Twin Willows: A Novel (5 page)

P
HILADELPHIA

Several more times, always in the presence of his aunt, Stuart Martin helped Anna with her Latin studies. They seldom had the opportunity to speak privately, and Anna thought that Stuart must prefer it that way.

As was the custom in most Philadelphia households, Christmas Day was quietly observed. Greenery garlands hung at the front door and over the fireplace in the sitting room, filling the room with a pleasant fragrance that reminded Anna of the woods around her former home. In honor of the day, Cook Nancy prepared a feast of roast duckling for their noon meal. After the plates had been removed, Miss Martin invited her to join them as she presided at a brief gift-exchanging ceremony.

Following a long-standing tradition, Miss Martin gave the cook a pair of mittens, and Stuart and Anna both received linen handkerchiefs, his boasting his initials, and hers with an edging of tatted lace.

In anticipation of the occasion, Anna had fashioned felt pen wipers for Miss Martin and her nephew, and knitted woolen stockings for the cook, whose basement quarters were cold and dank. Anna had also made a mohair muffler for Stuart from yarn laboriously unraveled from a shawl that she seldom wore, but Anna thought she should wait to give it to him when his aunt wasn’t present.

“Thank you, Miss McKnight,” Stuart said when he received the felt pen wiper. “I seem to use a great many of these.” Then he handed her a small, stringtied parcel. “I thought you might like to have this.”

Anna didn’t look at Miss Martin, but she felt certain that the schoolmistress was regarding her nephew with disapproval. Anna’s hands trembled slightly as she untied the string and the paper slipped away to reveal a dog-eared copy of Caesar’s
Commentaries on the Gallic Wars
.

“I cannot accept this,” she said quickly. “It should stay here for all of Miss Martin’s students to use.”

“This is my personal copy, not the school’s, Miss McKnight. I hope that it will encourage you to continue your studies.”

“In that case, I thank you, Mr. Martin,” Anna murmured.

“As well she should,” Matilda Martin said shortly.

“I count it a privilege to be able to give gifts. Last year at this time, Colonel McKnight and I weren’t certain we’d be alive to see another Christmas,” Stuart said.

He looked at Anna and wished he could say more about that time, but his aunt’s presence prevented him from doing so. More than once in the past few days, he had wondered what Ian McKnight would say if he knew how Stuart was beginning to feel about Anna. They had been the closest possible friends, but Ian probably still thought of his daughter as the child she had been the last time he’d seen her. He’d no doubt be pleasantly surprised to see how beautiful Anna was becoming—

His aunt’s voice put a quick end to Stuart’s woolgathering. “We must prepare to leave now for our holiday gathering, nephew. Miss McKnight, I trust that you will take this opportunity to retire to your studies.”

“Yes, Miss Martin,” Anna said.

When his aunt went to get her cloak, Stuart turned to Anna. “I wish you could go with us. You shouldn’t have to stay here alone today.”

“I don’t mind—I’m used to being by myself,” Anna assured him. She could have added that even if she had been invited, she had no wish to endure the stares of his relatives—the mixture of curiosity and disapproval she knew so well.

“Nevertheless—”

Whatever Stuart might have said was cut short by Miss Martin’s reappearance. With a curt nod to Anna, he took his aunt’s arm and escorted her from the room.

“Will you be needin’ anything else, Miss McKnight?” Cook Nancy’s question startled Anna, who was still thinking about Stuart.

“No, thank you. I believe I’ll sit by the fire and read for a while.”

“Then if you don’t mind, I’m off to me friend Molly’s. Her folks give her the day off and she asked me to come by, had I the chance.”

“Go along, and don’t worry about getting back for supper. I can make do with leftovers from the larder.”

The servant’s weathered face creased in a grateful smile. “Thank you, missy. Mayhap I can bring you a sweetmeat back from her mistress’s house. They be fine folks, an’ keep a good table.”

Unlike your stingy mistress
, Anna thought. She knew Nancy was too loyal to utter such a thing.

A few minutes later Anna heard the cook leave. She put down the book she had been only half reading and went to the front window. The fair and sunny day had brought out many people in their holiday satin and velvet finery to walk in the narrow street past Miss Martin’s.

