A Bride for Sterling

by Parker J Cole

  After tea had been served, Moira admired the fact that Mevrouw Ter Bane got directly to the point of her visit.

  “Mevrouw Wellington, I’ve noticed you’re behind three payments for your debt to me.”

  “I can explain, mevrouw—” Her mother started to say.

  “I’ll advise you that I am aware of your husband’s recent illness. I made allowances for that. However, you do understand the consequence for refusal to pay.”

  “I’m not refusing to pay, Mevrouw Ter Bane,” her mother’s voice shook in urgency. “If you’ll grant me a forbearance, I’ll be happy to pay you what is due when the forbearance period is expired.”

  “A forbearance?” The word ended on a disbelieving squeak. Then, as Moira watched, mevrouw’s eyes slid toward her…and lingered. For some reason, being the focus of that gray gaze sent spider legs of unease down the center of her spine.

  “How long of a forbearance do you need?” the woman asked unexpectedly, her eyes still latched onto Moira.

  “A few months,” Lotte gushed out. “After the election, I’ll be able to start paying my obligation to you again.”

  “Well, I need more than your promise to secure my funds. I require collateral.”

  Moira tried to look away but couldn’t. Behind the matchmaker’s eyes, she sensed that cold, diabolical mind scheming. Somehow, Moira knew, she was included in those schemes.

  “What sort of collateral?” Lotte asked warily, frowning.

  At last, Mevrouw Ter Bane pulled her gaze away. “Your daughter.”

  Moira gasped. “Mevrouw!”

  Lotte stood up, all sense of fear gone, and a defiant look on her face. “My daughter is not a commodity.”

  “But she is, ja?” Mevrouw Ter Bane adjusted the hat which rested on a coiled mass of dark brown hair. “Let’s not forget why you are indebted to me, Mevrouw Wellington.”

  Moira winced, aware of the threat behind the words. She knew about the debt the woman referred to.

  Her mother’s body stilled like a statute. “Nee, that is something altogether different. I will not have you cheapen my daughter.”

  “To be clear, Mevrouw Wellington, since semantics seem to be the order of the day, it’s not your daughter I will use as collateral. It’s her echt.”

  “Marriage!” Moira translated, leaping up to stand next to her mother. “I am not married.”

  “But you will be,” Mevrouw Ter Bane replied in a cool, almost disinterested voice.

  “I highly doubt I would marry anyone you choose for me, Mevrouw Ter Bane,” Moira told the woman in no uncertain terms. The only man she’d ever wanted was her silver prince. He had stolen her heart all those years ago.

  Though she couldn’t hold on to those girlish dreams of her youth, a part of her knew she had no wish to marry anyone but him. He had no right to her heart since he’d treated it so horribly when he never came back to her, yet she had been unable to forget her prince.

  Mevrouw Ter Bane tugged the edges of her gloved hands. “You haven’t told them, have you, Lotte?”

  “Told them what?” Lotte asked.

  An arrogant slender brow lifted over Mevrouw Ter Bane’s left eye, “You don’t really believe I would let three payments go by without discovering if my money was being used for frivolity, did you?” The other woman shook her head in mock mournfulness. “I’ve had a Pinkerton keeping record of your whereabouts along with your visitors. Tell me, have you told your husband and your daughter that you are with child?”

  A flush stained her mother’s face.

  Moira’s mouth dropped open. “Is it true, Moeder?”

  “Ja. Soon after the election, I’ll give birth to your brother or sister.”

  Moira digested this new information. She knew how much her mother and father had longed for other children. To be given such a blessing when, so very few months ago, it seemed her father was on his deathbed, would be wonderful news.

  “You wouldn’t want such news to be marred by scandal raised from your past, would you, Lotte?” Mevrouw Ter Bane’s narrow face hardened into taut planes. “Not when your husband has a very good chance of winning the city seat? Do you?”

  “You’re horrid!” Moira accused, her temper flaring with the heat of a hot summer day. “How could you do this!”

  “Moira, please!” Lotte restrained her with a hand on her shoulder when Moira took an unconscious step forward.

