The Amish Bride of Ice Mountain

 

“Everything, hmm? You mean to say that Abner got his dander up and now you’re married to a man who’s leaving the mountain in two weeks?”

Mary lifted her tear-stained face. “The professor—Jude—he wants an annul . . . annulment.”

Grossmuder
May laughed. “So he plans not to touch ye, does he? Well, then, I say your job is to turn this wedding into a marriage . . . and I don’t mean only the bedding; that’s the least of it in some ways. A marriage is about the physical body, eh? But also the spirit, the mind, and the heart.”

“It’s not that easy, though.”

Grossmuder
grunted and lowered herself onto the bunk. “
Nee
, it won’t be. He’s afar off, I think, from loving that way—anyone, not only you. But if you keep to what you know to be true, true of the Lord and true to the mountain, you’ll be all right, child, no matter where you go.”

 

 

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The Amish Bride
OF ICE MOUNTAIN

K
ELLY
L
ONG

ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Prologue

 

Chapter One

 

Associate Professor of Amish Studies Jude Lyons squeezed his eyes shut in the bright light of the summer sun and pretended he hadn’t heard what the girl said.

But the word rang indelibly through his mind . . .
dishonored.
He opened his eyes and stared down off the wooden porch step into the serious young face of the Amish girl, Mary King. Her dark hair was neatly coiled beneath her
kapp
, displaying only a straight, white part. Her hazel eyes were soulful, mournful, and the pale skin of her throat was even whiter than he remembered.

Say something, you idiot
, his brain chided him. But he couldn’t seem to get past the heated imagery that flashed through his memory—the day had been hot, the blueberry patch more than cool. And maybe he’d known somehow that their relationship would build to that sudden torrential burn of intense moments, but he stupidly hadn’t considered the consequences. And he certainly hadn’t imagined that Mary’s older brother, Joseph, might have been observing from the forest.

Jude never usually let himself go physically, not even with his fiancée. The blood thrummed in his ears—Carol . . . what would he say to Carol about this? But of course he was overreacting. He needn’t mention making out with Mary at all . . .

“My
daed
and
bruders
will be along shortly—to make sure you do the right thing.”

Her melodic voice was calm, rich with decades of dialectal purity, but he blinked at her words.

“What?”

“I expect they’ll take a while to rouse the bishop. He likes to sleep, you know.”

He likes to sleep . . .
Jude took a shaky step down to the flagstone nearest her and her small bare feet.

“Mary, I’m sorry. It was all a mistake . . . I’m due to be married in the fall. Are you sure Joseph saw . . .” He let his eyes drop with irreverence to her shoulders, as if she’d bear the imprints of his fingertips somehow, but there was nothing visible between the covering of her apron and dress.

“You know you were the first man who ever kissed me like that or touched—”

“I know. I know,” he broke in hastily, not wanting her to verify what he remembered all too well. Her innocence had been as palpable as his own heartbeat, her novice mouth returning his kisses with a tentative response that had made his throat burn.

“
Dat
wasn’t happy, what with you being an outsider and all, but he’s willing to settle seeing that you’re
schmart
in the head.”

Jude thought of the endless hours of study, sleepless nights upon nights, now his doctorate work, and his almost-completed book about the Amish of Ice Mountain, Pennsylvania. He had plans of returning home and breaking away from his father’s successful business and wealthy lifestyle and becoming a professor of Amish studies. He told himself that there was no way he was going to be coerced into “doing the right thing” for kissing a willing girl in the broad light of day. But he should have known better. If there was anything that he’d learned from his study of this people, it was their inherent sense of old-fashioned honor. The Mountain Amish were also about a hundred years farther behind the times than other
Amisch
, both in values and circumstances, and he was in the middle of nowhere with not a single soul to speak in his defense.

He scrambled in desperation for an answer, an angle . . . “Mary, your dad isn’t going to want you to leave the mountain, and you’d have to if I . . . if we did anything hasty. You know I’m supposed to go back to Atlanta in two weeks.”

