Chapter Three #2
A pair of young loggers passed nearby. One opened his mouth as if to say something. Mr. Peterson’s gaze moved to him, and the man seemed to think better of it. The logger tugged his hat down and kept walking.
Lottie noticed.
“You do that very well,” she said.
“What?”
“Make men reconsider.”
He looked faintly alarmed by the praise. “Most men should.”
“That is true.” She folded her hands around her Bible. “Do you reconsider often?”
His face closed by degrees. “Often enough.”
Too far, perhaps.
Lottie looked down at the Bible in her hands and rubbed her thumb along the worn edge. She had promised herself last night she would not build too much, but she hadn’t promised she wouldn’t ask anything at all.
“Mr. Peterson?”
He waited.
“Do you still intend to marry me?”
The question landed between them with the force of something far heavier than words. A bird called from the trees. Down the hill, someone laughed. The river kept moving below the churchyard, and Mr. Peterson took a long pause before moving. His hand tightened around his hat.
“That’s not a question for churchyard gossip,” he said.
“I am not a gossip.”
“No.”
“We are in a churchyard.”
“That does not improve the question.”
“It makes lying ill-advised.”
His gaze lifted to hers with reluctant attention. “You think I would lie to you?”
“No. I think you would answer another question and hope I did not notice.”
That time, the corner of his mouth moved and stayed for one dangerous second before vanishing.
“You learned that from your sister?”
“I have a natural gift.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Warmth spread through Lottie’s chest before she could stop it. His compliments, if they were compliments, arrived so dryly they might have passed as ordinary remarks. That made them worse. Better. Both.
He looked away first.
“I wrote to the sisters before winter,” he said. “Before matters changed.”
His right hand shifted inside his coat again. Lottie kept her eyes on his face. It took effort. She hoped he would notice.
“Do you wish you had not written?” she asked.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then, quietly, “I wish a great many things were different.”
Lottie drew a careful breath. “Were the letters lies?”
His head came up. “No.”
“Not any of them?”
“No. So you read them?”
“Nearly every day. When you wrote a home ought to have a woman’s laughter in it, was it true?”
Color rose beneath his beard. Lottie had not known a man could blush through a beard. She found the discovery very moving.
“That was foolish,” he said.
“It was my favorite line.”
“It should not have been.”
“Then you should have written a worse one.”
The almost-smile appeared again, unwilling and brief. Then it faded.
“Miss Bellamy, you seem a kind girl.”
“I am eighteen.” His brow drew together. “Girls are nine,” she clarified. “Or twelve on hard days. I am a woman, though Delly is still adjusting to the fact and may require time.”
He looked startled, then looked as if he might admire her against his better judgment. “A kind woman, then.”
“Thank you.”
“And hopeful.”
“I will accept that, too.”
“You ought to take care where you set hope.”
The words were gentle. That made them hurt more.
Lottie glanced past him to the churchyard wall.
Delly was now sitting beside Mr. Simms. Not too close, but close enough every instinct in Lottie sat up straight.
Her sister had a notebook in her lap, unopened.
Mr. Simms turned his hat slowly in both hands.
Whatever they were saying, it was not small talk.
Lottie looked back at Mr. Peterson. “I do try to be careful.”
His expression plainly said he did not believe her.
She lifted her chin. “I did not cross half a continent because I thought love was easy. I crossed because I thought it might be worth courage.”
Something on his face changed.
There. A crack in the wall. Not large enough to step through, perhaps, but large enough to let light show at the seam.
He looked down at the Bible in her hands. “Courage can be costly.”
“Yes,” she said, “but so is fear.”
The words surprised her after she had said them. They sounded like something Delly might have written in a notebook and then crossed out because it was too true to be useful.
Mr. Peterson stared at her. For one suspended moment, the whole morning held still.
Then Mrs. Beck called brightly from the church steps, “Mr. Peterson! Miss Bellamy! You two must not hide where no one can admire you.”
Mr. Peterson shut down so fast Lottie felt it like a door closing in her own chest.
