Mercy nodded. Before he left, he touched her cheek and she cringed. She saw the confusion in his eyes and then he left. Her suitcase was on the floor and she moved towards it and removed her cotton nightdress. It did cover all her scars, all of Mercy’s clothes were long sleeved with high necklines and they went down to ankles.
She undressed, all her thoughts coiled into one ball of fear. She wanted to sob her heart out, be she refrained from doing so. It would make everything much worse to have him fuss over her and wanting to know what the matter was. Too soon, she heard a slight knock on the door. He was back.
“Are you alright?” he asked, concern coloring his voice.
Mercy nodded. The light from the lamp was bright and showed everything in the room clearly. It would show every nook and curve of her ghastly scars. She felt him stand behind her and touch her hair, running a finger all the way to her neckline. The hairs on her body stood up. Her breathing came out in gasps and she felt as though someone was choking her, denying her of air.
His hand shifted to her arm and then to her waist. Before it went any lower, Mercy took a step forward and moved to the bed, her body breaking out into a cold sweat. She slipped in and felt safer in the comfort of the blankets.
Emil followed her. He got in and reached for her. She couldn’t take it anymore. She gave a yelp, like an animal that had been shot, and leaped from the bed, her fear now uncontrollable. Sweat flowed down from her face in large drops and her cotton nightdress clung to her body. She could feel her hair sculpting itself to her scalp.
“What is it?” Emil said, he too jumping from the bed.
When he approached out, she gave another small cry and backed back into a corner. She knew how she looked, but Mercy did not care. She just wanted him away from her. She only realized then, that she was whimpering, as though she was in great pain.
“Look, I won’t touch you. Just get into bed and sleep.” Emil said, putting his hands up in surrender.
She took tentative steps forward and inched her way to the bed. She entered the bed and pulled the covers over her. She moved her body to the very edge of the bed and shut her eyes. She was aware of Emil’s eyes on her and she pretended to have fallen asleep very fast. She dared not move as she felt him blow out the lamp and enter the bed.
A sigh of relief almost escaped her mouth. He had kept to his side of the bed and had turned away from her. Slowly her breath came down and she felt her muscles relaxing. Her body, cold from fear, began to warm up and the weariness of the previous week caught up with her. She was so tired, but her mind was too active to sleep.
There was so much to worry about. What if he touched her during the night and even lit the lamp to look at her. Perhaps her own behavior had alerted him that she had a problem with her body. She listened to his breathing. She didn’t think he was asleep yet. Mercy’s suspicions that Emil was waiting for her to fall asleep grew.
She fought her brain, which was desperate to shut down, as were her eyelids. She thought of her loved ones back home and what they were doing at this time of night. They had stayed up later in New York and supper was eaten at nine in the evening. Here in California, it seemed as though people ate their meals earlier in the evening.
The children would chat about their day, with the adults listening to them in quiet amusement. Sometimes they would quibble over a small detail that each claimed to be right about. She ached to be back home where her secret was safe. She thought of how much her life had changed since her parents had passed on.
She rarely dwelt on her parents but the loneliness that she felt, made their memories sharp and clear. Her mother’s scent was as clear to her as when she had been alive. Mercy could almost smell that flowery scent that followed her mother everywhere. People said that she resembled her mother and now thinking about it, Mercy knew that indeed she did. Her father was the talkative one and could charm a bargain from even the toughest shopkeepers.
She had loved listening to his stories about growing up on a farm. He and his siblings had had a happy childhood, with plenty to eat and though they worked hard, they enjoyed their lives too. Her feelings of loneliness grew worse with the memories of her departed parents, but they also served to relax her mind so that it became still.
All thoughts of the man who lay next to her disappeared and she could have been alone in the big bed for all she was aware. A gentle smile tugged on her lips as she fell asleep, caught between a world of the past and a little of the present. Her own laughing voice reverberated in her brain, at some forgotten story from her father.
The fear of the last hours and weeks left her and she fell into a deep sleep.
NINE
It was a month now since Emil had married Mercy Bohn. He was a married man only in name, Emil thought with bitterness. He stood alone in the front room, the big house silent with only the noises of expanding timber. So much for his dreams of filling the house with the children he and Mercy would be blessed with.
The letter from Joanna Hunter lay on the table. It was three weeks old and he had not replied to her. What could he tell her when he himself did not know what ailed his wife. She was fine during the day, especially when she took care of the sickly lambs, feeding them milk from a bottle. Those were the times when he glimpsed at her soul and saw that she was a gentle and kind person.
A bitter taste filled his mouth and he swallowed it back. His life had seemed so full of promise but now he just felt a dull ache from his lonely existence. It was far better when he had not had a wife. Then he had hope. But with Mercy, what hope was there for them, when she wouldn’t speak of what gripped her at night such that she became a terrified person, flinching from the slightest touch.
