A Man For Honor (The Amish Matchmaker Book 6)

by Emma Miller

  “I don’t think it’s about that,” Sara insisted. “I really think it’s cold feet. Her last marriage was difficult. I expect she’s afraid that she’s climbing out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

  “You think she’s afraid of me?” he asked, looking up at the matchmaker. “I’d never harm her. I’d never make decisions that weren’t the best for her and for our children. I’ll always put them first.”

  “So, convince her of that,” Sara said.

  “Go talk to her, Luke.” Freeman laid a hand on his shoulder. “If Honor’s worth having, she’s worth trying to hold on to. Don’t let pride stand in the way of fixing this.”

  Luke stood there in indecision. He wanted to go, but—

  “Do you have a driver’s license?” Albert asked.

  “What?” Luke turned to him.

  “Are you allowed to drive, legally?” Albert asked. “I thought you mentioned to me you knew how to drive.”

  “Ya, I have a driver’s license. I needed one in Kansas to deliver my uncle’s grain to the buyer.” Luke frowned. “Why do you ask?”

  The older man pointed to a small black SUV parked next to the barn. “Take Hannah’s daughter Grace’s car. The keys are in it.”

  “Take her car?” Luke asked, unsure of what he’d just heard.

  “She’s my daughter, too,” Albert said. “And Grace would be the first to agree that this is an emergency. Go get your bride, Luke. Or you’ll have to explain to Hannah why she made you that fine suit and baked all those pies for nothing.”

  * * *

  Luke banged on the back door of the house. “Unlock the door, Honor!”

  She stared at the door, glad the window was still covered with a board. Rather than fix the window, she and Luke had decided to replace the whole door and they were waiting for it to come in at the lumberyard.

  “Honor!”

  She took a shuddering breath. She hadn’t believed that he would come for her. And when she’d heard the motor vehicle come up the driveway, she wondered who he’d gotten to drive him over from Sara’s.

  Honor’s heart was pounding so hard that she thought it might fly out of her chest. How had she allowed this to go so far? What had made her agree to marry Luke in the first place? What had ever made her think it was a good idea?

  “Be reasonable! We need to talk!”

  “Ne! I don’t want to talk to you!” Honor slid the bolt. “Go away!”

  “No one is going to force you to marry me,” Luke said. “I wouldn’t do that. I just want to talk to you. I need to know why.”

  “It’s for the best!”

  He knocked louder. “You’re angry about the children, about my trying to interfere with your parenting. I understand. I’m just trying to help. Because I love them, too. But we can talk about this, Honor. We can figure it out.”

  “I’m not talking to you. Go away!”

  “I will not go away until we’ve talked face-to-face,” he hollered. “I’m coming in!”

  Then she heard nothing.

  “Luke... Luke?” Had he given up? She ran to a window and tried to see if he was still on the back step, but it was out of her line of vision. What she did see was a stepladder moving in the direction of the kitchen window. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered. Then she heard the squeak of the ladder being opened.

  Luke’s hat and then his determined face appeared on the other side of the glass. “I’m coming in,” he warned and began to push up the window.

  Honor dashed from the laundry room, through the kitchen and up the stairs into her bedroom. She heard footsteps just before she slammed the door and threw the latch. “There,” she declared, spinning around to stare at the paneled door. That would put an end to this nonsense. She didn’t have to talk to him if she didn’t want to. She’d decided what was best, and that was that.

  Footsteps pounded up the staircase. “Honor?” Her doorknob turned. “Honor, please.”

  “I’m not letting you in. I can’t marry you.” Honor began to push one of the new bedside tables in front of the door.

  “Honor, listen to me.”

  “Ne, go away, Luke.” She shook her head again and again, feeling a sense of panic. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “You are going to talk to me,” he repeated. He banged on the door. “Just open it.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Well, I have something to say to you. I love you,” Luke called from the other side of the door. “I want to make you my wife. Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I love you,” she whispered, too low for him to hear her. “Because I don’t want to ruin your life or my children’s.”

  “What?” he shouted. “I can’t understand what you’re saying. Are you going to open the door and talk to me like an adult?”

  She didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. If she did, she’d start crying again, and she’d wept too many tears.

  “Please open the door.”

  “Ne.”

  She heard him walk away and her heart sank. Her knees went weak and she steadied herself against one of the beautiful pineapple bedposts of the bed he’d put together the previous day. For their new life together. He’d set up the whole room, but first he’d cleaned the whole place top to bottom, and it smelled of lemon wood polish.

  She didn’t deserve him. Luke needed a sensible wife, someone with good judgment, someone he could rely on. She knew that she’d hurt him, but in time he’d come to realize that she’d made the best decision.

  She went to the window but didn’t see him. The black automobile stood in the yard, and she wondered where the driver was. She looked at the mantel clock. Quarter to ten. The bishop would be preaching Honor’s wedding sermon and she wasn’t there to hear it. What would her friends think of her? Sara Yoder would be crushed by her rejection of the match. She knew that Katie and Ivy were disappointed in her. She’d failed them all.

  The footsteps came back up the steps. “Last chance, Honor,” Luke said. “Open the door, or I’m taking it off the hinges.”

