Courting Emily (A Wells Landing Book 2) Read Free Page B

Elam would even want to court her. Not that she would give it any more thought than she already had. But it seemed she was going to have to do something to keep her father from out and out finding her a husband.
    She heard the soft patter of Mary’s bare feet as she padded across the wood floor.
    “Scoot over.” Her sister lifted the covers and slid into the bed beside her.
    In the darkened room, Emily could just make out Mary’s sweet face so like their mother’s. “You should be asleep,” she said even though she was grateful to have her sister near.
    Emily was the only daughter with her own room. Mary shared with Rose while Susannah and Bea occupied the bedroom right across the hall. Still she would miss nights like this when Mary married Aaron Miller, Jonah Miller’s younger brother.
    “So should you.”
    Four-thirty came early. But the goats had to be milked before the younger Ebersol girls headed to school.
    “I heard about what Dat said to you tonight in the barn.”
    “Who told you?”
    “Susannah.”
    “She is a gossip,” Emily grumbled.
    At fourteen, Susannah was a little more . . . spirited than the rest of them, a little more like Luke Lambright than their father would have preferred.
    Mary found Emily’s hand under the covers and gently squeezed her fingers. “She loves you as much as we all do.”
    “She is probably the one who told Dat Luke called and started this whole mess.”
    “You don’t believe that.”
    “ Nay . I don’t.” Emily sighed into the darkness. “What am I supposed to do? Now Dat has this in his head about me and Elam . . . he’ll never let it rest. I’ve already said I would go help at their house. Dat will probably do everything he can to make me known to Elam. How embarrassing.”
    “I am certain everything will work out just fine.”
    “I hope so.”
    They lay quietly in the darkness, each absorbed in her own thoughts.
    “I miss him so much,” Emily finally said. “I just want to talk to him, hear his voice, know that he’s allrecht out there among the Englisch .”
    “He will call when he can,” Mary said, her tone reassuring and so very much like their mother’s. She didn’t even ask who Emily was talking about. She knew right away it was Luke.
    “Do you really think so?” Emily hated the urgent quality in her voice. She had always been so confident when it came to Luke, never once doubting his love for her. Now everything was different, changing, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Or if there was anything she could do.
    “You know he would never call here,” Mary said, her words referring to the phone shanty that sat just across the road from their farm.
    “ Jah . I know.” But it didn’t lessen her disappointment.
    “Be strong, shveshtah .”
    She would be strong, for her, for Luke. And she would pray. Pray that soon the lure of the Englisch world would dull, and Luke would return to Wells Landing once again.
     
     
    “Jonah.” Emily raced down the sidewalk behind her friend’s beau. After the conversation with her vatter the night before, Emily knew it was time to do something. If she sat back, her life would blow right on past her, taking Luke and all her dreams along with it. She didn’t want to court anyone else; she wanted Luke, plain and simple. “Jonah Miller,” she called again.
    He finally heard her, stopping to allow her to catch up with him. She was breathless by the time she did.
    “ Goedemiddag, ” he said as she gasped for air. “Are you allrecht? ”
    Emily gulped and nodded. It had taken three blocks of running as fast as she could, but she finally managed to catch him. “I heard . . . you talked . . . to Luke.”
    “Oh, jah . He called a couple of days ago.”
    A couple of days? Why had no one told her? “How is he?” She was so desperate for news that she forgot herself and clutched Jonah’s arm.
    He looked down at her hand.
    She let him go and twisted her fingers together as she waited for his