Before the Dawn (Truly Yours Digital Editions) (10 page)

He took a deep breath. “Shall we go in?” He called down thankfulness upon Rex’s head for making him practice seating a lady at the table, though he was sure Mrs. Webber had grown weary of the exercise before he’d finally mastered it. When Rex suggested Karen take part in the practice, David’s reply had been curt and decisive. He might bumble in front of the housekeeper, but he would not appear a clumsy oaf in front of his wife.

“Thank you, David.”

A thrust of pride shot through him at the surprise in her voice, and he exhaled a tight breath when he managed to push her chair in without mishap. He sat at her left hand and lightly fingered the silverware and goblet placement, trying to force his muscles to relax.

Mrs. Webber placed his plate in front of him. The china clinked as she rotated it to the correct position. “There you are. Ring when you want dessert.”

He spread his napkin in his lap and picked up his knife and fork.
Small bites, slowly, main course at twelve, sides at four and eight. Let your fork hang over the plate for a count of three. Lean over.
Rex’s instructions cycled through his head in a continuous loop. He held the fork lightly, focusing on the sensations coming from the tines to his fingers.

“I was so surprised when Buckford showed up.” Karen’s utensils clinked against her plate, and her sleeve whispered on the tablecloth.

David moved his fork to his mouth, pleased when nothing dripped down his chin. The flavor of beef and gravy burst on his tongue. “Good of Mother to send him.”

Silence fell. When first courting, they had spent hours talking. Time had flown when they were together, and it had seemed they would never run out of things to say to one another. He’d wanted to know everything about her and tell her everything about himself. Now they sat like strangers. No. Worse than strangers. Strangers would at least make small talk.

His skin prickled and tightened. She watched him—he could feel her appraisal. How clumsy he must look to her, like a tentative toddler. His fork clattered to his plate, sending droplets of warm gravy across his face. When he scrambled to retrieve the fork, the heel of his hand hit his plate and dumped the contents into his lap.

“Oh, no.” Her chair shot back, and before he could move, wet cloth dabbed his face. “Hold still.”

He writhed away from her, shoving the napkin aside. “Don’t.” In his effort to get away, he knocked her arm.

She gasped an instant before cold liquid bathed his chest. Something thumped on the carpet. “I’m so sorry.” She mopped at his shirtfront. “I had my water glass in my hand to dampen my napkin and I dropped it.”

He gritted his teeth, grabbed her wrists, and shoved his chair back. “Stop, Karen. I should’ve known better than to try this. I’m a clumsy fool and always will be.” The warmth of her skin in his grasp, the heady aroma of her perfume swirling around him, the soft sound of her breathing all taunted him. “Why did you ever marry me? Can’t you see this was all a mistake? I’m inept at even the simplest task. I’m not a man. I’m a liability.” He stumbled against the table, rattling the china, and made his way out of the room.

❧

Karen sank into her chair and put her elbows on the table. She rested her face in her hands, utter weariness cloaking her, pressing her shoulders down and squeezing her heart. Why did it seem that for every inch of hard-won progress David made, a stumbling block tripped him up and yanked him back toward a yawning chasm of despondence?

“Lord,” she whispered, “I don’t know what to do. I can’t get close to him. He won’t let me help him. The more I press, the faster he retreats.” She swallowed against the spiky lump in her throat and took a staggering breath. She needed to find something positive, something to be thankful for, to gain some equilibrium. “Thank you for Rex. Thank you that David is at least willing to listen to him.”

She sat quiet for a while, calming her heart, letting God’s peace return. “Please, Lord, help me to be patient. Help me not to be jealous that David is turning to Rex or Buckford for help when he won’t turn to me. Help me to rely on You for direction, and please, break down the barriers around his heart. Help him to forgive himself and to accept his blindness. Please help him to accept his marriage as well.” Karen leaned back and put her hands in her lap. She blinked rapidly, bringing the plaster medallion on the ceiling into focus.

“Missus?” Mrs. Webber hovered in the doorway. “Should I bring in dessert?”

Karen pushed her plate back and rose. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Webber. The dinner was delicious, but I think we’ll save dessert for tomorrow. If you could just clear away. David has retired for the night, and I think I will, too.”

The housekeeper’s eyes shone with sympathy as she took in the splattered tablecloth and the water glass on the floor. “The poor creature.” She clucked, shook her head, and began stacking plates and cutlery.

Karen didn’t know if “poor creature” meant her or David.

NINE

“This is ludicrous.” David slammed the book closed and tilted his head back against his chair. Nothing had gone right the entire week, not since his disastrous dinner with Karen.

“David, you just have to be patient.” Rex’s soothing tone rasped on David’s nerves. “It will take time, but you’re making progress.”

“Don’t patronize me. Braille is beyond me. I can’t do this.”

“I think what you really mean to say is you don’t want to
have
to do this.” Rex slapped the desk. “I think it’s time someone told you a few home truths. You say to stop treating you like a child, but your actions are childish. You haven’t accepted your blindness. You will never be free to learn until you accept the fact you are blind and destined to stay that way.”

Rex rose, and the direction of his voice told David he was leaning over the desk. “Do you think you are the only one to ever go through something like this? Do you think you are the only one in this house who is suffering? Stop for just a moment and think how this is affecting someone else. I may not be able to see, but I’m not stupid. I haven’t heard you say one kind or affectionate thing to your wife since I arrived in this house. You speak better to your servant or to me, a virtual stranger, than you do to the woman you married. You are so swamped with fear, you aren’t just blind. You’re emotionally paralyzed.”

He wanted to squirm. Rex had no business hitting so close to the truth. “You know nothing of the situation, and I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of it.”

