Part Two

    “I love you, Nat!”
    There.  She had said those words again.  Nat knew Nan wasn’t a liar, but she must have deceived herself.  Nevertheless, when he looked at Nan’s shining face, he almost believed her.
    They were alone.  After all the kind words and hugs were over, everyone had finally left them alone.
    “Do you?” Nat questioned, searching Nan’s eyes.
    “With all my heart!”  Nan smiled at him simply, sincerely.
    Nat took her in his arms.  “I want to believe it,” he murmured.
    Nan pushed back and looked up into his eyes.  “Nat . . . will you forgive me?”
    This caught Nat off guard.  He didn’t know how to reply.
    “I’ve neglected you, I know.  I’ve been so caught up in my doctor’s world that I’ve been terribly inconsiderate to you.”  Nan said it so earnestly, her eyes looking straight at him with a pleading, loving look in them.
    Nat’s lips wobbled in emotion.  “I forgive you, Nan.  And I love you. . . . I hope you can forgive me for being so rude and running off like that.”
    “Of course,” Nan said.  “I forgive you, and I’ll try to always forgive you and love you, even when we’re eighty and dying.”
    Nat smiled, a full, wide smile.  “With your medicine knowledge, who knows?  Maybe we’ll live till we’re a hundred! . . . I hope so.”

~~~~

    The sky was cloudy.
    “It can’t rain—not today!” Nan wailed.
    “The wedding will be in the church, so if it does rain, it won’t matter,” Bess assured, weaving a daisy into place in Nan’s plaited hair.  Even a simple flower like a daisy looked princess-like in Nan’s golden hair.  It had been Nan’s suggestion to use daisies instead of the showy roses that Bess had wanted.
    “But it’s just so gloomy.  I wanted a nice, sunny day for my wedding!” Nan sighed.
    “Do you want to reschedule the wedding?” Bess teased.
    “No—not even till tomorrow!” Nan replied.  “Even if I get wet, I won’t complain.”
    Bess finished putting another daisy in Nan’s hair around the crown of the veil.  “There.  You look beautiful!”
    “Do I really?” Nan asked, and then studied herself in the mirror.  “Not so beautiful as you did at your wedding—but not bad.”  She smiled.
    “Nervous?” Bess asked.
    “Just a little,” Nan admitted, smoothing out a little wrinkle in her long silk gown.
    “I was nervous at my wedding,” Bess said, smiling at the memory.  “I think Dan was more nervous, though.  His hands shook when he took mine and put the ring on it.”
    Nan laughed, then commented, “I used to think that weddings were so boring and stupidly sentimental.  Now, they seem like the best things in the world!”
    Jo popped her head in the door.  “Time to go,” she smiled.

