His Stolen Bride

by Judith Stanton

  His own words. Relieved, Nicholas let out a pent-up breath.

  From the middle of the table, Rosina Krause gave an encouraging look. “My dear, if you could shed new light on this, we would be gratified to hear your version of the story.”

  At the table’s head, Brother Marshall added words of wisdom. “We do not fear truth, Sister Till.”

  Then Abbigail looked straight at Nicholas, her large brown eyes glittering with emotion. With, he greatly feared, apology. New worry slicked down his spine. He had believed she thought him innocent

  He was innocent. He could not explain the absence of the blasted watches, but he knew nothing of it. Nothing. He felt accountable nonetheless, under her gaze, waiting for the ax to fall. Culpable, even guilty. He had always committed sins, venial, all of them. In this fiasco of the watches, had he omitted to do something and thereby sinned unawares?

  “In truth,” Abbigail said, her voice sweet and strong, “I have nothing to add to Brother Blum’s account.”

  Sister Krause nodded, not unkindly. “Of course not, dear. We merely want to hear it in your own words.”

  “My story adds nothing to Brother Blum’s account,” she repeated.

  “That would be for us to determine,” Schopp said reproachfully “Are we to understand that you were alone at home on the evening Brother Blum returned with the watches?”

  Abbigail tilted her head as if the very question were distasteful. “Yes.”

  “And was that usual, for you to be alone?”

  Across the table, Philip Schopp shifted. It was all Nicholas could do to hold his tongue, to keep his seat. His schooldays had been filled with the man’s petty inquisitions. Since then, the old schoolmaster had taken up the private study of law and was clearly bringing all his wits to bear on the case at hand.

  “No. Father had left me at home. We had a family… disagreement.”

  “Where did Brother Blum find you?”

  Nicholas glared a warning at her, too aware she was beyond his control.

  “Brother Blum called out when he heard me crying.”

  Georg Till’s sharp hiss of breath was the only sound in the room.

  “Crying, dear?” Sister Marshall prodded sympatheticady.

  “I Weis in my room, alone, distressed about some family matter of no import here.”

  “Go on, Sister Till,” Brother Marshall said.

  “I dried my tears. When I joined him downstairs, he had laid out the dolls on the counter for me to see.” Abbigail spoke with care, choosing her words, Nicholas noted thankfully, so as to omit everything that had passed between them in her room. Yet, clever woman that she was, she let the bones of the truth stand bare. “Then he showed me the watches. I thought them quite beautiful and his purchase of them quite shrewd.”

  “So you saw the watches on the counter at the same time you saw the dolls?” Brother Marshall asked.

  “No. He showed me the watches in my father’s office before he put them in the safe.”

  “Ah,” Brother Marshall said, as if a great mystery were cleared. “Then you actually saw him put them in the safe, just as he says he did.”

  “No, I did not see him do that. I left the room.”

  Brother Schopp looked up from taking notes and made a stabbing gesture with his quill. “Are you saying that you cannot confirm his claim that he left them in the safe? Are you saying that he could have taken them?”

  His triumphant tone, angled at Abbigail, infuriated Nicholas.

  But not, evidently, her. She said calmly, “’Twas obvious to me he put them in the safe. It was open when I entered the office and closed when I next saw it.”

  “How do you explain their disappearance?”

  Abbigail’s mouth pursed in evident frustration. “’Tis not my place to explain anything. But, Brother Schopp-”

  “Thank you, Sister Till,” Schopp said, cutting her off.

  “But Brothers and Sisters, if I may be allowed to finish,” she continued bravely. “Nothing Brother Blum said or did in all his weeks with us and nothing I saw that evening suggests to me that he would take my father’s watches.”

  Schopp laid his quill pen down with exaggerated resignation. “Then we are at an impasse. Nothing Brother Blum says and nothing you saw supports his claim of innocence. You have been most helpful, Sister Till.”

  “Helpful?” she said angrily. “I have no desire to help you find an innocent man guilty. I do not understand why you-any of you, my own father-seem determined to declare Brother Blum guilty with no clear proof.”

