Jeb's Wife

by Patricia Johns

  Jeb put the basket on the table. “It was good chicken. Thank you.”

  “I’m glad. You’re welcome.”

  Jeb dropped his gaze and crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t seem in a hurry to leave, and that might be good news. Maybe her brother had succeeded in convincing their neighbor that he was worth an investment. She looked up at the large man hopefully, and Jeb met her gaze for a moment, the intensity in his eyes making a shiver run down her arms.

  “Leah, we’ve been talking,” Simon said, straightening and holding the meat in place with one hand. “There’s a solution here that might work for all of us.”

  “Oh?” She looked between them. Jeb was looking away again.

  “Here’s the way I see it,” Simon went on. “We need fifty thousand dollars, and that’s not easy to come by. If we don’t get it, I’m in a lot of trouble. And Jeb here has been working this land for ... how long?”

  “Fifteen years,” Jeb replied.

  “And his cousin is about to inherit this farm right out from under him if he can’t suss up a wife.”

  Leah felt the heat in her face. “Simon, you can’t just arrange a marriage for money.”

  “Leah, you should get married,” Simon said. “What do you have right now? You’ve got a loser of a younger brother who keeps messing things up and a job teaching school in another community. I know you were hoping to find some solid widower out there who might be interested in marriage again, and unless there is a man in Rimstone you haven’t mentioned—”

  “No,” she said curtly. And that was true, she had been husband hunting in Rimstone. When Matthew dumped her and immediately picked up with Rebecca, she’d thought that perhaps the best way through a broken heart was to move on, too. She had the idea that maybe a widower with a houseful of young kinner might be happy enough to take on a wife who’d be happy raising the kinner he already had. But there wasn’t quite the abundance of widowers as a discarded single woman might hope.

  “Simon, you’re very naïve in some ways. If this is your idea of fixing your own problem, then forget it. Marriage is for life. Jeb could marry again, and you can’t just have some legal arrangement that will cut off any chance of a man finding love—”

  “I won’t.” Jeb’s deep voice reverberated through the room. Did he mean he wouldn’t find love again or wouldn’t marry again? It shouldn’t matter. The two went hand in hand.

  “Well, then, you see?” Leah shot her brother an annoyed look. Simon was making them both look foolish.

  “I don’t have fifty thousand dollars,” Jeb said. “I’ve saved a little, but my uncle didn’t pay me much with the understanding that he’d leave me the farm. The money I did make, I sent to my mamm. However, the inheritance does include some money meant to be used to buy seed and livestock and the like. If I inherited this land, I’d get that money, too, and I could use it for your brother’s debt.”

  Leah blinked at him. Jeb was seriously considering this?

  “You said you wouldn’t marry again,” she said.

  “I never meant to marry again,” he replied. “That might be a more accurate statement.”

  “I’m not being a wife on paper,” she said curtly. “I’d rather be single and keep my own name than do that.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” Jeb said.

  “Oh . . .” She felt the heat in her face, and she wished she could hide her embarrassment better than this. “If you’re asking me to find you a wife—”

  “I know what I am,” Jeb said, his voice low and deep. “I know I’m . . . disagreeable and scarred. I’m not exactly the kind of man a woman dreams of marrying. But I’ve also got my integrity. I’m not going to try to cheat my cousin out of that land. My uncle made it clear before he died that he wanted me to have that farm, but his will clarified his wishes a little more—he also wanted me married. What would that make me if I went around his wishes and put a woman’s name next to mine for money? I might have the farm, but I wouldn’t have the respect of anyone in this community. I couldn’t live with myself. It’s not worth it that way. So I’m not interested in putting someone on paper just to get some land. That would be dishonest, and this community can think of me what they will, but I’m not a liar.”

  Leah looked back toward him. Jeb stood there, his arms still crossed over his chest, but that dark, direct gaze was locked on her. There was no escaping it.

