An Amish Man of Ice Mountain (The Amish of Ice Mountain Series Book 2) (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Priscilla was grateful for the strength of Joseph’s large hand when she peered into the NICU window at the tiny baby girl she’d helped to deliver only that morning. The tubes and machines and deliberate movements of the nurses all worked to produce what seemed like a strange scene in a play.
But God is in control . . .
Priscilla blinked as the thought riveted, unbidden.

“Kumme,”
Joseph said after a few minutes. “Let’s go and see Mary and Jude. It does no good to stand here.”

Priscilla obeyed the husky timbre of his voice and walked with him down the hospital hall. Hollie had reluctantly agreed to stay back on the mountain with the bishop’s wife, while Mr. Ellis had driven Priscilla and Joseph, as well as the bishop and Mr. King, to Coudersport. Priscilla had sat next to Joseph, hardly able to believe that she was now his wife.

But now, she could tell, his thoughts were wholly of his sister and her little family. She was about to try and speak to him when Dr. McCully walked toward them.

“Ah, the heroes of the hour, or so I hear from Mary Lyons. You two did an amazing job with Mary and the baby—saved both their lives without a doubt. Congratulations!”

Priscilla felt herself color hotly when she felt the weight of Joseph’s gaze. “It was Priscilla,
dochter
. My wife now, in fact.”

“Well, well . . . even more congratulations then.” Dr. McCully smiled. “I’ve got to get up to the NICU and see that little wonder of humanity. We’re lucky to have the facilities to care for her here—a grand donation from a local family years ago. All right . . . see you both soon . . .” The doctor’s cheery voice drifted to them from down the hall.

“
It sounds like everything will be all right,” Priscilla ventured, looking at Joseph’s solemn face.

“
Jah
, and I meant what I said, Priscilla. You saved my sister and my niece.”

A moment of insecurity pierced her heart at his words. “Joseph, is—was that the real reason you wanted to marry me?”

He smiled then, a flash of even, white teeth in the dreary hall, and casually stepped nearer until she had no choice but to back against a closed wooden door.

“Joseph,” she squeaked. “We’re in the hall.”

“And, little spitfire, what are you expecting me to do, hmm?” He lifted a hand to gently twine a loose tendril of her hair around his finger. “The
Amisch
are renowned to the
Englischers
for keeping their—um—public displays of affection under lock and key.” His lips brushed close to her right ear and she shivered, half closing her eyes and forgetting where they were as his voice continued to lull her.

“So, former
Englischer
, tell me about the Mountain
Amisch
. . . do we not touch?” He moved his hand from her hair to brush his fingers down her cheek, and she caught her breath. “Do we not kiss?” He placed a single hard kiss upon her lips, then drew back only to rock his hips forward again. “Do we not want?” His voice dropped to a whisper and she could not help but feel the heat and pulse of him through her dress.

“Joseph,” she whimpered, needing something she could not explain, right there, right then.

“I promised to give you time to be nurtured, and I will keep my word.” He drew back from her and she knew he was caught in his own game as his dark hair fell forward to cover his heated cheeks and brush at the darkened emerald-gold of his eyes. “But don’t waste any more time on notions about why I married you, Priscilla King.” He smiled as he said her new name, lazing it out, as if he savored a sweet. And she could not help but smile in return.

Joseph held Priscilla’s hand tighter as they neared his sister’s room to discover his
daed
, Bishop Umble, and Mr. Ellis, all gathered outside in a waiting area. His
fater
held a handful of cellophane-encased roses that he’d obviously purchased at the gift store, but he looked grim and was using one of his inhaler medicines.

“What’s wrong?” Joseph asked, his eyes sweeping the group. “Is it Mary?”

Bishop Umble cleared his throat. “Nothing’s wrong, lad, that we know of—only a doctor wanting some time alone with your sister. Your daed’s had a bit of a coughing spell.”

