Read Online The Bride's House by Sandra Dallas - Free Book Online

wanting to ask you.”
    Nealie stiffened, because she didn’t want Charlie claiming another evening before Will had a chance to ask. She wondered how she could turn him down without being rude.
    When Nealie didn’t encourage him, Charlie fidgeted. “You see…” He cleared his throat and moved around. “You see, Miss Nealie … that is … I’ve been thinking.” He stopped and leaned over the table. “I never liked anybody as much as you. I work hard, and I keep myself clean, and I don’t drink or chew. My claim looks good, and I’ve got a little money put aside. And I own my cabin.” He ran his finger around his collar and blurted out, “Would you marry me?” Charlie looked askance then, and his face turned red, as if he’d uttered an obscenity. “I never asked that of anybody before.”
    “Mr. Dumas—” Nealie replied, her eyes wide. But at that moment, the waiter removed their plates, and took out a small brush to sweep the crumbs around Charlie’s place into a silver dustpan. He left, and the two avoided looking at each other. Nealie’s face was on fire, and she had a powerful need to dip her napkin into her water glass and rub off the heat. Instead, she stared at the tablecloth, noting a tiny hole that would have to be mended or else the cloth would begin to ravel. With her fingernail, she worried the hole, pulling a thread loose.
    “Did you hear what I said, Miss Nealie?” Charlie asked.
    Nealie’s eyes felt as heavy as flatirons as she raised them to face Charlie. “Mr. Dumas, I…”
    He leaned farther forward, his forearms on the table, watching her.
    Nealie tried to think of something gracious to say and suddenly remembered words from a story in Mrs. Travers’s Peterson’s Magazine . “I am mindful of the honor,” she said, not remembering the rest of the sentence, so she thought a moment and continued. “Well, I guess I’m not ready to get married. I haven’t been in Georgetown so long, and I don’t want to get tied down yet. There’s things I want to do before I get married.”
    “What things?”
    Nealie shrugged, wishing her mind worked faster. “Just things. You know, things.”
    “You’re not saying no, are you?” Charlie held his breath.
    She was saying no, the girl thought, but she didn’t want to hurt the man’s feelings. “I guess I’m not saying yes,” she told him.
    Charlie let out his breath in a whoosh and grinned at her. “I’ll just wait, then. I’m not so good at waiting, but I guess I’ll just have to do that.” He was so happy that Nealie was glad she hadn’t told him outright she wouldn’t have him.
    The waiter set down their ice, and Charlie watched as Nealie picked up her spoon, not gripping it in her fist but holding it awkwardly in her fingers. Charlie tried to copy her but dropped the spoon.
    The sound made Nealie jump, and she looked around the room to see if anyone was staring. But nobody seemed to notice. She ate her dessert with her eyes downcast, not looking to see how Charlie ate. When she was finished, she stood up, saying she needed fresh air, because the room seemed hot and stuffy to her. Charlie paid the bill and followed Nealie to the door. “We could walk around a little, if you want to,” he said, as Nealie stood in the doorway, fanning her face.
    “I need to cool down,” she said.
    So they took a roundabout way back to the boardinghouse, going up the hill and circling back down to the bride’s house on Taos Street, Nealie’s favorite stop.
    “I guess that’s going to be the prettiest house in Georgetown,” she said. “The yard’s big enough for an ice-cream social.”
    “I wonder who’s going to live there.”
    “A bride,” Nealie said. “It’s a bride’s house. Only a bride can live there. She’d plant lilacs all around it, and you could smell them every summer.” Nealie turned away so that Charlie wouldn’t suspect that she was thinking about Will Spaulding, instead of him, as the bridegroom. It almost