His consideration touched Abbigail. But his restraint miffed her, for reasons she did not fully understand. Nicholas Blum was in love with a nameless, featureless woman. Abbigail needed a name and features to bite down hard on, the way men and women under surgeons’ knives bit down on towels to bear the pain.
“So … no name. But you may tell me about her.”
“Our families are near neighbors. I rescued her from the ropes of her mother’s meanest cow when she was ten and I was seventeen, and I set myself to wait until she grew up. My heart has been hers ever since.”
Abbigail spoke with difficulty. “She must be a paragon.”
He laughed lightly, fondly. Abbigail’s heart compressed with loss.
“An angel, but not very good with cows.”
They had reached the store, and he could say no more.
Brother Huber met them at the door, out of sorts. Her father was complaining of his pain, his attendant, her desertion. He demanded willow bark tea, and Huber had no notion where to find or how to make it.
Abbigail busied herself in making the infusion and accepted the men’s quick goodnights without looking up. They headed for the Brothers House, leaving her to her unhappy father and her sad, spinsterish duty to his health. She climbed the stairs to her room with his tea on a little tray, repeating the words that must become her new rule.
There was nothing between her and Nicholas Blum, she told herself.
There had been nothing between them.
There would be nothing. Nothing. Ever.
13
On his fifth trading junket to Philadelphia, Nicholas successfully haggled, traded, and bartered all week with the sharpest, slyest merchants on the wharves and at the stalls. Beneath the covered marketplace, he wove in and out of the throng of shoppers, no mean feat for a man his size in a hot, dense crowd intent on purchasing wares and spending money. He was putting the last of his scrip on a pair of China dolls.
A red-faced woman primped their crisp muslin dresses for display. “Yer daughters’ll love ‘em, laddie,” she said. “How many do ye ‘ave?”
“I have sisters. Twins,” he said.
She named her price but he held his ground, settling on a sum that did not quite clean his pockets.
Protesting his parsimony, she took his coins. “Ye should ha’ daughters o’ yer own. A man like ye is in ‘is prime.” She whisked a sheet off a pile of broadsides to wrap a limp-limbed doll. “Ye should marry.”
He would have, he thought grimly, but for the Elders’ strictures. He waited for the old sharp anger that had driven him from Salem but instead felt … merely hunger. He should have a wife, indulgent and admiring, tall and stately. A wife like Catharina. But instead of her, his mind summoned the image of someone dark and tiny, self-confident and bossy.
He stood in the midst of strangers, stunned by the coil of his intention. Catharina was his lifelong sweetheart; Abbigail, his newest friend.
Friend, he exhorted himself.
Nevertheless, her pert, pretty face came between him and the sweet memory of Catharina’s distant beauty. He had tried to ignore it, bury it, shove it away. He had done so for weeks, arguing to himself that sheer proximity had sparked his notice of Abbigail’s bright, precise beauty.
Proximity, and his fall from grace with Mary Clark. Her seduction had awakened him to tormenting desires that would not go away.
No, he argued with himself, he was not dallying with Abbigail. His attraction to her was of a higher order. He liked sparring with her, a female equal he had known only in his stepmother, not ten years his senior, and in his oldest sister. He admired Abbigail’s competence in the store and her handling of Huber and her father. Nicholas appreciated her for being kind to him, for sensing his homesickness, for patiently prodding him to speak of his family and Catharina.
When he got home to Abbigail, he would have to… kiss her.
Blast the thought. It assailed him. It perplexed him and intrigued him. For it would not go away.
Kissing Abbigail was the image in his mind, his heart, his body. Deny it as he might in the light of day, she came to him in dreams at night. Soulful eyes. Stubborn nose. Pretty, kissable mouth. A tiny waist his hands could span. Generous breasts that would fill his grasp. Hips that swayed, making him swell with …
His feelings for Abbigail were lust, not brotherly gratitude for her goodness of heart. He should be ashamed-for her sake and for Catharina’s.
Standing in the bustling street, he closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, damning his lapse with Mary Clark. That night had acutely stirred his once-mastered desire, had irredeemably aroused long-neglected passion in his loins.
