Bride Blunder (19 page)

“Is that cousin of yours still in bed?” Ermintrude looked up from her embroidery when Marge came downstairs with her set of McGuffey's Readers after putting away the breakfast dishes.

“It's been a long journey for her, and she's not used to dealing with anything so taxing.” Marge fought off the feeling she was making excuses and sat down in her favorite armchair.

“Of course sitting in a luxuriously cushioned private coach for days on end must be absolutely exhausting.”

“She's also nursing a broken heart.”
And keeping secrets, which Daisy's never been able to do well.
Marge kept the second part to herself.

Until she knew the full and precise reason why Daisy broke off her engagement to Trouston Dillard III, she refused to speculate or pressure her cousin to accept Gavin's suit. A gnawing worry pressed against the back of her throat every time she remembered the look of panic on Daisy's face when she'd asked what went wrong.

“A broken heart, unlike a broken limb, does not leave a body bedridden.” Ermintrude's snort almost sparked a smile in response, but Marge was in no mood for merriment.

“Daisy's accustomed to town hours, where she stays up late into the night and doesn't rise until long after the sun.”

“Foolishness and unnatural. I notice you come from Baltimore—on a hired stage—and didn't indulge in such behavior.” Approval rang in her friend's voice. “I say the right bride arrived in Buttonwood the first time. Furthermore,” she went on, raising her voice when it became apparent Marge intended to interrupt, “I believe my grandson shares my opinion.”

Marge decided to ignore the last part altogether. “Since I've always taught school, even in Baltimore, country hours aren't a switch for me. It's not fair to judge Daisy by my schedule.”

“Going to avoid the important statement, are you?”

“I'm going to find the story I mentioned to Midge the other day. After church tomorrow is the field day celebration to mark the start of school on Monday. She should be here any time to go over our lessons.” With that, Marge buried her nose in a book. The familiar page before her went unread as her mind churned with a thousand things.

“Difficult to read without turning pages.”

“Planning lessons requires thoughtful consideration.” Her retort to Ermintrude's prodding lacked conviction—mostly because she hadn't been reading or planning lessons at all.

Truly, she'd brought down the books so she'd have them on hand when Midge arrived and only opened them to avoid an uncomfortable conversation with Ermintrude. Obviously she needed a more clever ruse if she wanted to fool the old woman.

“If you can concentrate on grammar when you think you've lost my grandson, then you never deserved him.”

“You know me too well for such a short period of time.” Snapping the book shut, Marge set it aside and rose to go stand beside the window. “On the bright side, that means you must know I don't wish to discuss the possibility of Gavin courting my cousin, much less marrying her. At any rate, it seems such things will be placed on hold until such a time as Daisy's heart recovers from the disillusionment she suffered at the hands of her last fiancé.”

“Why put them on hold? Let your cousin sleep the days away, recovering, while you marry my grandson.” Her rocking chair creaked at a faster pace as the old woman laid out her plans. “Then we'll all be happy, and Sleeping Beauty needn't be disturbed. No delays required.”

Thankfully Midge came into sight at that moment, allowing Marge to excuse herself without having to tell Ermintrude precisely how ridiculous she sounded. After all, she'd been raised to respect her elders—even when those elders didn't show much respect in return.

“Midge!” Marge rushed out the door and met her friend several yards from the house, thrilled to make her escape. Thrilled, at least, until she caught sight of Midge's face up close. “Why have you been crying?”

“Amos.” She reached up and swiped angrily at her eyes, making the red even more pronounced. “That man simply doesn't know when to accept defeat and call it a day.”

“I know a few people like that.” Marge led Midge toward the barn, not wanting to return to the house or, worse, venture near the mill ... where Gavin spent his time.
I wish Gavin wanted me that way—that he chose me, settled on me, and refused to give up until he won me as his bride. But look where my hopes have gotten me so far. I'm better off without them.

“Hurry.” Midge cast a disgruntled glance into the distance behind them, where a figure approached at a rapid pace. “He's catching up and I'm in no mood to speak with him now.”

