The Preacher's Bride (Brides of Simpson Creek) Read online

  “Right after breakfast, about eight? Oh, and I wanted to show you what Mrs. Patterson loaned me from the mercantile.”

  Curious, Faith stepped down off the step into the sparse grass that was all that would grow so near the giant live oak that shaded their house.

  “I was so concerned Polly’d spot it, if not me,” he confessed over his shoulder, then pushed the object away from the side of the house toward her.

  It was a chair, with a back and seat of leather and wheels on the sides. “It’s for Papa,” he said with a smile. “Mrs. Patterson said I could use it as long as Papa needs it. Wasn’t that kind? And Dr. Walker says if Papa continues to improve, he can soon get up in it and spend more time out of bed. He can sit outside, when the weather’s good, and even go to church.”

  She smiled back at him, buoyed by Gil’s hope.

  Gil left the chair and came closer to her. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing, Miss Faith,” he said. “God bless you.”

  The intensity of his gaze spurred her heart into a gallop. “I... Thank you, Gil, but there will be several of us helping. We love your father, you know.”

  He nodded, then took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “I know,” he said, “but you’re the one who’s put our Lord’s teachings into action and mobilized the ladies. I’m very grateful.” He let go of her hand and backed away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Good night.”

  “Good night...” Oh, dear, she thought as she went back inside the house, her pulse pounding, her hand tingling from his touch. Rationally, she knew she was not for Gil, but convincing her heart was another thing. And unless she had greatly misread the look in those hazel eyes, Gil Chadwick was attracted to her, too. But taking care of Gil’s father was going to put her in Gil’s company frequently, even with the other ladies helping her. How could she keep herself from encouraging him?

  Sooner or later, she would have to have an honest talk with him, the one she had planned to have after the church service, but she dreaded it. Not only would it mean forgoing the courtship he seemed to want to begin, but Gil would never see her as admirable ever again. And what if her secret got out? She might well become an outcast in Simpson Creek.

  Chapter Four

  Word had spread that the preacher was going home this morning, and when Gil and Dr. Walker pushed the old preacher across the street on a wheeled litter, the townspeople formed a cheering gauntlet through which the litter passed.

  Reverend Chadwick beamed crookedly at this evidence of the love his congregation bore for him, and raised a hand in a weak attempt at a wave—or maybe it was a blessing. Faith, watching from the front step of the parsonage, wasn’t sure.

  Once inside the parsonage, Gil and the doctor lifted him gently into his bed. Reverend Chadwick looked around him, obviously recognizing the familiar surroundings, and gave a happy sigh before closing his eyes. Even the brief excitement of being moved back to the parsonage had exhausted him.

  Faith’s and Gil’s gazes met across the preacher’s bed. Gil’s hazel eyes gleamed with the same triumph that warmed her. No matter what else happened, they had accomplished this much. They had brought his father home.

  “Dr. Walker said he would tire easily,” Faith whispered. “I’ll just go into the kitchen and start making dinner.”

  Gil took the worn Bible off the bedside table and lowered himself into a chair at the side of the bed. “I think I’ll just sit with Papa and pray awhile,” he said.

  Faith hadn’t been inside the parsonage for many years, but she found her way down the hallway into the kitchen at the back of the house. She had no idea what she was going to prepare for the noon meal, but Sarah had told her she was going to bring over a kettle of stewed chicken, so perhaps Gil could eat the chicken and the preacher could sip the nourishing broth.

  When she reached the kitchen, Faith found she had not been the only one thinking of the Chadwicks’ need for nourishment, for while they had been preparing the preacher for the move back to his house, the married ladies of the town had let themselves in and brought enough food for a regiment. In addition to the promised pot of chicken, the side table was filled with hams, fresh-baked loaves of bread, baskets of rolls, jars of jelly, preserves, green beans, applesauce, baskets of eggs and crocks of lemonade, cold tea and apple juice. On the floor sat bushel baskets of potatoes, apples, peaches, a sack of flour and one of cornmeal. Goodness, they’d thought of everything! She would have to move some of these things to the root cellar beneath the house or they would spoil before they could be eaten.

