Homespun Bride

to disorient me. I get a little lost on my own.”
    “Me, too, but I don’t need a storm for that.” There was a touch of warmth to those words.
    She wondered if he were smiling, and what kind of smile he had. Just for curiosity’s sake, of course. She began to shake the snow from the lap blanket.
    “Let me get that for you.”
    He blocked the storm as he towered beside her. She felt the weight of the snow-caked blanket fall away. She breathed in the wintry air, the faint scent of his soap and leather and wool and remembered that boy she’d once loved.
    His hand cradled her elbow to help her step out of the sleigh. Cold snow sank to the tops of her ankle-high shoes. For a moment, she felt a strange quiver of familiarity and denial seized her like a fist. Thad McKaslin here, in Angel Falls? Could it be?
    She took one step, and he moved to her side to block the worst of the wind and snow. And the way he towered beside her made recognition shiver through her.
    I don’t want it to be him, she thought, her stomach tightening even more. But just because she didn’t want it to be Thad, didn’t mean it wasn’t. She took another step. “Should I know you?”
    “Not really,” his comforting baritone rumbled.
    “When a man saves a woman’s life, well, two women’s, she likes to know what name to call her rescuer when she thanks him.”
    “Maybe some things are better left a mystery.” Friendly, that’s what his voice was and cozy, the way a fire crackling in the hearth was cozy. “Careful, now. There’s a deep drift coming up.”
    His grip tightened on her and he responded so quickly and gallantly, he must have thought she was truly helpless. It was a common misconception. “Don’t worry,” she said, easily correcting her balance. “I’ve gotten used to tottering around. I’m fine.”
    “The snow drifts high here. Lift your steps a little higher,” he said with concern.
    Concern she didn’t need, not from him. She tried to concentrate on feeling her way over the crest of the snowdrift with the toe of her shoe. Her feet were numb from cold, making it only a little more difficult.
    “You do this very well.”
    She recognized the surprise in his words. “When I lost my sight, I realized I had two options. To see it as a reason to give up or as a reason to go on. Of course, I walk into a few walls and catch my toe on the top of snowdrifts, but I do all right.”
    “I’ll say.”
    She could feel the flat level of the brick stone walkway that her uncle kept carefully cleared. Snow had accumulated on it, but not more than a few inches, and the walking was easier. She released her rescuer’s arm. “Thank you, but I can get in from here.”
    “No, I should see you to the door.”
    “You’ve done enough all ready.”
    “But you’re blind.”
    “Yes, but I’m not incapable.”
    “No, I see that.” What did he say to that? Thad didn’t have the slightest notion. It was breaking his heart in every way. He cleared his throat to ask the question most troubling him. “How long have you been like this?”
    “Tripping in the snow? Or blind, do you mean?”
    “I’m sorry for your loss of sight.” Her smile was still the same, he realized, modest and sweet as the finest sugar, and how it transformed her lovely face the way dawn changed the night sky. But something had changed. She no longer held the power to render him a love-struck fool. No, he thought stoically, her smile had no effect on him whatsoever.
    “It’s been over four years, now.”
    “Four years?” That surprised him. He’d been gone just about five.
    “I hit my head when our buggy rolled and I lost my sight. It wasn’t the worst thing I lost. My parents were killed.”
    “I—I’m sorry to hear that.” It surprised him that the venom he’d felt for Noelle’s parents vanished. Whatever they had done to him aside, they had loved their daughter dearly. She was their greatest treasure. Hard to blame them for it; harder now that they were gone.
    The venom had died but not the bitterness. It was hard to keep it buried where it belonged. “I guess that had to be hard for you.”
    A single nod, nothing more.
    His feelings aside, he knew it had to have been an unbearable loss for her. She had loved her parents deeply, which was one reason why he’d made the decision he did five years ago and why they stood together now as strangers. The only decision he could have made.
    Despite her condition, she looked well. Very well. Soft