Love by the Letter (3 page)

Dex had never looked her way. She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut.
I’m pitiful.

A throat cleared. Then a second time. Opening her eyes, she found everyone staring at her.

“What did you say?” Patricia looked bewildered, though still cute.

“Um . . .” Had she said that out loud? Oh no. What rhymed with
pitiful
?
Visible, predictable, laughable
? Yes,
laughable
would work. “Nothing.”

She evidently needed further education. Her brain must be going soft if her mouth ran off like that.

“I’m actually here to see Rachel.” Dex turned his soft green eyes on her. “I, um, need to ask you a question. But I don’t have much time before the wedding ceremony this afternoon. Are you going?”

“Maybe,” she whispered. She could hardly hear herself over the heartbeat in her ears.

“We’ll excuse ourselves.” Patricia stood and beckoned at Neil before throwing her sister a wink. Romantic, silly girl. Dex wasn’t here to propose or anything. But then, why else would he be squirming so much?

And all of a sudden, it was hard to breathe.

Neil glanced over his shoulder from the doorway and made a point to swing the parlor door wide open.

The second her brother’s back disappeared, Dex stood, walked a pace, then pivoted toward her. His chin jutted, and he put his hands behind his back and splayed his legs wide.

She sat up straighter.

He closed his eyes and sucked in his lips. As if he were about to bow his knee and declare himself her subject.

Should she stand? She rubbed her sweaty palms on her skirt.

“This is a rather hard thing for me to ask, but I don’t have any other choice.” He cleared his throat. “Or rather, you’re my only choice.”

Well, if this was a marriage proposal, Dex was about to give Mr. Darcy a lesson on how to thoroughly offend and insult a woman while asking for her hand.

“So I’m going to ask before I change my mind.” Dex finally focused on her. “I need help—reading help—like Allen does. Would you mind giving me a few writing lessons before I leave?”

Dex’s hands were frigid, so he stuck one of his big mitts against his blazing hot neck. He’d expected a look of derision, pity . . . something when he’d divulged his big secret, but Rachel only blinked.

Had she heard him? She appeared a bit ill actually.

Maybe she figured he was too old to learn to read. Perhaps she was scrambling in her brain for a polite way to decline. His gut quivered, but he dropped his hand and straightened as if he hadn’t just forced himself to expose the one secret he’d hoped she’d never discover . . . and the one secret he wished she’d already known.

Maybe she wouldn’t care. Maybe she could look past his inability to read and . . . no, better not think any more in that vein. She wouldn’t want to marry a man who probably couldn’t spell her name.

Rachel’s face cleared with a little shake of her head, and her lips bunched in thought. She pushed herself off the settee, walked over, and tipped her head back a little to see him.

He should make sure to inquire about any potential brides’ heights. He’d need a tall woman like Rachel since he’d only have to lean a little to kiss—

“What are you looking at?” She swiped her thumb across her lower lip.

He snapped his eyes up to hers. “Nothing, ma’am.” He needed to get a hold of himself. He’d done it for years, he could do it now.

“Ma’am?” Her face scrunched like Lily’s did when Grant brought up her cooking failures.

“I mean Miss Oliver.”

She folded her arms across her ample chest. Shucks, why were his eyes betraying him? He forced his focus back up on her face.

“I won’t teach you anything if you treat me like a schoolmarm. You’re older than me and more than my equal.”

Not equally smart, she’d find that out sure enough.

“Rachel, then.” He drug up a smile. Even if she skittered off like a barn cat when she heard him read, he could try to summon some charm to make up for his stupidity. “So that means you’ve got time for me?”

She frowned. “You’re leaving Sunday. That doesn’t give us much time.”

“I’ve got the wagon packed already, so I’ve got nothing pressing for awhile.”

“Then come over here.” She skirted around the couch and opened the shutters. The afternoon sunlight shot through the floating dust. “Sit down, and I’ll tell Papa what we’re doing.”

“What, you mean . . . now?” He ran a finger along the opening at the top of his shirt. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all. If she asked him to read something right now, he’d stumble all over himself. He needed time to practice.

“Did you have something in particular you needed to read?”

He took a step back toward the door. “Not exactly, it’s just that . . . I—” He fumbled to catch the fancy lamp that careened to the edge of the table. He was going to have a bruise on the back of his leg from banging the table corner, but he wouldn’t rub it.

