HIS STOLEN

Bride

Judith Stanton

To my cousins, Moravian and otherwise, for enthusiasm, love, and support: Joellyn Arends, Penny Cota, Barbara Giles, Winona Masten, Winoka Plummer, Sue Reeves, Janice Reich, Elaine Thacker, Carolyn Thomason, Delores Vogt, Sylvia White

“And happy was the bride,
And glad the bridegroom’s heart…”

—Moravian wedding hymn

CONTENTS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

Epilogue

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

About the Author

Praise for Judith Stanton and Wild Indigo

ALSO BY JUDITH STANTON

Afterword

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA, APRIL 1796

He would not give her up yet, Single Brother Nicholas Blum vowed to himself. But the Elders had not even asked her name before denying his request to marry. Then, with his father’s blessing and support, they had assigned him to yet another trade. With another master.

In another state.

Three hundred miles away.

His hand reached for the latch to his brother’s dye shop. Matthias might help. Might not. Nicholas would tell him just enough to enlist his sympathy. He need not confess his plan to marry Catharina Baumgarten.

Nicholas would not, could not give her up at all.

The latch creaked downward suddenly, and the door sprang open.

“Nicky?” Taller than he, darker, thinner, better, his brother was already hard at work. He peered at Nicholas in the soft dawn light. “Early for you, is it not?”

Nicholas walked in. Steam from a vat of boiling scarlet liquid shrouded them. “I, um, I leave this morning.” Asking anything would be harder than he thought.

“Ah, yes,” Matthias said tactfully. “Your latest adventure.”

“My banishment. You can say it.”

But Matthias wouldn’t. He never misspoke, never took a misstep. Piety, natural modesty, and an endless capacity to stick to one dull task had made him a model Single Brother. A success among Salem’s community of tradesmen. And a bit of a prig, Nicholas assured himself. For there was no denying that his younger brother threw a harsh light on the fits and starts and stops on his own path.

Matthias cuffed his shoulder. Red from the dye baths stained his fist, a curiously diabolical sight on such a paragon. “’Tis a fresh start, brother, and well you know it This time, you will find your true vocation, I am certain of it. Would that I…” he trailed off. His blue eyes went dreamy, then he sighed. “But I have bolts of linen destined for the scarlet baths today.”

“You love your work,” Nicholas said, taken aback by a note that smacked of envy in his pious brother’s voice.

Matthias strode over to the vat, grasped a giant paddle with both hands, and stirred the steaming brew. “Idle hands are the devil’s–”

“Dieu, Matty. The devil has no more a handhold on you than he would on a saint. You never needed work to save yourself from sin.”

He sloshed the sinister red mixture to the vat’s rim. “We work because we must. I here amidst the colors, and you … wherever. In adventures.”

As a boy of twelve, Nicholas had run off to fight with the Continentals, contrary to the Brethen’s pacifist faith. Someone had to defend the town, he had fervently believed. He had never lived it down.

“Hah. My bid at butchery was no adventure. I retched for days on end.”

Matthias almost grinned. “I never said ‘twas all adventure.”

“No, indeed,” Nicholas grumbled. Apprenticing had been his hell.

The paddle swished and slurped in the dye bath.

For twelve years, Matthias had been the town’s dyer, never deviating from the trade chosen for him at fourteen years of age. Whereas Nicholas, after his wartime misadventure, had been turned out by a severe master gunsmith at fifteen. By seventeen, he had conclusively established that brawn alone did not a blacksmith make. His hands were too large for delicate clockworks, and he had no stomach for butchering. Now twenty-eight, he made a humble living as the town’s lone tinsmith, making tinware for his fellow communicants in the church and the outsiders who came on Market Day.

He was years from being established enough that the Elders would let him marry.

Catharina.

He forged ahead to the purpose of his visit “Matty, while I’m gone, I want you to watch out for my …” He stopped. It was damned awkward. Officially, Catharina was nothing to him. Courtship was forbidden. Even flirting was frowned upon. In their community, Brethren Single Brothers and Single Sisters lived, worked, prayed, and played strictly apart Naming her in any terms that smacked of familiarity would tarnish her in his family’s eyes and soil her reputation.

Matthias looked up guardedly. “Watch out for your affairs? Father says Brother Issen will mind your shop. Do you not trust him?”

Nicholas grasped the topic like a drowning man. If clever, he could steer it back to Catharina. “’Tis not a matter of trust Nils lacks your business sense,” he confided. “He’s apt to fashion naught but lanterns for a year. Engage him in conversation and steer him toward variety.”

“I can do that.”

“And our family. Harmon, Elizabeth, and the twins–they sometimes need an older brother’s hand.”

Matthias’s dark brows knotted guiltily. “Ach, I’m too steeped in work. Besides, Harmon and Elizabeth will soon be grown, and I will barely know them.”

Nicholas was not displeased to prick his brother’s conscience. Matthias had stinted family for work, never giving their younger brother and four sisters their due, things he himself took to be the older brothers’ duty. Frolics, presents, and advice–whether they wanted it or not.

“It’s the twins mostly. I–well, perhaps I should not say how often I bail them out of trouble.”

Matthias’s mouth crooked. “Rapscallions. I can guess.”

“And Anna Johanna. She’s old enough to marry the next time it’s proposed. You should talk to her.”

“Or to some fence post! Truly, Nicky, she won’t listen. She’s a grown woman.”

“I will worry about our parents, too.”

Matthias’s sideways look said he must be mad. Their father and stepmother were able, respected leaders in the town, healthy, vigorous. Almost embarrassingly still in love. “They cannot need aught from us.”

Nicholas pushed his point. “They are getting on, Matty,” he said gravely. “And so must I. The sun’s up.”

Matthias lay the paddle down and clasped his shoulders. Red dye lined the creases of his knuckles. “God be with you, Nicky.”

Nicholas turned toward the door, then looked back casually. “Oh, and keep an eye out for Catharina Baumgarten, will you?”

“Sister Baumgarten?”

“You know, the beauty,” Nicholas said lightly, with a confiding wink thrown in for good measure.

Shy to a fault with women, Matthias stuttered, evidently overcome. “All right, Nicky. Thank you. Yes, I will.”

Nicholas left, not sure he had gained his point. Had he asked enough? Too much? Matthias had almost smiled, looked eager to help out. He must have understood.

He had to. Everything depended on it.

Nicholas angled across the Square to the Baumgartens’ barn and found Catharina milking her cow.

Rising from the stool when she finished, she saw him and gasped in surprise. “Brother Nicholas! The sun is barely up.”

But it was light enough to see perfection in the willowy blonde he planned to wed. He collected his customary, considerable charm and directed it her way. “I leave today, Sister Catharina, but not without a word of goodbye.”

The ethereal Single Sister blushed becomingly.

“Come,” he said. He took her brimful pail of milk and led her to the peach orchard behind her mother’s barn, where they sometimes met. Well, if truth be told, where he sometimes waylaid her, unable to follow his strict conscience and stay away.

The sun’s edge nudged above the trees.

“Horen Sie mir zu, listen.” He set the milk pail safely down. “We will be bent and gray before the Elders hear my request to wed.”

She dipped her white-capped head beneath a branch of a peach tree frothed with blossoms. “’Tis no great matter, Brother Nicholas,” she answered in German, her native tongue. Like most women in the community, she dealt with no outsiders and so needed little English. “Brothers often marry older, in their thirties. You are yet young.”

“I am full twenty-eight years, old enough to know my mind.”

Catharina smiled a very proper and indulgent smile. A pretty smile. A smile he’d done his best to cultivate in public and on the sly at every turn since she was ten years old and he was seventeen and he’d untangled her from the ropes of her mother’s meanest cow.

“But you cannot know the Elders’ will,” she said sweetly.

He cast his eyes aloft for patience. Sheep-shaped clouds scudded across the brightening spring morning, mimicking the blooming peach trees’ wind-tossed limbs. “They have made their will plain. They refuse to consider my proposal to marry.”

She lifted a hand in consolation but would not touch him. She was modest and chaste and so delectable. “I am truly sorry, Nicholas. And for your father too. How very painful it must be for him, to turn down his oldest son’s request.”

“Sorry for him?” Nicholas bit back a demand for her sympathy. She should side with him, the son, the one wronged. But how like his kind, beautiful Catharina to defend a champion as equally as an underdog. “My father has a family. Why should he stand in the way of mine?”

“Surely he did not.” She ducked behind a branch.

Nicholas tweaked off an intervening blossom and crushed it between his fingers, releasing its delicate scent No, his father hadn’t thwarted him single-handedly. Not his honest, stalwart father who had never gone astray, picked a fight, ricocheted from trade to trade, or piled up debt.

“Nicholas?” She coaxed him from his glowering silence. “There must have been a reason.”

“My tinsmith shop has not turned a decent profit these five years.”

Catharina’s pink lips pursed. “We are not supposed to profit unduly by our work. It distracts us from our Christian path. Besides, wealth is not required for men to marry.”

“Wealth is required of me.”

She inclined her head. The slender arc of her neck made his blood rush to his skin and to more private places. “Why you?”

“They won’t permit a man to marry under such a debt as mine.”

“You carry debt? Whatever on?”

Nicholas was not a man to buckle under pressure, but chagrin twinged him. “My two parcels of land,” he mumbled.

“Ah, land.” She waved a demure hand. “I know nothing of land. My mother leases her house from the town, and I earn my bed in the Sisters House by needlework and cooking.”

“Well, I purchased a backcountry tract that no one wants. Then I took a lease on the swamp.”

“At Peters Creek? Why the swamp?”

“I thought to dam it, then to … I have not decided. ‘Twas a fool’s idea, they say.” Yet if he took no risk, he had no hope of gain. What they called irresponsible debt, he considered reasonable investment.

But nothing had convinced the Elders that his risk was anything but another escapade by feckless, reckless Nicholas Blum, the thorn in their thumbs, the spur in their sides since he’d run off to war.

“My indebtedness is not the only point.” He looked out over the squat peach trees. Severely pruned back by the Brothers, the treetops met his shoulders. “Their ways don’t permit a man to be a man and choose his own path.”

Her soft hand touched his forearm, earnest and daring. “Nicholas, you have tried many paths. Too many, surely …”

“They say I must setde down. But I am setded–on whom to marry and on when to do so.”

He fingered another hapless blossom. He hadn’t yet succeeded in a trade to the Elders’ satisfaction–or his own. At least the predictable tedium of his tin shop freed his restless mind to dream of more adventurous, more consequential work.

He turned to Catharina, his boyhood sweetheart, his manhood’s desire, and searched her mild gray eyes. “I’m settled on …

You, he thought He had been for years. Her gentle acceptance had comforted him when all his other plans went wrong. But in honor, he would not burden her with his heart’s claim, not when the Elders were sending him away.

“… on going to Bethlehem. My father has arranged for me to work with a friend who runs their store. I am to become a trader.”

Her approving smile took his breath away. “You will do that wonderfully well. Traveling will suit you. And you will have such a way with the customers.”

A flush heated his face as he shrugged off her compliments. No one praised great hulking brutes like him, no doubt thinking them too strong to need encouragement or support.

“Why, you could sell bark to beavers!” she assured him.

But what if he couldn’t sell himself to her?

Exasperated, he swept off his tricom and raked a hand through his hair. He could not ask her to wait. The Elders arranged all marriages and frowned on courting without their consent. Defiant as he felt today, he drew the line at compromising sweet proper Catharina-his intended bride-by seeking her hand despite the Elders’ prohibition.

“Will you be gone long?”

A longing in her melodious soprano heightened his frustration. He would have to wait so long to claim her.

“Months,” he said earnestly. “Years perhaps.”

“Oh, Nicholas, what will I do without you?”

Her sweet concern was more than he could bear. “Think of me. You can think of me,” he said. His voice a growl and his heart in a twist, he bent his head to steal a kiss.

Her lips were cool and dry and pure, an innocent pledge of the married delights that had spurred his impulsive request. She followed his lead, moving beneath his mouth only after he moved, her willowy body a careful fist’s breadth apart from his. He deepened the kiss, seeking the clink of her teeth and the taste of her tongue, cupping the back of her head to keep her from slipping away.

For she was virginally shy, from the top of her starched white Haube to the toes of her plain Sunday shoes.

He was a virgin, too, by faith and practice and enormous power of will, but not shy. He pulled her body to his and felt himself harden against her belly. She was of a height to fit him perfectly.

Her body stiffened.

“Catharina…” Hunger aroused, he let out her name in a hiss of desire. “Think of me.”

She pulled away.

“We mustn’t,” she said, the puff of her breath lost in a tug of April wind. But when she put a light hand to the plane of his jaw, he felt her urging him to stay.

Catharina hurried up the steep rise to town as fast as a young woman could, worrying that Nicholas Blum’s stolen kiss had reddened her mouth. He was always irresistible, and she, immensely flattered each and every time he sought her out. But his careless indulgences worried her. Her mother had an eagle’s eye for daughterly transgression. Worse, Single Sister Rosina Krause, to whom Catharina answered, pounced on her charges’ misconduct faster than cats on mice in a moonlit field.

Nicholas’s long strides easily kept pace with Catharina’s. The milk pail slowed him not at all. She quickened her steps, trying to keep ahead of him, trusting exertion to explain the flush that heated her face.

She shouldn’t keep letting him kiss her. What if his kisses meant nothing?

Beside her, he made light of her haste, of her quickening breath, of the dust he claimed her skirts were kicking up to choke him. This morning, his usual charm did not amuse her.

“Slow down, Sister Catharina, bitte,” he pled, resorting to the more formal address he had used before he kissed her. He blocked her way, his massive body argument enough to stop a runaway horse. She halted on a ha’pence to evade his embrace.

“I meant no harm.” His cobalt eyes glimmered with amusement, and she detected no apology in his voice.

“Oh, Nicholas, you never do.”

Abruptly, chagrin furrowed his brow. “You don’t care that I am leaving.”

“Of course I care. But surely your new position is for the best.”

“You’re no help. You want me gone.”

“I want you happy. Besides, how could I help?”

“How could you help?”

He sounded so exasperated then, so unlike charming, carefree Nicholas, that her heart squeezed inside her chest. How could she help him in his troubles? She was an ordinary girl, never good at books, admired by one and all for a beauty her own silvered glass did not reveal to her. So far as she understood herself, her only virtues lay with thread and thimble and a deft twist of dough.

She raised her eyes to his insistent, probing gaze. “Will it help if I miss you?” She had already had two good cries over his coming departure, but she could hardly tell him so.

A sharp sigh whistled past his well-shaped lips. He was so much more beautiful than she, she thought objectively, and for the hundredth time. The biggest, strongest man in town with broad-browed, squarejawed, fresh good looks that melted women’s bones–any woman’s, any girl’s, to hear the Single Sisters talk.

“Come away with me. There is a world beyond all this,” he said urgently.

She wanted to but could not. “You are a rogue, Brother Blum, to tease me so. ‘Tis unbecoming in a virtuous man.”

“Consider this. We could leave tonight.”

“No!” she said, horrified. He was teasing, flirting, surely, she sought to reassure herself. Her life was here, mother, brothers, sisters. Her faith.

He bit his lower lip as if to take back words. “Then I will say no more, Catharina. But you, you…” He raised an instructing finger then touched it to her lips. “… remember me.”

He bowed and turned at the top of the hill where the road parted around the Square. She watched, milk and modesty forgotten as the flurry of morning activity reeled him back into the community. Already he was laughing again, greeting other Brothers, charming his way past Widows, Married Sisters, Older Girls, and other Single Sisters with as full a claim to him as she.

“I will remember you,” she whispered after him.

Of all the kisses he had stolen from her, she would remember the urgency of this last kiss the longest. Always he had awed her, a summer storm to her own spring showers. His reckless, daring nature scared and overwhelmed her. He was energy, and she, repose. Her way was quietude, and her path was simple.

Why would he single her out, meek soul that she knew herself to be? He must have kissed a dozen other girls. Any but the severest prude would have let him. But surely none was such a fool as she, to fall in love with Nicholas Blum.

At the stoop of his father’s home, he paused for a moment, then opened its herringboned green door, too large a man for it to frame him, and she watched him disappear inside.

2

DANVILLE, VIRGINIA, MAY 1796

Soft spring morning light streamed through the streaked windows of Nicholas’s room at the White Horse Tavern on the wagon road to Pennsylvania. He awoke to it with a pounding head, a queasy stomach–and a gasp of unaccustomed pleasure. His own. Callused feminine fingers threaded through the hair around his early morning arousal, which strained eagerly toward their touch.

“Morning, love,” the woman purred, her voice rich with amusement and desire.

“Mornings, too?” he asked thickly, astonished to find himself in bed with the woman who’d served him ale and stronger spirits last night until he … until he what? Evidently, everything, with tempting, luscious, brazen Mary Clark. For he was even more astonished at the direction her attentions were taking at this unseemly hour. He rubbed sleep from his face, remembering her bawdy, laughing seduction of him. His sober hesitation. His drunken weakening. He groaned. So he had yielded, as it seemed from her words, her touch, her expectations. What would it be like sober? He let his hands find her large breasts, her nipples already taut.

She whimpered with approval. “You didn’t know about mornings?”

He hadn’t known about anything. It was too damnably embarrassing to be a virgin ruined and not even remember. He hid that as best he could. “I’d guessed, but bedding a woman in one’s mind hardly measures up to the reality.”

She gave him a large, sloppy kiss, her tongue seeking his and demanding it join hers in play. He played, as she must have played with him throughout the night. But this time after they finished, he launched himself up to sit on the side of the bed, unwilling to leave, needing to go. Stockings, breeches, waistcoat, coat lay on the floor where she had thrown them as she stripped him.

He reached for a woolen stocking.

She plucked it from his grasp. “’Twould be fine if ye would linger, love.”

It would be heaven, he thought, his body weak with lassitude and his mind filling with guilt. But not regret. Men should marry young, younger than the Brethren allowed. And he should not have waited all these years. Been made to wait. Have vowed to wait, not knowing he was missing this … selig, bliss. Earthly, earthy bliss.

“I will be late. Days late.” He clenched his jaw against his desire for more of the pleasures that she offered. Trade in flesh, when he was headed north to learn to trade in goods. Plump feminine welcome, laughter, and experienced delights, for a coin. But not, he recalled, his coin. She had incited him, urged him, seduced him, she’d said, because he struck her fancy. Because, he suspected, he looked clean.

Sitting behind him on the edge of the bed, she wound her arms and legs around him. “Who would note a quarter hour’s more delay?”

Her nipples poked into his back, and her lower thatch of feminine hair, the first he had ever seen, tickled his buttocks. Her arms circled his ribs, and she lowered her hands to his happily exhausted privates. Her fingers dallied, fondling the aching stones he rarely handled but to bathe or to adjust them in his breeches.

He savored her skilled torture, her knowing instruction in the ways of love.

Drunk or not, seduced or not, he was well rid of his virginity. He had left Salem and the Elders’ strictures angry, humiliated, discontent. All that, and hunger, had led him to let go of a lifetime of celibacy. It seemed the only facet of his life that he could affect Those other markers of manhood-family, business, even a role in his community-evaded him.

He had regrets, sharp and secret Privately he admitted that his life was a miserable patchwork of unrewarded effort, mismatched vocations, and dreaded fresh starts. But he had the mind, the energy, and the ability to achieve something meaningful, something his father would approve, something his family would applaud. Something his wife could depend on. He was sure of it.

Again, Mary Clark’s practiced hands roused his ardor, banishing self-doubt and self-recrimination. He tried to return her caresses.

“In me, love, again. I’ll not see the like of ye this comin’ year.”

So Nicholas obliged her one last time, again finding the experience far superior to her sordid sheets. His erection fairly leapt inside her, and he spilled the last remnants of his innocence into her dark mysteries.

Afterward, she watched him dress, the barest quiver of her pouting mouth betraying her disappointment. In gratitude, he gave her a hug and kissed the top of her not-quite-clean, russet-colored hair. Then he tipped up her chin with a finger and gave her a chaste kiss. Union with a woman had proven wetter and faster and slower and more exhilarating than his most vivid imaginings. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

“Ah, you’re welcome.” She gave a saucy grin. “I never had a Brother.”

Embarrassment heated his face, not for the first time in his extended frolic, but for the worst reason. Surely he was not the first man among the Brethren to stray.

“Never?” he asked. “What gave me away?”

The grin broadened, and he saw she had reclaimed her self-control. “The plainness of your dress. Besides, most of my virgins are fourteen.”

He shrugged and smiled, allowing her jest at his expense. It didn’t bother him she had guessed his innocence. It bothered him he had waited so long.

An hour later, he led his saddled mount from the lean-to that served as a livery. Mary Clark lazed at the tavern’s door, her skirt draped to disclose a dimpled knee. He swung up on the horse, determined to go on.

She sashayed over and rested a hand on his thigh. “The White Horse is always here, and me with it.”

He covered her hand with his. “I won’t forget.” But he wouldn’t come back. He would be too tempted.

“God speed you, Brother Nicholas. And may He bless that willing rod you carry in your breeches.”

He laughed at her bawdy retort and turned his mare onto the wagon road. His destination was a good fortnight away, if he pressed on. He was in no hurry, however. He had to recover his accustomed equanimity. Bethlehem and a return to celibacy awaited him. He had to think of Catharina and their future.

Belated guilt sloshed to the forefront of his mind. This foray into the sensual delights betrayed her purity, her gentle affection. But then his faith had betrayed him, too, into years of frustrating discipline. Into missing out on this … glory.

Now at least, he would come to his bride a whole man, knowing how to please her.

Nicholas dallied three weeks along the Wagon Road, flirting to test his newfound ease with women but accepting no more invitations.

In Bethlehem at the very end of May, he surrendered his mount to the visitors’ livery with a gentle pat to her neck under her flaxen mane. He liked her, had requested her in fact, knowing from his days as a farrier that she would suit his temper. Half draft animal, she was just large enough for his great size. He didn’t mind her marish quirks, her moods and sometimes sullen balks. He had always had a way with creatures of the feminine persuasion. With four younger sisters and a bevy of admirers, he had better.

But for the three hundred miles of his trip north, he had stared at that mare’s mane, the exact color of Catharina’s blonde tresses. And thought of how he had betrayed her. He was good at slipping into trouble and reasoning his way out. But it was proving unexpectedly hard to reason his way around his lapse into forbidden carnal pleasures.

Mary Clark had given him the wildest night of his life, and the best morning after. His hours with the kind-hearted whore only sharpened his resolve to hurry back to his innocent, intended bride, better prepared to introduce her to the pleasures of a sanctified union. So he told himself. But he knew the scripture.

If Paul said better to marry than burn, he meant better not to fornicate. Nicholas was a Single, not a Married Brother. Still, he had not taken a monk’s vows. Having tasted a woman’s delights, how would he endure a long course of celibacy?

At the Brothers House, he unpacked and walked out to find Georg Till’s store. The novelty of Bethlehem dispelled his worrisome thoughts. The town was larger, busier, and more enterprising than Salem. He strode up the hill, heart pumping in anticipation. Here was a town suited for projects and endeavors. Rounding a corner, he saw Till’s store, twice the size of Traugott Bagge’s store at home in the backcountry. Big enough for him to exercise his enterprise and his ambition, he realized, his spirits lifting.

He straightened the lapel on his road-rumpled coat, ducked his head to enter a low door, and found himself, face to back, with the tiniest, trimmest female he had ever encountered.

3

BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA, MAY

Abbigail Till perched on a stool and stretched her feather duster high. But it would not reach the top two shelves. She sneezed. Pine pollen was everywhere this spring. With her father and Brother Huber out of town and few lulls between customers, she had little enough time to clean. A thin film of yellow dust coated every pot, book, and buckle in the store. She stretched and sneezed again.