Abner got to his feet, thrusting his inhaler into the pocket of his black pants, and held out the roses to Priscilla. “It’s pleased I am to have another daughter . . . and another grand-
boppli
—your Hollie. I—I can’t thank you enough for what you did for Mary . . . and for bringing this stubborn
sohn
of mine to marry as Bishop Umble has told us.”

Joseph was pleased with his fater’s speech and swallowed as his
daed
whipped out a large red hankie and blew his nose loudly before sitting back down. Joseph looked down at Priscilla and found her clutching the roses with a tremulous smile on her red lips.

“Danki,”
she whispered. “If—if Joseph agrees, I hope you won’t mind us taking up living with you, Herr King . . .”

“Daed,” Abner corrected. “Call me Daed.”

“All right . . . Daed.”

Joseph heard the tremor in her voice and understood.
What was it like to have the offer of another earthly
fater
, when one had already failed you so badly ?
He clutched his wife’s hand a bit tighter and nodded to his
daed.
“
Jah
, Priscilla is right. We would stay with you at the cabin, if it’s all right.”

Abner snorted. “It’s your home, even though I know you can build as fancy a
haus
as any an
Englischer
could dream of. Just ask him, Priscilla. He’s a master builder and carpenter but won’t admit it.”

Joseph colored as Priscilla gave an indulgent laugh. “I know—Mary’s told me.”

He looked down at her in surprise, then was distracted by the female doctor emerging from Mary’s room.

“You may go in now, but no more than two at a time, please,” the woman said pleasantly. “She’s doing well but is tired.”

The doctor nodded and walked away, and Abner pointed toward Joseph. “You and Priscilla go—we’ve already been for a bit.”

“All right.” Joseph smiled down at Priscilla, who suddenly seemed reticent.

He stopped her right outside the large door. “Is everything okay?”

“I—I don’t want Jude and Mary to think I’ve come seeking praise or something.”

Joseph considered the implication of her words.
How wounded she is inside . . . Gott, let me help her in her brokenness. You help her,
sei se gut
, Derr Herr.
He slid a hand to the small of her back. “They won’t think any such thing, Priscilla. Now let’s go tell them we’re married.”

He swung the door open and ushered her inside the pleasant room. His sister was lying in a hospital bed, her hair bundled beneath a kerchief, her beautiful face tired but holding so much more color than when they’d seen her last.

Jude got up from her bedside and came to embrace Joseph, then fervently shook Priscilla’s hand.
“Danki,”
he muttered, bright-eyed but clearly exhausted. “Thank you both so much.”

Joseph clapped him on the shoulder, then led Priscilla to the bed. He took his sister’s outstretched hand and squeezed it, the minutes during the birth passing rapidly through his mind. Then he blinked and pulled Priscilla close with his other hand.

“I don’t know what to say,” Mary whispered. “Have you seen her?”

Joseph watched Priscilla nod, a quick, humble motion of her kapped head, and he had to swallow hard.

“Priscilla,” Mary asked. “Could you please tell us your middle name?”

Joseph looked at his sister in surprise, then suppressed a quick grin, guessing where the question was leading.

“Um, it’s Rose,” Priscilla said. “It was my mother’s name.”

Mary gave a brief clap of delight. “
Ach
, I love it . . . don’t you love it, Jude?”

Jude nodded. “I do.” He lifted Mary’s hand and pressed it to his lips, then smiled. “And, if you don’t mind, we’d like to name our little
maedel
Rose, in your honor, Priscilla.”

Joseph hugged Priscilla close to his side as she let out a gasp of surprise. “What? You don’t have to do that . . . I don’t . . . I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes, my sweet,” Joseph murmured and caught his sister’s eye.

“What did you call her?” Mary demanded.

“Nothing that isn’t appropriate for one’s
frau
, I promise.” Joseph enjoyed the looks he got, then smiled at the resulting exclamations of pleasure as Priscilla was welcomed warmly into the family.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Priscilla watched with a tired smile as Hollie wrestled on the floor with the great black dog. They’d returned from the hospital to settle in at Abner’s cabin, and Hollie had found a true friend and companion in Bear.