He took one step back. “You should go.”
“I am not the only one being summoned for admiration.”
“That makes one of us.”
The dryness of it almost made her smile, but his face was too guarded now. Whatever had nearly opened between them had slipped away beneath the sound of Mrs. Beck’s voice.
Still, before he could retreat fully, Lottie said, “The books will be at the meeting hall soon. I would like you to come see them.”
His gaze flickered to hers.
“Not to lift trunks,” she added quickly. “Or shelves, or boxes, or anything else that might make you wish you had taken a different road out of church. Only to see them. Since you have already saved one and kept another from falling, you are practically acquainted with the collection.”
For a second, she feared she had said the wrong thing. Then he looked toward the road, toward the town below, anywhere but at her.
“I’ll see,” he said.
It was not yes. It was also not no.
Lottie accepted it with the dignity of a woman who knew how to make a feast out of crumbs and a library out of three trunks.
“Good morning, Mr. Peterson.”
He hesitated. “Good morning, Miss Bellamy.”
Then he walked away down the side path, his right hand still tucked against him and his hat held low in his left. Lottie stood where he had left her and let out the breath she had been holding.
She had asked whether he intended to marry her.
He had not answered.
A sensible woman might be discouraged. Lottie considered it unfinished. Behind her, someone cleared her throat.
She turned and found Val watching from several feet away, not close enough to have heard everything, but close enough to have seen more than Lottie might have preferred.
“Did he frighten you?” Val asked.
“No.”
“Did he try?”
Lottie considered that. “I think he tried to frighten himself.”
Val’s expression softened. “That sounds nearer the truth.”
Lottie looked down the path where Peterson had gone. “He does not seem happy I came.”
“Some men have lived a long while believing happiness is a thing belonging to other houses.”
“That is very sad.”
“It is.” Val touched her arm gently. “Sadness is not always a warning to turn away. Sometimes it is only a sign to walk carefully.”
Lottie nodded because that sounded true, and because she did not trust herself to speak.
Across the yard, Delly still sat on the low stone wall. Mr. Simms had risen and was walking down toward the camp road. Delly watched him go with an expression so peculiar Lottie forgot her own bruised heart for a moment.
Oh, Delly.
Lottie crossed the churchyard and sat beside her sister.
“You look peculiar,” she said. “Are you ill?”
“I’m thinking,” Delly answered.
“That is usually when you look most dangerous.”
Delly did not deny it. Lottie studied her. Her sister’s notebook rested unopened in her lap. That alone was enough to alarm anyone who knew her.
“Are you doing this for me?” Lottie asked softly.
Delly looked at her.
“Doing what?”
“All of it,” Lottie said. “Coming west. Marrying, if you truly mean to do it. Is this so you can hover over me and catch me before I fall?”
For once, Delly did not answer quickly. “Partially,” she finally said.
The honesty hurt. It also warmed her inside. Everyone should have a sister like Odelia, she thought.
Lottie leaned closer until their shoulders touched. “And the rest?”
Delly looked toward the path where Mr. Simms had disappeared. Her face changed again, not into softness exactly, but into something that had not been there in Chicago. Something uncertain and awake.
“Partly because I need to know whether I am right.”
“About marriage?”
“About everything.”
Lottie thought of Mr. Peterson’s lowered voice, the hidden hand, the almost-smile, the line about a home needing a woman’s laughter. She thought of the sermon and the lost sheep and the way his face had gone still when Preacher Sutton said being found was not failure.
Perhaps Delly was not the only one who needed to know whether she was right.
Lottie rested her shoulder more firmly against her sister’s. Neither of them said anything for a while.
Below the churchyard, Wild Rose Ridge went on shining in the June sun, rough and bright and full of unfinished things. The meeting hall waited for books. The town waited for brides. Delly, impossibly, seemed to be waiting for a husband.
Somewhere down the path, Mr. Peterson carried questions Lottie did not yet know how to ask. She had come west, believing every love story deserved a happy ending. Now she understood some stories did not begin with happiness at all.
Some began with courage.