The Amish Bride of Ice Mountain (11 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Mary slid into the wooden desk chair and closed her fingers on themselves with care. An uneasy week in his parents’ home had passed since they’d come to Atlanta, and Jude’s university was to start classes. She told herself that she should be proud that he’d asked her to accompany him on the first day and should not be quaking like a lone leaf inside. But she felt rather disconnected from him; he’d been kind but had not really touched her since the night he took her photograph.

“Nervous?” Jude asked. He adjusted his glasses and smiled at her. “Don’t be. They’re only a bunch of college kids.”

“That doesn’t help, really,” she confessed. “Aren’t they my age?”

He frowned a bit. “Yes, but I find every day that you are wise beyond your years. So don’t be intimidated.”

He turned and walked back to his desk at the front of the room. “It’s about time. Oh, and they might ask you questions—answer what you like. Don’t worry. I’ll help you.”

Mary tightened her fingertips and tried to concentrate on the smell of old wood, stuffy, filtered sunlight, and the fact that here, she recognized her husband in his element. His tall body was relaxed yet poised as he leaned against the front of the teacher’s desk and smiled and nodded as students began to enter.

Mary became aware of a multitude of sensory details as the various people glanced her way, then dropped into seats. There were boys with large numbers on their shirts who bobbed their heads with reckless abandon while thin wires dangled from their ears. And girls, perfumed with cloying scents, who wore long boots with short skirts and tight tops who took extra time to sidle past Jude, who appeared not to notice. Even the more serious and plain-looking students seemed alien to her with their mountainous book bags and careful preparations with pencils and papers and small computers. They all waited for her husband to speak and she realized that she was waiting too.

He flashed a smile in her direction and she felt herself flush; then he began to talk.

“If you’re here, you’re in Amish Studies 100, and I’m Professor Lyons. Here is the syllabus, nothing too bad, I promise.”

One of the booted girls raised a hand and smiled in what Mary considered a coy fashion. “Professor Lyons? May I ask who the Amish girl is at the back of the room?”

Jude smiled easily. “Of course. May I introduce Mary Lyons, a special guest for today.”

“Lyons?” The apparently bold
Englisch
girl persisted. “Is she related to you, Professor?”

Again, Mary couldn’t keep the heat from her cheeks when he grinned. “Indeed. I forgot to add that she’s my wife.”

There was a subtle murmuring of disappointment from the girls as a whole while Mary watched the boys in the room apparently share some private joke at the situation from the smiles they wore.

A serious-looking girl raised her hand and Jude nodded. “May we ask Mrs. Lyons questions?”

“Of course, but remember, she’s no different than you are, really, so be respectful.”

Mary squared her shoulders in her seat in response.

“How did you and the professor meet?” It was a booted girl again, and Mary fidgeted a little, trying to think of what to say, when Jude interrupted.

“I’ll take that one, if you don’t mind. I had the privilege of spending a few months this past summer at a place called Ice Mountain, Pennsylvania. I met my wife there.”

“But wasn’t it hard to get the bishop to allow you to marry, with you being
Englisch
?” The serious-looking girl knew her stuff, Mary thought with grim acknowledgment, wondering what he’d say.

But Jude only smiled. “You’re right. For those of you who are new to the
Amisch
culture, anyone who is not
Amisch
is called
Englisch
or is an
Englischer
. Each
Amisch
community is governed by the spiritual and literal leadership of the bishop. In Ice Mountain, it was Bishop Umble who heard my case, and I became a very lucky man.”

Lies or half-truths. He does it so easily, but
ach
, he did not shame me about my family forcing him . . . about me forcing him . . .
Mary shifted in the wooden seat.

Another boy closer to her seat spoke. “So are you going to stop being
Amisch
eventually—I mean, wear regular clothes and stuff?”

“I—” Mary opened her mouth then closed it again as the question tore through her.
Stop being
Amisch
? Could I? Could I give up everything I know and value if it would allow me to stay in Jude’s life? But what about the annulment he wants?

She realized the boy had repeated the question and shook her head. “I am
Amisch
. It’s not really about my clothing.”

“Then what does make you
Amisch
?” one of the girls asked with disbelief and a faint challenge.

Mary bit her lip, then began to answer one of the most difficult questions of her life.

 

 

Jude clutched the ridge of the desk behind him.
This was a bad idea, bringing Mary here to expose her to prying eyes and questions . . .
But this question, this answer—the one she wet her lips and stumbled over, made his heart beat faster. He felt he was able to gain a very intimate view of her within the confines of a small crowd, and he felt his eyes burn as she struggled over the words.

