Cheryl Reavis (19 page)

She gathered up her skirts and began to run.

F
rederich heard her long before she saw her coming through the trees. The night was so cold and the sound of her footsteps echoed across the frozen ground. He recognized her immediately, but he stayed in the shadows and watched her go into the house.

He waited—for her to come back out again—for whoever might be following her to catch up. He looked upward at the night sky. There was no moon visible, no stars. He marveled that she had been able to find her way, except that she, unlike him, had been born here. She had been a child here, played in these woods and along these paths. Of course, she would know the way, even in the dark. All the time he’d been hiding around Avery’s abandoned house, he had expected her to come to him—with no real reason for him to do so, except that he wanted it. She’d been greatly taken aback by his arrival, but civil to him, if barely. And just when he’d given up the idea of seeing her one last time, here she was, and he was all undecided again.

But then, he had always been undecided when it came to Caroline Holt. He didn’t want to risk capture. He fully intended to return to his company as soon as he was satisfied that his family—that
she—was
all right, but he had no delusions. He knew that if he was caught, he would indeed be hanged. He was a foreigner, a German. And conscripts as a
whole were considered cowardly and undependable in battle by the military and the civilians alike. Even so, he waited, knowing that he should be well on his way into town before daylight.

But then he suddenly moved out of the place where he’d been hiding. He was wasting time, when he knew better than anyone that he had no time to spare.

Caroline could find no sign that Frederich had been in the house. The place was deathly quiet. She didn’t call out to him. She moved carefully in the dark and touched the pig iron stove. It was cold. She couldn’t keep from shivering. Her teeth chattered as she tried to find the candle she’d brought in her pocket. She fumbled along the shelf near the stove for the tin matchbox, her fingers finally locating it, but not where she expected it to be. Perhaps Frederich had been here after all, she thought.

She lit the candle at the moment the back door opened, startling her so much that she dropped it and the match tin on the floor, scattering matches everywhere, the lit candle flaming brighter in its downward fall.

“Put that out!” Frederich said, and she immediately fumbled along the floor to reach it only to have the flame die of its own accord. It rolled away from her fingers and she left it lying.

“I thought you’d gone,” she whispered, her voice shaking with the cold. He didn’t come any closer. She couldn’t see his face. “I came to tell you the soldiers are still at the house. I was afraid you’d come back while they were—”

“Are you sure you didn’t bring them with you?” he interrupted, and her heart sank. What if she had?

“I don’t think so. These aren’t men who would want to be out on such a cold night. The officer asked me where you were—because Mary Louise woke up and came looking for you. He may suspect but he isn’t sure—”

She looked up sharply at the sudden burst of rain—no, sleet—against the house. The bad weather she’d expected all afternoon had finally arrived.

“Have you had anything to eat?” she asked, looking back at him. She could just make out his form in the darkness. “I’ve got some apples in my pockets. Your pockets,” she amended. “It’s your coat I’m wearing. I thought you would need it—”

“I’ve stolen one of your brother’s coats,” he said, his voice strained.

“If you don’t want apples, I can look for whatever else might be here to eat,” she went on in a rush. “But I’ll have to light the candle—if I can find the candle.”

She thought that it had gone the way of the scattered matches, and she got down on her hands and knees to feel for it in the dark. She found a number of the matches and the tin box they were in, but no candle.

“I don’t want anything to eat,” he said, coming close to her. He reached down and took her by the arm to bring her to her feet again. “I haven’t been waiting for you here so that you could bring me apples.”

“You’ve been waiting?” she asked, trying to see his face in the darkness.

His fingers tightened on her arm. “Yes! Did you think I deserted the army to get apples? I came home to see you, Caroline, so that I could talk to you. So that I could tell you how it is with me. I’m afraid I’ll die and never get it said—” He abruptly released her and moved away again. She followed after him, coming as close as she dared.

“I am so
tired
of this,” he said after a time. “We are never going to understand each other.”

