Two hours later, Ingrid rolled her sleeves back down. Joshua was busy tucking all four girls into their beds in the loft in the cleanest clothes she could find. The dishes were all put away. The bits and pieces of leftover food had been thrown to the hogs. She had rinsed a kettle of beans, which was now soaking for tomorrow’s dinner, and she had swept the fireplace clean. Much had been accomplished.
Joshua came downstairs and sat down at the kitchen table, looking tired to death. There were dark circles beneath his eyes. She could only guess at the emotional toll this day had taken on him.
“You’re still working,” he said. “What can I do to help you?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Go. Rest. I will come to bed soon.”
Joshua didn’t argue. He disappeared into the bedroom. With pounding heart, she went out to the well to draw one last bucket of water. She drew the dripping bucket up and sat it on a small bench near the house.
She felt shy about getting ready for her wedding night inside the house, so she slipped her dress off outside in the dark and dipped a clean rag into the bucket of cold well water. With a sliver of lye soap, she washed herself as well as she could and then slipped on the only nightgown she owned.
She threw her bath water away and then quietly entered her new home. Pulse racing, she opened the door to the small bedroom she and Joshua would share.
He was sound asleep, fully clothed, facedown, sprawled out as though trying to claim every square inch of the bed for himself. Trying not to take up any more space than absolutely necessary, she carefully moved his arm and curled up beside her new husband.
A wolf howled in the distance, a mournful, lonely sound. She decided that she would not allow herself to be afraid of that wolf—or anything else. She would defend her new home with her life, whether the man of the house ever learned to care for her or not.
7
Joshua awoke in the early morning darkness from a vivid dream in which Diantha and he were still young and very much in love. It was in this half dream, while clothed in a foggy happiness, that he put an arm around the warm body next to him and pulled her close.
That was when he fully awoke. This person he had reached for was not Diantha. His wife had been a small, soft handful. Just the right size for a man to wrap his arms around. The person he was embracing was all bones and angles and nearly as large as himself. She also smelled of lye soap instead of the French-milled rose-scented soap that Diantha had hoarded for herself.
“Good morning,” the woman said.
Had her body been made of hot coals, he could not have let loose of her more quickly.
“G-good morning.” He scrambled out of bed so fast, his feet got caught in the blankets and he stumbled and fell. As he lay on the floor, tangled in blankets, she rose from the bed and knelt beside him.
“You are hurt?” she asked.
The shock of falling had jarred a little sense back into his dream-muddled brain, but for the life of him, he could not remember the name of the woman he had married yesterday.
“No, no, I’m not hurt.” He untangled himself from the bedcovers, grateful that he was still fully clothed.
“I fix breakfast?” the woman asked.
What was her name?
“Yes, that would be good, thank you.”
To his surprise, she immediately set to making the bed. But instead of simply drawing the covers up, which had been Diantha’s habit, she unbuttoned one side of the straw tick and reached in and smoothed the mounds of straw out more evenly. Then she straightened and tucked the bedcovers.
“I’ll go milk the cow,” he said for lack of anything better to say.
“Ja. That is fine.” She gave the neatly made bed a satisfied pat.
What was this woman’s name?
By the time he had finished milking, strained the milk, set it to cool in the small cellar out back, and brought yesterday’s already-cooled milk into the kitchen, she was completely dressed, her hair was neatly braided, and she was standing in front of the stove.
“I’ll go get the eggs now,” he said.
“I already do.” She nodded toward the cast-iron skillet, in which eggs spluttered in bacon grease. Thick pieces of fried bacon from the smokehouse lay on a platter nearby.
“Oh.”
“Coffee is ready. Please sit.” She gestured with the spatula. “I take care of everything.”
And so Joshua sat at his own kitchen table feeling like an awkward guest while she placed a cup before him and filled it with coffee.
“Good?” She avidly watched as he took a sip.
It was the blackest, strongest coffee he had ever tasted.
“Yes,” he lied, “very good.”
She studied his face with a worried expression. “Not good.”
“It’s a little strong, and I like cream.”
“I fix.” She poured hot water into his cup and added cream that she skimmed from the top of yesterday’s milking.
He sipped again. It was rich and delicious. “Very good.”
Her face lit up like he had given her a gift. Smiling, she turned back to the stove.
An aroma of something sweet came from the oven. She folded a dish towel and brought out what smelled like a bit of heaven. Somehow she had managed to find some raisins and nuts, which now studded the golden pastry.
“How in the world did you manage that!”
She shrugged modestly.
He pinched off a piece of the hot pastry, placed it on his tongue, and felt it melt in his mouth.
She waited for his appraisal.
“That is delicious, um . . . ma’am.”
Her face fell. “I am Ingrid.”
“I know.” It was a lie, and they both knew it.
She turned back to the stove while he chastised himself for having unintentionally hurt her. Living with a woman he barely knew was not going to be easy—even if she was a good cook.
Silence descended upon the kitchen. He watched while she carefully spooned hot bacon grease over the frying eggs. The girl was certainly no beauty. Everything about her looked used, from her borrowed men’s shoes to her frayed brown dress.
