by Delia Parr
The answer beat slowly in the depths of her heart and soul, filling her with great peace.
“Now that you’ve seen the house, what do you think?” he asked, his gaze simmering with hope, as well as affection.
“I think I like this home very much,” she replied. When her heart skipped one beat, then another, she knew that if God had led her here to this man and to this home, He would also guide them both as they built their new life together as husband and wife.
His eyes widened. “You do?”
She moistened her lips. “Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, I think I would like to live here and share this home with you.”
“You would?”
“Yes, I would.”
“May I . . . may I ask why?” He looked as if he could scarcely believe she had already reached the decision he had asked her to make.
“I could tell you that I think the house is wonderful, which it is. Or I could tell you that I think it would be more convenient for you, which it is. But I should tell you what’s more important to me.”
She paused, captured his gaze with her own, and held it. “I love you, Zachary. I want to share my life with you. Here.”
“You do.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Are you saying you’ll marry me on your birthday as I asked?”
“Yes, I am, although there are a number of issues that still need to be settled, so I’d prefer it if we kept that to ourselves for now,” she said. “There’s also a problem I need to resolve with Warren, but I’d like to discuss that with you later.”
“What about Mr. Larimore?”
She smiled. “I have the papers right here. I was hoping to stop at his office this morning. I don’t have an appointment to see him, but I’ll try.”
He smiled and took her into his arms. “What made you suddenly change your mind about selling Hill House?” he asked.
“I talked it over with a few people this morning, but I haven’t really thought it all through yet. I’m not even certain if I want to actually sell Hill House or to keep it as an investment and hire someone to run it.”
“Who did you talk to? Your mother-in-law or one of your sons?”
She chuckled. “If you must know, it was a few of my grandchildren.”
He looked down at her and shook his head. “Your grand-children?”
“Yes, but I talked to Mark and Benjamin, too. They reminded me that if you love someone, you should be willing to give up something that’s very dear to you, which got me to thinking about us and . . . and Hill House.”
“And here I was thinking that I had been the one to convince you, which made me wonder why I didn’t kiss you long before this morning if that’s all you needed to help you make up your mind.”
“Perhaps you did help,” she whispered, “but just to be certain, perhaps you should kiss me again.”
So he did.
26
A KNOCK AT THE FRONT DOOR quickly ended their kiss. Zachary let out a sigh. “Since my client apparently decided to arrive early, it appears we don’t have any more privacy here than we had at Hill House. Once we’re married, I may have to build another tent here for the two of us.”
She smiled. “You may have to do just that. In the meantime, it might be wiser if I took the service stairs to the kitchen and waited for you there while you use the main stairs,” she suggested, with no desire to invite any more gossip than their betrothal had already ignited.
He waited until she was safely at the bottom of the stairs before leaving to answer the door. Since she had nothing better to do, she took a peek into the larder. Other than a few staples, there was little else inside, which meant Emma had to get Mother Garrett here to make a list of what she would need to establish herself here in her new kitchen.
Now that Emma had a moment to think what getting married on her birthday would mean in a more practical sense, she realized Mother Garrett would not be able to move in here right away. Until Benjamin and Mark left for their homes with their families, she would need to remain at Hill House.
Emma had not thought far enough ahead to consider where Warren and Anna would live eventually, but she assumed they would remain at Hill House until Warren decided where and how he was going to support his family. Anna was also more than capable in the kitchen, which would free Mother Garrett to move in here with Emma, and Liesel and Ditty would be at Hill House to help her with the housekeeping.
That arrangement, however, would only be possible until Emma either found a buyer or decided to hold on to the property as an investment. In either case, Emma had to trust God would reveal the answer to her in perfect time—His.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed when she thought about all the lives that would be affected when she married Zachary, she walked over to the bank of windows and stared outside. The garden of weeds encircled a small paved sitting area just beyond the back door. An arbor dressed in a vine of some sort allowed access to a side walkway. Since there were no outdoor chairs in place, only a small bench, she assumed they must still be stored away and made a mental note to ask Zachary about that.
When she heard the kitchen door open behind her, she turned about, saw Zachary entering the kitchen, and smiled. “Are you finished already?”
He cleared his throat. “No. That wasn’t my client at the door after all.”
“Please don’t tell me that Benjamin or Mark came to fetch me. I told them to wait for me at the Glenns’.”
“No. The caller is Miss Morning Drummond, but she refuses to speak to me without talking to you first. And she isn’t alone. She brought another woman with her—a woman who insists she wants to speak to you and only you,” he said, clearly annoyed.
“I can’t imagine why Morning even thought I’d be here instead of Hill House, and I have absolutely no idea why she brought someone else to see me.”
He narrowed his gaze.
She narrowed her own. “Are they waiting for me in your office?”
“No, I left them standing in the foyer. I’m expecting a client, remember?”
Emma cringed. “Yes, of course. Why don’t you have them come back here to the kitchen where we’ll all be out of your way? Would you like me to ask Morning to wait until you’ve finished with your client to speak to you, or should I simply ask her to stop back another time to make an appointment?”