“Sir. Sir!” He looked down at the old woman’s cart. “Yer dolls.” She handed him two oblong lumps in wrinkled paper.
“Thank you.” Masking a grimace with a practiced wink, he headed for the clockmaker’s shop, and his final purchase for Georg Till. The clockmaker, expecting Nicholas, unlocked a display case and took out five gleaming watches.
“Gold Swiss works with diamonds, encased in French enamel.” The man repeated his pitch from the morning. “Each one is unique, except for quality. There, all are the same, the best you will find this side of the Atlantic.”
Nicholas could tell. His former master, the clockmaker, would admire the precision works and hop with glee to hear the low price.
Nicholas wanted it lower. He haggled, invoking his new-honed skills to drive a hard bargain. The man yielded grudgingly.
“Very well. I have decided to take them.” Nicholas let reluctance hide his satisfaction with the deal. “If our customers buy them quickly, I might try more.”
The man gave a deferential nod and packed the watches in a walnut box. Till had not commissioned such a purchase. Convincing him of its merit would be a task. Still, if he refused to see their possibilities, Nicholas could always buy them back with his own reserves.
He paid the last of Till’s money, stashed the watches safe beneath the dolls in his battered portmanteau, and slung it over his shoulder.
The wharf beckoned. In his weeklong stay he must have walked it end to end a dozen times, exploring his first freedom from the restrictions and habits of home. His questing nature reveled in the docks’ fogged mornings, glaring noon, the amassed heat of evening. The stink of hot tar, damp hemp, and dead fish permeated his clothing and his skin. At every hour of the day heavy chains clanked, ships’ timbers creaked, and carts rattled past. The din of men never ceased.
This afternoon, sailors shouted from mainmasts to decks to quay, readying ships for voyages. Dingy water slapped against the pilings. Heat shimmered in the stale late-August air. Philadelphians thought it unbearable, but it wasn’t. Not to a man from North Carolina, where wet heat cloaked the land and sat for weeks.
Carolina. Salem. Catharina Catharina, he commanded himself to think. Past the point of physical hunger, he walked on, his mind in turmoil and his heart in a twist. Like the great dumb draft horse he felt himself to be, he had gone off his feed. He should be looking to the future with hope, with pride in what he was achieving. Every purchase brought him nearer to deserving Catharina’s hand.
Shielding his eyes with his hand, he watched a wiry sailor scramble up riggings like a spider. Seabirds whose names he did not know careened around, then swooped down after scraps.
Beautiful, pure, innocent Catharina. He closed his eyes to summon her image. And saw Abbigail’s great dark eyes and teasing smile instead.
He had brought the heat of Philadelphia home, he thought, driving his team through the nearly deserted town to Georg Till’s store. It was time for vespers, and everyone must be at prayer. He wished himself in the shelter of the Saal. Unloading could wait until morning when it might be cool enough to breathe.
He eased the team behind the store, swung down from the wagon, unhitched the traces, and led the horses down the hill to the nearest cistern for animals. Sweat dripped off their sleek bodies as they drank, then clopped wearily to the livery. The last tw
o mornings on the road he had hitched them up at three and driven until dark.
He was weary, too. Back at the store, he found no one to welcome him. Perhaps all three of them had gone to vespers. Odd, though, for someone usually stayed home. He climbed onto the wagon, moved a few things from behind the seat and tilted it forward to retrieve the dolls and watches he called treasures.
Plunder, Abbigail would say smartly.
Inside, more silence. He loosened his stock, hung his coat on a peg, and washed up, glad of shade and solitude. Yet something was amiss. He had not been in the kitchen at vespers without Abbigail’s suppertime busde. Without her brisk, efficient presence, the room seemed cavernous to him, great giant that he was.
She had left a kettle simmering in the hearth’s coals. Lifting the lid, he sniffed the fragrant steam. At home, the kitchen was his stepmother’s domain, so he had never needed to know the names of the most familiar herbs, and never bothered to learn. The steam cleared. White and orange chunks bobbed near the top of the hearty stew, and he detected squares of meat. Potatoes, carrots, beef. His stomach tightened with hunger.
