Gingham Bride (6 page)

What would you do, Grandfather? He asked, knowing there was no way to be heard, that heaven was not that close. But he thought of the man who had taught him the difference between right and wrong and who had understood his failures, in the end. Failures he felt as powerfully as the bite of pain in his bad leg. He had spent a good part of the night drawing her face and trying to capture her spirit on the page, and those hours stuck with him. When he ought to leave, his feet did not move and a farewell remained unspoken, lodged somewhere near to his heart.

“How is your hand after all that work?”

Not a single word rose up to rescue him as she breezed closer through the gray shadows. With no lantern to light her way, she came like dawn after the night. Sweetly she gathered his hand in hers. Lord help him, because he could not move. As if paralyzed, he stood helpless, captive to her featherlight touch and compassion.

“It doesn’t look as if you broke it open.” She bent close, scattering dark curls and diamond flecks of melting snow. “Let me change the bandage.”

He shook his head, his only protest, and struggled to clear his throat. She affected him, there was no doubt about that, when he didn’t want to be. He knew her by memory, those big, wide-set eyes framed by lush black lashes, the slope of her nose speckled with a light scattering of freckles, the curve of her cheek, the shine of her smile and her gentleness that touched him now as she prodded at his wound. A line of concern creased her porcelain brow.

“It will only take a minute and then you can be on your way back home. Come, sit on the grain bags and I’ll get started.”

The thought of sitting close to her, breathing in her rose-and-snow scent and fighting emotions he didn’t want to feel choked him. Panic sped up his uneven pulse. “No need to go to the trouble.”

“What makes you think it would be any trouble?”

Aye, there would be trouble if he gave in to the need to stay near her. Trouble in the form he hadn’t reckoned on.

A shy man, he said no more, even when she continued to inspect his hand. He stayed the urge to brush the stray untamed curls before they tumbled in her eyes. He fought to wrestle down soft emotions coming to life within him, feelings he did not want to name or examine too closely. “You have taken care of me well enough, Fiona.”

“It looks good, so I’ll let you have your way, tough guy.” She gently relinquished control of his hand. “I should fetch some breakfast for you before you go. Town is a long walk on an empty stomach.”

“Is this what you always do? Take care of everyone else? Do you have no one to care about you at all?”

“There’s no other family. No one else left alive but my parents.” She shook her head, scattering gossamer curls that fell back in place around her perfect heart-shaped face. What a picture she made with her simple gingham dress peeking out beneath her long gray coat and her silken black locks. “Are you starting to worry about me, Mr. McPherson?”

“We are back to being formal, are we?”

“We
are
strangers.”

“And yet I’ve heard of you all my life, lass. I did not think you would be so beautiful.”

“Beautiful? No wonder you’ve never married. You have terrible eyesight and poor judgment.”

“Aye, I have been accused of the latter more times than I’d care to admit.” He chuckled, a warm coziness coming to life within him. “You enjoy insulting me?”

“What other course do I have?” Her chin went up. “Da might decide to lower his price and then where would I be? It’s best to make sure you can’t stand the likes of me.”

“Wise thinking.” He hefted his rucksack from the shadows and settled the strap on his shoulder. “Times might get harder for you, Fiona. You can come to me if you need help, if you need a friend.”

“Perhaps I should offer you the same. You might have need of a friend, too.”

“That I do.” They were too alike, Ian realized, as he buttoned his coat. With family burdens and financial hardships and no clear way to turn, and he wished there was more he could offer her. He grabbed his hat from a nail in the wall and settled it onto his head. His feet did not want to move, although the rest of him was ready. He had not bargained on caring about the girl. He cleared his throat. “I left something for you on your sewing basket.”

“A gift?”

“Aye. It was your grandmother’s.” He hesitated with his hand on the door. “A promise was made long ago that it would be given to you on our engagement day. I think we can agree that you should have it anyway.”

“May God go with you, Ian McPherson.”

“And with you.” He shouldered open the door and the fierce snow pounded against him, cloaking him with white. “Goodbye, Fiona.”

