Cheryl Reavis (9 page)

He forced himself to sit up on the side of the bed in spite of his exhaustion. Mary Louise never cried when he found her wandering about, never expected to be scolded. She always seemed glad to have located him at least. Sometimes he drew the milk jug up from the cold bottom of the well, and they’d share a cupful before he put her back to bed. Sometimes they just sat in the big rocking chair in front of the fire until she grew sleepy again.

But Mary Louise was in her bed when he stopped outside the room she and Lise shared. They were both sleeping soundly. He listened for a moment, then moved quietly down the stairs, avoiding the telltale third step he was certain he’d heard. Beata hiding things again, he thought. Or Eli come sneaking home.

He had made a point of not seeking Caroline out when the guests had finally gone and he came upstairs. Beyond simple charity, he refused to be concerned about her. His only concern was Lise. His older daughter was far too sensitive for her own good, and Caroline was once again the cause of Lise’s tears. He was aware that Caroline would have asked him about Beata’s crude remark. She would have asked in that proud, blunt way she had, and he would have told her. Then she would have looked at him with those
eyes of hers, and he would have felt sorry for her. He did
not
want to feel sorry for Caroline Holt.

He could see partway into the kitchen when he reached the bottom step. The fire had been built up. He could smell the burning wood. The room danced in shadows. After a moment, he heard a wavering sigh.

He stepped closer. Caroline was kneeling on the hearth beside a porcelain pitcher and basin, one shoulder and one breast bare. She worked to get her other arm out of the sleeve of her dress and the chemise she wore underneath it, letting both garments hang downward from her waist.

The fire popped and hissed. One of the smaller logs shifted. Caroline waited for the sparks to subside, then she carefully began to wash, her movements tentative, as if the water was still too hot or the procedure too painful. Her back was to him, and he imagined that he could smell the pungent scent of the lye soap as the steam rose upward. He could almost but not quite see the dark mottling of the bruises on her forearms and back, and he could hear her soft cry of pain when she touched a place on her shoulder too heavily with the wet cloth. Until this moment, regardless of her battered face, he hadn’t realized how much Avery had hurt her.

She moved closer to the fire and turned slightly. He could see one breast lined in firelight. She was completely unaware of him.

He stood transfixed.

Watching.

When she began to gently soap her breasts, his lips parted and he drew a shaky breath, feeling himself grow hot and heavy with desire. She was so…beautiful. He hadn’t known she would be so beautiful. In his fantasies of revenge he had simply taken her, his will over hers, his right as her husband. He hadn’t cluttered his mind with any of the details.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away. His hands ached to touch her in the same way she was touching. He wanted to step
into the room. He wanted to grab her and push her down right there on the hearth and—

No! I will not think of her in this way!

Not when he knew now who was likely the father of her baby. He had seen her stricken look when she realized Kader Gerhardt was in the room. If any other woman in the community had been in Caroline’s situation, he would have immediately suspected the schoolmaster, but he had honestly thought
she
would have had better sense. He had more or less convinced himself that she had been tumbled by some man from the town, some old classmate’s brother or cousin, some rich, fast-talking dandy she had no experience in knowing how to resist.

He realized immediately that he was describing Kader Gerhardt.

He abruptly turned away. Tomorrow, spring planting or not, he would go looking for Eli.

C
aroline got the girls ready for church well ahead of Beata’s complaints. Both nieces were fed, clean and dressed in the proper attire. They had nothing to do but wait for the arrival of John Steigermann’s wagon—an arrangement Frederich made before he left. Mary Louise was still full of questions about when her father would return, but there was nothing Caroline could say to satisfy her. She had not been made privy to Frederich’s itinerary, and neither, she suspected, had Beata.

Frederich had been gone three days, and she couldn’t account for the feeling of vulnerability his absence precipitated. Frederich was in no way her champion, in spite of the fact that he had kept the marriage pledge after all and had allegedly knocked Avery down. That had been the result of his and Avery’s long-standing animosity; she had only been the excuse, and she was not to be flattered that Frederich had done violence supposedly on her behalf. It annoyed her greatly to keep finding herself looking and listening for his return—when they could hardly be civil to each other and when she locked her door against him every night.

Even so, she was flooded with relief when Frederich walked abruptly through the back door. Both his daughters ran to him. He said something to Beata over the clamor of their greeting. John Steigermann was taking them to church,
Caroline thought Beata replied. Then, Frederich asked for something to eat—a request that Beata clearly did not receive kindly.

“I’ll get it,” Caroline said, realizing that there was something, after all, to William’s claim of being able to guess what was being said without actually speaking the language. She ignored both the Graebers surprised expressions and turned to get the leftover biscuits and ham from the niche in the hearth wall that served as a warming oven. She got down a plate and a tin cup from the cupboard as well, but Beata stood firmly planted between her and the table.

“I thought you didn’t understand German,” Beata said, her hands on her hips.

“I don’t—”

“You understand when it suits you to understand!”

“I know the word for breakfast!”

“You are trying to make
me
look bad!”

