An Old-Fashioned Texas Christmas by Karen Witemeyer

Author:Karen Witemeyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: American romance fiction;American Christmas stories;FIC042110, FIC027050, FIC058000
ISBN: 9781493421770
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

Ruth sat in a hard wooden chair in front of a hard wooden desk atop hard wooden floors. The warning could not be clearer. Don’t expect anything soft from the man who belongs to this room. The very walls made her feel like prey with their hunter green paint and oak wainscoting surrounding her on every side, pressing in. Even the mountain landscapes hanging around the room seemed to taunt her about reaching above her station.

Ruth frowned. Since when had she become a melodramatic ninny? The chair was just a chair. No harder than any other.

Get a hold of yourself. Mr. Palmer will be here soon, and you need your wits about you.

Deciding to distract herself, Ruth opened her reticule and extracted the only item of value she had left. Her mother’s heirloom brooch. Housed in a cloth bag Ruth had sewn as a lavender sachet for her trousseau when she was fourteen, the small luckenbooth brooch felt heavy in her hand. She turned the sachet pouch over, hiding the embroidered lavender blooms on the front, and ran her finger along the initials and dates she’d stitched into the backing after she’d married Stephen.

LD 1768

SGE 1827

REH 1859

RHF 1882

Such a legacy of love handed down from mother to daughter. A legacy that now belonged to Naomi. Ruth recalled the stories her mother had shared of how a great English noblewoman, Lady Densbury, had gifted the amethyst brooch to Ruth’s grandmother, Sarah Gooding, a mere servant, when Sarah married the lady’s grandson. Sarah and her beloved Randall left England to start a new life in America, and the brooch was handed down to their daughter, Rosemary. Ruth’s mother had met and married a cotton plantation owner in Tennessee, and even through the horrors of civil war and the loss of their land, their love remained true. When Ruth inherited the brooch, she already knew who she’d be marrying. Stephen Fulbright had owned her heart since childhood, and at sixteen, she’d married her true love and followed him to Texas to make a life of their own farming cotton.

Only their love story had ended with harsh abruptness. A fever. A failed crop. A bank foreclosure. Yet she harbored no regrets. Stephen had been her best friend and her greatest joy. Ruth’s chance at lifelong love might be gone, but Naomi had an entire future ahead of her. A future that deserved a love story and a family brooch to hand down to her own daughter someday.

Ruth loosened the ribbon that held the sachet bag closed and tipped out the brooch. Two interlocking silver hearts supported a large amethyst topped with a silver crown. The Scottish symbol of loyalty and love, connected hearts that could endure all manner of hardship without being torn apart. The deep purple jewel symbolized the rarity and preciousness of such love, a reminder not to join oneself to a man lightly but only to one of noble character and devoted heart.

Please don’t force me to give this up, she prayed as her fingers traced the outline of the jeweled pin.

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