“Take care of that hand.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, watching as he braced his cane and ambled into the storm. The thick veil of white stole him from her sight long before the door slammed shut, leaving her in darkness.

That was one burden off her shoulders. Ian McPherson, the man chosen for her long ago, had come and gone and her family duty was over. She ought to feel jubilant, or at the very least relieved. She was neither as she knelt to rub the top of Mally’s head and dodge him underfoot. She stopped to pat Flannigan and Riley and the emptiness dogged her, a vague feeling that something would never be the same.

Her sewing basket sat tucked in the darkest shadows of the stall, in the soft hay that Ian had freshly stirred and beside the quilts and blankets he had neatly folded. She couldn’t make out the two items sitting on the woven basket lid until she knelt close and Mally knocked the edge of a paper with his cheek. The paper flew into the hay like a giant maple leaf, and something sparkled as it fell, too. A small gold locket gleamed dully, the heart shape intricately etched with rosebuds and petals.

The instant her fingers closed around it, she heard Ian’s words.
It was your grandmother’s. A promise was made long ago that it would be given to you.
The richness, the meter, the lilting kindness of his words rolled through her, one sweet wave at a time, and reminded her of his caring. Of how he had swept a lock of hair behind her ear, how he had stepped out of the darkness to save her from being punished, how his concern for her was as true as an old friend.

She closed her hand around the delicate piece of jewelry and felt the cold metal warm against her palm. Why did the man affect her so much? Why did she remember the richness of his timbre and the character in his voice? She hardly knew him. She would never see him again. He was nothing to her, not really. He was only a story her parents told, a man she had always dreaded meeting, and yet it was as if he had taken something of her she could not replace, something she would always miss. It made no sense, not at all.

What else had he left her? A note? She slid the locket in her pocket and leaned across Mally, who bumped up into her hand. The paper rattled as she drew it out of the straw. Not a note, she realized, squinting at the dark slash of lines and fragile curves. She turned the page around and her pulse skidded to a full stop. Everything within her stilled and she feared it would never start up again. She stared at the exquisite drawing. Airy delicate snowflakes swirled across the snowy white paper, crowning a defiant runaway and a girl with her hand reaching toward the horse. She recognized her own full black curls and the gingham ruffle showing beneath her coat.

His initials were in the right-hand corner, etched next to a snowbound fence post.
Captivated,
he had written below like a title. She closed her eyes, but the image remained as if burned on the back of her lids.
Captivated?
She had almost felt that way with him, when she had held his hand and tended his wound, when he had kept secrets and shadows had darkened his eyes, and when he told her she could turn to him for help. And why did the emptiness he left behind seem so vast?

Mally’s meow broke through her thoughts. She opened her eyes to see the cat glaring up at her and yowling again in reprimand.

“Yes, I’m right here and so why am I not petting you?” Fiona ran her fingertips through the cat’s long, thick fur. “You are perfectly right. I should never ignore such a good friend.”

The feline purred rustily, rubbing her skirts with his cheek. She spent a few moments with Mally before tucking the picture carefully in her sewing basket, and tucking her sewing piecework into her book bag. The locket jingled in her pocket as she went to fetch the milk bucket by the door. It was gone. He must have taken it with him when he left the barn, but she hadn’t even noticed. No, she had been far too busy noticing the man.

More proof it was a good thing he was gone. If there was one man who could ruin her plans for the future, it would be Ian McPherson.

Since the work was done, she had no reason to linger in the barn. Her ma needed help with breakfast. She squared her shoulders, drew her muffler around her neck and faced the dying storm.

Chapter Six

“’M
ornin’, Fiona.” Lorenzo Davis sauntered down the aisle, his boots ringing on the wooden schoolhouse floor. “You’re here bright and early today.”

Great. Why was he coming in her direction? If she didn’t acknowledge him, would he change direction and decide to go somewhere else? Why didn’t he try to charm another girl? She poked her needle through the fabric, the click of the needle point against her thimble holding more of her attention than poor Lorenzo ever would. When the toes of his boots came into sight beside her desk, she could no longer ignore him. “Good morning, Lorenzo.”

