His Stolen Bride Page 8

  An afternoon away from the store with Brother Blum could be a pleasure, she tried to reassure herself. By the week’s end, he had recovered his good humor in spite of her demands. Perhaps he was pleased to realize how very much he had already mastered.

  Or perhaps it was the letter he had received already from a family who obviously adored him.

  With reason, she thought, startled by the clarity of her sudden insight. For she was coming dangerously, scandalously close to adoring him herself.

  9

  Monocacy Creek, the strollers’ destination, took an L-turn just down the hill from town. Bounded on the west and south by the creek and its springs and tributaries, Bethlehem was well sited to supply ample water for households and half a dozen sizable local industries-wool and flax, meat, leather, oil, wood. To date, Salem had only a tannery and a sawmill. All other trades were still carried out in the master craftsmens’ homes.

  Nicholas shortened his stride to help Sister Rothrock down to the creek’s edge strictly out of courtesy, not her need. A tall, slim, handsome woman, she was quite agile for all her-he guessed-fifty-some years. But with Abbigail shunning him like spoiled milk, Sister Rothrock’s good will was his best hope for salvaging an afternoon away from his enslavement at the store.

  He ran a hand through his hair in the warming sun. Abbigail was displeased with him again. After days of her strictures, he should be used to it. He was used to it. He just didn’t like her change from smart and amusing to sharp and somber. Breathing in the fresh spring air, he thanked the Lord he was out of the cellar and vowed to make Abbigail laugh before their afternoon stroll was over.

  Sister Rothrock led them down to a sizable building straddling the stream. “The new fulling mill was just finished-when, Abbigail?”

  Abbigail lagged behind on the slope. “Two years ago,” she called down.

  “It includes the gristmill and the dyeworks under one roof, each using the water, of course, in a different way.”

  “My brother is master dyer for Salem,” Nicholas volunteered, too aware of Abbigail’s distant silence.

  “Is he not young to be a master at his trade?” Sister Rothrock asked.

  “Young but perfectly focused on anything he attempts to do. Our family is quite proud of him, in fact,” Nicholas said, sifting the dregs of brotherly rivalry from his tone. He was here, after all, was he not, embarked on an adventure that his perfect brother would never risk. “His operation is not so large as this, naturally,” Nicholas added. “It is mainly flax, for sheep swelter in southern summers. As do people who must wear their wool.”

  Sister Rothrock smiled at his little joke.

  “Which brother is this?” Abbigail asked, moving nearer.

  Ah, Nicholas thought, turning to face her, the little wren has flown her nest to join the flock. “Matthias, the next oldest after me.”

  “How old would that be?” Sister Rothrock asked graciously. “You see, we know so little of you.”

  “Twenty-six. He was born two years after me. In a wagon, as it happened, when my parents moved to Salem.”

  “So you were not born there?”

  “In the wagon?” he asked, deliberately obtuse.

  Abbigail stayed sternly unamused, but Sister Rothrock allowed herself to laugh. “In Salem, Brother Blum,” the Widow chided lightly.

  He thought for a minute, then said, surprised, “I was born in Bethlehem, I believe.”

  In that instant, Nicholas saw the northern town in a whole new light. He had accepted the backcountry village of Salem as his home, but his family could have stayed in Bethlehem. Larger and more enterprising, the bustling town suited him better. Brother Till’s cellar might oppress him, but his spirit expanded when he walked outside. The burgeoning town had twice as many people as Salem, twice as many buildings, and they were twice as large. It stood to reason that there were twice as many opportunities for him to succeed.

  Arm in arm, the women strolled toward the next building. He loitered behind, enjoying the contrast of Abbigail’s diminutive frame to Sister Rothrock’s larger build. How much tinier Abbigail must look beside his great bulk, he thought, wishing he were in her better graces. Catching up to them, he almost swore an oath. The building they approached reeked of rot, a smell he queasily remembered from his butchering days.

  “No need to say what that establishment is,” Abbigail volunteered again, wrinkling her nose.

