Gingham Bride (14 page)

Someone touched her elbow and she jumped to stand. Ian.

“Are you all right, lass?” His faint Irish brogue resonated gently.

“Fine.” Fine? That was all she could say? She had no trouble speaking her mind usually, except her brain was still oatmeal. She managed to shuffle her feet forward toward the end of the row. It was all her friends’ fault for putting these fanciful notions into her head.

She crept forward. The end of the row seemed miles away. Maybe it was because Ian was inches from her back, his six-foot height like a mammoth unwanted mountain behind her. Love, indeed. The man did not love her. Ridiculous idea. That’s what came from dreaming about romance all the time—you started seeing it whether it was there or not. Good thing she was not a fanciful sort. It was why she wanted a future she could depend on, relying only on herself.

Finally, she reached the row’s end—escape. She slipped into the crowded aisle only to have Ian’s hand land on her shoulder, stopping her.

“You aren’t going to stay after and help out?” He leaned close, his chin stirring her hair. Goodness, he was near and far too intimate.

“I have to go home,” she confessed, but not the reason for it.

Ma, having heard the conversation, whipped around. “Fiona spends far too much time with those girls as it is. Church is serious, not meant for idle play and garishness. Come along, girl.”

“Yes, Ma.” Why wasn’t Ian following her?

“Don’t you want to stay?” Puzzled lines dug into his brow as he leaned on his cane. “You can’t help decorate the tree if you leave.”

She could see why her friends had drawn the wrong conclusions. He was simply a kind man, and it would be easy to see more if you didn’t understand. Ian was faithful; he did what was right. That was why he was helping her. He saw it as the correct thing to do. She liked that about him. Against her will, a wisp of admiration ribboned through her, as airy and pure as the daylight hazing the stained-glass window.

Oh, it was something more than admiration, she admitted. She hardly heard Ma’s sharp words of reproach, ordering her to hurry up.

“She will stay if she wants to.” Ian’s tone brooked no argument, but to her, he was gentle. “I will take your mother home and be back to get you.”

“But Da will be mad—”

“I will deal with your father, too.” Ian looked a great deal older than his nineteen years. He pressed something into her hand. A twenty-five-cent piece. “I heard the group goes up to town for the noon meal before they start decorating.”

She stared at the quarter, but it wasn’t the gift that touched her. “You will come back?”

“If you want me to.”

“I suppose that would be tolerable.”

His smile came slow as sunrise. He tipped his hat before he donned it and took a step away. “Have fun, lass.”

The church crowd had thinned out; they were alone in the aisle. Ian turned on his heel and strode away, ever so strong and solitary. She did not know why she felt his wounds, the depth and breadth of them. She liked the man. Very much. She couldn’t help it.

“I can’t believe you get to stay.” Scarlet’s footsteps echoed in the aisle behind her. “Thanks to your Ian.”

“This is going to be so fun, Fee.” Lila grabbed her hand.

“And to think, he’s coming back.” Meredith joined them. “If I were you, I couldn’t wait.”

“If I were you, I would never let him go,” Kate added with a sigh.

Fiona watched Ian as he pushed open the vestibule door. The falling snow tossed him in dark relief, and his silhouette made the real Ian much easier to see. They all thought Ian was a catch, but she knew the truth. There was true goodness in this world—goodness in the heart of the man who ambled out into the winter’s cold. The door closed shut behind him and his image stayed with her, at the back of her mind and the core of her soul.

Chapter Fourteen

“O
oh, there
he
is, helping with the Christmas tree.” Lila left no doubt as to who “he” was. “Ian is a nice man.”

“Nice and good-looking. I approve.” Meredith hooked her arm in Fiona’s. The group was walking back from a meal at the boardinghouse owned by a church member who had spoiled them all with delicious roast beef sandwiches and chocolate cake. “I hate being away at school. I’m missing the good times and soon they will all be gone. First Fiona, and then one of you is next. By the time I come back in May, every one of you will be married.”

