Chapter Four
Charlotte Bellamy had been in Wild Rose Ridge for one full day when her sister married a man before supper.
This was alarming for several reasons.
First, Delly did nothing before supper unless it had been considered, weighed, revised, and possibly written twice in a notebook.
Second, the man in question was Jebediah Simms, the large camp healer with the dark beard, rough hands, and a way of looking at Delly which made Lottie’s chest ache. Her sister did not seem to notice it, of course. Delly rarely noticed anything not counted, cataloged, or argued into submission.
Yet, Lottie noticed. Mr. Simms looked at Delly as if her very presence pleased him, and Lottie had spent years quietly hoping someone might someday look at her that way.
Third, Delly had spent the last five years warning Lottie against rash decisions, romantic impulses, strange men, western towns, unsupervised correspondence, and marriage, in general.
Now she was marrying a frontier man she had met yesterday.
Lottie found out about the news in the meeting hall, where she had gone with Cornelia Montgomery to discuss possible shelving for the town’s first lending library.
They had made little progress beyond agreeing the meeting hall was dry, the trunks were heavy, and the town possessed more enthusiasm than lumber suitable for shelves.
Cornelia had just said, “We may need to borrow brackets from the schoolhouse,” when Mrs. Beck burst through the door with her feathered hat trembling.
“There you are!” Mrs. Beck cried. “Come at once. Your sister is to be married.”
Lottie dropped the book in her hands.
Cornelia caught it before it struck the floor. “Which sister?”
“I have only one,” Lottie said, and rushed toward the door.
Mrs. Beck turned as if leading a parade.
“Mrs. Schulte says there is to be no fuss because Miss Bellamy requested no fuss, which of course means a modest amount of necessary fuss. Mrs. Hanford is seeing to hairpins. Ella has lace. Clara is providing a small cake. Val says Preacher Sutton is ready, though I do think ministers’ wives are expected to look less amused at moments like these. ”
Lottie lifted her skirts and hurried after her. “Where is Delly?”
“At the hotel. Mrs. Schulte captured her before she could escape.”
“Captured?”
“Lovingly.”
That did not reassure Lottie.
They reached the hotel parlor to find Delly seated in a chair with three women around her, looking less like a bride but more like a woman enduring medical treatment without complaint.
Mrs. Hanford stood behind her, repairing her wind-tumbled hair with grim purpose.
Mrs. Schulte held a small spray of flowers cut from Mrs. Beck’s garden.
Ella from the dress shop kneeled at Delly’s side, pinning a length of borrowed lace at her collar.
Delly’s eyes met Lottie’s in the mirror.
“I am not being dragged,” she said at once.
Lottie stopped in the doorway.
“I know,” Lottie said. “That is what frightens me.”
The parlor quieted around them.
Delly’s face was a carefully managed country with strict border laws. Lottie had lived there long enough to notice when one guard stepped away from the gate.
“I am certain,” Delly said.
“Are you happy?”
Mrs. Hanford made a soft sound as if the question were both intimate and badly timed.
Delly looked down at her hands. “I am not sure happiness is the word I would choose.”
“That is not comforting.”
“I find him suitable.”
“Delly.”
Her sister sighed, and for one moment, she looked very young. Not younger than Lottie, perhaps, but younger than the woman who had held their whole life together by force of will since their parents died.
“He is good,” Delly said quietly. “I think I trust that more than happiness.”
Lottie had many things she wanted to say. Marriage should be more than suitability. Delly deserved tenderness, not merely safety. Marrying a man to study marriage was possibly the most Delly-like thing ever done and still entirely absurd.
Lottie had seen Mr. Simms yesterday at the dock. She had seen him bend over a bleeding boy, steady as stone and gentle as prayer.
Earlier that afternoon, Delly had told her the rest.
Her sister had walked into the lumber camp carrying an apple pie as if baked goods were a perfectly reasonable form of negotiation.
There had been rough talk, of course. A whistle.
Some laughter. One or two remarks Delly had repeated with great precision and no apparent understanding of how shocking they sounded coming from her mouth.
Mr. Simms had not laughed.
According to Delly, he had risen from his place, broad and quiet and impossible to ignore, and the whole cookhouse had remembered its manners.
He had not shoved Delly behind him or spoken over her.
He had simply stood beside her, near enough that every man there understood she would be treated with respect.
