“Fred is going to make a first-rate secretary for you, Adler. He’s very fast on his machine, and he remembers everything you tell him. In a few weeks, you’ll be able to tell him something like, ‘Write to Jones in San Antonio and tell him we can meet next Thursday.’ Fred will know who Jones is, what you want to meet about, and what your schedule is for that day. You won’t even have to write out the letter. Fred will know exactly what to say. He’s bright and he’s anxious to do things well.”
“And Otto?”
“Otto isn’t as fast, and he has no imagination. If you wanted him to do that letter for you, he’d need for you to write it out for him. He’d do a perfect job, but he’d not be able to jump in and do it spontaneously. On the other hand, if you needed a page of tables or numbers, or a long, involved report, he’d do an excellent job. He’s not as fast as Fred, but he’s uncanny in the way he works with detailed, exacting copy work.”
“You’ve done the bank a huge service, Diana. Fred and Otto are going to take an immense burden off me.”
“I’m glad I could help you and them. They’ll be more valuable to you, of course, but I think they’ll be more satisfied with their positions, too.”
Adler stacked the plates and put a plump slice of cake with a dollop of cream in front of her. “That’s what you do, or did do, in your other life? Taught people skills that would make them more valuable employees?”
She dipped her fork into the cake, closing her eyes in delight at the mingling flavors. “Mostly I gave young girls a chance to be something besides a maid or a mill worker. That’s about the only thing a girl has to look forward to if she has to make her way in the world. Or prostitution. That’s the reality a lot of women face. Working in an office, using equipment or techniques that are unfamiliar to the men in the place, gives a woman a chance to make a life on her own terms, a better chance than working in someone else’s house or slaving long hours in a mill. Or moving to the red light district where she’ll probably have a very short and miserable life.” She swallowed the bit of cake that suddenly felt as big as a baseball. “Teaching is what I do. Or what I did do. What I still want to do.”
He put the dishes aside and drew his chair closer to hers. “We will make it work out, darling. I promise you that.”
“How, Adler? I don’t see how.”
“Nor do I, at the moment, but I do believe there is a way.” He stood and drew her into his arms. “We’ll find it.” He kissed her, slowly, gently, and stepped back. “While we’re trying to work out your dilemma, would you mind helping me with mine? I’ve been trying to pack Elizabeth’s things to take to Lotte’s house, but I’m nothing but thumbs. Would you help me with it? I need to have her things out of her room here so I can arrange things a little better for Trey and the professors when they arrive.” He held back a short chuckle. “Somehow I can’t see Pearce or Holmes sleeping in a white ruffled half-tester bed with pink geraniums embroidered on the bed curtains.”
The idea of chubby, bald Pearce in such frilled accommodations tickled Diana, too. “I’ll be glad to help you out. I can imagine what Pearce would do in that atmosphere. He’d be wiping his pen on the ruffles and using the curtains for blotting paper. Lotte would have a fit.”
“She would, especially since she made the curtains and did the embroidery for Greta, way back when Greta was Elizabeth’s age.”
“Show me to the room. I can fold and pack if you can get the frou-frou down.”
Adler started for the stairs. “Frou-frou?” He stopped at the first step. “I’m not sure I’ll recognize that if I see it.”
“General term for girlish accessories. Don’t worry. You don’t speak the language…at least not yet.”
“But by the time we’ve been married forty years, I’ll be fluent. Is that the idea?”
“If you’re a quick study, maybe. It’s not an easy language.”
“Trade with you. You teach me your secret language, and I’ll…give you lessons in love.” He came back to the bottom of the stairs. Without thinking, Diana walked into his arms, lifting her face for his kiss. The room faded from her mind, the errand they’d begun vanished from thought. She only wanted to hold on to the moment, to feel the steady beat of his heart against her. The flame that had kindled before, standing by the river in the moonlight, blazed again.
“We could…” he began.
“We could.”
“My bedroom…no, I took the bed down. Moving it…”
“Then?”
