Amish Country Box Set: Restless Hearts\The Doctor's Blessing\Courting Ruth (67 page)

Mam pushed back Ruth’s cap and kissed the crown of her head. “That might very well be Eli’s choice. And if it is, then this isn’t the path you are meant to follow. God will never abandon you, my child. He was with me when I lost your father and He is with me every moment of every day.”

“But…if I’ve thrown away my only chance at love…”

Mam rocked her in her arms, her tears falling on Ruth’s cheek. “Whatever happens, you will be stronger and wiser for it. But nothing will convince me that your true path is to remain unwed. If not this wild boy, Eli Lapp, then another. I don’t know. But what I do know is that you, Ruth, are a woman meant to love and be loved.”

Chapter Sixteen

T
he sixteenth of June dawned hot and hazy, and Ruth awakened with a stirring of hope in her heart. It was her birthday. The sadness she’d felt at losing Eli remained with her, but she pushed it to the far corner of her mind, determined not to spoil the day for her family by pining for what could not be.

Tonight there would be a birthday celebration dinner. They’d invited Samuel and his children and, of course, Irwin, and Johanna and her family would be there. Leah had been able to remain with them longer than she’d expected before she had to return to Ohio, so having her there for dinner would be a special treat. Ruth’s one wish was that Rebecca could have been with them, too, but it would still be a fun evening.

The family had never exchanged expensive gifts on birthdays, as the English did, but Ruth was sure that Anna would bake a coconut cake, and Mam would surprise her with some special treat. More important, when they gathered together to share the meal, Ruth would feel the love and joy of being part of something precious.

Deciding to pick flowers for the breakfast table, Ruth walked down to the orchard with the puppy, Jeremiah,
following her. She laughed at the little dog’s antics as he sniffed at the scent of a rabbit, leaped to chase a toad and barked furiously at an angry wren that objected to them near her nest in an apple tree. Ruth took her time in the warm sunshine, picking fat black-eyed Susans and delicate Queen Anne’s lace. Just as she started back to the house, she heard the sound of a horse and buggy coming up the lane.

Scooping up the puppy, Ruth hurried to see who it was. She couldn’t imagine who would be there before breakfast. As she came around the corncrib, she suddenly felt as though she’d tumbled off the top rung of the windmill ladder. Climbing out of a neat new black buggy was Eli. He saw her and smiled, and her knees went weak.

“Ruth.”

She opened her mouth to say his name, but she was too breathless to speak. She swallowed, trying to say something, anything, but she could only stare at him, clutching the puppy and the flowers to her chest.

How handsome he was in his black leather boots, blue trousers, powder-blue shirt, navy suspenders and straw hat. He looked so…
Plain
.

“You’re back.” It was a silly thing to say.

“I’m back.” He grinned, then the smile faded, and he looked so serious. “I’ve missed you.”

His eyes were bluer than she remembered. “Gone some time, you were,” she managed.

“Ya.”
He seemed suddenly shy, unsure of himself.

“Busy up there in Belleville, I suppose.” She was aware of just how silly those words sounded as soon as they tumbled out of her mouth. She must look a sight, barefooted and
Kapp
askew. She put Jeremiah down, and the puppy barked and spun and ran to bark some more at Eli.

“Hey, puppy.” He bent and petted the squirming animal. “He’s putting on weight. He looks better.”

“If Irwin keeps feeding him, he’ll be as fat as a pig.” She watched the puppy wiggle with pleasure as Eli rubbed his belly. Silence stretched between them.

“It’s early, you’re about,” she said finally.

“Ya.”
He stood up, slipping his hands into his pockets, looking at her, then the puppy, then her again. “I thought so, but I…I thought you were an early riser.”

She felt her cheeks grow warm. Why was he looking at her so intently? Did she have dirt on her nose? She shifted the flowers from one hand to the other. “I am,” she admitted.

Again, they were quiet.

“Those for me?” he asked after a moment.

“Ne.”
She looked up and then laughed, and he laughed.

It felt good.

There were so many things Ruth wanted to say to Eli. Needed to say. Only she didn’t know where to start. Finally she just plunged in. “Roman didn’t know if you were coming back or if he should look for someone else to help in the chair shop.”