“Metro Atlanta.” She emphasized what he knew she had heard him say from time to time.

“Never mind,” he muttered, but then another thought came to him. He peered into her eyes. “Mary, how old are you?”
And why in heaven’s name have I not asked that before
—

“Eighteen—nineteen in October.”

“Well, that’s something . . .” She wasn’t underage by his world’s standards at least. At least—what the devil was he thinking? He owed her nothing. “I’m twenty-six,” he offered in spite of himself.

“Way past marrying age,” she observed.

“Yeah.”
From your world’s view.

She glanced behind her as instinctively, he knew, as a doe. “Here they come.”

Jude was suddenly more than nervous. He wanted to sink into the ground, dissolve, or at least run as the four men broke from the line of trees, their faces set like stone. And then he felt everything go black . . .

 

 

Mary watched him fall to the ground with dismay. She hurried to kneel by his side, feeling his head; she’d heard a thud when he fell. Sure enough, as her careful fingers combed through his short, neat dark blond hair, she came upon a fast-swelling goose egg at the back of his skull.

She frowned, wishing
Grossmuder
May was there with her poultices. Then she carefully picked up his spectacles from the ground, glad that they hadn’t broken.

“Weak as water.”

Mary looked up as her
fater
’s voice boomed out, filled with scorn.

“I gave him the news,
Fater
, but you know he has an illness of the blood that can cause him to become light in the head.”

“Ach, the
buwe
wilted like a rose when you told him; some husband he’s bound to make. Haul him up . . . Edward, Joseph.”

Mary leaned aside as her two older
bruders
caught Professor Lyons’s arms. “Be careful,” she urged as they half dragged him to his feet, supporting him on either side.

Mary got up and hurried to move so she could look up into his handsome face. His head lolled from side to side, his blue eyes closed behind thick lashes.

“Let’s git on with it,” her
dat
said, glancing at Bishop Umble.

“But he’s not awake yet,” Mary protested, looking into the wise old bishop’s wizened face.

“Ah, but he was awake enough a day ago, eh, Mary?” her father barked. “It makes
nee
difference if he’s out of his head or not. He’ll do what needs doing.”

Mary flushed at her father’s brash words, true though they were.

Bishop Umble cleared his throat. “Your
fater
is right in this matter, Mary. We cannot allow such things on this mountain . . . a man dallying with an innocent maid. This must be set right.”

The professor groaned and Mary pressed her hand to his warm cheek. She felt like she was touching some wild, beautiful thing that had come to rest in her world for a moment and would soon be gone. She knew she didn’t match him, couldn’t understand him, but she wanted him, wanted to keep him and care for him . . . like a wounded eagle.

And then the bishop began to speak in High German, saying with quiet, sacred reverence the words that would bind her to the
Englischer
for all time.

 

 

Jude heard the old language as if through a long funnel and recognized its import. He tried to open his eyes. He wanted to throw up and his head felt as if it had been hewn in two. He knew his sugar must be very low, but he still managed to speak. “No.”

He felt rough hands shake him a bit from side to side and he thought of the clamor of iron bells in an old church tower. He tried again. “I said no. I do not con—consent.”

“I—I would ... Thrash him,
buwes
!” The thunderous voice could only be Abner King’s—Mary King’s father. He wanted to wince away from the blows that he knew were coming but couldn’t seem to lift his eyelids.

Then he heard Mary’s voice and felt the soft press of her back against his chest. “
Nee
,
Fater
. You will not hurt him . . . I—I don’t want him like this, not with force. He-he didn’t force me, I-I wanted . . . I mean . . . I’ve told you we were only kissing.”

Jude got his eyes open with grim thankfulness for the tight grips on his arms. He caught the scent of Mary’s hair beneath his chin and spoke with gaining strength.

“Look,
Herr
King . . . Bishop. We kissed some, true, and I . . .”

Mary was thrust aside to be replaced with the blunt, reddened face of her father. “Don’t say it, scoundrel. Joseph here filled the picture in real clear. Do you think I’ll allow you to shame her like that?”