“Have her stop back another time, along with the woman she brought with her. I have other appointments for the rest of my morning,” he said firmly and closed the door again, leaving her wondering where the sweet man she had kissed only moments ago had gone.
Emma hung her cape on the back of one of the chairs and laid her bonnet on a counter. She smoothed her hair and stood by the table to wait for Morning and her companion to appear.
After a soft knock, the door opened, but Morning entered the kitchen alone. Her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, and she kept her back pressed against the door instead of venturing any farther into the kitchen. “I’m sorry. I seem to have annoyed Mr. Breckenwith by coming here. I know you asked me to come to see you at Hill House, but when I caught a glimpse of you turning down Mr. Breckenwith’s street, I thought it might be easier for my friend and me to talk to you here, since it’s such a long walk up to Hill House. I don’t mind so much for myself, but—”
“Mr. Breckenwith isn’t annoyed with you,” Emma assured her, all too aware he was annoyed with her. “Where’s your friend?”
Morning nodded to the windows behind Emma. “Since Mr. Breckenwith is expecting another client, she decided to wait outside in the garden so I could speak to you privately.”
Without bothering to turn around to get a glimpse of the woman Morning had brought with her, Emma pursed her lips. “Although I agreed to make an exception and bring your concerns to Mr. Breckenwith’s attention, I thought I made it very clear that I wouldn’t be able to give you or anyone else legal advice,” Emma cautioned.
Morning paled and her eyes filled with tears. “I know you did.
Have you had a chance to tell him about my . . . my problem?”
“Come and sit down. You look as though you’re about to faint,” Emma insisted and led the young woman to one of the chairs at the kitchen table and took a seat alongside of her. “As a matter of fact, I took a trip to Bounty on your behalf and met with Mr. Breckenwith there to tell him of your concerns.”
Clasping her hand to her heart, Morning gasped. “You did that? For me?”
“I did,” Emma replied, although she realized now she had also ridden to Bounty to satisfy her own curiosity about whether or not she might be able to help this young woman. Without waiting any further, she quickly explained what Zachary had been able to confirm: Morning Drummond was legally free to marry again.
“You’ll still need to speak to Mr. Breckenwith, but you’ll have to stop back another time to make an appointment,” Emma cautioned. “I’ll be there with you when you do meet with him, just as I promised.”
Morning reached over, took Emma’s hand, and squeezed it hard as tears ran down her cheeks. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Emma murmured, unable to recall when she had felt so good about something she had done for someone else.
When Morning’s tears were spent, she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands, got to her feet, and glanced out the windows to the back garden. “I know you said you couldn’t help my friend, too, but would I be able to trouble you to make her a cup of tea before we leave? She tends to take a chill fairly easily. I’m not certain she has much in her larder at home, and I don’t have kitchen privileges at Mrs. Sweeney’s.”
Emma rose. The moment she turned, looked out the window, and saw the elderly woman sitting forlornly on the bench in that garden of weeds, her heart skipped a beat. “She must be eighty years old,” Emma murmured. She was unable to take her eyes off the woman wearing a threadbare cape and a bonnet limp with age whose eyes were clouded with disillusionment.
“Miss Burns is eighty-six,” Morning explained. “She’d been living with her brother and family, but when he passed a few weeks ago—he was only seventy—his widow told Miss Burns she had to leave by the first of next month, even though her brother promised she could stay and supposedly left provisions for his sister in his will. Can she do that? Can she go against the terms of the will and just turn poor Miss Burns out into the street?”
Emma shrugged. “I suppose that depends on what the will actually says,” she replied, trying to remember what Zachary had told her last fall about the will Aunt Frances’ first husband had drawn up to provide for her. “Please bring Miss Burns inside while I set some water to boil. There’s bound to be some tea somewhere in this kitchen,” she said, certain she now knew what He intended for her to do once she was living in town.
Amazed by how quickly God was revealing His plans for her, Emma said a silent prayer that He might touch Zachary’s heart and convince him to support her efforts just as quickly.
* * *
An hour later, Emma watched Morning slip through the garden holding on to Miss Burns with one hand and a basket of foodstuffs Emma had raided from the little she found in Zachary’s larder with the other.
Reminded once again how she had been blessed with a loving family and the financial resources to safeguard herself and her loved ones, she washed up the cups and saucers they had used, rinsed out the teapot she had found in the cupboard, and dried everything. She was just storing the dishes away again when Zachary poked his head into the kitchen.
“Are you alone?”
She smiled. “Not anymore, now that you’re here. Have you finished meeting with your client?”
“Yes,” he said as he walked into the kitchen. “I trust you’ve set Miss Drummond and her friend straight and that they’ll both stop back to make an appointment with me? In the meantime, I have some time before my next appointment. Shall we go to see Reverend Glenn now to ask him if he’s available to marry us on your birthday?”