Eli nodded. “I guess he should. I wanted to…” He took a deep breath. “I came early, Ruth, because I wanted to see you without anybody else around.”

She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. He must have decided to stay in Belleville for good, and he’d come to tell her. She nibbled at her lower lip. She didn’t want to hear him say it. “Your family is well?” she said, stalling. “Your mother?”

“Good. She’s good. And my stepfather and little brother are good.”

“Good,” she echoed, not sure what to say next. If he
was going back to Belleville, was there any point in saying anything? All she would do was embarrass herself, maybe him.

He took a step toward her. “I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I didn’t want to go away for good without saying goodbye.”

Hot tears stung the back of her eyelids. When she’d seen him in her yard, she’d thought for just a second that maybe there was a chance that she hadn’t ruined everything, but now…

“I have something for you. Fannie said today was your birthday, so I hope you’ll accept it. I made it for you.” He walked to the back of the buggy.

She followed him.

He raised the canvas on the back and lifted out the beautiful cherry box with the round top and the carved wrens that he’d shown her so proudly once before. “It’s a bride’s chest,” he explained. “Remember it?”

“Of course I remember it. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” She set the flowers down on the back of the buggy, unable to take her eyes off the piece of furniture. “But…but I’m not getting married.”

She wasn’t getting married, not ever. But she wanted the chest. The finish gleamed in the sunlight, and she couldn’t keep her hands off it. She stooped to stroke the smooth wood. “It’s not meant for me. You should save it for your intended.”

His gaze met hers across the bride’s chest with such force that she felt light-headed.

“You will marry,” he said. “When the right man comes along, the man who’s good enough to deserve you.”

“It’s a treasure,” she said. “And the little birds…” She tried to find the right words. “It’s a gift the Lord has given you, to make something so beautiful.”

“Not as beautiful as you are to me this moment.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and a single tear spilled down her cheek. She looked down. Stood up. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not? It’s true. I’ve never met anyone like you before, Ruth, and I never will again. I’d never give this to another woman.” He caught her hand and squeezed it and let go. “It was meant for you. It always was, even before I knew you.” He took a breath. “I love you, Ruth. That’s why it has to be yours.”

She lifted her gaze. “Then why are you going away?” she demanded, suddenly angry. “Are you marrying that Belleville girl? That Hazel?”

He stared at her in astonishment. “
Ne!
Why would you think that?”

“Because you went back to Belleville. Because…I thought…” Confused, she broke off. Behind her, she heard the kitchen screen door bang. Someone had come out on the porch, but she didn’t care. “You
aren’t
marrying her?”

“I’m not marrying anyone. It was you I wanted, only you. And if I can’t have you, then…then, I have to leave Seven Poplars.”

More tears followed the first, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand. She had to say it, she
had
to. Even if nothing would ever come of it. Even if it was too late. Only she didn’t know how to tell him she loved him. “But what if I…what if I care for you, too?”

She reached for his hand and clung to it as if she were drowning and he was the only hope she had of living. “Oh, Eli, I’ve been such a fool. I thought I shouldn’t marry anyone.” Once she started, the words gushed from her mouth. “I thought it was God’s will that I stay with Mam and Susanna and then you came along and I felt differently, but then there was the gossip and then…but then…”

“Wait, go back,” he said. “You…you care for me? The way I care for you?”

She looked into his eyes, his face a blur through her tears. “So much it hurts. Only I made such a mess of things.”

“Are you saying your mother might give her permission?” Eli asked incredulously. “That she’d let you marry me? If…you wanted to?”

She held his gaze. “She only wants what’s best for me. She’d give her blessing if you joined the church. I know she would if you could put the world behind you and your past and be happy being Plain.”

“And you would marry me? In spite of all the gossip—”

“I realized I don’t care about that. I only care about you. But I’m Amish. I can’t live in the English world, and I can’t marry a man who didn’t share my faith.”

He glanced around. “Is there someplace we can sit down?”

