Wild Indigo (8 page)

How could she promise Jacob that? In the heat, a prickle of anxiety stole down her back where perspiration dampened it. She already had so promised him.

“I will.” Her voice cracked, and she felt her soul split too. She had been free, compared to this. Hard as she had tried to fit in with the Single Sisters, she didn't know how to be subject to him or anyone.

And what of love?

Her heart shrank. He had yet to say a word of it.

Jacob took her hand and held it while Brother Marshall brought the service to an end. During those long moments, she was aware of nothing but a warm pulsing between them from his hand to hers.

Then Jacob turned her to face him, his blue eyes darkening to indigo as he drew her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers with his lips. She thought she heard a stirring in the crowd, a rustling of assent.

He moved closer still and bent his tawny head toward hers.

“
Liebling
, sweetheart,” he whispered for her alone, and brushed her lips with his, a caress as tender as the first spring fern. Her heart moved in her chest. Toward him. No one had ever said that, done that. No one ever before.

 

“Where are they taking Sister Retha?” Anna Johanna's voice quavered at the ceremony's end.
Her little hands tugged at the ties on Jacob's black Sunday breeches, jarring him back from a taste of heaven to the here and now of fatherhood.

Moments before, a full dozen heartbeats before Jacob was remotely willing to release his new bride, Sister Ernst had pulled her into the small anteroom off the large chamber. With an unpleasant shock at losing the sight of Retha so soon, Jacob watched the women disappear.

“Yes, pumpkin,” he said absently. “She'll be right back.”

“Is she our new mother now?” Anna Johanna asked, twisting the tie harder.

With a jolt, Jacob realized that his daughter had indeed understood his explanation last night. He searched her face for evidence that she was thinking of Christina. It was all innocence. Momentarily he surveyed his own heart, reminding himself of the promise he had made before Christina died: her children would not go motherless. So he had pursued the lot.

Whatever niggling doubts spiked up between his hope and his desire, this marriage was his first wife's wish. It was the Savior's will.

“Yes, pumpkin, she is your new mother. And she'll be waiting for you when you come home from your visit.” Now he only hoped that Anna Johanna wouldn't destroy the double knot he had specially tied at his knees to withstand her tenacious fingers.

Her grip tightened trustingly, and he was glad he had insisted on his children being at the ceremony, especially Anna Johanna. She was safe with him.

“Does that make you our new father?” Nicholas
asked, smirking, unable to contain his delight over making such a clever joke on a solemn occasion.

“No, it does not,” Matthias said in his precise, scholarly way. “It makes him our very old father still.” The boy's rare laughter bubbled up. Jacob looked down at his middle child, hands piously folded while he grinned wickedly, and joined in the boys' laughter at his own expense. Even saints like Matthias needed a share of attention, Jacob supposed.

“You lads show your father more respect,” Brother Ernst chided pleasantly. “They want us over there.” He pointed to the long, narrow table where the Elders usually deliberated, backed up against the wall and doubling this late Sunday afternoon as a groaning board for a community feast that followed the candlelit service.

The boys scooted after him. Jacob followed, pacing himself so Anna Johanna wouldn't lose her grip on his knotted breeches.

Halfway across the room, Traugott Bagge, recently back from Pennsylvania and still without a mate, stopped him with congratulations, joking that Jacob's bride had been much nearer after all. And pretty. Jacob smiled. He knew that.

As they neared the table, Philip Schopp in jest begged Jacob not to rush to swell the number of boys that he would have to teach. Yet he sounded envious. As well he should, Jacob thought, savoring tender, heated thoughts of his bride in his arms. If he had any say about it, he and Retha would indeed increase the schoolmaster's burden. Jacob aimed for them to start tonight.

The two men merged into a clump of earnest Brothers waiting for the food to be served. Dismissing fragments of conversation he overheard about “No sign of rain” and “Hard on the troops,” Jacob anxiously watched the anteroom. For such a simple task as changing Retha's ribbons, Sister Ernst was taking her own sweet time. He wanted his bride back now. In the five long days since Retha had accepted him, urgency had consumed him despite all doubts. The wait had reduced him, an experienced man, a Widower, to youthful eagerness.