She was a very attractive woman, with curves in all the right places. It frustrated Emil that he could not share with her the gift of love that the Lord had blessed marriages with. He had prayed about it every night and nothing seemed to be happening. Emil glanced at the candle, his mind elsewhere.
His body was weary from cultivating the land in the morning and then seeing to the flock in the afternoon. His way of coping was to keep busy, which left him tired in body but not in the mind. He dreaded going to sleep. Mercy pretended to be asleep when he followed her to bed. Shaking off his tiredness, Emil stood up, stretched and went to the porch. He would give her a little more time before joining her in bed.
What was he to do? He had no one to ask for advice over what a man did in such cases. He had asked her a dozen times what the matter was but she remained mum. He had beseeched her to trust him. Together they could overcome anything, but nothing he said seemed to get through to her.
Emil closed his eyes, intending to rest them for a few seconds. The next thing he knew, a scorching heat was coming from somewhere in his back and causing him to be most uncomfortable. He opened his eyes reluctantly and the next instant he was on his feet. The whole porch was lit by a bright orange light, and he realized immediately that the house was on fire.
He kicked the door open and begun yelling for Mercy at the top of his voice. He glanced to the left, to the door that led to the front room. He saw that most of it was engulfed in the fire and it was spreading fast. He took the stairs three at a time, praying fervently that he and Mercy would get out of the house on time.
“Mercy!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
He crossed the hallway and opened their bedroom.
“Mercy, you must get up, the house is on fire!”
“Fire?” she mumbled sleepily.
He went to her and threw back the covers. Her night dress had ridden all the way to her thighs and what he saw almost made him weep with grief, only there was no time for that now. Everything fell into place. He acted as though he had seen nothing and he pulled her from the bed and pushed her out of the room.
They made it out of the house just in time and in his heart, Emil knew that the Lord had held the fire at bay until he and Mercy were safely out. A minute later, the whole structure seemed to collapse. Th
e five ranch hands that worked and lived on the farm came rushing out and together with Emil; they worked tirelessly pouring water on the house.
When it was finally over, there was nothing left to save, from his beautiful house. Emil looked at Mercy, huddled under a blanket provided by one of the wives, her eyes big wide and fearful. He was just happy to have gotten her out alive. He felt a pang of compassion for her. How long had she kept that part of her life hidden away?
He turned back to the house he had put in so much time and thought into. A lesser person would have asked ‘why Lord’ but Emil was a believer in things happening according to the grand plan of God. Sure, he felt sad at the loss, however he focused more on their lives, which had been spared.
The most important thing was to plan for the next couple of hours and months. He remembered his old two-room structure as he joined Mercy and the women comforting her.
“Don’t worry; we’ll have a roof over our heads. We’ll live in my old house.”
Mercy nodded, probably still numb from the shock of the fire. He took her hand and guided her towards the house. There was nothing in it, save for an old feather mattress that a passing traveler had used when Emil gave him a place to rest overnight. Within a short time, the small dirt house, begun to fill up.
One woman and her husband brought out pots, pans and plates. Another brought blankets and yet another brought jugs and other utensils. Emil’s eyes filled with tears at their kindness. He shook hands with all of them and said a hearty thank you. Mercy stood alongside him and received each item as though it was the finest handiwork she had ever seen.
They finally slept in the wee hours of the morning. The mattress was smaller than their bed and the space between them was smaller. He could feel Mercy squeeze herself into a ball. He moved further to the edge to give her as much space as possible. Now that he knew what the matter was, Emil did not dare approach her.
He listened to her breathing and she quickly fell asleep. He thought of how the Lord worked in mysterious ways. Had the house not burnt, he would not have known what ailed Mercy and who knew how long they could have gone on like that for. He had been proud of that house but he would have exchanged it without a second thought just to have his wife happy.
Before he slept, Emil turned his head up and imagined that he was seeing the open sky. And he said a prayer.
“Dear Father, I know that all things happen according to your will and I as your servant bow down to it. I pray for my dear wife, I pray for her hearts healing and I pray that she will learn to trust me. In the name of your son Jesus Christ, Amen.”
TEN
Their lives had fallen into a pattern. Mercy prepared their meals over the open fire fed by wood, which Emil kept stocked up by the side of the house. It was two months now since the burning of the house and though Mercy felt sad for Emil, she herself did not really miss it. It had been too big and it held painful, fearful memories.
She looked out the door, which they kept open all day and most of the night to keep the house circulated with air. The sun was going down earlier these days with the approach of autumn. Emil was almost coming home and her heart gave a little leap of joy. Something had changed inside her on the night of the fire.
He had risked his own life by running upstairs to fetch her. She had seen another side of Emil that fears had stopped her from seeing. Unlike most people faced with such a disaster, he had gone on as though he had always lived in the two-roomed structure. It was as if with the rise of dawn, all thoughts of the burnt house had disappeared during the night.
He went about his day cheerfully and in the evenings, they chatted over the fire. She had told him about losing her parents, and going to live with her aunt and uncle.
