Christina tugged at a thick braid. “It’s company …”
“Very pretty company,” Margaretha injected.
“For you,” Christina concluded emphatically.
Pretty! Oh no, he thought. It was too soon for the Elders to set him up for marriage. They had only just turned him down. They had not been wrong, he admitted with new insight Now that he was tied forever to his tin shop, he realized how limited his opportunities were, how burdensome his debts and encumbrances. No matter. He would take on extra business to resolve them, stay up long hours into the night, work his fingers to the bone. The profits from the stock he’d sold to Huber were just enough to tide him over until his efforts paid.
If not the Elders setting him up, then who? Neither Retha nor his father was above trying to put his life right by marrying him off. They believed in marital bliss. They had practically invented iL Exasperated, he almost crushed a teacup in his hand.
The twins danced at his feet. “Nicky, come!”
“Oh, very well, I’m coming.” He reached for his old coat beside the door.
Margaretha crossed her arms, and Christina pursed her lips in disapproval. “Take your good coat, Nicky,” she said.
“We mean really pretty,” Margaretha added.
He didn’t feign the groan that rose up from his chest. What were his parents planning? He shrugged into his father’s best old coat-the one worn in humiliation at Catharina’s wedding-and let his sisters drag him into the crisp September night, past the Square, and down the street to his paternal home, trusting that the newlyweds were in their cabin in the opposite direction. Up the rise, on the west road out of Salem.
The girls skipped beside him, their dolls bobbing bonelessly along.
“Aren’t you going to even ask, Nicky?” Margaretha prodded as the Blums’ substantial two-story brick-and-timber home came into view.
No, he would not ask. Whatever awkwardness awaited him, he would meet head on.
He chucked her chin and offered his most winning smile. “Not tonight, pumpkin. Surprise me.”
She relented, and in moments they were at the door, his sisters spinning around him like the last fireflies of summer.
Jacob Blum was waiting, worried, and he nudged the twins inside. “Go to your mama, girls.” Then he gravely turned to Nicholas. “There was no way to alert you, son.”
Alert him to what? “Sir?”
“To Brother Till, his daughter, and their friend, a widow, come down from Bethlehem.”
Abbigail here? Nicholas’s blood ran cold. Ran hot. With puzzlement, with anticipation.
“Sister Till?” His voice tripped on her name. “And Brother Till? And Sister Rothrock?” he amended, too late for propriety. “Whatever for?”
His father caught the slip and raised a brow. “I hoped you might know.”
“I have not the foggiest notion,” Nicholas said.
But his mind raced over his frenetic last evening in Bethlehem. He had unloaded the wagons, stowed all the goods in their proper places, and left up-to-date ledgers in plain sight. Under Huber’s watchful, indeed, vigilant eye, he had cleared his meager possessions from the Brothers House, sold the man his remaining stock, then stashed his hard-earned profits in his battered portmanteau.
Before that, earlier in the evening, he had … kissed Abbigail. He frowned. Yes, it had been impulsive, even disrespectful of him to touch her. But kissing was no hanging offense. No reason for the ailing Georg Till to make the arduous trek to Salem. No reason for Abbigail to come too. Never mind that Nicholas’s pulse pumped and his heart thudded at the thought of seeing her. But why had they come? It did not bode well.
His father gestured him into the parlor, his brow furrowed with concern. “Let us go in. I am with you, son.”
Nicholas blinked in the brightly lit room. Everyone spoke in hushed, expectant tones except for the twins. They played with the dolls they’d dragged all over town, enjoying their supremacy now that all their older siblings had moved into the Brothers and Sisters Houses. He looked for Abbigail and found her, sitting with Retha and Sister Rothrock, her face to the brightly tiled stove that warmed the room against an evening chill. Between the two stately women, she was tiny, scarcely larger than the twins, and seemed fragile the way only a trim, fine-boned woman could.
He knew better. His heart compressed with admiration. She was tough, she was shrewd, she was true. That was how she’d earned his friendship and esteem.