  Nicholas was proud, so proud that she would stand by him with such heart. But damn his luck, she was not supposed to defend him. That could be her ruin.

  Till tried to silence her with a look. “Mind, daughter,” he said in a low voice. “’Twas your father crossed in this.”

  But Abbigail went on, undaunted. “He is your Brother, Brother Schopp. Has no one consulted his character?”

  “’Tis precisely that which we have consulted, Sister Till,” said Philip Schopp in a grave, disdainful voice. “You cannot know of his past transgressions, of his many failures in trade. Why even as a child, he ran off-”

  “To war, did he not?” Abbigail interrupted, too fierce in his defense. Nicholas clenched his fists, unable to take a father’s, brother’s, husband’s place and stop her. If he intervened, it would only show they knew each other all too well. “Besides, he was but a boy.”

  “A reckless, heedless boy.”

  “But a boy. Was that a true transgression or a mere excess of boyish zeal?”

  “He endangered many.”

  “He helps many. I beg to differ, Brother Schopp, in your assessment of his character. And Father”- Abbigail gathered a fierce new courage she never knew she had-“I must disagree with you. I for one have witnessed conduct altogether different in our store. Brother Blum errs-call it sin if you will-on the side of generosity.”

  “Ab-Sister Till … this is not necessary,” Nicholas protested. It was as he feared. He could not stop her now.

  “It is necessary,” Abbigail insisted, ignoring Nicholas’s pained protest For she had found her wings in this storm of nonsense and flew to his defense, freed at last from restraint by her father’s and Brother Schopp’s willingness-no, eagemess-to condemn Nicholas. What she knew could clear his name.

  She recounted how he had patiently carried out the most menial tasks, defended her before rude strangers, bestowed kindnesses on strangers in the store. She told how Mrs. O’Brien’s abject need had led Nicholas to sell the disputed peck of rationed flour for her and her weedy children.

  “Those,” Abbigail concluded, “are not the acts of a thief.”

  The plume of Brother Schopp’s quill pen danced with his annoyance. “Yours is the sentiment of a Sister who does not know the whole of Brother Blum’s past. Any appearance of generosity is beside the point. He always bent our rules. No doubt it amused him to break yours.”

  Abbigail stood to her full four feet ten inches tall but felt very small and vulnerable in this group of mostly large men. She touched her fingertips to the solid oak table to hide the frustration that shook her. For no reason she could imagine beyond dour Germanic rectitude, Brother Schopp had joined her father’s crusade to blacken Nicholas’s name. And the respectable Elders seemed to allow iL

  She had it in her power to defend him, if not clear him altogether.

  “I am persuaded that Brother Blum is innocent. So persuaded that I would stake my reputation on his honesty and marry him tomorrow, by the Lot or not. Without a moment’s hesitation.”

  A horrified silence fell in the great room. Abbigail looked up and down the long table, determined to meet the gazes of each and every somber, upright Brother and Sister gathered in judgment. Nicholas’s grateful gaze caught hers and held it. Grateful, and regretful. But there was nothing to regret. He would not be cast out if she could stop it.

  On her right, her father shuffled gouty feet as if his pain had worsened
, then stood. “She cannot mean that. My daughter is betrothed.”

  Nicholas’s face froze.

  “Not true, Papa!” Abbigail blurted out, stunned by her father’s lie into exposing him to this most respectable crowd.

  Reactions rippled through the meeting. Brother Marshall coughed in disapproval while Sisters Marshall and Rosina Krause registered dismay. Nicholas’s father and brother gaped at her, astonished. Beneath the table, Sister Benigna clasped Abbigail’s hand in support.

  On their left, Philip Schopp picked up his notes and painstakingly folded the pages of his cramped handwriting. “We will accept your father’s judgment of the matter,” he said smugly. “As I am sure you will be guided by it.”

  Abbigail’s heart sank. In such a matter, a daughter’s word would not carry the credit of a father. Nor did she have his decades-long reputation as a man scrupulously honest in trade.

  “I should know my own wedding plans, Brother Schopp,” she said.

