by Tia Siren
“She showed me the letter he had sent most recently. She has others. They are in his handwriting. I would recognize it anywhere.”
“I… I don’t believe it.” Helen finally looked away and took a step back from him, her aggressiveness dissolved. She moved to the couch and let herself drop on it next to Jane.
Jane looked at her.
“What’s happening, Helen? What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you later, Jane.” Helen patted her sister’s hand softly. “Don’t you worry about it.”
Chapter Four
The house was extremely long. It was obvious that Mr. Lewis, who built it in the first place, continued to add rooms as he saw fit. He never expanded the upper level, leaving the house looking very odd from the outside. The rooms he built on were comfortable, solid and very nicely decorated. He’d felt the need to add another room when his daughters married, in case they and their husbands wanted to visit at the same time. Then he had added two more rooms for the children he knew they would eventually have.
He was an extremely boisterous and fun man in his late 60’s. He was fit and trim, ready to take on the world. Olive enjoyed being around him whenever he was there.
Over the course of a week, she learned many things about the new life she was living and the people she was living it with. She learned that Helen and Matthew were daily visitors, that William and his wife were rarely seen and that Henry had not been a visitor more often than holidays. She couldn’t understand that, considering the kind of family he’d had. Eric was also there more often than not.
She took the time to wonder if his visits were more frequent now that she was here. She tried hard not to think about Eric all day. He was the brother of the man she was supposed to marry. She hadn’t corresponded with him, and he hadn’t paid for her ticket to come. He was under no obligation to her. She was someone else’s intended. She could only imagine what he thought of her decision to marry a stranger across the country.
But when he visited, her doubts and fears seemed to disappear. He was so friendly and kind; she had no time to think negative thoughts. He took her on a tour of the house and surrounding land a few days after her arrival and had been thoughtful enough to bring along a basket with fresh fruit, cornbread and small jars of a delicious strawberry drink Hannah had been making for her children since they were very young.
“This is a concoction my mother is famous for.” Eric had boasted.
She remembered laughing and saying, “Famous where? I’ve never heard of her strawberry drink before.” and not even caring that it sounded blunt and a little rude. Eric never took it that way. Her conversations with him were always smooth, flowing naturally from one topic to another, with a lot of laughing along the way.
They had spent that entire day together. The only possibly negative thing she noticed of the day was that he always steered the conversation away from Henry if the topic was broached. Olive had seen very little grieving of the brother that had so recently passed, not just by Eric but by his siblings, as well. Helen did not seem to be naturally friendly, but the rest of Eric’s siblings were.
Still she had not seen one shed tear from any of them. Their mother was the only one she had ever seen show emotion about her deceased son.
Nevertheless, the rest of the day proved to be a true blessing from God. It was one of the most wonderful days she had ever had in her entire lifetime. She couldn’t imagine a day in her future that could make her feel as comfortable and happy as that day.
Since then, she’d found it nearly impossible to keep him off her mind. She wanted to be with him wherever he was, no matter what time of day or night it was. She wanted to feel his hands and his lips against hers.
It was during these times of elation that her mind would begin to fill with doubts. It was wrong for her to feel that way about him. He was Henry’s brother. She still felt some kind of obligation to the deceased man, and she didn’t know why. She wondered what his family must think of her. They hadn’t once asked where she’d come from, but she suspected they talked about it when she wasn’t around.
It was with those thoughts that she woke that morning, exactly one week since her arrival. She looked around the small room, stretching her arms out wide and breathing in the fresh scent of coffee brewing.
She sat up and let her small legs hang over the side. Her feet touched the cold floor for just a moment before she slid them into the little soft slippers Amy had given her. Wrapping her robe around her, she stopped in front of the mirror and poured some water from the pitcher into a pretty ceramic bowl. As always, she hesitated before dipping her hands into the water and washing her face. It had become a habit when she was in Virginia to hesitate because oftentimes the water was very cold.
It was rarely cold here in Nevada. The weather was completely different. But she still hesitated.
Five minutes later, face clean, hair brushed and pulled back behind her to fall loose and curly down her back, Olive walked out of the room and down the hall toward the kitchen and dining room. There was a very long carved wooden table with matching chairs that took up an entire room size. The kitchen was open to the table, doubling the size of the room. Henry had made the table for his family several years past.
She heard voices and stopped, standing silently, listening to what they were saying.
“I still don’t see the point in all of this.” It was Helen she heard first, and the tone of her voice is what had made Olive stop.
“What do you mean by ‘point’?” It was Eric that responded. Olive’s heart skipped a beat, and she berated herself for eavesdropping but didn’t continue to the kitchen. “Why does there have to be a point in helping someone?”
“She’s a complete stranger. Maybe the letters were forged, and she found a way to move into a home when she did not have one?”
“I don’t understand why you think that way.” It wasn’t Eric that was talking this time. Olive was surprised to hear William’s voice. “She has given no indication that she is anything other than she said she is. A woman who promised to marry a man that is deceased. She had nowhere to go.”
