Belle Âme ~ Gilbert Blythe

"I disrupt the order of everything they know by simply being black."

"I'm sure they'll get over it. "

Annabelle Marie Clement had been taught to never forget the colour of her skin, because no one else would.

Her Clement blood granted her station higher than anyone else's of her colouring but it did not grant her the same unquestioned privilege that her white cousin would receive, and Annabelle accepted that.

She accepted that people would stare whenever she set up in public, she accepted that her worth was determined by her wealth alone, and she accepted the fact that her blackness would be the most important thing about her and that it would warrant discrimination. So why couldn't Gilbert Blythe?

When she and her family moved their belongings from London to the small situation of Prince Edward Island for her uncles retirement she did not expect to stay long, she did not expect to make friends and she certainly didn't mean for a small-town boy to make such an impact on her that falling in love became so unavoidable.