Twin Willows: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

into her eyes. “If I tell you what I might do, will you agree to keep it to yourself?”
    A shiver completely unrelated to the cold moved down Anna’s spine as she realized that Stuart Martin was about to tell her something that he would probably not even discuss with his aunt. “Of course,” she said faintly.
    With fascination, Anna noticed for the first time the steady pulse beating in Stuart’s temple. Had it always been so visible, or was she just now seeing it because of the heightened sensations she felt in his presence?
    When he continued to be silent, Anna laid her hand lightly on his coat sleeve. “It’s all right if you’d rather not tell me—I understand.”
    Stuart covered her hand with his and stared intently into Anna’s eyes as if testing the truth of her words. “I believe you do, at that,” he said. “So many do not.”
    “It is the same with me,” Anna said quietly. “Many people don’t understand my existence. Sometimes I think they wonder why I should be living at all.”
    A look of anger passed over Stuart’s features, and he shook his head slightly. “The world is full of ignorant people, Miss McKnight. Sometimes I think I’m being presumptuous to assume that I can teach them better, but perhaps that may be my call.”
    “I thought you didn’t want to be a teacher,” Anna said.
    “I said I would never teach here. Your father first put an idea into my mind that has stayed.”
    Anna looked puzzled. “My father? What did he say?”
    “As you know, your father and I became very good friends. Sharing rations and quarters, we had many opportunities to speak frankly, as men are apt to do before battles they’re not sure they’ll survive. At such a time he told me about your mother, and how some members of his own family—he didn’t name them—had cut him off when he married her because they thought of Silverwillow as a subhuman savage.”
    At Anna’s sharp intake of breath, Stuart stopped, concern apparent in his expression. “I feared my words would be hurtful,” he said.
    “No,” Anna managed to say. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before about—savages.”
    “Of course, your father said that the aunt who brought you up didn’t feel that way,” Stuart hastened to add.
    Anna nodded. “Yes, Aunt Agnes never differentiated between me and her own children. But I’ve heard such things from others, even my own cousins, all my life. I try not to let it bother me, but I do feel sad that people can be so cruel.”
    Stuart took her hand in his and gently pressed it. “Exactly what I thought when your father told me about it. Then he suggested I should consider living on the frontier, as he has done.”
    “Your aunt would not approve,” Anna said.
    Stuart pulled the corners of his mouth down in an imitation of Miss Martin’s perpetual expression. “Aunt Matilda hasn’t liked anything I’ve ever done—she’s unlikely to start now. Anyway, she cannot control my future.”
    “What would you do if you went West?” For a moment, Anna allowed herself to imagine Stuart Martin in buckskins. She liked the picture.
    Stuart took his hand from hers again. “I would like to start my own school, but that will take more money than I have now. I might stay on at Princeton and tutor for a time when my own studies are completed. Then I’d like to cross the mountains and see the Northwest Territory,” he said.
    Where I was born
? Anna’s thought answered her unspoken question and finished what his own words had not. “It’s still wilderness out there,” she said, more distantly than she intended.
    “It will grow less so in time. Anyway, all that’s still far in the future. That’s one reason nothing must be said about it now.”
    Anna’s eyes silently reinforced her spoken words. “I understand. You can trust me.”
    For a moment Anna and Stuart gazed into each other’s eyes, aware that something important had passed between them, but not quite understanding its true