Homespun Bride

shattered those fairy tales and dimmed the stars, she could see a different motive. Not a romantic one, but a less than noble one. He’d courted her behind her parents’ backs, purposefully fooling them, and for what?
    In the end, he’d chosen to run instead of marry. In the end, if there had been any truth to his courtship, then his affection for her had paled next to the strength of his fear. At least, that was the way she’d rationalized it. That’s why his words were haunting her. My caring was never in question.
    Perhaps his caring had been only that. Caring and not the strong, true love she’d felt for him. Either way, it hardly mattered now. She knew his true measure beneath the handsome charm and solid-appearing values. Thad McKaslin was not a man of his word. He was a coward. A man who ran instead of stayed.
    “What about his family? Does he own property?” Henrietta persisted. “That’s a fine young man. And handsome. Don’t you think, Matilda? Noelle, you must tell me what you know about him. Here’s your cloak. We’re still attending to our errands in town. I’ll not be put off my cause, you know.”
    Noelle fumbled with the garment Henrietta pressed into her hands. Certainly she knew that; why had she rehung her cloak in the first place? It simply went to show how tangled up her emotions were. A mess of them, threads of old hurt and confusion and the sharp tang of lost love were as hopelessly knotted. “I’m afraid I know very little about Mr. McKaslin. He left town long ago. I never knew what became of him. I never cared to.”
    After she’d finally accepted that he’d broken his vow to her. That he’d left her waiting for a promise he’d never meant to keep.
    “Perhaps he left to make his fortune.” There was the rustle of wool as Henrietta slipped into her coat. “Perhaps he has very respectable family back East.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t know.” Noelle lost count of her steps and had to reorient herself. Three more steps and she was at the door. The handle felt warm from the radiant heat of the fireplace, which was blazing on this frigid, late-winter morning—like her emotional tie to Thad. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t depend on Thad McKaslin as a reliable kind of man.”
    When she stepped outside, the still morning air seemed to wait expectantly, as if some wonderful thing were about to happen. But what? She lived a quiet life teaching piano and crocheting and sewing for her five cousins’ hope chests. The days, while happy, were predictable and routine. Why did it feel as if something was about to change?
    Simply her wishful thinking, no doubt. Before she’d lost her sight, she had a love for romantic novels. Or, she reasoned, maybe spring really was right around the corner. It was, after all, late January. A month and a few weeks more and March would be storming in. It had been her father’s favorite time of the year.
    Her father. She missed him so strongly, it was like taking an ax to her midsection. She gripped the rail and froze a moment, drawing in the fresh, icy air. He’d been at her side when she finally accepted that Thad had abandoned her. He’d run away from marrying her. After she confessed, her father had comforted her and reassured her as she cried for the pieces of her shattered heart and broken dreams. Only the death of her parents had hurt with that same keen-edged grief.
    I miss you, Papa. She felt the lonesomeness for him as solidly as the boards at her feet. Her knees felt weak as she tripped down the steps. Thad had brought all this up. Simply waltzing into her home, pretending he was such a good dependable man. Why the pretense? She already knew the kind of man he was.
    An opportunist, her father had said to her, kindly, while she’d sobbed. She remembered how her mother had come into her room with a steaming pot of tea for all of them. She sure ached for her parents’ comfort, their company, everything. They had held her up after her innocent illusions had been so thoroughly destroyed.
    If they were still alive, they would be the first to reassure her and to send Thaddeus McKaslin back on his way to wherever it was he’d run off to. Good riddance.
    But as she reached the brick walk, she heard the low, deep-throated nicker of a horse’s greeting and the chink of steeled shoes shifting in the ice-crusted snow. Was it Thad’s horse? Was he still here? And why was she allowing herself to be so upset by him that she hadn’t paid enough