  His eyes were the most disconcerting, because they didn’t seem to match the rest of him. He was tall and muscular, but the scars drew the eye with their puckered ugliness. His eyes, however, held her with the same demand of an attractive man who might think he had something to offer.

  “Leah, walk with me outside,” Jeb said. “This is a conversation that should be had in private.”

  Leah looked toward her brother, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze, that steak held in place over the side of his face. She needed to clear this up—make sure Jeb didn’t think she was throwing herself at him for some money. She had her integrity, too.

  * * *

  Jeb held the door open, a faint breeze feeling good as it pressed against his shirt. Leah followed him, passing in front of him to get outside. She was shorter than him, coming up just past his shoulder, but she felt like a more commanding presence than she looked. Maybe that was the schoolteacher in her.

  The screen door banged shut behind them, and Jeb led the way, ambling away from the house and toward the small field where Leah and Simon’s two horses grazed. The sunlight was golden and warm, and bees buzzed lazily over the patches of purple wildflowers that grew up by the fence posts.

  “I’m sorry about my brother,” Leah said as she got to his side. “I told him he needed to talk to you himself if he wanted to arrange a loan. I had no idea he’d—”

  “I think it’s a workable idea,” Jeb said, cutting her off.

  “You do?” She frowned at him.

  “And you didn’t suggest it?” he asked.

  “No.” She swallowed. “I’m not the kind of woman who makes a business deal out of a marriage.”

  And he wasn’t that kind of man ordinarily either. He pulled off his hat and rubbed his fingers through his hair.

  “I’m not going to find another woman and marry again,” he said quietly. “That’s just a fact. And I had made my peace with that. One marriage was enough for me. At least a marriage with all the expectations attached to it.”

  “What expectations ... exactly?” she asked.

  “Love. Passion. Connection.” All the things he’d longed for in his first marriage to a woman who had loved someone else ...

  “Oh.” She smiled wistfully, and he recognized that look in her eyes. That was a woman who still dreamed of love.

  “You still want to marry one day,” he said.

  “I think my chances at marriage are past,” she said. “For me, that is. I’m thirty, you know. I can’t have children either. I know that’s a lot of information, but it explains it, doesn’t it? I’m both old and infertile. I’m not exactly in demand.”

  “You aren’t old,” he said with a low laugh.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Yah, he did. There always seemed to be more women than men in Amish communities, and the marriage market could be competitive. There came a point when it was simply too late, and a woman had to make her peace with that, too.

  “So maybe we could help each other,” he said quietly.

  “How?” she asked.

  “By getting married.”

  She blinked at him, then a faint smile tugged at her lips as if she were just getting a joke. “I don’t think you’re serious.”

  “I am, though,” he said. “The thing is, my best days are behind me. What I want is to work this farm. My cousin Menno hates me. I know that’s a hard thing to say about a family member for us Amish, but it’s true. I don’t even remember when it started now. Probably when we were kinner. My point is, my cousin and I aren’t going to farm together. There is no cozy family rec
onciliation on the horizon for us. But I’m not inheriting this land without a wedding.”

  “Why did your uncle make that stipulation?” Leah asked.

  “That was old Peter for you,” Jeb replied. “Even after all my injuries, he figured I still had something a woman might want in a man. I disagreed with him on that point. Anyway, I think it was his attempt to make me more appealing to the available women if I came with a farm.”

  “He meant well,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Something like that. Thing is, I can’t just go find some unsuspecting woman and ask her to marry me. I’m . . . well, you see me. I’m a bit of a romantic disappointment, I think. I know myself, and I’m better off single. But if there were a woman who could benefit from an arrangement with me . . . someone who wouldn’t expect too much and might see the arrangement as mutually beneficial . . .”

  Jeb paused, watching the emotions flit across her face. She didn’t answer, and he didn’t go on. She pursed her lips and looked down at her feet.

  If there were a woman who didn’t mind these ugly scars, who could see beyond them to the man in him. If there were a woman who might even learn to love him over time ...