“I came to speak to someone in charge.” A mellow, amused voice broke her concentration.

She gave a start, then quickly polished off the highest shelf that she could reach. Apparently whoever owned that voice could not imagine a woman in charge.

But she was. Today, in her father’s absence, and often enough when he was here. After her mother died, Abbigail had given up her life as an Older Girl at the Sisters House to manage her ailing father’s household and his store. Her responsibilities in the shop, added to the endless hours of woman’s work, had made her much the stronger.

And much the stranger. An outsider among a community of outsiders. A rare woman among the Brethren Sisters, one who dealt regularly and comfortably and in English with men and goods and money.

She set the duster down, hitched her skirts, and stepped off the stool to stand before the man with the amazing voice.

Her gaze went up and up and up, to the lionish, handsome head of a burly, well-formed golden giant. A man no longer young, though perhaps younger than her spinsterish self. Intensely cobalt eyes twinkled with mocking self-knowledge.

Women always cater thus to me, they said to her, carelessly, fecklessly.

Her breath caught. She smoothed the fine laine fabric of her best shop dress, the nervous, unaccustomed gesture surprising her. She was at her best with overbearing strangers. She straightened to her full four feet, ten inches tall.

“’Tis I you seek, sir. Sister Abbigail Till. I am in charge in my father’s stead.”

The blond giant smiled and bowed seamlessly, gestures so becoming and gendemanly that Abbigail’s heart tripped in appreciation beneath the stiff boning of her bodice.

“Nicholas Blum, Sister Till, at your service.”

Oh no, she thought, not this–this male pulchritude and overweening confidence-to add to her burdensome duties. The son of her father’s friend had arrived to take his place in her shop.

Oh yes, she thought again. All this power and energy at her disposal.

“You are late, Brother Blum, by a week.”

How could a man look gracefully abashed yet unrepentant too?

“The wagon road from North Carolina is no short trek in springtime.”

“We have mud here as well, Brother Blum, but we do not close the store. Besides,” she added, eyeing his riding gaiters, “you obviously rode a horse. Do they mire in mud?”

His eyes glinted wickedly as he shifted from strict courtesy to engage her. “Would you believe that my horse threw a shoe?”

She braced herself against the power of that wicked glint. “And that there are no farriers betwixt here and Salem? Try again, Brother Blum.”

He grinned, a slash of a dimple gracing his left cheek. “Bowed a tendon?”

She softened to his undeniable beauty, his unflappable charm. But ruling him required her not to yield. She glared back. “’Twas you, was it not, who passed an hour hence on the great sorrel at a forward trot?”

“You have me there.”

“The point is that we did not have you here. And my father–whose gout retards his activity-has gone into Philadelphia with our shop assistant, leaving me to mind the store alone. Green though you are to trade, he had rather have sent you.”

Despite her sharp tongue and grudging welcome, Nicholas appraised the tiny woman before him with a newly awakened sensibility to what a Sister might look like under her plain dress. Full high breasts crushed beneath a confining bodice, two hands’ span of a waist awaiting his embrace. For the first time, he fully understood the Brethren’s prohibition against bawdy encounters like his with Mary Clark. Sister Abbigail Till was glossy as a blackbird, tiny as a wren, and twice as bossy.

And he still wanted to kiss her senseless.

His fatigue from the road lifted under the little wren’s tart sallies. Rising to meet her challenge, he banished her wrath with his patented charm. His boyish grin had earned him half a dozen stolen kisses from Sisters more intent than Abbigail on girding themselves in maidenly belts of honor.

“Ah, and I had rather have gone,” he said. “’Tis my entire purpose here to travel and learn the finer points of trade.”

She straightened so that the crown of her head came just to the top button of his rumpled waistcoat. “Trade begins in the shop. You will assist me here.”

Her tone of customary command was unbecoming in a Single Sister, and it puzzled him. He had thought that she was enjoying their crisp exchange.

She raised a straight, sensible brow. “You are ready? You have unpacked? At the Brothers House, we arranged for a bed for you.”

If her lips stumbled over bed, he would not allow himself to notice.

“I have indeed unpacked but am hardly fit to mind the counter in this.” He gestured toward his dusty outer coat, teasing her stiff and proper self to awareness of his body.

She averted her eyes.

For a fraction of a second, he gloated.

“My traveling clothes are filthy,” he admitted soberly. “But I thought it best to come straight away-”

“As well you should have done,” she interrupted briskly.

Then as if emboldened, her gaze slid up and down his seriously begrimed clothes. He remembered himself, unclad and randy, under the dissimilar scrutiny of the buxom tavern wench. The generous tavern wench. Gott im Himmel, what a tangle he had made for himself this time, to have such thoughts intrude with a Sister he barely knew.

“The clothes you are wearing will do nicely for the task at hand.”

He let an obliging nod ease his tension. Sister Abbigail was so … unsparing, so … resistant, so … angry that she must perceive him as a danger. What could he say to set things right?

“I came to work for you, Sister Till, and your father.”

She smiled. It was not a bad smile. Pretty, pearly teeth. Then she turned on her heel and conducted him out back to a waist-high pile of aged manure mounded up beside a garden.

“If you would be so kind as to spread it, I could plant my beans before my father comes back.”

This was a job for Older Boys, or Little Boys not yet apprenticed, he thought with quick temper. But he managed a courteous smile. He had been apprenticed several times himself and knew apprentices faced lowly chores. But he hadn’t traveled all the way to Pennsylvania to begin at the bottom again.

She put a well-worn shovel in his hand, the right size for her but too small for him by half. “That should be a good afternoon’s work. Mind you spread it evenly. I should hate for Brother Huber to find fault.”

“Brother Huber?” he asked, at a loss. Brother Till was to teach him the ins and outs of trade.

“He is our assistant in the shop when my father’s gout keeps him abed and I must mind the household.”

Nicholas started to protest his ignominious assignment but thought better of it. Perhaps this was all a misunderstanding, and she was having a feminine bad day. Perhaps Brother Till hadn’t fully informed his daughter of his plan to instruct Nicholas in the art of trade.

On the other hand, he thought glumly, perhaps this lowly servitude was exactly what the Elders intended for him.

What had his resless spirit gotten him into this time? And how was he to endure bending his will to the sting of this wasp?

Sister Till darted back to the store, an unconscious flick of her skirts revealing a flash of ankle he could not afford to notice.

This clever, bossy little wren, he amended, bending his back to his work and jabbing the shovel into the pile.

The next morning, Nicholas knocked on the back door of Till’s store, his muscles aching from yesterday’s ill use and from a resless night. He had tossed for hours on his strange and narrow bed, thinking of his hopes for Catharina and his awkward start with his new partner’s daughter.

Shrugging the kinks from his shoulders, he took in the unfamiliar landscape. Bethlehem was beautiful in a different way from the world he knew. Not so very far away, a ridge of low indigo hills nestled the waking town like new stuffed pillows strewn across a morning bed. The spring air was even softer than he remembered it in Salem, three hundred miles south. A bounty of blooming vines curled up and over the back door’s stoop. He breathed in their too-sweet perfume and waited.

His summons went unanswered. But his tiny taskmaster had stipulated the crack of dawn, he was certain of it. We are up with the roosters, Sister Till had explained. He offered to break fast at the Brothers’ tables, but she had insisted he come here.

Very well, he had thought. Food at the Brothers House would no doubt satisfy, but after weeks of tavern fare, he wanted mounds of hearth-cooked food from home like his stepmother always made.

Nicholas knocked again, rapping his knuckles on the fresh green paint of the kitchen door. Its opened top half told him she was up.

“Guten Morgen. I’m coming.” The words sang out from the store’s front rooms. He squinted into the darkness, then heard the delicate slide of Sister Till’s tiny feet heading toward him. A whiff of baking bread and fresh-ground coffee stirred his hunger.

Briskly, she entered the shadowed kitchen, a sagebrush broom and a dripping mop askew in her arms. The glare on her face when she saw him belied the cheerful greeting she had called out

“Late again, Brother Blum,” she said, struggling to set down a heavy oaken bucket filled with suds and yet not drop her cleaning tools. Before he could reach in to help her, she plunked it on the floor, wastewater splashing the hem of her dove gray dress.

“And you needn’t knock. We don’t stand on ceremony with our ew–”

“New trading partners?” He offered obligingly.

“Our help,” she amended crisply. A quick frown produced three even, vertical lines between her nononsense straight brows. Plainly she took his courtesy for brash presumption. With a huff, she ranged the broom and mop like firearms by the door. Straining, she thrust the bucket up and over the door into his not-quite-waiting arms.

“Take this,” she ordered, “and dump it over the fence.”

He strolled easily with his burden toward the garden’s edge and hoisted the bucket from his side.

“Not that fence,” she called out. “The other one, beyond the privy.”

He shrugged, not minding her tone but noting her morning dishevelment rather more than an all-but-betrothed man should. It set his pulse to racing. What would she be like, bedded at first light and bidding him to touch her here, not there? He shook his head at his relentless new fixation, so wildly unbefitting his new position. And so unfair to Catharina.

“Danke,” Sister Till said hastily, once he was back inside. Then she pointed toward the broom. “You may sweep the front rooms while I set out your breakfast.”

He hesitated to take it up, unexpectedly provoked by the ignominious assignment. Spreading muck and emptying buckets were men’s chores in a pinch, but sweeping! A man did not move three hundred miles to learn to sweep a shop.

She tapped her little foot and handed him the broom. “Can you sweep, Brother Blum? Or must I teach you?”

He filled his chest with air. “I can sweep, Sister Till. But I came all this way to learn trade, not sweeping.”

“Ah.” She smiled, though not with humor, he thought. “But a well-swept shop promotes good trade.”

He shrugged in reluctant acquiescence and tracked through the dawn-dark rooms to the front of the shop, resolving to carry out his task with a good will. After all, at home he swept his tin shop.

So what was bothering him?

She was.

He, a man with the experience of four sisters and the admiration of every other female who crossed his path, had never met a woman so impervious to his usual charm, so sure of herself, so smart. The little wren had an answer for everything. He suspected she was testing him. Though why, he couldn’t guess.

Nevertheless, he reminded himself, not even she, prim and trim and self-contained, could be immune to him forever. He would sweeten her up. Women of all ages couldn’t resist an honest compliment an admiring glance, an offered arm or confidence. If she persisted in resisting him, he would find a way to smooth her feathers. He would not let her ruffle his.

“Your meal is ready.”

Her soft words, sudden and right behind him, made him jump like a lad caught loafing. Unthinking, he pivoted. And found himself eye to eye–nose to nose–with Abbigail, two steps above him. A confection of female beauty. In the early sun’s slant rays, she was startlingly pretty. Chocolate brown eyes, a determined nose, a porcelain complexion.

He tried to blank his face of unsummoned appreciation. It wasn’t right to notice her in such intimate detail. He lowered his sights and, for his trouble, got an eyeful of generous bosom.

Under which her arms were sternly folded.

The clock chimed three melodic notes, a quarter till the hour, and he looked up, the focus of his thoughts mercifully broken.

“Breakfast now or not at all, Brother Blum. We open at seven sharp.”

As if his gaze had never strayed to her endowments, she turned and led him through the front room past an open office into the kitchen. Silenced, he kept pace, wondering if women ever considered what occupied men’s minds when they tagged along.

Their bodies, he admitted, with a grateful nod to Mary Clark’s instructive intervention. Even he, neophyte to corporeal pleasure, could see that Sister Abbigail Till’s figure was a miniature of perfection, her posture proud, her waist a size his hands could span, and those hips, that unconsciously inviting sway …

But he would not indulge such thoughts of any but Catharina. Who was not here. He told himself to concentrate on other appetites. A hearty slab of ham and pile of hominy would do him nicely.

The table was sparsely set. The strong dark smell of fresh-boiled coffee teased his nostrils. On tinware of a quality with his own rested two peeled boiled eggs. Calling on manners, he dispatched the meager offering in two bites each and politely folded his hands in his lap, hoping the rest would soon be ready.

Sister Till whisked away his plate.

“Wait,” he said, reaching to stop her and grasping air.

She turned and frowned, real puzzlement deepening the little lines between her brows. “Wait?”

She must think his fast broken. He laughed that he had expected more. “Sister Till, I could have eaten with the Brothers.”

The corners of her mouth turned down. “The eggs were fresh.”

“With respect, two eggs are no meal for a man my size.”

She marched stiffly to her larder and came back with half a quartern loaf of bread and a fist-sized hunk of cheese. “One egg apiece is what we eat. But there, by all means eat your fill.”

The bread was dry and the cheese was hard, but he ate his fill under her widening gaze, invoking patience to help him through this day and his vaunted charm to get him past her armor.

“So much?” Abbigail asked weakly a few moments later. Her best cheese had disappeared, and a full pound of her original four-pound loaf was gone.

Brother Blum pushed his chair back from the table, visibly relaxing. She stood, claiming what little advantage she could over a man more than twice her size. She had been off balance since surprising him on the steps and nearly thrusting her face into his leonine mane of unhatted, unbound hair.

He swallowed the mug of coffee and flashed her a grin. “Twill stave off the hounds of hunger till midday. Danker

She poured him another cup. Perhaps it would earn her another such grin, she thought recklessly. Bah! She censured herself with her next breath. She should be switched, a spinster Single Sister with responsibili ties and a hard-earned, impeccable reputation, entertaining the forward notion of flirting with a Single Brother.

Or worse, a trollop’s hope of a Single Brother flirting back.

Behind his back, she adjusted her Haube with nervous fingers. Her insides had been in a girlish dither since the irresistible blond giant had set her feather duster to trembling yesterday. Today it seemed anything she said or did showed her up to be a simpleton-or an ogre. She had endured Brother Huber too long, grown used to fending off his sly attentions with sterner and sterner edicts.

Now she no longer knew how to make the most innocuous conversation with a reasonable man. Who drank his second mug of coffee down and smiled disarmingly again. “I think, Sister Till, we have not begun aright.”

“’Twas our usual breakfast,” she said defensively.

“Breakfast was fine,” he reassured her. “’Tis my fault. I came here, you see, with certain assumptions about my father’s friend and his store. I assumed, for one, that he worked alone. Evidently he does not.”

His polite pause invited the civil explanation that Abbigail longed to give. “I have been his main assistant for fourteen years.”

He smiled approvingly, and his approval made her insides move. “You must be his right-hand … daughter. None of my sisters would be so devoted.”

She had a friendly urge to inquire about his sisters. But from long-cultivated caution, she would not show a personal interest in any man’s life. Their acquaintance was yet young, and they might have hours all alone in the store. Best to attend to business.

“I keep the books and inventory. I don’t work behind the counter except when my father must be away. Then I mind the store.”

His slow nod implied a gentlemanly bow of apology. “My fault again, entirely.”

“He is not well, ‘tis true. Travel is a hardship for him.”

“But there is this … Brother Huber to assist him?”

“Christian Huber, yes.” She spoke evenly, not wanting to betray her distaste for the man before Brother Blum could form his own opinion. “After he joined our community, he came directly to work for us.”

“And he is your father’s trading partner,” Brother Blum said neutrally.

Too neutrally. In an instant, Abbigail was on her guard. A weasel was a weasel in any guise, she knew from dealing with the pious Brother Huber. She had spent nineteen long months evading his veiled but probing remarks about the store’s value, prospects, profits, and her own single state.

Brother Blum might pry with charm, but he could not manipulate her into telling him more about her father’s business than he deserved to know. It was for her father to say, and indeed, she was not certain what her father planned for his new help.

“My father has no trading partners, Brother Blum. Brother Huber minds the inventory and tends shop. You will learn the business. And I oversee you both.”

She cleared the table in a flash and wrapped the remnants of the bread, avoiding his solemn silence. Her dismissal of his interest must have struck home with him. They both started when the bell over the store’s front door jangled.

Exasperation riddled her. “A customer, Brother Blum. Our idle conversation and your appetite have made us late in opening the store.” She tossed the bread on a shelf in the larder and hurried to her work, leaving him to follow.

4

The prickly Sister set him to sorting women’s things. By afternoon, despite his appreciation of the quite hearty noon meal she had provided of smoked ham and sauerkraut and steaming hot rhubarb pie, Nicholas was fit to be tied. For he had smiled and catered to her, agreed and acquiesced until his true rash, reckless self longed to laugh and shout and run about in large open spaces.

Never mind that he knew all the torments to which masters subjected young apprentices. In his youth, he had been unwilling fodder for the inventive corrections of four good men. He had no idea that mistresses were better at dispensing indignity.

For what had a man of his stature—his strength—his bulk-to do with thread and thimbles and papers of pins? With shoe buckles and knee buckles, or bone buttons as opposed to brass ones? Surely you tossed them into drawers and let the women who wanted them sort them out.

He was made for larger, more weighty matters, for travel, trade and barter. Even Catharina had seen that.

But no, his too-cheerful overseer wanted all her trivia counted, for a start, then sorted into drawers with compartments made of wooden dividers. And she kept finding more baubles and trinkets for him to count-ribands and feathers and several deadly ornamental pins.

“Surely, Sister Till, I did not come to Bethlehem for this.”

She lifted a brow. “You came to learn trade, did you not? Have you not yet committed the prices I have named to memory?”

He glared at his tiny interrogator. The small and precise had always been his nemesis. “I cannot remember everything.”

Not that she had helped him. But he would not complain at the way she rattled off the items’ names and prices at a pace to rival an auctioneer. He suspected she did so to confound him. But to what purpose? He had merely arrived late. What else had he done wrong? Walked? Talked? Breathed? He didn’t know whether to dread her father’s return or look forward to it.

For what could Nicholas expect from the man if his daughter already resented his very presence? Smiles she dismissed. Courtesy had not worked. Soft answers had not won her trust or her approval. Despite his most agreeable, obliging nods, she still saw him unfit to speak to customers.

“Perhaps, Brother Blum, you are not so suited for this work as my father hoped. How can I help you to remember?”

“If I had a slate, notes … to study in the evenings.”

She whisked into a cramped office and returned with sheets of paper, their edges perfectly aligned. “Try these”

Bills of lading, vendors’ notes, receipts, requests. He scanned them eagerly. His annoyance lifted, and he almost rubbed his hands in greed. The quantity of goods, their prices, list and mark-up, dates of purchase, and the amount of coin or scrip tendered.

“Danke, Sister. ‘Tis exactly what I need … except for experience with customers.”

She pokered up. “You think I have been remiss.”

Yes, he thought, and bossy besides. But he carefully did not say so. Upright, successful Brothers of the sort he sought to become did not quibble with Sisters, gloat over their discomfiture, or exult when they conceded a point. He began untangling the ribands.

The clock chimed half-past four when a plump matron entered-a Married Sister with her daughter clinging to her hand. A bright red riband anchored her Little Girl’s simple starched cap.

Nicholas’s taskmaster greeted these new customers in softer tones. “Guten Tag, Sister Grube. And little Juliana. What brings you to our shop today?”

The mother’s gaze roved the wares, noted Nicholas, then modestly moved away. “Ribands for my daughter, Sister Till.”

Nicholas had the briefest moment to register a mischievous challenge in Sister Till’s dark eyes.

“Brother Blum, my father’s new assistant, can help you with those.”

She was giving him a customer who wanted ribands? Nicholas breathed in relief. Ribands he could handle. Sister Grube rolled toward his counter and looked up trustingly.

“I need two coclico ribands, two blossoms, and a crimson one for Juliana.”

Sister Till, arranging bolts of cloth, turned her head as if to hide a smile. Annoyance pricked Nicholas. He had never heard of coclico or blossom. He laid every riband he had seen since morning on the counter for Sister Grube to choose.

The good Sister ran blunt chubby fingers over them and selected a narrow one of deepest red. “Hier, dumpling, das ist deiner crimson one,” she said in mostly German to her daughter. The child beamed at her treasure.

It was purple. Nicholas grimaced at his ignorance. He might have known if he’d ever paid attention to his four sisters’ fabrics or to his brother, the dyer. But shades of anything other than a Sister’s blushing cheeks were a matter of indifference to Nicholas.

Besides, blossoms came in every color under the sun, and what the devil was coclico?

He straightened the remaining ribands for Sister Grube to choose.

“Have you no coclico ones?” she asked.

He didn’t know. Across the room, Sister Till hunched her shoulders with barely repressed laughter. Straightening, she pointed to a drawer he’d not yet opened. “Brother Blum, we have ribands in more colors here. Perhaps you haven’t mastered all the stock.”

Six siblings and four masters had taught him fortitude in defeat. His face a mask, he hoped, of cheerful compliance, he strode across the worn board floor, retrieved a writhing mound of even more varied ribands, and spread them out before his client.

Sister Grube’s round face sparked with pleasure. “Splendid!” She ruffled through them rabidly, plucking out two red ones lighter than the crimson. Then she held up two more that even he could tell were a dainty shade of pink, a Single Sisters’ riband like Sister Till’s.

But did they call it blossom? Or coclico? Idly he cursed a youth misspent in stealing kisses when he could have purloined ribands and learned their names instead.

“These will do nicely,” Sister Grube said, then paid and left.

The instant the latch snicked shut, Sister Till chorded with laughter.

Indignation rising, Nicholas stalked over to her.

She covered a shamefaced grin with her hand. “I do apologize, Brother Blum. You wanted a customer.”

He held his voice to a low roar. “You contrived to make me play the fool.”

“You insisted.”

“So I did. Whereas you … you have bullied me all day.”

Stepping back, Sister Till took him in at his full length, pointedly pausing to study his wide shoulders. “I would not have thought it possible for one of my modest stature to bully so large a man.”

He flashed her a defeated grin, then said, to provoke her, “I might hold my own if you were not so bold”

“So bold!” She blushed scarlet. “I am in charge here.”

“Bullying me,” he insisted.

Her chin jutted out. “My father will be worse. He is very hard to please.”

What if he were? Nicholas groaned. “Heaven help me then.”

“Nor will Brother Huber tolerate such language in our store.”

“Gott im Himmel,” Nicholas swore deliberately, one last time.

Two days later, Abbigail hitched up her skirts and headed across the swept streets of town to the Widows House with a sigh of relief. Brother Blum’s constant teasing and irrepressible charm were driving her to distraction. She was supposed to be in charge of him, and she was losing all control.

Well, let him see if he could run the store without her.

Besides, Sister Benigna Rothrock was overdue a visit, and Abbigail needed a favor her old friend could grant. Her father still absent, she knew she took a risk leaving Nicholas Blum in charge of the store. But she deemed him ready. Although the good Brother had returned her bills and receipts turned every which way and out of order, he had mastered all the inventory within sight. Overnight.

She strolled up the lane to see the Widows House, celebrating the arrival of spring. It blazed great old oaks with miniature gold leaves and tipped evergreen branches with new bronze cones. Still and all, she doubted that the spring splendor made her heart trip so wildly. Three whole days of Brother Blum’s constant company had her usually sensible self in an uncharacteristic dither.

When riled, he looked like a lion, running his strong blunt fingers through his golden hair. Not a woman had entered the store without pausing to gape at his unruly tawny mane or steal secret glances at his commanding physique. Abbigail herself had neither gaped nor peeked, of course, being disciplined and far too smart to fall for surface charms.

It was the inner man that made her heart flutter.

Despite vexing hours in the store filled with trial and error, his good will and enthusiasm reigned. Beneath both his rare anger and his persistent charm, he was adept at the finer points of trade and also hopelessly earnest.

At breakfast she had piled his plate, a feast compared to the abstemious meal her father’s gout required she usually make. She marveled that the handsome Brother ate so much. Thrice what she could manage to stuff in without waddling through the morning.

He worked so hard and was so quick to laugh. Today he’d charmed every female customer who’d dropped by, Sister and outsider alike. Over tin trays of fishhooks and wooden boxes of penknives, men confided in him about she knew not what.