“Here.” Marge ducked behind the mill and made a straight path to the small barn, where Gavin kept two oxen to pull his wagon and one milk cow for Ermintrude's sake. She remembered thinking how sweet it was for him to have purchased that cow and taken the time every day to milk it simply because his grandmother favored fresh milk and wanted a regular supply. But those were happier times, when she'd first arrived. When she'd still thought things might work out. She blinked and pointed to the ladder leaning against the hayloft. “We can talk up there for a while, and no one will think to come looking for us.”

“Good.” Midge scampered up ahead of her, settling into the sweetly scented, slightly prickly hay. “Now, I hate to be nosy....” she started, making Marge laugh for the first time since Daisy arrived the day before.

“No one hates being nosy. People just hate being thought of as nosy.” She shook her head. “Since I want to know what Amos did to upset you, I'm just as guilty as you are. Go ahead.”

“The beautiful black coach that came through town yesterday headed this direction—everyone will be asking you about it tomorrow at church.” Most people's eyes grew red after they were exposed to bunches of loose hay, but on Midge it seemed to have the opposite effect. The signs of her tears all but vanished as she waited for Marge to explain.

“Daisy.”

“I thought so.” The two of them sat in silence for a moment. Midge understood the magnitude of what Daisy's arrival meant for Marge and her budding relationship with Gavin without Marge needing to expound upon it or bemoan the change. “You would've said if she'd arrived with her fiancé ... or her husband. I forget when her wedding date was supposed to be.”

“Today.” Marge closed her eyes and didn't add to the damning nature of that one word.

“Ah.” If a mind were a maze and thoughts traveled through, the map of their course was printed in the lines on Midge's forehead. Her brow furrowed, lifted, crinkled, smoothed, and creased as she attempted to solve an impossible quandary. Finally her friend shrugged and said the last thing Marge could have expected.

“Amos knows now that I'm not a Christian, and he doesn't want to marry me anymore.”

“Where is she?” Amos Geer stalked into the mill with a bag of grain on his shoulder and a scowl on his face.

“Which one?” Gavin muttered the response before considering that Amos had no way of knowing about Daisy's arrival.

“Midge, of course.” He dumped the sack onto the floor, where it slumped as though dejected to be left there. If a man could resemble a sack of flour, Amos fit the bill as he slouched against one of the mill's wooden support beams. “She won't listen to reason.”

“She's a woman.” Gavin tied off the bag of flour he'd just filled, adjusted the opening to the fresh one, and tested the grind between thumb and forefinger.
Perfect.
“They don't seem to be in the habit of listening to reason. At least, not around here. Sounds like things aren't much different for you.”

“Midge decided I don't want to marry her.”

“Marge decided the same thing.” Gavin straightened and returned Amos's confidence with one of his own. It felt right, considering they found themselves in the same boat. “Wonder if it's a stubborn schoolmarm characteristic?” They shared a rueful laugh at his joke, despite the fact it wasn't funny at all.

“I could use some wise counsel, and you're about the closest I've come to a friend I can trust since I came to Buttonwood.” Geer's admission didn't surprise him.

“Makes sense. Pretty much the same thing here.” Since Amos had been the one to help with the mill, Gavin spent enough time with him to trust the other man had a good head on his shoulders. “Both been too busy with work to do much gabbing like women make time for. Marge's only been here a few weeks, and she's already got a gaggle of friends.”

“Women manage that. Women and children.” They stood in silence for a moment, wondering at the parallel but refusing to say another word about it.

“So what seems to be the trouble with your Miss Collins?” Gavin recalled the night of the dinner party at the Reed place, when everyone welcomed Marge to town, and how he'd disliked the way Geer's eye fell on Marge. Later he'd come to realize the other man's interest lay in Marge's friend—something he was only too happy to support.

“Understanding it goes no further than this conversation.” The other man waited for his nod before continuing, “Midge isn't born again. She knows I won't be unequally yoked, and she's decided this means I can't see anything of interest in her.”

“She's not a believer?” Gavin heard the astonishment in his own question but didn't try to soften it. “I never would have guessed. Miss Collins attends church regularly....”

“Church attendance and belief are not one and the same.”

