His Stolen Bride

by Judith Stanton

  Their distress made it doubly hard for him to watch his parents’ bleak approach. The early morning sun cast long bright shadows through the pines, across fields heavy with September harvest. His bear of a father did not show his fifty years except for a dignified sprinkling of gray in his blond mane. His tall, elegant stepmother, Retha, looked barely old enough to have borne four children, the twins nearly ten years old.

  Solemnly his parents conferred with Brother Ernst, who left. Brother Steiner, who had stayed behind to forestall further fighting, discreedy walked on to his mill. Sister Baumgarten fiercely shepherded her erring daughter back to face her fate. Matthias put down a rake and straightened his stock uneasily.

  Retha took Nicholas’s hand and reached up to warmly kiss his cheek. “Nicky, we didn’t hope to have you home.” She inspected his ravaged face. “You look a perfect wreck.”

  Despite his turmoil, Nicholas almost grinned at her fond, familiar scolding, then dismissed her attentions as he always had. “The other man looks worse.”

  Concern furrowing his brow, Jacob Blum embraced him and released him. “I am glad to see you, son, but this is a sorry pass.”

  Nicholas nodded, sure of his family’s love but equally sure of their disgust of grown men-brothers-fighting.

  Jacob Blum turned sternly to Matthias. “’Tis an inauspicious beginning for a man slated to become an Elder.”

  “An Elder?” Nicholas muttered, astonished that the Board had appointed him so young.

  Catharina made a little cry of shock. Clearly, she had not been told. Matthias’s new position and the Elders’ haste in marrying him must somehow be connected. Nicholas felt a smug, unworthy satisfaction grip him. After today’s brawl, no one, not Catharina, not anyone, would think his maddeningly perfect brother fit to fill the role.

  Matthias ducked his head to clear the doorway of the shadowed barn. “Yes, sir. I regret it” Squaring his shoulders like a martyr, he stepped into the light his face raw as butchered meat

  With a gasp of concern, Retha went to him, whipped off her crisp white apron and raised it to the corner of his eye, clucking her tongue in a motherly, sympathetic way. “We cannot remedy your injuries by Sunday. Everyone will know what happened here.”

  Matthias winced manfully as she blotted blood off bruises.

  “Which of you is hurt the worst?” she asked, dabbing away.

  “He is,” Nicholas said in unison with his brother.

  Their father gave a cheerless laugh. “There’s a change. You both used to claim the worser injury.”

  He laughed alone. Used to seemed very long ago, when Nicholas and his brother had been fast friends, true allies in whatever mischief Nicholas could devise.

  Two farm families on their way to town for morning prayers slowed down. Curious children craned their necks. Bright-eyed Sisters averted their gazes to hide unseemly nosiness. Two bearded Brethren looked out from under flat-brimmed hats.

  “Can we be of any help?” Brother Leinbach called out courteously.

  Jacob Blum hurried him along. “Nein, ‘tis naught. Everything is fine.”

  But it wasn’t. The gossip would start the minute the families passed on, and everyone knew it. Worse, Nicholas knew from hard experience that Catharina could not be shielded from it. Which was his fault, too.

  After the worshippers went their way, his father herded the families inside the barn and turned to Nicholas. “This morning’s business, son, ‘tis not right.”

  Unrepentant, Nicholas bridled at the injustice of it all. “No, sir. I grant you, ‘tis not right.” His own intended bride, stolen by his brother.

  “I need to know what happened,” Jacob Blum said evenly.

  Despite Nicholas’s simmering anger, his gaze instinctively sought his brother’s, unconsciously evoking their old accord. Deny all had been their boyhood motto.

  “’Twas naught, sir,” Matthias said, true to their old form but unconvincing.

  “A misunderstanding merely, Father,” Nicholas added smoothly. “Of concern to none but us.”

  “Misunderstanding!” Jacob Blum rubbed the back of his neck, always a sign of how deeply he was disturbed. Had they been miscreant boys, he would have served up justice quickly, fairly. But they were men, responsible for their actions, and his reasoning tone allotted each of them respect. “Do you not think a stronger word is called for? Misunderstandings don’t draw blood. I cannot counsel you, but the Elders do not stand idly by when Brethren fight They will take it very badly, too, if there is reason to call off the wedding.”