This morning travelers stopping off the Wagon Road bought out her father’s reserve of good French brandy. Brother Blum had hauled three cases at a time up from the cellar and hoisted them onto the strangers’ wagon as easily as if the boxes in his burly arms were stuffed with hummingbird feathers.

In this too, the rugged Brother was exactly the man her aging, gouty father needed. Georg Till could barely work, and Christian Huber’s back was temperamental. What a welcome antidote Nicholas Blum’s health and energy were to her father’s distant management and Huber’s sanctimonious maneuvering.

At the stone Widow’s House, Abbigail knocked and was admitted. It was a simple, serene retreat, filled with women who found joy in a quiet, meditative life.

Tall and slender, Sister Benigna embraced her warmly. “Look at you. Ever tiny and industrious.” She examined her at arm’s length like a proud mother. Which in many ways she was. “A blossom in the springtime.”

“A blossom long since faded,” Abbigail corrected with good humor. “Just because I have no gray hairs doesn’t make me young. See these wrinkles?” She pointed to crow’s feet, newly tracking the corners of her eyes this year, a tribute to the wear and tear of keeping Christian Huber in his place.

Sister Benigna clucked her tongue. “Worn by too much duty and responsibility at your father’s store.”

“Not in the least,” Abbigail said stoudy. “Laundry in the Single Sisters House would be as wearing. Or teaching. Or raising children of my own. No, that would be harder. But you look well.”

The slender Sister almost preened with pleasure, then descended the steep flight of stairs to the kitchen where she held sway. A roast simmering in a kettle on the hearth filled the air with hearty fragrance. “I can tell you want something. But we are fresh out of Strudel.”

Abbigail warmed. The Sister knew her too well not to guess her purpose. “Apple butter.”

Sister Benigna raised a brow. “Who in your house likes apple butter? Surely not your father. It has spices!”

They shared the easy laughter of old friendship. After her mother died and Abbigail had taken over her father’s household, she had gone to Sister Rothrock to learn to cook for him. They had ruined one perfectly good dish after another, stripping recipes of herbs and spices in order to please his finicky palate, as the Widowed Sister tutted and teased. Under her good-humored tutelage, solemn, motherless Abbigail had learned to laugh again.

“We have a newcomer,” Abbigail explained, surprised that the town’s endless, harmless threads of gossip had not reached her friend. But then Widows lived apart by choice.

“Oh?” Sister Benigna’s head tilted with interest as she headed for the larder.

“A new assistant for my father, sent up from Salem.”

“A Single Brother,” the Sister surmised.

“With an appetite. He eats more than we three together eat, then dares to look as if I had deprived him. I cannot guess how much extra I’ll be tossing into ketdes by the time my father and Brother Huber return.”

Her friend would not be thrown off course. “A young Single Brother?”

“Not so young. Of an age to marry.” Abbigail bit her tongue.

Smiling, the Sister casually selected a gleaming jar of dark, rich apple butter from a shelf. “Of an age to marry?”

Abbigail’s heart fluttered. For three days she’d worked to stifle the inescapable conclusion that her likable assistant was an extremely eligible Single Brother. She set about to stamp out Sister Benigna’s too-eager matchmaking with a bold retort. “So it would seem. Every unclaimed Sister who has entered our store has set her Haube for him. Even little Juliana Grube stepped out from behind her mother’s skirts to encourage his attentions.”

“He is handsome then.”

“Handsome, hungry, huge.”

Benigna Rothrock sobered. “Have a care, Abbigail. ‘Tis not quite seemly for you to be alone with him.”

A blush heated Abbigail’s face. “The store is almost always full of customers, and he sleeps at the Single Brothers House,” she said. Suddenly that bit of information seemed too personal a matter for her to know-let alone express-about a man who made her heart soar.

“Nor is it safe. I fear you will be hurt.”

“I won’t be. I have my duty to my father. There will be no husband for me.”

“Never say so, child.”

“I’m no child. I’m a full grown, aging Single Sister.”

“Not that there’s the first thing wrong with being a Single Sister.” Sister Benigna said lightly. “There’s no pesky husband to stand between you and the Savior.”

Abbigail sputtered at her friend’s mild irreverence.

The Widowed Sister quickly sobered. “’Tis an honorable calling, Abbigail, to be a Single Sister.”

Abbigail heartily agreed. “Honorable-and safe. I have suffered enough from the drawing of the Lot. Twice it said nein, denying me Brothers I would happily have married.”

“You did not love them.”

“I would have learned. No, my heart is sealed to love, Sister.”

At the door, Sister Benigna gently folded Abbigail’s hands around the jar of apple butter. “No one’s heart is ever sealed, my dear, whether or not the Lot allows our heart’s desire.”

5

After Sister Till left the store, Nicholas rested a hip on the tall clerk’s stool behind the counter and kneaded his aching arms. Move this, load that, sweep here, polish there–she had been after him all day. Intent, no doubt, on wearing him down. But on this third day of their acquaintance, he had prevailed on her in his own way, garnering two smiles, one smothered giggle, and an amazing blush. With the pride of a conqueror, he savored the times he had penetrated her armor.

Especially this last time. Citing errands to run, she had dashed off rather quickly after that blush, brought on by his audacious questions about whether Sisters were allowed to wear the fine laces she stocked in the store. And if so, where exactly did they hide them?

He didn’t believe her excuse about errands. She was fleeing him, he thought with a hearty rush of male pride.

His presence must be plaguing her sensibilities just as hers did his. Sensibilities, balderdash. Senses. Her voice was pure as the thrush’s evening song, at least when she was not upbraiding him. He labored to evoke her praise. Now that he had handled bolts of silk, he knew her skin was as sleek as that exotic fabric. For he had stolen opportunities to touch her, brushing her hand with his fingers as he tendered her some coins.

Worst, or best of all, she smelled of roses, morning, noon, and night; her sweet uplifting fragrance tickled his nose and the back of his throat and made his lungs expand to take in more.

To say nothing of other expansions he fought with manly valor.

He couldn’t help himself. From the first, the sight of her had pleased him. The creamy delicacy of her features satisfied some aesthetic vision of woman he hadn’t known he had. His ethereal Catharina was obviously a beauty, unmistakably divine to one and all, while Abbigail Till was pretty with a precision easily overlooked. But not by him. His gaze was drawn to doebrown eyes that could not conceal a thought. To a refined nose with a trace of stubborn arch. To rosepetal lips begging to be kissed.

Disconcerted, he ran his fingers through his hair.

What in the world was he thinking?

For the first time in his life, he had spent three days alone in the company of a woman who was not family. And his senses were on fire with her. This conflagration was the fleshly, profane danger that the Brethren’s way of life aimed to check. Boys and girls were schooled separately, and men and women lived apart until or unless they married.

Up until Mary Clark, he had had no idea that his sensual self was so wanton. So vital. So unremittingly single-minded.

And so unfaithful. He summoned up his last sight of Catharina, tall and blonde and shimmering with innocence amidst the purity of the blossoming peach trees. What an endearing reflection of sweetness and compliance she had been that morning. Still, he had to admit that his image of her had grown slightly faint. That his heart did not race as it once had. What a fickle, feckless heart to faint because of distance.

But he was only appreciating Sister Till, he told himself. With Mary Clark, he had acted. And afterward vowed he would never again stray with a woman not his wife.

The store’s bell jangled as a customer entered. An outsider, judging from his dress, trimmed out in every point where a Brother’s would be plain. His coat sported engraved silver buttons, and lace edged the sleeves of his fine linen shirt. He even wore an oldfashioned powdered wig and smelled of rum cologne.

Dressed in sober brown, Nicholas greeted him, glad to break his troubling, tantalizing thoughts. The gentleman wanted a particular year of a wine from Sicily. Never having heard of it, Nicholas could only search the cellar.

Briefly indulging the heady feeling of being the store’s proprietor, he remembered to lock the cash drawer behind him. Then he lit a lantern and descended the narrow cellar steps to find the wine. Cases of wine from France, New York, and Germany lay about. But wine from Sicily eluded him. Long minutes passed in a fruitless search of unfamiliar crates and cases, and Nicholas cursed his luck.

Abbigail Till had whisked herself away at the very moment he needed her direction.

Upstairs, boots scuffed and spurs jingled across the wide plank floor. More customers. He must not leave them all alone. Brethren could be trusted, but the fine spring afternoon had brought outsiders to town in droves. Abandoning his search for wine, he mounted the stairs, his lantern’s light flickering on the damp stone steps.

Above him the cellar door swung open. A man’s large physique filled the frame, a stout club brandished in his heavy arms.

“What have you done with her?” the stranger blustered.

“Done with whom?” Nicholas asked, sure nothing was amiss. But he calmly set the lantern down and tensed to defend himself.

“With whom?” the man echoed caustically. “With Sister Till, of course. We left her safe.”

Safe? Nicholas almost laughed. They had left her alone. He peered up at the big man’s face, shadowed beneath a tricorn with a foppish feather. No, he was too large to be the diminutive taskmaster’s father, for he was of a size with Nicholas. And he hoped her father wasn’t such a fool, to speak without thinking. Perhaps this was the assistant? Huber?

Nicholas held up his hands, palms out and empty. “I am Nicholas Blum, Brother Till’s new-”

“You, sir, are a liar and a scoundrel. What have you done with Sister Till?”

Nicholas moved up a step, seeking level ground to reason with the man. “Sister Till stepped out-”

Without warning, the club came down, aimed for the crown of his head. Instinctively, he caught it, pulled himself up the last step, and found himself shoulder to shoulder with a not so very young, irate Brother grappling to control the club.

“You … mistake … me.” Nicholas grunted with the effort to fend off Huber’s erratic thrusts. A rash of anger splotched his fair cheeks, and his snuff-scented breath gusted across their locked arms.

All of a sudden he released the club. Nicholas fought for balance, arms scrabbling for the door’s frame. A fist collided with his jaw, and a volley of punches drove into his belly.

He caught himself–barely–against the door, his anger flaring. This self-righteous idiot meant to push him down the stairs. Steep stone stairs.

A second blow slammed into Nicholas’s eye. Blood spurted, blinding him on one side. Staggering on the top step, he righted himself and mustered strategy. A boyhood spent in schoolyard brangles had taught him to fight hard.

Forearms up to guard his face, he kicked out a powerful leg, hooked a heel behind the man’s knees, and felled him like a rotted pine.

To Nicholas’s deep satisfaction, the hapless Brother thudded onto the hall floor, a heap of stunned flesh, gasping like a beached whale. Nicholas straddled him in a flash and pinned one flailing arm above his head.

“Release me, you–you–intruder!” the man sputtered and jammed a hand under Nicholas’ jaw, digging sharp nails into his cheek.

Intruder? He belonged here! He drew back his free fist to strike.

Light footsteps dashed down the hallway. Sister Till to his rescue? “Nicholas, no! Stop!” she cried out. “’Tis Brother Huber you assault”

Nicholas looked up at her, sucking in a ragged breath. She took him for the aggressor, he realized, chagrined.

But pleased. In her urgency, she had broken protocol and used his given name.

Her dark eyes bright with concern, she fluttered above them, brandishing a walking stick and a jar of something brown for weapons. “What do you think you are doing to Brother Huber?”

An ungovernable grin stole across his face. Unless he wanted to sound all of twelve years old again, he could not protest, “He started it.”

Instead, he said, “Yes, I figured out who he is. But he takes me for a thief. Kindly tell him that I am not before he tries to pitch me down the stairs again.”

“He wouldn’t!” she said, aghast.

Beneath him, Huber bucked like a cantankerous horse. A large, strong cantankerous horse.

Grunting, Nicholas grappled to contain him. “He did.”

She rolled her eyes. In disbelief? Nicholas wondered. Or annoyance? Which man would she credit? Her father’s trusted assistant or a trying interloper she had just met?

She knelt beside them, her walking stick and the jar of brown stuff pressed to her ample breasts, her tone stern. “Brother Christian Huber, meet Brother Nicholas Blum. My father’s new assistant Who arrived, Brother Huber, while you were gone. Late, I’ll grant, but no intruder. Now stand up, both of you, and apologize.”

Nicholas fought not to grin at the tongue-lashing laced with courtesy. It was worthy of his stepmother at her very best. Did the little wren expect two enormous, angry pugilists to follow her orders? Taken together, he and Huber made up five of her at least.

“Today, Brother Blum.”

Feeling a little sheepish, he eased off his adversary’s torso and stood. Huber lumbered up like a grouchy bear and glared at him. Thirty, perhaps thirty-five, good-looking in an ascetic, aquiline way that sat uneasily with his great height. Though fine-featured, he had proved to be no weakling.

“Apologize,” she repeated as if they were naughty schoolboys and she the only grown-up in the room.

“Who?” they asked in unison.

“Both of you! You first, Brother Huber, because you had no call to pick up that club again. Who would rob us in broad daylight? And then you, Brother Blum, because you should know fighting never solves disputes.”

With a surprisingly good grace, Huber stepped up and apologized to her. But the man did not apologize to Nicholas for those three underhanded blows.

From years of getting into scrapes, Nicholas apologized to both Sister Till and Huber as if the fault were solely his. Which, given his size and strength and the-devil-made-me-do-it attitude, people usually believed it to be. It never hurt, he had learned, to go the extra mile.

Humility did not impress Sister Till. Her walking stick tapped his shoulder with nagging authority. “The vintage Mr. Fortney seeks is under the cellar stairs, bottom row, third case from the right.”

Huber bowed and left the room–to change, he said. Nicholas retreated to the cellar, grinning with appreciation for the diminutive Sister. One or two schoolmasters had scolded him more thoroughly than she.

But they had not been pretty.

Moments later, he climbed up from the dank dark room with a case of best Sicily wine, too distracted by Sister Till’s rebuke to feel the weight of the wine or the sting of his new wounds. But his neglected customer had backed the tiny Sister up against the counter for an obviously unwelcome chat. She leaned away from him, arms flat across her breasts, trapped between her shopkeeper’s duty to cater to a customer and illconcealed repugnance at the man’s presumption.

A roar of fierce protectiveness stuck in Nicholas’s throat. He dropped the case on the counter with a thunk. His bloodied face must look fierce, and he was glad of it.

“Your wine, sir,” he said.

“Load it,” the gentleman said dismissively, pointing to the door, his eyes fixed on Sister Till, his face too close to hers for common decency.

Nicholas opened the case and took out a bottle. “You should inspect this first,” he said, and thrust it and himself into the narrow space between them.

The man glowered. “Wha-at?”

Sister Till slipped behind the counter for protection.

“Your wine, sir,” Nicholas said implacably, shielding her from the man’s sight. “Is this the wine you sought?”

With a disgusted grunt, the man took the bottle and inspected the label. “’Twill do.” He trailed off haughtily, then waved a hand at his purchase. “Load them. I have tarried long enough in this … establishment.”

Nicholas followed the man from the store, loaded the wine, and plunged back inside. But his rescued Sister Till scowled at him. “You! Wait for me in the kitchen.”

Surprised by her severity, Nicholas frowned. The movement pulled at the outside corner of his right eye where his fingers confirmed a puffy, tender, sticky mess. A champion’s trophy, he thought wryly, earned for her.

He ducked his head under the doorway to the Tills’ private quarters. In the kitchen window’s light, he examined his wounds with an experienced eye. His struggle for the club had scraped his palms and fingers. He rolled up his sleeves. Angry red bruises decorated his forearms where he had warded off blows. He felt blood crusted on his cheek, and his eye throbbed like the very devil. Must look it, too. He wanted sympathy.

Sister Till swept in like a killdeer over a lake. “’Tis well for you that Father missed your disturbance and retreated to his bed. ‘Twas not a fitting introduction, Brother Blum.”

“My fault entirely,” he admitted, adhering to his policy of never dodging blame.

“Fortunately, too,” she said, “Brother Huber is not seriously hurt. I left him to mind the store.”

Her frank rebuffs amused him, but Nicholas turned out his hands contritely. “I could scarcely have bungled my beginning here more badly.”

She pounced on his bloody palms. “Hurt there, too!” Her eyes glinted. “Wait here.” She turned on her little heel and briskly walked away.

He indulged himself with the vision of her sensibly booted yet dainty feet. Of her tiny waist flaring to well-defined hips. Of a finger’s breadth of pale bare skin gleaming at the nape of her slender neck. He was wounded in the line of duty, he told himself. What could be the harm?

She retrieved butter, a cloth, and an ominous brown jug from the larder, then joined him by the window in a pool of golden light. All he saw was the perfection of her creamy complexion-and a moment’s hesitation to address her task.

Boldly she clasped his thick battered forearm in her small hand and steadied it. He steadied himself, overcome by the sweet sight of her fragility against his brute strength. He watched her face as she inspected his wounds and pursed her pretty lips. “Hmm. Not so serious as the palm.”

She whisked to the table, upended the brown jug against the cloth, and returned. “Close your eyes. This will hurt,” she said briskly.

Her concern amused him. “I can bear it.”

Too firmly she pressed the cloth soaked with fiery brandy to his wound. Against his will he let out a hiss of pain.

She glared at him. “Serves you right for fighting.”

Defending oneself from a neck-breaking assault at the top of a stair was allowed, he almost retorted. But he didn’t. He had watched his father deal with first his mother, then his stepmother, and had learned better than to defend even a reasonable action to a woman in a righteous rage. No, a sensible man waited for the event to prove him right.

He braced for Abbigail’s attentions to that arm. Was it imagination, or had her touch softened? Perhaps, but the alcohol stung like the very dickens.

“Danke,”he said after she finished, giving a grateful smile through clenched teeth. He offered her his palms, reminding himself that these wounds were minor. She upended the jug again and came at him with the dripping cloth.

Slowly and thoroughly, she proceeded to blot blood and clear dirt from his right palm. He would not flinch. Not in front of a mere woman bent on tormenting him. A tiny woman. He focused on her delicacy, her diminutive stature, and denied the pain.

His gaze rested on her Haube-topped head. It did not reach his collarbones. On tiptoes, he thought with amusement, she could not see over his shoulder. His stepmother and sisters, the only women he knew well, were so tall. Catharina was so tall. Tiny was different Tiny was … alluring.

Sister Abbigail dampened the cloth with liquor again and moved her ministrations to his other hand. “Hold still,” she ordered.

He gritted his teeth and stared at the fine blue veins that pulsed at her temple. At strength combined with delicacy.

The brandy burned raw flesh. He narrowed his focus. Under the edges of the crisp white linen cap, a fringe of mahogany hair peeked out in unruly swirls. The intimate sight of the fragile new growth surprised him, touched him.

He had never noticed such about a woman in his life. This close, she seemed precious. Vulnerable, perhaps even to him.

What a peculiar notion. He protected women, except when he was stealing kisses from them. This confident little spinster would no doubt declare herself invulnerable to men. Nevertheless, he realized with a rush of warm certainty, he wanted to protect her from men who did not value or respect her. He wanted to draw her into the safety of his arms where arrogant customers would not dare impose on her.

He wanted to hold her.

He wanted to feel the press of her small bones against his flesh.

He stared down at her in stunned amazement.

Finished with his arms and hands, she glanced up. Her luminous chocolate eyes met his, and she actually blushed. Pausing as if uncertain what came next, she held his hands a moment longer. Gently.

“I … you … just stand there, in the light.” Her voice broke, oddly hoarse. She released him and stepped away.

Nicholas fisted his hands to stop from pulling her back. And a realization struck him, as blinding as the sun slanting through the mullioned casement.

Abbigail Till needed protection indeed. Protection from him.

6

Abbigail knew she was in trouble the moment Nicholas Blum tendered her his excessively contrite apology, concealing a grin but not the deep dimple that creased the left side of his too, too handsome face.

In her protracted spinsterhood, she had touched many men. She had cut her father’s hair, bathed his swollen feet, put on his socks, and buckled his shoes. Occasionally when exchanging goods or coin, customers’ fingers grazed hers. Sometimes even Brother Huber needed a wound dressed or a splinter removed.

But this afternoon when she had entered her small, familiar kitchen, her heart swooped at the sight of the man she intended, with all due deliberation, to touch. Standing by the window, Nicholas Blum awaited her, tall and strong, calmly and casually inspecting his wounded hands. A golden afternoon light glinted off his tousled tawny hair and burnished the features of his battered face.

Oh dear. How could she properly attend to a man she wanted to touch so badly?

With firmness, she ordered herself. She would hide her awakened senses behind a schoolmistress’s disgust of the fight. And give his wounds a merciless cleansing with hard liquor.

She swiftly carried out her task, sheltered by his massive, courteous presence and breathing in his heated scent. Though resolved not to be affected by him, she had sighed. And weakened. His abject, boyish apology had charmed her, the more so as she knew Huber was to blame.

So she brandished her cleansing cloth boldly, determined not to spare him. But Nicholas had only to flash his rakish dimple against the pain, and her heart dived. He accepted her rather brutal remedy with thanks, and it soared.

She had cleaned his last scrape, looked up, and caught him drinking in the sight of her as if she were a wonder. She. A wonder.

“I … um …” she had stammered, feeling discovered. As if he saw the soaring of her heart.

Heaven help me finish this, she prayed. He was only a Single Brother needing nursing. But he was not merely another Brother. He was the man who had rushed to her defense. She cut off a chunk of butter for the bruises on his face.

Stretching to reach his cheek, she smoothed the butter in. It softened the light stubble of his beard. She tried not to be awed by the square strength of his jaw, by the solid column of his neck beneath his bloodstained stock, by the breadth and depth of his shoulders. But he towered over her, and she had a clear impression of power banked, of energy reined in, of something waiting to explode. She stretched still higher to reach the bruising at his eye but could barely see what she was doing.

“Could you just…” She didn’t know what to ask. “Lean over? You’re so-”

“Monstrous, yes, I know,” he said, grinning, wincing as the grin wrinkled the cut at the corner of his eye. “You are a sparrow to my giant hawk. But don’t let my great bulk stop you.”

Before she could blink, his abraded hands circled her waist, and he set her feet on the low stool she kept by to step up to the cupboard. Caught by surprise, she gasped. He was strong, gentle, and much too close. His large hands lingered at her waist.

“Better?” he asked smoothly, letting her go. But he grimaced as his hands released her.

“Humph,” she answered, trying for equanimity. He had lifted her as effortlessly as he had those three cases of wine. His touch had singed her through the thick, practical linen of her day dress, but she couldn’t let on. She put her hands on her hips in disapproval. “You need not prove your strength, Brother Blum.”

The dimple flashed. “Twas naught.”

She resisted the pull of his attraction. The man charmed anyone in skirts. “If you would just hold still and let me finish. Close your eyes.”

He sucked in his breath, squared his broad shoulders, and obediently closed his eyes. “Do with me as you will.”

What was her will? She could say nothing. Nothing smart, nothing withering. She could only struggle to suppress a new, embarrassing unsteadiness of hand.

What was his will? Knowing she would hurt him, he put himself in her power wholly, gladly, trustingly.

In the silence of the store’s private quarters, her hand trembled at the intimate freedom of touching a man. At touching this man. The skin by his eye where no beard grew was luxuriously soft. His flaxen lashes were thick and long, and sunlight burnished them to gold. She bit her lower lip, forcing her attention to the bruise, to swirling the butter into his purpling flesh.

But she saw past flesh to him, to what he really was: kind, gentle, and amusing, qualities surprising in a man so large. Surprising in any man. To keep his charms at bay, she forced herself to be tyrannical. He laughed her sternness off; her injunctions simply diverted him. His sweet, light acceptance of her feigned bossiness made her insides soft with tenderness.

Tenderness for him. A man she could have loved.

