Cheryl St.John - [Neubauer Brothers 01]
Page 4
Her father remained silent for long minutes. His chair creaked as he leaned back and then forward again, thoughtfully. "I can think of no objections to a union...."
Lydia's heart dared to lift in preparation for his words of blessing. Oh, thank you, Lord!
"As long as Herr Neubauer signs the articles of agreement and pledges himself to the Lord and the Society—"
"Wait a minute," Jakob said, interrupting him. Two sets of dark eyes fixed on his face. He raised a palm in a negative gesture. "I never said anything about joining the Society. I'm a farmer, and I—"
Etham lunged from his chair, slapping his hands flat on his desk. "You attended meetings and accepted our hospitality for naught? You came only to seduce my daughter?"
Jakob stiffened. A muscle in his lean jaw jumped. "I didn't seduce your daughter. Just because I wasn't born in a brick house and raised here doesn't mean I seduce women! I asked her to marry me, for God's sake!"
"You will not curse in front of her." Etham pulled himself up straight. "My daughter will not marry outside of God's will. A child of God she is, one of the chosen. We do not marry outside the brethren. If you intend to remain a heathen, nothing further do I see to discuss."
Grief sliced into Lydia's heart. She, too, had assumed Jakob wanted to become one of them. He hadn't. Disappointment thickened in her chest and throat.
"You think you've got the corner on God, Vater Beker. You look down your nose at me, and you don't know me. You're judging me an unfit husband because of my faith." Lydia recognized the anger in his rigid shoulders.
Etham studied Jakob. "What faith?"
Jakob leapt to his feet and swatted his hat against his thigh. The muscle in his jaw jerked while he composed himself. Cringing inside, Lydia peered from beneath her lashes. The room's atmosphere had grown volatile. Jakob. Oh, Jakob. Oh, God. "I want to talk to Lydia before I leave."
Etham walked to the door. "Five minutes." The door clicked shut behind him.
Chapter 4
Flooded with shame, Lydia fought the tears smarting behind her lids. She refused to look up. She stared at her lap, and two shiny black boots came into view.
"I didn't realize you'd expect me to join the colony."
His husky voice pierced her soul. Her chin trembled.
"Lydia."
She turned her face away from him.
"Look at me."
Why? So that she could memorize the face she'd never see again? So that she could brand the exact color of his sky blue eyes and fair hair on her heart forever? So that she could gauge his height and the breadth of his shoulders, marvel one last time at the sun-kissed hue of his vibrant skin? So that she could ensure suffering the exact measure of her foolishness for eternity? No.
"Lydia, I never meant to hurt you. I guess it was foolish thinking our marriage could've been worked out so easily. Have you changed your mind about marrying me?"
Twisting her skirt in her lap, she struggled to sort out her wretched feelings, horrified that she'd misinterpreted his intent and thus embarrassed them both. If only she'd realized! If only they'd discussed his intention beforehand, before coming to Father.
"Sorry I am to have misled you. I... I didn't think. I wasn't certain of..." Her quavering voice faded away.
His hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped. Quickly he withdrew it. "Is he right? You can't marry me because I'm not one of the brethren?"
"This is my home, my people."
"You're too good for me?"
"Nein!" She met his eyes, and wished she hadn't. Blue and ice-cold, they chilled her with their intensity. She didn't want to remember them like this.
"Come with me, then."
Had she heard him right? She stared at her clenched hands, blinking back tears. Go with him. She wanted to. Sie Gott, she wanted to. Her father would never give his permission. How could she leave her grandmother? She couldn't make that choice in an instant.
As a child, she'd fallen from a ladder while dusting lamps in the service hall. The fall on the hard wooden floor had knocked the air from her lungs, and she'd been unable to breathe for terrifying minutes. That was what this choice felt like. Her mouth opened. She forced words out. "I... cannot."
A floorboard creaked as Jakob shifted his weight. Seconds passed, and she knew his gaze bored into the top of her head. She refused to look up again.
