by Kelly Long
Then she noticed that Ransom had raised his small punch glass in one of his big hands. “Then here’s to knowing where kinner come from, eh?”
She looked in his handsome face and saw the twist of his lips as he gave the toast, and she saw something like a dark flame in his eyes, but just as suddenly, it was gone.
She grabbed her glass, sloshing the liquid a bit over her hand, but then determinedly clinked her glass against his and put the strawberry punch to her lips. She’d never had anyone offer a toast in her direction and the feeling was heady.
“To kinner,” she returned, watching his tan throat work as he swallowed. And suddenly, she realized that she’d hurt him somehow with her “hare’s teeth” and the toast, but she couldn’t understand why. And she had little time to ponder the feeling as the wedding festivities continued.
* * *
Wedding days were a time for games and fun, and some girls of the community, despite his position as escort to Beth, tried everything they could to catch Ransom’s interest. He was brushed against, forced to catch someone with a sprained ankle, had his suspenders snapped against his chest, and one female actually whispered something in his ear that did not bear repeating.
“I feel like I’m being mauled,” he muttered softly to Beth, who stood quietly by during all these ploys. “Let’s geh for a walk.”
Beth nodded, and he was surprisingly refreshed by her silence. They wandered along the grass near the green trees, and Ransom found that he couldn’t think of much to say until she asked him about his apprenticeship.
“Ach, now that was something both hard and worthwhile. I plan to expand Daed’s woodshop to include the making of fine furniture, mantelpieces and scrollwork for larger houses. My grandfather was a gut teacher. . . .”
She nodded. “It must have been hard, though, to be away all those years and then to nurse your grandfather. I—forgive me. That’s just something I heard, and—”
“Of course I nursed the auld man,” he said easily. “I loved him and he had no one else.” Ransom cleared his throat. “And what of you, Beth Mast? What are your plans in life? Surely not to stay under Viola’s thumb forever?”
* * *
She sucked in a deep breath and was about to make a sharp retort when she felt him lift her chin with one of his hands. “I mean no disrespect.... It’s a genuine question.”
“I–I expect that I’ll always be with Viola. She needs me, needs what I do around the haus.” And I’m scared, afraid to think about being alone. I don’t want to be alone.
She parted her lips and drew in her breath as she came back to the moment. Ransom leaned closer to her, then released her chin. She was unsure what game he was playing at, but his attention made her feel out of control and she didn’t like that one bit. She took a step backward and promptly tripped over a large, exposed tree root. She felt herself falling, but Ransom grabbed her arms and pulled her back to her feet with inexorable strength.
“You need to drink more water,” he commented.
“I tripped—on this root! I didn’t faint and don’t think for one minute that I was trying to get your infernal attention,” she huffed, moving away from him.
“We’d better geh back to the wedding, unless you’d rather stay and . . . talk?”
She gritted her teeth and shook her head, not understanding why the man so infuriated her. But soon they were back among the crowd and she could concentrate on her role in the wedding party.
It was late when the wedding celebration was over, but Beth had done her duty as attendant and visited and laughed shyly with everyone she knew. Lucy had also led her inside to see some of the wedding gifts, which would ultimately have to be moved to the newlyweds’ cabin. The bride and groom had definitely been blessed with gifts to start a new life.
“Beth . . . Allow Rose to lean on you as we walk. She’s tired and you’re so much more—hearty.” Her stepmother’s voice cut through Beth’s wandering thoughts.
Beth swallowed and nodded as Viola turned away. It was time to say goodbye to Ransom and she wasn’t quite sure of how to do it properly.
But he took sudden charge of the situation by catching one of her hands in his and then giving her a faintly mocking bow. “Goodbye, Beth. Have a gut nacht.”
“Ach, jah,” she murmured, flustered. “Gut nacht.”
Chapter Two
As dusk set in and the fireflies began to dance, Ransom eased the curry brush down the side of his faithful horse, Benny, and let his thoughts drift back over the day’s wedding. Beth Mast had proved a dutiful companion for all the games and visiting that went on, and he wondered at himself for baiting her. He was still considering this when his seventeen-year-old bruder, Abel, came in with a bucket of oats and hurriedly fed Benny.
