Free The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story by Theodora Goss

Knight
.”
    “Your translation?” She looked puzzled.
    “The one nobody heard about. You know what Oxford University Press told me? There wasn’t enough scholarly interest in such an obscure Cornish poem. Three years later, they published the translation by Thomas Holbrook.” Who was an idiot, and whose interpretations were sometimes ridiculously inaccurate. He grimaced. “Well, at least my translation got me out of graduate school. And into Bartlett.”
    It still bothered him that his translation had been superseded. That scholars like Evelyn used Holbrook in their research. But that was all right, he thought later, walking across campus.They’d set a date for dinner, and when he looked inside his copy of
Green Thoughts
he saw that the inscription said:
To Brendan, with love. Evelyn
.
    I t was another two weeks before they found the time to drive to Richmond for a real date. In the meantime, they had lunch together, walked around campus together. He was starting to wonder if she thought of him as anything more than a friend. But he was too nervous to ask—or to take her in his arms and kiss her, although each time he saw her, he thought about what it would be like. And then he remembered her screaming and running away.
    They had an early dinner at a restaurant in Richmond. He’d been worried that the conversation might be awkward, but they talked as though they had known each other for years. He told her about his father’s death and selling the bookstore.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said. “That must have been difficult. You know, I tried to send you a letter there once. I guess it never reached you. Maybe it was after your father died.”
    “It must have been,” he said. “I would certainly have written back to you, Evelyn.”
    “Then you weren’t angry?” she asked. How beautiful she looked in the flickering candlelight. He was reminded once again of how he had once thought of her: Queen Elowen, by John William Waterhouse.
    “I could never be angry with you,” he said, taking her hand across the table.
    Afterward, they drove to the Museum of Fine Arts. In the gift shop, he saw a notebook with Waterhouse’s
The Lady of Shalott
reproduced on the cover. It reminded him so much of her—thesame auburn hair, the same line of cheek and jaw—that he bought it for her, despite the depressing subject matter. “For your poetry,” he said. “Just don’t pay attention to any curses, all right?”
    “ ‘The curse is come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott,’ ” she said. “I don’t think anyone hates me enough to curse me. Unless it’s the student I might have to flunk this semester!”
    Afterward, he walked her up to her porch. “Evelyn,” he said, “is it safe to kiss you? I’ve been holding off, you know. Worried you would run away again.”
    “I’m not going to run away,” she said. “I promise.”
    “All right.” He put his hand on her cheek, leaned down, put his lips on hers. Tentatively at first, waiting for her to draw back. But she didn’t draw back.
    Instead, she said, “Do you want to come in?”
    This was the moment. He had to tell her about Isabel. He should have told her earlier, at dinner, during one of those pauses that happen in even the best conversations. But he had not.
    She was looking up at him, waiting for an answer. They hadn’t turned on the porch light, and her eyes were dark, like the sea. He wanted to drown in them.
    “Yes, I want to come in. Most definitely.”
    She turned and opened the door. He followed her up the narrow stairs to the bedroom. There, he kissed her again, neck, shoulders, unbuttoning the blouse he’d imagined unbuttoning all through dinner, tossing it on the floor. Since Isabel’s accident, there had been no one, and he wondered if he would remember how to unhook a bra, how to make a woman cry out with pleasure. But his fingers remembered, traveled along the curves of her body as though it were a landscape he had known all his life. He