“Fiona wouldn’t get married so fast, would you, Fee?” Kate locked arms with her on the other side.

“What about finishing school?” Lila asked.

“I
will
be graduating.” Thanks to Ian. If she walked on tiptoe she could see a glimpse of him, standing alongside Emmett Sims’s teamster’s sled, talking with a few other young men. None of them seemed as fine or as handsome as Ian McPherson. “He and I are not discussing weddings. We are strangers. I do not want to marry a stranger.”

“Some people you meet right away and know better than someone you have known forever.” Kate crinkled her brow thoughtfully. “True love might be like that. At least that’s the way it is in all the stories. You find the right one for you, the other half of your soul. It’s not about how much time you know someone.”

“My parents were like that,” Lila confessed, lowering her voice. Up ahead their nemesis, Narcissa Bell, was walking with her friends, within earshot. “They were school sweethearts. Ma said the first time she saw my pa, it was as if she had known him forever. One year later, they were married. They were happy.”

“That’s not a fairy tale, it’s real,” Kate said as if proof positive. “I have a feeling the same will happen to you, Fee. The way Ian has changed you—”

“I have
not
changed.” Okay, maybe she said that a little too fast and with a telling ring of denial, but she was exactly the same girl she had been before Ian had rode into her life one snowy afternoon.

A note rang in her chest, an emotional pang that felt like the perfect chord played by both heart and soul. It came from simply remembering how he’d galloped after Flannigan with lasso circling, like a myth.

I’m starting to believe, she realized as the road brought her to the churchyard, where he stood talking to other young men near to his age. Every step brought her nearer, making it easy to see the details. The snow building on his hat brim, the dimples bracketing his cheeks, the lean line of his jaw, the laughter softening it.

She forgot that he was only a year older than her. Ian had become the head of his household when his grandfather passed away. He provided for his grandmother. Somehow he had managed his grandfather’s debts and survived losing great wealth and valuable land, all with his dignity and spirit intact. He had not walked an easy road, and yet he’d done so without complaint or bitterness and with an injured leg.

Shame filled her because she had never asked him about it. She had wanted to keep distance between them; now, she no longer cared about that. She had been so concerned with what she wanted and couldn’t have that she’d failed to see how he had tried to help her. He was having a hard time of it and she could have offered him an ear to listen and a friend to care.

He lit up when he saw her, and something within him was open, like a door letting in the light. He turned from his discussion with the Sims brothers and the reverend’s son. Pure blue sparkles twinkled in his irises, like a rare jewel she had never seen before. There was much to admire about this man, more than she had let herself notice. Maybe—just maybe—she had noticed all along. She didn’t want tender feelings for him taking root, but her will didn’t seem to stop them. Affection for him kept struggling to life.

“I invited your fiancé to join us, Fiona,” the reverend’s son explained as he hefted the base of a cut fir tree from the teamster sled. “Something tells me you won’t mind.”

She blushed, feeling the weight of all eyes turning to her. But it was Ian’s silent question she noticed, the one that she heard without a single word. She did want him with her. She wanted him to have fun. “I was going to ask him to stay, too.”

“Then grab a hand, McPherson.” Austin Hadly was joined by the other young men in lifting the tree.

The fresh scent of evergreen sweetened the air, or maybe it was something else that made the afternoon perfect. She was hardly aware of other kids from her class clamoring up the street to help; Ian was all she could see. The ease as he grabbed the tree’s trunk midway, his easy conversation with the other men, and the capable way he did everything. His baritone stood out from all the other voices in the yard, deep and rich and far too dear.

“Oh, you really do care about him.” Kate squeezed her tightly.

“It’s written all over your face.” Meredith squeezed, too. “I’m happy for you, Fee.”

“We all are,” Scarlet added.

“But the real question is who will stand up for you at your wedding?” Lila’s question, meant to tease, was a loving one.

