A Plain and Sweet Christmas Romance Collection

by Lauralee Bliss

  “I did not even hear you come to bed last night,” she said.

  “I was only gone thirty minutes, but you were sound asleep.”

  Glory fell back against the pillow, her limbs leaden and her mind a thick fog.

  Marlin leaned over and laid a hand against her cheek. “Wie geht’s?” Are you all right? “Still tired?”

  Any word Glory could think of, whether in English or Pennsylvania Dutch, was wholly insufficient to describe the unfamiliar physical sensation that overwhelmed her.

  “You can write to your mamm,” Marlin said, “and she will write to you. You will have more information after Christmas.”

  She exhaled a shallow breath. “I know.”

  “Glory, what can I do for you?”

  He was sweet to want to do something, but Glory was the only person who could make her feet swing to the floor and push her frame upright.

  Except even she could not manage it. Her eyes drooped closed.

  “Glory? You will miss breakfast.”

  Behind closed eyelids was the peculiar sensation of light insisting its way through her resistance, but Glory could no more lift her eyelids than her feet.

  “I am not hungry,” she murmured. “A few more minutes.”

  “If you are unwell, I will explain to the family.”

  Unwell? Not precisely. Glory did not often fall ill, but illness had never felt like this. Even before her mother’s letter arrived the previous day, something was amiss. But if she told Marlin that it was because she did not fit in his family, she would wound him.

  “Perhaps I am unwell,” she said, prying her eyes open to look into his. “If I could rest awhile longer…”

  “Take your time,” he said. “We have plenty of help for the chores.”

  She knew that well. For seven weeks she had foundered for needfulness.

  “I promised I would return to help Leroy again,” Marlin said, “but I do not have to go.”

  “Yes. You should go. He will wonder what became of you.”

  Marlin hesitated, his black felt hat in his hand. “I will ask someone to check on you.”

  “No need. I will be up before anyone has to be concerned.”

  She thought he would lean in to kiss her. Cheek, lips, forehead—it would be his parting affection.

  But Marlin pushed up off the bed and shuffled across the wood floor out of the room.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Balmy,” Marlin said. “Must be right up there close to freezing.”

  “Hush,” Leroy said. “Just find the holes and jam some plaster in them.”

  Marlin heard the anxiety in his brother’s voice. He dragged a trowel through a tray of plaster, transferred the muck to a wall, and spread it strategically. Admittedly, Leroy’s barn did not have long sections where daylight was visible within direct line of sight, and the temperature inside the barn was warmer than outside. Yet at moments wind gusted like a knife to the lung, whistling through the turns that brought the outside in. Leroy, four years older than Marlin and three years married, was running his farm with limited capital. He managed essential repairs on the house and barn, which doubled as a stable, when a particular need became urgent. It may already be too cold for plaster to dry properly, but if they waited until January, they might as well wait until spring to find and fill the gaps. Marlin would not point out any of this. He had his eye on a farm not too far from here, but the value of the barn was questionable. Soon enough he would be relying on the generosity of his brothers.

  “Angels,” Marlin said, threatening to swipe plaster in the arc of an angel’s wings.

  “Sadie was quite pleased with the putz selection,” Leroy said.

  Marlin jiggled the water bucket. So far it had not frozen. This was a good sign.

  “I suppose Sadie has some ideas,” Marlin said.

  “She might.” Tight-lipped, Leroy eyeballed another hole.

  “Will she send the little ones out to help you?”

  “She might.”

  “Maybe the boppli are too young. Awfully cold for them anyway.”

  “Might be.”

  “But the wife might add a few suggestions.”

  “Might.”

  “Might be something I could do to help,” Marlin said. “If I knew what you had in mind, that is.”

  “Doubtful.” Leroy scraped his trowel on the side of a tray.

  “Seems to me you do not have much to say,” Marlin said.

  “Seems to me you ask a lot of nosy questions.”