Joseph was outside doing evening chores, and Abner gave a belly laugh occasionally at the antics of the wolf dog and the little girl.

“Hey, Mommy? Are you watching? It’s getting dark out . . . Where’s my bedroom gonna be? And you’re going to sleep in Joseph’s bed, right?”

Priscilla was startled out of her tired mood and glanced at Abner, who had abruptly taken to coughing. She rose, moving for his inhalers, glad of the diversion, when she turned and saw the merriment in the old man’s eyes. He waved her back with the medicine.

“It’s sorry I am, Priscilla, but the child gets to the heart of things, doesn’t she?”

“Well, Mommy?” Hollie persisted.

“I . . .” Priscilla broke off as her heart began to beat faster. She hadn’t gotten to the actual logistics of where she would sleep with a marriage “in name only.”
Wasn’t that how Joseph had put it? But what will Abner think if I don’t share Joseph’s bed ? And, oh mercy, what would it be like to lie close to him, to have him near enough to touch and . . .

She was puzzling all of this out, with a rapidly increasing pulse, when Joseph entered. She launched herself across the room to grab his arm. “Uh . . . Joseph. Hollie here was wondering where she would sleep? I think she might be getting tired.”

She watched his intelligent green-gold eyes sweep the room and take in her urgent words with barely a pause.

“Hollie shall have Mary’s room, of course. And you and I, Priscilla . . . we’ll sleep in the room Edward and I used to share. It’ll all be fine.” She gazed up into his face, unsure whether the soothing note in his voice was meant for her or himself but grateful for it nonetheless.

She released his arm and he went to the sink while Hollie plucked at Bear’s ears with a joyful cry. “Yay! My own room. Can we paint it pink, Mommy? And maybe have some white roses on the walls, can we?”

Again Priscilla was at a loss, not sure how Abner would tolerate change in his household. But the old man laughed and swiped at his eyes. “You may do anything you like,
kind.
It’s your room
,
your home too.”

Hollie jumped to her feet to run and hug Abner, who returned her embrace with obvious enthusiasm.

Priscilla bit her lip, feeling again the wash of unexpected tenderness that these people extended to her—to her daughter. She prayed then that they might continue to abide on Ice Mountain without harm for as long as possible. And meeting her husband’s eyes, she saw the echo of that hope reflected there.

 

 

Joseph paced the confines of his
auld
room like a caged mountain lion. Priscilla had lain down with Hollie for a bit to settle the kind’s excitement at being in a new place, and his
daed
had long since retired. Joseph knew he had only a few more minutes to make a decision about whether or not he should sleep on the floor. He didn’t want to appear as though he was rejecting Priscilla in any way, but he also couldn’t decide how much he could trust himself not to touch her in his sleep
.I could stay awake at night . . . take naps during the day.
He abandoned the foolishness of the thought, then turned as Priscilla quietly entered the room and closed the door behind her.

She looked at him, her blue eyes wide with questioning and something else—was it a hint of fear? He had a sudden pounding intuition that it might have been like this her first night with Heath . . . uncertainty and then violence . . .

He stepped toward her and she lifted her chin. He’d come to recognize the gesture as her preparing to face something difficult, and he felt both admiration and despair in his heart. He backed off and sank into his old reading chair between the bookshelf and the window, praying about how to proceed.

“Priscilla,” he whispered finally. “I don’t want anything from you, expect anything. You don’t owe me and never will.”

He saw her shoulders slump a bit and felt confused.

“I was afraid of this,” she said.

“Afraid of tonight?”

She shook her head. “Afraid that you’d find me . . . well, unclean or not worthy or something . . . because I feel so—sullied—by what I went through with Heath.”

Joseph gripped the arms of the
auld
chair, forcing himself not to go to her, to give her a chance to talk.

“And was—Heath—brutal during your time together in the bedroom?”

Her eyes took on a haunted, faraway look and he cursed himself for asking the question, but any kind of real intimacy between them had to be wrought in truth . . . and he knew that secrets hurt when they were left unspoken.

“He was horrific,” she said suddenly, simply, then put her face in her hands, and he saw her shoulders shake with silent sobs.