“I understand,” she said.

“No, Caroline Holt, you do
not.
I was wrong to come home. I was wrong to stay here trying to see you. I’m leaving now. With the weather this bad, I’ll have a better chance
to get to town without being caught. Kiss my daughters for me…”

He flung the door open and she shivered in the blast of cold wind. It reminded her suddenly of that cold March day when Avery had come home to tell her of her impending marriage.

He slammed the door closed behind him, and she stood for a moment before following him.

“Frederich,” she whispered. “Frederich!” she said louder as she opened the door.

The sleet pelted down; she could hear it clicking against the porch boards all around her. The steps were already icy. She had to hold on to the railing to keep from falling.

“Frederich,” she called, trying to catch up to him as he walked rapidly away from the house toward the path in the woods. “Frederich!”

He didn’t slow down. She had to run hard to try to close the distance between them.

“Frederich,” she said when she was close enough for him to hear her. “Whatever—you came—to say, I want you to— say it. My baby is—gone. The reason for this so-called-marriage is gone. If you want it, you can be—free of me now. I know—I owe you my life. I owe you—your—freedom—”

“I can never be free of you,” he said over his shoulder, still moving away from her in the dark.

“The marriage can be—ended legally—you’ve done your duty—even Johann would agree. I have no reputation—to lose. I won’t hold you to the vows—”

“I don’t want to end marriage!”

He stopped walking so suddenly she nearly ran into him. “I don’t want…to end marriage,” he said again, his voice gone quiet, his back still toward her.

“Then what do you want?” she said in exasperation.

He turned around, but she still couldn’t see his face in the dark. The sleet beat against them both. She couldn’t stop shaking in the cold.

“I want us to be together,” he said. “I’m tired of being your enemy, Caroline. What little is left of this night, I want to spend with you. I want to lie in your arms and I want to forget everything else. I want you to make me forget where I’ve been and what I’ve done—”

He abruptly started walking again, and she grabbed his arm, all but falling against him. “Frederich—”

“Let me go now, Caroline,” he said gruffly. “Before we hurt each other any more—”

“No—wait—the question you asked me today, Frederich—I
am
glad to see you. I am! I’ve been so afraid for you. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you. I couldn’t bear it!” She held on harder when he would have put her aside, nearly falling again.

But then he abruptly stopped trying to get away from her. He simply stood there, suffering her undignified attempt to detain him.

“I want you to come back with me,” she said, trying to see his face in the darkness.

“Did you not understand what I want from you? I can be more blunt if you didn’t—”

“Come back with me!”

He whirled around and gripped her by both shoulders; she thought he was going to shake her—he was surely angry enough to do that and worse. But he swore instead, German words she didn’t precisely understand. He took her by the hand and began walking toward the house again, pulling her along after him.

He all but carried her inside, flinging his gear to the floor and reaching for her as soon as he had kicked the door closed. His hands pulled at the front of her coat, freeing enough buttons so that he could touch her. She closed her
eyes and arched against him when his hand found her breast.

But this was not what she wanted. This was far too much like that shameful time with Kader, rushed and furtive and illicit, with no love and no respect.

“Wait,” she said, pushing against his chest to keep his hands out of her bodice. “Frederich, wait—Frederich!”

He abruptly stopped, his breath coming in heavy gasps.

“Please,” she said, trying to slip from his grasp.

“What—?” He lurched after her, catching her easily and pulling her to him.

“No—not here. I want to make a place for us,” she said, trying to hold him at arm’s length. “I don’t want my wedding night on the kitchen floor. Give me—just a few minutes. Then come to me—find the candle I dropped and come upstairs—please—”

“Caroline—”

“Please!” she whispered urgently.

He gave a heavy sigh.

“Frederich, I need to do this!”

“All right,” he said after a moment, because he knew her well enough to know that there was no way short of brute force to do otherwise. But he held on to her as long as he could, letting her fingers slip through his, trying to see which way she went in the dark. He heard her going noisily up the stairs, bumping into something that caused her to cry out along the way.