“I-I do dress differently,
jah
. But I’m still
Amisch
without my clothing.” She blushed when she realized what she’d said, and the appreciative males in the audience laughed. “I mean to say that being Amish—for me—means loving
Derr Herr
, the Lord, and the community and nature He’s given us. I—we
Amisch
read often from
The Book of Martyrs
, stories about the first
Amisch
in Europe, who were tortured for their faith. I think of those people and how they came to Pennsylvania to find a new life, and I guess my faith helps me to find that new life too—every day.”

She looked at Jude when she’d finished, her beautiful eyes wide and seeking his approval. He nodded and smiled at her. She summed it up so well. Of course there was more to being
Amisch
, but that was what it meant first to her. His conscience pricked him though at her easy speaking of God in a nonsectarian university.
How can I ever be with her and not believe as she does? I can’t, that’s all. I can’t . . .

He cleared his throat and took back the class’s attention, laying out the plans for the semester and studiously avoiding Mary’s gaze.

After the last student had gone, she watched his lean hands scoop papers up from the wood of the large desk and a sudden impulse took over, sending a tightening to her belly as she bit the inside of her cheek.

“You’re a wonderful teacher.” Mary couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. She’d loved sitting in on Jude’s class, loved hearing him talk about her people with a knowledge and respect that made her proud to be his wife—even if only in name. But she also knew that something she had said had put him off a bit because he didn’t seem to want to connect with her for the rest of the class. Her enthusiasm dissipated at her last thought and she wondered how far she’d come in building a marriage from a simple wedding.

“I’m glad you like the class. What’s wrong?” he asked, looking up.

She shrugged in what she hoped was a casual way and put out a finger to run circles around a knothole in the desk. “Well, since you’re such a
gut
teacher, I-I thought, well, that you might teach me how you—like to be touched. I mean, your mom said you always were affectionate, and Carol seemed to know . . .”

“Ah, Carol.” He laughed shortly, his blue eyes bright. Then he dropped back into the wooden desk chair, slid slightly on its coasters, and gazed up at her. “So, Carol said something that got your
Amisch
dander up?”

She sniffed in a prim fashion. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He laughed again, then sighed. “How I like to be touched? Well, let’s see—Carol certainly never asked.” He rose to his feet and brushed past her briefly.

Mary felt her heart jump. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Carol is a taker, not a giver, but you, sweet Mary, are something else entirely.” His voice lowered as he locked the classroom door and sauntered back to the desk.

“Am I?”

“Yep.” He dropped into his desk chair and sprawled his legs apart. “Come here, will you? And I’ll try to give you a—lesson.”

Nervous now at having achieved her goal, she glanced at the closed classroom door behind her, then moved hesitantly to stand before him.

Then he removed his dark-rimmed spectacles and closed his eyes, leaning his head far back against the chair. “Touch my throat,” he murmured. “Please.”

She set her teeth at his sudden and intimate request, then stopped and took a small step back.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Lyons.” He reached out and caught her hand. “No running away. I’m afraid you asked for some teaching. Am I right?” His blue eyes gleamed at her from beneath thick lashes.

She waved her other hand before her in a vague gesture while her fingertips burned against his palm. She had the intriguing idea that she had somehow happened upon a large wild cat lazing in the sun, and she wasn’t so sure that she wanted to have a pet . . .

 

 

He knew he shouldn’t be playing such a hazardous game with her. But she tempted him with her innocent provocation, and he rationalized that a touch couldn’t hurt. He felt torn between panic and the pressing desire to forget everything but the probability of kissing his wife.
My wife . . .
He swallowed hard. “Closer . . .
sei se gut
.” He bumped her with his knee as he rumbled the Amish words, dropping her hand. Then he arched his neck against the low chair back. “My throat. I like to be touched there.” He closed his eyes, heart pounding, waiting for what seemed a forever moment, and then felt her dress press against the insides of his legs. He felt her fingers stroke down his throat quickly; a butterfly’s touch, and he tightened his grip on the chair arms.

“Slower.”

“Like this?”

He felt her lean into him, using both of her hands, touching him in languorous motions that sent him wondering if she could feel the thrumming of the blood in his veins.

“Yeah . . . like that.”

“Where else?” Her voice sounded husky, warm, and confident. “Like that day in the blueberry patch?”

He was hot, burning up between the slanted sunlight of the old office window and the fall of the Amish dress against his thighs.

“Mmm . . . yes,” he whispered. “I can’t forget.”

