Lilly's Wedding Quilt (11 page)
Lilly looked up at him. “I’m fine. How is Kate Zook?”
Alice coughed.
Jacob looked at Lilly cautiously but was pleased to see the calmness in her blue eyes. “A bother to me,” he confided.
Lilly raised an eyebrow, asking a question he couldn’t discern.
“Maybe today’s official announcement will scare her off,” Alice offered.
“If it doesn’t, maybe I’ll tell her Seth likes her.”
Lilly’s unasked question changed to a smile, while Alice covered her mouth to hide hers.
Meeting was about to begin so he backed away, when Lilly handed him a green envelope. “I know it’s not usually customary, but I just thought—well, read it and please let me know.”
He took the note and nodded. “Surely.”
H
e made his way to where Seth sat, taking his time to sit down, making sure to elbow his brother twice as he got situated.
“Ow,” Seth hissed, rubbing his side. “All right. I’m sorry about Kate.”
“No you’re not.”
“You’re right. I’m not,” Seth said, adding his mischievous grin.
Jacob shook his head and slid him the envelope under the cover of his coat.
“Now what did you do?”
Jacob shrugged. “Maybe nothing.”
“Sure …”
“Just read it. I have to let Lilly know something.”
The first hymn began and a sharp blast of wind whistled through the Stolises’ barn. The green envelope danced from Seth’s hold to twirl in the air and then land. Seth rose to make a grab for the paper, then stumbled backward onto the bench, but not before he’d caught the disapproving eye of many in the community.
“What are you doing?” Jacob growled, under the cover of singing.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure she never even noticed.”
L
illy saw her green envelope blown from Seth’s hand and wanted to cover her face with her cape in embarrassment. How could he? How could Jacob show his brother the invitation? It was meant to be something private. It wasn’t really personal, but private nonetheless. It seemed the two were having a joke at her expense. She tried to brush aside the thought that Jacob may even have told Seth the details of their engagement and the truth behind it. She told herself it didn’t matter. But embarrassment soon gave way to simmering anger as the Meeting continued.
She would not speak to him—that was it—engagement or no engagement. To think that she’d begun to trust him. He apparently thought nothing of the feelings of friendship and camaraderie he’d created in her with his kind words of interest about her insecurity around horses. Perhaps he had learned to be kind and polite around other girls as a matter of necessity while he’d been waiting for Sarah. She put aside the internal voice that suggested Sarah was no longer someone he could wait for, urging her to see what truly happened, to give him a chance to explain.
She nearly jumped when Alice reached over and squeezed her hand. Lilly looked at her friend, who leaned close.
“Are you all right?”
Lilly nodded, managing a weak smile. She turned her face to the front. But her attention was still highly focused on Jacob’s insensitivity.
W
hen Meeting ended hours later, she wanted to bolt from the bench like a pig out of the chute, but one of the deacons stood up with a piece of paper in his hand and a smile on his face. She’d nearly forgotten the engagement announcement, and now she’d have to endure pleasantries while she fumed inside. She should have listened to her
mamm
and stayed home.
The deacon always enjoyed his role and smiled and teased the crowd a bit before he would read the names of the couples to be married within the next month. Finally, he cleared his throat, and the crowd rustled expectantly. This time was usually a surprise for all but the couples and their immediate families.
“Mary Stolfus and Christian Esh, Naomi Glick and Benjamin Lantz all wish to announce their intention to—ah, just a moment, I seem to have forgotten one couple. So sorry.”
Lilly wanted to crawl under the bench at the joke as Alice squeezed her arm.
“Lilly Lapp and Jacob Wyse also wish to announce their intent to be joined as man and wife before this community.”
Everyone laughed and Lilly avoided looking in Jacob’s direction. As people rose and turned to speak to her, she murmured politely. She excused herself from Alice with a promise to see her later in the week, then worked her way toward the barn doors. When she was finally free, she hurried up the lane to where the buggies stood in a line. she’d untied Ruler, climbed onto the buggy, and grasped the reins, when a large hand closed over her gloved fingers.
M
ove over. I’m driving you home.”
She stared as Jacob jumped in beside her, and she opened her mouth to protest.
“Not one word until we’re clear of here, then you can let go all you need. You don’t want to make a scene.”
She swallowed hard, realizing he was right.
People turned to stare with interest at the engaged couple who drove away without even bothering to stop for lunch in the main house.
She sniffed and tried to ignore the clean male scent of him that drifted to her as he turned the buggy onto the highway.
“All right. Go ahead,” he said when they’d driven a short distance.
She held her tongue with perverse reason, not wanting to give him the satisfaction now of even so much as a word.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shake his head.
“Women!”
“That’s it, Jacob Wyse. You just—you just jump out right now and let me alone. Why I ever thought to give you that invitation is beyond me, but I was wrong. Absolutely wrong!”
He eased his hat back, exposing his dark hair, and exhaled. “It was—an invitation?”
“Of course it was an invitation! Didn’t you have the decency to read it before passing it along to joke about with your brother?” She felt her eyes well with tears and clutched her hands together in her lap.
“I wasn’t joking with Seth.”
“Then what were you doing?”
