The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story Read Online Free Page A

interested in running the bookstore. My father was disappointed, but I couldn’t stay in Clews. Too much of the world I wanted to see. Although I never thought I’d end up at Bartlett College, in the crown colony of Virginia.”
    “Why did you?” He seemed incongruous here, with his accent, although it was less pronounced than she remembered. The brown hair was still thick, although there were a few gray strands running through it, and the green eyes still crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
    He was smiling now. “Fate, perhaps? Allowing us to meet again? Listen, assuming you get this position, which you will, can I take you out to dinner to celebrate?”
    “Um, sure.” She smiled back. That was one thing they’d never done together in Clews: go out on an actual date.
    “Terrific. I’ll see you in September.” As she drove back to the Richmond airport, she felt a sort of warm glow.
Why does the thought of having dinner with Brendan Thorne make me so happy?
she wondered. And yet it did.
    E velyn rented a house in Coleville, where Bartlett College was located. Slowly, she settled into her new routine. It was completely different from teaching at Columbia. In the mornings, she woke to the sound of birdsong and drank her coffee on the front porch. Then she drove to the college. No subway, no picking up a quick breakfast at the diner. At Columbia, her students had come from New York, California, Singapore. Here they came from Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee. Many were the first in their families to go to college. She liked their accents, their earnestness.
    Her office, in a building that had stood there for a hundred years, looked out onto a courtyard with an ancient oak tree and a lawn where undergraduates made out. She looked at them wistfully. It had been so long since she’d been romantically involved with anyone. There hadn’t been anyone in her life, not in a serious way, since David. She’d been so focused on writing her dissertation, on being a good teacher, that she had entirely neglected that part of herself. Perhaps she shouldn’t have? She thought of brown hair and green eyes that crinkled at the corners. She’d been at Bartlett for a week but had heard nothing from Brendan Thorne.
    “Dr. Morgan, I presume?” And there he was, standing in her doorway, dressed in corduroys and a Fair Isle sweater, looking not much older than he had in Clews. “I believe I invited you to dinner.”
    “You did. And where in Coleville are you planning to take me?” She had learned on the first day to pronounce it
Covil
, although it still confused her that Talliafero Hall, where the English department was located, was pronounced
Tolliver
.
    “Surely you jest, my lady. I’m planning on driving you to Richmond, so we can have dinner at a proper restaurant, not the Pancake House. And, by the way, would you do me the honor ofsigning my copy of
Green Thoughts
?” He held out her book. “I had no idea you’d written this, E. R. Morgan. Every third poet is named Morgan in Cornwall. I bought it when it was first published. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for years.”
    She laughed. “Well, thanks. I’m glad you like it.”
    “What does the
R
stand for?”
    “Rose, actually. It was my grandmother’s name. Terribly sentimental, isn’t it?”
    “It’s rather nice,” he said. “Evelyn Rose. It suits you.” She blushed and opened her book. On the flyleaf she wrote,
To Brendan, with love. Evelyn
. And then wondered what in the world had possessed her to write something so personal. But it was too late now. She’d written it in pen and couldn’t simply cross it out.
    “How are classes going?” he asked.
    “All right. I like the students. They’re quieter than the ones at Columbia, less willing to raise their hands. I feel as though they’re afraid they’ll give the wrong answers.”
    “Yes, as if in literature there were any right answers.” He sat on a corner of her desk. “You know, I worried that