Amish Country Box Set: Restless Hearts\The Doctor's Blessing\Courting Ruth (68 page)

“Maybe it would have anyway,” Ruth suggested softly. “If not that night, another.”

“Maybe,” he conceded. “But she was so scared when she found out she was going to have a baby. She tried to talk to her boyfriend, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with her after that night. So she asked me to marry her so that no one would know what she had done. I liked her a lot, but I didn’t love her. I told her I would help her. I would give her child my name, but only if we told the truth first. I couldn’t lie about that to her family or mine.”

“But, Eli.” Ruth brushed her hand over his shoulder. “She told everyone you were the father. And they believed her.”

“They did. I got angry, and I let her face her trouble alone. In the end, she gave the baby to her sister, and she left.”

“Did you know where she went?”

“Not until I got the letter at Uncle Roman’s. Her English boyfriend didn’t want to take responsibility for the baby,
but his family helped her with money. She’s going to go to college to be a nurse. She was writing to me to tell me she is all right and that she was sorry for everything.”

“Why didn’t you tell your family what really happened?”

“I tried at the time, but they wouldn’t listen. You are the only one who didn’t judge me.”

“Maybe I did, in the beginning.” She smiled at him. “Because of those red suspenders and that awful motor scooter. You are a wild boy, Eli Lapp.”

“
Was
a wild boy.” He leaned close and brushed his lips against hers. “Marry me, Ruth Yoder, and keep me on the path of Godliness. Keep me Plain.”

Ruth closed her eyes and savored a second kiss. She was so full of love and joy that she thought she would burst. “Oh, Eli,” she began, but then she stopped when she heard Susanna squeal. She opened her eyes to see her little sister scrambling out from behind the rosebushes to run toward the house—her chubby feet bare, her bonnet strings flying.

“Mam! Mam! Roofie’s kissing Eli!” Susanna shouted. “Come quick, Mam! Roofie’s getting married!”

Chapter Seventeen

F
or a moment, Ruth sat beside Eli in sweet silence, gazing into his blue eyes, holding his hand tightly. She wanted him to kiss her again, but her heart was pounding so hard that she thought maybe she’d had enough kissing for the moment.

Upstairs, Anna pushed up a bedroom window. “What’s going on?” she called. “Why is Susanna—” She broke off when she saw them together, hand in hand. “I’ll be right down!”

“I suppose we’d better speak to your mother,” Eli said, “before we cause another scandal…to ask her blessing on our marriage.”

“Ya,”
Ruth agreed and giggled with sheer joy. “We wouldn’t want to give Aunt Martha even more reason to gossip about us.” She was so happy at this moment that she thought she might take off like a dandelion puff and float away.

“Do you want to do it now, or should I, you know, make an appointment or something to speak with her?”

She laughed at that thought. “I don’t know. That depends on how soon you want to marry,” she teased. “If you mean years from now—”

“I’d marry you today if I could!” Eli caught her around the waist and lifted her up. “I can’t believe I’m so lucky,” he said, “to come down from the Kishacoquillas Valley and find you.” He lowered her bare feet to the ground and kissed her mouth with such tenderness and passion that tears sprang to her eyes. “Marry me today.”

“I can’t marry you today!” She laughed, breathless, playfully pushing on his broad chest. “But maybe you should speak to Mam today before there’s more kissing.”

“Speak to me about what?” Mam demanded, coming around the corner of the house with Susanna tugging on her hand. But Mam’s eyes sparkled with mischief, and Ruth knew she really wasn’t angry. “Eli, do you have an explanation for kissing my daughter in front of her mother and little sister?”

“Sisters,” cried Miriam and Anna together as they joined them.

Irwin was the last to appear, the little terrier in his arms. “All of us,” he echoed.

Eli slipped an arm around Ruth’s shoulder and pulled her close beside him. The smell of her and the softness of her skin was so sweet that it made him almost giddy. “We’re going to be married,” he declared more boldly. “Ruth and me. In the church.”

“But you have to be Amish,” Irwin said sternly. “You can’t marry our Ruth if you aren’t Plain.”

Mam dried her hands on her apron and folded her arms. “Irwin’s right. So what do you have to say to that, Eli? Can you be properly Amish? Can you accept our faith and live by it every day?”