  Mevrouw Ter Bane shrugged nonchalantly. “What are you willing to do to ensure your parents and your new sibling are protected from scandal, Juffrouw Wellington? Will you take on her debt?”

  “Nee!” Lotte stood in front of Moira in a protective stance. “I’ll not allow that.”

  “That is for your daughter to decide.” The woman’s thin lips lifted into a nasty smile. “Isn’t it, lieveling?”

  Moira ignored the mocking term of endearment. “How would marriage be collateral to you?”

  “I have a client, a minister’s son, who is in desperate need of a wife. Anyone will do, be she of beauty or not. The circumstances of this marriage are such that she, this wife, would have to be married by proxy and then travel to his home.”

  “Marriage by proxy?” Moira’s eyebrows lifted into her forehead. “What sort of arrangement is that?”

  “The kind that I offer you in order to transfer your mother’s debt to you.”

  “Nee, mevrouw!” Lotte wrapped her hands around Moira’s shoulders and put her further behind her. “My daughter is not involved in my debt. Begrijp U?”

  “I understand very well.” The matchmaker shifted her gaze back to Moira. “The question is, does your daughter?”

  Moira’s mind churned. Mevrouw Ter Bane knew she would do anything to help her parents. Her mother’s debt to this woman had gone on for far too long. It was time to take some of the burden off her mother who had sacrificed so much.

  An image of her silver prince floated in her mind. All these years, she’d held onto a mustard seed of hope that he would come back into her life again. Though she’d been but ten and three to his ten and six, she knew the deepest roots of love had found their way into her heart.

  Her mother and father needed to be protected from Mevrouw Ter Bane’s schemes. If she could not marry the man she wanted, did it matter whom she married?

  “Is a proxy marriage legal?” Moira found herself asking. Was she truly going to do this? “Will I truly be married?”

  “Proxy marriages are alive and well just as they have been in times past. They are also legal and binding. Should you agree, you will be married and traveling to Holland, located in Michigan before the month has ended. Believe me, this isn’t my first proxy marriage. I know all of the legalities.”

  “Lieveling, don’t!” Lotte cried out in entreaty. “There is no need for you to do this.”

  Nervously, Moira bit down on her bottom lip. “If I do this, Mevrouw Ter Bane, will my mother’s debt be transferred to me? Will I be responsible for the payments? Will you cease to seek payment from her?”

  A calculating mischievous gleam appeared in the woman’s eyes. “Ja. See, your marriage is the collateral. I’m certain neither you nor your mother wish for Mijnheer Wellington to know the true circumstances of your past. Is that not so?”

  Moira nodded once. “Dat is juist.” Though her past no longer shamed her, or her mother for that matter, society could be cruel. Remorse swelled inside her chest. If only her silver prince had met her that final day, she would have told him everything. She was almost certain he would have accepted her as she was.

  And they would have lived happily ever after.

  But fairytales didn’t come true. They were only for children’s books.

  “My client is a minister’s son with a reputation to protect. He would rather not have a wife with such a past as yours but I know you and he will grow to love each other. All of my matches do.” Mevrouw Ter Bane gazed pointedly at Lotte.

  “Your father and I can—,”

  “Nee, moeder
.” Moira shook her head. “The election is too important.” Inhaling, she sealed her fate and released her mother’s. “I’ll marry your client, Mevrouw Ter Bane.”

  “Geweldig!” The matchmaker rubbed her hands together like a gleeful witch. “In time, you will feel in my debt to be granted such a wonderful man with whom to spend the rest of your life. Despite what you may think of me, Juffrouw Wellington, my hunches are never wrong.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  October 1870

  “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the Earth.” Reverend Clyford Montgomery paused and looked up from his reading. “Isn’t that what the Good Book, the Blessed Book says?”

  Sterling hid his clasped fists behind his back. “Yes, Father.”

  His father’s dark eyes narrowed. “Therefore, it stands to reason that obedience to your father’s wishes is paramount to obeying God.”

