Texas Twilight Read Online Free PDF

you’re up.”
    Lily came close. “Yes, a new bed in a new
town. You know.”
    “Yes, indeed I do,” Harriett said, scooting
up. She positioned her pillow behind her back and leaned against
the shiny brass headboard. “That’s exactly what you said your first
day here in America. I’m sorry, dear. I can say it had little
effect on my sleep, though.” She reached out and stroked Lily’s
hair. “Tell me what’s troubling you.”
    Lily didn’t have the heart to voice her
concerns. She knew her aunt would never hurt her intentionally or
break the law in any way. She was just going to have to be patient,
until she could figure this out on her own. She wouldn’t burden her
aunt’s already weighted shoulders.
    “I just feel bad Abigail is dead. She was
such a wonderful person.” She felt her eyes well up but blinked
them back. “Now she’s gone. And the two men. How can people be so
cruel?”
    “That’s a question I don’t have an answer
for. It’s strange, isn’t it? How humans can protect their own with
such fierceness and loyalty, yet not blink an eye when it comes to
destroying someone else. I wish I knew, Lily. I really do.”
    Harriett flipped the cover back and swung her
spindly legs over the bed. Her pink flannel nightgown swirled
around her feet as she went behind the dressing screen and used the
chamber pot. A moment later sounds of water pouring and splashing,
then quiet. “Let’s go get a nice cup of hot coffee downstairs and
then go and see what kinds of things our new home has to offer,”
she called past the blue and white gingham fabric stretched taut on
the wooden frame. “How does that sound?”
    “Fine.”
    Harriett peeked around the screen. “Just
fine? Would you rather have a hot cocoa and strudel?”
    Lily smiled at her aunt’s efforts to cheer
her up. She went to her trunk and debated on which dress to put on.
“I doubt they have strudel here,” she responded as she took off her
nightshirt and donned her undergarments. Gathering yards of blue
material she pulled her dress over her head and took a moment of
shifting this way and that, to get it straight.
    “Perhaps John McCutcheon, with his flashing
green eyes, will be at the restaurant this morning. I think that
would cheer you up.”
    Lily was fixing her hair but stopped to gape
at the screen in the reflection of the mirror. “What are you
saying? You heard him speak of Miss Emmeline Jordan. He’s engaged
to be married.”
    “I’m saying I’m getting hungrier by the
second. If I don’t have my coffee soon, and maybe some toast, I’m
going to evaporate into thin air and float away.” Lily heard a bang
and a swish and then a scooting sound. “There. I’m ready.”
    Tante Harriett came around the screen dressed
for the day. She picked up her parasol and her small hand-clutch,
then stuffed a white cotton kerchief up the sleeve of her dress.
She went to the door and waited patiently.
    It was amazing how fast her elderly aunt
could get ready. Lily pushed away a wispy golden strand that was
dancing before her eyes and hurried to the door.
    Tante Harriett took Lily’s hands into her
own. “I don’t want you worrying about a thing, child. I can see it
in your pretty blue eyes that you’re pining away about something,
and that only sets off my anxiety and makes me dizzy. You don’t
want to do that, do you?”
    Of course Lily didn’t want to distress her.
Fine, then. Until something horrible happened she’d put her
suspicions aside and consider this a new chapter in her life. She’d
read novels about the wild American West when she was a little
girl. She’d dreamt about the handsome cowboys and the ruthless
outlaws. Today she’d concentrate on all the new things in her
life.
     
     
    John was finishing his breakfast of sliced
beef, potatoes and gravy, and a cup of strong coffee when Dustin
came through the front door. He hung his Stetson on a peg and
pulled up a chair opposite John, next to his sister Becky.
    Dustin