Homespun Bride

her knee and heard the distant thunk as it hit the floor at her feet, but it was hard to notice anything beyond her fears. “Do you mean our talk on the sleigh ride home?”
    “That would be the one.” His hands were comforting, his voice soothing. “I don’t want you to be so disaught, sweetheart.”
    “I—I—” She couldn’t make any words come. The panic was crawling into her throat now, and a horrible sorrow taking root in her chest. A dark, agonizing sorrow.
    “I love you.” His baritone broke through the sorrow. “Surely you know that I do.”
    His love for her made it worse. She could hear Shelton’s words echoing in the chambers of her mind. You’re damaged goods, now. What use are you? Henrita’s loving reassurances after she’d woken up from the buggy accident. I’ll take care of you now. I’ll never consider you a burden. Well-intended words, but even Henrietta, her own father’s sister, had used the word burden.
    “I was hoping,” Thad was saying, “that you’d come to love me, too.”
    Love him? Love was too pale a word for the deep abiding devotion she held for him. “Y-you are supposed to marry someone else. Someone b-better.”
    “Who could be better than you?” He said those words as if he could not see the problem.
    Her dear, sweet, good-hearted Thad. Did he truly not understand? What did she say? She longed to throw caution and her very real concerns to the wind. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, accept his proposal and spend the rest of her life as his wife.
    His wife. Her soul soared at that very notion. Having the privilege to love and cherish and honor him day by day, year by year for the rest of her life felt like her heaven on earth. Sweet longing filled her with such force, it threatened to lift her right out of the chair.
    And what about what Thad wanted? Her joy faded. Her longing vanished. She had to keep her feet on the floor and tight hold of her common sense. A marriage between them would never work. Not if he wanted to realize his dream of running a ranch. She could not help him with that, not the way she once could.
    That’s what he hadn’t realized, she thought. He was acting on his past feelings for her. He still viewed her as he did five long years ago when the world seemed full of possibilities and their love unshakable.
    She knew better now. She was wiser. If her heart cracked into a million pieces, she had to ignore the pain of it. She had to do the right thing. The best thing for Thad.
    And, yes, for her.
    He broke the silence. “It shouldn’t take you this long to say yes to marrying me. Not if you want me.”
    She withdrew her hands from his—and her heart, too.
    “You do love me, darlin’. Don’t you?”
    “Love isn’t the question, Thad.” She sat very still, gathering up every bit of might she had and yet it wasn’t enough.
    “Then what is the question, darlin’?” So tender his words. So loving.
    Sorrow dripped through her. “I c-can’t marry you.”
    “You sound so sure about that. Why not?”
    Because I won’t trade my dreams for yours, she ached to say. Because I don’t want to be a burden to the one man I love beyond all else on this earth.
    Her soul squeezed with pain, making every inch of her ache. She covered her face with her hands, unable to say the truth. Unable to bare herself so fully.
    Not even Thad would understand. He would say all the right things, about how her blindness didn’t matter to him, and that was not the truth. It couldn’t be the truth.
    She swallowed hard against the burn in her throat. He hadn’t seen her real limitations yet. She had worked extremely hard to adapt to the constraints of her blindness, but he didn’t know that. He only saw what she could do and not what she couldn’t. She had to do the right thing for them both.
    “Noelle? Are you crying?”
    “N-no.” She would make that the truth. She set her chin and blinked hard against the heat behind her eyes. “I don’t know what else to say to you, Thad. I c-can’t marry you.”
    “You haven’t told me why, darlin’.”
    His tenderness tore her apart. Fear left her helpless. Truly in the dark, she reached out in prayer. Help me, Lord. Don’t let my words hurt him.
    There was no answer, not one in her heart, not one in the darkness. Outside the house another gust of wind slammed against the house, rattling the windowpanes, jarring her soul.
    “Tell me, sweetheart, just tell me the truth.”
    “Which truth?” She