“You going down the mountain to Coudersport tonight, Abel?”
His brother stopped in his tracks and Ransom frowned. Abel was having his rumspringa, and Ransom knew only too well that the unaccustomed freedom of this time could lead to reckless behavior.
“Uh . . . jah.”
“To meet a girl?”
Abel nodded. “Mebbe.”
“Do you have protection?”
“Uh . . . I . . .”
Ransom blew out a breath in exasperation and gave his bruder a pointed look. “Condoms, Abel?” He took out his wallet and withdrew a few bills. “Get some. And don’t forget to use them . . . It’s easy in the—moment to let seemingly lesser things geh by the wayside.”
“All right. Danki, Ransom.”
Ransom sighed to himself once Abel had gone and then dropped the curry brush and pressed his head against Benny’s side. The vast emptiness he always felt and could never seem to push away rose up in his throat and he choked on a half sob. Some days, he didn’t know how he was supposed to go on. Once more he wished that the ground might cover his back and hide his face forever....
“You all right, sohn?”
Ransom looked up and quickly put on a mask of composure as his father came into the barn and set a lantern down on a barrel top.
“Jah, Daed. I was thinking more than working, truth to tell.”
“Well, it’ll be strange not to have Jeb in the haus, that’s for sure.”
“Uh—right.”
“Not what you were thinking of?” His fater’s voice was warm. “Perhaps it was the bevy of young maedels there today? Or one in particular?”
“Nee.” Ransom laughed. “No one special.”
“So I won’t be gaining another dochder-in-law anytime soon?”
Ransom put down the brush and went over to lay a gentle arm round his daed’s shoulders. The aulder man had recovered from a heart attack recently and sometimes seemed more fragile than Ransom cared to acknowledge.
“No, Daed. If there’s ever any girl I come to love, I promise you’ll be the first—or somewhere in the top three—who kummes to know it.”
They laughed together and then headed for the haus in the gloaming. Once there, Ransom sat down to the table to enjoy a cold supper of stewed tomatoes and sugar, egg salad, hearty bacon and broccoli salad, and a blueberry cake for afters. The blueberry cake made him think of the moment he’d fed Beth the pie after she’d fainted. Little hare . . . somewhere along the way she’s lost her spark for living . . . like me . . . I know it. . . .
His mamm was quiet, obviously tired after a day’s helping at the wedding, and Ransom gently patted her shoulder as he got up to take his dishes to the sink. He bent and kissed her soft cheek, balancing his plate in his left hand. “Danki, Mamm—for all of your hard work. I know Jeb and Lucy appreciated it.”
“As well they should,” his sister Esther mumbled sourly, her irritability bearing witness to her own tiredness.
Ransom laughed. “Kumme on, Esther. You know you loved every minute of it.”
“Better watch out, Ransom King,” Esther quipped, “or you’re going to get trapped into a wedding of your own one of these days.”
She got up from the table an
d swatted at him with a damp dish towel. He easily evaded her, then jumped up to sit on the wooden counter, swinging his legs. “You be older than I, Esther . . . Isn’t it time you yourself were, uh, trapped, as you put it?”
His sister glared at him. Everyone knew Esther was moody and scared off any prospective suitors with her sharp tongue, but Ransom still thought she was beautiful—even if a bit off-putting. But now, she marched from the kitchen, obviously dismissing him in a fit of anger.
“Ransom, you shouldn’t tease her so,” his mamm said in soft rebuke as she pumped water into the sink.
“I know.” He grinned. “But it’s too much fun to stop.”
“Well, while you’re having fun, I need you to remember that I want you to take some lamb’s ears plantings over to Viola Mast’s haus tomorrow. She asked for them special today, and you also need to return the tables we borrowed.”
Ransom jumped down from the counter and headed for the stairs with a yawn. “No problem, Mamm. Gut nacht.”
