Having strangers as wedding attendants should not bother her.
It had been some time since the districts were re-divided. With her tiny house on the outskirts of the district she’d known most of her life, Sara had become part of this new community, one peopled with strangers, among them Abby Zuckerman, her best and last friend, and Abby’s taciturn husband, Adam, now Sara’s missing groom.
Adam. The man with whom Sara would spend the rest of her life. The man she would stand beside in trouble and lie beside in bed. Sara placed a hand to her fluttering chest. Lord, and didn’t that race her heart?
She wondered how to tell him that she’d rather they share that bedroom off the kitchen, where he’d stayed since he got hurt, than his and Abby’s old room, where she’d recently put the girls. She did not expect that he would understand. She could barely understand, herself, or even believe this was happening.
She guessed that tonight, when she hung her dresses on those empty pegs beside his suit—if he ever came to the wedding—that this would all, finally, seem real. Especially as she would undress after that and climb into Adam Zuckerman’s bed. Oh Lord.
Sara struggled again to swallow.
Would he be lying there in that bed, already—waiting, watching? Or would he come to her only after she had undressed, washed and settled beneath Mom’s old Sunshine quilt? If so, would she watch him perform his own private bedtime rituals?
“Lord it’s hot in here.” The echoing crack in her voice accompanied her opening of the summer kitchen window for a bracing slice of winter air.
Her face cooled and she straightened, shivered, and hugged herself, and as her heart calmed, and she turned to speak, Adam stepped into the room.
The air thinned and warmed. The walls closed in.
Elation set her free.
Adam’s intense gaze seemed to look deep into her soul, sending a new rush of blood to lighten her heart and fill her lungs. Even more startling, his eyes reflected a concern rarely revealed. Somehow, as a result, a sense of destiny calmed Sara to the point where she found herself promising with her look that theirs would be a good marriage, and Adam accepted and returned the promise with barely a nod.
Roman chuckled, as if entertained by the exchange, which was annoying to Sara, Adam too, she saw, but Roman was nothing if not vexatious. He rubbed his hands together, his grin wide. “Let’s get this done. Food’s waiting and I’m powerful hungry.” It was always food first, with Roman.
Into the center of Mrs. Weaver’s best room, Sara and Adam walked hand in hand, toward a bench dead center, between facing sections of bearded men and kapped women.
There, beside Lizbeth and Roman, Sara and Adam sat.
Four hymns and three sermons cited the responsibilities of marriage and the sacred relationship between husband and wife. Then the Bishop stood before them. “Adam Zuckerman and Sara Lapp, if you are still minded the same, you may now come forth.”
Sara and Adam stepped before Bishop Weaver. Roman and Lizbeth, as attendants, stepped behind them.
The Bishop opened his bible. “Can you confess, brother, that you accept this our sister as your wife?”
Tears filled Sara’s eyes as she looked down at her hand, small within Adam’s huge callused one, a symbol she was forever to be protected, someday perhaps, even cherished ... never to be lonely again. A moment often dreamed, yet never expected.
A husband for Sara. A family.
“And you, Sara….”
She started as if from a daydream, and paid strict attention, answering properly, vowing with her heart to care for Adam in adversity, affliction, sickness, weakness or faintheartedness. Adam … fainthearted?
“I wish you the blessings of God,” the Bishop intoned. “For a good beginning, a steadfast middle time, and strength until a blessed end. Amen.”
Sara and Adam knelt before their high holy leader and he placed one of his hands on each of their heads. “Go forth in the name of the Lord. You are now man and wife.”
Spinster Sara, a spinster no more.
Sara stood and accompanied her husband—her husband!—to their seat, as if she walked on a soft, sun-warm cloud, floating in a haze of joy and peacefulness.
Adam’s feet felt leaden, almost too heavy to lift, as he tried to place one before the other for the unending walk back to their bench. A pall, like a thundercloud, hung heavy above him, pressing on his shoulders, weighing down even his heart. Though he could almost see a brighter horizon, far in the distance of his mind’s eye, he refused to acknowledge it, because he feared it, though he did not know why.