  About noon, when Reverend Chadwick had awakened from his nap, she was ready with warmed broth which she spooned little by little into his mouth. Dr. Walker had warned her of the danger of the old preacher aspirating liquid into his lungs if she was not careful, but he did very well, as long as she went slowly and kept a napkin at the ready. She could tell from the way he blinked in exasperation when some leaked out of the right side of his mouth that the process frustrated him a little, for the old man was not used to being helpless. But after he’d taken his fill of broth and washed it down with apple juice, he gave her a crooked smile.

  She helped ease him back onto his pillows. “Why don’t you rest a little, Reverend Chadwick? I’m going to go make sure Gil has some dinner. When I come back, we’ll exercise your limbs a little, all right? We’ve got to get you back into fighting trim—the town needs you.” She could tell by the gleam in his eyes he appreciated her thinking such a goal was possible.

  Faith found Gil in the parlor, sitting at a roll-top desk and writing something, his Bible open next to the paper.

  “Gil, dinner’s ready,” she said. “Can you stop for a while?”

  He turned in his chair and smiled at her. “Only if you’ll eat with me,” he said.

  She nodded. She’d intended to do that, but his invitation pleased her more than it should.

  “I’ve been struggling with my wedding sermon,” he told her, once he’d said a blessing over the meal. “It’ll be short, of course,” he added with a chuckle. “No one wants to hear a preacher drone on for very long. They want to see the groom kiss his bride and begin the celebration.”

  She cut a piece of chicken and took a bite. “Didn’t your father write down his sermons? Can’t you use one of those?”

  He swallowed some lemonade and shook his head. “Papa never writes anything down. It’s all in his head, along with whole chapters of the Bible he’s memorized.”

  “Your papa wa—is—” she corrected herself hastily “—an amazing man.”

  Gil nodded. “If I’m ever half the preacher my father has been, I’ll be thankful. Besides, I’m trying to come up with something that hasn’t been said thousands of times before.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “I think folks like the tried and true in a wedding. Tradition is comforting,” she said.

  “I suppose so,” he said. “I hope I can find a way to make it traditional and fresh at the same time, however.”

  Just having a preacher other than his father conducting the service would make it fresh enough for the people of Simpson Creek, she thought.

  “I think the world of Miss Caroline and Jack,” he went on. “I want to do my part to make their wedding day special for them.”

  “I’m sure you will. But...it doesn’t bother you?” she asked at last, giving way to curiosity.

  He didn’t pretend he didn’t know what she meant. “Because I kept company with Miss Caroline for a little while, back during the winter? No, not really,” he said. “I’m happy that she and Jack were able to resolve the things that were keeping them apart. God showed me Caroline was for Jack, not me. And the more I’m around the two of them, the more convinced I am of that.”

  “God...showed you,” she said, hoping her doubt didn’t show. “How does that...happen? To you, I mean
,” she added quickly, not wanting to reveal that she never prayed anymore, and had never experienced God showing her anything.

  He speared a couple of green beans with his fork as he considered her question, and nothing on his face revealed that he found her question unusual. “I prayed about it, of course, but He doesn’t always answer out loud. It was more of a feeling, here,” he said, flattening his hand over the center of his chest. “And sometimes He shows us by the way events work out. That’s what happened in this case. Jack finally declared his true feelings, and now he and Miss Caroline are about to get married.” He looked more carefully at her. “You didn’t think I was hiding a broken heart, did you?”

  His direct question gaze flustered her. “No...I—I’m... Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked you that. It’s none of my business after all.” She pretended great interest in a mockingbird which had just landed on the lantana bush outside the kitchen window.

