Farmer's Daughter Romance Collection : Five Historical Romances Homegrown in the American Heartland (9781630586164)

by Peterson, Tracie; Davis, Mary; Hake, Kelly Eileen; Stengl, Jill; Warren, Susan May

  Lilly wasn’t examining the railroad tracks. She saw only Heinrick and his blue eyes. They were almost transparent, as if she could see inside him to his optimist’s heart. He wore a faded bronze shirt, untied at the neck, and had pushed his brown bandana around so that the knot seemed a little bow tie at the base of his thick, tanned neck. He wore leather gloves, but his sleeves were rolled past the elbow to reveal muscled forearms. Weathered tan chaps covered his strong legs, and he seemed to be almost one with his mount. But Lilly was especially drawn in by his voice and an accent that betrayed a man who had surmounted fear, climbed aboard a ship, ridden over an angry sea, and was forging out a life in a hostile land.

  “I want to work on the railroad someday, Lilly,” he said softly. “I want to ride those black rails from shore to shore and see America. Discover why my relatives left Norway for America.”

  “Heinrick, why did you stand me up?”

  Heinrick’s gaze fell away from her, and a shadow crossed his face. “Clive needed the barn mucked out.”

  Lilly’s heart twisted and shame eclipsed the anger she’d felt. “I’m sorry.”

  He lifted his gaze to hers, and she saw in his eyes a passionate blaze that betrayed his frustration. “Christmas, Lilly,” he said. “By Christmas, I’ll be free!” He suddenly whooped and spurred his horse, which shot off into a gallop along the ridgeline. Lilly clucked to her mare, and the horse cantered after him. She clutched the saddle horn and tried to swallow her terror.

  “Move with her, Lilly. Don’t be afraid.” The wind brought his voice to her. “Give her some rein!”

  “That’s easy for you to say, you’re not riding in a dress!”

  Heinrick’s laughter formed a vivid trail, one she could have followed with her eyes closed. He slowed his mount to a walk.

  “Give your horse some freedom to move, Lilly. She wants to obey you, but if you choke her, she has no choice but to fight. Your horse has to be controlled by you, but you have to give her room to trust you. A horse that is afraid and choking on the bit is a horse that can’t be ridden.”

  Lilly fingered the leather reins, loosening her hold. Her mare fell into a graceful walk next to Heinrick.

  “It’s like faith in God, Lilly. You are like that horse. You have to trust God, who loves you. No matter what He does, it is for your eternal good. You can’t make God do what you want, just like your horse can’t make you obey. The rider is the master of the horse, but the horse can make things a lot harder by grabbing the bit in her mouth and running off with it. A horse that won’t surrender freely can’t be used and is no good.” Heinrick leaned over and put a hand on her reins. A crooked smile creased his face. “We shoot horses like that.”

  Lilly grimaced. Heinrick winked at her, his eyes twinkling in the sunlight. Then his smile vanished.

  “You have to trust in God’s love to fully surrender to His leading. Without that trust, you’ll constantly be trying to grab the bit.”

  Lilly ran her eyes along the horizon. The fence line hurtled the next ridge and ran beyond that to the Clark farm. The joy had evaporated from the afternoon ride. First the reminder of Reggie and now Heinrick’s spiritual invasion. Couldn’t he just leave her religion alone? Why did he have to rattle her beliefs every time they were together?

  “Lilly, do you trust that God loves you?”

  Lilly shrugged and turned away. Tears edged her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” His soft voice caressed her fraying emotions.

  His saddle creaked as he dismounted. He stood next to her, holding her reins, searching her eyes. Lilly bit her lip and turned her face away. Heinrick pulled off his glove and took her hand.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  She shook her head but couldn’t form words. How could she explain something she couldn’t even understand herself? Of course, God loved her; the Bible said so, right? And Reverand Larsen had spelled it out so many times, she didn’t have room for doubt. Believe and obey. She did both.

  Then why did Heinrick’s religion seem so different from hers? She was envious of Heinrick’s absolute confidence of God’s love. God’s love to her had always meant tangible blessings, life in control. If Reggie died, did that mean God didn’t love her? Lilly frowned at the turquoise, cloudless sky.

