A Winter Heart, Sexy Amish Historical Novella

by Annette Blair

  Unable to bear the pain in that truth, Sara silently took the newest Zuckerman to her fast-beating heart and into the kitchen to wash, and when the babe opened her big Zuckerman eyes, Sara was lost.

  Before long, the mite was clean and soft in Sara's arms, her tiny heart-shaped mouth pursed in sleep, her full head of chestnut hair a fluff of wayward curls.

  Sara shut out the pain and absorbed the pure and simple pleasure of human contact. She rocked, hummed, and savored, until four-year-old Lizzie, ranked-and-professed big-sister, barefoot, hair in her eyes, dress on backward, entered the kitchen from the enclosed stairway and came right to her. “Hi Sara, what you got?”

  Before Sara could answer, from the enclosed stairway came a bit of whining and some childish Penn Dutch chatter. Then three-year-old Katie, all smiles, curly hair and big eyes, dragged Pris over. Two-year-old Priscilla, eyes downcast, pouting as usual, companion-blanket in hand, stepped behind Katie.

  Sara reached over and tugged on the blanket, drawing forth the shy, sullen Zuckerman who had just been displaced as baby of the family. Pris looked, not at Sara but at the floor. Sara lowered her head to see Pris's face, and with a whine, the child lowered hers even more.

  This continued until Pris was on all fours, whining for all she was worth, brow touching the floor. What had always seemed a game to Sara disturbed her more than she would like, though she'd never followed it through to this sad conclusion before.

  “Pretty Pris,” she said, not daring to touch those dark curls. And she would be pretty, Sara thought, if she were not so sulky.

  With nut-brown hair and storm-gray eyes, they were, all three, the image of Adam Zuckerman. Lord, and weren't they the most beautiful little girls in the world. Sara wanted to gather them up, hug them tight, and protect them forever.

  “Where's Mommie?” Lizzie asked.

  The pain in Sara's heart might have come from a blade, it cut so sharp. They had no Mommie anymore. They had no one. She shook her head in denial and determination. Even if she didn't take them home with her, they had her now. Sara held the baby forward so they could see her. “Look what you've got. A new sister.”

  “What's her name?” Katie asked.

  “I waited for you to wake up so we could name her together. Let's each say a name, then pick the one we like best.”

  “Noodle!” Katie shouted on a giggle.

  But Lizzie was, as usual, serious and wise. “Can we call our baby Hannah? Mommie said Hannah, if we got another sister.” She ran across the kitchen. “I'll go ask her.” But Lizzie stopped in her tracks and stood stiff-backed and unmoving, because her father suddenly filled the entrance to the enclosed stairway.

  For each of Adam's steps into the kitchen, his oldest took one backward, never removing her gaze from his.

  Sara feared he'd tell them their mother was dead in his cold, harsh way. But she needn't have worried, he didn't tell them anything; he just passed them by.

  Katie ran after him, “Datt, Datt. My got a baby. My want Mommie, Datt. My's hungry.”

  He ignored his high-spirited daughter, the only one who did not seem afraid of him. “Sara will feed you,” he growled.

  “We named the baby, Hannah!” Sara yelled at his back as the door slammed behind him. She was right. He didn't care.

  With Lizzie's help, Sara got Katie and Pris dressed and fed, her need to weep having less to do with not knowing how to care for the girls and more to do with the joy Abby would never know.

  Stooping down, Sara bundled Lizzie in her cape and bonnet to send her to the barn. “Go ask your Datt for a lambing bottle so I can feed Hannah some milk. I'll watch you from the window.”

  Shaking her wise little head, Lizzie placed her hands on each side of Sara's face, as if she must pay strict attention. “No, Sara. Mommie will feed Hannah with her Mommie's milk.”

  Sara swallowed hard and blinked to clear her vision. She covered Lizzie's small hands against her face with her own. “We're going to try the bottle for Hannah. Cow's milk will make her strong.”

  That must have made sense to Lizzie, because she nodded and skipped off on her errand.

  As Sara watched the child approach the barn through the window, she touched her cheek to baby Hannah's and let her tears fall. Behind her, Katie giggled and Pris whined.

  In the lower level of his huge bank barn, Adam paced. Cows lowed. A mule kicked its stall. Ginger ran to and fro barking needlessly. Even the sheep in their pens bleated; the stupidest animals God created, and even they knew something was terribly wrong.

  Why had he let Abby talk him into trying again for a boy? Yes, he wanted sons. A man did need sons on a farm. Everyone knew that. But not at such a cost.

  Dear God, Ab, what have I done?

  She might have been content with the girls, but she thought giving him a son would make him love her. He never did succeed in making her understand that he couldn't love anyone, for their own good.

