Hearts Awakening (5 page)

He swallowed hard, reluctant to discuss the deep pain of Rebecca’s betrayal or the scandal that had escalated with her untimely death. “My marriage to Rebecca wasn’t a particularly happy one, and there was more than a bit of gossip about us, both before and after she died,” he offered weakly, refusing to label the gossip as scandal for fear of completely turning this woman against his proposal.

Ellie waved her hand in the air. Again. “I care as much about gossip as I do for salted fish, which is to say I avoid it as much as possible.” She paused. “Was there any truth to this so-called gossip?”

He stiffened. “A fair bit. Yes. A good bit of it, I should rightly say,” he admitted, waiting for her to reject him now, just like several young women had already done when he approached the idea of courting them, although those women were obviously far more aware of his situation than Ellie was.

She nodded slowly, but he noticed a slight twitch to her lips. “Were you . . . were you always true and faithful to Rebecca?”

Her question caught him off guard, and he flinched. “Of course I was, but I don’t see why—”

“Then you should dismiss the gossip as nothing more than malicious prattle, along with any woman foolish enough to let gossip control her decisions about whom she decides to marry or how she decides to live her life.” She huffed. “Surely there must be one woman of substance who would be willing to marry you.”

“I haven’t found her in Harrisburg or anywhere else within fifty miles,” he argued. “But even if I could, I’d rather not have my life complicated by marrying any of them. I’d rather marry you.”

She narrowed her gaze. “ ‘Complicated’? Exactly how would marrying any woman, other than me, make your life ‘complicated’?”

She huffed again, but he sensed his advantage and held on to it. “Because I’m not looking for a wife to share my bed. Just my name,” he blurted. “If truth be told, I’ve no desire to marry again at all, but I need someone who can help me take care of my sons and keep a clean house and make a good home for them without worrying about how long she’ll stay. I need someone of good character they can respect. Someone they can learn to trust.”

“But—”

“I want to marry someone like you because . . . because it also occurs to me that you have little more to look forward to in the coming years than living with your cousin and his wife or finding a position in someone else’s household and spending the rest of your days as a spinster. I can offer you so much more,” he explained and leaned forward just a bit to judge her reaction to his rather provocative, if not insensitive, words.

In reply, she simply stared at him, although the pained expression in her eyes and the deep blush on her cheeks made it clear that she was uncomfortable with his rather stark assessment of her life.

When her gaze darkened with hurt, he softened his voice. “I’m not trying to be unkind. All I really want you to see is that it would serve your interests, as well as mine, if we were to marry. If you think so, too, as I hope you will, we could travel directly to the city and get married this morning. By late afternoon, you could be back here, with your own home to run and two boys to mother as your own. You wouldn’t have to depend on your cousin for a place to live or for anything else, ever again,” he said gently.

Pausing for a moment, he held her gaze. “I’m not a rich man in my own right, by any means, but I can and will provide well for you as your husband, and I . . . I would hope we could find contentment and . . . and a pleasant companionship with one another as we raise Daniel and Ethan. Together.”

Her eyes welled with tears that she visibly struggled to keep at bay. When she did speak, her voice was barely above a whisper. “I trust I may speak to you as frankly as you’ve spoken to me.”

He caught his breath for a moment. “Of course.”

She moistened her lips, blinked back her tears, and tilted up her chin. “I believe I may have misspoken earlier. You weren’t wrong at all. In fact, you were probably quite right to assume there wouldn’t be any other woman who might consider a proposal like yours, because no self-respecting woman ever would. But in all truth, yours isn’t a proposal of marriage at all. It’s a business proposition. And while I find your proposition interesting, albeit highly unconventional, I’m afraid I must decline,” she said and rose from her seat. “Under the circumstances, I think it best if I leave now and trust you can find someone else to tend to your housekeeping needs.”

Frowning, he got to his feet. “You’re saying no?”

“I’m afraid I must,” she whispered.

“Just like that? Without any further discussion or consideration of my proposal?”

“Exactly like that,” she said, stepping around him.

He followed her as she crossed the room.

“Would you at least stay to discuss the idea further?”

She stopped, forcing him to do the same, but she did not turn around right away. When she did, her features were pale and her hands were trembling. In the depths of her dark eyes, he saw just a glimmer of hurt she had buried as deeply as his own before a flash of defiance eclipsed it.

“How old are you, Mr. Smith? Precisely.”

“Twenty-eight. As of last May.”

“Well, as you can no doubt see for yourself, I’m a fair bit older,” she countered. “I’m thirty-one years old, and as you were quick to point out so ungallantly, I’m also a spinster. Not by choice, but by circumstances I have no inclination to explain to you. But please know this,” she said firmly. “I may be a bit long in the tooth and unduly plain, even by generous standards. I also may not have more than a single coin or two to my name or a room within my cousin’s household to call my own, but I’m not desperate enough to accept a proposal of marriage that would make me nothing more than a . . . a solution to your problems. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take my leave,” she whispered and promptly walked out of the room.

Stung by her reproach as much as her refusal, he followed her back to the kitchen, where she ignored him while she removed her apron and donned her cape. “I didn’t want to . . . I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said weakly.

She marched to the back door, paused, and turned around to face him again. “No, I don’t imagine you meant to do that at all, but you did,” she replied, opened the door, and slipped outside.

He charged after her. “At least let me escort you back to the landing,” he suggested, hoping he might be able to change her mind along the way.

She waved off his offer without breaking stride. “Thank you, but I’ll find my way by myself,” she insisted, but never looked back. Not once.

