Then his footsteps came right up to the outside of the bedroom door. She had left the door slightly ajar, just enough to let him feel her welcoming him but closed enough to leave her a little privacy.
There was a long hesitation outside the bedroom door. Too long of a hesitation. She did not understand.
And then the door opened.
She saw him taking it all in, the clean, neatly ironed sheets folded back, her new white nightgown, her unbound hair, the glowing candle.
The expression in his eyes was unfathomable. She did not know him well enough yet to discern what was going on in his mind. Was he thinking she was beautiful? Was he thinking he might be able to love her?
Her breath caught in her throat, waiting . . .
“I can’t do this,” he said. “I am so very sorry, Ingrid, but I just can’t. I’ll be sleeping in the barn if you or the girls need me.”
And her world crumbled in.
10
Scalding tears soaked Ingrid’s pillowcase as she rehashed the hopes and dreams she had held in her heart as she had prepared for this night. What kind of man turned away from a woman, his legal wife, who was waiting and willing to give him her heart—a woman who had worked miracles with his family and home in such a short time?
She knew the answer to this question. It was the kind of man who was still in love with his first wife, a man whose heart was still bound to Diantha.
Her romantic dreams of love with this handsome stranger evaporated. Like drops of water casually flung upon a hot stove, they turned into a fine mist and floated away upon the breath of his rejection.
Of course, it was hard for him to turn his affection toward her so soon after his wife had died. She did not blame him for being divided. That, in itself, was understandable, but tonight had not been her idea. She had not been the one who suggested they spend the night together.
How dare he do this to her? She, who had spent so many nights with the girls, entertaining them with her stories, loving them, and watching after them while he snored away, alone, in his own bed downstairs. She had not once complained; if anything, she had gone out of her way to make things easy for him. She had deliberately allowed this husband of hers, this widower, the time and space to grieve.
Well, he could spend the rest of his life grieving as far as she was concerned.
Ingrid did not sleep a wink. Instead, she lay awake, thinking, reflecting, redefining, and planning her life as it would be from now on.
It was clear that there would be no more children. Even if he changed his mind someday, she would never allow herself to be put in the position of being rejected by him ever again. Instead, she would love the children she had even more, and she would not visit her disappointment in the father upon the little girls who had so innocently accepted her into their lives.
Nor would she visit her disappointment upon the man who had been forced, because of his love for his children, to marry her. It would be foolish to attempt to punish him for not loving her. She had seen the fruits of such things in other women’s lives, those who complained and nagged about inattention from their husbands—their tongues effectively pushing men away who had once presumably loved them.
No, when Joshua came in from the barn for breakfast in the morning, she would act as though nothing was the matter. She would act as though he had not broken her heart with his rejection. She would act like the happy mother of a brood of children.
He would not know the difference. After all, he was only a man. As long as his belly was full and his children were alive, he would be content. Then he could grieve his wife, the wonderful Diantha, all he wanted!
Long before the rooster crowed to greet the sunrise, Ingrid rose to begin her day. She plaited her hair, removed her new nightgown, put on her old work dress, and went outside to split the day’s kindling with Joshua’s sharp axe. This was a chore he was becoming lax about doing. She had to remind him nearly every morning this week that she needed kindling to start the fire.
He was always apologetic—him with the beautiful blue eyes—and he would hurry to bring an armful in, but she was tired of reminding him.
Awakening before the rooster crowed gave her enough time to do the chore herself and saved her from having to ask him to do something he should have done without being asked. She would wager that Diantha had never had to ask him for kindling. No doubt he had anticipated her every need.
The pain of Joshua’s rejection made her longing, worry, and grief over her brother’s disappearance even more acute. It would be comforting to know that there was one person on earth who truly loved her. But she would never allow Joshua to know the emptiness she felt inside.
Unless it was an emergency or something important for the children, she would never ask that man for another thing as long as she lived!
Joshua slept fitfully in the hayloft. The scurrying of mice over the horse blanket under which he was sleeping and the sound of the livestock stirring beneath him had kept him awake most of the night as he tried to forget the memory of the hurt he had seen in Ingrid’s eyes as he had turned away from her. Finally, he fell into an exhausted slumber in which Ingrid’s and Diantha’s faces blended together in a bizarre collage.
The sound of an axe splitting wood roused him from that restless sleep. This was not a sound he was used to hearing unless he was on the other side of the axe. He threw back the horse blanket and climbed down the ladder to investigate.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sight of a tall, slender woman illuminated by a lantern glowing nearby, wielding an axe as expertly as a man. Her golden hair gleamed in the lamplight as she swung the axe in a perfect circle over her head and brought it dead-center on each piece of wood she was splitting.
Apparently, Ingrid had decided to take care of the kindling herself, and taking care of it she was! She could not be more energetic with that axe than if she had been going after a nest of rattlesnakes.
In the lantern’s glare, he checked his pocket watch. It was three o’clock in the morning. Even on his best work days, he didn’t awaken for another hour.
