice a little rough. He set the tea-cup down again, more securely, then unknotted the sash at his waist, shrugged off the robe. "Won't you make a little room for me...Mrs. Blythe? It's perishing cold out here," he said with a laugh and took her in his warm, bare arms. She laid her head against his shoulder and allowed herself to dream in the sunshine, allowed him to finish the cup of tea, watching as he carefully put his lips where hers had been, the first kiss he would give her that day.
