“I pray so. I believe so. But I cannot think that he will find me here. And if he does not…” Her voice broke. “Brother Huber plans to bed me this very evening in your private room. And so I am”-a tear spilled over-“here, and obviously unwell.”
Mary Clark dumped the contents of the basin down the hole, gathered up the now cold towels, and slipped an arm through Abbigail’s. “I have just the answer. If you would get the door, Sister Abbigail, perhaps you could help me take a sick guest to her private room.”
“Mistress Clark, how-”
“Not a word. For all they know, ‘twas my food that brought on your distress. Therefore, ‘tis my bounden duty to nurse you through the night.”
Appreciation bubbled up through all of Abbigail’s troubles. “Mistress Clark, how kind you are.”
“Think nothing of iL I had rather share your bed and get a good night’s sleep than share anything with those louts in the common room for a mere coin.”
With a savage curse, Nicholas mounted his great draft horse and thundered up the wagon road under the setting moon. Nothing, again. As it had been ad night. No strapping, id-tempered roans. No hulking, dapper Single Brother.
No tiny, vulnerable Single Sister, a captive, doubting he would come.
Matthias rode beside him in sdence. No general alarm was called, a compromise between Nicholas’s impulse to warn the world and his father’s more considered approach. Eight men held formed the search, each pair taking a main road out of Salem, one to Cross Creek, one to Salisbury, his father and Samuel Emst west to ford the Atkin. And Nicholas with Matthias, north on the wagon road, the most likely route. Everyone insisted on pitting the two fittest men against the abductor. It was damned awkward, Nicholas thought. At the start, he dreaded his brother’s disapproving eye but now was grateful for his silent, steadfast support.
They spurred their horses on, certain Huber was ahead. By day’s end, no clear tracks confirmed it. Nicholas did not lose heart, reasoning that Huber’s petty mind would not be subde or adventuresome. He would stick to the routes he knew.
Nicholas’s hands fisted around the reins, poor substitutes for Abbigail’s sweet person, but his only way to reach her. Why had he been so complacent in the morning? Abbigad never missed prayers. Vanity, he berated himself, stupid male vanity that his loving had exhausted her in the night. Despair curdled in his stomach, ran rancid through his veins. Instead, she could be humiliated, hurt. Or violated, after a night with Huber.
Up till midnight, he had wakened every innkeeper on the way, checking for Abbigail and Huber. No one had seen anything. The last man he roused had cocked a musket at him. Nicholas had stood down. He was no good to her dead. Now, in the ghostly hour before dawn, he and Matthias were reduced to sneaking into barns and liveries and holding up his lantern to look for Huber’s horse.
And saw nothing, anywhere.
Slowing his mount to a steady trot, Nicholas rewrapped a muffler around his neck against the chill of night. Matthias had soldiered on, but Nicholas was tiring rapidly. He had hardly slept in days. Abbigail must be beyond exhaustion. The image of her precise, pretty features turned to him in trust had driven him up hills and down, through streams, past farms sleeping under a glaring moon.
Driven him, and haunted him.
The moon set, plunging the men into blackest night. Matthias lit a lantern and held it up to pierce a path into the darkness. Nicholas walked his horse, too tired to push it harder but too troubled to rest At last the eastern sky lightened faintly, and he made out what looked to be another tavern. A poor log budding. Signaling his brother to stay back, he crept closer through the gloom. Two stories, but no barn. A rickety lean-to for a livery. The White Horse Inn. Hope, doused at every other tavern on the way, trickled up through Nicholas’s fatigue. Huber could have gotten Abbigail this far by suppertime, and stayed the night.
All night. Nicholas would beat him to a pulp. From the lean-to, he heard voices, early morning travelers readying to leave. Or perhaps to dee?
“Take the horses, Matty,” he said in a low voice, “and see who’s in the Tavern.” Nicholas dismounted and handed him his horse’s reins. Matthias killed the wick on his lantern and rode ahead, tying the horses to the tavern’s hitching rail and disappearing inside.
Nicholas crept back closer to the lean-to. It had no door. Through the opening, he saw the rear end of a huge roan horse. A skinny old man bent over its off fore hoof.
“Lame horse ain’t worth a tinker’s dam to me,” he was saying in thin, nasal tones.
