A Time to Bloom (Leah's Garden #2)(102)
“Thank you, Lord, for this glorious new day in spite of the snow. Lark will grumble about the fieldwork, but the snow will disappear by noon if the sun stays like it is.” She was already thinking her coat was a bit warm.
Her mind flew to the wedding. There was still so much to do, including finishing her dress. She and RJ were getting married right after school was out the last week of May. So the wedding would be the first Saturday in June. She hoped the lilacs would be blooming by then since the forsythia would probably be finished. Surely there would be flowers of some kind for Lilac to make her bridal bouquet and decorate the altar.
She let her thoughts wander back to RJ’s proposal in February. She had been stuck at Forsythia and Adam’s house in a blizzard, unable to get home after school. Thankfully she’d dismissed class early enough to allow all her students to get home safely, but she’d made the mistake of staying after to grade papers. So RJ’s romantic plans, she’d later learned, had turned into the two of them eating popcorn by the fire in the Brownsville sitting room while the storm raged outside the windows and Forsythia and Adam put the children to bed.
“Such an odd thing, popcorn.” Sitting beside her on the settee, RJ had turned a puffy kernel between his fingers. “A tiny explosion, mostly fluff and air. Yet we down them by the handful.”
“Because they’re so good.” Del snatched the kernel from him and popped it in her mouth, arching a brow at his mock-frown. “You weren’t eating it anyway.”
“Fair enough.” RJ grabbed another handful, then sat sorting through the kernels, looking even more meditative and broody than his eye patch usually rendered him.
Del touched his arm. “Something wrong?”
He shrugged and gave a half grin. “This just isn’t quite how I saw the evening going.”
Del slipped her hand beneath his arm and squeezed it. “I’m sorry about the dance. But this is nice too, isn’t it?”
“It’s not so much the dance. It’s . . . what I planned to ask you on the drive back from the dance.” Abruptly, he dug back into the popcorn bowl and unearthed a tiny box.
Del stared at it, her mind at first a spinning blank. Until RJ slid from the sofa to one knee before her on the sitting room rug, holding one of her hands fast in his. His other hand held the tiny box, now open to show a ring.
And with a faint catch in his voice, he’d asked her if she’d do him the honor of becoming his wife, as long as they both should live.
Smiling and warmed through at the memory, Del stripped the last of the milk from the teats and set the bucket off to the side. The two-month-old bull calf, Buster, bawled from his pen as she hung the stool on the center post. “I’m coming. Your ma has to go out first.” Del opened the stanchion and, after staring at her bawling calf, Buttercup backed up and turned to head out the door, followed by Clover, the heifer. By the end of the year, they would have two cows to milk.
Del poured milk into another bucket for the calf, this one set in a frame to keep it from spilling. After half filling the flat pan they set out for their two new barn cats, she carried the bucket outside to the well house and strained the milk.
“Are you counting the days?” Lark asked when Del returned to the soddy.
“Six until school is out and seven until the wedding. After breakfast, I want to head over and see how RJ is doing with the house.”
“Do you think he thought to cover it before the snow?”
“I doubt it. There wasn’t much warning last night.”
Del found her beloved sweeping snow from the floor of their unfinished cabin, thunder on his brow. He and his crew had been hard at work all week building on the other half section of the homestead, just north of the gardens.
“I should’ve covered the door and windows,” RJ said by way of greeting, his glare enough to scare off any woman who didn’t know and love him like she did. “How could I be so stupid?”
“Because one doesn’t generally expect a snowstorm in late May. And you’re not stupid.” Del reached up to tug his woolen cap straight and plant a kiss on his chilly cheek. “See, you’ve got half the floor swept clean already. Let me do the rest, and you can get ready for your crew.”
RJ resisted her grip on his broom for a moment, then relinquished it with a sigh. “Was I crazy to try to build this cabin in a week?”
“Well, crazy or not, you’ve nearly done it.” Del set to sweeping the fine powder from the wood floor RJ had spent hours laying. The sod dug from beneath the cabin had gone into the barn walls for Captain, also almost complete.
“I still wish I could have built you the house you deserve. The house I wanted to build.”
“Someday.” Del stopped sweeping to step close and twine her fingers through his. “One step at a time. Isn’t that what we agreed?”
He stared at her, his one eye rebellious, then he softened into a half smile. “I ever tell you I love you, Delphinium Nielsen?”
“Once or twice.” She stood on booted tiptoes for his kiss.
———
The final days of school flew by—truly final for Del, since she wouldn’t be allowed to teach anymore once married. The town leaders had already hired a new teacher for the school, a competent and experienced one by the sound of it. And the new schoolhouse was in fine order for next term. Yet her heart ached as she bid her students bittersweet farewells, hugging Bethany Kinsley and Elsie Weber, hearing Timothy’s shy thanks, the little ones clinging to her skirts and declaring they’d never love another teacher like her. “Never ever,” Josie said.