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Cheryl Reavis

Page 30

by The Bartered Bride


  “You are not far from that yourself, Frederich. I will bring Leah to put her to bed.”

  “No, I want her to—stay here. I want her to sleep—as long as she needs to. I don’t want her where I can’t hear— what Beata—will say to her.”

  “Yes,” Steigermann said. “That is good. I will get the brandy. And I will get enough for you, too.”

  She tried to sit up, but she couldn’t manage it. It felt so good to just lie there. And if she drank the brandy Frederich sent for, she didn’t remember it. She only remembered voices from far off—Lise and Mary Louise, Leah Steigermann, and yet another of Beata’s eloquent sniffs.

  Voices, she thought sleepily. And birdsong.

  The sun was shining. The breakfast was cooking. A warm body lay all along hers. Because she had shared a bed with another human being only once in her adult life, she came awake and upright at the same moment.

  It was the same human being.

  “Mein Gott, Caroline! You scared me half to death!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I am wounded,” he reminded her, sinking back on the pillows. “It is my bed—”

  She licked her lips and stared at him. “Have I—hurt you?”

  “Yes,” he said pointedly.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, sliding her feet to the floor. “How long have I—”

  “A long time,” he assured her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “It’s all right for you to be here, Caroline. We said the words to the marriage ceremony—if little else.”

  Their eyes met, and she immediately looked elsewhere.

  “Where are you going?” he asked when she turned away and began looking for her shoes.

  “I’m going home,” she said. “Nothing has changed, Frederich. I have done what you asked of me. I have brought you back here. I’ll come later to help Beata—if she’ll let me—but I told you before. I can’t live here.”

  “Even if I—?”

  She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. He looked at her with a sadness she could hardly bear.

  “Even if I—asked?” he said finally, and she shook her head.

  “I can’t,” she said, and she sounded determined, even to herself. But she couldn’t keep from giving him one last look as she went out the door.

  Nothing has changed.

  Frederich in his helplessness wondered if she really believed that.

  She kept her word on both accounts. She came back to help Beata as she said she would—every day—and she would not live in his house. She took great care of him; even the worst of her critics—Beata herself—could not find fault with that. He tried not to miss her when she was gone. He tried not to worry about her staying at the Holt place alone. He tried to grow stronger, to enjoy his children, to forget about Eli—but there were times when it was all he could do not to make a fool of himself and beg for what he wanted.

  Stay with me, Caroline.

  The truth of the matter was that he couldn’t bear to have her out of his sight—and yet he did everything he could to drive her away. He lay now with his eyes closed as she bathed him, waiting for her to cause him pain so that he could complain.

  But she was always gentle.

  So…gentle…

  “Where were you all those months?” she asked him. Her hands moved over him, soaping his body, his unwounded arm and hand, his shoulders and chest and belly. Her lingering touch was a long-desired thing he had never expected to know again, and he gave himself up to the memory. The cold attic room. The crackling of the cedar fire. And her hands moving over him.

  “What—months?” he forced himself to ask.

  “When the army took you away—and we couldn’t find where you’d been taken.”

  “I was in Richmond. The prison—Castle Thunder. They were going to make an example of me,” he said, his eyes still closed. “My commanding officer came and ordered me back to the regiment. He was very angry. He told them to make an example out of somebody who didn’t know how to sergeant.”

  “You…never sent word.”

  “No,” he said. “I never did.”

  “Frederich—”

  “You say my name wrong, did you know that?” he asked with his eyes still closed—because he still needed to find fault. “‘Frederich.’”

  “Do you want me to say it the German way?”

  “No. The German way is dying here. I will be like John Steigermann. He changes the Hans. I will change the Friedrich.’”

  She leaned across him to dry his shoulder; he opened his eyes. Their faces were inches apart, but she was too intent upon her task to notice. He wanted to kiss her mouth. Now. Perhaps she would even stand still and let him do it.

  As she straightened, their eyes met.

  “Do you think about us at all?” he asked quietly, because truly he felt that if he said such a thing too loud she would run from him. “Do you think about what it was like with us? Or do you only think about him—?”

  “Oh, don’t!” Caroline said, her eyes locked with his. “I can’t bear it! If you say anything to me about Eli, I will go out of this house and I won’t come back.”

  He believed her. He had already guessed as much—that any insinuation about her and Eli on his part would be unforgivable, regardless of how guilty she might be. All he had to do was make the unsubtle remark, ask the accusatory question, and she would be gone. She would endure everything else about him—his bad temper and his fevers and his wounds—but not that.

  “I don’t know why you are here at all!” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me!”

  “All right! You took care of me when I was so ill—when it was of no importance to me if I lived or died. I am repaying that charity—”

  “I never held that up to you!”

  “No. But I feel obligated anyway. Just as I feel obligated to do penance for Ann.”

  He stared at her.

  Penance for Ann.

  He had heard that before.

  Penance for…Anna…

  She tried to move away from him, but he held on to her, his eyes searching hers. “Is that all there is between us? Debts to be paid? Is it? Is it?”

