And Abbigail would have to face a happily married Nicholas. For she had no doubt that his determination would have won the day-and the bride.
She could not face him, married, now that he had claimed her profane heart.
15
Through harsh moonlight, Nicholas saw a few familiar landmarks. Exhausted but resolute, he kicked his flagging livery mount into a gallop and took off on the last stretch of road into Salem. It was midnight, Friday night. On the first Sunday in September Matthias would marry Catharina.
He had to face his brother down. His perfect brother, the thief.
Nicholas reined in his horse at his parents’ door, thinking of rousing the household. The twins would fly to his arms, his stepmother would welcome him. Up the street, night watchman Samuel Ernst sounded the one o’clock hour on the conch shell he used for a horn. Too late. Later than Nicholas had realized. He would not alarm his family.
He wheeled his steaming horse toward the livery, past the brick-and-timbered Brothers House, a smaller, more inviting house than Bethlehem’s. Salem’s Brothers would take him in at any hour of the day or night He looked up at the rows on rows of windows, blank, black eyes onto the night. On second thought even they would be put out by his late arrival.
He no longer had a home here. He no longer knew where he belonged. Was that his fault or the Elders’? Should he have stood up like a man against their rule? Or did honor-manly honor-lie in submitting to their edict? Did his faith require submitting to their rule?
He had no ready answer. Unlike Matthias, he was not a contemplative man.
At the livery, not even the old groom Abraham was up. Rather than trouble the aging slave, Nicholas rubbed down his horse, found it hay and water, and tied it in a stall.
He was who he was. He could not change that. He had set the course of his life a long, long time ago, the day he ran away to war, thinking with a boy’s brash presumption to make amends for his whole community’s refusal to join in the fight. Restless, reckless Nicholas, everyone had said.
His striving to prove otherwise had fizzled. He had dabbled in the trades and floundered in affection, but he could right neither failing overnight For he had burned his bridges behind him. He had broken the agreement his father had made for him with Brother Till. He had thwarted a solid summer’s work with the old curmudgeon. He had ruined a budding friendship with Abbigad, nipped, clipped, crushed it.
Friendship?
That kiss had felt like something … more. He squashed that thought as she had obviously done. Abbigail was behind him now.
Catharina, before him.
Catharina, the pledge, the dream, the beauty. Self-censure pummeling his brain, he tramped toward his tin shop. Danke Gott, he still had that.
He did not, however, have Catharina, for all that she loved him. And she did love him. He was sure of it. What would a forced marriage to his brother do to her?
Forced? He stopped in his tracks, struck by the thought.
She had not waited for him. She had not refused his brother.
Why in heaven’s name not? he wondered. A flash of anger struck him, and betrayal knifed his heart.
But no. Catharina was not devious or capable of a deliberate breach of faith. She was a modest girl, true in her affections. She had honored every kiss he offered, and he would honor her. It was no doubt her mother’s fault. Even Abbigail had almost yielded to her father over Huber, and she had more mettle than anyone he knew. Catharina was a gender soul, younger, milder, less formed as a person, less tried by life. Always she had been open to suggestion, subject to persuasion. A tender empathy washed over him.
Her sweet, compliant nature flattered him. As his wife, he imagined her caring for him, honoring him. Looking up to him, as no one had ever looked up to restless, charming Nicholas, who charged about from here to there, jack of all trades, master of nothing.
Walking on past neat, trim, sleeping houses, Nicholas dragged his tricorn from his head in exasperation and swatted his breeches, stiff from sweat and the evening damps of four nights on the road. No, he thought, he had not done it all wrong. If no one credited him for his good, hard work over the years, so be it. His little tin shop was the town’s sole supplier, and after its first two years of predictable losses, it had garnered modest profits.
As for purchasing that land, his idea had been sound. With property, no man could predict which way the wind would blow. If the land had lost its value since he bought it, in time it would pay again. His two tracts were as likely to make him rich as make him poor. And he had done no other wrong. No grievous wrong, he amended.
A man was not hell-bound for stealing kisses.