A smattering of decorous claps silenced the talk as Sister Ernst pushed his bride into the chamber, a new blue ribbon tied under her chin. His wife now. His beautiful wife. Untrammeled by oaken buckets and willow baskets piled with linens, she moved with newfound grace, shy and regal as a doe in the woods. As she walked toward him, her friends among the younger of the Single Sisters each handed her a wildflower until a bouquet filled her hands. Ducking her head sweetly, she acknowledged each tribute. He thought he saw her blink back tears.

She came to his side, taller than the other women, taller than some men, yet shorter than the bear he knew himself to be. Ah, how she would fit in the circle of his arms. And he was back where he had been all week, consumed, with Retha urgently on his mind, pulsing through his veins, sighing on his breath.

He took in her wild, golden eyes. The tan and amber stripes of her new dress darkened them, enriched them.

“Fetch that man a brandy!” Brother Bagge
laughed heartily, beating on his back to remind him of the occasion, the other men laughing along good-humoredly. Caught lusting after his bride in public, Jacob felt his face heat. He was that far gone.

Samuel Ernst stuck a cut-glass goblet of the town's best peach brandy in his hand as Eva handed one to Retha, and passed the bottle on. In three large swallows, Jacob drained his glass and set it down.

Nicholas, who had hovered impatiently near the food, came over and asked for a glass of his own.

Jacob shook his head, as much to clear it from the brandy as to tell his son no. But Matthias told Nicholas for him. “We're too young, Nicholas. You know that.”

Nicholas glowered at his brother. Not here, Jacob thought, putting a warning hand on the older boy's shoulder. He should not have insisted they be allowed to come. “It's our father's wedding,” Nicholas hissed at his brother.

“We're still Little Boys,” Matthias spit back, maddening in his pious command of community rules.

“No brandy or arguments for any boys,” Jacob said firmly.

Together they glared at him.

Bodily he separated them, putting one on one side, one on the other. He should have considered their incessant bickering before insisting that they come. As quickly as his sons arrived at camaraderie, so quickly would it vanish into petty rivalries. But he had wanted them here, as much for their own sakes as to welcome Retha.

“Can I have brandy, too?” A watery voice wafted
up from just above his knees. Jacob dug his fingers into his neck. She didn't even know what brandy was.

“You're just a baby,” Nicholas taunted.

“Everyone's too young for brandy,” Jacob said, wishing he could dose them all with it and be done with their moods.

Anna Johanna's lower lip trembled. He darted Retha a desperate look. His children would mar her day.

But she broke into a sunny smile and knelt down before Anna Johanna. “You're not too young for…for…” Retha surveyed the piles of food behind them, a teasing hesitation in her voice. “…dumplings! Strudel! Sugarcake!”

Anna Johanna's damp eyes sparkled.

“Which one do you want?”

“Sugarcake,” she whispered.

Retha snatched a small square of sticky sugarcake off the table and presented it to his daughter with a flourish. “We need to feed those boys, too,” she confided in Jacob.

Samuel Ernst overheard. “I will take care of that, Sister Retha.” Using his watchman's voice, he called out that it was time to eat.

“Toasts first!” Brother Schopp cried.

Retha's eyes met Jacob's in a quick glance filled with dread. No toasts, she mouthed.

Jacob felt a surge of pleasure at the understanding that passed between them. He knew what she was thinking as surely as if she spoke the words aloud. Feed the children, and take me home. In her way she was as shy as his daughter, but she had held up better, bravely, in public, for him.

“One toast,” he said in a voice of command. Quiet rippled across the noisy, happy crowd as all faces looked toward him. His years of leadership counted for something.

“To my bride. Her courage in marrying us, and her beauty.” He thought of Single Sister Krause's hope for her most unusual charge. He turned to Retha quietly and said so she alone could hear, “I pledge to make you happy in our home.”

Her amber eyes widened in surprise, reminding him uncomfortably of her wild wolf. And how much she might be like it.

C
ries of “best wishes” and “a long and happy life” rang out from the steps of
Gemein Haus
.

