Jo Bhaer could hardly believe it had been six months already since she had first sat down with Nick Riley to teach him the wonders of the written word. Reluctant at first to admit that his world might be better for the knowledge that his employer offered him, Nick soon became an avid student, relishing the time he spent almost daily with this woman who was not only his teacher, but also his friend... and perhaps more.

On this night, as the fire crackled in the hearth, the moon shone brightly in the starlit sky and the children slept dreamfully upstairs as Jo sat by Nick's side, listening to him read. His speech was stilted from the effort it took to form the words, but the meaning behind each phrase was clear, no longer lost in the struggle to string letters together to form the images of thought.

"Your reading is coming along," Jo commended as she returned the now finished book to its rightful place among the library Laurie had provided for the children at Plumfield School. She let her fingers alight across the spines of several leather-bound volumes that she and her late husband Fritz had once read together and settled on a fairly new book by a female poet who had died not long ago.

Nick noticed Jo's particular affection for the book by the way she held it in her hands and he waited in silence for her to decide whether to share the secrets within. Finally, curiously, he asked her which book she had chosen. Jo didn't seem, at first, to hear the question, but then she blinked as if to awaken herself from a dream. She handed Nick the book which he leafed through carefully, knowing that it seemed to have a special significance to Jo.

"I think we'll try tackling some poetry," Jo began. "It can sometimes be a bit abstract, but I think you'll learn to appreciate the complexity and feeling behind it."

"Feelings I can handle," Nick replied. "Complexity, I'm not too sure about."

"Mother..." Robin's plaintive cry beckoned Jo upstairs to see what troubled her son. The nightmares he had once had almost nightly following his father's death came seldom now, but Jo felt obliged to comfort her child when he called, assuring him that she was there even if her husband could be there only in spirit and not in body. Nick watched Jo climb the stairs and looked back at the book in his lap only when he could no longer hear the rustling of her skirts on the stair case. He leafed through the pages once again, and began to read before he noticed a slip of paper that had fallen to the ground. The paper appeared tear stained, and at the very bottom he could barely make out the initials of the author: "J.B." Slowly, Nick read the words which he soon realized were a poem to someone now lost.

Nick folded the paper and tucked it back into the pages of the book, feeling as if he had just looked into the very heart of a place he had no right to be. Quietly, he gathered his things and left the house, leaving the book resting where he had just sat.

The next day, Nick left Plumfield for town even before Asia had started making breakfast for the children. "He didn't even have a bite to eat," Asia complained. Certainly, Nick was a grown man, but she sometimes felt like a mother not only to the children at the school, but also to the school's owner and its caretaker.

"I hope everything's all right," Jo said quietly thinking how she had come back down to the parlour the night before after checking on her son only to find an empty room. Nick had always waited for her before when she had gone to check on Robin, and she wondered what might have made him decide to abandon their lesson the previous evening. She had noticed that he had left the book of poetry and she held it now, having hoped that she would find Nick in the kitchen so that she could give it to him.

Asia topped up a plate of hot cakes and made her way to the dining room where some of the children were setting the table. "He seemed a bit down, if you ask me," she concluded on her way past Jo.

Jo looked pensively out the window and then down at the book. Breakfast would still be another few minutes, so she decided to leave the book on Nick's table out by the barn. Surely, he must just have forgotten it and would be glad to have it.

Without Nick working in the barn, everything seemed oddly quiet. Jo put the book down where he would find it next to the ink well, pen and paper she had bought him as a birthday gift. She was about to leave, when she noticed the childlike words scrawled on the top sheet. Against her better judgment, she stopped to read a few of the words.

Jo caught herself and pulled away, horrified that she would read someone's private words. Maybe they weren't meant for her to see even if she wanted to be pleased that Nick was trying to write his thoughts on paper.

Suddenly, catching her by surprise, Nick's door swung open. Jo turned to see who had come in and the book fell to the ground.

"I, um, forgot something," Nick said, his crystal blue eyes catching Jo's brown ones for just an instant before looking away.

Jo quickly picked up the book and held it out for Nick. "You forgot this last night. I thought I'd drop it by."