Fingers fumbling, he unlocked the door and entered his shadowy shop. His bones ached, his skin was blistered, and his flesh bruised from brutal hours in the saddle. But he was home. Filings crunched beneath his feet. The oppressive smells of raw metal and moldy earth filled his nostrils. He stumbled through the front room, reordered in his absence by his fanatically neat assistant.
He needed sleep, if his teeming brain would let him. Catharina must not see him looking like the very devil. He could not confront his father tomorrow this exhausted. But when he saw his upstanding younger brother, he thought darkly, he would still have the energy to deck him with a well-placed blow for stealing Catharina.
In the upstairs dormitory of Salem’s Brothers House, Matthias Blum lit a tallow candle, stropped his razor, and brushed up a dense foam of soap in a redware mug. It was early Saturday morning, barely light, and his blood raced hot and keen.
His blood, which was by nature deliberate, methodical and even.
Three weeks had crawled by since his father had insisted on a talk-as if he were in trouble. Which he had not been for years. He had a positive aversion to scenes, strictures, strife. He never meant to turn into the paragon Nicholas taunted him for being. But he was, and he knew it. He was ploddingly straitlaced. Perhaps his mind was dull. Perhaps he lacked invention.
More likely, he thought, daubing thick foam on the harsh angles of his jaw, he had trodden the straight and narrow to spare his parents such turmoil as Nicholas stirred up.
Crossing the Square, his father had put a confiding arm around Matthias’s shoulders, an easy gesture usually awarded his older brother, the prodigal one. “Son,” Jacob Blum had said gravely, “we-the Elders–think it time for you to marry.”
Marry? Already? To have his own home, his own bride-to have children-would be a secret, cherished dream come true. But he had stifled his natural warm enthusiasm. “Am I not rather … young?”
His father had smiled. “Yes, son. Twenty-six is young. But you have done us proud. The Board of Elders thinks you ready for this and more.”
The prospect had more than tempted him, but natural diffidence had prompted him to say, “I suppose. But marriage?”
“If you can consent to marrying Catharina Baumgarten.”
His heart had stopped. Sister Baumgarten. It didn’t hurt that she was a stunning beauty, a walking spiritual lesson in conquering envy for every woman in the town. How could a woman be so beautiful, yet modest? So chaste, yet warm? Only in his wildest dreams had he aspired to her. Dreams that had grown wilder after Nicholas had charged him to keep an eye on her.
How could Nicholas have known he had long admired her from afar?
His wink had given Matthias everything-complicity, approval.
Matthais consented to the Lot. Catharina accepted the Elders’ proposal with sweet submission in her mild gray eyes. Matthias plunged headfirst in love with her very image, then chafed while waiting three long weeks, the traditional time between the betrothal and the vows. He would care for Catharina, morning, noon, and night. His heart desired it, the Elders approved it, and Nicky would be pleased.
This morning, the day before the wedding, Matthias would start courting her in earnest. Of course, courting was forbidden. That was why betrothals were so short. He had never even flirted because, unlike his older brother,
he was too shy. There was no need, no room for shyness now. Anticipation set his heart to thumping. He breathed deeply, seeking his usual calm, even meditative, state.
It had vanished, he realized, smiling at his own expense. His pulse pounded through his extremities at the very thought of her.
All his extremities, he admitted for the hundredth time since Catharina had consented to become his bride. Had he known how insistently the prospect would have focused his … appetites, he would have asked to marry outright Instead, he had denied desire, fighting even this most chaste attraction. For who among the Single Sisters would want him, tall, quiet, awkward? Nicholas was every woman’s heart’s desire. Even happily Married Sisters had been seen to blush at his approach.
Matthias eschewed competition.
“Take this betrothal as a compliment,” his father had said. “We believe in you, your future. We acknowledge your singular success.”
Such praise embarrassed him to the roots of his teeth. A man could hardly shrug it off, however, with his father’s arm draped around his shoulders. But Matthias did not comprehend the fuss. He was merely the town’s appointed dyer, heir to his stepmother’s former trade. His craft neither fitted him for family nor prepared him for public duties.
