“Perhaps in another sitting,” I said, distracted as I wrapped the scarf smooth over my head and twisted the length of it to fall over one shoulder.
It was vain, I suppose, to assume Jerome would have an opinion one way or another about the style of the scarf on my head, but Christoph seemed pleased enough with the result and resumed his sketching.
“Yes, yes. Quite becoming. Simplicity suits you.”
“It is my accustomed fashion,” I said, and Marina stifled a giggle behind her hand.
Though I sat in obedient stillness, bits of me raced within. My heart, for one, pounding so that I worried its palpitations could be seen in the expanse of skin revealed by the cut of my bodice. And my leg, trembling beneath the fabric of my gown. And my thoughts, calculating the distance between the place where Jerome paused in the window and the front door. Would he knock and wait for a servant to greet and grant him entrance? Or was he familiar enough with the patrons of the estate to make himself welcome? Two minutes had passed, maybe three. Surely he’d had enough time to engage in a polite exchange with Herr Reichenbach about the weather, his horse, some neighborhood gossip. Or pressing business. Such absurdity to think he’d come here to visit me, simply because we’d sat across from each other at five dinners, beside each other at two, danced no fewer than nine times, and walked the perimeters of the grand hall engaged in conversation about . . . Well, I couldn’t recall the topic. But I know I must have been witty, because I made him laugh three times.
“Turn a bit, to the left,” Christoph instructed, making me realize I had been staring intently at the door.
It might have been the better part of an hour, or perhaps a time more accurately measured in minutes, before I heard him. First, his steps, unhurried and measured. Then a cautionary clearing of his throat, and I knew he’d entered the room.
“Might I interrupt?” He spoke to Christoph directly, as I had not yet turned my head to allow him into my line of sight.
“Of course you may, sir.” Christoph’s reply carried his deference to both Jerome’s age and social standing, though he kept his artistic irritation barely concealed.
“I was hoping to entice Miss Katharina to join me on a walk in the garden today, if you can spare her.”
“Well, I’ve only just started. . . .”
Jerome walked around to where he was looking over Christoph’s shoulder and studied the sketch.
“You have a strong start there,” he said. “And it must help having so lovely a subject to capture.”
“Indeed,” Christoph said, though I doubted he shared the opinion of my beauty. It was something one said in a manner of polite flattery, nothing more, and I chose not to acknowledge the compliment.
I stood, a welcome relief to my cramped muscles, and offered a nod in greeting. “What brings you here to visit so early, Herr Baumgartner? Or has time passed so quickly it is nearly time for supper?” The other night Herr Reichenbach had made a quip about Jerome’s frequent presence at the table, and I assumed the warmth of the humor held true.
A chuckle rumbled from the depth of Jerome’s broad chest, and Christoph returned his stick of charcoal to the tray in defeat.
“Actually,” Jerome said, “I had some business to discuss with Philipp and, with it complete, hoped you could accompany me on a stroll through the garden.”
“Oh.” It was the first time he’d sought my company in particular—the first time for any man to do so—and I found myself flummoxed for an answer. Did I need to ask permission of my host? Could I trust my own counsel?
Unbeknownst to Jerome, Christoph twisted his spotted face into a knowing smirk, and I felt color rise not only to my cheeks, but also to every bit of my exposed skin. A soft clearing of a throat behind me, and I glanced back to Marina. Here, I was glad to have had a lifetime of silent communication with women, because a single glance from her—quick, hooded, away, and back—and I knew what to say. When I again looked at Jerome, he clearly had seen and understood every unspoken word.
“Of course the young Marina will accompany us, as is proper. I would not want any undue speculation about your character.”
I fingered the scarf wrapped so artlessly. “I’m afraid I’m not quite—”
Jerome bowed, dismissing my feeble protest. “I’ll wait for you. Rather, I’ll wait, for a while. I’ve no pressing errands this morning.”
A turn on his heel, and he left.
Christoph slammed down the lid of the flat wooden box that held his paints and brushes, saying, “Might as well go. Looks like clouds are moving in anyway. Losing the light.”
I looked to Marina, silently pleading. Should I go?
“Come, miss,” she said, approaching and touching the hem of my sleeve. “Let’s go up and I’ll dress your hair.”
Although Marina and I lived under the appearance that she was an attendant of sorts to me, in truth I relied on her for nearly every social move I made. Though she had never lived in a home as fine as the Reichenbachs’, she was a quick study of the human spirit and had served people from all echelons at the inn. I trusted her judgment in all things, from what and how to eat the variety of foods presented in the grand dining hall to how to spark polite conversation with the stranger at my elbow.
Now, we walked quickly through the halls, she with a step light as air, and I with a step above it. Not until we reached my room—our room—did she face me full-on, her hands full of breathless giggles.
“Oh, miss! Isn’t he the most handsome thing!”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know what to do.” Oh, how I envied her youthful mirth. Even were I a decade younger, I don’t know that I could ever have been comfortable with such blatant exuberance.
“What to do? Why, miss, what else can there be to do when a handsome man is waiting in the garden on a fine spring morning? Give me that.”