She smiled so wide, he lost his breath. She’d never smiled at him like that before.

“There’s no need to run away from me.” The lilt in her voice suddenly died.

He glanced over his shoulder to see if her father or Neil were scowling at them or something. Neil would notice right away he wasn’t acting right. And he didn’t want anyone to realize how much he’d fallen for a girl who’d never have him.

But the hallway was silent and empty.

Frowning, she waved him toward a chair at a small table. “I won’t make this harder than it is, I promise. Allen comes home every night in one piece, doesn’t he?”

If he continued to act like a pup afraid of his own shadow, she’d have plenty more to laugh at than how thoroughly he was about to
murder the English language. “If this is the time you’ve got, I guess I’ll take it.”

“Good.” She turned and shuffled out the door.

He sat and focused on breathing.

Come on Dex, you know why you’re doing this—it needs to be done. Though you should’ve gotten help earlier . . . much earlier.

Rachel and Neil’s voices mingled in a far corner of the house over the clatter of dishes. He glanced at the papers strewn on the table. Letters mixed in with numbers and math symbols were written in neat rows. Allen had said she did math with the alphabet, but he hadn’t actually believed him. Math with the alphabet? Who’d heard of such tripe?

What did those letters do anyway? Rachel’s fancy math didn’t make a lick of sense, so he looked around the room. Her father evidently made enough money in all his business ventures to do quite well. A fine piano, frilly doilies, fancy lamp shades. He turned to stare out the window, only able to see the brick wall of the house next door.

He could provide Rachel with much prettier vistas in Kansas, but a woman who lived in a house like this wouldn’t be content with a hovel that might not even have a window, let alone a glass one.

Did Patricia know what kind of house Everett intended to build? He couldn’t imagine that blond bundle of giggles in a soddy. He’d have to question the next lady he wrote about her living condition expectations.

Rachel glided back in and grabbed two books off the shelf. They were thick, too thick. “Would you prefer a seafaring adventure or a haunted house? Or rather, what the heroine imagines is a haunted house.”

Couldn’t he start with a much smaller book? He glanced around the shelves but they all seemed bulky. “Ah . . . the sea.”

“
Robinson Crusoe
it is.” Did she actually skip a little on the way back to the shelf? She put away the thinner book, twirled, and slid the larger one across the table before sitting. “Go ahead and read the first page.”

He clamped his hand over the book to hide his shaking and dragged it toward him. Curse the courage that had prodded him to come today. He flipped past the exorbitant amount of fine blank pages to get to chapter one, then pressed the book flat. He grimaced at his sweaty hands and stopped to wipe his palms on his pant legs.

Why did it have to be such fine print? The lines wouldn’t stop congealing, and concentrating harder wasn’t keeping the words still.

This would be more taxing than the time Miss Christmore threatened him with a ruler if he didn’t come to the front of the class to read. He hadn’t been able to squirm his way out of every fix back then, and it didn’t look like he could now—and this time, he’d asked for it.

“Read aloud, so I can hear you.”

He cleared his throat to keep from laughing. Did she think he’d been reading in his head? He hadn’t even pinned down the first word.

“Don’t be afraid to be wrong; I can’t help unless I can discover a pattern to what you’re misreading, so don’t try too hard.”

Easy for her to say. Hard was the only way he got any reading done. “All right.” He focused on the first page and tried to breathe calmly. The first line proved no trouble. He wiped his brow. But the second?

“. . . my Father being a foree—foray . . .” How was he supposed to say that? He had no hope of getting through this book with any pride.

“It’s all right if you get the word wrong. But on this one, it might be better to guess at what you think it might be. Use the other words in the sentence to help you.”

He was supposed to guess? How was that reading? Her warm fingers settled on his, and his jitters jumped double time.

She smiled. “I need to hear what’s giving you trouble.”

He had trouble with everything, especially the feel of her silky skin against his calloused knuckles.

With a start, she snatched her hand back and stuffed it below the table with her other. “And I won’t correct you since that’d make it harder for you to concentrate.”

That she sat close enough to hold his hand was enough to mess with his focus. If he didn’t stop looking at her, he’d get no reading done. He pulled the book closer and stared harder.

“. . . my Father being a foregg—foreggner.” That wasn’t even a word. He looked again.

“No need to fix anything, I’d rather you not think too hard and just read.” She scooted closer and peered at the page over his arm.

