He woke before her, sun dooding the room, dancing over the pretty delicacy of the woman he would wed. He wanted her with a tormenting ache, but she moaned at his slightest touch. If Matthais hadn’t already left with Huber, he would kill the man for putting her through this ordeal. Sighing heavily, Nicholas got up and crept out to the common room to buy food so they could leave.
Mary Clark worked at figures behind her little booth.
He pushed coins to her over the bar. “For the room. And the lean-to. And food to take with us.”
With a saucy grin, she swiped them off the counter and dropped them down her bodice in the cleavage between her ample breasts. “I like a man who covers all his debts.”
He took her meaning in every possible way, grinned back, then sobered. “I owe you, madam, a very great deal indeed.”
She laughed. “So you do, Nicholas. So you do.”
When he looked up, Abbigail was limping down the stairs. He rushed up to help her down.
On returning to Salem, Matthias delivered Huber to the senior Elder Brother Marshall in the middle of the afternoon. For the trip, he had tied Huber’s hands to his saddle, attached a lead-line to the horse, and given the man the exclusive pleasure of a singularly id-tempered roan. It wasn’t lame, Mary Clark had explained to him before they left. She and Abbigail had secretly asked the hostler to cord the old roan’s pastern just tight enough to make it favor that leg. The limp had fooled Huber and delayed his flight.
The man complained and whined about injustice, but Matthias barely noticed him over the insistent drumming of his thoughts. Beautiful. To the man who loved her. Of course, he had fallen in love: with her beauty before their marriage and with her dignity in the face of his jealous accusations afterward. Some upstanding Brother and Elder he had turned out to be, allowing covetousness and spiteful thinking to spoil his beginning with his bride.
In Salem, Marshall rolled the enameled watch in his hand and put Huber in custody in the Single Brothers House. Now tired, edgy, and filled with self-reproach, Matthias strode up the rutted road to the newlyweds’ cabin. Coming home to his poor wronged Catharina would be harder than he thought. Fool! he berated himself. Seven times a fool. How could he make amends to her? How could they start over?
He was so lost in his remorse that he was at the door of their modest cabin before he noticed the acrid smell of something burning. Shouldering past the catch in the door, he rushed inside. Smoke bidowed from the bricked oven beside the hearth, clouding the little room. His bride bent toward the oven, sobbing, her apron twisted around her hands.
Burned! In an intolerable panic, he raced to her side. “What is it? Are you hurt? Catharina! Are you burned?”
She pulled a tin sheet from the oven and looked up. Her mdd gray eyes were pink around the edges, and tears glistened in her golden lashes. “It’s ruined.”
Ruined? We knew that. He had ruined everything so far. He squeezed her shoulder gently. “Catharina, it will be ad right.”
“No, it won’t be. Ever.”
“Let me see. I will make it ad right,” he said, reaching for her blistered hands.
“You can’t make these all right.” She held out the tin for him to see-the usual molasses-brown rounds and stars and diamond-shaped cookies were all burned black. “My ginger crisps. I burnt them to cinders.” Her voice was tremulous with wrath and self-disgust.
“Ach, Catharina,” he said in the voice his father used to comfort distraught females of all ages in their household. “’Tis not the end of the world.”
It seemed so for her. She looked down at the tin in her hands, at the ruins of her day’s work, and burst into tears. Grievous tears with gulping sobs-he couldn’t bear to hear her suffer. It was worse than smad wounded animals, worse than when the twins cried, worse than anything.
But he knew nothing of women. He drew close to her, awkwardly putting one arm around her shaking, shuddering shoulders. Slim, strong, tall.
“There, there, Catharina,” he said sofdy.
But she had many days worth of tears to shed, which took another arm around her and required a head drawn down to his shoulder and a hand patting gendy at the center of her back. His throat closed on a lump of tenderness. It was hard to speak. “Catharina, ‘twill be all right.”
“Between us?” she choked out.
It was an opening he had not dared to hope for and could not afford to lose. “Between us,” he said fervently.