Marina took the gold silk wrap from my head, and I could feel my hair lift and stand on end from the friction. After folding the silk and putting it away, she dipped her hands in the water in the basin and ran them through my hair—still shy of meeting my shoulders—smoothing the tresses until they glistened, then fastening them with a tie at the nape of my neck.
All this I watched through my looking glass, and when I asked, “Why would he want to walk with me?” I spoke as much to myself as to Marina. She, however, had an answer.
“You’re a lovely woman. Fair of face, and smart to talk to. That would be enough, I imagine, to capture a man’s fancy.”
“You don’t find it suspicious?”
“Suspicious?”
“Or at least odd?”
“He’s a man. You’re a woman. Everything is exactly as God intended, I think. Adam and Eve met up in a garden too. Now, I’ve got something special I fashioned just for you.”
She left for a moment and came back carrying a cloth bundle, which she placed on the dressing table and unfolded.
“For your hair. To cover and yet not cover.”
It was a broad band, made up of pearlescent beads strung together, wide enough to span from my hairline to the tip of my crown. The width tapered to a point just above my ears, and a bit of fine netting stretched from one tip to the other. This, she rolled up, capturing my sad bit of hair within, but a ginger touch to the back confirmed a false sense of volume.
“How very clever,” I said. “Like a real woman.”
“Now there, miss. You’re as real a woman as ever was.” She took the lid off a small pot, and I dipped my finger in, taking a bit of the creamy substance and rubbing it into my lips. “And I’ll be right there with you. Behind you, so he’ll remember you’re a real lady, too.”
“Stay close enough to listen. So you can tell me later what I said. Let me know if I’m nearly as foolish as I fear I’ll be.”
I don’t know why I was surprised to find Jerome waiting for me in the garden, just as he said he’d be. I had no evidence that he was anything other than an honest, honorable man. I worried that perhaps we’d spent
too long dressing my hair, and he’d grown impatient. Or maybe the idea of an hour in my company lost its appeal in the wake of my lackluster response to the invitation.
And yet, there he was, sitting on a stone bench right at the entrance to a path that wound through the manicured hedges of the Reichenbachs’ estate. He stood as I arrived, doffed a plumed hat, and bowed, as if we hadn’t seen each other not fifteen minutes before.
“I’m glad to see you didn’t change your dress,” he said after a suitable greeting. “It’s quite becoming.”
“Thank you.” I smoothed the flat-fronted bodice. It was the second dress with which I’d been gifted. This one, the color of poppies, embellished with black stitching, was given to me by a cousin of Elsa Reichenbach, sent with a message of her prayer that I would wear it in good health and prosperity.
We walked, our steps in sync on the fine-pebbled path. The slightest chill lingered in the air, with a promise of warmth behind it. The hedges grew waist-high, and were I walking alone, I would be skimming my hand along the top, the coarse green tickling my palm. We talked, too. Inconsequential conversation—inane observations about the weather. I would have shared the same sentences and phrases with a man twice his age, and half as handsome. I kept my wit tucked beneath my cap, having no occasion to employ it.
“Do you miss anything about the convent life?” he asked after a few steps of silence.
“What do you imagine I would miss?”
“I couldn’t say, never having lived such a life.”
“Then how could you benefit from my response?” I heard Marina make a sound, nothing of which Jerome would take account, as he had no experience with silence. I softened my tone. “I suppose, if anything, I miss not having the fear of making conversation with a gentleman.”
He laughed. “Is it such a fearsome thing?”
“Not fearsome. Just . . . unfamiliar. I lived all my life with so few surprises. Now, it seems every day I encounter something new.”
“Well, I’m afraid I intend to continue that tradition today. Tonight, actually, as I will be a guest for supper.”
“Your presence at the table is hardly surprising.” Indeed, it had become something familiar, and I found myself missing him on the few evenings when he was absent.
“Yes, but this evening I have taken it upon myself to bring two other guests besides.”
“Why do you feel the need to tell me this? I’m not the cook. Or will your guests call upon me to give up my share of the lamb?”
“I’m bringing my parents.”
“Oh.”
We’d come to the midpoint of the garden, a wide, circular space laid with smooth pink stone and a fountain at its center. He led me to a bench and, taking my hand, bade me sit with him.
“I’m bringing them specifically to meet you. They’re rather curious.”
“Are they?” I withdrew my hand. “I knew we’d be the objects of some speculation. The day we arrived, people stared as if they’d never seen a nun before. I expected such ignorant gawking from a certain class of people, but not from anyone I would presume to be as sophisticated—”
“They want to meet you, Katharina. The woman whose name has been on their son’s tongue for these past weeks. The woman whose bewitching eyes have robbed them of his company at their own supper table.”
I felt myself flush with each word, until there could be nothing to separate the hue of my dress from that of my skin. From the corner of my eye, I saw Marina take a discreet step back into hedges, and I felt no compulsion to summon her.
“You shouldn’t speak such flattery,” I said with what breath I could muster.
