“You said the women are involved in all the matches,” Levi said, his boots crunching over the gravel drive. “What are they telling Ketura?”
“I don’t know,” Aaron replied. “We’ve kept our relationship a secret up until now. I don’t think they know.”
“She has no confidante?” Levi asked with a frown.
“All I know is what I tell her,” Aaron replied. “And I tell her that I’d face anything to be called her husband. Anything at all.”
They walked together up the steps, and Aaron opened the door first, stepping into the house. Anna and Josiah sat at the kitchen table, mugs of coffee in front of them. They looked up and gave Aaron a nod.
“The women are in the sitting room,” Anna said. “My fingers aren’t much help with the stitching anymore, I’m afraid. I can’t see enough.”
“But in her day, she made quilts for all of our children and grandchildren. They were so beautifully stitched that the bishop’s own wife came to learn from her.” Josiah gave a meaningful nod. “Come sit down, boys. Anna will get you a coffee—”
“And some pie. I made lemon meringue last night,” Anna said, slowly rising to her feet. “Sit . . . sit . . .”
There wasn’t anything else to be done, but to sit down and eat that pie. Normally, Levi would be joking with his hosts at the prospect of eating something delicious, but he wasn’t here to visit, and he wasn’t just a ride for Rosmanda, either. He’d come to see his aunt. He needed to know if her plans had changed at all.
But there wasn’t much else he could do. He didn’t belong in the sitting room with women at work, family or not. He looked in that direction, though, and he heard the sound of women’s laughter—light, quiet.
“Yah, pie would be nice,” Levi said.
Aaron sank into a chair next to him.
“So . . .” Josiah leaned forward. “Are we any closer to announcing a proposal this fall?”
Levi looked over at Josiah. On his last visit, the old man had been suggesting a match between Aaron and Rosmanda. Obviously, something had changed.
Levi looked over at Aaron, his eyebrows raised.
“I said we’d been keeping it a secret. But not anymore,” Aaron said.
“Is that wise?” Levi lowered his voice. Putting this out there . . . People would have opinions—and strong ones at that. It was a brave stance, especially without family support to buoy a couple up. Marriages were held together by wedding vows, but also by community.
“I’m going to the elders, Levi,” Aaron said. “I’m only telling you as a courtesy.”
It looked like Aaron had the support of old Josiah. For what it was worth. Anna came back to the table and put a trembling plate of pie in front of both Levi and Aaron.
“When a man loves a woman,” Anna said, slowly lowering herself back into her seat. “Sometimes it’s better to just move out of the way.”
Chapter Eleven
Rosmanda and Ketura worked hard for two hours. Together, they were able to finish much of the stitching. All spread out and with the backing nearly complete, Rosmanda’s quilt did look rather fine, she had to admit. It wasn’t finished, but it was closer to being complete now.
“It’s breathtaking.” Ketura smoothed her hand over the red and orange leaves.
Strange how work fueled by so much pain could be so lovely in the end. Rosmanda could remember every stitch, every piece, and the tears she’d blinked back as she worked. How many prayers had she said, the wordless kind where she didn’t even know what to ask anymore . . .
“Was it the same for you when your husbands died?” Rosmanda asked. “Was it easier if you kept your hands busy?”
“I built a whole business on it,” Ketura said.
“Do you want to marry again?” Rosmanda asked.
Ketura was silent. “I have good friends. I have family. I don’t know if it’s too much to ask. What about you?”
“I don’t think I have the strength to do it again right now,” Rosmanda said. “It’s a lot of work getting to know a man’s ways. I’d have to watch for his moods, his preferences, get to know his family . . . all while raising my babies. A woman shouldn’t shy away from work, but I’d rather put my energy into my needle and thread right now. It’s less complicated.”
Ketura smiled wanly. “Husbands are a different sort of work, aren’t they?”
“Wayne was a good man, but—” Rosmanda hesitated and looked over at Ketura. “It’s just that life is harder than you think it will be.”
