Adam's Bride (5 page)

“Not so fast.” Lidia felt his forehead with the back of her hand. “Your fever broke a couple hours ago, but that doesn’t mean you can get up.”

“I feel fine. Just a bit achy.”

She rested her fists against her hips and frowned. “You might be feeling better, but after three days in bed with a raging fever and a bump the size of Massachusetts on your head, I think—”

“Wait a minute.” Adam studied the swoosh of her skirts as she moved away from his bed. At times he’d been aware of her presence as she hovered around him with a cool cloth and cups of water for him to sip. But he thought he’d been dreaming. “What did you say?”

“You’ve been sick.”

“I know, but how long?”

She paused beside the rickety table he needed to refurbish. There were so many things he’d intended to do.

“My brother and I found you lying outside on the ground three days ago. I’m not sure how long you were sick before that.”

Adam’s stomach clenched. A few more hours lying against the frozen ground and more than likely he wouldn’t have made it. But three days passing meant that three days of harvesting his sap was lost.

Struggling to ignore the ache that engulfed every muscle of his body, he forced himself to sit up. Sick or not, he had work to do. “I’ve got to get up. My maple crop—”

“My brother and I have been harvesting the sap in the mornings and afternoons.” Lidia stopped in the doorway of his room and turned to face him. “The run slowed down a bit last night as the temperatures dropped too low, but the sun was out today and the taps ran well again. You’re going to have a great crop this year.”

Adam’s jaw tightened. It wasn’t as if he didn’t appreciate the effort, but there was so much more to gathering the sap than simply emptying the buckets. A novice trying to do the work would ruin the entire season’s production. “You don’t understand, the sap has to be boiled—”

“Of course.” Lidia tilted her head. “Koby’s kept the fire going strong. Thankfully you had plenty of wood for fuel.”

“But do you know how to test the density of the sap when you’re boiling it? Once the sap begins to drip off the end of the dipper in sheets—”

“Then it’s syrup. It’s called aproning.” He watched through the doorway as she busied herself in the kitchen then returned with a cup of the broth he’d smelled simmering on the stove. “My father used to work in the maple groves at the end of every winter, and I helped him.”

The room seemed to spin around him. “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this for me?”

“There wasn’t much of a choice. Since I don’t know this area well, I was afraid I wouldn’t find my way back to town with the snowdrifts and the weather being the way it is. Once it clears, my brother and I can go and find a few men to help, but until then, we couldn’t let your sap go bad, now could we?”

He fingered the edge of his worn blanket. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’ve done, but I can’t have you and your brother working my maple crop for me.”

“And why not? You’ll never get well if you don’t get your strength back, and either we do the work or buckets sit full of wasted sap.” Lidia’s eyes brightened with her smile. “Drink some of this broth and stop worrying. Fretting over things you can’t do anything about will only make you grow old quicker, as my babcia used to say.”

“Your who?” Adam took a sip of the broth and felt the warmth of the liquid run down his throat.

“My grandmother. You’d have liked her. She was almost as stubborn as you are.”

He shook his head at the comment then winced as the pain returned. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, it did seem as if his stubbornness had once again gotten him into trouble. If he’d listened to his father, he would have the help he needed instead of having to rely on a young girl who barely weighed more than a feather. The days might be warming up, but she had no business working out there. Harvesting a maple crop was hard work.

Ignoring the guilt that surged through him, he tried to stand, determined to get out of bed. He crossed the wood-planked floor in uneven steps.

Lidia grabbed his arm. “You’re too weak to get out of bed.”

“I’m fine.” His jaw tensed. “Just let me sit in the other room for a while, then I promise to go back to bed.”

“Suit yourself.”

He watched as Lidia bustled around his kitchen. He had plans to sand the cupboards and replace the stove, but time hadn’t allowed it. There had been so much work to do, and the kitchen had never been a priority. Suddenly, he wished he’d made it a priority.

Lidia pulled a pan out of the oven, and the yeasty aroma of freshly baked bread wafted to him. It and the fragrant broth were much more alluring than the smells of burnt biscuits and stale coffee that normally filled the room. He had no problem fixing beans and overdone biscuits in his kitchen, but he’d certainly never stopped to consider what a woman might think about his living conditions.

