The knowing thrust him forward and then he was beside her. The sky was clean again, the air fresh, and the decision beamed bright enough to wash away the grime of all that came before. Andrew grabbed her arm, cupped her limp hand in his large palm. “Marry me.”
She bent her neck in defeat. “Please,” she begged plaintively. “Don’t be cruel. I’m sorry and maybe you got every right to be cruel, but please don’t tease me like that.”
“Marry me, Lily.” He pulled her against his chest and smiled into her hair, held on to the thin shoulders with all his might. “My God, Lily, don’t you see I love you? None of this was your doing. None of this was your fault. You didn’t have any more choice in this than that baby did.”
“No.” She pushed at him. “You’re not thinking straight—” But her words were cut short by his lips. And he kissed her between smiles because he had been wrong, because it had never been him, and then he kissed her nose and her forehead gently, worked to erase the suffering she had endured. And the hope rushed, flooded in an eddy, and he kissed her until she giggled with disbelief.
He stopped abruptly and put his palm against her cheek, his forehead against hers. He fumbled with the ring in his pocket and slid it on her finger. “Marry me, Lily. Come back to the farm with me and we’ll raise this baby together. Claire can come, too. You’ll be safe. I swear I’ll never let anything happen to you; I’ll protect you all. I swear it.”
“But what about what I did? What about—”
“None of it matters. None of it.”
“We can’t go back. If Frank finds out, there’s no telling what he’ll do. He’d have you thrown into jail or worse. Make up something awful just to make you pay.”
“We’ll figure it out. You’ll be safe. You have my word.” He kissed her again. “I love you, Lily. Say you’ll marry me.”
She covered her mouth with her hand, wrestled between crying and laughter, fumbled for words. “I—I don’t know what to say?”
“Say yes.”
A choked gasp sprinted from her throat and she wrapped her arms around his neck as if she were drowning. “Yes.”
CHAPTER 52
The hour was late, well past Will and Edgar’s bedtime, but no one could sleep—no one would sleep. The house was wired from each body, lightning rods that summoned and waited for the electrical charge.
Andrew presided at the head of the old wooden table, Wilhelm’s old seat, without intimidation. He had earned this place. His legs were strong; his arm and chest held the muscles of hard work and perseverance. No weakness bent his posture as he looked around the table at the eyes that searched for guidance. He grounded this home now, his home. Reassurance and power remained steadfast in his jaws and the lines of his strong neck. This was his family and he would protect and care for them as a warrior between battle lines. Take care of your family. Always.
Lily sat to his right, Claire beside her. He reached for Lily’s hand, felt it quiver under his touch, the fear constant.
“It’s important that no one knows Lily and Claire are here,” he started quietly, firmly. “There are things that need to be settled first. So, we’re depending on you all to keep this within the house.”
“Is it ’cause of the war?” Edgar asked. “’Cause of our name?”
“Shhhh . . .” Will hushed.
“It’s all right, Will.” He smiled at the two boys, would not give them reason to doubt their security. “No, it’s not because of the war. I’ll explain more, but for right now we have to keep Claire and Lily safe and that means nobody can know they’re here.”
Eveline gazed at her boys. “You understand what Andrew is saying?”
They nodded. Eveline rose and put a hand on each small shoulder. “Claire, let’s get you settled in a room upstairs. Will and Edgar can bunk up tonight until we clear a room for you tomorrow.”
When the four were out of earshot, Andrew turned to Lily, her face drawn and pale. “You all right?” he asked gently.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
She shook her head and her chin crumpled. He pulled her to him, traced her spine with his fingertips. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he promised.
“I know.” She held on to his waist, gripped his leather belt. “But it’s not right bringing this to your family. Making you hide us like fugitives. Making the boys lie.”
He held her closer, smiled into the hair. “We’re family now. All of us. We take care of each other. You’d do the same for us.”
He slid a finger under her jaw and kissed the soft mouth, bright pink and open. He fell into her lips. He slid his hand down her body, rested it upon the small bump of her belly, let the warmth of her closeness heat his palm and send it back through the skin to the budding life inside.