He expected to drop right off to sleep, praying that he would find solace in oblivion. But it was like always—he’d awaken after an hour or two, then pace the floor until he lay down in utter exhaustion while still finding no comfort in his bed.
* * *
Beth finally fell asleep after tossing and turning for a gut hour while images of the wedding day and Ransom King were dancing shadows behind her eyes. But then, as usual, the nightmare began, and she was trapped between the mattress and the quilts with nowhere to run in the confines of her mind.
She could smell the blood—a tangy, metallic scent that made her long to curl up in a ball. But she couldn’t . . . She waited for the familiar jolt and the scream of the horse, and then she was free and running, always running far, far away. . . .
* * *
Dawn had yet to stretch its pink fingers across the summer morning sky when Beth slipped quietly from her bed. She was grateful for the feel of Thumbelina, her large Maine coon cat, when he brushed against her legs in the inky darkness. She dressed with hasty hands, anxious to get the milking done before breakfast. Friday meant doing the laundry—always a prodigious task, but today, with the addition of the soiled tablecloths Viola had loaned and brought back from the Kings’, it would be a monstrous chore.
But Beth was undaunted; she understood that work was a necessary thing in life. And, as her stepmamm often said, “The more time spent in work, the less there is for idle thought.” Beth had no desire for idle thoughts. She liked to keep her mind busy and in control. She knew that if she let her mind wander, she wouldn’t like the dark trails it would roam, so she was happy for the often heavy chores.
Thumbelina jumped ahead of her as she carefully made her way down the ladder from her loft bedroom in the big cabin. She gained the main floor, avoiding the particular floorboards that creaked in an effort not to wake her stepmamm and Rose. The two had large bedrooms, and, as was typical, they each had placed a mound of clothes and linens outside their respective doors the nacht before so Beth might gather their laundry without waking them before breakfast was ready.
She balanced the tall pile of clothes and walked blindly toward a small door. The washroom was adjacent to the kitchen—a cramped space, barely big enough to hold the wringer washer, large tub, and, when needed, the ironing board and heavy irons heated on the woodstove. She had to go outside, through a narrow back door, to pump the water, but she understood Viola not wanting her to use the kitchen pump and possibly slosh water on the hickory flooring.
Beth dumped the clothes down and hurriedly tiptoed back into the main kitchen. There was part of a pumpkin pie left from yesterday, and her mouth watered in expectation. She stood at the clean counter and, after saying a quick grace, wolfed down the thick, soft filling. She felt the familiar satisfaction of temporary fullness, then returned hurriedly to the laundry.
It took five pails of water to get the metal tub full enough for washing, and she hastily separated the whites from the colors after lugging the buckets to the tub. She plunged the first of Rose’s dark aprons into the water, watching the fabric balloon up, then squashing it down once more. She continued through dresses of different hues, then paused for a moment to catch the breeze from the open back door. Just then, Thumbelina let out a piercing meow.
Beth jumped in spite of herself, then stepped outside in time to see Ransom King driving a wagon slowly down the dirt lane that led to the barn. The clip-clopping of the horse’s hooves was muted in the morning’s newness. Ransom gave her a casual wave and she lifted her hand, feeling a strange pounding in her chest. She was suddenly very conscious of the perspiration stains under her arms and the fact that her hair had escaped her kapp in errant tendrils.
“He must be returning the tables from the wedding to the barn,” she muttered to Thumbelina, who purred loudly in return. “And he probably won’t even stop here at the cabin . . .”
Still, she grasped her hair with ruthless fingers and hastily pinned it back as best she could, then returned with a resolute effort to the washing. She was working the wringer washer when a male voice sounded from the doorway, and Thumbelina’s purring increased.
“That’s a big cat.”
Beth spun, then swallowed hard, careless of the water dripping from the pillowcase she held.
“Uh . . . jah. . . . His name is Thumbelina. I–I thought he was a girl at first and then . . .” She floundered helplessly, wishing she could be as beautiful and confident as her stepsister.