His boots thundered across the carpeted floor. The wooden barrier slammed shut. Raising her apron, she buried her face. Hurt and disappointment hollowed an aching void where her heart had palpitated only moments before. Why had God sent Jakob to save her from the fire and given her a second chance? Why had a union with him felt so right? Was he saint or sinner?
She had seen only what she wanted to see, neglecting even concern for his salvation. Remorse filled the agonizing cavity in her chest, a weight so great and unfamiliar that it frightened her. She dried her face, lifted her chin and forced herself to breathe.
It's not too late! I could catch him! She could run out that door and—and what? Come face-to-face with her father? Twenty years of self-denial and obedience were not easily cast aside. She sat rigidly for several minutes before her father entered.
"I am sorry you suffered this indignity. The sinful nature is a powerful force, and not to be dealt with lightly. We trusted Herr Neubauer's motives, but the serpent disguises himself in many forms, Lydia. You have been sheltered from his deceitful ways until now."
Her skin burned with humiliation.
"Perhaps it took an Outsider to open your eyes. It may be a blessing in disguise that will instruct you in the future. We must pray diligently." Etham sat in the chair next to hers, and together they bent at the waist and prayed. For what, Lydia wasn't sure.
He had to go back.
Jakob perched on a nail keg in the tack room, surrounded by the familiar smells of neat's-foot oil, leather and horses. His canine companion lay at his feet, snoring lightly, her chin resting on his booted toe. While rain poured from the sky and thunder shook the barn rafters, he busied himself sharpening tools and oiling harnesses. Doves chirred in the loft beyond the tack room door. Working the land fatigued and satisfied him at the same time. Even though a body was pushed to its physical limit, the tedious hours still left a mind free to explore.
Absently he reached down and stroked the dog's silken ears. He had pictured a wife sharing these days and nights, making the labor seem worthwhile. He pictured Lydia in the kitchen, in the garden, in his bed... He remembered her delicate profile against the glowing gas lamps, her rose petal-soft skin and the intoxicating fragrance of her hair.
He envisioned their own house, children, Sunday dinners and picnics in the meadow, where it sloped down beneath a stand of eastern hemlock. Perhaps she needed time to examine her vision of the future. He had waited this long, he could be patient a little longer. One thing was certain: Vater Beker's word wasn't enough. Jakob would settle for nothing less than hearing from her own lips that she no longer wanted to marry him. She couldn't have changed her mind so easily. The distress on her face that evening still haunted his nights.
Could he convince her to come? He'd seen eagerness in her eyes, a spark of life none of the other colonists had. But was she different enough from her family to choose a life with him? He wanted her and it was a want bad enough to mellow his indignation.
As soon as the rain stopped, he would clear the road for one last trip to Accord.
With a grudgingly repentant heart, Lydia sought to restore her former role in her family and community. Working for the good of the whole, she strove to win her father's approval and God's forgiveness, suspecting that the latter would be easier. Her work was done with a strength born of an anger she could neither vent nor recognize. Another sin could not be compounded upon the last.
Each day she put in her full schedule at the bakery, sat with the women during supper and service and joined her mother and her sisters in the housework each evening. At the nine-o'clock bell she went to her cot an
d prayed, asking God to take away her confused feelings for the Outsider. Sometimes her prayers lasted until the early hours of the morning. The next day she began all over again.
Orderliness had always been security. The Society's purpose had always reassured her. Solitude had been familiar. Never had she been hungry, or cold, or burdened.
Until now. Until Jakob.
Assigned the task of cleaning the number two dormitory, Lydia sat in the open doorway with a cup of tea after the bell for Vesperbrot. The view was slightly more stimulating than that from the bakery. Main Street was the site of the town store, the apothecary's and the hatter's. Few men and women were walking between the businesses.
Three unmarried women arrived home for the afternoon break. Lydia moved away from the doorway, her thoughts touching on each woman. How did they resign themselves to their unmarried state? She pictured living here, where no children laughed or cried, no voices spoiled the silence and no small shoes lined the kitchen wall.