She smiled again. Convinced she knew how she might be His instrument in the days ahead, her goal now was to convince the man she was going to marry to support her efforts to help the women of Candlewood with their legal problems when they were either too embarrassed or too poor to seek out the services of a lawyer.
“I think we might,” she ventured. “Along the way, perhaps you could tell me a bit about the laws providing for the protection of widows, particularly when there’s a will in place,” she suggested as she donned her bonnet. “I’m not certain I remember exactly what you told me last fall when I came to you to discuss Aunt Frances’ problem.”
He raised one brow. “Are you interested in the laws in general or in particular?”
“Just in general for now,” she replied as he helped her with her cape. “I know you have shelves of law books in your office that I could read—assuming I could make my way to them without tripping over a pile of one thing or another—but it would be much quicker if you simply told me what I’d find there.”
He let out a long breath. “Based on what you’ve asked, I assume Morning Drummond is now as interested in what she might have inherited from her late husband as she apparently was to find out her legal status.”
“Then you’d be wrong. In point of fact, I’d like to find out some information for Miss Burns, the elderly woman who came with Morning.”
“I thought you said she agreed to stop back and make an appointment with me.”
“No, you said that,” Emma countered. “Miss Burns hasn’t a coin to her name. She can’t afford to see a lawyer, but if I could help her—”
He stiffened his back. “I thought I made myself clear in Bounty. You can’t dispense legal advice. You’re not a lawyer and you can’t be a lawyer, as fair or as unfair as you find that reality to be.”
“That may be true, but I can read, I can think, and I can reason, and above all, I can listen to women who aren’t comfortable discussing certain issues with a man or who can’t afford to pay for a lawyer,” she stated firmly. “Besides, I don’t have to worry about actually being a lawyer. Not when I’m going to be married to one. You know I wouldn’t hesitate to turn a legal matter over to you, if that became necessary.”
“What you’re asking is . . . is out of the question. Allowing you to give anyone legal advice could get me disbarred!”
Emma’s temper flared, and it suddenly became clear that she was the only one willing to make concessions when it came to building a life together. She could not imagine ever having this kind of discussion with Jonas, but she couldn’t imagine the future she envisioned for herself with Zachary, either. Not unless he could see her side of things.
“No. It isn’t out of the question. It’s fair and it’s right. I highly doubt anyone who comes to speak to me with a legal problem is likely to make a complaint against you, and I don’t think it’s too much for you to at least consider the opportunities I would have here in town once we were married,” she countered.
As Mother Garrett’s words at the cemetery echoed in her mind, she stiffened her spine and forged ahead before she lost her nerve. “When you proposed to me, I thought you wanted a woman as strong in her own way as you are, but it’s become abundantly clear that’s not what you want at all. If you find the prospect too disturbing that your future wife might be able to use her mind and her wits to help other women, then perhaps you’ve chosen the wrong one. Perhaps you should marry someone more like your first wife, whose entire world revolved around you, because that’s apparently what you expect of me. You want me to focus on you and only you, and you haven’t shown one whit of concern about what I might want or need in addition to that.”
He froze in place. “That’s not true. Not at all true.”
She blinked back tears of frustration. As different events during their courtship flashed through her mind, she grew more and more convinced she was right. “Yes, it is, and I should have seen the signs of it before now,” she said. “You knew exactly how to sway me to your point of view from th
e start. I won’t bother to mention the mare you gave me again. You’ve already admitted you had ulterior motives in selecting that gift. Then later, although I didn’t realize it at the time, I can see now that showing me the extent of your fortune and drafting a will leaving that fortune to my sons, all the while magnanimously protecting the holdings I have, was meant to convince me how foolish I would be to let a man of your means slip away. You also know how much it would mean to me to wear a pin that belonged to your mother as a symbol of our betrothal, so that I would be only too willing to bend to each of your expectations about what I would have to do in order to marry you. I don’t need you to rescue me from the life I have. I need you to love me enough to want to share a life just as meaningful with me here. B-but I wonder now if you truly love me and want to marry me at all, and . . . and unless you can reach a more equitable vision of what we will each bring to this marriage, then . . . then I don’t think we should marry at all. And this time,” she whispered, “whether or not we should marry is entirely up to you.”
Drawing a deep breath, she blinked back tears that blurred her vision. “Think hard before you make your decision, but until you do, I have no desire to see you or to step another foot in this house,” she said, then grabbed the canvas bag and let herself out the back door to the kitchen.
Heart pounding, she walked slowly through the garden to go home.
To her great sorrow, Zachary did not stop her and simply let her go.
27
STILL TREMBLING FROM HER ARGUMENT with Zachary, Emma never heard the freight wagon approaching from behind as she trudged back to Hill House.
She never heard the driver cry out a warning until it was almost too late.
Startled out of her reverie when she felt a solid nudge at her back, she looked over her shoulder into the eyes of a pair of draft horses, and literally dove out of the way.
Her cape flew open and she landed facedown on top of her canvas bag and nearly sank in a pit of cold, rank mud.