  “Reason!” Nicholas exploded. Would he have gone through this without one? “There was every-”

  “I will not call off the wedding,” Matthias cut in, new fervor in his voice.

  All heads pivoted toward him. Catharina was abashed, her mother softening, Retha somber. His father frowned, studying his second oldest son as if approving of his manly stand.

  Nicholas’s heart compressed. Matthias had won Catharina He had lost his oldest dream.

  “Tis a serious matter to take a wife under this cloud. You are prepared then to live with this, son,” his father said.

  Matthias set his jaw with conviction. “As prepared as a man can be,” he said firmly. “Twould be unconscionable to turn her out I will not shame my bride by breaking our betrothal.”

  He didn’t look prepared, Nicholas thought. He looked tormented.

  His father nodded, apparently satisfied with Matthias’s response. “I will take it very badly if you resort to fists again,” he added.

  Matthias shook his head bleakly. “So will I, sir.”

  He must have broken every code of conduct dear to his straitlaced soul, Nicholas thought. Then his father turned back to Nicholas. All eyes followed suit.

  “We didn’t expect you, Nicky. How is it that you came for this?” his father asked quietly.

  I came on a horse, Nicholas nearly said. At a dead gallop. In the black of night.

  Every cell in his body struggled to repress defiance. With a jerk of his head, he implicated his brother. “He wrote to me.”

  “And you arrived …?” Jacob Blum began.

  “Last night, after midnight. I slept in my shop,” Nicholas snapped, exasperated.

  “You left everyone and everything well in Bethlehem?” his father asked kindly.

  With remorse, Nicholas recalled the bruised look on Abbigail’s face when he said goodbye. Neither that nor anything else about his leaving was fit for telling here. “As well as could be.”

  Retha stepped up. “Good, Nicky. Join us at our midday meal today. The twins will be overjoyed to see you. You can tell us all about your adventures.”

  Then she inserted herself between him and his brother and took their hands in hers, a gesture of reconciliation that had worked when they were boys. “You cannot take this feud to tomorrow’s wedding. Let us begin by mending fences. Nothing is ever so bad that men of goodwill cannot mend it.”

  But there was no goodwill between them. Nicholas knew it, and Matthias’s expression of affronted pride ensured that the matter between them would not soon be resolved.

  Nevertheless, Matthias motioned him into the privacy of the barn’s shadows and lowered his voice. “Retha has the right of it, you know.”

  Nicholas picked up his tricorn from the barn’s dirt floor and whacked it clean against his breeches. Bastard. Smug, superior bastard. Nicholas had won the battle of the fists. But the struggle for Catharina’s heart was hardly over.

  Matthias held himself straight as a rifle. “I am willing to forgive, whether you are or not.”

  Nicholas slammed a stall door shut and stalked from the barn. He hated this … goodness thrown up in his face.

  But Matthias followed him into the lane. Well out of hearing, Catharina and their parents gawked. “Nicholas. Forgiveness … ‘tis Scripture.”

  Doctrinal goodness was the worst. Nicholas stared stonily away, furious. His perfect brother was forgiving him for sins he’d not committed
.

  “You are coming to the wedding?” Matthias asked solemnly. “For her sake. ‘Twill be taken amiss by all if you do not.” Hurt creased his brow and glistened in his eyes. Actual hurt.

  “I will come to your wedding,” Nicholas said hoarsely and walked off without another word. And without a backward glance at Catharina.

  “Mother, please.” Catharina pulled against her mother’s tight chastising grip. The Blums had walked away, and Nicholas had stalked off, leaving only Matthias, standing in the barn’s door, dark and solitary. “Let me have a moment with Brother Blum.”

  Anger splotched her mother’s face. “After what I have seen and heard in my own barn this morning, I think not! Catharina, how could you?” she hissed in a shamed and shaming whisper.

  As if whispered secrets mattered now. The town would be spellbound with news of their private affairs, Catharina thought with dismay.

  “Sunday he will be my husband!”

  “Sunday you may talk to him”

  “Mother…”

  Matthias turned to leave. Catharina couldn’t let him.