  “I didn’t mind, Miss Faith,” he said. “Not at all. I think it’s good for believers to talk about how they feel God’s leading, because He has different ways of leading different people.”

  But I’m not a believer, she thought.

  “Miss Caroline and I really hadn’t progressed beyond friendship,” he told her. “I would never let my feelings grow to the point where my heart would be wounded without seeking His guidance on the matter.”

  If that was true, she felt better. For if there was a God who cared about His faithful followers, He’d never let Gil fall in love with a woman like her—one who did not believe as he did.

  “I wish I’d grown up in Simpson Creek,” he said then. “It’s a good place. Good land, good people.”

  Reverend Chadwick had become pastor here during the war years, while his son was in college. Gil had served in the army after graduating, then been wounded only a few months before the war’s end. He’d gone straight into the seminary after he’d recovered.

  “I’m glad you like our town,” she said, wondering where this was leading. “If you had been raised here, you might have been the only single man who returned to Simpson Creek after Appomattox.”

  “Or one of those who didn’t live to come back,” he said soberly, his eyes thoughtful. “Which is why you ladies started the Spinsters’ Club, isn’t it—the lack of unmarried men? Papa wrote me about the beginnings of the Spinsters’ Club while I was away at seminary.”

  “Did you think we sounded like a band of brazen hussies, advertising for marriage-minded bachelors?” she asked, almost afraid of the answer. But she saw a twinkle in his eye that reassured her.

  “Not at all,” he said. “You sounded like a plucky lot. I was only worried all the young ladies of the hill country would get the same idea and there’d be no one left for me when I finished seminary.”

  “Ah, now, where was your faith, Reverend Gil?” she teased. “Didn’t you believe that the Lord would provide?”

  He smiled at her, and she felt the jolt of it all the way through her heart.

  “I’m only surprised you haven’t made one of those matches, Miss Faith,” he said. “I’d have thought those bachelors would have snatched you up when the group first started,” he said.

  This bantering tone was new from him. She shrugged and looked away to hide her confusion. “So far it hasn’t happened... I haven’t felt ‘led’ to any of the gentlemen who’ve answered our advertisements so far, either.”

  “Maybe for a reason.”

  The sentence hung in the air, heavy with meaning. Oh, dear, what did he mean by that? What was she to say?

  Just then a loud, urgent rapping at the front door startled both of them. Faith dropped her fork. Gil jumped up from the table, nearly oversetting his chair.

  “Who can that be?” he wondered aloud. Faith followed him as he headed down the hall toward the sound.

  * * *

  Billy Henderson stood on the doorstep, his face tearstained, his eyes swollen. “Pastor Gil, you gotta come quick! My ma got a letter just now, and she’s terrible upset. She won’t tell me what it’s about or let me see it. She just sits on the sofa and sobs.”

  “I’ll come,” he said quickly, remembering that Billy Henderson’s father had been sent to prison after assaulting Caroline Wallace at her schoolhouse. He’d been in on the conspiracy to kidnap Jack Collier’s twins which had taken place at the same time. His imprisonment had left his wife and son alone in Simpson Creek, fearful of the time Henderson would be released, for he’d also been a brutal husband and father. Daisy Henderson and her son had been planning to move away from Simpson Creek in hope that her husband wouldn’t be able to find them, but they hadn’t left yet.

  He turned back to Faith. “Will you and Papa be all right?” he asked. He hated to have to leave on the very first day his father was home, and still in such frail condition, but one of the congregation needed him now, too.

  “We’ll be fine, Gil. Go ahead,” she said. “Dr. Walker’s right across the street if I need help.”

  “Bless you, Faith,” he said, as he dashed down the steps after Billy Joe. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He found Mrs. Henderson just as Billy Joe had described her, weeping on a horsehair sofa and clutching a damp handkerchief. A crumpled sheet of paper lay in her lap.

  “Ma, I brung the rev’rend,” Billy Joe said, speaking loudly over his mother’s sobs.

