Love by the Letter (An Unexpected Brides Novella)
Page 4
“You sure don’t give yourself much time to do things.”
He tore apart his cookie in chunks but didn’t eat the pieces. “Nothing else is this hard.”
“But see? If you naturally excel at everything else, you can’t be stupid.”
“Even little kids read better than me.” He shoved his plate away.
She reached toward him but let her hand fall beside him before making contact. If she started touching his hand again today she wouldn’t stop. “But you dropped out of school when you were twelve.”
“My pa dropped out at eight, and he could read better than this.” He shook his head. “And you were six then and read circles around the reading I’m doing now.”
“So you have a problem we didn’t.” One that had caused him years of suffering she’d never known about. “Doesn’t mean you can’t overcome it. With enough practice, you could even go to college one day.”
He snorted. “Not unless I packed you in my suitcase and hid you under my desk to do the work for me.” He colored for some reason and turned to look out the window. “My ma handled all the farm’s bookwork.”
“Who’s handling that now?”
“Grant.”
“Who’ll handle that in Kansas?”
He fidgeted in his chair.
He’d need somebody to do that for him. She scooted closer but bit back the idea, curling her tongue. Too forward. Unasked-for. Foolish.
But what if she was in love with the man?
She’d been trying hard lately not to offer people advice or help unless they asked. Most men thought her ideas weren’t worth much because she was female. Did Dex feel threatened by her superior academic skills?
He shouldn’t. He may not be able to parse ambulo, but he’d saved his mother from financial ruin at the age of twelve, worked every day from dawn to dusk so his brothers could finish school, and now ran the best little dairy in town. She’d follow him anywhere without an ounce of worry that he could provide.
But was she crazy enough to propose a convenient marriage when he’d never shown interest in her? She could do his paperwork, and surely he’d come to love her, right? Her shaky hand pressed against the jitters in her stomach. If anyone needed her, Dex did. People married for convenience all the time, in fact for lesser—
“That’s the beauty of a homestead: no need to write or read anything to succeed at farming.” Dex stared at the pen in his hand as if it were his nemesis.
The air left her lungs, sagging her shoulders. How dumb to jump back so quickly into her schoolgirl dreams. She stared at her twiddling thumbs. As if academic abilities were reason enough to push herself onto Dex when her skills mattered little to a farmer.
“And it doesn’t matter how poorly I write my grocery list if I’m the only one reading it.”
Right. What farmer needed to know Cicero? Or algebra? Well, some algebra would come in handy—
“Where’s the cookies?” Patricia swooped in from the hall, and Rachel scowled. The door had to be open for propriety, but her sister didn’t need cookies enough to interrupt.
Rachel held up the plate and didn’t even look at her sister. “Here, take one.”
“Hello, Dex.”
Dex draped his arm over the back of the settee and hitched his ankle up onto his knee. “You look lovely today, Patricia.”
And when didn’t her little sister look stunning? Rachel put the plate of cookies back down with a thump and stuffed half of one in her mouth to keep her from grinding her teeth uselessly.
Her sister twirled, the rose-sprigged calico flaring about her feet and letting white cotton eyelets peek out from underneath her skirt. “I had a trunk full of practical dresses made, but sensible doesn’t have to mean ugly.”
Rachel humphed. Patricia’s lace collar added considerable cost to the dress when the money could have been used for useful supplies instead.
“Rachel disapproves.” Patricia’s mouth scrunched to the side in a sorry attempt to look chastened. “But then, if she’d ordered my dresses, they’d all be brown, black, or gray. And you can’t catch a man’s eye in those.”
Was her sister already feeling restless? Rachel narrowed her eyes. “If you’ve a need to catch a man’s eye other than Everett’s, you ought to stay in town and let Neil go alone.”
Patricia slapped a hand to her heart. “I can’t believe you’d think such a thing.” She dropped in the chair on the other side of Dex. “Now tell me, what married man ain’t gonna want his wife to look a vision?”
“Isn’t,” Rachel said through clenched teeth. More because of how much Patricia’s eyelashes fluttered at Dex than her poor grammar.
“Ain’t works perfectly fine. You know what I meant.” Patricia turned her big eyes back on Dex. “And she calls me insensible. Why fight over words when they don’t hurt nobody? School ain’t going to make you a better person.”
Dex folded his arms over his chest. “I agree, it won’t.”
Rachel caught the quick glance he threw her way before he angled his body to face her little sister. She tried to smile but couldn’t keep her lips from trembling, so she let the frown have its reign. Surely some man in her future would want a woman of an improved mind.
“Rachel says people who don’t go to school are doomed to have closed minds. Says how else are people going to improve themselves?”
And with that, her little sister took away the teeny tiniest hope Dex might have wanted a woman like her. The little vixen. Rachel pressed her finger into her cookie until she poked a hole clean through.
Dex glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “School won’t improve your sister any—”
“I just don’t get why she wants a silly degree anyway.” Patricia didn’t even flinch at the scowl Rachel sent her way. “They won’t give you a man’s job unless they’re trying to save money. And they’d still have to be desperate.”