“Yah, it is.” Ketura smiled. “You don’t have to talk carefully around me, you know. I understand.”
“The question is, should I hold off and stay single?” Rosmanda said. “Or do I find another good man and put my back into it?”
“You’re young,” Ketura said softly. “Find another husband. I don’t regret my second marriage for a minute.”
“But who?” Rosmanda sighed. “They want me to look a little closer at Aaron, truth be told.”
Ketura’s smile dropped. “Do they.”
Rosmanda froze—she’d hit a nerve there. “Ketura, I don’t mean to step out of my kitchen, so to speak, but I think that Aaron has a bit of a crush on you.”
Ketura’s gaze flickered toward Rosmanda, but then she put her attention into folding the pieces of quilt together again, her hands working quickly and efficiently as if completely separate from the rest of her.
“Does he, now?”
“Well, he’s here helping Josiah and Anna often enough, isn’t he?” Rosmanda took the other side of the quilt to help fold it.
“Yah. He’s very thoughtful that way,” Ketura replied.
“But I’ve seen the way he watches you—” Rosmanda paused, eyed her for a moment. She knew that look. It was the same one she’d gotten from Levi time and again—the one that woke things up inside of her that should have stayed dormant. Ketura’s cheeks pinked, and Rosmanda stopped. It suddenly made sense—but with Aaron? “Oh . . .”
“Oh, what?” Ketura snapped.
“Nothing.” Rosmanda pressed her lips together.
No, it wasn’t something to speak of. If Aaron was coming here for Ketura, then Ketura would have to be the one to set him straight. And maybe Ketura liked the attention. Maybe it gave her something different in her days.
“I’ll finish up the quilt the rest of the way alone,” Rosmanda said. “I’ll tell you when it’s done.”
“Yah, that would be good.” Ketura’s composure was back and she smiled. “Don’t feel pushed toward a man you don’t want, Rosie. You’re right about the work a husband takes.”
Or was Ketura asking her not to be pushed toward Aaron? There seemed to be something there—something Ketura wasn’t speaking of, but Rosmanda had had two boyfriends before she’d gotten married. So she did have some experience....
Rosmanda laid her quilt in the center of the plastic and wrapped it up again. Then she hoisted it up and headed toward the kitchen.
Levi and Aaron sat at the table with Josiah and Anna, and when Rosmanda came in, Levi rose to his feet.
“Here—” Levi took the heavy quilt from her arms, hoisting it more easily than she had in one arm, his muscles flexed under the weight of it. He met her gaze, but his expression was granite.
“Thank you . . .” she murmured.
“You ready?” The words were casual, familiar, but his expression still didn’t betray anything. He stood there with her plastic-covered quilt hanging over his arm, standing just a little bit closer to her than he needed to.
“Yah. We should get home,” she said, then turned toward Ketura. “Thank you for helping me today. I’ll come by with the quilt as soon as I’m done. A few more days at most.”
“Okay. See you then,” Ketura said, and there was pink in her cheeks again.
There was tension in the room, and Rosmanda looked around. All she could see was Aaron, sitting at the table like he properly belonged, and Ketura refusing to look at him.
Levi led the way o
ut, and Aaron came with them to help with hitching the horses to the buggy. It didn’t take long with both men working, and after Rosmanda got up onto the seat, Aaron lowered his voice, but not low enough, because Rosmanda could still hear his words.
“Will you talk to your daet again?” Aaron asked Levi. The horses stamped their impatience, and Rosmanda leaned back in the seat.
“I can’t promise that,” Levi said. “If you’re going to the elders, then do it. They’d have more influence over my daet than I would right now.”
“Yah. All right then.” Aaron stepped back, and Rosmanda dropped her gaze, pretending not to have heard. The elders? No one went to elders over an issue unless it was very serious, and her stomach clenched. What could be this important to bring it to the elders that involved their family? Had news about Jonathan gotten out? Did others know? He was in town somewhere, wasn’t he? And maybe he’d been talking . . . The possibilities tumbled through her mind.
