“I was young once too, and I think it’s perfectly normal to want more from a relationship than just friendship. But maybe—maybe there’s more to Luke Lantz than meets the eye. Have you thought of that?”
Rose shrugged as her aunt cleared her throat. “Luke’s father—well, we courted some. He was always shy, but then . . . well. He had it in him to do some fine kissing now and then.”
Rose stared at her aenti’s flushed face. “You and Matthew Lantz? Aenti Tabby—I never knew you dated him. Why didn’t you marry him?”
“It wasn’t what the Lord wanted for me.”
Rose marveled at the simple statement. She knew her people lived by the will of Derr Herr, but to give up a relationship because of faith was difficult for her to comprehend. She knew she had spiritual miles to go before she would make a decision like that.
“Haven’t you ever regretted it? Not even when—well, when Laura Lantz died of the influenza? You’re still young, Aenti Tabby. Maybe you and Mr. Lantz could—”
“Nee,” the older woman gently contradicted. “I’ve never regretted it, not even when Laura died. In truth, I believe I would have regretted more if I had not obeyed what I felt was the Lord’s leading. And just think—had I married Matthew, there would be no Luke for you.”
Rose frowned. “Ya, you’re right.”
“So, you will try, Rosie? To see all there is of him?” Her aunt gave her a hug.
“Ya, Aenti Tabby—all that there is.”
Chapter Two
A HAWK GAVE A KEENING CRY AS IT BEGAN ITS TWILIGHT hunt while the evening shadows stretched across the grass to wend through the windows of the Lantz woodworking shop. Luke closed the heavy ledger and glanced at his watch. Six o’clock. He was done tussling with another day’s accounts for his family’s furniture-making business, and his head ached from the numbers and the customers. But his father wouldn’t trust an outsider with the books, and although Luke was as skilled as any of his brothers in woodworking, he was the only one “with a head for business,” as his daed liked to say. So he sat in the stuffy office and dutifully did his job, though he would much rather let his hands run down the fine smoothness of a wood grain than the tally of a day’s earnings.
He leaned back in the chair, letting himself drift for a moment until the familiar pleasure of imagining Rose came to mind. In truth, he couldn’t believe she’d accepted his proposal so readily. He wasn’t always the most persuasive of persons, and Rose could be headstrong.
He didn’t jump when his father clapped him on the back.
“Dreaming of your bride, sohn?”
Luke smiled, looking over his shoulder. “She’s worth the dreaming, Daed.”
“To be sure. But now’s the time to see what Joshua’s managed for supper. Kumme.”
He followed his father into the old farmhouse and stifled the urge to look about for his mother as he came through the door. It was difficult for him to believe that she was gone, even after two years. She’d been what the Bible called a “gentle and quiet spirit,” but she’d been a vigorous light to each of them as well. He knew that part of what he loved about Rose was her own light and sweetness, and that her spirit was a balm to his grieving soul. He knew she’d bring that comfort to the whole house once they married, and he mentally charged himself once again with making sure that she wasn’t overtaxed physically or emotionally with the inherent burden of taking on a household of men.
His brother Joshua looked up rather sheepishly from the stove when Daed asked what was for supper. “Fried potatoes and bacon.”
Luke stifled a groan. He longed for variety—vegetables, pie, anything. Even when kindly members of the community brought them hot meals, it wasn’t the same as having someone cook for them with love. And there had been no one to maintain a kitchen garden since Mamm passed, so they were restricted to more plain fare. Still, he knew it was food in his belly, and he was grateful for it. And so he told the Lord when Daed bowed for silent grace.
ROSE SQUELCHED A SUDDEN CRY AS THE BLUEBERRY JUICE from the bubbling pie dripped over onto her hand. She hastily deposited the pie onto a rack and ran to soak the burn in the bowl of cool milk and vinegar she’d used in making the crusts. She glanced at the kitchen clock as she blew a loose tendril of hair away from her damp forehead and was glad to see that it was only just past seven. Her family was relaxing in the adjoining room after supper, and she’d volunteered to clean up alone so that she could finish her pies in peace. Now, if she could just keep Ben and James from wanting a taste . . .
