Twin Willows: A Novel by Kay Cornelius Page A

his carelessly knotted stock revealed that he’d probably dressed in haste when Helen Barfield summoned him to meet her.
    Mr. Duward stopped a few paces from the tavern and abruptly reached out to pull off the white mobcap covering Anna’s hair.
    Anna gasped, too surprised to protest.
    “Your skin is dark, and you’ve the hair and eyes to match it,” he said. “You don’t look much like any of the Barfields, either. How do you come to be related to them, Mistress McKnight?”
    “We are first cousins,” Anna said with as much civility as she could muster. “My father and their mother were brother and sister.”
    Silas Duward folded his arms across his chest and riveted her with his gaze. “What about your mother? From the looks of it, I’d wager your dam’s no white woman.”
    Anna held her chin a little higher and looked down on him. “My mother was a Delaware, Mr. Duward. She died at my birth.”
    Mr. Duward unfolded his arms and thrust Anna’s cap into her right hand. “Mistress Barfield neglected to tell me that.”
    “Does my Indian blood concern you?” Although the answer was already obvious, Anna felt the need to make him admit it.
    Silas Duward’s face darkened. “My children will never be taught by a savage, Miss McKnight. We have nothing further to discuss. Good day.”
    He turned to walk away, but Anna held the sleeve of his frock coat, forcing him turn back and face her again.
    “Look at me, sir. Do I really appear so savage that you would deny your children access to the knowledge I could pass on to them?”
    Mr. Duward pursed his lips, then jerked his sleeve away from her and brushed the fabric as if her touch had soiled it. “Perhaps Mrs. Barfield neglected to tell you that my children have no mother because raiding savages scalped her and left her dying on our door-stone. They’d have done the same to the children, had they not hidden themselves as they’d been taught to do. Since then, they’ve been in perfect terror of all Indians.”
    “I can understand how you feel, sir, but surely if the children and I could just meet—”
    “They’ll stay ignorant of all but what I can teach them before I’d subject them to the likes of you. Good day, miss.”
    As Silas Duward strode away, Anna shook her head at the man’s blind prejudice and wondered what Stuart Martin would say to him.
    Oh, Stuart, if only you were here
, Anna thought forlornly. Slowly she walked back to the livery stable, not eager to deliver her bad news.
    The next day, Helen Barfield’s sour mood encouraged Anna to stay out of her way. Telling Helen that she was going for walk, Anna crossed the creek that had divided the McKnight and Barfield land. Through a path that had all but grown over, she reached the cabin, abandoned many years past, where her father and Aunt Agnes had lived as children. Its roof sagged and its rock chimneys were crumbling, but the cabin still stood on a rise in the middle of the land that Agnes had brought to William Barfield as her dower. The old cabin was crude compared to the Barfield house, yet in her childhood it had offered her peace and a place of refuge from her cousins. Anna always liked to pretend that the cabin belonged to her, even though she knew better.
    This day, Anna looked at the cabin with a critical eye. A few basic repairs would make it habitable, she decided. She’d ask Henry about fixing it up for her to live in. He and James might grumble about doing the work, but Anna suspected that for once Helen would be her ally in the matter.
    Her inspection completed, Anna sat sideways on the doorstone and leaned back against the still-sturdy doorframe. She had brought along the book that Stuart Martin had given her, not so much to read as to have a tangible reminder of him. She traced the lettering on the cover with her forefinger and pictured Stuart in her mind’s eye. At first, she had almost been afraid of him. Now she could scarcely believe how bold her love for Stuart Martin