He was out of the chair before he could think and gathered her close against his chest. “Dear Gott, Priscilla, I wish I could take this from you—all of it. The pain, the memories . . .”

She lifted her tearstained face and looped her arms around his neck. “You can,” she half sobbed. “Kiss me. Please. When you kiss me, I can’t think of anything else.”

He was caught by the franticness in her voice and lost all sense of finesse as he urgently bent to kiss her mouth. He slanted his head and heard a roaring in his ears as she arched on tiptoe and fit her small frame against his body. Then he lifted her easily and carried her to sit in his lap on the chair he’d abandoned moments before, never breaking contact with her soft lips.

Finally, he had to gasp for breath and drew air harshly into his lungs. He stared down in the moonlight at her swollen and reddened mouth, then met her eyes. She lifted her hands to touch his face and he turned his head to bite gently at the juncture of her thumb and forefinger when she stroked back his hair. He watched her reaction through narrowed eyes, unsure of how far she’d be willing for him to extend the kiss. But she seemed to stare in abject fascination at his teeth on her skin, and her beautiful mouth formed a soft O of surprise and pleasure.

Then he shivered, knowing suddenly that there were a hundred things he could teach her to make her feel
gut
, and he knew he’d love to spend his life in the process. But suddenly, she’d wriggled her soft bottom back from his thighs and had risen to her feet before he even knew what she was about.

She stood before him, her hand over her mouth. Then she dropped her shaking fingers to clutch at her apron.

He leaned forward, his voice urgent. “Priscilla, what’s wrong?”

“I never even thought about how you might feel when I asked you to kiss me—maybe it was selfish. I mean—did it make you think about when you were sixteen?”

He leaned back in the chair, thoughts thrumming through his mind at her question. Then he sighed and passed a hand over his eyes before he looked up at her once more. “Maybe . . . but not in the way you might think, my sweet
frau
.”

Priscilla’s lips stung sweetly from the heat and pressure of Joseph’s mouth, but she could not allow herself to fully enjoy the tender pleasure of the burn until she heard what he had to say.

“Priscilla, I want to talk to you in truth, find freedom there, but I worry that it is you who might find me lacking if I were to—” He broke off as an urgent knock sounded on the door and then Hollie burst in, followed by the black tumult of Bear.

“Hollie,” Priscilla gasped as she took in her daughter’s distraught face. “What’s wrong?”

“I thought I saw Daddy’s face at the window,” Hollie sobbed.

Priscilla immediately caught her daughter close and looked with frantic eyes to the window next to where Joseph now stood. She felt the impulse to run, somewhere, anywhere, but didn’t know how she could when she was already in the middle of nowhere. She started to shake and sob and pressed Hollie against her chest.

“Priscilla,” Joseph said softly. “He’s not here.”

“Hollie saw him!”

“The child’s in a new place, a new room. She was dreaming. No one or no thing could get within a hundred feet of this cabin with Bear here. He’d tear them apart and howl like a wolf in the process.”

Priscilla still sobbed, unable to stop as she shook her head fiercely and looked again to the unadorned, open window. She nearly jumped when Joseph touched her shoulder, then slid his arms around both her and Hollie.

“
Kumme
, my
maedels
, let’s lie down in the bed and get some sleep. If it makes you feel better, Priscilla, I’ll go have a look round with Bear and then stay up to watch tonight.”

“No, don’t leave us, please.” Priscilla felt her teeth begin to chatter and was grateful when Joseph walked them to the bed and helped tuck in first Hollie, then herself. He piled quilts from an old chest on top of them and Hollie was soon fast asleep in Priscilla’s arms with Bear taking up the other side of the bed.

Priscilla watched as Joseph stood by the window, his broad shoulders silhouetted by moonlight, his stance relaxed and comforting. She closed her eyes and almost drifted off, only to wake with a start. Joseph came to bend over her and gently kissed her forehead. “Happy wedding
nacht
, my beauty, my spitfire. Sweet dreams.” And then she slept.