“What are you working on?”

She peered up at him through her lashes. Surely he wasn’t interested in hearing about sewing. She pulled her thread through and considered what to say to him that would be polite but not encouraging, and yet not too friendly to give him any kind of hope. Judging by the clean-combed look of him and that hopeful glint in his polite eyes, he wasn’t simply being courteous. She had noticed Lorenzo’s interest for a while now.

“A dress,” she said simply, and turned her attention back to her next stitch.

“Oh. Uh, you wouldn’t be going to join the caroling group at the church, would you?” Nerves hopped in his voice, making it rough and squeaky.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, you have a nice morning.” He took a step back, a wide-shouldered, strapping young man with hurt feelings.

Not what she wanted to do, but she had to be honest. “You, too, Lorenzo.”

He nodded once, apparently choosing not to answer, and walked with great dignity back up the aisle. She felt terrible.

“I can’t believe you said no.” Someone dropped onto the bench seat beside her, occupying the vacant side of the double desk. Lila dropped her calico book bag on the desktop. “Lorenzo is the cutest boy in school.”

“Cutest?” She hadn’t noticed that, although he was rather good-looking, she had to admit, as she watched him join the popular crowd, headed by their nemesis, Narcissa Bell, near the potbelly stove in the front of the classroom. But his clean-cut good looks could not compare to a certain man’s rugged handsomeness and dependable presence, a man she could not get out of her mind. She slipped her needle into the seam to secure it. “Lorenzo is all right.”

“He’s a complete dream. There isn’t one girl in this school who isn’t sweet on him, and you turn him down. I heard him. He was going to ask you to join the caroling group with him.” Lila, keeping her voice low, opened her bag and pulled out a comb. She began to fluff at her sleek cinnamon-brown hair. “I would have said yes before he could have finished asking me.”

“I wish he would have asked you.” A terribly tight pressure grew behind her sternum, and it wasn’t her corset constricting her breathing. It was Ian. Why did the emptiness inside remain every time she thought of him? It was a mystery for sure.

She folded up her sewing. She had checked on the animals after he’d left her, and they were happy and fed and well cared for. Their stalls spotless, their water bin scrubbed and filled with fresh water. Even the barn cat had been grinning ear to ear while he washed the milk from his whiskers.

Yes, it was a good thing Ian had gone. She pulled off her thimble. “I don’t want a beau.”

“I know, I know.” Lila rolled her eyes lovingly as always. She believed that love happened to everyone when you least expected it, like smallpox attacking when you were vulnerable. Poor Lila. Then again, everyone knew her mother and father had been blissfully happy for a time. She came from an entirely different view of things. “But I would have said yes. Lorenzo is just too too. What are you sewing on? Another piece for Miss Sims?”

“Yes. I almost have the collar set. If I can work the entire lunch hour, I can finish up and get this to her after school.” It would be another dollar for her money sock; she might need it sooner than she’d once thought. If her parents were going to lose the farm, then what would happen to them? Where would they go? And what if they found a man they wanted her to marry instead?

I’ll run, she decided, thumbing her thimble. The silver gadget winked in the lamplight like an affirmation. It was the only thing she could do. To run away from her best friends and this schoolhouse where she had always been happiest. Snow still fell beyond the windows, reminding her it was a cold world. Making it on her own too soon and with too small of a savings would not be easy. But it would be better than marrying a stranger, than living a life without freedom.

“What? You’re going to work through the entire hour again? You’ve got to eat.” Lila’s voice drew her back to the classroom. Worry furrowed her oval face. “You’re going to ruin your health.”

“I’ve got to get as much work done as I can.”

“You work too hard, Fee.”

“I don’t know what choice I have.” Her best choice was still to strike out on her own. So why, then, was she wondering about Ian? With all the snow, would the train arrive on time or not at all? Would he be forced to stay in town awhile longer?

“All right, you have to tell me what’s going on.” Lila slid her comb into her bag and set it on the floor. “You look like you barely slept a wink last night.”

“Sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”

“Yes, and why aren’t you sharing it?”

How did she tell part of the story without telling all of it? If she spoke of Ian, would it make this strange yawning behind her sternum worse? If she told of why he had left, then would she have to confess what her father was trying to do?

“Just tell me, Fee. Maybe I can help.”

“I wish you could.” A true friend. Her heart squeezed with thankfulness. Whatever hardships that came into her life, she was grateful to the Lord for softening those blows with caring friends. “Remember Ian McPherson? He came to meet me yesterday.”

“What?”
Lila’s jaw dropped. “You mean that Tennessee guy?”

“He’s from Louisville.” Mentioning him had been the wrong decision. The emptiness that he had left intensified, like a wound festering. She bowed her head, staring at the folds of delicate green fabric on her lap, but what she saw was the picture Ian had drawn for her.
Captivated,
he’d written. The expert strokes, the skilled rendering of a girl who was too lovely and lyrical to be plain old Fiona O’Rourke. But how she wanted it to be.

“So, what happened? Do you really have to marry him?” A familiar voice spoke out from behind her. Kate dropped her armload of schoolbooks onto the desk.

“Your parents can’t make you, can they?” Scarlet demanded as she took the seat across the aisle.

“No, they can’t force me to. Guilt me into it, pressure me into it, scare me into it, yes. But that’s not going to happen.” Fiona slipped the folded fabric into her book bag with care. “Ian is catching the morning train.”

“He’s leaving? Without marrying you?”

“Lucky me.” Why didn’t it feel that way? She didn’t want to get married—that had not changed. But something within her had—the belief that there could never be a man she could trust even a little bit.

“Whew. Thank God.” Lila’s hand flew to her throat. “It might sound romantic in my dime novels, but really having to marry a stranger is downright frightening.”

“I’d be scared,” Kate put in. “Well, not scared exactly. More like wary. You would want to know that he is a good, honorable man who would never hurt you.”

Yes, that was what she was afraid of. Fiona tied the ribbons on her bag, holding her feelings still. Images tried to fill her mind, images of him, noble and fine, but she stopped them. “I was surprised that Ian seemed to be a nice guy.”

“That was unexpected.” Lila leaned closer. “So, tell us more. Was he good-looking?”

Fiona’s face heated.

“He was!” Kate clasped her hands together. “So, did you like him?”

“Why did he come in the first place if he was just going to leave?” Lila asked.

Fiona held up her hands. “Wait. He’s gone, so we don’t have to talk about it, do we?”

“Yes,” her friends answered together, looking shocked that she didn’t want to share information about the man they had been wondering about forever.

“It’s over. He is not a horrible obligation hanging over my head like a noose anymore.” Now he was simply a feeling of loss she couldn’t explain or make sense of. He had carried the milk pail to the lean-to before he left, because she had found it was waiting for her inside, safely out of the storm’s reach when she’d returned to the house. Only his footsteps and the faint track of his cane in the snow were proof he had been there. A fair walk on an empty stomach and a cold one without a thicker winter coat than his. Why was her stomach coiling up with worry over him?

“What did I miss?” Earlee wove around and plopped into the seat beside Kate. Bits of driven snow still hung to her blond locks and her face was flushed red from her walk to town. “What’s not hanging over your head?”

“Ian McPherson.” The name simply popped out and why? Because her stomach had been coiled up with worry over him all the morning through. Had he found a warm place in town? How had his injured leg fared? Was he feeling like this, a confused tangle of sadness and relief?

“The arranged marriage is off,” Lila announced.

“And you are free.” Kate bounced in her seat.

Free? Her midsection cramped up in knots as she remembered her father’s threat. How did she begin to explain that she wasn’t free? Not by a long shot.

“Oh, Fee, your parents finally changed their minds!” Earlee clapped her hands with excitement. “That’s great news. Yay. You don’t have to get married now.”

“I feel like celebrating,” Kate chimed in. “I’m going to make cookies. No, a cake. I’ll bring them tomorrow and we’ll have a party at lunch. Just the five of us.”

