He flashed her a defeated grin, then said, to provoke her, “I might hold my own if you were not so bold”
“So bold!” She blushed scarlet. “I am in charge here.”
“Bullying me,” he insisted.
Her chin jutted out. “My father will be worse. He is very hard to please.”
What if he were? Nicholas groaned. “Heaven help me then.”
“Nor will Brother Huber tolerate such language in our store.”
“Gott im Himmel,” Nicholas swore deliberately, one last time.
Two days later, Abbigail hitched up her skirts and headed across the swept streets of town to the Widows House with a sigh of relief. Brother Blum’s constant teasing and irrepressible charm were driving her to distraction. She was supposed to be in charge of him, and she was losing all control.
Well, let him see if he could run the store without her.
Besides, Sister Benigna Rothrock was overdue a visit, and Abbigail needed a favor her old friend could grant. Her father still absent, she knew she took a risk leaving Nicholas Blum in charge of the store. But she deemed him ready. Although the good Brother had returned her bills and receipts turned every which way and out of order, he had mastered all the inventory within sight. Overnight.
She strolled up the lane to see the Widows House, celebrating the arrival of spring. It blazed great old oaks with miniature gold leaves and tipped evergreen branches with new bronze cones. Still and all, she doubted that the spring splendor made her heart trip so wildly. Three whole days of Brother Blum’s constant company had her usually sensible self in an uncharacteristic dither.
When riled, he looked like a lion, running his strong blunt fingers through his golden hair. Not a woman had entered the store without pausing to gape at his unruly tawny mane or steal secret glances at his commanding physique. Abbigail herself had neither gaped nor peeked, of course, being disciplined and far too smart to fall for surface charms.
It was the inner man that made her heart flutter.
Despite vexing hours in the store filled with trial and error, his good will and enthusiasm reigned. Beneath both his rare anger and his persistent charm, he was adept at the finer points of trade and also hopelessly earnest.
At breakfast she had piled his plate, a feast compared to the abstemious meal her father’s gout required she usually make. She marveled that the handsome Brother ate so much. Thrice what she could manage to stuff in without waddling through the morning.
He worked so hard and was so quick to laugh. Today he’d charmed every female customer who’d dropped by, Sister and outsider alike. Over tin trays of fishhooks and wooden boxes of penknives, men confided in him about she knew not what.
This morning travelers stopping off the Wagon Road bought out her father’s reserve of good French brandy. Brother Blum had hauled three cases at a time up from the cellar and hoisted them onto the strangers’ wagon as easily as if the boxes in his burly arms were stuffed with hummingbird feathers.
In this too, the rugged Brother was exactly the man her aging, gouty father needed. Georg Till could barely work, and Christian Huber’s back was temperamental. What a welcome antidote Nicholas Blum’s health and energy were to her father’s distant management and Huber’s sanctimonious maneuvering.
At the stone Widow’s House, Abbigail knocked and was admitted. It was a simple, serene retreat, filled with women who found joy in a quiet, meditative life.
Tall and slender, Sister Benigna embraced her warmly. “Look at you. Ever tiny and industrious.” She examined her at arm’s length like a proud mother. Which in many ways she was. “A blossom in the springtime.”
“A blossom long since faded,” Abbigail corrected with good humor. “Just because I have no gray hairs doesn’t make me young. See these wrinkles?” She pointed to crow’s feet, newly tracking the corners of her eyes this year, a tribute to the wear and tear of keeping Christian Huber in his place.
Sister Benigna clucked her tongue. “Worn by too much duty and responsibility at your father’s store.”
“Not in the least,” Abbigail said stoudy. “Laundry in the Single Sisters House would be as wearing. Or teaching. Or raising children of my own. No, that would be harder. But you look well.”
The slender Sister almost preened with pleasure, then descended the steep flight of stairs to the kitchen where she held sway. A roast simmering in a kettle on the hearth filled the air with hearty fragrance. “I can tell you want something. But we are fresh out of Strudel.”
Abbigail warmed. The Sister knew her too well not to guess her purpose. “Apple butter.”
