Flint Hills Bride

She was so lost in thought that when she felt the buggy turn off the road she looked up in surprise. The huge rock house with its many balconies filled her with sudden nostalgia. They rode up the hill and around the house to the second-level entrance. Before Jake had even pulled the buggy to a stop, Christian was there to greet her. He lifted her out, hugging her to his chest and spinning her around as he had done since she was a child.

He set her back on the ground but waited a moment to let her go, giving her his familiar dimpled smile. “Get inside where it’s warm, muffin,” he said, guiding her toward the door, with his arm around her shoulder. “Jake and I’ll get the trunk.”

She spared Jake one last glance and, though his father had joined him, his eyes were on her. She wondered what he was thinking then decided she would just as soon not know.

Christian’s pretty wife, Lynnette, opened the back door and welcomed her inside with a kiss on her cheek. Two little children peeked from behind her skirts as she helped Emily out of her cloak, scarf and gloves.

“Hello, Willa. Hello, Trevor.” Emily crouched down and tried to coax them out. “Do you remember me?”

Trevor grinned and buried his face in a fistful of his mother’s skirt, but Willa stepped forward. “I ’member you. You’re Aunt Emily. Trevor’s just a dumb ol’ baby and doesn’t ‘member nothin’.”

Lynnette pried her skirt free and lifted the boy, positioning him around her protruding belly. Another child was due in three months. “Let’s get inside by the fire,” she said. “You must be freezing.”

Willa took Emily’s hand. “Mama said it was too cold to go outside and meet you, but it wasn’t, was it?”

“It’s pretty cold,” Emily said. “I think I’ll ask Martha for some tea.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Lynnette said. “You go on in and make yourself at home.”

“It’s not too cold for Papa to go outside and meet you,” Willa observed, dragging Emily into the living room.

“Papa’s doing chores,” Emily said, laughing at Willa’s pout. She was a perfect combination of her parents, with her mother’s fine features and her father’s blond hair. Trevor was the opposite, a dark-haired version of Christian, dimples and all.

“I can do the chores,” the little girl insisted.

“I bet you can,” Emily said, moving to stand before the fire. “Though why you would want to is beyond me.”

“I’m almost five,” Willa said, explaining everything.

Christian and Lynnette hadn’t changed the living room much in the five years they had been married. Her father’s books and artifacts had gone with him to Topeka and had been replaced by some of their own. The room bore traces of little children, but the furniture and its arrangement was essentially as it had always been, making her feel for just a moment as if she had stepped back in time.

Lynnette, with Trevor on her hip, joined them. “Martha will have the tea ready in a few minutes.” She sat down and swung Trevor onto her lap. He grinned shyly at Emily.

Emily was trying to get him to say “Emily” when Jake and Christian brought her trunk through the room and up the stairs. She tried not to watch them. They had shed their coats at the door, and it was disconcerting to realize that Jake was a full-grown man. Though why this troubled her she wasn’t sure.

“I’ll help,” yelled Willa, running to catch up with the men. She pushed her little hands against the trunk.

“Run around in front, biscuit, and get the door,” Christian suggested.

Emily laughed. “She’s his biscuit and I’m his muffin.”

“All his favorite females he nicknames after food.”

Emily grinned at her sister-in-law. “And you are…?”

Lynnette grimaced and adjusted her snug dress. “Right now I’m his dumpling.”

Emily laughed. She hadn’t realized her gaze had gone back to the men working their way up the open stairway until Lynnette spoke again.

“Jake’s taking two weeks off to visit his parents. He tries to visit often, but he doesn’t usually stay long. They’ve really looked forward to this.”

Emily nodded. She hoped that meant his parents would keep him so busy she wouldn’t see much of him.

Emily made a face at Trevor, trying to coax another smile out of him. She didn’t want to talk about Jake. But she didn’t want to talk about herself, either. She wondered what her parents had said about her and Anson in the letter that preceded her. She would probably find out soon enough.

Trevor mimicked Emily’s wrinkled nose and scrunched lips, making Emily laugh. Willa’s high-pitched giggle and the sound of footsteps on the stairs caught her attention. Christian, with Willa on his shoulders, turned in their direction at the bottom of the stairs. Jake, without a glance at her, went the other way toward the kitchen.

“We’re glad to have you here, muffin,” Christian said, joining them. He set Willa on the floor, then kissed Emily’s cheek. “I’ll finish the chores then we can talk.”

As Christian left the room, Emily sighed and slumped into a chair. “Another lecture?” she asked her sister-in-law.

“From Christian? I doubt it,” Lynnette replied. “But you know your brother. He feels responsible for everyone, and he’s very worried about you. He wants to hear your side.”

“Where have I heard that before?” she muttered.

“Emily, I’m the first one to say a woman should be allowed to make up her own mind, but you’re young and the things we hear about this young man are not good. We want to be sure it’s you making the decisions, not this young man.”

Martha, with a tray of tea and teacups, saved her from having to make a response. Willa declared it a tea party and kept the women busy moving tables and chairs to accommodate the younger guests. By the time the tea was gone Emily could honestly claim fatigue and retire to her room.

She sat down on the bed, her mind in too much turmoil to try to rest. She eyed the trunk that she knew she should unpack, but even thinking about it seemed to take too much energy. She let her eyes roam the room. The holidays she had spent here the past few years seemed to blend together in her memory, but the summers when she was a child were as distinct as separate photographs.

She sat and recalled when the quilt, the picture on the wall, the little writing desk had each been bought and added to the room. Her eyes fell on a doll propped beside a row of books on the shelf above the desk. She had been six when her father had bought it. She had taken it back and forth between the ranch and Topeka for several years. Then when she was twelve, she had left it here.

She lifted the doll from the shelf, unconscious of having moved toward it. She smoothed aside the mangled hair and smiled down at the painted face. This had been her baby. In a display of vanity she had named it Emily.

She felt tears forming in her eyes and tried to blink them away. It was too early to know, too early yet to worry. And besides, Anson loved her. It would all work out. They would convince their families somehow and be married before the baby came.

She put the doll back on the shelf, determined not to think about it, and resolutely turned her attention to her trunk. She was nearly unpacked when she heard a knock on the door.

“Can I come in, muffin?”

She slid the drawer closed as she answered, turned and waited for her brother to enter. He closed the door behind him and opened his arms to her.

She ran to him, accepting his offer of comfort. He stroked her hair and rocked her gently. “I’ve been worried since I got Pa’s letter.” She heard the rumble of his voice in his chest under her ear. “I guess I wish you’d stay a little girl forever.”

She drew away so she could see his face. “I can’t,” she stated. “I’m grown, and I’m in love. Why make things hard for me?”

“The man’s in jail.” He cut off her protest with a finger on her lips. “We don’t want to see anyone break your heart.”

“Let me go back to him.”

He shook his head. “It’s hard for me to deny you anything, but our parents have forbidden you to contact him, and I have to say I agree with them.”

She pulled out of his arms and crossed the room, moving aside the curtain that hung in front of the glass balcony door and looked down on the brown valley below.

“Emily, they’ll be here in two weeks. We can talk it all out then. If you still feel the same, I’ll take your side.”

“I don’t want to wait,” she said.