I have prayed myself to sleep each night for the last week, crying out to God to guide me as I cope with this challenge ahead of me. I remember Eleanor telling me that he will not give me anything that I am not capable of handling, but that still means that I have to make the decision of how to move forward on my own. What if I make the wrong decision? I have already lost so much and watched my hopes for my future fade. How can I face the possibility that I will make the choice that is not the right path for me, and that I will lose what little I have left? I do not think that I could bear the pain. All I can do is seek the Lord's guidance and pray that he will place my feet on the correct path.
Louisa
****
"Miss Rogers, there is someone here to see you."
I looked up at Joseph.
"Please, Joseph, talk to me."
"I'll see her in."
I had assumed that it would be Mr. Akron visiting me again, so when Joseph said 'she' it was slightly startling. He turned away from the door and disappeared as I repositioned myself higher on the bed and tried to straighten my hair as best I could. A moment later, Jessica stepped into the room and I could feel myself break into the first smile I had had in nearly two weeks.
"Jessica!"
"Louisa! I am so happy to see you looking so well. I've been worried about you."
"I have been thinking about you, too," I told her, gesturing for her to come sit beside me on the edge of the bed, "I'm so sorry that I missed all of the festivities. Tell me about your new husband."
A disappointed look crossed Jessica's face and she looked down briefly before glancing back up at me.
"I don't have a new husband," she said.
I reached over and took her hand.
"What happened? Is everything alright?"
"He just wasn't anything like I thought he would be. In his letters, he was so sweet and tender, but when I arrived and actually met him, he was," she hesitated and then took a breath, "he was nothing short of brutish. As soon as Papa met him, he refused to give permission for the marriage. I have to say I was relieved, but I am a bit disappointed to have come all this way and still be alone."
Just then there was a sharp knock on the open door and I glanced around Jessica to see Mr. Akron standing in the doorframe.
"Hello," he said, "Am I interrupting?"
"No," I said, "You may come in."
Mr. Akron approached cautiously, not taking his eyes off of Jessica.
"Hello," he said again.
"Mr. Akron, this is my cousin, Jessica Rogers."
There was a long second where the two gazed at each other before Jessica raised her hand and Mr. Akron took it, touching a kiss to the back. They didn't take their eyes off of each other for another moment, and I could see that they were entranced. It was the feeling that I had had when I met Gregory, and what I knew for sure now that I felt when I looked at Joseph.
"I should be going," Jessica finally said, "I only stopped by to visit. I need to go to the general store."
"I am going that way," Mr. Akron said, "I would be happy to walk with you. If that is alright with Louisa, of course."
"Absolutely," I told him, feeling a smile beginning on my lips.
This scene repeated itself each afternoon for the next several days, until finally I felt ready to talk to Mr. Akron. When Jessica arrived that afternoon, looking even lovelier with the flush on her cheeks that I had noticed appeared each time Mr. Akron arrived, I asked if she would go to the general store and bring me back a piece of licorice to soothe my stomach. It was a weak excuse, but as soon as she walked out and I knew that Mr. Akron would be arriving shortly, the sick feeling in my stomach increased and I was happy that I had asked her to go for me.
"Hello, Louisa," he said as he came into the room just a few moments after Jessica left.
"Hello," I said, gesturing for him to come sit on the chair beside the bed, "I need to speak with you."
"Is everything alright?"
"Yes," I told him, glancing down at my hands to give myself a brief moment of calming prayer that I would choose my words in the right way to tell him how I was feeling without hurting him, "The doctor says that I am well enough to leave the clinic."
"That's wonderful news," he said, though his voice didn't hold quite the same enthusiasm as it had before.
This only confirmed that he was feeling as I was, and it encouraged me forward. I reached out and rested my hand over his.
"With that in mind, I want you to think very carefully about whether you truly want to marry me."
A quizzical look crossed his face.
"Of course, I do. That is what we have been planning. That is why you are here."
"I know. I came here because you are in need of a hostess for your events."
"Yes, but also a companion to share my life."
"Yes," I agreed, "you mentioned that, and I understand that need. It is difficult to live your life alone and wish you had someone to share it with."
"It is," he said, "but now I do."
I nodded and looked down at our hands. He held mine fondly, but it was the fondness of a friend, not of a husband.
"I made an agreement with you," I said carefully, "and I will honor it if you can tell me with complete honesty that you would not rather have a companion who you love than one who you chose out of convenience."
"What are you saying?" he asked, his voice softer than it had been any other time I heard it.
"I believe that each of us deserves a life filled with love, laughter, and joy, and that though you have been a kind and loyal friend, I am not who you carry in your heart. Your companion should be someone who is not there just to hostess your events and entertain your business contacts. She should be someone who makes you smile when she walks in the room, who you would want to read books with in the evenings, and take walks with just so that you can be beside her. That isn't me. I think, however, you know who it might be."
Mr. Akron looked at me with eyes that appeared misted with tears and squeezed my hand.