So why had everyone gone to vespers? On the counter in the front room, he displayed the dolls for Abbigail to see. To impress her. He wished he’d had the money to buy the twins a pair, but never mind. He would in time. This pair would sell in a snap at Till’s store. As would the watches, he hoped. The little office held the safe for valuables. He searched for the key under the cushion of Brother Till’s chair.
That was when he heard it. The low, unmistakable sound of misery. Alerted, he cocked his head. A woman, weeping. A man with many sisters knew the sound. It came from upstairs, from Abbigail’s bedroom. He knew exactly where it was from helping her father to bed. The weeping grew no louder but did not stop.
What disaster had happened in his absence to make her cry? What theft, what injury, whose insult could drive her to tears?
She, who seemed to him contained, complete, invulnerable.
A fierce desire to comfort and protect her tore through him, and he pocketed the key, picked up the walnut case, and headed for her. But he paused at the foot of the stairs.
He had the need, but not the right.
There was a louder sob. Of sorrow? What if she were grieving? Assuaging sorrow was not his forte. His father was the great dispenser of consolation in the family. Nicholas made them laugh. But for Abbigail, he braved the stairs, annoyed to think that Huber and Till had left her here, bereft.
Nicholas stood before the door and rapped lightly.
The sobbing choked off. “Oh, go away.”
Her voice was hoarse and low and unmistakably angry at this breach of her privacy. Angry? Nicholas didn’t claim a working knowledge of the woman’s darker emotions. But in his limited experience, grieving women were not primarily angry at any and all comers.
“Abbigail, ‘tis Nicholas. Do you want me to go away?”
Her voice was stronger, prickly. “Yes.”
Her answer did not satisfy. The door was not shut tight. He spoke into the crack. “What is the matter?”
An unintelligible outburst confirmed her anger, but she cracked the door. “Go away.”
“Can’t I help? May I come in?”
“There is nothing you can do!” she said quite firmly.
Very likely. But neither could a friend stand idly by in the face of her distress. With a sense of urgency, he pushed in. She stood before him, proud and tense, her face ravaged with tears, her plain dress in rumpled disarray. Her head was bare. Its fall of thick mahogany hair tumbled past her shoulders.
Telling himself that he had seen his father comfort his sisters a hundred dozen times, he sucked in a deep breath and tried to take her in his arms.
“Liebling,” he murmured, as Jacob Blum would do. “Sweetheart, I am so sorry.”
She pushed him away, her small flat hands bouncing off his chest. “As well you ought to be!”
“Me?” he asked with mild surprise. Mild, because unexpected trouble often came his way. Surprise, because he could think of nothing untoward he could possibly have done to hurt her or-as now seemed certain-to inflame her to this pitch.
“You!” she confirmed. “’Tis all your fault. Your charming, decent, likable fault! You strolled into my store and turned my world upside down.”
“I have been away all week,” he pointed out reasonably.
To his astonishment, she started pounding at him with her fists. Under her tight calico bodice, her bosom heaved with fury. Sobs punctuated the blows that landed smartly on his chest. She couldn’t actually hurt him, he reasoned, trying like the devil to make sense of her passion, her accusation, her tears streaming down a flushed, angry face.
He hated to see her so distraught. “Abbigail! Stop!”
She did not stop.
Standing, he caught one wrist and then the other, restraining her as gently as he could. She was not weak. Small, but not weak. With her arms pinned, she struggled anyway, kicking his shins with the pointed toes of her very tiny, very hard shoes.
“Gott im Himmel, Abbigail. Whatever I did, I apologize.”
“You cannot apologize long enough or loud enough for this!” she almost shouted, kicking with ever more deadly accuracy
Abruptly he released her arms, picked her up, and flung her bodily over his shoulder. She was lighter than a sack of almost anything, but she screamed in protest, pounding his back with her elbows and his belly with her knees.
He was, all in all, impressed.
