His Stolen Bride

by Judith Stanton

  “She needs to marry,” he protested lamely. “Someone honest.”

  “In your heart of hearts you know Nicholas Blum is honest as the day is long. Perfect for her and for your store.”

  Abbigail shivered with keen regret. At least Sister Benigna saw that Nicholas was her match. But then she saw a lot of things. She knew Georg Till well, well enough to upbraid him when he needed it Her mother had not, if memory served, handled him as well.

  “I’ll not have a stranger turning my store upside down,” he said petulantly.

  The widow sniffed. “Christian Huber was a stranger only two years ago.”

  “He brought testimonials from Brethren in Maine.”

  “Mere papers, Georg! Brother Blum brought an honored father’s blessing.”

  Her father muttered something, but Abbigail could listen to no more. She fiddled noisily with the latch. “Papa … I have brought your lunch,” she said, walking in with the tin lunch pail.

  Her father sat in shirtsleeves, his gouty feet and legs swathed in wet white cloths. Pain etched lines deeper in his face.

  “Daughter,” he said formally, his eyes not meeting her gaze.

  Sister Benigna stood in complete command of her invalid, a simple repast of broth and bread already procured. Abbigail’s offering was not needed. She set it on a table by a trim tile stove. The Widow crossed the room and took Abbigail in her arms. “Ach, Leibling, I am so glad to see you.”

  Her father was not. “I cannot approve of your exhibition this morning, daughter,” he said, still not looking at her, after she was released.

  Tears of aggravation sprang to her eyes. “Nor do I approve of yours, Papa. You distorted everything. Nicholas Blum never cheated you. He is innocent, I know it.”

  Her father did not look well at ad. His loss festered in him, as she had guessed it would. “His innocence has not been proven, Abbigail.”

  Poinless to argue with a stone. She gave a heavy sigh. “How do you feel?”

  He gave a tired one. “Sister Benigna is a godsend.”

  “Don’t flatter me, Georg,” the Widow said sharply, almost fondly.

  “Then we should be thankful she is here,” Abbigail said. “I only came to check on you. I must return to my hostess.”

  He did not object. She dutifully kissed his cheek.

  “You will see that Blum is guilty when Brother Huber comes,” he persisted.

  “Papa!” she said, exasperated. But she refused to be tormented.

  Sister Benigna followed her into the hall and closed the door. They whispered about her father’s health. He needed notice more than nostrums, the Widow said, then added, “The town is ablaze with speculation, my dear.”

  Shaking her head, Abbigaill sought a moment’s refuge in her friend’s maternal embrace. “The entire town, I fear.”

  “Rumor made it to the Widows House within the hour.”

  Abbigail looked up and saw no censure. “I only meant that I am so convinced of his innocence I would marry him on the spot.”

  Sister Benigna waited as the import of those words sunk in. Then she smiled. “’Tis progress in my little friend whose heart is sealed to love.”

  “’Twas hypothetical!” Abbigail protested.

  “Nevertheless, I can see how the rumor spreads that you proposed,” the Widow said, with amusement.

  “But I didn’t!” Abbigad fought a tide of weakness that started in her shoulders and sank through her body to her knees. “Oh, they cannot say … I never meant… I said it to affirm my belief in his innocence. My faith in his good character.”

  “’Twas good of you to stand your ground. But your father’s comment made it worse.”

  “Yes, the supposed betrothal.” Abbigail grimaced. “Much worse.”

  “I concede that Brother Huber is not my choice for you.” Sister Benigna put a confiding arm around her shoulders and they started down the stairs. “Nicholas Blum has so much more to offer.”

  “I know,” Abbigail whispered, overcome. She had known for months. “But not to me.”

  Sister Benigna clucked and tutted. “I must believe all will tum out right.”

  “How?” Abbigail cried. “My father has spared no effort to make it wrong. But I will not sacrifice myself to Brother Huber.”

  “Excellent! Brave girl! But you will have to face it when we return to Bethlehem.”

  “I am safe here. So long as Brother Huber is there, they cannot even post the banns. As for when he arrives here …” She had a respite of four weeks, maybe more. She shook off apprehension. “The important thing is Nicholas’s future.”

