The Wind Harp

by BJ Hoff

  This was a side of her Jonathan had never seen, and he was intensely curious. “The wind harp?”

  “Some say it’s the sound of Ireland’s sorrows,” she said, her voice low. “A common grief.”

  To his surprise, she seemed to brighten a little. “Have you ever noticed the little wind boxes Mum makes—the ones in the windows?”

  “No, I don’t think I have.”

  “They’re musical. Mum strings them like you might a harp and stands them upright or lays them flat on the windowsill. When the wind comes through the window and blows over them, they make music. It’s a sad sound, but lovely too.”

  “A kind of Aeolian harp,” Jonathan stated.

  “I don’t know about that, not being musical. It’s an old legend, you see. Supposedly the Irish who are forced to leave their land take their sorrows with them wherever they go. And sometimes the sound of their troubles…all the terrible things that have happened to the country and its people…are carried on the wind. The sounds are in the grass and the trees and the bushes, and they make a kind of music. But not everyone can hear it.”

  By now her voice was little more than a whisper.

  “Da says that you feel it more than you hear it, that you don’t hear it at all with your ears, but in your soul.”

  Caught up in the magic of her words, Jonathan looked over at her. “And you’re one of the special ones who can hear it,” he said quietly.

  Still smiling a little, she said, “Sometimes I do. Not always.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he said quietly. “I’ve always known you were special.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her turn to look at him, but he said nothing more. They drove along in silence, his senses filled to overflowing with her presence.

  Finally, though, unwilling to let her close herself off from him again, he decided to broach the subject that had been nagging at him all week. “Maggie…I know I asked you this before, but I need to ask you again. Are you angry with me?”

  Again she fixed her gaze on him. “Why would I be angry with you?”

  Where were the words he needed? Why was it that so much of the time when he was with her, he became totally inarticulate?

  “I thought perhaps…last Sunday, you might have misunderstood—”

  He stopped. “Never mind,” he said, wishing he hadn’t asked.

  “You mean about you and Mrs. Ross,” she said.

  He nodded, embarrassed that he had evidently been so transparent. “I—if that’s the problem, I want to explain…”

  He didn’t finish. Besides the fact that he didn’t quite know where he was going with this—to his ears, he sounded like a bumbling fool.

  He glanced over at her to find her watching him, her eyes enormous in the last fading light of the day. “I wasn’t angry, Jonathan,” she said softly. “I’m sorry if you thought I was.” She paused and he heard a catch in her breath. “I was…jealous.”

  Jonathan’s hold on the reins loosened. Surely he had heard her wrong.

  They crossed the covered bridge over the creek, the horse’s hooves pounding the wooden planks, the buggy wheels creaking. Just ahead, several yards off to their right stood a massive old oak tree, its branches hanging heavy with the rain. Instinct…or impulse… compelled Jonathan to turn off.

  Before he could question his own intentions, he drove the buggy beneath the sheltering arms of the oak and came to a halt.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When Love Finally Speaks

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  My soul can reach.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  With the canopy of the tree limbs, the rain was now little more than a soft patter on the roof of the buggy. The wind had weakened until it made only a soft whispering as it ruffled the oak’s few remaining leaves. Maggie was vaguely aware of the lapping of the creek, the horse puffing and thumping his hooves once, then again. But nothing else, nothing but the sound of her own breathing…and the drumming of her accelerated heartbeat.

  Jonathan sat looking straight ahead, across the field and at the hills beyond, too veiled in rain and mist to be clearly seen.

  He sat that way for a long time before finally turning to her, his dark gaze searching, probing, as if what he was about to say depended on what he saw in her eyes.

  “Maggie,” he said at last. “Tell me what you mean. I need to know.”

  She had always loved his voice. It invariably made her think of warm honey and butter…smooth and soothing and comforting. When she was a child, just the sound of his voice could calm her and reassure her. As a teen, and still today, only a few words from him would make her heart leap and set something deep inside her to singing. But at the moment his voice was rough, and his words came slowly and fitfully as if with a terrible effort.

  “Maggie, look at me.”

  Slowly she turned toward him.

  “Tell me, Maggie. What did you mean about being jealous?”

  She simply could not hold his gaze. She felt as if he could read her very soul. “You seemed so…happy.” Her voice sounded as if it were rising from a deep well. “I suppose I just wanted to be in her place. I wanted it to be me with you and not Carolyn Ross.”

  Humiliated, she finally forced herself to look directly at him. But his eyes were closed now, his features drawn.

  She had embarrassed him…and herself.

  He opened his eyes, but Maggie found it impossible to read what she saw there.

  “Carolyn Ross isn’t important to me, Maggie. The truth is—” his voice caught, “the truth is, I did a terrible thing that day. I was with Carolyn…because I was trying to get you out of my mind.” He shook his head. “It didn’t work. The entire time I was with her, all I could think about was you.”

  Maggie stared at him in amazement. He was watching her with that same seeking, questioning intensity that had been there only a moment ago, and she knew she should say something in response to the incredible statement he’d just made. But he had taken her breath away, and apparently her wits as well.