He braced to a halt and watched her head straight into the woods behind the house, but he knew by the way she walked, with her back rigid and her head held high, that it was useless to follow her to try to change her mind.

It was not the first time he had failed to convince a woman to accept his marriage proposal, but he certainly hoped it would be the last.

His only consolation was that this time, the woman who had spurned him did not take his heart with her when she walked away.

Five

Ellie refused to let her bottom lip even quiver or to allow a single tear to fall as she marched away from the farmhouse.

Once she reached the privacy of the thick woods separating the property from the orchards, however, she unlatched the lock on her well-practiced resolve to keep her feelings to herself and opened the floodgates, releasing emotions she had kept hidden from the rest of the world for a very, very long time.

Leaning flat against a massive swamp maple tree, she rested her forehead against the solid trunk and pressed her open palms to the rough bark. She gulped in shaky breaths of cool air as hot tears flowed down her cheeks, but it was the sense of total abandonment that lay heaviest on her heart.

The notion that Jackson Smith had proposed marriage was shocking, but his offer of a marriage in name only shook the very foundation of her faith. Faith that God loved her and understood how very deeply she had always wanted a husband and a family of her own. Faith that God would end the uncertainties in her life now, and most important, faith that God would never, ever abandon her.

She lowered her gaze, and salty tears that flowed freely now warmed her flaming cheeks. Jackson Smith’s unexpected proposal, which played on her plain looks and reduced circumstances, simply added more fuel to the flames of resentment she had tried so hard to extinguish these past few months.

He knew that no other woman would ever consider such a proposal. He had even admitted as much, which made his proposal to her all the more hurtful.

She tasted her tears and swiped at her lips, but the yearning for a family and home of her own resurfaced—a yearning she had set aside willingly for years. As an only child, she had stayed home to care for her elderly parents, finding herself free to marry after their deaths when she was twenty-eight, an antique on the marriage market by anyone’s standards.

Her status as an aging spinster had inspired only pity from acquaintances and strangers alike. Even her only two living relatives had little interest in making her a part of their families, seeing her only as a burden to bear.

Bands of anguish, braided with thick strands of rejection and abandonment, tightened around her chest, and she drew in measured breaths of air that was laced with the subtle scent of the nearby orchards. Like the apple trees that were twisted and bent, heavy with fruit ready to be harvested, her spirit bowed low and pressed against the tattered remnants of the faith that had always centered her life.

Desperate for understanding, she folded her hands in prayer. “This man’s proposal couldn’t be your will or the answer to my prayers,” she whispered before wrapping her arms about her waist and bowing her head. Breathing ever so slowly, she continued to silently pray, emptying every vestige of the hurt and embarrassment and disappointment that laced her spirit, until she set aside her burden.

Anxious to be on her way, she looked around. Just beyond the dirt roadway that led to the landing at the other end of the island, she saw a small, shaded clearing a bit deeper in the woods. Inexplicably drawn there, she discovered what appeared to be a small family cemetery. Within a shallow rim of river stones, five thick stone markers lay flat, like pillows, on a bed of dense clover and weeds that nearly obscured them.

She tiptoed closer. Reverently, she bent down and cleared away the overgrowth so she could read the etchings on each of the stones. When she finished, she realized they told the simple tale of the family who had owned and lived on Dillon’s Island for some time.

Obviously, the death of Jackson Smith’s young wife was not the only tragedy to befall them. According to the headstone in the center, James Gladson, the boys’ grandfather, had died only four years ago at the age of eighty-three, but he had been predeceased by not one, but three wives. She scanned the headstones closest to him. The inscription, “Beloved Wife,” below the names of his first two wives was different from his third wife, Emily, whose inscription read “Beloved Wife and Mother.”

All three women had passed away before celebrating their thirty-fifth birthdays, but apparently Emily had been the only one of his wives to bear a child. Sadly, Emily had died before their daughter, Rebecca, had celebrated her second birthday.

Family tragedy continued with Rebecca’s death six months ago at the age of twenty-five. She was buried next to her parents, leaving room for Jackson to lay beside her again, as well as space for their sons and their families one day.

Unbidden questions about the gossip surrounding Rebecca and Jackson’s marriage rose and begged for answers, but Ellie nudged them aside out of respect for Rebecca, who was not here to defend herself or offer any explanations.

Moved nearly to tears again, Ellie sat down to rest on the ground next to Rebecca’s tombstone, and she could not help but compare her life to the other women buried here.

None of these four women had had all their dreams fulfilled in this world. All had died far too young, and two had died childless. Neither Rebecca nor her mother had even lived long enough to see their children grow to adulthood.

And Ellie dared to complain about her life? Or refused to consider that God had led her here to this island for His purpose?

Confronted with this family’s many tragedies, she leaned back on her haunches and clasped her hands together. “Forgive me, Father,” she whispered, acknowledging a litany of sins with those three simple, but heart-spoken, words.

When Daniel and Ethan came to her mind, she glanced at Rebecca’s tombstone and gave Jackson Smith’s proposal more serious thought. Granted, if she accepted his proposal, he would never be her husband in the truest sense of the word, perhaps because he was still grieving for the wife he had loved and lost and simply could not open his heart to love again. But Ellie knew he would respect her and provide well for her, because he seemed to be a man of his word and he truly, truly loved his sons.

She reached over to trace Rebecca’s name and sniffled back more tears. If she agreed to the conditions he demanded for their marriage, she would never know the joy of carrying a child in her womb or the pain of burying that child, but she would have both the joy and privilege, if not the challenge, of raising Daniel and Ethan to adulthood.