Wild Indigo

by Judith Stanton

  Soon Jacob’s arm settled approvingly around her shoulder. For the first time. Her toes stilled. He was touching her for everyone to see, conspicuously, she realized with alarm. She suppressed an urge to lurch away, to retreat from the public view, escape to the meadow and run down to the creek.

  Instead, tall and solid, her new husband backed her up a step and squeezed her into the protection of his small doorway. She didn’t feel protected. She felt exposed. The band began a softer tune, a romantic little air.

  Jacob leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Brace yourself.”

  A surge of white-capped Little Girls and Single Sisters rushed them.

  “This is for you, too, Sister Retha. Open it,” the youngest Little Girl trilled importantly, holding up a present. Anna Johanna sidled in to see, eyes bright with interest.

  “Must I?” Retha pressed against the bulk of Jacob’s hot body. She knew what was coming.

  Little Catherine Baumgarten held up a tome-sized package wrapped in a scrap of dyed cloth and tied with a vine string. It was very light. Taking a deep breath, Retha undid the bow.

  Loosed, the cloth fell away of its own accord, and a foam of fine white linen unfolded in front of her.

  A gown for her wedding night. Linen so fine that her laundry-roughened skin picked its fabric. Deeper ruffles than she had ever seen edged its neck and sleeves. She didn’t want to be caught staring, but couldn’t stop.

  Applause rippled through the crowd. To cover her flustered state, she looked down. Her new stepchildren watched the show with avid interest. The oldest and the youngest, at least. Smiling smugly, Nicholas stuffed both fists in his pockets as if he had a deep dark secret. An enthusiastic Anna Johanna clapped in time with Sister Ernst. Matthias, oblivious to his father’s wedding, was grinning foolishly at the little Baumgarten girl.

  Someone cried out for another toast.

  Nicholas’s sneaky grin widened. “Here, here,” he chimed in, letting fly a second barrage of rice aimed mainly at his father. Retha took refuge behind Jacob’s great body.

  “Enough for one day!” Speaking with firm good humor, Jacob scowled at his older son as he swirled Retha through the door. He closed the door behind them and clicked its latch with a flourish. “That rascal!” he said. Still, she heard the pride of love in his voice.

  “The word is out, they’re all rascals, Brother Blum!” Retha teased, crowding with him into a narrow entry.

  “You too, I think,” Jacob answered. He swooped in on her, larger than ever in the confining space, and close enough to kiss. She clutched the gown up to her neck.

  Gently he pulled it away. “You have no need of hiding from me now.”

  “I’m not hiding.” But she felt her face heat.

  He bent his head for an even closer look. “You are blushing, Liebling, at the very least.”

  Of course she was! She peered at him in the shadowed entryway. His sober tone couldn’t mask a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  Caught teasing, caught blushing. She lifted her chin. Would the rest of her life be embarrassment with this man!

  “You would blush, too, if they held your nightshirt up to the whole wide world,” she sassed, jerking the gown behind her back.

  “Nein, with me, ’twould only be from heat.” Playfully he tipped her chin before reaching around to snare her gown. “Let me see it.”

  “Not for a moment,” she cried, stepping backwards and stretching the gown as far away from him as possible.

  He caught up to her, gripped her tightly around her waist, and danced her into the middle of a large room, smoothly dodging scattered chairs, a table, a desk. He was still laughing, laughing harder. To him it was a game. She hadn’t played with boys since childhood, but games she understood. She wriggled in his arms to keep him from the gown.

  “Yield,” he gasped, pausing to snatch a kiss.

  “Never!” Twisting, she flung the gown into the air, away from his control. Like a giant white heron, the gown sailed to the front of the room and fluttered to roost over a slanted desktop.

  Fine brass implements clattered to the floor, and a small globe of glass shattered.

  Shocked at her own recklessness, she skidded to a halt.

  “A spirited wench. I like that.” Jacob’s eyes glinted and dropped to the strict lacing of her bodice.

