Sweeter than Birdsong (42 page)

A
N
E
XCERPT FROM
Fairer than Morning

R
USHVILLE
, O
HIO
15th July 1823

P
ROPOSALS OF MARRIAGE SHOULD NOT CAUSE PANIC.
That much she knew.

Eli knelt before her on the riverbank. His cheekbones paled into marble above his high collar. Behind him, the water rushed in silver eddies, dashed itself against the bank, and spiraled onward out of sight. If only she could melt into the water and tumble away with it down the narrow valley.

She clutched the folds of her satin skirt, as the answer she wanted to give him slid away in her jumbled thoughts.

Afternoon light burnished his blond hair to gold. “Must I beg for you? Then I shall.” He smiled. “You know I have a verse for every occasion. ‘Is it thy will thy image should keep open, My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?’”

The silence lengthened. His smile faded.

“No.” The single word was all Ann could muster. It sliced the air between them with its awkward sharpness.

He faltered. “You refuse me?”

“I must.”

He released her hand, his eyes wide, his lips parted. After a pause, he closed his mouth and swallowed visibly. “But why?” Hurt flowered in his face.

“We’re too young.” The words sounded tinny and false even to her.

“You’ve said that youth is no barrier to true love. And I’m nineteen.” He rose to his feet, buttoning his cobalt cutaway coat.

“But I’m only fifteen.” Again Ann failed to disguise her hollowness.

She had never imagined a proposal so soon, always assuming it years away, at a safe distance. She should never have told him how she loved the story of Romeo and Juliet. Only a week ago she had called young marriage romantic, as she and Eli sat close to one another on that very riverbank, reading the parts of the lovers in low voices.

“There is some other reason.” In his mounting indignation, he resembled a blond avenging angel. “What is it? Is it because I did not ask your father first?”

“You should have asked him, but even so, he would not have consented. Father will not permit me to marry until I am eighteen.”

“Eighteen? Three years?” His eyes were the blue at the center of a candle flame. “Then you must change his mind. I cannot wait.” He slid his hands behind her elbows and pulled her close. His touch aligned all her senses to him like nails cleaving to a magnet. With an effort, she twisted from his grasp and shook her head.

His brow creased and he looked away as if he could not bear the sight of her. “I think it very callous of you to refuse me without the slightest attempt to persuade your father.”

“I do not think he will change his mind. He has been very clear.”

“Then perhaps you should have been—clearer—yourself.” His faint sarcasm stung her, as if a bee had crawled beneath the lace of her bodice.

He dropped his gaze. “You would not give up so easily if you cared. You have deceived me, Ann.”

He turned and walked up the riverbank, the white lining flashing from the gore of his coat over his boot tops. Before she could even call out, he topped the ridge and disappeared from view.

She stared blankly after him. She was so certain that the Lord had intended Eli to be her husband. But that once-distant future had arrived too early, and now it lay in ruins.

Numb, she collected the history and rhetoric books that she had dropped on the grass. She must change her father’s mind, as Eli had said. If she did not, all was lost.

She clutched the books to her like a shield and began the long walk home.

In front of the farmhouse, her two young sisters crouched in the grass in their flowered frocks. Mabel pointed her chubby little finger at an insect on the ground. Susan brushed back wispy strands of light-brown hair and peered at it.

“Have you seen Father?” Ann asked them.

Their soft faces turned toward her.

“He’s in the workshop.” Mabel’s voice was high and pure and still held a trace of her baby lisp. She turned back to inspect the grass.

“He said he is writing a sermon and please not to disturb him,” Susan added with the panache of an eight-year-old giving orders.

Without comment, Ann angled toward the barn, which held the horses and also a workshop for her father’s saddle and harness business. Like most circuit riders, he did not earn his living from his ministry, and so he crafted sermons and saddles at the same workbench.

He glanced up when the wooden door slapped against its frame behind her.

“Ann.” His clean-shaven face showed the wear of his forty years, though his posture was vigorous and his constitution strong from hours of riding and farmwork. “I asked Susan to let you know I was writing.” There was no blame in his voice. He had always been gentle with them, and even more so since their mother had passed away.