  Nicholas grinned at the face she made and hazarded the obvious. “Butchery, set here to supply the tannery which must be the next building down.”

  “Are you always so perceptive, Brother Blum?” she asked pertly, keeping her friend between them like a shield.

  Nicholas took the older woman’s arm. “Only when I aim to impress pretty women.” The Widow’s face colored at his touch, but Nicholas pretended not to notice and guided her downstream.

  Walking on, Abbigail patted Sister Rothrock’s hand. “Never mind him. It pleases Nicholas Blum to charm the most intelligent women among us into stammering ninnies. He thinks it proof of his appeal. You must put a brave face upon it and determine not to let his flattery sway you.”

  Nicholas reined in a grin of triumph. Abbigail carping about him was better than Abbigail not speaking about him at all.

  “Harsh words, Sister Till. Such as you have had for me all week,” he challenged her.

  “Has she been so bad, Brother Blum?” Sister Rothrock asked, looking up with mild gray eyes. Admiring, assessing eyes.

  Nicholas had been eyed by many an older Sister on behalf of a daughter unattached. Suddenly he suspected the Widow had proposed their stroll for just such a purpose. He winced. She couldn’t know he was already pledged.

  He rushed to reverse her course. “She upbraids me for the best of reasons. I have been thick-headed, slow to learn the inventory I must know.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Sister Rothrock said doubtfully, striding to keep up. She must think she knew how things stood between him and Abbigail. Who shrunk back, embarrassed, at her friend’s side.

  He was embarrassed, too. He couldn’t come up with a single disarming or distracting retort. Nor was he free to mention Catharina. The stream rushed noisily beside them. The awkward silence that descended on the strollers was noisier.

  “Well then,” Sister Rothrock said at last, releasing her arm to gesture expansively downstream, “next, as you said, is the tannery, of course, and below that the oil mill and the-Oomph!”

  The dignified Widow’s feet flew out from under her and she landed on her backside.

  “Sister Benigna! Are you all right?” Abbigail cried out, falling to her knees beside her friend.

  “Yes, of course, I’m fine,” the Widow protested heartily. But she did not get up.

  Nicholas knelt too and offered her his hands. “Can you safely stand, Sister?”

  “Certainly,” she said briskly, taking his hands and trying to rise. And failing. She scowled. “Well. Perhaps not just yet.”

  Nicholas put on his best sympathetic manner. “I can carry you home if need be.”

  She grimaced but laughed. “A great tall thing like me? Wouldn’t we be a spectacle? No, let’s not end this lovely afternoon. I shall recover very well seated by the stream in the sun.”

  “As I shall,” Abbigail said, sitting beside her and arranging her skirts. “You go on, Brother Blum. You will see the flax houses and the saw mill well around the bend of the creek. Then come back and fetch us home.”

  “No, Abbigail, you must lead Brother Blum down there.”

  “You need me here,” Abbigail protested.

  Nicholas still knelt at the Widow’s feet. “’Twas a nasty fall. You need us both.”

  She shook her head. “To help me sit? No, no, not at all. Abbigail, go with Brother Blum and explain the workings of our town.”

  Abbigail couldn’t hide her dismay. Nicholas could barely hide his.

  “But Father insisted that you chaperone-”

  “Two perfectly reasonable, trus
tworthy adults.” Sister Rothrock didn’t bother to hide her disdain for Georg Till’s old-fashioned dictates. Nor did she show the slightest fear of any censure. “The old ways he clings to are changing, dear. No one will look askance on a Sabbath afternoon if a mature Single Sister shows our industries to her father’s new assistant.”

  Abbigail rose, protesting her friend’s injuries. Just as vociferously, the Widow protested all the fuss.

  “You will not move, Sister Rothrock, will you, lest you be worse injured than we think,” Nicholas insisted, unwilling to leave her-or to let Abbigail go on.

  The Widow folded her hands in her lap. “I am quite content to sit. Now go. Go.”

  They went, Abbigail looking a little desperate. He took some comfort that she did not solicit his company. She must not share the Widow’s clever scheme to match them up. Still, Abbigail’s reluctance to walk with him nettled. Did she fear her father’s censure? She evaded that well enough at home.