  “I do this because I love you.” He could hear the words in his father's voice, words he could not, would not, say to his children, not to another soul, for the cruelty doled out in their wake was not to be borne. Love. He could never dare feel it.

  Abby had known and said she accepted it. She had known enough to protect the children. Now she was gone and it was his fault. He hadn't let himself love her, and still he destroyed her.

  Adam punched a hay bale, over and over, until his knuckles bled. He wanted to hit something bigger, harder, throw his whole body into the fight, but he couldn't. Not yet. His punishment for killing Abby could wait until after her girls were settled.

  He couldn't keep them. Not alone. Not without somebody who cared enough to keep them safe. Without Abby, no one was left who knew why but him, and he wanted to keep it that way. Neither he nor Abby had family. Ab had said that together, with their children, they were a family, but what was a family with no heart?

  Broken.

  Only one person in the district whose heart he knew, because she was the only one ever came close enough . . . Spinster Sara.

  Sara visited Abby—not often—but when she did, usually when he was away, Abby chattered on for days after about Sara.

  She'd damned near leveled him with a barn-board at Zook's barn-raising, and that was the first time he set eyes on her. At fellowship meals after service, Sara often served him first. Looked him right in the eye, she did. Wasn't afraid of anybody, that one. Spoke her mind.

  Lord, she drove people crazy with speaking her mind. She was fractious all right. He'd often thought she served him just to prove she could handle anyone. Look at her trying to become a midwife. She was in for a fight with that. The whole district was set against her.

  Spinster Sara. Midwife Sara.

  Scrapper Sara, more like.

  Bad enough she'd been earning her own living for years with her salves and remedies. Now she was trying to learn doctoring, something no woman should. Worse, she was going about it all wrong. Spending weeks in the company of the English doctor . . . it was scandalous, immoral, a man and a woman tending to the intimate needs of a woman in labor, sometimes overnight. Adam clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.

  And, Sara, unmarried on top of it.

  He'd once lost his temper over her foolishness, and Ab had laughed at him and— Adam stopped pacing, struck in an almost physical way with shock and remorse. Here he stood, consumed with fury at another woman, when his own wife had just died.

  Ah, and here, in loud and rattling reproach, came the cabinet-maker with his spring wagon bearing Abby's casket. His father was right. He was worthless. He'd failed as a son, and now as a husband and father. He was defective, body and soul. His children didn't need him. They needed Sara. Already he'd seen her give them a mother's smiles.

  Sara would take good care of Abby's girls.

  When she'd drawn them to her, without extending so much as a finger, and let them name their sister, he knew he'd been right to send for her.

  And Sara was right too. He'd killed
Abby as surely as that empty casket sat waiting for her body. God he could still hear Ab weeping for a son. He'd hated himself for his weakness, had vowed if she weren't pregnant after that one time, she would never be again. But she was.

  And now she was gone.

  “Datt?”

  Adam looked down, toward the barest whisper of sound, and wondered when his oldest daughter had arrived to stand before him. Lizziebelle.

  He fisted his hands at his side to keep from reaching for her.

  “Why can't Mommie feed Hannah with her Mommie's milk?”

  Adam leaned against the lambing pen, seeking balance in a careening world. Guilt. Hard. Raw. He swallowed and forced himself to take a breath, and needed two more before he could speak. “What did Sara say?” he asked in a voice that did not sound like his own.

  “That you would give me a lambing bottle and we would feed Hannah cow's milk to make her strong.”

  Adam nodded and turned his back on his motherless child, because for the life of him, if he did not, he would gather her up and . . . condemn her to the punishment love enforced.

  The girls played quietly in Abby's sewing room while Sara rocked baby Hannah and fed her milk from the boiled bottle and nipple.

  Abby's body would soon be carried in an open box from her bedroom into her best room.

  At the very thought, the sharp claws of anxiety clenched Sara's every muscle, holding her captive in the same way it had fifteen years before.

  Her mother's labor had gone on for more than a day. Her father had set off in an ice storm for the doctor . . . and died in a ditch with a broken neck.

  Sara had been fifteen when she'd taken that lifeless baby boy and placed him in her mother's weak arms. Fifteen, when she'd pushed wadded towels between Mama's legs to stop the blood . . . but watched her life drain away, instead.

  The next morning, in a house gone silent, Sara had stepped into the best room to see three caskets—two large, and one too tiny to bear. Crude boxes with covers to smother.

  She'd had trouble breathing then.

  She had trouble breathing now.

  Once again, panic rushed her. Abby's girls were too young to see such a sight. But Sara couldn't take them, not from their father. It would be the greatest cruelty to lose both parents at once; no one knew that better than her.

