moved in. Have you made a decision about the strap?” She held it in the flat of her palm.
“What?” He’d been concentrating so much on her appearance that he hadn’t really heard what she’d said.
“Mended or replaced with new? Your britchen strap.” She raised her eyebrows. “The reason you came to my stepfather’s harness shop?”
“Um...whatever you think.” He pressed his hands on the counter, leaning closer to her, and on impulse asked, “Lovey, would you let me drive you home from the singing this Friday night? It’s going to be at Asa King’s.”
“It’s Lovage and I would not.” She wrote his name on the tag in small, perfect print. “Come back in five business days and this will be ready.” She wrote on a receipt pad on the counter and ripped off the page.
“Why won’t you let me take you home from the singing? Have you got a steady beau?”
“Ne, I don’t have a beau. I won’t go home with you from the singing because there is no singing at the Kings. It was canceled.”
He grinned. “Fair enough.” He thought fast, unwilling to walk away without some commitment from her. “Wait, there’s a softball game Saturday night. At the bishop’s farm. How about that? Men against the women. You do play, don’t you? You look like a pitcher.”
“Catcher,” she replied. She handed him the receipt.
“So...is that a maybe you’ll let me take you home Saturday night?”
She smiled sweetly. “Ne. It is not. Thank you for your business, Marshall Byler. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take this back to the workroom.”
“Will you at least think about riding home with me?” he called after her as she walked away.
She didn’t respond, but Marshall wasn’t in the least bit discouraged. She’d come around. He knew she would. The girls always did. “Nice meeting you, Lovey Stutzman. See you Saturday.” He rapped his knuckles on the wooden counter a final time.
“Lovage,” she called over her shoulder.
Marshall was still grinning when he walked out of the harness shop and back to the wagon, where Sam waited for him.
“What are you so happy about?” Sam asked, looking up at his big brother.
“I’m more than happy. I’m ecstatic, blissful, elated.” Marshall climbed up into the wagon and took the reins. “Because I’ve just met the woman I’m going to marry.”
* * *
In the workroom in the rear of Benjamin’s harness shop, Lovage stopped beside the worktable where one of her sisters was using an oversize treadle sewing machine to stitch a strap on a new halter. Ginger, twenty-three, was two years younger than Lovage and twin to Bay Laurel.
Ginger paused, glanced up at her and offered a teasing smile. “I see you met Marshall Byler.”
Lovage dropped the britchen strap on the long plank table. “It can be fixed, but you might be better off just making him a new one. Look at it and see what you think.”
Preferring harness-making to housework and minding children, Ginger had worked in Benjamin’s shop for the past three years, first in New York where they used to live and now in Hickory Grove. Her small hands were deft at fashioning leather into everything from bridles to belts to dog leashes. Ginger may have been a woman, but she’d quickly become Benjamin’s most skilled leather worker, surpassing even his sons.
“He’s cute, isn’t he?” Ginger’s green eyes twinkled mischievously. “If I’d known that was him ringing the bell, I’d have waited on him myself.”
“You know him?”
“Every Amish girl of marrying age in the county knows Marshall Byler. Wishes he’d ask her out.”
“You, too?” Lovage asked, looking down at Ginger, who was seated on a wooden stool.
Ginger lowered her gaze to her work at hand. She lifted the foot of the sewing machine, adjusted the leather and dropped the foot again. “Are you going to let him take you home after the softball game?”
Lovage gazed at her sister.
Ginger was the prettiest of the Stutzman girls, blonde and green-eyed. And she was a flirt if there ever was such a thing among Old Order Amish. Back in New York, several mothers and a matchmaker had contacted their mother inquiring as to Ginger’s availability as a possible match for their sons. Apparently, half the young men in Cattaraugus County, New York, were smitten with her. Rosemary had declared her second daughter too young to marry yet and had then whisked her off to Delaware.
“You were eavesdropping on my conversation with Marshall Byler?” Lovage asked, not even a little bit surprised.
“Maybe.” Ginger nibbled on her lower lip. “From this stool, I hear all sorts of things in the front shop. Last week I heard that Mary Aaron Troyer is trying to match her twin boys with twin sisters from Kentucky.” She shrugged. “Not sure they’re keen on the idea. Are you going to the softball game?”
“You’re certainly interested in my comings and goings.” Lovage crossed her arms over her chest, pretending to be put out with the whole discussion. The truth was she was flattered by Marshall’s attention. Though she didn’t quite understand it. Not many boys expressed interest in her. She wasn’t pretty enough or flirty enough. If a boy wanted to walk out with a Stutzman girl, Ginger was his choice every time. “And no one invited me.”
Ginger ran the length of stitch and when the sewing machine was quiet again, she said, “It sounded to me as if Marshall Byler just invited you. Everyone’s invited, anyway. It’s a neighborhood game. We’ve gone before. Sometimes boys from Rose Valley even come.” She snipped off a bit of loose thread from the halter with a pair of homemade scissors. “We play at Bishop Simon’s house. He has a good field, even a backstop. He’s nice. Jolly. And not too long-winded on Sundays. You’ll love his wife, Annie. She’ll make chocolate whoopie pies with peanut butter filling for the snack table. Wait until you taste them.” Ginger took a breath and went on without waiting for Lovage to respond. “You should accept Marshall’s offer.”
“I certainly should not.” Now Lovage was slightly peeved with her favorite sister for listening to what should have been a private conversation. Or maybe embarrassed. “I don’t even know him—don’t care to.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind if I ride home with him.” Ginger tilted her head and giggled. “Will you?”
“You’re impossible.” Lovage tried to sound vexed, but it was all she could do not to laugh at her sister’s boldness. She knew she should admonish Ginger for eavesdropping, but with four sisters, and now a houseful of brothers, who could expect privacy? It was impossible. And she could never be cross with one of her sisters for long. Certainly not over a boy. “You like all the single young men,” she reminded her.
“Most, but not all,” Ginger agreed. “Nothing wrong with liking the boys, so long as I remember everything Mam taught me about protecting my reputation.” Her sister’s amusement brought out her dimples. “I think Marshall is fun. Bay does, too. I know she’d