Her kiss grew longer and she did not break it as she moved from her chair to his lap. Her hand found his neck, her fingers stroking the smooth, tan skin. She unbuttoned the top of his shirt.
The smell of her hair, of all things fresh and of sun, dizzied and made the room fade. He moved his touch to her breast, swollen and round beneath the dress. She sighed, placed her hand upon his and squeezed it gently, then harder, till his fingers cupped the breast fully. She rolled her head, kissed under his chin and up to his ear. “I want to share your bed,” she whispered, her words breathless.
Andrew swiveled her hips so she straddled his thighs and pressed his pelvis against the opening of her skirt. He rose, kept his arm firmly under her body, her legs gripping tightly. Even pregnant, Lily was nearly as weightless as a barn cat, and he carried her up the steps blind as she feverishly kissed his lips and neck, fumbled with his buttons.
He brought her to his room, kicked the door closed with his foot. He laid her on the bed, cradling her golden hair as it spilled across the pillow. Andrew arched above her upper body to find her lips again. She unbuttoned his shirt, one urgent pull at a time. She stared at the open chest revealed between the edges of the shirt, the strength and expanse of the muscles. He watched her, watched the way the green eyes slid across his skin and then met his and locked. Tenderly, she touched her palm to his breastbone, let the pulse beat between her fingers and align to her heart’s vibration and cadence.
Lily fell into Andrew’s gaze, innocent in its restraint and hesitation. She moved her hand to his beautiful face, to the soul-numbing features, the perfection of him nearly stopping her heart.
She slowly moved his shirt from his right shoulder and he tensed. His face angled away. Assuredly, she removed his arm from the sleeve, rubbed her fingertips down the balled shoulder and biceps, the hairs along the tight forearm, raising the gooseflesh in a trail. With a feathered, calm touch, she moved her fingers back up his arm, across the base of his neck along the collarbone to the other shoulder. She held his eyes, their breathing matched with uncertainty. She nudged the material tentatively from the severed shoulder.
“Don’t,” he murmured. He closed his eyes and grimaced.
She moved the shirt, let it fall to his hips and rest on the quilt. His nostrils flared and he turned his head farther away, his forehead creasing and his eyes squeezed shut. The scars, white and bold against the tan skin, shirked from the air, seemed to breathe like lungs, haltingly. Lily traced the scars lightly with her fingertips, found the network of lines no different from the chiseled structure of his face and figure.
With the touch, Andrew’s heart sped, the veins in his neck throbbing. Lily bent forward, placed her lips upon the scars, kissed each gently, loved them as if they were individual beings, loved them as she would an injured wing on a butterfly.
Andrew’s body shuddered, softened from granite, and he watched her now, bided for any sign of discomfort or pity or revulsion. But she smiled up at him—smiled as a pond shines under the sun. And Andrew kissed her—kissed her gratefully and hard—kissed her as a sentenced man kisses freedom.
He pressed against her body until her head settled back upon the downy pillow. He
unclipped the clasps of her dress, urgently but with care. Her body arched to open them faster and her thighs stretched wide to fit the strong hips pushing against her pelvis. He opened the dress and kissed the breasts, slid her slip off her shoulder and kissed her hard nipple.
The sensations in her breasts tingled, hardened them to points. She reached down and slid his pants over his hips and down his legs until he kicked them to the floor. He pulled at her slip again until it was off, her cotton drawers sliding off with the flood of flowing clothes. Without the impediment of clothing, the rush to remove it, time settled slowly. She stared at his figure, chiseled out of marble yet pliable and soft and warm. Alive.
He looked at her, all of her. The small body at once fragile and strong in lithe womanhood. And the face, the curve of lips, the pink cheeks that glowed with desire. The white shoulders and silky hair that draped like that of a goddess from an ancient time.