  She looked up and blinked at Gil as if she’d never seen him before.

  “I’m Pastor Gil, Reverend Chadwick’s son,” he reminded her gently. He wasn’t sure if he’d seen her at church since the day of the assault and kidnapping in March. Folks said she kept mostly to herself these days, shamed by her husband’s despicable actions.

  “Oh. Yes, of c-course,” she said. “S-somehow I was expecting to see your father...forgot about what happened to him...”

  He brought a chair close to the sofa and lowered himself into it. “That’s all right,” he said. “Your son said you were upset by the arrival of a letter. He’s pretty worried about you, so he came and got me. Is there some way I can help?”

  “I just couldn’t tell him!” she wailed. “Here, read it!” She yanked the letter off her lap and extended it to him with a shaking hand.

  Gil unfolded the rumpled paper, aware of Billy Joe watching him, his eyes troubled, his gaze darting between Gil and his mother. Gil bent his head and read the letter to himself:

  * * *

  Dear Mrs. Henderson,

  I regret to inform you that your husband, William J. Henderson, was killed in an altercation between himself and another prisoner yesterday. He died instantly after being stabbed in the chest. We are shipping his body home to you for burial, and it should arrive at the same time as this letter.

  Yours truly,

  Emerson Fogle, Prison Administrator

  * * *

  Gil looked up at Daisy Henderson, who had covered her eyes with her sodden handkerchief. Muffled sobs still escaped from her shaking body.

  Compassion welled up within Gil. The man had beaten her for years, and abused his son for as long as he had lived, yet she still sorrowed for her husband, Gil thought. She had been William Henderson’s faithful wife, despite the way he had treated her.

  “Mrs. Henderson,” he said gently, “is it your wish that I tell your son what the letter says?”

  She nodded, raising red-rimmed, tear-drenched eyes to him and then her son.

  Billy Joe had drifted to a position in between Gil and his mother.

  Gil took a deep breath. “Billy Joe, I need you to be brave,” he said. “Your father is dead. He was killed in a fight between himself and another prisoner,” he said.

  Billy Joe had already been pale with worry, but now the color drained from his face. Gil rose and put a bracing hand on the boy’s shoulder. He was only about twelve, Gil knew, but
at this moment he looked much younger.

  “I’m very sorry, Billy Joe,” Gil said. “You’ll need to be strong, for your mother will need you to be the man of the house now.”

  Billy broke away from Gil then, his face growing red as the tears flooded his cheeks. “I’m not sorry!” he cried. “My pa was mean to me an’ Ma every day a’ his life. We was gonna hafta leave town, and now we don’t need to! We can stay here, Ma!” He knelt by the couch and buried his face in his mother’s skirts, crying just as she had been.

  Daisy Henderson stroked her son’s rumpled hair as she raised her tearstained face to Gil. “That’s why I’m cryin’, too, Reverend,” she admitted. “I’m feelin’ guilty ’cause I should be grievin’, but what I mostly feel is relief.”

  “No one could blame you for feeling that way, Mrs. Henderson,” he said. “In time, perhaps, you will be able to remember your husband’s better qualities, the good times...” He wondered if the brutality the dead man had exhibited had erased all that from her memory. Surely there had been a time when Henderson had cherished his wife?

  She shrugged. “Maybe someday,” she said. “But right now his body’s at the undertaker’s, waitin’ to be buried. Might you have some time to say some words over him tomorrow? I’ll have to borrow some widow’s weeds, too, I expect, just to be proper.”

  There was a defiant glint in her eyes that hinted she secretly wanted to put on her Sunday best and celebrate her unexpected freedom.

  “I’ll be happy to say some words at the graveside,” he assured her. “And again, I expect folks will understand if you choose not to wear mourning very long. It’s only natural that you’re experiencing a lot of conflicting feelings, Mrs. Henderson, under the circumstances.”