He glanced around and, seeming satisfied with our privacy, took my hand. “I assure you, Katharina. It is not flattery.” I felt his breath against my knuckles. Then his lips. The kiss burned—a gathering heat, with nothing but the thin layer of my skin to separate his touch from my blood. Somewhere, from the depths of that same skin, came the memory of another burning, that delivered by the priest at the moment he sensed my disobedient spirit. Those bruises had disappeared within a matter of days, but with this—the first touch of a man intent on some declaration of romantic love—I fully expected to find myself forever marked when he at last lifted his head to look into my eyes once again.
“Herr Baumgartner—”
“Jerome.” Breath wrapped itself around his name, and I was close enough to feel it.
“Jerome.”
Beyond that, I found I had nothing to say.
CHAPTER 18
“Tell me again what he said.”
Marina held the curling tong at a careful distance from my face and looked approvingly as the hair was released.
“He said—” and here she adopted a near perfect imitation of the deep hollow of Jerome’s voice—“They want to meet you, Katharina. The woman whose name has been on their son’s tongue for these past weeks. The woman whose bewitching eyes have robbed them of his company at their own supper table.”
I didn’t need to hear it again; I’d repeated the phrases to myself in an endless chorus since the minute after he first uttered them.
“Do I really have bewitching eyes?”
Marina lifted another section of hair and wrapped it around the tongs. “All that matters is he thinks you do. You’ve bewitched him well enough.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very Christian thing to do, though, does it?”
“There’s nothing more Christian than falling in love, miss.” She said it with the deep sigh of youth.
“Do you think it’s possible, then? That he loves me?” The only people I’d ever known to be in love were Girt and Hans, and that seemed more of a gradual dawning. Strengthened and deepened after years of stolen glances and secret exchanges, as if wrung through cheesecloth. Jerome and I, on the other hand, had known each other for only a matter of weeks. Mere hours spent in each other’s company, and here I’d been caught in this deluge of professed affection.
“I don’t know a lot about the ways of men,” Marina said, studying the newest curl, “but I’ve seen the way he regards you. Like something he’s never seen before.”
“A curiosity?”
“More like a treasure.”
She ran her fingers through the new-formed curls, separating them to frame my face. The rest was tucked and pinned at the back of my head, and a soft, rounded headdress adorned the top.
“Speaking of which,” she said, stepping back with a critical eye, “I wish you had a bit of jewelry to wear tonight. Something to show you as a woman of quality. Breeding.”
I touched my locket. “This is all I need to prove that. I know who I am, Marina. And what I am is penniless. Borrowed robes, an indefinite guest. No bauble is going to change any of that. If anything, it will further disguise the truth. If I were to present myself to Jerome’s parents in all honesty, it would be in rags.”
“Shall we do that then, miss?” As before, she offered me the small pot of color for my lips. “Or we could do something along the lines of Bathsheba—set you a tub of washing water out in the courtyard and time it to Herr Baumgartner’s arrival. Make a nice, honest impression on his parents, wouldn’t that?”
“Marina!” But I laughed, both at my exaggerated humility and her ostentatious suggestion.
I touched the color to my lips, a bit more than I had earlier in the afternoon, but refused to allow Marina to dust my face with even a trace of powder. If anything, I envied her robust complexion—the healthy, almost golden glow of her skin, the perpetual pinkness of her cheeks. I knew myself to be sallow, unfashionably pale, and every moment spent with my own reflection brought further questions as to what would catch the interest of a man such as Jerome Baumgartner.
Marina walked with me through the corridor and as far as the main hall, where we parted company for the duration of the evening. I remained outside, smoothing my skirt, fingering my curls, shifting from one foot to the other, all in a nerve-driven attempt to stall my entrance.
Then I heard Herr Reichenbach’s laugh, rich and deep. Welcoming. It meant somebody was in the middle of an amusing tale, and whoever stood gathered around the great stone fireplace would be engaged, distracted from my entrance. I might be in there for a minute or more before my host would say, Why, Katharina. There you are.
Another burst of laughter, more mirth to serve as camouflage. Men and women, so Elsa must be in attendance too, as well as Jerome’s mother. I expected to see them, glasses of wine in hand, raised in cheer. I did not, however, expect to see Luther. And yet, in the midst of them, the apparent teller of the tale, there he was.
It had been so long since I’d felt the comfort of reunion, if indeed I ever had. For a moment, all others disappeared as Luther stood, pewter mug in hand, and broke free from his central place of unofficial court by the fire to approach me, his arms open and ready to embrace.
“Elsa told me you had blossomed into a woman of noble beauty, but I had a hard time believing you could surpass the comeliness I first beheld at Easter. And yet, here you are, my Kate.”
By the time he finished speaking, he stood right before me, his empty hand gripping my sleeve, and—before I could escape or protest—his kiss on my right cheek.
“It is a welcome surprise to see you.” I suppose I should have spoken some protest at his compliment, but something very primal within me enjoyed such attention from two different men in the span of an afternoon.
The first, Jerome, had also broken away from the group gathered at the fire, and as I stepped back from Luther’s embrace, I stepped into his—far more chaste, merely a touch of his hand to my elbow.
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