Sister Benigna raised a brow. “Who in your house likes apple butter? Surely not your father. It has spices!”
They shared the easy laughter of old friendship. After her mother died and Abbigail had taken over her father’s household, she had gone to Sister Rothrock to learn to cook for him. They had ruined one perfectly good dish after another, stripping recipes of herbs and spices in order to please his finicky palate, as the Widowed Sister tutted and teased. Under her good-humored tutelage, solemn, motherless Abbigail had learned to laugh again.
“We have a newcomer,” Abbigail explained, surprised that the town’s endless, harmless threads of gossip had not reached her friend. But then Widows lived apart by choice.
“Oh?” Sister Benigna’s head tilted with interest as she headed for the larder.
“A new assistant for my father, sent up from Salem.”
“A Single Brother,” the Sister surmised.
“With an appetite. He eats more than we three together eat, then dares to look as if I had deprived him. I cannot guess how much extra I’ll be tossing into ketdes by the time my father and Brother Huber return.”
Her friend would not be thrown off course. “A young Single Brother?”
“Not so young. Of an age to marry.” Abbigail bit her tongue.
Smiling, the Sister casually selected a gleaming jar of dark, rich apple butter from a shelf. “Of an age to marry?”
Abbigail’s heart fluttered. For three days she’d worked to stifle the inescapable conclusion that her likable assistant was an extremely eligible Single Brother. She set about to stamp out Sister Benigna’s too-eager matchmaking with a bold retort. “So it would seem. Every unclaimed Sister who has entered our store has set her Haube for him. Even little Juliana Grube stepped out from behind her mother’s skirts to encourage his attentions.”
“He is handsome then.”
“Handsome, hungry, huge.”
Benigna Rothrock sobered. “Have a care, Abbigail. ‘Tis not quite seemly for you to be alone with him.”
A blush heated Abbigail’s face. “The store is almost always full of customers, and he sleeps at the Single Brothers House,” she said. Suddenly that bit of information seemed too personal a matter for her to know-let alone express-about a man who made her heart soar.
“Nor is it safe. I fear you will be hurt.”
“I won’t be. I have my duty to my father. There will be no husband for me.”
“Never say so, child.”
“I’m no child. I’m a full grown, aging Single Sister.”
“Not that there’s the first thing wrong with being a Single Sister.” Sister Benigna said lightly. “There’s no pesky husband to stand between you and the Savior.”
Abbigail sputtered at her friend’s mild irreverence.
The Widowed Sister quickly sobered. “’Tis an honorable calling, Abbigail, to be a Single Sister.”
Abbigail heartily agreed. “Honorable-and safe. I have suffered enough from the drawing of the Lot. Twice it said nein, denying me Brothers I would happily have married.”
“You did not love them.”
“I would have learned. No, my heart is sealed to love, Sister.”
At the door, Sister Benigna gently folded Abbigail’s hands around the jar of apple butter. “No one’s heart is ever sealed, my dear, whether or not the Lot allows our heart’s desire.”
5
After Sister Till left the store, Nicholas rested a hip on the tall clerk’s stool behind the counter and kneaded his aching arms. Move this, load that, sweep here, polish there–she had been after him all day. Intent, no doubt, on wearing him down. But on this third day of their acquaintance, he had prevailed on her in his own way, garnering two smiles, one smothered giggle, and an amazing blush. With the pride of a conqueror, he savored the times he had penetrated her armor.
Especially this last time. Citing errands to run, she had dashed off rather quickly after that blush, brought on by his audacious questions about whether Sisters were allowed to wear the fine laces she stocked in the store. And if so, where exactly did they hide them?
He didn’t believe her excuse about errands. She was fleeing him, he thought with a hearty rush of male pride.
His presence must be plaguing her sensibilities just as hers did his. Sensibilities, balderdash. Senses. Her voice was pure as the thrush’s evening song, at least when she was not upbraiding him. He labored to evoke her praise. Now that he had handled bolts of silk, he knew her skin was as sleek as that exotic fabric. For he had stolen opportunities to touch her, brushing her hand with his fingers as he tendered her some coins.
