“What about the men? Were there Lighthorse? Was it just infantry? How many?”
“Mostly infantry. Hot, stinking, hungry infantry, nervous as jackrabbits about the British coming up from Camden.”
Nicholas smashed a fist into the tabletop. “We’ll lick them this time, not like Camden.”
Matthias rolled his eyes. Danke Gott, Jacob thought, he was not on his brother’s path. One warrior offspring was tribulation enough. Jacob cast about for words that might douse Nicholas’s fire. For wisdom. Wisdom, if he could yet lay claim to any, had come slowly.
“There’s no ‘we’ to it, son,” Jacob said quietly. “They’re the army. We’re Moravians. Our allegiance is to this land, yes, and to the Continental government, but more to our community. Colonel Armstrong understands this. He respects our decision not to fight.”
Even if Sim Scaife did not, Jacob amended to himself. But he refrained from further explanation. He remembered only too well that his response to parental logic at Nicholas’s age had been rank rebellion. And he was loath to mar his homecoming with a pitched battle.
“But did you see any Lighthorse?”
Jacob repressed an oath of dissatisfaction. Wisdom was lost on Nicholas. “One division passed me on the way home,” he said, answering again as if the matter were of no importance.
“British?”
Retha intervened. “’Twas probably those Continentals that rode through yesterday. Nothing to be excited about. Nothing to worry about either.”
“Who’s worried?” Nicholas said with adolescent bravado.
Retha raised an eyebrow, and Nicholas subsided.
Jacob looked at his wife in mild surprise, wondering what he had missed while he was away. Had Retha spoken to Nicholas about his attitude toward war? Jacob had had no success in dampening his son’s interest. He had explained the community’s neutrality. To that, he had regularly added discouraging tales of the misery and injustice of war. Nothing had worked. But Nicholas seemed to respond to Retha.
For the present, Jacob accepted his son’s silence and addressed the food piled high on his plate. Good food. Hearty food. Retha could also cook.
“But Papa—” Matthias pushed back his nearly full trencher and steepled his fingers. “We thought you were wounded.”
“Not wounded, son.” Jacob speared a fat dumpling. Nicholas’s rebellion quelled, he really was hungry.
“Then why did you sleep the whole day?” he asked in a small worried voice.
“Because I was bone tired.”
“Not wounded?”
“Wounded? No!” Jacob bit into the salty, tender fruit of Retha’s labors, half attending to his son’s innocuous question.
Eyes glimmering, Matthias stammered. “But you—you always say we’re not supposed to lie.”
Jacob set his utensils on his plate. From his younger, milder son, such a statement was tantamount to revolt. “That’s right, son.”
“But I saw your bloody socks,” Matthias accused.
“My socks…” Jacob repeated.
“When she—” He sounded out the word awkwardly, as if unsure what to call his stepmother to his father’s face. “When she let us look in on you.”
“Blisters,” Jacob answered, taking care to be very serious. “You saw blisters.”
Matthias jutted his chin out. “They bled.”
“That’s not the same thing as being wounded, son. I wasn’t attacked and I didn’t fight.”
“You were hurt.”
“But safe, son. I’m home safe, and you’re safe, too,” he said, reaching out to reassure his most serious child with a hand around his shoulder.
He could hardly bear to keep it there. His once vibrant, healthy son had wasted away to skin and bone. Rail thin.
A pox on Dr. Bonn’s easy assurances. Jacob promised to plant himself on the good doctor’s doorstep in the morning.
Jacob glanced up at Retha. Concern was printed across her features like a map. She knew Matthias was starving, and cared. Squeezing his son’s shoulder, he gave her a look of gratitude.
“And so,” he said, aiming for lighter conversation than wounds and war, “what did everyone do while I was gone?”
A smile broke through her concern. “We picked lima beans. And then we hoed the garden. And the boys went to school every day, and we went to vespers once, and to Singstunde every night.”
She stopped and smiled mysteriously.
What else? he wanted to ask, but the children chimed in about games and blackberries and school. Retha brought out a fruit pie, served up thick runny wedges, and everyone feasted, save Matthias.
