CHAPTER 1

THE HOT SUNSHINE of the summer Thursday morning caught on the glassware and flower petals that gave special significance to the corner of the Miller kitchen where the eck table stood.

All that was needed was the bridal couple and their attendants to begin the special wedding feast where John and Tabitha Miller would receive the blessings and well wishes of both family and community.

But the wedding ceremony still went on, as it normally did, for a gut four hours, and Matt Miller was bored. He let his gaze roam over the profile of his handsome big bruder and then briefly paid attention to the sound of Bishop Esch’s exhortation, only to idly glance across the row at his fellow attendant and the one he was to escort for the day—Letty Mast.

The girl’s plump cheeks were flushed a becoming pink and her small hands were clenched in her lap, as she sat, as attuned as a baby hare to every moment of her best friend’s wedding. I’ve never realized how pretty Letty is, Matt mused to himself, but then something went subtly wrong. Letty’s face drained of color and she wobbled slightly in her hard-backed chair.

She fell, like a wilting rose bud, slightly sideways, fast destined for the floor, but Matt was faster. He caught her neatly, ignoring the circle of whispers behind him, and pressed the back of his hand to her forehead as he lowered her gently to the wooden floor. “Fainted only,” he pronounced quietly, knowing Bishop Esch would continue with the ceremony whether one girl fainted or ten.

“She needs to eat,” Matt hissed over his shoulder, aware that the girl had been most likely too focused on her duties as attendant to have any breakfast. Someone handed him a morsel in a white cloth napkin. Pie, he thought. Gut. He pressed some crumbs to her lips, and she opened her wide brown eyes in both dawning surprise and dismay.

“Blueberry pie . . . ach, my . . .”

Matt smiled down at her. “Oh, my, indeed.”