Bluebonnet Bride
Page 24
“This is the quilt you sold Mrs. Jance.” Mama slipped to her knees, her hands brushing over the cloth appliquéd roses. “I am right. This is the one. What is it doing in your trunk?”
“Mama, let’s put the sweaters over here.” She grabbed her mother’s hand and clasped it gently. “Come help me.”
“But dotter, let me think. Let me remember what that kind Mrs. Jance said.”
“She asked for more quilts that day, remember?” Linnea tried to help her mother to her feet, but the frail woman wouldn’t budge. “Mama, leave it alone. Please.”
“She said a young man had bought this quilt for his bride. His bride.” Mama ran her fingers over the alternating squares of appliquéd flowers and stitched blocks. “Why do you have it? Were you to be the bride? That cannot be. My own dotter would tell me if she was to marry.”
Linnea didn’t know how to answer. “We should put away the sweaters—”
“You did not lie to me!” Mama’s eyes filled with tears, her face wreathed in distress. “My own dotter.”
“I didn’t lie, Mama. I promise.”
“You did not tell me the truth. Did the major give this to you?”
“It doesn’t matter now. Come sit in the sunshine and I’ll read to you until it’s time to visit Aunt Eva—”
“Linnea Anna Holmstrom, you will answer your mother.” Fierce, she stood, not so frail after all. “You were to marry the major?”
“He did propose to me.”
“And you did not tell me?”
“How could I? Aunt Eva came the very next day. I couldn’t break your heart.”
“So you would break yours.” Mama sank onto the bed. “All my life I have dreamed you would find the happiness I shared with your papa. To know the depth of a love that shelters and strengthens. Glad would I give my life so that you would know the greatest of all gifts, and you did not tell me.”
“You come first, Mama. Always you.”
“No, my sweet girl. You are wrong. What a good dotter I have, one who would do this for me. But I cannot allow it.” She traced the scalloped stitches along the quilt’s edge. “I am well now. You must not stay. You must hurry back to the major and marry him.”
“Who will take care of you?” Linnea sat next to her mother and brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Your love has sheltered me my entire life. How could I do less for you?”
“Do you know what you can do? To repay this love you think you owe me? You marry the major and you love him the way your father and I taught you. You cherish him, and make me lots of grandbabies. That is what I truly want.”
“You’ll be alone, Mama.”
“I carry your love inside my heart, dotter. I will never be alone.”
“I do love him, Mama.” At last she felt the tears come, hot and aching with all the loneliness of the past months. Winter had come and gone without him.
But she would not let one more season pass without being at his side.
“We will tell Eva,” Mama announced, beaming with happiness. “To think this lunch would be a celebration. A goodbye celebration for my dotter. She is to be married!”
Married. Linnea knelt and took the ring from the velvet pocket in her trunk. The ring Seth had given her. He’d said he’d wait. That he would love her forever.
He was a man of his word. He would be waiting.
* * *
Seth leaned his shovel against the fence and snared the water jug from the grass. He uncorked the lid and drank deeply. Cool water slid down his throat. General nickered, probably wanting some, too.
Seth cupped one hand to pour water into his palm, but General turned tail and neighed. The stallion saw something. It wasn’t unusual to have coyotes hunt in the daylight, especially when there were new foals in the fields.
Seth set the jug aside and scanned the wild grasses undulating in the wind. A movement of blue and gold caught his eye. He blinked, and she was still there.
Linnea. Real and not a dream.
She was carrying his quilt over her arm. The quilt he’d given back to her. The quilt for their wedding bed.
“Seth!” She flew into his arms as if she belonged there. As if she’d never left. “I knew I’d find you here.”
“You’re here to stay?”
He kissed her before she could answer. She was sweet silk and warm woman and he buried his face in her hair and breathed deeply. Lilacs. He’d awakened more nights than he could count, still smelling lilacs from his dreams.
“I’m here to marry you.” The ring sparkled on her finger and the question lurked in her eyes. “If you still want me.”
“I told you I’d wait forever.” He kissed her again, joy rising in his heart like daybreak. Then he stilled. If Linnea was here, did that mean Mrs. Holmstrom had passed away? “What happened to your mother?”
“She’s probably sitting on the porch with her sister right now, speculating on whether or not she’ll have a grandbaby in exactly nine months.”
Linnea blushed but her smile was coy. He kissed her again and felt the longing in her kiss. The way she surrendered herself to him as the prairie did to the sky.
“You have to wait to marry me,” he told her between breathless kisses. “Seeing as the pastor’s out of town. But we can get started on that baby right away.”
“I’ve thought of nothing else but loving you.” She buried her face in the hollow of his throat, holding him tight. “I missed you so much. I didn’t feel alive without you.”
Tender love filled him. He curled his hand around her nape, holding her to his heart. “You are my greatest love, Linnea. You always will be.”
She smiled up at him through her tears. He kissed them away, just as he vowed to do for the rest of her life. She made his heart live. For all the nights he’d dreamed about her, all the days he longed to love her, he couldn’t wait. Not one more minute.
He took the quilt still hooked around her arm. “Come with me. I know a private place right over here. We’ve been there before.”
“I remember.” She helped him spread out the quilt amid the grasses and wildflowers. She didn’t say a word, working quietly, smoothing the wrinkles with her gentle hands.
How could he be this lucky? He plucked a single bluebonnet and brushed it along her face. Slowly, because this was important, this moment. “Let me love you. Really love you.”
“This is truly happening. I’ve done nothing but dream about this moment. I’m never going to leave you.”
“Good. Because I’m never going to let you.”
Sweet joy filled her. Linnea lay back on the quilt and welcomed Seth into her arms.
Mama was right. Loving a man, and being truly loved by him, was the greatest of gifts.
Epilogue
The prairie winds rustled the pages of the Bible the pastor held and sent the bluebonnets dancing against the hem of her dress, the blue one her mother had worked so hard to make for her.
“You look beautiful,” Seth whispered in her ear.
“I’ve never seen you in a suit. You’re so handsome. I’m proud to be marrying you.” She looked down at their hands, clasped together. “I’m nervous.”
“There’s nothing to worry about. The pastor is only going to unite us until death do us part and for better or worse.”
“Why does it remind me of a jail sentence?”
“They wrote it that way on purpose to scare couples.” Seth leaned his forehead to hers and they smiled together.
“Enough of this,” the pastor complained, trying to stand so the sun wasn’t in his eyes. “Let us move to the shade of the cottonwoods over there.”
“I’m afraid we have to say our vows here. This is a sentimental place,” Seth told him, but didn’t mention why it was special.
Linnea blushed. She wasn’t going to point out what they’d been doing at this exact place only a few hours ago. And many times before that.
“I’d better get the house built quick, because summer’s going to be here soon and we’re going to get su
nburned,” Seth quipped.
And so she was laughing as their wedding began, with Seth at her side. Where he’d be for always and forever. The man who had changed her life with his love.
* * * * *
ISBN-13: 9781460389843
Bluebonnet Bride
Copyright © 2001 by Jill Strickler
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