A Match Made in Texas

by Mary Connealy

  Andrew closed the distance between them and cupped her cheeks in his hands. “I can’t think of anything further from the truth.” His breath stirred a tendril of hair above her left ear. “It nearly tore me apart when I thought I might have lost you. I couldn’t stand it if that really happened.”

  The simple statement took her breath away. Lucy’s heart stopped, then started up again, hammering like the hooves of a runaway horse.

  He slipped one arm around her waist. “I only know one way to keep you with me always, and that’s to ask you to be my wife.” He dragged his thumb across her cheek, sending a shiver of delight through her. “Lucy, will you marry me?”

  Her lips trembled so, she couldn’t speak. Resting her hands on his shirt, she looked up into his soot-streaked face and knew this was what she wanted for the rest of her life . . . to spend it at Andrew’s side.

  Raising herself on her tiptoes, she wound her arms around his neck and answered him with her kiss.

  Fingers of gold and crimson wove across the western sky. Lucy sat beside Andrew on the top porch step and nestled her head on his shoulder as they watched the sunset. She closed her eyes and let a sense of pure contentment wash over her. They had spent the hour since Andrew’s proposal marveling at the way God brought them together and dreaming of the future.

  The doorknob rattled behind them, followed by a startled exclamation. “What in thunder?”

  Lucy sprang to her feet, with Andrew right beside her. He was the first to find his voice.

  “How was your prayer time, Aunt Martha?”

  Martha regarded them with an unreadable expression. “The Lord and I got everything worked out. Looks like you two got a few things straightened out, too.”

  Lucy felt Andrew reach for her hand, and she wrapped her fingers around his.

  “We have some news for you,” he said.

  Martha chuckled. “And I’ll bet I can guess what it is.”

  Lucy’s cheeks grew warm. She looked up at the man beside her and smiled. “Andrew asked me to marry him.”

  A wide grin spread across Martha’s face. “I had an idea this was going to happen. Just like Burt and Bessie.”

  Lucy crinkled her forehead. “That bull and heifer you and your husband brought out here with you?” She glanced at Andrew, who appeared to be stifling a grin, then looked back at Martha. “I thought you said all they did was butt heads.”

  “That’s right. At first, anyway.”

  “What happened later?”

  Martha’s hearty laugh rang out, and she waved one arm toward the cattle that dotted the nearby hillside. “Where do you think that line of stock came from?”

  “Oh.” Lucy nodded. Then Martha’s meaning registered. “Oh!”

  Still chuckling, Martha plopped down in her rocking chair. “This seems to be an evening for announcements. I have a little news of my own.”

  “News? Tell us!” Lucy took a seat in the other rocker, while Andrew leaned back against the porch rail.

  Martha rocked back and forth with a gentle motion. “I did some deep thinking while I was upstairs. With the railroad coming through, it’s going to change everything. As hard as I’ve worked to hang on to this land, it’s difficult to think it won’t be the Diamond S much longer. Nothing is going to be the same.”

  A lump formed in Lucy’s throat. She reached over and laid her hand on Martha’s arm. “Andrew and I have been talking about that. We want you to come live with us in North Fork. I know it won’t be the same, but at least we’ll be together as a family.”

  Martha patted Lucy’s hand. “Thank you, dear. That’s a comfort.” She looked at Andrew with a speculative gleam in her eyes. “So it’s pretty much a certainty the railroad is coming through here?”

  “I’m afraid so. I know it’s going to be hard for you to say good-bye to this place.”

  “And you think they’ll offer me a fair price for the land?”

  “I’m sure of it, Aunt Martha. They won’t be out to cheat you. You’ll be financially secure for the rest of your days.”

  Martha slapped both hands on the arms of her rocker. “In that case, let ’em come! I’m ready to sell.”

  Andrew couldn’t have looked more dazed if she’d hit him on the head with a two-by-four. “You are?”

  “Yep. It’s time for me to do what your uncle and I always dreamed of. I’m going to take that money and see the world.” She turned to Lucy. “Since the two of us have hit it off so well, I was going to ask you to come along . . . but it appears you’ve gotten a better offer.”

