Temporary Bride: Dakota Brides

by Ford, Linda;

  “We are ready,” Inga called from the doorway.

  A fiddler began to play.

  Lena hung back. All this for a pretend marriage? She could imagine how angry these people would be when they found out.

  Kirsten caught her hand and drew her toward the door, ignoring Lena’s resistance. Panic churned up Lena’s throat and grappled with her tongue. She could not speak her protests. She could hardly get enough air into her lungs to keep her legs from buckling. How could she stop this?

  They reached the doorway. There was Anker, wearing a white shirt and black jacket. Apparently Ingvald had been at work on Anker at the same time his wife and daughter worked on Lena.

  Anker met Lena’s frightened look. His blue eyes offered strength, his steady smile reassurance. He held out his hand and she took it, allowing him to pull her into the room as the fiddler continued to play.

  Ingvald stepped forward and signaled the fiddler to stop. “I know the marriage took place several days ago but let me introduce Mr. and Mrs. Anker Hansen.”

  Anker nodded acknowledgement of the applause. He pulled Lena close, his warm arm across her shoulders giving her strength. “My wife, Lena. Charlie, little man, come here.”

  Charlie, playing at the side of the room with some wooden animals, left his toys at the sound of his name and ran to Anker. “Man,” he said. “Up.”

  Anker swept Charlie into his arms. “My son, Charlie.”

  The three of them faced the room, anchored together by Anker’s arms.

  Ingvald clapped. “Now we celebrate.”

  The fiddler struck up another tune. Someone called for Ingvald to dance and a space was cleared in the middle of the room.

  Anker edged back still holding Charlie and keeping Lena close to his side. “Are you—?” He searched for a word.

  “I’m fine.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I’m fine.”

  He tightened his arm around her shoulders.

  She was more than fine. She was having fun and feeling safe and content at Anker’s side.

  He tipped his head to brush the crown and set the bangles to tinkling. Charlie reached to grab them, but Anker shifted him so he couldn’t touch. “Those are for your mama to enjoy.” He grinned at Lena. “I think you are enjoying all this. Yes?”

  She nodded, her eyes flashing.

  He glanced toward the window. “Want to go see if the sky has turned green?”

  She laughed.

  He lifted his hand from her shoulder and brushed back her hair. “You make a beautiful bride.”

  Her heart forgot to beat. Pinpricks of heat stung her cheeks. She couldn’t tear herself from Anker’s look. He searched past her fears and resistance and found a place deep inside she hadn’t known existed, a place that took his words and vowed to cherish them forever.

  Clapping brought her attention back to the party, where Ingvald did elaborate gyrations in time with the violin, hopping sideways, then swinging to and fro. He sprang up again and stood as though he was going to take a leap, and then went on hopping sideways as before. The tune became more and more exciting, the beat catching at Lena’s thoughts, taking them on a happy dance in time to the music.

  The tune ended and Ingvald bowed, then turned to Anker. “This man is the one to dance.” He pushed Anker forward.

  Anker handed Charlie to Lena and brushed a fingertip across her cheek before he ran to the center of the room and the fiddler started another tune.

  Lena pressed her palm to the spot he had touched as if she could capture the rough feel of his hand. As if she could somehow separate her fear from this beckoning contentment.

  At first, Anker danced as Ingvald had then bent his head backwards and suddenly kicked toward the ceiling.

  Lena cringed, fearing he would crash to the floor. She tried not to imagine him broken and battered.

  However, he landed lightly on his feet as the guests laughed and shouted.

  The violin picked up speed and seemed to push him faster and faster. He turned cartwheels forward and backward, standing up quite straight after each.

  Charlie wanted to return to his play so she let him go. As she watched Anker and realized he wasn’t about to kill himself, she relaxed and enjoyed his agility. She clapped and swayed in time to the music.

  Then the tune died away in one single, long low note.

  “A love song,” Ingvald called, and the fiddler played a slow haunting tune.