She touched his neck and advanced him closer. She reached for his hips, pressed her nails gently into the flesh and beckoned him between her legs. His breath was warm against her cheek and agitated with self-control. “What about the baby?” He halted, the concern arching his eyebrows. “I don’t want to hurt it. Or you.”
“You won’t hurt it.” She grinned into his cheek, kissed his chin and lips. “Or me. I promise.”
His body still struggled, stiffened with debate. “Please,” she begged as she raised her hips. “Make this baby yours, Andrew.”
He entered her then. Slowly and carefully, a small moan leaving his mouth with the warmth and the wetness that surrounded him. He pressed farther, each thrust sending his nerves to fire. She writhed beneath him, a small noise coming from her throat.
He stopped. “Did I hurt you?” he gasped.
“No.” She laughed and pulled his hips to her again, arched her back to take him deeper. “God, no!”
Every cell of his body throbbed and trembled. He tried to hold out, prolong a bit longer, but the wanting, the sensations, were too much and he came, smothered his mouth into the pillow next to her ear to keep from yelling. His heart thumped straight through the mattress, loud and defined in his ears. His back glistened with a light sweat. He kissed her face, beaming and smiling. Then remembered his lesson in Pittsburgh. “I want to make you feel good, Lily.”
“You already did.” She smiled serenely.
“No.” He glided his fingers between her legs. “I want you to do what I just did.”
She gently pulled the inching hand up from her thigh and kissed the palm, laughed sheepishly into it. “I meant, I already did.” She touched her belly. “Things feel different down there since I got pregnant. I had mine as soon as you entered, when you thought you had hurt me.”
“Oh.” He ran a hand through his hair so the strands stood up in wisps. “Well, you could have told me. I nearly bit my lip off trying to hold out.”
She giggled into his chest and he laughed. He wrapped his arm around her, held her tight, the warmth held in one combined body.
“You’re the only one, Andrew,” she promised into his chest. “I need you to know that. There was no one before you. This is my first time.” She glanced at him. “Do you know what I mean?”
And he did. He kissed her and he knew just what she meant. Nothing ever existed before this moment.
CHAPTER 53
Andrew waited in the empty stalls of the Morton barn. The cow, chickens and horse had disappeared the day Lily and Claire left, evaporated into the unknown while Frank dreamed in a drug-induced reverie. The man would have let the animals starve, let the cow’s udder swell with unattended milk until pained and ill with mastitis. There was no sign of the animals that Lily had made arrangements for. But if one had visited old man Stevens and his wife, Bernice, in their tiny shack deep in the woods one would find the couple smearing new butter on their warm bread and with more eggs in their basket than their few teeth could eat in a week.
Andrew leaned against the rotting wood of the ramshackle barn. Mounds of blackflies loitered in the straw- and dung-filled corners. The chicken coop had lost its fence long ago and the remnants of old corn and feed sprinkled the compact dirt along its edges. Indignation seized, left him wanting to hit the old barn wood with a tight fist. This had been his Lily’s life and he wanted to hack the stench and blackness away as he had the apple tree, burn her past in a rubble of ash and sweep it into the wind.
After they had made love, Lily told him everything. Told him of life with her father, of what Claire had endured, told him with quivering abasement that Claire was more than just her sister. He had held her in silence as the torrents of her suffering cracked from her slight body, left her shaking and whimpering against his chest. She told him of the babies Claire lost, of the teas Frank would make her drink whenever she was pregnant. And she told him about what she had been forced to do. The first time at fourteen. The second time leaving her pregnant. There would never be a third time.
Andrew’s insides curled and he grunted with rage in the humid barn. He thought of what Frank had done to his own family, what he had done to Eveline. Pieter had warned Andrew, but even his friend hadn’t known the level of Frank Morton’s savagery.
The old Ford lumbered onto the lane, the exhaust spewing and the wheels bouncing over the narrow width. Andrew took one step into the shadows, watched from the open seams of the barn. The vehicle stopped.
Andrew didn’t have a plan. He hadn’t brought a weapon and loosely scanned the stalls for something metal. He looked at his hand. No. If he met Frank, he wouldn’t hide behind a gun or a knife or an ax. He’d meet him pummel to pummel.