Oh Lord, she thought. Too late. She was too old. Her time to marry, like her chance for love, had passed. Her temperament had turned shrewish. But now, because of Nicholas Blum’s compelling presence, her world would never be the same. She would carry this sweet moment with her forever, to her single cot, to her single grave.

“May I open my eyes?” Nicholas asked at last. A hint of teasing laced his question.

Her cheeks heated. “Of course!”

He did, and his cobalt gaze bore into her. She couldn’t look away. She could hear only the sound of their breathing, his breaths deep and slow and even, hers fast, shallow, as if she had just run up from the river to escape a sudden shower.

His brows lowered into a question. “Sister Till? Is aught the matter?” He raised his hand to her cheek, and his finger swept away a tear she did not know that she had shed.

“No, naught is the matter,” she whispered, mortified by her thoughts, by her distraction. “I feared to hurt you worse.”

“You haven’t hurt me,” he lied softly.

Nothing was wrong, and everything. Brother Blum had just rippled the surface of the little pond that was her life. For years it had been far from smooth, but she had made herself content.

He lowered his head and planted a tender kiss on her forehead. Then he spoke, his breath warm on her brow. “I will try to do better. Thank you for your care, Sister Abbigail.”

Abbigail’s breath caught in her throat. Sister Abbigail. He had said her given name again. He had offered it as if he had known her all his life. That and his too-sweet kiss pleased her far too much for her to play the shrew and admonish him.

The late-afternoon sun cast a golden glow about the kitchen, and the sweet music of vespers had ended a few minutes ago. Abbigail’s father, short and dark and precise like herself, sat in the parlor reading scripture. Complaining of his gout, he had begged off walking to Gemeinhaus for services. Naturally, he expected his daughter to attend him. Dutifully, she restrained her wishes and obeyed him. She was setting out an evening meal for him and the pugilists who had gone to pray.

At the hearth she lifted a kettle off its stand and lugged it toward the table.

“That is far too heavy for you, Sister. Let me do it,” Brother Huber called out from the back door. He stalked into the kitchen, Brother Blum close on his heels. Tension simmered between them. She heard it in Brother Huber’s pointed offer to help her-and saw it in the excessively courteous way Brother Blum held the door for his attacker. But Nicholas Blum had offered no excuses for the row, no defense of his involvement in it. Admirable of him, she thought, to take responsibility.

She turned the ketde’s contents into a deep redware bowl. “It’s just potatoes. I can manage nicely, danke.“

The shop assistant’s lips thinned as always when she declined his meddlesome aid. He took a place behind his usual chair and bowed his head, quickly masking his displeasure. And rehearsing grace, no doubt. Uncharitably, she wished his manner matched his show of piety.

“’Tis quite a feast, Sister Till,” Brother Blum said heartily, as if to cut the tension.

“Too much food,” her father grumbled. He took his cushioned chair at the table’s head and gestured to the younger men to join him.

Never mind her. Her father took for granted her presence, her service, her compliance. She sat anyway, facing him and bracketed by two massive hostile males, and allowed herself a tight sigh of resignation.

Her father was home at last, and he was not well pleased, not with Brother Huber nor with Brother Blum.

And certainly not with her. She should have waited, her father had complained earlier, shutting her with himself in the store’s small office. It was no more her part to introduce his old friend Jacob Blum’s son to his duties in the store than to instruct him for the road. No wonder Brother Huber had become confused and taken the newcomer for an intruder.

She justified her action: The store had benefited from the younger Blum’s strength and energy. Georg Till dismissed the idea. He was not to be coddled. He was not that ill.

“Potatoes, everyone?” she asked after Huber said grace. Then she passed the covered redware dish to the handsome man on her left Even seated, Nicholas Blum towered over her, making her feel not small but … protected.

She dashed away the unwelcome thought. Never mind that he had defended her against the rude outsider. She would not let herself be swayed by that. Nor by the tender touch they had just shared.

Her father gave his sparsely loaded plate a distasteful nudge away. “None for me.”

Annoyance spurted through Abbigail. No doubt, he had gone off his strict diet while away from her care and was cross from pain.

“Nor for me,” said Brother Huber quietly. His deference to her father’s habits rankled Abbigail. Could he hope that this would recommend him to a selfcentered man who no longer noticed any trouble others took in his behalf?

Brother Blum ate heartily. But when she glanced his way, she saw confusion crease his brow. Anyone, she supposed, would struggle to make sense of the subtle undercurrents of policy here.

Her father finally pushed back his half-cleared plate and addressed his visitor. “Your father is well?”

Brother Blum quickly swallowed a bite of the smoked ham.

Mercy, she thought to herself, she was aware of every bite he took.

“Yes, sir. As is the entire family, stepmother, brothers, sisters all.”

Her father’s mouth turned down with disapproval. “Ah, yes. That Indian wife of his.”

Embarrassment crawled up Abbigail’s spine. She thought her father liked the senior Blum. But then, he well might. Nothing hindered her father’s endless fault-finding-not like, not love, not Christian charity.

Beside her, easygoing Nicholas Blum bristled, but his mild response belied offense. “My stepmother, whom we all admire, happens to be English. But she does speak Cherokee, learned from the tribe that saved and raised her as a child.”

Admiring Brother Blum’s quick defense of his stepmother, Abbigail seconded his effort. “We have a mission among the Cherokee, do we not?”

Brother Huber dabbed at the corners of his mouth, a sign of a pronouncement. “The heathens do need word of the Savior.”

Brother Blum passed over that piety and spoke to her. “And there will soon be mission schools. My brother Matthias learned Cherokee from our stepmother. He may become the first Brother to answer a call to teach them.”

Her father scowled at her. A Brethren of the old order, he disapproved of chatter between Brothers and Sisters, believing men should talk to men. He addressed Nicholas clumsily. “You had a good trip.”

Nicholas smoothly shifted his attention to her father. “Safe but rather too slow, I am sorry to say. I regret that I was not here to spare you a troublesome journey.”

Her father’s lips thinned to an unconvincing smile. “Twas inconvenient. Nor was it my daughter’s place to start you working in the store. You must overlook her. She is bolder than a good Sister should be.”

At the table’s edge, Brother Huber folded his hands. In pious accord with her father’s rebuke, she thought, setting her jaw. Or was she in truth too sensitive, her spirit too rebellious? Even Brother Blum had found her bold. She couldn’t help it. Years spent managing her father’s store had made her so. Mortification swept her.

“Not that she doesn’t understand our business thoroughly,” her father continued. “I taught her myself—despite some opposition from the Single Sisters.”

“Your efforts are to be commended, sir, as are the fruits of your teaching,” Brother Blum said courteously, asking for the potatoes and taking another serving.

Risking her father’s disapproval, Abbigail spoke to Brother Blum again. “When I first started, I scarcely understood myself how much I had to learn.”

He gave her a sympathetic smile. “Nor did I, evidently. And I am grateful for your instruction.”

Her father crossed his pewter tableware on his plate with a disapproving clank. “Your important instruction begins tomorrow, Brother Blum. At daybreak.”

The old man pulled off the napkin tucked into the stock that wound around his neck and made a feeble attempt to stand.

“Help me, daughter,” he croaked.

She rose in a flash, but so did Brother Blum. “May I assist you, sir?”

Her father stopped in surprise.

Brother Huber stiffened. “It is the dutiful woman’s office to assist her father.”

“I do not question her duty or her willingness,” Brother Blum said evenly. “But I am three times her size and equally as willing to offer aid.”

“No, Brother Huber has the right of it,” her father said. “It is my daughter’s place.”

Nicholas Blum stepped forward until Abbigail stopped him with a quick shake of her head and an uncertain smile. “Oblige him in this, please,” she said quietly. “Oblige me.”

Obedient to her request, he stood back as she supported her father up the stairs, filled with a deepening admiration for the surprising Nicholas Blum.

Was he sleekly charming, as she first feared? Or was he truly kind? For in this and other attentions, she saw in him an earnest charity, a light, that warmed her lonely heart.

7

Daybreak, and the rain, came too soon for Nicholas. Wet weather dampened the spirits of a man who thrived on vigorous activity. He found himself strolling the streets of Bethlehem, the sulfuric smell of the first drops of morning rain rising from the road.

“Hurry along, Brother Blum. The Lord waits not for those who tarry,” Christian Huber urged, striding briskly toward Till’s store.

Lagging behind, Nicholas allowed himself to make a boyish face of disgust. “What is our rush? With the clouds, ‘tis barely light enough to see.”

Puffing with aggravation, Huber stopped and faced him for the first time since their altercation. “There must be no ill will between us, Brother Blum. No ill will at all. ‘Tis not Christian to hold a grudge. ‘Twas a miserable mistake.”

Nicholas shrugged. Why was the man beating this dead horse? “We apologized. I never say I am sorry if I am not.”

“Very well.” Huber walked faster toward the store, puffing harder.

Breathing easily, Nicholas caught up to him. “Still, ‘tis not yet six o’clock. The store doesn’t open until seven.”

“Surely you want to make a good impression.”

The only thing Nicholas surely wanted was to see how Abbigail had fared overnight. Yesterday her father’s mere appearance had leeched the sparkle from her eyes. “My honest work will speak for me,” he said.

Huber gave a condescending smile. “So it will. For you must learn to sweep and straighten, Brother Blum. Sweep and straighten.”

Nicholas suppressed annoyance. He’d learned that. And at the hands of a far more appealing teacher. But this officious, pasty-faced man could not rile him.

“Yes, of course,” he said dismissively, wishing himself back in Salem’s Single Brothers House where he had once enjoyed the camaraderie of men. At fourteen he had readily adapted to dormitory life when he had joined the other apprentices. A natural leader, he had been well liked. Neither overly modest nor unduly shy, he had always accepted the communal living of the Brethren’s Single Brothers. His restless and outspoken nature had even learned to accommodate the often monkish silence that pervaded the sleeping lofts.

But he minded Huber’s taking him under his wing last night. Huber had persuaded the Brother in charge to give Nicholas the cot nearest to him. Nicholas couldn’t relish the thought of the man’s presence day and night, for he couldn’t help noticing what he did not wish to see. The fastidious Huber had risen a full hour early for what should have been a few moments of private prayer followed by simple ablutions and dressing for the day.

Nicholas had tried to doze. But the man polished the shiny buckles on his shoes to a squeaking gleam. Then flung away three stocks before his neckwear passed inspection in a tiny silvered glass which he secreted beneath his mattress. Then he tried on several waistcoats, though most Brothers kept only two. The man was a spectacle of complications, pious but vain, obliging but demanding.

And he had appointed himself Nicholas’s advisor.

Nicholas ground his teeth. He was his own man, beholden to none and answering only to himself. And to Brother Till, he reminded himself, until he mastered trade and could return to Salem a successful man to marry Catharina.

On this gray morning, even that prospect appeared dim and bleak. A gloom hung over the Tills’ kitchen even as the hearth fire roared, breakfast meats sizzled, and the hearty aroma of rich sweet coffee drifted through the air. Nicholas’s stomach rumbled, but his eyes sought out Abbigail. To his concern, her pale face was expressionless. She ducked her head, but he refused to help her avoid him.

“Smells wonderful, Sister,” he said cheerfully as he did every morning.

He thought Huber masked a scowl.

Abbigail simply shoved the broom at Nicholas. Undaunted, he twirled it in his fingers, shouldered it, and grinned. “You see, Brother Huber, my instruction in sweeping is already underway.”

Huber huffed in disapproval. Of Nicholas’s cheer in the gloom? Of his bent for work? Nicholas left him huffing, wondering who had swept the floors before. Surely not the immaculate Single Brother. Dust would spoil his treasured clothes.

In the front rooms, Nicholas applied himself to the chore, taking pride in putting the store in order for the morning’s custom. In the kitchen a few minutes later, he found the table set with plain pewterware and cracked crockery mugs. Till and Huber had claimed their chairs, waiting to be served.

Uncertain of his role, Nicholas put away the broom and offered to help Abbigail with her burdens. She waved him away, and he sat, facing Abbigail’s empty seat. Shortly she came to the table. “Your egg, Father,” she said flatly and placed it on his plate.

Nicholas watched her move silently to the hearth where she piled meat and steaming cornbread on platters. Her change puzzled him. He much preferred the bossy Abbigail to the subdued Single Sister who meekly ferried platters to the table.

“Such a superfluity of food is wasteful, daughter,” Till grumbled.

“Yes, Father,” she said blandly.

Father, Nicholas noted. How formal she was. And how unkind her parent was. Nicholas’s notion of parents was so different-his virile, stalwart Papa had never been an unapproachable Father, not even after one of Nicholas’s escapades. It was hard to respect the ungrateful Georg Till. His dutiful daughter must have arisen in the dark to prepare their generous meal.

With a clockmaker’s precision, Till tapped all around the egg, peeled it and sliced it in half. Bright yellow yolk oozed out. “Raw, daughter,” he said with distaste. “It plays havoc with my digestion.”

“Yes, Father. Put that one on my plate. Another simmers in the pot.”

Nicholas frowned. She deferred to her father’s complaint. Under his dominion, she was flat, bland, slow, dull, all the life stamped out of her. Where was the woman who had taken him to task for being late? His protective nature wanted to rush to her defense. His sense of right wanted to reproach the father for crushing his daughter’s spirit.

Then, behind her father’s back, Nicholas caught her gaze. She crimped her mouth and rolled her eyes. Nicholas speared a rasher of bacon and breathed a litde easier. Her father demanded and she obeyed, but she did not bow.

Till finished his hard-boiled egg and adjusted himself in his cushioned chair. “For today, Brother Huber will attend to customers. Brother Blum, you will unload the wagon. The work will acquaint you with the stock and where everything belongs. Daughter, check off every item and direct Brother Blum where to put it.”

“Before or after I wash up, Father?”

“After, after,” he said impatiently. “Brother Huber can assist Brother Blum until you are free.”

Huber assisted very little. “My back,” he said, dipping into his silvered snuff box as he left pecks and bushels and all sizes of crates and bales for Nicholas to tote and Abbigail to organize.

Hours later, shirt soaked through from slogging in the rain to the wagon and back, Nicholas had to admit he was somewhat winded and more than a little sore.

Work, work, work. He might as well be a pack mule. At the counter, Huber, unruffled and moreover dry, riffled through a ledger in between three paltry sales. Worst of all, Abbigail had changed again. His taskmaster became relentless, her injunctions unrelieved by his attempts at teasing and her former apt retorts.

Near noon, Nicholas struggled manfully to lug one last unbalanced load down the cellar stairs.

“Put it there,” she prompted, pointing to the highest shelf around, almost beyond his reach. He was nearly panting, but pride would not let him reveal his exertion for her to see. He hoisted the crate to one shoulder, shifted his weight beneath it, and shoved it back in place.

Then he turned to her, exasperated. “Who did this work before? Not your father, obviously. Nor Brother Huber, who sits there idly paging through the books and savoring his snuff.”

Her mouth pursed prettily. “Papa hired the town slaves, Brother Blum.”

Nicholas laughed out loud. “Ah. That explains my new status-your slave.”

In the dim privacy of the dank cellar, Nicholas could have sworn she stifled a laugh. “Brother Huber’s back is, um, unreliable.”

“So he told me while you washed up. Yet our altercation yesterday did him no harm.”

A cloud of warning flitted across her face. “No good, either,” she cautioned. “He remembers these things. Take care not to make him your enemy.”

Concern pumped through him. “Is he your enemy, Sister Abbigail?”

She lowered her voice. “Oh no, not mine. He wants to be my friend. My particular friend.”

The very thought hit Nicholas like a fist. That preening, pious, lazy man had no right to hope that Abbigail was anything to him. “He wouldn’t dare.”

“He dares as much as any man,” she said, an edge to her voice that made him squirm.

A man’s shadow at the cellar door blocked the natural light. Peremptory words bounced down the stairs. “Sister Till! A customer for you!”

She whirled and fled up the stairs toward Huber as if relieved.

Or was she upset? As much as any man. Did she mean him?

Nicholas followed her. Had she thought him daring, out of bounds? Perhaps he had been when he had teased her, touched her, when he had tenderly kissed her forehead as if she were his sister.

Though kissing his own sisters had never felt like that.

No, he would admit it. Reckless, restless, he had pressed Abbigail too far. Not so far as to compromise her perhaps, but far enough to make her uncomfortable.

She had not, however, brushed him away. Had not stiffened her body, averted her eyes, or dulled her voice as she did when Huber came too near. Before, alone with her, Nicholas had begun to think she liked him. He would swear so now.

With a surge of satisfaction, he slapped the door casing above his head as he cleared the stairs. He could unload another wagon full of heavy goods on the strength of that.

Upstairs in the shop, Abbigail blinked in the dull noon light at Sister Benigna, no customer, but a friend bearing gifts. Her glance probed the corners of the room. “I brought you this, my dear.”

Abbigail lifted the warm plaid linen that covered the hot pan and breathed deeply of yeast bread, cinnamon, and melted butter. “Bless you! Your sugarcake!”

“Your sugarcake, now that you are cooking for three men.” Sister Benigna’s eyes twinkled.

Abbigail put her hands to her cheeks, surrendering to the inevitable. “With two Single Brothers at my table, talk must be all over town.”

Her friend winked at her. “Oh no. A little bird told me about the new one.”

Abbigail gave the Sister a quick dark look for making mountains out of molehills. After all Abbigail herself had told her. She wrung her hands on the filthy apron she had worn all morning and took the pan of sugarcake. “Don’t leave. I must put this in the larder and change into something decent”

Freshened, Abbigail returned to see Sister Benigna dawdling over fabric, needles, and fine gold chains, none of which she needed. But her gaze darted about no doubt seeking a sight of the newcomer.

A moment later, Nicholas swept in like a March lion, charging the room with his bright turbulent energy. He had driven the draft team and wagon back to the livery. By the look of him, fresh and dry yet somehow attractively rumpled, he must have also stopped at the Single Brothers House to change his rain-soaked shirt.

He turned his golden smile on Sister Benigna, and her lips parted in admiration.

She was old enough to be his mother, Abbigail thought, checking herself as her heart squeezed with jealousy. After days of observing Nicholas’s appeal to women of all ages, she should be used to it Apparently, to her dismay, she was not Brother Huber called him to the counter, and Nicholas bent his tousled, tawny head over some newly acquired hatbands.

Sister Benigna edged over to Abbigail. “Introduce me,” she whispered like a schoolgirl.

“You came here to gawk!” Abbigail chided, amused to think that the Widow she revered had a nosy side.

Two helpless, round red spots stained the good Sister’s cheeks. Abbigail understood too well. Every woman sighed for Nicholas. She led her friend to the counter where he was working and made the introduction, which he accepted with a gender grace than Abbigail had yet seen in him.

The danger of her growing admiration for Brother Blum increased tenfold. How socially presentable he was. How sincere his gentlemanly bow. How merrily his eye accepted Sister Benigna’s appreciation.

How relieved Abbigail was that her good but still attractive friend-practically her mother–was really rather old.

For in an instant, the pair were chatting like confidants. Sister Benigna asked Nicholas about a friend of hers in Salem she had not seen since their missionary days. He knew the woman personally, it seemed, and told a reassuring anecdote that proved she was well and happy. Their chat moved on to other missionary friends, newer Salemites Sister Benigna longed to see.

“Stay for the noon meal, Sister,” Abbigail found herself saying out of habit rather than desire when Sister Benigna started to leave.

Her friend could not hold back a smile of pleasure. “I believe I shall. Let me help,” she added in a dazed afterthought.

Abbigail understood her friend’s dazed state. Hadn’t silly smiles, false starts, and absentmindedness plagued her since the moment Nicholas Blum arrived?

Her father, however, was impervious to Nicholas’s charms. He seated himself at the table and turned a critical eye on the food. It featured Sister Benigna’s apple butter from yesterday and the hot, sweet sugarcake for dessert.

“That”-he pointed at the offending apple butter–is a needless extravagance.”

Abbigail distracted him by passing plain boiled cabbage. “’Tis too spicy, Father, for you to give it another thought.”

He spooned a grudgingly small amount of cabbage onto his plate.

Brother Huber mounded cabbage on his but otherwise upheld her father’s argument. “More abundance, and we shall all be whales, suitable for rendering into lamp oil.”

No one laughed, but Abbigail noted Brother Blum’s longing look at the cinnamon-brown apple butter and perfectly good cornbread warmed over from breakfast. Before she could offer him anything, Sister Benigna handed him biscuits and the apple butter.

“Excess is permitted those who worked all morning, Brother Blum.”

He grinned, broke open a biscuit, and smeared its crumbly insides with the rich brown butter.

Abbigail’s father grumbled inhospitably. “Don’t encourage him, Sister Rothrock. He eats like a horse but not at livery rates. The way my daughter indulges him, he will eat us out of house and home.”

Embarrassed, Abbigail shut her eyes and sealed her lips. Any protest or defense would be rebuked. Her father had mastered the art of generally insulting everyone-herself, Brother Huber, even Sister Benigna. Her friend knew what a crotchety invalid her once robust father had become, and what Christian Huber thought could never matter.

But did her father have to be at his worst for Nicholas Blum? Nicholas, who was so newly arrived and willing to please.

Did he have to humiliate her in front of him?

Near tears, she heard the courteous rumble of Nicholas’s voice. “But such a spread is surely suitable, sir, for a guest like Sister Rothrock. No doubt Sister Till thought only of her duty as the hostess of your table.”

Bested, her father stabbed his cabbage.

Abbigail bowed her head, blushing with gratitude. Brother Blum had defended her, silenced her father on her behalf, and charmed her closest friend. But why? He couldn’t possibly be interested in her. Not Nicholas Blum, who treated every woman so. Didn’t that very charm imply deception? How could she be sure he was sincere?

He and Sister Benigna filled the awkward silence with more talk, Nicholas asking about Bethlehem and the Widowed Sister promising to show it to him.

“In fact, we could take a stroll on Sunday afternoon. I will show you the waterworks and the fulling mill, and you can tell me about my friends who moved to Salem thirty years ago.”

The dimple in Nicholas’s cheek deepened. “Besides, fresh air would do Sister Till good. She looks wan, don’t you think?”

Instantly a conspirator, Sister Rothrock agreed. “Wan, indeed. Tired and listless. A stroll would be just the thing.”

Abbigail blushed yet again, unaccustomed to notice and secretly pleased that they included her.

Her father cleared his throat. “Strolls with Single Brothers require a chaperone, Sister Rothrock.”

Sister Benigna dismissed his edict with a cheering laugh. “A Widowed Sister of two score and fourteen years, Brother Georg, is chaperone enough for any couple.”

“I need my daughter here.”

The older Sister clucked her tongue, spirits undampened by her father’s steam. “No more than Brother Blum and I will need her on our stroll. Abbigail understands what he needs to know for trade. He will be a better trader, Georg, for a knowledge of our town.”

“What he needs is a knowledge of our stock,” her father said.

Abbigail felt it safe to interrupt. “Which is what I have planned for him, Father, for this afternoon.”

“And tomorrow and the next day,” her father insisted.

“You are so severe, Georg,” Sister Benigna chided lightly, passing him the sugarcake.

He turned up his nose at it. “The store won’t run itself, Sister.”

Her father’s contrary objection set Abbigail’s teeth on edge. Today not even Sister Benigna’s indulgent humor could sugarcoat his mood. He offered the cake to Brother Huber, who took a pinch and handed it to Nicholas.

Nicholas broke off a generous slab of the dessert, proving the justice of her father’s complaint about his appetite. But he spoke respectfully to the older man. “I have made strides, sir. In your absence, I studied all the prices.”

Her father’s eyes narrowed. “How so?”

“From receipts. Sister Till said you would expect it of me and thoughtfully gave me a stack to memorize. Which I did.”