“Where are they all going, I wonder?” Anna asked aloud. The ticking of Miss Martin’s stately old grandfather clock was the only reply she heard. For a fleeting moment she wished that she, too, had somewhere to go, and someone like Stuart—no, Stuart himself—to take her there. The notion passed, and Anna turned from the window and mounted the stairs to her attic room.

From its hiding place she took the scarf that she had knitted for Stuart, and wrapped it in the same paper that had covered her book. She went back down the stairs to the second floor, where Miss Martin and Stuart occupied adjoining rooms.

Feeling like an intruder, Anna entered Stuart’s room. She winced and started guiltily when the door groaned on its hinges; then she smiled at her own foolishness. “No one else is in this house,” she said aloud. Her voice sounded strange and hollow as it echoed against the walls of the sparsely furnished chamber.

Stuart had neatly spread the counterpane atop his bed, and the clothing he apparently meant to take back to Princeton was carefully stacked on top of his plain chest of drawers. Anna first put her package underneath two of his linen shirts, then decided to put a note on the package, and withdrew it.

Dipping one of Stuart’s quills into his inkstand, she wrote, “From Anna Willow McKnight, with thanks, Christmas, 1781.” She waited for the ink to dry, then rewrapped the mohair scarf and put it inside one of the shirts in the middle of the stack, where Stuart wouldn’t likely notice it until he unpacked his things at Princeton. Anna had just turned to leave when she heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

Her heart stopped.
I didn’t lock the door after the cook left
, was her first thought. Yet the steady tread on the stairs didn’t sound like that of a furtive burglar, but rather of someone who was perfectly at ease with being there and who knew exactly where he was going. For an instant Anna stood frozen where she stood, but as the steps grew closer, she started toward the door, intending to close it.

Just as she reached the door, Anna saw a man’s figure mount the final stair and stride toward Miss Martin’s room. When he raised his head, Anna found herself staring into Stuart Martin’s violet eyes, now opened wide in surprise.

For an instant neither spoke. Then Anna recovered and walked into the hall toward him, leaving the door to his room open. “You frightened me.”

Stuart folded his arms across his chest and stared at her, his face a dull red. “I could say the same thing, Miss McKnight. Might I ask what you were doing in my room?”

Anna looked at the floor, and wished that it would open and swallow her up and thus relieve her of the warm tide of embarrassment that engulfed her entire body. “I’m sorry, Mr. Martin,” she managed to say. “I feared I wouldn’t see you before you left tomorrow. I put a package for you with your things,” she added, half turning to gesture toward the stack of clothing where she had placed the scarf. “I was just about to leave when I heard footsteps. I thought you must be a burglar.”

“Well, I could have been, at that,” Stuart said. “Did you know that the back door was all but standing wide open?”

Stuart’s mild tone encouraged Anna to look at him. “No, Mr. Martin. I didn’t check it when the cook left.”

“Cook Nancy’s gone to her friend Molly’s, I suppose,” Stuart said.

“Yes, Mr. Martin.” Then another thought struck Anna. “Why did you come back? Has something happened to Miss Martin?”

“Not unless you count a spell of forgetfulness. Aunt Matilda had gifts to take to our relatives, but she left them in her room. I’ve returned with orders to fetch them.”

“Oh,” Anna said. She stood where she was, feeling awkward, while Stuart Martin regarded her with obvious amusement.

“You wouldn’t make a very good criminal,” he told her. “Anyone who can look as guilty as you do over nothing would surely give herself away if she ever tried anything really underhanded.”

“If I look guilty, I am sure I deserve to,” Anna said stiffly. “I shouldn’t have entered your room without permission.”

“Granted, but in this case, the cause was just. May I open the package?”

Anna nodded, and Stuart walked past her into his room. He looked around but saw nothing, and turned back to her with a puzzled expression.

“It’s inside the third shirt from the top,” she explained. “I thought if I put it there, you wouldn’t see it until you were well away from here.”

Stuart withdrew the package and opened it. “Why would you ever want to hide such a useful gift?” he asked, admiring her handiwork. “Its warmth will come in quite handy on my trip to New York.”

Anna stood in the doorway and watched with pleasure as Stuart looped the muffler around his neck. “I didn’t think Miss Martin would approve of my giving it to you,” she said.

“
Honi soit qui mal y pense
, ” Stuart murmured.

“I don’t understand what you just said. Is it Latin?” Anna asked.

“No, but it’s close. In French it means ‘evil to him who evil thinks.’ Sometimes Aunt Matilda seems to look for wrong where none exists.”

