His Stolen Bride

by Judith Stanton

  “Nicholas,” she breathed, awash with pleasure at the sight of him. Awash with confusion and dismay. She had loved him almost half her life. Loved him, and feared his restless, questing energy. Why was he here? No one had expected him for the wedding, her least of all. The Brethren’s weddings were simple affairs. After the Lot was cast, banns were quickly posted, and the ceremony quickly, quietly carried out. Nearby family members and a few friends came, but no one from far away

  “In the flesh,” he said caustically, his golden features gray and drawn.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came for you, Catharina.” He set the foaming bucket aside with easy, angry power. Instinctively she stepped back, folding her arms across her breasts. But he ran his fingers through his disordered hair, and his distress, his disarray, finally struck her. His rumpled clothes were dirty, not at all his usual attire, and they smelled of horse and sweat

  “You came for me?” she repeated, her heart pounding at the welcome-yet unwelcome-news. He had wanted her. Liebe Gott, she had made a grave mistake. “You never even wrote.”

  “’Twould have been improper, and easily found out.” His face twisted. “So I learn of this from my brother. How could you?”

  “I never meant to hurt you, Nicholas.”

  “Well, you did.” He paced away, paced back. “Gut Gott, Catharina, you will be the one hurt. You need not go and marry him.”

  Her chin trembled with loss. She had vowed. “’Tis settled. I marry Brother Blum tomorrow.”

  “No, marry me.” He looked fierce. “You can marry me. I can take you away.”

  “But I am betrothed.”

  A single step brought him within inches of her face, her mouth. He clasped her hands, still warm from the cow’s udder. His grip was strong but cold.

  “You don’t have to marry my brother,” he repeated earnestly.

  Her head whirled. She could not deny the authority of the Lot. “’Tis the Savior’s will.”

  “Rubbish.” Nicholas’s grip tightened, alarming her. “Rubbish. Even now, late though the hour is, you can still say no to him. And yes to me.”

  She could not. She slumped against the wall where the cow had flung her. She searched his face and saw more hurt behind his dark entreaty. She searched her heart and knew she had to hurt him more.

  “Nicholas, bitte. The Savior’s will is sacred. Betrothals cannot be reversed.”

  His face set with injured pride. “You promised me, I promised you. We were in this together.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  “And so what happened?” His cold grasp seemed inescapable, frightening her more than his abundant energy ever had. “You loved me.”

  She had loved him. She loved him still. She hung her head, shame spreading to her toes. Nearly a Married Sister, practically his brother’s bride, she summoned the gumption to deny it.

  “Once. I was a foolish girl,” she said.

  Inside, the barn had lightened as the sun rose.

  “Catharina, I don’t understand. You kissed me. You allowed it.”

  She remembered. She had let him. From curiosity, at the start. And then because his kisses pleased her. Then because the other girls would ask … Until finally, awed, flattered, impressed, she fell in love with his attentions, energy, good heart. A condemning blush heated her face. “Well, I…” She stammered. “I didn’t…”

  His gaze bored into her, testing her nerve, her sincerity, she guessed. “You let me. You liked it,” he accused, his grip on her fingers tightening, menacing.

  “Give me my hands,” she said through fear and pain.

  Self-awareness flashed across his face, and instantly he let her go. Her back against the barn’s plain wooden wall, she flattened her palms against its rough support. She would have to put her actions in the worst light to drive him away.

  “Your kisses flattered me.”

  “You are very pretty, Catharina, but kisses are not flattery! They’re about affection, love.” He spit out the words.

  Oh, how he frightened her. To be so angry, when he spoke of love. To be so impatient, when he meant to persuade. She recalled once more what she always feared in him. His restless energy swamped her. Over a lifetime, which he seemed to be proposing, it would swallow her whole. And all the charm in the world would not make up for that.

  She owed him honesty. “The truth is …

  Oh, so very hard to say when it would hurt a man you loved.

  Nicholas stepped back, incredulous. With Catharina and himself. What had happened to his longtime sweetheart? What had happened to his old dream? He had raced to her in loyalty, in honor, knowing she loved him

  She denied what he knew to be true. She was confused that he had come.

