A Bride For The Asking -- (on hold)

Chapter 3--The Letter

Dreams of finding a husband and home had slowly disappeared when the dreary months had passed with no answer to her advertisement. Rose had watched their meager supplies to live on over the winter disappear, while she had waited for a letter, any letter, until now Rose and Aunt Mary found themselves closer to starvation than they‘d ever been, with the coming of Spring; her hopes long gone of ever getting an answer. It had been money wasted they could have well used to better purpose.

The only thing that had kept them from literally starving to death was the mustard, collard, and turnip greens that had sprouted, volunteer, in those forsaken cotton fields among the weeds and stray cotton bushes.

Vegetables from abandoned, once closely tended, garden plots of their former slaves, had gone to seed long ago. Those seeds, scattered by the winds, grew where they fell. They mostly fell in those war-ravaged fields. Rose, and her Aunt Mary had gathered them gladly, though they’d been a flavorless meal, without even a hint of pork fat, most of the time, to season them with, but they had survived.

It was nearly noon when they reached Piney Creek. The morning chill had been chased away by a warm April sun, and Rose had slipped her shawl off hours ago. She grabbed it off the wagon seat and re-tied it before stepping down from the wagon outside the hotel. It was going to be awkward helping Aunt Mary down without disturbing her broken arm, and was glad of Ben Johnson’s assistance as he slopped his way across the muddy street when he saw their arrival.

"Mornin’ Mr. Johnson," called Aunt Mary from up on the wagon seat.

"How’s the arm, Mary?" Ben asked, squinting up at her, one calloused hand shading his leathery face against the sun.

"Good Morning," echoed Rose, tying His Highness’s reigns to a hitching rail.

"Mornin’ Rose. How ya’ll been getting along?" Ben answered, both hands firmly around her aunt’s waist, as she backed awkwardly down off the wagon.

"We’re doin. Can’t complain," answered Rose, heading to the back of the wagon.

"Thank’e kindly, Ben," said Aunt Mary, a little breathless from her exertion and being touched so intimately, when she reached the muddy ground. She smiled weakly, fighting pain, and adjusted the sling which had shifted during her descent from the wagon. She gritted her teeth silently against the throbbing in her arm where she had disturbed it while adjusting the sling.

"Takes time fer bones to knit, Mary," commented Ben kindly, having noticed her grimace of pain. "That wuz a bad break you got. Healin‘ alright?"

Without asking permission, he examined the fingers sticking out of the sling, looking for swelling or discoloration. This caused Aunt Mary to blush over the top of his grizzled head as he bent close to her hand. She was close enough to see several frizzled ends of curls where sparks had singed his hair.

"It pains me some. But I’ll live, I reckon." Aunt Mary shifted away from the kindly blacksmith. "Ain’t no need to fash y’self with it. Y’ve done more’n enough, already." It had been a while since she found herself standing so close to a man.

There was an intimacy in being close enough to see those singed curls, and she felt the heat rising from her throat and spreading across her cheeks. She eased her fingers out of Ben’s grip and turned towards the back of the wagon to hide an unfamiliar blush.

"Don’t try to do that by yourself, Rose," Aunt Mary admonished, lifting her skirt with her good hand out of the mud as she squelched to the back of the wagon where Rose had dragged the bulging bags of clean sheets.

"Go tell Mr. Goodman we’re here with the washin.’ He’ll send Travis out to help tote‘m in."

A bell tinkled merrily over her head when Rose stuck her head through the door of the hotel. Aware of her muddy shoes and hem, she stopped there, not wanting to track mud onto the intricately-designed rug placed invitingly just inside the door.