“The front bedroom…”
“Yes, just…”
He drew her up the stairs, holding her, kissing her at each step, finding the buttons behind the tucks of her blouse and freeing them. She reached up to the open neck of his shirt to slip the next button loose. At the top of the stairs, her overblouse slid down her arms to land in a pool of white on the pine floor. His shirt fell on top of it. By the time they reached the closed door of the bedroom, her skirt was a patch of gray beside the wainscot. Adler pushed the door open. An enormous bed, with a carved headboard as high as the ceiling, almost filled the room. He started toward it, holding out one hand, encouraging her to join him.
Diana looked at the tall slab of walnut. It looks just like a tombstone! She giggled, tried to stop, and when she couldn’t control the laughter, it spilled out, and she was forced to clutch the bedpost to stay upright, laughing until tears ran down her cheeks.
Adler, his arms crossed and wearing his most stern Horned Owl expression, waited. “I’ve…not had a lot of experience with inviting a beautiful girl into my bedroom, but…”
Diana managed to control herself. “I’m sorry, dear, dear Adler. I’m sorry, but we walked in, and that…that thing…” She pointed at the headboard, smothering another peal of giggles. “That tombstone of a bed just jumped at me. I felt like all the disapproving ancestors from Adam on were watching. And I suddenly thought how envious they must be.” She came to him, touched the grim furrow between his eyes. “I’ll bet they are envious.” She raised on tiptoe and kissed him. “Aren’t they?”
He pulled her to him, and they sank together on the bed. “They are, and they have every reason to be.” He slipped her camisole over her head. “They’re gone and mostly forgotten. Just faded names in the family Bible. Here I am with a warm, loving—though slightly unpredictable—girl who says she loves me. Even if she does think the ancestral bed looks like a tombstone.”
“We won’t have to sleep in it, will we? When we’re married?”
“We can sleep in a hammock under the oak trees, as far as I’m concerned. Anywhere, as long as you’re sleeping with me.” He ruffled her hair and kissed the curve of her breast. “Though I’ve never tried making love in a hammock.” His touch left a delicious shiver in its wake. “Sounds challenging.”
That was the last of the conversation Diana remembered. From that point on, words ceased to have meaning, and the hideous headboard disappeared from her mind. She was too caught up in the exchange of sensations and the growing need within her. She’d read the words, but she’d never known the feelings behind them. The hunger for a touch, a knowing touch, a stroke in the right place, filled her, blocked out everything but the moment. She was almost on fire with the need, the unrelenting hunger, but to one side a small question kept surfacing. Adler, can you show me? Will you know how to make it happen?
She might have been a small boat caught in the tide, inevitably drawn by the power of the waves, or a fallen leaf swirling in the rush of the stream. Then the waves crashed to the shore and she rose with the crest, up, higher, still higher, until the craft, lifted by the highest wave, hurled into the shore. She had her answer. He could show her the way. He did know how to make it happen.
She lay limp and sated against his chest, her hair damp and tangled. “I suppose I have to marry you now.”
“Yes, Miss Woods, I believe you do.” One palm cupped the mooning curve of her backside. “By all that’s legal, as soon as possible.”
“Adler, we
have to wait until my sister is here. I won’t do it without her here. It wouldn’t be…it just wouldn’t be right.”
He patted her and ran one long finger up her spine. “I suppose not. And I’ll want Trey, too. We’ll wait for your professorial owls.”
“And get another bed. One that doesn’t come with envious ancestors.”
“You really don’t like it?”
“Gives me the flapping woo-hoos. I can feel all those old, long-gone souls glaring at me.”
“Then a new bed. Anything else you want to change in the house before you move in?”
Move in? Diana had to digest that for a moment. “I suppose I will be moving in here, won’t I? I mean, it’s your home, and now that Papa is going to be with Lotte, he and Elizabeth, you’d want to make this our home.” She raised her head to glance at the room. She’d had no impression of it, other than the bed that dominated it. “I’ve never lived in a place where there were this many rooms for just one or two people.”