And when one man pushed the joke too far, Mr. Simms had looked around the cookhouse and said, calm as Sabbath bells, that the woman was going to be his wife.
Lottie crossed the room and took her sister’s hand.
“If he hurts you, I shall strike him with the largest book I brought.”
Delly’s mouth twitched. “That would be the botany volume.”
“It has excellent weight.”
“I shall warn him.”
“You do that.”
Mrs. Beck dabbed at her eyes. “Sisters are so dear.”
Mrs. Hanford, who had several pins clenched between her lips, made a sound which suggested sisters were dear but must hold still.
Delly squeezed Lottie’s hand once. “You are not angry?”
“I am trying to decide.”
“That seems fair.”
“I thought I was the romantic one.”
“You are.”
“Then what are you?”
Delly looked toward the window, where the late afternoon light had softened against the hotel glass. Her reflection appeared in the mirror with borrowed lace at her throat and flowers in her hair, so unfamiliar and so not like Delly that Lottie’s heart ached.
“I am,” Delly said, “recalculating.”
That was as close to a confession as her sister could likely manage in a parlor full of Busy Bees.
Lottie leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Then recalculate carefully.”
Delly’s fingers tightened around hers. “I always do.”
This time, Lottie was not entirely certain that was true. By the time they reached the church, most of Wild Rose Ridge seemed to know there was to be a wedding.
The news had traveled faster than modesty.
Loggers came down from camp in clean shirts and uneasy silence.
Men from town and the surrounding farms appeared and slid into the back pews.
The brides gathered in a bright cluster, whispering behind gloved hands.
Clara arrived with a white cake boxed in paper and tied with string.
Mrs. Schulte moved people into place with the calm authority of a general organizing his troops.
Lottie stood near the front with her Bible in one hand and the botany book in the other. She had not meant to bring both. In the rush, she had grabbed the book from the table next to her bed and held on to it as if one sturdy volume might anchor the day.
Then she saw Mr. Peterson at the back of the church. He stood near the wall, half behind two other loggers, as though weddings were public events best endured from the safest possible distance. His right hand was tucked into his coat again. His left hand held his hat low at his side.
He looked at the front of the church, then at Delly.
Then, briefly, at Lottie.
Her breath caught.
It was not a long look. Mr. Peterson did not seem capable of long looks in public. It differed from yesterday’s careful retreat and this morning’s guarded warning. There was something troubled in the way he looked at her.
Lottie had the sudden, uncomfortable thought he was measuring this wedding against the one they might have.
A hasty wedding. A stranger for a spouse. Vows spoken before a town that had already decided more than either bride or groom had said aloud.
Perhaps Mr. Peterson was wondering if she expected the same.
Perhaps he was afraid she did.
Jebediah Simms stood at the front, near Preacher Sutton, hat in hand. He looked too large for the little church and too solemn for the borrowed flowers tucked beside the pulpit. When Delly came down the aisle, he went still in a way to tighten Lottie’s throat.
Delly did not float. Delly would never float unless pushed into water, and then she would come up furious and practical.
She walked down the aisle with her shoulders straight, her chin lifted, her gray dress cleaned as best as could be managed, lace at her collar, and Mrs. Beck’s garden flowers trembling in her hand.
When she reached Jeb, he held out his hand.
His fingers shook.
Only slightly.
Lottie saw it because she was watching him. Delly saw it too.
Her sister’s face softened by such a small degree no one else might have noticed. Then she placed her hand in his.
Preacher Sutton began.
Lottie had read about many weddings in the books she devoured. She had imagined more than she would ever admit to Delly. Weddings in books were often full of candlelight, trembling voices, and declarations fit to make a woman close the page and press it to her heart.
This was different.
There were no grand declarations. No orchestra of feeling. No paragraph in which the bride’s whole soul lifted like a lark into morning.
There were only two people standing in a frontier church while the sun came low through the windows and the whole town lifted them up in prayer.
Preacher Sutton spoke the vows slowly.
To have and to hold.
In sickness and in health.
Till death us do part.
The words were familiar. Lottie knew them. Everyone knew them.
They did not sound familiar when Jebediah Simms repeated them.
They sounded heavy in the way bread was heavy when too much flour was added.
Or the way a bucket of water seemed to gain weight when it was carried uphill because someone needed it.
The words were not a declaration for love.
They were the shape love promised to take when feeling was not enough to carry it.