Plum Pudding Bride by Anne Garboczi Evans

Author:Anne Garboczi Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: christian Fiction
Publisher: Pelican Book Group
Published: 2015-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

6

A chill wind blew through the pebbled streets as Patience crossed through a back alley. Around her snow had begun to fall, dusting the streets and catching on the bare twigs of rosebushes planted in picketed front yards. Her one hand rested on the frayed elbow of Arnie’s coat.

“I haven’t shown you the new horse post Mr. Clinton installed outside the blacksmith’s shop yet, have I?” Patience glanced at the last rays of sunshine falling below the red rock cliff face. If she delayed long enough, perhaps Mrs. Clinton and all the other busybodies would eat their meal and leave.

“Three times, sweetheart.” Arnie Dehaven took advantage of the alley to press her into the brick shop building. His hand slid underneath her wool coat.

“That’s scarcely appropriate. We’re not married.” Patience shoved the big topmost button of her coat back into its proper hole.

“Won’t be long. One day don’t make no difference nohow.” The leather of Arnie’s massive glove pushed back her knit cap as he touched her hair.

She ducked from under his arm, sending her cap sailing. “Yes, it does.” Was this what her life was to be like? To be pawed by a mountain of a rancher in the darkness of a Montana soddy? She stooped to retrieve her now-sodden cap.

“Let’s eat then. Got to fill one of a man’s carnal needs. Your ma’s cooking, right?”

“We could dine at the boardinghouse, just the two of us.”

He laughed, a pleasant enough sound. “Naw. Got to see where my woman learned to cook.”

Who said “my woman”? That was dark-ages dialect, not the speech of liberated nineteenth-century women. Of course, it sounded romantic from the lips of Ivanhoe or d’Artagnan. But from Arnie Dehaven? Not very.

Storefronts and snow-capped roofs faded as they walked around the tiny crest that hid her house from the rest of town. Remains of last week’s snow piled under a north-facing boulder’s jutting presence. More snow fell on top of the now-dark dirt road.

Patience shivered and drew her mittens farther inside the red wool of her coat sleeves.

“The Clintons’ silver mine’s up thataway, eh?” Arnie stuck a big, gloved finger towards the valley beyond, but made no other attempt at conversation.

She nodded and hurried towards the warmth a few hundred yards beyond. Before she could grab the handle of the front door, the wooden panel flew open from within.

“Ma and Pa have been waiting and waiting for you.” Now changed into yet another of her many jackets, Kitty looked resplendent in a green-trimmed bolero with a matching holly-leaf pin in her hair. Had Peter given her that too?

“You’ve got a father?” Arnie shoved past Patience on the snowy door stoop and stomped his boots on the floor. Mud splattered over the pine floorboards she’d scrubbed earlier.

“Most people since Adam have.” Squeezing around his bulky frame, she picked up the coat he’d let fall. She hung it neatly on the carved coat hanger Peter had helped Pa whittle this summer. The coat smelled even more pungent now that they were inside.

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