Nicholas’s generosity warmed Abbigail again. Save for Sister Benigna, no one credited her for anything she did. Certainly not for being thoughtful. Brother Huber always obscured any contribution that she made lest his own be eclipsed.

Georg Till’s brow arched with doubt. “Memorized, you say? All the prices?”

Beneath the table, Abbigail wrung her hands. Her father knew the price of every item in the store and every change of price for the last ten years. If Nicholas could not measure up, he wouldn’t hesitate to pillory him.

Nicholas went on alert, sensing the old man’s challenge. Sister Benigna tilted her head with quiet interest, and Abbigail looked down as if embarrassed. Across the table, Brother Huber smiled smugly. Nicholas had had quite enough of the old man’s carping. He wanted to get down to business and on with his new life. To that end, two nights ago he had memorized everything, poring over receipts, sleepless until dawn. He was proud of his success.

Still, a show of modesty would not demean him. “I believe so. All on the current receipts, that is.”

“The price of a tea pot then,” Till said.

An easy answer. “One shilling, eight pence.”

Till’s eyes narrowed with doubt. “Figure twenty-three yards of bath coating at eight shillings per yard.”

Nicholas held back a grin. His brother Matthias might be the Latin scholar, but his own best skill was mathematics, else his father would not have backed his quest to set up in trade. He had the total in a snap. “Nine pounds, four shillings.”

Till harumphed and paused. To mentally doublecheck his figure, Nicholas thought. He did not venture a look at Abbigail but felt her stiffen with displeasure beside him. Displeasure with her harsh, demanding father, he hoped, not with him.

“Very well,” Till said finally, almost grudgingly. “A hogshead of tobacco.”

Nicholas tensed against his straight-backed chair. Tobacco prices fluctuated wildly throughout the season and throughout the states. Till was determined to trip him up!

“That would depend on the quality and the source, less the weight of the hogshead, less inspection, and sometimes the cooperage fee.”

Till scowled. “Don’t dance around the point, Brother Blum. The traders you meet won’t suffer it. How much would you reckon that to be?”

A shoe scuffed under the table, but no one moved that Nicholas could see. “Around ten pounds, the price per hundredweight ranging from sixteen to twenty-five shillings. Than inspections average around seven shillings.”

Nicholas knew his response was sound. Till waved a hand, dismissing it. “Explain the fluctuations in sugar prices,” he said grimly.

Beside him, Abbigail almost lifted out of her chair with impatience. “Father! Don’t torment the man. Can you not see that he has learnt all the prices?”

“Silence, daughter.”

Her anger barely moderated. “Father, he knows the prices. And they cannot possibly interest our guest.”

Sister Benigna, keenly watching the exchange, tried to dampen tempers with a soft response. “I keep up with sugar prices, Abbigail, but not tobacco. I never dipped snuff, you know, Georg.”

Till went on gracelessly. “You must see to inventory, daughter. If he doesn’t know what we have in stock, he will be unfit for the docks.”

He didn’t plan to be unfit for anything, Nicholas thought, but he was grateful for Abbigail’s intervention. He finished his sugarcake and washed it down with sweet warm coffee, the last pleasures, he suspected, of his day. Serious and determined, he turned to Abbigail.

“Then I am more than ready, Sister Till, for you to lead me to the cellar and force-feed me inventory.”

8

Halfway through the afternoon, the obliging, pretty woman Nicholas had thought to be his ally had turned enemy. Abbigail worked him rapidly through all the cellar stores and then quizzed him relendessly: Where had each item been bought and when? How rapidly might it sell out? Who was the vendor, and was he new and untried, or old and trusted? Which customer in town requested it? Would outsiders ask for it? Over and over, until he got it right. All of it right. Which, distracted by her speed and the contradictory soft smell of roses that drifted up from between her ample breasts, he could not consistendy do.

“Again, Brother Blum,” she said.

His mind was mush. The lantern dimly lit the cold damp cellar, and he was making stupid mistakes. He lay down his jottings and sat heavily on a crate. Frustration put out his resolve to be patient with her.

“Just how rapidly do you expect me to master this?”

“Yesterday, Brother Blum,” she said sharply, her face shadowed in the dim light. “Your paper knowledge of the prices notwithstanding, my father expects you to know where everything came from and where it might go.”

Her tone stymied him. She hadn’t been this caustic on the afternoon they met. Was it her father’s influence? Or had Nicholas done something unawares? Whatever had turned her against him, her attention to detail seemed pointless. Punishing. But who was punishing him? The father or the daughter? And how was he to know?

“Surely all I require for trading trips is a list of items needed,” he said tightly.

“You could take a list. But it would slow you down,” she said deliberately, as if he might have trouble grasping her point. “And it would look as though you didn’t know your stock.”

That was not the answer he wanted. “I came here to learn. I am prepared to do that. I am ready for the road.”

“Not until you know exactly what we keep in stock at home. As I know. As Brother Huber knows.”

The comparison caught him by surprise and laid him low. An unwholesome petulance of a sort not felt since boyhood made his stomach chum. If even Huber knew it, he must too. But it was proving harder than he had imagined at the outset

“’Twill take me days at this rate.”

“I should hope not,” she said tersely. “I don’t think you stupid, Brother Blum.”

But he felt stupid. His frustration with her, with his lessons, spilled out. “You have obviously had years to master all this.”

She frowned. “Fourteen years. I have worked for my father since I was seventeen.”

“But that would make you …” he trailed off, biting his tongue against his gaffe.

Her face reddened, and he was instantly sorry. Her age was no concern of his. She squared her slim shoulders and answered him without rancor.

“Thirty-one, Brother Blum. A spinster Single Sister.”

He wished for a cellar beneath the cellar, a hole to crawl into. He would not have guessed. She did not look her age. A woman ten years older than Catharina-three years older than himself-half a dozen years past hoping that the Elders would find her a match.

But they hadn’t. Was that the source of her sharp tongue? Did she wish to remain a Single Sister, unwed, unwanted, subject to her father’s beck and call?

What woman would? he thought. He could not help that. But it troubled him to think that she suffered day by day and that his insensitive remark had made that suffering worse.

He stood up and walked over to the box of T-hinges where he had lost his way. Miserably, he counted them out loud, then recited their cost, their vendor, their probable buyers. Mechanically, she approved his answers and tossed the hinges in their wooden box.

The woman who had sweetly tended his wounds, the woman he had tenderly kissed, had disappeared like swallows in the fall. And he was sorry for it. Still, she was close and smelled of roses. He inhaled her scent and wished for yesterday, when she had been his friend.

Before the Sunday morning service started, Sister Benigna intercepted Abbigail at the door of Gemeinhaus and gently took her arm.

Abbigail pressed her hand in sweet relief. “Still spying on me, Sister?” she teased, mustering a slight, tired smile. It had been a grueling week of training Brother Blum. Of placating her father. Of reining in her emotions.

“Perhaps,” Benigna Rothrock said mysteriously, directing her to the crowded women’s side of the Saal. She found them seats on the center aisle right across from the men—across from Nicholas Blum. “I didn’t want you or Brother Blum to slip home after worship and miss our afternoon stroll.”

“Not that.” Abbigail withdrew her hand from her friend’s clasp. The thought of escaping for the stroll had sorely tempted her all week. Her father’s certain disapproval stripped pleasure from the anticipation. “Father will-”

“Object?” Sister Benigna inspected Abbigail’s face. “Hmm. Still pale. Georg will accede to my recommendation for your health.”

Abbigail wished she had her friend’s confident control over her father’s disposition, a confidence borne of her missionary years in strenuous climes among difficult people, Abbigail believed. Alas, she did not.

Settling on the bench, Abbigail listened to the brass band warming up. She enjoyed the pleasing cacophony of instruments before services. The Sunday morning ritual always offered wisdom, leading her to forgiveness and lifting her sagging spirits when life with her father dragged her down. It always had, but never more than now, when his iron hand ruled. She wasn’t sure she had the will to disobey his wishes today.

“Perhaps I am too run down to traipse about town all afternoon with you and Brother Blum.”

Sister Benigna gave a dignified snort. “You have the constitution of a horse.”

The ministers, band, and choir were settling in. Abbigail lowered her voice. “A broken-down, swaybacked nag.”

Her friend clucked her tongue and whispered, “You will be if you devote every minute of your life to your father and that store. Besides, your Brother Blum is counting on our little walk.”

Her Brother Blum! Surely Sister Benigna wasn’t playing matchmaker. Abbigail was too old, too settled, too resigned to her single state. Besides, the only recognized matches that the Brethren were those sanctioned by the drawing of the Lot. She would not knowingly subject herself to that disappointment a third time.

Even so, Abbigail followed her friend’s gaze to the men’s side of the Saal. To Nicholas, who must have arrived early. He sat, quiet and attentive, just across the aisle, his broad shoulders barely restrained in his crisp dark Sunday best. She had not seen him quite like this before, so at ease and reverent.

Reverent? This was a new side of the charmer. Yet nothing she had seen of him gave her reason to doubt that his faith was sincere.

He turned and saw her watching and gave her his kind smile

Her heart flipped, then fluttered out of control. The flutters ran down to her stomach and spread lower and deeper, and she blushed hot with mortification. She had been fighting those sensations all week long, every time he brushed against her and when he touched her purposefully–whether to help her or torment her. Whatever those sensations meant-and she feared she knew-her conscience told her she should not be sitting here in church, her body thrumming with thoughts of… Or with wishes …

She hugged her arms to her waist. Did Nicholas know the tumult he inspired in her? The tumbling, falling out of the sky, breathless descent into pure sensation? And shouldn’t she stamp out such feelings here? During worship, surrounded by the congregation? Thank the Savior no one could guess anything of what she felt inside. Nicholas included, she hoped. Nicholas most of all.

She smoothed the heavy linen skirts of her best dress and shifted uncomfortably on the hard bench seat. Of all the Sunday mornings she had fled to Gemeinhaus for sustenance, she had never needed it more. Why? Because she had become too attached to worldly concerns.

To the fate of her pupil. To his habits and his ways.

She stared at the starched white Haube in front of her, trying to put Nicholas’s presence out of her mind.

And failing. Perhaps her senses were overloaded from a week of working with him constantly. Her reserves were spent, her carefully marshaled emotions stretched tight. Not that he hadn’t been courteous and quick to learn and even tolerant when her patience wore thin. He was all that and more.

He was far smarter than the other three assistants she had trained for her father. Nicholas’s quick assimilation of prices was astounding. His dogged mastery of the hated inventory was proof positive of his will to learn. His sufferance of her relentless badgering was … touching. But she must not dwell on that

For she hated every minute of playing the taskmaster and the shrew. If she read Nicholas’s desires aright, she had no choice but to press him. He wanted nothing less. Whether by his father’s will or his own, Nicholas Blum was determined to be a trader. Since he had agreed to learn that enterprise from her exacting father, she must harden herself to prepare him properly.

Without being frankly disloyal to her father, she could not warn Nicholas of what he faced. Her father’s painful gout had sharpened a temper already shortened by her mother’s death. These days he tolerated nothing short of perfection. From her, from Brother Huber, or from the previous three assistants, each of whom had failed to measure up. Her father had humiliated them. One had left the Brethren. One now dug graves, God’s work and respected by the community, but well below his abilities. The third, the one who had presumed to court her, did menial tasks at the new fulling mill.

What could a devoted daughter say without impugning her father’s character? That his tyranny had broken the spirits of men younger, abler, healthier than he? That Brother Huber, the only one to pass her father’s tests, had done so with an obsequious spinelessness that turned her stomach? She couldn’t bear to see Nicholas’s bold, energetic nature reduced to that.

Worse was in store. Before her father would let Nicholas represent Bethlehem’s most public business, he would subject him to the severest grilling of his life. With a view, she hated to admit, to humiliating him in front of her and Brother Huber. To spare Nicholas that, she could only drill him hard and make sure he succeeded.

This morning, the reading of the Scripture droned to an end, but she had not absorbed a word of comfort. The sermon commenced, and it was not likely to yield more relief. Across the aisle, Nicholas’s commanding presence continued to draw every particle of her attention like a magnet attracted filaments of iron. She couldn’t shut it off. She couldn’t shut him out.

Even when she sang–and she loved to join her light soprano with the women’s voices in the old chorales–it was his deep, pure baritone she heard above all others in the Saal. No man here was so substantial or so strong, stood with such manly pride, or sat with such restrained energy.

Could she be the only one to notice that? Had he gotten so deep beneath her skin?

Blast her untimely attraction to the man, which left her fighting those feelings in the sacred shadows of the Saal.

Blast Sister Benigna’s meddling, too, to make her sit so close to him. To insist on the stroll, which Abbigail could not avoid without blatant discourtesy to her best friend.

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, trustworthy 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.

“Have you kissed many women, Brother Blum?” she asked suddenly. Boldly.

Catharina. He almost choked at the shocking question, hitting so true to his thoughts, so close to home. “Er … once or twice.”

“Many women once? Or many women twice?” she asked, a teasing interest in her voice.

He dared to look at her and made his stand. “I am a respectable Single Brother, Sister Till. What makes you think I have kissed any women?”

Her dark eyes sparkled with mischief. “Any man so sure of his attraction is bound to steal a kiss or two from time to time.”

Her perception was too keen, he thought, and she would see right through him. He gave her his best grin. “I have four beautiful sisters who dote on me.”

Her ladylike sniff dismissed his answer. “Displays of familial affection don’t make men cocky.”

She looked at him with a challenging twinkle.

“Come, come, Brother Blum. Is not confession a salve for the soul?”

Perhaps, he thought, teetering on the precipice of all his little venial sins. Confession was a hazard, and he could never tell all. But he sucked in a breath and challenged her in kind.

“Are we talking about kisses on the forehead, kisses on the cheek, or”-he paused dramatically, hoping to dampen her starch-“real kisses on the mouth?”

“You would be the expert there.” Her mouth, her pretty, kissable mouth, curved into a smug smile. “But, kisses on the mouth, I think.”

He groaned. “You take no prisoners, Sister Till.”

She laughed. Again. And inside him, a brand new happiness sprouted wings and took flight. She was clever, she was bold, and she was not afraid of him, for all his size and might and–well, he could admit it, for she had said so–for all his charm.

“Very well, then. Remember, when I am done confessing, that you asked for this.”

“I shall remember, Brother Blum. Everything.”

In his experience, confessions went better when he told the truth and told it fast.

“Seven women once, three twice, and one five times.”

“You kept track!”

“Mmm.” He admitted it reluctantly. She sounded scandalized, not what he would have wished. But what else could a good Single Brother, a spirited young man, do with all those feelings, those sensations? With so many pretty Older Girls and Single Sisters yet unclaimed and wondering about kissing as much as he?

“Counting your own sisters?”

“Of course not My family thrives on hugs and kisses. I kiss and hug them all the time.”

Abbigail’s brow knitted. “Tell me about the one you kissed five times.”

“Perhaps you haven’t heard,” he said. “Gentlemen don’t kiss and tell.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.

They were strolling again, but slowly. Slowly, because Sister Rothrock was now in sight, attended by some kind Brother, and Nicholas was in no hurry to end this unexpected playful interlude with the surprising Sister Abbigail. He was at his ease for the first time since he had left home. And he would bet the profits from his first trading trip that Abbigail Till had never allowed such outrageous talk with a Single Brother, much less encouraged it.

On second thought, perhaps she had. She showed a raw talent for badinage.

He volunteered no more. He had had a near escape. He had almost named his Catharina without giving her reputation a thought.

Then he remembered his drunken interlude with the seductive tavern wench.

Danke Gott, Abbigail had asked him only about kisses.

By the time they neared Sister Benigna, Abbigail was at the end of her tether. Nicholas had only held her hand, but she felt as though she had been touched all over. Sweet sensation streamed through her body like a morning breeze. Her feet did not touch the ground. Her throat ached with nameless feelings, fleeting as the plumes of clouds that raced above them in the sky. And her hand, singled out for his attention, tingled with the imprint of his fingers.

She pressed her lips together in dismay. Her little ruse to take her mind off Nicholas Blum’s compelling touch had miscarried. Teasing him about kissing Single Sisters had tumbled her own thoughts down a mountain of imaginings, new and wild and too intriguing.

As she and Nicholas approached Sister Benigna, the Brother attending the Widow stood and barreled toward them. It was Christian Huber, glowering, his gaze honing in on the point where Abbigail’s hand clasped Nicholas’s arm. “’Tis fortunate I came along to attend to Sister Rothrock while you rambled,” he complained.

Abbigail flushed, guilty but angry at his presumption. “We would not have left her, but she insisted.”

“She cannot even stand,” Huber charged as if it were their fault.

“Is she worse?” Abbigail asked.

Not waiting for an answer, Nicholas released her, hurried toward the Widowed Sister, and sank to her side. Abbigail caught up in time to hear his rueful, caring tone. “Ah, Sister, you should have told us this was serious. We never would have gone. You should have let Brother Huber take you home.”

Sister Benigna waved his concern away. “What is serious, Brother Blum, is my size. I saw no reason for Brother Huber to struggle alone when I knew you would soon be here to help.”

“You cannot walk,” he said worriedly.

“I am not sure, in truth, that my right ankle will bear my weight.”

Nicholas nodded. “I can still carry you.”

Bending over them, Brother Huber gave a censorious cough. “Surely, Brother Blum, you could fetch a cart”

Nicholas gave him a blank look.

“Such contact between Brothers and Sisters-it is not allowed,” Brother Huber explained stiffly.

“Those precepts don’t apply where there is injury,” Nicholas snapped, then turned to the injured ankle. “Sister, may I see if it is broken? I shall try not to hurt you.”

Sister Benigna gave him a weak smile and lifted her skirt a fraction of an inch, revealing a plain white threaded stocking.

Brother Huber puffed up. “Brother Blum! You are not a doctor!”

“No.” Nicholas took her thickening ankle in his large hands. “But I have tended sprains and strains, my brothers’ and my own.”

“’Tis wrong of you … Brethren do not…”

This exchange fascinated Abbigail. She had never seen Sister Benigna coy or Brother Huber at a loss for words. And she was quite impressed to see Nicholas so attentive to the former and dismissive of the latter.

“Brethren do not what, Brother Huber?” he asked steadily, touching the Widowed Sister’s stocking lightly and continuing to talk to her. “It is swelling rather rapidly, here, you see, over the inside bone.”

Sister Benigna winced and jerked away.

Hovering over them, Brother Huber swallowed hard. “Brother Blum, you must stop.”

Nicholas looked displeased. “I am sorry to hurt you, Sister.”

“That is not my point!” Christian Huber protested, then found his tongue. “Only a true physician should attend an injured woman. We must remain steadfast in the separation of the sexes, not because we are a saintly people, but because we are not. We choose to separate ourselves to prevent opportunities for sin and seduction. The stroll you took alone with Sister Till is scandal enough.”

A muscle in Nicholas’s jaw clenched, and he carefully rested Sister Benigna’s ankle on the ground. Then he stood and squared off in Christian Huber’s startled face.

“There was no scandal attached to my walking out here with Sister Rothrock and Sister Till,” he said, his voice low and deliberate. “And there will be no scandal attached to mine and Sister Till’s stroll out to the sawmill and back again alone.”

Huber took a step back from Nicholas’s hot anger, and Sister Benigna spoke up. “Surely, Brother Blum, he means to say no ill of Sister Abbigail.”

Nicholas stepped toward him and repeated Sister Benigna’s exhortation icily. “Surely, Brother Huber, you mean to say no ill of Sister Abbigail.”

Inside, Abbigail smiled. She thought her new defender quite magnificent, his cobalt eyes hard and his hands clenched into fists.

Huber’s fastidious features crimped in angry opposition.

“No talk, and no scandal. Do you understand?” Nicholas said, his words a growl, his tawny hair shining like a lion’s mane in the sun.

Brother Huber’s short “Yes” was terribly begrudging.

“I think Sister Rothrock’s ankle is not broken, but we must help her home. You and I together, one man on either arm.”

Stiff-necked, Brother Huber helped, and Abbigail walked along behind, nursing a new worry for Nicholas’s sake. Brother Huber’s understanding was not acceptance, and she knew he hoarded insults like a squirrel saves nuts.

10

Dressing for bed that night, Abbigail looked across the town. A moonless dark had settled over Bethlehem. In nearby neighbors’ homes, candles glowed at upstairs windows. Thinking of the good people behind each and every door, she wondered what constituted scandal. It had been her life’s achievement to avoid it, yet she did not know precisely what it was.

Did scandal happen only in the deed, or was it started in the heart?

Was a touch as wicked as a kiss?

Would the wanting of it make it so?

Did scandal begin only when you were discovered?

Or could you be a scandal to yourself?

She drew her wrapper around her simple summer shift, noting how white and virginal it was.

But her thoughts were not pure, and the sensations coursing through her were not innocent, and they scandalized her. For Nicholas Blum appealed to her, amused her, and amazed her beyond anything she had ever felt for a man.

And he had awakened her desire.

Even now all over town, candles were snuffed out as couples, Married Brothers and Sisters, went to bed. She knew enough of love to realize that she knew nothing of the ties that bound them, nothing of ordained desire. The town crier called the eleventh hour. It was getting late. Still she watched. Eight houses over, she could see the upper stories of the Brothers House where all Single Brothers slept. In the distance, one window glowed faintly. She imagined it was Nicholas up late, studying his notes, striving to become the man he seemed to think he had to be.

She liked him as he was. She had privately applauded as he masked his frustrations and mastered a room full of inventory he had never seen. She approved of the care he had given Sister Benigna and appreciated his stands against the insulting gentleman customer and the pious Brother Huber on her behalf.

But more than that, he was kind to her, and he made her laugh.

She let down her hair and braided it. The single coil fell down her spine, hot and heavy. A block away, the single light still burned. She closed her window and turned down.her bed, worrying about her new sensations.

It was not scandalous-it could not be wrong-for a Single Sister to admire a Single Brother.

But now, since she had walked with Nicholas alone beside the banks of Monocacy Creek, she wanted him to touch her again. Some new spirit was hammering away inside her, fragile yet bold as a chick testing its beak against its imprisoning shell. In the dark secrecy of her room, she feared she would risk anything–anything–to discover the taste of one of his heartfelt kisses.

A month later, Abbigail determined to catch up on the cloth. A dozen bolts in rainbow colors stood on end outside their storage bins-China silks, calico from India, and linen loomed in Bethlehem. She finished dusting the bins, then brandished her feather duster like a sword at Christian Huber.

“The red flannel is to be stored, not displayed,” she repeated to him.

They were alone in the store’s front room after the noonday meal. Her father had gone upstairs for his afternoon nap, and Abbigail hurried to organize the cloth while he slept.

“Everybody buys red flannel,” Huber said.

“Not in summer. Don’t cross me on this, Brother Huber. ‘Tis already July, and hot. No seamstress in her senses works flannel now.”

Strange, she thought with gritted teeth, how much more boldly the man would state his mind with Nicholas away. Nicholas’s first solo trip to nearby Nazareth had taken him a day; his second, to Philadelphia, three. This trip he had gone to Philadelphia again. Four days had turned to five, and he was unaccounted for. The hot July days were ripe for epidemics.

She schooled herself not to worry.

Stubbornness fixed Huber’s aquiline features. “Brother Till said not to move it.”

“So he says every year. Then he buys more, which never sells before autumn. Now I move it. Women want the lighter linens, calicos and silks-not this. Take it to the back room.” She thrust a heavy bolt of bright red flannel at Huber.

His arms curled to receive it, but his thin lips thinned. “Brother Till will be displeased.”

She plopped a second bolt of flannel on top of the first. “Everything displeases Father,” she snapped, then bit her lower lip. She tried so hard to show respect. She hated it when Brother Huber’s sanctimonious manner made her snide and snippy.