  She suddenly bowed her head.

  “Caroline,” he whispered, straining upward so that he could get closer to her. She held herself rigid, unyielding. “Caroline—”

  Their faces touched, and she made a soft, yielding sound, clinging to him for a moment before she pushed herself away.

  She slipped from his grasp and stumbled toward the door.

  “Caroline, I want to know what is between you and Eli!”

  “There is nothing! How many times do I have to tell you? I see how much you want to forgive me. I know all I have to do is ask. But it’s Ann who needs it. I will not be forgiven for something I haven’t done!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Nothing has changed. I will never understand these people!

  But she did understand. She understood how proud Frederich was. She understood that, because of Ann, he believed the worst of her, even after she’d dragged him more dead than alive all the way back from Richmond. She understood that on some level he needed her, was grateful to her, regardless of the fact that he’d left it unsaid.

  But she was proud as well, and she couldn’t change that any more than he could. She had but one recourse—to stay away from him—for both their sakes—as he himself had once told her to do. She would take things to the house for him—what food she could spare, honey for his wounds, but she wouldn’t sit in constant attendance. Beata or one of the other German women could do that for him. And she would see the children until he forbade it.

  She heard a horse and buggy approaching, and she stepped outside, relieved that the army wasn’t foraging again. She recognized the somber black clerical garb immediately. She had heard from Leah Steigermann that Johann had at last returned and that he hadn’t found Aver
y or any of the others. She was glad to see him, even if he was likely here to chastise her for her abandoning her husband. She walked out into the yard to meet him.

  He got down from the buggy and took off his hat and began to fan himself vigorously. “Weather’s abominably hot today,” he said as if it hadn’t been weeks since they’d last talked—as if he weren’t here for a purpose.

  “Is there any news about Avery?” she asked immediately, even if that was not the foremost thing on her mind.

  “No. Nor any of the others. My friends in Richmond will continue to look—so we mustn’t give up hope.”

  “You have been to see Frederich today?” she said, asking what she really wanted to know.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How is he?”

  “He’s…the same,” he said, and she earnestly believed it. Frederich never changed. Well or wounded, he still thought she had betrayed him.

  ‘You know that I’ve come to talk,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the porch.

  “There is nothing to talk about—”

  “Please!” he said, holding up his hand. “I am hot. I am tired. And I want you to start at the beginning.”

  “There is no ‘beginning.’ Why don’t you go and ask Frederich if you want revelations?”

  “I did. It didn’t do any good. He is no more forthcoming than you are. If I am to give my counsel—”

  “Johann, I haven’t asked for your counsel.”

  “Well, I intend to give it. I have to. It’s what I do.“

  She paced around the yard for a moment, then turned over a pebble with the toe of her shoe. “Frederich asked me about Eli,” she said abruptly. She glanced at him, but for once his face told her nothing.

  “Did you expect that he would not? You are his wife. It’s a matter of his pride—a personal attribute you know well, if you will pardon my bluntness. And he’s not a saint.”

  “He did it after I told him to do so…would drive me from his house.”

  “And?”

  “And…” She gave an offhand shrug “I’m…here.”

  “Which accomplishes nothing—except your mutual misery, as far as I can see. You think he asked the question unjustly, then.”

  “Yes,” she said evenly.

  “He thinks he has the right to know.”

  “There is nothing to know! He can ask all he wants!”

  “There is the money Eli sent you,” he reminded her.

  She sighed.

  “Does Frederich know you used it to bring him home?”

  “No,” she said.

  “It’s just as well. He wouldn’t be happy to find out he’s even more indebted to Eli than he realized.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Eli is the one who carried him from the battlefield and then stole a wagon to get him to Richmond—he brought Frederich and William both, and he was paying the German woman for Frederich’s care. That is the reason Frederich was so desperate to be away from there.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Eli told me.”

  “Eli—?”

  “He’s here, Caroline. He came back yesterday. He came to make sure Frederich had survived the journey. And to work the land until Frederich can do it. He did make a promise to Ann, and he is determined to keep it.”

  “Frederich must be—”

  “Exactly,” Johann said.

  She pushed the pebble around with her shoe again.

  “Eli wants to talk to you, Caroline,” he said, and she looked at him.

  “I want to talk to him,” she said quietly.

  “When?”

  “Now. Before he disappears again.”

  “You’ll come back to the house with me?”

  “Yes,” she said, understanding now the purpose of this visit. “I just wish…” She abruptly stopped and looked off in the direction of the Graeber place. But she couldn’t see anything of the house in full summer with the leaves on the trees.

  “What? What do you wish?”

  She looked at him. “I wish that, just once, Frederich had seen me.“

  “He sees you, Caroline.”

  “Then why don’t I feel it? Why can’t I tell that I matter to him? I don’t know what to do, Johann. I just know I can’t live in Ann’s shadow.”

  “Caroline, Caroline,” Johann said with a sigh. “You and Frederich both keep backing yourselves into corners without the slightest idea how to get out—when it’s perfectly obvious to me.”

