And that light comes straight from Lydianne, from a heart so loving and dedicated, that I’m not sure I deserve her.
“What a fine sentiment. I wish I’d said that,” he murmured. He certainly couldn’t voice his doubts about deserving her, for fear she’d agree with him. “I—I’m really glad Pete’s going to paint it soon and freshen it up inside over the winter months, too. It’s work that’s long overdue—”
“And you really are being very generous, Jeremiah, asking my opinion about those renovations,” Lydianne put in. “I—I didn’t mean to put you on the spot at supper or—”
“You did, too!” he blurted as he pulled her close in a playful hug. “And I needed that—and I need you, Lydianne, and please will you marry me because you’re making me so crazy I can’t think straight and—and I love you so much,” he blurted out. “Please say you will!”
He closed his eyes with an anguished sigh. He’d sounded like an absolute idiot who couldn’t string three words together in a meaningful sentence. At this most important moment, when he’d intended to be every bit as eloquent as Lydianne, he’d fallen flat. He didn’t dare turn her loose and let her walk away, yet he couldn’t look at her, either.
As the silence stretched between them, he knew he was doomed.
“Oh, Jeremiah, I love you, too,” Lydianne finally whispered in a trembling voice. “Of course, I’ll—yes! Yes, I’ll be your wife!”
His heart stood still. His soul soaked up the peace and grace—and joy!—that enveloped him, surely gifts from God Himself. When he opened his eyes, Lydianne’s crystal-blue gaze unhinged him and he hugged her close. The tear dribbling down each of her velvety cheeks touched him deeply as he let her answer sink in.
She said yes! Lydianne has agreed to be my wife!
Jeremiah chuckled, mostly at himself. “You know, I’ve delivered dozens of sermons, depending upon the Lord to give me the right ideas and the words to express them. Yet when I asked you to—well, I must’ve sounded like I didn’t have a brain in my head—”
Lydianne placed a finger across his lips to silence him. “You sounded like a man who’s in love—with me,” she added in a whisper. “Since the moment I knew a baby was on the way—more than six years ago, after I’d lost Aden—I’ve believed no other man would have me. Yet you, a bishop, forgave my secret past and—”
“Do you have any idea what a sense of hope I’ve known since we’ve been together?” Jeremiah interrupted her gently. “I thought I’d never have another chance at a new family, but now—”
His heart felt so overwhelmed with emotion, he embraced Lydianne again, loving the way her arms encircled him as though she’d never let him go. “Now, as I think ahead to late spring, when we’ll marry, I realize that by this time next year—”
“I could be carrying your child, Jeremiah,” she finished in a whisper. “I can’t wait!”
“Oh, don’t say that!” he shot back with a desperate laugh. “You’re way too tempting, Lydianne, and if we don’t wait, we’ll have to answer to—”
“I know. A bishop and his woman have to toe the line. I’ll try to behave,” she murmured. She looked him straight in the eye as color rose into her flawless cheeks. “But I want you, too.”
Jeremiah sighed from the depth of his soul and eased away from her. “We’d better keep walking,” he suggested as he took her hand again. “I’m all too aware of how long it’s been since . . . a wife shared my bed.”
As they followed the trail to his favorite place beside the river, he realized how much Lydianne had blessed his life by simply being her inimitable self. He could already imagine his mother’s excitement when they returned to the house to share their news, but at this moment he wanted to savor Lydianne’s company. Dry leaves rustled beneath their feet as the gurgling of the river’s current called to Jeremiah as it always had—like the voice of God, ever moving forward, reminding him that life never stood still.
“Ohhh. Look at this place,” Lydianne whispered. “See the way the last of the day’s light plays on the leaves? Smell the dampness of the shoreline, and hear how the water sings as it flows along? And look!” she said, pointing upward. “There’s an eagle!”
Indeed, a lone bird soared far above them, drifting effortlessly on the currents of wind beneath its wings.
“They nest a little farther down the river, on the bluffs,” Jeremiah explained. “I come here when I need to think through a problem, or to let go of troubling thoughts—or when I just want to bask in the sunshine on top of that big flat boulder, and remind myself of all the gifts God’s brought into my life. Like you, Lydianne.”
Her smile made him shimmer all over. “Listen to you, saying all the right things the right way,” she said softly. “May I join you in your spot?”
“I was hoping you would.”
Before he could help her, Lydianne assessed the smaller rocks and nimbly clambered over them to the top of the boulder. As she sat down, her attentive gaze told Jeremiah that she was taking in the details of this place and appreciating them as deeply as he did. He lowered himself beside her, gently wrapping his arm around her slender shoulders.
“I . . . I’ve never sat here with anyone else.”
“Not even Priscilla?” she whispered. Her eyes widened as she considered this.
Jeremiah shook his head. “She kept her distance from the river because the current scared her, and she couldn’t swim. She understood that when I took my walks, I often came here to have some quiet time—not that she was noisy or intrusive,” he added wistfully.
