Reverend Collins, I’d like you to meet Alfred Streeter and his daughter, Brigit,” Milo Farnsworth shouted at them.
Brigit’s heart, which had been busily fluttering in her throat, seemed to rise even farther and take over her speech. She nodded mutely, unable to take her eyes off the minister’s face, yet at the same time completely incapable of looking directly into his coffee-colored eyes for fear of what her own eyes would reveal.
This is ridiculous, she scolded herself. You’ve just met the man. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her shaking fingers as she reached to clasp his hand.
“I’m very delighted to meet you,” he said, and she found herself returning his easy smile.
She’d always loved Archer Falls, always felt that she was so much a part of the prairie that its rich soil was part of her blood and bone. But she had never been as glad to be standing where she was as at that moment in the newly painted church with late-spring sunlight streaming through the windows—and holding Peter Collins’s hand.
She was suddenly aware of how she’d flown into her clothes this morning, having overslept by at least an hour, ripped a brush through her knotted locks, and quickly bound her hair into a braided bun.
Her shoes were probably irretrievably scuffed. Brigit looked down at the leather-shod toes that peeked from under her blue and white calico skirt and grimaced. Not only were her shoes dusty, but also one of them was untied and the lacing hopelessly frayed. She tucked the offending shoe behind the heel of her other foot and attempted a smile.
This man had the speaking skills that Lars Nilsen lacked. He wasn’t wreathed in odorous pipe smoke like Jerrod Stiles. And he most certainly was nowhere near as old as Arthur Smith.
No, the Reverend Peter Collins was about as perfect a piece of work as God could have made. She could only pray that his heart was as good.
“I’m very delighted to meet you.” She felt stupid and quite dense. He’d certainly think she was not very bright if all she could do was parrot back his line.
His smile was a candle in a dark room. “I’m looking forward to being here.”
His fingers moved in her grip, and she realized that she was still holding his hand. She dropped it as if it were on fire. Quickly she mumbled a few incoherent words and turned, nearly tripping on her shoelace as it caught on her heel.
No wonder he was smiling. She was a foolish, foolish young woman. He was so elegant, so cultured, so perfect, and she was nothing more than a prairie chicken scratching in the dust.
Her father filled the uneasy silence on the ride home with a running commentary on the reactions to the new minister.
“That was quite the picture, let me tell you,” he said to Brigit as Fulton pulled them along the lane. “Milo Farnsworth was puffed up, proud as a pigeon; and you know, I think I heard him claim responsibility for the Reverend Collins’s presence here.”
He slowed the wagon to look at a deer that wandered out of the shelterbelt. “Of course, Milo was part of the committee that requested a minister, so I do suppose he has some credit due him on that.”
She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Her mind was too occupied to manage speech at the moment.
He glanced at his daughter. “Remember, he’s a bachelor.”
“Mr. Farnsworth?” Brigit looked at him in confusion. “No, he’s not.”
“I didn’t mean Milo,” her father said. “The new minister isn’t married.”
Suddenly the day didn’t seem as bright as it had. Couldn’t she simply meet Reverend Collins without her father and who knew who else pushing them together? Didn’t he think she was capable of finding her own sweetheart without his interference?
“He’s not married,” she snapped, “and interestingly enough, neither am I.”
Her father didn’t respond to her outburst. He merely reached across the wagon and patted her hand. “We farmers can only trust in our Lord for our daily bread, but He trusts us with the seed.”
She loved her father dearly, but right now figuring out what he was talking about required more thinking than she was willing to do. Somehow, though, she knew this had to do with Reverend Collins.
She should guard her heart closely with the new minister, because there was no way he’d want a farming woman like her with calluses on her hands and no social graces at all. The gap between them was as wide as the Mississippi River.
Brigit sighed. At last someone who was handsome and charming and educated had come to Archer Falls, and she had no choice but to look the other way.
Her father had quit talking and was now singing softly. It was a hymn that she’d grown up with, “Rock of Ages.” He’d hummed her to sleep with the melody many nights when she was a child, and it never failed to calm her.
Even now, she felt the tightness in her throat relax and her heart ease. God was good. He had given them a minister.
He would give her love, too—in time.
All He asked of her was patience.