Rex gave a short bark of laughter, all traces of patience and understanding gone. “You think I don’t know what you are going through? I wasn’t born blind, David. I was a college graduate with dreams of becoming a teacher and eventually a professor of history. I had prospects in the academic field, a fiancée, a future all mapped out. Then, in the space of a few weeks’ illness, I had nothing. My fiancée couldn’t face marrying a blind man and fled. My teaching job ended before it got started, and for a while, I thought even God had abandoned me. I now know He was there all the time, watching over me, guiding me, healing my hurts. Though I couldn’t see with my physical eyes, God brought new sight to my spiritual eyes. He had better things in store for me, and I would have missed them if not for the blindness.”

“Better things?” Bitterness coated David’s tongue. “How can blindness be better than sight? You lost your job, your girl, and your independence.”

Rex’s chair creaked and his voice moderated. “While I was busy making plans for my life, I never once considered if those plans were God’s will or if I would be serving Him by being a college professor. I wanted the recognition and the status of teaching at a university someday. I was so full of my own plans and desires I left God completely out of the equation. God had a better plan for me. I lost a girl who wouldn’t stick by me when I became blind. I’m just thankful I found it out before we were actually married. I’m now engaged to a wonderful, godly young woman I met at the academy. And before you say, ‘Of course, one blind person marrying another. What else can you expect?’ I’ll tell you she’s not blind. Her father, Mr. Standish, runs the school, and my Aimee loves God and loves me enough that my blindness doesn’t matter to her a bit. As for losing my independence, isn’t that what God wants most for us as His children? God doesn’t want us to be independent. He wants us to be totally dependent on Him. Without Him, even men with perfect vision are blind.”

David snorted his disbelief. “I prefer to think that God helps those who help themselves, and I can’t very well help myself now, can I?”

“You realize that little homily isn’t even in the Bible? When I met with your wife about taking this job, she said you were a Christian struggling with God over your blindness. It was one of the reasons I was willing to take this job. I thought I could help you, because I struggled, too.”

David put his elbows on the desk and slid his fingers into his hair. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“I know you don’t, but you can’t continue as you are. I know how exhausting it can be running from God. You won’t have any peace until you realize there is nowhere you can go to get away from Him. He will pursue you with His love to the ends of the earth or the depths of your despair. Give up on the bitterness and the running away, David, or it will consume you. It will ruin your relationship with God, your marriage, and your career.”

“All of that is ruined already.” His chest ached. “I have nothing left.”

“I’ll be the first to admit things won’t ever be as they once were for you, but you’re selling yourself short if you think you have nothing left to offer anyone.”

David’s heart smoldered. It was galling for a man of his education and accomplishments to be forced to begin his schooling over again like the smallest primary student. To learn his letters at his age. No matter how proficient he became at reading those exasperating bumps on the page, he would never be able to work in the mine office again. It was like a death to him, the loss of his career. He
was
an engineer. All his adult life he’d been identified by that term. He sought elusive ore, directing an army of miners to find hidden treasure. David Mackenzie was an engineer. Was. . . Was. . . Was. . .

Rex opened the book before him. “Shall we begin again?”

He sighed, placed his fingertips on the paper, and settled them along the top row. Before he could once again begin sounding out the words, the door opened.

She was home. He knew it was her before she even spoke. Every day this week his wife had gone shopping, leaving the house early, lunching uptown, and coming home in the late afternoon. A swirl of chilly air accompanied her entrance into the parlor, and the smell of snow vied with her perfume. He envisioned her shrugging out of her coat and tugging off her gloves.

David pushed back his chair and rose a fraction of a second after Rex’s chair scraped the floor.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. How are the lessons going?”

“I think we’ve done enough for the day. I’ll be taking my leave.” Rex closed his book. “David, we’ll meet again tonight? I hope you’ll consider carefully what we discussed this afternoon.”

“Tonight?” Karen asked. “What’s happening tonight, David?”

“There’s a program at the school tonight, recitations and such. To raise funds, I gather. Rex could explain it better. In a weak moment I promised we’d attend.”

“You’re leaving the house? That’s wonderful. We haven’t had a night out in ages.”

The excitement in her voice made David purse his lips. When they were courting, they’d attended every production at the Martin City opera house. Several times over the past few weeks, she’d asked him if he would like to go to the symphony or to a play. Each time he had declined, a fine sweat breaking on his skin at the thought of going out in public, having to meet new people he couldn’t see. He could barely navigate his own house. How could he escort his wife to a public function? The only saving grace about tonight’s affair was that it would take place at the blind school where most of the people wouldn’t be gawking.

❧

Karen gave her reflection a cheeky wink and scooped up her new cloak. For the first time in her month-old marriage, she and her husband would be doing something normal—going out for the evening.

Her heart tripped as lightly as her feet on the way down the stairs. She’d mulled over everything Rex had said about David’s fears and why he was having such a difficult time adjusting to his blindness, putting it together with David’s own comment about being a liability. She’d have to prove to him over time that she had no intention of leaving him and pray that as he studied and worked with Rex his confidence in his abilities would return. Until that day, she would take each hurdle as it came. As for tonight, she planned to enjoy herself.

David waited in the foyer. The sight of him in evening dress made her breath hitch. So handsome with his broad shoulders, fine features, and strong personality, no man had ever come close to him in her estimation. She bit her lip and steadied herself.

Be yourself. Act as you would if the accident had never happened.

“Good evening, David.” Before she could talk herself out of it, she walked to his side, put her hand on his arm for balance, and rose on tiptoe to place a kiss on his cheek. “You look so handsome tonight. Would you help me with my cloak?” She handed it to him before he could refuse and turned her back.