“Eli has already joined the church in Belleville. He’s one of us now.” Ruth looked up at him with such love in her eyes that he felt ten feet tall.

“Can you be a loving husband to Ruth?” Hannah asked. “In good times and bad?”

Miriam’s chin firmed. “He’d better be.”

“Or we’ll know the reason why,” Anna added.

“I will,” Eli said. “I give you my word.” He held out his hand to Irwin. “I would like your blessing, too, since you’re the man of the house.”

Irwin’s ears turned fire red beneath his straw hat, but he took the offered hand and shook it. “I’ll hold you to it,” he said.

“I want to be part of this family,” Eli announced to them all, still holding Ruth in his arm. “I want to be the kind of man Jonas was and a son to you, Hannah, as well as a true brother to the rest of you.”

“And I promise you that God will always come first in our home,” Ruth said, clinging to him for all she was worth.

“Then you have our blessing,” Hannah said.

“Ya,”
Susanna jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “And now I will have a big brother for sure!”

“And I will have a husband,” Ruth said.

“The happiest husband in the world,” Eli answered.

Ruth smiled up at him, her eyes shining. “
Ya,
and the happiest wife.”

We hope you enjoyed these classic
Love Inspired
stories.

Love Inspired
stories show that faith, forgiveness and hope have the power to lift spirits and change lives—always.
[Insert Love Inspired logo]

Uplifting romances of faith, forgiveness and hope.

Enjoy 6 new stories every month!
Available wherever books and ebooks are sold.

Find us on Facebook at
www.Facebook.com/LoveInspiredBooks

CHAPTER ONE

L
AINEY
C
OLTON JOLTED AWAKE
, her heart pounding in her ears. She stared into darkness so intense she couldn’t make out anything beyond the outlines of the strange bed. She sat upright, turning. A pale rectangle marked the window, and her panic waned.

How stupid. She was in Great-aunt Rebecca’s house, in tiny Deer Run, Pennsylvania. She’d fallen asleep, exhausted after the flight and drive and the stress of the past few weeks, in the bed that had been hers the summer she was ten.

That had been twenty years ago, but the room felt intimately familiar now that she was awake. She rubbed the gooseflesh on her bare arms. The dream that woke her must have been something out of a horror movie. Odd, that she couldn’t remember anything about it.

But maybe just as well, since she had no desire to slip back into nightmares. Lainey plumped the pillows, straightened the hand-stitched quilt, and settled herself to sleep.

Sleep seemed to have fled. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she made out the shapes of the chest of drawers, the rocking chair, and the bookshelf that still held the complete set of Laura Ingalls Wilder books she’d devoured as a ten-year-old. Her Amish great-aunt probably wouldn’t have approved of most of Lainey’s reading choices, but she’d been happy to see her
Englisch
great-niece reading the Little House books.

Twenty years. Lainey moved restlessly on the pillow. She hadn’t been back in all that time, at first because of her mother’s habit of jumping from husband to husband, and later because of her own gypsy tendencies.

Guilt flickered. Aunt Rebecca had been kind to her during one of the most difficult parts of a troubled childhood. Lainey should have managed to come back, instead of being content with the weekly letters they exchanged. Being Amish, Aunt Rebecca didn’t have a phone. Or electricity, a fact brought home to Lainey earlier when she’d fumbled for nonexistent light switches in the dark kitchen.

But now she was here, summoned by an abrupt phone call from her great-aunt’s lawyer. Rebecca had had a fall and suffered a stroke. She’d asked for Lainey. The attorney, one Jacob Evans, hadn’t sounded particularly approving. Well, Lainey would deal with him in the morning.

She’d planned to get a motel near the airport in Pittsburgh and drive up tomorrow morning, but once she’d picked up a rental car, worry and tension had impelled her onto the road to Deer Run. What difference did it make if she arrived after midnight? She knew where the house key was kept, though if she’d thought about the absence of electricity, she might have opted for a motel.

Aunt Rebecca would laugh at Lainey, coming to visit an Amish home equipped with her smartphone, her computer, her hair dryer, and all the other devices she thought she couldn’t do without.

But the laughter would be gentle. Aunt Rebecca never judged, never made a person feel stupid or guilty or unwanted. Her love had been a balm to a lost child whose familiar world had slipped from her grasp one too many times. Even when the details of that summer visit had slipped away, Lainey had still been aware of that solid sense of being loved without condition.

