A Plain and Sweet Christmas Romance Collection

by Lauralee Bliss

  The carriage slowed as they neared the hotel.

  There were seven villages in the Amana Colonies, all of them circled together on a large plot of prairie land their ancestors bought in eastern Iowa. Liesel, her childhood friend, had invited them to spend Christmas with her and her family here in this main village.

  The carriage stopped by the hotel built mainly for the men who came to do business with Amana’s woolen mill. It would be their residence for the rest of the month.

  As they waited for the coachman to open the door, Sophie glanced back down at Meredith’s lap. Same yellow lion on the page. Same tears rolling off his cheeks.

  It was two weeks before Christmas, and Sophie had promised Liesel that she’d stay in Amana until the new year. But Meredith didn’t want to be here—she didn’t seem to want to be anywhere except lost in the pages of a book.

  She desperately hoped that her daughter would find healing here, but if she didn’t improve, perhaps they would go back to Des Moines the day after Christmas.

  John had invited her and Meredith over for Christmas Day, but returning to the city meant so much more than just having dinner with John’s family. It meant flitting among the city’s festive balls for the entire week and attending dinners with Iowa’s governor and city leaders. It meant pasting on a smile when everyone asked how she was doing, pretending that she was fine, pretending that she didn’t miss her husband and that even though there were thousands of people in Des Moines, she’d never felt lonelier in her entire life.

  Their grand house on Sherman Hill felt like a tomb to her, and she suspected it felt the same to Meredith. Ever since Conrad’s death, it seemed that both she and her daughter had been wandering around in isolation. Meredith couldn’t seem to focus on her schoolwork nor was she interested in spending time with other girls her age. It was almost as if she felt guilty for having fun.

  Sophie understood. She missed Conrad desperately. Every day. Sometimes all she wanted to do was slip back under the black cloak of mourning and stay there forever, but Conrad would say there was still a lot of life to be had for both her and Meredith.

  John certainly thought a year was long enough for her to mourn. After Thanksgiving dinner—in front of his two daughters and Meredith—he’d asked her to become his wife. She’d promised him an answer before the end of the year. Then she’d left Des Moines while he was in the District of Columbia, leaving behind only a note that she would see him in January. It was a cowardly move, but she needed to think more about their future before she gave him a decision. And she couldn’t seem to think at all in the city.

  John hadn’t swept her off her feet like Conrad had so long ago, but his wife passed away six months ago. He was a senator in Iowa, and he needed a hostess for his beautiful home, a mother for his two daughters. And a devoted wife to help him campaign for the next election.

  She wasn’t quite sure what she needed and had taken no offense to his matter-of-fact proposal. The practicalities of a respectable marriage were much more important than any romantic notions either of them might have entertained in their youth.

  John needed a wife, and she was desperate for a father for Meredith, even more than a husband for herself. With Conrad’s successful law practice and good stewardship, he had left her and Meredith with a regular income from his investments. They would have to sell their beautiful home, move into something much smaller, but they would make do with the money they had.

  The spendthrift practices from her childhood lingered with her. She had learned how to manage a kitchen house when she was eighteen, bustling around to feed three meals a day to forty men and women, and if she continued to manage their money well, she and Meredith would be in need of nothing in the material realm.

  Yet it felt as if they were in need of everything.

  The coachman opened the door, and Sophie climbed out, the cold breeze ruffling her long dress. The air smelled like baked apples, chimney smoke, and dried grass. Pine trees, hot coffee, and bread fresh from a brick oven.

  Meredith closed the cover to her book and tucked it at her side, but she didn’t move.

  “Come inside,” Sophie said, offering Meredith her hand. “We’ll unpack and eat.”

  Meredith glanced at her hand, but she didn’t take it. Instead, she stepped out of the carriage on her own, onto the icy walkway.

  Sighing, Sophie pointed her daughter toward the door of the small hotel.

  Even though she was back in the place she’d once called home, her heart still felt homeless.

