Butterfly Bride~Hand-me-Down Bride's Little Sister

 
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“Waiting for someone, Miss?” A tall, good-looking American swept off his hat in an exaggerated gesture. He had short brown hair, a tanned face, blue eyes, and a neatly trimmed moustache. He wore a yellow waistcoat with a golden pocket watch chain.

“Yes sir.” Elfie hoped the conversation wouldn’t get too complicated. She was afraid her English wasn’t yet up to it. Aunt Ilga, who had brought her from Philadelphia, had just disappeared into the crowded little station house to see if there was any message for them and hadn’t yet returned.

“Well, I’m waiting for someone, too. Perhaps,” the smiling young man leaned closer, “it’s you.”

Elfie had seen him earlier, one of a group of three, who had all come piling out of a buggy with a double-hitch of chestnut geldings. The horses were lathered, so they’d obviously been going fast. They’d arrived in a cloud of dust, practically running down a newsboy who’d been crossing the yard, just as the train had pulled in. They’d looked around a bit, and she’d noticed them just as they’d noticed her. The best looking, the one who had come over, had lifted his hat, but Elfie had turned away, pretending to be distracted by some children who were racing along the platform. 

A moment later, when she turned back, here he was, boldly walking up. She hadn’t been in America long, just a few weeks, but in Philadelphia, she’d seen his like when she’d been out walking with her Aunt Ilga. “A swell,” her Aunt would call him.  Aunt Ilga had warned Elfie about young men like him.

Elfie looked him up and down, trying her best to appear severe, but it was not an easy thing for a willowy girl who was barely eighteen to do.  Besides, she knew she looked pretty, in a green dress and with a darling new hat which sported a curled feather atop her dark brown curls.

“I don’ tink zo.”

 

 

 

“Oh—hahahaha—tink what, you adorable creature?”

 

He leaned in even closer, and Elfie took a few prudent steps back, putting her steamer trunk between them.

 

 

“Come on—tell me your name, Darlin’ and where you want to go. We’ve got plenty of room in the buggy there. Me and my friends will be happy to drive you anywhere you want to go.”

 

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From a work in progress, Butterfly Bride, the sequel to Hand-me-Down Bride. Elfie arrives in Pennsylvania, and proves to be quite different from her earnest, hard-working older sister Sophie. Instead, Elfie is an impulsive beauty who turns the heads of every young fellow in the Great Valley.

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http://mizging.blogspot.com (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

~~~A summer time piece from my post-Civil War romance, Hand-me-Down Bride

~~On the way to the hayfields, Karl and Sophie marvel at the beauty of a blooming field of Buckwheat.

Karl watched her.  She had walked into the field, delighting in the moment, in the sun, in the sea-froth-over-sage color of the buckwheat.  He'd caught a flash of her joy; joy in the splendor of this land!

After the long and terrible war, after his illness, it had been hard to find joy in his heart at anything.   Today, Karl felt free as a swallow, flashing over the rising corn.

Sophie was framed against the light, her plain apron lifted by a firm young bosom, her dark hair wound beneath the bonnet.  Above, great clouds sailed in shattering blue, and the buzz of those thousands of bees echoed some dream space he'd been to before, the white hum of eternity.

He tied the reins to a sapling and got down. He had wanted to put his arms around her, to mold her breasts against his chest, to catch the scent of her, to drink from those rosy, undoubtedly sweet lips.  Now, he waded into the field after her, wanting even more to share her moment of happiness. 

A simple gift. . .

"Das ist schon!" Face radiant, she turned.  "It is beautiful!”

 

 

 

 

~~Juliet Waldron

 

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Sophie studied her toes.  She sat on the double bed in which she'd spent the night, knees drawn up beneath her white lawn nightgown. Lifting her dark head, she gazed through a nearby window at a May morning that shone upon a blooming--but sternly regimented--rose garden.  In spite of the warm breeze, she shivered.

Then, hoping it wasn't true, for the hundredth time, she looked at the other narrow bed, the one next to hers.  Upon it lay her new husband, the rich grandfatherly man who'd paid her way from Germany, a man she'd married only yesterday.

Theodore Wildbach was quite dead.  Proper, in death as in life, he was flat on his back, hands folded on his chest. He looked like the stone knights lying in the cathedral in her home town.  That was how Theodore habitually slept, and how he'd died. Pale lips gaped inside a ring of neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.

She'd discovered him upon awakening. She’d come close, staring, unable to believe her eyes. It was a terrible surprise, nowhere among the thousand twists of fate she'd imagined as she'd journeyed across sea and land to German Mills, Pennsylvania...

 

~Juliet Waldron
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Set in Post-Civil-War Pennsylvania, this tale of an arranged marriage is as much about family as it is about finding true love. Sophie is a sensitive young woman struggling to make sense of her a difficult past and to understand the strange ways of her new homeland. Karl is not only a veteran of the Great War, but scarred by the secret violence of his childhood. How they both learn to trust--this often-tested immigrant girl and the veteran with a chip on his shoulder--is the subject of this tender, All-American story.

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