The Bride's House by Sandra Dallas Read Free Book Online

Nealie said. “Well, I don’t care what it is. I’m hungry enough to eat buzzard bait.”
    “I don’t believe the Hotel de Paris serves buzzard bait, but there is fish and venison and ptarmigan.”
    “Not ptarmigan. I couldn’t eat a ptarmigan. They’re such pretty birds, all white in the winter. I saw one when I first arrived. And they take care of their chicks real good,” she said.
    “No ptarmigan,” Will told the waiter. “Venison, then.” He ordered other foods, and Nealie was glad he did, because she didn’t recognize their names and would have been shy about asking Will to explain every offering.
    In a few minutes, the waiter brought them special plates with oysters on them. “I’m not acquainted with those. What are they?” Nealie whispered, after the man left.
    “Raw oysters. You eat them like this.” Will picked up a tiny fork and speared an oyster and ate it.
    Nealie imitated him, balancing an oyster on her fork and putting it into her mouth. She swallowed the oyster but didn’t like its taste and made a face. Then suddenly the oyster popped back up, and she spit it out into her hand. “He’s a slimy fellow,” she said, staring at the round white object.
    “Put it back onto the plate then. You don’t have to eat them. Oysters are an acquired taste.”
    “But that man won’t like it.”
    Will reached over and patted her hand. “He won’t mind.”
    Nealie looked doubtful, but in a few minutes, the waiter removed the plate without so much as a glance at her. He returned with a bottle of wine, removed the cork, and poured a small amount into Will’s glass. Will tasted it, nodded, and the waiter filled Nealie’s glass. “It’s a light wine, but you don’t have to drink that, either, if you don’t like it,” Will said.
    Nealie did like it, however. In fact, she wanted to gulp it down at once as she would a glass of water. But she had glimpsed the other ladies in the restaurant sipping their wine and imitated them.
    When the food arrived, Nealie gripped her fork as if it were a hammer. Then she noticed how Will held his fork, gracefully. She looked around the room and saw that other people ate the way Will did. So she held the fork between her fingers and she picked at a vegetable she didn’t recognize. She started to saw her meat into pieces, the way the miners did at the boardinghouse. But again, she watched Will, who cut off a single piece, then picked it up with his fork. Nealie thought about the way Charlie shoveled his food into his mouth and decided she would study Will to improve her manners.
    “Where did you learn to read?” Will asked her. He picked up a salt shaker and offered it to her, but Nealie had salted her food when it arrived. She wondered now if she was supposed to taste it first.
    “At school. I’m the only one in my family that can read. I guess my pa’s in a pickle now without me. He said a girl that could read was as useless as a dog that could count. Well, I can cipher, too, better’n most. I bet my pa misses me for that, too.”
    “Do you miss them?”
    Nealie shook her head. “Ma’s dead. I ran off.”
    “Does he know where you are?”
    “No, he does not.” Nealie looked up at Will. “You won’t tell him, will you?”
    Will laughed. “Cross my heart. If you hadn’t run away, I never would have met you.” He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “And I’m awfully glad I met you, Miss Bent.” He leaned back, waiting for a response.
    “You’re the nicest person I’m acquainted with in Georgetown,” Nealie said, “except for Mrs. Travers. If it hadn’t been for her, maybe I would have ended up with those sorry girls on Brownell Street.”
    “Why, Miss Bent!”
    Nealie blushed and said defensively, “Well, there isn’t much choice for a girl like me.”
    “If you had gone to Brownell Street, then I might have met you there.”
    Nealie looked at Will in astonishment, because even she knew he had gone too far. “I’ll thank