“Caroline?”

“It’s all right. You’re going to need that candle,” she assured him, and he smiled in the darkness. After a moment, he could hear her overhead, then not at all.

He took a deep, ragged breath and tried to find the lost candle. His hands still trembled, more with desire than from the cold. He knew perfectly well that he should go now, before the army came looking for him, before he had the time to think about this amazing turn of events. The risk he was
taking was great, and he prayed to God that Caroline was right, that these home guard soldiers were not the sort of men who would relish being out in the cold if they could help it

He found the candle finally, when he stepped on it and cracked one end. It took him a moment to fix it, and he moved away from the window before he lit it. Then he used it to look around the room, wondering how long “a few minutes” might be. He’d been here in the kitchen a number of times in the past, but he’d never been upstairs. He and Avery had had a kind of grudging, mutual agreement to help each other when the need arose, and he’d come inside with his brothers-in-law to drink lemonade or coffee, depending on the weather. Caroline had almost always been there, aloof and unapproachable.

Come back with me.

That she should have said such a thing to him was incredible. He still half expected to wake up and find himself among a dozen snoring men in a makeshift log-and-mud hut in Virginia.

He had no idea of the time. Before midnight? After? How long did he have with her? A few hours? Or no time at all?

Caroline.

He picked up his gear and walked toward the stairs. She was waiting for him on the first landing, another wavering candle in her hands. She said nothing, and neither did he. He simply followed her—wherever she wanted to take him, he didn’t care.

She had uncovered her hair. If he had had a free hand, he would have reached out to touch the thick braid that hung down her back. She led the way to the second story, then up another flight of stairs to the attic space.

“Do you think we can have a fire?” she asked along the way, her voice so matter-of-fact that it unsettled him.
He
was nervous about this sudden change in their relationship. Why wasn’t she?

“The windows are very small,” she went on. “I don’t think anyone who passed by would see the glow in this weather.”

“They’ll smell the smoke, Caroline,” he said.

“Oh. Yes. I didn’t think—”

“It won’t matter,” he said quickly. “If the soldiers come here, it will be because they believe they have a reason. A smokeless chimney isn’t going to keep them away.”

She had to make him move down a step or two so that she could open the door at the top of the narrow attic stairway. Her hand rested on his shoulder. He felt her touch much deeper than that.

“This is where you stayed? When you lived here?” he asked as he followed her into the room.

But it was more than a room. As far as he could tell, the space took up the entire top floor of the house. He stood awkwardly, looking around him.

“Yes,” she said. “It was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter—but I needed a place away from…”

She didn’t go on, but he understood. It would have been hell for a quiet, bookish person like her to live in the same house with Avery Holt. She would have needed some kind of sanctuary. It occurred to him that it must have been hell for her to live with him as well.

Everything looked swept and tidy. The bed—her bedhad a high headboard with oak leaf carvings and a thick feather mattress. The pile of quilts covering it had been turned down. He found the gesture both endearing and erotic.

She had other small candles lit, most of them on the hearth where a fire had been laid. He could see a stack of books in the shadowy recesses of the room, perhaps the same books she’d brought to his own house that day William had given her her belongings in a pillow slip. But she hadn’t been up here long enough to arrange all this—she must still stay here sometimes, he thought. Beata had written
to him, complaining bitterly about Caroline’s sleeping in her brother’s house every night after all the men had gone for soldiers—and her implication had been anything but that Caroline was sleeping
alone.
But Johann Rial had taken it upon himself to explain the situation to him in a lengthy letter, answering all the questions that he, Frederich, would have had too much pride to ask. He had believed Johann, and he knew Caroline well enough to know that she still grieved for her child and that she would want some kind of respite from living with Beata.

His eyes strayed to the bed again, and this time Caroline caught him at it. She glanced quickly away.