Chapter One #2
His lips moved once over the line. Only once.
Then he shut the book and held it out to her without meeting her eyes.
“You’d best mind your strap, miss,” he said. “The boards’ll ruin anything that falls.”
“Thank you.” Lottie took the book with both hands. Their fingers did not touch, because he made certain they would not. “Are you Mr. Peterson?”
His face changed slightly, but he didn’t speak. Anyone else might have missed it. Lottie had spent half her life reading aloud to a widow whose eyes saw little and whose silence said much, and she had learned people often spoke first with their faces.
“I am,” he said.
That was all.
Not, ‘You must be Miss Bellamy.’
No, ‘I am glad you came safely.’
Not even a, ‘That is a great number of books for one woman.’
Mr. Peterson’s response was simply two words: I am. Then he stepped back.
Lottie held Tennyson against her chest, not caring mud was transferring to her light travel frock. “I’m Charlotte Bellamy,” she blurted. “Though everyone calls me Lottie.”
A man bumped between them, carrying one of her smaller trunks. By the time the path cleared again, Mr. Peterson had moved toward the far side of the dock, where the noise could swallow him more easily.
He did not look back.
Lottie stood there with her book pressed to her heart and her hope dented in a place she had not known was exposed.
“Well,” Delly said, appearing at her side with blood still staining the cuff of one sleeve. “He is certainly tall.”
Lottie blinked at her. “You are bleeding.”
“It is not mine.”
“That does not make it less alarming.”
“It makes it less urgent.” Delly looked past her toward the retreating logger. “Was that Mr. Peterson?”
“Yes.”
“Did he speak?”
“He rescued Tennyson from the dock.”
“That is not speaking.”
“He also told me the boards would ruin it.”
Delly considered this. “Imagine that. It was very nearly a conversation.”
Lottie looked down at the book. A faint line of damp marked one corner, and a bit of mud appeared on the cover, but the pages were safe. “He read the page.”
“Did he?”
“His lips moved.”
“Perhaps he was sounding out the title.”
“It was open to the middle.”
“Then perhaps he was criticizing your habit of transporting loose poetry across dangerous surfaces.”
Lottie’s mouth twitched. Delly had blood on her sleeve, a torn hem, and the steady expression of a woman who had just helped save a stranger’s arm and considered the matter part of an inconvenient morning. Lottie loved her fiercely for that.
“He did not help with the trunk,” Delly said.
“No.”
“He kept his right hand in his coat.”
“I saw.”
“That is worth noting.”
“You note everything.”
“Yes,” Delly said. “It is a useful practice.”
Lottie looked again toward the place where Peterson had vanished into the crowd.
The other men still stared openly at the brides.
Several smiled. One waved when she accidentally glanced his way.
They were easier men, at least from a distance.
Men who would likely laugh, carry a trunk, make conversation, and not retreat after returning a book.
Mr. Peterson had stepped back from her, yes, but he had stepped forward for the book.
That mattered. Lottie was sure it mattered.
A man might be frightened by a bride. He might be embarrassed by a crowd. He might even be uncertain what to do with a trunk full of books and a woman who had crossed half a continent because of his letters.
However, a man who picked up Tennyson from wet boards as if the book deserved gentleness was not indifferent.
Lottie held the volume a little tighter. “Delly,” she said.
“Hm?” Her sister was gathering the last of her belongings.
“I don’t think he wanted to be unkind.”
Delly’s gaze moved over Lottie’s face with a careful attention she knew too well. It was the look Delly wore when she had already seen danger and was deciding whether naming it would make things better or worse.
At last, her sister sighed. “I did not say he was unkind.”
“No. You only sounded as if you were preparing to build a fence around me.”
“A modest one.”
“Delly,” Lottie groaned.
“With a gate.”
Lottie laughed, though her throat still felt tight. “I am not a cow.”
“No. Cows are less determined.”
The dock continued around them. The injured boy was gone.
Men had returned to carrying trunks with more caution than before.
Her books had arrived, mostly intact. Her sister had survived the first contact with Wild Rose Ridge and had already found someone to argue with over blood and proper medical procedures.
Mr. Peterson had looked at her as though she was a problem he did not know how to solve. Lottie should have been discouraged. She was a little.
Underneath the sting was something else. A little tug urging her forward. It was the same feeling she sometimes had when opening a book to the first page and finding a sentence that did not tell her everything. It only encouraged her to keep reading.
“Where’s the other book?” Delly asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“Wh-what?”
“Moon something or another.”
Lottie kept her eyes on the dock. “Oh, I lent the book to Margot.”
Delly picked up her satchel. “Remember to note it down somewhere; otherwise you’ll forget.”
She looked down at the Tennyson in her arms, then toward the town rising above the dock.
“Uh-huh.”
“Come on, Lottie. We need to find the hotel.”
Lottie shifted the books in her arm, picked up her satchel, and followed her sister down the dock and up the road towards town.
Wild Rose Ridge was rougher than she had imagined. Louder. More dangerous. It had already bloodied a boy, ruined Delly’s dress, and given Lottie a husband-to-be who seemed determined to flee before they had properly begun.
Still, she had not come all this way for a simple story. She had come because somewhere beneath Mr. Peterson’s awkward letters she had found a kindness he did not know how to hide. Now, she had seen it in his hands, or at least on the one hand he allowed the world to see.
The other hand remained tucked in his coat. In June.
Lottie intended to understand why.