Dakota Dream (14 page)

“Our closing hymn for today is number 360, ‘My Jesus, I Love Thee.’”

As the organ wheezed into the opening bars of the song, Clara and Dag stood along with the congregation. The words poured forth. “My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine. For thee all the folly of sin I resign . . .”

Dag quit singing. He bit his lip and let the words and music roll over him, bathing him in the healing Christ promised. He whispered along with the final line. “If ever I love thee, my Jesus ‘tis now.”

Clara struggled to reach the high notes—and gave up. Singing was impossible from a throat clogged with tears. Why did Reverend Moen choose such a sermon for today? Had someone told him about their game? Who would? And was it
really
a game? Was getting even ever a game?

Neither Dag nor Clara spoke a word on the ride home, until they arrived at the big house, and then it was only a polite good-bye.

The doorbell announced a visitor just as the grandfather clock bonged six times.

“Come right on in,” Mrs. Hanson said. “You’re just in time for supper.”

“No, I mean, no, thank you. I’d just like a few minutes with Clara, if I may.” Dag gripped his hat in his hands. This would be the hardest thing he’d ever done.

When Clara came to the door, he stared into her eyes, then dropped his gaze to the floor. “Could you come out for a moment, please?”

She nodded, reached behind her for the shawl on the coat tree, and stepped outside, her gaze never leaving his face. “What is it, Dag. What’s wrong?”

Her soft voice tore his heart from his chest. “I . . . we . . . that is, I cannot play our courting game any longer.” He took a deep breath. “And I cannot see you anymore.” He turned and stepped off the porch, his long strides eating up the distance to the fence.

“Dag, what is it?”

He kept on walking.

Clara chewed on her knuckle for one brief moment and flew down the walk after him. When he didn’t stop at her calling his name, she grabbed his coat when she caught up with him.

“Now, tell me what this is all about.” She put all the force she could into her words.

“
Nei,
no. Just let it be.”

“Dag, you can’t run away from me now. Not now or anytime.” Clara grasped his lapels with shaking hands. “You can’t leave because I love you and you love me, if you’d just open your eyes. If you can’t see it, maybe I should take one of your hammers and smack you over the head with it till you get some sense.”

“You love me?” His voice squeaked.

Clara stepped back. She tipped her head slightly to the side and glared up at him. “I said so, didn’t I?”

Dag grabbed her around the waist with both hands and whirled them both around. “She loves me!” he yelled to the robin who fluttered out of his nighttime perch at all the commotion.

He set her down just long enough to wrap both arms around her and lifted her for the kiss he’d dreamed of during the long winter nights.

Clara wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. When they drew apart to breathe, she traced one slim fingertip across his full bottom lip. “I like kissing a man with a beard,” she whispered and placed her lips on his again. “But only if that man is you.” Her breathy voice tickled the soft hairs around his mouth.

Slowly, he set her down, never letting her move from the circle of his arms. “I feel like Jacob who stole the birthright,” he confessed.

“No, you have it backwards. You’re the older. Your brother has spent most of his life trying to steal the birthright from you. But now you know how much you are worth. And nothing, no one, can take that or me from you.”

“Clara, my heart, I love you.” There, he’d said the words. He couldn’t remember ever uttering them before. Such simple words. He thought back to this morning. He had said them before. Today, in church. Only it was a different love song, “My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine.” He looked deep into Clara’s eyes, searching her soul. “My Clara, I love thee, I know thou art mine.” And thus he gave her his heart.

Clara rocked gently in the chair on the wide front porch. She could hear the canary singing from Mrs. Norgaard’s room up above. He serenaded them from the first rays of sunlight until the golden ball sank in the west.

On the flagpole attached to the house, she could hear the Norwegian flag fluttering in the breeze. The seventeenth of May, Norwegian Independence Day and Clara and Dag’s one-year anniversary.

She leaned her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes. What a day that had been. No, to be exact, the celebration had begun the week before that, when Mrs. Norgaard called her and Dag into the sitting room one evening.

After they took their places on the brown velvet couch, a gentle silence permeated the room.

“I have something for you,” she said, her face serious but her eyes sending messages of warmth and love. “I’ve put off telling you this because I don’t want you to be burdened by an old woman’s silliness.”

“What is it?” Clara felt alarm leaping in her heart. Was something wrong with her friend? Something she’d not told them?

Mrs. Norgaard leaned forward and handed them an envelope. When Clara looked up in consternation, the old woman just nodded.

Dag slit the envelope open and removed a parchment sheet. Together, he and Clara read the formal words.