“I brought that horse sound, I’d swear it. I only stopped to rest him. I don’t want to trade him out” Mounting anger edged the man’s voice.
A voice Nicholas knew too wed.
Raw hatred surged through his veins, and a quick savage desire to kill. He clamped down on it forcing caution. For Abbigail’s safety, he had to know where she was before he acted. Later he would murder Huber.
“Some lameness turns up overnight” the old groom said. “Yore horse had been rid hard.”
A fist shot out the horse shied, and the old man hit the dirt, Huber hovering over him. “You lamed him yourself, you bug-eyed little runt.”
“No sir, no sir,” the old man cried in a high frightened voice. “Ain’t never lamed nothing in my life. Ain’t got a horse to trade you neither. Not that your missus is in any shape to travel.”
Abbigail! Nicholas almost yelled.
Ditching caution, he plunged into the lean-to and drove both fists into Christian Huber’s gut, lifting him off the ground. The roan reared up, kicked out, and bolted. The old man scrambled to a stall. Nicholas grabbed Huber’s lapels and pushed him against a precarious post that propped the lean-to up. The flimsy structure shuddered, and dust and chaff rained down from the low rafters.
Nicholas tightened his hold on Huber’s coat. “Abbigail, you bastard! You tell me where she is.”
Huber’s mouth stretched into a provoking smile. “Sister Till is upstairs in my room. Almost recovered from last night.”
With a savage roar, Nicholas slammed his body into Huber’s, plowing him backward into the lean-to wall. It creaked, buckled, and collapsed, wood cracking and splintering ad around them. Nicholas staggered and fell through it with Huber into the dull dawn fight. Arms locked, legs struggling for purchase, they rolled man over man, brutal, heavy, big men, breaking boards, crushing weeds, and breathing dirt.
Half blinded by dust and muck, Nicholas got on top and stumbled to his feet, wiping his eyes to see. Too late. With a vulgar oath, Huber swung a thick flat board. Instinctively, Nicholas flung up his arm. The board cracked against it and struck Nicholas in the face. He staggered, caught his balance, shook his head to clear it.
But his vision blurred, and there were two of Huber, taunting, “Too late, Blum. She’s mine now. Last night we-”
Nicholas punched wildly, aiming for both Hubers with his right fist, then his left slamming into flesh and skull. Huber yowled in pain and anger, and tore at Nicholas’s eyes, fingernails raking the flesh of his face.
Nicholas butted him with his head. Huber slumped and fell, landing on his back. Straddling the man with his full weight, Nicholas pummeled his face and jaw. Right fist, left fist. Right, left, for Abbigail. Mayhem. Murder. Bone crunched, blood spurted. For Abbigail, for Abbigail.
Hands pulled at him. “Mister, mister.” He swung backward at the old man once, heard him grunt, and returned to battering Huber’s body, wild, rabid, furious.
“Mister! Stop!” the man went on. “She don’t want no murder here. You done gone and knocked him out. Clean out.”
The hands again, like little cats’ claws on his shoulders, nothing he couldn’t handle. He struck out; they clung to his arm.
Suddenly the hands were bigger, stronger than an old man had a right to be. They arrested him. “Nicky, stop! For God’s sake, stop,” Matthias shouted. “She’s here, I found her.”
“Where?” Nicholas rose up to his knees, roaring. Murder, later.
He had blood on his face, his hands. “Where in heaven’s name is she, man?”
Matthias stayed calm. “Inside, somewhere, they wouldn’t let me in.”
“Safe?” He was shaking, panting, fuming. “Is she safe?”
“Alive, Nicky,” Matthias said softly. “That’s all I know.”
He grabbed the old man by his collar. “The tiny one, the pretty one, the one he brought? Where?”
The old man quailed. “The women’s in the private room.”
Nicholas shook him. “What private room?”
The old man cowered, and self-disgust flooded Nicholas. This man was not his enemy. He loosed his grip.
The old man brushed at his grimy coat and stammered, “Private room, sir. Top O’ the stairs, sir.”
Nicholas pivoted and headed for the tavern, shouting back to Matthias, “Tie Huber up, and bed the horses,” and then from the stone steps, “don’t let him get away.”