  Surely she did not fear a great lout like himself. What a mortifying thought. They had spent days together in the cellar, and she was none the worse for it. His overwrought senses were, but she wasn’t. A wicked, risky impulse to pay her back for every caviling admonition overcame him, and he charged into the breach, risk be damned.

  “Don’t worry, Sister Abbigail,” he said smoothly, slowing his stride and leaning close. “If it will reassure you, I promise I won’t try to kiss you.”

  There was reward in risk, he thought, profoundly pleased to see a blossom blush suffuse her pretty face.

  Glaring, Abbigail stopped and stamped her foot on the soggy, pebbly margin of the creek. “Oh, you … you rake, you … bounder!”

  “I have been called worse.”

  “If you try anything … the slightest … anything, Nicholas Blum, I won’t be responsible for what my father will do to you.”

  As if afraid, he sucked in an exaggerated breath then feigned worry in his voice. “Oh, peril.” He snared her hand, drew it under his arm, and bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. Charm was his best defense against scheming widows and prickly friends. “You can count on me, Sister Abbigail.” He started them forward again.

  “You are a rogue, you know,” she said, her tone lightening for the first time that afternoon. He might draw that laugh from her after all.

  Retaining her hand, he paused and made an elaborate, old-fashioned bow, hopeful they had regained their earlier ease.

  “I am a perfect gentleman, dear Sister, with only your blameless virtue at heart.”

  She sniffed at his silliness but, to his everlasting relief, walked on with him, making no attempt to withdraw her hand from the crook of his elbow. He held on fast. Her touch was warm and soft. With his best protective instincts rising to the fore, he vowed to earn her trust, her friendship, this afternoon.

  “Your father would run me out of town, I take it, if we strayed.”

  “You are familiar with tar and feathers?”

  He grimaced. “Not administered by any papas amoungst us that I ever heard of.”

  “You mean, by papas that you ever crossed.”

  He stopped so that she had to face him and said with all the gravity he could marshal, “If I succeeded in seducing you, yours would be the first papa I ever so offended.”

  Her chocolate eyes widened, then danced. “And you, Nicholas Blum, would be the first Single Brother ever tarred and feathered.”

  Pretending fear, he quaked against the tiny hand still pressing to his arm. A laugh was nearly his reward.

  But she suppressed it. They had reached the creek’s bend, widened by the force of the flow, water sluicing against the inside curve. The trees here had not been cleared for any buildings and some dipped branches into the stream. More content than he had been since leaving home, he patted her hand, thinking it fragile and her precious, walking alongside him, taking three steps to his two. He slowed his pace for her. She had trials enough keeping up with her father’s demands.

  “Your father … was he always …” What inoffensive word could he trot out?

  “Such a difficult man?”

  Nicholas nodded, taken aback by her directness.

  She squared her shoulders as if to fend off hurt, an old hurt, to be sure. “No, not until my mother died. Her humor leavened his severity. He wanted a son to carry on the store. To maintain his standing in the town. A daughter cannot do that.”

  Nicholas gave a short, wry laugh. “A son wouldn’t necessarily live up to his expectations.”

  Striding along beside him, Abbigail gave him an assessing look. Her tone, though curious, was kind. “Have you not lived up to your father’s?”

  All week long Nicholas had admired her keen mind. He liked this sympathetic understanding better. “Neither his expectations nor his example,” he admitted.

  Her delicate brows raised. “He is such a paragon, then?”

  The creek narrowed and straightened, and for a way ahead was lined by a dense growth of trees. Nicholas chose his words with care. “He is a good man. A model to the community. To live up to his example I would have had to marry at twenty-three, have a brood of seven by the age of forty, be an Elder and run the Supervisory Board, have a reputation for unimpeachable honor, and be the best baritone in the choir.”

  Her fingers fiddled with his coat sleeve. “Your baritone is quite nice, actually.”