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  “You are angling for a little more than that, but you will not find it here.”

  Marlin feigned indignation. “You doubt my motives?”

  “You will see the putz on Christmas Eve, same as everybody else.”

  “Only two days,” Marlin said. “Not much time.”

  “Then you should go home and get busy.”

  “Are we finished here?” Marlin scanned the most vulnerable barn wall.

  “Looks that way to me.” Leroy dropped his trowel in the water bucket. “I am sure Glory would like to have you home. I remember what it was like to be newly wed.”

  Marlin turned his back and scooped up work rags. He was less sure than Leroy of his wife’s welcome. Was she ill, or did she simply not want his company? He had been gone most of the day. If Glory was ill, he hoped she had let someone care for her.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The soup was cold, and the bread untouched. Glory had thanked Mrs. Grabill—Magdalena, her mother-in-law insisted she call her now—for going to the trouble of preparing soup for Glory when she must have made a full midday meal for her husband, David, and John and Marianne. Glory was grateful for the kindness, but she had not awakened when Magdalena carried the tray in. Why had no one warned her that adjusting to living in a new household could be so exhausting? Or that one disappointing letter would so strain her ability to cope?

  But she could not lie in bed another day, nor for the rest of this one. Glory pushed herself upright in the bed, leaned against the headboard, and reached for the glass of well water Magdalena had included on the undisturbed tray. Draining the liquid, she turned her thoughts toward dressing for an overdue trip to the outhouse. Once she and Marlin were in their own home, she could simply pull a cloak over her nightdress, but seven weeks among the Grabills had not yet provided the necessary ease for a quick dash. One way or another there would be a smile on her face when she went down the stairs and out the back door.

  She had just dropped a dress over her head and put her arms into the sleeves when a sharp rap on the door was followed swiftly by a turning doorknob.

  “Oh good, you are up.” Home from school, Lyddie entered the room. “You have not even put your hair up.”

  “I have been under the weather.”

  Glory had not been as forward as Lyddie when she was fourteen. Surely she never would be. Their temperaments were nothing alike. She picked up her hairbrush and began arranging her thick tresses.

  “How was school?” Glory asked. It was either make conversation or ask Lyddie to leave.

  Lyddie rolled her eyes. “I suppose it is sinful to look forward to a school break simply to get away from one of your classmates.”

  Glory knew well the sensation. Minnie Handelman.

  “What is her name?” Glory asked.

  Lyddie’s dark eyes widened. “I should not have said that.”

  “It is all right. You can tell me.”

  Lyddie’s hesitation vanished. “Madeleine Madison. She thinks she is the star of the Christmas program.”

  Glory pinned up one braid. “When I was in school, everyone had a part in the program.”

  “It is still that way. Poems, readings, songs. But every day when we rehearse, Madeleine Madison has at least three suggestions for how to change things. I am not sure how much more Miss Draper can take.”

  “She will manage,” Glory said. “Teachers always do.”

  “Will you come t
o the program?”

  Glory flushed with the realization that she had not considered the question before this. All the families with children in the school attended. She had not been since her own eighth-grade year, but she was a Grabill now. Marlin’s sister was her sister.

  At least it ought to feel that way.

  Chapter 4

  Marlin stamped snow off his boots in the sparse entryway off the Grabill kitchen and then wiped them dry on the mat. Inside, a hearty beef aroma wafted from a pot on the stove set over a simmering heat. Marlin paused long enough to fill his lungs with the fragrance but resisted the temptation to lift the lid and peek at the supper menu. Instead, he took the back stairs two at a time in long lunges. The door to his bedroom was open, and sounds of a woman’s light movements buoyed his expectations. Whatever had kept Glory in bed that morning had passed.

  He made a one-quarter pivot on his left foot to enter the room.

  “Lyddie,” he said.

  “Hello, Marlin.”