Ransom smiled and stooped down to rub his hand in the thick gray fur of the animal, and Beth was reminded of his stroking her back on the previous day.
“I came to put the tables in the barn, all right?” He slanted a glance up at her through thick lashes, and she wet her lips.
“Jah, do you need any help?”
He rose and shook his head. “Nee—it’s men’s work anyway.”
“Ach, I’m as strong as an ox,” Beth returned in a cheery tone, unconsciously repeating what Viola had often said.
She watched him as he let his dark eyes skim down her damp frame and up again. He shook his head. “I don’t know who’s been putting such ideas in your head, but whoever they are—they’re wrong. You look like you should be cutting flowers, not doing such heavy labor as this.” He gestured to the wash piles, visible inside the door. “Where’s your stepsister to help?”
Beth drank in the kindness of his words and then snapped back to the moment. “Ach, Rose is delicate—a doctor told her long ago that she should only do light tasks as she tends to faint . . . And by the way, she is not a brat.”
Ransom gave her a wry look. “Uh-huh,” he said, then reached out to gently tug the wet pillowcase from her fingers. “What do you say to the two of us getting this job done faster?”
Beth stared at him, appalled. “I couldn’t—couldn’t let you help me.”
He put his hands on his lean hips, ignoring the dripping cloth he held. “Don’t be ridiculous. I did my grandfather’s laundry for years.... Kumme, let me show you.”
“But—it’s women’s work.”
He laughed then. “I guess, in truth, that work is work. But I can do this more easily than you—not to mention faster. So why shouldn’t I help?”
Then she watched helplessly as his light blue shirt became wetter and wetter as he took charge of the wringer and soon had the clothes flying through.
“This is not what I expected of the man who baited me yesterday,” she finally blurted out.
He paused and looked down into her eyes. “Do you want me to stop?”
She could have kicked herself, but she answered anyway. “Nee.”
“Gut,” he said and resumed working. “Can you hang these on the clothesline?” he asked over his shoulder, and she hurried to help.
She swallowed when she saw that he held one of her plain nacht shifts in his big hands. He gave her a wicked smile and lifted it to her as she flushed. She grabbed it without a word and was stretching to place a wooden clothe
spin when she heard Rose’s voice and spun in dismay, thinking desperately of a way to explain why Ransom King was washing women’s dresses and undergarments.
Chapter Three
Beth wanted to dissolve into a spot on the clean grass, but instead she swallowed and walked over to the small washroom. Rose stood like some kind of fairy apparition in the doorway, the early sunlight playing off her magnificent red hair, which hung unbound down to her hips. She was wearing her dressing gown but was standing with visible confidence as Ransom paused, looking unimpressed, with a dripping cloth in his hands.
“What’s going on this fine morning, Beth?” Rose’s voice was high and breathy, and Beth ignored the fact that any other girl would have run back to her room if caught in such a state, with her hair loose, as only a husband should see it. But not her Rose . . . Nee, Rose had both confidence and innocence, Beth thought with pride.
“Ach . . . Ransom offered to help with the washing and I . . .”
“Let him, of course.” Rose smiled. “What kindness, so early in the morning. You must kumme in and have some breakfast, Ransom. I’m sure all of this work has made you hungry.”
Beth watched Ransom wring out the towel he held and then look up at her stepsister. Heaven only knows what he’s thinking . . . Surely he must be floored by Rose’s beauty despite thinking she’s a brat....
“Breakfast would be nice,” Ransom said. “You go on and cook while Beth and I finish here.”
Beth hastened to intervene, feeling flustered. “Ach, but I do the cooking. I’m sorry, Rose—I forgot breakfast with this pile of laundry, and—”
Rose waved a delicate hand in dismissal. “I’ll cook, Beth. Please kumme in, Ransom, and dry off. Beth’s gut at the washing—she’s used to it. Besides, I wanted to talk to you about making a new spice box for the kitchen—a surprise for my mamm’s birthday.”
Beth grabbed the towel from Ransom’s hand. “Jah, please geh. I’m fine here.”