  He returned, grimly committed to his mission. “Very well then. Tell me the truth, Catharina.”

  “The truth is, you … charmed me,” she said.

  Another of his endless blunders chalked up to charm? He scowled. “Don’t say that. Don’t dare blame my … my curse.”

  “Everybody loves that in you, Nicholas. At least a little bit”

  “A little bit?” He let out a great groan. “This is not about my vaunted charm! Don’t toy with me, Catharina. I came all the way from Pennsylvania to spare you from a fate … a fate …”

  She was listening, her pale gold lashes blinking in disbelief. He trailed off, hearing his presumption. She missed his purpose utterly. “I went up there to build a life for us. I can support you now even if they throw us out.”

  “Throw who out? What can you mean? My wedding is tomorrow.”

  “Yes, to me,” he insisted, loyally, honorably, even as a certain tiny tyrant’s face mocked him in imagination. Overstepping, Brother Blum? Abbigail asked.

  He plowed ahead. He had come all this way for Catharina. She was being so perverse. “You are not bound by the Elders’ dictum. A loveless marriage is worse than anything.”

  She looked down. “Nicholas,” she said sadly, “I am betrothed, the banns are read, my decision has been made.”

  Why would she not listen? “Gott im Himmel, Catharina. Don’t marry a man you don’t love. Remember how we kissed.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth. Guiltily, he thought. He brushed her hand away.

  “Kiss me now,” he entreated hoarsely, cupping the back of her head, the soft linen of her old Haube. “Kiss me as you always did.” His honor and old loyalties were at stake. As was the rest of her life. He covered her mouth with his, kissing her hard so she could have no doubt.

  She sighed.

  He shuddered in response.

  Her cool hps trembled beneath his, compliant, innocent, and he deepened the kiss. He probed for the sweetness he once knew. He probed to erase her lies and strange equivocations, to recover his old vision of the ethereal woman he had come so far and given up so much to save. Catharina had been his plan when all his other plans had gone awry.

  Then he realized he was thinking. Thinking, while kissing. It had not been like that with Abbigail. With Abbigail, ach, Gott! That had been lust, he told himself, a spiral into fleshly indulgences begun in his dalliance with Mistress Mary Clark.

  He shoved all that behind him. He could not desert the woman he had come to save.

  “Catharina, bitte, don’t marry a man you cannot-” A roar like a wild beast’s cry brought him to his senses. “Leave her alone!”

  16

  Strong hands clamped down on Nicholas’s shoulders and shoved him away from Catharina. From the corner of his eye, he saw her willowy body stagger back. And saw Matthias, rage contorting his face.

  “Nicholas! What in God’s name are you doing?”

  It should have been perfectly obvious what he was doing-what he’d always done, and with Catharina’s sweet cooperation. “I was kissing the woman I love.”

  She stood alone against the dark barn wall, quivering between them, her face buried in her hands. He headed to comfort her.

  “She’s my betr
othed!” Matthias bellowed in disbelief, grabbing him from behind and jerking him to a standstill.

  Nicholas pivoted to face him, wrenching free, the full force of his brother’s betrayal spiking his anger. “I asked you to keep an eye out for her, not take her away from me.”

  Matthias looked stunned. Uncomprehending. “You encouraged my suit”

  “Zum Teufel! I never!” he snapped, giving a flat-handed push of sheer belligerence, boyhood injunctions to protect his younger brother drumming in his ears.

  Matthias shoved back with surprising power. It would be an even fight Nicholas thought with savage satisfaction. He had not come this far to he down and roll over, not with Catharina yielding to his kiss.

  “But the Lot said yes,” Matthias protested.

  “And Catharina said she’d wait for me.” Nicholas balanced, knees flexed, stance wide, fists clenched at his side, as warning darkened his brother’s face.

  “She accepted me fast enough.”

  “Against her will,” Nicholas goaded. “Against her heart.”

  His brother charged him headfirst bull-strong for a man so tall and lean. Nicholas welcomed strikes and punches, each one justifying his frantic trip home-or punishing him for compromising her before his brother. He felt a perfect fool. But also honor-bound to save her from a loveless match.