  Under it, her breasts heaved. She was acutely aware that he saw that. Then he went after the gown, brought it back, and held it up as if for measurement against her wedding dress.

  “I’m going to like this, too.” He looked her up and down. Under his new possessing gaze, she wanted to shrivel up and blow away.

  Without a thought, she flattened her hands across her bosom.

  “No, don’t,” he said. His voice deepened, softened. With one finger, he gently moved her hands away, leaving her uncovered, fully clothed. Her breasts felt heavy, conspicuous. One hand moved back to cover them. He frowned. “Please don’t.”

  She dropped it down. Somehow she had pushed the game too far. “What must you think of me?”

  She bit into her lip. Jacob Blum was a man, a father, a pillar of the town. Why was she always and ever again a silly girl in front of him? “I was frolicking like a fox cub.”

  “A vixen. A very pretty one,” he insisted.

  She shook her head. “I have always been too wild.”

  Sudden tenderness softened his handsome countenance. She couldn’t fathom why. Misconduct was her besetting sin. She couldn’t hope to hide it from him now.

  “Oh, Retha. Not too wild.” As if to comfort her in her dismay, he calmly draped the gown across a black-sleeved forearm. “We will use this soon enough. I will just put it on the bed.”

  He stepped down into a room beyond the parlor and disappeared. Alone for the first time since morning, Retha examined her surroundings. Except for the scattered instruments and broken glass, the room was immaculate. Its paned windows opened to the east, but smaller ones in adjoining rooms admitted the last slant of evening sun. Yellow light warmed brass fittings on desks and glanced off glass cobblers’ lamps on shelves.

  Off those, that is, that had survived her assault.

  Hastily she stooped to pick up his tools, not knowing what they were or what they were for, and replaced them at the lipped edge of the slanted desk. She wrinkled her brow. The shards of glass were another matter. She gathered up her skirt and was cautiously depositing them in it when she heard Jacob’s tread behind her.

  “Never mind that.” He gave her a reassuring hand up, helped her transfer the broken glass onto a pewter plate, and brushed up the rest with a rag. Feeling useless, she stood by, eyes fixed on the wide planks of the polished floor. A slippered toe peeked out from under her new skirt. She withdrew it from her husband’s view and sighed, resigned to confessing her sins.

  “I have been careless.”

  For a moment he said nothing. The day’s heat radiated up from the floor, off the walls.

  “How do you like your new home?” he asked after what seemed to Retha a long and possibly angry silence. But his voice was mild, even.

  She breathed with relief. He was giving her a fresh start. “’Tis beautiful, so clean, Brother—Brother—Jacob.”

  He snorted with amusement, overlooking her clumsiness. “An illusion, you can be sure of that. Let’s see. The Ernsts have had my children for”—he studied the face of a gleaming watch he took from a waistcoat pocket—“all of nine hours and forty minutes. Their house is now a shambles.”

  Retha looked up. Surely he was joking. “They were at the wedding the whole afternoon.”

  “My point exactly. They need much less time than that.”

  She scanned the immaculate room. “This is no shambles.”

  “Ah. The Single Sisters’ other gift to us was cleaning up the house. It hasn’t looked this good since Christina—”

  Breaking off awkwardly, he took a step away. Retha could see his throat work. Since Christina what? she wanted to know. Woul
d he say died, or would he say went home, as Moravians usually said? She had been at the funeral herself, and it had been a sad, sad day, those three lost children and the large, grief-stricken man. Even she had felt sad to see a kindly woman gone home so young.

  Retha studied her bitten-off nails. At least the weeks of doing laundry had removed the last traces of dyes, she thought, waiting to hear more about Christina Blum.

  After tense moments Jacob gripped her elbow, inclining his head toward the kitchen, and guided her toward it.

  “Come. They left us a repast as well.”

  She made a face. “I could not eat another bite.”

  Yet more than the thought of food, she resisted his touch. It made her feel strange in ways she didn’t understand, tingling, tense. Worse, it made her think of the woman who had gone before her, the woman who used to make him laugh. She wished he had finished what he started to say about his wife. It was no secret he had adored her.

