Brides of Ohio Read Free Page B

neighborly after Toby left. Thank you.”
    Mr. Carr approached her, giving Katherine a hard look as he brushed by her.
    “I’m sorry Dolly’s gone. Let me take you back to my house. You could stay there a spell. …”
    “No thank you. We have the farm to look after.”
    The man gritted his teeth in silent frustration.
    “But if you would be so kind,” Mary continued, “as to take Ruth Decker’s horse and buggy back into Ostrander, I would appreciate it. And please call on Reverend Warren on your way by Mill Creek Church. I need to lay my sister to rest.”
    Mr. Carr nodded and, without so much as a glance at Katherine, left the room. Presently they heard the distinct sound of a wagon pulling away from the house.
    “Father, forgive me for disliking that man,” Mary murmured.
    Katherine looked at her questioningly, but her friend said nothing more.
    Instead, she leaned forward and folded Dolly’s arms across her waist. She then grasped the patchwork quilt and gently pulled it over her sister’s body. “We’ll talk later, Katherine. For now, we need to get ready for Reverend Warren.”

Chapter 2
    K atherine tossed in her bed for what seemed like the hundredth time. In spite of all she had done and been through today, sleep refused to call on her. Too many thoughts ran through her mind.
    To begin with, Mary had insisted on her using one of the unused rooms upstairs. One of her nephew’s rooms. It hadn’t seemed proper, but where else would she sleep? The barn? She supposed it simply felt odd to be sleeping in a man’s bed. Mary had thought she would be most comfortable in Daniel’s room and insisted he wouldn’t mind. She would have felt much more comfortable in Dolly’s room, but that would need airing out.
And besides
, she thought,
Mary should have her sister’s room.
    Mr. Carr had spoken to Reverend Warren as Mary had asked, for the reverend and his wife, Minnie, soon arrived to help her with all the arrangements. They had been kind and sympathetic toward Mary, but the couple seemed to keep Katherine at a polite distance. At least they were a tad warmer than Ruth Decker.
    She played with a thread in the quilt that covered her. She had kept herself busy in the kitchen while Reverend Warren spoke to Mary, and she had rounded up the loose chickens while Mary and the reverend’s wife laid Dorothy out in the parlor. Making herself as scarce as possible was all she could think of to avoid the discreet coldness of the couple. In light of their behavior, alongside Ruth Decker’s, she could only imagine how people would treat her at the funeral on Saturday.
    She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. When she had insisted on coming north with Mary, she had not really thought about how people would treat her. In retrospect, she realized she had latched on to the silly notion that the North was a sort of wonderland where everyone was warm and friendly and welcomed strangers with open arms. How could she help it? Mary had been the standard she had used to measure all Northerners.
    The anger and suspicion Katherine aroused had come as shocking as a slap on the face. The instant any Northerner heard her voice, it was assumed she was either a secessionist or, worse, a Southern spy.
    I was a fool to think people would assume otherwise. Mary warned me it might be this way, but I was so happy to be coming to the North. … Why shouldn’t people be suspicious? The war certainly isn’t over yet. Oh why didn’t I just stay put?
    She put a hand to her eyes and sighed deeply. She couldn’t stay and live a life she didn’t want with a family who had never wanted her.
    Andrew Wallace, Katherine’s father, had never forgiven her for not possessing her mother’s beauty and vivaciousness. His only daughter’s shy and studious spirit only irritated him. As far as he was concerned, her only value to him lay in whom she married. Her brother, Charles, had always blamed her for their mother’s death. Annabelle Wallace had