Sara belonged to him now, not to the doctor, a new mommie for his girls, a helpmate for him. A mate. Adam stumbled and reached his seat sooner than expected, most humbly grateful for its firm support.
More hymns, another sermon, silent prayer. This was the longest marriage service ever.
When it finally ended, they made their way to the upper room, a dreadful custom, Adam thought, and wondered why he felt like a yearling in a spring meadow. On Sara’s face, he saw a look of wonder as she turned to gaze at him, as if she were a butterfly set free, and he forgot all else. He forgot even to breathe.
Sara gazed into her husband’s bright, shining eyes. Every bride waited for this moment, she thought, and no wonder. Though the upper room was nothing more than a room where an Amish bride and groom waited to officially and ceremoniously enter the celebration of their marriage, it was the place where they were closeted alone together for the very first time as husband and wife. It was a first opportunity for privacy, a kiss, a touch. Many a married woman blushed over what transpired in the upper room on her own wedding day, and many a maiden waited, with bated breath, as Sara was near to doing right now, for just such an experience.
Standing beside the open door, watching them, Roman winked. “I’ll wait with Lizbeth at the top of the stairs for the signal to go down.” He shut them inside with a chuckle and a click.
The Weavers’ bedroom was plain, homey. Sunshine gilded the wedding quilt on the high feather bed. The colors in the quilt, cream, sky blue, forest green and deep wine, matched the flowers painted on the ewer and basin atop the dresser. Mrs. Weaver’s ‘Number Five New Remington Sewing Machine,’ as she faithfully called it, sat open, a colorful spill of twill and percale quilt squares beside it. Above it, a purple sateen scissors-holder hung on the wall, beside a calendar depicting a bright Swiss mountain scene. Everything must have a use, and if every useful item was colorful, so much the better.
To calm the flutter in her breast, Sara examined the room’s pristine beauty in great detail. Then she looked into Adam’s eyes, deeper and wider, more open than ever, it seemed, and her heart returned to its buggy-careening pace.
I know you cannot love me, she thought, regarding the stillness in him. You love Abby, as should be. “I will take good care of Abby’s girls,” she whispered.
Adam raised a hand to her cheek. “Our girls.” He barely made contact, yet his touch sizzled like water on a hot griddle.
Sara craved more and closer contact, and before she knew what she was doing, she touched his cheek too. And when he did not pull away, she let her fingers glide through his beard.
Adam’s face was close, now, though she did not think that either of them had moved.
His hand at her back made her feel cherished for the first time ever. She touched her fingers to the curls at his nape. Sparks prickled along her spine, her limbs. Adam’s groan seemed to come from deep in his throat, and with it Sara welcomed the power of a wife.
His lips were not cold and hard, as she expected, but soft, warm, and yielding, consuming her. It was his chest that was hard, his legs, and the strength of his arms sliding around her, pulling her closer. Sara sighed and opened her lips to his, coaxing, answering, seeking a luxury she could not name. She no longer stood on that cloud, but floated above it, Adam now the root and center of her world.
When they were closer than she thought possible, and she, pliant and bendi
ng in his embrace, he brought her into a sensuous new world, branding her with his touch. His stroke beneath her breast brought a blaze of heat, hardly bearable, yet deeply fulfilling.
Even lacking experience, Sara knew then that she wanted Adam in the purely physical, secretly intimate way a woman wanted her mate. And glory of glories, he wanted her in the same way. He was as hard as he had been during his baths, and she was warm, ready and open, in the way she had been at those times. But now was different. Now they were man and wife, sanctioned.
Tonight in Adam’s big bed, Sara would know. She would know her husband and experience a woman’s pain, the one that marched beside ultimate fulfillment.
With a groan that was almost a curse, Adam lay her down on the big bed, and she welcomed the support of the mattress beneath her almost as much as she welcomed his weight along her length. When he slid his hand up her leg, Sara became too heavy to float. Higher and higher he stroked, until he reached her center and learned her moist secret.