“You don’t need me for that!” Caroline broke off and gave a sigh. She did
not
want to start the day with yet another altercation. “I thought you wanted to finish dressing,” she said in a normal voice. “You’ve said at least ten times that Mr. Steigermann would be here soon.”

Beata still hesitated, but apparently the possibility of missing a ride to church outweighed her need to quarrel. She would want to be in church this Sunday, the first Sunday after the so-called wedding. Everyone would want to talk to her today. Everyone would want to hear all about Caroline Holt and Frederich Graeber.

Frederich sat down to eat with Mary Louise on his lap.

“You aren’t ready for church,” he said when Caroline put the plate and cup down in front of him.

“Aunt Caroline’s not going to church,” Lise said helpfully.

“Aunt Caroline
is
going to church,” he answered, filling his plate with biscuits and ham. “There is no declining or accepting, as
she
pleases. She will go.”

Caroline stood for a moment with the coffeepot in her hand, ignoring the cup Frederich deigned to hold out to her. “No,” she said, the quietness of her voice in no way indicative of the anger she felt. She set the coffeepot down carefully just out of his reach, and she untied her apron. “Caroline is
not
going.”

She turned away then and walked purposefully toward the stairs, because she wanted him to understand that she was not having a tantrum like Beata. She was simply…leaving, and she didn’t realize that Frederich had followed her until she had gone into her room and tried to close the door.

“I am not going!” she said, trying to keep him out, but he was much too strong for her, and he pushed his way in past her.

“How many times do I have to tell you these things?" Frederich said. “Do you listen to anything I say to you?" He crossed the room and jerked open the clothes cupboard, searching through it and bringing out the unbecoming wren-brown frock he’d seen her wear to church. “You will go!”

She stood rigidly in the center of the room, and she looked from him to the dress and back again. He expected some kind of angry retort, but she said nothing, and suddenly tears began to spill down her cheeks. She made no attempt to wipe them away. Her mouth trembled, but she made no sound. She simply stood there with her head up, the way she had stood in front of the congregation when they’d gone through with their farce of marriage.

“You are not going to give these people more to talk about, Caroline Holt!” he said.

“It’s Graeber,” she said. “Not Holt. Graeber!”

She covered her face with her hands then and abruptly sat down on the side of the bed.

“I can’t stand anymore,” he thought she said. After a moment she took her hands down and looked at him. “I can’t—face the—stares and the whispers—” she said, struggling for control.

It’s Kader Gerhardt you don’t want to face,
he thought, knowing how much worse he would think of her if she were clamoring to get to church to see the man. But even he would admit that she had given Gerhardt no encouragement at the hospitality supper. He had heard her remark to the schoolmaster when he’d professed to loving the rain. If anything, she had insulted him.

“You are no better to face the stares and whispers than the rest of us, Caroline
Graeber,
“ he said. “And there is nothing that can happen in the church today that will be any worse than you—than we—have already been through. We will not hide. Who doesn’t know everything by now, tell me that?”

They don’t know you sleep alone,
she thought. And she had no doubt whatsoever that Beata would tell them. What distressed her, though, was how much she minded. Of course she didn’t want Frederich to consummate the marriage, and yet she didn’t want people to know how disinclined he was to do it.

Frederich thrust the dress at her. When she didn’t take it, he threw it over the back of the chair.

“Did you find anything about Eli in town?” Caroline suddenly asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“No. I didn’t. No one has seen him. Now get ready for church—or you can go the way you are. It makes no difference to me.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” she said, incredulous that she could have been waiting expectantly for this man’s return. He was right, however. She was not the only one affected by this scandal, and John Steigermann had already explained what needed to be done. She would let no one sit in judgment of her. She would have to wait until people forgot—

No. People would never forget. She would have to bear this, now, until some other scandal came along to take their collective attention. And she would enjoy the respite until they remembered again.

“If you are worried about Avery—”

“I’m not worried about Avery,” she said. “Fighting is all my brother understands. If you’ve bested him at that
and
given him the marriage settlement, you’ve made a friend for life. He won’t bother me as long as I’m living under your roof.”

She took a deep breath, then stood up and reached for the dress. “Do you at least give me the privacy to put this on?" she asked.

Frederich could feel himself blush, as if she had somehow become privy to the thoughts he’d had about her these past few days, thoughts that easily could have driven him into the arms of some whore in one of the houses down by the railroad depot in town if he’d given in to them even for a second. He forced himself not to look at her. He would not let himself be caught in those great, sad eyes that pleaded for help even while she tried to drive him away.

“I’m going to feed the livestock,” he said abruptly.

“They’ve been fed,” she said, taking a certain satisfaction from his surprised look. “I’m not entirely the burden you think, Frederich. I was born and raised on a farm. I know what needs to be done when the lord and master is gone, and I know how to do it.”

“I spoke to John Steigermann—”

“And I spoke to him afterward,” she said. “I saw no point in being any more indebted to him than I already am. There was no reason for him to have to come here every day to do something I can do. I fed the livestock and—”

“And ruined them, too, likely!”