“True. But usually you see things the other way around.” Gavin wiped the flour from his hands on a spare rag. “There are plenty of people who attend church and claim salvation but don't live it out. Miss Collins lives as though she believes, but if what you're saying is accurate, isn't saved. That's surprising.”

“I know. At the same time, it shows that her heart's in the right place.” Frustration coated the other man's words. “I'm not wrong in the choice of the woman. It's the timing I have to wait on.”

“When the heart's good, the soul follows. I'll keep it in prayer, my friend.” Gavin bent down and grabbed the fifty-pound sack of grain.

“Thanks.” Geer followed him up the stairs to the storage room, where they poured the contents into the bin leading to the hopper.

“This won't take long once I finish Speck's last batch down there.”

“Good.”

They tromped back down to the main floor. Amos took up his post by the support beam, and Gavin checked the progress of the flour.

Sure enough, the batch had just about finished running—the mill capacity ran at three hundred pounds per hour, after all. Gavin pulled the lever to release Geer's grain into the hopper. He needn't adjust the distance between the stones, and the type of grain hadn't changed. Fine white flour coated his hands and shirt, settling in his hair as it always did when he bent near the output, but he didn't mind.

Breathing in air mixed with flour made it seem as though all was right with the world, even when it wasn't.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, an ominous scrape sounded, simultaneous with the searing flash of burned powder as a spark ignited, setting the mill aflame.

To say the earth shook with her pronouncement might be somewhat of an overstatement, but not nearly so much as Midge would have liked. No sooner did she get to the bottom of what ate at her than a horrendous, grating scrape, followed by a sort of booming explosion, shattered the stillness of the prairie.

If it hadn't been for the fact Marge sat in her way and beat her to it, Midge would've been down the ladder and out the barn door before the sound stopped echoing in her eardrums. As it stood, the two of them raced outside, with Midge pulling up alongside Marge in a desperate rush for the mill.

“Gavin!” Her friend's gasping scream sounded the note of desperation thumping in Midge's own heart—though the name differed. She reached the door the same moment as Midge, her hand closing around the handle with the thoughtless determination to yank it open.

“No!” Midge threw herself between her friend and the door. “Like this!” She pushed them both to the side, behind the wooden barrier as she opened the portal—the only way to offer some scant protection against the possibility that fresh air would make a raging fire belch out the door in new fury. She hadn't spent so much time reading about fire safety only to let Marge succumb to unnecessary injury now.

No flames burst out, reassuring Midge that the tan stone of the mill had done its work in minimizing the impact of the blaze. She looked around the door, felt the heat, and smelled burned flour and something worse, something stronger than the singed stone around them as Marge pushed past her.

“Amos!” Smoke blanketed the room, blinding her for a moment. Flames licked greedily up wooden supports to the beams bearing the floor of the next level above.
If this continues, the upper story will collapse upon us all.
“Amos!” She screamed his name, hearing Marge call for Gavin—hearing Gavin respond.

Cold clutched her in a tight fist when Amos didn't call back or come to her.
No. God, no. Don't let him be hurt.
She didn't care if she was praying. Didn't care if her asking for Amos to be spared meant God might decide to let a burning beam fall atop her.
It doesn't matter, so long as he and everyone else are all right. Do You hear me?

“Over here!” She followed Gavin's voice—the wrong one, but the only lead she had—eyes tearing from the smoke and her fear. Midge felt more than saw Marge move to the right, and she followed, avoiding the large dark shape that must be the millstones in the center of the building.

“We need to get him out of here.” Gavin could only be talking about Amos. He came into view, crouching low over a prone figure.

“Amos?” Midge fell to her knees, scooping her hands beneath his underarms as Gavin picked up his ankles. “Wake up, Amos!” Even as she spoke, she knew it would be best for him to lie still while they moved him. But so long as he remained still, dread clawed at her that the life had already left him.

A low moan, raw and filled with pain, brought a new flood of tears. “He's alive!” Together the three of them lifted him, carrying him around the millstones and out the door.