He crossed the room and greeted his stepmother with a peck on the cheek, hoping for a word, a smile from Abbigail. To his deep consternation, his onetime friend did not look up. Surely she had not come all this way to snub him. Perhaps she was angry. He would be the first to admit that she had every right to be. Perhaps the trip had been an imposition. Perhaps she was uncomfortable in his family’s home. He didn’t want any of that.
No, he wanted her to acknowledge him. Wanted her to greet him gladly. Wanted the reassurance of her bright, discriminating smile.
At a loss, he turned to her father and bowed deeply. “Sir. Tis a pleasure to see you looking well. I trust your journey was not a hard one.”
Till scowled. “’Twas an utter inconvenience.”
A bubble of foreboding stuck in Nicholas’s chest. “If I can help you while you’re here…” Nicholas said, mustering courtesy, mastering curiosity. There was no polite way to ask why they had come before they offered it. “I am at your service.”
“Too late for you to do me any service.” The old man was always blunt to a fault, but this was rude.
Nicholas bristled.
Jacob Blum moved closer, resting a calming hand on Nicholas’s shoulder. “My wife will put our daughters to bed, Brother Georg. Then we can all talk.”
With a flutter of skirts, Retha Blum escorted the reluctant twins upstairs. The silence in their wake sucked the comfort from the room.
Waiting respectfully, Nicholas chafed as he catalogued every move he had made on Georg Till’s behalf, grasping at straws for errors, sins. For some thing that would make Abbigad sit by the fire, avoiding the very sight of him.
Then she turned. For an instant, he relished the familiar precision of her pretty features. Then he saw that her large brown eyes brimmed with … hurt? Doubt? Scrutiny?
He felt his face burn. He could not hide his injuries. Taken off guard by her distance, he linked his hands behind his back, racking his brain to recall an offense against her. He had not hurt her. He had not breathed a word of his unseemly visit to her room or of their indiscreet embrace. Nor could anyone have seen them.
Then what had brought her to his parents’ home with hurt and blame haunting her dark eyes?
On the grueling eight-day coach ride to Salem, Abbigail had steeled herself for meeting Nicholas Blum. But nothing prepared her for the effect of his massive masculine beauty on her ungovernable heart. What a foolish, aging spinster, to have palpitations for the man who dallied with trollops and spurned her for another woman.
Who introduced her to desire.
She had tried those lips, tasted that mouth, pressed her body to his strength.
Oh dear.
She chided herself for her carnal thoughts. But he looked rakish, dangerous, desirable-and grim. His battered face was pale and drawn, and the ready smile was gone. He had come to Salem to stop a wedding and to claim a bride. He did not look like a happily married man. She smoothed the bodice of her dress, seeking composure.
Only a fool would hope him still free.
Her father sat beside her, one gouty foot tapping impatiently. Abbigail wished for a handkerchief or needlework or fresh fall nuts to crack-anything to occupy her hands in this forbidding silence. On the journey, Sister Benigna’s goodwill had curbed her father’s appetite for Nicholas’s blood. The sight of him revived it.
The stairs creaked under Sister Blum’s tread, light and agile for a woman so tall, and she took her place beside her husband. The handsome couple presented a united front, a unity that Abbi
gad remembered in her parents when her mother was alive. She envied Nicholas their support.
“Shall we sit?” Retha Blum asked.
Jacob Blum cleared his throat. “We are at a loss, Brother Georg. I take it Nicholas’s abrupt departure discommoded you beyond what he has told us.”
“Ah, that.” Her father brushed the idea off as if he had not ranted over Nicholas’s desertion even before they discovered the missing watches. “’Twas badly done.”
Nicholas stepped up, manly and contrite. “I acted in haste, in temper. I see that and regret it. I will of course repay you any losses.”
She thought his apology gracious, even generous. If, she realized with a pang, he were truly innocent. Which up till now she had believed him to be. Had prayed could be proven.
Her father noted Nicholas’s apology with an overly correct bow. “Handsome of you, Brother Nicholas. But this”-he reached deep into the pocket of his traveling coat-“is not so easily explained away”
And with a little flourish of triumph that made her wince, he took out the fine-grained walnut case from the safe and clapped it open, exposing its emptiness to one and all. Retha Blum gasped.