  Anker reached for Lena and drew her into the center of the room. He held both her hands and looked deep into her gaze as he sang a song in foreign words, his voice deep and rich.

  She didn’t need to understand the words to understand the sentiment.

  Anker’s look went on and on, past her defenses, past her fears and worries, beyond her vow to not owe anyone, and found a tender, unfamiliar spot deep inside that welcomed his words even though she knew them not.

  Silence embraced them as the song ended. Anker drew her closer. She went without thought, caught in his gentle gaze. His eyes crinkled as he bent and brushed her lips.

  Applause jerked her back, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. She had forgotten they were not alone. In fact, she had forgotten everything but the way her heart leaned toward him, seeking a connection.

  The betraying direction of her thoughts filled her with shock that she could be so easily distracted from her purpose. This man was her pretend husband. Nothing more.

  She made to spin away, escape, but Anker held her hands and wouldn’t let her.

  “Stay with me,” he whispered.

  She cast a glance around the guests, saw a mixture of reactions from uncertainty about this marriage to pleased smiles. Her gaze stopped at Inga, who looked as if Christmas had come early with gifts beyond imagination.

  Lena slowly let her embarrassment ease. They had a pretense to maintain. She allowed Anker to draw her away from the center of the room.

  Ingvald cleared his throat noisily to get everyone’s attention. “We have a gift for Lena and Anker. Peder. Kirsten.”

  The pair struggled in, each with a tiny evergreen in a bucket of soil. They set the trees before Anker and Lena.

  Inga waved her arms in excitement. “We sent to a cousin in the mountains for them.”

  “How nice. Fir trees on the prairie,” Lena said.

  Inga laughed. “It is custom. Kirsten, you tell her.”

  Kirsten’s cheeks flamed as she explained. “You are to plant these on either side of your door. It will make sure you are blessed with a child.”

  Lena’s cheeks fired up. Her eyes stung and she ducked her head.

  Anker chuckled, his mouth close to her ear. “You look very nice when your cheeks get pink.”

  She didn’t feel nice. She felt trapped in a falsehood she knew she would live to regret. She thanked the Nilsson family for the gift, wondering if her words sounded as stiff as they felt. Charlie, racing after one of the children, tripped and banged his head. Lena rushed to soothe him, glad of an excuse to get away from curious, watchful glances.

  How had she allowed herself to be drawn so far along a pretend path?

  And how was she to find her way back when her own heart betrayed her with yearnings she tried so hard to ignore?

  Chapter 7

  They headed home as the sun drifted toward the horizon. Anker sent a glance to Lena, sitting straight as a board beside him in the buggy, Charlie asleep on her lap. She met his look, her eyes flashing a cautioning signal.

  He jerked his attention to watching the horse plod onward. For an hour or two, he’d allowed himself to forget their marriage was pretend. He’d been carried along by the sentiment of age-old traditions. The love song had started out as only familiar words but somehow, as he smiled into Lena’s eyes, he had become aware of the meaning. And the kiss had been as sincere as his name.

  “Lena, did you enjoy the party?”

  She shrugged. “I kept thinking how angry your friends will be when spring comes and I go back home
.” A challenge blazed from her eyes as if making sure he remembered their agreement.

  “They will be sad, I expect.” He gave her look for look, demanding things as well. A response. An indication of what she really, truly felt instead of this hard resistance to every kindness someone offered her.

  “Lena, how will you feel?” His voice softened, deepened. Surprised he was, to discover he hoped she felt some growing fondness for him.

  Her gaze grew more intense and her lips pulled into a straight line.

  Seeing her rigid posture, sensing she felt vulnerable and found the feeling not to her liking, he relented. He was, above all, a man of his word. “Lena, I agreed to a pretend marriage. I want only to keep you and Charlie safe.”

  She nodded and turned forward, settling herself with fractionally less stiffness.