“I’m sorry about the kitchen.” He cleared his throat. “It wasn’t exactly built with the needs of a woman in mind. The supplies are a bit low. …”

“I’ve managed to make do.” She waved her hand in his direction. “Once you’re up and around, you’ll need something hearty to eat like a steaming pot of
bigos
, though you’re right. Your store of food is completely inadequate, even if it is just for one man.”

“
Bigos
?”

“Stew. My father could never understand how a man could survive without a steamy bowl of stew on the table at night. It’s full of different meats and vegetables.” She dried her hands on a dishcloth. “I’ll make you a huge pot one day, and you can taste it for yourself.”

She must have realized how intimate her comment might be interpreted because Adam caught her sheepish expression after she’d said it. Her cheeks reddened as she turned away from him, pushing a strand of auburn hair out of her face. Once he got out of bed, she would leave and there would be no reason for her to ever make him another meal. His pulse quickened despite his earlier resolve to forget her.

“Tell me about your family,” he said.

Lidia shrugged as she finished washing the dishes. “There’s not much to tell. My parents emigrated from Poland to America when I was six. I never saw my grandmother again.”

He could hear the marked sadness in her voice. “And your parents?”

“They died during a cholera outbreak a little over a year ago. Now it’s just me and my brother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s no sense in dwelling on the past.” She shook her head, as if trying to erase the memories inside. “What about your family?”

“My parents live a few miles from here on a farm where I was raised with my brothers and sisters.” He cleared his throat. “There’s seven of us now. Samuel was killed last fall.”

“I’m sorry. You must miss him tremendously.”

“I do.”

As much as he appreciated Lidia’s and her brother’s help, he couldn’t help thinking of his own brother. The deafening sound of a gun firing. His brother lying dead on the street. Anger welled within him at the memories. He knew his sister Rebecca was right. It wasn’t fair to blame an entire people for one man’s wrong, and he knew Lidia had nothing to do with his brother’s death. But knowing the truth and stopping the anger inside him had proved to be two different things.

Part of him wanted to reach out and comfort her for her own losses. To tell her that everything was going to be all right despite the horrible heartache she’d lived through. The other part of his soul still grappled over what he’d lost. There was no way around it. Seeing Lidia only reminded him of his own pain and his own guilt in allowing it to happen.

Struggling to remain sitting up, he fought against the growing nausea. While he appreciated Lidia and Koby’s help, he needed to find a way to finish the job—alone.

five

Adam shoved his boots on before stepping out onto the porch. The morning sun greeted him, a pale circle against a white sky. He pulled up the collar of his jacket against the wind, not needing to look at a thermometer to know the temperature wasn’t rising fast enough. And if he was reading the sky correctly, a storm was coming in. Though it wasn’t unusual for cold snaps or warm days to temporarily stop the run of sap, he was anxious that the weather conditions hold for at least another two weeks so he could collect his entire run this year. He already had a buyer lined up for his syrup, and he would need every bit of cash he could earn in order to continue with his expansion plans for the land.

He rubbed his hand against the side of his head, thankful that the swelling had gone down. After another two days of recovering, he’d made no promises to Lidia that he would stay in bed as she and her brother had slipped outside to begin another day of harvesting. Even if the sap weren’t running, there would still be plenty of work to do. Supplies needed to be scalded to prevent the syrup from spoiling; necessary repairs to the buckets and other equipment would need to be made, as well as extra wood chopped for the fire.

Lidia rounded the corner of the house with two buckets in her hands, stopping when she saw him. “Adam. I thought you were sleeping.”

“I couldn’t stay in bed another minute.” He read the look of concern in her eyes as her brow furrowed, and he forced a grin. “I’m fine. Really. And I’m ready to get back to work. A man can only stay cooped up in that cabin for so long.”

“You’re still weak.” She set the buckets on the porch and started up the steps. “And you need to eat something.”

“I already did. I found the leftover biscuits you made. Tasted as good as my stepmother’s, which is saying something. She’s a fantastic cook.”