The floral scent of her hair was making a muddle of his brain. He could barely think at all. How did she expect him to read this
way? “I’m sorry, but I can’t keep going until I figure it out. It might be important.”

“Then go ahead.” Rachel bit her tongue and moved her eyes off the page to keep from saying the word for him.

For a second, their eyes locked, but he returned his focus to the book, folding back the front cover as if strangling
Robinson Crusoe
with his giant hands would wrestle the story into submission. “Just tell me what the word is if I’m supposed to guess.”

“Foreigner.”

“. . . foreigner of Brem . . . en?” He looked up at her.

She nodded. “Keep going.”

After he started reading fairly fluidly, she noted he omitted or misread simple words like
a
and
the,
and apparently his brain skipped the middle letters in some words and substituted another word with the same beginning and ending sounds, like
ramping
instead of
rambling,
even if it didn’t quite make sense. Just like Allen.

She stared at his profile. His jaw was awfully tense for reading aloud. The slight crick in his nose she’d never noticed before didn’t detract from his overall handsomeness, but rather added to it.

He stumbled on a word and cut his eyes toward her. A blush crawled up her neck. She quickly located his place on the page and pointed to it, hoping to distract him from her heightened color. “That would be
competent
.”

So much for promising not to correct him.

“Competent.” He growled. “Now I’ve lost my place.” His finger started at the top of the page and slid down each line until he found
competent
, then he started reading again.

Each word hummed in his low bass voice, and she couldn’t help but smile at some of his mistakes. Oh, why hadn’t he come to her earlier when she might have had time to help?

And maybe catch his eye.

What other man in town was as responsible and hardworking as Dex? Livelier girls might have been turned off by how mellow and relaxed he was, but he was the most mature man around by far. And his handsome face wasn’t in the least disappointing.

She shook her head; she was more enamored than ever. This spur-of-the-moment decision to tutor him would only end in heartache—hers.

“So it’s not
strongly
?” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he squinted at the page and pulled the book closer.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t shaking my head at you. It is
strongly
, as you said.” She reached out a reassuring hand but stopped herself. She’d never touched a man outside of her family—well, except for occasionally being helped down stairs or onto a buggy seat—yet she’d almost laid a hand on him a second time. Clenching her fingers, she blew out a breath.

He shut the book. “I’m sorry I’m doing so poorly. This was a bad idea.”

“Oh no.” And her hand was on his again. But if she snatched it back, she’d draw undo attention to where her hand ought not to be—again.

Surely her touch reassured him, though the opposite sensation coursed through her skin: a warm, prickling awareness mixed with cold shivers. “I’m afraid my mind wandered. I was only reprimanding myself.”

“And what were you reprimanding yourself for?”

“Is it hot in here?” She jumped from her seat and went to the window. “Spring seems a bit muggy this year, don’t you think?” She lifted the sash and let the entirely too cold air in. Suppressing a shiver, she ignored the impulse to slide the window back down.

“Do all women have malfunctioning furnaces under their skin?” He chuckled, the sound drawing out the gooseflesh already decorating her arms. “Mother often fought me over leaving windows open and then got mad at me later for shutting them.”

Cupping the side of her neck, Rachel looked askance at the man driving her internal furnace up a notch past normal. Or maybe five notches. “Your mother was a lovely woman. I don’t think I ever gave you my condolences.”

“That’s all right.” He abruptly stood and rambled over. “You do look flushed. I should head home so you can lie down.”

She took a step back. She’d seen his tricks before. The few times Miss Christmore had asked him to read in front of the class, he distracted the teacher with some outlandish behavior that earned
him a spell in the corner or made everyone laugh so the teacher forgot she’d called him forward as she tried to regain control.

Miss Christmore hadn’t seen through his tactics, but Rachel had. However, with his deep green eyes only a foot away and that strand of brown hair falling across his forehead, she understood how easily a woman could be distracted.

Dex reached up and tugged the mischievous strand back into place. “I think I’ve lost you.”

No, Dex. You can’t lose what you never wanted.
Pushing away from the windowsill, she returned to the table. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly.” And it was time to do so. If Dex hadn’t wanted anything to do with her before, he didn’t now. She was still, maddeningly, under the spell of his handsome face.

But it was time to put away childhood fantasies—a man with homesteading dreams would never consider marrying a girl who’d spent more time translating Latin than learning how to bake a variety of breads.