Texas Angel, 2-in-1 (40 page)

“Well, if you want my opinion . . .” Pausing, she searched him with her eyes, and when he nodded she went on, but rather shyly, still with little concept of the power of her simple wisdom. “When Jesus came to earth, all logic should have led Him to the religious and political leaders for his support—you know, the priests and the Pharisees and the Saddu—oh, I can never remember that one.”

“Sadducees,” he offered.

“Yes, them. Anyway, He didn’t go to any of the leaders. Instead He went to fishermen and such. Simple men. Simon Peter was a perfect example. I really like him. Not only was he simple and uneducated, he was also constantly making mistakes, just as we all do. But it was he, not the high priest, whatever-his-name.was, who Jesus made the head of his church.”

Benjamin shook his head in awe at the clarity of the point she was making. “In the past I always dismissed Peter because I could not understand him, nor Christ’s choice of him.”

“He was a perfect leader because he knew what it meant to make mistakes, to be human,” she suggested with quiet intensity.

A grin spread across his face. “That’s it, of course! Jesus said, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ ”

“Yes,” she said, “and that is why He chose the men He chose. And that is why I think He might choose you, Benjamin.”

“I am definitely the weakest of the lot!”

“Oh . . . I didn’t mean . . .” she reddened, as though realizing her words could be taken as an insult.

He took her hands reassuringly in his. “Elise . . .” Her name rolled off his tongue like a prayer. As his eyes met hers, her unlikely past flickered through his mind, and he knew she, too, had been used of God. For only God could have seen past the filth of her life to the precious jewel within. Only God would have had the patience and love to coax it to the surface. Only God could have known how profoundly she would affect Benjamin’s life and those of his children. Only God would have known that this fallen angel was in fact a true angel.

“What, Benjamin?” she breathed. Her hand was trembling a little in his.

“I was just thinking about what a gift you have been to this house-hold . . . to me.”

“Oh, goodness!” she attempted a dismissive laugh, but her face still reddened, both with embarrassment and with pleasure. “So . . .” Her voice squeaked over the word, and she paused nervously to clear her throat. “Do you know what you will do, then?”

“I’m going to see if these Texians want a flawed, bruised, and rather worse-for-the.wear man to lead them.”

CHAPTER

46

M
ICAH, I AM SURE YOUR
mother would have wanted you to have lessons.” Elise thrust the primer under the boy’s nose. “Or else she wouldn’t have brought this all the way from Boston.”

“My ma wanted a lot of things she didn’t get,” Micah retorted.

“Don’t be disrespectful of your mother!” Elise scolded firmly.

“I ain’t being disrespectful of her . . . or you either,” he added quickly.

He didn’t have to say where his disrespect was aimed. It was clear enough he blamed only one person for the fact that Rebekah Sinclair would never realize any of her dreams or desires. But Elise was determined that, if nothing else, she was not going to allow Rebekah’s children to be ignorant or illiterate. Elise was barely literate herself— education of female members of southern gentry was discouraged—but she could read, and she would expect no less from her—that is, Rebekah’s—children.

“Now you open that primer, Micah,” Elise ordered, “and start to read. Isabel, you follow along.”

Actually Micah was quite a good reader. He’d had very good instruction before coming to Texas, where, by his and Benjamin’s admission, his teaching had been neglected. Isabel, on the other hand, was completely unlearned. Now seven years old, she knew only some of the sounds of the letters and a few words by sight, but little else beyond that.

When it came Isabel’s turn to read, the first word on the page stumped her.

“T-ha-e,” Isabel paused. “That doesn’t sound right.”

Micah said with big-brother superiority, “It’s
the
. ‘Th’ makes one sound. You should know that.”

“You’ll get it,” Elise encouraged when she saw Isabel’s lip quiver.

“Why don’t you look at the word and say it again. That will help you memorize it.”

Isabel did so and with similar prompting, managed to finish a sentence.

“That was very good!” Elise exclaimed, perhaps with overstated enthusiasm, but she hoped her praise would be incentive for future lessons. “Your father will be pleased and proud of both of you when he comes home.”