Thankfully, he had never tried to touch her again. He kept her at arms’ length and even when he needed to touch her to get her attention; he spoke out her name first so that she wasn’t startled.
Her feelings for him had grown from gratefulness to love. A more considerate and caring man than Emil Duval, she had not yet met. She had found herself longing for his touch, longing to become a proper wife, instead of a wife in name only. What would their children look like? At the thought, she blushed.
Today would be a big night for her and for Emil. Mercy had prayed about it for weeks now and she felt that the time was right. She just hoped that she would not chicken out at the last moment. She didn’t give that worry a lot of thought, though. A kind of confidence had grown in her and so had her faith.
She could rival Amelia’s knowledge of the scriptures now. Her discussions with Emil had taught her that absolute faith meant believing in the goodness of the Lord even when faced with difficulties. Look how Emil had dealt with the destruction of his house?
She had given a lot of thought to her own scars. Whether she liked it or not, they were not going to go away. She had been created in the image of God, and the scars did not make her any less important to the Lord. She could only hope and pray that her husband would not be too disappointed by her disfigurement and that he could see beyond that and desire to consecrate their marriage.
She prepared steaming vegetables for dinner and potatoes, ready for mashing. They would have that together with steaks of beef.
He came in just as she finished mashing the potatoes. His hands were wet and he dried them with a towel draped over the chair.
“Hello my dear, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Emil said.
“Long day?” Mercy asked.
“No more than usual. I kept thinking of how lovely it would be to come home to you and have a nice evening sitting by the fire.”
He had never given up on her, Mercy now realized. Throughout the two months they had lived in the small house, he had continuously courted her. That had led to this moment, when she felt brave enough to finally share her deepest secret with her husband. She was quiet during dinner, thinking of what lay ahead.
She washed the dishes, while a kettle of tea boiled over the stove. With that done, she took the two cups, and handed one to Emil. She sat next to him by the fire. She sipped her tea and stared at her husband over the rim of her mug. He was a very handsome man, something that she had just started to appreciate. His eyes were a dark blue color and his mouth perfectly shaped.
He kept his beard trimmed and he took great care of himself, wearing clean and pressed clothes.
“You seem very thoughtful this evening my dear.” Emil said.
Mercy placed her cup on the floor and took a deep breath.
“I am. That’s because I want to share with you something about my life that I’ve never told you.”
He waited quietly. She loved that about Emil. He was the most patient person she had ever known. He never rushed you and just waited until you were ready, as he was now. She faced him and told him everything about the night that boiling water poured over her body. When she finished her tale, she stood up and shed her day dress. Under it were her petticoats, which she shed too and was left with her underclothes, which hid very little of her scars.
Finally, she looked up fearful of the revulsion she knew she would find there. There was none. His eyes travelled up and down and then rested on her face.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever had the privilege of knowing,” he said.
“What about my scars?” Mercy asked her voice incredulous.
“I knew about them. I saw the scars on the night of the fire. I’ve been waiting for you to trust me enough to tell me. I love you Mercy Duval.”
Mercy was overcome by emotion. Surely, she did not deserve this man! She covered her face and cried into her hands. She felt Emil wrap his hands around her and she collapsed into his arms. God was a merciful God. Mercy wanted to cry out in joy and to weep, all at the same time. She felt his hands touch her around the belly, where the scares were at their worst.
Then he disentangled himself from her hands and did the most astonishing thing. He went on his knees and kissed her skin, with its hideous scars
. Mercy closed her eyes in disbelief. It was if she and Emil could communicate wordlessly. She knew that was the message that he was communicating to her. He loved her and her body didn’t repulse him.
Hours later, Mercy drifted in and out of sleep in her husband’s arms. She thought back to the gift he had bestowed on her and marveled at the beauty of love. Who knew that two people could be so close, both physically and emotionally? She felt his every breath and he in turn felt hers.
“Are you ready to rebuild?” Emil said, startling Mercy.
She had thought he was asleep.
“Rebuild?” she echoed.
“Yes, the profits have been good and consistent over the last years; we will be able to build ourselves another house. Three people may not fit comfortably in this house.”
“Three?”
“Well yes, you never know with the Lord’s blessings, it’s better to be prepared.” Emil said his voice surprisingly alert.
Mercy blushed and was glad that it was dark and he could not see her face. She did have a secret longing for children, now, the thought of their own flesh and blood running around the ranch infused her with pleasure. She thought of the burnt house and the way she had disliked its size.
“Can we make it a little smaller?” she asked.
Emil let out a loud laugh. “Of course we can. I always knew you never really liked it.”
Mercy smiled in the dark. “Let’s keep this one too.”
“In case of another fire?” Emil quipped.
“No, as a reminder of where our marriage really began,” Mercy whispered.
The End
13. The Prideful Preacher and The Dwarf Bride – Amelia
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EIGHT
NINE
TEN
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