  She noticed that this morning? From across the aisle? Nicholas felt his face heat. He never deemed himself good enough to sing alongside his father in the choir. He studied the stream through an opening in the trees, and mumbled, “Er, you have not heard him.”

  “I heard you.”

  He collected his wits and turned to her, for good manners dictated that he thank her. “But I appreciate the compliment.”

  Her fingers squeezed his arm. “So, your father is a paragon, whereas you …”

  For an instant, he wanted to be a paragon too. To earn the exacting approval that he knew she could give. But he had Catharina’s approval already.

  So he shrugged. “Whereas I-when I was twelveran away to join the army.”

  “Redcoats? Or Continentals?” she asked, gravely attentive.

  “Continentals.” He raised a brow and waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t.

  “Wise choice. The winning side. I gather that our unfortunate Brother Huber actually allied himself with the British before joining our community and refusing to bear arms, like us.”

  “Brother Huber is a convert?”

  “He is, indeed. And not the first to think our plain way of living would be simple. He even asked to be baptized under a new name. From Gerhard to Christian.”

  “Odd, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. Slaves change their names when we confirm them.”

  “So they do.”

  She pointed out the flax house and the flax-breaking house, and then they reached the sawmill. Like everything else in Bethlehem, Nicholas saw that it was twice as large as Salem’s. They turned back to rescue Sister Rothrock, agreeing that they hoped to find her improved and able to walk home.

  “You have other failings?” Abbigail prodded after a moment.

  “Too many to enumerate.”

  “Yet your family writes to you. That says much of their love and esteem.”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Or much of their concern that I will go astray again.”

  “You came well recommended.” Her eyes twinkled. “Perhaps you have dark secrets, Brother Blum.”

  There was an unexpected lightness in her question, as if she enjoyed his confessions. No harm could come of detailing his abasement, he thought, not if it won him a smile.

  “No, no secrets. My failures play out large for the whole town to see. From every corner of the settlement, people gather in the Square whispering, ‘Did you hear what Brother Blum did today?’”

  Abbigail laughed, a sweet soprano trill of genuine amusement. The tightness in his lungs eased. He had made her laugh. Her face glowed
with the pleasure of it, and he reveled in her delight.

  “You may be a rogue, but you won’t convince me that you are a failure.”

  Recklessly, soberly, he crossed his heart. “’Tis God’s truth, Abbigail.” She didn’t even blink at the informal address. “Four different masters released me. Go with my blessings, they said, and not a moment too soon.”

  She seemed to weigh his words against what she knew of him, and her scrutiny made him self-conscious. “I don’t believe it. Convince me.”

  “Very well.” He regaled her with tales of his bungled stints with the gunsmith, blacksmith, and butcher. “Then I was put out to the clockmaker. Tiny parts, infinite precision.” He held out his very large, square hands and stretched out long, blunt fingers. “I was hopelessly inept. But you…” He slipped her hand from his arm and smoothed it flat against his palm. To his surprise, she let him. Like the rest of her, it was feminine and delicate as china. “Your hands are made for precision … for making clocks.”

  “We don’t apprentice women, Brother Blum,” she teased.

  But he had stopped and did not really hear. Her small-boned hand was made for love. He wanted to hold it through the afternoon. Over his heart. Absorbed in her, he turned her hand over, smoothing it open when her fingers curled into a fist. Her palm read like a map of her heart, the key to her character, its lines straight and direct and precise.

  He heard her clear her throat. He heard her say his name. He raised his head and looked into the dark depths of her wide mahogany eyes. They glittered warily in the afternoon sun.

  “You promised,” she said quietly.

  He blinked. “Promised?”

  “To be a gentleman,” she whispered, almost as if she did not want him to give her back possession of her hand.

  He couldn’t give it back. He tucked it under his arm again and ushered her toward her widowed friend. They neared the fulling mill in silence, a dangerous, self-conscious, senses-laden silence. But she didn’t fight his pressure to retain her hand, and he managed again to slow his pace to a speed comfortable for her. Just barely. He wanted to race with her back to the store, find some private corner, and kiss her until she begged for more.