The young man cleared his throat. The slight trembling in his voice had ceased and he was gaining confidence with every word that he spoke.
"At first he didn't let on about how smart he was 'cause he wanted folks to like him. And folks don't like people who are different much. Later it was because he knew he weren't no better than you because of it."
Jesse tugged unthinkingly on the sleeves of his suit coat. "Ye see," he said, "Roe Farley figured out that having a smart mind was a gift from God. Just a gift, like something yer pa hands ye at Christmastime. It wasn't something that you earned or something that ye deserved. It was nothing a feller could really take any pride in having 'cause he didn't have nothing to do with it. God did. If a feller got his nose in the air about being smarter than some other folks, why, it was as silly as thinking he was something 'cause his eyes were blue or he had a wart on his lip."
Jesse hesitated as he looked across the crowd hoping that they would understand.
"And Roe Farley, he taught me that not having a smart mind was not something I need to be 'shamed of. Like the smart feller, I didn't have nothing to do with it either."
Jesse smiled proudly. "Roe knew that what ye do with what ye got is what really is worth countin' in this world. He admired us here on the mountain. He comes from a real fancy place with an ocean and trains and more folks than we seen in our lifetimes. Now us, we didn't have nothing like them folks. We didn't have nothing at all. But we had our tunes and songs. Roe said that was brung from acrost the sea a long time ago. They was ours and we kept 'em. That was a good thing and he was grateful to us for it. That's what Roe's Listening Box was all about."
Jesse's quiet voice had mesmerized the congregation who sat thoughtfully, reverently silent.
"Now Roe Farley weren't perfect," Jesse continued. "He made mistakes. I make a lot of mistakes myself. I feel bad about mine. And he felt bad about his. But he didn't try to hide 'em or pretend they didn't happen or blame them on somebody else. He just owned up to what he done and he tried to do better next time."
Hesitating for a moment, Jesse caught his sister's eye and she smiled encouragingly. "Now some people thought that Roe Farley a-marrying my sister was a mistake. My sister, Meggie, was one of the folks that thought that way. But it weren't no mistake as I can see it. Roe, he loved Meggie. He told me . . . well, we talked sometime about personal things and he told me that the way he felt about love and life and people, it changed because of my sister Meggie. She cared about him and no one had never cared about him afore."
Tears gathered in Meggie's eyes and she dabbed them with the black hankie.
"Now some of you folks probably think that Roe was just talking and that he didn't mean all the things he told me about it being all right that I got a simple mind and about how he cared for my sister Meggie. But I know he weren't just making up lies. Roe Farley was my frien' and frien's tell each other the truth."
"That's right, Jesse."
The unexpected voice came from the doorway of the church. The entire congregation turned to see. Several people screamed. Beulah Winsloe fainted dead away.
"I told you that I was coming back, Jesse," Roe said as he took a step up the aisle. "And I just couldn't lie to my friend."
"Roe!" Meggie stood up, her eyes staring wide as the man she loved began walking toward her.
"I heard what you said about making mistakes, Jesse," he continued. "This little mistake is one that your sister made. I'm not dead. And I don't plan to be for a very long time."
He was at the front of the church now, within arm's length of the woman whom he loved.
"You're home," Meggie whispered.
"I'm home," he said.
The crowd came to life then. Women began shouting "hallelujah" and babbling to each other in joyous disbelief. Children began scampering around as if the church service had suddenly become a community picnic. The menfolk slapped Roe on the back companionably and welcomed him home.
Onery clapped his hand and pumped it with delighted vigor. "I knew you'd come back, son," he hollered over the noisy crowd. "Somehow I just knew it."
Granny Piggott was laughing and crying at the same time. She reached over and grabbed her nephew Pigg Broody around the neck and gave him a big buss on the cheek. The old fellow shook his head and spit a wad of tobacco into the can that he carried and commented to anyone who could hear him that "It's the dangest thang I ever seen in my life."