He took the stairs in threes and dung open the first door he saw.
A head of thick dark hair popped up from under a fluff of downy covers.
“Abbigail!” he roared, relief pumping past his rage. Sife. He had to believe her safe. Protected by … A second head lifted, red and rumpled. “Mistress Clark!” he blurted.
His deepest, wildest secret. Mary Clark, his one-night paramour! And his only other … woman. Mary had shared her bed with Abbigail? Mary smiled wryly, teasing him with her knowledge of who he was and who he’d come for. He shrank inside, purely mortified. Abby must not know the outer limits of his sins.
All innocence, she threw off her covers, limped painfully around the end of the bed, and hurled herself into his stunned arms. “Nicky, Nicky. Danke Gott, you came, you’re here.”
Looking up to his clawed, battered face, she whispered, “Liebe Gott, you look terrible.”
“I’m all right, love, I’m ad right,” he whispered back. “You’re safe.”
Filthy, bloody though he was, he hauled her to his chest and buried his face in her hair. Her tiny body clung to him, alive and whole and his. For long moments, he savored the assurance of her light breathing, the affirmation of her feather touch. Then he cautiously lifted his gaze.
Mary Clark sat up, slid her voluptuous, practiced charms out of the bed, and tied on a heavy wrapper. Slowly, seductively, making sure he saw.
His chin rubbing the crown of Abbigail’s head, he scowled at her.
Mary Clark winked back. “Now I cad that a good night’s work.” She sashayed from the room, pausing at the door to speak to Abbigail
No! Don’t tell! he almost cried out, desperation raking him. Everything precious to him was within his grasp. Abbigail would be hurt, would not understand. He wasn’t sure he understood that night, the liquor or his lapse. Abbigail must not know.
But Mary asked gently, “This Brother is the right one, Sister Till?” winning Nicholas’s lifelong gratitude for her kindness to the one he loved.
Abbigail smiled, a happier smile than he had ever seen. “This is the forever one. Danke, Mistress Clark.”
He could have leapt and touched the ceiling where it vaulted high above him. Forever. He was willing, he was here.
Grinning ad too knowingly, Mary Clark passed through the door, then turned. “You turtledoves can have this room until nine O’ the clock. ‘Tis paid for in good coin.”
30
Nicholas tucked his exhausted, crippled Abbigail into her bed and limped downstairs. He was fairly well crippled himself. His head pounded, his face ached and stung, and a rib knifed him with every breath.
He found his brother in the public room, guarding Huber. Matthias had bound his wrists and ankles to his chair. Huber watched from swollen, hostile eyes, his face a purple, mottled mess, his pomaded hair hanging in hunks, his dapper clothes in muck-smeared tatters.
“Ach, Nicky,” Matthias said as Nicholas hobbled up. “You look much the worse for wear.”
“I’d rather fight him than you,” he said.
Matthias paused, surprised, and grinned wryly, then he sobered. “How is Sister Till?
“She says she’s all right,” he said hoarsely. “She doesn’t look all right.”
“Stay then until she can ride,” Matthias said earnestly. “I need to get back.”
To Catharina, Nicholas realized through dulled senses, blessedly unmoved by the thought at last. “What about him?”
Matthias’s gaze hardened. “I take him to the Elders. This was in his pocket.” He reached inside his coat and drew out a gleaming, brightly enameled watch. It matched the others.
Proof, but… “Only one?” Nicholas asked.
“So far. I asked him. He admits nothing.”
Nicholas leaned over Huber. “You don’t have to confess anything, you bastard. Abducting Sister Till shows your true colors clear enough.”
Huber pressed his thin lips together and glared.
Matthias fetched ales from Mary Clark and walked Nicholas toward a table by the fire. Nicholas drank a deep draught and put his mug down.
“I thank you for finding the watches,” he said. “Unless, that is, you think I put them there.” He was joking, but he was not sure how far he had regained his brother’s trust.
Matthias looked at him with clear blue eyes. “Given you were beating him to a bloody pulp, I think it unlikely you had time to plan it. Besides, I never doubted you in this, Nicky.”
Nicholas blinked. “All Salem doubted me. Why not you?”
Matthias frowned, pressed a brown-stained fist to his mouth, then spoke. “I mean, in this, I knew that you, my brother … you never would have stolen anything.”
