by Ginny Aiken
She was sure Peter loved her. He might not know it yet, but she was here now. She might just need to help him see how much he loved her.
But what if…?
And so the days went, three of them, full of joy and full of nerves. The evening of the fourth day, when the beans she’d prepared were about perfect for serving, Emma measured out the ingredients for the evening’s biscuits and dug her fingers in to work the dough. When it reached just the right soft, puffy consistency, she shaped the rounds and put them to bake. As she went to clean her hands, the sound of hoofbeats entered the clearing outside. Pippa, who these days divided her time between following Wade wherever he went and shadowing Robby, set off a volley of yelps and yaps. Emma’s heart picked up its beat.
She rinsed and dabbed off the dampness on a towel, then hurried to where she’d stowed the few belongings she’d unpacked. Since Peter had only seen her at her worst for the longest time, she wanted to change that first impression she’d made. She looked at herself in her hand-held mirror then ran her hands over her hair, smoothing away the stray strands that refused to stay off her forehead.
Giving up on making them obey, she crossed to the door, but before she got there, it opened wide and her father strode in. Shock froze her for a second, but then she shook her head. “Father! Papa? What are you doing here?”
He harrumphed, his cheeks turning ruddy and a smile curving his lips. “Why, is there something wrong with a father visiting his daughter these days?”
She blinked furiously, only to realize this wasn’t a dream. “No, no! Of course not. But why are you here? I thought you said you’d never come, that you were a businessman at heart, not a mountain man at all.”
He shrugged and opened his arms. “A man can change his mind, can’t he? Come give me a hug, Princess.”
She ran to him, took a deep breath of his familiar scent of bay rum and cherry pipe tobacco, and then looked up again.
“I’m so glad to see you. I didn’t expect to so soon.” She stepped back and gestured him inside. “Please come in, you must be tired and—Colley!”
“Thought ya’d never see me outta that there jail of Adam Blair’s again, didn’t ya?”
Emma flew into the older woman’s arms. “I’m so happy to see you free again. Are you well? Did he hurt you? If he did, I’ll make sure Papa’s lawyer—”
“You don’t have to do a thing, dear child,” her father said. “I’m here to see this through.”
Emma clasped her head between her hands. “I must be dreaming. I just left you behind in Portland. Colley in jail…”
Papa strode around the cabin, stared in all directions with his usual curiosity. After a moment or two, he gave a slow, satisfied nod. “Interesting place, this. And I gather the boy built it himself, too. Quite a feat, I must admit.”
Emma batted at her father’s shoulder. “Never mind the cabin, Papa. What are you doing here? I would expect you back at the hotel in Bountiful.”
Papa’s eyes twinkled when he looked at her. “Don’t you think you can trust me? I needed to come see a few things, learn more about all this.”
She could only stare.
Her father went on. “Shouldn’t a man get to know the fellow who’s asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage? I can’t very well do that when he’s here and I’m in Portland. Besides, you were right. This dear lady”—he gestured toward Colley—“was in great need of help. I brought Hubert so he could see to it the marshal understood the pertinent law in no time. She’s been released into your Mr. Lowery’s supervision—in a probationary kind of arrangement. Hubert’s now seeing to Ned’s release.”
Colley huffed. “That Adam Blair says if I don’t behave he’ll be haulin’ me back to that jail faster’n your biscuits’re gonna burn there, missy. See to ’em quick. I reckon all these fellers are gonna be right hungry here.”
“Oh, no!” Emma ran to save the bread, her heart beating like a big kettledrum. She was thrilled to see her father, and it was a joy to know he and Hubert Merritt had managed to set Adam Blair straight about Colley’s situation, but… where was Peter?
The man Papa said she was about to marry… shouldn’t he be the one in a hurry to see her again?
“I did bring you a surprise from Portland,” Papa added. “And I know how you love surprises. But you’ll have to fetch it in here. I’m much too old for this kind of travel these days, my dear. And I had no idea it would be such an arduous trip…”
Emma called on every bit of her decorum, fought down the urge to run as Robby might do. Instead, she made herself walk calmly outside. The sun had begun to set in the western horizon. The sky glowed a rich russet scattered with stray ribbons of plum and purple. It nearly took her breath away. Yet another glorious painting by the Master’s hand.
She couldn’t believe she’d once hated this mountain. She didn’t think she would want to leave it again anytime soon.
“I’m back,” Peter said close behind her.
She spun around and found herself only inches away. His eyes searched her face, and she felt his glance as though his fingers had touched her skin. She drew in a deep breath, savoring the piney, clean scent of him. She’d missed him. She couldn’t believe how much.
“You have nothing to say?” he asked, his mouth quirking up in a grin. “You’re never silent, Emma, you know that? This is a first.” His eyes twinkled with mischief. “Are you ill?”
“Oh, you.” She made a face and shook her head. “Of course, I’m fine. I can’t believe you chased off after me.”
“I can’t believe you turned right around and came back.”
“I told you I was a different person.”
He ran the tip of his finger down her nose. “A floured one, I would say.”
She shrugged. “Someone had to make the dinner biscuits.”
He grinned wider. “I believe Wade’s been here the whole time. He could do it.”