  “Let’s look at this logically, then,” she said quietly. “Marriage could be beneficial to me in the community. I wouldn’t be an old maid anymore. I’d be married. It would make things easier with the other women. I won’t have kinner, but at least I could have a husband.”

  “Yah . . . I could be that,” he said.

  “If we were very clear on expectations, we might be able to make an agreeable arrangement,” she said.

  “Such as?” he asked, squinting.

  “Well . . . I can’t have kinner. You know that up front. And if kinner aren’t part of our deal, then I’d want a bedroom of my own. That part of marriage would be off the table.”

  No intimacy. The words hung heavy in the air. His first wife hadn’t wanted that kind of intimacy with him either. She’d been in love with an Englisher man, and her family had insisted upon their proper Amish marriage to try to make her forget about him. Jeb had no desire to push himself onto a woman in that way. If she didn’t want him, she didn’t want him. But they could still benefit, couldn’t they?

  “You don’t want ... to share a bed,” he said softly.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I think it’s better to just face this for what it is, don’t you? If we both stand to gain from this marriage, we don’t need to play games. Not between us, at least.”

  Marital intimacy was supposed to be a part of marriage, but he’d already been through a miserable marriage. He wasn’t interested in talking a woman into intimacy, or taking what crumbs were tossed in his direction, especially not now with his scarred body. Maybe this was the better way—less rejection all around.

  “What happens in a marriage bed, or doesn’t happen for that matter, is private,” Jeb said. “I can agree to that. I can give you your own bedroom so you can be most comfortable, too. But we’d have to live together. It would have to be a real partnership.”

  “A partnership?” she asked.

  “A friendship, perhaps. We’d have to mean those vows—that we won’t go looking for intimacy with others and embarrass each other that way, we’ll have each other’s best interests at heart, we’ll take care of each other when we get old or sick.”

  “Yah.” She nodded. “I agree with that. The important part of marriage.”

  So, they were going to pretend that the physical wasn’t important ... and maybe it wasn’t. If they did this, it would be a unique arrangement anyway, and their private deal wouldn’t be anyone else’s business.

  “Is there anything else we’d need to agree on?” Jeb asked.

  “Perhaps what we wanted from the marriage,” she said. “We can talk about what we don’t want, but what do we hope to gain from it? It’s a lifetime agreement, after all.”

  “Yah, a rather long-lasting one,” he agreed. “What do you want?”

  “I want social acceptance,” she said. “I want our community to see me as a wife. I want to be a legitimately grown woman at the sewing circle. So there would be a few social gatherings we’d go to together, and we’d never let anyone know about our private arrangement, or the women wouldn’t respect me at all. It would have to be seen as a real marriage, a love match.”

  “I could . . . keep up appearances,” he said.

  Whatever that might look like. He wasn’t keen on going to barn raisings and hymn sings, but he could do one or two to help her solidify her position as a wife in the community. And maybe it would feel nice to have the same respect of “married person” afforded to him.

  “And what do you want from this arrangement?” she asked. “Besides the farm, I mean.”

  “Peace in my home,” he said quietly.

  She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  “No fighting,” he clarified. “No anger simmering beneath the surface. No name-calling. No jokes at the other’s expense. I’d want quiet and respect.”

  “Quiet and respect,” she murmured.

  “Going both ways, of course,” he clarified. “I’m not asking you to wait on me exactly, but the women’s work would fall to you, obviously. I’d be working the farm on my own, so I’d be out there dawn to dusk ... and maybe even later. So I’m not saying I’d be a hard husband or anything. It’s just that in my first marriage—” No, he didn’t want to get into that. The past was the past, and it wasn’t even her business. “I’m just asking you not to . . . be cruel. That’s all. And I’ll do my very best by you.”

  “I wouldn’t be mean to you,” she said, shaking her head, and the look in her eyes looked genuinely confused. “I can promise you that much, yah. No name-calling—obviously. No teasing or barbed words. I don’t know what you lived with before, Jeb, but that sounds awful to me, too.”