He shifted the load as if to protect his back. “You will make trouble for me with him.”

Exasperated, she thrust a bolt of sunny summer calico back into its bin.

A mellow baritone spoke firmly from the hall. “You already seem to be in trouble. With Sister Till.”

Nicholas Blum was back, his brown coat dusty from travel. He strode through the hallway, confidence squaring his broad shoulders and excitement brimming in his cobalt eyes. Abbigail’s breath caught, hard as she fought her wayward desire.

Huber flushed with anger. “Sister Till is not my superior.”

Nicholas’s fine blond eyebrow climbed in admonition. “She is mine, Brother Huber, and I am man enough to say so.”

Abbigail clamped down on her relief. Unlike Nicholas, Huber nagged, questioned, and resisted her direction. Her father countenanced this, and no one else ever had the mettle or the moment to take him down a peg.

Huber, still holding the heavy cloth, shifted. “I mean,” he said with pique, “I answer to Brother Till.”

“As do I,” Nicholas said smoothly. “Therefore, it behooves me to attend to his daughter’s wishes. I would not presume, however, to speak for you.”

Huber ignored him and pointedly looked down at her. “Where did you say you wanted these?”

“In the back room.”

He sighed with exaggerated patience. “Customers can better see them on the higher shelf out here.”

“But when I am alone, I cannot get them down.”

Her answer seemed to stifle if not satisfy him. He left the room, making much of the chore and complaining of his back.

Nicholas’s blue eyes sparkled with complicity at Abbigail. She busied herself putting bolts away to conceal a pleased smile. Pleased that he had rescued her.

Too pleased that he was back.

She took out a rumpled bolt of silk. “Welcome home, Brother Blum. You are late again, it seems.”

Pure sunshine lit the handsome angles of his face. “Getting the wine required a wait. Tis well I took the four-horse hitch.”

She tilted her head in challenge. “Can I assume you filled the wagon with aught else? Long trips should be successful.”

He grinned, unapologetic. “Measured in money spent or time taken?”

“A man can spend a very great deal of money in five days.”

He pulled a purse from his waistcoat pocket and turned it upside down. Empty. “Indeed, I spent every last pence as planned.”

“Five days away was not my father’s plan.”

He shrugged. “Yesterday the wheel horse threw a shoe.”

Smoothing the slippery silk onto the cumbersome bolt, she gave him her best skeptical look. “I thought you had apprenticed to the blacksmith.”

“There was no forge at hand.” He paused earnestly. “Do you know how hard it is to bend iron with your bare hands?”

She cocked her head. He could be teasing. “How hard?”

“I managed,” he said, serious as a stone, as he took the heavy silk in one hand and slid it into the highest bin. “Then I salvaged the bent nails and straightened them with my teeth.”

“Liar!” She scowled. She hated being gulled.

His disarming shrug admitted all. And her resistance to his charm melted like pond ice in the spring.

“Come,” he said, enticing her with a gesture and his voice. “See what I procured for us. The wagon is in back, near the cellar, for unloading the wine.”

Then he touched her elbow and steered her toward the hall. His fingers were warm, and his easy courtesy acknowledged her femininity. A bright gladness shivered through her. She had missed him. Had needed him-the teasing, the quick mind, the lightness of heart, the camaraderie. Nothing scandalous there, she tried to reassure herself. But it was a dangerous course of thinking.

She dredged up a safer subject. “Did you truly spend all my father’s money?”

He walked round to the back of the wagon, untied the heavy tarpaulin, and started folding it back. Brother Huber sauntered out, his aquiline nose almost quivering with interest.

“All of his, as he instructed me,” Nicholas said. “And most of mine.”

“Yours!” Huber burst out. Her father had refused Huber that latitude.

Nicholas flopped the heavy cover back another fold and glanced at Abbigail over his shoulder. “I have your father’s consent. After finishing his business, I can make my own purchases.”

Huber’s lips crimped with disapproval. “Brother Till cannot mean to let you to conduct business for yourself!”

“It is by arrangement, naturally,” Nicholas said to Huber, then turned to explain to Abbigail. “Our fathers agreed to that before I came.”

How unlike her father, she thought.

“How interesting,” she said. “Were you successful? For yourself, I mean?”

Pride, she thought, restrained the smile that threatened to break across his face. Pride, and the hovering presence of Brother Huber, whose envy contorted his ascetic features.

Nicholas balanced three wine cases, one atop the other, in his powerful arms and carried them toward the house. “We shall see, shall we not? No doubt I have much to learn about what sells and what does not.”

He was not a man to notice flowers, but the roses that arced over the back door stoop had bloomed since he had left, Nicholas noted as he stepped inside, the wagon unloaded and his work done. The store was cool, welcoming, courtesy of Abbigail’s singular touch. In each room she had filled a vase with bright blossoms.

He was stacking his purchases neatly in the hall when Georg Till came downstairs. Rumpled from sleep, he inspected the items with a mumble and a sniff. Then he asked for Nicholas’s receipts, set him to mind the afternoon’s customers with Huber, and disappeared into his office.

Nicholas chafed at the wait. It was too like his former masters checking his work for imperfections: a gun that wouldn’t fire straight, a watch that ticked randomly, a nail in a new shoe that quicked the horse.

In the front room the handsome casing clock chimed the passing quarter hours. Till hobbled out, called Nicholas to the counter, and spread a single receipt on it. “Ripperton overcharged you. He always tries. In future, be on your guard.”

Huber looked down his nose. Nicholas frowned, surprised by Till’s neutral tone. Was there to be no blame? No litany of mistakes? Did one error make the whole a failure?

“Of course,” Nicholas said. “By how much was I off, sir, if I may ask?”

Till’s mouth twitched. In amusement? “You can add, boy,” he said, then climbed to his bed again.

Nicholas bent over the counter and refigured each line on the receipt. Twice. An error of three pence too much here, two there-it added up to over a shilling. The cost of a pound of candles, a quart of rum, or a night’s lodging in a private home. He frowned. Significant, but a fraction of his purchases.

Propping a hip on the high clerk’s stool, he stretched the travel stiffness from his muscles. He was not dissatisfied with his work. He had hastily checked the figures at the wharf. But Ripperton, styling himself as Georg Till’s old friend, had hurried him. Nicholas had trusted him, not wanting to offend. The rush, and the resulting errors, could have been an intentional test of his business acumen.

Then he grinned, pleased to figure out the old man’s ploy. Till could have put Ripperton up to it.

11

Later that July afternoon, a bearer arrived with the twice-monthly bundle of mail. Abbigail stepped in from the kitchen, the aroma of fresh bread and stew curling after her through the open door, and consulted with the young man. When their exchange was over, she shuffled through the letters in her hand, then held up a small rectangular packet. “For you, Brother Blum.”

Nicholas recognized his stepmother’s writing and almost grabbed the packet from Abbigail. Retha Blum would supply news of friends and family-and harmless gossip, too.

Abbigail withheld the packet, her eyes twinkling. “You do want word from home.”

He admired her twinkling eyes. “I have had but two letters. Of course, I want word of home.”

With a smug grin, she dropped the letter on the counter and left the room. He tore the seal, flattened the page on the counter’s ink-stained surface, and began to read. Two sentences along-a greeting, “We are well”-and the door’s bell jangled. He looked up. A pinch-faced woman entered the store with two skinny children who were none too clean. Outsiders, but customers nevertheless.

He put an obliging smile in place.

The woman held out a frayed sack. “Flour, please.”

Hastily he anchored the letter with a polished stone paperweight, checked the ration list, and frowned. The last flour allotted for outsiders had been sold yesterday.

He lifted his hands in an uncomfortable apology. “If you could return at the first of the month, madam …”

Her chin trembled but her gaze did not waver. “I have none nor have I corn for meal.”

Flour was in very short supply until the summer’s wheat harvest, but her proud supplication and the children’s obvious need touched his heart. The Brethren’s rules might be a noose around his neck, but he would not restrict a woman trying to feed her hungry children. “Ah, well, that won’t do, will it?” he said obligingly, and took off the flour barrel’s lid. “How much do you need?”

She indicated half of her peck sack. He filled it and put her payment into the cash drawer. Coins clinked against each other, and he counted out her meager change, hoping she would be the last to interrupt his reading of the letter. As the family left, however, a man sauntered in seeking tenpenny nails. Nicholas could not find as many as he needed. His impatience mounted. Huber returned, and Nicholas asked him to take over.

“If I must,” Huber said self-importantly, neck craning toward the weighted letter.

Nicholas whipped it off the counter and sought sanctuary in the tiny office, his long, large legs pressed beneath the desk. Apart from a square left for the address, Retha Blum had covered both sides of a quarto page in her fine hand. It pleased him that his stepmother cared enough to write him. When she had married his father, Nicholas had been twelve and distressed by her intrusion into his home. By the time he was grown, her virtues were plain to him. Her fierce love extended from Jacob Blum to his three motherless children. Nicholas saw how she made his father happy, how their four children thrived. As for Nicholas, his spirited stepmother sided with him in both his exploits and his misadventures.

She wrote with indulgent humor of her runaway garden, his father’s building projects, his siblings’ latest efforts and escapades. He read, his smile widening.

Matthias still consulted her for recipes for special colors, though his success as the town’s dyer had allowed her to retire.

Catharina. The name leapt from the page, and Nicholas’s heart leapt in his throat With the passing weeks, her angelic image had faded from his mind, and he began to fear the strength of his affections.

They were still strong. In his mind’s eye, he saw her as she had been among the peach blossoms that April day-ethereal, tempting, pure. A bride to cherish and be cherished by.

She had joined his sister Anna Johanna, Retha wrote, in teaching little Girls. But where his sister tutored them in reading and geography, Catharina schooled them in domestic arts. No surprise there. His secret sweetheart had a knack with children, plied her needle skillfully, and cooked … well, her cooking was renowned.

He skimmed the rest of the letter. The store’s bell jangled, a lock clicked, and boots strode toward the back of the house. He read on. Catharina’s family were near neighbors. He counted her older brothers John and Thomas among his many friends. They were working, his stepmother reported, and they were well. Would they recognize his new steadiness of purpose? he wondered. He was not the man who had left Salem, angry and a disappointment to his former masters and the Elders who had failed to find a place for him.

Already he was on his way to fulfilling his unspoken promise to Catharina. For he understood, with some relief and not a little pride, the full import of Georg Till’s crusty reception earlier in the day. Till had caught him out in one small mistake. But he had accepted the veracity of every receipt and the suitability of every item Nicholas had purchased. If he could meet Till’s exacting expectations, Salem would have to make room for the merchant he would become.

The office door creaked. A hand settled on his shoulder, light as a bird on the branch of a tree. “Nicholas? Your family-is it bad news?” Abbigail’s voice was soft with concern.

“Everyone is well,” he said absently.

“So you said last time.” She withdrew her sympathetic hand and tried to move away, but the room was cramped. Her calico skirts brushed his thigh.

“’Twas true last time,” Nicholas said as steadily as a man could in such close quarters with a pretty woman.

“But you say so little of them.”

He frowned. He hadn’t wanted to expose his family again to Georg Till’s scorn. Or to share with Christian Huber anything so close to his heart “They are better than well. They are all up to their usual mischief.”

“Your parents too?” she asked in mock disbelief.

“No, of course not them! My parents are highly respectable, perfectly responsible Married Brethren.”

“Tell me about them. And the children,” she invited. Her knee beneath the skirts now pressed his thigh.

He rubbed his hand over his jaw, seeking equilibrium. “All of them? My large family would only confuse you. It confuses me.”

“No, tell me. I should like to hear.”

He relented. “Very well. Sit then, and I will tell you all.”

She looked around and gave a light laugh. “Sit where?”

“Oh.” There was only one chair. He couldn’t stand; he would tower over her if she were seated. He cleared papers from a corner of the desk, and she perched up on it, a little wren above him now. And prettier than ever. He resolutely shoved aside that thought and prepared to share the news about his family, from oldest to youngest.

But as he talked, his mind wandered. His eyes wandered to her skirts. Beneath them, she must have hooked a heel on the desk drawer’s knob.

Her skirts, he cautioned himself, were not where he should look.

She leaned forward, listening keenly, and his heart hammered away. If he looked dead ahead, he saw her waist, slender enough to snap in a breeze. Up higher, and he saw the ample curve of her breasts compressed beneath her modest bodice. But there was nothing modest about their constrained fullness: They were made to fill his hands.

“Nicholas?” she prompted. Whether pleased or puzzled, he could not say

So he fixed his gaze on her doe-brown eyes and resolutely told his tale. Her interest in his parents and his two full siblings pleased him, and the tales of his half-brother and three half-sisters made her laugh. Harmon, fourteen, apprenticed to their father as a planner and builder, had designed his first building. His outhouse listed to the left

“The building?” she asked. “Or the seat?”

Not sure, he scanned the letter, then had to grin. “From the way she worded it, I would have to say the seat.”

This time, Abbigail’s laugh was rounder, fuller. Happier. Her porcelain complexion pinked with pleasure.

He resisted that line of thought and soldiered on. Elizabeth, only twelve, begged to move into the Sisters House, set on helping Anna Johanna teach Little Girls. His independent-minded stepmother supported Elizabeth. His doting father wanted her to stay at home.

“Like my father,” Abbigail said agreeably, smoothing her skirts as she wriggled on her perch.

Nicholas forbore to say that his father was not the least like hers and went on with his story. His twin sisters had brought home an adorable kitten. Just that week, it had taken a bath in a bucket of milk.

Abbigail’s neat eyebrows drew together worriedly. “I hope it didn’t drown.”

“My father probably wishes it drowned, but now it gets its milk in saucers. Twice a day, according to my stepmother. He cannot deny his twins anything-dolls, toys, games.”

She shook her head in mock censure. “They sound spoiled, Brother Blum.”

“Spoiled or loved. Who’s to draw the line?”

“The parents,” Abbigail said.

“They do. Otherwise the Blums would be bankrupt.”

Nicholas couldn’t help but grin, thinking of Christina and Margaretha jumping up and down at some new gift. Jumping on him whenever he came to visit, begging for piggyback rides around the parlor and backyard.

“You love them,” Abbigail said wistfully.

Her perception startled him–and her directness. Of course, he loved his family. He spread a hand across his chest where his mute feelings lay. “Naturally. Absolutely.”

She took his free hand with a feather touch. “You are homesick for them,” she said gently.

“I… No.” Her dark, intelligent gaze brimmed with sympathy, sympathy he did not need. He looked away.

A man would not be homesick. A boy might be, but not a man embarked on a new livelihood. His heart might twinge as he read a letter from home. It might pound when he read of his intended bride. But he was not homesick. He rearranged his knees under the desk, pushed back his chair, and bumped his head against the wall.

“I miss the noise,” he offered lamely, looking at her, allowing the friendly comfort of her hand to rest on his.

Her gaze narrowed teasingly. “Confess, Brother Blum. A man caught staring out a window on a sunny afternoon is homesick for something.”

He liked the keen, kind way she read him. “A man would not admit that, Sister Abbigail.” He grinned at her, making it plain that he admired her observation. “Even if ‘twere true.”

Her pretty lips curved in response. His breath, his heart, caught. And they sat, foolishly staring, foolishly smiling, when Huber rapped on the door and opened it, storm-faced, his bulk filling the doorway.

Abbigail jerked her hand away and slid off the desk. Her grin faded in obvious mortification.

Nicholas could have throttled Huber for her sake. The Single Brother’s suspicious gaze darted back and forth, taking in the scene of their supposed transgression. But the scent of scandal did not lure him from the track of his complaint.

“Mrs. O’Brian was not due the peck of flour that you sold her, Brother Blum,” he announced. “You should have checked the list.”

He had checked the list. “Her children looked hungry,” he said.

Huber gave a condescending smile. “Oh no, Brother Blum, the woman outwitted you.”

“Surely need takes precedence over rations,” Nicholas argued. In Bethlehem as in Salem, sugar, salt, and flour were rationed the year round to guard against the townspeople’s amassing wasteful stores. This year, however, rations were strict from need, more so for outsiders.

“Indeed, where there is need,” Huber said. “But she buys extra flour to make and sell cakes.”

“To support her starving children, no doubt,” Nicholas said sharply, still sure of his benevolent deed.

Huber pushed into the tiny room, crowding but not intimidating Nicholas.

“Yesterday,” Huber continued acidly, “she bought her week’s ration from me. Today she returns, quick to take advantage of there being three of us to mind the counter.”

Abbigail made an apologetic grimace. “I should have warned you about her.”

Nicholas cut her a look. “Warned me?”

Abbigail shrugged, clearly reluctant to agree with Huber. “She has tried this before. She is very clever.”

“The children were pitiful,” Nicholas pointed out.

Huber gave Nicholas a bland, self-satisfied smile. “The children are well schooled. She duped you, Brother Blum. Nevertheless, that does not lessen your responsibility. You should always check the list.”

Abbigail straightened to her fullheight, forcing a flustered Huber to step, embarrassed, out of her way. “We must all check the list, Brother Huber. Brother Blum is not the first man Mrs. O’Brian has tricked for flour.”

Huber colored, then plunged ahead spitefully. “He also gave her clipped coins for change.”

He probably did. He had hurried. Nicholas clenched his teeth in self-reproach. He had taken the woman’s old-style money and no doubt given her outdated pence for change. The nation was not shifting from pounds to dollars overnight.

Abbigail glared up at Huber, a wren braving a cross but dapper crow. “We all make mistakes, Brother Huber. The fault here, however, is wholly mine. I had not explained our policy to Brother Blum.”

Her quick defense warmed Nicholas, but he could not accept it. From his former business in his tin shop he knew the Elders expected every business to hold back all shillings, pence, and pounds to exchange for the newer dollars.

“No, Sister Till. You may not take the blame.” He turned to Huber. “I chose to sell the woman flour. But I erred in changing her with pence instead of pennies.”

Huber puffed up with smug seniority. “A merchant’s profits lie in pennies, Brother Blum. Clipped coins from the old coinage trade for more in bulk.”

Nicholas felt his indignation rise but forced a casual drawl. “I know all that. I made a mistake.”

Huber wagged his head. “I must tell Brother Till.”

Nicholas ground his teeth with anger. From childhood he had hated tattletales. He put a firm, unfriendly hand on Huber’s shoulder and felt him flinch.

“You may tell Brother Till.” He growled the words. “’Twas not the first error of my life. But I won’t repeat it.”

“We should not send him trading, Sister Till, if he forgets such critical matters,” Huber said, attempting to ignore Nicholas as he confided in Abbigail.

Nicholas tightened his grip, marveling at his rival’s ill-considered tenacity. “I will remember. Sister Till can count on that.”

Abbigail tapped his arm. “I will hold you to it then,” she said gently, trustingly.

Her intervention calmed him. He dropped his hand from Huber’s shoulder.

Huber gave him a dark, unreadable look. “You have not heard the end of this.” Then he stalked out of the cramped office.

Nicholas swore softly to himself. The end of what? He would not retract his kindness to the pinch-faced woman for love nor money. Not until he had proof of her deliberate deceit Given the children’s looks, not even then. But he regretted that his good turn had played into Huber’s hands, and he regretted his lapse with the clipped coins.

He could not, however, regret his time with Abbigail. Not even when Huber had discovered them too close together. Abbigail retreated to the kitchen, looking small, vulnerable, and possibly ashamed. Nicholas was not ashamed. Kindness, friendship, sympathy-which they had shared-all were godly virtues.

Still, it struck him as odd that the overly pious Brother had said nothing about Abbigail’s touching him. Nicholas’s shoulders tensed against a budding worry.

Odd, and ominous.

12

The sun would soon set, Abbigail noted, pausing for a moment’s privacy after seeing her father to bed early. She straightened her skirts and breached the archway to the parlor. Brother Huber sat in his chair, dipping snuff from his own metal box, then poring over the dark, heavy script of his German Bible. Nicholas bent over the little parlor desk, repairing a new toy broken on the wagon trip from Philadelphia.

On other evenings, the three of them made careful conversation about their day’s work. Tonight, silence ruled the room, raking her nerves like chalk on slate. What was Huber thinking? How long before the animosity that had flared this afternoon blazed up again?

She had had no chance to speak to Nicholas about the mortifying moment when Huber had spied her hand on his. But she had to. She had told herself a dozen times that she had done no wrong in offering him her small comfort. Nor had he in accepting her gesture.

Christian Huber would see it differently, however, and to their detriment.

Edgy with uncertainty, she rose and went to close the window curtains for the night. A warm summer breeze rippled through them, caressing her cheek like the touch of a hand. Like Nicholas’s strong, tender hand.

Outside, neighbors dotted the street, heading for Gemeinhaus where Singstunde, the evening song service, was held. A father in a dark tricorn held back hatless sons from headlong gallops toward the last worship of the day. The white caps of women dipped and bobbed as mothers and daughters walked along the tamped dirt public roadway in front of the store, her home.

All families, she thought with a familiar pang. The Single Brothers and the Single Sisters Houses were just across the way. The Single Sisters who had been her childhood friends were married now with families of their own. Her heart tugged at the sight of wives and husbands. Every night, she watched them trickle past, happy in their companionable unions, proud of daughters and sons. While every night she, married to bolts of cloth and cases of wine for others’ kitchens, faced her own isolated solitude.

Isolated except for her burgeoning friendship with Single Brother Nicholas Blum. Which the Brethren could never countenance. In the main, Brother Huber had gotten that right: Men and women were kept separate because human nature tended toward sin and seduction. The pairing of couples was in God’s hands.

She had not sinned with Nicholas, but in her heart she was already seduced.

What was wrong and what was right blurred for Abbigail again. She wanted to honor her soul and preserve her reputation. Her own self-respect, her father’s acceptance, and Nicholas’s good opinion hinged on doing both. So, she suspected, did Nicholas’s regard. Nevertheless, her heart yearned for what her mind would not allow her to dream of.

His presence, all around her.

She had to go to Singstunde tonight. Go with Nicholas, and explain their danger should Huber decide to slander them before her father and the town.

She turned from the window. “I must attend services tonight,” she said to Brother Huber. “Will you stay with my father?”

Huber looked up from his scriptures, disapproving. “’Tis not proper for you to walk out alone.”

“’Tis not proper for me to go so seldom. I have not been this week.”

He gave her a bland, insistent smile. “Then I shall escort you.”

“That would be most kind,” she said formally. “But Father cannot be alone in his present state.”

“Of course not,” Huber said condescendingly. “Brother Blum can keep him company.”

“You know Father’s ways better than Nicholas. He can accompany me.”

Huber rose ponderously, righteously. “Brother Blum, you mean to say,” he said sternly. “I caution you, Sister Till. I was silent this afternoon, but this … this connection between the two of you … it grows worse and worse.”

Too true, she thought, her face burning. Her careless blunder with Nicholas’s name betrayed her sentiments to both men.

Behind them, Nicholas’s chair scraped the floor and she turned. He had loosened his stock, and his tawny mane was in disarray. He pushed back from the desk and stood over Huber, his blue eyes dark with barely contained rage. “I am aware of no impropriety for which you have the right to scold Sister Till.”

Abbigail twisted the edge of her apron in her fist, alarmed. However much she secretly thrilled at Nicholas’s ready defense, two hulking men glaring at each other over her was the last thing she intended. Or could afford.

Huber made a squeak of indignation. “Touching her-not an impropriety? Rubbish!”

So he had seen everything, she thought, dismayed.

Nicholas lowered his powerful voice. “Christian compassion is not rubbish, Brother Huber. Sister Till touched me briefly, concerned that my letter from home brought unhappy news.”

“A likely excuse!” Huber said in obvious disbelief. “How can I be sure that that is what happened?”

Nicholas’s jaw tightened. “You cannot,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “But you have her word, and mine. It will be awkward for you to doubt us both. Disrespectful to her. Offensive to me.”