“It’s just a house, sweetheart. Just a house where people have lived, loved, and been happy. I think we can be happy here, can’t we?”
Diana nodded, but she glanced around again. “We’ll be together. That’s our starting place.”
“Then what’s bothering my New Woman who takes on the twentieth century like a lion tamer?”
She sat bolt upright, disregarding her lack of garments or covering. “Adler, don’t you understand? I not only can’t cook, I also do not know one thing about keeping house or running one or taking care of anyone but myself. I have never washed dishes other than to rinse a coffee cup. I can make coffee, more or less. But other than that, I’m a domestic disaster—can’t organize a cupboard, couldn’t plan a meal, don’t even know how to do the marketing for one. I can take down an hour-long speech verbatim, but I’d stare at a grocery list in panic. What are you getting us into? Married? Share a house? We must be out of our minds.”
“Probably we are.” Adler stared at her for a moment, then leaned against the towering headboard and then laughed. “My darling, I can cook. My mama, who definitely would have liked your mother, insisted no man should be totally helpless in the house. I’m not Lotte, by any means, but I can manage a simple dinner, or fry an egg, or at least shepherd us down to Bindler’s when we need a change. As for keeping house, I believe young Trinka has another sister or two who will be glad to take over the dishes and dusting for you.” He pulled her to his side. “See, we are beginning to find the places where there is something we both want. Meals and a clean house. That’s a sound start.”
“But the big thing, Adler, is still what I will be doing.”
“It’s a big thing, Diana. I’m not diminishing it. But one way or another, we’ll get it figured out. As I told you, we’ll each give way a little to the other, and we’ll each hold on to the things that make us who we are. Somehow the compromise will work.” He tilted her chin up. “As your part of the compromise, you will learn to cook. At least a little. If I have to be away, for the annual banking conference for instance, you’ll be able to take care of yourself that much.”
****
Night had fallen, and the moon was high above the oak trees by the time Diana convinced Adler she had to leave. The temptation to stay, to see the sunrise together, was strong, but Diana knew very well people rose early in the little town and very likely someone would see her returning to Lotte’s house in the early hours, obviously not having been home the night before. Word of their indiscretion would be all over town by noon.
They walked silently, so in tune with each other they didn’t need words. The night owls made occasional calls through the trees, and small rustlings in the grass and bushes answered as prey sought shelter.
“I love it here, Adler. The quiet of the town after everyone is home, the rhythm of life going on as it has for, well, how long has Pfeiffer been here?”
“Not all that long, really. The first settlers came just before the Civil War, from Bavaria, mostly. Landed at Indianola and sheltered there for the winter. Came here by wagon in the spring, and began to lay out town lots and farm lots. Most families had both. Hardworking, staunch, rock-ribbed, and stubborn. They met storms and limestone and hostility with the same immovable fortitude you see in their descendants today.”
Diana looked at the sturdy, well-kept houses around her. “And they prospered.”
“They did.” Adler pointed to the tidy house on the corner. “That man’s father cut the stones for this house out of the field where he planted his first oats and rye. Raised a family and taught them to be the same hardy, industrious folks. Wrestled a living from the rocky valley and the unpredictable river. Planted orchards and crops, and if they failed, he planted again. Like ninety per cent of the farmers here, his son owes no man for what he has. You know, he’s always first to step up when we need something done here in town, whether it’s helping a neighbor or getting streetlights put in so folks can walk in the evening. These are good people, Diana, and you’ll like having them for friends and neighbors.” He hugged her. “And family, I might add.”
“I think I will, but it’s going to be quite a change from what I’ve always known.”
“Just let it work itself out, my love.” He stopped in the center of the block, where no streetlight shed its rays, and kissed her again. “Do you have any idea when your sister and company might be coming? I’d like for us to begin planning things as soon as we can. I know Trey won’t be able to stay long. He’ll have to be back when classes begin, as will the others, and they’ll have a long, not to add complicated, drive back to Pennsylvania. We’ll want them all here, come the day.”