Sara had to turn from his probing look. The thrust of his hips, the stroke of his hand—there, where she’d never felt a touch before—heady and wondrous, almost fulfilling in itself, but not quite.
Not quite.
His kisses, on her face, her neck, her breasts, even through the bodice of her wedding dress, kept time with the pulse in her center ... with the knock on the door.
Sara gasped.
Adam raised his head, swore. “Coming, damn it!”
Roman chuckled on the other side of the door. “Ya, I was afraid of that, but it’s time to go downstairs.” He laughed again.
Sara knew she should be changing into the black apron and kapp of a married woman, but Adam pulled her attention back to him. He looked straight at her and she at him. It was important, what had just passed between them. They both knew it, yet neither spoke.
Adam took her hand and slipped it into the broadfall flap of his trousers. Only his union suit stood between her and her husband’s flesh. Shocked, almost as much by her daring touch as by his size and strength, Sara applied pressure to her grasp.
Adam did the same to her, and their moans merged in the long, slow way her body instinctively craved his.
“It’s time to go down,” Sara whispered. For the life of her, she could think of nothing else to say. No wonder married women blushed when the upper room was mentioned. She hoped the flames consuming her would cool before she reached the bottom of the stairs and had to face their wedding guests.
“Tonight,” Adam said as he released her.
Sara nodded but dared to stroke him once more, and he cursed as he snatched her hand away.
“Ready?” Roman called through the door, not bothering to hide his amusement.
Adam stood and smacked the door a good one from the inside, making Roman roar with laughter. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had,” Roman called. “Thanks for asking me to attend you.” They heard his laughter fade as he moved away. “It’s now or never,” he yelled, likely from the top of the enclosed stairs. “You’d better come now.”
Sara’s giggle at his frustration turned Adam’s mind, and he damn near smiled as he untied her white apron while she removed her kapp. Her neatly coifed hair made him itch to muss it, but he shook his head, denying himself, for now. He took her black apron out of her hands and dressed her, her smile at his attention touching him so deep inside, he ached.
Scrapper Sara, filled with enough passion to fight her community, bring a squalling infant into the world, or do battle with a madman. Smiling Sara, with the kind of passion that could make a man her slave, the kind that would get him hard every time he looked at her, that would have her on her back and ... ripe with chil—
Like a blow, the realization struck.
“Tonight,” Sara whispered, taking his hand. “Ready?”
Warmth deserted Adam, the blood left his limbs, chilling him to his marrow, as together, they stepped from the upper room.
Their wedding celebration went by in a haze as he and Sara sat at the Eck, the wedding table. There, in the corner of the main room, the bride and groom and their attendants always sat before those who’d come to celebrate with them.
As usual, smiling made Adam uncomfortable, but he did as well as he could, because it was expected. Besides, it involved only his lips; not his heart. That, in fact, sat encased in ice. Adam shook his head at fate. A rare man had a wife who seemed to want her husband’s touch, rather than bear it as a chore. Sara was a wife who might make her husband smile, without feeling sick about it. But such was not to be.
He’d best face facts. He had a new wife he ... cared about ... in a different way than he’d cared for his first. With Sara, his ... fondness was almost of the spirit, if that were possible, and different from his need to protect his girls, though that was deep and fierce too.
He did not think he had ever cared for anyone in quite the same way he cared for Sara. Oh he had cared for Abby as a husband should. And he cared for his girls in a life-giving way—his sister Emma, too, when she was small. It was fitting, he supposed, that he should deny his body for Sara’s sake, in the way he turned from his girls for their sake, and in the way he had taken his father’s ‘punishment’ in Emma’s place. But Sara….
He would not put her through the danger of childbirth. He would never cause her harm. What had happened in the upper room had happened for the best. A warning. If they had come together for the first time tonight, he would not have had the sanity to consider the consequences.
