Homespun Bride

own ranch?”
    “It doesn’t change my obligations to my brothers. Don’t look troubled. I don’t mind hard work. I figure the Lord set a good example. He worked six days out of seven.”
    “I thought you were no longer a praying kind of man.”
    “I guess I’m more of one than I thought.”
    He took a step back, hating that the time had come to leave. The thud that seemed to rattle his chest was his heart falling even more in love with her.
    Friends, she’d said. And that she’d like to see him again. Friends was far more than he’d expected. How about that.
    He hesitated on the top step. “I’ll be coming back around to see you.”
    “All right. I won’t even pretend not to be home when you do.”
    She smiled and it was a sight that chased the chill from the air and the snow from the sky.
    As he tucked down the brim of his hat and headed out into the increasing snowfall, it seemed as if he walked in sunshine.

Chapter Thirteen
    N oelle hadn’t realized how much she’d been listening for any sign of Thad until he was gone. Oh, he’d found someone to replace him—although no word of it had been mentioned. A worker had shown up to carry in the morning’s wood and tend to the stable work.
    After the girls had left for school, Matilda had come in to quietly mention that Thad had sent the youngest brother of the Sims family. But there was no mention of the older boy—Emmett Sims—as Matilda poured a second cup of tea and carried it away to the library with a slight clatter. The mention of the Sims family had upset her.
    That’s all my fault. Sadness eked into her, dimming the warm touch of the morning’s sun through the dining room window. Her well-meaning words in town before Robert’s accident haunted her now. She’d meant to protect innocent Matilda, that was all. But as she was listening to the crackle of the fire echoing in the empty room around her, she remembered how it had felt to twirl on the ice and know that Thad was at her side. It had been pure joy.
    What had happened to her? On the ice she’d caught a glimpse of the real Noelle—the one who’d once known how to live and love. The one who used her heart, her whole heart.
    Noelle reached for the teapot with trembling fingers and found the crest of lid and round of the handle. You might think that breaking my promise to you that night came pretty easy, Thad had said. I can honestly say it was the hardest decision I ever made. His words troubled her like little teeth taking a bite of her soul.
    She’d blamed him, judged him and—for a time—despised him. She’d let those things into her heart, into her soul, and although she’d told herself she’d found forgiveness and had handed her pain up to God, it was not the whole truth. The stain of it, like tarnish on silver, remained, and shame filled her.
    She slipped her forefinger against the rim of her teacup and poured with her other hand until she felt the lap of the beverage against the tip of her finger. She set down the pot with care. She’d held all that pain in her heart—without meaning to and in spite of her best intentions—and for what? Thad had done what he’d thought best in leaving her. She knew her parents well enough to see clearly what they had done. Her father, bless his soul, would have used any means to protect her, for that’s how he would have viewed it.
    She’d been the one to change her heart and her life. She’d been the one to stop believing. To stop living. To stop dreaming. Long before the accident took her sight. She’d decided life and love were about sensible decisions and emotions—nothing else.
    She scooped a lump of sugar from the bowl and slipped it into her cup with a plop. The house seemed silent around her. It was best to be steeled to the truth in life. It was best to be practical. She almost said so to Matilda but held back the words.
    Once, like her cousin, she’d been young and filling her hope chest with embroidered pillow slips and a girl’s dreams. Maybe that was a part of the way life went. Maybe she would be a different woman if she’d been able to hold on to some of those dreams, or at least the belief in them.
    But she was a woman without dreams.
    She took a sip of tea and turned her mind to her music lessons for the rest of the morning. While there was no sound of Thad—no lazy snap of a training whip, no rhythmic trot of a horse he was working, and no familiar gait in the yard outside—her mind turned to him. Always