  “But . . . but . . .” Andrew sputtered like a teakettle on the boil. “You can’t go off on your own like that! There’s no telling what you might run up against.”

  Martha quelled him with a look. “Need I remind you, I’ve run up against plenty of dangers right here—including that fire this afternoon. I expect I can handle anything—or anyone—I come across.”

  Laughter bubbled from Lucy’s throat. “After seeing you in action, I’m sure you can.”

  Martha bobbed her head as if that settled the matter. Rising, she walked to the front door. “I’m going to brew myself a pot of tea and let you get back to that conversation I interrupted.”

  Andrew stared after her. “A lone woman traveling the world? That’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard of.”

  Lucy hopped out of her chair and swatted him on the shoulder. “How many times do I have to tell you, your aunt is not crazy?” She slipped into the circle of his arms, which was quickly becoming her favorite place to be, and pressed the tip of her forefinger into the cleft in his chin. A perfect fit, just as she’d suspected. “After all, she knew we were meant for each other, even before we did.”

  “That she did.” Andrew brushed a kiss against her temple, and laughter rumbled from his chest. Framing her cheeks with his hands, he bent his head toward hers. Just before their lips met, she heard him murmur, “I guess Burt and Bessie set a pretty good example, after all.”

  Chapter 1

  DRY GULCH, TEXAS

  DECEMBER 1893

  It was downright silly to be the mother to three boys and running a busy household when you were twenty-one and single.

  It was a good thing Hannah Taylor was up to it.

  “Abraham Taylor, you leave Kevin alone!” Hannah, big sister and schoolmarm, stood at the bottom of the schoolhouse steps. Hannah was a quiet woman and too busy to have much in the way of friends. But when it came to her little brothers, she could melt stubborn with a single glare, and she felt no great need to be quiet with the little varmints. Abe settled down fast. Then she added, “Abe, remember you have to get the clinkers out of the stove.”

  “It’s Jeremy’s turn!” Abe wailed.

  “You traded with Jeremy for a chance to get out of pitching hay to the horses just yesterday. Now it’s time to pay.” Hannah went up the steps to the schoolhouse. She paused to wave at Dottie Brighton, who was on her way to Claasen’s General Store for supplies. After Dottie smiled and waved back, Hannah hurried inside, leaving her little brothers on the playground. The oldest of them, Jeremy, took charge while Hannah got ready to start the school day. She didn’t scold Abe anymore. He was a good boy, just active and noisy. He’d be in to clean out the heating stove soon enough.

  Hannah heaved a sigh of relief when she shut the schoolhouse door on the chilly December morning. “Thank heavens I’m back at work so I can get some rest!” She smiled at herself when she thought it. But it was true. The town of Dry Gulch, Texas, halted school for harvest, which was as much work for the women as it was for the men. And Hannah had convinced the school board to give her an extra week of freedom to help prepare for Nelda’s wedding. It was Hannah’s second little sister to marry. Two Taylor weddings in three years, leaving Hannah the only girl in the family. She had three little brothers, another baby on the way, and a ma who was mighty tired.

  As always, Pa was hoping for a boy.

  Now here they were, a week before Christmas. There
was barely going to be time to organize a school Christmas program, and Hannah loved making Christmas special for her students.

  She smiled as shouts of laughter echoed from the playground, all of the noise coming from her little brothers—including two-year-old Kevin, who was too young for school. But Hannah had informed the school board that bringing her baby brother was part of the deal. Hannah couldn’t teach if she couldn’t bring him along, because Ma wasn’t up to it.

  She savored the peace of the brisk winter morning in her familiar classroom, enjoying the dusty smell of chalk and the biting odor of ashes from the stone-cold potbellied stove. She kept her cloak and bonnet on until the stove could be cleaned out and lit, yet she didn’t mind that Abe was slow in coming. She needed a few more quiet moments to enjoy her surprising success with helping some lonely friends find happiness.