Jesse was jumping up and down like a youngster at the candy counter waiting for his turn to hug his friend. When his opportunity came he threw his arms around Roe like a big blond bear.
"It's so good to see you, my friend," Roe told him.
"I tried not to cry," Jesse confessed. "But I missed you real bad and there is so much I want to tell you and show you."
"I hope we have a lot of time together for telling and showing," Roe answered. "And someday, when I really do die, I want you to say all those things about me all over again."
Jesse nodded, but then admitted honestly, "I don't know if I can remember all them things that long."
Meggie still just stood there, stunned. Her heart was beating. She was breathing. But a sense of unreality gripped her.
As Roe came to stand in front of her a silence slowly fell upon the crowd. "Hello, Meggie," he said quietly.
Her voice trembled as she answered. "Hello, Roe."
Roe allowed his eyes to wander her face, her eyes, her hair half hidden beneath the plain black bonnet, the long length of her body, the tips of her toes peeking out beneath her gown.
"You're wearing shoes," he said with amazement.
"It's nearly winter," she told him.
They continued to gaze at each other, lost to the people around them. Meggie's hand trembled as she reached out, so gingerly, just to touch his coat.
He gathered her fingers into his own and brought them to his lips. A strange sound like the breaking of ice on the river on a spring morning resounded in Meggie's heart.
"There is something that I've got to tell you," he said.
She waited, wide-eyed and speechless for his words. There were things she had to tell him, too.
Roe cast a momentary glance in Onery's direction and gave him a hint of a smile. "Woman," he began gruffly, "I'm here on this mountain to stay. You can love me or loathe me but I'm not leaving you ever again."
Meggie felt her throat tighten as she stared at him.
"And there's something else I've got to tell you, too," he continued more gently. "I love you, Meggie. I've never loved anyone or had anyone love me. So I suppose I didn't recognize it for what it was at first. But I know now, Meggie. I know that it is love."
"I love you, too," she whispered.
"Praise God and hallelujah!" Pastor Jay shouted loudly from the pulpit.
The congregation turned their attention to the old preacher. They were surprised to find that rather than a comment on the young couple's reunion, the pastor was paying no attention to the people in front of him at all. With an expression of dazed thanksgiving and his hands raised to the heavens, he was staring toward the doorway at the back of the church.
As one, the people turned to see what he was looking at.
Gid Weston stood, just inside the threshold, looking as surprised at the preacher's outburst as everyone else.
"Gid Weston, you are the answer to my prayers," Pastor Jay proclaimed. "I promised God that I'd give up my pulpit when I got Gid Weston to darken this church's door. I'm an old man, my friends. I'm tired and ready to step down from this lofty service God has placed upon me. And now heaven has given me leave to do just that."
The congregation was stunned into silence and Gid Weston's eyes were as wide as a mama mink caught in the glow of a grease lamp.
"Not so fast, Pastor Jay," Roe said quickly. "I won't have you retiring from your pulpit before you marry me officially."
The preacher was momentarily startled and looked at Roe questioningly. "Who is it that you want to marry, son?"
"Why, Meggie," he answered.
The pastor's jaw dropped open and he looked plainly scandalized. "Young widows usually do marry quickly, but during the funeral is highly unusual."
It took several minutes of explanations to convince Pastor Jay of the rightness of Roe's request.
Roe wanted Onery or Jesse to stand up with him, but the preacher insisted that Gid Weston was a better choice. Wanting to get married more than he wanted to argue, Roe acceded to the old man's wishes.
The bride, dressed forlornly in black, and the groom, travel-dusty and with two days' growth of beard, followed Pastor Jay out the church door, up the small incline in the clearing to the summit of the Marrying Stone.
The sun shone down on the remaining traces of the first snow of the year causing it to glimmer brightly against the clear blue sky. The air was clean and fresh and new as if time itself were just beginning. And the young couple who stood together on the ancient stone that had seen so many lives eternally joined together was very much in love.