  Why did Heinrick have to challenge everything? He’d practically accused her of not being a Christian! He’d ripped apart her religion until it was shredded. Now she didn’t know what she believed.

  Two betraying tears sneaked down her cheeks. Heinrick wiped one away with his wide thumb. “What is it, Lilly?”

  Lilly grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away. She shook her head, until, abruptly, the fear shuddered out of her. “No, I don’t know God loves me, and I’m afraid! I’m afraid I can’t be everything He wants me to be, that I will somehow destroy my chance at happiness, maybe even my salvation! And I’m afraid He’s going to let something bad happen, maybe even because of something I’ve done, and it’ll ruin everything.” The truth thinned her voice to sobs.

  Heinrick’s brows puckered. “Lilly, God does love you. He wants to give you salvation and a happy future. You just have to trust Him.”

  Lilly shook her head. “How do I trust Him if I don’t know what He’s going to do?”

  “You trust Him because He’s already shown you His love. And you can count on that.”

  Lilly frowned and bit her lip. How had God shown her His love? She dared to look at Heinrick. Compassion swam in his blue eyes, and, in that moment, all she wanted to do was slide off the mare and into his strong arms. And that frightened her almost as much as surrendering to an uncontrollable God.

  “Heinrick, I have to go home. This is no good. I can’t be here with you. I’m going to ruin everything.”

  Lilly leaned on his shoulders and slid off the horse. Then she stepped away. “Thank you for the ride.”

  “Lilly, you aren’t going to cause Reggie to be killed by going for a ride with me.”

  Lilly’s heart lodged in her chest. She stared at him, horrified. He’d summed up, in his statement, every nightmare she’d ever imagined.

  “Do you think you can earn God’s favor or His love by following all the rules? By doing all Reggie, your parents, and your church tell you to?”

  Heinrick pulled off his hat. The wind picked through his matted hair. “Your salvation is not based on anything you do, Lilly. No one can be good enough to be saved. That’s why Jesus came and allowed Himself to be crucified. No one can live up to the Jewish law. It only serves to point out our sins. But Jesus sets us free from death by paying the price for our sins. All we can do is ask for forgiveness and receive salvation! We cannot earn it. Salvation isn’t a bargain with God, it’s a gift from Him.”

  Lilly saw him through watery eyes.

  Heinrick wrapped his massive hands around her upper arms. “I don’t know much, Lilly, but I know this. It is by grace you are saved through faith. Grace, Lilly. Something unearned, undeserved, and without rules.” His voice was like the wind, refreshing and tugging at the bonds of her soul. “If you truly want to follow God and to know Him, then you have to understand this. If there is nothing we can do to earn salvation, if Jesus paid for our sins before we knew Him, when we were the worst of sinners, then there is also nothing we can do to lose it. His sacrifice is enough to pay for all of our sins. You cannot ruin your salvation because it is not in your power to ruin it! He loves you, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  Lilly gasped as the truth hit her heart. She felt the first inklings of a freedom she’d been searching for all her life. “Not in my power to ruin it?”

  Heinrick lifted her chin with his forefinger, and his gaze held hers. “God loves you, Lilly. You can trust His plans; for you, for Reggie, for your life.”

  She nodded, then slipped under his arms and started toward home. Halfway across the Clark hayfield, she began to laugh, joy bubbling from some broken vault in her soul. Lilly opened her arms, embracing the sky, tw
irled twice, and broke into a run. The canvas bag bumped against her back as she went leaping across the fallow field, laughing, crying, and most of all singing, as her soul, for the first time, found freedom.

  That night, after Bonnie’s breath deepened in sleep beside her, Lilly slipped out of her bed and onto her knees. Embedded in the glow of moonlight, Lilly prayed and, for the first time in her life, fully surrendered to the One who loved her.

  Chapter 18

  The melody of an early rising bluebird floated in on a cool dawn breeze. Lilly awakened slowly, bathed in the peace of a new morning, and realized she’d slept straight through. No nightmare. The terrifying dream had vanished, as had the fear that seemed to dog her since Reggie’s departure. Worry still throbbed on one side of her heart, but it wasn’t the same frantic panic that had boiled in her soul.