“She did. But I must speak with you.”

“You seem perturbed.” He laid down his quill and turned around in his chair. “Will you sit down?”

“No, thank you.” She clasped her hands in front of her and pressed them against her wide sash to steady herself as she took a quick breath. “Eli Bowen proposed to me today.”

“Without asking my blessing?” A small line appeared between his brows. “And what did you tell him?”

“That I cannot marry until I am eighteen. That you have forbidden it.”

“That is true. I have good reason to ask you to wait.” He regarded her steadily.

She summoned restraint with effort. “What reason? I am young, I know, but he is nineteen. He can make his way in the world. He wishes to go to medical school.”

“I don’t doubt that Mr. Bowen is a fine young man.” Her father’s reply was calm. “But I do not think your mother would have let you marry so young.”

“Dora Sumner married last year, and she was only sixteen.” She paced across the room, casting her eyes on the floor, on the walls, anywhere but on him. He must not refuse, he must not. He did not understand.

“I am not Dora’s father.” His voice was flat, unyielding. He turned to his table and gently closed his Bible. When he faced her again, his demeanor softened. “Your mother almost married another man when she was your age. She told me it would have been a terrible match. She was glad she waited until she was eighteen.” He looked at her mother’s tiny portrait in its oval ivory frame on the table. “She said that by the time she met me, she knew her own mind and wasn’t quite as silly.”

“I am not silly. I know how I feel. And he is not a terrible match.” Her voice grew quieter as her throat tightened.

“I am sorry, Ann. I must do what I think is right.” He was sober and sad.

Or what is convenient. For who else would care for my sisters, if not me?

But such thoughts wronged her father, for she had never known him to act from self-interest.

“But how can he wait for me? He is older than I am. He will want to marry before three years are out.” She did not try to keep the pleading from her voice, though her face tingled.

He paused, then leaned forward, as steady and quiet as when he comforted a bereaved widow. “Then he does not deserve you.”

“No, you are simply mistaken. And cruel.”

He stood up and walked to the back of the barn.

Clutching her skirt, she whirled around, pushed through the door, and ran for the house.

She would not give way to tears. She must stay calm. She slowed to a walk so her sisters would not be startled and passed them without a word.

Her bedroom beckoned her down the dark hallway.

She did not throw herself on the bed, as she had so often that first year after the loss of her mother.

Instead, she went to her desk, lifted the top, and fished out her diary. Her skirts sent up a puff of air as she flounced into the seat and began writing feverishly. After some time, the even curves of her handwriting mesmerized her, and her quill slowed. She lifted it from the page of the book and gazed ahead at the dark oaken wall.

What if he does not wait for me?

She must not doubt him so. Eli would regain his good humor and understand. He had told her many times that she was his perfect match, that he would never find another girl so admirable and with such uncommon interest in the life of the mind.

Besides, she had been praying to someday find a husband of like interests and kind heart, and God had provided. Eli loved poetry and appreciated fine art, but he was nonetheless a man’s man who liked to ride and hunt. And, of course, he was every village girl’s dream, with his aristocratic face. No other young man in Rushville could compare.

She doodled on the bottom of the page. First she wrote her own name.

Ann Miller
.

Then she wrote his. Then she wrote her name with his.

Ann Bowen
.

Ann Bowen
.

Ann Bowen
.

She smiled, pushed the diary aside, and pillowed her head on her arm to daydream of white bridal gowns and orange blossoms.

About the Author

Author photo by Amy Parish Photography,
New Mexico

R
OSSLYN
E
LLIOTT GREW UP IN A MILITARY FAMILY
and relocated so often that she attended nine schools before her high school graduation. With the help of excellent teachers, she qualified to attend Yale University, where she earned a BA in English and Theater. She worked in business and as a schoolteacher before returning to study at Emory University, where she earned a PhD in English in 2006. Her study of American literature and history inspired her to pursue her lifelong dream of writing fiction. Her debut novel,
Fairer than Morning
, was the 2011 winner of the Laurel Award. She lives in the Southwest, where she home-schools her daughter and teaches in children’s ministry.