“I did nothing of the kind. I followed the instructions you gave Mr. Steigermann—”

He left her standing and went straight to the barn to make a painstaking inspection of his property. Everything seemed perfectly in order—to his great relief and to his annoyance. None of the animals had been starved or overfed. The stalls had all been cleaned out. The cows had been milked.

He began to tend the horse he’d ridden to and from town, more than a little perplexed by this new facet to Caroline Holt. He
had
considered her useless in anything that mattered, and it did not please him to discover that he’d been wrong.

He looked around to find Caroline and his daughters standing in the barn doorway. Caroline was not wearing the dress he’d all but thrown at her. She had changed to a dark blue one instead, one with black trim and a red ribbon at the neck.

“Any dead bodies?” she asked mildly.

“Who did the milking?” he asked without answering, still looking for a cause for complaint.

“Me, Papa,” Mary Louise said. “I can milk good.”

“You let Mary Louise—” Frederich began, turning on Caroline.

“Of course not, Papa!” Lise interrupted, rolling her eyes. “It’s too dangerous. We did the singing part—”

“Singing? What singing is this?”

“Papa, we sat in the hay pile and sang some songs. Did you know if you sing to the cows, they give more milk? Hurry, Papa,” Lise said, grabbing him by the hand as if she didn’t see the all-too apparent signs that he was far from mollified. “You’re the only one not ready for church.”

He gave a heavy sigh. He was trying hard to hang on to his anger, but he couldn’t when he looked into Lise’s upturned face. “Go,” he said, shooing his children ahead of him. “Go quick and find me a clean shirt.”

He followed along after them, taking long strides so as not to have to walk alongside Caroline.

“A ‘thank you, Caroline’ would be in order,” she said behind him.

“If not for you, I would not have been gone in the first place,” he answered unkindly.

She stopped walking, and he looked back, half expecting to see her in tears again. But she wasn’t crying. She was staring at him, the fleeting, little quirk of a smile he’d seen now and then firmly in place.

“Touché,” was all she said.

Caroline hardly heard the sermon, so intently was she concentrating on hearing everything else. She tried to focus her attention on the hymnal instead of the overt whispering, on standing when she was supposed to stand, and sitting when everyone else did. But she was not participating in the service at all, and she felt everyone’s attention so acutely that she actually thought any noise from her, even interspersed among countless others, would make her even more conspicuous than she already was. It wasn’t only her bruised face that turned heads. She was conspicuous by her very presence here.

Neither Avery nor William had come to the service this morning, a disappointment in William’s case. She had maintained the small hope that seeing her younger brother would make whatever else she had to endure worthwhile. She hadn’t really expected Avery to put in an appearance— if he truly was wearing the evidence of Frederich’s fists.

But Kader was there, smiling and gallant and seeming intensely affected by her arrival. He would have actually made a point of speaking to her if Frederich hadn’t circumvented it.

How peculiar,
she thought. It was as if her show of disinterest and her obvious unavailability had made her desirable again in Kader’s eyes, pregnant or not.

Learn from all this, Caroline,
she admonished herself as she stood yet another time. Two rows ahead of her she could
see the back of Beata’s bonnet. Beata had made a great show of avoiding her since their arrival, and Caroline was thankful for small favors. At least Frederich hadn’t insisted that they sit together to further the hypocritical show of Graeber family unity.

She tried harder to concentrate on what Johann Rial was saying, but she began to feel more and more queasy. She should have eaten breakfast—would have eaten if she’d known Frederich would force her to come to church.

Johann finally ended his sermon, and she meant to get to the outside quickly, hurrying Lise and Mary Louise along ahead of her the second he concluded the benediction. But the aisle was crowded and progress slow. As she reached the main doors, she faltered. She could see the group of men congregating just outside, men who turned and looked in her direction as she approached.

“What’s wrong?” Lise said at her elbow.

“What’s wrong?” Mary Louise repeated.

“Mary Louise, don’t say everything I say,” Lisa said, and Caroline gave both of them a hard look. Frederich stood waiting on the front steps.

“Something’s wrong,” Lise immediately advised him.

Frederich looked at Caroline sharply, but he made no comment. There were too many people around. He noted immediately how pale she looked and just as he noted that, she had seen the group of men who stood on the flagstone path between her and John Steigermann’s wagon. There was nothing subtle about the way they looked at her or about the sudden burst of laughter that erupted after someone’s remark.

“Take my arm, Caroline,” Frederich said to her quietly. She looked at him but she didn’t do as he asked. “Take my arm,” he said again. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

Her lips parted, trembling slightly as she gave a small, wavering sigh. But she reached to put her hand on his arm, her touch tentative and hesitant at first. He was beginning
to understand her, to realize that she’d rather die than ask for help, particularly from him, and that she hated her vulnerability in this situation because it gave her no choice. She let Lise carry her Bible, and she took Mary Louise by the hand and walked with him, her grip on his arm tightening when she realized he had no intention of circumventing these leering men. He headed directly toward them, causing them to have to step aside to let him pass.