  Sterling chose to say nothing. He had already disobeyed his father and had already broken several commandments. What more could he say?

  “Your silence is telling, Sterling,” Clyford said, a triumphant beam in his eyes. “Even you cannot deny that this is so.”

  Sterling’s shoulders tightened. These little manipulations of faith had always left a sour taste in his mouth. His father’s words suggested that obedience to God meant obedience to man. It had been many years of internal struggle and his own study into the Good Book to know that honoring one’s parents didn’t necessarily mean obedience to them.

  Unlike Clyford, Sterling had no wish to become a preacher. He had no desire to stand before a congregation every week. Nor, had he the inclination to nurture his ‘flock’ like a good shepherd. He wasn’t frightened by people, but he much preferred his own company, along with one or two people he trusted.

  Yet his father had forced him to attend the seminary, nightly study the scriptures, and to examine the doctrinal dissension among the Dutch Separatists that divided the community.

  For a long time, Sterling believed himself to be dishonorable to God because he had no wish to be a minister. Obeying God had never been a problem. Should the Lord and Creator of All require Sterling to go into the deepest jungles of the African continent, he would obey without hesitation. Not as a minister of the gospel, but a creator of music. Music composed with lyrics and instruments to part the heavens in full joy of majesty.

  Clyford would never tolerate such a thing, so Sterling wrote in secret, keeping his musical compositions hidden at Jasper’s home, out of sight.

  But tomorrow, all of that would change. It had already changed as he stood before his father, secretly wed.

  The thought brought with it a sense of freedom. Companion to that liberty was also a sense of death. By marrying this Moira Wellington, whoever she was, Sterling had forfeited his decade-long dream of marrying his angel of music. He had some consolation in the fact that her voice rang in his ears on a nightly basis although her face continued to elude his memory.

  Could he love and cherish a woman he had never met?

  “The best time to approach Lavinia, Sterling, would be after services on Sunday.”

  Clyford’s words penetrated the fog of his thoughts. Straightening his shoulders, Sterling thrust out his chest. It was time. Time to stand up to this man – a man he loved with a son’s natural inclination but didn’t like very much.

  “Father, I will not pursue Lavinia,” he said adamantly, his voice quiet but firm.

  Clyford set the gold filigree bible onto the table next to him. “I will not have defiance from my only son.”

  Thinking of Jasper’s words, Sterling repeated, “The Book of Life says, ‘Fathers, provoke not your children to anger.’”

  He had little time to say anything else. His father, leaping up from the ornate brocade chair, roared, “Don’t you dare try to quote scripture to me, Sterling.”

  “But it is all well and good for you to use scripture to bend me to your will.” Sterling dug his fingernails into the flesh of his palm. He was unused to being so bold.

  Firelight from the massive hearth behind him reflected in his father’s light blue eyes. “You will do as I say. ‘Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right’!”

  Sterling’s innards twisted and he felt a bit of illness overtake him. Though he wasn’t afraid of his father, his temper was the stuff of legend. It sizzled, crackled, and blazed like a forest fire. It was because of his father’s wrath that, over the years, Sterling always obeyed his sire, preferring to do as he was told instead of standing face to face with a fire-breathing dragon.

  Now, he had no choice but to stand up. It was a good thing he was already married. He swallowed the bitter taste at the back of his throat. “Jesus also said, ‘The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father—’”

  Clyford hissed through his tightly clenched lips. “I will not have defiance from my only son. I have spent years caring for you without the aid of your mother. I have worked tirelessly to procure the good graces of Elder Collingsworth. His ill health has taken a toll upon his body. Soon, he will seek a replacement to head the church. The position is sure to be mine if you are married to his daughter.”

  His father clapped his hand on Sterling’s shoulder. The determination which had hardened his features ebbed away. “Then in due course, the pastoralship will fall to you.”

  How he longed to tell his father he wanted nothing to do with the pulpit!

  “Lavinia is not an unbecoming woman, my son,” Clifford said in a lulling voice. “In fact, surely the beauty of Sarai exists in her. How many men have long sought out Elder Collingsworth’s daughter?”