Her small hands dropped to skim his shoulders, then down his arms, and images of that day on the mountain slammed into his consciousness. She’d touched him then too, and he’d kissed her and worked his shirt off at the same time. She’d laughed, a small breezy sound, as he pulled her hands against his chest, staining his skin with the purple juice that clung to her fingertips. He’d wanted her then; he couldn’t deny it. Fast. Hard. Right there . . . against the green of the grass and the shelter of the bushes.

He came to himself in the pressing wood of his desk chair and stared up at her in confusion, the past still looping pleasantly with the present in his brain. Then he shook his head and slid back from her in a rough motion. He stood up and turned away from her, knowing he was probably confusing her beyond measure. But he didn’t fully understand himself—didn’t want to, in truth.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” he managed to say, thrusting his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.

“Did I—do something wrong?”

Wrong? Wrong?
His mind screamed.
No, that was about as right a touch as I’ve ever had and now I hurt and want and . . .

He swung around to face her, then stopped still at the bleak look in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” he repeated. “I—I’m not focusing very well on our deal, am I? Things like this won’t help an annulment much. But for the record, no, you did nothing wrong.”

She still looked dejected and he was about to gather her in his arms when a quick knock at the door surprised both of them.

He crossed the room quickly and unlocked the door, twisting the knob. His best friend, an associate professor of history, Sam Riley, poked his blond head into the classroom.

“Cheerio. Not interrupting anything, am I?” Sam asked in a fake British accent.

“No.” Jude shook his head “Nothing. Come in and meet my wife.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Who is she?” Sam hissed the words when Mary walked out of earshot in the restaurant where they’d gone for lunch.

Jude sighed. “I told you—she’s my wife.”

Sam rubbed his hand over his blue eyes as if to clear them and leaned closer across the table. “But what about Carol? You know—the fiancée near and dear to my heart?”

“You and Carol never did get along,” Jude acknowledged, accepting a glass of sweet tea from the smiling waitress.

“Yeah, so? I’m not denying that, but coming back here with a girl who could be a model—an Amish model, mind you—and who looks about as innocent as a baby is not exactly what I expected as completed book research. She’s not pregnant, is she?”

“Carol asked the same thing. And no, she’s not.”

“Then why are you married?”

“Maybe I fell in love.”

“Jude—come on. How long have I known you? Junior high? You haven’t been a monk, but you also haven’t been in love with anyone or anything but your books and your research and the Amish since—Wait, that’s it, isn’t it? She’s a research project—your own personal Amish research project.”

“Sam . . .” Jude swallowed, startled at how close to the bone his friend’s surmising struck. Sam’s words echoed what his father had suggested. “Of course she’s not a project.”
But maybe she is
. . . He pushed away the dangerous thought that she also might be something else entirely and chose to take refuge in the colder part of his being. Maybe his father was right . . .
A project—research, up close and personal
. He shifted in his chair when he thought about exactly how personal things could become.

“So how long are you planning on keeping her?” Sam asked, his nonchalance striking a chord of anger in Jude.

“I told you, I’m not keeping her like she’s something in a cage. We’re married. End of story.”

“Remind me to get you drunk one night, my friend. You tend to be more forthcoming when you’re intoxicated.”

“I’ve decided to give up drinking,” he announced, realizing it was true.

Sam stared at him in puzzled consternation. “Is your sugar low?”

“No,” Jude growled. “Now here she comes. Drop it.”

Mary slid back into her seat and Jude focused on the beauty of his wife’s face and found himself relaxing in spite of his tension a few moments before.

“What would you like to eat, sweetheart?”

He watched her give a self-conscious glance at Sam, then look down at the menu. “It doesn’t matter. Pie, I guess.”

Sam gave an appreciative sigh. “A girl after my own heart. Pie for lunch. Do you have a specialty Amish pie that you make?”

“Raisin . . . Jude likes it.”

“I bet he does. I’ve never had it.”

Jude wanted to roll his eyes at the open wistfulness in his friend’s voice. “Well, you might as well come over some afternoon and have a slice—if my wife will be so kind as to bake for you.”

“
Ach
, I’d love to,” Mary murmured.

“Thank you. How is it staying at your mom and dad’s? Not much fun, I bet?” Sam asked.

Jude met Mary’s eyes and smiled. “It’s as interesting as ever.”

“I’m sorry, old man. I’d have you with me but you know my place is only an efficiency.”

“Don’t worry about it, Sam. I—” Jude broke off as a jovial older man in a suit approached their table.

“Don’t get up, boys.” The short, balding man waved them back down into their seats.