"I'm sorry," he said softly.
"I'm not," I told him, "I am glad that I came here and I would not have if it was not for you."
Just then I saw Jessica step back into the room carrying a small bag from the general store. Preston, for that is how I could think of him now that I knew he would be a special friend and a member of my family, glanced over at her and then back at me. I gave him an encouraging smile and he stood.
"Miss Jessica," he said, stepping toward her, "Would you like to take a walk with me?"
Jessica blushed and nodded. I took the bag from her and watched them walk out of the room, feeling tears beginning to form in my eyes. I missed Gregory deeply in that moment, but I also missed Joseph. As if my emotions had called him, he stepped into the room and stood at the end of my bed, looking at me.
"I heard what you said," he confessed.
"You did?"
"Yes. Were you only speaking of Mr. Akron and your cousin?"
I shook my head, feeling my hands starting to tremble and the tears finally breaking free.
"No."
Joseph came to the edge of the bed and sat, taking my hand in both of his.
"Louisa, I have loved you since the moment I saw you, and have only grown in my love for you each day since. You are the one who I carry in my heart and if you will allow me, I would like to spend every day filling our lives with love, laughter, and joy."
I smiled at Joseph, feeling the significance of my own words, even more meaningful now that he was saying them, settle into my heart. I reached over to the bedside table where the book that we had read together sat. Though I had taken it with me when Joseph moved me from his quarters to the examination room by Preston's request, I had not read any of it since the last time I read with Joseph.
"Now that I am healthy enough to no longer be in the clinic," I said, gazing into his eyes, "Why don't we go sit out on the balcony together, get some fresh air, and finish this book toge
ther?"
My body still felt weak as he helped me climb out of the bed and walk through the clinic, up the stairs, and out onto the balcony that overlooked the main street. Somewhere beneath us Preston and Jessica were taking their first steps into their lives together as Joseph and I started a new chapter in ours. I knew then more than I had ever known before that Eleanor had be right about the challenges that I would face in life. In that moment, my body might have felt weakened by the trials it had gone through in the last several months, but my heart and spirit had never felt stronger.
THE END
Mail Order Bride Betsy
Story Description
Betsy always knew that love would find her eventually, and until then, she would be happy watching the young men who lived in her mother’s boarding house court their sweethearts on the front porch. Everything seemed perfect until the War came too close to home, and what was once an elegant and privileged boarding school became a bloody hospital. Left to suffer the aftermath, Betsy decides that her only hope is to get out of her hometown and go as far away as she could. In order to do that, however, she would have to find a husband.
December, 1862
Dear Diary,
I have never been so happy to have a year come to an end. It seems another lifetime when I so eagerly anticipated the winter so that Christmas would finally come and I would get to spend the holiday so filled with joy and excitement as I celebrated with my family. Now I am excited only for the chill to grow deeper around me so that it more closely resembles the cold that has lingered within me for more than a year.
I long for the year to change and the days to begin again. I know it will do little to actually change the feelings that I have been suffering, and it will not take the memories away, but I feel that there will be something somewhat comforting about writing a different year. Just thinking that this year is behind me will distance me from all that it I have experienced in it.
I wonder what the New Year has ahead of me. To be honest, I wonder if it holds anything at all. I realize that that sounds morbid and hopeless, but I assure you that I am truly neither. It is not that I feel hopeless about my future. In order to do that, I think I would have to actually feel something. It is simply that I have come to the point in my life that I do not feel that I have anything within me leading me forward toward anything.
This year has taken everything from me.
Betsy
****
"Betsy!"
I heard my mother calling to me from across the house and my chest clenched painfully. Gone were the days when hearing my mother's voice brought any kind of happy emotions. The only surviving child of the six that my mother bore, I was very close to her when I was young and was always happy to spend time helping her with the tasks of managing her boarding house.
Those days had quickly faded, though, after the war began. The boarding house had one been the most esteemed in town. Only the sons of the most elite families came to live in the rooms of our home while they studied at the university, and we were known for maintaining the strictest of decorum. While some houses often had their boarders return shamelessly drunken from their nights of revelry, our young men knew that they were expected to be back at the house for supper and then would spend their evenings studying and writing letters in the parlor, having discussions in the living room, or, on occasion, entertaining their sweethearts on the front veranda.
I loved to bring these couples tea and lemonade and watch the way that they gazed at one another across the small tables that we had set along the porch, or from where they sat on the gliders. Most of the other young ladies in town figured that since I was of marriageable age that I must be overcome with envy when I watched these couples, or even embarrassed that I was having to serve them, but it was one of my favorite parts of having the boarding house.
Yes, I was of marriageable age and there were plenty of times that I thought about possibly finding a husband one day and going ahead with my life away from home, but it wasn't something that bothered me, and I never thought about it when I was with the young couples. Instead, seeing them was almost like reading the fairy tales and romantic novels that my mother had tucked here and there in our library amongst the dusty tomes that my father used to read and that were rarely touched now except when one of the young men wanted to look esteemed. I got to watch as they gazed at one another and exchanged sweet, gentle words that seemed at once so proper and so intimate.
