by Faye Sonja
Prologue
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Nigras,
Alabama- 1884
Agnes sat still in the salon listening to the words coming from the elders around her and trying very hard not to cry. She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing their decision was hurting her.
“We will give you a week to get your affairs in order and say your goodbyes,” one elder told her.
It seemed to her that the dying got the same treatment, and here he was giving her a week to make her preparations. She wanted to protest but her mouth had already gotten her into enough trouble as of late and she didn’t want to make matters worse.
“A week is too long,” another said and she heard her mother stifle a cry.
She glanced in the direction of the tearful outburst and her heart broke. She had never meant to hurt her mother in all of this. Lord knows her mother had been hurt enough already, but she hadn’t been given much of a choice. She looked towards her older brother and saw no sympathy in his eyes. He was his father’s child and to be Amish was something he took just as serious as the very air he breathed. She had no idea who had reported her to the elders but she would bet money that it was him. They hadn’t really ever gotten along. As a child she was always their father’s favorite and on more than one occasion he had mentioned being slighted of his birth right regarding their father’s love. Her father had been a man of few words and questionable actions, but she would have vowed her life that he had loved his son. Though probably not as much as his son had wanted him to.
She kept her gaze on his hard face, and when his turned to meet hers not a look of sympathy was given, he simply turned and walked away.
“We will be sad to see you go,” the first elder spoke to her again. “But our rules are clear Agnes, and you have broken them.”
It was sad that all she had done was try to get medicine to her mother. On a trip to town she had bought English medicine and had brought it into the Amish community. She was not sorry though, because had she not done that, her mother would not be there to cry for her. They would have been having a very different kind of meeting. Instead of shunning her for an act to save a life, they would have been having a funeral and her mother would be placed in a wooden box and lowered down into the ground.
She didn’t regret her decision, but she would never forgive this community for theirs.
“I am sorry,” her mother said as the crowd walked out and headed toward the house.
“It is okay mother,” she said hugging her close. “If I had to choose, I would choose to save your life every time.”
Her brother scuffed beside them. “You have brought shame on our family name and our father. You need to be sorry.”
She turned to him fighting the urge to slap him across the face to keep from being thrown out on her ears.
“Shame?” she asked him unable to believe that was what he thought. “I spared our mother from death and you cry shame.
Her brother stormed away from her and she let him. “He will come around,” her mother said trying to comfort her.
“I hope he does, but if he doesn’t, please take care of him mama,” she said as she walked her mother back into their house.
The elders had given her a week but she did not need that long. Staying longer would only prolong the hurt and so she did what she needed to do. Pulling the newspaper from under her bed she looked at the mail order bride clipping she had stumbled upon and wrote a response to be telegrammed in the morning when she left. She would leave and go start her new life as best as she could, and she hoped this Mr. Jim Carlson, who was seeking a religious wife, would be the help she needed to get on her feet in a world she knew so little about.
That night as she took a long look around her community, she cried for what she would lose by sunrise and prayed for the strength to survive wherever life would take her.
* * *
1
Chapter ONE
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“ … The child in her arms screamed… ”
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Two weeks later,
two towns away
Agnes stood across the street staring at the building. She was trying to decide if it was ugly or just old; one of those buildings that looked like the ones in the pictures she saw in the papers since she had been in the town. She just couldn’t decide if they were beautiful or homely, skinny or deformed. After musing for close to twenty minutes she decided that she just didn’t like the building at all. In fact, she really didn’t like this town much. She had been here for almost seven days and it never stopped drizzling, like the rain couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to visit or not. Everything was just so indecisive around town, and it seemed as if she had all but upped and developed the same attribute. She currently couldn’t decide if she was going to go into the office building and meet the man who placed the ad for a mail order bride, or whether she was going to lift her frock and hightail it back to the community she had been shunned from and beg them to take her back in.
She was not sure whether marrying some man from a newspaper clipping was better than falling on her knees in front of the elders and begging their forgiveness.
“Excuse me,” an elderly woman said as she tried to pass Agnes on the pavement. She stepped back so the woman wouldn’t mess up her shoes in the puddle. She smiled at the thought she could almost hear coming from the woman’s mind. There was this thing the Englisghers did that was absolutely enthralling. Their faces would contort into all sorts of different facial expressions to convey how they felt at any given time. Her first couple days here she had been asked so many times if she was all right, only to have a young child explain to her that her face was just so serious that she looked like she was upset.
Where she was from, to be stoic and silent was the only way to go about living. Nothing else was accepted. A laugh too loud would be frowned on, and a smile too wide might give the wrong message. But she had never before noticed the difference and how enlightening it could be. It was almost as if she had been gifted with the power to read minds through nothing but a smile.