“I’m glad you liked them.” He caught her familiar blush as she spoke and couldn’t help but warm at her smile. “I’m sure you felt the cold snap last night, and the temperature’s not warming up like it needs to. I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to collect.”

He’d expected her to tell him that he needed to march back inside the house and get back in bed, but apparently she’d decided not to argue with him today. He was glad, even though she’d probably be right.

He leaned his palms against the porch rail. “A break in the weather will give me a chance to get caught up.”

Lidia picked up the empty buckets and started across the snow toward the grove of stately maple trees. He followed her through the sugar brush, amazed at her endurance. He had poured so much of who he was into this land and knew the backbreaking effort it took to harvest the sap.

The buckets hung from each tree waiting to collect the sweet liquid. Some of the trees spanned almost four feet in diameter. Others were much smaller, but Old Man Potter had told him they were all at least forty years old.

“Did you know that as the tree grows, the bark doesn’t expand with it? You can see how it keeps splitting open.” Adam ran his hand across the shaggy bark. “These trees are as individual as people.”

She came to stand beside him. “Meaning?”

“One might produce sap that is consistently sweeter than the others while another’s sap might taste like water. And their sap runs differently, as well. Some manage a good run every year and others might produce a lot less.”

“Who taught you about the harvest?”

“Old Man Potter owned this property. I started working for him when I was about fourteen, and while he was a bit of a codger, he became like a grandfather to me.” Adam smiled at the memory of the gray-haired man who had been an active part of every harvest until the year he died. “He taught me the science of tapping a tree for the best results, how to study the bark as well as the new growth, and where to set the buckets. When he died, he left me the land.”

“That’s quite an inheritance.”

“I suppose I was the grandson he never had. While he never told me, rumor has it his only son was killed in a gunfight back in Kansas in the ‘50s.”

“You must have meant a lot to him, then.”

“He meant a lot to me, too.” He fidgeted, uncomfortable with the way the conversation had turned. “You know, if I close my eyes I can almost taste the syrup.”

Lidia’s eyes lit up when she smiled. “This has always been my favorite time of the year.”

“Mine, too.” As he lifted one of the buckets off the tree, he was surprised at how much he enjoyed her company. “It’s crazy, I guess, but while my brother dreamed of being a doctor, my dreams always centered around God’s good earth and the things I could produce with it.”

“That’s not a crazy dream. I think that’s why I love poetry. Much of it describes nature so beautifully.”

“Do you write your own?”

“Poetry?” Lidia lowered her gaze at the question. “When I find the time. I have a book where I write down thoughts and ideas, though my attempts certainly couldn’t compare to some of the great poets of our time.”

“Who said they had to?”

Adam tried to ignore the stirring of his heart when he looked at her, but he couldn’t. What was it about Lidia that set his senses alive when he was around her? From the first time he’d looked into her dark mahogany eyes and caught the rosy blush that swept across her fair cheeks, she’d affected him like no woman ever had.

The wall he’d put up around him was beginning to crack. He was now able to see Lidia as an individual person, not simply a Polish immigrant.

“What’s your favorite kind of maple syrup?” Lidia’s abrupt change in subject amused him. While she emitted a certain confidence, at the same time he sensed a streak of vulnerability within her. And that only made her more captivating.

Adam smiled at the question. “Without a doubt, maple cream. Spread it on a piece of hot bread and it’s like a bit of heaven right there in your hand.”

“That’s my favorite, too. That and a tall stack of pancakes dripping with hot syrup. Then there’s the music and singing at the annual sugaring off.”

“While I’ve never been much on social gatherings, you do have a point.”

Lidia laughed, then picked up one of the buckets filled with sap. “Do you feel like walking to the sugarhouse? Or would you rather take the wagon?”

“It’s not far. I’ll walk.”

Five minutes later, Adam stepped out of the chilly breeze that blew through the maple grove and into the warmth of the sugarhouse. The aroma of hot syrup lingered in the air from the sap that was being boiled down. Taking in a deep breath, he felt his body relax. There was something about this first rite of spring that always invigorated him. Looking at the bubbling vats, he saw that everything had been done exactly as needed.