Patricia turned back to Dex. “I think she ought to come with us. She could do Neil’s books or keep me company or teach school. No one would think she was uppity for those things.”
He rubbed at the back of his neck. “She’d certainly be a help—”
“And you’re right about no one around here wanting to marry her since she acts so snooty about things—”
“Yoo-hoo, Patsy!” A melodic voice belonging to one of the myriad girls her sister giggled with in the afternoons called from the front entrance.
Swiping the cookie plate, Patricia left without a wave of good-bye.
No one wanted to marry her? Was she that haughty?
Rachel bowed her head, staring down at the crumbs on the table as though a dunce cap pressed against her brow. She couldn’t deny what Patricia had accused her of saying.
But she hadn’t known how hard school was for some people until she’d started working with Allen.
The silence Patricia left in her wake grew long. Should she apologize?
Dex’s hand ran agitatedly over the tablecloth. “Um, that’s not what I said exactly, and I need to apologize for my earlier attitude.”
Rachel frowned. “No, I’m the one that said those things, but—”
“But those of us without schooling are in a world of hurt.” He dropped his leg with a thump onto the floor and leaned forward on both elbows, his hands clasped between his knees. “I didn’t mean to get so fired up earlier. I was angry at me, not you. I thought I could pick up on this reading and writing thing quicker. And we haven’t even started working on my spelling, which is what I really need fixed.”
She tilted her head. “I’ve been working with Allen for months now and his reading isn’t close to stellar. You can only learn so much in a few days.”
“But I’m older. I should take to instruction better.”
“I don’t think it’s a matter of instruction, per se.” She ran her finger along the lamp shade’s fringe. “I have a feeling there’s something in your brain that makes reading difficult.”
“Great. Then I’m hopeless.�
� He sat back and crossed his arms.
Why was he so down on himself? He could learn to read better, maybe not in a week, but surely with help. “I didn’t say that.”
Dex sighed and took the book from her. “I guess we might as well continue.”
Maybe she should stop these lessons. He needed more help than she could provide. But if he didn’t think he benefited from the brief effort, he might never try again. Neil could help him in Kansas, surely. “You’ve done fine until now, and as you’ve said, reading won’t affect running a homestead much. Plus Neil and Patricia will be nearby, they could—”
“No, I need to write better.”
“But again, Neil and—”
“They can’t write what I need written.” He jabbed her pen into one of her equations, poking a hole through the paper.
“Sure they can. You could always ask them how to spell things if you want to write in your own hand.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. With his eyes fixed on the pen and paper in front of him, he mumbled something.
“I’m sorry?”
“They can’t help me write to my future bride.”
Her heart froze. “Bride?” she sputtered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“I’ve got to be able to write letters she can understand.”
No wonder he’d never given her a second glance. A woman she didn’t know had won him.
Oh! This tutoring had to end. Now.
Lord, get me out of this, please.
“I think perhaps a dictionary would be a wise purchase. Then you could forget these lessons and spend more time with your family and prepare for your trip.” She lowered her eyes. Had this woman sat across from him in church and every community dance for years hoping to catch his eye? Had she dreamed about Dex for more than a decade?
But it didn’t matter what the woman had or had not given up. Dex had chosen her.
“I’ve borrowed Lily’s dictionary, but it doesn’t help if you don’t know how to spell in the first place.” He flicked his hand as if he’d been holding all his confidence in his grasp and flung it away. “Maybe I just have to get over myself. Patricia would probably find the letter writing thing romantic, but I couldn’t have her write down the personal stuff.”
Personal words and feelings that would never be written to her. What would Dex write the woman he loved? Probably the same things she couldn’t say to him. But it wasn’t her inability to spell that had kept her quiet—a very good thing she’d stayed quiet.
Rachel’s eyes grew warm, but she wouldn’t blink lest she loose a tear over something that had never been hers anyway. “A woman in love would overlook your misspellings or your need for someone’s help.”
He paled. “A woman in love, perhaps, but not a mail-order bride.”
Her lungs squeezed, and her hands sought one another to wring out the tension.
He’d not just chosen another woman. He’d chosen any woman but her.
The silence in the room weighed upon Dex’s shoulders. Rachel’s eyes had turned cloudy, and she’d grown pale though she hadn’t said anything more. Probably because she hadn’t anything nice to say about his mail-order bride decision. Everett and Grant hadn’t either.
“Did I hear Patsy say cookies earlier?” Rachel’s father poked his balding head through the door and smiled. “Good afternoon, Dex.”
Dex tried not to sigh with relief at the interruption. “I’m sorry, Mr. Oliver, but the snickerdoodles Rachel baked are gone.”
Rachel shook her head as if to clear it. “Sorry, Papa. Patricia ran off with them.”
“You made the cookies?” Mr. Oliver’s smile disappeared, and a bushy eyebrow popped up.
“Yes.” Why did she look so sheepish?
“But you never make cookies.” Rachel’s father put his hands behind his back and shifted his bulky weight to one foot. “You never bake for that matter.”
She shrugged. Her eyes followed her fingers playing with the lampshade fringe again. “Allen ate my lemon drops.”