In the parlor for the short wait until Singstunde, Jacob watched the boys play at spillikins while Anna Johanna dressed and redressed her little doll with its porcelain face, wishing he could spare each child the pains and trials of growing up. He sighed contentedly, cherishing this quiet moment. By the dwindling light, Retha worked a small, shapeless piece of material. He was too tired to notice what.
But not too tired to notice her. Serene as a swan, she arched her slender neck over her work. Ah, she was a treat to come home to. She was making this her home. She looked domesticated, calm, transformed from the wild creature who had attacked him on the stairs last night.
The children were transformed, too. To his astonishment, Anna Johanna had touched him. His strictly proper Matthias had voiced a worry. Even Nicholas had said, “Yes, ma’am.”
A small hand tugged at his shirtsleeve.
“Hilf mir, Papa.” But his daughter didn’t need help. Before he could figure out what she wanted, she had clambered onto his lap and snuggled against his chest.
He scarcely dared to breathe.
For the first time since her mother’s death, Anna Johanna wanted him to cuddle her.
So he wrapped his arms around her, throat clotted with feeling. He held her little body as if it might break. She giggled, wiggled, and settled in with a sweet sigh. Tentatively he lowered his head to plant a fatherly kiss on the Haube that hid a froth of blond curls. Beyond the smell of starch, he detected the scent of rosewater.
Even her hair was clean!
With gentle hands, he steadied her shoulders and held her away a little to inspect her face. Scrubbed clean! Before dinner he had been too occupied with her touch to look this close. It was just as well. He would probably have said the wrong thing.
He looked to Retha for an explanation, but she stayed maddeningly engrossed in her work.
Then he examined Anna Johanna’s ragged dress. Up close, it was brighter than usual. Up close, it didn’t smell.
She didn’t smell.
“Pumpkin,” he croaked. “I think you had a bath.”
Vigorous nods rocked her whole frame and dug her little seat bones into his thighs. His heart expanded. His emotionally fragile daughter was sturdy as a cart horse.
“When and where did this wonder come to pass?” he teased.
Suddenly shy, she ducked her head and mumbled. “In the creek.”
Taken by surprise, he laughed. “You fell in!”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head earnestly. “I waded in.”
He raised a paternal brow. The creek had been off-limits since well before her mother died. Could that be why she’d shunned all water? To keep a promise to her mother?
“I got ’mission,” Anna Johanna said hastily.
“Permission,” he said absently, resting his face against her starched cap.
“Right. ’Mission. To wash beans. From Mama Retha.”
Mama Retha? Washing beans? In the creek? He hadn’t felt so emotional since he last wept for his wife at the end of a long Christmas day. He was close to crying now. But these would be tears of joy, of relief. He couldn’t shed them here. He had to make sense of what had happened.
In the creek! What if…He remembered now. Not long before the epidemic that carried Christina away, she had scolded Anna Johanna royally for wading unattended. During her mother’s illness, he too had f
ound her in the creek again and scolded her himself. What if, in her child’s mind, she somehow twisted her wading in the water into guilt over her mother’s death?
“You smell like roses,” he whispered to Anna Johanna, sure now he understood and hopeful that his daughter’s ban on bathing was ended.
“Rose water,” she pronounced proudly, dragging out the word as if it felt good on her tongue. “Mama Retha said you’d like that.”
“I like it, pumpkin.” He took the liberty of tweaking her cheek, but she slid off his lap like a boneless kitten and started rummaging in Retha’s sewing basket.
Again he looked to Retha for some clue. Diligent, she bent her head to her work. But he thought a corner of her mouth crooked up. Was she pleased? Amused? Proud of herself? And what had really happened? he wanted to ask for the second time that evening. The creek! The creek?
Anna Johanna came back with a nondescript scrap of material and scuttled onto his lap, this time more confident.
“Look, Papa. Mama Retha’s making me a deer dress.”
Nicholas sniggered. “That’s deerskin, you numb—”
“That’s enough, Nicholas.” Retha’s firm order cut him off as effectively as Jacob could have done himself.
