A Time to Bloom (Leah's Garden #2)(101)
He drew a breath, then pulled away one hand to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “I guess because you’re a woman I want to work alongside. A woman I trust, who seeks the good of others. Who leans on the Lord and is humble enough to admit when she forgets to.” He hesitated, then leaned his head close to hers until their foreheads touched. “And most of all, Delphinium Nielsen, because I’m falling in love with you.”
She caught her breath, the words spinning round and round within her until she thought her feet would lift from the ground.
But a sudden thought set them back on earth again. “RJ . . . I want to.” Oh, how I want to. “But the school . . . by my contract, I’m forbidden to marry as long as I’m teaching. At least through this next term.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not asking you to marry me yet.” His chuckle warmed the air between their bent faces. “Though I might end up hard-pressed to wait until the end of the term.”
Closing her eyes, she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. RJ’s arms came around her, his chin resting atop her head. The thump of his heart beat against her, and Del let out the breath she had been holding. All at once, it seemed she’d found the place she’d been searching for longer than she knew.
“Does this mean I may drive you home, Miss Nielsen?”
She turned her head to lean her cheek against his shoulder and smiled. “It means I accept your suit, Mr. Easton. And yes, you may drive me home.”
The night air hung quietly as they drove to the sod house, hardly a sound across the prairie but the creak of the gig RJ had borrowed from Adam for the night—seeming forethought, though he claimed he hadn’t known Anders’s answer until near evening’s end.
Del pulled her mittened hand from beneath the buffalo robe and held it out to catch one of the sparkles drifting from the sky. “RJ, look.” The delicate flake glimmered a moment on her mitten in the swinging lantern light, then faded. “Snow.”
He chuckled. “Waited for your school, sure enough.”
She tipped her face to the softly falling flakes, their feathery touch on her nose, eyelashes, cheeks. By the time they reached the Nielsen farm, the lantern showed a thickening blanket of white surrounding the soddy.
“I hope it won’t be too heavy for you driving back.” She took RJ’s hand as he helped her dismount.
“Shouldn’t be. It’s steady but not thick.” He drew her to him for a moment, gathering her hands between his. He glanced at the soddy, snug under its mantle of snow, light gleaming from the windows and the sturdy barn nearby. “It’s truly remarkable what you ladies have built here already. I never heard of a family of sisters taking on so much. You make a man feel right indolent at times.”
“I’d hardly say that.” Del traced the lines of his face, gentled in the soft snowlight, eye patch and all. “You know, it was our dream from the start to someday all build homes on this land of ours. We’ve still got a whole half section we haven’t done anything with yet.”
“It was always my dream to design and build a home for my family one day,” RJ murmured, his lips brushing her hair. “I started a design with Francine, but . . . well, you know what happened there.”
“Perhaps you’ll get a chance to finish it.” And tossing aside any thought of sisters who might be watching at windows, Del lifted her face and kissed her one-eyed soldier in the falling snow.
Epilogue
I thought spring was here to stay.
Del stood in the doorway of the sod house and stared out over the white fields. The grass had thought so too, sending up enough shoots to create a blanket of green welcoming the sun. RJ wouldn’t be happy if the snow had dampened his work on their house.
“Close the door. You’re letting all the heat out,” Lark grumbled from the stove, feeding the hungry flames so she could finish making breakfast.
Del lifted her coat off one of the wooden pegs in a board fixed to the sod wall. “I’ll get the milking done. Has the cream been skimmed yet?” There was no school on Saturday, so she didn’t have to be on her way to town by seven.
“Not that I know of, but then, I didn’t get home until near dark last night.”
“How’s Climie doing with the boardinghouse?”
“She had eight people for supper last night, all of them sleeping on pallets upstairs. One of the wives took Sythia’s place at the Jorgensens’ store, since neither she nor Climie have time to work there any longer.”
“So you stayed to help her clean up?”
“I did. Tell you about it after milking.”
Del followed the near-to-grown Scamp out the door and called for Buttercup, who was already waiting at the back door of the barn. She bellowed a response as Scamp barked and danced in the snow. Starbright, now showing she was carrying a foal, whinnied from the wooden fence.
“I’m glad you all think this snow is wonderful. Lark had just gotten the fieldwork in full swing, and now it will be too wet again.” Not that there was that much snow, but an inch or two melting into the ground would quickly make mud. Surely it would be gone by the wedding, though.
Only seven more days. Her middle fluttered at the thought.
In the barn, she hummed as she set down the three-legged stool and wiped any dirt off Buttercup’s udder so it wouldn’t fall into the bucket. Milk pinged into the bucket as the bovines enjoyed their grain. If one sought peace, a barn in the morning was a good place to find it.