“You'll regret it,” Eva Ernst teased. Her plump hand clinging to her stocky husband's arm belied her friendly taunt.

“
Gratulieren!
” Philip Schopp cried out as Retha and Jacob escaped the festivities and crossed the parched square to Jacob's house. Stately Brother and Sister Marshall led their way, Jacob's children romping close behind.

Neither the hour nor the sultry evening heat stifled their high spirits. Anna Johanna, skipping along beside the Ernsts in her trusted old dress, waved a sprig of indigo that she had salvaged from the floor. Nicholas, eating a huge piece of cake, rudely defied all good manners by hiding his free hand in a pocket. Meanwhile, sober Matthias—usually sober Matthias—gawked at two Little Girls of his own age as they wove in and out around the bridal party.

At the heavy green door of Jacob's half-timbered home, Retha paused and faced the happy crowd with her husband. The Little Girls hurried up, shrieking as they sprayed the couple with rose petals and a bit of
precious rice. Retha and Jacob fended off the light barrage with upheld hands and laughter. When it ended, Retha eyed first the giggling girls and then the rowdy family that she had acquired so abruptly.

Always before, she had loved being among the Little Girls and younger Single Sisters, full of joy and bent on play. Now, self-consciously fingering the new blue ribbon under her chin, she felt matronly and apart. A Married Sister, with a home of her own.

Red-faced from the heat, a few members from the brass band struck up a spirited folk song from the homeland they had left behind. Familiar with the tune from other weddings, Retha couldn't keep her toes from tapping.

Soon Jacob's arm settled approvingly around her shoulder. For the first time. Her toes stilled. He was touching her for everyone to see, conspicuously, she realized with alarm. She suppressed an urge to lurch away, to retreat from the public view, escape to the meadow and run down to the creek.

Instead, tall and solid, her new husband backed her up a step and squeezed her into the protection of his small doorway. She didn't feel protected. She felt exposed. The band began a softer tune, a romantic little air.

Jacob leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Brace yourself.”

A surge of white-capped Little Girls and Single Sisters rushed them.

“This is for you, too, Sister Retha. Open it,” the youngest Little Girl trilled importantly, holding up a present. Anna Johanna sidled in to see, eyes bright with interest.

“Must I?” Retha pressed against the bulk of Jacob's hot body. She knew what was coming.

Little Catherine Baumgarten held up a tome-sized package wrapped in a scrap of dyed cloth and tied with a vine string. It was very light. Taking a deep breath, Retha undid the bow.

Loosed, the cloth fell away of its own accord, and a foam of fine white linen unfolded in front of her.

A gown for her wedding night. Linen so fine that her laundry-roughened skin picked its fabric. Deeper ruffles than she had ever seen edged its neck and sleeves. She didn't want to be caught staring, but couldn't stop.

Applause rippled through the crowd. To cover her flustered state, she looked down. Her new stepchildren watched the show with avid interest. The oldest and the youngest, at least. Smiling smugly, Nicholas stuffed both fists in his pockets as if he had a deep dark secret. An enthusiastic Anna Johanna clapped in time with Sister Ernst. Matthias, oblivious to his father's wedding, was grinning foolishly at the little Baumgarten girl.

Someone cried out for another toast.

Nicholas's sneaky grin widened. “Here, here,” he chimed in, letting fly a second barrage of rice aimed mainly at his father. Retha took refuge behind Jacob's great body.

“Enough for one day!” Speaking with firm good humor, Jacob scowled at his older son as he swirled Retha through the door. He closed the door behind them and clicked its latch with a flourish. “That rascal!” he said. Still, she heard the pride of love in his voice.

“The word is out, they're all rascals, Brother Blum!” Retha teased, crowding with him into a narrow entry.

“You too, I think,” Jacob answered. He swooped in on her, larger than ever in the confining space, and close enough to kiss. She clutched the gown up to her neck.

Gently he pulled it away. “You have no need of hiding from me now.”

“I'm not hiding.” But she felt her face heat.

He bent his head for an even closer look. “You are blushing,
Liebling
, at the very least.”

