Lone Pine Bride (The Brides of Lone Pine #1)(2)

“Hitched? That sounds awful. I’ve got to make a good impression. She must think I’m alright or she wouldn’t have agreed to come here. She’s a real lady and I have to treat her well because she’s had a lot of sadness in her past, I also need to give her what she was accustomed to before he parents died.”

“What was she accustomed to?” Jason asked.

“Good living. Family. People who treated her with respect. She lost that after their deaths. She told me in one of her letters that after they went she had to work hard to pay off debts which had been left by her father which he accrued when he wanted to help some neighbours who were down on their luck. She had to sell the house but that didn’t raise enough. She’s had a hard time.”

“That sounds sad,” Jason asked.

They set the bale of hay down and walked back out into the field. “Yes, I want to make it up to her.”

“Is she pretty?”

“I don’t know. She says she’s average. She couldn’t send a photograph because she can’t afford it.”

“I would want someone pretty,” Jason said.

“I’m no oil painting. She says nobody faints when they see her or runs away. If she’s as interesting as she sounds in her letters I will be blessed.”

“I think I’d rather see someone before I decide to marry them.”

“Then you’ll probably never marry because no self respecting lady is going to come to live here without being invited and that has to include marriage.”

“Good luck to you. When is she arriving?”

“Tomorrow at ten fifteen. The journey is a long one and includes trains and a stagecoach. A few ladies are coming and we’re going straight to the church in Lower Pine to be married.”

“Is she happy to marry someone she hasn’t seen?”

“She says she is. We’ve fallen in love through our letters.”

“I’ll come to the wedding. What time?”

“Midday. The ladies are going to the Reverend’s house before we marry to freshen up.”

“Midday then. Goodbye, Seth.”

“Goodbye.” Jason walked away and the nervousness which seemed to consume Seth nearer to the time Rachel would arrive returned. He was sure he loved her and the bond between them had grown over the months they corresponded. But now the time of actually meeting her was imminent and what would she think of him?

He was tall and his friends said women liked tall men. He was fairly muscular but then weren’t all farmers? Nobody had fainted when they looked at him either. He chuckled as he thought of it. He had a farm but it was nowhere as luxurious as he had portrayed it nor did he have a great deal of money. He was definitely not on any ruling council. There was a committee in Lower Pine led by the Reverend but they had never approached him to join it. He had not employed people to build his house and had taken ages to do it while he stayed in his barn. He only employed people when absolutely necessary.

He also had no idea how to treat a lady and his father died when he was young so he had no example to follow. His mother had married again recently but he did not see them often because they lived some way away.

Where personal matters were concerned he would go slowly, of course, so she had time to get used to him. He had already cleaned the house from top to bottom so that could go in his favour. He didn’t expect her to wait on him hand and foot which he knew some men expected. He didn’t get drunk or gamble and was quite happy with the social events which were held at the church. He followed God as well as he could though he wasn’t sure what He thought about the embellishments he had made.

So would that make her happy or was there more he didn’t know about? He had told her everything he could think of in his letters to her and she had told him a lot too. Quite a bit they seemed to have in common and he had read with interest the things she did associated with her church and community.

But he had also exaggerated because he wanted so badly to impress her and she would catch him out, he was sure. Respected by the community? Maybe to a degree but probably to most of them he was just a young man trying to eke out a living. Pay for someone to clean the house and cook? That was just a dream so he would have to do it himself or somehow earn more money to employ someone.

But she sounded as if she could do things. Feeding the poor, visiting orphans, knitting warm clothes for the needy. She loved knitting, she told him, and would bring him the nice warm cardigan he wanted. That was, if the weather wasn’t too hot for that sort of thing. Boston was quite different from California climate wise. She also knew how to cook because her mother thought that important to teach her daughter.

But he had exaggerated more and more in his letter about himself and his habits, he had to admit. He was tidy, he told her, but the house had been a mess until he cleaned it recently. He could cook well, he continued, but really all he could do was eggs. The meat he just threw in the oven and the potatoes he never peeled though he did clean them thoroughly before cooking them. He was excellent with needle and cotton but all he had ever sewed was a sock and that turned out to have such a lump after he pulled the needle and cotton through innumerable times that in the end he just threw it out.

Maybe he should be practising all those things but time had caught up with him and he didn’t have enough hours left before tomorrow to do so. There was also nobody to teach him with his mother away. She really should have paid attention when he was young to making her son ready for a wife.