Read Online No Other Love by Isabel Morin - Free Book Online

she said, glad for the opportunity to make another ally. Besides, she enjoyed her sessions with Lydia and could never turn down anyone who wanted to learn to read.
    They had their first lesson the very next afternoon. It being too warm in the servants’ hall, they settled themselves on a horse blanket under the shade of a maple tree near the carriage house. With a sheepish grin Charlie produced a bible given him by his mother.
    Charlie was an eager student and Rose found that she possessed an endless amount of patience when it came to teaching. She didn’t mind if it took ten minutes for him to get through a single paragraph, and she recited passages for him to copy, repeating herself as many times as was necessary.
    Word of their lessons spread, and within two weeks several of the farmhands who worked at Cider Hill had approached her and asked if they might join them. Delighted, Rose agreed and soon had eight students she met throughout the week for lessons.
    In the evenings, when not reading with Lydia, she read and re-read letters Vivian had given her from Aunt Olivia and Will. Her aunt wrote of how well the crops were growing, a runaway cow that had managed to travel ten miles before being caught, and the new schoolhouse that would be raised within the month. She had always loved the parties for raising buildings, when people from miles around ate and drank and danced after the walls went up. She missed laughing.
    It was at just such an event that she met Will. He came from a good family with a thriving farm, was shy but not afraid to approach her. She enjoyed his company, found him sincere and comfortable to talk to. But whereas his eyes lit up every time he caught sight of her, she was never more than pleased to see him.
    He was handsome and kind, with a gentle manner, and he genuinely wanted to know what she thought. Only she somehow could never talk to him about the things that mattered to her. When she spoke of her former life in Boston he seemed at a loss, puzzled and worried that her life did not already contain all she could want. The way he spoke of his farm she knew he loved the land, and she envied him the certainty he had of his place in the world.
    When Will suggested they might one day marry, Rose went home to talk to her father. She found him in the barn, sitting on a bale of hay and mending a piece of tack in the sunlight from the open door. Though it was a story she knew well, she asked him how he and her mother had fallen in love, something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. But she listened now with a woman’s heart and wondered if she would be giving up on that kind of happiness. And if so, would she find another kind in return?
    “Everyone has to decide for themselves what they want, Rose,” her father had said in that quiet, thoughtful way of his. “You’ll know it when you find it, and it may not be the same as what your mother and I had. You may need to be brave enough to see it for what it is.”
    All she’d wanted at that moment was to remain in the warmth and safety of her father’s presence, breathing in the sweet smell of hay as the goats shuffled in a nearby pen and cows lowed in the field below. But life did not stand still. Everyone had to grow up and make their choices.
    Perhaps growing up meant giving up on childish ideas of love. Few people had what her parents had. They were lucky, luckier than most, but wasn’t she lucky to have found a man like Will? Maybe it was foolish to expect more than that.
    A couple of women told her she’d be a fool to pass him by, and that one day she’d regret it. She even overheard one woman say that Rose thought she was too good to be a farmer's wife, coming as she did from Boston with her city manners, her Latin and French. Rose didn’t think she was too good for Will, but she wondered if maybe she had gotten foolish ideas in her head. She wasn’t so special, and she could do a lot worse than marry him. But three weeks later her