Instead of fearing that life on earth would end before she had experienced a shred of life, she now dreaded the prospect of living! The prospect of growing older with no hope of her own family, only the Society.
Resuming her window cleaning, a shout came from the street. "Fraulein Beker!"
Lucas Durer stood on the walkway below. "Vater Beker sends you home to sit with your grandmother."
She hurried home and found the old woman's dark eyes dull with pain. "Grandmother."
"What are you hiding from me, child?"
"I'm not hiding anything." She knelt beside the cot.
"Is my pain hidden because I don't talk about it?"
"Nein," Lydia whispered.
"What is the pain you're not telling me?" Rose Beker's thick gray braid lay like a rope across her shallow chest.
Lydia knew better than to deny her Grandmother. She sighed. "I didn't tell you because I was... I am ashamed."
"What would such a flower have to be ashamed of?"
"I became... distracted by the Outsider. I thought of nothing but the idle promise of a life with him, and believed he wanted to become one of us. I was wrong." Here, only here, in this tiny, barren room, was she free to express her fear and uncertainties.
"Did he deliberately lead you to think he wanted to be a Harmonist?"
Lydia's emotions had been so painfully near the surface that she hadn't considered his. She remembered Jakob's words vividly. I never meant to hurt you. It was foolish thinking our marriage could've been worked out so easily. Hurt and embarrassment had turned her thoughts inward until she hadn't listened. Perhaps if she'd been able to think it out, to talk to him without humiliating tears threatening...
"He is kind and good," she said, realizing as she spoke that it was true. "He did not mislead me. His proposal was sincere, but... he didn't realize how different we are, how impossible a union was."
"Do you love the young man?"
Lydia's eyes met their amber-flecked match. "Love is something one must learn, and there was no time."
"I know what your father says." Grandmother clucked reproachfully. "What are your feelings?"
"I think I might have loved him. I wanted to." She drew a deep breath, leaned forward and closed her fingers lovingly over her grandmother's twisted hand. "I've placed it behind me. Don't worry."
"You cannot go back to life as it was before. You're not untouched."
"I will go on."
"With your joyless life?"
Joyless. What a perfect word. "You were happy here."
"Because your grandfather was here. Sometimes we must follow our instincts, our hearts."
Lydia's heart fluttered curiously.
"Promise me one thing, child."
"Of course." She'd jump off a cliff for the old woman.
"Look at Meier Neubauer with your heart, not with your father's eyes."
"I doubt I shall ever look at him again in any manner." There was something incredibly sad about saying those words. Opportunity had laid itself at her feet. She'd had a chance to shed the suffocating mantle of the colony and climb on the back of Jakob Neubauer's horse. What held her? Responsibility. Obligation. Duty. To whom? She looked into her grandmother's gold-flecked eyes. "I must concentrate on fulfilling God's pleasure, not mine."
"What if marrying him pleased God?"
"Impossible." The word, her father's word, was out before she thought about it. As always, Grandmother's odd ideas unsettled her. She gazed down, tenderly. "Close your eyes. You need to sleep."
She pulled the rocker beside the cot and sat, a unique thought rolling across her troubled mind. Could God's will and hers really be the same?
Anton entered the bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt. "What are you making?"
"A new shade for the baby buggy." Emily adjusted the lacy white fabric on her lap.
"A what?" As a child, a nearly fatal case of measles had left him deaf in one ear.
"A shade for Nikolaus's buggy. Maybe you could step closer when I speak to you."
Anton watched her for a moment, then tossed his shirt over the back of a chair and poured water into the porcelain bowl. His hearing loss was a minor inconvenience. His family accepted, compensated, forgot. Emily, on the other hand, got impatient about it. Drying his face and shoulders, Anton turned. "I need to run into town in the mornin'. Want to go?"
"Yes, I'd like that."
"Got any letters to mail?"
"No."
He took a fresh shirt from a drawer. "Have you written your ma since you've been here?"
"I have."
"Not that I've noticed."
Emily leaned over the side of her rocker and plucked a spool of thread from her sewing box. "I write them while you're working."