"Do you take this woman to be yourn, for better or worse, rich or poor, for this life ever, forsaking all?" the preacher asked.
"I do," Roe answered.
"And do you take this man as husband, obeying and keeping, for this life ever, forsaking all?"
"I do," Meggie said.
They turned to look at each other, eyes dazed with loving disbelief. They were together. They were here. And heaven itself was watching.
"Before God and this company," Pastor Jay bellowed out, "I declare ye according to the Word to be Mister and Missus . . ." The old man hesitated. "What was your name again, son?" he asked.
"Monroe Farley."
Pastor Jay nodded and began again. "Mister and Missus Monroefarley Weston."
Meggie opened her mouth to protest, but she didn't get the chance. Roe accepted the pronouncement given for its intent and laughed.
Possessively he grabbed her hand.
"There is not a skunk in sight this morning, Mrs. Farley," he told her.
Meggie smiled. They didn't need one. In an instant, before God and the good people of the mountain, Meggie and Roe Farley jumped the Marrying Stone.
The sun had barely disappeared behind the mountain when Meggie and Roe made their way through the doorway to the new cabin room. The wedding infare had been set up makeshift and haphazard, but it had worked. The company had eaten the funeral fare, Jesse had played his fiddle for the dancers, and Gid Weston had even hung around to provide a little imbibement for the less saintly of the congregation.
Roe and Meggie were tired and weary, but they were happy. Happier than either of them had ever before hoped to be. Together they hung a patchwork quilt across the opening to the main room to afford them some privacy.
"I think I'll make us a door tomorrow," Roe said.
"That might be a good idea," Meggie agreed.
He turned to the woman who was his bride and ran his hand around her waist, pulling her body up close to his.
"Are you glad that I came back?" he asked.
She feigned coyness for only a minute and then replied, "How can you doubt it?"
Roe grinned. "I don't, but it's good to hear you say it all the same."
She grinned back at him and he placed a tiny kiss on the end of her nose. They embraced warmly, both sighing with the warm, welcome fulfillment of holding the other half of their life so close. He breathed in her scent deeply. And his strength held her fast.
"I'm so glad that you love me," she whispered.
He pulled away to look at her. "Not as glad as I am that you love me."
They stood silently together grinning like a couple of well-fed whistle pigs for long moments.
"You ready to go to bed?" Roe asked.
Meggie blushed. "Yes, well, of course."
The two waited a little uncomfortably in the middle of the room for one of them to make the first move.
"Why don't you take your hair down?" Roe asked.
Immediately Meggie's hands flew to her head and she released the braided coronet that adorned her head with such undue haste she spilled hairpins to the floor.
"I'll get them," Roe said, but when he squatted down, she was right beside him.
They were close, very close, and he brought his mouth to hers, reveling in the sweet taste of her, so well remembered and so much desired.
As the kiss lingered they rose to their feet, the pins completely forgotten.
They finally parted but continued to stand very close, both of them breathing with exaggerated effort.
"You want to help me get down to my josie?" Meggie asked.
Roe swallowed any apprehension he might have felt and nodded. He turned her back to him and dutifully worked the buttons of her jet-black gown as she held her hair up and out of the way.
Meggie closed her eyes in near rapture at the gentle touch of his hands upon her. Determinedly she found her voice and tried to speak offhand.
"I've been sleeping in this room since you've been gone," she said.
Roe pressed his lips to the pale nape of her neck that he had exposed. "I was hoping that you had," he said. "I dreamed about it, you know. In my lonely nights in Cambridge I imagined you asleep on these quilt coverlets."
Meggie felt the warmth of his breath on her skin. It raised gooseflesh all up and down her back and a fluttering in the depths of her chest.
"I imagined you in these quilt coverlets, too," she confessed. "I imagined you here with me. But not sleeping."
