Arms of Love (23 page)

Lena looked at her in surprise. “What?”

“That tall fella, black hair, strange eyes. Real handsome-like.

What did Abby say his name was? Adam something.”

“Adam Wyse,” Lena whispered.

“Well, now, that’s all right then. Ain’t Wyse the last name of the feller you’ll be marryin’, like yer father announced to everyone today? Ah, he’s a keeper—I could tell right off—his seeking milk fer that little mite. Not an easy thing for any man to do, I would say. But he did it and brought me here. Well, dropped me off.”

Lena stroked the homespun fabric of a dark dress and felt her resolve to marry Isaac dissolve a little, like ice melting from the edges of a pond. And she was in too deep a water to tread. She swallowed hard and forced a smile on her lips.

“Actually, Ruth, I’m to marry
Isaac
Wyse. Adam’s brother.”

“Oh.” Ruth sniffed, clearly disappointed. “Well, I guess ye’re old enough to know yer own mind. But marriage . . . that’s a hard thing sometimes, even with the right person.” She broke off, rubbing her hands together. “But now I miss even those hard times, I guess. It’s foolishness, ain’t it?”

“No,” Lena said soberly. “There is nothing foolish about it. It is dear and wonderful and the way life should be together.”

“Well, I wish that fer ye, luv. I do in truth.”

“Thank you, Ruth.” Lena moved forward to embrace the woman, turning her head into the strong shoulder so that her tears could fall unseen.

Chapter 19

A
dam came to himself in the midst of dark shadows and a fetid smell. He sat in a secluded leather seat, and Dale was across the scarred table, watching him with intent eyes.

“So, you’re back.” It was a question from his friend, riddled with some current of knowing and anxiety at the same time.

Adam felt his hands around a cool tankard and knew a sour taste in his mouth. He nodded with a slow movement, feeling like his head might come off at the motion.

“When did you fight?” Dale asked in a low voice.

“What?” Adam wasn’t sure he had heard right.

“Early in the war? For what side?”

“I do not—I have never fought before. I am ashamed,” Adam confessed, feeling his face suffuse with color.

Dale shook his head. “Oh, you have fought. I’ve seen it before— what happened out on the street with you.”

Adam leaned forward. “What happened? What happened to me?

I am Amish; I do not fight. I lifted my hands to those men.”

“And a good thing you did, too,” Dale remarked dryly, taking a pull from his tankard. “I could not have handled their little scheme alone.”

Adam sighed. “It was a trick. I should have paid them and walked away.”

“I do not think you could have.”

“What? Why?” Adam whispered.

“That look on your face, the bloodlust or fever—I have seen it in battle and in places far more civil. A man who has fought long and hard sometimes cannot recall . . . or seem to remember that he is not still warring, still killing. It is as though his mind sees another place, another time. That’s how you looked, my friend.”

Adam ran his thumb over the pewter handle of the tankard and longed for a drink of springwater. “And . . . this look . . . It went away?”

“After my nearly wrestling you into that seat and forcing a drink of strong cider down your throat, yes.”

Adam stared at his friend. “I tell you again; I have fought no war.”

Dale nodded thoughtfully. “No—perhaps not one that you can remember.”

“You question my strength of mind?” It was not a challenge, but a wondering inquiry, almost that of a child.

Dale lifted his tankard. “I salute your strength of mind, Adam Wyse. Whatever you have been through, you have found a way to cope, to survive. And I respect that, my friend.”

Adam lifted his tankard after a moment and knocked it into Dale’s. The strong cider splashed over onto his hand, which he noticed for the first time was bruised and swollen. He lifted the drink to his lips but did not taste. He would not give tribute to a part of himself that was as savage as a mountain cat and as hidden as the minerals of the earth.

Joseph Wyse looked up from his Bible to encounter his wife’s worried gaze. They were sitting together after the evening meal in bentwood rockers near a low fire in the hearth, while Isaac had gone upstairs with his books.

“
Ya
, Ellen, what is it?”

“Isaac’s announcement about himself and Lena . . . Do you think it wise?”

Joseph closed the Bible and began to rock in the chair slightly.

“Why ever not? She is of
gut
stock. And you will be able to look forward to
grosskinner
to dawdle on your knees.”

“You know I think of Adam. It will drive him away surely.”

“And what of that? Perhaps it is time he made his own way in the world. The boy is long past marrying age himself.”

He noticed that Ellen did not drop her gaze as she was wont to do, and he frowned.

“Joseph, I try never to vex you, but Adam is unmarried for reasons you well understand. And to have him lose what he holds most dear may break him in entirety.”

“I think you will find that—” He stopped speaking as the front door opened wide and Adam stepped inside.

Ellen gasped at the boy’s disheveled and bruised appearance and rose to hurry to him.

“Adam,” she whispered, so that Joseph could barely catch her words.

“Have you been in a fight?”

Joseph had wondered many times . . . if Adam were pushed to the edge of violence, would he recall those minutes so long ago?

“It’s nothing,
Mamm
,” Adam soothed her. “Please don’t worry. I am well. I would simply go to bed, if it would please you both.”

“You have brought the
glaws
back,
sohn
?” Joseph called from his chair.

“Nee, sir. I dropped it in the crowds of the street. I will go again tomorrow.”

“
Ach
,” Ellen cried in despair. “Forget the glass. Let me give you some liniment for those bruises.”

“Again I tell you that I am well. I bid you both a good night.”

Joseph stirred and raised his voice. “Before you would lie down,
sohn
. Some news of celebration for the family . . .” He heard a soft sigh escape Ellen’s lips and turned his head to see Adam standing wary and alert. “Lena Yoder has done your brother the honor of accepting his proposal to become his wife. We will celebrate the happy marriage when the bishop rides through.”

If Joseph hoped for some visible reaction, he was disappointed. His
sohn’s
strange golden eyes never wavered. Adam merely nodded and made for the stairs, leaving Joseph to finger his Bible under his wife’s worried gaze.

Adam felt the steps beneath his feet, turned to the right toward his room, doing all as if it were the most natural thing in the world—the most natural thing when his world had imploded into a vague nothingness in the pit of his belly.
Lena is to marry
Isaac.

He passed his
bruder’s
open door and stopped, staring at Isaac where he reclined on the bed with an arm under his head and a book in his hand while a mangy pup curled about his feet.

“’Tis the courting hour, is it not?” He heard his own voice from a distance, surprised at its normality.

Isaac looked up with a lazy smile. “You have heard then. Gut. I want there to be no ill will between us, Adam. I believe what Lena felt for you was a dream of childhood, well past. While I—”

“Do you love her?”

“What?” Isaac lost his page.

“Do you love her?” Adam repeated the question, turning a figurative knife in his abdomen, wanting to feel even the pain to know that he was still alive.

Isaac gave a derisive sniff. “Love is for young swains who would sneak about in the night and charm a woman’s virtue from her. ’Tis better for the man to be
fond
of a woman and to let her dabble with all of those emotions so common to humans but so far from the real love of
Derr Herr
. I would not want—”

“Love her,” Adam commanded in a harsh growl.

Isaac sat up in the bed. “What? Do you threaten me?”

“Love her. And may Gott have mercy on your soul if I ever discover that you do not.”

“Adam, I—”

“You heard me,” he muttered, then swung the door closed with a quiet snap. He continued down the hall and fell into his bed, still fully dressed, unsure if he would find the will to wake upon the morn.

Chapter 20