  Chapter 2

  Sophie!” Liesel Hirsch called, her long skirt lifted up to her knees as she rushed down the sidewalk masked with mud and snow, an hour after Sophie and Meredith’s carriage arrived in Amana.

  Sophie leaned against a hitching post, smiling at the sight of her dear friend hurrying toward her, the strings on her prayer cap trailing behind. None of her friends in Des Moines would ever shout her name in the street like that. And they would most certainly never hoist their skirts like a dance hall girl and burrow their way through the slush.

  The chill in Sophie’s arms warmed as Liesel wrapped both arms around her shoulders and then stepped back to study Sophie’s mossy-green velvet dress, the fur-lined neck and matching stole that kept her warm. “You look beautiful,” Liesel proclaimed.

  “So do you,” Sophie said. The simplicity of her calico dress and woolen shawl was a welcome sight compared to all the feathers, ribbons, and bows found on women aspiring to be fashionable in the city. Liesel’s pale blond hair was tucked under her elegant cap, the black tatting on the edges a perfect frame around her heart-shaped face.

  Liesel glanced up and down the walkway. “Where’s Meredith?”

  “Back at the hotel,” she replied. “Since she turned thirteen, she seems to be tired all the time.”

  Liesel smiled. “So does my Peter.”

  Sophie clutched her hands together. “I can’t wait to see him and Cassie.”

  “They are looking forward to seeing you, too, but are most excited about seeing Meredith.”

  “Of course they are,” Sophie said with a laugh.

  “They’ve been writing down their many questions to ask her about Des Moines.”

  Liesel had married an outsider named Jacob Hirsch, a man from Chicago who’d stumbled into their colony the same year Sophie married Conrad. Jacob already had a daughter named Cassie, and the moment Liesel met him and Cassie, she’d fallen in love with them both. Jacob eventually joined the Amana Society, and he and Conrad worked together dredging the millrace until Conrad left to attend law school.

  She and Liesel had dreamed of raising their children together in the colonies, but in order for Conrad to achieve his dream, she’d had to sacrifice hers. It had been worth it, giving up her dreams to marry Conrad, but sometimes she wondered what would have happened if Conrad had decided to continue working on the millrace instead of becoming an attorney. He would probably still be here for their daughter.

  “Are you hungry?” Liesel asked, nodding toward the brick kitchen house at the end of the block.

  “Yes, but we’ll eat our dinner at the hotel.”

  Liesel looked offended. “Our food is much better than anything you’d order there.”

  “I can’t argue with that.” Sophie waved her gloved hand in front of her. “But we can’t impose.”

  “Pfui,” Liesel exclaimed in German. “It’s not an imposition. I’m the kitchen boss now, and I want you to eat with us.”

  Sophie sighed. “Not everyone will feel the same.”

  This time it was Liesel who waved her hand, reassuring her. “They’ll be fine.”

  Sophie smelled the baked apples again in the air. Sausage and sauerkraut. “I’ll have Meredith with me,” she said, one last excuse to avoid the community of people she once thought she’d never leave.

  “I hope so,” Liesel replied, smiling. “Cassie will be disappointed if she doesn’t come.”

  The two girls would be so different,
Sophie thought. Cassie, confident and strong, raised by a community with the benefits of hard work and a strong faith. Her sweet Meredith, reared by a loving family up on Sherman Hill who loved God, too, but lacked the kinship of their neighbors.

  Even though she was loved, her daughter had begun slipping away in the months before Conrad’s death. After he died, Meredith had plunged inside herself so deeply that Sophie only caught glimpses of the young woman who’d once been confident as well.

  Sophie didn’t know what to do about her daughter’s insecurity, the self-doubts. Growing up in Amana, any self-doubt of hers was quickly drowned in the abundance of opportunities for the youth here to thrive.

  Liesel glanced into the window of the general store, toward the clock on the wall. “I have to get back to work,” she said. “Dinner is at eleven thirty.”