“I meant to make everything so perfect,” she lamented.
He pulled her closer. “You are perfect.” She was pliant and elegant in his arms, and he ached with the effort not to haul her body to him and crush her with his kiss.
She looked up self-consciously. “Not when in tears, I think.”
He tilted her face toward his and drank in her creamy, celestial beauty. His, for the first time. His to claim, his to cherish, his to love. Then with his fingers, he btushed the tears away. “Either way, tears or not,” he murmured. “Beautiful, either way.”
Her chin trembled. Hoping to forestall another round of tears, he reached for a brick-hard, slate-black cookie and held it to his mouth to show her: He was with her, for her. “You see. I’d eat one.”
With a small smile, she levered his hand away from his mouth. “I can’t let you eat that! They’re awful.”
“I will take anything you make for me,” he offered.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth and frowned. “What if I want to give you more than cookies?”
His heart flipped in his chest. “Anything,” he said hoarsely.
She blushed and looked aside but did not pull away, evidently as stunned as he by this unexpected shift in their troubled union. They were married. They were alone.
“I went out to admire my new-tided garden,” she said nervously, budding a fence of words between them. Perhaps, he thought, there was more that needed to be said. “And I forgot to come back in. I wasted them.”
A mound of stiff brown molasses dough lay upon the table. “You have enough left to make cookies for the town.”
“The garden is beautiful,” she said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
His throat closed again. “I did. I have to do a great deal more to make it up to you. I have been a jealous fool.”
She raised her head and looked at him. “But Nicholas and I-”
“He’s in love with Abbigad.” He let the thought ratle around in his head. Abbigad, for Nicholas. He liked her. He liked the idea of his great reckless, impulsive brother being ordered about by one so small, so capable, so bright.
Catharina chanced another smile. “I could have told you that!”
“You should have,” he murmured. “I have been so blind.” Then he swung his bride around the room, taking care to do no further damage in their cramped quarters on this fine October afternoon. Then he set her on her feet and claimed a kiss, glad that she was tall and willowy and, oh, so compliant. When he lifted his mouth from hers, for just a breath, the world spun and his heart thumped in joy.
“But the oven’s hot,” she said. “I must finish before vespers.”
“The oven can wait….” he said, claiming another kiss, a deep, drinking kiss. “Vespers can wait” It didn’t matter if the oven was hot when other things were heating up.
“Shouldn’t we go?” she asked, a very long time later.
“The world can wait….” he muttered, moving his hps on hers, tasting the ginger-spice, cookie-dough flavor of her perfect mouth. In a moment, he barred the door and drew the curtain on the little window that looked out on the street. Their small rope bed was only a half a dozen steps away. “We can build another fire.”
Slowly, carefully. As he should have done on their wedding night, he thought ruefully. He took a step with her and untied her Haube, her pale blond hair spilling over his fingers, stained nut-brown from his latest batch of dye. Another step, and he untied her neckerchief, unveiling the petal-soft skin of her throat and chest and the creamy
tops of high full breasts he had deprived himself the sight of. The touch of.
In a folly of righteousness.
Then she took a step and pulled him closer to the bed, unpinning her bodice, untaping her stays. “Hurry,” she whispered. “We have waited long enough.”
Startled, pleased, he looked into her eyes and saw a hunger shining there he had not hoped that they could share. “Too long. Forgive me?”
She forgave him with her hands, her willingness, her unexpected earthy pleasure, stripping his stock and her laces, while he removed his gaiters and piled her stockings-everything—arounthing them on the clean-swept, packed dirt floor. Laughing. She was laughing, and she made him laugh. They stumbled into bed, and he pulled her to him, skin on skin, flesh to flesh.
Perfection. Earthly perfection. “Catharina…” he began.
She pulled away, arched a pale blond brow. “Sister Catharina?”
His voice found a new register, hoarse and soft at once. “Catharina, be my bride.”
“In married love, Matthias,” she insisted.