  Compared to that, the foolish longings of a Single Sister’s heart were nothing.

  Nicholas Blum stood outside the door of his tin shop, arms crossed against impatience, itchy with discontent. For once in his life he was absolutely innocent, but the eyes of passersby judged him a guilty man. There was not a blessed thing he could do until Christian Huber came. Until then Nicholas faced weeks of doubting looks and whispers. Of tedious tinsmithing. Of seeing Abbigail about the town and treating her as if she were a mere acquaintance.

  He gazed across the Square. There was no rush now, nothing to accomplish, nothing he could change. He must wait under this cloud, and wait some more, for Huber to arrive. The thought of that pompous, pomaded prig controlling his future galled him at a place inside not even the loss of Catharina had touched. Especially after he had sold the fruits of his summer’s labor to the man practically at cost.

  He looked more warily up and down the street, bracing lest either his brother or his stolen bride stroll by. Stolen. The thought still stung, but not because he wanted Catharina. He didn’t. Rather, because he had once more made himself the town’s laughingstock. No, not even that. He was used to entertaining the town. It stung because he’d done it in front of Abbigail.

  Just then she came marching up the street, past the clockmaker’s and the cobbler’s shops, trim and tiny, shoulders squared against scandal, eyes dead ahead.

  “Stupid. Unthinkable,” he heard her mutter.

  He took up her pace. “Some things are,” he said softly. Being accused of a theft I never committed. Living a lifetime without you.

  She stopped and looked up, her delicate, porcelain features flushed from her walk. Or from running into him. His heart flipped, and he stopped too.

  “Don’t stop. Or don’t follow. We cannot talk,” she whispered harshly.

  “Not here, I know,” he said sadly, sorry he had acted on impulse, sorrier still he had distressed her by joining her.

  “Not anywhere. Not even at your parents’ home.”

  He knew that His parents’ sterling reputation in the town could withstand a very great deal, but he did not want to compromise it.

  Her gaze skittered around the Square, to Sisters, Brothers walking, watching. He felt them too, their gazes turning, burning. But most of all he felt desire, like a magnet, pulling him to Abbigail, Abbigail to him.

  “I must go,” she said, an ache in her voice.

  He could not want her to go, but he owed her safe passage away from the cloud of suspicion that shadowed him. “Go, Liebling,” he whispered.

  In public, he realized with a jab of resentment, everything had changed. The town’s eyes would watch every move he made and construe his actions ill. But now that he knew how precious Abbigail was to him, he had to find a way to see her.

  Matthias Blum plunged his hands into dark waters, just come to his shop from his new bride. She had prepared a delicious meal for him, and to his relief, had been a punctiliously correct model of good wifely conduct, neither asking about the hearing nor trying to breach his defenses. Perhaps, after all, she would allow the distance he demanded.

  So he could bury his hint in work.

  He cast about for a color. What would it be this bright fall afternoon? Three weeks ago, on the eve of his betrothal, he’d imagined dyeing a lot of fabric honoring Catharina’s creamy complexion and flaxen hair. A yellow lot f
rom dahlias, goldenrod, or Queen Anne’s lace, all blooming now, to set off the rare beauty of his bride-to-be.

  Romantic sod.

  That impulse, and the pathetic bouquet of flowers he had brought to her in the bam, made him cringe. He stiffened with resolution. He would not come to her a helpless, lovesick puppy.

  Black suited his mood this afternoon, and fixing the dye properly would take all week. He dropped walnut leaves, bark, hulls, and roots into the vat and fired it. He’d given his apprentice a few days off, expecting to take time away himself. He still could. The downward spiral he was in could hardly get worse, he’d thought. Then it had. Twice since dawn, on only the second day of his new marriage.

  Nicholas and Catharina, Catharina and Nicholas.

  Despite their protests of innocence, he couldn’t separate them in his mind.

  This morning in bed, before the hearing, he had been wide awake for every excruciating touch his bride bestowed on his feet, legs, shoulder, arm. Fingers. Fingertips. He’d never imagined them as a source of sensual awakening. For one blazing moment he had been poised to forgive everybody everything.