She sniffed. “Did you think I would sit around all day and let him wait on me?”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
“And now?”
“Now, I think I’d like an answer to my earlier question.”
Her heart pounded so hard she could scarcely draw a breath. “And what question would that be?”
“Well, I have a few, now I think on it.” He crossed an arm over his chest and tapped his nose with the index finger of his other hand. “Hm… don’t you reckon Robby might be in need of a new mama these days?”
“That could be.”
“And what about those lessons we talked about? He might need help with those again, right?”
“Perhaps.”
“There is that cabin over there, and the woman’s touch I mentioned it might need. Do you think you’re up to the task of taking it on?”
She gave him a superior stare. “With my right hand tied to my back.”
His lips twitched as he clearly fought a laugh. “Well, then. I reckon we’ve come to the most important question of them all.”
“Which is?” She held her breath.
He slowly dropped down on bended knee, his expression more intent than the light tone in which he spoke. “Are you ready to start in on civilizing me?”
Her breath burst out in a peal of nervous laughter. He chuckled with her, took her hand in his, and then grew serious. “I’ve grown to care a great deal for you, Emma. I think… I reckon I could say I’m most of the way to loving you forever already. I’m ready to wed you when you say the word. Would you be willing to give me the time so you can be sure of your feelings for me?”
She smiled, covering their joined hands with her still-free one. “I was afraid I’d ruined my chances. And I thought you’d never ask me again if I let any length of time go by. That’s why I came back right away.”
“I didn’t want you to have too much time on your hands in Portland. After all, there is that Joshua fellow to consider.”
She shrugged. “He didn’t stand a chance.” She gave him an impish
grin. “What was that question again, Mr. Lowery?”
A damp gleam appeared in his eyes. “Will you marry me, Emma? Be my Mrs. Lowery?”
A tear dampened her cheek. “Yes, Peter. Very, very soon.”
Peter told her how he felt about that with a kiss.
Reading Group Guide
1. When Peter and Emma first meet, each one comes with an expectation of the other based on their lives up until that encounter. Do you think either one was unreasonable? Were they reasonable? Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation, and how did you respond?
2. Have you ever met a “Colley,” someone who was absolutely anything but the person you believed you saw? What impact did your Colley make on you once their true nature was revealed?
3. What spiritual lessons was Emma learning early in the story?
4. What do you think of the father-son dynamic between Peter and Robby? Have you ever found yourself unable to relate to someone you love? How did you overcome the situation?
5. Has there ever been a time when you’ve let emotions blind you to reason? Emma’s experience had calamitous results. How did your experience affect you?
6. Given the various characters who had reasons to commit the murder, who did you suspect? Why?
7. Was there anything in Emma’s character at the opening of the book that might have led you to expect the woman she’d become by the end?
8. What part did Robby play in the spiritual growth of the adults around him?
9. What have you learned about yourself in view of Psalm 31?
10. What did Peter and Emma learn about themselves? About each other?
Turn this page for an excerpt of Ginny Aiken’s
For Such a Time as This
Available now from FaithWords.
Chapter 1
Bountiful, Hope County, Oregon—1879
Olivia Moore swiped the back of her hand across her cheek. She slapped away a trickle of tear, the only moisture visible as far as she could see in all directions.
Drought.
Such a simple word, but, oh, how complicated its reality was to her family. And not just to her family. All the other farmers and ranchers scattered across Hope County were suffering as much as Mama and Papa, with no hint in the cloudless sky of any relief to come.
“Oh, I hate this,” Leah Rose, Olivia’s youngest sister, complained. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!”
Olivia hitched the willow basket more securely onto her hip, crammed down another one of their father’s shirts with the rest of the laundry, and prayed for patience. “Nobody likes to fight the wind when they’re trying to work. But we must get the clothes inside before they get dirtier than before we washed them. You don’t want to scrub them again, now, do you?”
Leah rolled her eyes then yelped and rubbed her nose, her eyelids, and her mouth.
Another blast of hot air buffeted Olivia right then, its texture rough and sandpapery with the tiny grains of dry dirt it picked up as it gusted across her family’s ravaged land. She wrapped her arm tighter around the tree limb where Papa had tied one end of the wash line. The bark rasped her skin.
Not ready to go back inside the house quite yet, she propped the basket between her hip and the bare trunk then shielded her eyes with her free hand. The wind whipped her calico skirt into a froth against her legs, the flapping another unwelcome irritant.
Leah Rose muttered something, but the rising wind carried away the words. Olivia suspected it was just as well. More grumbling that echoed her own misery didn’t appeal just then.
She didn’t want to gather still-damp laundry any more than Leah Rose did. Still, Olivia couldn’t be too hard on the girl. She, too, wished things were as they’d always been, that the old rhythm of their pleasant lives still determined their daily schedules. In previous years, that late in the summer, nearly September, had meant days filled with the mad busyness of preparing for winter. Olivia had always worked with her mother as Elizabeth Moore canned, dried, salted, and helped her husband smoke the results of their efforts, the fruits of their land. The hardworking couple had made certain their family would have enough provisions to see them through the dark, cold months ahead. Olivia admired her parents’ diligence.