Of course she was! She peered at him in the shadowed entryway. His sober tone couldn't mask a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Caught teasing, caught blushing. She lifted her chin. Would the rest of her life be embarrassment with this man!

“You would blush, too, if they held your nightshirt up to the whole wide world,” she sassed, jerking the gown behind her back.

“
Nein
, with me, 'twould only be from heat.” Playfully he tipped her chin before reaching around to snare her gown. “Let me see it.”

“Not for a moment,” she cried, stepping backwards and stretching the gown as far away from him as possible.

He caught up to her, gripped her tightly around her waist, and danced her into the middle of a large room, smoothly dodging scattered chairs, a table, a desk. He was still laughing, laughing harder. To him it was a game. She hadn't played with boys since childhood, but games she understood. She wriggled in his arms to keep him from the gown.

“Yield,” he gasped, pausing to snatch a kiss.

“Never!” Twisting, she flung the gown into the air, away from his control. Like a giant white heron, the gown sailed to the front of the room and fluttered to roost over a slanted desktop.

Fine brass implements clattered to the floor, and a small globe of glass shattered.

Shocked at her own recklessness, she skidded to a halt.

“A spirited wench. I like that.” Jacob's eyes glinted and dropped to the strict lacing of her bodice.

Under it, her breasts heaved. She was acutely aware that he saw that. Then he went after the gown, brought it back, and held it up as if for measurement against her wedding dress.

“I'm going to like this, too.” He looked her up and down. Under his new possessing gaze, she wanted to shrivel up and blow away.

Without a thought, she flattened her hands across her bosom.

“No, don't,” he said. His voice deepened, softened. With one finger, he gently moved her hands away, leaving her uncovered, fully clothed. Her breasts felt heavy, conspicuous. One hand moved back to cover them. He frowned. “Please don't.”

She dropped it down. Somehow she had pushed the game too far. “What must you think of me?”

She bit into her lip. Jacob Blum was a man, a father, a pillar of the town. Why was she always and ever again a silly girl in front of him? “I was frolicking like a fox cub.”

“A vixen. A very pretty one,” he insisted.

She shook her head. “I have always been too wild.”

Sudden tenderness softened his handsome countenance. She couldn't fathom why. Misconduct was her besetting sin. She couldn't hope to hide it from him now.

“Oh, Retha. Not too wild.” As if to comfort her in her dismay, he calmly draped the gown across a black-sleeved forearm. “We will use this soon enough. I will just put it on the bed.”

He stepped down into a room beyond the parlor and disappeared. Alone for the first time since morning, Retha examined her surroundings. Except for the scattered instruments and broken glass, the room was immaculate. Its paned windows opened to the east, but smaller ones in adjoining rooms admitted the last slant of evening sun. Yellow light warmed brass fittings on desks and glanced off glass cobblers' lamps on shelves.

Off those, that is, that had survived her assault.

Hastily she stooped to pick up his tools, not knowing what they were or what they were for, and replaced them at the lipped edge of the slanted desk. She wrinkled her brow. The shards of glass were another matter. She gathered up her skirt and was cautiously depositing them in it when she heard Jacob's tread behind her.

“Never mind that.” He gave her a reassuring hand up, helped her transfer the broken glass onto a pewter plate, and brushed up the rest with a rag. Feeling useless, she stood by, eyes fixed on the wide planks of the polished floor. A slippered toe peeked out from under her new skirt. She withdrew it from her husband's view and sighed, resigned to confessing her sins.

“I have been careless.”

For a moment he said nothing. The day's heat radiated up from the floor, off the walls.

“How do you like your new home?” he asked after what seemed to Retha a long and possibly angry silence. But his voice was mild, even.

She breathed with relief. He was giving her a fresh start. “'Tis beautiful, so clean, Brother—Brother—Jacob.”

He snorted with amusement, overlooking her clumsiness. “An illusion, you can be sure of that. Let's see. The Ernsts have had my children for”—he studied the face of a gleaming watch he took from a waistcoat pocket—“all of nine hours and forty minutes. Their house is now a shambles.”

