by Faye Sonja
That being said, I now understand the happiness you spoke of and sought. I have spent a great deal of time in solitude and quiet introspection and I now understand more about me. That is due to the courage your insistence gave me to step out into the world.
Thank you for it all.
Thank you for the love I lost.
Thank you for your friendship through it all.
And thank you for having the courage to choose your own path. It inspired me.
Jackson tells me you are married and with child. I wish you and your family all the very best and I will keep you in my prayers as I go out to seek my own path. I will never forget you and I will love you always.
Yours truly,
Joshua.
She smiled as she read the letter and placed a hand on her stomach. From the foyer she waved to Jake who came running to her side immediately.
“What is wrong?” he asked looking her up and down for signs of an ailment.
“Nothing she said resting his hand on her stomach where their child lay kicking. “Nothing is wrong. Everything is absolutely perfect.”
* * *
The Pursuit of the Half-Blind Amish Bride
Mail Order Amish Brides
Book 3
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b o o k 3
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Amish Jessica is dating Samuel for a while but she knows he is not her one true love. And this lies with it a problem- If she defies her father’s order, she will be shunned by the community and so she keeps quiet till she meets Joshua through a mail order bride ad.
Trapped in a love triangle and the pressure of being shunned, will she find the courage to face the truth and seek the love she longs for?
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Prologue
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Minnesota
Mid-summer,
1913,
“Jessica Massey,” she said. “Jessica Massey.”
She said it slower the second time as if the name was somehow foreign to her and not her own. For three years she felt as though she was stuck. Stuck in the same spot for ages, not moving or going anywhere. She looked down at the dark blue tunic she was wearing and could not find her identity in that either, even though she’s worn one her entire life. The one thing that had defined her- being Amish- was fading in its relevance and she was trying desperately to hold on to it, but she could feel her grip slipping away.
Was this what she was meant to be for the rest of her life?
If it was then she would be happy with it as long as there could be a little difference. She just couldn’t commit to baking all day every day, as she felt she was dying inside.
“Running away from your life again?” Annabelle asked her. She looked up at the shadow that had fallen over her peaceful ruminations and smiled.
“I am here wondering if maybe you think it might be possible to get a pass to go into town with the farmers to sell their produce today,” she said.
Annabelle sighed. “Am I to be worried that you always seem to want to go into town?”
She didn’t answer, she simply looked at the same dark blue tunic her friend was wearing and wondered if Annabelle had never gotten tired of doing the same things all the time. The glow on her face answered that question.
“Worried? No,” she said responded. “I would just like to go do something different at least once per week. Maybe see another place.”
“Then read a book,” Annabelle said with a giggle.
Jessica laughed. “That worked perfectly fine when I was a child, though that time of my life has passed.”
Annabelle sighed. “Well, your love interest is going to be going,” she said pulling out the day’s paper with a mischievous smile at Jessica.”
“Yes, he is,” she perked up and turned her one good eye towards Annabelle. “I can always go with him.”
Annabelle laughed. “Maybe you should start thinking of him as more than just an escape from the boredom here.”
She sighed. She really hadn’t been using him. She had been thinking about that lately. Samuel was a good man; he worked the stables and when he was not home with his mother he was catering to her every whim. She was born blind in one eye and others would cringe as they looked at the eyeball that saw nothing, Samuel would always place a kiss over the eye to show he did not think she was any less a woman. With him she felt love and some part of her loved him, but she didn’t get that tickle in her stomach her mother said she should get whenever her love was around. He made her happy and made her hopeful, but he was not to be the one for her for the rest of her life.
“Can you believe this?” Annabelle asked her pointing to an advertisement in the paper she was reading. “Men trying to find wives and women trying to find husbands the same way!”
As Annabelle spoke she jabbed at different ads in the paper and Jessica looked at them in shock. Men were advertising themselves.
“Is that even legal?”
“Well it must be,” Annabelle said as they read the others. “It is in the papers.”
She sat reading through them for a while and Annabelle excused herself to go back to work and found an ad by an Amish man- Joshua Ashon. She rolled his name off her lips over and over again, enjoying how it sounded and felt. He was from an Amish community up north and she was sure she had heard of them before. With a smile she decided to write to him out of curiosity. Maybe if they did find themselves connected she would find much more enjoyment living someplace new.
The one thing she was absolutely sure of was that she did not want to live outside an Amish community, and so any man she married had to be firmly grounded in the Amish faith. The thought of having a romance through letters appealed to her sense of adventure so much that she lost the urge to go to town. She went back to her chores hoping to finish before afternoon church was over to be sure Samuel would be waiting.