  The second thing that impressed her as she sat up and gazed at her light-dappled walls, was the unfamiliar, remarkable lightness of soul, as if the day was hers and nothing could pin her down. It was the intoxicating breath of unconditional love, giving her hope wings. It made her gasp.

  Bonnie sat up next to her, rubbing her eyes. “What?”

  Lilly whirled and embraced her sister. They fell together on the stuffed mattress and giggled.

  Lilly threw off the sheet, skipped to the window, and pulled back the curtains. The shadow of the house loomed long across the yard, but the sun lit the field rose gold. “With each sunrise, there is new hope.”

  Bonnie stared at her as if she’d grown another leg.

  Lilly pulled off her cotton nightgown. She needed something refreshing, something sunny. She chose a one-piece cornflower blue calico with minute yellow daisies. It had a fitted bodice, with a lace-trimmed boat neck and turned-up cap sleeves. Lilly slid it over her head, then loosely braided her hair down her back.

  “You going somewhere?” Bonnie asked, her knees drawn up to her chest under the sheet.

  “Going out to greet the dawn.”

  Lilly reckoned, from Bonnie’s look, she must have turned purple. But she didn’t care. On impulse, she grabbed her Bible and tucked it under her arm. Then she left her bewildered sister to flop back onto the feather pillow and tiptoed down the stairs.

  Lilly’s mother was in the kitchen whipping pancake batter. She glanced up, spied Lilly, and her brow knit into a frown. Lilly shot her a wide smile and stepped out onto the porch. Across the yard, the barn doors were open, her father inside, milking. Lilly headed toward her maple grove.

  The wind whispered in the branches, and the glade was cool and shadowed. Lilly strolled to the bluff and stared out at the endless prairie. A hazy residue of platinum, rose, and lavender simmered along the eastern horizon. From the opposing shore, a startled pheasant took flight from a clump of sage. Hope rode the air, tinged in the fragrance of columbine and jasmine, which continued to bloom in hardy defiance of the drought.

  Lilly sat on a piece of driftwood to read her Bible. She had no idea what she was doing, but it seemed the right thing to do. Like Heinrick said, if she was to trust God, she ought to know Him. And Heinrick seemed to think knowing God meant more than just attending services. She randomly flipped open the thick Bible and determined to give it a try.

  She landed somewhere in the Old Testament. Jeremiah. She hardly recalled the book, but ran her finger down the page. Then, to her profound surprise, she noticed someone had marked a verse. Verse eleven of chapter twenty-nine was underlined ever so slightly in pencil, and she heard her heart thump as she read. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”

  A shiver rippled up Lilly’s spine. “Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Lilly bit her lip and looked up at the pale, jeweled sky. Could the Maker of the heavens really be talking to her, calling out to her? “The Living Word,” Heinrick had said. God talking through the Bible. The thought was terrifying and exhilarating and beyond her comprehension.

  Lilly bowed her head. Yes, God. I want to seek You. I want to find You. I know You love me, and I want to surrender to You and Your plans for me.

  As she lifted her eyes, the fragrance of peace swept through her heart. She drew in a long breath, and the feeling seeped into her bones. But would it linger when the heat of day battered it, when fear reared its head in the form of news from Europe? Would she be able to trust?

  This surrender would have to be a daily, moment-by-moment thing. God, please, help me to know You so I am not afraid, so I see Your love. Help me to trust You.

  It was the briefest of moments after the prayer left her lips that she realized she must tell Reggie. Everything. The half truths of her letters were, simply put, sin. She had to be honest. Most of all, she had to share with him the joy of grace. Maybe it would give him the one thing he so desperately needed—release from the cold knot of fear.

  She would write to him on lavender paper, send a pressed lily, and hope he would truly understand her newfound joy.

  Most of all, she would pray somehow the news of her spiritual awakening would cushion the tale about Heinrick. To tell Reggie the truth, she would have to tell him about her German friend. She would put her surrender, that peace, to the test and trust the Lord for the outcome.