He set the clean, folded shirt on top of the dresser. "Maybe you would you like to take Nikolaus to meet his grandma sometime."
"No, I don't think so." She poked the needle into a wad of material and set it aside. Standing, she picked up his dirty shirt from the chair and, after rolling it, placed it in a woven basket under the bureau, with the rest of the soiled laundry. "I've written, in fact your father took a letter for me the other day. I don't need to go to Pittsburgh."
Anton ran a brush through his hair and dropped it on the washstand. He would have had to be deaf in both ears, and blind to boot, to miss the way his wife avoided discussions about her mother or her life in Pittsburgh. He watched Emily rearrange his comb and brush in perfect alignment. "Annie is getting supper ready."
"I was helping her, but I didn't feel well." She turned and looked at him, her gaze skimming down his bare torso and back up, taking in the scar on his shoulder. It was V-shaped, the result of a barbed-wire-fencing incident a few years back. He guessed he had a lot of imperfections—and he wasn't sure what she thought. The tension between them puzzled him.
Anton stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head, and studied her. She was pretty. Her fair skin was clear and delicate, her gold hair luxurious and shiny. Beneath her satiny rose dress, her body was lush and warm. Immediately his own body responded, and he cursed it silently. He took one hand from under his head and motioned for her to join him. "Come sit by me."
She perched uneasily on the edge of the bed. Anton took her hand and flattened it on his chest. She looked at her hand on his skin for a long moment, then lifted her gaze to his. His raised his hand to cup her cheek and caress her silky skin. She lowered her lashes.
She endured his lovemaking. Just like she endured everything else—the farm, the work... him. She was disappointed. A city girl, born and bred, she undoubtedly missed the social life, party dresses and friends, but whenever he offered to take her visiting, she flatly refused. He was at a loss on how to please her.
He thought of Nikolaus, whom he'd passed as he entered the house. Playing on the porch with his grandfather, his son had beamed and clapped his hands delightedly at Anton's appearance. The child needed a strong family. Two loving parents. For him, Anton would work on his relation
ship with Emily.
He sat and flattened a palm on her back, drawing her toward him and kissed her. She raised a hand to his shoulder, but immediately let it drop. Her lack of enthusiasm dampened his resolve. He released her. "Time for dinner, I guess."
Anton stood and shrugged into his shirt.
Lydia had been assigned to extinguish lights, straighten benches and stack hymnals—chores to keep her hands and mind busy. She finished her tasks and left the assembly hall, pulling the door closed behind her. The night was warm, and a light breeze sighed through the poplar leaves and lifted her skirt's hem.
"Lydia."
Thinking the voice was a trick of the wind in the boughs overhead, a sound contrived by her own traitorous imagination to lure her thoughts back to the subject she sought to forget, she walked on.
"Lydia, please." The masculine voice was as unmistakably near as the blood that pounded in her ears. She stopped and hugged her Bible against her breast as she turned.
"Jakob." He was so tall! How had she forgotten? A luminous white shirt encased his chest and shoulders, and the moonlight emphasized their breadth. She fought the urge to touch him, to reach out and assure herself he was real. "What are you doing here?"
"You need to ask?"
The quiet voice was so achingly familiar that she fought back tears. She'd thought never to hear it again. "Walk with me, in the other direction, where my father won't see us."
He followed her lead, falling into step at her side. Frightened of her response to his nearness, she held the Book protectively against the front of her dress. Oh, Jakob, please. Don't do this to me. I want to forget, but I can't. "I didn't expect to see you."
"Did you think I'd just go home and forget?"
"I didn't know."
He plucked a sprig from a hanging branch and twirled it between his fingers. "I don't want to forget about us. At least not till I've done my darnedest to work it out."
Church Street fell behind them. They walked without speaking through the residential section, the gas lamps defining their shadows in yellow halos. They passed the footpath, but continued walking. Somewhere beside the goose meadow he took the lead. Their eyes adjusted to the dark, and they found a waist-high fence to follow.