Read Love by the Letter for Free Online Page B

leg with a thump onto the floor and leaned forward on both elbows, his hands clasped between his knees. “I didn’t mean to get so fired up earlier. I was angry at me, not you. I thought I could pick up on this reading and writing thing quicker. And we haven’t even started working on my spelling, which is what I really need fixed.”
    She tilted her head. “I’ve been working with Allen for months now and his reading isn’t close to stellar. You can only learn so much in a few days.”
    “But I’m older. I should take to instruction better.”
    “I don’t think it’s a matter of instruction, per se.” She ran her finger along the lamp shade’s fringe. “I have a feeling there’s something in your brain that makes reading difficult.”
    “Great. Then I’m hopeless.” He sat back and crossed his arms.
    Why was he so down on himself? He could learn to read better, maybe not in a week, but surely with help. “I didn’t say that.”
    Dex sighed and took the book from her. “I guess we might as well continue.”
    Maybe she should stop these lessons. He needed more help than she could provide. But if he didn’t think he benefited from the brief effort, he might never try again. Neil could help him in Kansas, surely. “You’ve done fine until now, and as you’ve said, reading won’t affect running a homestead much. Plus Neil and Patricia will be nearby, they could—”
    “No, I need to write better.”
    “But again, Neil and—”
    “They can’t write what I need written.” He jabbed her pen into one of her equations, poking a hole through the paper.
    “Sure they can. You could always ask them how to spell things if you want to write in your own hand.”
    His Adam’s apple bobbed. With his eyes fixed on the pen and paper in front of him, he mumbled something.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “They can’t help me write to my future bride.”
    Her heart froze. “Bride?” she sputtered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
    “I’ve got to be able to write letters she can understand.”
    No wonder he’d never given her a second glance. A woman she didn’t know had won him.
    Oh! This tutoring had to end. Now.
    Lord, get me out of this, please.
    “I think perhaps a dictionary would be a wise purchase. Then you could forget these lessons and spend more time with your family and prepare for your trip.” She lowered her eyes. Had this woman sat across from him in church and every community dance for years hoping to catch his eye? Had she dreamed about Dex for more than a decade?
    But it didn’t matter what the woman had or had not given up. Dex had chosen her.
    “I’ve borrowed Lily’s dictionary, but it doesn’t help if you don’t know how to spell in the first place.” He flicked his hand as if he’d been holding all his confidence in his grasp and flung it away. “Maybe I just have to get over myself. Patricia would probably find the letterwriting thing romantic, but I couldn’t have her write down the personal stuff.”
    Personal words and feelings that would never be written to her. What would Dex write the woman he loved? Probably the same things she couldn’t say to him. But it wasn’t her inability to spell that had kept her quiet—a very good thing she’d stayed quiet.
    Rachel’s eyes grew warm, but she wouldn’t blink lest she loose a tear over something that had never been hers anyway. “A woman in love would overlook your misspellings or your need for someone’s help.”
    He paled. “A woman in love, perhaps, but not a mail-order bride.”
    Her lungs squeezed, and her hands sought one another to wring out the tension.
    He’d not just chosen another woman. He’d chosen any woman but her.

    The silence in the room weighed upon Dex’s shoulders. Rachel’s eyes had turned cloudy, and she’d grown pale though she hadn’t said anything more. Probably because she hadn’t anything nice to say about his mail-order bride decision. Everett and Grant hadn’t either.
    “Did I hear