The Preacher's Bride Claim. Laurie Kingery

      Chapter Two

      Thornton turned back, ashen now, his eyes stricken. Alice’s heart went out to him. How very embarrassing, to be accused of hypocrisy in front of his congregation—or at least in front of the few who remained. Alice glanced around, and the faces of those who remained looked as shocked as Thornton himself—and uneasy, too, as if they wondered if LeMaster’s accusations were true. They’d talk about what they had seen, Alice realized, and in short order those who had already left would know what had happened.

      She watched as the preacher visibly pulled himself together and cleared his throat.

      “I—I’m sorry for the unpleasantness, ma’am,” he managed to say. “Such things normally don’t happen at our services. It’s your...your first visit, isn’t it, Miss—Mrs.—?”

      “Miss Alice Hawthorne,” she said. She hadn’t the heart to be evasive with him after what had just transpired. His eyes were hazel—a rich chocolate color mixed with rust and green, like a forest floor in autumn. His accent was Eastern, like her own, but with occasional tinges of a Southern drawl. His tone was deep, wrapping itself around her heart like a warm cloak.

      “It’s nice to meet you, Reverend Thornton. I...I enjoyed the service,” she surprised herself by saying. She merely wanted to make him feel better after the awkward incident, she told herself.

      “You’re new to Boomer Town, aren’t you?” he asked then. “And from the East, I think. New York?”

      She nodded. “Upstate, originally. I grew up on a farm near Albany. More recently I’ve been nursing in New York City, at Bellevue Hospital.” What was wrong with her? She hadn’t meant to say anything more than her name before proceeding on into the sunlight. But there was something compelling about those hazel eyes set in an earnest, scholarly but masculine face that somehow rendered her as talkative as Carrie and Cordelia Ferguson.

      His eyebrows rose, and those eyes warmed. “A nurse? You’ll be much appreciated here, Miss Hawthorne.”

      “Thank you,” she said. “But I’ve put my nursing career behind me. I—”

      “The Lord must have sent you to us,” Elijah Thornton went on, as if he hadn’t heard what she had said. “We don’t have any sort of doctor here. I go around and pray with people who are ill, but they need so much more than I can provide, Miss Hawthorne.”

      “But I’ve come to Oklahoma to farm,” she told him firmly. “My mother is not young, and she’ll need all my help, once we have our claim.”

      “Is she here now? In Boomer Town, I mean?”

      Alice shook her head. “No, I’ll send for her once I’ve managed to erect some sort of dwelling. And now I must be going, Reverend,” she added firmly.

      “Miss Hawthorne,” Reverend Thornton continued, “please consider what I’ve said about nursing here. Pray about it, if you would. It’s not that there’s any great amount of sickness and injuries, but occasionally the need is great.”

      “I will, Reverend. Good day.”

      The man didn’t know how to take no for an answer, Alice thought, as she entered the muddy main street of the tent city. And yet, Elijah Thornton was not the least bit overbearing. There was something very kind in his twinkling hazel eyes.

      He was certainly nothing like Maxwell Peterson. If only she’d met a man like the reverend in New York....

      Still, she’d made her decision, and there was no use dwelling on “if only.” Marriage and family were not for her. She’d keep her independence and take care of her mother by working the land. No man was going to take over her life and divert her from that goal. Perhaps it was best if she did not return to the daily services at the Boomer Town Chapel, where she would have to listen to and look at Reverend Elijah Thornton—who did not wear a wedding ring, she’d noticed, nor had there been a wife hovering near him.

      Yet the idea of not returning to the chapel sent a pang of regret through her. It had felt good to sing hymns with other Christians and to hear the preacher’s deep, resonant voice praying for all of them. But could any threat to her independence be worth it? If she got to know people better at the chapel, they’d start nosing into her business. They’d want to know why a decent-appearing unmarried lady like herself was here in the territory all alone. They’d suspect she was running from something—and they’d be right.

      Perhaps it was better to keep to herself. There were only three weeks to go till the Land Rush. Surely she could manage to lead a solitary existence among the crowded tent city until then, so that no one would suspect that a certain man in New York would pay highly to know where she was and what she was about to do, to make sure she never needed anything from him.

      * * *

      Normally Elijah joined his brothers for the noon meal, which was cooked over their campfire by Gideon, and usually consisted of beans and corn bread, or if Clint had hunted, rabbit, wild turkey or prairie chicken stew. Today, though, still feeling the sting of LeMaster’s denunciation, he had gone to pay the promised visit to Asa Benton’s ailing wife and had been invited to share dinner with them. The meal had been a simple soup and the last half of a loaf of bread, but Mrs. Benton seemed to take encouragement from his company and to keep inventing reasons for him to stay longer.

      He paid several other calls around the tent city after that. It appeared the community was buzzing with reaction to Horace LeMaster’s remarks, and Elijah spent a lot of time answering questions and easing their concerns as best as he could. Many would-be homesteaders came from the South, particularly Texas, and even these days—twenty-four years after General Lee had surrendered—the Civil War wounds had not completely healed between the North and the South. Some folks felt as warmly toward him as ever, while others were definitely cooler.

      Ah, well, he was not called to be popular but to preach the Gospel. Perhaps this would all blow over, perhaps it wouldn’t, but he would be obedient to his calling.

      Still he wondered where Miss Alice Hawthorne’s campsite was and kept an eye out for it. But he never spotted her.

      Before he knew it, the afternoon had passed and it was nearly time to meet up with his brothers for their nightly trip to Mrs. Murphy’s dining tent for supper. The red-faced Irishwoman’s meals were filling, cheap and quickly served, and if her beef was occasionally tough as boot leather, her desserts always made up for it. And it made a welcome change from Gideon’s cooking.

      Tonight, however, he arrived at their large tent only to be told they’d all been invited to take supper with a fellow Clint had met that day, one Lars Brinkerhoff.

      “He’s a Danish fellow, Lije,” Clint said, using the name he’d called his eldest brother ever since he’d lisped his first words and couldn’t quite manage Elijah. “He’s been in this country a decade, he and his sister, and he’s lived with the Cheyenne. They taught him tracking. You’ll never believe how we met, but I think I’ll save the story till we’re there.”

      “How does it happen we wrangled a dinner invitation on such short acquaintance?” Elijah asked, though he was always happy to meet new people. Reaching out to others was his job as a preacher, after all.

      Clint grinned. “That’s part of the story. Let’s just say we went after the same antelope,” he said with a wink.

      “Neighborly of the fellow to invite us,” Gideon remarked in his low, rumbling voice. “But I sure hope he doesn’t plan on pairing us up with that sister of his—at least, not you or me, Elijah—since