  “Jonathan…” she finally whispered.

  He reached to press a finger to her lips, then dropped his hand away. “It’s all right. You don’t have to say anything. But if I keep this to myself any longer…I’ll explode. I know all the reasons I shouldn’t be telling you this—believe me, I’ve reminded myself of every one of them more times than I can count—but it seems that I’m not strong enough to keep my silence.”

  Maggie’s mind skidded past reason and went falling into a place where she couldn’t think but could only feel.

  His eyes seemed to be drawing her into himself. He wasn’t touching her, had made no move to touch her, and yet with the strength of his gaze, he was holding her.

  “Unless you stop me, I’m going to say this before I lose my nerve altogether. I’ve tried…I have tried so hard, for so long, not…to care for you. But I have feelings for you, Maggie. The kind of feelings some would say I shouldn’t have. Given my age and yours, the fact that you were my student, that I’m your supervisor at the school—it’s questionable, even from my perspective, whether I should voice those feelings.”

  He drew a long, shuddering breath. “I’ve prayed about this. You’ve no idea how much I’ve prayed about it. More than once I thought I sensed an urgency to just come right out and tell you how I feel, but I kept putting it off…for so many reasons. And then you said what you did…and now I can’t not tell you, in case there’s a chance you do care for me.”

  His words drifted off, and Maggie could feel him reaching…struggling.

  Just say it, Jonathan, her mind pleaded. Tell me Evie was right, that she really did see what she thought she saw when you looked at me. Tell me I’m not crazy for believing in the impossible. Tell me!

  As she watched, he seemed to go very still, as if he weren’t even breathing.

  He looked away once and then swung his gaze back to her.

  And in th
at moment Maggie realized what he needed her to do, what she had to do if he was ever to say what her heart was begging him to say.

  He was so close…so close she had only to lift her hand and touch it to his lean, tightly drawn face. He turned toward her touch and caught her hand in his, lacing his fingers gently through hers.

  His eyes darkened even more, his gaze so impossibly tender it melted her heart.

  “You know, don’t you?” he asked, his voice even softer than before. “You already know that I love you.”

  “I was afraid to hope…” Maggie felt as though she were winding her way out of a fog.

  He brought her hand to his lips, his eyes all the while holding her. “Oh, Maggie…I do…I do love you.”

  Unexpectedly, Maggie felt tears burning her eyes. “But I’ve loved you longer, Jonathan,” she said softly. “I’ve loved you forever.”

  “Maggie.”

  He spoke her name with incredulity and wonder—and overwhelming gratitude.

  She loved him!

  “Are you sure, Maggie? Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Oh, Jonathan! Have you really never seen it? Every time I look at you, every time I’m with you or even think about you I feel as though I might as well be waving a banner with ‘I love Jonathan Stuart!’ painted all over it!”

  “I didn’t think it was possible.”

  He moved closer, reached for her—and saw her startled reaction in time to draw back. “Maggie, I’m sorry…”

  But she smiled and shook her head. “No, don’t be sorry. I’m…just realizing that everything is changing. You’re not Mr. Stuart anymore. I have to learn how…to be with you.”

  Jonathan’s arms were aching, his heart thudding, but he kept his distance. “Just be Maggie,” he said. “You don’t have to be anything other than yourself.”

  So many years he had known her, yet he had so many questions to ask her, so much to find out about her so he could really know her. She was everything familiar and dear and beloved…and yet she was changed and even a little frightening in her newness. And she was looking at him as if there was something she needed to see in him, something she was expecting from him.

  “Jonathan,” she whispered, freeing her hand from his to trace the lines of his face, his jaw, his chin, his eyes…all the while looking at him as if she were seeing him for the first time.

  He held his breath, clenched his hands to still their trembling… and to keep from drawing her to him.

  Finally, unable to bear her touch any longer without crushing her in his arms, he caught both her hands in his and held them, gently but securely. “I’m going to take you home now,” he said,” because I can’t be alone with you like this. Not without speaking to Matthew. I have to tell him…what’s happened. I won’t ask you to marry me until he knows.”

  Her eyes were brimming. “You want to marry me?”

  Did he want to go on living? “If I didn’t want to marry you, Maggie, I would never have said the things I did.”

  “I wish you’d ask me now,” she said quietly.

  Taken aback, Jonathan swallowed against what felt like a musket ball lodged in his throat. “I hope that means that when I do ask, you’ll say yes,” he said.

  Unexpectedly she gave him an impish smile. “You’ll have to ask before you know the answer to that now, won’t you?”

  Studying her, the piquant features, the amazing eyes, the cheekbones sharp enough to pierce a man’s heart, Jonathan held her by her forearms—closer than before, but not too close. He bent his head, and she sighed, raising her face to his, expectantly, it seemed.

  But he knew what he had to do and what he could not do—not yet anyway. This was Maggie, his Maggie. God had brought them this far, had brought them together, had blessed his life with a miracle for the second time. God had entrusted Maggie to him, and in no way would he betray that trust…or hers.