“This could still be your place, Jeremiah—your special getaway—”
“But if you’ll share it with me, it’ll be even more special, Lydianne.” He drank in the sight of her soft skin and the blond hair pulled neatly beneath her fresh white kapp—and the blue eyes that sparkled with such a sense of promise. “I mostly wanted to show it to you because this is where I found Ella after we’d been searching for her all night. She was curled up right here on top of this rock, because it had retained the day’s warmth.”
Lydianne’s eyes filled with tears of wonder. “She came here looking for God, and she heard His voice,” she whispered. “As long as I live, I’ll never forget the moment she said that—not because she’s my child, but because she’d had such a holy moment.”
“And she recognized it for what it was,” Jeremiah put in. He reached for Lydianne’s hand again as he recalled that moment of joy and relief, finding Ella in the spot where they were sitting. “She looked so peaceful and trusting, so sweet—like an angel taking a nap. And she looked exactly like you, Sunshine.”
“Resemblance aside, Ella is the greatest gift I’ve received in my lifetime,” she whispered. “And right now, you’re running a pretty close second, Jeremiah.”
When Lydianne rested her head against his shoulder, Jeremiah felt a deep sense of satisfaction—the certainty that this was the first evening of the rest of their lives, and that God had meant for them to find each other the way He’d led little Ella to this safe place.
“I feel we’re sitting on hallowed ground, you and I,” he murmured. “That’s another reason I hope we can consider this spot by the river our place.”
When she smiled at him, Jeremiah saw himself reflected in her crystal blue eyes—and he loved being there.
“Anyplace can be our place,” Lydianne said. “As long as we’re there together, jah?”
Once again, she’d left him speechless. Jeremiah smiled, knowing he’d better get used to that.
Please read on for an excerpt from the next novel in
The Maidels of Morning Star series, available soon!
Christmas Comes to Morning Star
By
Charlotte Hubbard
Chapter One
Warmed by the sunlight streaming through the window of the newly expanded noodle factory, Marietta Helfing stretched. She felt like a cat, limber and strong, soothed by the low rumble of the motors that ran the two cylindrical noo
dle presses. As she carefully arranged a thin length of pressed dough on her worktable, she caught her twin, Molly, gazing at her from beside the other table, where she was also preparing to cut a large rectangle of dough into long strips.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Molly remarked as she picked up her sharp knife. “And you look like you have a lot of them.”
Marietta smiled as she, too, began to cut her dough into long strips about four inches wide. “This time last year—the day after Thanksgiving—I was going in for my surgery, and I was frightened out of my mind,” she recalled as her knife moved deftly through the dough. “It’s such a blessing to be recovered and working at full steam again, after all that time I was wiped out from chemo.”
“And I thank the Lord every day that you’re back to normal,” Molly put in as they worked. “I’m looking forward to a fine, fun Christmas, different from last year, when we had to spend so much time getting you to your cancer treatments. Another gift is being able to work side by side now that we’ve doubled our work space and equipment,” she added with a lilt in her voice. “Mamm would be amazed at the way her little business has taken off like a shot, and that we’re selling so many bags of noodles at The Marketplace each Saturday.”
“Jah, she would.” Marietta worked in silence for a while, letting a wave of wistful nostalgia run its course. She missed their mother even more than she missed the breasts she’d lost during her bilateral mastectomy, but she was determined to forge ahead—to meet the demands of the eager customers who thronged their noodle shop at The Marketplace each Saturday.
After today’s noodles were cut and drying on screens, she and Molly would bag and label the dried noodles they’d made earlier in the week, so they could load the wagon this afternoon for the drive into town on Saturday morning. It was a steady yet demanding schedule they kept these days, but Marietta felt good about paying down the mountain of bills she’d accrued following her mastectomy and chemo treatments. She and Molly would soon be banking enough income to support themselves well into their later years—an important advantage, considering Marietta didn’t intend to marry.
After all, what man could possibly want a woman who was both damaged goods and unable to bear him children?
When she glanced at her sister, who was placing the first strip of her noodle dough into the roller to flatten it again, Marietta noticed a flicker of emotion on Molly’s face. What could’ve caused such a discontented expression?
“Penny for your thoughts, sister,” Marietta said as she, too, began feeding a strip of noodle dough through her roller.
Molly shrugged, guiding the thinner strip of pastry with her hands for several seconds before she responded. “Sure is quiet without Riley and Pete around.”
Marietta’s eyes widened at her sister’s wistful remark. For several months, Pete Shetler and his golden retriever, Riley, had stayed in one of their two dawdi hauses because Bishop Jeremiah Shetler had thought it would be an improvement over his nephew’s former living arrangements. During his stay, Pete had done some much-needed maintenance around their farm as well as remodeled their noodle factory—while his active young dog had mostly dug up Mamm’s flower beds, chewed the belts on their noodle-making equipment, and found other trouble to get into.
Pete had moved into a room at his uncle’s house, however, when Bishop Jeremiah had announced his engagement to Teacher Lydianne Christner. Both men had felt it would be more convenient for Pete to live at the Shetler farm during the winter months while he did some extensive remodeling on the bishop’s place. Although Marietta appreciated the return to a quieter routine without their renter, she sensed that Molly had secretly adored the muscular blond carpenter and his rambunctious dog.