She brought the eggs, still spluttering in the skillet, and sat them in the middle of the heavy oak table. Then she refilled his cup, took her place at the table, and sat with her hands folded in her lap and her head down. Waiting.
Her submissive posture unnerved him. She was trying so very hard to please that it made him uncomfortable. Something needed to change if they were going to get through this.
“Do you like coffee, Ingrid?” He deliberately used her name.
She nodded.
“How do you like it?”
“With sugar.” She started to rise.
“No.” He put a hand out. “Don’t.” He took one more sip of the coffee she had brought him. “Let me.”
Hoping to break the ice between them, he rose from the table, filled a cup, put in a heaping teaspoon of sugar, and brought it to her. She accepted it with wide-eyed wonder.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“Is the coffee to your taste?”
She took a sip and nodded. Her eyes were a light blue, and her eyelashes were the same light blonde of her hair. Her features were even, and her complexion was creamy white. Her body—well, the shapeless work dress she was wearing didn’t give away much. Her hands were roughened and red from work. When she was standing, she was only a couple inches shorter than him, and he was not a short man. Had he tried, he could not possibly have brought home anyone more different from Diantha.
“Breakfast looks tasty,” he said lamely.
“Do you want I wake the children now?”
“Yes, please.” He desperately wanted to have the girls sitting here at the table with him, absorbing some of the awkwardness between him and his new . . . wife.
Few things had ever pleased Ingrid more than the sight of those four little girls lapping up her breakfast like hungry puppies. Of course, it was a challenge
to find things to cook when she had not been the one to choose the contents of the family’s food supply, but she had long ago mastered the art of putting together things that tasted good even when ingredients were sparse.
“Should we make a trip to town?” Joshua asked. “For supplies?”
“Today?” She shook her head. “No.”
He seemed relieved. She didn’t blame him. The last thing she wanted to do was go back into town the day after their very public wedding.
By nine o’clock in the morning, she had gathered eggs, set a nice, even fire in the cookstove, fed her new family, washed the dishes, swept the floor, put the overnight-soaked beans to simmering on the back of the stove, and, while the children helped their father weed the vegetable garden, scrubbed the wooden floor on her hands and knees with lye soap. She threw the dirty water outside and stood surveying the damp, clean floor with satisfaction.
“You gonna do the wash today?” Agnes asked. “It sure has piled up lately.”
“Ja. I do laundry,” Ingrid agreed. “Today is fine day for drying.”
“And there’s some mending that needs doing.”
Ingrid nodded. “Tonight I mend.”
Agnes contemplated her through narrowed eyes, as though evaluating how far she could push.
“I sure could use me a new dress,” Agnes said. “And so could Trudy. I’ve about grown out of this one, and Pa ruined Trudy’s best dress with the iron.”
Ingrid put both hands on Agnes’s shoulders and turned her around. The dress was shorter than it should be for a girl her age, and it was getting too tight beneath the arms.
“You have . . . material?”
“Not that I know of, but Mama had some real pretty dresses. Do you think it might be possible to cut one of them down to fit me?” Agnes’s voice, usually so very grown up, grew hopeful. It was the first time Ingrid had heard a hint of the child’s voice hidden beneath Agnes’s prickly grown-up one.
“I sew you fine dress.”
“Can you do smocking?”
“Ja. I smock too.”
“Huh.” Agnes stared at her in amazement. “How about that.”
Ingrid was amused at the child’s surprise. “After we wash, we sew.”
“Sounds good to me, lady.”
Lady? That did not seem like something a child should call a mother—not even a new stepmother.
What she secretly longed to hear coming out of these children’s mouths was “mama,” just like she had called her own mother, but it was too soon to hope for such a thing.
“Please call me Ingrid,” she said. “Not ‘lady.’”
“You sew me a nice dress,” Agnes said, “and I’ll call you anything you want.”
Joshua had carefully explained to her exactly where he would be if she needed him. He had even taken her outside and pointed to the far pasture where he would be plowing ground for corn. This made her feel protected and cared for.
Before he left, he had also taken the time to show her his new pride and joy, a John Deere plow, which he said was going to revolutionize farming. It was a fine thing, indeed, and Ingrid, who had helped Hans plow their small acreage back home, genuinely admired the exquisitely made tool. It had been a nice, friendly moment between them.
With a light heart, Ingrid drew water from the well and filled the two washtubs. Then she lit a fire beneath a large kettle outdoors. It was a beautiful spring day, and laundry was one of her favorite chores when the weather was fine. Agnes brought the washboard, and without a word, the child began to scrub a dress while Ellie and Trudy played with Polly beneath a large maple tree nearby.
Ingrid stood back, watching Agnes with her skinny arms trying to do a grown woman’s job, and it made her ache to think of how hard this child had struggled to care for her family since her mother’s death. Agnes was a force to be reckoned with, but she was still, deep down, just a little girl.
“You want to play with sisters, ja?”
Agnes looked over her shoulder at the three little girls. “We got work to do,” she said and went back to the scrub board.
“No.” Ingrid gently pulled the wet dress out of Agnes’s hands and turned her away from the washboard. “You go be little girl.”
