Bella's snort was, thankfully, hidden beneath her mother's clapping and her father's delighted praise. "That's wonderful!" said their mother, as she had said so many times before. Her voice had lost none of its enthusiasm. They had good parents, Bella thought, good ones indeed. Mother and Father were gentle and loving, supportive where other adults in the town opted to use the whip. It was a shame they'd gotten stuck with a daughter as daft as Grace Ann.

Their eldest girl beamed, as she had beamed four times before. There was Andrew, who never returned from the war although rumor had it he was not harmed or killed. He fled, they said, to avoid a marriage with a girl he could not love and somehow Grace Ann held her head high despite this. Next was Lionel, a lad with courage to match his name but an utter lack of sense. He was discovered in the church basement during the service, his arms and legs tangled around some city girl. Yet still, Grace Ann bore the shame and scandal unfalteringly. Max, the next boy, was disappointing. He simply came to their home to withdrawal his proposal. And lastly came Earnest, an engagement that lasted only a day, for Earnest earnestly insisted that he had never asked for Grace Ann's hand in marriage and, if he'd said anything of that sort, it was simply because he had had too much wine.

Since no one else asked the question, Bella took it upon herself. "So who is it this time?"

Her father frowned and rephrased the question. "Who is the lucky man, my future son-in-law?"

"Oh, Father." Grace Ann giggled. "His name is Colin and I met him at fair."

"So you met him two days ago." Mother managed to conceal her disappointment well.

Bella lacked the skill, despite twenty two years of life. "Have you ever managed to just be friends with a man, instead of automatically hoping for marriage?"

"As if you don't hope for marriage, with Jonathan." snapped her sister, darkly.

"That's different."

"Different how?" the older girl demanded, leaning forward against the table as if she'd just made an important point.

"Can we please eat dinner?" asked their father, mildly. Years of practice had weathered him for his daughters' squabbles.

"Because I'm well past marrying age." Bella pointed out, impatient with her sister's pretend intelligence. "Jonathan and I have been together for years now, waiting. But besides and before him, I've had many male friends."

"You always were a tomboy." Grace Ann sneered.

"And you always were a slut."

"Bella!" both her parents were scandalized by such language at the dinner table.

"You, young lady, may take your dinner out to the barn with the animals, until you learn manners fit for human company." Father commanded and that was the end of that.

Bella didn't bother to look unhappy at the prospect. Her parents didn't expect her to be shamed; they would be satisfied by her absence from the table. She didn't have to fear the lash, like other town girls might have faced in the same situation, so she gathered her plate and silverware cheerfully and left the house. It was nicer out here anyway, with the heavy front door blocking her from Grace Ann's chatter.

She felt more at home out in the yard anyway, although she'd been born in that house. "And it wasn't a pretty birth either," her mother always said. "There I was, worn out from the whole of it, with an infant who refused to breathe."

Stubborn she'd come into the world and stubborn she remained, Bella did. One had to be stubborn and strong, to put up with life here. The farm work wasn't the half of it, although it had strengthened her body. No one would recognize her as the sickly toddler she'd been. Bella stood strong and built, with the well shaped muscles befitting a girl who had worked since she could walk. She had thick dark locks which she wore in coiled braids, if she had the patience to style it so, or otherwise down her back, one barrette holding up the top layer.

But the difficulty of life physically wasn't all that made Bella strong, she thought, settling on the fence with her dinner so that she could watch the sunset. No, the hardest thing in her life was Grace Ann. Only those who had to live with that girl all day long could understand the difficulty of it all and Bella's parents couldn't admit the hardship because they'd made the choice to give birth and the choice not to bury the daughter alive, as sometimes happened on the farms these days. Grace Ann was a soft, down blanket tossed to fend for itself in a mud puddle. She smothered her hands in lotions before heading out to deal with the horses. She brushed her hair morning, noon, and night, falling into a panic should one strand too many come loose. And Grace Ann was the only one of them who had gone across their father's knee, spanked at twenty for wasting precious fabric to sew city-girl style pockets all over her plain dress when she ought to have known better.

The biggest trouble with Grace Ann, though, was that she wouldn't get married. Of course she had tried; Bella couldn't say otherwise. Grace Ann lived for marriage and had been planning it since her fifth birthday, when she, their parents said, weaved a ring out of grass and demanded, not asked, a little boy playmate to marry her. But she ignored the potential suitors in their community, looking towards the wealthiest or those from the city. And so long as she kept her sights on such high strutting fools - and so long as they kept turning her down - she'd never be a wife. Which meant, according to the tradition of the land, Bella could not be one either.

"Your sister?" Jonathan came up behind her, offering some buttered bread from his own dinner table to soak up her tasteless porridge.

"But of course." Bella shook her head, refusing the bread even though her mouth watered. She knew as well as anyone else in the town that the years had been lean; butter was hard to come by.

"Take it." he pressed the treat firmly into her palm and swung up onto the fence, behind her. "What'd you do this time?"

"Called her a slut." she grinned, choosing to accept the gift rather than insult him by refusing again. "She's planning to be married, again. This time to a boy from the fair - a boy she's known only a few days now."

"Perhaps they'll marry quickly, before he has time to realize what a mistake he's making?" Jonathan suggested, hopefully.

"Wouldn't that be nice." Bella swung her legs, hiding her sigh. She'd long ago stopped hoping that things would go her way in this. Most of the town girls married by fifteen and had babies soon after. A few younger sisters waited till seventeen or eighteen. To still be single at twenty two was nearly unthinkable. And her sister was thirty; the gossipers whispered that Grace Ann was an old maid, a spinster who ruined her family's future by not marrying and getting with child or allowing her sister to do so.

"It would." he let his arms encircle her, chin resting on her dark head. "But enough of that topic now."

She silenced dutifully, welcoming the warmth of his arms and the steadiness of his tone. Early on, Bella had worried. She'd feared that Jonathan would grow tired of the waiting and find one of the many other willing young ladies in the community. Certainly his parents wished he would. They wanted to see their grandchildren before death. But he had stood tirelessly at her side. Still, times were only growing worse...

"Bella!" the call from the house interrupted their moment.

She jumped, not from fear at being caught in this position - it wasn't like he had his hands anywhere questionable, after all - but from the unexpectedness of it. Bella hadn't planned on going in until dark. If she was being punished, she might as well make the most of it by avoiding the dishes and other evening chores.

"Bella!" the call came again, her mother impatient. "Come inside, now."

"Coming, Mother!" she kept her groan silent, but Jonathan knew and chuckled.

"You'd better head in."

"Will you be around tomorrow?" Bella asked, disappointed at losing this moment with him.

"In the evening, yes." he nodded. "Before that, I'm stuck helping Father with the harvest."

"I'll try to slip out to see you after dinner."

"Bella!" her mother was screeching now. "If you don't come in, you'll have nothing to eat tomorrow!"

"Go on." Jonathan ushered her forward with a pat to her bottom. "I don't wish to marry a starved waif."

She laughed at his joke and shoo'ed him away, saving the muttered comment until she was on her way inside. "If we ever get to marry at all."