“Yes, ma’am,” he grumbled.
Jacob’s mind whirled. Nicholas obedient and Anna Johanna clean! If Retha had another week, Matthias might start gaining weight.
Perhaps he should return to the battlefield.
“You have to explain these miracles to me, Retha,” Jacob said quietly a quarter-hour later as Retha shyly took her husband’s arm.
He was escorting her down the street to attend the final song service of the day—limping slightly, although only she could tell. The boys ran on ahead. Anna Johanna skipped up to her and Jacob, and inserted herself between them.
“Later,” Retha promised, tongue-tied with pride that each child’s behavior had so greatly exceeded her expectations on this, her husband’s first evening home. But she could not explain Anna Johanna’s transformation. She would not if she could. In truth, she feared speaking. She was afraid to break the spell. It was their first outing as a family, and she relished it.
From Sister Marshall to Brother Bagge, people greeted them as Brother Blum and Sister Blum. Even Rosina Krause, who always called her Sister Retha, dignified her new status by calling her Sister Blum. Retha smiled with secret pleasure, too, that she had acquired a surname after years of having none.
Eva Ernst fluttered up, giddy with inconsequentials, until she knelt to Anna Johanna and saw her holding her parents’ hands. “Retha! Anna Johanna’s hold—”
“Anna Johanna’s glad her father’s home,” Retha blurted, meaning to keep Eva from saying something silly.
Eva seemed to fluff up her feathers, but instead of being affronted, said, in her dithering way, the perfect thing. “Why, Anna Johanna, aren’t you grown up tonight?”
Anna Johanna danced in place. “Mama Retha’s making me a deer dress,” she boasted.
“Isn’t that nice?” Eva gushed, although she looked confused.
Retha felt a moment of panic over Eva’s response to the dress, but Anna Johanna beamed and Jacob was smiling, too. Retha squared her shoulders and tried to savor both her accomplishments and her new status. She would just have to get used to being seen in public as a mother and a wife.
Especially wife. Unfortunately, she felt more natural being with Jacob’s children than with him. With Jacob, she still felt like gawking. His manly bearing was beautiful to her, and paternal pride sat well on his broad shoulders. She wondered whether he would have the same pride if they had children, given that they had now done what married people do.
She felt a flush heat her face. Such thoughts, she chastised herself as she entered the Saal for Singstunde. Such thoughts, when it was time to resume her duty as mother. With her free hand, she straightened her apron.
“I will keep the children while you sing.” She hoped she struck a note of maternal competence.
“Ah, but I planned not to sing tonight.” Jacob nodded tellingly down at Anna Johanna whose death grip on their fingers had not slackened.
Retha looked up questioningly.
“She’s the reason. I don’t think she’ll allow it.”
He called the boys, who joined them as they took their places on the bench. Nicholas, Matthias, Jacob, Anna Johanna, and herself. The boys to Jacob’s left and his daughter to his right, separating Retha from him. But surely, when he sat with the family for services, her place was beside him. She squashed a blossoming disappointment. Or was it resentment? For four solid days she had done nothing but tend his children’s needs—and a great many needs they had. Except for a few stolen minutes at dawn, her husband had given her no more attention.
Suddenly she recognized her churning emotion for what it was. Childish jealousy. She sank her chin to her chest and laughed at herself. The children would always come first with him. Had to come first. She married him knowing that. She had to accept that. And she couldn’t allow childish emotions to turn her into a child.
Without his powerful voice, the choir sounded thin, but she still tried to lose herself in its song. The congregation sat, then stood, and Anna Johanna released Retha’s hand. When everyone sat down again, a new chorale began and Anna Johanna claimed her father’s lap.
Jacob gave Retha a glance of blinding gratitude. Thank you, his lips said. Then he patted the empty space between them on the bench.
Her heart skipped a beat. Manly and beautiful and mine.
Self-conscious now that she was getting what she wanted, she edged nearer to him. As at dawn, she could feel his heat. She did not mistake this radiating warmth for summer weather. It was his man’s heat, a physical power, a pull he had over her that she did not understand.