“Good morning?” he said. After what had happened last night, he wasn’t entirely certain what sort of morning it was going to be.
She froze with her back toward him, and then she lowered the axe and slowly turned around to face him.
“Good morning!” she said with a wide smile.
She looked reasonable enough, he thought, as he slowly approached her. Maybe she had just wanted to get an early start.
“I’ll get the rest of the kindling in.” He cautiously reached for the axe. “But, Ingrid, do you have any idea what time it is?”
“It is early. Better to get work done before children awake.” She blithely handed him the axe and sauntered on into the house.
He stood there looking at the axe, then at her, then at the woodpile. He had always hated splitting kindling, a tiresome job for which he’d been responsible since he was big enough to handle an axe. Because he hated it, he tended to split just enough to get them through each day, but today, he decided it might be wise if he went ahead and got a nice big pile of it together for her. Perhaps enough to see her through the entire week.
“Here you go.” Joshua filled the wood box nearly full and headed back outdoors for another armload.
“Thank you.” Ingrid was engrossed in beating up a batch of something in a large bowl.
When he came back in, she had the stove blazing, a thin pastry spread out over nearly the entire table, and she was industriously layering it with butter, sugar, nuts, and dried fruit.
“What is that?” he asked, dropping another armload of kindling into the box.
“Strudel.”
“Is that what we’re having for breakfast?”
“No,” she said without looking up.
He waited for her to explain, but she was so engrossed in her task that she seemed to barely notice that he was standing there. He had absolutely no idea what to do next—so he
went outside and split another armload of kindling.
“I keep the bed,” Ingrid said as he mounded kindling in what had been an empty box.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“I keep.” This time she looked straight at him. “I keep the bed. Not right for moder to sleep in loft with girls all the time.”
Now he understood. Perfectly. She was staking out her territory, claiming his bedroom for herself.
“Where am I going to sleep?”
“I no care.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Barn. Kitchen floor. On roof. On moon. I no care.”
She finished sprinkling the pastry with cinnamon and began to expertly fold it. The folding of it was intricate and would have been fascinating to watch—except he was still trying to puzzle out where he was going to sleep.
“But really, Ingrid, where—”
“Barn good enough last night, good enough other nights.”
“It was miserable out there.”
She paused in the middle of folding the pastry, and he saw a slow smile spread over her face as she savored the idea of him having been miserable.
“Ingrid, I want to apologize—”
“Kaffee?” She whirled around with the coffeepot in her hand.
“Sure,” he said. “About last night . . .”
“We need eggs.” She brushed butter over the folded strudel. “You get?”
“I guess so.”
He slunk off to the henhouse—thinking it was a whole lot easier to deal with a riled-up rooster and twelve sleepy hens than the woman who was slinging pastry together in his kitchen.
He wondered, given Ingrid’s mood this morning, if it might be wise to hide the axe she had been wielding so expertly.
“Something sure smells good.” Joshua came back inside after milking the cow and gathering the eggs. “Is it that strudel you were working on this morning?”
Ingrid bent to take a pan out of the woodstove and sat it on the table. The pastry had turned out beautifully.
“That looks delicious, Ingrid.” He reached to pinch off a piece.
“Not for you.” She smacked his hand. “For neighbors.”
He looked at her like he could not believe his ears. “What neighbors?”
“Diantha’s parents.”
“They won’t want to see you. These are not people we can be friends with, Ingrid. They hate me.”
“But they not hate me. Ingrid nothing but dum Svenska girl. They think I not know better than come for visit.”
“My father-in-law has a gun.”
She grinned. “But Ingrid have strudel.”
“You’re a great cook, Ingrid, but they aren’t going to soften toward us just because of some pastry.”
“We see. You stay with children. Breakfast in skillet. Soup on stove for dinner. I come back—maybe late.”
“Please,” he said. “Don’t go down there. Or at least let me go with you.”
“No. You stay with children.”
She had a plan, but it was not one she wanted to discuss. It involved an emotional tug-of-war that might or might not work. If it failed, she would rather no one know what she had attempted to do.
“You do not worry.” She patted his cheek like a bustling housewife. “Diantha’s persons like.”
This particular strudel was a complicated dish and not even native to her country. She had learned it from a German girlfriend, who had told her that good strudel was irresistible to men. This was important, because she had gotten the impression at the inquest that Richard Young might not be quite as unreasonable as his wife.
She took two flat, clean bricks she had heated in the oven and placed them in the bottom of a basket. Then, she carefully wrapped the steaming strudel in a clean cloth and laid it on the hot bricks. That would make the pastry not only stay hot but be at its most aromatic when she arrived. She had used extra cinnamon for that reason alone.
“Richard might not shoot you, Ingrid, but I’ll guarantee he’s not going to be happy to see you,” Joshua warned. “Virgie’s a good cook in her own right.”
“It is time I visit neighbors.” She wrapped her maroon shawl around her shoulders and lifted the basket.