“Are you serious, lady . . . I mean, Ingrid?” Agnes cocked her head to one side, taking her measure. “You want me to go play? There’s an awful lot of clothes here.”
“This job, for me, is play.” Ingrid nodded toward the laundry tubs. “You go be liten flicka, a little girl.”
Agnes’s big gray eyes slowly filled with tears, and her skinny arms suddenly encircled Ingrid’s waist. For one brief, fleeting moment Ingrid felt the thrill of an unexpected hug from her new daughter. Then Agnes ran to her sisters.
The rest of the morning went by like a song.
Their dinner was not elaborate, but Joshua, once again, seemed inordinately grateful for her cooking, and the children had good appetites. She had noticed, when she came back inside after hanging out the laundry, that the cabin smelled much better from all the cleaning she had done.
“You scrubbed the floor,” Joshua said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
He had noticed. She smiled modestly down at her plate.
She was enormously pleased with how this day was going. She intended to astonish Joshua with his well-ordered home.
As odd as it felt coming home to see a stranger presiding over his wife’s kitchen, Joshua certainly couldn’t fault the woman’s work ethic. An enormous burden had been lifted from his shoulders today at noon. He had come home for dinner and found the cabin filled with productive domestic activity, and his children were not cross with each other for a change. Agnes had even smiled a couple of times while they ate, and he had not seen his oldest daughter smile since she had lost her mother.
By the grace of God, he was once again free to work his land. The children were being well cared for. Life was far from perfect, but it was survivable . . . until he walked into the cabin in the late afternoon and smelled the familiar scent of his wife’s perfume wafting from within their bedroom.
The sweet smell of roses brought such a flood of memories that it nearly brought him to his knees. It was as though his wife were physically present . . . tangible . . . waiting for him in their bedroom, just beyond the half-closed door.
He managed to walk through that door and found Ingrid going through his wife’s things.
The top drawer of Diantha’s bureau was open and empty, and various articles of her clothing were stacked in small piles on the bed. The precious bottle of his wife’s perfume sat on the dresser.
And Ingrid reeked of it.
He was usually a patient man, slow to anger, but the sight of this immigrant girl pawing through his wife’s things threw him into such an instantaneous rage, he wanted to slam her against the wall. The woman smelled as though she had bathed in Diantha’s perfume. Was she too stupid to know any better? Or did she think he’d fall in love with her if she wore enough of his wife’s scent?
“What do you think you’re doing, you stupid cow?” Without realizing it, he repeated the very same hurtful words he had heard Millicent fling at her. “You have no right!”
Ingrid seemed surprised by his anger. She dropped the article of Diantha’s clothing she had been holding and cowered against the wall.
“Speak up!” he roared. “Tell me why you think you have the right to touch my wife’s things!”
“She was doing it for me, Pa.” A child’s frightened voice sliced through his anger and brought him to his senses.
Joshua had not realized that Agnes was directly behind him.
“Ingrid was going to cut down one of Ma’s dresses for me if it was all right with you. We were going to ask your permission before we did anything.”
He turned around and his heart sank. Not only was Agnes directly behind him, but so was little Ellie. He saw Ellie’s hand stealing into Agnes’s while both of them stared at him with frightened eyes.
“I
asked Ingrid to do it,” Agnes said. “My dresses are too little for me, and I didn’t think you would care.”
Joshua’s anger evaporated, leaving him empty and ashamed—but the scent of roses still swirled around him, tickling his senses, making him feel unsettled and disoriented.
“That doesn’t excuse her for using your mother’s perfume.”
“She didn’t, Pa.” Agnes shook her head. “Trudy was playing with the bottle and she accidentally spilled some. The only thing Ingrid did was clean it up.”
Joshua could not meet Ingrid’s eyes. He stumbled over his apology. “I—I’m sorry . . . I didn’t realize.”
Ingrid hurriedly lifted the piles of folded clothing and stuffed them back inside the dresser drawer with trembling hands. She shoved the drawer closed and tried to pass by him in the doorway. He touched her arm to stop her. “Ingrid, I’m so sorry—”
“Please excuse.” She had her head down and did not look at him.
He stepped aside, as did the girls, and Ingrid walked right out of the cabin.
“Now see what you done?” Agnes complained. “We finally get some good help around here and you scare her off.”
Had he scared her off? She wouldn’t leave, would she?
In all honesty, he wouldn’t blame her if she did. Who would want to live with a man who went into a rage over a few items of clothing and some spilled perfume—especially a man who had been accused by some of killing his wife.
With shame, he remembered the cruel thing he had said to her. What he had called her was unforgivable.
It was the first time he had wished that Ingrid didn’t have such a good grasp of the English language. He went to the front door and watched, helpless, as Ingrid walked toward the large woodlot that adjoined their farm, but unlike Diantha, who would sometimes spend hours walking alone in the deep woods, Ingrid stopped at the edge, hesitated, looked back at the cabin, and took a seat on a stump.
“You oughta at least go talk to Ingrid.” Agnes jabbed an elbow into his side as they stood there. “Go tell her you’re sorry again. Sweet-talk her or something. Go on, Pa. We need her here bad.”
A Promise to Love Page 8