Now it was Lainey’s chance to repay that kindness. In the morning she’d touch base with the attorney and then head for the hospital to find out how bad Aunt Rebecca’s condition was and what needed to be done. Lainey’s mind ran up against a blank wall of ignorance when it came to helping someone who’d had a stroke, but she’d figure it out. She owed Aunt Rebecca far more than that.

If this trip had happened to coincide with an excellent time for her to leave St. Louis—well, no one here need ever know that, although if the task of helping her great-aunt was as difficult as the attorney’s tone had suggested, she might have jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.

In any event, she was clearly not going to drift back to sleep. Lainey swung her legs out from under the covers. She’d go downstairs and brew a cup of Aunt Rebecca’s herbal tea. But first she’d pull on some sweats. The house had grown cold, and she hadn’t the faintest idea how the furnace worked.

Thanks to her aunt’s habit of leaving a flashlight on the nightstand, Lainey was able to light her way to the stairs. She started down, her heavy socks making no sound on the treads. The beam of the flashlight picked up the hooked rug in the living room, the rocker that had always been her aunt’s favorite chair, the—

She stopped, gripping the banister. A noise, faint and indefinable, came from the kitchen. Maybe the gas refrigerator made noises.

Another step, and Lainey froze again. This time there had been a soft but definite thud. Someone … or something … was in the kitchen.

She held her breath, afraid the intruder would hear the slightest sound. The whole town probably knew that the homeowner was hospitalized, making the house an easy target for a break-in. Could she get back to the bedroom and her cell phone without being heard?

She eased back a step. And heard a loud meow. Lainey’s tension dissolved into a shaky laugh. Not someone. A cat. She hadn’t known Aunt Rebecca had a cat.

Sweeping the flashlight beam ahead of her, Lainey went quickly to the kitchen, pushing open the swinging door. The flashlight beam reflected shining green eyes, eerily suspended in the air, it seemed. The large black cat sat on the counter next to the stove, looking at her accusingly.

“Well, so who are you?” She reached out a hand tentatively, having a respect for pointed teeth and sharp claws.

The cat sniffed at her hand, apparently found it acceptable, and rubbed its head against her fingers.

“You are a handsome creature.” She stroked the shining length of his back, and it arched under her hand. “What’s your name?”

He didn’t answer, of course, but he butted her hand again and then jumped lightly to the floor, where he pawed at the cabinet door.

“Is that where the cat food is kept?” Silly, to be talking to a cat, but the house was so deadly silent that it was a relief to make some noise. She opened the door and had a look.

No cat food, but there were several cans of tuna. Her visitor seemed to know what that was, because he hooked a paw over one can.

“All right, all right, I get the message. But I can’t believe that one of the neighbors isn’t feeding you while Aunt Rebecca is in the hospital.”

The hand can opener was in the top drawer, and in a few minutes she’d dumped the contents of the can into a bowl and set it down in front of the animal. The cat took one sniff and then began eating.

“I’m not sure what to do with you,” she muttered. “Are you supposed to stay inside or go out at night?” She searched the neat, sparsely furnished downstairs to the living room, finding no sign of a litter box. “Out, I guess.”

The front windows of the living room looked out on the main road that ran through the village, becoming Main Street on its way. Nothing moved outside. Even when she craned her neck to look down toward the center of town, the streets and sidewalks were empty. Apparently at 3:00 a.m. the citizens of Deer Run were safe in their beds.

A small town would undoubtedly seem even smaller and deader when seen through the eyes of a thirty-year-old, rather than the ten-year-old she’d been when last in Deer Run. But she was here to see to Aunt Rebecca’s care, not to socialize.

And afterward? Afterward would have to take care of itself for the moment.

A loud meow interrupted her reverie. She returned to the kitchen to find that the cat had polished the bowl and now stood at the back door, looking fixedly at the knob as if he could turn it with the force of his gaze.

“Okay, I get the message. You want out.” She opened the door. The cat spurted through it, disappearing into the shadows as if part of an illusionist’s trick.

Lainey stood for a moment in the doorway, looking out. Beyond a large shed, a stretch of weeds and brush led to the woods. There was a stream back that way someplace, as she recalled, and on the other side some Amish farms. That probably wouldn’t have changed since …