A lump of gratitude lodged in Nicholas’s throat. He swallowed hard and forced a shrug of nonchalance. “Pies, Matty. We were first-rate pie thieves.”
Matthias’s eyes softened. “You were quicker, but I stole more in the end. I was always hungry.”
“So you were,” Nicholas said carefully. It felt like a truce.
Matthias forged ahead. “’Tis awkward after …”
“Our falling out over Sister Catharina?” Nicholas said quietly.
Matthias’s face crumpled, and he spoke in a low, confiding voice. “I have not … we are not…” He drew a harsh breath. “Not while she loves you and you love her. I will not,” he added firmly.
Nicholas caught his brother’s gaze, unsure of what he meant. His eyes were big blue pools of pain. “You have not…?”
“Loved her, as a husband. I thought you would want to know.”
Nicholas was stunned. He had never imagined such damage could come of his young man’s infatuation. Not now that he and Abbigail had found a deeper union of hearts and minds and habits. Catharina was his brother’s bride, and he wished them wed. He regretted the pain he’d caused her. Her, and Abbigail. He had set aside the jealousy, the obsession that had driven him from Bethlehem. But a new gudt stabbed him. He had hurt his brother perhaps beyond repair.
“Matty, she was never mine that way.”
Matthias lifted a shoulder, not an ounce of fight behind the gesture. “I saw you kiss her in the bam that morning. You said, ‘Kiss the one you love.’”
“I said that?” Nicholas knocked his forehead with the heel of his fist.
Matthias nodded without rancor. “You and I-we always vied to best the other. I will not contest you in this.”
“Matty …” Nicholas couldn’t find the words for so serious a matter.
“I will honor Sister Catharina,” Matthias continued as if he had prepared a speech. “She will have no complaint of me. We can do the Savior’s work. We can find love in our way.”
“Matty, no.” Love, married love, was glorious, was bliss. Love ordained for procreation. Love ordained for sanctioned hearts. Love such as Nicholas aspired to now with Abbigail-and had within his grasp.
“I believe that Sister Catharina misses you, but will in time be reconciled to this.”
Nicholas reached across the little table and clamped a hand on hi
s brother’s broad strong shoulders. “She doesn’t miss me, Matty. I only kissed her, never more than that. She never pledged herself to me. That morning she was begging me to go away.”
Matthias’s brow creased skeptically, hopefully. “But you came all the way from-”
“Gott im Himmel. You know me for a rash impetuous fool. What else would you expect of such a man? I left Salem because the Elders wouldn’t let me marry. I left Bethlehem because Brother Till said I had to stay.”
“But you wanted to many her.”
“Didn’t every Single Brother of our generation hope to marry her?”
Matthias grinned sheepishly at that home truth. “I suppose.”
“Once, when she was but a child, I rescued her. Thick-skulled dolt that I am, I took that for a sign that we were meant to marry. She never promised me to.”
“Never?”
“I assumed her … interest. ‘Twas vanity on my part. And, well”-he lifted a shoulder, helplessly confessing-“your bride is very pretty.”
Matthias’s gaze narrowed. “Beautiful,” he corrected.
In his most self-effacing bit of prevarication ever, Nicholas said as if it had just occurred to him, “Beautiful? She might be. To the man who loved her.”
His serious-minded brother fought a smile and won, but Nicholas cuffed him lighdy on the shoulder anyway They finished their ale, and Matthias hurriedly readied Huber for the ride back to Salem.
Nicholas helped tie the man to his saddle. “He’ll slow you down. I know you want to get back.”
“Yes.” Matthias ducked his head, but Nicholas caught his blush. “Besides, Sister Till needs you here.”
And Catharina needs you to come home, Nicholas thought, all his old fondness for his shy, correct brother flooding him. “I … thank you for that. Godspeed, Matty. Go home to your bride.”
Returning to Abbigail’s room, Nicholas found her fast asleep, not at ad what he had hoped. But he stripped off his outer clothes and got into bed, bracketing her tiny body in his arms to protect her for all time. Exhausted, he was instantly asleep himself and slept until after noon, entwined in the comfort of her warmth.
His Stolen Bride Page 33