Tension swamped the room. What to do? Stop them. Act! They might hit each other, but they would not hit her. Gathering courage, she moved between them, two boulders of mutual aversion, and boldly clasped their forearms.

“Brother Huber, Brother Blum. We must not fight over whose word to believe. Or over who should go to worship.”

Nicholas bowed politely, acquiescing.

Huber stiffened. “We are not fighting.”

“Quite right,” she answered sharply. “We are disagreeing. And since we disagree, we cannot all be pleased. I will go to Singstunde, and Brother Huber will stay here for Father’s safety. I insist. You both know Father empowers me to speak in his stead.”

Huber’s mouth worked like a landed fish. His unspoken protest–He shouldn’t-hung in the air.

“Brother Blum can do me no harm in such a public venue as the Saal,” she added.

Huber found his voice. “He can ruin your reputation,” he spit out.

Abbigail fisted her hands at her side, her disgust of him mounting. “Fourteen years of dealing with strange men in my father’s store has not ruined my reputation. Working here with you has not ruined it. Brother Blum cannot ruin it in one night.”

Huber’s demeanor went black. “’Tis all folly, and reckless disregard for everything that we purport to be.”

Bafflement replaced the anger on Nicholas’s face, then that plain earnestness she had seen only twice and admired so much. And as surely as birds sing at sunrise, she knew that she could love this man with her whole heart.

“We are supposed to be kind to one another, Brother,” he said, reasonable again. “We are supposed to worship. Neither Sister Till nor I have been to evening worship in a week. If she still wishes it, I will take her safely there and bring her safely home.”

“I cannot believe that Brother Till would approve,” Huber said, with an ugly glare that promised retribution. But he resumed his seat and took up his Bible in a strained silence.

“We should go now or be late,” Abbigail told Nicholas in a moment. Lateness would be a scandal as well, she thought, if they arrived together.

Nicholas hastily straightened his stock, swatted road dust off his brown coat, and shrugged into it. Outside in the twilight, he paused at the bottom stair, his gaze on a level with hers where she stood three steps above him, his eyes glinting with recovered humor.

“Apron, Abbigail,” he softly chided.

“Oh!” She bunched it in her hands, tinned on her heel and hurried inside. It was soiled from the wagon, had been barely fit for supper, but she had not had time to change. It would not do for services. She unpinned it, flung it on its peg, and joined Nicholas in the street.

What Was the man up to? He had used her given name again. Again, with studied indifference to Brother Huber’s warning about improprieties.

The day’s heat had abated, and the twilight hour settled softly down. They fell in behind two families headed for the Saal and walked to the corner of the block without a word. An uncomfortable silence, she thought, owing to all that had happened that afternoon.

She edged into the purpose of her walk. “I do thank you, Brother Blum, for defending me to Brother Huber. He can be … overly punctilious.”

Nicholas’s dimple flashed wickedly. “Is that the word? I was thinking pious, priggish, pompous, and possessive. Vain too, but that spoils our alliteration.”

She agreed but knew she shouldn’t laugh. “So many words to choose from. And so severe.”

“You could pick just one, I suppose. They’re hard won but freely given.” He looked down at her kindly. “How do you bear him?”

“I pray.”

He laughed. “I will have to try that.”

“Nicholas, be serious.” She clapped her hand to her mouth, but there it was, it just slipped out. It felt so natural to call him by his given name. Nicholas, the devil in him. Nicholas, the patron saint of gifts.

“Very well, I will. I can, you know.” His voice shifted to the low, earnest tone that resonated to her bones. “I am the one who should thank you for standing up for me. It wasn’t necessary, especially as it riles him. It wasn’t deserved. I knew about the flour. I should have remembered about the coins.”

They had reached the next corner, and the gathering crowd. Abbigail was startled to realize that she had not noticed it. All her attention was riveted on Nicholas, and her sympathy. “Brother Huber is too literal in his belief, too willing to find fault.”

“It makes him a good bookkeeper.”

“But he was too hard on you.”

“Nein, ‘twas my own stupid fault. Sometimes I rush.” He made an impatient gesture with his hands. “Sometimes I am rash.”

She thought of how his restless energy filled rooms. “Sometimes?”

He looked down at her abruptly and caught her smile.

“Very well then, most of the time,” he conceded gracefully.

They parted at the steps to Gemeinhaus, and Abbigail found a seat on the women’s benches in the Saal. The candlelit room was quiet but for the reverent slide of shoes and deferential rustle of skirts. Peaceful, a place for her to calm tumultuous emotions. She sat far back, as she had with Sister Benigna, knowing in her heart that she wanted only to watch Nicholas again.

He sat in the middle of the men, already known and liked by many, to judge from the respectful greetings he received as they entered the Saal. The burnished gleam of his tawny hair under the golden candlelight lifted her spirits. Despite Brother Huber’s disapproval of him, despite Nicholas’s own irrepressible irreverence, she believed him to be a serious Christian man. He had a good heart. He loved his family. He was courteous to her difficult father. He even tolerated Huber. And he had a tender, friendly way with her that made her laugh.

The brass band had begun its first chorale. She pulled herself together for the singing-and for the sound of his voice. The verse began and sopranos, tenors, and baritones blended with the trumpets and trombones. Instantly she picked out the voice of the man who seemed to have become her friend. Knowing him better now, she heard its resonance uppermost, its higher ranges as easy as his humor, its low notes as reassuring as his earnest strength.

To think that Brother Huber would spoil it all. He exaggerated danger, saw sordid passion in an innocent touch. She was above that. Brother Blum was too. They were friends. No one could say she should not admire the man. Enjoy her time with him. Sharpen her wits against his humor. Assuage her loneliness with friendship.

Harmless friendship.

But it would be hard.

Walking home with Nicholas in the moonless night could easily become Abbigail’s secret pleasure, she thought, his very size a shelter, his relaxed pace an invitation to confide. A few worshipers carried torches, and candles in windows of the homes they passed cast faint rectangles of light onto the street She stumbled over a rut.

In the dark Nicholas drew her hand protectively under his arm, a thoughtful gesture but indiscreet. “We forgot the torch.”

“By now, I should know my way.”

His head inclined toward her. “But I am sworn to bring you home safe.”

Because of Christian Huber. Nothing had been resolved with him. No doubt he awaited their return. The thought of his too-keen interest in their behavior angered her all over again. “I am so sorry you must contend with his pompous, pious prying,” she said, deliberately repeating his words.

Nicholas chuckled, apparently unconcerned. “Yes, I thought it trouble enough to contend with you.”

“You are incorrigible!” Despite her worries, she laughed. “I take his interference this afternoon very seriously.”

“Indeed, as I do. But did you see his face?” Nicholas whispered wickedly.

Abbigail was not sure how to answer. Was he gloating that they had given Huber a setdown? Or trying to relieve the distress that she still felt? She gave him credit for the latter and tried to strike a lighter tone.

“His suspicions would be harmful if anything were going on between us.”

He smoothly guided her around the corner. “But nothing is,” he said lightly.

Nothing to you, she thought, her chest suddenly hollow.

But Nicholas cared for her, she would swear it. His every word and gesture said he did, earnestly, even intimately. She could not think he meant to seduce or even trifle with her. Unless … perhaps Salemites were more relaxed about Single Brothers spending time in the company of Single Sisters. And Nicholas had lived with four spirited sisters in his father’s house. Surely that accounted for his easy manner with her and his too-easy dismissal of Brother Huber’s prying eyes.

But she was no fool. And not about to be made one. She had known all along that she was too old, too short, too plain, too bold for such an eligible man as Nicholas Blum. She could be as casual and as nonchalant as he. Not Sisterly but sisterly.

Which gave her the right to admonish and advise.

“Even so, we must take care,” she warned. “Everything I know of Brother Huber-”

“Which is rather more, I suspect, than you may want to know.”

She sniffed, trying to ignore his too-sharp insight and his playful interruption. “Everything I know of him tells me he will leave no stone unturned until he finds us out in some trumped-up transgression. Which means he will see complicity in my passing you the cabbage.”

“Damning evidence of dalliance,” Nicholas said in a grave tone.

“Seriously, Nicholas. Prudes see sin in sidewise glances. Unless we take the greatest care not to appear familiar, he will ferret something out.”

“I am taking care, Abbigail. Besides”-he patted her hand reassuringly-“I am practically betrothed.”

Abbigail broke the hold he had on her and stopped stock still.

“Betrothed!”

He stopped too. “Well, practically.”

Her heart sank to her stomach and blood rushed to her head. In that instant she knew that what she felt for Nicholas far exceeded the bounds of friendship. But he must not suspect the involvement of her heart. She used her sisterly, inquisitory voice.

“How can you be betrothed? No banns are posted.”

“That would, ah … um, take a bit of explaining.”

“It certainly will. Given that betrothal begins the moment the bride consents and the banns are posted. Weddings then usually take place within three weeks. And you are quite unmarried.”

The darkness masked any blush, but consternation colored his voice. “The Elders refused to cast the Lot for me. They sent me here to learn a trade and clear my debt before they would even think of my setting up a household.”

“You have debt?”

“I accrued some debt. On land. They held that against me. Danke Gott, I did not name her to them. I told no one of my hope that she would be my bride.”

“You just told me.”

In the low light, she could see his hand rub his jaw, “I meant to assure you … that you are safe from… seduction.”

“I certainly feel safe now,” Abbigail said ironically her heart battering her ribs like a bird’s, trapped in the cage of her illusions, in the foolish spinster hopes she had allowed him to awaken. She had let herself be misled by the generous charm that Nicholas would extend even to a plain spinster who tormented him. Misled by her own too gullible, too pathetic imagination.

He reached for her hand. “Abbigail, I-”

She snatched it back. “Must you call me Abbigail?” The angry words spilled out. “A man practically betrothed to another woman must surely call me Sister Till.”

“Abbigail,” he said, contrite yet stubborn. “I care for you. You make it bearable for me here.”

Not bearable for me, she thought miserably. But she couldn’t let him suspect the foolish hope she had begun to harbor-foolish and so new, she’d barely understood it until he confessed.

“I am glad,” she said instead.

They were the bravest words that she had ever spoken in her life. She was glad she knew him, glad she had befriended him, glad for him if he truly loved the other woman. It was just that she was also so, so sorry. She smoothed her skirts and continued slowly walking toward home. A refuge too far, and yet too near, for her to ask him all she wanted to know.

“So, since I am now the only person in the world who knows of your hopes, it is safe for you to tell me all about her.”

“I cannot.”

“Why not? Ah. You are sworn to protect her too.” She tried not to sound too sarcastic, determined to keep her remarks light.

“Um … in a manner of speaking. Her reputation is in my hands. I want to protect that.”

“From me? I can see how you would want to protect her from me! Think, Nicholas. Who would I tell? She is from Salem, is she not? A woman I don’t even know.”

A torch bobbed past, lighting Nicholas’s troubled brow. “No, I cannot name her,” he said.

“You don’t trust me.”

He became very serious. “I do trust you. More than … more than anybody. Surely you understand. I do not have permission. The Lot was never cast.”

His consideration touched Abbigail. But his restraint miffed her, for reasons she did not fully understand. Nicholas Blum was in love with a nameless, featureless woman. Abbigail needed a name and features to bite down hard on, the way men and women under surgeons’ knives bit down on towels to bear the pain.

“So … no name. But you may tell me about her.”

“Our families are near neighbors. I rescued her from the ropes of her mother’s meanest cow when she was ten and I was seventeen, and I set myself to wait until she grew up. My heart has been hers ever since.”

Abbigail spoke with difficulty. “She must be a paragon.”

He laughed lightly, fondly. Abbigail’s heart compressed with loss.

“An angel, but not very good with cows.”

They had reached the store, and he could say no more.

Brother Huber met them at the door, out of sorts. Her father was complaining of his pain, his attendant, her desertion. He demanded willow bark tea, and Huber had no notion where to find or how to make it.

Abbigail busied herself in making the infusion and accepted the men’s quick goodnights without looking up. They headed for the Brothers House, leaving her to her unhappy father and her sad, spinsterish duty to his health. She climbed the stairs to her room with his tea on a little tray, repeating the words that must become her new rule.

There was nothing between her and Nicholas Blum, she told herself.

There had been nothing between them.

There would be nothing. Nothing. Ever.

13

On his fifth trading junket to Philadelphia, Nicholas successfully haggled, traded, and bartered all week with the sharpest, slyest merchants on the wharves and at the stalls. Beneath the covered marketplace, he wove in and out of the throng of shoppers, no mean feat for a man his size in a hot, dense crowd intent on purchasing wares and spending money. He was putting the last of his scrip on a pair of China dolls.

A red-faced woman primped their crisp muslin dresses for display. “Yer daughters’ll love ‘em, laddie,” she said. “How many do ye ‘ave?”

“I have sisters. Twins,” he said.

She named her price but he held his ground, settling on a sum that did not quite clean his pockets.

Protesting his parsimony, she took his coins. “Ye should ha’ daughters o’ yer own. A man like ye is in ‘is prime.” She whisked a sheet off a pile of broadsides to wrap a limp-limbed doll. “Ye should marry.”

He would have, he thought grimly, but for the Elders’ strictures. He waited for the old sharp anger that had driven him from Salem but instead felt … merely hunger. He should have a wife, indulgent and admiring, tall and stately. A wife like Catharina. But instead of her, his mind summoned the image of someone dark and tiny, self-confident and bossy.

He stood in the midst of strangers, stunned by the coil of his intention. Catharina was his lifelong sweetheart; Abbigail, his newest friend.

Friend, he exhorted himself.

Nevertheless, her pert, pretty face came between him and the sweet memory of Catharina’s distant beauty. He had tried to ignore it, bury it, shove it away. He had done so for weeks, arguing to himself that sheer proximity had sparked his notice of Abbigail’s bright, precise beauty.

Proximity, and his fall from grace with Mary Clark. Her seduction had awakened him to tormenting desires that would not go away.

No, he argued with himself, he was not dallying with Abbigail. His attraction to her was of a higher order. He liked sparring with her, a female equal he had known only in his stepmother, not ten years his senior, and in his oldest sister. He admired Abbigail’s competence in the store and her handling of Huber and her father. Nicholas appreciated her for being kind to him, for sensing his homesickness, for patiently prodding him to speak of his family and Catharina.

When he got home to Abbigail, he would have to… kiss her.

Blast the thought. It assailed him. It perplexed him and intrigued him. For it would not go away.

Kissing Abbigail was the image in his mind, his heart, his body. Deny it as he might in the light of day, she came to him in dreams at night. Soulful eyes. Stubborn nose. Pretty, kissable mouth. A tiny waist his hands could span. Generous breasts that would fill his grasp. Hips that swayed, making him swell with …

His feelings for Abbigail were lust, not brotherly gratitude for her goodness of heart. He should be ashamed-for her sake and for Catharina’s.

Standing in the bustling street, he closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, damning his lapse with Mary Clark. That night had acutely stirred his once-mastered desire, had irredeemably aroused long-neglected passion in his loins.

“Sir. Sir!” He looked down at the old woman’s cart. “Yer dolls.” She handed him two oblong lumps in wrinkled paper.

“Thank you.” Masking a grimace with a practiced wink, he headed for the clockmaker’s shop, and his final purchase for Georg Till. The clockmaker, expecting Nicholas, unlocked a display case and took out five gleaming watches.

“Gold Swiss works with diamonds, encased in French enamel.” The man repeated his pitch from the morning. “Each one is unique, except for quality. There, all are the same, the best you will find this side of the Atlantic.”

Nicholas could tell. His former master, the clockmaker, would admire the precision works and hop with glee to hear the low price.

Nicholas wanted it lower. He haggled, invoking his new-honed skills to drive a hard bargain. The man yielded grudgingly.

“Very well. I have decided to take them.” Nicholas let reluctance hide his satisfaction with the deal. “If our customers buy them quickly, I might try more.”

The man gave a deferential nod and packed the watches in a walnut box. Till had not commissioned such a purchase. Convincing him of its merit would be a task. Still, if he refused to see their possibilities, Nicholas could always buy them back with his own reserves.

He paid the last of Till’s money, stashed the watches safe beneath the dolls in his battered portmanteau, and slung it over his shoulder.

The wharf beckoned. In his weeklong stay he must have walked it end to end a dozen times, exploring his first freedom from the restrictions and habits of home. His questing nature reveled in the docks’ fogged mornings, glaring noon, the amassed heat of evening. The stink of hot tar, damp hemp, and dead fish permeated his clothing and his skin. At every hour of the day heavy chains clanked, ships’ timbers creaked, and carts rattled past. The din of men never ceased.

This afternoon, sailors shouted from mainmasts to decks to quay, readying ships for voyages. Dingy water slapped against the pilings. Heat shimmered in the stale late-August air. Philadelphians thought it unbearable, but it wasn’t. Not to a man from North Carolina, where wet heat cloaked the land and sat for weeks.

Carolina. Salem. Catharina Catharina, he commanded himself to think. Past the point of physical hunger, he walked on, his mind in turmoil and his heart in a twist. Like the great dumb draft horse he felt himself to be, he had gone off his feed. He should be looking to the future with hope, with pride in what he was achieving. Every purchase brought him nearer to deserving Catharina’s hand.

Shielding his eyes with his hand, he watched a wiry sailor scramble up riggings like a spider. Seabirds whose names he did not know careened around, then swooped down after scraps.

Beautiful, pure, innocent Catharina. He closed his eyes to summon her image. And saw Abbigail’s great dark eyes and teasing smile instead.

He had brought the heat of Philadelphia home, he thought, driving his team through the nearly deserted town to Georg Till’s store. It was time for vespers, and everyone must be at prayer. He wished himself in the shelter of the Saal. Unloading could wait until morning when it might be cool enough to breathe.

He eased the team behind the store, swung down from the wagon, unhitched the traces, and led the horses down the hill to the nearest cistern for animals. Sweat dripped off their sleek bodies as they drank, then clopped wearily to the livery. The last two mornings on the road he had hitched them up at three and driven until dark.

He was weary, too. Back at the store, he found no one to welcome him. Perhaps all three of them had gone to vespers. Odd, though, for someone usually stayed home. He climbed onto the wagon, moved a few things from behind the seat and tilted it forward to retrieve the dolls and watches he called treasures.

Plunder, Abbigail would say smartly.

Inside, more silence. He loosened his stock, hung his coat on a peg, and washed up, glad of shade and solitude. Yet something was amiss. He had not been in the kitchen at vespers without Abbigail’s suppertime busde. Without her brisk, efficient presence, the room seemed cavernous to him, great giant that he was.

She had left a kettle simmering in the hearth’s coals. Lifting the lid, he sniffed the fragrant steam. At home, the kitchen was his stepmother’s domain, so he had never needed to know the names of the most familiar herbs, and never bothered to learn. The steam cleared. White and orange chunks bobbed near the top of the hearty stew, and he detected squares of meat. Potatoes, carrots, beef. His stomach tightened with hunger.

So why had everyone gone to vespers? On the counter in the front room, he displayed the dolls for Abbigail to see. To impress her. He wished he’d had the money to buy the twins a pair, but never mind. He would in time. This pair would sell in a snap at Till’s store. As would the watches, he hoped. The little office held the safe for valuables. He searched for the key under the cushion of Brother Till’s chair.

That was when he heard it. The low, unmistakable sound of misery. Alerted, he cocked his head. A woman, weeping. A man with many sisters knew the sound. It came from upstairs, from Abbigail’s bedroom. He knew exactly where it was from helping her father to bed. The weeping grew no louder but did not stop.

What disaster had happened in his absence to make her cry? What theft, what injury, whose insult could drive her to tears?

She, who seemed to him contained, complete, invulnerable.

A fierce desire to comfort and protect her tore through him, and he pocketed the key, picked up the walnut case, and headed for her. But he paused at the foot of the stairs.

He had the need, but not the right.

There was a louder sob. Of sorrow? What if she were grieving? Assuaging sorrow was not his forte. His father was the great dispenser of consolation in the family. Nicholas made them laugh. But for Abbigail, he braved the stairs, annoyed to think that Huber and Till had left her here, bereft.

Nicholas stood before the door and rapped lightly.

The sobbing choked off. “Oh, go away.”

Her voice was hoarse and low and unmistakably angry at this breach of her privacy. Angry? Nicholas didn’t claim a working knowledge of the woman’s darker emotions. But in his limited experience, grieving women were not primarily angry at any and all comers.

“Abbigail, ‘tis Nicholas. Do you want me to go away?”

Her voice was stronger, prickly. “Yes.”

Her answer did not satisfy. The door was not shut tight. He spoke into the crack. “What is the matter?”

An unintelligible outburst confirmed her anger, but she cracked the door. “Go away.”

“Can’t I help? May I come in?”

“There is nothing you can do!” she said quite firmly.

Very likely. But neither could a friend stand idly by in the face of her distress. With a sense of urgency, he pushed in. She stood before him, proud and tense, her face ravaged with tears, her plain dress in rumpled disarray. Her head was bare. Its fall of thick mahogany hair tumbled past her shoulders.

Telling himself that he had seen his father comfort his sisters a hundred dozen times, he sucked in a deep breath and tried to take her in his arms.

“Liebling,” he murmured, as Jacob Blum would do. “Sweetheart, I am so sorry.”

She pushed him away, her small flat hands bouncing off his chest. “As well you ought to be!”

“Me?” he asked with mild surprise. Mild, because unexpected trouble often came his way. Surprise, because he could think of nothing untoward he could possibly have done to hurt her or-as now seemed certain-to inflame her to this pitch.

“You!” she confirmed. “’Tis all your fault. Your charming, decent, likable fault! You strolled into my store and turned my world upside down.”

“I have been away all week,” he pointed out reasonably.

To his astonishment, she started pounding at him with her fists. Under her tight calico bodice, her bosom heaved with fury. Sobs punctuated the blows that landed smartly on his chest. She couldn’t actually hurt him, he reasoned, trying like the devil to make sense of her passion, her accusation, her tears streaming down a flushed, angry face.

He hated to see her so distraught. “Abbigail! Stop!”

She did not stop.

Standing, he caught one wrist and then the other, restraining her as gently as he could. She was not weak. Small, but not weak. With her arms pinned, she struggled anyway, kicking his shins with the pointed toes of her very tiny, very hard shoes.

“Gott im Himmel, Abbigail. Whatever I did, I apologize.”

“You cannot apologize long enough or loud enough for this!” she almost shouted, kicking with ever more deadly accuracy

Abruptly he released her arms, picked her up, and flung her bodily over his shoulder. She was lighter than a sack of almost anything, but she screamed in protest, pounding his back with her elbows and his belly with her knees.

He was, all in all, impressed.

His latest sin must be spectacular. He managed to transport her across her bedroom without tripping on its colorful rag rug, then deposited her unceremoniously on her bed. She hit the featherdown mattress with a squeak of outrage. Taking no more chances, he carefully but firmly pinned her shoulders to the patchwork quilt, worried, appalled.

“Keep this up, and you will not be able to apologize long enough to me,” he said, trying for good humor as he angled his body above her.

She snarled, then turned her head and almost bit his restraining arm.

He twisted away, oddly hurt. “Jesu, Abbigail, I thought we were friends.”

All the starch washed out of her and tears of frustration welled in her eyes. “So did he. And that’s the problem.”

“So did who? And what’s the problem?”

“Brother Huber,” she croaked. “Brother Huber.”

A thousand thoughts raced through his mind. One lodged there. Anger flooded his lungs, then fear of the worst he could imagine coiled in his belly. “He hurt you.”

“Not yet,” she snapped.

Banking rage, Nicholas straightened up and took a place at the edge of her bed, patting a spot for her to join him. Not too close, for he regarded her fists as unpredictable, nor too far away. She looked ready to fly off at the slightest provocation.