  He dismissed her assertion with a thin, insulting smile. “Your bold defense of Brother Blum might have swayed us, Sister, but for your father’s shocking revelation. The Board can only regret that you abandon a Single Sister’s modesty and add more scandal to the matter before us.”

  Nicholas jumped up, glowering at Schopp, and Abbigail’s heart lurched in alarm. “No scandal whatsoever attaches to Sister Till. You should look to your own-”

  “Nicholas! Please,” Jacob Blum said, reaching to restrain him, then leaning across the table, the pitch of his body reproaching Schopp. “You have yet to establish theft, Philip, let alone prove scandal.”

  Schopp drew himself up, too pleased. “Sister Till’s testimony is scandal enough. Brother Nicholas always lured the innocent into his escapades. Now he corrupts a Single Sister. A wanton who declares her love for him while betrothed to another.”

  Nicholas exploded. “No wanton! She-”

  The assembled Elders started speaking all at once, their words jangling in Abbigail’s ears.

  She had said she was not betrothed. They had not believed her.

  Dizzy from her own daring, she steadied herself against the table. She did not care that she had spoken rashly. That her words were irrevocable. That a moment’s profession had erased a lifetime’s prudence. That her place among the Brethren would never be the same. Her father’s betrayal cut her like a knife, and Brother Schopp’s carping cast all she said in doubt.

  Never mind all that. She felt no shame. She had stood up to her father. She would marry Nicholas, here or anywhere. She knew that now. Failing that, she had defended the man she loved, had almost vindicated him. If they disassociated her tomorrow, she could never do a better deed than that.

  Disassociating her did not concern the Elders. Brother Marshall blandly invited her party and the Blum men to wait outside while the Board decided what to do. Evidently wary of another outburst, Nicholas’s father and brother practically hauled him from the room. The footsteps of the three massive men pounded across the floor like soldiers on a march.

  Abbigail felt bereft, the object of her interest gone. Nicholas shot her one blazing glance, any attempt to speak to her forestalled by his relatives’ protective retreat. From now on they would be strictly separated, closely watched. She could no longer presume on their familiarity as shopkeeper to assistant and enjoy his secret friendship.

  But what if he believed her father’s lie? She muffled an outcry of sheer frustration: Her father’s lie had robbed her of her small pleasure of being Nicholas’s friend. Even so, with Sister Benigna at their side, she helped her father creep across the room, unmoved by his doggedness or his frailty. For fourteen years she had repressed feelings, longings, truth … and honored him according to God’s law. She could do so for a few more minutes, through the door that creaked on heavy hinges, down the polished stone stairs, and out into a brilliant October morning in Salem Square.

  There the Blums gathered under a linden tree, a well-matched trio of large, handsome men, all of them restless now.

  Seeing them, her father headed for the opposite corner of the Square. Huffing from effort, he collapsed on a log bench and wagged his head at her as if she were a refractory child. “Shameful, upstart girl. The man’s a thief, and your ill-judged defense of him makes you little better.”

  Sister Benigna, silent through the hearing, sputtered now in privacy. “Georg, you truly go too far. I like Brother Blum.”

  “He is no thief, Father. But whatever you think of me, you lied about my accepting Brother Huber.”

  His pale face reddened. “I will not countenance such disrespect from my own daughter.”

  “You never before deserved it.”

  He lifted his hands in angry explanation. “You will yield to this. I promised Brother Huber.”

  “Promised him!” she cried. She could not see the world around her. Only an image of a too-tall man, pinched, fastidious, his breath marked, his teeth stained by his ever-present snuff, his soul constrained by excess piety. He would bore her, rule her, make her conform to his own sanctimonious code of conduct.

  “You can have no objection to the man I have entrusted with my store.”

  “I do object!” she cried out. “I cannot love him!”

  “Georg, really,” Sister Benigna interjected impatiently. “You cannot make her love him enough to marry him.”

  “‘Love is learned, love is earned,’” he said, citing an old saw. Some Brethren took comfort in it. “Everyone among us knows that and believes it.”

  “He cannot earn my love, nor can I learn to love him,” Abbigail said.