  Tearing herself free, she bolted after him.

  “Catharina!” her mother called out.

  “Brother Blum, bitte, wait! We must talk”

  She overtook him in the road and dared to clutch his sleeve. He wheeled around, tall and lean and blazing.

  “Brother Blum, you call me.” His poor battered mouth twisted. “But he is Nicholas to you. And you-he calls you Catharina. So intimate. So scandalous. What more is there to say?”

  For the second time in one short hour, Catharina stood her ground with one of the dauntingly tall Blum brothers. It was a dizzy feeling for one so great and gawky that she looked down on almost everybody else. She gathered up her courage.

  “You don’t understand … Matthias.”

  “What is there to understand, Sister Baumgarten?” he asked pointedly, rejecting her familiarity. “A man has eyes. A man sees his bride, willing, in his brother’s arms. A man sees his brother claim a kiss. A man hears his brother say-” He broke off, clasped her arms, and looked deeply into her eyes. The pain that poured off him hurt her heart “How could you have accepted me, knowing you love him?”

  “But I will come to love-”

  “A simple no would have sufficed. ‘Twould have hurt my pride, but nothing like this. A man and his wife should be-are-pledged to one another for all time. You could have waited and married him.”

  “The Savior willed that I should marry you.”

  “That’s not how it works!” He was incredulous, furious. Matthias, aroused to anger, was a far more fearful sight than Nicholas because he was such a milder man.

  She stood her ground, heart beating wildly. “I wanted to marry you.”

  His blazing blue eyes narrowed in disbelief. “You did, did you? Why? Because your beloved had left town? Because your mother browbeat you into doing it? Because the Elders asked? Did you not think of me? That I might want a bride whose heart was still her own?”

  How did he know? She studied her old shoes, poking out beneath her straw-strewn hem, completely shamed, found out The Blums had always been too smart for her, but this was surely the worst his seeing clear through all her motives. They were all of them as smart as whips where she was merely … a tongue-tied farm girl. But she did have common sense, and she summoned it They were pledged. He must have found her attractive, and she found him … safe. She offered up her mother’s litany for marital bliss.

  “I want to love you, Brother Blum. I believe in time I can. As our fathers came to love our mothers, and our mothers our fathers, and our grandparents before them. After we are married. If only you will marry me.”

  He looked down at her, his handsome, bruised face inscrutable. “Don’t mistake me, Sister. My word is my bond, and I am pledged to marry you. We will live together as man and wife in love and harmony. Spiritual love and chaste harmony.”

  Catharina’s heart compressed with dread. Could he mean for them to live together without the very act that marriage sanctioned? She might not now feel for him all that she would, but she wouldn’t run away with Nicholas and ruin the three of them in God’s eyes, and the Brethren’s. Besides, for all that she loved Nicholas, she saw now for the first time how he had flattered her and swept her along with his energy and charm.

  Matthias Blum led the quieter, simpler, safer life she craved. And she wanted to be his wife.

  Dieu, how to ask for that? Shyly, with effort, she corrected him. “In married love, Brother Blum.”

  His blue eyes chilled. “Not that. I cannot share your bed. Not while you love my brother. Given this morning’s evidence that you do love him, I do not expect, ah … married love”-he made the words a mockery-“to follow any time soon.”

  For one so smart, so mild, he could be both plainspoken and quite harsh. A sob of frustration caught in her throat He hadn’t believed Nicholas. He wouldn’t believe her. But she must try. She forced a note of confidence. “I don’t love your brother in the way you think. But I will not lie and say we were not friends. We were simply friends.”

  “You have an odd way of showing it, meeting him at the crack of dawn in your mother’s barn.”

  “Brother Blum, I never agreed to meet him here.”

  “Which is to say, you met him elsewhere,” Matthias said with the soft, alarming wrath of a man who had found a culprit out.

  In lanes, behind the Sisters House, in peach orchards, she remembered. A betraying blush burned her face.

  “Damnation! I knew it.” He flung his hat into the dirt. “I’ll murder him.”

  She put out her arms to stop him from charging off. “Gut Gott im Himmel, no, Matthias! For the two of you to fight was terrible enough!” Anything to prevent disaster. “They were only innocent kisses!”