“I do not know what I am going to do with the lot of you.” Fiona rolled her eyes. “We should be thinking of decorating the tree and raising donations for the orphanage. Not thinking about something that will never happen. You all are putting the cart before the pony.”

“Sure, but we keep hoping for you, Fee.” Scarlet led the way to the front stairs.

“Hoping and praying,” Kate added.

“Just because you have planned one future, doesn’t mean something better can’t happen.” Meredith sounded as if she spoke from personal experience. “God might have other plans for you, Fee. Better ones.”

“That’s right. Maybe He is planning to give you a good family,” Lila added as she followed Scarlet up the steps. “Maybe He wants you to have true love in your life, after all.”

But I don’t believe in true love. She bit her lip to hold back the words. The last thing she wanted to do was to spoil her friends’ good cheer. Besides, they knew how she felt about placing her life in a man’s hands. Even if they were Ian’s. She slipped through the doorway toward him. He and Lorenzo were holding the tree upright while the reverend’s son drove nails through the base and into the stand.

When his gaze met hers, she did not need words to know what he was thinking. She started to chuckle, just a little, and across the sanctuary he joined her. It felt as if their laughter lifted like prayers all the way to heaven.

He could have dreamed up the afternoon, drawing it with the soft slants of light through the windows—not harsh straight lines, but gentle, broken ones. The scene could have been something he had captured on paper, the regal tree and the hopeful young people surrounding it. The dance of lamplight on happy faces. Handmade and donated ornaments, some of fine crystal and porcelain, others of calico and lace, twirled on strings of red satin ribbon amid the dark stands of small white candles.

He moved the chair over a few feet and climbed back onto it. Through the boughs, he caught Lorenzo frowning at him. It took a bit to fight off another surge of jealousy. Those had been plaguing him all afternoon, ever since Fee stepped into church, snow dappled and luminous, more beautiful in her simple gingham dress and coat than he had ever seen her before. He feared he would never tire of seeing her; forever would be a long dark place when she was gone from his life. So he intended to cherish this time he had with her.

Judging by the adoration on the smitten Lorenzo’s face, Ian was not alone in that wish.

“You have a good eye, McPherson,” Austin Hadly commented from the next chair over. He finished twining a small candle holder to a sturdy bough and gave it a test to make sure it held tight. “Next year you should volunteer for the Christmas committee. We could use more men. I feel mighty outnumbered with all those matrons in the group.”

“I suppose some of them will be by to inspect our work?”

“Without a doubt.” Good-natured, the reverend’s son chuckled, as if he enjoyed his work. “I saw that fine mare you were driving around town on Friday. I’ve never seen an animal like her.”

“She is rare, my Duchess.” He absently hung a porcelain angel on a branch. He heard Fiona’s name murmured in the chorus of voices. His senses sharpened, aware when she spoke. In the dull roar of conversations, her alto was the one he heard above all the others.

“They did turn out very well this year.” Fiona held up a snowflake, a fragile lacy concoction of thin white thread and air. He had hung ornaments just like the one she held up, one she had made, he realized. “I am finally getting the knack of tatting. Thanks to you, Scarlet.”

“You are better at it than I ever was. I should have made snowflakes, too.”

“I love your little embroidered manger scenes.” Fiona, bent over her work on the front pew, tied a red ribbon into an ornament and fussed with the bow, tugging until it was perfect.

She made a picture with her china-doll face flushed pink and relaxed. Only the fading bruise of her black eye remained. He hated that she’d been hurt, but it would be the last time. He vowed it.

“Uh, Ian?”

He blinked. Austin was waiting, as if for an answer. Embarrassed to be caught watching the lass, with his feelings—he feared—revealed.

“The candles are up. Why don’t you go fetch the last of the ornaments from the girls, and then we will all be done.” Austin cleared his throat, probably trying not to laugh.

