She hated her father’s stubbornness even as she struggled to honor him. She invoked habit, duty, and an old affection for the loving parent he once was. For years, she had shored up that memory against his defects and his lacks. But neither his loneliness nor his unremitting pain excused his quest to have Nicholas Blum tried, found guilty, and disassociated from the Brethren from now until forever after.
Her father and Sister Benigna leading, Abbigail mounted the few steps to Gemeinhaus, one hand sliding up a gracefully curved iron railing. Georg Till held open the heavy green herringboned door for Sister Benigna, then for her. His play of courtesy chafed while he refused so obstinately to hear their pleas to drop his allegations.
Was he simply jealous of Nicholas? His youth? His health? His energy and new ideas? Or did her father resent Nicholas’s influence over her? She knew her father believed she’d resisted Brother Huber’s suit because of Nicholas. Did he fear losing her to the younger, newer man?
He could have-if Nicholas had ever asked. But the charming Single Brother’s regard was merely friendly. Last night’s brotherly kiss confirmed that, to her own dreary certainty.
With a sinking feeling Abbigail entered the Saal, the Elders’ cavernous meeting room. Several Brethren had preceded them. Beneath its vaulting ceiling a reverent buzz of voices echoed. Benches used for morning prayers scraped over the bare plank floors as teams of Brothers ranged them along the far wall. A low laugh sounded under the rafters.
She peered through the morning shadows. It was unmistakably Nicholas, his massive shoulders bulging under a formal Sunday coat. Oblivious to the prospect of his own demise, he was casually helping rearrange the room. Her heart squeezed with affection. How like him-fearless and undaunted. Had he no foreboding?
He’d had none last night, climbing through the window to her bedroom bold as the very devil, to insist that she not take his side.
She should never have made that pact.
How could she protect him if she didn’t tell the truth?
Four men lifted a heavy table and moved it to the center of the room, Nicholas among them. No, not among them. Larger than them, stronger than them, more vitally alive. Not even his father, whom she had come to like, had such a presence. Nor that tall young Brother. She wondered who he was.
Then Nicholas glanced her way. A grin of recognition flashed across his face, and her heart skidded into a spin. Merciful heavens. Her efforts to quiet the palpitations she had suffered in the wake of last night’s visit were all for naught. And now he was coming toward her, the healing bruises and gashes on his face more conspicuous in daylight. The dark young man walked stiffly at his side.
“Sister Till. This is my older younger brother, Matthias Blum,” Nicholas said, so secure in his own innocence that he teased her with the very words she’d said the day he left. “He is our newest, youngest Elder, too, and as such attends our hearing.”
Up close, the dark, fiercely handsome man showed signs of a brutal fight, not unlike Nicholas. His cool, proud manner was at odds with his battered features until he mumbled a greeting, and a blush crept up his neck.
Uncomfortable herself, she said the first thing that sprang to mind. “I congratulate you, Brother Blum, on your appointment and your marriage.”
The blush rose higher, and he stammered thanks, rousing her compassion. He was not proud but modest, shy. This was not a man who schemed to steal his brother’s bride. Why had Nicholas torn off in a rage against him?
“’Tis awkward, this meeting, is it not?” she asked gently.
“For all but Nicholas, Sister Till,” Matthias Blum said gravely. “He never shrank from trouble in his life.”
“They will not hang me this time either, Matty.” Nicholas smiled, but Abbigail saw his strain in the set of his jaw. “Come, Sister Till, have you met these good people?”
“Some of them,” she said, following his gaze to the assembled Elders. The two women Elders stood together. With practiced diplomacy, Jacob Blum squired her father to them for introductions.
She shook her head in bemused disbelief. Where did the Blum men get their grace in the face of adversity? Did none of them fear her father’s purpose? She took a steadying breath. If they could face the present awkwardness with grace, she could, too. She collected her manners. “I met Brother and Sister Marshall at vespers, and your stepmother presented me to Sister Krause at the Single Sisters House.”
“Well, then you have met all but two of the Elders.” Nicholas’s fingers at her elbow directed her to two older men she did not know. His touch, proprietary on her elbow, gave her a shiver of pleasure.