Eyes streaming, Midge didn't see Amos's face until they got him a good distance clear of the mill. The skin on his cheeks, forehead, and chin burned a livid red beneath blackened streaks of burned powder—at least, what Midge assumed to be burned powder. Flour. His eyes, closed, looked bare without their thick dusting of sandy lashes and unkempt bushy brows above.

Blackened holes tore through his shirt, displaying more burns beneath. His hands, where they rested at his sides, already showed signs of blistering. But he breathed steadily in and out, and his pulse, when she found it, beat strong and regular beneath her fingertips. “Oh, Amos.” She smoothed a hand through his hair, wincing at the crisp of the locks up front.

It was only then she realized Marge and Gavin had left—most likely rushed back to extinguish the flames devouring the wooden structures inside the brick building. For a brief moment, she wrestled with the question of whether to go help them. But it was no choice—not with Amos lying helpless and unconscious before her.

“Midglet?” His eyes opened for a moment, dazed but determined. “Heart—” He sucked in a breath and shut his eyes. “Beautiful.”

“You'll be all right.” One of her tears trickled onto his forehead, but she knew better than to wipe it away. She gulped back a sob as he slipped back into unconsciousness. “You have to be.”

“You aren't going back in!” His yell came out more like a croak, courtesy of the singed flour coating his throat, but that didn't diminish Gavin's determination as he halted Marge outside the mill door.

“If you're going, I'm going.”

“No time to argue.” He shoved—yes, shoved—her out of the path of the door, slid inside, and slammed it shut, barring it from within to keep her from danger. If the woman wouldn't listen to good sense, he'd see to it she had no choice but to abide by his decisions.
Effective—something I'll apply to other areas of our lives when this is over.

For now, he rushed right, where the second water barrel stood waiting. Thick smoke clogged his vision and filled the room, relieved only by the sinister orange of the flames climbing up and across the beams to his ceiling, sliding their way to the grain stored above. He grabbed hold of a cotton blanket kept immersed in one of the fire barrels, the fabric made heavy with water as he flung it around the top of a wooden pillar, its weight and the force of his throw wrapping it around the top.

Gavin tugged it downward, smothering the flames on that brace, then rushed to repeat the maneuver. Smoke crept into his lungs, tickling his throat, teasing forth coughs he didn't have time for as he hauled soaked fabric back to slap at the wooden ceiling above him time and time again.

If he'd been able to leave the door open, he might've had more air. But Gavin breathed easier knowing he'd made sure of Marge's safety. The door to the sluiceway stood open, letting out some of the smoke, at least. Until the scant sunlight permitted by that opening became blocked by something. Someone.

A woman, moving slowly, as though encumbered by extraordinarily heavy skirts, headed for another water barrel. “Marge!” As Gavin watched, she lifted a bucket and splashed its contents on the rafters, ignoring him as she focused on the flames. He wasted precious seconds trying to determine how she'd gotten there, and deciding he wouldn't be able to force her out, he got back to fighting the fire with renewed desperation.

It wasn't just about saving the mill anymore.
If the building goes down, I lose Marge.

They worked in silence, soaking and smothering every hint of flame and fire before Gavin took the time to reopen the main door. He would have done so far sooner had he not feared taking the time away from subduing the blaze. It was then, surveying the smoldering wreckage of every bit of wood in the room from the decimated gears and millrun to the now nonexistent hopper and the charred remains of the supports leading to the upper floor, that another heat unfurled within him.

She tried to muffle a cough, but it did no good. He heard. How could he not? How could she think he wouldn't know exactly how blistered, raw, and aching her throat felt? That knowing she experienced such a thing didn't make it worse by tenfold?

Gavin reached out, snagged her hand—a hand made rough with minor burns and scrapes coated with soot and burned flour, a hand he remembered as being soft and sweet mere days before—and led her outside. He dragged in a deep breath, ready to vent the rage of unrealized fears, only to pull up short when he realized he didn't have all the facts. “How did you get inside?”

Black streaked her cheeks, locks of hair wisped free from her habitually tidy bun to wave fiercely around her face, and her chin thrust forward in defiance. “I waded over and climbed the brace to the sluice gate walkway.”

