He nodded, uncertain at first. “I’m torn between feeling elated about this babe and yet terrified at the same time.”
She gave him a little smile. “I must confess the same.”
He lowered her hand from his arm until he was holding both her hands between them. “I don’t know how I found such fortune as to marry you, Catherine, but I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life.”
Her heart leapt into her throat at his confession. “I feel the same way,” she said.
He held her gaze another moment, and then, slowly, drew her hands closer until she was but a mere inch from him. His breath was warm on her face, and the nearness made her eyes close without her thinking about the action.
And then, just as she’d hoped, his lips touched hers. Catherine sighed into the feeling. This was all she wanted. All she needed.Love.
The air seemed to heat up around them as his lips explored hers, and Catherine thought she might melt the snow around them. All too soon, it was over and he’d pulled away. When she opened her eyes, he was watching her with warm, happy expression.
“We ought to get back,” he said, his eyes as bright as the snow around them.
“Not just yet.” She snuggled under the blanket, closer to him than before.
And when he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and set the horses into motion again, Catherine thought that maybe, for the first time since she was a girl, she just might be in love.
Chapter Sixteen
WITH CHRISTMAS ONLYtwo days away, Mrs. Bell and Catherine flew about the kitchen and the boarding house, preparing breads and cookies and ensuring the place was in order. The guests, fearful of setting a picture askew or being run down by Mrs. Bell’s quick feet, made themselves scarce during the day.
Worried about Catherine being on her feet so much, Jonathan arranged for Mrs. Denzinger to come for a visit. That would, he assumed, ensure Catherine sat for at least an hour. But he was wrong, he discovered, when he found Mrs. Denizinger whiling away her visit by assisting Catherine with sending a quilt through the wash wringer.
He looked to Mrs. Bell for help. “She’s going to wear herself out. Can’t you convince her to take just a short rest?”
“Plenty of women work right on up until their time. I was one of them,” Mrs. Bell said. But Jonathan must have looked more worried than he’d thought because she popped her hands upon her hips and gave a quick nod. “Fine. I’ll send her and Mrs. Denzinger to the parlor. Perhaps I can busy them with writing out place cards for the Christmas dinner.”
Much relieved, Jonathan took to his office to finish up some correspondence. Heartened by his conversation with Catherine in the sleigh, he had penned letters to his mother and each of his brothers. He touched ever-so-gently on Edward’s interactions with his own children. He had no illusions that he could change his brother’s behavior, but after doing nothing outside the mercantile, he felt the need to make up for that lack of action. Maybe something good would come of it.
He had just signed off on Edward’s letter when a cry came from the parlor.
Jonathan leapt up, dropping his pen on the desk without a second thought to smudging the ink on the letter. The cry was distinctly female, but whether it came from Catherine, Mrs. Denzinger, or Mrs. Bell, he couldn’t say.
Heart pounding, he was at the parlor in a few long strides. He reached the room at the same time as Mrs. Bell. Catherine was bent over in an armchair while Mrs. Denzinger knelt at her side.