"Betsy!"
As I heard my mother call to me again from the other side of the house, her voice sharper and more urgent now, those memories of the young couples sitting peacefully on the veranda seemed as though I had imagined them all. I couldn't even imagine such soft and tender moments existing any longer. Life simply didn't hold those feelings anymore.
I ran toward the sound of my mother's voice, following it through the corridors that had once been so full of life, hope, and ambition, and now only held dust and lingering memories. As I made my way toward her I tried not to look in any of the rooms that I passed. I didn't want to see what was inside, or what wasn't. They all carried too many memories, too much heartache for me to even bear.
I knew that any of the rooms I glanced into would be nothing like what they were when I was a child. Instead of seeing my mother and father sneaking a kiss in one of the lounges, I would see the furniture that had been pushed to the very edges of the room and covered with large, thick cloths to protect them, and the patterns of blood soaking into the wooden floor. Instead of seeing the polished young men hovering over their books as they studied, or worrying over their next love letter to their sweethearts, I would see the men suffering, lying in beds that we had squeezed into the rooms as closely as possible to ensure we could accommodate as many of the wounded and dying that we could.
The house had gone from a beautiful, welcoming space filled with laughter and life, to a dark and horrible place of death, suffering, and loss. Every time that I saw one of the men dragged inside from the battlefields, the blood discoloring his uniform and the look of fear making even the oldest of them look childlike and vulnerable, my mind immediately turned to who that man might be. A son, a brother, a husband, a father, a friend. In his greatest suffering, who was he wishing was by his side?
All too often I would watch the life drain from their eyes and their ribcages still without ever knowing what they were thinking about or whose face was the last thing that they saw against the background of their minds.
No matter how painful it was to watch them suffer, however, I sat by their sides and held their hands as they fought against their injuries, struggling to live through their agony. Sometimes I had to sit with them as the field doctors amputated limbs or cut bullets out of their flesh. The feeling of their hands tightening on mine until it was painful and the mist of blood that would sometimes fall on my skin was horrifying in a way that I could never have imagined, but any time that I even thought of stepping away from the men who lay on those beds or the temporary cots brought in, I would look into their eyes and think of my father. I hoped that in his last brutal moments there had been someone there to sit by his side and hold his hand. And I would stay there.
I could hear a painful gurgling sound as I approached the room where my mother had been that morning, scrubbing the floors after a surgery the night before. When I pushed the door open and found her sitting in the middle of the floor, one arm clutched over her chest and the other gripping a handkerchief to her mouth, I didn't understand what was happening. I saw the faint trace of blood speckling the front of her dress and thought for a moment that another injured man had been brought to the house, but I hadn't heard any of the horrible, haunting sounds that came along with those arrivals.
"Mama?" I said, stepping into the room.
Her eyes lifted to me and I could see the terror in them. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. She was the strongest person I had ever known and even in the face of the horrific scenes that we had witnessed s
ince the beginning of the war, she had never weakened, never shown fear or reluctance to help the men in whatever way she could. In that moment, however, I could see fear that sent a chill through my body and made me reach for the doorframe to give myself strength.
Without saying another word, my mother pulled the cloth away from her face and I saw that it was soaked in blood.
****
January, 1863
Dear Diary,
The New Year has come, but I feel no better. I had hoped that the fresh beginning would have some form of a calming, soothing effect and I would be better able to focus, but now that it has arrived I find myself only feeling worse.
Instead of each day that passes making me feel as though I am soldiering forwarding, pushing further and further away from the pain and sadness of last year, I feel that each time I go to sleep at night I am even more intensely reminded that it is another day that my mother has suffered and another day closer to her end. I do not want to think about it, Diary, and I truly am as committed as I can be to being trusting and faithful, praying that the Lord holds her and protects her, but I find it more difficult with each passing moment to feel anything but heartache and worry.
The quiet of the house seems so strange now. With all of the wounded and dying men that had found their way from the battlefields into the rooms of our house, all of our focus had been on helping them through their pain and either assist them through their recovery or comfort them as they suffered their last, agonizing moments. We never thought about how caring for those men could have impacted our bodies as much as they impacted our minds. We never thought that any of the men who came in wounded could also be harboring one of the terrible diseases that burned through the field camps.
The house is empty now. The battles have moved and the men who lay in our rooms were brought away. Some were transferred to formal hospitals to receive more advanced care while others began their journeys back to their homes. Still others left in simple boxes, loaded into the backs of carts and brought away. Those whose families lived close enough would find their way back home where they could be buried properly. Others would end up in anonymous cemeteries or potter's fields.
Annie: A Bride For The Farmhand - A Clean Historical Western Romance (Stewart House Brides Book 3) Page 80