  Then her hand had ventured knowingly to his all too willing manhood. Under her tender inquiry, it jerked and throbbed, not caring for an instant whether she was pure, or his alone, or someone else’s. Outraged, he had frozen. How did she know the very touch that pleased men? How could she be innocent? He believed Nicholas had not stolen watches. But his theft of Catharina’s virtue was something else entirely.

  After an hour the dark, murky dye bath came to a boil, and Catharina stopped by, her cheeks rosy with exertion, her willowy shape gracing the door. Then she came in, her gentle beauty all the more ethereal in the steamy environs of his shop. Desire washed through his body, but he set his mind against her allure.

  “I thought you might be hungry, working,” she said sweetly, and spread bread and cheese and ale on a counter, a picture of wifely industry.

  Being served by beauty was novel and sweet. But he held out his walnut-blackened hands and shrugged the food away. Shrugged her sweetness away.

  She laughed lightly as she eyed his hands. “Are you poison?”

  “No.” Her good humor surprised him.

  Her mild gray eyes sparked with interest in him and his work. “Will it stain the cheese?”

  Peculiar question, naive and endearing. He fought a smile. “I should think so.”

  “Will it mark the mug?”

  The smile won. “I don’t know. I always wash.”

  “Do you want to wash now?” Her eyes danced a dare. “Or do I get to see you eat black cheese?”

  In the end, he ate black-stained cheese from black-dyed hands and drank his ale from a black-smudged mug. What a pair they made. The reluctant husband and his alluring bride. His seductive bride. She left before he knew what hit him.

  Matthias stirred the pot. The walnut bits and pieces stained the dye bath, slowly, permanently blackening the wool he’d added. His bride might be a virgin; she might not. He could prove her innocence only if he tried her. But he could not endure the blinding rage, the crushing disappointment if she faded his test. If his suspicion was right, to the devil with her. If wrong, he would be her clumsy, hungry first.

  Either way, he was a clod with women.

  His brother was the man who won them over. Even Till’s daughter, who seemed as upright and upstanding as a Sister could be. Her avowal she would wed his brother had been the final straw. Had Nicholas had her too? The question tormented Matthias as she made her speech, renewed jealousy crawling through him, as ugly as maggots in a carcass. It crawled through him now. Jealousy was low and mean, and he hated feeling it. But he could not seem to stop.

  What kind of man came to his bride in a jealous fever? Not the decent, level-headed man he prided himself on being. His body yearned, his manhood throbbed for her, so ethereal and yet so earthy, so real. What if she had come to him whole? His heart hurt to think that he was rejecting her out of misplaced pique. What if she were not? Was he reckless enough-or man enough-to find out?

  Back at the Blums’, hickory nuts thudded on the kitchen’s slate roof like random rain. Abbigail tried to put the argument with her father and the sight of Nicholas behind her. She had expected to find her father alone, licking his wounds because he had not won outright. Instead he submitted to Sister Benigna’s tender, relendess care and counsel. As on the trip, she met his difficulties with tolerance, chiding and fussing with him very like a wife.

  Abbigail had not expected to meet Nicholas on the way, to see the golden autumn sun glancing off the fading bruises on his face-or the new softness in his gaze. She had been riveted to the spot. Then he’d given her that look. It plagued her. Had it been pity? Or regret?

  She would not fan the flames of gossip by approaching him to ask.

  By late afternoon the fire beneath the copper kettle had heated the kitchen. She pressed the back of her hand to her damp forehead and wiped away a mist of perspiration. “This is worse than summer,” she said to her hostess.

  The apple butter finished, Retha rested the paddle across the kettle. “I had so much rather be outside.” Then she came to check Abbigad’s progress. “But for your help, I would be here until nightfall.”

  Abbigail cleaned the rim of a crockery jar, well satisfied with this part of her day if nothing else. “I enjoyed it.”

  Retha arched a brow. “Putting up apple butter?”

  “At home, I mind the store all day. Besides, I cannot concoct such spicy butters. They upset my father’s stomach.”

  Retha squeezed her shoulder. “What a trial to tend an invalid.”

