MB02 - A Noble Groom (32 page)

Herr Mueller’s accordion came to an abrupt stop. Silence trickled through the barn.

Heat crept up the back of Carl’s neck.

Was everyone watching them? Were they waiting to hear Annalisa’s answer to his question? Had the men placed such high wagers that they couldn’t give him a few more moments to talk with her?

Annalisa looked toward the barn door.

Carl chanced a glance around him. Nobody was paying any attention to them. In fact, not one person was even looking in
their direction. Instead, all eyes were focused on the same place as Annalisa’s—the entrance of the barn.

Carl followed their gazes. There, outlined against the dark of the evening, stood a young man, a stranger.

The shadows hid his face, but even so, a shiver crept up Carl’s backbone.

“
Guten abend
.” The man took a step forward so that the light of a gas lamp illuminated him. His face was pale, and he was thin and slightly stooped over.

As the man of the farm, Carl knew he should step forward, greet the visitor, and offer his assistance. But trepidation had wormed its way into his spine and paralyzed him.

“I’m sorry to disrupt your festivities.” The man gave a cough that came from deep in his chest, and it bent his shoulders even more.

Carl forced himself to move, to walk to the center of the barn and to face the man. “How can we help you?” He tried to calm the rapid beating of his heart, telling himself this man was only a sick passerby in need of their compassion.

But when the man removed his hat and scratched his head as if attacking an unseen enemy there, dread slammed into Carl and weakened his knees.

Carl could almost see the mammoth-sized lice jumping around in the man’s hair and having a party. Carl’s skin crawled at the memory of the itching agony he’d suffered during his long voyage in steerage.

If the man had ship-sized lice, then that could only mean one thing . . .

“I’m looking for Peter Bernthal.” The man scanned the crowd. “I was told he was here tonight.”

Annalisa moved away from the wall, and Carl wanted to push her back to the edges, out of sight.

“I’m Peter.” Annalisa’s father stepped from the shadows and crossed his arms at his chest. “Who are you?”

Carl shook his head. He didn’t want to hear who this man was. He wanted to shove him outside and send him away before he could speak.

But Carl couldn’t move and couldn’t get his voice to work.

The stranger stifled a cough, then let his bag slip from his shoulder to the floor, as if he was finally home.

“I’m Dirk. Your cousin.”

Chapter
17

Annalisa stared at the stranger. Dread snaked around her.

Dirk? Here? Now?

He couldn’t be. He was supposed to be dead.

But Vater was embracing him like a long-lost son. And the other men were swarming around him, bombarding him with questions of family back home.

Everyone but Carl.

He stood on the fringe, his face pale and his shoulders rigid.

She wanted him to look at her and ask his question one more time. She wouldn’t hesitate this time. Everything within her cried out
Ja, ja, ja
. She would marry him. In fact, she’d do it at that very moment.

But she couldn’t get her feet to move toward him, and he stared at Dirk as if the man were the only other person in the barn.

“Didn’t you get Matthias’s recent letter telling of my delay?” Dirk asked Vater.

“We haven’t heard from anyone,” he said. “We all assumed you were buried at the bottom of the sea.”

“I was almost buried back in Essen before I could set sail.” Dirk coughed again with a wheeze and rattle that rivaled a wagon on one of their bumpy roads.

“Sounds like you might need a burying yet,” one of the other farmers said.

“Oh, this is nothing compared to what it was before. I’m fit now. Even the immigration doctor at the harbor in New York told me I was healthy.”

Annalisa wanted someone to pinch her and wake her up. Likely she was only having a bad dream. She’d awaken and find this man gone. Carl would smile at her and ask her again if she would marry him. And of course she’d say yes.

Vater slapped Dirk’s back. “Well, it’s a good thing you came tonight. I was about to give my Annalisa in marriage to another man.”

The men shifted to look at Carl. Dirk followed their lead, his brow rising.

Carl didn’t move.

“If you’d waited to come until tomorrow,” Vater continued, “you would have found yourself without a wife and farm.”

Maybe he still would find himself without a wife and farm. Did she dare walk over to Carl and show Vater and everyone else that she loved Carl and wanted to marry him? She quaked at the thought of doing something so bold. Perhaps if she caught Carl’s attention, he would see her willingness to marry him in her eyes. And if he knew she would marry him, maybe he would speak up and claim her for his own.

“We’ve got the pastor here tonight.” Vater motioned at Herr Pastor. “We might as well do the marrying now, while he’s here.”

She took another step back. Nein. She couldn’t marry Dirk. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. But especially not tonight.

Dirk glanced around the crowd of women as if searching her out. If they’d ever met in the Old Country, she didn’t remember him anymore. They both would have been much younger then.

She slouched and tried to make herself invisible.

But Vater pointed her out. “This is my daughter, Annalisa. And even though she has two daughters of her own, she’s still young and strong and will eventually give you sons.”

She didn’t look at Dirk, yet she could sense his appraisal. Instead she turned to Carl. They both needed to say something before it was too late.

Her mouth was dry. If she spoke, they would likely only scoff her. But if Carl said something, they would listen to him.

Silently she pleaded with him. The muscles in Carl’s jaw twitched. If only he would declare his intention to marry her. If only he would tell Vater it was too late for Dirk to have her. If only he would come and stand by her side and declare his love for her.

Did he love her? He’d just asked her to marry him. But he’d never mentioned love . . .

Dirk’s gaze bounced between her and Carl. Understanding dawned in his eyes, and his thin face hardened. “I see I’m going to be competing for Annalisa’s affection.”

Herr Pastor stepped forward. “Dear friends,” he began in his most pastoral voice, “this is all so sudden and unexpected. I urge us not to be hasty tonight in making any decisions regarding Annalisa’s future.”