Because she did not speak perfect English, she knew that Joshua had sadly underestimated her. She hoped Diantha’s parents would also. Now that she knew there would be no children born between her and Joshua, now that she understood that their marriage would remain a marriage of convenience, she was absolutely determined to come back with Bertie in her arms. She wanted that baby more than anything in the world right now. For all she knew, little Bertie would be the only infant she would ever get to nurture as her own.
She was on Richard and Virgie’s doorstep before either of them knew she was on the place, which was exactly as she had hoped. She had walked so quietly she had even escaped the notice of their old dog until she was knocking on the Youngs’ front door. Then the dog began to bark.
Richard heard the dog and came hurrying from the barn just as Virgie opened the door to her.
“Good morgon!” Ingrid deliberately thickened her accent and made herself sound as Swedish as possible. “Ingrid bring neighbor gift.”
“What are you talking about . . . ‘neighbor gift’?” Virgie’s eyes narrowed. “Ain’t you that Swedish girl Josh married to keep us from getting the girls?”
“Ja. I marry to Joshua.” She peeled back the corner of the cloth covering the strudel and put a vacuous smile on her face. “Nice gift. Friends now?”
“Look at this, Richard.” Virgie barked out a laugh. “The girl thinks we’re gonna be friends just because she baked us some kind of a pie.”
“Strudel,” Ingrid corrected.
“Whatever you want to call it, it don’t make no difference. You turn yourself on around, missy, and—”
“Take it easy on her, Virgie.”
Richard, as Ingrid had hoped, intervened. “She’s just a young immigrant girl. In her country it’s probably some kind of custom to take this, this . . .”
“Strudel.” Ingrid supplied the word, still smiling.
“This strudel to their neighbors. She probably don’t know no better.” He came closer and sniffed. “What’s that thing got inside of it, girl?”
“Nuts, eggs, flour, butter—much butter—raisins, cinnamon, sugar.” She pulled the covering completely back and revealed the pastry in all of its glory.
The strudel, carefully brushed with beaten egg whites, glistened brown and delicious-looking. The cinnamon, sugar, and butter—still hot—oozed out of the slashes she had made with her knife into the many layers. Even Virgie seemed impressed and reached for the basket.
This was the pivotal moment. Instead of relinquishing the basket, she held on to it and affected a hurt sound to her voice.
“No invite Ingrid in for kaffee? Strudel much, much hard work.”
The delicious aroma surrounded them, but there was another smell, one not quite so pleasant—and Ingrid was delighted.
“Good golly, Virgie,” Richard said as he caught a whiff. “You done gone and burnt the potatoes!”
With a screech, Virgie rushed inside, leaving the door open. Ingrid immediately stepped inside as though invited. Richard, following the pastry, did not try to stop her.
Their home was pleasant enough. It was a little larger than Joshua’s, but her eyes were drawn to only one thing—the corner where a small cradle lay. It rocked a little as the infant inside it kicked and gurgled.
“Bertie?” she asked.
“Yes,” Richard said.
“May I see?”
“No.” Richard plucked the baby from the cradle, carried him into the bedroom, and kicked the door closed.
She was devastated.
“Well,” Virgie said, “them taters are hog food now, thanks to you a-knocking at our door. All I can say is that strudel better be good! We ain’t had breakfast yet.”
“Strudel very good.” Ingrid sat the basket on the living room table. T
here was no reason to hold on to it anymore. The golden pastry had gotten her through the door, which had been her intent. Virgie and Richard could bathe in strudel now for all she cared.
She seated herself on a small horsehair sofa. It was the nicest piece of furniture in the room.
“Why are you sitting down?” Virgie asked. “You ain’t staying.”
“Ingrid so tired.” She gave a great sigh. “All week long. Cook, cook, cook. Clean, clean, clean. You care I sit down? Rest a little minute? Joshua, he no help.”
“Honey, I hear you.” Virgie’s face softened. “A woman can get a bellyful of work out here on these hardscrabble farms—but you can’t stay here.”
“Ingrid leave—with Bertie.”
“You little sneak.” Virgie’s eyes smoldered. “The only reason you came here was to take our little boy away!”
“Bertie needs grow up with systrar and with father.”
“Did Josh put you up to this?”
“No. He say, ‘Don’t go there. Diantha’s parents mean.’”
Virgie seemed taken aback. “We’re not mean.”
“Then give Bertie . . . judge say.”
“Richard!” Virgie yelled. “Get your gun!”
Joshua fed the girls breakfast, then dinner, and later on, he fed them leftovers for supper. It had been hours and hours since Ingrid had left for the Youngs’ with her hopeful little basket of strudel, and she had not returned.
Had they shot her? Or had she handed them the basket of strudel and then just kept walking? He wouldn’t blame her a bit if she did.
He tried to put the girls to bed early, but it was like trying to put a hutch of rabbits to bed. About the time he got one down, another one would pop up full of questions about when Ingrid would be coming home.
It was starting to get dark. What would he do if she never came home?
11
“Bertie needs be with family,” Ingrid said for the umpteenth time.
A Promise to Love Page 11