  “I went away … to make a … life for her.” He drove his fists into his brother’s gut.

  “You have no life … to offer her. She chose me,” Matthias grated, punching back.

  Nicholas was livid, at the blows, at his brother’s certainty, at the folly of his journey. He got a lock on Matthias’s arms and spun him around in the small barn’s aisle.

  Matthias spun Nicholas back, slammed his flanks into stall doors, then cracked his shoulder against an open stanchion. Nicholas gathered up his forces, startled by his pious brother’s brutish anger. He hit a grazing blow on the side of Matthias’s face, then tackled his body and grappled him to the ground.

  As best he could. His brother matched him in strength and wrath. They rolled over and over, up the narrow aisle and back. Dirt and muck and bits of stone flew out around them, and Catharina’s skirts. He glimpsed a flurry of gray and heard her sob as she stepped up, then back, in torment. Her hand reached in, then drew away.

  He would kill Matty for putting her through this.

  The heavier man, Nicholas flattened himself across his brother’s body. Sinewy and sly, Matthias struggled, almost impossible to contain. Nicholas pinned an arm; the free hand boxed his ear. He straddled a leg; the other kneed his ribs.

  Nicholas fought for breath, each hot inrush of air burning into his lungs. Unjust, unfair, unbelievable.

  She had been the constant in his wayward life.

  “You cannot be … the man … she wants.”

  With a grunt, Matthias surged beneath him. Reaching beyond exhaustion, Nicholas drove a cracking punch to Matthias’s left jaw. His head bobbled, his eyes rolled back. Raging, jealous, Nicholas had aimed to kill. For long awful moments in the dark barn, he heard no sound but Catharina’s weeping. For him, or for Matthias? He pressed his fingers to his brother’s neck and found a bounding, vital pulse.

  “Matty,” he croaked. Slowly, woozily, his brother’s eyes blinked open. An arm snaked out, his body bucked. Exhausted, Nicholas clung to control.

  “Jesu, I did not mean this.” But he could not let go.

  He trapped Matthias’s arms above his head and rested his battered face against his own outstretched arm.

  Wary, Matthias yielded to his brother. For the first time since their endless boyhood skirmishes, he could have taken him. But his older brother’s blow had paralyzed him. Not the man she wants. Looking up blearily, he took a primal pleasure in the damage he had wrought: blood flowed from his brother’s nose, a jagged cut blazed his cheek.

  Liebe Gott, what had they done?

  They had fought like Cain and Abel. Still seething, he could not say who had played which part. But he could not abide a rupture in his family.

  “Nicky, listen,” he said hoarsely, reaching past his rage for reason. “Catharina is to marry me. You must accept this. I consented that the Lot be drawn for her and her alone. She accepted in good faith. The Elders posted banns. We are publicly, irrevocably betrothed. We are as good as wed.”

  Nicholas’s face twisted with pain. “She promised me.”

  Matthias swallowed pride, banked lethal fury. “She never said so,” he said, not quite evenly.

  “No doubt you did not ask,” Nicholas accused.

  “Of course not We have barely talked. We complied with custom. Unlike you.” Bitter censure colored his tone.

  “I have known her all her life. Loved her.” Nicholas’s big, powerful hands tightened on his wrists. “Back out, Matty, now, for her sake.”

  Incredible, outrageous, Matthias thought, trying to grasp his brother’s wild delusion. Then in a flash, he had it. With Single Brothers, obsessions with pretty Single Sisters cropped up from time to time. It was not something he wanted Catharina to hear. She was watching from the barn’s door, her white Haube gleaming in the light. She looked so lost.

  He lowered his voice. “You are not the only man with eyes for Catharina.”

  Nicholas gave a roar of indignation. “Gott im Himmel, I know that.”

  “But understand,” Matthias pressed on, forcing quiet reason. “Whatever passing attraction you felt for her, she is mine now. Everyone wants this match. Anna Johanna knows Catharina from the School and is delighted for us. Father approves, Retha has not stopped beaming.”

  Nicholas’s neck corded with the strain. “They didn’t know about me.”