She looked at him and noted the strange expression on his face, the sudden flush on his sculpted cheeks.
He paused a long time, his jaw working as though he was deciding what to say and how to say it. He finally took a deep breath and spoke. “I gave it to Seth to read for me.”
“You what?”
He glanced at her, his eyes dark with a pain she couldn’t understand.
“I can’t read very well.” He drew another deep breath and turned to face forward, his stony expression silencing her.
“I’ve never told anyone but my brother.”
She struggled to find her voice as his admission washed over her. She knew by instinct that if she reacted with pity or concern he’d pull away, and she realized with sudden clarity that she didn’t want that, not one bit.
“Well, then it seems we both have something we can teach each other in this relationship.” Her tone was level, practical. “I let you teach me to ride, and you let me teach you to read.”
He shook his head. “Riding’s easy, but there’s something in me with the reading. I can’t do it.”
“You can try.”
“Do you think I haven’t?” he spat out.
“I’m sure you have, but …” Feminine instinct came to her in a tingling rush of inspiration and she lowered her voice. “Maybe you’ve never had the right—tutor.”
He responded to her soft suggestion; she knew it by the way his throat worked and how he glanced at her with a flash of speculative interest.
“Tutor?”
“Mmm-hmm. We can do it in complete privacy, after school, for a little while. Then maybe—in the evenings when we’re married. And no elementary primers for you. I’ll make up lessons that will hold your attention.”
Her heart pounded as she listened to herself. Honestly, she sounded like she was inviting him to a series of very interesting dates, but her teaching instincts were too well engaged to give up now. She’d teach him to read all right, and he’d remember it as a pleasant experience or she wasn’t the teacher she knew herself to be.
He smiled at her then. “I’d be willing to try, I guess.”
She resisted the urge to clap her hands like a little girl and gave a simple nod instead. “
Gut
, after the Christmas program.” She bit her lower lip.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just—that invitation I gave you. It was to the Christmas program. I know everybody always comes but I just wanted to—invite you especially. I mean, it’s part of wanting to share my work with you.”
“I’ll be there, front and center.”
“Danki
.”
They turned into her lane. “
Ach
, Jacob, how will you get back?”
“The walk will do me good. I’ll put Ruler up and you go on in to your
mamm
.”
She hesitated, wanting to ask him in for lunch but not knowing what frame of mind her mother might be in. Still, he should probably get used to it.
“Lilly, go on. I understand about your
mamm
.”
She nodded and slipped from the buggy to make her way inside the house, closing the door behind her without looking back.
J
acob thumped his chest as he walked fast against the biting wind. He felt exhilarated inside, like the feeling he got when a new foal found its legs. He’d told the schoolteacher that he couldn’t read and she hadn’t batted so much as one professional eye. In fact, she’d made tutoring with her sound like a sensuous experience. Although, he could very well be putting more into her words than she’d meant. For all he could tell, Lilly did things with a calm logic, operating without the instincts he knew he had to rely on. Unless she got riled. He smiled as he thought of how blue her eyes were when she yelled. Blue like sea crystals.
“Jacob? Do you need a ride?”
He turned, so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t even heard the buggy coming up behind him, and he now faced Sarah and Grant Williams. Sarah looked concerned and Grant’s smile was welcoming, but it was like someone had thrown a bucket of water over Jacob in the thick of the cold. He shook his head.
“
Nee
,
danki
. I’m fine. Just enjoying a bit of a walk.”
“You’re going to freeze,” Sarah said, her hazel eyes, so like his own, flashing green.
He resisted the familiar urge to study the beauty of her face. He started to hug his arms across his chest, but the pain in his arm stopped him. He felt he must look silly with one arm giving a feeble attempt at warmth, and stomping his feet.
“Jah
.” He forced a smile. “I will if I keep standing here. Go on with the two of you now. I’m
gut
.”
“All right.” Grant lifted the reins. “Be seeing you—in about two days. Remember?”
“Sure.” Jacob recollected that the drain in his wound had to come out.
“Goodbye, Jacob.” Sarah turned a frowning face back to him and waved while he let the buggy get a good pace ahead.
He lifted his hand to wave back, then began walking again, but now he couldn’t recall what he’d been so happy about in the first place.
T
he few weeks until the Christmas program passed in a flurry of activity inside the little school. Lilly had each student painstakingly make out an invitation to friends and family as she tried to ignore the excitement of Jacob’s response to her own private invitation. She wasn’t quite sure why his words were like a secret of delight that she treasured. They’d seen each other several times before the program, of course, deciding on a simple wedding with few guests. As was customary, Jacob delivered the invitations in person, while Lilly concentrated on her mother and all of the preparations for the day. But she couldn’t fully focus on the wedding until the school program was past, so instead, she concentrated on last-minute rehearsals and the children’s favorite—decorating the classroom.
The class quilt had been completed by several of the mothers and was strung in a delightful display across two windows on a piece of clothesline. The winter sunlight penetrated the thin quilt and made the vibrant colors and images stand out in vivid hues. Lilly had hand-stitched each student’s first name on his or her particular square and knew that the parents, or at least the mothers of the community, would be pleased by the fine work of the students.