But hours later while all the other blue frocks were making their way to the church in the center of the quiet but quite large Amish community, Jessica was busy trying to do absolutely nothing.
"Dochtah, if you don’t hurry you will miss church again," Fayan, her mother warned her.
She looked at the woman with a smile. The woman had tried with her, but she always seemed to end up a little off to the side of what was expected of her. That seemed to be the common thread in her life. But her caring mother never once made her feel like she wasn’t doing what was expected of her. She was supportive and she only hoped that she would never disappoint her.
"I know Maem," she said with a sigh. "I will be there in a bit."
Her mother looked at her worried, but Jessica knew she would not force her to go. As of late she had been missing church in a search for solitude and quiet reflection on what she wanted of her life, and she knew her mother understood that. It made her feel guilty because this would be the second church day in the month she had not been to church. Things in her head were not as simple as they used to be. No matter how much she tried to pretend they weren’t complicated, she would always run head first into the fact that they were.
"I love you Maem," she called to Fayan as she walked out of the house. Her mother turned back to her with a worried smile and placed a kiss on her forehead. Between them words were not necessary, but the heavy footsteps coming down the stairs would most definitely demand a conversation whereby she would have to explain herself. That was not something she was in the mood for, so she clutched her bonnet to her head and hightailed it through the house and out the back door to the yard before her father appeared.
No, they didn't have a bad relationship. She loved her father like she would never love another man, and in all fairness she was closer to him than her mother was. It was just one of those things. She was a daddy's girl, but for that same reason his blue eyes could pierce her soul and read her deepest secrets, and she had some she wouldn't want to get out for f
ear that they would break his heart.
She just couldn't have that, so she avoided that with guilt... a lot of guilt.
"Hiding again?" Her baby brother with similar blue eyes asked her as she pinned out the laundry her mother had left for her to hang dry.
“I am never hiding,” she glared at him. "Why haven’t you gone to church?"
"Maem said you might need help with the chores and getting things ready for the get together tonight," he smiled up at her. "I think she knows you could use the company.”
“She does,” Jessica admitted.
“You know you should talk to her, right?" he asked.
She looked at him saddened by the worry she knew she must be causing her mother. "How would I go about doing that? Where would I even begin?"
He cleared his throat. "You say you have known for a while that something isn’t quite right about me and I think it is time to tell you that I am trying to figure myself out and Samuel just is not the one for me. I would like to court some other man who kisses me better than he does."
He walked around her making kissing noises and batting his eyelashes at her like a girl. She laughed and tossed a clothes pin at his head.
"You are such a pain,” she laughed at the little boy. His name was Casam, but she called him Cas. Her parents had given her the opportunity to name him when he had been born and that is what she had chosen. She thought it suited him; he was every bit the mischievous one.
They both fell silent because they knew the predicament she was in was a serious one. She was now twenty-three and had all but turned the other boys away. She had been turning down invitations for courtship since she was sixteen. Samuel had been the only one, who had appealed to her in the least, but she needed more adventure and he was far too traditional. Maybe if she ran off to the English world things would be easier for her, after all they did seem quite liberal there. But she knew she would not; she loved her home far too much. To be Amish was something she took great pride in, but she knew that to run off would be to break her mother’s heart. It broke about all the laws of their beloved ordnung and she would be shunned should she do such a thing.
"What are you going to do then?" Asked Cas, who was the keeper of her secrets.
"I don't know," she smiled down at the ten year old. "I really don't know."
He gave her a sad smile. "I hope you figure it out soon, Jessica. Not knowing has been making you very sad, and I don't want you to be sad anymore."
She pulled him in for a hug. She loved him more than he would ever be able to understand, and should she ever be forced to leave this beautiful place, she would miss him. She would probably miss him more than she would even miss her parents... That was the simple truth and about the only non-complicated thing in her head.
She turned back to the laundry at her feet as the early evening winds whispered through the trees around her. In the distance a horse neighed in time with the old German chorus coming from the church down the road.
Why did she ever wish to grow up? It wasn't working out for her at all... it just wasn't. She took solace in the fact that when she was through she would be writing a letter in response to the ad of Joshua Ashon, and hoped he would be something more than just the same traditional type gentleman she was growing so tired of.
* * *
1
Chapter ONE
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“ She hoped he would be something
more than just the same traditional
gentleman she was growing tired of.”
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Three weeks later
“No checking of the mailbox today?” Smith asked Joshua as they trotted their horses out through the gates toward the town.