“Soon, that’s all I can say. Pam didn’t mention specific dates or anything in the two letters I’ve had. She just said they were moving around to keep any unwanted company from locating them.” Diana let a small sigh escape. “I’ve missed her. We’ve always been the best of friends, and we’ve been apart what seems like ages.”
They turned the corner and walked up the path to Lotte’s house. In the darkness it was only a deeper shadow. Not a single light peeped from the windows.
“It looks strange, coming up this time of night and not seeing Lotte’s lamp in the window or a little gleam from any of the rooms upstairs.”
“You’ll be all right here tonight? By yourself?”
She grasped the banister and carefully stepped up the porch stairs hidden by the shadows. “I will.” She felt for the key in her bag, invisible in the dark recess of the tapestry lining. “I only had that little spell of nerves last night because I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the realization of the life I was facing. Was, dear Adler, was. Not the life I am facing. That’s a different thing entirely. Still overwhelming, but not the same. If I thought about what I’ve let myself, and you, in for, I’d probably panic again.” She found the key and inserted it into the lock. “Who could guess things could be so different, life could make such a twist, in only a day?”
“I could come in with you. Turn on lights or hold your hand…or something reassuring. Just so you don’t get those nerves again.”
Diana put her arms around him and drew him down to her level. “And give that prying old cat across the street even more to talk about than she already has?” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, a slow, sweet kiss filled with both promise and memory. “I think that will be quite enough to keep her prattling for a day or two. By the time Papa Behr and Lotte get home, she’ll have spun together a tale of orgies in the parlor. Lotte will be most entertained.”
“Well, if she’s going to spread gossip, we should give her some better stories.” He stepped back, knelt in a beseeching manner, and lifted her hand to his lips. Raising his voice, he declaimed in a melodramatic tone, “Dear Miss Woods, I can no longer restrain my words. I must speak of my admiration, my devotion, my very deep enchantment. You are the flower of femininity; your beauty is that of which poets sing. Could you…oh, would you…dear Miss Woods, make me the happiest man on earth and say yo
u’ll be mine?”
Shaking with laughter at his absurd and patently false sentimentality, Diana tried to withdraw her hand. “Adler, do get up. The entire neighborhood will hear you.”
“Ah, but my dear, my beloved, you must give me an answer. Forego your maidenly blushes, your sweetly modest reticence, if only for this moment. Tell me I may hope. Tell me, dearest angel ever to come from the Heaven, that you are not rejecting me for another.”
“Adler! Enough. Lights are coming on in the house next door.”
“Must I entreat further? I will wait, my dear Miss Woods, until dawn and even after, if it pleases you. But I must have an answer.”
Swept into his game, Diana lifted her hand to her brow and raised her voice to match his. “Oh, you have breached my defenses with your impassioned plea. I cannot be so heartless as to leave you here, in the darkness, with your supplication unanswered. Indeed, I will give you my reply. I can no longer deny your entreaty. I will be yours.”
He stood, wrapped her in his arms, both all but unbalanced with laughter. “All right,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re a wanton little hussy, but you are now committed, in the sight of all the nosy neighbors, and their various kith and kin.” He brushed her lips with his. “Get Trey and your sister here so we can make this thing legal. Otherwise I’m liable to have the town fathers show up at my house insisting on a ceremony and bringing shotguns to back them up.”
“I had no idea my great Horned Owl had such dramatic talent.” She pushed him a step back. “Go home and get some sleep. You have moving to do. I have to think about what I’m going to tell Pam when she gets here.” Another thought struck her. “Oh, jeepers creepers, we’re going to have to tell Lotte and your Papa. What are we going to tell them? What are we going to say?”
“I don’t think we’ll have to say a word.” He grinned and gestured to the lights popping on in the house across the street. “I suspect someone else will get there first.”
Diana and the Three Behrs Page 24