  Lyddie looked into a small dull mirror not much good for anything other than confirming that facial features were in their proper positions. Glory had never complained. Her nimble fingers could braid and roll her hair under a prayer kapp without confirmation from a piece of glass.

  “Where is Glory?” Marlin asked.

  “She will be right back.” Lyddie winked and returned her attention to the mirror, trying out a practiced smile and then a somber pinch in her cheeks.

  Marlin surrendered. “What are you doing, Lyddie?”

  “I have a solo in the Christmas program,” Lyddie said, her tone chastising Marlin for being duller than the mirror. “Glory promised to listen to me practice when she gets back.”

  Marlin looked past his sister to the rumpled bed. Glory cannot have been up for very long. From the first day of their marriage she insisted the bed be made promptly. Underneath a flour sack dish towel that his mother had cross-stitched a few cheery flowers on, the contents of a tray on the bedside table remained in a careful arrangement that was his mother’s handiwork as well. John used to call it the “sickly tray,” but the Grabill children had to be good and sick to warrant a sickly tray. Marlin’s stomach lurched.

  “Maybe Glory could listen to your song another time,” Marlin said.

  “But she promised.”

  “She does not feel well today.”

  “She said she was fine.” Lyddie squared her shoulders and folded her hands at her waist. “It is my last Christmas program, and finally I have a part that is not complete twaddle.”

  Complete twaddle? Where had Lyddie learned to say something like that? It was a good thing she was leaving school in a few months.

  “Maybe everyone would like to hear you sing after supper,” Marlin said. When Glory returned, he wanted a few minutes alone. Their bedroom should be a sanctuary for privacy, not a music practice hall.

  “I do not mind singing again later,” Lyddie said.

  Marlin sighed. Glory must have given in to similar duress.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Glory knew that the ninth step creaked, and even in the middle of the day when the noise would disturb no one, she did not like to provoke it. Having shed her wet boots in the mudroom, she moved with only the sound of thick socks sliding against polished wood, which was almost no sound at all.

  At the top of the staircase she turned left, her eyes already on the third door on the right. The door was open, as she had left it, but Lyddie was not merely talking to herself. Marlin’s murmuring tones answered Lyddie’s higher pitch. Glory could not make out his words. Though he could laugh with abandon at even slight amusement, Marlin was not one to raise his voice simply to be heard more clearly—and certainly not to be heard from down the hall.

  Glory paused outside the door, leaning against the wall out of sight. She had promised Lyddie she would be right back, but if in her absence Magdalena had called for her youngest child’s attention, Glory would not have been disappointed to return to an empty room.

  “You have been practicing for weeks,” Marlin said softly.

  “Months!” Lyddie’s exclamatory correction was swift. “Miss Draper started planning the program almost as soon as school started in September.”

  “Then it is sure to be a success,” Marlin said, “and you will do well.”

  “My English friends who go to the German Lutheran Church say that sometimes they have solos in their service.”

  “Is that what you want?” Marlin asked. “To sing a solo in church?” Music in their church was limited to congregational hymns with no accompanying instruments.

  “Not exactly,” Lyddie said. “I just wonder what it would be like.”

  “Many families in our church have children in the school. They will be there to hear you sing.”

  “I know. And I will be ready.”

  Glory inhaled and exhaled with intention. Then she pushed off of the wall and stood in the doorframe.

  Marlin’s head turned, and his eyebrows lifted. Glory loved his face and all its expressiveness. Even the scruffy beard, filling in far more slowly than Marlin would have liked since becoming a married man and finally being allowed to let it grow, was adorable. Perhaps one day it would be long and white and soft the way her own father’s beard was.

  “You are not going back to bett, are you?” Lyddie asked.

  Glory shifted her eyes from Marlin to the bed. Truth be told, she would not mind crawling back into it. Going downstairs, across the yard, and back again had sapped her energy, which had been feeble to begin with.

