“I don’t understand why you think that way.” It wasn’t Eric that was talking this time. Olive was surprised to hear William’s voice. “She has given no indication that she is anything other than she said she is. A woman who promised to marry a man that is deceased. She had nowhere to go.”
“I read those letters. They don’t sound anything like Henry. Nothing like him!” Helen snapped back at her brother. “I think she found a way to…to forge them!”
“That’s nonsense.” Eric spoke up. “She is who she says she is. However…” The way he said the word made Olive think Helen had been about to speak again. “I agree that the letters do not sound like Henry wrote them. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him use some of the words I read in those letters. That is, indeed, a mystery. But that is not a reflection on Olive. She would be a victim if this were some type of prank someone was playing on Henry.”
Olive distracted herself with thoughts about the letters and the man she thought she was coming to meet. The way they made it sound, Henry was not the kind of man she would have wanted to be married to. He sounded harsh, negative and mean. That would have been a living nightmare.
“You are right, Eric.” Helen’s voice had changed. Olive heard the shuffling of feet and the sound of someone sitting. Helen sighed. “I don’t want to see ma and pa taken advantage of, though. She shouldn’t just stay here forever. She isn’t kin. We don’t know her. She could be anyone…”
“I think I know why she was sent here, Helen.” Eric said, and Olive’s ears perked up, drinking in the sound of his voice. She sighed quietly.
“Oh? And why is that? For you to marry?”
The room was silent.
Olive’s breath caught in her throat, and she lifted one hand to it as if that would help. Her heart was hammering in her chest. Marrying Eric would be the most wonderful thing she could ever imagine.
But was it the wrong thing? What if that was never in God’s plan to begin with? She hadn’t been praying as much as she should have but she was worried that such a thing might not look good to Him or to the people she was living with. What would they think of her?
She was confused by the long pause and wondered if Eric would ever answer. She pressed her lips together and let out a breath when she finally heard his voice.
“I am not the one to say what is in God’s plan, Helen.” His words almost directly matched her thoughts. It only made her more nervous. Her hands were shaking, and she pressed them against her lips firmly. “But I can tell you that I’ve prayed every single morning for Him to send me a sign that I will have a happy life, and, until she came, there was no answer.”
Tears filled Olive’s eyes. She felt guilty for eavesdropping, even if it meant she had heard such words. She began a fierce internal battle with herself, wanting to burst through the door and go to him and also wanting to run back to her room and fall into a crying mess on the floor.
She reached out with one shaking hand and pushed the door open to reveal herself. As it swung open, she blinked away her tears and let her eyes fall on Eric.
When he saw her flushed face, he jumped up from his chair, knocking it back.
“Olive!” He said her name almost fearfully as if he had said something wrong. “I was…I don’t…”
She took a few steps toward him. It was as if there was no one else in the room when she approached him. She shook her head and held one hand out to him.
He pulled in a deep breath, his chest swelling magnificently. Her face flushed a deeper pink. When she was only a few inches from him, she stopped and looked up into his soft brown eyes. “You were praying for me?”
“I was praying for you before and after you arrived, Olive,” he responded, his voice sweet music in her ears. “And I will until the day I die, I swear.”
“Is it truly the right thing to do? Is it?” Olive wanted the answer to be yes more than anything in the world.
“Yes.”
She melted into his arms, and he held her against him as tight as he could. “Will you marry me, Olive? Will you be my bride?”
She didn’t separate herself from his grasp when she answered. She lifted her head and whispered it in his ear. “Yes, Eric. I will marry you. I love you with all my heart.”
Eric closed his eyes, praying thanks to God. “And I love you, sweet Olive Kelsey. I love you.”
****
THE END
A Bride’s Home – A Clean Western Romance
Chapter One
Frustrated and hot, Claire “Gabby” O’Reilly threw a blue sheet over the line and roughly straightened one side, then the other. She coughed once or twice and cleared her throat. She didn’t like the way her anger was growing. She didn’t want to be miserable all her life, either.