What, after all, had he done? Retha had taught him plants and recipes. Enterprise had done the rest. He had balanced his books. Expanded his business. Brought in trade in cloth, dyed larger and larger lots of flax, wool, and cotton for outsiders. He worked as his father had, hard, steadily, honestly. What achievement lay in that?
This morning, to accommodate his great height, he propped a shard of mirror on the windowsill to shave, a task he almost never gave a second thought Today he did. He wanted to please Catharina, to impress her, to touch-perhaps-her slim hand to his smoothly shaven cheek. Exhorting himself to take all care, he stretched the skin across his jaw and scraped the blade’s edge across thick stubble, a dark shadow in the silvered glass.
It wouldn’t do to meet his bride cut up like an adolescent.
His stomach churned with scruples, accumulated overnight.
Perhaps it wouldn’t do to meet her at all. Two nights ago, while visiting his father and stepmother, he had complained of the wait to marry, joking but ill at ease within. In Salem, prospective brides and grooms were prudently kept apart until the day they wed.
So it had been with them, his parents had said. They too had fretted at their wait but honored it.
Others had not, Retha slyly added. Once a couple was betrothed, the community averted its gaze from slips of decorum and breaches of discipline. The Brethren did not oppose kindling the spirit of married love just before the nuptials. The next day, as he had labored over formulas for dyebaths, first Retha, then his father had dropped by his shop and urged him to meet Catharina privately.
“Go to her,” his father had urged. “Speak with her. ‘Tis too great a strain on a bride to share a bed when she has never shared a private conversation.”
Retha, earthier and more confiding, recommended kisses. It would spare him having to introduce every intimacy on what was sine to be a nervous wedding night. Then she suggested flowers.
Standing at the window in the Brothers House, Matthias scrubbed his hands with lye soap to lighten the stains. He disliked minding how he looked. But yesterday’s dyebath had been goldenseal, beautiful in fabrics but a glaring orange in the crevices of his skin and nails. He dried his hands and inspected the result. Glaring yellow. He smiled wryly. What was the proper courting color for a dyer’s hands? Then he rinsed his stinging face and checked it in the mirror. Shaved close, yet without a sign of blood-a triumph of will over nerves.
Anxious blue eyes looked back at him. He was sneaking out at first light for a rendezvous with a Single Sister he barely knew.
Never mind that tomorrow she would be his bride.
Taking a steadying breath, he rehearsed his plan. He would find her in the bam, milking. He would arrive just as she finished and offer to carry her bucket to the house. But first he would steal a kiss.
Caution born of a shy lifetime of inexperience almost crippled him.
Coward! he upbraided himself. Tomorrow afternoon, the woman would be his wife. Kisses were not theft, but duty. Besides, how hard could it be to confer a seal upon a woman’s lips? His older brother, rumor had it, stole kisses like a fox steals grapes.
Stopping by Retha’s garden, he picked the flowers she had recommended, a flamboyant bouquet of color, and put in two near-blown yellow roses for good measure. The Baumgarten barn was not so far away, and his father’s parting words pursued him: Go to her, son. Claim your bride.
They did not dispel a lingering worry that Catharina would take offense. How, exactly, did a man proceed to steal a kiss?
“Stehen Sie hier, Gertrude! Stand still.” Catharina Baumgarten slapped the cantankerous red cow on its bony rump.
Catharina knew for a fact that she had learned her every ounce of gumption fighting cows. Not that gumption helped her very much with people. Dunderhead! she berated herself for the hundredth time since her betrothal. She hadn’t had the nerve to say no to the Elders. Not with her mother breathing down her neck to marry this fine Brother now. Not with her own belief, in her heart of hearts, that she should not cross the Savior’s will. Not without Nicholas to bolster her up.
Not that he had given her a thought since he had left.
Today her gumption wasn’t even helping with this cow. Gertrude swung her haunches away from the milk bucket, upturning it and the good inch of foaming morning milk already stripped from the creature’s ample udder. Spilt milk seeped into the ground.
