The Amish Bride by Emma Miller Page B

food table. “I want you to meet this couple from Delaware.” When Ellen joined them, Dinah introduced her to Charley and Miriam Byler.
    “It’s good to have you here with us,” Ellen said. As Saloma had told her, both Charley and Miriam were friendly. Ellen liked them at once. “Don’t you have a little boy?”
    “We do.” Miriam laughed, taking a chair beside her husband. “But he’s making the rounds with his cousins, Ava and Zoey King, and I can’t seem to get him back. I wish I could scoop the twins up and take them back to Seven Poplars with me. He’s a handful, and they’re wonderful with him.”
    “Wayne King and Charley are cousins,” Dinah explained. “The Bylers are staying with the Kings.”
    “Would you like to sit with us?” Miriam asked. Ellen nodded, and she, Miriam and Charley proceeded to take their plates to the buffet tables. Miriam chatted on, telling about their extended vacation, first to Ohio to see an aging aunt, and then to Honeysuckle. “Believe me, Charley will be busy when we get home. My brothers-in-law and my stepfather have filled in for him on the farm. But my sister Anna will be having a baby next month, and I’d like to give her a hand with canning. Still—” she sighed “—it’s been fun seeing all the family and all the sights.”
    They returned to the table, and Ellen took an empty seat between Charley and Wesley King, the eighteen-year-old brother of the King twins. Charley pulled out his chair then backed away. Ellen’s eyes widened in surprise as Micah slid into the seat, taking Charley’s place. Laughing, Charley circled the table and sat across from his wife. As he sat down, he and Micah exchanged looks and both grinned. Ellen was sure that it had been a setup.
    “Nice supper.” Micah’s eyes twinkled with mischief.
    “Jah,”
Ellen said. “And excellent company.” She couldn’t help smiling back at him. She’d been had, but now that he was here, seated close enough for his trouser legs to brush her skirt, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, she decided, not unpleasant at all. When had being with Micah not been entertaining? Between him and Charley, they soon had the whole end of the table laughing at their jokes and stories.
    Charley was relating an amusing incident about a neighbor’s goats when Micah leaned close to her. “Would you ride home with me, Ellen? After the supper?”
    “I have to be up early in the morning,” she hedged. She wasn’t ready to agree to a long buggy ride that might end with Micah wanting to come in and stay until midnight.
    “Straight home,” he promised. She noticed that Micah was dressed in his good church pants, a crisp white shirt and a vest, not in the clean working clothes that most of the men were wearing. He was wearing his courting clothes.
    She felt a flush of excitement. “I rode with my parents.”
    Micah poured water into her half-empty glass. “Your
dat
won’t mind. I’ll tell him that you’re with me, so he won’t worry.”
    “All right,” she agreed. It had been years since she’d ridden home from a frolic or a supper with a young man, and she couldn’t resist.
    Micah raised his glass of iced tea and clinked it against a grinning Charley’s lifted one. “I told you she would.”
    “Would what?”
    There was no mistaking that deep voice. Ellen turned to where Wayne King had been seated a moment ago, and there was Neziah, slipping into his place. The King boy was nowhere in sight. Ellen shook her head in disbelief.
    “Evening, Ellen,” Neziah said.
    “Hello, Neziah.” She smiled at him, surprised by his boldness. “Have you met Miriam and Charley Byler?”
    Charley stood and offered his hand across the table to Neziah, and by the time introductions were complete, the three men were talking, and Ellen was able to eat her supper. The food was good, but the dessert would be even better, and she hadn’t taken a large portion of the main course because she wanted to leave room for peach