His latest sin must be spectacular. He managed to transport her across her bedroom without tripping on its colorful rag rug, then deposited her unceremoniously on her bed. She hit the featherdown mattress with a squeak of outrage. Taking no more chances, he carefully but firmly pinned her shoulders to the patchwork quilt, worried, appalled.
“Keep this up, and you will not be able to apologize long enough to me,” he said, trying for good humor as he angled his body above her.
She snarled, then turned her head and almost bit his restraining arm.
He twisted away, oddly hurt. “Jesu, Abbigail, I thought we were friends.”
All the starch washed out of her and tears of frustration welled in her eyes. “So did he. And that’s the problem.”
“So did who? And what’s the problem?”
“Brother Huber,” she croaked. “Brother Huber.”
A thousand thoughts raced through his mind. One lodged there. Anger flooded his lungs, then fear of the worst he could imagine coiled in his belly. “He hurt you.”
“Not yet,” she snapped.
Banking rage, Nicholas straightened up and took a place at the edge of her bed, patting a spot for her to join him. Not too close, for he regarded her fists as unpredictable, nor too far away. She looked ready to fly off at the slightest provocation.
“Tell me,” he said gently.
He saw the struggle on her face. She swallowed, moistened her lips, passed a savage prayer skyward. “He asked the Elders for my hand in marriage.”
Her punches were nothing to this. Nicholas’s breath stuck in his diaphragm. Abbigail and Brother Huber! Over his dead body. He forced calm.
“Did they agree to draw the Lot?”
She nodded, looking down. “They drew the Lot last week, while you were away.”
“And …” He did not want to hear the answer.
She studied her fingernails. “It said yes.”
Knowing the answer, it stunned him anyway Reaching across to her, he gently turned her head. Her gaze skittered away. “Abbigail, look at me.”
She could not, without crying. Teardrops tracked down her cheeks. Furious teardrops. After years of seeing his sisters cry, he could tell angry tears from sad ones.
“Abbigail, refuse him,” he urged. “You can refuse his suit. You can say no to the Lot. ‘Tis the simplest thing in all the world. ‘Tis your prerogative.”
She granted him her flaming gaze. “Father insists.”
“Fathers
don’t have that right.”
Her chin trembled in rebellion. “He doesn’t want me to be alone after he goes.”
Nicholas could not repress a bark of laughter. “After he goes? He’s not that ill!”
A wry smile crooked the comers of her mouth. “He is that stubborn. He plans to manage me until I am old and gray.”
“Exactly. Besides, when he does pass on, you won’t be alone. You will have the Single Sisters House,” Nicholas said heartily. He felt on somewhat familiar ground about the fine points of the Brethren’s way of marriage, having discussed them with the oldest of his sisters many times. By the age of twenty-one, Anna Johanna had refused three prospective suitors, turning down the Lot each time.
“My father thinks a Single Sister’s life inferior to marriage,” Abbigail volunteered.
“Do you?”
She paused for an alarmingly long time. “No.”
“Do you want to marry?” he asked, aware of a hitch in his heart, a warning he did not want to heed. For he couldn’t imagine his teasing, confiding friend married, sharing her days, her thoughts, with a husband as she had shared them with him.
She turned her face up to his then, and he was lost in the dark, luminous depths of her eyes.
“Once, I did. Twice. Twice the Lot said no. That it would say yes now, at last…” Her voice cracked. “Can I question the Savior’s will? Can I deny my father’s wishes?”
Yes, yes, yes. The words drummed in Nicholas’s head. Doubt the Lord. Defy your father. Don’t follow my path of halfhearted compliance. Besides, her father probably just wanted to secure his store. But Nicholas slowed his thoughts and took her hands and spoke from his heart.
“The Savior’s consent to a match is not His command that the woman accept it. My sister turns down every proposal that comes her way. It is allowed. No stigma has attached to her. None will attach to you. You know that is our way, Abbigail.”
She nodded, acknowledging the truth of what he said. “But my father-”
“Your father minds his store and forgets his daughter’s happiness.”
“Oh,” she said on a sudden sob of outrage. “Happiness …”
His Stolen Bride Page 12