  Abbigail instantly regretted her complaint. “He has his good days,” she corrected.

  Retha busied herself cleaning up. Abbigail tried to lose herself in the rhythm of spooning the rich apple butter into crockery jars, but failed. Since running into Nicholas, she had endured an exhausting afternoon of visitors. Meddlers really, ever so polite and interested, had arrived in pairs, pried in tandem, and left, she feared, too well pleased at seeing her in disgrace, the object of their speculation. Every woman in town seemed to want a look at the first Single Sister daring enough to publicly declare herself for the desirable, unclaimed Single Brother Blum.

  It hadn’t been easy, watching her reputation scudding away like mined leaves before an autumn wind. It could hardly get worse, she thought. But then an erect Sister Steiner and her buxom daughter peered in through the open top of the kitchen door. Retha let them in with an almost imperceptible shrug of annoyance and introduced them as the wife and daughter of the Elder Abbigail had met this morning.

  “Danke Gott, you stood up for our dear Nicholas today,” the daughter volunteered, nosily looking around Retha Blum’s kitchen.

  Our dear Nicholas, indeed, Abbigad thought, fluffing up inside like an offended wren. He was our dear Nicholas to everyone in skirts!

  Seven women once, three twice, and one five times.

  His confession leapt into her thoughts, and her stomach plummeted. Had he favored this blushing Sister once or twice?

  Five times, she told herself grimly, would have been Catharina.

  “Natürlich,” the daughter went on, “I would have done so too, given the opportunity.”

  “Maria! You would do no such thing,” Sister Steiner hissed.

  The daughter ignored her. “Truly ‘twould have been a pleasure to defend him.”

  Practiced now, Abbigail blanked emotion from her face. She had defended Nicholas out of a heartfelt impulse, no casual pleasure, but a truer act than she had ever committed. She had not thought of consequences, of claims or petty rivalries or gossip.

  The mother blinked her disapproval under thick, straight, manly brows. “It must come from running your father’s shop. Working with outsiders taught you, no doubt, your uncommon boldness.”

  Retha gasped at the affront. “Sister Steiner, ‘tis not ours to judge.”

  The Married Sister’s dark brows drew t
ogether. “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.’”

  Maria help up a cautionary finger, not, Abbigail suspected, altogether sincere. “’Tis not ours to question the good Sister’s name, Mama. No matter what”- her voice dipped tellingly-“appearances suggest.”

  They must have seen her at the tin shop during that brief moment she had stopped. What did they suspect, an assignation? Shaking with anger, Abbigail bit her lower lip to keep from giving the two busybodies a piece of her mind. This was insult, pure and simple. What did they hear of Brother Marshall’s sermons? She folded her hands in her lap, forcing courtesy.

  “My father has long been my guide.”

  “Then he must be just devastated-” Sister Steiner began.

  Retha Blum flared in Abbigail’s defense. “I can assure you, Sister Steiner, that if he is, the Blums are not, not in the least. We are quite proud that Sister Till had the courage to speak up for our son. We have no doubt that the event will prove him innocent and her spolless. Now I must be about my business. And you would do well to mind your own.” She strode to the kitchen door, opened it to the narrow alley between her house and her neighbor’s, and waited for the Sisters to leave.

  In the doorway, Sister Steiner turned and said fervently, “Just remember, Sister Till, that the price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies.”

  Then she swept her plain gray skirts through the door, her daughter trading her.

  Retha latched the bottom and top halves of the door behind them, then leaned against it as if to fend off ransacking she-bears or ravenous raccoons. “That should keep the old biddies out!” she said vehemently. Then she began to laugh.

  Abbigail watched, astonished, still stinging from the insults.

  “Do you suppose they practice being sanctimonious?” Retha gasped, laughing.

  “All their lives, I think, to do it so effortlessly,” Abbigail choked out, freed by Retha’s laugh to laugh herself. Bless you, Sister Blum, she thought, for dousing my wrath with the ridiculous. What a liberating influence such a friend would have been for her, must have been for Nicholas. And suddenly, Abbigail understood one source of his great heart and daunless optimism.