  “They put me up to courting Catharina here this morning.”

  There was a long, black silence. His brother’s handsome face was gray with fatigue, red with blood, purple with bruises. Briefly Matthias pitied him for harboring a futile hope. Then his old insecurities reared up, resentment on their heels. This marriage was his chance to do something outside his dominating brother’s shadow.

  That chance was ruined. By his own fault. He had written the letter that had driven Nicholas home enraged. Matthias was sorry for it, for Nicholas, for the mess. But he was most sorry for himself. Catharina should be his, free and clear.

  Instead, she came with encumbrances. A past that threatened present happiness.

  “Are you going to let me up?” he asked at last.

  No, never, Nicholas wanted to say irrationally, childishly.

  If he and Matty stayed in the barn forever, there could be no wedding. No sense of having failed Catharina. No failure to live up to the promise of his youth. He should have known the Elders would not entrust a paragon like Catharina to a ne’er-do-well like himself.

  But she would make an ideal bride for his perfect younger brother.

  Who once more had proved himself the better man.

  Nicholas wanted to flail out in frustration at yet another plan gone wrong. At the Elders’ latest intervention in his life, this one the most personal, the most galling. But he was no longer the foolish lad, the restless Single Brother he had been; a man faced the consequences of youthful error. All his youthful errors.

  So he stood, shaking his head, and gave his brother a hand up. Reluctantly. Each one of them was making the mistake of a lifetime, sacrificing the bright hope of finding true love to a peculiar, binding marriage tradition. No one outside their narrow sphere would honor it It paired men and women for the community’s convenience without a thought of love. If some found love, or a semblance of it, within their arranged marriages, so much the better. Some, he knew, did not.

  Impulsively, he gambled on his brother’s sensitivity. “But you don’t understand. Catharina loves me.”

  Matthias scowled darkly. “What do you mean?”

  “She always has. Before I left-”

  Nicholas barely registered the trajectory of his brother’s fist. Pinpoints of light and torches of color exploded before
his eyes. Reeling, he staggered out the barn door into the road leading out of Salem–followed by a volley of filthy German oaths he had taught his brother long ago for the sheer pleasure of scandalizing his virtuous little heart.

  “Scoundrel!” Matthias concluded, having run the gamut of his curses. “You bedded my bride!”

  Nicholas hauled himself up. “Think what you will of me, but insult her at your peril,” he said dangerously. Then he spit out a bloody, four-pronged tooth from his cheek into his hand. “Catharina is as pure as the driven snow.”

  Fisting the other hand, he gathered his last ounce of strength to swing.

  “Nein, Nicholas, sei nicht so dumm!” Catharina launched herself from the doorway and grabbed his arm, deflecting the blow. “You’ve done enough!” she cried. Then she huddled up to Matthias. He pressed her to him for protection.

  Nicholas sagged against a stanchion, stunned. Catharina flew to his brother. Not to him. Some pure, idealistic corner of his heart shriveled. How had it all turned out so wrong? Could she really mean to marry Matthias? She couldn’t love him, could she?

  Bloodied, beaten, he glowered through swelling eyes, one fist clenched around the tooth and the other cocked to strike. He slackened his grip, dropped his hand, and noticed the larger world beyond the little bam. A modest crowd was assembling in the lane outside. Sister Baumgarten strode up to find out why her daughter had not come to breakfast Brother Steiner, hearing a ruckus while walking to his mill, had looked in. Brother Ernst arrived, his last nightly round complete.

  Three long faces. Three disapproving frowns.

  Nicholas cast a fruitless prayer skyward. Show them, Savior, somehow, this is not my fault.

  But it would be seen so. Of that, he had no doubt.

  “Go fetch Brother Blum,” Samuel Ernst told Brother Steiner gravely, his gaze moving from Matthias’s battered face to Nicholas’s equally bloodied one. “Jacob will want to see this.”

  In minutes, Brother Steiner hurried back down the hill with Nicholas’s father and stepmother. In front of the Baumgartens’ little barn, silence and unease reigned. Inside, Matthias was angrily putting things aright. Catharina, escorted by her fuming mother, was leading the cow to its paddock.