Unwarranted and unwelcome, she told herself firmly.
Nicholas gave the men a polite, correct bow. “Brother Steiner, from the mill, who represents our tradesmen. And Brother Schopp, whose schoolroom I fear I disrupted more than once.”
Abbigail murmured a demure greeting. Brother Steiner nodded back solemnly. The tall, thin schoolmaster gave her a curt acknowledgment, then scowled at Nicholas as if at a truant child.
“Another scandal, Brother Nicholas. Surely you take this one seriously.”
“’Tis no scandal till there’s proof of sin,” Nicholas said, only a slight tightening of his fingers on her arm betraying his displeasure at the schoolmaster’s rebuke.
Brother Marshall tapped a gavel on the table, and Abbgail jumped, on edge. Schopp took his seat with a show of straightening papers. Sister Marshall touched a crepe-skinned hand to her waist and directed her to the table marooned in the center of the room.
“Come, Sister Till. Sit here beside your father.”
Here, next to Brother Schopp. Directly across from Nicholas, who looked strong and handsome and at his ease. As he had looked last night, alone in her bedroom, stripped to shirt and breeches-golden, intimate, and close enough to kiss. Shameful, she chided herself, to think about that now.
But now as then, she felt no shame at all.
Nevertheless, her palpitations began again. She struggled to master her thoughts. The hearing was starting, she told herself, and the outcome was in doubt.
With all the fuss of an invalid, her father took his seat, leaving Brother Schopp to pull out Abbigail’s chair for her to sit. The order of seating had been accomplished deftly: she, her father, and Sister Benigna across from the Blum men. Accusers facing the accused. She lowered her eyes, unsure where accusers looked, but her gaze fell on Nicholas’s large, rough hands. They bore nicks and cuts, no doubt from working with tin snips and shears. The tinsmith’s trade was too humbling a calling for a man of promise in the larger world of trade.
Sitting again, Philip Schopp drummed restless fingers on a page of precise script and glared at the Blum men across the table. “I still hold that their attendance infringes upon some rule.”
Frederick Marshall laid his gavel down. “Not so, Brother Schopp. We voted to admit them to the hearing. Especially Brother Jacob, as he arranged for his son to work with Brother Till. And if him, then his younger son. We have the prerogative to make such changes. Especially in such an unusual inquiry.”
“Family members are not allowed-”
“To vote. Nor Will they, Brother Schopp.” Marshall firmly called the meeting to order and briefly prayed for the Savior’s guidance, for temperance and truth. Without further ado, he introduced Abbigail, her father, and Sister Benigna to the Board, gave a brief background of the inquiry, and explained the charge.
“In short,” he concluded, “Brother Till accuses our Single Brother Nicholas Blum of stealing several valuable watches. I believe, Brother Blum, you purchased them yourself.”
Nicholas nodded. “I did.”
“Have you anything to say?”
His golden countenance, she thought, was clear of all wrong doing. “I deny it. Not the purchase-’twas a carefully considered acquisition-but the theft.”
The Single Sisters’ leader, round-faced Rosina Krause, spoke up. Her gray eyes revealed nothing, but a steel backbone propped up
her pomp. “I have been chosen, Brother Blum, to ask our first questions. But first we would like to hear your version of what happened.”
“Beginning when?” Nicholas asked politely
“With the purchase.”
Omitting nothing Abbigail had heard before, he described buying dolls from an old woman and watches from a clockmaker by the wharf. Then he explained how he had carefully packed both purchases in the wagon, driven it home, unloaded it, shown Abbigail the watches, and secured them in the safe.
“Very good, Brother Blum,” Rosina Krause said. Her tone was not unkind but almost condescending. “I can understand buying dolls for the store. Perhaps you can explain what inspired you to buy such expensive watches.”
He nodded obligingly. “They were a bargain. And as such, they would benefit the store by selling at a reasonable but still higher price.”
“Yet they were not in keeping with our practice of plain dress.”