She thought about her mother for a while. She wished there was some way she could have convinced the elders to let her stay. She would have found some other way to administer English medicine to her mother in silence and then been able to stay to enjoy the rest of her mother’s days. But she had come to accept that the universe rarely ever gave her a break.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on finding her place of peace. She had been in turmoil for so long and she knew that if she did not contain her anxiety, she would show up on her new husband’s doorstep like an emotional wreck.
Calm down Agnes. It will be all right.
“Must be a very interesting building,” an old man said sitting on the wall behind her. “Tell me what kind of stories the paint is telling you.”
“What?” she asked a little confused.
The old man chuckled. “I have been watching you stare at that building for the last hour or so. It must be speaking to you in some way. Do you care for an ear?” he asked her.
She smiled at him. “An important decision awaits me on the inside and I don’t know if I am ready for it.”
“Well,” he said with a smile and she noticed his front teeth were gone. “You will never know unless you go in there will you?”
She was about to say she didn’t want to, but then she thought better of that. “Very true.”
“And something got you this far so maybe it is time you start thinking about what brought you here to begin with. Has that situation changed?”
She shook her head. “No it has not. Unfortunately.”
“Will going into that building change the situation?” the old man asked.
She nodded her head. “Yes, it will.”
“Will the situation change for the better?”
She sighed.
“I won’t know until I go in there.”
“Then what in heaven’s name are you waiting for?” he asked her.
He was right. “Thank you,” she said wishing she could offer him more than that for his council.
“Should it not work out so well I will be in the town’s library reading to a few of the town’s children if you want to talk.” With that he was off.
Closing her eyes she took a steadying breath so deep she thought her chest might burst wide open. Then she opened her eyes, steeled her jaw and stepped across the roadway, her high heels clicking elegantly against the pavement, matching the subtle sway of her hips and the smooth confidence that went along with it. A man entering the building stopped at the sight of her and held the door open. She nodded in gratitude feeling his eyes follow her as she mounted the stairs. Agnes smiled enjoying the effect she had on him. Had her mission been one of less importance he would have stopped and exchanged a word.
She knew she was gorgeous. Her bobbed brown hair that bounced around her heart shaped face and natural blood red lips had gotten her out of many situations. And with a body she was proud of, she found that men just seemed to fall in line. But back in her Amish town such qualities were not revered beyond the choosing of a spouse as one might be considered superficial. And superficiality may very well get you shunned. Everything got you shunned. She was exhausted just thinking about it.
She turned to smile at the man who still stood at the foot of the stairs watching her walk away as she turned and headed up to the second floor. She could feel her anxiety getting stronger than ever now and turned her attention towards her inner self yet again. Agnes was prepared for a tad bit of a wrangling since out of all the eligible bachelors in town she had heard the one she chose was a bit of a hard nut to crack. She liked his name though- Jim Carlson, but she did not take anything for granted.
Taking a deep breath as she stood outside the lawyer’s office she tried to prepare herself as much as she could for what could possibly happen. Then she knocked- three hard raps that told them whoever was on the other side that she meant business. He was a lawyer after all and this was a business arrangement.
“Who is it,” the question came seconds later. A man’s deep voice sounding like he was less than enthused that they had been interrupted.
“Agnes. Agnes Forbes,” Agnes said. She really had not thought about how she would introduce herself once she had found him. When there was need for an introduction at the rare festivities they held in the Amish community, she would just melt into the background and pray to be left alone. This time was a first; she hoped though that it would become the norm so she made a mental note to work on her introductory skills. She was planning on making this town her home so she would work on it.
The man spoke again. “What is your business about?”
“I am Agnes,” she called back. “The Amish woman who has business with Mr. Jim Carlson.”
She heard whispering and the shuffling of feet, then seconds later the bolt slid back on the door and Agnes did not wait to be invited in. As a man peered at her she stepped across the threshold with a forced smile on her face.
“Good morning,” she said to the man who stood before her.
She could not help herself but to ogle him unapologetically, now understanding why the women in the inn she had spoken to all said that he was quite the catch. She had gotten a general impression of him from their words but the reality was so much better. His blue eyes stared at her in surprised contempt, and his brown hair with light highlights gave him an edge over every other English man she had ever met. He most definitely wasn’t the cookie cutter type. His was a brooding glass of freshly squeezed lemonade and had he not already been taken she would have had to fight herself to keep from staking her claim on him.
“Well you are a chirpy one. Next time wait to be invited in,” he said not pleased that she invited herself in. He turned away from her swinging his waistcoat about him in a flurry of self-importance.
“I-I am sorry,” she stuttered in shock. “I just thought since you were waiting on me that I should make my way in.”
Jim wasn’t playing her game though and she guessed he had all the right reasons not to be amused at her intrusion.