  Perhaps he adored her still. Retha touched her new blue ribbon and sighed with heavy doubt. What if he found her to be a poor substitute?

  The small kitchen was equally neat, its blocky table laid out with pickled eggs, a bannock board of cold pone, a redware bowl of blackberries.

  He offered her berries. “Fresh picked, I’d guess.”

  “And early. ’Tis not yet July.”

  “The heat must have hurried them along.”

  She popped two berries in her mouth, their tartness exploding on her tongue. “Ooh, not ripe,” she exclaimed, shaking her head and pursing her lips tight when he offered to feed her another berry himself. His gesture made her think of him feeding children. His square fingers looked too large for such a tender task.

  And eating suddenly seemed terribly intimate.

  “No more.” She tried to smile. “I said I couldn’t hold another bite.”

  He ate the berry himself as if it were the most succulent fruit in the world. “Better. But if that doesn’t tempt you, perhaps this will.” He indicated a stoppered jug and two bottles filled with ruby and amber liquid. “Cider or scuppernong wine. Or more of that peach brandy.”

  At the thought of more dizzying brandy, she recoiled in mock horror. “Not spirits! I would fall off my chair. My head still spins.”

  “I might like for your head to spin,” he chuckled warmly.

  She furrowed her brow. He was recovering his humor, but his meaning eluded her. Save for the unfortunate mention of his wife, he had seemed happy, had been full of caged energy all afternoon. Standing to prowl the confines of the kitchen, he seemed to make a quick decision, and grabbed two mugs from the topmost shelf of a high cupboard. He didn’t even have to stretch, but his reach left her admiring his wide, deep shoulders. He filled the room.

  She didn’t know what to make of his taut haste. The wedding was over, the celebration ended. They could rest now. She had one whole day to learn her way about the house and prepare to meet the children formally. To meet them, she thought worriedly, and the Marshalls tomorrow morning at breakfast.

  He plunked the mugs down on the table, filled them from the jug, and took a swallow. “Cider then, as the milder of the three. I do not want a drunken bride.”

  “Drunken! I’ve never been drunk in my life. I’m a perfectly sober Sister, Brother Blum—” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I will find it hard to ever call you by your given name.”

  He pushed her mug closer to her.

  “I do not have the habit,” she explained weakly, ignoring the cider.

  He smiled. “Then I will teach you.”

  Setting his own mug down, he drew her to him. His body was damp from the heat, thick, long. Its unanticipated contact shocked her. He had been so upright over the soldiers that day. She could scarce believe that he would show so little restraint here. After all, that physical business was for making babies. Even she, green as she was, knew that. He had three children already, and they were more than he could handle.

  Perhaps not. Tenderly, seekingly, his mouth touched hers. And she was distracted. The skin of his lips was as tender as a new spring leaf, she mused. Who would have thought that? They moved across her mouth. A quiver she had never felt before snaked into her stomach. A little alarmed, she pulled away and heard him groan.

  “There.” His soft, sweet tone was musical, the voice she had always admired, and his face so very close that she saw only shadowed planes and golden angles lit by the setting sun. “Say my name.”

  “Jacob,” she whispered obediently.

  “Good,” he whispered back, managing to sound like a teacher until his mouth covered hers, humid and urgent. She closed her eyes. He was too, too close. Too pressing. A pressing heat, heat like the brutal summer’s day that lay thickly over the room, enveloped her body.

  He pulled at her lower lip, released it, then parted her mouth with his wet tongue. Its tip touched her teeth, then probed around them and searched above them and between them. He touched her tongue. She gasped. He tasted of the cider.

  She had seen people kiss, a little, but hadn’t imagined it would feel like this. Nor had she thought that a kiss would taste—that a man would taste—so good. No matter that he did, his invasion sent an unexpected ripple down the back of her neck. A frightening sensation. A faint memory of some bad dream, some nameless fear flitted across her mind’s eye. She wondered—no, worried—what would happen next.