“This way.” She led him around the house to a bench near the garden gate. Wild roses grew up the trellis behind them, and the newly mown grass was as soft as a carpet under her bare feet. Shyly, she sat on the edge of the seat and tugged him down to sit beside her. “No grape arbor here,” she teased. “We’re in plain view. We’re respectable.”

“But I’m holding your hand,” he reminded her.

She smiled at him. “Nearly respectable.” Excitement bubbled up inside her, and she trembled with joy. Were they really sitting here talking about marriage? Could her world really have tumbled upside down like this so quickly? So beautifully? “Would you consider it? Would you come to church with me? Become a part of it again?”

He raised her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Too late for that. I already joined the church. I went back to Belleville
to mend the trouble with my mother, with my family, and while I was there, I talked with our bishop. I met with him many evenings, and he answered a lot of questions that troubled me. He made me look at things differently.
You
made me look at things differently.” He grinned. “So last Sunday, I joined the Amish Church.”

She touched one navy-blue suspender. “So that’s why no red ones?”

“Ne.”
He laughed. “I sold the red ones with my motor scooter and bought the horse.”

She laughed with him. “Not with the money you got from that old motorbike, you didn’t. Or did you buy a blind horse?”

“He’s a fine horse, strong and smart. Wait until you see how fast he can trot. And this buggy was a gift from my stepfather Joseph. He said that I never had my proper portion from my dat. He’s a good man, and he is the right husband for my mother. I’ve never seen her so content.”

“I’m glad. And I’m glad you have such a wonderful bishop, that he could lead you to God.”

“He is a good shepherd,” Eli said, “but it was your mother that opened my eyes more than anyone.”

“Mam?”

“Ya.
Your mother and Roman and Samuel and you and your sisters.” His eyes glowed with emotion. “For many years, I wasn’t sure that I belonged in God’s grace, or that He wanted me there. But I watched your family and community bring Irwin into your home and love him, despite his faults. It wasn’t until I got back to Belleville and had time to think that I realized what I had witnessed here. If there was a place for Irwin in the Plain world, I realized maybe there was one for me.”

“There will always be a place for you here, Eli. In our community. In our home.”

“So does that mean you’ll let me court you?”

“If you’ll forgive me for being so stupid and stubborn, for thinking that I knew best what God wanted. You warned me not to be a martyr, to listen to God, and you were right.”

“Will you accept my bride’s chest?”

“Only if you’ll ask me to marry you. Officially.” Her heart was so full of joy that she didn’t care how forward she was being—that she’d practically proposed to him, instead of the other way round.

“You’d have me, even when you don’t know the truth about Hazel and me?”

“I know you, Eli, and I know you’d never do anything dishonorable. You might make a mistake. We all do because we’re human. But you’d never desert the mother of your child.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” He started to reach into his pocket. “I have a letter from her, a letter that will explain everything.”

“I don’t need to see your letter,” she protested, stilling his hand with hers. “I believe in you.”

“But I should have told you the truth as soon as I knew I had feelings for you, and I should have told my mother before I ever left Belleville the first time.” He looked away, then back at her. “Will you listen now?”

“If you want to tell me, of course I’ll listen.”

He took her hand again. “Hazel was my friend, and we went to some parties together, but she was like a sister to me. I was never her boyfriend. Not ever. I knew she liked an English fellow, and I knew she was secretly seeing him.”

“You don’t have to tell me these things,” Ruth said, her heart already going out to Hazel, the girl she had secretly disliked because of the hold she had on Eli. The hold Ruth thought she had on Eli.

“I do need to tell you. It’s important that there be no secrets between us.”

Ruth nodded and Eli continued. “I took Hazel to a bonfire one night, at Edgar Peachy’s farm. There were English there, and she left the party with someone. I tried to stop her but, Ruth, I didn’t try hard enough. She was having trouble at home, you know, following the rules…being who her parents wanted her to be. Hazel was always different. She loved school and she wanted to be part of the bigger world. But that night, she’d argued with her father. She wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Eli sighed, but he didn’t look away from her. “I blame myself for what happened. If I had stopped her, if I’d taken her home when I should have, instead of letting her go with that Englisher, maybe it would never have happened.”