“You waded through the millpond and climbed up the walkway?” He wanted to shake her. He wanted to yell at her until she never put herself in danger again. Gavin looked at her, proud and disheveled and irresistible.
I want to marry her.

But she wasn't looking at him. He turned to see Midge Collins kneeling at his friend's side, Dr. Reed next to her with his trusty black bag. Obviously the girl had run to fetch her adoptive father. Amos rested in the best of hands now.

That meant Gavin was free to confront Marge with the consequences of her actions.

As soon as Daisy released his fiancée from a hug that looked likely to strangle her, that was.

He coughed into his already-soiled handkerchief as Grandma approached, hoping to stave off the inevitable show of affection. It did no good. Before he could do a thing about it, Grandma had him and Marge in a clasp that would have done a jailer proud.

By then, he couldn't wait any longer to hear how Amos fared. Gavin walked over to confer with Saul Reed as the women held their own impromptu meeting, with Midge dispensing information.

“He'll live,” Dr. Reed offered. “Good vital signs, and the burns aren't nearly as severe as they could have been, given what I suspect happened.” Reed's words went a long way toward relieving Gavin's mind. “So long as we keep infection at bay and he doesn't succumb to lockjaw, Amos Geer should make a full recovery. Although I do wonder what we'll discover when he regains consciousness.”

“What do you fear, Doctor?”

“Depends on what happened in there.” Saul Reed jerked his head toward the still-smoking mill. “I've read that rye powder can be ten times as explosive as gunpowder but hadn't credited the rumors until Midge ran to fetch me and described what she knew, though she didn't witness the actual incident.” There was no mistaking the look of relieved gratitude on the man's face.

“I've not had the opportunity to investigate, but this sort of thing happens when a small piece of metal finds its way into a sack of grain and feeds through the hopper. It sparks against the millstones, ignites the powder lying thick in the mill air, and flashes into an instant explosion.” Gavin closed his eyes at the memory of the intense white light.

“So it is a flash burn. Then it's likely Mr. Geer will suffer blindness.” The doctor held up a hand. “In most cases, it's temporary rather than permanent. But forewarned is forearmed. I'll bandage his head and warn him as soon as he awakens so he isn't alarmed that he doesn't have his sight. That would be ... disconcerting.”

Gavin nodded. He could only imagine the sense of panic at losing his vision without warning.

“Although you seem not to have borne the impact of the explosion to the same extent as Mr. Geer, the fact that your vision remains unaffected beyond the effects of the smoke is highly encouraging.”

“The circumstances of this accident are somewhat unusual. I expect to find that the piece of metal at fault is rather large—the scraping sound tells me the top millstone was knocked from the runner. I happened to be kneeling over a sack of flour at the time of the incident—judging by the location of the flames in the mill, at about the place where the stones collided once dislodged. It would have acted like a sort of barrier, guarding me from the brunt of the explosion.”

“And directing it toward Mr. Geer?” The doctor caught on fast. “In that case, I won't make any expectations based on your condition, Mr. Miller.” At that point, he turned his attention toward examining how Gavin fared after breathing in so much smoke, and repeated the inspection on Marge.

“Here.” Dr. Reed gave him a rinse for his stinging eyes and a packet of herbs to make into tea. “This will help soothe the raw throat. You're both breathing fairly well. Don't try to stop the coughing. It's your body's way of getting out the soot.” With that, he and Gavin loaded a still-unconscious Amos into the doctor's wagon, and he and Miss Collins took him back to town for further treatment.

“Marge, I don't know when the next stage comes, but I guarantee that we'll be on it,” Daisy's voice rang out, shrill and demanding in the stillness left behind doctor and patient. “You don't belong in this forsaken place, full of dust and danger and ... and...” She plucked a small notebook from the pocket of her full skirts and rifled through it before adding triumphantly, “Dilapidated machinery leading to explosions!”

“Gavin's mill isn't dilapidated!” Marge's outburst matched his thoughts exactly. Well, almost exactly.

“If you want to leave, be my guest, Daisy.” Gavin slid an arm through one of Marge's and began walking, forcing her to keep pace alongside him. “But Marge stays with me.”