the doors.
“Just follow me,” he said to the woman as he stepped out to the street.
The wind hit him and he hunched his shoulders. He was a God-fearing man and he didn’t believe in superstitions, but he wondered if it was wise to get married with a snowstorm brewing. His first wife would have been calling the whole thing off by now. Maybe the widow was wise to have second thoughts.
Tiny hailstones were still falling as Maeve followed Noah out of the mercantile. The damp cold hit her face and she reached down to scoop Violet into her arms. She wrapped the blanket around both of them, even though she could barely carry her daughter.
A huge amount of snow covered the walkway. Maeve had worn her best leather shoes and didn’t want to ruin them so she began to gingerly place her feet in the trail of footsteps Noah had left behind. These were her church shoes, and, before she left Boston, she had promised Violet that they could go to church when they got settled here. She didn’t want anyone to look down on her and Violet so she’d need the shoes. The church people in Boston had been very particular about what a woman wore on her feet and on her head. That was even before they’d rejected her on account of her late husband.
Maeve had taken only two steps when Noah turned around. The clouds had darkened since they’d gone into the mercantile. He had his Stetson firmly pulled down on his head, but his beard was whiter in the snow.
“Here,” he said as he held out his arms. “I can carry her.”
“I don’t know.” Ever since the stabbing of her father, Violet had been skittish around men. They scared her. Maeve didn’t know how to explain all of that to Noah, though, especially not standing in the freezing wind in the middle of the walkway. “She’s content under the blanket.”
“She’ll still have the shawl if I take her,” Noah said.
Maeve hesitated, but she supposed the girl needed to get used to Noah at some point.
She bent down to whisper to her daughter. “The man’s going to carry you so you’re out of the cold faster. Is that all right?”
It was a moment before she felt her daughter nod her head slightly.
“Thank you,” Maeve said as she held her daughter out.
Noah took the girl and kept walking down the street. Now that Maeve was free to pick up her skirts, she stepped a lot faster behind him. She didn’t want to be too far away from him in case Violet needed her.
Noah waited for her in front of the small white church. She liked it. There was no formal steeple like they had back East. The place looked almost friendly and she saw smoke coming from a chimney in the back. The windows on each side were small and rimmed with frost. She doubted they had been pushed open since the last day of fall. Snow had blown against the casings and collected all around. She believed this church would not turn a woman away because of her husband’s sins.
After she arrived at the church steps, she looked at Noah. “I’ll need a few minutes to talk to you.”
He nodded as he opened the door and gestured for her to go inside ahead of him.
The smell of burning wood greeted her as she walked into the church. The blanket, while still wrapped around her head as best as she could manage, was cold and damp as she stood there. Some of the snowflakes on the wool must have melted while they were in the mercantile. Now a musty scent was beginning to rise from the covering as the heat become more pronounced.
It was dark enough inside the church that her eyes needed to adjust. A cast-iron heating stove stood in the far corner next to a pulpit. That was where the heat was coming from. Student desks were pushed against the sides of the church and, she noticed, there was a blackboard in the front of the room. A faint gray line on the floor, which looked as if it had endured many scrubbings, divided the room. This was Saturday and benches were lined up in the room now. She’d heard these frontier churches often used the same building for a schoolhouse and a church.
Maeve relaxed her grip on the blanket wrapped around her head and felt it fall to her shoulders. As the wool slid off her head, it took her hat with it.
She felt a moment’s unease. Her thick, riotous copper hair had given her trouble in the church she’d attended back East. People seemed to think a woman kept her morals in her hair knot and strands of hers were always coming loose. And that was before her husband had been loudly denounced from the pulpits in Boston. Maeve hadn’t trusted the clergy since then. It was the ministers who had turned her employer against her.
“Welcome.” A man’s voice came from the front of the room and she saw a figure rise from a chair next to the stove. Tall and dressed in black, the white-haired man swayed a little as he walked. “I’m Reverend Olson. I’ve been expecting the two of you.”
She blinked the last of the snowflakes off her eyelids and saw him lean on his cane with one hand as he walked down the side of the benches with the other hand outstretched.
“Excuse me, I should have said the three of you,” he added as he smiled at Violet even though the child had her face pressed against Noah’s chest and couldn’t even see the reverend.
“My wife is going to be here any minute,” the preacher continued, beaming at them all now. “She’ll bring our neighbor Mrs. Barker with her so you have the witnesses you need for a legal marriage certificate.”
“I need to discuss something with Noah first,” Maeve said. She couldn’t marry him without telling him about the baby.
Then she heard a choking sound behind her and turned.
Noah was staring at her. “Your hair.”
Maeve squared her shoulder. If the man had something against red hair, he should have mentioned it earlier.
“I told you I was from Northern Ireland,” she told him defiantly. “Everyone knows a lot of women in that part of the country have hair like this. I can’t change the color. I’ve been working to tame my voice so it sounds American, but there’s no changing my hair.”
Maeve knew she should back down. This man held her future. If he was going to reject her because of her hair, he certainly wouldn’t accept her with a baby.
She’d forgotten Reverend Olson had been talking until she saw that he was waiting patiently at the end of the row of benches. He’d given up on shaking anyone’s hand, but he was watching Noah and her with some interest.
“You haven’t changed your voice as much as you think,” Noah finally said as he sat Violet down on a bench.
Maeve glared at him. “I’ve done my best.”
“There’s music when you speak,” Noah said, his voice clipped as if he was angry, even though she didn’t know why he would be. He had removed his hat and set it down by her daughter. He ran his hand through his damp strands of hair.
“I like to sing,” Maeve said defiantly. She looked into the man’s eyes. The color had darkened and they were almost dark brown instead of green. She didn’t know why she fought when she was afraid, but everything in her seemed to lead her that way.
Noah