Sure, he felt like a sap as his feet hit the polished wood floor. The rest of the men gathered around the tree knew it, and he didn’t miss the choked-back laughter as he walked away. Just wait, he wanted to tell them. Wait until a pretty lass comes along who turns your priorities upside down. Until there wasn’t anything a man wouldn’t give to make her life better.

“Are you glad you stayed to help?” Fiona asked, unaware of how vulnerable she made him with that curve of her smile and her sweet spirit.

“Aye. I haven’t had this much fun since I was in school.” Before Grandfather’s illness had taken him out of the classroom for good. Life had been far too serious.

“You have made friends.” She looked pleased, as if that was her hope. “I mean, if you are going to be staying here, it might be nice for you to know people. So you aren’t so alone.”

His throat closed, and he could not speak. Ah, but her caring touched him and made the losses in his life smaller and the hardships easier.

“That is the last of them.” One of the girls—the red-haired one—shoved the box into his hand. He suspected Fiona’s friends saw right through him to his eternal devotion. To his enduring, lifelong love.

A love that likely would never be returned.

He clutched the box, realizing he still could not speak. He feared Fiona, too, could see far too much. It was for her that he gave a shrug, as if to make up for his silence, and turned away.

“I will take those.” Lorenzo took the ornaments, his manner gruff, although Ian sensed he did not mean to be.

He knew how it felt not to have affection for Fiona returned. He felt an odd empathy with the young man as they stood side by side, hanging the last of the decorations in the uppermost branches.

The chairs were pulled away and all in the room gathered close to admire the tree. Everything passed in a haze for him: the cacophony of movement and noise, the joyful discussions, the call to join hands in prayer. Fiona slipped into line beside him, her soft hand finding his. That surprised him, as did her tight grip. All through the prayer, he did his best to keep from asking the Lord above for what he wanted most. As the group prayed for compassion and peace and for the welfare of others, he did, too.

He prayed for Fiona. Not that he would win her love, but that she would have her heart’s desire. Beyond all that he wished for himself, none of it mattered a bit in comparison with all he wanted for her.

Coziness clung to her and chased away the shocking cold as they sped toward home. The town was a shadow in the falling twilight behind them, and the road ahead ribboned across the gently rolling prairie. Tonight the wind did not whisper to her as she drew the blanket up to her chin. Whatever the world held out there could not be as rosy as what Ian had given her here.

“Do you think you will like staying in Angel Falls?” She felt shy, her voice strangely thin, but she attributed it to the bitter temperatures.

“I like it just fine. This place will be a new start for me, different from all that I knew. Maybe I can find my future here in this land of wide-open prairie and of mountains that hold up the sky.”

“Spoken like a man who is thinking of drawing those mountains.”

“How did you know?”

“You are less and less a stranger to me.”

“I feel as if you never were, lass.”

It was pure kindness, plain and simple, a sign of his compassionate nature, that was all. Fiona fisted her hands inside her mittens, determined to be practical and sensible.

“What kind of start did you have in mind?” Snowflakes sifted through the air between them, perhaps hiding what she really wanted to know. “Will you move north if you get a job at the mill?”

“I need wages, lass, but I can ride the five-mile stretch and live here.”

Why could she see the colors of his dreams? Green like the fields in May, sapphire-blue like the Montana summer sky and dotted with horses of every color, their velvet coats gleaming in the sun. “You will work to buy horses again. To build another stable.”

“Once, we had more than two hundred horses grazing on our land. More than a few of them were champions. Now, the twelve are all I have left.”

She felt his loss, not for the former prestige of his family but for the horses he had loved. “You helped to raise and train them, didn’t you?”

“The hardest losses are of the heart, it’s true.” His throat worked, and his jaw turned to iron. “The horses I have left were the ones I could not part with.”

“Where are they now?”

“A neighbor is boarding them for me. He’s a good friend, and he bought all of my family’s land. It is his house where my grandmother is staying.”