  “Is it?” she said, very close to becoming annoyed.

  “Of course, it is. The past cannot be changed. It cannot be forgotten. But it can be forgiven. One forgives and one moves on. You see?”

  “No,” she said, and he smiled.

  “I am not the one who needs to be forgiven, Johann. I am not Ann.”

  “Yes, well,” he said. “I suppose it’s all up to Frederich then, isn’t it?”

  “Does he know you came for me?”

  “He knows.”

  She sighed again. “Then I believe we had best be on our way.”

  Frederich sat propped up in bed, straining to hear the voices downstairs—Johann and the children, and a lengthy protest of some kind from Beata.

  Had Caroline come?

  He couldn’t hear her or Eli—but she must have come or Beata wouldn’t be arguing about leaving the house with the children. He lay there looking at the ceiling, unsettled and helpless. The room was hot. His wounds throbbed and burned.

  Caroline.

  How could he feel so many things for one person? She infuriated him more times than not, and yet he had trusted her with his life and he had not been disappointed. He was about to do the same again, but this time he had no hope. None.

  He looked around sharply at the sound of footsteps, and he thought for a moment that she had come to him. But it was Leah Steigermann.

  “Good afternoon, Frederich,” she said with the considerable charm she had at her disposal.

  He didn’t answer her. She was not deterred.

  “I’ve come to keep you occupied for a time—Johann seems to think you need company.”

  “I don’t.”

  “That is what I told him, but you know Johann. He says you want to behave well while Caroline and Eli have their tête-à-tête—but you might not unless someone helps you." She brought a bottle of his own plum brandy out from behind her skirts. “This,” she said, “was my idea. Now. In answer to your questions—”

  “I haven’t asked any—”

  “In answer to your questions,” she interrupted pointedly. “Yes, Caroline has come to talk with Eli. Yes, both she and Eli are downstairs now—she is sitting at the kitchen table—he is pacing. He apparently has things he wants to say to her, but no, he hasn’t said what they might be. And whatever they are, Johann is on hand to translate so there will be no misunderstanding. Does that about cover it?”

  “Yes,” he said, reaching for the bottle. He was reasonably certain that Leah knew about Ann and Eli, and she had been kind to Caroline. He supposed that if he must be plagued by a keeper, it might as well be she. “I only have the one cup,” he said.

  “None for me. It won’t do for both of us to get tipsy.”

  “You shouldn’t be up here at all.”

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t look—”

  “No, it doesn’t, does it? But if my father, the Reverend Rial and your wife have no objections, who am I to argue? Shall I pour that or can you do it one-handed?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what her fiancé might think about her being here, but he didn’t. And he didn’t intend to pour. He drank the brandy straight from the bottle.

  He turned his head sharply at the sound of someone— Eli—talking.

  “So,” Leah said. “It begins.”

  He took another drink. It came to him suddenly that he was afraid. He was as afraid as he had ever been before a battle—perhaps more so, because there was nothing he
could do. Nothing.

  He stirred restlessly. He could hear Johann now, and a softer murmur that must be Caroline.

  “Shall I read to you?” Leah asked.

  “No—” he said impatiently, still trying to hear. “What does he want?” he said, more to himself than to her.

  “He wants to make things right,” Leah said.

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “He is very…changed.”

  “So are we all—particularly Anna.”

  He glanced at her. She was looking at him thoughtfully.

  “Say it,” he said. “And be done with it.”

  “All right. Caroline told me once that you had no affection, no regard, for Ann. If she felt that—as an outsiderthen how must Ann herself have felt? Perhaps she even said as much to Caroline—I don’t know. But you must understand this small thing about us women. We don’t need things to make us happy, Frederich. We need to know that we matter, that our simply being is important to the man we marry—apart from the things we do for him and the things we bring him as dowry. Perhaps Ann felt her lack of importance—whether you intended it or not—it was a very sad time for you then, yes? And Beata would have surely helped foster such a notion—”

  “Leah—”

  “Wait—there’s more. The thing I really want to say is that perhaps you are making the same mistake again—with Caroline. I think I know her as well as anyone, and I am telling you this. If she is important to you, you had better swallow your pride and let her know it—in no uncertain terms. You won’t have her otherwise—”

  It’s too late, he was about to say, but a sound came from downstairs and they both looked toward the door. Someone crying—sobbing. It grew louder. Frederich forced himself upward, trying to slide his good leg to the floor, the effort it took making him cry out in pain.

  “Wait!” Leah cried, catching him by the shoulders to keep him from falling. “Wait—! It’s not her, Frederich. It’s Eli.”

  It seemed a long while before the downstairs grew quiet again. Then he could hear Caroline’s voice, speaking quietly, on and on. He lay there, imagining her comforting Eli. Perhaps she had her arms around him—perhaps she would agree to go with him.

  He gave a shuddering sigh.

  “Someone’s coming,” Leah said. She stood up so that she could see out the door. “It’s Eli. I’ll go now. You remember what I’ve said—”

 

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