“I see,” said Anna, not knowing how else to respond to Stuart’s criticism of his aunt.

“Anyway, I’m glad I had to come back, so I can thank you properly for the muffler. A letter couldn’t have told you half so well how much I like it.”

“I made it with yarn from one of my old shawls—I hope you don’t mind.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Stuart said. “I assure you that I will get much good use from it—and think of you each time I wear it.”

Although Stuart had spoken matter-of-factly, his words brought a flush of color to Anna’s cheeks, and she turned away from him as he left his room and closed the door behind him.

“I was hoping I might see you when I came back,” Stuart said. “I’ll be leaving quite early in the morning, and it may be a long while before I’m free to return to Philadelphia.”

Anna’s face reflected her concern. “At least you’ll be back for the Commencement exercises, won’t you?”

Anna felt her heart lurch as Stuart took both of her hands in his and held them loosely. He looked steadily into her eyes. “I hope to, but I must make the money my father left me last a long time. If I can find suitable employment during the rest of the school term, I’ll have to take it, even if it means I can’t come back to Philadelphia as often as I’d like.”

“I’ll finish here in June,” Anna said.

“I know. I’ll be sorry to lose my best pupil.”

Anna’s eyes filled with tears as she realized the futility of any hope that this man might ever want her to share his life. Surely, she told herself, if Stuart Martin felt about her the way she was beginning to feel about him, he would vow to return to see her, no matter what the cost.

“And I’ll be sorry to lose my best teacher,” Anna managed to say.

Stuart released her hands and backed away with a sigh. “I’m afraid I must get back to Aunt Matilda before she sends the Watch after me.”

Anna’s voice wavered only slightly. “Yes, I know.”

Stuart put his hand on his aunt’s door, and Anna turned toward the stairs to her attic room, already thinking of how much she would miss him.

“Wait—” Stuart called.

Anna turned to face him, aware of the sudden pounding of her heart.

“Yes?”

Stuart regarded her intently. “I’ll leave about six tomorrow morning.”

Anna felt her face grow warm, and she wondered what he expected her to say. Fearful that she might misspeak, she merely nodded.

Once more he walked toward her. He took her into his arms and kissed her full on the lips almost before she had time to realize what was happening. Then he released her.

“Good-bye, Anna,” he said, and with a farewell wave, Stuart turned and entered his aunt’s room.

Almost as shocked that he had called her by her first name as that he had kissed her, Anna breathlessly turned and fled up the stairs to her attic room.

In the privacy of her own room, she wonderingly touched her fingertips to her lips.
I mustn’t be foolish
, she told herself sternly. Stuart had kissed her, but what did it mean? However, he had all but invited her to see him off. Anna knew with certainty that Miss Martin wouldn’t approve. On the other hand, seeing Stuart again was worth incurring his aunt’s wrath.

Elation and confusion warred within her as she sat alone in her room for the rest of the afternoon, thinking of Stuart’s kiss, and of the time they had spent together in the past few days. But by the time she heard the Martins coming back from their visiting, Anna knew what she must do.

The sun had not risen when Anna, fully dressed and carrying her shoes, crept down the stairs in her stockinged feet. She stopped in the dining room to put on her slippers, and heard a floorboard creak behind her. She turned, ready to invent some excuse for being caught downstairs before daylight.

Even in the predawn dimness, Anna realized with relief that the approaching figure was far too tall to be Miss Martin. When Stuart came closer, he raised a finger to his lips to caution silence, then took Anna’s arm and guided her through the back hallway to the rear door, where he stopped beside his luggage.

Without speaking, Stuart took Anna into his arms and drew her head down to rest on his shoulder. Heedless of the rough cloth of his cloak against her cheek, Anna felt a peace and contentment that she’d never before known.

After a long moment, Stuart spoke quietly. “I wasn’t certain you’d come.”

“I wasn’t certain you wanted me to.”

In reply Stuart tightened his embrace, and Anna raised her arms to circle his neck. Stuart kissed her again, this time with a great deal more feeling and for much longer than he had the evening before. He drew back briefly, then tightened his hold even further and kissed her again. This time, Anna kissed him back with equal passion. They stood thus for several long moments, their bodies pressed together, until Stuart put his hands on Anna’s shoulders and took a half step away from her. “I should never have done that—forgive me.”