  Sophie nodded. “We’d love to join you.”

  Sophie returned to the hotel and climbed the narrow steps up to the third floor. Meredith didn’t stir as Sophie sat on the narrow bed beside her.

  Her daughter had unbraided her hair, and the dark tresses splashed over her shoulders like the rolls of an ocean’s stormy waves. While she was sleeping, Sophie gently took Meredith’s hand. It seemed gaunt to her. Frail. Meredith had been losing weight since Conrad died, and if she lost any more, Sophie feared that she might slip through the cracks of the wooden floor.

  Sophie rubbed the top of her daughter’s hand. “Sweetheart, it’s time to wake up.”

  Meredith groaned.

  “We’re going to eat dinner at Liesel’s kitchen house.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Meredith said, shifting to her other side. But not before Sophie saw her red-rimmed eyes. The tears that stained her cheeks.

  “They’re having sausage and apple pie,” she continued, desperate to ignite any sort of spark inside her daughter. Desperate for any emotion at all.

  Meredith pulled her hand away one more time.

  Standing, Sophie quietly donned her coat again and backed toward the door. Meredith would be safer here in this hotel than she’d ever been in Des Moines, even with the household staff bustling around. Sophie would be back in less than an hour, and then she would try and coax Meredith to eat a meal downstairs.

  Her shoulders slumped as she reached for the doorknob.

  Perhaps in Amana, her daughter would find healing for her heart as well.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Will Kephart stomped his boots on the rug outside the brick communal kitchen—called Hirsch Kitchen House—and the snow he’d picked up on his walk from the mill scattered across the entry. The Speisesaal—dining hall—didn’t open for ten more minutes, but there wasn’t any harm in arriving early. He needed a few extra minutes to clear his head anyway.

  Work at the woolen mill had fallen behind this winter, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to inspire his crew to work any faster. Already they worked long days, trying to meet the demand for the blankets and fabric they’d become known for, but they needed to increase their production right away.

  Already they produced three thousand yards of woolen goods every day, but they needed another five hundred yards daily between now and January 15th to supply the largest order they’d ever received—a shipment of black wool for Sears, Roebuck & Co. No matter how he configured the workers and space, he couldn’t find a way to make up those extra five hundred yards. Fifteen thousand total in the next month.

  Most of his thirty-four years had been spent working on Amana’s farmland, cultivating their crops with a crew of men who enjoyed being outside, getting their hands dirty. His grandfather, Matthias Roemig, managed the mill, but his health was beginning to fail. Matthias had pulled Will inside earlier this year to help, saying he needed someone who could inspire a group of people to work well together and complete a large task.

  Still they were behind, and Will needed to find a way to increase their production, or they would have to cancel this order.

  No one in their society had ever canceled a woolen order before—and he had no desire to become the first—but what else could he do?

  Men and women began lining up on the walkway behind him, most of them wearing long black coats made from the mill’s wool. Each of them had a specific job to perform in the Amanas. Some of them cooked in one of the colony’s kitchen houses; others washed laundry, painted walls, repaired machines as a millwright, laid bricks for their new buildings, cared for the animals and gardens, or wove the mill’s wool. Several women cared for the younger kinder in the kindergarten, and each village had a teacher to instruct the school-age children in the mornings. In the afternoons, the older youth labored alongside the adults.

  Work and their daily prayer meetings kept all of them grounded as a society and deepened their faith in God and His Spirit as He continued to meet their needs.

  As he waited, Will prayed silently that God would also help him meet the community’s needs through his work at the mill. None of them made money for themselves, but the sales of their wool provided the food the community couldn’t grow, paid their taxes to Iowa, and purchased any supplies they couldn’t make for themselves.

  In the corner of his eye, Will saw the flash of a green dress, one worn by a worldly woman walking down the sidewalk. Visitors often came to the Amana Colonies in the summer, some to buy wool, some for refreshment. Others just wanted to gawk at the unique way of living. It was strange for them to have visitors in the winter though, especially in the weeks before Christmas.