  He can’t do that, she thought. Hinges are on the inside, not the outside. But the bedrooms had had no doors when they moved into the farmhouse, and Silas had hung them all backward so that they opened out into the hall, not into the rooms. He’d made a mistake, one she’d wanted to tease him about, but hadn’t dared. It was a mistake he’d promised to fix, but like so many of Silas’s promises, he’d never kept it.

  Metal scraped against metal and the top hinge squealed as Luke pulled out the pin. “One question,” he called. “Answer one question for me.”

  She was shaking. “Will you leave if I do?”

  “Maybe,” he replied, as he pried at the bottom hinge.

  “What is it?”

  “Can you tell me that you don’t love me?”

  “You’ll go if I do... If I tell you that I don’t love you?”

  “I will. If you tell me to my face, not through a door.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. God forgive her, all she had to do was to tell a tiny untruth. Just say the words, and he’d go away and leave her in peace. Simple. But it was the most difficult thing anyone had ever asked her to do. She opened her mouth and tried to speak. Nothing came out.

  “Thought so,” Luke answered. He removed the pin from the bottom hinge. “One to go.”

  She ran back to the second nightstand and began to push it toward the door, but she was too late. The door sagged and swayed, and then Luke lifted it and moved it aside. He shoved aside the first nightstand aside and walked into her bedroom.

  “You can’t come in here with me,” she protested weakly. “It isn’t decent.”

  “Ne,” he agreed. “It isn’t, but after tonight, it will be our bedroom.”

  “Why can’t you understand?” she cried, bringing her hands to h
er cheeks. “Why can’t I make you see that I can’t marry you?”

  Luke sat on the corner of the nightstand and folded his arms. He took off his hat and tossed it onto the top of the tall dresser that stood at an angle to the door. “Explain it to me.”

  She began to tremble harder. Her throat felt as if it was closing up and her stomach turned over. How fine he looked in his new clothing. She could see how angry he was. But she didn’t feel afraid of him, as she had been with Silas. She knew Luke would never harm her.

  “You love me, and I love you,” he said quietly. “You promised to marry me, and now you say you don’t want to. What have I done wrong, Honor?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, hugging herself inside the knit wrap. “It’s not you, it’s me. I’m afraid. Terrified that if I marry you, I’ll ruin everything for you and for my children.”

  He opened his arms.

  She ran to him, finding solace when she laid her head against his chest. “Don’t you see?” she sobbed. “I’ve made so many bad decisions. Over and over. I insisted you and I get married when we were too young. You wanted to wait, but I wouldn’t. I told you that I wouldn’t wait for you if we didn’t marry then. And with the children... My boys almost drowned because I’m a terrible mother.”

  He cradled her against him. “You’re not a bad mother, Honor. You’re a wonderful mother. You’re dedicated to your children. And you can’t blame yourself for what happened between us nine years ago. We were both immature.”

  “But you left me the morning of our wedding.”

  “It wasn’t you. It was always me,” he said, burying his face in her hair. Her kapp fell back onto her neck, but neither of them noticed. “I left because I knew that you would never abandon your faith. And I didn’t know if mine was strong enough...if I could live Amish. I couldn’t ask you to leave with me.”

  She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “But you’d accepted baptism.”

  “That made it worse, that I doubted my faith after I’d given my pledge to remain true to our beliefs.”

  “But you didn’t leave the church. And you believe now. Your faith is strong.”

  He nodded. “I do believe now. I grew up, Honor. God spoke to me, not to my ears, but in my heart. I knew that He was the right way, the only way. I wanted to come back for you, but by then, you’d already married someone else.”

  “That was another mistake I made,” she told him. “Marrying Silas, staying with him once I knew what he was, letting him control our money, control me. If I was a good mother, I would never have let him be so hard with the children. I was supposed to protect them.”

  “And you did. You told me that you wouldn’t let Silas strike them.”

  “But...but...”

  “You’re human. You make mistakes, just like I do. Once you were in the marriage, you stayed to try to make the best of it. But that shouldn’t keep you from marrying me, from reaching for happiness, Honor.” He tilted her face up with a big hand and tenderly kissed her lips. “Why didn’t you come this morning...? Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”

  “Because I was afraid. Afraid that if I was making another mistake by marrying you, my children would suffer, you would suffer. If I messed up my first wedding and then did the same with the second, how could I be certain that the third would be any different?”

  The barest smile appeared on his face as he looked down on her. “Do you love me, Honor?” he asked.

  “You know that I do.”

  “Then join with me in marriage in the sight of God and our church. Today. Now.”

  She closed her eyes. Not knowing what to say, what to do. She knew what she wanted to do. “But what if...”

  “Have faith, Honor. Faith in us, faith in the Lord God. That’s all you need, a little faith. Because you won’t have to make all these decisions alone anymore. We’ll do it together. And if we make mistakes, which we will, we’ll work to make them right again. Together. It’s all any of us can do. Try, every day. Try to do the right thing and try to live as our beliefs teach us.”

  “But it’s too late,” she murmured, still holding on tightly to him. “I was supposed to be there at nine.”