Did Stephen and Miriam know now? How many people would know about her humiliating mistake if this got out? Her mouth went dry and she looked over at Levi, trying to read that stony expression.
Levi flicked the reins and they started. Levi looked back toward Aaron, who stood with his arms crossed, and it seemed as if Levi was going to say something, but he didn’t. He just looked at his friend and then turned forward again, the buggy wheels crunching over the gravel drive. Rosmanda looked back at Aaron to find him staring morosely at the back of the buggy.
“Why is he going to the elders?” Rosmanda asked.
“I shouldn’t say.”
“Is it about Jonathan?” she asked, and her voice sounded tight in her own ears.
“No.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. So far, he’d been hiding behind that stony expression of his—his real feelings locked away from her.
“Then what’s it about?” she pressed. “What’s happening?”
They reached the main road and Levi steered the horses onto it, and they picked up their pace.
“Levi, you’re shutting me out. I know there’s something going on, and if this has to do with Jonathan, I have the right to know.”
“It isn’t about Jonathan,” he said, and he looked over at her. “You really want to know? It’ll come out soon enough anyway.”
“Yah! What is it?”
“Aaron wants to marry my aunt.”
“He wants to . . .” Rosmanda’s mind spun. This really didn’t have anything to do with Jonathan, but—“Wait. He wants to marry her? It’s gone that far?”
“What do you mean—you noticed?” Levi said, shooting her a cautious look.
“Yah, I noticed. He looks at her like—” She licked her lips. “Like a man who wants to pull her into his arms if only the rest of us weren’t around.”
“He’s young enough to be her son,” he said.
Rosmanda shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to change the way he looks at her, does it?”
Whatever was happening between Aaron and Ketura didn’t seem to require any permission from the rest of them. Aaron wasn’t seeing a mother figure when he looked at Ketura—he was seeing the woman. But Rosmanda wasn’t naïve enough to think it would stop there. The community’s opinion mattered, too.
“He’s going to the elders to see if they can get help getting family support then?” Rosmanda asked.
“Yah, that’s his plan,” Levi replied. “And don’t get me wrong, I have no interest in stopping them if they’re set on it, but people will talk.”
“They always do,” she agreed.
Was a romance between Aaron and Ketura smart? Not likely. It certainly wasn’t the kind of risk that Rosmanda would take—especially not now. But Ketura had been married twice before, and she knew what she was getting into. She didn’t need the sheltering protection of younger family members to get in her way. If anyone could appreciate the difficulties ahead, it was Ketura.
“Aaron told me something today,” Levi said. The reins were tight in his hands, and his gaze stayed pinned to the road ahead of them.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“That your aunt advised you not to get any more serious with me,” he said.
Rosmanda paused, her mind going back to those days of freedom when no one knew her and she was the new, available girl in the community. Young men would stop and say hello, introduce themselves. There had been several young men who’d shown interest, but Levi had a way of turning her brain to mush. It wasn’t just that smoldering look of his . . . it was the way he could catch her hand and make her think of nothing but his touch. Aunt Dina hadn’t been quite so blind to the ways of young people as Rosmanda had believed, though. She’d sat Rosmanda down for a sober conversation about her future.
“Yah. She did,” Rosmanda agreed.
“I didn’t know that.”
“People talk . . .” Rosmanda said feebly. “They’d have opinions. They always do.”
“So I was the one not to be trusted?” he said.
“It wasn’t that—” She paused. Actually, it was that. “My aunt thought you wouldn’t have married me.”
And that had been the goal, hadn’t it? To find an Amish husband and settle down. She’d come to Abundance for that very reason. She wanted a wedding.
“You think she was right?” he countered.
“You’re single still,” she replied. If anything, Aunt Dina had been proven right over and over again. Levi had been trouble—too attractive for his own good and with a tendency toward drink.
Levi smiled slightly and glanced toward her. “So what did your aunt say, exactly?”