Worst, or best of all, she smelled of roses, morning, noon, and night; her sweet uplifting fragrance tickled his nose and the back of his throat and made his lungs expand to take in more.
To say nothing of other expansions he fought with manly valor.
He couldn’t help himself. From the first, the sight of her had pleased him. The creamy delicacy of her features satisfied some aesthetic vision of woman he hadn’t known he had. His ethereal Catharina was obviously a beauty, unmistakably divine to one and all, while Abbigail Till was pretty with a precision easily overlooked. But not by him. His gaze was drawn to doebrown eyes that could not conceal a thought. To a refined nose with a trace of stubborn arch. To rosepetal lips begging to be kissed.
Disconcerted, he ran his fingers through his hair.
What in the world was he thinking?
For the first time in his life, he had spent three days alone in the company of a woman who was not family. And his senses were on fire with her. This conflagration was the fleshly, profane danger that the Brethren’s way of life aimed to check. Boys and girls were schooled separately, and men and women lived apart until or unless they married.
Up until Mary Clark, he had had no idea that his sensual self was so wanton. So vital. So unremittingly single-minded.
And so unfaithful. He summoned up his last sight of Catharina, tall and blonde and shimmering with innocence amidst the purity of the blossoming peach trees. What an endearing reflection of sweetness and compliance she had been that morning. Still, he had to admit that his image of her had grown slightly faint. That his heart did not race as it once had. What a fickle, feckless heart to faint because of distance.
But he was only appreciating Sister Till, he told himself. With Mary Clark, he had acted. And afterward vowed he would never again stray with a woman not his wife.
The store’s bell jangled as a customer entered. An outsider, judging from his dress, trimmed out in every point where a Brother’s would be plain. His coat sported engraved silver buttons, and lace edged the sleeves of his fine linen shirt. He even wore an oldfashioned powdered wig and smelled of rum cologne.
Dressed in sober brown, Nicholas greeted him, glad to break his troubling, tantalizing thoughts. The gentleman wanted a particular year of a wine from Sicily. Never having heard of it, Nicholas could only search the cellar.
Briefly indulging the heady feeling of being the store’s proprietor, he remembered to lock the cash drawer behind him. Then he lit a lantern and descended the narrow cellar steps to find the wine. Cases of wine from France, New York, and Germany lay about. But wine from Sicily eluded him. Long minutes passed in a fruitless search of unfamiliar crates and cases, and Nicholas cursed his luck.
Abbigail Till had whisked herself away at the very moment he needed her direction.
Upstairs, boots scuffed and spurs jingled across the wide plank floor. More customers. He must not leave them all alone. Brethren could be trusted, but the fine spring afternoon had brought outsiders to town in droves. Abandoning his search for wine, he mounted the stairs, his lantern’s light flickering on the damp stone steps.
Above him the cellar door swung open. A man’s large physique filled the frame, a stout club brandished in his heavy arms.
“What have you done with her?” the stranger blustered.
“Done with whom?” Nicholas asked, sure nothing was amiss. But he calmly set the lantern down and tensed to defend himself.
“With whom?” the man echoed caustically. “With Sister Till, of course. We left her safe.”
Safe? Nicholas almost laughed. They had left her alone. He peered up at the big man’s face, shadowed beneath a tricorn with a foppish feather. No, he was too large to be the diminutive taskmaster’s father, for he was of a size with Nicholas. And he hoped her father wasn’t such a fool, to speak without thinking. Perhaps this was the assistant? Huber?
Nicholas held up his hands, palms out and empty. “I am Nicholas Blum, Brother Till’s new-”
“You, sir, are a liar and a scoundrel. What have you done with Sister Till?”
Nicholas moved up a step, seeking level ground to reason with the man. “Sister Till stepped out-”
Without warning, the club came down, aimed for the crown of his head. Instinctively, he caught it, pulled himself up the last step, and found himself shoulder to shoulder with a not so very young, irate Brother grappling to control the club.