She lifted her hand from the milk and gazed ruefully at the half-inch-long red mark on the back of her hand. But it gave her an idea. Taking a scrap of dough, she opened the woodstove and threw the pastry piece inside. Within seconds, the smell of burning piecrust filled the air. She smiled and scooped up the pies, this time carefully holding a dish towel around each pan as she bumped open the back screen door with her hip.
She ignored the groans of her brothers as the burning smell hung in the early evening air, then set the pies on the porch rail. Now, if only no animal would take a nibble before she caught her real prey . . .
“Rose!” Her mamm’s voice echoed, and Rose flew back inside, closing the door carefully behind her. The unpleasant smell had wafted throughout the house.
“Mercy, child! What are you doing? Where are your pies?”
Rose sighed. “Outside.”
“Burned that badly?” her mother asked as she fooled with the damper on the stove and waved a damp dish towel through the air.
Rose said a quick prayer for forgiveness as she delayed her response. She wasn’t used to withholding the truth.
“Well, open the window then, so we can get some more fresh air in,” Mamm urged.
“Ya, Mamm—open the window!” Ben bawled from the other room.
“And teach Rosie to bake before she kills poor Luke and the whole Lantz clan!” James’s voice joined in the banter.
But Rose simply smiled as she wrestled with the heavy window; she had put her plan into action.
Chapter Three
IN THE CROWDED CONFINES OF THE WELL-CONCEALED tent, oil lamps held the encroaching night at a cheerful distance. A hodgepodge of gathered furniture, dishes, quilts, and other small items filled the contours of the vinyl walls, while a thick, hand-braided rug covered the bulk of the pine-needled floor.
“It’s too much, really. You have to stop.” The Englisch woman’s tone was torn between gratitude and remorse as she balanced a blueberry pie in her outstretched hand and a fussy toddler on her lean hip.
Her benefactor shrugged as another child, slightly older, clung to his leg in a familiar game.
“Mommy! His shirt’s all dirty. Wash it!”
He laughed and brushed at the blueberry juice stain on the front of his sweatshirt.
“Never mind, Ally.” He glanced around the tent, then back to the woman. “There’s a storm coming tonight. Supposed to be bad. I don’t like the idea of leaving you here.”
She smiled. “The Lord will protect us. You staked the tent so well, and I doubt anything can shake this stand of pines.”
“Have you had any word—I mean—do you know when?” He stared with intent into her eyes.
“No—nothing.”
He nodded. “All right. I’d better go.” He set the other pie down on the washstand near the quilt-covered cot and noted that he’d need to bring more blankets soon. He disengaged the little girl from his leg, then bent to receive her sweet kiss. “Good-bye,” he whispered.
She clung to his neck. “Thank you for the pies. Tell the lady thank you too.”
“The lady?”
“Who made the pies.”
He smiled. “Maybe I will.”
ROSE WAITED UNTIL THE HOUSE HAD BEEN ASLEEP FOR more than half an hour before she crept from her room, avoiding the third step from the bottom of the back staircase and its telltale squeak. She almost giggled to herself as she maneuvered, remembering a time she’d sneaked out to see L
uke when they were young. They thought they could catch the biggest bullfrog from the local pond, the one with the baritone that soothed the locals to sleep on summer nights, if they could only get there late at night. They’d ended up with no frog, muddy clothes, and stiff reprimands from frustrated mothers the next morning. It had been fun, but that was a long time ago.
Rose told herself that she wasn’t a child anymore, looking for grandfather frogs on moonlit nights. No—she was a woman who wanted to hunt for something, someone—whose very nature seemed to call to her. Rob in the Hood, as some of her people called him from the old German rendition of the tale. She tiptoed across the kitchen floor and then gained the back porch. She switched on a flashlight and caught her breath, then smiled; both pies were gone without a trace. Of course, she told herself, as she stole into the wind-whipped air, a possum could have gotten them, but an animal would have left an overturned plate, a trail, a mess. A thief more likely would not . . .