“Oh, Georg!” Sister Benigna cried. Even she must disapprove the meanness of his gesture.
He thrust the case under Nicholas’s nose. “Your tongue is glib, however, sir, so you will perhaps find explanation.”
Nicholas plainly recognized the case. Abbigail had expected that. He took it and inspected it, his broad brow furrowing.
“Your watches,” he said in evident disbelief. Honest disbelief, Abbigail felt certain. “What happened to your watches?”
Her father laid his snare. “Perhaps you thought them yours, Blum?”
Abbigail bristled at his smugness.
“No, sir. I bought them for you,” Nicholas explained with careful courtesy. “With your money. On my last trip to Philadelphia. From a reputable dealer who was none too pleased at the low price I bargained for. I had purchased silks and wines and stationery to such advantage that there was money enough for this … extravagance.”
“Then you took the first excuse that offered to run off with them.” Her father paused dramatically. “I call that stealing.”
Nicholas blanched. Abbigail could not wrest her gaze away from his unfeigned indignation. His father and stepmother moved nearer to support him, a gesture of family accord and parental trust she had long yearned for.
“You think I stole the watches,” Nicholas said evenly, somehow managing, she sensed, to control his anger. It spoke well of him, she told herself, both the reason and the restraint.
Her father puffed up, a small dog defying a great one. “I know it, sir.”
Nicholas’s throat worked with emotion. “I regret leaving you in haste, Brother Till, but I never touched your watches but to stow them in your safe.”
“And you expect me-you expect ai”-her father’s arm clamped down on Abbigail’s shoulder, including her in a most unwelcome way-“to believe that.”
Injured pride reddened Nicholas’s cheek. “I expect exactly that.”
“Tell him, daughter, what you told me.”
“Father, don’t…” Abbigad protested as she had that day, then on the trip, and then even as they had stood with Sister Benigna on the Blums’ doorstep.
“’Tis either now or before the Elders.”
In a rare rebuttal of her father’s will, Abbigail shook her head.
“Georg, must it come to that?” the Widowed Sister asked, disapproving, disappointed.
“There must be another explanation,” Jacob Blum said. “You have a senior assistant, do you not?”
“Brother Huber, yes. Christian Huber,” her father said impatiently.
“Could he not have … misplaced them?”
Her father huffed. “In over a year of faithful service, the man has not misplaced one farthing-not one cent. I check every receipt he touches.”
“Then you will have checked my son’s receipts as well.”
“Yes, and found them in error.”
Abbigail remembered that first trip and could not let her father distort it. “Minor errors, Father. Ripperton’s errors, on Brother Blum’s first receipts.”
“Errors, Abbigail, such as Brother Huber never made. I have every confidence that he could keep track of five valuable French watches. He knew they would profit the store.”
“Some other explanation, then,” Sister Blum interceded gently. “Lost, perhaps, among some other stock.”
“Truly, Brother Blum, Sister Blum, if you persist in defending your son, we must approach the Elders.”
Jacob Blum’s eyes filled with indignation. “Can you not see the likelihood that my son’s departure and the missing watches are a coincidence?”
“A convenience, more likely.”
“Brother Georg, I know my son. He left in a rash anger, not planning anything. But he was raised an honest man. Besides, to accuse him, you must have proof.”
“How can I prove anything without examining him?” Georg Till exploded. “I cannot even find the key.”
Nicholas had stepped back, as if embarrassed by his parents’ vigorous defense. But he muffled an exclamation at her father’s comment. All heads whipped around to him.
“Son?”
He lifted a shoulder in defeat. “I have his key. I was distracted while unloading the wagons. I forgot to put it back.”
A fierce blush of consternation heated Abbigail’s face. She had distracted Nicholas that evening. He had found her in angry tears and had consoled her. She looked down miserably, then up at him.
He must remember, too, for his determined gaze enjoined her sdence.
But her father pounced on any evidence that Nicholas was less than scrupulously responsible. “There, you see, Brother Blum. Negligence goes hand in glove with dishonesty.”