“You … mistake … me.” Nicholas grunted with the effort to fend off Huber’s erratic thrusts. A rash of anger splotched his fair cheeks, and his snuff-scented breath gusted across their locked arms.
All of a sudden he released the club. Nicholas fought for balance, arms scrabbling for the door’s frame. A fist collided with his jaw, and a volley of punches drove into his belly.
He caught himself–barely–against the door, his anger flaring. This self-righteous idiot meant to push him down the stairs. Steep stone stairs.
A second blow slammed into Nicholas’s eye. Blood spurted, blinding him on one side. Staggering on the top step, he righted himself and mustered strategy. A boyhood spent in schoolyard brangles had taught him to fight hard.
Forearms up to guard his face, he kicked out a powerful leg, hooked a heel behind the man’s knees, and felled him like a rotted pine.
To Nicholas’s deep satisfaction, the hapless Brother thudded onto the hall floor, a heap of stunned flesh, gasping like a beached whale. Nicholas straddled him in a flash and pinned one flailing arm above his head.
“Release me, you–you–intruder!” the man sputtered and jammed a hand under Nicholas’ jaw, digging sharp nails into his cheek.
Intruder? He belonged here! He drew back his free fist to strike.
Light footsteps dashed down the hallway. Sister Till to his rescue? “Nicholas, no! Stop!” she cried out. “’Tis Brother Huber you assault”
Nicholas looked up at her, sucking in a ragged breath. She took him for the aggressor, he realized, chagrined.
But pleased. In her urgency, she had broken protocol and used his given name.
Her dark eyes bright with concern, she fluttered above them, brandishing a walking stick and a jar of something brown for weapons. “What do you think you are doing to Brother Huber?”
An ungovernable grin stole across his face. Unless he wanted to sound all of twelve years old again, he could not protest, “He started it.”
Instead, he said, “Yes, I figured out who he is. But he takes me for a thief. Kindly tell him that I am not before he tries to pitch me down the stairs again.”
“He wouldn’t!” she said, aghast.
Beneath him, Huber bucked like a cantankerous horse. A large, strong cantankerous horse.
Grunting, Nicholas grappled to contain him. “He did.”<
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She rolled her eyes. In disbelief? Nicholas wondered. Or annoyance? Which man would she credit? Her father’s trusted assistant or a trying interloper she had just met?
She knelt beside them, her walking stick and the jar of brown stuff pressed to her ample breasts, her tone stern. “Brother Christian Huber, meet Brother Nicholas Blum. My father’s new assistant Who arrived, Brother Huber, while you were gone. Late, I’ll grant, but no intruder. Now stand up, both of you, and apologize.”
Nicholas fought not to grin at the tongue-lashing laced with courtesy. It was worthy of his stepmother at her very best. Did the little wren expect two enormous, angry pugilists to follow her orders? Taken together, he and Huber made up five of her at least.
“Today, Brother Blum.”
Feeling a little sheepish, he eased off his adversary’s torso and stood. Huber lumbered up like a grouchy bear and glared at him. Thirty, perhaps thirty-five, good-looking in an ascetic, aquiline way that sat uneasily with his great height. Though fine-featured, he had proved to be no weakling.
“Apologize,” she repeated as if they were naughty schoolboys and she the only grown-up in the room.
“Who?” they asked in unison.
“Both of you! You first, Brother Huber, because you had no call to pick up that club again. Who would rob us in broad daylight? And then you, Brother Blum, because you should know fighting never solves disputes.”
With a surprisingly good grace, Huber stepped up and apologized to her. But the man did not apologize to Nicholas for those three underhanded blows.
From years of getting into scrapes, Nicholas apologized to both Sister Till and Huber as if the fault were solely his. Which, given his size and strength and the-devil-made-me-do-it attitude, people usually believed it to be. It never hurt, he had learned, to go the extra mile.
Humility did not impress Sister Till. Her walking stick tapped his shoulder with nagging authority. “The vintage Mr. Fortney seeks is under the cellar stairs, bottom row, third case from the right.”
His Stolen Bride Page 4