  “Many,” Sterling answered dutifully.

  “She will be a lovely woman for many, many years.”

  There was every certainty of that. Sterling had seen men stop in their tracks when they beheld their first glance of the sight of Elder Collingsworth’s daughter.

  “Would be it such a hardship to marry a woman like her?” His father’s voice had softened even more. “Would it be so difficult to have her on your arm as you greet the parishioners after morning service?”

  Again, he answered as his father wished him to. “No, Father. It would not be difficult.”

  “There. Even you have no objection to marrying Lavinia.”

  “There is, Father. I have no intention of pursuing her. I’ve already told you, I will marry a woman of my own choosing and no one else.”

  Clyford made a strangulated sound at the back of his throat. “Sterling…now tell me! Does…does…this…insubordination on your part…have to do with that child ten years ago? You still harbor feelings for a chit of a girl you knew for a single summer when you were ten and six?”

  If only that were true! That his angel of music had come to him. That, by some miracle, she would be by his side forever and fill the house with her songs.

  Despair centered in his chest. It was not meant to be and he’d better get used to it. He was a married man now, responsible for a wife who would need his protection.

  “No, she has nothing to do with it.” He couldn’t prevent his eyes from closing in pain. “But even if she did, I’m sure it’s not something you would understand, Father. You only married Mother for reasons of advancement.”

  Clyford made no attempt to naysay his son. How could he when they both knew Sterling spoke the truth?

  “I did love your mother after a fashion,” Clyford admitted on a sigh. A bit more of his bluster left. “I would say that I still do. I’ve never had the inclination to marry again though the opportunity has afforded itself many times.”

  It was not a boast in any manner, merely a statement of fact. His father was considered to be a handsome man. A crop of thick, mostly blond hair streaked with a few strands of gray adorned the square-shaped forehead. A thin mustache graced his upper lip while his sparkling blue eyes met his frank assessment. Well-built and of good stature. Keen and of sound mind.

  In twenty years time
, I shall be my father.

  The thought disquieted Sterling. He had no wish to be like his father. Turning away, Sterling went over to the single window in the study and focused on the scenery.

  A fierce wind blew among the branches of the naked trees scattered throughout their property. Most of the leaves had fallen away from the maple tree which stood outside of his father’s study.

  Except for one.

  A large, golden leaf clung defiantly to the limb. The leaf fluttered about, whipping back and forth against the ferocity of the wind. Any minute now, Sterling expected the leaf to be torn away from its stubborn grip. It seemed inevitable that the leaf would bow to nature’s tutelary duty to sweep away the vestiges of autumn to herald in the frost of winter.

  His breath hitched as he watched the battle of the leaf against the wind. The strength of the gale picked up, violently tearing into the leaf. He could hear wind’s roar. Feel the wind’s breath as it vibrated the glass pane underneath his fingertips.

  The leaf flailed about. Up and down. Back and forth. Left and right.

  Let go, Sterling urged, the silent spectator in this most peculiar clash of wills, let go.

  A few moments later, the wind died down. The leaf hung there, wilted like a warrior’s worn body, but still affixed to the limb.

  Sterling’s shoulders drooped and he pivoted away from the lost battle to focus on the matter at hand.

  “Father, why can’t you simply ask Elder Collingsworth if he would consider you for the position?” Sterling stressed. “Doesn’t the Good Book say, ‘Ask and ye shall receive’? ‘Seek and ye shall find’? ‘Knock, and it shall be opened unto you’? What is wrong with plain speaking?”

  “Because there are others, younger than I, who are also seeking to replace Elder Collingsworth.”

  “Bernard Van Vonderen.” It wasn’t a question.

  “He and others,” his father answered darkly, a brooding expression on his face. “It’s no secret that he desires Lavinia for his wife.”

  “She may consider his suit.” Sterling hoped that would be the case. Lavinia’s characteristic ploy of keeping a potential suitor dangling in hopes of winning her affection hadn’t daunted Van Vonderen’s desire to make her his bride.