  She hadn’t really set out to spark a romance with her meddling. But it was a pleasure to think of her former co-teacher, Grace O’Malley, married to Clayton Weber and already expecting a baby. And word had come back to town that Neill and Clara Archer had married, as well as Lucy and Andrew Simms. Hannah had a hand in all of that and it pleased her to no end. It gave her such a warm feeling that she thought maybe she had a true gift for helping others.

  She’d never had much luck helping herself.

  Hannah heard the schoolhouse door open and looked up, expecting Abe.

  Marcus Whitfield came in with an armful of wood. He’d never delivered the wood before. A member of the school board saw to their wood supply, usually dropping off a week’s supply at one time, stacked behind the schoolhouse, but it had never been Marcus. And Hannah routinely assigned the chore of hauling it inside to one of her students.

  “Good morning.” Hannah had been his classmate in this very school. Now she was the teacher and he was a partner in his father’s bank.

  Marcus glanced up at her awkwardly and nodded without speaking, then concentrated on where he was walking as if the floor were riddled with holes.

  “I hadn’t heard that you’d be bringing wood,” Hannah said politely, trying not to roll her eyes at Marcus’s strange ways.

  “Pa’s turn.” Marcus kept his chin down as he made his way to the stove at the front of the room.

  Hannah couldn’t imagine Mr. Whitfield, the rather regal president of the town’s only bank, ever dropping off wood. And she knew he wasn’t on the school board. But maybe he’d volunteered just recently.

  From the way he moved along the side of the room, it seemed Marcus was doing his best to stay as far away from her as possible. Marcus was the only unattached church going man in town. Hannah should probably set her cap for him, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to feel any romantic notions about the poor, shy man. Marcus had no interest in her, either. In fact, judging by his effort to keep space between them, he actively disliked her.

  Hannah felt a twinge of resentment. She had a sudden desire to march over to him and say, You can’t reject me. I’m rejecting you first, so there!

  She didn’t do any such thing, of course. She even had the grace to realize she was having too strong a reaction to a man whose only provable crime was shyness. Why, maybe she’d make Marcus her next project. The man quite obviously needed a wife.

  She mulled that over, watching him. So she was gazing right at him when he glanced up at her, saw her looking at him, and fell on his face.

  “Marcus!” Jumping up, she rushed over to him. “Are you all right?”

  He was sprawled awkwardly on his armload of wood. When he shoved himself up, a piece of kindling under his hand rolled and he fell again. Hannah got to her knees and pulled the small logs scattered under poor Marcus away and tossed them toward the place they’d be stacked. She had most of them removed when Marcus finally managed to get to his knees.

  “Your glasses are bent.” Hannah’s whole life was spent helping people, so it came naturally for her to pluck his spectacles away.

  “Here, let me—” she said.

  “Hannah, I can fix . . .” Marcus grabbed at her hands.

  She looked up to see a streak of blood trickle from the corner of his mouth. “Oh, Marcus, your lip is bleeding.” She abandoned his glasses to pull her handkerchief out of the sleeve of her blue gingham dress and dabbed at the small cut.

  Marcus rushed to put his glasses on, and his hand tangled with hers as they knelt facing each other. Their eyes locked and held.

  Hannah noticed that Marcus, up close, wasn’t quite so gangly as she remembered. His eyes were a clear light blue. His hair was blond, almost the same color as hers. His poor lip was mildly swollen and tender looking. The bleeding stopped after only a second or two of pressure from her handkerchief. Not a serious injury and yet she kept glancing at it.

  Between looking at his eyes and lips, quite a bit of time passed.

  Marcus’s hand on hers tightened. He seemed to draw her closer, and she was already very close. “Hannah, I wonder if you’d like to . . . to . . .”

  “I have an idea, Hannie!” Abe shouted, charging into the schoolhouse. He stumbled and caught himself against a desk at the back of the room, knocking it out of line.

  Hannah surged to her feet and almost ran to her desk, not sure what had just happened between her and Marcus Whitfield.

  “If we don’t start the stove, we don’t have to clean it,” Abe said. “It’s warm enough.”