Nick hesitated, not making a move to take the book. Instead, both he and Jo seem to notice at the same instant that a piece of paper had fallen from its pages onto the floor. Nick picked it up and handed it to Jo. "It's a nice poem," he said, retreating to find the item he had forgotten before leaving that morning. "It's about your husband, isn't it?"

Jo looked down at the paper, trying not to let the tears of days past come to her eyes.

"You must still care for him a great deal," Nick continued. Jo did not often talk of her late husband, and even in the early days of their growing friendship, Nick had noticed that Jo would catch herself and change the subject whenever she mentioned Fritz and looked at him all in the same instant.

Finding what he thought he was looking for, Nick quickly made his way back to the door, not wanting to intrude anymore upon Jo's feelings. It was apparent to him that there would be no greater love for Jo than the one she had found with Fritz. The night before, Nick had been able to read one of the sonnets from the book the night before, one which appeared on a tear-stained and well-worn page, and he knew he could never hope to win the love of this woman. The sonnet was fresh in his mind, for even though his reading was poor, he remembered vividly those words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning that he had seen on the page.

"Nick, wait..." Jo stepped toward Nick, the slip of paper still in one hand and his writing pad in the other. "Read me what you wrote."

Nick looked down at the blots of ink that stained the paper he had laboured over the night before. His spelling was horrid, and he was embarrassed that maybe Jo might laugh.

"Please, read it to me," Jo asked again.

"It's just nonsense," Nick said defensively.

"It's not, I'm sure. Please, read it."

But instead of reading from the page, Nick's eyes gazed into Jo's as he recited his own words.

Jo's eyes filled with tears, and there was a moment of silence which hung expectantly between this man and woman.

"I'd better go," Nick said at last, and before Jo could speak, he was out the door.

Feeling spent, Jo sat by the door and cried, not only for the love she had lost when her husband had passed away, but for one which she knew hung precariously by her now. How could she ever show Nick that she felt for him the same way he felt for her?

That evening, after the children had gone to bed, Jo sat at her desk, writing words to console herself. Love seemed such an unpredictable emotion. Just when she thought she and Nick had come to understand each other's feelings, he turned away at the sight of a verse written before she had even known him. She would always have a place in her heart for Fritz, but even when Nick had first come to Plumfield, as odd as it had felt, she had known that they belonged by one another's side and that he would easily win her over. The heart had an endless capacity for loving, her sister Beth used to say, and even now Meg and Amy both encouraged her to share her feelings with Nick, but such things had never come easily to her. Nick was such a different type of man than Fritz was, and she was afraid that she might say or do something inappropriate.

When she wrote, the words came easily to Jo, but when she was younger, what she said aloud often landed her in trouble, so she had tamed herself to say nothing. Perhaps Nick did not think himself a poet, but she knew his words had been written and spoken from his heart. Now, feeling the heaviness in her own, she let the words fly across the page.

"What are you writing?" The sound of Nick's voice startled Jo and she quickly caught the inkwell before too much of its contents was spilt. Nick hurried to her side to wipe up the offending ink before it stained the desk. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"That's all right," Jo said breathlessly. "I was just getting some of my thoughts down on paper." Jo moved frantically as she tried to fold up what she had just written, but her pen fell to the floor and as she bent to pick it up, Nick's eyes caught the words at the top of the page: My dearest Nick.

"May I read it?" Nick asked as his hand reached for the page, his fingers touching Jo's and preventing her from hiding what she had just written. Jo's face was flushed with embarrassment, but she relinquished the paper, rising from her seat to stand by the window and stare out at the moon. Nick read silently, and so deep in thought was Jo that she failed to hear his footsteps behind her. "You write beautifully," Nick said softly as he turned Jo to look at him.

"I didn't mean for you to ever read it," Jo said.

"And I didn't mean for you to ever find that paper on my desk either, but you did. And I'm glad you did. And I'm glad you've been teaching me to read," Nick replied, "because without these words on these little pieces of paper, we might never have told each other how we really feel."

"The poet's curse," Jo said. "A poet writes what he feels, and there's no denying the depth and sincerity of the words."

"Not a poet's curse," Nick countered as he looked deep into Jo's eyes, "but a blessing." Gently, he lifted Jo's hand in his own and brushed his lips against her fingertips. Never again would they have reason to question the feelings between them because, now, each had seen deep within the other the place which warmed the poet's heart.