Love's Reckoning by Laura Frantz

Author:Laura Frantz
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC042030, FIC042040, FIC027050, Families—Pennsylvania—Fiction
ISBN: 9781441239785
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

21

Change indeed is painful; yet ever needful.

Thomas Carlyle

Silas laid down his quill and looked out the garret window. Clouds were interspersed between scattered stars, blotting out the moon, dampening his hopes of a clear traveling day come dawn. Though he felt led to leave the Lees, he hadn’t reckoned with the awful wrench of it. Across from him, his burgeoning haversacks waited, his fiddle case secured for travel. He’d leave his books behind, all but his Bible. The garret room would be Eden’s again, to do with as she wished.

The Buik lay open, the taper’s golden light illuminating Song of Solomon 2:14. The lovely words, without significance till now, seemed to lodge and splinter inside him. They reminded him endlessly of Eden.

Oh my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.

Stomach rumbling from fasting, palms blistered from a feverish round of wood splitting, he was weary but couldn’t sleep, every sense stretched taut. When he heard a noise on the stair, he shot to his feet, nearly snuffing out the taper adance on the scarred desktop.

An acute longing made him pull open the door a bit too forcefully. With the thought of his leaving, of never seeing her again, he nearly lost all reason. Who cared if the door creaked or someone heard? The sonsie sight of her in the soft candlelight was all that mattered.

She hovered two steps down, still clothed in a simple linen dress though it was midnight, her eyes red-rimmed. For a moment he stood stricken. Was he a fool to not declare his love for her, make her his? Wouldn’t he regret not doing so the rest of his days?

“I’ve left some things for your journey in the hollow of the old oak in back of the barn.”

Her voice was husky—from crying, he guessed. His own throat ached with the words he couldn’t say. Tender words. Words of passion and promise. ’Twas now—or never.

“Eden . . .”

An unwelcome sound below skimmed the surface of his desire and turned him alert. There was the hasty click of a shutting door, a sudden footfall on the stair. Eden whirled on the step, tottering precariously, and his hand shot out and steadied her.

On the landing below stood Elspeth. Even in the dimness her ill will was palpable, her nightgowned figure stiff with rage. “Oh, Sister, wait till I tell Papa! You pretend to be so good, so pure—yet I find you sneaking about the garret doing shameful things! Have you just left his room? Has he—”

“Nae!” Silas’s voice rolled down the stairway, firm and full of warning.

He moved to stand in front of Eden as Elspeth came swiftly up the stairs. But in a heartbeat, Eden slipped past and faced her instead, holding out a hand as if to stop her shameful words. Elspeth grabbed at her sleeve, the candelabra in her hand wobbling wildly.

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