Clara felt her mouth fall open. She stared from the letter to Mrs. Norgaard and back to the paper in Dag’s hands. “You mean, you—?” She couldn’t get the rest of the words out.

“Yes, the house is yours, but only if you truly want it.”

“Want it? How could you doubt something so wonderful?”

“But that means you will be burdened with me until the good Lord calls me home.”

“No, not a burden.” Dag shook his head. “You have given me a life.” He clasped Clara’s hand in his own. “And a wife, and now a home.”

“Then I believe we have made a fair trade, for without Clara, I would not be here to rejoice with you.” Mrs. Norgaard blinked rapidly, matching the motions of the two on the settee.

Clara crossed the small space and dropped to her knees in front of her mentor. “Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

Mrs. Norgaard stroked back the tendrils of silky hair that framed Clara’s face. “I have one more favor to ask.”

“What? Anything.”

“Just fill these rooms with laughing children as soon as you can, so I can enjoy them, too.”

Clara, dreaming in the rocker, stroked her rounded belly. Little Lars or Lisa seemed in a mighty big hurry to make an entrance—or else the baby was practicing broad jumps.

She sighed. And the wedding had been magnificent. Her in her
bunad
and Nora in hers. Now neither of them would fit into their black skirts or sparkling aprons. Their babies would be born close together.

Dag had stood before the congregation after the pronouncement of man and wife. “I have something I’d like to say,” he announced. He glanced at Reverend Moen for permission. At the preacher’s nod, Dag continued. “Most of you knew me long before Clara came to Soldahl. You brought your plowshares to be sharpened and your horses to be shod. But I was not one to talk and share the latest news.”

A ripple of laughter spread across the congregation. “But you saw me then and you see me now. What happened to me was God’s miracle. He took a bitter, beaten man and poured love into his heart, that love that Christ talks about. God used a young woman to bring life to many of us in this town and then He gave her to me. Can you doubt God’s great love? If He could love me, He can love anyone.”

There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

Clara straightened from her idyll on the porch. The familiar whistle announced the arrival of her beloved whisper. She watched through the breaks in the newly leafed trees for glimpses of his head as he strode the street for home. She rubbed her back again.

Dag took the porch steps in one bound. “Have you been resting like you were told?” he asked, his smile causing her heart to leap in response.

“I have. Resting and remembering.” She laid her cheek against the back of his hand.

“Remembering?”

“Oh, about the wedding and the months before that.” She kissed a spot on his hand that had gotten too close to the heat.

Dag sank down on the floor beside her, one arm propped on a raised knee. “I have a confession to make.”

Clara’s eyebrows traveled upward.

“Your present didn’t come in on the train.”

Clara rubbed her back again and this time squirmed a bit in the seat. “I think yours might be coming sooner than we expected.”

Dag turned in time to catch a grimace marring the serenity of her forehead. “Are you all right?” A tinge of panic touched his voice.

“I’m fine. Or I will be after a few more hours.” She stroked her fingers through the coffee-hued hair that waved back so richly from his face. She’d come to Dakota to find her dream and now they were living it.

Lauraine Snelling is the best-selling author of over seventy books, both fiction and nonfiction, historical and contemporary for adults and young readers. Lauraine and her husband Wayne live in California with a Basset Hound named Winston. To learn more about the author, you can visit
www.laurainesnelling.com
.

Read all the stories in this series:

Dakota Dawn

Dakota Dream

Dakota Dusk

Dakota December and Dakota Destiny

Dakota Dream

© Copyright 1993, 2012 by Lauraine Snelling. All right reserved.

Previously published as
Dakota Stories I: Dakota Dawn and Dakota Dream
by Smoky Water Press, Post Office Box 2322, Bismarck, ND 58502-2322. Smoky Water Press is a division of Capital Communications, Inc. Bismarck, North Dakota. Former ISBN: 978-0-9820752-0-3

First electronic printing in 2012 by eChristian, Inc.

eChristian, Inc.

2235 Enterprise Street, Suite 140

Escondido, CA 92029

http://echristian.com

Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370,
www.booksandsuch.com

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover and interior design by Larry Taylor.

Produced with the assistance of Livingstone, the Publishing Services Division of eChristian, Inc. Project staff includes Dan Balow, Afton Rorvik, Linda Taylor, Tom Luke Taylor, Jami Taylor, Ashley Taylor, Lois Jackson, and Tom Shumaker.

ISBN: EPUB 978-1-61-843184-4

ISBN: MOBI 978-1-61-843185-1