She glanced without concern to the moon and dark gathering clouds overhead; the incoming storm suited her mood. She passed the kitchen garden, still sprawled with the bulging shadows of pumpkins yet to be harvested, then broke into a light run toward the forest that encircled the back of the farmhouse. She knew nearly every inch of the woods between her family’s home and the Lantzes’—though she had to admit she hadn’t been walking there in the months since her engagement. It seemed that courting, as well as the usual influx of work of the farm during harvest, had kept her too busy. But now she trod the pine-needled ground with secret delight. She could tell from the air that the rain would hold off for a while, and she pressed more deeply into the trees, certain that the best place for a would-be thief to hide would be the woods.
After an hour of actually navigating the rocks and root systems of the dark forest, she began to question if she truly had her wits about her. What had she expected? That the thief would just pop out and introduce himself? Suppose he really was dangerous and much more than a thief? She thought of the comfort and safety of her narrow bed and shivered, deciding she’d go hunting for the mystery man some other time. Then she stifled a scream as the beam of her light gave out, and a voice spoke to her from the dark path ahead.
“You’re an Amish girl, aren’t you? Why are you out in these woods so late and in this kind of weather?”
The voice was a strained whisper. Rose peered into the darkness, trying to see the speaker, when a helpful flash of lightning gave her a brief glimpse.
He was taller than she, clothed in blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt, its hood shrouding his face. Another white streak of light, and the breadth of his shoulders and a dark stain on the front of his shirt were emblazoned in her mind.
“You’re the thief,” she stated.
“What?”
“The thief who’s been taking from hereabouts the past weeks. I put those two blueberry pies out on the back porch. I see the blueberry stain on your front.”
He laughed, and she almost gasped in disbelief as the realization hit her with full force. It was Luke! Even as a confusion of thoughts rushed past her like the waters of a swollen creek, one instinctual idea took control of her brain—she would not let him know that she recognized him.
“Very smart,” he said. “My compliments. But you’d better get home to your husband. These woods are no place for a lady.”
Chapter Four
“I’VE RUN ABOUT THIS LAND SINCE I WAS A CHILD,” SHE announced, trying for normalcy in her tone. “And why do you assume I’m married?”
Was in der welt was he doing—dressed as an Englischer and stealing pies from her porch? He didn’t seem to recognize her in the dark . . . but then why was he out talking about marriage with a strange girl in the woods?
“Aren’t most Amish girls married young?” he asked in the same husky whisper that seemed to tickle at her shoulder bones in a way that his normal voice didn’t do.
“Ya . . . Yes, I mean—some are. I’m just engaged.” She almost clapped her hand over her mouth at the word just.
“Just?”
She wet her lips in the dark and tried to infuse her voice with warmth. “I’m going to marry my best friend in a few months.”
“And does your . . . er . . . best friend realize how enthused you are about the whole affair?”
He does now, she thought, trying to keep a rein on her emotions. “I am happy,” she asserted finally, then swallowed, finding herself voicing to the supposed stranger the concern that had haunted her for weeks. “It’s just that—he—my betrothed—doesn’t notice anything—not about me anyway. He’s very—practical and smart.”
She felt a palpable silence between them, then sensed him step toward her. She lifted her chin, wondering what he would do next.
“Smart or not, he’s a fool—not to notice you,” he muttered.
“How can you say that? You can’t even see me properly,” she said.
“You saw me, at least enough to know my—secret. And I saw you, like meeting destiny in a strike of lightning. White sparks and moonlight—they suit your beauty, Amish girl.”
In the cascading roll of thunder that followed, she heard the deafening sound of her own heartbeat as his words penetrated. They were so unlike him. And proof that he did see her in the waxing light. Beguiled and bewildered, Rose held her breath, waiting.