  Lilly stood, flung out her arms as if to welcome the day, and then picked her way through the grove of maples and back to the Clark farm for breakfast.

  Lilly spent the morning laying out and cutting the skirt for Mrs. Torgesen’s suit on the kitchen table. Lilly’s mother peeked over her shoulder, offered a few hints, and finally admitted to Lilly that she’d surpassed her mother as a seamstress.

  “I don’t know how you can just look at a picture and make it come alive.” Her mother shook her head in parental admiration.

  After a lunch of warm milk, bread, and jam, Lilly escaped to her room and wrote to Reggie. The story was more difficult in the telling than she’d anticipated, and it took her two full hours to fill two evenly scrawled pages. She started over twice and finally resigned herself to the reality that regardless how she wrote it, she’d betrayed him. She’d spent a week in the company of a man not her fiancé, despite its innocence, and she would have to hope Reggie trusted her. She slipped a sprig of lily of the valley into the envelope. Its tiny white bells were withering, but the fragrance lingered. She hoped Reggie would be encouraged by it. She sealed the letter and propped it on her vanity. She couldn’t mail it until Monday’s train, but she felt that much the cleaner for having revealed the truth.

  “Lilly, could you run into Ernestine’s for flour and molasses?” her mother called from the bottom steps. Lilly grabbed her basket and her straw hat and set off for Mobridge.

  A buzz of tension, beyond the hum of the riverbed grasshoppers, drifted through the town. Horses were packed into tight rows, tethered to hitching posts. Buckboards stood at a standstill, filled with goods. Women in bonnets and men chewing on straw milled about on the clapboard sidewalk. Curious, Lilly quickened her pace toward Ernestine’s.

  The news met her there.

  “Did you hear about the battle?” Ernestine’s fat sweaty hands worked quickly, filling the flour sacks. Lilly handed her the empty burlap bag she’d borrowed. Ernestine took it and continued her monologue. “We just got the news in the Milwaukee Journal. A big battle over a river in France someplace.” She gave Lilly the flour. Her probing eyes seemed to soften. “They say our boys are in the fray.”

  Lilly bit her lip and nodded. “Can I have some molasses, also?”

  Ernestine turned and searched the shelves for a bottle. Lilly was glad for the moment to compose herself. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears, and she fought a tremble. Ernestine returned with the molasses. Lilly dropped it into her basket and paid her.

  “God be with
you and Reggie.” Ernestine offered a smile that felt too much like a condolence.

  “Thank you,” Lilly managed. She darted for the door.

  At Miller’s, Ed shrugged. “Sorry, Lilly, we’re out of fresh newspapers. Try the postal.”

  Lilly hustled to the post office and discovered they, too, were sold out. Heart sinking, she headed for the door.

  “Lilly, you have a letter.” Mildred Baxter, the postmistress, handed her a small envelope.

  Lilly frowned. “Did I miss the train?”

  Mildred shook her head. “I don’t know who it’s from.”

  Lilly stepped out into the sunshine, confusion distracting her disappointment over the shortage of newspapers. The letter was for her. Her name was spelled out in small, bold capitals on the bleached parchment envelope. And there was no postage.

  Lilly examined it for a moment, then decided to open it on the road home, away from any prying eyes on the street. She slipped the letter into her basket.

  Her last stop was the armory. She found Marjorie red-eyed and folding bandages with unequalled passion. Lilly pulled her friend into an embrace.

  “Don’t worry, Marj. God will watch over them.”

  Tears flooded Marjorie’s eyes. “That doesn’t mean Harley will come back home. It doesn’t mean everything will be okay.”

  Lilly peered into her friend’s anguished face, her heart reciting everything she’d embraced over the past day. “Yes, it does. God loves us, and because of that, everything will be okay.”

  Marjorie studied her a long moment, as if absorbing her words. Then she laid her head on Lilly’s shoulder. Lilly held her, briefly bearing her friend’s burden. Then Lilly left Marjorie to assemble soon-to-be needed action kits and headed home.

  A half mile out of Mobridge, Lilly remembered the letter. She retrieved it from the basket and worked the envelope open.