Isabel beamed, wanting nothing more than to please her father.

Micah merely smirked and rolled his eyes.

Elise let out a sharp breath, frustrated as always by his attitude.

This time however she couldn’t let it go. “Micah, why don’t you try to give your father a chance? If you’d open your eyes for a minute, you’d see he has changed.”

“So what?”

“So what!” her voice made a discombobulated squeak. “You can’t hold his mistakes against him forever!”

His hard stare seemed to say he could indeed do just that. “I don’t care what he does now. He ruined our lives, and I’ll never forgive him for that.” Pushing aside the primer, he jumped up and strode to the door. “I gotta feed the animals.” He opened the door, slamming it behind him as he exited.

Elise looked at Isabel as if the child might understand her frustration. She was about to voice her emotions to her, as she had become the closest thing Elise had to a friend. But she reminded herself that this was just a seven-year-old child who had her own burdens—she still awoke at night crying for her mother. She didn’t need adult burdens to compound her own.

“Perhaps you should go out for some fresh air also,” Elise suggested to the child.

Isabel rose. “I’ll pick some flowers.”

“That would be nice.” Elise smiled and, giving the child a brief hug and kiss on the cheek, sent her on her way.

The cabin was quiet now. Elise had finally managed the feat of getting the younger children all to take their afternoon naps at the same time. But the quiet of the cabin and the incident of wanting to vent her emotions to Isabel made Elise realize how much she missed Benjamin.

He’d been gone on his circuit for three weeks now, although this time his aim was to see if he still had a ministry to his Texians. She had encouraged him to go, not fully realizing what that would mean to her. It wasn’t that she was lonely, not in the way she imagined Rebekah had been. Elise was entirely content with her life in the little cabin. Caring for the children fulfilled her in a way that often surprised her. And she enjoyed keeping house as well. She had found a length of red gingham in the trunk and with Isabel’s help and encouragement had made curtains for the windows and a cloth for the table. With other fabric, a pretty blue calico Benjamin had brought home for Rebekah shortly before her death, and old patterns stowed also in the trunk, Elise made dresses for all the females in the house, including herself. She’d also taken the hide from the deer Micah had shot and Benjamin had tanned and was in the process of making a shirt for Micah. She hoped to have it done by his birthday, which was coming up soon. From the scraps she would make a pair of booties for Oliver.

Then there was the challenge of other household tasks new to Elise, but which she was quickly mastering—churning butter, making medicines, soap, candles, and preserving the early harvest from the vegetable garden she had planted a couple of months ago. She was also working on perfecting her technique for cooking and baking in the hearth. Baking johnnycakes was one thing, but she was determined to make Micah a cake for his birthday. So far all she had produced were burnt offerings.

No, loneliness and boredom were not a problem. Neither was discontent. Still, she missed Benjamin—for himself alone. The intensity of his voice, even when he laughed or teased. The flash of his eyes when he was passionate about something, the blue that could turn so vivid at times yet also could fade to a gentle softness that took her breath away as much as the dark intensity they sometimes held.

She missed his laughter and the way it would surprise even him when it slipped out unexpectedly. At times he was like a child, discovering life for the first time. And he would make her part of those discoveries, whether it be a spiritual truth or a farming technique or an antic of one of the children. He was always seeking her out to tell her about something new he’d found, and she was doing the same with him. They were learning afresh about life—together.

All at once, as if wishing indeed could make it so, Elise heard the faint sounds of hoofbeats. Could she be imagining it? She went to the window but saw nothing. Perhaps Micah was exercising their second horse. It couldn’t be Benjamin, because he’d told her it would take at least a month to cover his circuit. But Elise’s thudding heart made her head for the door and step outside hopefully.

The sound drew closer, and she was certain now a horse was approaching. Unconsciously she smoothed her hands over her dress, sorry she had put on her old skirt and blouse today while laundering the better dress that had belonged to Rebekah. She patted her hair, the mass of curls escaping the pins she had put in place that morning. Nothing could be done for it now, especially as she soon saw a head bob up behind a clump of mesquite.