  “I suppose that’s a good thing,” he said with a nod. He already felt like he’d said too much there, but if he was thinking about marrying her, he’d better be clear about it. “I’m a private man, and I’d want my business to stay that way.”

  “Agreed,” she said.

  Jeb looked down at her, the wind having worked a tendril of her auburn hair free and her brown eyes meeting his earnestly.

  “So that’s the fine print, I suppose,” he said, and he smiled faintly. “Do you need to pray on this? Sleep on it? Take some time? We have three weeks until my deadline to wed is up.”

  “I don’t have three weeks,” she said simply. “The Englishers gave Simon two weeks to come up with the money.”

  “So, time is of the essence,” he murmured.

  “Yah.” She sucked in a breath, looking at him hesitantly. She was waiting for him to do this—make it official.

  Was he crazy here? He’d spent the last fifteen years convinced that being on his own was the best thing, and now within a space of a few hours, he was going to ask a woman to marry him for convenience, without any of the marital sweetness after the lamp was blown out?

  Lord, am I making a mistake?

  But the heavens were silent, save for the twitter of birds overhead, and he looked down at the woman in front him—her soft eyes, the lines just forming around them, her face looking pale with the pressure of the moment.

  If he didn’t want to lose this farm, he knew what he had to do ... and it wasn’t like he was going to marry again. He was scarred, ugly, undesirable to the women of Abundance. He’d be alone for the rest of his life otherwise.

  “Well, then,” he said, clearing his throat. “Leah, taking into account all the things we’ve just talked over, will you marry me?”

  His breath caught in his throat as he looked down at her. Those pale cheeks pinked then, and she smiled.

  “Yah. I think I will.”

  Jeb laughed softly. “Okay, then. Am I supposed to kiss you? Or do we skip that?”

  “Maybe skip it,” she said, and she dropped her gaze.

  “Right.” He cleared his throat. “
I’ll talk to the bishop, then, and see if he can read our banns this week at service, and then I’ll go to the lawyer and make sure the papers are ready for the day after our wedding. Then I’ll give you the money, and you can take care of that.”

  His mind was already skipping ahead. There would be things to do to get ready for a wife coming home to his house ... but it would indeed be his house. The land, the house, the cattle, the very fence posts would be properly his, and no one could take them away.

  “Thank you, Jeb,” she said, and he felt her hand press against his scarred forearm, then she pulled her hand back and winced. “Sorry.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” he said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  She reached out purposefully, as if willing herself to do it, and touched his arm again. This time she didn’t pull back, and she didn’t wince. A lump rose in his throat. This was the first time anyone besides a medical practitioner had touched his scars, and it was oddly sweeter than a kiss would have been. Maybe she was right. There were more important parts to a marriage.

  Jeb pressed his hand over hers, then nodded toward the house. “Best tell Simon.”

  Leah pulled her hand back. “I will.”

  Then she headed toward the house, leaving him by the fence in the warm sunlight and the low drone of the bees.

  He was officially engaged. For the second time in his life.

  Chapter Four

  Leah couldn’t attend service that week after all. Tradition held that when the banns were announced, the betrothed would be spending a day together at the bride-to-be’s family home. She’d cook for her fiancé and they’d have a few hours together while everyone else was at service.

  They didn’t follow that tradition, however. She didn’t cook for Jeb, and he didn’t come to spend the day with her. He had too much work to do on his farm, and this wasn’t exactly a chance for two lovers to play house. No one would know the difference anyway—and if Simon suspected they’d skipped their private meal together, he had his own reasons to keep that information to himself; this wedding was for saving his skin.

  Rosmanda and Levi offered to host the wedding at their farm, a truly generous offer on her friend’s part. And the community would pitch in with food and physical labor. By Thursday, with her community behind her, Leah would be properly wed. Jeb would be her husband, for better or for worse. With the Amish, there was no going back once those vows were said. Jeb King would be both their immediate salvation and her lifetime of penance.