Read Online Mail Order Maternity (Brides of Beckham Book 6) by Kirsten Osbourne - Free Book Online Page B

old.  Losing him broke my heart.”
    “How long were you married?”
    “He died on our six month anniversary.”  She looked down at the quilt, not wanting him to see the sadness in her eyes.  She still missed her husband with everything inside her, but how could she tell him that?  He was her new husband and deserved to be the one she loved, but she couldn’t force herself to fall in love with him any more than she could bring Charlie back.
    “I’m sorry.  I don’t know why, but I was sure you’d been married longer than that.”
    She shook her head.  “No, we weren’t married long at all.”
    “You couldn’t move back in with your parents after he died?  Or with your in-laws?”
    “No, my mother had twins right after I got married.  They don’t have room for the ones still at home, let alone two more.  And my mother-in-law never liked me .  She’s certain that it’s somehow my fault that Charlie died.”
    “What did you have to do with it?  I assume you were in the house working when he died?”  The baffled look on Thomas’s face had her stifling a laugh.
    “She’s just never liked me.  She thought that Charlie should have married someone better than me.  My father is a poor farmer.  Charlie’s father was a farmer, but he wasn’t poor.  He gave us a section of land to farm so we could start out.  We were going to pay him a little every harvest until the land was legally ours.  When Charlie died, they gave me six weeks to find somewhere else to live.”  She shrugged.  “I never told them I was pregnant.  I’m sure if I had they’d have insisted they get to keep the baby.  Charlie was an only child.”
    “Is that why you were in such a hurry to marry and get out of town?”
    She nodded.  “I didn’t know what else to do.  I was looking for a job when I saw the ad for mail order brides.  It seemed like the perfect answer, so here I am.”  She was glad she was there.  It was good to have someone else to lean on again.
    “It must have been hard for you to marry someone else after losing him so suddenly.”  He watched her over the top of his lemonade glass as he took another deep swallow.
    “It was, but it’s the best thing for my child.  He’ll never know anyone but you as his father.”
    Thomas studied her for a minute.  “I promise you, I’ll treat him as if he were my own.”
    “Thank you.”  She knew Thomas would treat him as a father.  The fact that he hadn’t sent her right back to Massachusetts when she’d shown up smelling like vomit had told her a lot about his character.  She looked around her.  “How close are the nearest neighbors?”
    “A few miles down the road.  My brother is our closest neighbor.  We share a boundary with him and his wife.”
    “What’s his wife like?”  She liked the idea of having a sister-in-law close by, because she would need a friend.
    “She’s really nice.  Quiet for the most part.  She’s the midwife around here, and when I talked to her about you coming out she immediately said she’d be here to help with the birth.”
    Esther sighed and looked down at her hands.  “I wish they didn’t know that I was coming out here pregnant.  I wish they thought that you were the baby’s father.”
    “No one is going to think less of you for losing your first husband.”
    “I almost feel like I’ve done something wrong, but I didn’t know what else to do.”  She felt the tears gathering in her eyes.  It was one thing for him to know she was carrying another man’s child, but did the entire community need to know about it as well?
    He shook his head.  “You’ve done nothing wrong.  You did what you had to do for yourself and your child.  And me.  I’m really glad you’re here.”  He took her hand in his, his eyes meeting hers.  “I enjoy having you here.  You make my life better in a lot of different ways.”
    She smiled.  “Thank you.”  She didn’t know if he was happy because he was