When the choir paused before its next chorale, he whispered in her ear. “You’re the other reason.”
His breath spiraled a warm shiver down the side of her neck, and she completely missed his meaning. “Pardon me?”
The choir’s song swelling to fill the room, he whispered again. “I wanted you beside me.”
Her face flushed, and then her stomach twisted with those scary, pleasurable feelings from the night, from the morning when she had lingered beside his half-naked body. Not here! She bit into her pressed lips, but the feeling spread below, to the depths of her stomach, and deeper, to the parting of her thighs. Mortified, she wanted to wrap her arms around herself and crawl under the bench.
How could she have such unworthy feelings while hymns were being sung? There must be some renegade Cherokee part of her heart that the Moravians had never touched.
She dared a glance at Jacob. He looked steadily ahead, his strong profile undisturbed, except for a slight strained downturning at the corner of his mouth. She had an uncanny sense he was reining in runaway mirth. At her? Had he seen her flush? Could he know about her predicament?
What if he could feel her heat? As she felt his.
Heaven help her.
Her husband, it seemed, would not.
Jacob shifted his wriggling daughter on his lap. Now that he had shocked his innocent wife to her bones, it was all he could do to honor the solemnity of evening service. He couldn’t say when such a wicked playfulness had overcome him.
On second thought, he could. He had probably been about seventeen, and Christina, already his best friend, had been his willing partner in irreverence. Unlike her, poor Retha had had the most irregular upbringing, her white parents of unknown background lost, savage Indians schooling her for untold years, and the Moravian way of life. As a Single Sister, she had conformed to proprieties her parents might not have approved of and the Cherokee would not understand. Proprieties no longer appropriate to a Married Sister. Surely more than her upbringing lay behind the fear she’d shown him. Jacob muted a clarion of worry and determined to take heart. Whatever her fears were, she had made great strides with his children.
He resettled hims
elf on the plain bench seat and felt her shift of attention.
In the coming days, if need be in the coming weeks, he thought, it would be his pleasure to teach her all the ways, all the delights between a man and a woman. If this interminable service ever ended. No wonder he had spent every night for years singing in the choir. Without that sanctified discipline, his attention strayed.
By dark the children were in bed, and Jacob waited in the parlor to talk with his wife. She whisked about in the kitchen, plunking washed supper dishes into the cupboard and then readying breakfast. Something pinged into the iron kettle. Hominy, he guessed, for morning. She splashed some water in. Yes, she was soaking hominy.
Wondering what excuses she would drum up for tonight, he closed his eyes and hummed a complicated bass line from his favorite hymn. It helped him bear the wait. It helped him bear her clattering pokiness.
But he could not rush her, he reminded himself. He had had days to think about her bizarre behavior on their wedding night and after. Last night, except when nursing him, she had again been nervous, strange.
He had arrived at no conclusion, a place where he, as a man of reason, did not like to be. Her deft handling of his children had scotched his theory that she suffered from an excess of fancy.
Beside him, Retha’s skirts rustled. He looked up, ready with compliments, ready to cajole her, if need be, into his arms.
Tight-lipped and pale, she stood before him. “I’m going to bed.”
CHAPTER 9
In the morning light, Retha lay across Jacob’s bed, abandoned to sleep. She had flung off her sheets to the cool of the night and lay on her side facing him. One arm cradled her head, and the other reached across the bed toward where he should have been. Like an Indian runner at the top of his stride, Jacob thought, she had drawn up one leg.
She looked wild. And free. Without her Haube, she reminded him of the untamed child he had caught and saved, of the woman seen dancing in the moonlight, unfettered by fear.
He couldn’t ignore the weight of desire that pulled at his groin. Last night, on seeing her distress, he had let her go, compliments unspoken, questions unasked. He was too tired. She was too—too repelled by him. Frustrated, he had thought of storming that bed, her citadel of resistance, her fortress of rejection. But her pallor argued stronger than his need. He willed himself to sleep, into a shallow, restless sleep. By morning, when he woke with his desire in his hands, he retreated to the chair, watching her as if he were her sentinel.
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