He ignored his own shaking hands as he undid the final button at her waist and chuckled. "Meggie, Meggie, Meggie," he said with deliberate teasing. "You talk with the brazenness of a woman who would lay in the grass with a drunken frog gigger."
Not to be outdone by his teasing, Meggie gazed back at him over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow speculatively. "It depends, Mr. Farley, upon just who that frog gigger might be."
He gave her a nod of appreciation and then pulled the bodice of her gown away from her body. Eagerly he helped her lift it over her head and then allowed himself the pleasure once more of viewing his woman in a thin covering of homespun cotton.
"You are beautiful, Meggie," he whispered. After a moment he looked down at the crow-black dress that he still held in his hand.
"But this thing isn't. I think you should burn it," he said. "I'm not overly fond of the color black."
"It's my best dress," Meggie protested. "I'll have to wear it until it's a rag of threads."
"Oh? You're going to be a very practical wife, are you?"
"I have no choice," she answered. "I just got married, you see, and my new husband has given up his job as a scholar to be an Ozarker at leisure. He doesn't have his own farm. We don't have a corn bottom, a pack of dogs, a milk cow, or a hog to our name."
"Guess we'll have to live on love," he said.
"That makes pretty poor eating," she declared.
"Oh, I don't know," Roe said, moving in close. "I'm actually quite fond of nibbling on it from time to time."
He proved the truth of his statement by catching the lobe of her ear between his teeth.
The sensation made Meggie gasp a meaningful "Oh!" as the heat of desire sizzled through her. The new sensation was more than a little frightening. This was no girlish fantasy of love. What happened now between them was real and would have meaning and would be a part of the fabric woven of their lives. Meggie Best was really married to a man whom she really loved and this was really their bedroom where they would really conceive their own children. It scared her. Nervously, she pulled away from him.
"Meggie?" It was a whispered question.
"Let's get into the bed under the covers," she said, hurrying to climb up onto the rope-supported tick. "And douse that light."
He watched her scamper under the quilts and he smiled. "Marriage is all new to me, too, Meggie," he said quietly.
"It's not something that I know anything about. It's not something that I can learn in books."
> She nodded in agreement. "We will just have to catch on about it together," she said.
It was obvious that she was trying to be very brave. Still she bit her lip with concern. "Do put out the light, Roe. I think we ought to start out in the dark."
Roe looked at her a long moment and then grinned. "In a minute," he said. "First I've brought something for you."
"For me?"
Roe handed her a parcel wrapped in soft brown flannel.
"Open it," he said.
Nervously Meggie unfolded the cloth. Inside it was a shiny silver spoon tooled with a design very similar to the one of wood she'd given him all those months ago.
"It's beautiful!" she exclaimed.
He pulled the wood one out of his pocket. "I've carried this one with me since the day that I left here."
"I thought you just forgot to return it when you left."
"I couldn't leave it behind. Just like I couldn't leave you behind either," he said. "When I knew I must return to your arms, I asked the jeweler to make this one especially for you. So that you would carry it always and never leave me either."
"Never," she said with solemn sincerity. "I love you, Roe Farley. I could be unselfish once and send you away, but I'll never have the courage to make that mistake again."
He kissed her then, long, lovingly, passionately. When their lips parted, she smoothed the cool metal of the spoon along the softness of her cheek.
"You like it," he said.
"It's a wonderful present. The kind of gift that a prince would bring."
Roe smiled. "You like princely gifts. I brought you one of those, too."
"Another gift?"
He nodded. "Do you want it now?"
"Oh, yes," she answered with the excitement of a child.
"I'll get it for you."
Meggie sat up in the bed bright-eyed.
From the inside of his satchel Roe retrieved a fancy blue silk jewel case. The sides were beaded with delicate freshwater pearls and the tiny gold latch at the front was heart-shaped and locked with a delicate filigree key.
When he handed it to Meggie, she gasped.
With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection Page 266