“I see only that the case is complicated,” Jacob Blum said evenly.
“The case is deplorable! Brothers have been censured-even dismissed-for drunkenness, for brawling, for marrying outside of our community. But has Salem ever known Brother to steal from Brother? Bethlehem has not. The case must be heard.”
Abbigad knew her father loved to drive hard bargains. Evidently the senior Blum knew, too. He continued with taut control. “Brother Georg, you and I have done business together for three decades. Business based on trust. I ask you to extend that trust to my son. No one condones his hasty departure. But he is innocent of any theft. Let us not be hasty now.”
“Two weeks have passed since the watches disappeared. Nor is this my only grievance. Tomorrow morning I will call on the Elders if you will not.”
Nicholas stepped forward abruptly, his face dark with anger he no longer tried to conceal. “Why bother with the Elders?” He turned to his father. “Call a search, sir. I have naught to hide.”
Abbigail shuddered. It was not wise to let her father have his way. Jacob Blum agreed, however, with Nicholas. Quickly assembling a few men, the senior Blum led the way to his son’s tin shop.
“Don’t forget the storage bins,” Nicholas called out to his father, confident of being cleared and intent on establishing his innocence. Jacob Blum was riffling through the contents of the front room of the tin shop. He had taken down every container arranged along the wall for sale, shaken them, and listened for a ratde, then turned them upside down. His brother Matthias, in his first duty as an Elder, was in the back room rummaging through Nicholas’s things.
No watches! Nicholas wanted to shout loud enough for all to hear. Particularly, he realized with a curious twist of his heart, for Abbigail to hear. Her doubting gaze had cut him to the bone.
Nicholas reined in impatience. Waiting was the hard part. To clear him, they had to glean the contents of the shop. His private quarters were not fancy, a Single Brother’s temporary lodging, a pallet and some clothes. His shop was large for one in Salem, built to accommodate large sheets of tin, an assistant, and some inventory. Not four large me
n, and one small vindictive one.
At Nicholas’s right, night watchman Samuel Ernst, friend of his father’s and unofficial proctor of the search, supervised them with a scowl. On his left, Georg Till stood, determined to see him in the wrong.
“Don’t forget my clothes, Matty,” he yelled to the back. “They have pockets!
Matthias peered around the door frame, straining to smile good news. “Empty,” he said in his forthright way and disappeared again.
“Can we be done with this?” Samuel Ernst fidgeted with his conch. “I have rounds to finish.”
Georg Till stood in the doorway still, dividing his attention between Jacob and Matthias Blum’s searches. “If they hope to clear you, Brother Blum, there should be no doubt of their assiduous effort,” he said.
“None whatsoever,” Nicholas said smoothly. But the back of his neck prickled.
Moments later, Matthias joined their father at the counter where Nicholas fashioned all his tinware. He wiped his yellow-tinged hands with a wrinkled handkerchief.
“Sorry about the mess, Nicky,” he said in an undertone. “But you said everything.”
Jacob Blum dusted off his hands, too, and said amiably, “Had you followed my profession, son, you would have found drafting paper not to be so dirty. I am done here as well.”
Nicholas frowned. It couldn’t be that easy or that fast. Had they searched everything? “Check the cash box, Papa, and the drawers.”
His father left Matthias to the task. His brother opened the cash box and dumped script and coin onto the counter. It had been a meager day, the customers gawking at the shop’s scandalous proprietor rather than buying his goods.
“Nothing.” Then Matthias attacked the drawers. Messy drawers, one crammed with broken tools awaiting repair, another filled with receipts and invoices, records of things done and things to do.
And no watches.
“No watches anywhere, son, Brother Till. As we knew,” Jacob Blum said.
For no reason Nicholas could understand, he almost sagged with relief. “Let that be an end of it then,” he said, his harsh voice giving away feelings he’d rather have kept private. He hadn’t thought the search he’d asked for would carve up his pride and crowd his sense of freedom. He pivoted and left the room, seeking the wider streets of town, the clearer air where he could breathe more easily.
His Stolen Bride Page 20