  Hannah almost laughed out loud. Abe had the earflaps pulled down on his beloved red hat, and his mittens firmly on. Hannah had knitted them for Christmas but made the mistake of telling Pa, who’d insisted on giving the boys their hats and mittens early for the sake of being practical. Abe’s cheeks and nose were as red as the cap on his head. But he would rather freeze, and all his classmates along with him, than struggle with the minimal chore of collecting and disposing of the built-up ash in the stove.

  Hannah didn’t blame him for trying, but it was his turn and he knew it.

  Marcus quickly finished stacking the firewood and then nearly ran out of the place. He’d said, “Hannah, I wonder if you’d like to . . .” If she’d like to what?

  “Nice try, Abe,” she said. “Now get to work.” She spoke firmly, but her thoughts were drawn back to Marcus and his question. Could he possibly not be quite so indifferent to her as she’d imagined?

  Hannah, I wonder if you’d like to go for a carriage ride with me?

  Or did he wonder something quite different.

  Hannah, I wonder if you’d like to get your own stupid kindling from now on?

  Shaking away thoughts of Marcus, she listened with a smile as Abe moaned and groaned his way through the simple job of pulling the cast-iron tray out of the stove and carrying the sooty ashes—along with the hard black “clinkers” of unburned wood—out the door and tossing it all in the ash pile.

  Hannah began pulling her books out of the cloth bag she carried. She had fashioned the bag to hang over her shoulder because she usually had Kevin in her arms for most of the three-mile walk to the school.

  Hannah prepared for the lessons, making a few last-minute notes. As she worked at her desk, her mind wandered to the reason for this disorganized morning.

  Nelda.

  The wedding had taken place on Saturday. Hannah had stood up with Nelda, and Marcus Whitfield had been a witness for Rudy. The wedding had gone well, and Hannah was happy for both of them.

  She’d been stung by Pa’s joke about disguising Hannah, the older sister, and slipping her in as the bride. He’d teased her that he should be like Leah’s father in the Bible when he’d tricked Jacob into marrying his older daughter.

  As far as a sense of humor went, Pa’s left quite a bit to be desired.

  Hannah had worked until the wee hours of the morning, setting the house to rights after all the guests had left. Hannah’s sister Martha had helped of course, but she had a baby on the way and tired easily. Hannah had shooed her away early. Ma had gone straight back to bed after the wedding, not even joining the guest
s who came to wish Nelda well.

  Ma was frighteningly weak from this baby. Only with the most heroic effort had Ma even attended Nelda’s wedding. This would be the seventh Taylor baby. Much as she loved her little brothers and sisters, Hannah fervently hoped this would be the last.

  Chapter 2

  Idiot! Mark wanted to slam his head against the schoolhouse wall.

  Clumsy, stupid oaf. Why didn’t you just make it perfect and knock poor Hannah over while you were putting your glasses back on?

  The only reason he didn’t bang his head against something really hard was because he’d probably knock himself out, then she’d find him, collapsed in a heap, when she came to ring the bell and call the children in to class.

  He strode along the street and bitterly noticed that he didn’t trip over his own feet, not one single time! Oh no, save that for when he was standing near the prettiest, sweetest woman he’d ever seen. Why did his tongue twist into knots, his feet grow ten sizes, and his face turn flaming red every time he saw her? Why?

  He was almost to the bank, where he could go in and sit, with paper and numbers. Numbers made sense. He got two and two to equal four every time he tried. With numbers he wasn’t an idiot.

  He reached for the doorknob on the bank just as the doctor burst out of his office, only a door down, with Hannah’s pa a step behind.

  Jerome Taylor was moving faster than Mark had ever seen him go.

  The doctor rushed for his horse. “I’m not waiting for you, Jerome. I’ll see you at the house.”

  Jerome swung himself up onto his buckboard. The doctor galloped out of town and was gone before Jerome got his horses backed up from the hitching post.

  “What’s happened, Mr. Taylor? Should I tell Hannah there’s trouble?” Mark set aside all shyness as he thought of all Hannah had endured over the years—her fiancé dying, working as a teacher, mothering that huge, ever-growing brood as her ma became a quiet, frail woman rarely seen in town.