Joshua shrugged. He had placed his mail order bride ad months before and had it recurring at least once per week, but up until now he had not received a single response. It used to be that he ran to the mail box every morning and every evening, but after finding nothing there for a while he decided to stop setting himself up to be disappointed.
“You know,” Smith began and he sighed. Here was another lecture looming on the horizon. “Here in the English world they have a saying that Rome was not built in a day. It is proverbial for almost everything in life. It all takes time and romance is no different. What you need to remember is that you are seeking romance the non-traditional way.”
He did remember that. That was all he ever thought about.
Sometimes he would sit in the meadows to the back of the property and wonder if he hadn’t made a huge mistake. Maybe if he had stayed in his own Amish community instead of running after Minna when she had left him, he would have been better off. He felt lonely these days. It wasn’t even that he was just lonely; he was beginning to feel like the world had all but turned its back on him and left him to fend for himself. It was not a nice feeling even in the least.
He missed his mother, too. He missed her all day every day and it made him even sadder that he would not be able to go back home anytime soon. Going after Minna when she left had been in an effort to show her he still loved her despite everything that had happened. Yet, here he sat atop a horse wondering if he had not made a horrible mistake. The deal he had made with the community elders was that if he brought her back with him then he would have a place in the community. She had been in love with an Englishmen on some great ranch in the west when he found her. And she had been adamant that she would not be leaving.
He had risked it all for her and she had turned away from him. For the first couple months all he felt was a bitter-sweet resentment for her, but then the fact that he could not go home had struck him hard and he found himself in quiet introspection. It was then that he understood what her leaving was actually all about. Joshua had come to see that one’s path, though predefined, did not have to be the only option one had for happiness. His inability to return home had prompted the desire to find life elsewhere and here he was in Minnesota, living as if he was Amish because he refused to give up his beliefs, working for a man who was like a father to him.
“I don’t know about this love thing,” he confessed to Smith. “Maybe it is not for me. Not everybody has that luxury of finding love you know.”
Smith stared at him in hopelessness and then smiled. “You sound like a man who has given up on the world he is trying to integrate himself into. Life is lived on a continuum young man. It is not meant to be rushed and you cannot rush the universe into changing its plans just because you don’t like the pace it is going at.”
Joshua chuckled. He always found it strange to hear Smith refer to the inner workings of the God he believed in as the universe. Not much of a religious man, he had come to understand that Smith did share one thing in common with him- the belief of something greater than himself.
“I am a patient man,” he told Smith. “The Amish ordnung has taught me that life is about simplicity and the ability to embrace what life throws our way, knowing all the while that the Good Lord has a plan for us. But I find myself questioning the reality of that sometimes.”
“And to question means you are a man with a thought,” Smith assured him. “That is a good thing. Now don’t give up hope on yourself.”
They fell into a pensive silence as they trotted to the wheat fields on the south of Smith’s large plantation. The cattle they passed chewed with blank uninterested stares as if they were no more than flies passing by and the workers in the field could be heard singing as they toiled. He had enjoyed it here since he had moved, and in the months passed he had made himself useful. Nevertheless, as the day passed him by, sweating under the heat of the sun, he knew he wanted more.
Hours later as he made his way home he stopped at the mailbox, and with a huge sigh and a prayer that somehow he would find a letter there he opened it. What awaited him took his breath way, and when he pulled the pink envelope addressed to him from the box, his hear
t smiled and sang in happiness.
He galloped to the house to tell Smith who only laughed at his behavior.
“You see,” the older man said to him. “All you needed was a little faith and patience.”
What was in the envelope was what he had wanted all along. A Jessica Massey of an Amish community four towns away had responded, and she ended the letter with an invitation.
If you are interested, I will be at the food market a week from now on Saturday.
Come by and introduce yourself and let us see what life has to offer us.
He was ecstatic and when he told Smith of it, the plan was made. This Jessica was Amish as well and that was something he had been searching for.
Thank you Lord for this opportunity was the prayer on his lips that night as he went to bed.
* * *
The market roared with rage for it now was awakened from its peaceful slumber. The shops were stuffed and street vendors made the street extremely narrow, forcing people to walk in a straight line like soldiers going into battle. This was the part of it that Jessica loved- the people watching. Even as she helped to stack their goods in the front of the little stall they had rented for the day, she found time to glance at the passersby. And every Amish man that passed, caught her one good eye as she wondered when Joshua would show up. He had sent a response saying he would be coming and she was excited to meet this Amish man who lived in the English world.