Chapter Three
Charlotte had always loved the sound of church bells.
Even when they were cracked, too loud, too thin, or rung by a boy who believed enthusiasm was a proper substitute for rhythm, church bells meant people were gathering.
The sound meant hymns lifted by voices both fine and unfortunate, and a room where even strangers could sit together and be reminded they belonged to God before they belonged anywhere else.
Wild Rose Ridge’s bell was not elegant.
It rang with a bright, uneven clang which chased birds from the church roof and sent two children near the steps into fits of laughter. Lottie loved it immediately.
The little white church stood above the river, simple and clean, with pine boards scrubbed pale by weather and care. By the time Lottie arrived with Delly and the other brides, the building was already full enough that every head turned.
Lottie felt the looking. She had been looked at before, of course. In Chicago, people looked at girls who rented rooms above milliners and carried books home under patched shawls. They looked to measure, to judge, or to decide whether one was respectable enough to ignore.
This was different.
Wild Rose Ridge looked at the brides with curiosity, hope, suspicion, and a kind of communal alarm, as though half the town had prayed for wives to arrive, and the other half had not considered what would happen if the Lord answered.
“Stand straight,” Delly murmured beside her.
“I am standing straight.”
“You are clutching that book as if the congregation intends to steal it.”
Lottie looked down at the small Bible pressed against her middle. “It is a church. One clutches a Bible.”
“One holds a Bible.”
“I clutch with reverence.”
Delly’s mouth tightened in a way which meant she wished to laugh but had decided against rewarding Lottie. That was all right. Lottie counted it anyway.
The Busy Bees sat in the second pew, arranged like a tribunal in Sunday bonnets.
Mrs. Schulte nodded to each bride as though checking her name against a list held somewhere inside her mind, while Mrs. Beck’s feathered hat bobbed with pleased excitement.
Mrs. Hanford looked satisfied with the attendance, though mildly displeased by the behavior of one child who had brought a beetle in a matchbox.
Val Sutton moved near the front with the practiced calm of a minister’s wife, her smile warming when she caught sight of the brides. Beside her, Preacher Sutton greeted people at the aisle with both hands extended and the kind of welcome which did not feel arranged.
Lottie followed Delly into a pew near the middle. Then she saw Mr. Peterson.
He stood near the back with several logging men, his hat in his left hand, his right tucked against his coat as though the building might be cold despite the June warmth.
He wore a dark coat brushed clean for church, and his hair had been combed back from his face.
The effort made him look less rough and somehow more guarded, as if Sunday clothes had taken away one kind of hiding and left him short of another.
He did not look at her. That, Lottie decided, was becoming a habit with him.
The service began with a hymn. The congregation rose, and pages rustled throughout the room. Lottie opened her hymnal to the proper place and tried not to turn around.
Trying lasted almost one verse.
She glanced back. Mr. Peterson was not looking at the hymnal. He held it closed in his left hand, down by his side, and sang from memory.
Not loudly. His voice was low, almost buried beneath the others, but steady. Sure. He knew every word. Lottie faced forward again before he could catch her watching.
He got by, he had said last night when she asked if he read. That was not the voice of a man who got by. That was the voice of a man who sang hymns from his heart.
Preacher Sutton preached from Luke about the shepherd who left the ninety-nine to seek the one lost sheep. It was a familiar passage, one Lottie had heard many times, but the preacher did not treat it as familiar.
“Being found,” he said, one hand resting lightly on the pulpit, “does not mean a soul has failed. It means the Shepherd knew where to look.”
The words settled quietly over the room. Behind her, a floorboard creaked. Lottie could not help glancing back again.
Mr. Peterson’s face had gone still in a way which made her throat tighten before she understood why. His gaze was fixed on the front window, but Lottie had the feeling he was seeing something far beyond it.
Then his right hand shifted under his coat. The movement was slight, but it seemed to cost him.
Lottie turned forward again, cheeks warm with the shame of having seen what had not been offered to her. She had not meant to pry. She had only wanted to understand him, but wanting did not give a person the right to open every locked door.
Delly stood beside her, straight-backed and serious, as if the sermon had given her several arguments to consider, and none of them were welcome. Lottie looked at her sister’s profile and suddenly felt a soft ache.