“True enough. But the outsiders who shop with us would buy them. We sell laces, necklaces, all manner of goods we ourselves do not wear. There is no sin in selling fine watches. Indeed, they should have drawn more custom into Brother Till’s store and thus increased his profit.”
Sister Krause’s gray eyes narrowed. “So … Brother Till had commissioned such a purchase.”
“Not that exact purchase. But he particularly instructed me to shop with an eye to expanding our inventory.”
“Ah, very well then. That answers all my questions.”
The old battle-ax had not actually asked questions, Abbigail noted. Still, she let out a breath of relief on Nicholas’s behalf. But she let down her guard too soon. Rosina Krause turned to Abbigail’s father.
“Now, Brother Till, if you would give your version of events.”
As if in pain, her father shifted, then to Abbigail’s astonishment began a tale of insubordination that could only blacken Nicholas’s name. To begin with, her father complained, the Single Brother had arrived in Bethlehem days late. And picked a fight with Brother Huber, a mild man. Every trip that Nicholas had made for trade had taken too much or too little time. He had faded to purchase everything required and heaped up bills in room and board. He had disregarded rationing and sold unauthorized meal to outsiders. He had even failed to attend to Sister Rothrock’s injured ankle properly.
Then he paused for breath.
Abbigail wanted to slink under the table. Her father skewed the truth. Sister Benigna could not repress a disapproving sigh. Jacob Blum’s deep displeasure showed in the way he unconsciously rubbed his neck. And this time poor Matthias Blum’s proud posture fooled her not one whit
Nicholas stayed calm, only his clenched jaw suggesting the strain he felt Unfortunately his failure to fold would deepen her father’s resolve to fight.
“Be that as it may, Brother Till, our concern is events surrounding the watch,” said Sister Krause.
“I have more,” he said.
“Papa, you have said enough,” Abbigail whispered urgently.
He ignored her, and she forced her hands to rest upon the table, curbing further protest until it might prove most effective.
The rest of his story was very nearly what Nicholas already said, but told aslant and threaded with innuendo and suspicion. Finally her father stopped.
“That shines a rather clearer light upon Brother Nicholas’s story. Brother Marshall … tf I may,” said Brother Schopp. The schoolmaster brought his notes up to his spectacles, scanned the page, then laid them down. “Ahem. Did you usually consign valuables to the safe, Brother Blum?”
“No. I had not purchased anything that valuable before.”
“Yet you knew where to find the key.”
“Despite Brother Till’s account of my conduct, Brother Schopp, I had been instructed about the key. Under Sister Till’s instruction, I learned the value, source, and station of every item in the store.”
“Even the safe, Brother Blum?” Philip Schopp asked doubtfully.
“Yes, she showed me its contents briefly once. ‘Twas empty but for a purse of guineas from the sale of a large lot of wine from Sicily.”
“Yet you remembered the location of the key.” The old schoolmaster dug like a dog after a prized bone.
“’Twas no great secret. ‘Twas kept beneath the cushion on Brother Till’s chair.”
“How is it that you did not return it there?”
Nicholas shrugged, but Abbigail’s sympathetic eye saw mounting tension in the shortness of his gesture. “I had unexpected news from home and left in haste.”
Her father pushed back his chair and stood up, favoring his weaker leg. “Which I strictly forbade you to do. You left without-”
“You will have your turn, Brother Till.” Sister Marshall cut into his tirade with a hand held high. “Pray continue, Brother Blum.”
“That must be why I pocketed the key. Which I freely admit to doing.”
“Do you have it now?” the schoolmaster asked
“I returned it to Brother Till the evening he arrived in Salem.”
Her father thrust forward in his chair. “But not the watches.”
“Because I do not have them,” Nicholas said.
Her father’s face reddened. “Because you traded them. You could have-”
Frederic Marshall intervened this time. “Brother Till! We will question our Brother. Brother Schopp is well prepared to do so.”
Abbigail groaned inwardly. The old schoolmaster was too prepared, too vengeful. Never would she have imagined Nicholas had enemies. Nor could she guess why. At her side, Schopp consulted his notes, his eyes darting up and down a page that the slightest glance told her was prepared meticulously.