  But he broke off.

  And she felt his terrible absence in the cool air on her damp lips.

  “Jacob?” She whispered his name again, confused by yearning and an unspeakable fear that strummed through her at once.

  “Beautiful.” Jacob started to touch his new bride’s lips with his finger until a look of feral caution flashed in her amber eyes. He withdrew.

  Perhaps he had imagined that look. She tasted sweet as a summer peach plucked from a tree and hot from the sun. Yet she pulled away. Twice. He gave a sigh and let her go again. Noticing the heavy confinement of his black coat for the first time all day, he unbuttoned it with fumbling fingers and shrugged out of it. Hot air hit him like a blast from a forge. God help him, he hated summers in his new country. They had never been this bad in Germany.

  He turned to hang his coat on a peg. Not a second too soon. Under his damp waistcoat, hard desire for Retha pressed against his breeches. His virgin bride was not yet ready for evidence of his arousal. She could barely handle a drink of cider. Behind him, she choked merely sipping it. He hoped coughing would occupy her while he adjusted himself inside his breeches.

  She walked away, striding lightly across the floor into the parlor. He pivoted in time to see her tip a curtain aside. For a long time, he watched and wondered as she gazed into the night. He must have frightened her away.

  He blamed himself. He had assumed too much and rushed her. She could not be like his first. Christina had been a distant cousin and his closest childhood friend. With their families, they had sailed to the Colonies together and never been separated after that. Once married, they had come to loving as naturally as water flows a well-planned course.

  Retha started out a stranger.

  That had to be her problem. Simply welcoming her here must not have been enough. Women took to houses in bits and pieces, room by room, table by chair by bed. Except for the scary night he found her, she had never seen his home. He could only hope she didn’t remember that. She had been only ten or twelve, and straight from years of living in bark houses under stars. How alien his home must have appeared to her.

  He joined her by the shadowed parlor window, knowing she saw nothing. “’Tis dark out,” he reminded her quietly.

  “Everyone’s gone home.” She sounded lost. His heart twisted. He could think of nothing in his life for which he had been as unprepared as she must be for this. For him, for his whole family, overnight. Christina had been playmate, confidante, long before she became his wife. He must not assume that anything tonight would be the same.

  “Come,” he said. He thought be
tter of trying to lead his bride. Wild she might be, but innocent, too, unused to a man’s touch. He was sure no man had ever kissed her.

  He lit a golden candle, releasing its honeyed scent into the room and casting a pale light. Already it was dark enough to spook his daughter. But his new bride was a grown woman, as his senses told him relentlessly.

  “This way. The children sleep here.” Reversing their steps through the entry to the stairs, he led the way to the loft’s two rooms and gave her time to look around.

  “That’s a fine tile stove.” Her voice sounded controlled.

  “In winter, it heats both rooms.”

  The candle’s light muted the intricate designs on the stove’s sleek tiles. She asked if it had been made here or imported. He didn’t know, he hadn’t built this house. And then she was full of questions about who slept where and whether the boys took care of wood and fire and ashes and how Anna Johanna slept at night in a room alone.

  Delaying questions. He started down the stairs before she had a chance to interrogate him about what was stored under the eaves. When he took her hand it rested in his, compliant but passive. He gritted his teeth. He was in this marriage for the rest of his life. He would make it work.

  Back in the parlor, she walked straight to his drafting table and held up the compass that had fallen out of its shagreen case when she had flung the gown.

  She winced as she inspected the jointed instrument. “I hope I didn’t break it. What are these things?”

  “My drafting instruments. This is a compass.” He traded it with her for the candle. “I use it when I work.”

  She gave him a blank look. She didn’t even know who he was. Large scrolls of paper stood in a deep basket against the wall. He unrolled a stiff sheet detailing his latest project.

  “This is one of my designs.”

  Her eyes politely scanned the curling paper. She couldn’t make out the object represented. Girls learned geography, but he couldn’t expect her to have a feel for drafting.

  “’Tis the mill’s new water wheel.”