Baker - G. BLYTHE

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-ˋˏ *.·:·. [ONE WEEK LATER] .·:·.* ˎˊ-

GILBERT HAD GONE INTO CHARLOTTETOWN ONE COLD MORNING. Charlotte had planned to have the day alone with her thoughts, maybe go for a walk or pick up writing stories again as she much enjoyed writing them with Anne. Her original plans quickly changed when Anne Shirley Cuthbert came hustling into the bakery with a determined look on her face. Anne practically dragged the girl out of the house, still wearing her apron, saying that she had spent far too long with Gilbert not in school. Anne took Charlotte to Green Gables and gave her a very enthusiastic tour of the place she called home. It was a very beautiful functional farm and she could clearly see why Anne loved it so much. The two sat in her gable room, talking and playing imaginary games which they later wrote stories for. As much as she hated to admit it, she had been feeling very out of the loop with the goings-on with the girls. She knew she had to be there for Gilbert for as long as he needed it and she hadn't a problem with that, she just missed the girls more than she thought she would have. Missing a friend was a foreign feeling to her, one which she welcomed even though it caused her pain, it told her she had friends to miss.

"When are you coming back to school? Josie Pye is getting to be unbearable and you usually know how to deal with her plus we all miss you terribly," Anne asked as they walked out of Green Gables since it was time for her to return home.

"I don't know Anne, Gilbert's still a little off and I want to be there for him," she replied, laughing slightly at the comment about Josie Pye who was certainly unmissed by Charlotte. She would never take a liking to that girl, first impressions were everything and she had made a particularly horrid one.

"Anne, who's your friend?" A voice completely unfamiliar to Charlotte interrupted their conversation. She looked from Anne to a boy dressed in farming clothes, this must be the french boy that Anne had told her about.

"Charlotte Rayhill, her family own the bakery," Anne replied stopping on the dirt path with heavier footing than before. The boy rested against a tool used for picking up hay, she knew it was hay since he currently had a strand laying on his shoulder (she of course gestured to it and he wiped it off.)

"Jerry," he introduced, extending a hand for her to shake, which she did without a second thought. "Jerry Bernard." He carried such an accent, an accent that Charlotte loved entirely. Her mother had tried to teach her French and they had laughed at her attempt at the accent and how terrible it was.

"Lovely to meet you, Jerry," she smiled softly at the french boy putting his face to the many stories Anne had told her about him. Jerry tipped his hat towards the two of them then went back to do whatever he was doing on the farm. The two girls linked arms and continued walking down the path out of Green Gables.

"He doesn't seem as terrible as you made him sound Anne," Anne chose to ignore the comment and walked Charlotte halfway to her house, the two hugged goodbye and then walked off in their opposite directions. Charlotte got to work in the bakery as soon as she walked through the door as it was in the middle of the usual boom of customers around this time of day.

Gilbert walked into the kitchen a few hours later, having expertly dodged her Mother and smiled at Charlotte, momentarily forgetting his day. She looked deep in thought over one of the old, clearly very used recipe books which took up most of the space on the kitchen shelf. Charlotte was converting a recipe for an ordered cake and looked up from her piece of paper having finally noticed Gilbert. She smiled at him and then went back to what she was doing, a few seconds passed and she looked back up with a confused look on her face. Concern and worry ran through her veins, furrowing her eyebrows and quickening her heart rate as she looked at the bruise under his eye and the small split in his cheek.

"Gilbert wha-"

"It's nothing, no need to panic," he interrupted, quickly coming out of his sort of daze. From what Billy looked like, he guessed that he had a few bruises but nothing too terrible. Charlotte of course saw the injuries as worse than they actually were, being slightly dramatic and all.

"You're bleeding of course I'm going to panic, come here," she gestured towards the kitchen stool. He sighed knowing full well she wouldn't take no for an answer then walked to sit on the chair. She took a fresh cloth from the box and ran it underneath the water pump, she looked him over once more and then began to press the old cloth against his face. "What happened?" she asked carefully cleaning the dried blood from the small cut, making sure he didn't cause him any pain.

"Billy Andrews, he said some things about Anne. Then when I ignored him, he went to talk about you," he responded, looking very intently at the freckles which covered her nose. He tried to think of things that he could say instead of the complete truth, the insults were ones he didn't want to have to repeat to her.

"What did he say?" she asked softly, taking extra care as she got closer to the marks around his eyes. His gaze shifted from watching her focused expression to a chip in the wooden flooring.

"I don't think-"

"Gilbert Blythe, you tell me what he said!" she exclaimed, growing impatient as her hand dropped from his face. She took a step back from him and squeezed the cloth in her hand. Gilbert noticing this and the fact that she had used his first and last name for the first time, quickly got to telling what had happened knowing that she had a rather short temper.

"He talked about you in school and about you being smarter than then he is, how that was annoying and he needed someone to 'put you in your place'. Then he said that you not being close friends with any of the girls meant something very bad about you and some other things that I don't care to ever repeat to you because they were all completely lies, everything he said was a lie."

She returned to gently dabbing at the bruises in complete silence with a hand resting on his shoulder, this action had Gilbert worrying to no end. He could practically see the gears turning over in her head, the action that would come from them was a complete mystery. "Did you get a good few hits in?" she asked nonchalantly, not breaking the focus.

"Yeah, I think so," replied letting out a light chuckle that whistled softly in his nose. He was, in all honesty, pretty pleased with the number of punches he got in unharmed. The words 'ugly Irish girl' had fueled the reaction and he still heard them ringing in his ears, Charlotte was far from ugly and hearing those words used in reaction to her just didn't sit right with him. Billy was horrid, everyone knew that but he had never thought he would be as bad as he actually was.

"Good, Billy Andrews needs to be taught not to say such horrid things," she replied putting the slightly bloodied cloth into the pile of ones to be cleaned. She quickly washed her hands under the pump then dried them on her apron. "Now, how about some of Miss Cuthbert's plum puffs?"

"Of course," Gilbert replied with a grin and hopped off the stool, following her to the bakery front. They both sneakily took a puff from the stand, whilst her mother wasn't looking, then ran as fast as possible up the wooden staircase to avoid her Mother's calls. Stolen food always tasted better anyway.