Retha looked up. Surely he was joking. “They were at the wedding the whole afternoon.”

“My point exactly. They need much less time than that.”

She scanned the immaculate room. “This is no shambles.”

“Ah. The Single Sisters' other gift to us was cleaning up the house. It hasn't looked this good since Christina—”

Breaking off awkwardly, he took a step away. Retha could see his throat work. Since Christina
what?
she wanted to know. Would he say
died
, or would he say
went home
, as Moravians usually said? She had been at the funeral herself, and it had been a sad, sad day, those three lost children and the large, grief-stricken man. Even she had felt sad to see a kindly woman gone home so young.

Retha studied her bitten-off nails. At least the
weeks of doing laundry had removed the last traces of dyes, she thought, waiting to hear more about Christina Blum.

After tense moments Jacob gripped her elbow, inclining his head toward the kitchen, and guided her toward it.

“Come. They left us a repast as well.”

She made a face. “I could not eat another bite.”

Yet more than the thought of food, she resisted his touch. It made her feel strange in ways she didn't understand, tingling, tense. Worse, it made her think of the woman who had gone before her, the woman who used to make him laugh. She wished he had finished what he started to say about his wife. It was no secret he had adored her.

Perhaps he adored her still. Retha touched her new blue ribbon and sighed with heavy doubt. What if he found her to be a poor substitute?

The small kitchen was equally neat, its blocky table laid out with pickled eggs, a bannock board of cold pone, a redware bowl of blackberries.

He offered her berries. “Fresh picked, I'd guess.”

“And early. 'Tis not yet July.”

“The heat must have hurried them along.”

She popped two berries in her mouth, their tartness exploding on her tongue. “Ooh, not ripe,” she exclaimed, shaking her head and pursing her lips tight when he offered to feed her another berry himself. His gesture made her think of him feeding children. His square fingers looked too large for such a tender task.

And eating suddenly seemed terribly intimate.

“No more.” She tried to smile. “I said I couldn't hold another bite.”

He ate the berry himself as if it were the most succulent fruit in the world. “Better. But if that doesn't tempt you, perhaps this will.” He indicated a stoppered jug and two bottles filled with ruby and amber liquid. “Cider or scuppernong wine. Or more of that peach brandy.”

At the thought of more dizzying brandy, she recoiled in mock horror. “Not spirits! I would fall off my chair. My head still spins.”

“I might like for your head to spin,” he chuckled warmly.

She furrowed her brow. He was recovering his humor, but his meaning eluded her. Save for the unfortunate mention of his wife, he had seemed happy, had been full of caged energy all afternoon. Standing to prowl the confines of the kitchen, he seemed to make a quick decision, and grabbed two mugs from the topmost shelf of a high cupboard. He didn't even have to stretch, but his reach left her admiring his wide, deep shoulders. He filled the room.

She didn't know what to make of his taut haste. The wedding was over, the celebration ended. They could rest now. She had one whole day to learn her way about the house and prepare to meet the children formally. To meet them, she thought worriedly, and the Marshalls tomorrow morning at breakfast.

He plunked the mugs down on the table, filled them from the jug, and took a swallow. “Cider then, as the milder of the three. I do not want a drunken bride.”

“Drunken! I've never been drunk in my life. I'm a perfectly sober Sister, Brother Blum—” She
clapped a hand over her mouth. “I will find it hard to ever call you by your given name.”

He pushed her mug closer to her.

“I do not have the habit,” she explained weakly, ignoring the cider.

He smiled. “Then I will teach you.”

Setting his own mug down, he drew her to him. His body was damp from the heat, thick, long. Its unanticipated contact shocked her. He had been so upright over the soldiers that day. She could scarce believe that he would show so little restraint here. After all, that physical business was for making babies. Even she, green as she was, knew that. He had three children already, and they were more than he could handle.

Perhaps not. Tenderly, seekingly, his mouth touched hers. And she was distracted. The skin of his lips was as tender as a new spring leaf, she mused. Who would have thought that? They moved across her mouth. A quiver she had never felt before snaked into her stomach. A little alarmed, she pulled away and heard him groan.