Delly had come all this way because she believed Lottie was the lost sheep. Perhaps they all had pieces of themselves standing somewhere in the snow, waiting to be found.
When the last hymn ended, the congregation spilled outside into the bright morning.
The churchyard was filled with conversation, handshakes, and the rustle of skirts.
Men who had stared too boldly at the dock now approached the brides with their hats in hand and manners polished by proximity to the Busy Bees and knowing they were in the church yard.
Lottie was introduced to six people in fewer minutes and remembered three names with certainty.
Mrs. Dawes had a kind voice and a hat from Portland.
Clara from the bakery smelled faintly of cinnamon.
Cornelia Montgomery, the schoolteacher, had clear eyes, a warm smile, and the look of a woman who could organize a room without frightening it into obedience, which made her very unlike Delly.
“A library,” Cornelia said, taking both of Lottie’s hands when Mrs. Schulte presented her as the bride with the books. “Please tell me the rumor is true.”
“It is true,” Lottie said, delighted. “At least, the beginning of one. My trunks arrived yesterday, though one of them tried to butcher a dockhand.”
Cornelia’s mouth twitched. “Books are powerful things.”
“Delly has already threatened a borrowing ledger.”
“Then your sister and I are going to become excellent friends.”
Across the churchyard, Delly stiffened slightly, as though she had sensed a ledger being discussed from twenty feet away.
Lottie smiled. “I believe she would like that, though she will pretend otherwise at first.”
Mrs. Schulte moved in briskly. “The meeting hall can be used for the first sorting. Shelves may take time, of course, but we shall not let that delay us. The Fourth of July celebration will bring everyone together, and it would be a fine thing to show progress by then.”
“Progress,” Mrs. Hanford added, “is not the same as chaos.”
“No,” Lottie said. “Though sometimes they look alike before breakfast.”
Cornelia laughed. Lottie’s gaze drifted past her shoulder.
Mr. Peterson stood near the side path, speaking with an older logger whose hand had been bandaged.
He bent his head toward the man, listening without impatience.
When the logger said something, Mr. Peterson gave the barest nod, then reached into his coat with his left hand and produced a small, folded paper.
He did not use his right hand.
The logger took the paper, clapped him carefully on the shoulder, and moved away.
Now, Mr. Peterson was alone.
Lottie looked toward Delly, expecting to find her watchful sister already measuring the distance between Lottie and danger. Delly was not watching her at all. She was looking toward the far edge of the churchyard, where the large camp healer from the dock crouched beside another man’s hand.
Mr. Simms looked up, and Delly’s expression changed. Lottie had read Delly’s face longer than she had read any book, and this expression was new.
“Oh,” Lottie whispered.
Val, who had appeared beside her with the quiet skill of a woman used to arriving when most useful, followed her gaze. “Your sister is formidable.”
“She is.”
“Mr. Simms is not easily startled.”
“He should prepare himself.”
Val’s smile deepened. “Perhaps they both should.”
A very sensible sister would have stayed to discover whether Delly meant to interfere with a healer, a sermon, or the entire institution of marriage. Lottie had never claimed to be the sensible sister.
She slipped away from the little circle and walked toward the side path.
Mr. Peterson saw her coming. For one breath, he looked as if he might flee. Then his gaze moved past her to the watching churchyard, and he stayed. That, Lottie decided, was a start.
“Good morning, Mr. Peterson.”
“Miss Bellamy.”
Still not Lottie.
She accepted it for now because yesterday she had learned there were soft places in a man’s name and one does not step there carelessly.
“It was a wonderful sermon,” she said.
“Aye.”
“One of the better ones I’ve heard about sheep.”
His brow moved slightly. “You’ve heard many?”
“More than most sheep, I expect.”
There it was again. Almost a smile. Hidden quickly, but not quickly enough. Lottie felt an unreasonable triumph.
He glanced toward the church steps. “Mrs. Schulte said you were speaking with Mrs. Montgomery about books.”
“Yes. She thinks the meeting hall may do for the first sorting.”
“It will.”
“You sound certain.”
“It’s dry. Big enough. Has tables.”
“Those are excellent library qualities.”
“It was built for meetings.”
“A library is a meeting between a person and a book.”
He looked at her then. Truly looked. “You believe that?”
“Of course.”
“Of course,” he repeated, as if the words meant something different in his mouth.