Peter placed his new Bible on his bureau. It was the one that the presiding elder had given him as a first-assignment gift. The rich burgundy leather cover had his name stamped in gold letters on the front. He’d never had anything as fine, he had assured the Reverend Armstrong at the time, but that wasn’t quite true.
His fingers ran across the words HOLY BIBLE on an older copy that was also on his bureau. The black leather was cracked, the pages were dog-eared and bent, but it meant more to him than the new volume.
This Bible had belonged to his father, and before that, his father’s father. He opened the cover and let his fingertips trail across the notes that three generations had added.
The last page was the Our Family page. There were his grandparents’ names, and his parents’, and their children’s. His brothers and sisters and their spouses were on the family tree, along with the “twigs,” as he liked to call his six nephews and nieces.
But his branch was empty save for his name. No spouse. No twigs.
The only corner of his heart that wasn’t filled with joy moved sadly—yet with hope.
Maybe here he’d find his love, and his tree would grow and bloom on this prairie.
God, he prayed silently, dearest Lord, might I find love here? Is the woman Thou meanest for me—is she here?
The image of a young woman, her hair the color of orange marmalade, floated into his mind.
Brigit Streeter. Brigit Collins?
The tiny empty corner of his heart seemed to sigh with a sense of hope.
If only Brigit hadn’t decided to take a late afternoon run through the cottonwoods on Fulton’s back. But the house had been too closed in for her. Spring was already nearly over. Summer was lurking behind every leafing tree, ready to leap out and embrace her.
The new minister had been there for five weeks already, and his sermon that morning had been about enjoying the beauty of God’s creation. She had gone out of the house, not planning on doing anything beyond sitting on the log seats and doing exactly what Reverend Collins had suggested, when she discovered that one of the harbingers of summer had already arrived—the voracious mosquito.
She quickly slapped that insect into history and ran into the barn to saddle up Fulton. Mosquitoes were already in his stable area, and his tail switched furiously in a mostly futile attempt to keep the pests away.
Within minutes they were one being, woman and horse, and the memory of the nasty mosquitoes was left behind them.
These were the times she loved the most, when she could shake herself free of the responsibility of house and farm. Fulton seemed to enjoy it, too, and Brigit allowed herself the fancy that he was imagining himself running free across the prairie with no saddle on his back, no plow fastened to him, and only the wild grasses to feed upon.
At last they both tired, and at the end of the farthest tree line, they turned back, moving in a companionable canter as the ever-present wind cooled the sweat.
The mosquitoes found them immediately. Brigit brushed and swatted, swatted and brushed until they arrived home and she could lead Fulton into the barn and clean him up.
Voices were coming from the house, and Brigit glanced at the wagon that was parked in front of their house. It was probably one of her father’s friends come to chew over the events of the day.
Fulton was, without a doubt, the best horse in the world, and Brigit told him so as she curried and fed him. “I wish I could do something about the mosquitoes, old friend. Someday someone will invent something that really works to make them go away.”
She gave him one final pat and left the barn.
The voices still floated from inside the house in a quiet, murmuring stream. Automatically she began separating them. Her father. Mary Rose’s father, Calvin Groves. But who did the third voice belong to?
She pulled the straggling bun out of her hair as she walked toward the house. There was no point in trying to keep it in place. The ride had effectively torn the hairpins from their moorings so that the chignon trailed down one side.
Men surely had it nice, she thought as she tried to untangle her hair from the pins. Just snip-snip and they were done. It certainly would be wonderful if she could have short hair, too. Her life would be much easier: no snarls to try to comb through, no trying to braid and wrap her hair behind her back.
“Hello, Papa,” she sang as she stumbled into the house, her eyes not used to the darkness of the inside after the glare of the afternoon sunshine. A pin fell, and she dropped to her knees to find it. Her fingers searched blindly; against the floral background of the rug, it was nearly impossible to see the pin. “Fulton—”
Her words stopped mid-throat as she realized who the third voice belonged to.
The Reverend Peter Collins was in her house, and she was crawling on the floor, her hair a matted mess, her dress stained and wrinkled. Plus she smelled like a sweating horse.
Lovely, she thought. Just lovely.
There was no hope for her. None. At least, she consoled herself as she stood and worked up a smile for him, there was one good thing to be said for all this.
It couldn’t get any worse.