“There’s only one thing to be done, Herr Pastor,” Vater said. “Even though I gave my consent for Carl to marry Annalisa, I did so only because I believed Dirk to be dead. But now that he’s here and very much alive, I must honor the commitment I made to him. Annalisa and the farm must go to Dirk.”

Annalisa started to shake her head in protest. What about
her
choice? Shouldn’t she have a say in the matter of her future husband?

Didn’t Carl think so too? After all he’d said about not marrying a stranger or giving up on the chance for love and happiness in marriage?

She looked to him to say something, anything. His eyes locked with hers for a long moment. Anguish pooled in their dark depths, along with his desire to be with her.

For a fraction of a second, hope fluttered inside her chest.

But then he shook his head, his eyes filled with apology, and he looked away.

The flutter vanished into utter stillness. Was he unwilling to fight to marry her?

“Carl isn’t objecting.” Vater voiced her worst fear. “He’d considered marrying her to help her. But now that Dirk is here, Carl has no need to stay. He can move on as he’d planned.”

Nausea pooled in her stomach. So he’d asked her to marry him out of obligation? And he didn’t care enough to marry her now that Dirk was here?

She’d wanted so badly to believe Carl had proposed marriage because he loved her. But the cold truth slapped her again—he’d never once made a declaration of his love.

“Even so,” Herr Pastor said, his gentle eyes coming to rest on her, “there’s no reason to rush the matter.”

Frau Pastor sidled next to her and rubbed Annalisa’s arm. She gave her husband a nod as if encouraging him to go on.

“In fact,” he continued, “I suggest we wait two weeks. Let’s give everyone a chance to get to know one another first.”

“Two weeks is too long,” Vater boomed. But when he glanced at Annalisa, and saw the desperation she knew was ingrained in every line of her face, he stopped speaking. His brow lifted, and the confident set of his shoulders wavered.

“Then one week,” Herr Pastor said. “If everyone is in agreement, I’ll perform the ceremony in one week, after next week’s Sunday morning service.”

Vater nodded, then looked at Dirk. “What do you say, cousin? Will you wait one week?”

Dirk hesitated, then looked at Carl.

Without saying a word, Carl tugged down the brim of his hat, strode through the crowd, and stalked out of the barn, disappearing into the darkness of night.

The weight in Annalisa’s stomach pressed heavier.

“We can wait a week,” Dirk said, staring after Carl. “We would be wiser to have the good-byes behind us before we attempt to start a new life.”

Annalisa wanted to cry out in protest.

But she didn’t move, not even when Frau Pastor patted her arm again and whispered, “There, there, dearie. It’ll all work out just fine. You’ll see.”

Carl rammed the edge of the shovel into the hill of potatoes. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face and back. But he didn’t care. He took satisfaction in the fact that Dirk—who was digging potatoes in the row next to him—had fallen behind. Way behind. And he took pleasure in the fact that Annalisa had chosen to follow him and gather the potatoes from the soil he’d loosened while requiring Gretchen to follow after Dirk.

He glanced over his shoulder toward Dirk. The man had stopped again. His cough had worsened with each passing hour, and now he could hardly hold his head up under the rigors of working in the unceasing heat.

Carl held back a grin, thinking back to the days when he’d first arrived. He’d been just as weak and incompetent—perhaps
even more so. He shoved the blade into the hard soil, and the muscles in his arms rippled. He wasn’t a weakling any longer. The summer of hard manual labor had turned him into a strong man, and in more ways than one.

With a swipe of his sleeve he brushed the sweat out of his eyes and peered toward the cabin, where Annalisa and Gretchen had gone to empty their baskets of potatoes.

They were his. Not Dirk’s.

The man had no right arriving after all this time and expecting that Annalisa would still marry him. Anger punched Carl’s gut again—as it had every time he thought of the previous evening in the barn. And yet the anger was just as quickly followed by helplessness. Who was he to stand up and demand that Annalisa marry him?

He’d been a fool to think he could take her as his wife—not when he was living a lie. He couldn’t just forget about his true identity or that she hated his father. He’d already deceived her enough. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life letting her believe he was someone he wasn’t.

A gust of hot wind whipped at his face. The wind had been increasing in intensity over the morning, but even so, it provided little relief from the heat.

He drew in a deep breath and caught the hint of smoke.

At the barn raising, the men had talked about the fires to the west. Everyone had agreed the conditions were too dangerous for the usual burning of slashings, that anyone wishing to clear more land needed to wait until the drought was over.

Carl could only shake his head at the foolishness of whoever was ignoring the warnings.

Dirk coughed again and this time couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

Carl wedged the blade of his shovel into the dirt and trudged over the uneven ground toward the man.

Although he didn’t particularly like Dirk, he couldn’t stand back and watch him kill himself. Besides, it wasn’t Dirk’s fault they both wanted Annalisa. From what he’d seen of Dirk so far, he seemed to be a decent man.

He halted in front of Dirk and waited as the man hunched over and struggled through his coughing fit. When he finally lifted his head, his lips were blue and his face drawn.

“I’m ready for a break,” Carl said. “What do you say? Shall we go rest in the shade for a spell?” He nodded toward the edge of the field to one of the old oaks whose leaves were already brown.

Dirk straightened and wiped his brow. “Maybe I should rest for a few minutes.”

They stumbled through the clods of soil that were as solid as stones. When they reached the shade, they tossed their sweat-ringed hats into the long, yellowed grass and flopped onto their backs.

For a short while neither of them said anything, letting the wind do all the talking. It whistled in the grass and rustled among the dry leaves and branches. It had already rattled loose all the acorns, and Gretchen had gathered whatever the squirrels had left behind.

“I have a letter for you from Matthias.” Dirk pushed up to his elbows and gave him a shrewd, narrowed gaze that sent Carl’s stomach into a nervous tumble.