  “It’s never too late,” Luke assured her. “I’ve got Grace’s car. I can have us at Sara’s house in fifteen minutes.” He leaned back to look at her, still holding her in his arms. “Now, dry your eyes, straighten your kapp, and let’s go. Because, unless I’m sadly mistaken, our bishop won’t be halfway through his sermon.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked.

  “I do. And if he’s as hungry as I think he’ll be when he reaches the end of his sermon, he’ll still marry us so that he can sit down to that fine wedding dinner that Sara and Hannah have prepared.”

  She offered him a faint smile, wiping at her eyes as she took a step back from him. “We’ll be a scandal. Showing up late to our own wedding. Together.”

  He met her gaze. Held it. “Enough to keep your aunt Martha in a spin for weeks.”

  “Let’s do it, then.”

  She laughed, and he laughed with her, and her heart swelled with joy as her fears melted away. It would be all right. It would really be all right. She would marry Luke, and with the children they would be a family. Together they would face all the trials and happiness that life had to offer. And when she made mistakes or Luke did, they would ask God for forgiveness and try to do better. As Luke said, it was all anyone could do.

  Epilogue

  One year later...

  “I can help finishing setting up the chairs,” Tanner offered. “I’m not tired.”

  Luke shook his head. “You heard your mother, son. Bedtime. I’ll expect you up by five to feed the livestock.”

  “Ya, Dat.” He turned to his mother. “Should I wake Justice then?”

  Honor gave Tanner a good-night hug, still unable to believe how he’d shot up in the last year. “Leave your little brothers to sleep. Justice can tend the chickens after breakfast.” She tousled his hair affectionately. “Our first worship service for our new church is a special day of thanksgiving and celebration. We’ll need you to help look after the younger ones.” Tanner nodded, and she hugged him again.

  “Good night, son. Don’t forget your prayers,” Luke reminded.

  “Ne, Dat, I won’t.” With a final grin, Tanner left the parlor.

  Honor watched him go, a lump rising in her throat. “He’s growing up on us. Not just in height, but he seems so much more mature.”

  “Ya,” Luke agreed. “He is. It’s what children do.” He unfolded two more chairs and added them to the women’s row. “Do you need any help in the kitchen for tomorrow’s midday meal?”

  “I don’t think so. I just hope I’ve made enough chicken salad. I have plenty of yeast rolls, but I wouldn’t want to run out of salad.”

  He chuckled. “It’s just six families, counting Freeman’s and ours. We aren’t feeding half of Kent County, not yet. And everyone else is bringing food. We’ll have plenty.”

  She used her broom to reach a cobweb on the ceiling in one corner of the parlor. This newly expanded room would be plenty large enough for their first worship service. “Do you think I was selfish not to sell any of my land? Would Green Meadows have come together sooner, if I did?”

  Luke shook his head. “Everything is in God’s plan. If you had agreed, I’d not have gone to that English neighbor and asked him to let us know if he wanted to move. And you see what came of that?”

  She smiled at him. “I still have a hard time believing it.”

  The neighbor had wanted to move to South Carolina to be near his grandchildren, so Luke and Freeman were able to purchase the ninety-four acres. They’d divided that three ways and found three Amish families to settle, including Luke’s cousin Raymond’s. And Freeman and Katie had just sold one of their lots to a young Amish coupl
e who wanted to build a house, so they would soon join the new church community. Zipporah’s family would also be joining them.

  “We have our church,” Luke said, sliding a big stuffed easy chair into position for one of the elders. “And our bishop and preachers.”

  They’d asked Bishop Atlee from Seven Poplars to help choose their first church leaders. According to tradition, God’s ministers were chosen by lottery. The names were placed in identical Bibles and one picked at random by a designated elder. Freeman’s uncle Jehu would be their first bishop, with Freeman and one of the newcomers, Abel Byler, as preachers. Some might be surprised that their bishop would be a blind man, but they didn’t know Jehu. He had committed passages, stories and proverbs to memory, and he was full of wisdom and compassion. His capable, work-worn hands would help to mold the new community. And, surprising everyone, Luke was to be the new deacon, responsible for seeing that the Ordnung was followed.

  It was all Honor could do not to feel pride that her Luke was chosen and that he had been so instrumental in forming the new Amish community, which they’d decided to call Green Meadows.

  “...the school,” Luke said. “Honor, are you listening to me?”

  She felt her cheeks grow warm. “Ya... Ne, I was thinking how God has blessed us with good friends and so many opportunities. And ya, I am thrilled that we will have our own school just across the meadow.”

  “Thanks to you,” he said. “You donated the land.”

  “What’s an acre to see our children educated close to home? It was you and our new neighbors who built it. Without you, Luke, none of this would have happened.” Her smile was tender. “My life changed when you showed up at my door.”

  “It’s a good thing you opened the door that day. I was afraid you were going to leave me in the rain.”

  She laughed as Luke put his arms around her and hugged her. Then he kissed her full on the mouth. “You know that I love you,” he said.

  She nodded, too full of emotion to speak.

  “And I love our four children. You know that, too?”