“Beast!” Catharina cried, poking the sleek red haunches in exasperation. “Stehen Sie hier, or we’ll be roasting you for dinner.”
The milch cow did not comply. Catharina rose from her little three-legged stool and looked for a switch. It might not make the old cow mind, but she would feel ever so much better. Hastily she glanced around the stalls, the hay mow, the storage barrels, and back to the wooden stanchion. Ah, that was it! Gertrude had no hay. No wonder her tail was in a twist.
“Ver Flixe!” Catharina bunched up the skirts of her worn barn dress as she clambered up the slatted ladder to the mow. She never forgot the hay. Absentminded to distraction since her betrotheal, today her mind had positively wandered off. No mystery in that. Yesterday her bridegroom’s stepmother had alerted her to watch out for a secret visitor. Sister Blum’s kind amusement left no doubt who that would be.
“Where?” Catharina had asked. “And when?”
Sister Blum had smiled mysteriously. Tomorrow, somewhere.
Since that exchange, Catharina’s head had whirled, and her heart had thumped with dread. Nineteen days had hurtled past. Tomorrow afternoon, she would be his. In thirty-four short hours, the last time she checked the clock. Oh, Nicholas! There was no stopping now.
She tried to console herself. Matthias Blum was, bar none, the town’s most settled, most eligible Single Brother. She should count herself fortunate. Rather, she corrected herself, she should thank the Savior for smiling on her with favor. But didn’t her heart belong to Nicholas? Hadn’t he all but asked her to wait? Hadn’t she all but promised to do so? For hours on end she had tossed in bed, weighing, worrying.
Surely this was the supreme test of her faith.
If the Savior had intended her for Nicholas, then the Lot would not have given her to his younger brother. She would have to reconcile herself to that Her mother expected it of her. And she expected it of herself.
It was no small comfort that Matthias Blum, with whom she had yet to share a score of words, was tall and dark and lean and … serious like her. Since agreeing to marry him, she had noticed from a distance his quiet ways. They intrigued her. And suited, she dearly hoped, her retiring.nature, whether or not they were in love.
Love, her mother had insisted, was not required for marriage. A match in temperament and a willingness to strive to live together amicably
were far, far more important.
Catharina was not sure, but she clung to that advice.
That decree.
She tossed a pitchfork of hay from the mow, climbed down, and piled it before the cow’s wooden stanchion. For the last time, she thought, shuddering with anxiety … and the first glimmer of anticipation. She could hardly ask to leave her marriage bed at the crack of dawn to milk her mother’s cow, now could she? Tomorrow her sister Maria would take over at the barn.
“Easy, Gertie,” Catharina crooned, placing her bucket and mounting her stool again. Nose deep in fragrant summer cuttings, Gertrude stood without complaint while Catharina filled the bucket near to overflowing. Finishing, she stroked the cow’s flank, then stood and stretched. Shorter girls were better suited to low-slung work like milking cows. Danke Himmel, her betrothed was tall too.
“You are going to break my back with such full buckets,” she muttered to the cow, her mild good nature restored with her chore finished.
“I will take that for you,” said a low male voice behind her kindly, gently.
Matthias. Catharina gasped in surprise. Not him! Not here! Not with me in my old worn milking dress!
Before she could turn to greet him, the fractious cow hunched her back and kicked. Dodging cloven hooves, Catharina reeled, and the bucket tilted.
“The milk!” she cried.
“Got it!” the voice said, triumphant, then sobering. “Catharina, are you all right?”
The cow’s kick had thrown her, face first, up against the cobweb-festooned wall. She was mortified, not hurt
“I’m fine.” She straightened her work-worn Haube and for the first time ventured to use her shy groom’s given name. “Fine … Matthias.”
The kind voice hardened. “Matthias?”
She pushed against the wall and whirled around, palms sticky with cobwebs, heart hammering.
Nicholas was back, immense and blond and overpowering.
“So he’s Matthias to you now,” he said darkly.
Just now. Her face heated. Warned that Matthias would come courting on this, the day before their wedding, she had risked that intimacy.
His Stolen Bride Page 15