Marrying Stone Read Online Free PDF

look of bewilderment and guilt was heart-wrenching.
    "Are ye sick, Mr. Farley? Mr. Farley, can ye hear me?" The gray-beard spoke louder than was necessary.
    "Poison." The word came out a stiff and croaky sound.
    "What?"
    "Poison," he said again. "She poisoned me."
    "Who?"
    "Your daughter."
    "Meggie?"
    "I don't know why, but—" His voice faded as his eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted dead away.
    Shocked, the older man turned to the younger standing close by. "What the devil is going on here, Jesse?"
    The boy shrugged. "I tole him not to eat none of Meggie's piccalilli."
     

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CHAPTER THREE

     
    "I JUST DONT understand why we had to bring him here!" Meggie Best complained as her father and brother laid the sick, moaning man in the small rope-sprung one-poster bed built into the far corner of the little mountain cabin.
    "It's the least we can offer a sick stranger," her father said. "Good God, Meggie, you nearly killed the man!"
    "Maybe he deserved to die!" she exclaimed, before her father silenced her with a look.
    "I don't know what happened between you two, but we'd sure to heaven better keep him alive if they's need of him declaring for you."
    "Declaring for me! I wouldn't have that no-account if he come with a pink ribbon around his throat."
    Her father gave her a long look. Meggie's harsh words shamed her. She was humiliated.
    "Nothing happened between us. And besides, he's nowhere near dead. A little touch of bad food isn't likely to kill a sharp-talking wily fellow like Mr. J. Monroe Farley."
    She spoke the name in such a disparaging way, her father could only shake his head.
    "For that we can be grateful," Best replied. "It's a good thing you didn't know that before you fed him the piccalilli."
     
    "Pa!" Meggie gave a little cry of indignation. "You talk like I did it on purpose."
    "We know you didn't mean it," her brother Jesse said quietly. His handsome young face was innocent and without guile. "It ain't your fault, Meggie. Your cooking just makes folks sick. It happens every picnic."
    "Not every picnic!" Her expression was stricken.
    "Often enough that you ought to give up trying to feed the unwary," her father said.
    Meggie raised her chin bravely, made a dramatic huff, and turned to leave the cabin.
    "Where are you going?" her father called out.
    "You don't expect me to actually stay in here with a man who tried to sweet-talk me."
    Her father shrugged. "No, I suspect not. Tho' why in heaven would this city fellow take a notion toward you is a mystery."
    "Pa!"
    "I'd not meant it that way, Meggie," he said. "It's just that you've always been so standoffish when it comes to wife-lookers."
    "And she cain't cook neither," Jesse added.
    "I'm going to the cellar," she snapped.
    "What for?"
    "I might as well throw out the rest of that batch of piccalilli."
    Meggie couldn't quite hear her father's chuckle behind her, but she knew it was there. She had never been so humiliated in her life. She'd been so overwhelmed by the stranger she'd lost her good sense. To think she'd allowed that fast-talking city man to kiss her and hug her and all that cooing and spooning, and he'd not been thinking about marrying her at all.
    There was a loud choking sound from the bed and Meggie heard her father call out, "Hand me the basin, Jesse." She hurried out the back door, unwilling to listen to any more. Maybe he wouldn't survive. At least then she wouldn't have to see his face again. What had she been thinking?
    On the far side of the porch, she opened the trapdoor to the root cellar. The ladder was narrow and steep but Meggie negotiated it easily. She lit the small tallow candle in the lantern that hung from the ceiling. In its yellow glow, the brightness of unshed tears shone in her blue eyes.
    "Dad-burn and blast!" she exclaimed quietly to herself. She knew exactly what she'd been thinking. She'd been thinking the same silly, foolish thoughts that had been flitting in and out of her mind since she was old enough to know