  Perhaps this woman was here to purchase woolen goods. If so, he would ask her to come back in the summer. Hopefully, the mill would be on track by then, and he would be back out in the fields with his crew of men.

  The woman’s black-ribboned hat tilted slightly, covering the side of her face. He didn’t want to stare, but he watched curiously as she stepped into the line for the kitchen house. With her brightly colored dress, flaring out from her waist, and black ribbons, she looked like a peacock, fanning her plumage over a flock of plain birds.

  Did she think this was a restaurant? Outsiders were often confused about their way of living, especially when they realized that the Amana people ate together in a communal kitchen instead of cooking in the rooms they occupied in the large houses around town. He, for one, had never understood why women outside the colonies preferred to make meals in their own home—but then again he’d never understood much about women.

  Here in Amana, they could be much more productive by having only a small group make their meals while the remaining members worked for the community six days a week before resting on the Sabbath. None of them concerned themselves with tasks outside their assigned duties, but his assigned job seemed overwhelming right now.

  Two younger women chuckled behind him, and he turned back toward the door.

  Jacob Hirsch, his friend and co-manager during the summer months, stopped along the sidewalk nearby and called out to him. “I didn’t think you were allowed to eat anymore.”

  Will pretended to hush him. “No one knows I’m here.”

  Jacob thumbed over his shoulder. “You need to get your men out on the field.”

  “We don’t have time to play baseball,” Will replied. These days they hardly had time to attend the evening prayer meetings. The elders would never agree to let them play a sport for the afternoon.

  “Baseball might be exactly what you need.” Jacob glanced at the unmarried women behind Will. “That and a wife.”

  The women giggled again, and Will wished he was on the diamond, bat in hand. Ready to sprint around the bases.

  Just because Jacob—once an outsider himself—had enjoyed his marriage to Liesel for well over a decade, didn’t mean that Will needed to marry as well.

  As Jacob moved toward the end of the line, Will didn’t continue their conversation. If he turned again, he would need to exchange pleasantries with the women behind him, and he didn’t want either of them to think he was interested in anything beyond cordiality. Neither woma
n had ever tried to speak with him, but they stared at him across the aisle at church and at the prayer meetings. It was terribly distracting, but he was relieved, at least, by their reservations to converse.

  While some of the older women had hinted in years past about him marrying one of their daughters, no one had openly tried to push him into marriage. Most people in their society seemed to understand that he resented being pushed into anything, including being forced into this management position at the mill.

  The door to the kitchen house opened, and he moved inside quickly, forty people flooding into the dining hall behind him.

  The Amana men and women sat on benches around separate trestle tables—the women eating at the long table on the left, the men on the right. Both tables were covered by a white oilcloth and topped with tureens of barley soup and platters filled with sausages. There was a kettle with hot coffee on each table, pitchers of fresh milk, and serving bowls with cabbage slaw.

  Each man and woman silently thanked God for the meal then began filling their bowls with soup, their plates with the food. The meals in the colonies were hearty, but the mealtimes didn’t last long because each person needed to return to his or her job.

  Will took a long sip of coffee and then glanced back over at the women’s table. The woman in the green dress was sitting among the Amana ladies, quietly spooning soup into her mouth.

  He stopped suddenly, coffee dripping onto his plate.

  This woman wasn’t just any visitor from the outside. It was Sophie Henson Keller sitting across the dining hall from him, all dressed up like a city girl.

  He turned back toward his food, ducking his head slightly. He’d heard rumors about her returning to Amana after she and Conrad married, but he hadn’t seen her since she’d left the colonies. And he certainly didn’t want to see her today.

  He studied the sausage and cabbage on his plate but didn’t feel hungry anymore. Glancing down the narrow table, he saw Emil Hahn studying Sophie, too. Did he recognize her from when they all used to play as children? They’d all attended the same Lehrschule with Conrad, too. Learned the same songs together. How to write and do arithmetic and knit.