  Anker faced forward too, although the tension across his shoulders increased. He remembered the sense of peace he’d experienced as he sat in church, and forced his thoughts backward to that place. Tried to bring back the words Reverend Sorrow said about trusting God, knowing His faithfulness, and knowing He would honor obedience. Father God, You have given me a task for the winter, to care for Lena and Charlie. I will obey and not falter. I will seek to honor You in my words and deeds, and trust You to see us all through these next few months.

  They arrived home. Anker pulled up in front of the house. He climbed down and went around the buggy to reach up for Charlie who came awake instantly, his feet churning to be down so he could run. “Hang on, young man. Wait until we get inside.”

  Anker took Lena’s hand and assisted her down. Her feet landed on an icy patch and she slipped. If not for his firm grasp, she might have fallen.

  She righted herself. “I’m okay now.” She tried to pull her hand free.

  Anker did not release her. “I will see you get to the house safely.” Not until Lena stepped inside did he relinquish her hand and put Charlie down. As soon as Charlie’s feet hit the floor, he began to run. Anker chuckled as he slipped outside, closing the door behind him. This one time, he would let Lena tend to the fire while he tended to the trees and the horse.

  He put the two little fir trees off the wagon and took the horse to the barn to unhitch and care for.

  A few minutes later, he returned to the house with a shovel and stepped inside. Lena stood before the stove staring at nothing as far as he could tell. “Can you get me a bucket of hot water, please?”

  She glanced at the shovel then hurried to get water from the reservoir on the stove. She returned and handed him the bucket. “What are you doing?”

  “Planting the trees.”

  Ignoring her surprised look, he took the water outside and poured some on the spots he had chosen. As the hot water softened the ground, he dug it out. Soon he had holes on either side of the door.

  Lena peered through the window, watching. As he prepared to place the trees in place, she threw on a coat and stepped outside. One glance at her face and he knew she was about to protest.

  He decided to stall her. “No point in wasting two fine trees.”

  “Your friends will expect they mean something.”

  He didn’t miss the warning in her voice, but kept his attention on his task. “I hope they will grow tall and provide shade for the house from the hot summer sun and a place for birds to nest.”

  She made a dissenting noise.

  He straightened and faced her. “Don’t let it mean something I don’t intend it to.”

  She searched his eyes as if doubting his words. Then she shrugged. “It’s your house. Plant trees wherever you desire. It makes no difference to me. I’ll be gone come spring.” She slipped back inside before Anker could answer.

  Not that he had anything more to say. Seems to him, it had all been said more than once.

  He placed a ball of roots in each hole and packed the wet dirt around. A few minutes later, he stood back, satisfied. The trees would remain dormant until spring and then he would water them well. In a few years, bird song would greet him as he entered his house. Perhaps even this year the branches would attract the birds when they returned in the spring. He grabbed the shovel and headed for the barn.

  Was he destined to live the whole winter with a reminder of spring dogging his every action?

  * * *

  Lena walked the length of the living room twice before she paused at the bedroom door. Boredom had plagued her the last few days. She’d polished the kitchen. She’d done the laundry, including Anker’s clothing that he had produced at her request. He’d given her permission to use anything in the house, go anywhere. However, it wasn’t her house and she hesitated to poke through closets, but driven by her need for something to do, she had decided she would tackle the bedroom today. The first days, Anker had emptied the drawers of the highboy into a trunk and heaved the trunk up the ladder to the loft. But the room still seemed to overflow with his things. She could not relax until she had corrected that.

  Sucking in a deep breath, she walked past the bed to the closet and threw the door back. A shirt hung from a peg. Wondering why he had left it behind, she pulled it down and saw a tear in the sleeve. She’d mend that. A bundle on the floor drew her attention and she scooped it to the bed to examine. She unknotted several pairs of socks, each with a worn heel or toe, wondering if his mother had knit them before he left home. Or . . . remembering his large family . . . a sister, or cousin or aunt.