  And yet, with such a parent?

  Her mind scrambled for an answer, examining and discarding every possibility, until....

  If she took the girls . . . for a time . . . and taught their father, somehow, to know and love them.... It seemed an impossible task, and yet Abby said there was something worthy hiding deep inside Adam Zuckerman, something he wanted to keep buried. Sara thought she had glimpsed a shadow of that something today. She was almost certain of it. Besides, what choice did she have?

  She wasn't sure which would be more difficult, reforming Mad Adam Zuckerman or letting his children go once she loved them. Except that wasn't even a consideration, because she loved them already.

  Sara rose and went to the window. The clouds were dark and angry still. She sought guidance from beyond the firmament, but neither faith nor entreaty would come, only anger, and in her heart, she gave it voice. I won't let them lose both parents, she informed He who seemed to have abandoned them, almost expecting thunder and lightening in reply. Then she admitted that she could not do it alone and whispered, “Help. Please.” But neither comfort nor response was forthcoming.

  “Fine then,” she snapped. “I'll do it myself. And this time I won't fail.”

  Sara hurried to the bottom of the stairway. “Adam,” she shouted, angry with God for not listening, and with Adam for . . . everything. “Adam, come down here, now!”

  Like a mule team spooked by a jackrabbit, he came, but he stopped when he saw her, his face pale and taut, his breath short.

  “I'll take them,” she said. “Until after the funeral,” she added in a rush. “And if I'm called to deliver a babe while I have them, I'll go if I have to take them with me.”

  Adam hesitated then nodded once, his relief so apparent, Sara thought she might have imagined the wretchedness that preceded it. “Shut Abby's door,” she said. “I'm taking them upstairs to get their things. I'll tell them about Abby later. It's best they think of their mother smiling and happy in heaven, not cold and silent in a box.”

  Another single nod, a hard swallow. “I won't show her till you're gone.”

  Bio: Annette Blair

  A New York Times Bestselling Author for Penguin Books, Annette Blair left her job as a Development Director and Journalism Advisor at a private New England prep school to become a full time writer. At forty books and counting, she added cozy mysteries and bewitching romantic comedies to her award-winning historical romances. She also stepped into the amazing world of self-publishing.

  Contact her at:

  http://www.annetteblair.com

  http://twitter.com/annetteblair

  To find out when a new book is available, sign up for Annette’s mailing list at: https://www.facebook.com/annetteblairfans

  Annette Blair Booklist

  Tulle Death do us Part, July 2013

  Moving Pictures, Sisters of Sprit Anthology, Dec 2012/Jan 2013

  Cloaked in Malice, July 2012, New York Times Bestseller

  Jonquils in the Snow, Mammoth Book Ghost Romance, Aug 2012

  A Winter Heart Novella, Aug 2012

  Holy Scoundrel, Sept 2012

  Proper Scoundrel, May 2012

  Captive Scoundrel, May 2012

  Sea Scoundrel, May 2012

  Butterfly Garden Audio Book, April 2012

  Jacob’s Return Audio Book, March 2012

  Untamable Rogue, January 2012

  Unmistakable Rogue, January 2012

  Unforgettable Rogue, January 2012

  Undeniable Rogue, January 2012

  Butterfly Garden, Oct 2011

  Skirting the Grave, July 2011

  Kissingate Magic, Mammoth Book Scottish Romance, January 2011

  Jacob's Return, May 2011

  Vampire Dragon, April 2011

  Fall in Love like a Romance Writer, February 2011

  Naked Dragon, January 2010

  Death by Diamonds, July 2010

  Bedeviled Angel, August 2010

  You Can't Steal First, Hot Ticket Anthology, Sept 2009

  Larceny and Lace, Aug 2009

  A Veiled Deception, January 2009

  Never Been Witched, Feb 2009

  Gone with the Witch, May 2008

  Sex and the Psychic Witch, August 2007

  The Scot, the Witch & the Wardrobe, Dec 2006

  You Can't Steal First, Hot Ticket Anthology, May 2006

  Scoundrel in Disguise, May 2006

  My Favorite Witch, January 2006

  The Butterfly Garden, April 2005

  The Kitchen Witch, Oct 2004

  A Christmas Baby, Oct 2004

  An Unmistakable Rogue, Oct 2003

  An Unforgettable Rogue, Oct 2002

  An Undeniable Rogue, Mar 2002

  Thee I love, Oct 1999

  Lady Patience, Sept 1999

  Lady Faith, March 1999

  http://www.annetteblair.com

  http://twitter.com/annetteblair

  To find out when a new book is available, sign up for Annette’s mailing list at: https://www.facebook.com/annetteblairfans

  THE END