It was definitely Benjamin, his straw-colored hair glinting in the sunlight as if gold dust had been sprinkled in the hay. She wondered somewhat protectively why he was not wearing his hat. He would get sunstroke in the afternoon heat.

But she forgot this as his figure emerged from behind the brush and trees, tall in the saddle, almost regal, though he had exchanged the fine black frock coat he used to wear on his circuit for the simple garb he wore while working the field—a coarse white homespun shirt and brown trousers braced with suspenders over strong, sturdy shoulders. He’d said the other clothes were too pretentious. They had belonged to a different man, a man he wanted to put in his past.

Her breath caught, and her heart, which had already been thumping wildly, now skipped a beat. Was it wrong to feel this way? He was her husband. Everything within her shouted that she was no more than a housekeeper, yet the fact of the matter was that their lives had touched and intersected in such a way that it should not be surprising more might have grown between them. They had been drawn together, two souls as different as night from day . . . even adversaries of sorts at first. But mutual need had forced them to see past those differences, oblivious of where it would lead.

Then she remembered her secret. She hadn’t thought about it since her wedding day. That had been a terrible mistake, because her forgetfulness had made her careless of her emotions, of the fact that she had no right to fall in love. Was it true, then? Is that what had happened? Perhaps it wasn’t too late to make it go away.

She could deny it. She
should
deny it. Yet as her heart careened like a raft out of control on a wild river, it was almost impossible to hide from the truth, to repress the burgeoning fact, the terrible, the wonderful fact that she . . . loved him, her husband.

As Benjamin rounded the corner of the path where the cabin first came into view beyond the brush, he saw her. Standing in the yard, her slight figure appeared forlorn, like the poor waif he had once imagined her. That image was heightened by the frayed, old dress she was wearing. The garish yellow silk of the skirt and the tattered ruffles of the blouse gave her the appearance of a child playing dress-up. But that image ended with surface observation. He knew there was so much more beneath mere appearances. Like her hair, the sable black strands gleaming in the sunlight, unruly curls escaping from the restraints of the pins, there was rich complexity mixed with her tender vulnerability. He’d once equated that life with evil, but he knew now it was nothing of the sort. The life she displayed radiated light, and that light had descended upon his life in an astounding way.

In the three weeks on the trail he had thought about her more than he let himself admit, thinking often of small things, the way her eyes crinkled tellingly when she teased, the music of her laughter, the sweet smell of lilac. He dreamed about her and woke from those dreams feeling a disturbing mixture of disquiet and exhilaration, missing her as if an important part of him had been left behind.

He hadn’t wanted to think how anxious he was to get home. After the first week on the circuit, he had practically raced through the rest, until his poor horse was ready to collapse with exhaustion. He had ridden hard the last two days thinking always of his home, his children, but mostly of her.

It was wrong. He knew it. Wrong because Rebekah had been gone not even six months. Wrong because he had made an agreement with Elise. He could not feel this way. He could not feel such happiness, such contentment, such stirrings that he sometimes ached with the fullness of it all. It was wrong, wasn’t it? It was wrong to love this woman, his wife.

He rode into the yard and dismounted. They both stood still, facing each other. His throat was so dry, he could barely creak out a stilted “Hello.” His arms ached to reach out to her, to draw her to him, to hold her and feel the warm security he knew he’d find in her arms.

She didn’t know what to think of the crooked smile on his lips that did not seem to match his eyes, which smoldered like ice caught on fire.

How she ached to run into his arms like a wife should upon her husbandfs homecoming. Her answering “Hello” was the most inadequate word she had ever spoken.

“You look tired.” She resisted the urge to brush away a drop of sweat trailing through the travel grit on his face.

“You look . . . well.” He could barely get that final word past the lump in his throat, especially when it hardly began to describe just how excruciatingly wonderful she did look. To steady himself, he reached for his saddlebags.

“Let me help,” she said, stepping close and reaching up her slim hand. Even the smell of trail and sweat and horseflesh did not abate the wild beating of her heart with the nearness of him.