And Matthias Blum let go of his reserve and all his doubts. With the same fierceness he had gathered to reject her, he touched every part of her. Kissing ear-lobes, nibbling her neck, suckling nipples into diamond points, discovering how a belly quivered under his very breath. “Matty,” she said in an aching voice. Matty, as she would have said when they were young and innocent and ignorant of claims. “Matty, I am ready, I have been for weeks.”
She parted her thighs for him, and he drove in, breaking maiden barriers, her barriers and his. He heard her cry, he felt her flinch, but her arms stayed strong around him. Her inner self pulsed around him. And a deeply buried carnal self within him, beyond thought and virtue, answered, moving, learning, seeking, finding, waiting for her, driving, driving home.
Nicholas found a magistrate and married Abbigail the day they left the Tavern-with a little help from Mary Clark, who had a friend. Nicholas held his tongue about her reference, pleased and relieved to reclaim his stolen bride. Their marriage wasn’t sanctified by the Brethren, but it was fully legal in the sight of God. That was good enough for him, for now-forever, if need be.
Traveling back to Salem, he resolved to take it slow. He carried Abbigail before him on the saddle for short distances each day, not only reluctant to let her out of his sight but unable to let her out of his arms. She was small, and he was strong, and his big horse was more than equal to their weight.
Of course, holding his bride so close required a great deal of restraint on Nicholas’s part. But Huber’s forced ride had badly injured Abbigail. For ad the care that Nicholas took, at times she withdrew in pain. So he cradled her and cuddled her and deployed all his charm to cheer her, there being no question of resuming where they had left off on the pallet in his shop. Yet.
But at night, he held her and kissed her, and they talked about the trials of his quest and the triumphs of her adventure. For, daundess woman that she was, she would see it so. He was proud that she had been clever and resourceful, disposing of the horse and saving herself from Huber’s attentions in the night. By their third night he slipped into bed behind her, hoping she was rested now and healed. If she wasn’t…
He would not dwell on that. He would dwell on the downy softness of her skin where her breasts plumped into his hands beneath her shift, her nipples budding into desire at a feather touch, the tempting curve of her buttocks against his aching loins. He drew in a ragged breath of anticipation and nuzzled the dark coils of her heavy hair, unbound for him in full candlelight.
“Abby,” he rasped, the ache traveling throughout him, loins to lungs to throat, making speech hard, harsh. “Wife. Tum.”
She turned slowly, scowling, as she had done too often since they left the White Horse Tavem. He lowered his head to kiss the scowl away. She put her hand between their mouths, pressing him to come no closer.
She wanted to talk! He groaned and reined in runaway desire. “Liebling? Are you scared? ‘Twill not hurt this time.”
Her brow knotted. “The woman who helped me … knew you.”
“Mary Clark?” he asked, in haste to oblige her. He could have bit his tongue.
“You know her name, too.” There was a tremor in Abbigad’s voice.
He went on alert. Of all the women in the world, he wanted least of all to hear of Mary on the first night he bedded his bride. “Of course I know her name. We owe Mistress Clark a great deal for your safety.”
Abbigail clenched her teeth. “She calls you Nicholas. I heard her.”
From the stairs, he realized, as Abbigail walked down. Mary had been her usual, outrageously brazen self, dropping his coins down her bodice. “Mary Clark is mistress of her own tavern,” he said, deliberately light. “It serves her wed to know men’s names.”
Abbigad’s brown eyes went black. “Her customers’ names. Don’t think I don’t know what she does. You kissed her. Even her.”
Then Abbigail’s hand drew back in a gesture he remembered from another evening on another bed. Not again! he thought. The hand darted for his face, but he caught her narrow wrist, holding onto it and thinking, fast. For three days, her scowls and frowns and withdrawals had augured jealousy! When he had craved her touch, her trust. Possessiveness was not unflattering …
But he was aching to love her. “This must not become a habit with you, Abby,” he said gently, wrapping his fingers around the fine bones of her wrist. Ad the way around it, he noticed, amazed all over again by his tiny tyrant’s fragility. But also by her wrath.