  Rage, jealousy, desire raced across his face. “How could any man kiss you innocently?” he rasped, and caught her in his arms.

  His mouth came down on hers, and the kiss was hard and deep, possessing her at a place inside she never knew existed. Not safe, she thought dazedly. Not safe at all. But his taste was sweet for one so angry, and his careful hands upon her face belied the anger in his kiss. He ended it and pulled away, his mouth a breath from hers, his chest heaving.

  “So. There. Do you see why no innocence attaches to the kisses that you shared with my brother?”

  Given that her stomach was doing somersaults, she saw iL Kisses were dangerous. Kisses with Matthias, that is. Sweet as she was on Nicholas, he had never turned her upside down like this. His taste had never burned her blood. Never coded into her inmost being. Her head whirled with these new insights. What had she felt for Nicholas all these years, if not love? Could she love Matthias differently? Could she love him more?

  Maybe. Almost certainly.

  But how to prove it?

  “Brother Blum, Nicholas kisses all the girls.”

  Matthias swooped down, captured his hat and jammed it on his head. “Not you, not any longer. Meet me in Gemeinhaus on Sunday afternoon. I stand by my vow. I will not turn you away.”

  And he was gone.

  She whirled around in a circle of confusion and distress, her skirts billowing around her, her thoughts scurrying in all directions.

  What to do? Where to go? What to say?

  Nothing, nowhere, not one word. She put her hand to her mouth, testing her lips, tender and alive from his bold kiss.

  Nicholas had never claimed her soul.

  Her mother peeked around a corner of the barn, holding a handful of trampled flowers Catharina had overlooked. “It appears that there will be a wedding after all,” she said, suddenly sunny. She thrust the bouquet into Catharina’s arms. “These must be for you.”

  They were. Catharina gaped at their colorful array. Her heart flooded with gratitude, with belated pleasure. Matthias Blum had come to court her with sweet Williams, ragged pinks and mums, and two great, fullblown yellow roses.

  Simple, pretty, thou
ghtful. And sincere.

  Oh, dear, she thought. Dismay cloaked her shoulders like a coat of many sorrows. Her perfectly handsome, perfectly shy bridegroom had come to court her with a tender heart, and she had smashed his trust.

  17

  “Move over. You’re crowding me,” Harmon Blum complained, waiting in Gemeinhaus for the wedding to begin. The hulking fifteen-year-old already matched the stature of his father and his older brothers.

  “Any farther, and I’ll push Papa off the bench,” Nicholas said through clenched teeth. To the left of the Saal, Married and Single Brothers jammed onto benches; Married and Single Sisters squeezed together on the right. His father and his youngest brother flanked him, as if, left to his own devices, he would flee the scene.

  Not a chance, he thought. He was too exhausted, too filled with remorse. It was Catharina’s wedding day, and he looked the fool, beaten and battered and the odd man out. In the gaping space at the front of the Saal, the minister preceded the three bridal couples to the altar.

  It could have been better, Nicholas told himself. By tradition, Brethren sometimes wed a dozen couples in one ceremony. It could have been worse. More rarely they wed only one.

  “Papa told us to come early,” Harmon said.

  “We are early,” Nicholas pointed out. Coming early hadn’t helped. Everyone who’d ever caught him in the wrong had turned out to see his brother wed. Masters, daughters’ mothers. Single Sisters he had kissed. He braced for scrutiny.

  “Welcome home, Brother Nicholas.” Philip Schopp twisted on the bench in front of them to greet him. More likely his former schoolmaster wished to inspect his wounds, too fresh to be hidden. Much given to brawling as a lad, Nicholas had never been his favorite.

  Nicholas forced a smile. Never mind that it cracked his split lip and made his bruised jaw throb. “’Tis a joyous occasion, is it not?”

  Brother Schopp scowled, obviously disapproving that he had the nerve to show his face. But he had no retort. Since Saturday morning, rumors of the rift between him and his brother had ricocheted through town. With studied nonchalance, Nicholas brushed a drift of goosedown off the sleeve of the coat he had borrowed from his father.