Never had he expected Scrapper Sara to have such an effect on him, but he should have. How could he have forgotten … the baths?
Sara surprised him by touching his hand, to indicate a footed plate of swirled yellow glass, bearing a cake with icing daffodils. The cake had been baked by Roman’s mother; the cake dish was the Bylers’ wedding gift.
As if he occupied the body of someone else, Adam stood and accepted Mrs. Byler’s good wishes for a long and fruitful marriage. Roman was taking her home now; his father had not been well enough to come and she was concerned. Roman would be back to continue his duties as groom’s attendant. Lizbeth would remain, as bride’s attendant, Roman said, in case Adam or Sara needed anything.
Adam noticed then that the married couples were leaving, while the young, unmarried members of the congregation were going out to the barn for a frolic. Lizbeth looked wistful and Adam was not surprised when Sara sent her outside with her friends. Sara always saw people’s needs, even those unspoken.
As bride and groom, he and Sara would not be able to leave until midnight at least. What was it now … nine, maybe ten o’clock? How many bridegrooms, he wondered, wanted to ambush a few energetic youngsters at about this time?
Just as well they had to stay. Tired was better than randy.
At nearly one in the morning, Adam and Sara, with Roman’s help—The English had long-since gone—gathered their girls from the beds upstairs and took them home.
“Most bridegrooms do not carry their sleeping children up to their beds on their wedding night,” Adam grumbled, for the sole purpose of lessening the constriction in his chest, and elsewhere, and of putting off the inevitable. But it was past time for honesty.
After the children were settled, Sara, his new wife, came back downstairs and stood in the middle of the kitchen, much as she had done on the night of his first wife’s death, an occasion he must remember now to remain strong. Sara even held the back of the same kitchen chair, though she had been less woman and more scrapper that night.
Wishing with all his heart that she were less of a woman now, Adam coughed and with a shaking hand, picked up the lantern in the middle of the big oak table. Here, use this to light your way upstairs. I don’t need to see to find my room.
He wished he hadn’t watched her so closely, because when she paled, something sharp stabbed him in the region of his missing heart.
“But I thought….”
“What?” he said, turning toward his room, showing her his
back.
“Tonight, you said ... Today when ... when we….”
Adam turned. Much as he dreaded the prospect of looking into her soulful eyes, he owed her the courtesy of plain speaking. “I am sorry Sara. That was a mistake.”
“No, Adam. I thought it was ... that we were so—”
“Foolish. Foolish, we were ... I was. This is a marriage to satisfy the Elders. We married in name only to fulfill the ordnung. Do not make more of it than it is.”
Sara’s back stiffened and before his eyes the woman who’d melted in his arms turned into a scrapper again. And though he could see pain hovering just beyond her anger, she made a good show of strength. “You don’t need anyone, do you Adam Zuckerman? Too strong for such nonsense, right? Well, I’ll tell you what I think, big, mean, scary man. I think you’re afraid. Afraid of a woman. Of me. That’s what I think.”
She almost lost it then, Adam saw, and prayed she would not. Scrapper Sara damn near cried as she turned and made for the stairs.
If she only knew that big, bad, Mad Adam Zuckerman wanted to howl louder than she did.
Chapter 7
Too bossy to bed.
The litany ran through Sara’s head as she climbed the stairs. It continued as she slipped off her married apron and wedding dress to reveal the breasts her husband had awakened, aching even now for his touch.
Too bossy to bed. Those words, along with her memory of their time in the upper room, haunted her as she slipped into her cold bed. Alone. Lonely.
Spinster Sara Lapp, a spinster no more, yet Sara Zuckerman, wife, mother, virgin still, curled into a ball, hugged herself tight and let her tears fall. Too bossy to bed.
When the cock crowed, Sara snuggled deeper into her dream man’s arms, in the upper room, on the big bed where Adam had touched her in the way only a husband could.
She slipped back into unbuttoning his broadfalls, his union suit. Adam opened her dress, until they were both free of their clothes and ... and….
Butterfly Garden Page 8
