The Preacher's Bride Claim. Laurie Kingery

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      Chapter Two

      Thornton turned back, ashen now, his eyes stricken. Alice’s heart went out to him. How very embarrassing, to be accused of hypocrisy in front of his congregation—or at least in front of the few who remained. Alice glanced around, and the faces of those who remained looked as shocked as Thornton himself—and uneasy, too, as if they wondered if LeMaster’s accusations were true. They’d talk about what they had seen, Alice realized, and in short order those who had already left would know what had happened.

      She watched as the preacher visibly pulled himself together and cleared his throat.

      “I—I’m sorry for the unpleasantness, ma’am,” he managed to say. “Such things normally don’t happen at our services. It’s your...your first visit, isn’t it, Miss—Mrs.—?”

      “Miss Alice Hawthorne,” she said. She hadn’t the heart to be evasive with him after what had just transpired. His eyes were hazel—a rich chocolate color mixed with rust and green, like a forest floor in autumn. His accent was Eastern, like her own, but with occasional tinges of a Southern drawl. His tone was deep, wrapping itself around her heart like a warm cloak.

      “It’s nice to meet you, Reverend Thornton. I...I enjoyed the service,” she surprised herself by saying. She merely wanted to make him feel better after the awkward incident, she told herself.

      “You’re new to Boomer Town, aren’t you?” he asked then. “And from the East, I think. New York?”

      She nodded. “Upstate, originally. I grew up on a farm near Albany. More recently I’ve been nursing in New York City, at Bellevue Hospital.” What was wrong with her? She hadn’t meant to say anything more than her name before proceeding on into the sunlight. But there was something compelling about those hazel eyes set in an earnest, scholarly but masculine face that somehow rendered her as talkative as Carrie and Cordelia Ferguson.

      His eyebrows rose, and those eyes warmed. “A nurse? You’ll be much appreciated here, Miss Hawthorne.”

      “Thank you,” she said. “But I’ve put my nursing career behind me. I—”

      “The Lord must have sent you to us,” Elijah Thornton went on, as if he hadn’t heard what she had said. “We don’t have any sort of doctor here. I go around and pray with people who are ill, but they need so much more than I can provide, Miss Hawthorne.”

      “But I’ve come to Oklahoma to farm,” she told him firmly. “My mother is not young, and she’ll need all my help, once we have our claim.”

      “Is she here now? In Boomer Town, I mean?”

      Alice shook her head. “No, I’ll send for her once I’ve managed to erect some sort of dwelling. And now I must be going, Reverend,” she added firmly.

      “Miss Hawthorne,” Reverend Thornton continued, “please consider what I’ve said about nursing here. Pray about it, if you would. It’s not that there’s any great amount of sickness and injuries, but occasionally the need is great.”

      “I will, Reverend. Good day.”

      The man didn’t know how to take no for an answer, Alice thought, as she entered the muddy main street of the tent city. And yet, Elijah Thornton was not the least bit overbearing. There was something very kind in his twinkling hazel eyes.

      He was certainly nothing like Maxwell Peterson. If only she’d met a man like the reverend in New York....

      Still, she’d made her decision, and there was no use dwelling on “if only.” Marriage and family were not for her. She’d keep her independence and take care of her mother by working the land. No man was going to take over her life and divert her from that goal. Perhaps it was best if she did not return to the daily services at the Boomer Town Chapel, where she would have to listen to and look at Reverend Elijah Thornton—who did not wear a wedding ring, she’d noticed, nor had there been a wife hovering near him.

      Yet the idea of not returning to the chapel sent a pang of regret through her. It had felt good to sing hymns with other Christians and to hear the preacher’s deep, resonant voice praying for all of them. But could any threat to her independence be worth it? If she got to know people better at the chapel, they’d start nosing into her business. They’d want to know why a decent-appearing unmarried lady like herself was here in the territory all alone. They’d suspect she was running from something—and they’d be right.

      Perhaps it was better to keep to herself. There were only three weeks to go till the Land Rush. Surely she could manage to lead a solitary existence among the crowded tent СКАЧАТЬ