“I read those letters. They don’t sound anything like Henry. Nothing like him!” Helen snapped back at her brother. “I think she found a way to…to forge them!”
“That’s nonsense.” Eric spoke up. “She is who she says she is. However…” The way he said the word made Olive think Helen had been about to speak again. “I agree that the letters do not sound like Henry wrote them. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him use some of the words I read in those letters. That is, indeed, a mystery. But that is not a reflection on Olive. She would be a victim if this were some type of prank someone was playing on Henry.”
Olive distracted herself with thoughts about the letters and the man she thought she was coming to meet. The way they made it sound, Henry was not the kind of man she would have wanted to be married to. He sounded harsh, negative and mean. That would have been a living nightmare.
“You are right, Eric.” Helen’s voice had changed. Olive heard the shuffling of feet and the sound of someone sitting. Helen sighed. “I don’t want to see ma and pa taken advantage of, though. She shouldn’t just stay here forever. She isn’t kin. We don’t know her. She could be anyone…”
“I think I know why she was sent here, Helen.” Eric said, and Olive’s ears perked up, drinking in the sound of his voice. She sighed quietly.
“Oh? And why is that? For you to marry?”
The room was silent.
Olive’s breath caught in her throat, and she lifted one hand to it as if that would help. Her heart was hammering in her chest. Marrying Eric would be the most wonderful thing she could ever imagine.
But was it the wrong thing? What if that was never in God’s plan to begin with? She hadn’t been praying as much as she should have but she was worried that such a thing might not look good to Him or to the people she was living with. What would they think of her?
She was
confused by the long pause and wondered if Eric would ever answer. She pressed her lips together and let out a breath when she finally heard his voice.
“I am not the one to say what is in God’s plan, Helen.” His words almost directly matched her thoughts. It only made her more nervous. Her hands were shaking, and she pressed them against her lips firmly. “But I can tell you that I’ve prayed every single morning for Him to send me a sign that I will have a happy life, and, until she came, there was no answer.”
Tears filled Olive’s eyes. She felt guilty for eavesdropping, even if it meant she had heard such words. She began a fierce internal battle with herself, wanting to burst through the door and go to him and also wanting to run back to her room and fall into a crying mess on the floor.
She reached out with one shaking hand and pushed the door open to reveal herself. As it swung open, she blinked away her tears and let her eyes fall on Eric.
When he saw her flushed face, he jumped up from his chair, knocking it back.
“Olive!” He said her name almost fearfully as if he had said something wrong. “I was…I don’t…”
She took a few steps toward him. It was as if there was no one else in the room when she approached him. She shook her head and held one hand out to him.
He pulled in a deep breath, his chest swelling magnificently. Her face flushed a deeper pink. When she was only a few inches from him, she stopped and looked up into his soft brown eyes. “You were praying for me?”
“I was praying for you before and after you arrived, Olive,” he responded, his voice sweet music in her ears. “And I will until the day I die, I swear.”
“Is it truly the right thing to do? Is it?” Olive wanted the answer to be yes more than anything in the world.
“Yes.”
She melted into his arms, and he held her against him as tight as he could. “Will you marry me, Olive? Will you be my bride?”
She didn’t separate herself from his grasp when she answered. She lifted her head and whispered it in his ear. “Yes, Eric. I will marry you. I love you with all my heart.”
Eric closed his eyes, praying thanks to God. “And I love you, sweet Olive Kelsey. I love you.”
****
THE END
A Bride’s Home – A Clean Western Romance
Chapter One
Frustrated and hot, Claire “Gabby” O’Reilly threw a blue sheet over the line and roughly straightened one side, then the other. She coughed once or twice and cleared her throat. She didn’t like the way her anger was growing. She didn’t want to be miserable all her life, either.
She repeated her earlier motions with another sheet, tossing it and straightening it just as roughly as she had the first. Her brothers, Aeden and Donovan, were also tossing something – a ball. They were able-bodied. Why didn’t they have chores to do?
The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. She was 23 years old and had never experienced a true day of her life. There was only cleaning, cooking, laundry, when would it end? It would never end, as far as she was concerned.
Her brothers were not little children. She picked up a towel and looked at them as she shook it straight. Aeden wasn’t wearing a shirt and his muscles bulged when he caught the small ball and sent it flying back to Donovan, who was affectionately called “Donnie” by everyone in their little New York country town. The population was mostly Irish and many were kin to each other. She herself had many relatives nearby. It was like they had just brought Ireland over to New York and claimed a bit of land.
But the officials in town weren’t Irish. They were Americans and they let all the Irish people know it. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like the way they treated her relatives one bit.
Gabby’s thoughts ran in roundabout fashion, coming back to her personal situation when her eyes focused on her brothers again. They had stopped throwing the ball and were wrestling all over the lawn. Donnie’s shirt was also off and their tan bodies were sweaty. She reached up, pulling her apron up to her forehead and wiping her own sweat away.