“What happened to the horehound I gave you yesterday? Don’t tell me you ate all of them without sharing.”
“No, I just felt like . . . having something different.”
Mr. Oliver turned his way. “So she gave you snickerdoodles? Fresh baked?”
Dex cleared his throat and looked at Rachel, who’d turned several shades of pink. “Yes, sir.”
“I see.” And then he smiled. “You don’t happen to have any more in the kitchen?”
Rachel shook her head. “No, Neil grabbed two handfuls the moment they came out of the oven. It’s like he’d never eaten a cookie before.”
“Well, my women aren’t known for their baking skills.”
Rachel slunk lower in her chair.
“Unless they’ve got a special reason to turn on the oven.”
And she turned red again.
“No reason. I . . . uh . . . didn’t want to share my candy is all. Well, besides with you, Papa.” She clamped her lips tight and looked to the ceiling. “I’ll make another batch tonight.”
“Ah, no need. No need.” He scanned the table littered with closed books with a smile. “How are the lessons going?”
Dex clamped down on the inside of his cheek and stared at Rachel. What would her answer be? Any sane person would have given up on him already, but she’d defended his intelligence. Had he been wrong about her this whole time? Could he fail academically, yet still be competent in her eyes?
“As well as can be expected. I won’t be able to help him improve much before he leaves, but then . . .” She lifted a shoulder. “His life doesn’t depend on it either.”
Dex swept back the infernal lock of hair that always fell in his eyes. Maybe his life didn’t depend on him writing a decent letter, and maybe some woman could look past his spelling . . . but a woman who’d never met him?
“Huh.” Mr. Oliver peered at him over his spectacles. “So you’re still leaving?”
Dex frowned. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t be?”
Mr. Oliver gave a pointed look at Rachel, then at him, wrinkling his forehead by raising both eyebrows. “Oh, I don’t know.” He placed a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “I’m going up to your room for a handful of your horehound.”
“Sure, Papa.” Once he exited, Rachel leaned toward him, but didn’t meet his eyes. “We don’t bake sweets because Papa won’t stay out of them.”
Dex kept his gaze on her until she looked up. And when she did, her normally rosy cheeks colored a bit more.
Could a smart girl like her really have feelings for a man like him?
No, Mr. Oliver’s crazy questions and her blushes didn’t mean what his brain was trying to twist them to mean. Patricia had said Rachel didn’t intend to marry. But why? Didn’t all women want to? Of course, not many men wanted to marry someone smarter than the whole town put together. A woman like that would be rather independent, not to mention downright intimidating.
But what if Rachel had made him cookies for some reason other than hospitality?
When she glanced back at him, he loosed the slow smile he plied on little girls to make them giggle.
Rachel ducked her head and grabbed the book in front of her as if it was a life line. “Perhaps we should quit these lessons entirely. Neil would tutor you in Kansas, I’m sure.”
“No.” He let his tongue slide across his teeth. Maybe he couldn’t improve in a week, but he could see if Rachel fancied him. “I mean, I’d like to continue. To learn as much from you as I can. I really don’t know why this is so hard for me, but you’re my best chance at learning.” And spending time with her would help him decipher her feelings for him.
She didn’t say anything.
Maybe he was misreading this whole situation. “Since I’ve never had the nerve to admit my problems to anyone besides family, I think I should try to see how this goes. I’ll work hard every night.”
“If that would make you happy.” She didn’t look thrilled.
If she did feel something for him, would it be right to hold such an intelligent woman captive on the prairie, keeping her from ever going to school?
Maybe Rachel would be willing to correspond with him while in college. If she could handle years of his atrocious spelling, then she could handle anything. He could put off writing a mail-order bride again if she—
Mail-order bride. He rubbed his hand down his face. Her tense posture and firm pout as she studied the bookshelf across from her made him grit his teeth.
If her father’s hinting and her fidgeting indicated she liked him, he’d ruined any chance he had by telling her the real reason he’d wanted these lessons.
How stupid could he be?
Chapter 4
Rachel slid the last hot snickerdoodle onto a plate, then poured coffee in her father’s favorite mug. The fading beams of the setting sun lit her way to the parlor where her mother always played their favorite songs every evening.
Patricia tatted by the light of the brightest lantern, her shuttle racing with quick second-nature movements. Neil sat with his feet propped on the hassock, their tabby curled on his outstretched legs, and Papa rested his head against his chair, soaking in the familiar runs of Mozart.
The plunk of the plate on the side table stirred Papa from his reverie. He turned and smiled at the pile of fresh-baked dessert. “For me?”
Neil straightened in his chair, his eyes locking on the cookies.
“Yes, but you’re going to have to eat fast before Neil gets them.”
Her brother shoved the cat off his lap, hopped out of his chair, and grabbed a handful of cookies. “Night.”
Her father chuckled. “Night, son.”
Patricia sighed and put her work in a basket. “I can’t do any more, so I’ll turn in too. But I won’t steal any of your cookies, Papa.” She kissed his receding hairline, then shuffled out of the room with an exaggerated yawn. “Good night.”