Chapter 12
Move over. I’m driving you home.”
She stared as Jacob jumped in beside her, and she opened her mouth to protest.
“Not one word until we’re clear of here, then you can let go all you need. You don’t want to make a scene.”
She swallowed hard, realizing he was right.
People turned to stare with interest at the engaged couple who drove away without even bothering to stop for lunch in the main house.
She sniffed and tried to ignore the clean male scent of him that drifted to her as he turned the buggy onto the highway.
“All right. Go ahead,” he said when they’d driven a short distance.
She held her tongue with perverse reason, not wanting to give him the satisfaction now of even so much as a word.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shake his head.
“Women!”
“That’s it, Jacob Wyse. You just—you just jump out right now and let me alone. Why I ever thought to give you that invitation is beyond me, but I was wrong. Absolutely wrong!”
He eased his hat back, exposing his dark hair, and exhaled. “It was—an invitation?”
“Of course it was an invitation! Didn’t you have the decency to read it before passing it along to joke about with your brother?” She felt her eyes well with tears and clutched her hands together in her lap.
“I wasn’t joking with Seth.”
“Then what were you doing?”
She looked at him and noted the strange expression on his face, the sudden flush on his sculpted cheeks.
He paused a long time, his jaw working as though he was deciding what to say and how to say it. He finally took a deep breath and spoke. “I gave it to Seth to read for me.”
“You what?”
He glanced at her, his eyes dark with a pain she couldn’t understand.
“I can’t read very well.” He drew another deep breath and turned to face forward, his stony expression silencing her.
“I’ve never told anyone but my brother.”
She struggled to find her voice as his admission washed over her. She knew by instinct that if she reacted with pity or concern he’d pull away, and she realized with sudden clarity that she didn’t want that, not one bit.
“Well, then it seems we both have something we can teach each other in this relationship.” Her tone was level, practical. “I let you teach me to ride, and you let me teach you to read.”
He shook his head. “Riding’s easy, but there’s something in me with the reading. I can’t do it.”
“You can try.”
“Do you think I haven’t?” he spat out.
“I’m sure you have, but …” Feminine instinct came to her in a tingling rush of inspiration and she lowered her voice. “Maybe you’ve never had the right—tutor.”
He responded to her soft suggestion; she knew it by the way his throat worked and how he glanced at her with a flash of speculative interest.
“Tutor?”
“Mmm-hmm. We can do it in complete privacy, after school, for a little while. Then maybe—in the evenings when we’re married. And no elementary primers for you. I’ll make up lessons that will hold your attention.”
Her heart pounded as she listened to herself. Honestly, she sounded like she was inviting him to a series of very interesting dates, but her teaching instincts were too well engaged to give up now. She’d teach him to read all right, and he’d remember it as a pleasant experience or she wasn’t the teacher she knew herself to be.
He smiled at her then. “I’d be willing to try, I guess.”
She resisted the urge to clap her hands like a little girl and gave a simple nod instead. “Gut, after the Christmas program.” She bit her lower lip.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just—that invitation I gave you. It was to the Christmas program. I know everybody always comes but I just wanted to—invite you especially. I mean, it’s part of wanting to share my work with you.”
“I’ll be there, front and center.”
“Danki.”
They turned into her lane. “Ach, Jacob, how will you get back?”
“The walk will do me good. I’ll put Ruler up and you go on in to your mamm.”
She hesitated, wanting to ask him in for lunch but not knowing what frame of mind her mother might be in. Still, he should probably get used to it.
“Lilly, go on. I understand about your mamm.”
She nodded and slipped from the buggy to make her way inside the house, closing the door behind her without looking back.
Jacob thumped his chest as he walked fast against the biting wind. He felt exhilarated inside, like the feeling he got when a new foal found its legs. He’d told the schoolteacher that he couldn’t read and she hadn’t batted so much as one professional eye. In fact, she’d made tutoring with her sound like a sensuous experience. Although, he could very well be putting more into her words than she’d meant. For all he could tell, Lilly did things with a calm logic, operating without the instincts he knew he had to rely on. Unless she got riled. He smiled as he thought of how blue her eyes were when she yelled. Blue like sea crystals.
“Jacob? Do you need a ride?”
He turned, so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t even heard the buggy coming up behind him, and he now faced Sarah and Grant Williams. Sarah looked concerned and Grant’s smile was welcoming, but it was like someone had thrown a bucket of water over Jacob in the thick of the cold. He shook his head.
“Nee, danki. I’m fine. Just enjoying a bit of a walk.”
“You’re going to freeze,” Sarah said, her hazel eyes, so like his own, flashing green.
He resisted the familiar urge to study the beauty of her face. He started to hug his arms across his chest, but the pain in his arm stopped him. He felt he must look silly with one arm giving a feeble attempt at warmth, and stomping his feet.
“Jah.” He forced a smile. “I will if I keep standing here. Go on with the two of you now. I’m gut.”
“All right.” Grant lifted the reins. “Be seeing you—in about two days. Remember?”
“Sure.” Jacob recollected that the drain in his wound had to come out.
“Goodbye, Jacob.” Sarah turned a frowning face back to him and waved while he let the buggy get a good pace ahead.
He lifted his hand to wave back, then began walking again, but now he couldn’t recall what he’d been so happy about in the first place.