“That—” She laughed breathily. “That you were the kind of boy to make a girl lose her clear thinking. And that a girl needed clear thinking more than she needed to be kissed.”
“You were always pretty level-headed,” he countered.
“Oh . . .” She smiled ruefully. “Not always. You had this way of—” She stopped, her cheeks heating as she recalled those early days. He’d been so full of masculine energy, all of it directed right at her. She could still remember the way his lips had felt on hers . . . a whole lot like that kiss they’d shared in the chicken house.
“I had a way of doing what?” His gaze darkened and caught hers.
“Of distracting me from my focus,” she said. “I came to find a husband—you know that well enough now. I needed a solid, Amish man to take me. I wasn’t looking for—” She swallowed. “You know . . .”
“Distraction.” His lips curled up in a slow smile.
“Exactly . . .” Her reply was fainter than she’d hoped, and she swallowed again, looking out the other side of the buggy at the passing reeds that grew up out of the ditch.
Her hand was on the seat between them, and she felt his warm hand cover hers. He closed his fingers around hers, and then his thumb started to move slowly over the tips of her fingers. His movement was methodical and slow. Her breath caught—it was something he used to do back while she’d been wasting her time, as Aunt Dina had put it, but she didn’t pull away. Her mind was following the motion of his thumb going from tip to tip of her fingers, the rough skin of his work-toughened thumb scraping lightly against her fingertips.
“I kind of resent being called a distraction,” he said, his voice low, then he released her hand, and she pulled it back into her lap, a little embarrassed.
Was he teasing her? Reminding her of the old days?
But then Levi reined in the horses as they came under the low-hanging branches of a tree, and the buggy stopped. Rosmanda looked over at him, her breath shallow. Her fingers still tingled where he’d touched her, and she caught herself wishing he’d do it again—touch her like that. Levi dropped his gaze then.
“Why have we stopped?” she asked, and she closed her hands into fists in her lap. She couldn’t let herself think like that.
“Because I need to hear this. From you—straight.” Levi lifted his gaze again, and he shrugged slightly. “What made you think I’d n
ever marry you?”
* * *
This question mattered to Levi. Amish men married—eventually, at least. Why would she think he’d be any different? Rosmanda stared at him, her eyes wide and fixed on him.
“Do you really want to talk about this?” she asked.
“Yah. I do.” He shook his head. “Why would you assume that I had no interest in marriage?”
“It wasn’t that you wouldn’t marry me,” she said. “I think you would have, eventually. But it wasn’t about the kind of man I was naturally attracted to. It was about the kind of man I needed.”
“So our attraction—that meant nothing.”
“It wasn’t enough to build a marriage on,” she said. “Look at Jonathan! He got his wife pregnant before they were even wed, and is he the kind of husband a woman needs?”
“You’re comparing me to him?” Levi shook his head, her words sinking beneath his defenses. She thought he was that kind of man? It stung, and he felt his mouth turning down in distaste.
“My feelings for you were very similar to how I felt about Jonathan, so yes.” She nodded. “I did compare you to him.”
“Your feelings, how?” he demanded.
“My . . . attraction.” Rosmanda licked her lips. “It was powerful, sweeping me away before I could even think about things properly. All I could think about was him. All I wanted was him. And if he so much as touched my hand, I’d do anything he wanted.”
“You were young, though,” he countered. “Teenagers can feel things more strongly because it’s all so new. Besides, you didn’t do just anything I wanted.”
“No, I wasn’t quite so stupid anymore,” she said with a small, humorless smile. “But it was the same with you. I could be around the side of my aunt’s house, and thinking nothing of the future, of my reputation, or anything else—just what it felt like to be in your arms.”
“It was more than just physical between us, though,” he countered. “We talked . . . a lot, actually.”
“Not as much as you seem to remember,” she said softly.
Had it really been such a physical relationship? Because for him, it had sunk right down into his heart. He reached out and took her hand, turning it over so he could see her palm, and he ran his fingers over her soft skin.
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