Frank stumbled from his car, his shirt untucked and his face thick with sharp whiskers. A gin bottle fell from the car and rolled in the gravel. Frank bent to pick it up, saw it was empty and kicked it to the side. He wobbled to the corner of the house, put one hand to the crooked gutter spout and fumbled with his pants with the other before relieving himself against the stone and mortar. He swayed, then stopped, his bottom showing above his pants.
His left hand gripped the whining gutter in a strong hold and his right hand rose and smacked flat against the clapboard. He leaned in, his head bowed. A long, low wail cried from the deepest recesses of his throat and then he retched. Vomit splashed upon the ground and his shiny cowboy boots, splattered against the house.
Andrew turned away, the hate mixing with revulsion. He could take the man easy, drunk or not. He could beat him, bloody him to pulp. But then Andrew thought of Lily and the child she carried. He was going to be a father. He had a family to care for, people who looked up to him for guidance. He thought of the war, the spilled blood that seemed to drip across the world, fed the violence that only escalated and multiplied.
He looked at Frank again. The man patted the peeling paint as if an old friend, spit to clear his mouth and wobbled to the porch, his pants slipping unnoticed down his hips. Frank stopped, put his hand to his chest, opened his mouth wide as if trying to swallow the clouds. The man’s body erupted then, a hacking cough the likes of which Andrew had never heard. Frank’s face turned blue. He stumbled to find the side of the house, his body convulsing.
Andrew’s blood iced. They all knew about the influenza that had ravaged Europe and appeared in Kansas a few months prior, had recently leaked into the crowded streets of the Pittsburgh tenements. Slowly, the virus was spreading and breeding across the nation, crippling the army camps, closing schools, public meeting places, even the church.
Frank wasn’t just drunk. He was sick.
Andrew slunk back, covered his nose with his shirt as if the germs were reaching for him. He waited until Frank skulked into the house, watched the slice of a man fade away into the shadows.
With a conscious will, Andrew loosened his body. He could go into the house and kill Frank. He could add another murder to the war’s tally, to the running count of those dying from the Spanish influenza. But he would not draw more blood to already-soaked ground. Frank would pay one way or ano
ther, but not through Andrew’s fist—not with the hand that would one day hold his and Lily’s child.
CHAPTER 54
“Take a break now, Lily,” Eveline recommended.
Lily smashed the green tomatoes and garlic into a fine pulp for Eveline’s piccalilli, wiped her hands and took the woman’s advice. Over the last month, Claire and Lily had fallen into the routine of the farm and the house had never been cleaner, the boys more catered to.
The Morton women remained in the house during the day to stave off any chance of seeing Frank. But upon the inching twilight they would emerge from the kitchen like foxes, sitting in the warmth of the setting sun. Lily’s belly swelled and her face flushed with health and happiness.
Lily taught Edgar and Will how to pencil sketch animals, how to roll a perfect piecrust. At night, she’d let them rest their hands upon her belly when the baby waltzed inside. In return, Will read to Lily, taught her the simple words he had learned in school, holding her fingers as she traced the lines of sentences.
Pieter Mueller left for the war. They saw the Muellers when they could, but with the top of the harvest season underway, both families were tethered to their fields and animals. Fritz came often, though. The great man-child came with Anna in tow, would help Andrew in the fields, as if a day’s work on his own farm hadn’t taken more effort than blowing a dandelion puff.
And in those weeks, Eveline watched her nephew with pride. Watched the way he and Lily cherished and revered each other. The young man worked hard and ate well. His blue eyes glowed as an ocean that knew and loved its expanse. Eveline ached and grieved for Wilhelm, but there were days that she was happy, too. Truly happy. There were sad days also, but the sting lessened, became somewhat bearable.
And the war against Germany went on. But the Kisers insulated themselves. They did not bury their heads to the war, but they also did not entertain it. They prayed for Pieter and they sent food and wool socks to the Red Cross when they were able.
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