Then he reached out one hand to stroke her cheek in a slow caress. She wanted to lean into the mysterious yet familiar hand, its strong warmth coupled with a heavy tenderness that transmitted to every delicate nerve ending the flush that she felt burning her skin.
“You don’t even know me,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “Maybe I’m too wild, or a petty shrew, or just plain . . . boring.” She found herself citing all of the things she thought she might seem to him at times.
He laughed again, then backed away. “Go home,” he said roughly.
She knew she should do as he said to keep up the charade, but there was a mystery here . . . a mystery man whom she had thought she knew so well. And for the first time in weeks she’d unburdened herself to someone, and it exhilarated her.
“I’ll go when I’m ready.”
“Suit yourself. Oh, and by the way, thank you for the pies.”
She heard him step through a layer of dried leaves. “Wait!” she called.
“What?”
“I—do you—do you need some more?” She could have bitten her tongue at the desperation in the inane question, but he replied with seriousness.
“Apple. Any time.”
Of course, apple . . . his favorite.
“All right. Do you . . .” She broke off when she sensed that she was alone, and only the sound of the wind through the trees touched her. She shivered in the dark before turning back toward home, wondering who in the world this man was that she was to marry.
Chapter Five
THE RAIN PELTED IN EARNEST AGAINST THE BARN ROOF AS Luke stripped off the Englisch clothes. He stuffed them into the back of his buggy before changing in the chill air of the barn to his usual Amish wear. All the while, the beauty of Rose’s pale face, the warmth of her skin, pulsed through his mind as he recalled the heart-stopping moments in the woods. He was sure that she would have recognized him, but she hadn’t.
He was two steps outside when the thought stopped him. He stood stock-still, heedless of the rain soaking him. She’d gone looking for the thief . . . she had thought to find something out there, in the woods, with a perfect stranger, more compelling than she found in her own betrothed. The idea shook him to his core, but then he remembered why he was doing what he was and decided that Derr Herr might have plans beyond what he could see himself. He sloshed on through the mud and gained the back porch. He wiped his work boots against the ragged rug with the habit of his mamm’s long training and entered the empty kitchen.
THE STORM LEFT THE AREA, LEAVING BEHIND AN ALMOST luminous clarity to the following day. Squirrels hurried to replenish nut supplies across leaf-strewn gras
s as the neighborhood cows greeted their fodder with tail flicks and echoing bellows.
“What are you thinking of, Rose?” Luke asked the question in what she considered an idle fashion as they were out driving to survey the damage the storm had wrought. He navigated the buggy down one of myriad country roads, sending the horse around a fallen tree branch with a light touch of the reins.
“Same as usual.” Her shrug was noncommittal, but in truth she hadn’t been able to stop thinking of him all night—him and his secrets.
“Which is?” He grinned, and she frowned.
Tired and confused, she wondered if she should just admit the truth to him, but something restrained her. She’d rationalized her way through a hundred possible reasons why Luke would resort to disguising himself and thieving from his own people. But after a lot of prayer, she’d decided that she had to trust him until he trusted her enough to tell her his secret.
“Shouldn’t you know what your betrothed is thinking, Luke Lantz?”
“What you’re thinking? Nee—who can ever know what’s in a woman’s mind?”
Well, after last night . . . you should know, she thought in irritation. “Take me home.”
“What? I just picked you up fifteen minutes ago.”
“I don’t care.” And she didn’t. She did not care one bit for Luke’s sensibilities, not when she knew that he could be someone like the stranger in the woods who’d noticed her even in the dark. The Luke Lantz in the buggy today hardly seemed the same man. It wasn’t just his Amish dress and calm tone; it was also his detached demeanor.
But then, to her surprise, Luke drew the buggy to a halt. She saw that they were in Glorious Grove—the childish name she’d given to the copse of maples that towered over the dirt road. She was pleased to see that nothing but a stray branch here and there seemed to have been hurt by the storm.
“What are you doing? I told you to take me home.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, unused to his not doing as she asked.
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