That year, however, diligence would not be enough.
“Oh, Livvy, I can’t stand it another minute!” Leah Rose threw a petticoat at Olivia, but before she could catch it, a gust of wind snatched it and turned it into a tumbleweed, rolling and bouncing just out of her reach.
She sighed and hurried after the voluminous white garment. “Go on in, then. I’ll be right behind you. When I’m done with the wash, you understand. Let Mama know for me.”
Leah Rose bent against the wind, dramatizing a bit more than necessary, and ran to the house. Once on the porch steps, she glanced back over her shoulder. “I will. And do hurry, Livvy. I want to show you my latest project.”
Leah Rose had the ability to turn needle, fabric, and thread into exquisite things of beauty. Olivia, while a competent enough seamstress, couldn’t come close to producing the fine needlework at which her youngest sister excelled. “I’ll be happy to see what you’ve accomplished so far as soon as I’ve finished out here.”
She chased after the elusive petticoat, the willow basket on her hip hampering her steps. But if she set it down, the contents would likely capture the swirling dirt. With every step she took, her irritation rose. Just as she came within a finger’s length of the renegade piece, the wind caught it, tossed it up and over, and then flung it against a large rock that in previous years Elizabeth and her girls had ringed with cheery blossoms. This August the flower bed around the boulder lay bare, the soil as dry and dusty as everything else.
Olivia rushed the garment, but the next blast of wind snatched it away again, whirling it across the rear of the house. Finally, when she was about to give up on ever capturing the infuriating piece of clothing, it slammed up against the privy wall and sagged in a pile onto the dirt at the base. Olivia grabbed the petticoat, shook it out, grimaced at the dirt stains it had gathered, and finally stuffed it in her basket, resigned to another session with hot water, lye soap, and the washboard.
Her temper didn’t tamp down as easily as the fabric did. Frustrated by her family’s situation, and aggravated by the rebel slip, she squared her shoulders and marched back over to the clothesline, her every step propelled by her resolve.
With renewed vigor, she yanked a pillowcase off its mooring, reached for a pair of socks, and then an old towel. In moments, she had stripped the rest of the wash from where she’d hung it not so long ago. When she reached the post at the end of the line, she leaned on it and paused to catch her breath, a difficult endeavor as the gritty air continued to batter her face. Through narrowed eyes she looked out over the Moore property—Papa’s pride and joy.
Olivia’s heart constricted, and she fought again for breath. As awful as the scorching, dusty wind was, she knew it wasn’t wholly to blame for her misery. Her distress stemmed from watching her dear parents work, work, work, and then, by virtue of a twist of nature’s fickleness, see all their efforts come to nothing.
In the years since they’d come to Oregon Territory, her father had plowed and planted his fields as soon as spring deemed the land ready. For the last two years, however, the plants had battled to drink what little moisture the land provided, and when the sturdy shoots had broken through to the sunshine, they’d been ravaged by the sudden arrival of swarming airborne beasts that descended on the young crops. The ravenous grasshoppers had left nothing behind.
Despite the weather, Olivia lingered outside. She couldn’t bear to see the worry that drew deep lines down either side of Mama’s mouth again, nor hear the strain in her mother’s voice. She didn’t know what she would do in an hour or so when Papa dragged himself inside for whatever Mama put together and passed off as that night’s supper. The ruts etched across his forehead and those that fanned out from the corners of his eyes made her heart ache
with futility.
Mama and Papa hadn’t meant for Olivia to overhear their late-night conversations. But she had. At the age of nineteen, she was no child. By all rights she should have been married already, and maybe even a mother, as well, like her friends Adelaide Tucker and Rosie Thurman. But so far she hadn’t been tempted to take that step with any of the very few marriageable men in town, and her parents hadn’t pushed, to her great relief. She’d yet to meet the man who appealed to her enough to make her consider the momentous change.
She’d been happy to stay home. She helped Mama with the younger children, and with the never-ending work around the house. She also helped her father and the boys with whatever she wheedled Papa into letting her do out in the barn.
But even those welcome chores had vanished with the last of the grasshoppers. Papa had been forced to sell Olivia’s sheep when he no longer could provide properly for them. There was little feed anywhere, and whatever could be found came at a dear cost indeed. Faced with the choice of feeding animals or feeding his children, Stephen Moore hadn’t even blinked. He’d sold a fair number of the Moores’ prized cattle as well.
The small sum Papa had realized from that sale hadn’t stretched far enough. Olivia wasn’t supposed to know what her parents had resorted to, but she’d struggled with sleeplessness during the last couple of months as their circumstances had worsened, seemingly by the day. Papa’s anxious words during the late-night conversations had confirmed her unsettled feeling.
He’d been forced to mortgage the property.
“Livvy!” Leah Rose called.
“Coming—” Olivia tried to respond, but her dry mouth turned the word into a croaked rasp. She ran her tongue over her parched lips, grimacing when she tasted the dust there. She started toward the house and gave her answer another go. “I’ll be right there.”
At the top of the porch steps, she cast a final glance down the long brown drive. It was as dry and dreary as it had been the last time she’d looked that way, scant minutes earlier.