Jude swallowed at the pounding violence in the words and shook his head. “I never meant to do any harm.”

“I’ll tell you what you’ll do, you—you . . . You’ll marry her or give up them notes you’ve been takin’ these past months. Always working on your book—well, there’ll be no book if there’s no marriage. Consider it a fair dowry.”

Jude heard the pain lacing the outcry and the threat, and his head swam. He didn’t want this . . . he’d come to know and respect these people. But losing what he considered to be his life’s work so far—the notes for the book on Ice Mountain—was not an option.

Jude felt the grip on his right arm ratchet up.

“I say we beat him into agreeing,” Joseph King growled.

“
Nee
,” Bishop Umble said. “There’ll be none of that. You know that violence is not an option for us. Abner,
buwes
—I’m surprised at you.”

“But it’s my girl!” Mary’s father cried.

Jude nodded though the effort cost him. “It’s still another two weeks until I leave. Let me and Mary have time to—decide.”

“You already decided,” Abner growled. “Yesterday.”

Jude lifted his chin, and the older man apparently took it as a challenge.

“Burn his cabin and all that writing,
buwes
. Now.”

Jude staggered when he was released and Bishop Umble caught his shoulder. “Joseph . . . Edward. Stop this instant!”

Jude saw one of Mary’s brothers strike a match against a booted heel and his world spun into crystalline clarity.

“I’ll marry her.”

 

 

Mary bit her bottom lip as the bishop finished the old words that bound the professor to her for the rest of this earthly life. She didn’t like the trapping her
fater
did during the winter, and somehow, this wedding seemed equally bad in a way. She noticed that the professor didn’t look at her but was focused on snatching back the pile of yellow notebook paper that Joseph had held out as extra reinforcement. He’d also pulled some hard candy from his jeans pocket and was sucking it. She knew it had something to do with his blood.

“Bring the broom,” her father bawled out and Mary jumped. She’d forgotten the broom and its meaning.

Edward brought a broomstick forward, and he and Joseph bent to hold it level about a foot off the ground.

“What’s this?” the professor asked, his voice laced with sudden interest. Mary understood his shift of mood. She’d helped him with his work all summer, and whenever he came across something “unique,” as he called it, about her people, he furiously wrote it down in one of the yellow tablets. Now he pulled a pencil nub from the pocket of his blue jeans and started to write on the back of one of the pages he’d secured from Joseph. Mary handed him his spectacles and he slipped them on with an absent word of thanks, then went back to his words.

“Stop yer foolishness and writing,” her father ordered in a voice that made Mary cringe. She couldn’t understand her
daed
’s contempt for the professor even though he acknowledged that the younger man was
schmart
. It was something to think about. But now her heart beat with growing excitement. Somehow, the broom made everything seem more real.

“Hold hands with my girl and jump the broom together,” her
dat
instructed. “And don’t fall—or it’ll be worse luck than what you’re startin’ off with.”

The professor neatly folded his papers and put them in his back pocket, then reached for Mary’s hand.

“Why are we doing this?” he asked.

Her
daed
snorted.

“You jump over the broom together to symbolize moving from life alone to a life together,” the bishop explained.

“So there’s no religious significance?”

Mary knew the professor might ask about religious doings but that he didn’t believe in
Gott.
He’d told her that one day. And she knew it was wrong, though she couldn’t help being drawn to him all the same.

“
Nee
, no religion,” her
fater
snapped. “Now jump.”

Jude gazed down at Mary’s hand in his. One part of him kept murmuring
annulment . . . annulment
, while the other, that part his grandfather had nurtured and taught, wondered if he could really do it to her. He knew she had intense curiosity about the outside world and understood how keenly her mind worked. It might be an interesting last few chapters in the book to see how a Mountain Amish girl would fare in the world of the wealthy of Atlanta, and then he could always bring her home and leave. She might hate him for a while, but then she’d forget and marry someone else from her own people . . . He ignored the strange prick of disquiet that accompanied this idea.