“Nicholas Blum, is there anyone from here to Philadelphia that you have not kissed?”
He frowned. He could not outright lie. “Well, yes, there is. There are dozens, hundreds, thousands of women I have never, ever kissed.”
But she had started now, sitting cross-legged on the bed before him, indignant, her shift fluttering thinly over her shapely breasts.
“If you think, Nicholas Blum, that I am going to spend the rest of my life with a man who kisses every female who crosses his path, you had best think again. I am a self-respecting and respectable Married Sister now, and if I have to keep you in my sights every day, day in and day out, believe that I will contrive a way to do it.”
To a man who had not spent a waking, sleeping, or breathing moment out of his bride’s sight for three whole days-and still had not made love to her-he was more than ready to put himself at her constant disposal. He waited for a languorously long time, stretching out his legs and getting comfortable. The rope bed creaked beneath his weight while she expounded on her plans for keeping a strict watch on him.
When she finally broke for breath, Nicholas just grinned at her. She was at heart a managing woman, and he was ready to submit, for now and for a lifetime.
He dashed his dimple hopefully. “Does this mean you forgive me?”
“Not for one single, solitary minute!” she said with spirit, his tiny tyrant come to life. He wanted her to stop so he could kiss her, but had no idea what to say. “You did what I accuse you of.”
“I kissed a few women. What is so wrong with that?”
She started in again, telling him exactly what was wrong with having to live in a town where every other-if not every-comely woman had tasted her husband’s kisses …
He stopped her. He sat up on the bed and took her pretty face in his too-large, too-clumsy hands and faced her. “But it’s you I love, Abbigail.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She almost smiled but drew in a preparatory breath instead and started again. “It certainly took you long enough to say so,” she said. “I am, as you well know, not getting any younger.”
He relaxed, smiling, on the bed beside her. “Dieu, if you had been here all my life.”
“We would have fought like cats and dogs.”
He laughed. She was his match, his mate. He drew her down to him.
“I may have kissed a couple of other women, Liebling,” he teased tenderly. “But clearly I have not ki
ssed you enough.”
Her delicate features, pretty in a pout, softened, lightened. “Not lately, Brother Blum, nor very well, as I recall.”
And using what he’d learned from all those other women, Nicholas Blum proceeded to kiss his new bride with everything he knew about kisses … and with all the love in his earnest heart.
Epilogue
SALEM, CHRISTMAS EVE, 1796
THE CHILDREN’S LOVE FEAST
Joyful, reverent Brethren crowded ad the benches in the curtained Saal to celebrate the birth of Christ. Abbigail breathed in the honeyed scent of golden beeswax candles; their scent and light purified and made the great room holy for the congregation. Her throat ached with tenderness at the new beauty ad around her. In a twinkling, her lonely life had changed, expanding to include her in an enormous, loving family.
On the Brothers’ side of the room, she could see the center of that family, her husband, his head bowed, tawny in the gentle light. Only a few feet separated them, but he touched her deep within her heart. Privately she celebrated two months of perfect happiness, selig-bliss-with Nicholas. With the tolerance they were known for, the Board of Elders had waived any question of drawing the Lot, endorsed their marriage, and urged them to settle in Salem.
“I thought they would never ask,” Nicholas had teased irreverently.
“You belong here, and they know it,” she had insisted.
They belonged, she had discovered. Last month, at her request, Brother Marshall had remarried them in the Saal on a sunny November day complete with songs, friends, family-and not a few sad Single Sisters. Abbigail feared it would take years to learn how to gracefully be the wife of the most adored man in town. Her charming husband still turned heads, still had a smile for everyone.
After prayers and songs and services, Nicholas and his brother rose to help pass out the Love Feast buns and coffee. They carried in great wooden trays with the sweet, steaming brew and fragrant rolls for all the Brethren, young and old, from twin Little Girls to gouty Widowers. Nicholas came to Abbigail’s row, a quiet content on his face.
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