Contract to Wed by Holly Bush Page A

boxes myself.”
    “What’s in them?” Melinda asked.
    Max tilted his head. “I’m not sure anymore. Maria packed up
some of her clothes sometime after your momma died, and I cleaned out the desk
in my room that she’d always used. There were notes and recipes from her mother
and a newspaper clipping of when the war was over.”
    “No drawings or anything?” Melinda asked.
    Max shook his head. “No drawings, honey. But you are a
beautiful young lady because of her. All you have to do is look in the mirror
to know what she looked like.”
    “Your Daddy’s right. You’re a pretty girl, just like your
Momma from what your Daddy says and just as sweet, too,” Zeb said.
    Melinda glanced at Jolene. “She said it doesn’t matter what
we look like and that when men tell you you’re pretty, they’re just
trying to distract you from what they are doing .”
    Max laughed.  “I suppose that’s true when you’re older
but when Zeb and I tell you you’re pretty, it’s because we think you’re a
wonderful little girl who’s pretty and smart.”
    “But she will not always have champions beside her. She has
to discern her value on her own,” Jolene said. “It’s a failing for many women,
that constant dependence on what other’s think.”
    “We all worry about what others think, Jolene,” Zeb said.
“And I imagine you give plenty of credence to others as well. Isn’t that at the
forefront of every ‘good’ Boston family?”
    “You are correct, Zebidiah,” Jolene said and looked at him
squarely. “I’ve been very concerned about what others think my entire life as
my mother taught me to be. But I defied her in grand fashion by moving here and
marrying Mr. Shelby. I’m not less concerned about what others think of me
because I’m looking down my nose at them. I’m less concerned because I just
don’t care as much as I’ve been taught to, other than in relationship to
helping Mr. Shelby with his political intentions.”
    Max stared at her while she signaled for dishes to be
cleared. She would not meet his eyes.
    “Can I change clothes and go see the foal in the barn?”
Melinda asked.
    “May I?” Jolene said.
    “May I, Daddy?”
    “Jolene? Has she done all her studies and such?”
    “She has,” Jolene replied.
    Max nodded, and Melinda hurried out of the room. Zeb stood,
picked up his drink, and followed Melinda.
    “My apologies if I was less than correct in my comments
while Melinda was in the room,” Jolene said.
    Max shrugged. “I didn’t hear anything that was inappropriate.
But I am curious now about your mother after you said what you did. She was not
in favor of our marriage?”
    “I have not lived in my parent’s home since my first marriage,
nearly fifteen years ago,” Jolene said. “It hardly signifies what my mother
thinks now.”
    “I don’t know about that,” Max said. “I treasure every
letter my mother and father write. They’re my guiding light when sometimes I
don’t know what to do or think.” Jolene took a sip of coffee, and Max poured
her a brandy, which he was coming to know she enjoyed after a meal.
    “My mother was and still is, I imagine, furious beyond
words. I waited until just four weeks before I was to leave to come here to
tell her and my father about our marriage.”
    “What did your father have to say?”
    “He was silent, as he always has been on matters such as
this,” Jolene said and looked away out the long window. “I have yet to
determine whether he was angry or ashamed of me or envious.”
    “Envious?”
    She turned back to face him with a wry smile. “I would no
longer be in Mother’s sphere.”
    “That desperate?” he said with a chuckle but he sobered when
he looked at Jolene’s face.
    “My younger sister, Julia, took a train to marry a man she’d
never met, a storekeeper in South Dakota. She knew next to nothing about him.
Never took the time to discover anything about him, although she didn’t end up
marrying him. He could