  So with all the self-restraint he possessed, he touched his lips to her forehead for a moment, and only a moment. Then he put her gently away from him.

  “It’s too late to talk to your father tonight,” he said, his voice hoarse and not overly steady. “But soon. One night this week, I’ll come to the house—”

  “Jonathan, I don’t want to wait. But you shouldn’t try to talk to Da on a work night. He’s always so tired…and hurting…after work all day. He goes to bed really early, too.

  “I need to wait until next weekend?”

  She might just as well have asked him to wait a month or more.

  “I’m afraid so. It’s for the best, really it is. You don’t want to surprise Da with something like this when he’s dead tired.” She paused. “And he will be surprised.”

  Jonathan passed a hand over his forehead. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “Whatever you think. I want his blessing.” He paused. “Do you think he’ll give it?”

  “I’m twenty-four years old, Jonathan. I don’t need my father’s permission to marry you.”

  “And I’m thirty-nine—soon to be forty—my love, but I want your father’s permission. And his blessing.” He squeezed her hands. “I want everything to be right for us, Maggie. Right with your parents and right with God. This is important to me. I think it’s important for us.”

  She searched his eyes before nodding her agreement. “Whatever you want.”

  Again Jonathan had all he could do not to touch her. Setting his gaze straight ahead, he flicked the reins, and drove away.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A Different World

  A man in love sees all things as new.

  Anonymous

  Jonathan, along with Figaro, arrived at school early Monday morning. Despite the comfortable familiarity of his surroundings, he felt as though he’d stepped into a whole new world. Everything had changed. He had changed; life had changed. He couldn’t remember ever being this lighthearted, this happy. He thought his heart might be in danger of bursting.

  He took Figaro into the office with him and sat down at his desk. Right away the dog came and plopped down in his place, which he’d claimed almost upon sight last Friday: underneath the desk, with his hind quarters sprawled just so toward the wall in order to lay his head on Jonathan’s feet. Here was where he would stay while Jonathan was in class next door.

  As long as Jonathan was in the office with him, though, every time he got up from his chair, Figaro would lift his head for a look, then, reassured of his master’s whereabouts, return to his nap. Jonathan estimated that in the course of a twenty-four hour day, the dog slept a minimum of twenty.

  A dog’s life, indeed.

  He realized that, temporarily, the great hound would be a real distraction for the children, but he was optimistic that it wouldn’t take long before the students accepted the animal as easily as Figaro had accepted them as a central part of his life.

  When Maggie breezed in fifteen minutes later, the children were still in the school yard. She stopped in the doorway, and Figaro very nearly knocked Jonathan out of his chair getting to her. With his tail beating the air in a circular motion, he plopped down at her feet, tongue lolling as she stooped to rub his ears.

  Jonathan stood, unable to take his eyes off her. She quite literally took his breath away. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold morning air, and her hair was in a heavy braid. When she looked across the dog’s head and smiled at him—a smile that appeared to be just for him—he could hardly manage a civil “Good morning.”

  This was going to be more difficult than he’d realized. Seeing her here every day, keeping a professional demeanor at all times, which included not grinning like his idiot dog every time he caught a glimpse of her, well, it wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, it was almost certain to complicate his life. At least until they were married.

  Until they were married!

  Six more days before he could speak with Matthew. He almost groaned. Instead, he called Figaro back to the desk, and walked halfway across the room. “How are you?” he asked, keeping hi
s voice down.

  Still smiling, she glanced over her shoulder, then turned back and said, “I’m wonderful. And you?”

  “Surprisingly well, considering I spent an almost entirely sleepless night.”

  Her smile grew even brighter. “So did I!”

  He couldn’t stop staring. And he was pleased to note she seemed to be suffering the same affliction.

  “It’s almost November,” she said, enthusiasm dancing in her eyes as she pulled off her knit cap.

  His eyes followed the movement. “So it is.”

  “We’ll have to start working on the Thanksgiving Day program soon.”

  “Yes, I expect we will, won’t we?”

  “I already have some ideas,” she said.

  “Excellent. We can’t start too soon. We should get together and discuss your thoughts.”

  “Oh, that would be good,” she said agreeably. “Perhaps in a few days?”

  “I’d say so. The sooner the better.”

  She was actually sparkling.

  “By the way,” he said. “I like your hair better that way.”

  She put a hand to her head. “You don’t think it’s childish? It’s just a braid.”

  “I like braids. What was going on last week, by the way? Every time I saw you, you had a different hair style.”

  She grinned at him. “Eva Grace was trying to make me look older.”

  That stopped him. “Any special reason?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it one day,” she said, giving him a sly look. “Right now I need to round up the children.”

  He went to the window and watched her as she hurried outside into the school yard, her braid swinging back and forth.

  He sighed. It was just as he’d thought. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  He turned around just as Carolyn walked into his office. “Jonathan.”

  It took a moment to find his tongue. “Good morning, Carolyn.”

  She was studying him with that sharp look of hers, as though she was trying to read his mind.