~~~~

    Nan rode in an enclosed carriage since the rain was falling in sheets.  Even stepping from the front door of Plumfield into the carriage had gotten Nan’s hair and dress soaked.
    Nan fidgeted with her fingers as the carriage bumped along the road to the church.  Her heart was thumping as it never had before.  In a few minutes I’ll be Mrs. Anthea Blake, she thought, awed.  It was slightly frightening, but marvelous.  She wondered if she could handle all the responsibilities of being a wife, and someday a mother.  I’m sure I’ll burn more than one steak, she thought wryly.
    Bess looked at her and smiled encouragingly, as if she could hear Nan’s nervous thoughts.
    At the church, there were wagons and carriages lined up outside.  Rain was still pouring down, so the carriage driver tried to get as close to the front door as possible.
    “There’s a mud puddle,” Bess frowned.  “Driver, please move the carriage away from the puddle!”
    Nan was so lost in her thoughts she hardly heard Bess.  As the driver re-parked the carriage, Nan hopped out, eager to be inside and walk the aisle up to her beloved Nat.
    “Nan, watch out!” Bess shrieked, jumping out and trying to pull Nan back.
    But it was too late.  Nan had stepped in the mud puddle, and her shoes and ivory hem were blackened with mud.
    Nan stopped and stared down at her splattered dress.  “Oh, no,” she murmured.
    Bess was horrified, but managed to collect herself and pull Nan out of the puddle and into the vestibule of the church.  Jo and Bess got a wet cloth and tried to wash out the mud, but gray-brown spots still remained, and the entire hem was ruined.
    “It’s okay,” Nan shrugged.  “I’m getting married, and that’s all that matters.”
    Bess sighed.  “Well, you at least need some clean shoes . . .”
    Jo pulled off her shoes.  “Here—take mine.”
    “Mrs. Jo, that’s really not necessary,” Nan protested.  “I’ll just take mine off and go barefoot.  My dress is so long, no one will know!”
    Bess frowned, but finally they both agreed.
    Nan’s father came into the vestibule and hugged Nan.  “You’re lovely,” he said.
    “Thank you,” Nan murmured, smiling.  Her father didn’t even seem to notice the muddy spots on her dress.
    Dan came out and took Bess’s arm.  “They’re starting the music.  It’s time for us to walk the aisle.”  His eyes twinkled.
    “I thought we did that a year ago,” Bess whispered, grinning.
    Then they slowly started walking down the aisle in time to the piano music.
    Mr. Harding took Nan’s arm.  They stared into each other’s eyes, smiling.  Her father couldn’t help feeling a melancholy twinge, though; Nan was a grown woman, and soon to be Mrs. Anthea Blake.  All the precious time they had spent together in the past few years was not nearly enough, and he wasn’t sure he would get to spend much time with Nan from now on.
    “I love you,” Nan whispered with a little smile.
    Mr. Harding swallowed.  “I love you, too.”
    The first chord of the wedding march played.  Nan took a deep breath and stepped forward with her father.  They proceeded slowly, rhythmically.
    Nat stood at the front of the church, staring at Nan with loving wonder.
    Nan slowly passed by friends.  There was Asia, radiant; there were Emil and Tommy, grinning; there were Franz and Isabel, smiling.  Then, she was at the front of the church, looking into Nat’s adoring eyes.  She stepped up next to him, her head tilted up to look at him.  He had never looked as handsome in his life.
    The clergyman, a stout, friendly fellow, began his oration.  The words were very familiar to Nan by now, but they seemed to take on new meaning when she was the one standing there and committing her life to her love.
    “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here before God and in the presence of these witnesses, to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony . . .”  Holy matrimony. . . . She was entering something ordained of God, a holy union.  Nan’s heart beat a little faster.  Was she ready?  Was God actually with her?  It was a perplexing thing, and she did not understand the fear that suddenly gripped her heart.  She wasn’t afraid of being married to Nat.  No, it was just . . . she had never thought about God in a personal way, before.  She rarely prayed to Him.  Would their union really be a union under God, with God blessing them?
    “If anyone object to this match, speak now or forever hold your peace,” the preacher said.
    Nan was thankful that she didn’t hear anyone speak up—although she thought she heard some whispering from the back of the church.
    The preacher said the next words, and Nat repeated them, looking sincerely into Nan’s eyes.  Then, it was Nan’s turn.  She repeated the words.  “ . . . To love and to cherish, in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, to have and to hold, from this day forward . . . till death do we part.”
    The rings were exchanged.  Nat’s hand was trembling, but he put the gold band around Nan’s finger and smiled.
    “Do you, Nathaniel Blake, take this woman, Anthea Harding, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
    Nat smiled at Nan.  “I do.”
    The preacher looked at Nan, and asked, “Do you, Anthea Harding, take this man, Nathaniel Blake, to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
    Nan’s throat was dry.  “I do.”
    “What God has joined together let no man put asunder.  By the authority given to me as a minister of the Lord's church, I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the preacher intoned, then smiled at Nat.  “You may kiss the bride.”
    Nan had never been kissed before; not this way.  The only other time she had been kissed on the lips was in the hayloft by a younger Nat—a quick little peck.  Nan was breathless at the end of this gentle but long kiss.  It was nothing like that first kiss—but her feelings were the same as they had been then.

~~~~

    In a certain part of town, two ladies gossiped over tea.
    The first, a middle-aged woman wearing a ruffled blue taffeta gown and with her dark hair braided intricately into a chignon, stirred her tea precisely and remarked, “Her gown was so layered with mud that I declare she must have been rolling in a pig sty!”
    The second, an older woman, but still tidy and fashionable, took a sip out of her china tea-cup and raised her eyebrows.  “That’s not the least of it!”  The woman leaned in close and whispered, “When she came down the aisle, I’m positive I saw a bare foot—yes, a bare foot—under her muddy dress!”

THE END