They weren’t expected to do any chores around the house. Gabby’s family owned one of the largest general stores in town. Aeden and Donnie ran it. She narrowed her eyes, throwing yet another sheet up on the line to dry. She straightened it, stewing in her exasperation. They didn’t really do anything. They just told other people what to do. They never did anything around the house.
She heard a bell ringing from inside the house and peered in through one of the windows on the second floor. She saw a hand waving. Her grandmother needed something. She glanced over at her brothers, who had now stopped wrestling and were just sitting in the grass, talking. They didn’t move. She knew they heard that bell. But were they going to go help Nana? No. Of course they weren’t.
She sighed heavily and abandoned the remaining part of the wet laundry to attend to her grandmother. Both of her grandparents were elderly and frail. It seemed amazing that she had lost both her parents, who had been so strong and vibrant, in a tragic train accident and was left with grandparents who couldn’t even get out of bed by themselves most of the time.
She was disgusted that all her life was about was cleaning, caring for her grandparents – though she truly did love them – and doing menial chores like an old spinster. She didn’t go into town to do anything, she had only a handful of friends and they were marrying off faster than she could blink.
Gabby went up the stairs to the second floor with determined feet.
One foot after the other, she thought. This is the way it’s always going to be for me. Aeden and Donnie will never do anything but frolic with the ladies in town and take care of themselves.
She pushed open the door to her grandmother’s room and went in.
“You all right, Nana? What can I get for you?” She smiled as she went in the room, not wanting to give her grandma the impression she didn’t want to be there helping her. She cared for the old woman greatly, whether or not she wanted to be stuck in her life like this forever.
“Hello, little flower.” Her grandmother was tiny, sitting in a rolling chair near her window where she’d been looking out. “Little flower” was always what Nana called her and she didn’t mind. It was better than Gabby, a name she had despised from the first time it had come from her brother’s mouth. Her older brother, Aeden, had first called her that and the rest of them just followed along. As usual. Except for Nana. Nana always called her “little flower” no matter how big she got and gave her a sweet smile to go along with it. “Do you think you could make me a cup of hot tea?”
“I would love to.” She nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
Anxious to retrieve hot tea for her Nana as quickly as she could, she hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen. One glance out the window told Gabby her brothers had not bothered to help her out by finishing the laundry for her. But it was okay. The two sheets and cases she’d left in the basket where theirs. They would have to deal with wrinkled sheets.
She set a pot on the stove and waited for the water to heat up. She set the flame to the highest she could and waited. She took another smaller pot and set it on one of the other areas of the cooking-stove and dropped in three heaping spoonfuls of tea. When the water was boiling, she poured it over the tea, enough to make at least three cups worth.
When the tea was brewed to her satisfaction, she removed it from the heat and poured it into two mugs, one for her and one for her Nana.
She took the two steaming cups of liquid up the stairs carefully and pushed Nana’s door open with her backside. “Here we go, Nana. I thought I’d join you for a bit of tea, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh of course not, dearie.” The old woman replied. “I love to sit and have time with my garinίon! I love to talk to you.”
Gabby smiled at the sound of her mother’s Irish word. It was the only one she ever heard from the homeland. It meant “granddaughter”. It pleased Gabby to hear it. “Thank you, Gamma, you are so wise. I like talki
ng to you, too.” She set the cup down next to her Nana on the table and then sat near her on a small cushioned chair that she dragged up close. She sipped her tea, which was still quite hot.
“Tell me,” The old woman leaned forward, her still red hair, though lightened over the years, fell forward, curling down to touch Gabby’s hand. Gabby was impressed with the quality of the old woman’s long locks. It seemed to her since she was like her grandmother, she would likely keep her own flaming red hair for quite a few years. Even her Nana’s green eyes flashed when she looked over at Gabby, catching the sun through the window for just a brief moment. It made Gabby wonder how a frail woman like Nana could have such fine hair and flashing young eyes. “Have you met a young man to marry yet?”
Gabby’s cheeks flushed. “No, Nana. I don’t have time for that. I have to care for you and Grampa.”
Nana leaned forward and retrieved the hand Gabby had taken back. “You will find your life changing soon enough, little flower. You need to think about your future. You need to be happy.”
Nana always made her feel better. She had the right words to say and always calmed Gabby’s heart when she was down.
“Have you been saying your prayers, little flower?”
“Yes, Nana. I really have.” And she had. She wasn’t sure God really wanted to hear her complaints, though. He was hearing them all the time, if He was listening to her. She took a sip, thinking maybe it would be better if He wasn’t listening. She looked at her Nana and thought about how long the old woman had lived and what she had gone through during troubled times in Ireland. Gabby had always been fed and clothed and safe, for the most part. She was just miserable and bored.
“I know He’s going to give you a good life, little flower. You are so young. My sweet little girl, you will be happy.”
“Nana, if you’re talking about when you and Grampa pass, I really don’t want to think about it.”
“Oh, but you don’t have to worry about us, dearie. We have both lived very long and are still living! You are very young and need to live! You won’t have to wait too long, I’m certain of it.”