  “No, of course not,” Glory said. “I was just about to straighten the quilts.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Marlin adjusted his weight to one side and caught Glory’s eye. She was no more rested than when he left her hours ago. While she might indeed make up the bed, she would still want to stretch out on it.

  He should not have left her last night, even for thirty minutes, and he should not have gone to Leroy’s farm two days in a row. He was home now. He would be a husband.

  “Lyddie,” Marlin said, “Glory needs to rest.”

  “This will only take three minutes,” Lyddie said.

  Lyddie was fourteen, but when she made up her mind about something, it was as if she was seven all over again.

  “Maybe later,” Marlin said, his eyes on his bride. Had she been so pale this morning? Or last night?

  “That is what Mamm used to say when we were little,” Lyddie countered, “and later never came.”

  “Lyddie,” Marlin said, his voice growing less conciliatory.

  “It is all right,” Glory said. “I will be fine.”

  Marlin was not persuaded. “Just one stanza.”

  “Fine,” Lyddie said. “One stanza. One minute.”

  “If you do not mind, I will sit in the reading chair to listen,” Glory said. “You will have my full attention.”

  Marlin followed Glory across the room and stood behind the chair, one hand on her shoulder. Lyddie straightened her shoulders, held still, and created a dramatic moment of anticipation. Even if the teacher had not been coaching her, Lyddie, of all the Grabills, would have come to this technique on her own.

  The lyric, pure tone flowing from the perfect O of his sister’s mouth stunned Marlin.

  How did he not know she could produce such beauty?

  “Silent night!” she sang. “Holy night! All is calm, all is bright.”

  Glory’s fingers patted Marlin’s hand on her shoulder.

  “‘Round yon virgin, mother and child, holy infant, so tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.”

  She stopped, reminding Marlin that she had agreed to his condition of just one stanza. Somehow, when Marlin was not paying attention, Lyddie had become a young woman and exchanged a child’s sweet voice for a startling soprano. She had a habit of humming during her chores, but no one else in the family sang outside of church or the young people’s Singings. Lyddie was too young for Singings that
Marlin and Glory attended until they married, and Marlin had crossed the aisle to sit with his father among the men during church services before Lyddie was born and had never heard her sing during worship.

  Though Lyddie stood still and silent now, the room burst with the beauty of her gift.

  Glory spoke. “That is lovely, Lyddie. Lovely.”

  Marlin stumbled toward his sister. “I confess, I had no idea.”

  “I can still practice,” Lyddie said. “I can do better. I want to give God my best.”

  “There is no need,” Glory said. “As long as you know the words, the music will be gorgeous.”

  “Perfect,” Marlin said, “it’s perfect, as every Christmas carol should be.”

  He glanced at Glory, whose eyes glistened. Tears? The streaming afternoon light catching her eyes for a split second? A plea for…Marlin could not finish the thought.

  Chapter 5

  Thank you.” Glory stood. Beneath her dress, her knees wobbled, and she did not let go of the chair until she found her balance. One glass of water all day was not sufficient nourishment. She would make herself eat the bread on the tray.

  Lyddie took a long step sideways. “Mamm will be looking for me. Work on a farm never stops.”

  Glory’s stomach soured, putting her off the notion of eating the bread. What must her mother-in-law think of her? The English would call it lollygagging. Dawdling. Malingering. And maybe they were right.

  Lyddie shuffled out of the room, and Marlin closed the door behind her.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  She neither nodded nor shook her head.

  “Glory, what’s wrong?”

  “If I knew, I would tell you.”

  “Something is wrong, then.” Marlin approached her.

  “Just a passing gloom.” Surely even Marlin had despondent moments. “I will be all right. Just give me a minute.”

  “You should go back to bed.”

  “But—”

  Marlin shook a finger. “It is still three hours until supper. You may as well rest until then.”

  “I should help with the vegetables, or at least set the table.”

  “My sisters will do that,” Marlin said. “Someday you will be the mamm, but right now you are a bride, and the household will run as it always has.”