  As she sorted through the bundle, she realized she had found something to occupy her time. She would unravel one or two of the socks and reknit the heels and toes of the others. She set them aside and turned back to cleaning out the closet and the drawers. In one drawer, she found a bundle of letters, all from Norway. So much family. She couldn’t imagine. Charlie was all the family she had left, and Sky, her sister-in-law, but she was so far away.

  A great loneliness sucked her insides tight. She made a disgusted noise. She should be used to having no family. There wasn’t a time she remembered anything remotely resembling family apart from the three years she’d been Johnson’s wife. After his death, she would have laid down and given up except for Charlie. But now, it was no longer solely for Charlie she intended to return to the farm and start over. She knew better than to depend on anyone. Either they demanded a harsh price as Mrs. Miller had, or they left her alone and floundering as Johnson had.

  And Anker? She hadn’t yet discovered what he wanted. He insisted it was only to make sure she and Charlie were safe. She feared to believe it. Feared there would be an unwelcome tallying at the end of the winter.

  She finished scouring the room, put things back to rights, then took the socks to the chair by the stove and began to work on them. This was one small thing she could do to help balance the scales.

  Charlie alternately occupied himself with racing back and forth across the room or stacking the blocks and knocking them over. He looked up from the scattered blocks. “Man?”

  “He’ll be in soon.” Charlie looked forward to playing with Anker.

  Charlie pushed to his feet, and came over to lean on Lena’s knee. “Papa, come?”

  Lena pushed her work aside and pulled her son to her lap. “No, sweet boy, your papa is not ever coming again. He’s gone to be with Jesus.” She thought of pointing upward but wondered if Charlie would take that to mean Johnson hid in the rafters.

  “Papa, come.” He said it with the certainty of an innocent child.

  “No, Charlie.” She wished she had a picture of Johnson to help keep him alive in Charlie’s head. And in her own mind. It seemed his image grew more and more blurred. And she couldn’t remember exactly how his voice sounded. She’d asked Sky to send a picture. Had Sky written? Anker used to come by every couple of weeks and always brought her mail, but now he had no need to check on her. Nor could she ask him to see if she had mail. She’d have to wait until he felt moved to go to town for some reason of his own.

  Charlie demanded to be put down and she reluctantly released hi
m, wanting to study him longer for a likeness to his father. She never caught more than a glimpse of Johnson in Charlie’s looks and now even that had begun to fade. Or was she only forgetting more than she knew?

  Charlie trotted to the window and pressed his nose to the glass. “Papa, come.”

  Before she could explain again, the door opened and Anker stepped in accompanied by a blast of cold air.

  “Papa.” Charlie said it with utmost confidence and stood waiting for Anker to take off his coat, knowing as soon as he did, Anker would toss him in the air.

  Lena pushed to her feet, intent on stepping in front of Charlie and reminding him again his papa had gone to heaven. But before she could cross the room, Anker hunkered down to eye level with the boy.

  “Charlie, I would be very pleased to have you call me papa.”

  Lena ground to a halt. It was impossible to misread the love in Anker’s face or misinterpret the glow of approval in Charlie’s.

  Anker sent her a happy look that flattened as he correctly read the shock in her face. She turned away, unable to voice the rush of protests. He had every right to expect Charlie to call him papa. Everyone would expect it.

  This, then, was one of the costs of her agreement.

  * * *

  Anker opened the store door and waited for Lena to precede him. He set Charlie on the floor but held his hand tightly to keep him from beginning his usual race across the open floor. “I’ll get our mail.”

  Lena had seemed eager for the trip to town but now hung back. He half suspected she would have returned to the wagon if he hadn’t blocked her way.

  He glanced past her to the other customers. His gaze rested on two women who glared from Lena to Charlie with undisguised harshness. Clearing his throat, he took a step forward, his action forcing Lena farther into the room. These old hens would do well to remember he was now Lena’s husband and Charlie’s father.

  Lena checked to make sure Anker had a firm hold on Charlie, then ducking her head, hurried to the counter and softly asked for oats and molasses.