“Maybe you should pay Pete a visit,” she suggested. “I bet he’d be tickled if you took over a pan of that noodle pudding he always—”
“Why would I do that?” Molly blurted. Her tone sounded playfully defiant, but her brow furrowed. “It’s not as though anything would come of it—even if Pete took the hint and asked me out.”
“Why not?” Marietta paused, almost hesitant to continue. She didn’t want to limit her twin’s future, and yet... “Just because I’ll never marry doesn’t mean you should forfeit a potential romance with Pete. Sure, he’s clueless most of the time, but he seems trainable. And he’s awfully cute.”
“Let’s not forget that Pete refuses to join the Amish church, so a romance with him is pointless—even if he knew the meaning of the word,” Molly shot back. “Truth be told, I like Riley a whole lot better than Pete, anyway. I intend to remain here on the farm with you, sister, as we’ve always agreed upon,” she added quickly. “We’re turning thirty-five next month, so why would I want to change my life—and my attitude—to accommodate a husband?”
Although Marietta still suspected her sister had feelings for Pete, she was relieved to hear Molly’s vehement insistence upon staying at the home place. The two of them had spent very little time apart; how would she cope with life alone in their farmhouse if Molly married? Such a lonely life was something she didn’t even want to think about.
“And besides,” Molly continued as she fed another strip of her dough into the roller, “we maidels need to stick together to keep The Marketplace going, ain’t so? With Regina married now and Lydianne engaged to the bishop, it’ll soon just be us two and Jo running the place.”
Marietta nodded. Jo Fussner had been the driving force behind creating The Marketplace from a dilapidated old stable nearly six months ago. It wouldn’t be fair to saddle her with all the responsibility for managing Morning Star’s very successful Amish market, especially when she’d planned that the business venture would be a project for her four maidel friends to share with her.
“Jah, that’s a gut point. Having a husband or a fiancé has changed things for those two girls—and I really miss having Regina around on Saturdays,” Marietta put in. “Once Lydianne’s married to Bishop Jeremiah, there’ll be no working away from home for her, either.”
“Not to mention what would happen if we acquired husbands and they felt they should be involved with running The Marketplace,” Molly speculated aloud. “That would change everything, and we’d no longer have control over how business was done there.”
“Wouldn’t be fair to Jo if we married and left the management all on her shoulders, either,” Marietta put in. “Her bakery keeps her so busy nowadays, I don’t see how she’d have time to take over all of the bookkeeping, as well.”
For a few moments the two of them worked in comfortable silence, feeding the remaining strips of dough into their separate rollers so they could cut them into noodles suitable for soups and casseroles.
“I’m hoping Lydianne will keep doing our accounting at home after she marries,” Molly remarked after a bit. “Can you imagine the fuss Drusilla will make if Jo spends even more time doing all the organizing and accounting? She’s already squawking about the extra effort the Christmas season will require, and it’s not even December yet.”
Marietta laughed out loud. Jo’s mamm was known for always seeing the proverbial glass as half empty rather than half full—and indeed, Drusilla often seemed to believe she had no glass at all. “We shopkeepers will all be busier than usual, starting this weekend when—”
The backfiring and familiar rumble of a pickup truck made them look toward the window. Molly’s face lit up. She quickly shut off her roller, washed her hands, and started toward the door of the shop, laughing at the sound of a golden retriever’s raucous bark. She opened the door just wide enough to slip outside, preventing Riley from entering the noodle factory—and spoiling their morning’s work if he plunked his huge front paws on a worktable covered with dough strips.
“Shetler, we were just talking about you!” Molly called out.
“Maybe that’s why my ears were burning, jah?” Pete fired back. “Were you talking trash about me, or saying how much you miss Riley and me causing trouble all the time?”
M
arietta shut off her roller and braced herself against her worktable. Molly could deny it until the cows came home, but she was sweet on Pete Shetler, and he liked Molly a lot more than he would admit, as well. Their banter continued outside for a few moments while Marietta tried to still the apprehensive fluttering of her heart.
This is all in Your hands, Lord, but you know how lonely I’d be if Molly married and left me here by myself—even if she deserves her happiness.
As the shop door opened, however, Marietta fixed a smile on her face. After all, if she’d battled cancer and won, she could face whatever changes Pete Shetler might bring into their lives—or whatever he’d come to tell them today.
photo: Tom Piper
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charlotte Hubbard is the acclaimed author of Amish romance and fiction that evokes simpler times and draws upon her experiences in Jamesport, the largest Old Order Amish community west of the Mississippi. Faith and family, farming, and food preservation are hallmarks of her lifestyle—and the foundation of all her novels. A deacon, dedicated church musician, and choir member, she loves to travel, read, try new recipes, and crochet. A longtime Missourian, Charlotte now lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband and their border collie. Please visit Charlotte online at www.CharlotteHubbard.com or write to her at P.O. Box 343, Elkhorn, NE 68022.
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