“I like people to wait until they are invited into my domain before entering, that’s all I am saying.” He turned again looking away from her and swinging his long petty coat as he did. In that moment the initial entrancement she had felt from his appearance all but disappeared. Of all the men she had met thus far in the English world, he was by far the most disappointing.
“I will ensure not to do that again,” she said but she was really not beginning to appreciate the way he spoke to her. “However, I do not see that a little intrusion by mistake warrants such a gruff and impolite response such as the one you gave.”
Jim’s face registered shock and then disbelief at her words, but she was not about to turn this into a joke. By all accounts she had committed no crime, if he did not like something she did all he needed to do was say so and she would do her best to oblige him. He didn’t need to continue being so cold and stoic toward her.
“Who do you think you are?” Jim asked and Agnes saw his eyes dart around the room in an angered frenzy. She was not so sure what that meant but she did not like it.
“I am the woman you agreed to meet for the possibility of marriage, but I see you would rather insult me instead of getting on with our business.”
Jim was having none of that. He reached for his drink and pointed to the door. “Sorry sweetheart, but around here talk like that will get you nowhere, and I would much prefer a wife who knew her place.”
Agnes sighed. Yup, this was going to be way harder than she thought it would be and even harder than it had to be. The one thing she was certain of was that she had no interest in marrying a man who treated her this way.
“Please apologize for Jana on my behalf and thank her for the time she spent arranging this meeting, but I do not think we will work out after all.”
Jim was far from pleased with her outburst, but it did the job. An old woman bent around the corner tentatively, her eyes widening as she looked at an angry Jim pointing at Agnes.
“Who are you and what is all the fuss about?” she asked in shock and Agnes watched as recognition dawned on her face. Janna was a lot taller than she had originally thought but just as fragile looking and beautiful.
“Hi,” Agnes said. “I am Agnes Forbes. The woman you spoke to on behalf of Mr. Carlson here.”
Janna looked at her, putting a reassuring arm on Jim’s hand to help him calm down. “I see,” she said to Agnes barely above a whisper. “And, how was your trip?”
“Well, up until now it had been quite amazing, but Mr. Carlson here managed to change all that the moment I arrived.”
Janna frowned at her for a moment and Agnes knew she must be trying to find some way to remedy the situation.
“I am sorry for wasting your time,” she said to the woman, “but it is clear that this arrangement will not work out.”
“What are you talking about?” Janna asked, confused.
“Ask Mr. Carlson here. He will be able to tell you what I am referring to.”
Janna’s face held nothing but confusion and she really couldn’t waste any more time on the semantics. “Do not mind him. Sometimes I am not sure if he needs a good whacking over the head or a hug.”
“Oh sweet Jesus,” Jim muttered off to the side as he reached for the bottle of vodka on the counter and poured himself a drink.
Agnes raised an eyebrow at him, glancing suggestively at the clock over his head. He glared at her as if to say she should dare not judge him. “I am pretty sure which of the two he needs.”
Janna spoke again drawing her attention back to what was important.
“So I am not going crazy?” Janna asked with a laugh. “Maybe you should be the one to whip him into shape.”
“Ah, no!” Jim said stepping between them. “I
don’t know which coo coo’s nest you just flew out of, but you can head on back there right now. I am fine. She is nothing more than a pretty woman with a smart mouth. I will not be marrying her.”
Agnes shook her head at him, all of his testosterone was making her crazy. “Okay Jim. Thanks for your time.”
“No!” Janna said coming to stand before her. “I will fix this.”
Agnes smiled at the old woman she had come to like. “I am sure you can Janna, but Mr. Carlson has insulted me non-stop since I stepped through those doors. I know I am nothing more than a simple Amish woman and I have little but myself to offer, but I cannot stand defenseless to such treatments. Thank you for all you have done and tried to do, but I think it is best I be moving on now.”
“I am so very sorry,” Janna said to her as she made her way out the door.
“All the very best to you both,” Agnes said with a smile that hid the tear she wanted to cry. She made her way out of the building trying hard not to fall apart from the disappointment. This was a hard blow and she had no other plan but she knew that she would not marry a man who would treat her so horribly.
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2
Chapter TWO
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“ … The child in her arms screamed… ”
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Agnes made her way to the inn two streets over. She didn’t want to be too close to the building where there was a possibility that she might run into Mr. Carlson while she tried to figure out what her next move would be. She tried not to think about what had just happened and tried not to let it get her down. She remembered the suggestion from the old man she had just met, but she was in no mood for a conversation. Maybe she would go by the library tomorrow and see if they had any work she could do. After her encounter with Jim she had all but had it with men for the day, though she was feeling like there was something different about him. But having not slept for almost two days there was no way she could focus on that now.