  Love, she realized now that it was too late, should flow like breezes, loft like birds, sail through the heart like songs of clouds.

  “You have not tried,” he insisted.

  “He has worked for us almost two years, and we are far from being friends.”

  Her father’s eyes accused her. “Whereas you befriended the charming Brother Blum in a matter of mere weeks.”

  Abbigail drew herself up. “I admit it He is kind, amusing.”

  “Impetuous, feckless.”

  “You don’t know that Father.”

  “I do. I stand by every word I testified before the Elders. He is not to be trusted. Not to be vouchsafed your regard.”

  Her father’s mind was cast in mortar! She bit off a cry of anger and sat down on the bench.

  Softening, her father took her hand. His felt cold, unhealthy. “Ah, Abbigail, I promised your mother to do right by you.”

  “Then do it Papa,” she urged, her chin trembling. “Let me be.”

  But he did not hear. He had returned to a day he rarely visited in memory, tears glazing his eyes. “’Twas the last thing she required of me. I have kept you safely by me as she asked. I could never forgive myself-or you-if we fail her.”

  Fail in what? Had he not already failed in simple charity, human decency, familial duty? Abbigail stared at him in disbelief. In all her years of thankless work for him, he had thought he cared for her, had thought her lonely life with him secured her best interests and honored her mother’s last request.

  If God was merciful … An angry sob caught in Abbigail’s throat.

  God was merciful, she believed with all her heart. But He had not made His way exactly plain. She could not believe that His will and her father’s ruinous plan for her were one and the same thing.

  “Excuse me, Papa. I think we have nothing more to say,” she said, and turned to her friend, her father’s friend, who had come with them all this way. “Sister Benigna …?” she asked.

  The tall competent Widow nodded. “Go, Abbigail. I will care for him.”

  Lifting her skirts over the newly fallen linden leaves scattered over the Square, Abbigail flew back to her bedroom at the Blums’ home, hoping for privacy to settle the tempest in her heart.

  23

  After half an hour to repair herself upstairs, Abbigail went down to Retha Blum’s kitchen. It smelled of cinnamon and cider, and Ret
ha plied a carved wooden paddle in a bubbling copper kettle of apple butter. Courtesy demanded that Abbigail pitch in. She perched on a nearby stool, peeling russet apples, then plopping them into the sauce.

  “So … I hear you are to be married,” Retha said brightly after allowing her a short while to settle down to work.

  “No!” Abbigail started another apple, her fingers too unsteady to peel it fast or neatly. “My father’s choice does not love me, nor I him.”

  “Oh dear,” Retha said, quietly sympathetic. “Marriage without love is too sad to contemplate.”

  “Marriage in middle age is too pathetic,” Abbigail countered.

  Retha busied herself with checking other pots among the coals. “I would not call you middle-aged,” she said carefully.

  Abbigail gave a mirthless laugh to cover her futile yearning. “I am a rather older Single Sister, Sister Blum-nearly as old as you, who have four growing children, the oldest almost grown.”

  “Do you not dream of children?” Retha asked gently.

  “To dream of them while still unmarried,” she answered in strict dogmatical correctness, “would be to put my wishes before the Savior’s will.”

  “To dream is not to disobey.”

  But Abbigail did not want to dream. It hurt too much to think of the ever more unlikely union with the handsome, supremely eligible man whose burning bedroom kiss still tortured her at night. “I know nothing of children. Not even of brothers and sisters, for I had none.”

  There was a clatter at the back door. “Speaking of which …”

  It would be the twins, home from school to eat. Retha brightened at the simple daily prospect of her children coming home. Despite denying it, Abbigail felt deprived of all the marital joys she’d missed-a husband to adore, his children darting like swallows through the bright skies of her days.

  Had she deserved them, she would have them.

  The terrible thought formed and stayed. What if she deserved to be her father’s drone, and nothing more? Had she been brave and loving like Retha Blum, instead of old and plain and too sharp for her own good, perhaps then she would have deserved a love, a family of her own. But not as she was, drying up and languishing.