“Dean Walters.” Jude spoke with pleasure. “Please join us. You must meet my wife, Mary.”

“Aha! I heard it gossiped round the department this morning that you had a bride and a most fitting one for you, Jude. My dear, I’m James Walters. A pleasure to meet you.”

Jude watched with pride as Mary’s delicate hand was engulfed by his mentor’s. The dean of the department had secured the funds for him to travel to Ice Mountain and was also in charge of the funding for his book to be published. And the older man was someone Jude respected and trusted.
Like introducing Mary to a real father . . .

He pushed the thought aside and joined in the pleasant talk of completing his book.

 

 

Mary knelt on the floor in the vast Lyons family library. Jude had brought her home after lunch and she had found good company. Jude’s grandfather was in his chair, drawn near the fall of afternoon sunlight through the tall windows that looked out onto the garden with Bear at his feet.

“You have a gentle and quiet spirit, my dear.” The old man smiled down at her with Jude’s blue eyes. “Not unlike, I might add, my own dear wife, Amelia.”

Mary heard the sadness lacing his words and smiled with gentle sympathy. “How long has she been gone from you?”

“Ah, ten years now.”

“My mother died giving birth to me. I miss her though I never knew her. So you must truly miss someone you were able to hold and love.”

“But life goes on,” he said after a quiet moment. “Now you fill my grandson’s arms, and I am grateful for that.”

Mary bowed her head and nodded, not wanting this man who loved Jude so to know that she was a wife in name only.

He cleared his throat. “Are you homesick, child?”

She looked up with a bright smile. “
Ach, nee
. . . there’s so much to see and do.”

The old man grunted. “Especially in this house.”

“
Nee
, really. Every family is . . . different. But the Bible teaches that
Gott
places us in families, and I am so glad to be part of yours.”

“Again, you are gracious and good, child. But should you ever grow homesick . . . Will you go to the desk in the far corner over there?”

Mary rose and went to where he asked. The large mahogany desk had a beautiful grain, but she felt it was probably more a decoration of sorts than actually for everyday use.

“In the top drawer, my dear. On the right. You’ll find a small item wrapped in brown paper. Will you bring it here?”

She found what he wanted and felt its odd heaviness as she carried it to him. Then she resumed her place on the floor near him.

His elderly hands carefully undid the paper as he spoke. “This was from our honeymoon—mine and Amelia’s. We stopped on our way to New York at a little place in the mountains of Pennsylvania called Coudersport, at a miraculous spot called the Ice Mine.” He held up the glass globe of water, then gave it to her.

She took it with careful hands, amazed to see that the ball was a miniature of the Ice Mine, complete with thick icicles and faint colors, as if the sun shone on the ice.

“
Ach
, it’s—beautiful.” To her surprise, her eyes filled with tears and she realized that she did miss the mountain, its peacefulness and steadiness. “I’m sorry for crying,” she whispered, swiping at her cheeks with one hand.

But Jude’s
grossdaudi
smiled. “Take it, child. Keep it for when you miss the mountain, as I have remembered it in all of its mystery and glory.”

“I can’t do that,” she said, nonplussed, leaning forward as if to hand it back. “
Ach
, I can’t . . .”

“What can’t you do?” Jude asked from where he stood in the open doorway of the vast room.

Mary looked up in surprise and Bear gave a welcoming snort as Jude’s grandfather laughed. “Come in, my boy! Come in.”

 

 

Jude crossed the intricately woven carpet, pleased to see his wife sitting with his grandfather. The afternoon’s class had gone well and he had enjoyed their lunch with the dean, who had assured him that the university’s press was more than ready for his book.

He bent to hug his grandfather in greeting and glanced down at Mary. “Oh, you’ve shown her the snow globe . . . Mary, what can’t you do?”

“He wants me to have it . . . I said I could not.”

Jude dropped to the floor beside her, sitting cross-legged, and reached out to give the globe a little shake in her hands. A mixture of snow and sparkle added to the background of the ice and she gasped again at its loveliness.

“Oh, I can’t think of a better person to have it, sweetheart. It’s perfect.” He smiled at her. “Thank you, Grandfather.”

“You may enjoy it together.” The old man laughed, and the sound was pure joy to Jude’s heart. He put his arm around Mary and pulled her close for a warm, snuggling hug.

“You make Grandfather happy, Mary. I won’t ever forget that.”

He’d meant it lightly, not to speak of the future, wanting only to dwell in the moment, but he caught the shadow of doubt in her lovely eyes as she gazed back at the globe. And he wondered how it would be when she was back in her world, and he alone in his.