“When did you discover-” Schopp said the word with a cynical curl to his lips-“that you had the key?”
“The next afternoon, when I changed horses. I reached into my pocket for change.”
“Where was that?”
“The Apple Tree in Gettysburg.”
“Ah. Gettysburg. A convenient town, was it not, in which to sell stolen watches?”
Nicholas’s square, strong jaw clenched at the insult. So Brother Schopp had sprung his trap and meant to wrest a confession by surprise.
“Convenient, had I stolen them. But I did not,” Nicholas said firmly.
Schopp rattled his papers importantly. “Now then, what were the watches worth?”
A very great deal of money, Abbigail thought, tightening her hands against the man’s disturbing insinuation. Enough to motivate a thief-even she, Nicholas’s staunch defender, had to admit as much. Niggling doubt crept into her certainty.
What if her father, what if Schopp were right?
She had not doubted Nicholas in her bedroom in the dark of night. Would his easy charm withstand the day? For she also recalled the enameled snuff boxes he had bought. Expensive baubles she had lost track of. Had they been his? Or theirs? Had they been sold? Or had they disappeared? For a miserable moment, she wasn’t sure. But to stake her reputation on his integrity, she had to be.
Across the table Nicholas met Schopp’s damaging implication head-on. “As a lot, the watches were worth about a hundred guineas. One hundred forty dollars at the current exchange.”
With relief, she unclenched her hands. Stupid, to let herself be drawn in. Thieves slithered, bluffed, or buckled. They didn’t glower righteously.
“And singly?” Schopp prodded.
“Singly, at a shop, they would sell for thirty guineas each.”
“A considerable sum, Brother Blum.”
“An estimate. Some would sell for less, some perhaps for more.”
“A profit of fifty guineas, shall we say?”
That was obvious, pedantic, and disputatious of the man, Abbigail thought, her own wrath rising for Nicholas’s sake.
Nicholas shrugged off Schopp’s attack. “Near enough.”
“Enough for a man strapped by debt to begin to clear his ledgers. As you have done since you returned to town.
”
Abbigail gasped. Heads bobbed as murmurs rippled up and down the table.
“Why don’t you speak plainly, Brother Schopp?” Nicholas asked, his restraint breaking into sarcasm.
Philip Schopp smiled smugly. “You left Salem heavily in debt, as perhaps not everyone here quite knows. On your precipitate return, you commence to pay off those considerable debts. Ergo, you had access to the watches and a need for the profits they would realize.”
Georg Till gave a hearty sniff of satisfaction. “Just as I suspected. Precisely.”
Nicholas stood, flattened his hands on the polished surface of the heavy oak table, and leaned toward Abbigad’s father, banking defiance and disdain. The two men took an unchristian pleasure in making him out to be a thief. “I did not take your blasted watches, Brother Till. Had I wanted watches, I could have bought them for myself. With profits from my own purchases, which you encouraged me to make. Profits which I used to pay down my debt here.”
Till gave him a small, triumphant smile. “My daughter can say differently.”
She braced herself. Appearing before a Board of Elders for the first time in her reputable life unnerved her. The prospect of speaking to them was daunting. But she would do it on her own terms. “Not willingly, sir.”
“But you will.”
She would, for now. If her story lent credence to her father’s, she would have to stand up for Nicholas in another way.
Nicholas looked at Abbigail, and his defiance left him in a whoosh. She was pale and thin and somber. Dark circles ringed her large, intelligent eyes. She could not have slept Despite his best effort, she had worried herself to a frazzle. But she lifted her direct, uncompromising gaze to his, and his heart thudded in his chest.
His turn to worry. What did she plan? Danke Gott, he had extracted her promise to protect her reputation. He sat and waited, not quite trusting her forthright nature to be silent.
After a long moment, she lifted her chin. “Do not ask it of me, Father. You know I disagree with you.”
“Tell them merely what you told me,” Georg Till ordered.
Abbigail straightened in her chair, not using its back to support her arrow-straight posture. “It will mislead them, sir. It is not germane.”
His Stolen Bride Page 23