“I’ll get some candy from my dad’s store,” Lila added. “We need to mark this occasion. Fiona is free to find her own beau. Look around, Fee, think of the possibilities.”

Her face heated, because she was not looking for a schoolyard crush.

“Class.” Miss Lambert strolled to the front of the room and rang her handbell. “School will begin now. Please take your seats.”

Saved from having to comment on any of the boys in the room, Fiona gave thanks for the perfectly timed interruption, shrugged apologetically to her friends and slipped her sewing beneath the lid of her desk. Beside her, Lila sighed wistfully as handsome Lorenzo lumbered by and took the back seat two aisles over.

Apparently she was the only girl in school not sighing wistfully. Three other sighs rose around her. When she glanced over her shoulder, Kate, Scarlet and Earlee were all star-struck, their attentions fixed on Lorenzo as he sorted through his stack of schoolbooks.

“I still can’t believe you turned him down,” Lila whispered. “He could be your beau right now.”

“I’m not interested in a—” She started to explain, for probably the nine hundredth time.

“In a beau,” Lila answered. “I know.”

She had never been one of those girls prone to going sweet on a boy and daydreaming about a future with him. Innocent crushes were fine, her best friends were certainly prone to them, but Fiona was immune. She prided herself on her strength of will and control over her heart.

So why were her feelings about Ian tangled up like a knot in a length of thread? It made no sense. There was so much she wanted to know about him, questions she should have asked. Now she would never know about his grandmother or what his hopes for his future were. While the classroom quieted, she pulled her spelling book from her piles of texts and laid it on top of her desk. It was eight o’clock, but she hadn’t heard a train’s whistle yet this morning. Had she missed it, or did that mean Ian was only blocks away, still waiting?

Miss Lambert called the twelfth-grade spelling class to the front of the room, so there would be no more wondering. Fiona tucked her book in the crook of her arm, smiled at Scarlet and followed her down the aisle. She passed the frosty windows. Snow was still falling with fury.
Watch over Ian, Lord,
she prayed.
Please touch him with Your grace and make his road easier.

She thought of the man who had offered her a place to go should she need it. Gratitude, stubborn and tender, crept into her eyes, blurring her vision. She followed Scarlet across the front of the classroom toward the teacher’s desk, and she still thought of him.

“I’ll be sure and send the telegraph right away for you, Mr. McPherson.” The man behind the depot’s counter gave an efficient nod as he gathered the coins and the note. “Word is the train is slow, but she’s comin’. Just not sure when. If you wander through town, keep an ear out for the whistle.”

“Thanks.” Ian tipped his hat, pocketed his change and grabbed his cane. His leg hadn’t taken kindly to the bitter-cold mile’s walk, and while he had thawed out hours ago the healed break in his thigh bone was still putting up a protest.

He ought to be itchy to start the long journey home, but his feet were dragging as he cut across the train station’s small waiting room. A crowd gathered around a red-hot potbellied stove, but he wasn’t in the mood to sit with a dozen strangers and make small talk. He shouldered open the door, bowed his head against the drum of snow and headed across the street.

Was it luck or Providence that the storm was slowing? Either way, he didn’t know, but as sure as it was a December day, there was the steeple of a church a few blocks away and beyond that the bell tower of the schoolhouse.

Fiona. Warmth, unbidden and unwanted, curled around him. He could picture her bending studiously over her schoolbooks with her dark curls framing her flawless face and a little furrow of concentration right above the bridge of her nose. She had been haunting him all morning. Did he get on that train when it came? If he did, what might happen to Fiona? Should he stay behind? And if he did so, what would it cost him and his grandmother? Nana was his only family, surely his responsibility was to her.

That had to be the correct thing to do, he reasoned, trudging through the ruts of ice and snow in the street. But it didn’t feel right. He wiped snow from his face with his free hand, squinting against the twirling snow. The shadowed steps were hard to spot covered in white, and trickier to climb up once he was there. The school bell chimed one long merry toll to announce the noon hour. Children’s shouts and squeals of freedom rose above the street noise and the dying note of the bell.