“Tell me,” he said gently.

He saw the struggle on her face. She swallowed, moistened her lips, passed a savage prayer skyward. “He asked the Elders for my hand in marriage.”

Her punches were nothing to this. Nicholas’s breath stuck in his diaphragm. Abbigail and Brother Huber! Over his dead body. He forced calm.

“Did they agree to draw the Lot?”

She nodded, looking down. “They drew the Lot last week, while you were away.”

“And …” He did not want to hear the answer.

She studied her fingernails. “It said yes.”

Knowing the answer, it stunned him anyway Reaching across to her, he gently turned her head. Her gaze skittered away. “Abbigail, look at me.”

She could not, without crying. Teardrops tracked down her cheeks. Furious teardrops. After years of seeing his sisters cry, he could tell angry tears from sad ones.

“Abbigail, refuse him,” he urged. “You can refuse his suit. You can say no to the Lot. ‘Tis the simplest thing in all the world. ‘Tis your prerogative.”

She granted him her flaming gaze. “Father insists.”

“Fathers don’t have that right.”

Her chin trembled in rebellion. “He doesn’t want me to be alone after he goes.”

Nicholas could not repress a bark of laughter. “After he goes? He’s not that ill!”

A wry smile crooked the comers of her mouth. “He is that stubborn. He plans to manage me until I am old and gray.”

“Exactly. Besides, when he does pass on, you won’t be alone. You will have the Single Sisters House,” Nicholas said heartily. He felt on somewhat familiar ground about the fine points of the Brethren’s way of marriage, having discussed them with the oldest of his sisters many times. By the age of twenty-one, Anna Johanna had refused three prospective suitors, turning down the Lot each time.

“My father thinks a Single Sister’s life inferior to marriage,” Abbigail volunteered.

“Do you?”

She paused for an alarmingly long time. “No.”

“Do you want to marry?” he asked, aware of a hitch in his heart, a warning he did not want to heed. For he couldn’t imagine his teasing, confiding friend married, sharing her days, her thoughts, with a husband as she had shared them with him.

She turned her face up to his then, and he was lost in the dark, luminous depths of her eyes.

“Once, I did. Twice. Twice the Lot said no. That it would say yes now, at last…” Her voice cracked. “Can I question the Savior’s will? Can I deny my father’s wishes?”

Yes, yes, yes. The words drummed in Nicholas’s head. Doubt the Lord. Defy your father. Don’t follow my path of halfhearted compliance. Besides, her father probably just wanted to secure his store. But Nicholas slowed his thoughts and took her hands and spoke from his heart.

“The Savior’s consent to a match is not His command that the woman accept it. My sister turns down every proposal that comes her way. It is allowed. No stigma has attached to her. None will attach to you. You know that is our way, Abbigail.”

She nodded, acknowledging the truth of what he said. “But my father-”

“Your father minds his store and forgets his daughter’s happiness.”

“Oh,” she said on a sudden sob of outrage. “Happiness …”

Nicholas pressed his point. “There would be no happiness with Huber. Being with him would be worse than being alone.”

“Brother Huber would be worse than anything,” she rasped.

Nicholas agreed. The thought of Abbigail forced to accept that man’s embrace heaved in his belly like a spoiled meal. He had to make her see she must refuse the man. “You would have to kiss him.”

She snatched her hands from Nicholas’s grasp and spread them across her breasts as if the ultimate intimacy of marriage-and with a man like that-had just assaulted her.

“No one ever kissed me.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be him.” It should be me. The thought was physical, powerful.

Eyes open, Nicholas bent his head toward her mouth, his heart hammering in his chest. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He had kissed so many girls, but always with permission. “Abbigail?”

Her lashes were long and dark and thick, and she blinked softly. “No one. Ever,” she whispered.

His heart skipped a whole beat, then jolted into service. “He would not do it right,” he pointed out, persuading her. Persuading himself.

Her limpid brown gaze clouded, darkened. “I would not know right.”

He gave brief thanks to a wise God for all those stolen kisses that enabled him to say now with confidence, “This is right.” He lowered his head to her desolate face.

Abbigail accepted the chaste, brotherly salute that Nicholas offered for a kiss. Then he pulled away. Disappointment stung her.

“Ah. Is that all?” It was far, far more than she would ever want from Brother Huber, but not at all the heated embrace that had fired her recent dreams of Nicholas. Perhaps this was all a man like him could offer a woman like her.

His broad chest rose and fell.

“No, not all,” he said huskily.

With slow deliberation, his hands framed her face, his leonine head angled down, and his mouth covered hers. The force of his tender assault swept her like the wind. Like a consolation for every day of her lonely, spinster’s life. Softly searing, his lips branded her, and all on its own, her body curled toward his.

She froze, breathless, afraid that any move she made would signal him to stop. Or to continue. She did not know which. Poised on the brink of her fledgling flight, she did not know whether to trust the wind or risk the fall.

His arms decided her, enfolding her as if to prevent escape and banish fear. He lifted his mouth a feather’s width away.

“Breathe, Liebling,” he whispered. “Relax and close your eyes, and let me show you.”

She nodded in confused assent, and her unbound hair tumbled in her face.

He freed one arm, gently brushed a thick lock away, and gave her a tender smile that came from the man behind the charm. “I promise to stop when you say so.”

A spinster faced with marriage should know the weight of kisses, she told herself. Besides, the sweetness of his wry reassurance gave her all the freedom and permission even she could ever need.

Expelling a pent-up breath, she closed her eyes and waited.

His mouth, so generous with smiles, was munificent with kisses. Warmth drizzled over her newly, acutely awakened mouth, which up till now had been engaged in futile speech and fruitless eating all her life. His lips touched hers like the merest wingbeat of a butterfly, then moved across her mouth in little loose nibbles, clinging, releasing, clinging again. In answer, her lips allowed, softened, clung.

His sighs roared in her ears.

The heat of his breathing fanned her face.

A slow, sweet burn kindled in her belly, and her throat closed on a small, high cry-a trill, she knew, of pleasure.

Which he answered with a moan that rumbled up from deep within his chest. Then his strong, large hands tenderly drew her down beside him on the featherbed where he had pinned her only moments ago. She could not struggle now. She could not will herself to move except as he might ask her to.

He asked mutely, his thick strong arms pulling her to his broad chest, his mouth claiming hers. She gasped at the strangeness, the intimacy, the rightness of his embrace. In his arms, sheltered by his massive bulk, she felt protected and free enough to fly.

His kiss went on and on, lasting fifty, a hundred leisurely, fraught breaths, overwhelming her. She lost count, could only feel. Nicholas, charming, fearless Nicholas, the man she thought she knew, was deeper, steadier, more intense. Hot and wet, his tongue ran along the seam of her mouth, delicate but insisting that she part her lips.

Bemused, beset, besieged, she yielded, thinking-to the extent that thought would form-she had not bargained for this. She knew what kissing was. Lips pressed to lips, and that was that. But he probed at her teeth as he had at her lips. Unsure of what he wanted, unsure what to do, she opened her mouth for him awkwardly. But he groaned with unmistakable approval, and his tongue sought hers.

Shocked, she broke away, an inch away, opened her eyes, and saw stark hunger on his face. Hunger for her. It warmed her to her bones. It shook her to the center of her being.

“We’re not finished, Abbigail,” he said softly. “Let me kiss you.”

Not finished! His consuming kiss swallowed up her startled “Oh!” Her teeth clanged into his, his tongue possessed the inside of her mouth, and his own sweet taste and rich, masculine smell gusted through her remaining senses.

Still cautious, she accepted him, amazed when tremors quaked an inner core she never knew she had. For his deepening kiss rolled through her body like thunder, flashing her senses like lightning on a sultry afternoon. Emboldened by his sheer energy, she flew full-strength into the storm. Exuberant from the sensations streaming through her body, she wriggled closer to him, pressing her tingling breasts against his chest, her trembling stomach against the muscled flat of his, her very hipbone to his … his …

What she encountered was no hipbone.

A thick, stiff, heated rod jammed against the parting of her legs. She went still, utterly at a loss what to say or do. She knew just enough of sanctioned love to recognize that this must be his manhood, must be the most private, intimate evidence of his desire.

Abruptly, he released her and flung himself back across the bed, self-contempt flashing across his face.

“Abbigail, I am sorry…” His voice was gravelly, vexed. “A man shouldn’t… A man can’t help… with someone he likes …”

She had done something wrong. She forced a small smile. Sitting up, she fussed her gauzy neckerchief into place. She needed to get her clothes in order. She needed to get her emotions under control.

“I take it that was a kiss?” she asked pertly.

He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Liebe Gott,” he muttered.

She pressed her lips together, hiding the eagerness she had felt and the tiniest bit of amusement. The charmer who took nothing seriously had never been so serious with her.

“Adding swearing to fornication, I see, Brother Blum.”

He lurched up, his massive frame sitting heavily apart from her on the edge of her creaking bed. “That was not fornication!”

“Perhaps you could define fornication for me then,” she said, deliberately, excessively prim.

He jabbed his fingers through his golden mane of hair, which she had tousled. She, as if she were his lover, and not merely his friend in need of comfort. Feeling a hot blush rise, she looked away. When she could bear to look again, he was shaking his head.

“I wouldn’t define fornication for my own sisters if my soul depended on it.”

She relented from her teasing and gave his hand an empathetic little squeeze. “No need, Nicholas,” she said softly. “I know the difference between what we just did and that.”

“Ah. Gut. Sehr gut.” He paused, straightened his stock, then made a point of adjusting the blousy sleeves of his shirt which their embrace had twisted.

She resisted the urge to help him.

“Then I have made my point,” he said.

“Your point?”

He grimaced, half charm, half guilt. “I showed you what a kiss is like.”

She crossed her arms and tapped her foot, mortification swamping her best effort at control. She would have sworn that he had shown her passion. But what did she know-a spinster Single Sister virgin who had never been kissed in her whole life? More likely, he had kissed her so to win a point in argument. Her heart shriveled. His demonstration had not meant to him what it had meant to her.

“Indeed.” She managed not to spit the word out in his face.

“Well.” He grinned at last, evidently taking her restraint for approval of his lesson. “You might enjoy kissing a friend, but you wouldn’t want to kiss Christian Huber. Not like that. Not for the rest of your life.”

All the anger that had simmered in her for days boiled up. “Idiot,” she bit off. “Friends don’t kiss like that. I know that, sheltered spinster that I am.”

Chagrin did not make him less handsome, she noted, as he rubbed his strong jaw. “Nevertheless, you must not marry Brother Huber,” he said. “I truly meant to spare you that by giving you an example. Nothing more.”

She was hurt, not assuaged. “Nothing more? Then what do you call what happened between us on my bed?”

He stood and paced the confines of her little room, stopped in front of her, and took her hands in a chaste, demanding clasp.

“Sweet, Abbigail. What happened between us was sweet. And hot and wonderful. And wrong of me,” he said with an earnestness that cleaved her heart. “I owe you my deepest apology for letting it go that far. I know better. I know how upright and principled you are.”

His words dropped into her soul like stones. He had given. Now he was taking away. He liked her enough to give her a soul-consuming kiss, but not enough to do it again. Her old familiar sense of isolation swirled through her. Upright and principled never warmed her bed at night. Upright and principled never seared her soul.

Cords of regret banded her heart. Misery hollowed her stomach. Pride lifted her chin. “You need not worry about me and Brother Huber,” she said briskly, resolved at least to appear to take his ill-considered kiss in the spirit it was intended.

As a lesson. From a friend. For the rest of her life.

14

Nicholas saw the prideful lift of Abbigail’s head and gave her a short, unhappy nod. He had carried his point. Now he could count the cost. She was hurt, her friendship lost.

“But we should worry if Brother Huber finds us here,” Abbigail said.

She whisked over to the window and peered into the street, tiny and efficient and in command of herself again. He admired her self-control. But he watched the graceful precision of her movements.

“Singstunde is over,” she said.

And the sun was setting and everyone was walking home and he was a prize idiot, Nicholas thought. Despite her quick recovery, he would not let Huber find them and hurt her further.

“I’m leaving,” he said, backing from the room into the unlit hall and heading for the stairs.

“Wait.” Her light tread padded up behind him. “This is yours.”

She handed him the walnut case. “More plunder, I take it,” she said in a too-bright tone, and followed him down the stairs.

“Treasure,” he replied, hoping a joke they had once shared would restore their former standing. “You must see them before I put them away.”

As if willing them to return to earlier times, she lit a square tin lantern and joined him downstairs in the tiny office. Explaining how he came to buy the watches for her father, he lifted the lid for her inspection. Her eyes narrowed keenly, then widened with appreciation.

“French enamel. Very nice.”

The knot of tension in his gut loosened in relief. He had found a neutral topic; she was showing interest, real or feigned. He demonstrated the watches’ fine workings. Taking the key from his pocket and opening the safe, he continued, “Your father will have my hide, however, for extravagance on his behalf.”

She smiled blandly, a shadow of her old openness. But still, he hoped, progress. Perhaps he hadn’t blundered past repair. His chronic optimism surfaced.

If there were kissing cousins, could there be kissing friends?

“My father will not scold. Not if there is profit in them, Brother Blum,” she said, and slipped out of the office.

She was still on his side, he thought. But he watched her go with a jab of remorse that he had hurt her. A jolt of regret that his morals had not let him finish what he started. No, he told himself, he could not rue that. He had protected her from his worst self-the thoughtless sensual ogre Mary Clark had unleashed.

He tendered his treasure to the security of the safe. He even hoped for a bite of stew before going to the Brothers House for the night, as he absentmindedly pocketed the key.

She swept back in and placed a packet in his hand. “In all the fuss, I almost forgot. News for you from home,” she said breezily.

She had recovered, he realized, strangely disappointed. She put no more stake in their mind-shattering kiss than he had intended to. Intended, that is, until he tasted her sweet passion. She could walk away from him. Gut, zehr gut, he told himself. She should walk away from him, as he had to walk away from her.

His heart wrenched. Resolutely, he ignored it.

“Well, open it,” she said after he delayed. “I know how you welcome news from home.”

He wanted to open it, but later, in privacy, when his mind was less distracted and his senses less disordered. Still, he would pretend that all was well.

He tore into the packet and flattened the sheet of heavy paper on the counter next to the dolls. “From my brother,” he said, struck by the oddity that he would write at all.

“Which one?” Abbigail asked with friendly interest, fingering the dolls’ muslin dresses with approval. She picked one up and examined it, head to toe, waiting for his answer.

“Matthias.” He scanned the letter worriedly, then with disbelief. There must be some mistake. Hot blood flooded his face. The air deserted his lungs.

His intended bride, stolen out from under him.

He had asked his brother to keep an eye out for her, not claim her for his own. How could Matthias do such a thing? How could his father and God and the Elders conspire to let it happen?

“Is he the younger younger brother or the older younger brother?” Abbigail quizzed, apparently amused.

“The older younger brother,” he all but snarled.

“Nicholas …?” She asked, her voice softening.

Nicholas looked up from the letter. Abbigail’s face was bright with interest. The words tumbled from him, pulled by her sympathy.

“Matthias is to wed my Catharina.”

The brightness faded. “Your Catharina?”

“Catharina is in love with me. And I pledged myself to her.”

A few minutes later, George Till returned from Singstunde. “Out of the question!” he said when Nicholas tendered his request to leave. “You cannot go to Salem to attend your brother’s wedding.”

Not to attend it, Nicholas thought grimly. To stop it.

Abbigail, too brisk and too efficient, was setting the stew on the table without a sign of being the willing woman who had melted in his arms. Disheartened by her sudden distance and the darker turn his day had taken, Nicholas sat to eat with Till. Huber joined them, his aquiline nose aquiver at the prospect of another set-to.

“Let me explain,” Nicholas said to Till. But he could not explain the damning words in his thieving brother’s letter …

… astonishing good fortune… accepted the Lot… safe with me…

Till shoveled a spoonful of beans into his mouth, chewed, then spoke. “No explanation is needed. No one expects you to forsake your duty here to attend a simple ceremony. It is not our way. Besides, traveling three hundred miles there and three hundred back would take a month. A month I cannot grant you.”

Nicholas looked to Abbigail for help. But she was setting ale down at her father’s place, her pretty, strained face shutting him out.

“My family wishes I would come,” he said, not quite accurately.

I wish you could share my joy, were his betraying brother’s words.

Till’s mouth thinned into a denying smile. “Knowing you cannot. Knowing your time is mine.”

“My family is very close. They will want me there.”

“Bah! You are bound to me. You may prove yourself otherwise, but your father is a man of his word.”

Nicholas bristled. He too was a man of his word. For years, he had made promises, albeit veiled, to Catharina. Who here-for that matter, who there ?- would understand? Abbigail plunked a mug of ale beside his plate, her gaze shuttered. She knew enough, she must see his awkward position. But she could not stand by him the way she always did.

The way Catharina should have. But no, he would not blame Catharina. She, he reminded himself firmly, was his mainstay, the woman he had built his dreams around. Her tender acceptance had been his mooring as the Elders had shifted him from trade to trade.

But for her to marry his brother! What change had come to pass? Surely there was some error. Catharina loved him. She had as much as said so. He had to stand by her in this fiasco of the Lot drawn wrong. Only he could extract her from the disaster of marrying against her heart’s desire.

“I must go, Brother Till, with your consent or not.”

Till’s face darkened. “Go then. But don’t expect to saunter back.”

Saunter back. Careless, reckless Nicholas. His reputation followed, even here. “I honor my contracts,” he said firmly. “I will return.”

Till shoved his plate away, only a tremor in his hands divulging his anger. “Go without my consent, and that contract is broken.”

For the first time since their kiss, Abbigail met his gaze then turned to her father. “Papa, really If his family wishes-”

Till cut her off. “I regret, Brother Blum, that I have no choice.”

“But you do, sir. I’m no lad, no apprentice, but a man full grown. And as such, you can let me go, banking on my word for my swift return.”

But with a bride, he amended to himself, after he rescued Catharina.

Till lurched up, his chair clattering to the floor. “No young whippersnapper walks out on me. You’re finished, Blum. Finished here and-if my reputation stands for aught-there, as well.”

Nicholas stood to help, but Abbigail beat him to it, righting the chair and taking her father’s arm in her accommodating way. “Papa, don’t upset yourself. Perhaps Brother Blum has reasons he cannot explain.”

A wave of gratitude washed over him. Forgiven. Danke Gott.

“’Tis not your affair, daughter.”

She patted Till’s hand and led him toward the parlor. “’Twas my affair to train him. He proved himself in that.”

Her father huffed and limped along.

“You would allow it if his father were dying,” she added.

“Jacob Blum is well,” he said to her, then waved a hand, dismissing Nicholas. “Go, Brother Blum. I no longer need you.”

Abbigail’s large brown eyes gave Nicholas one quick glance. Too quick to interpret. And she and her father retired.

Nicholas packed his few belongings at the Brothers House. He tried to be quick, but Christian Huber buzzed about, plaguing him with questions and complaining of all the extra work he’d have with all the extra inventory. As recompense, he suggested Nicholas sell his accumulated personal stock for profit to him. That decision took about a minute. Nicholas had to travel fast, and money was fighter than tools and toys and stationery. He sold it all to Huber, everything but the dolls. Now they would make presents for the twins, the one good to come of this disaster.

Shouldering his battered portmanteau, Nicholas extracted himself and went to unload the wagon at the store. Huber followed him there, too, slowing him down with endless inquiries about his new stock and finally commandeering the tiny office to take an inventory of it. Nicholas moved the last case from the wagon to the store.

He was fired. Fired, but free. Christian Huber could take inventory till his fingers cramped. And Georg Till could take his contrariness to the devil. Nicholas would rescue Catharina. He had not saved the weeping ten-year-old from that blasted cow only to leave her stranded now, loving him, depending on him, and facing marriage to a man she did not love. He had his loyalties.

And one last loyalty here, to Abbigail.

He entered the back way softly and wound through the hall to the shop to return his keys. She sat at the counter over a blotted ledger and started up at the sound of his stride.

“Abbigail,” he said gently. “I never wanted to alarm you.”

She wrapped her arms across her bosom, looking drained. “I’m just tired.”

“Here are my keys.”

He dropped them in her open hand, wanting to touch but careful not to.

She looked at them blankly and tossed them in a drawer. “You are leaving then.”

He nodded, surprised it was so hard, facing her, to say so.

So hard, facing her, to go.

She stood and swept past him to the kitchen, once more her efficient self. “You need food.”

“Don’t go to any trouble for me,” he said, striding to catch up.

But she had already opened the larder and taken out a loaf of bread. “No trouble.” Her unguarded smile turned rueful. “I know how much you eat.”

He smiled back. Friends. His heart thumped with relief. He reached for the loaf.

“Wait.” She rummaged in a pocket, took out a crisp handkerchief finely edged with tatting, and wrapped the loaf in it. “’Twill have to do,” she added, knotting the ends into four crisp points.

He took it soberly. “Be safe, Abbigail,” he murmured, unsure what more a Single Brother could say to a Single Sister he would likely never see again.

She reached out a hand as if to touch him but withdrew iL “You be careful.”

Gratitude for her friendship flooded him, and he bent to kiss her forehead.

“Don’t,” she said, pulling away. Her pained voice quicked his senses.

“Bless you, then,” he whispered harshly. And left her there, an unaccustomed emptiness hollowing his heart.

Six days later, he galloped, exhausted, into the yard at the White Horse Inn, ravenous for supper but not even tempted by the thought of Mary Clark. He had crossed the Virginia border into North Carolina and could make it home to Salem before dawn.

Home-if they would take him in.

“Nicholas! So soon?” Mary Clark’s voice broke into his thoughts, and she looked at him as if he were a succulent roast.

“Mistress Clark,” he acknowledged kindly, without a flare of interest. He dismounted, one hand on the saddle lest his legs buckle. “I could use some food. And a change of mount”

“Gaunt becomes you, Nicholas.” She playfully took his arm and tested it as if for weight or strength.

“Food, Mistress Clark,” he said tiredly.

She gave him her sauciest come-hither look. “There’s more than one kind of sustenance to perk up a weary man.”

He had to smile at her persistence. “I want the kind you eat.”

She cocked a knowing brow.

“Off platters,” he amended, feeling a hot blush rise at her easy bawdiness.

Laughing, she led him to a table in the large, open public room. He wolfed his food in silence, barely aware of her managing the rowdy crowd of back-country men.

For images of two other women plagued him. Every inn, every change of horse brought him closer to the luminous girl he had idealized since she was ten … and carried him farther from the tiny woman whose spirit had entangled his heart.

What was it about Abbigail? he wondered. Six days, five nights he had ridden, stopping to sleep on roadsides before he nodded off and fell out of the saddle. Long days and nights of knowing, fearing, he never would see her again. She had been …

Sharp-tongued, bossy, adamant that he toe the line, work hard, behave himself, stay true. He grinned. She knew what he meant to say almost before he said it. Unlike Catharina, her keen brown eyes never went soft with puzzlement. Abbigail was …

In his past. She had nothing to do with his perfect brother’s theft of his intended bride.

She could do nothing, say nothing, advise nothing on his current quest.

When he finished his meal, his mount was ready, and Mary Clark met him at the lean-to. “Come back, Brother Blum,” she teased, unruffled by rejection.

Never, he thought.

But he grinned and thanked her, heaved himself onto his fresh mount, and kicked it into the gathering darkness toward home.

Anger over Nicholas’s abrupt departure reduced Georg Till to broth and bed rest for a day. Abbigail left Christian Huber to mind the store while she nursed her father hand and foot.

“Deserted! Abandoned!” he railed for the fifth time since noon, she calculated. “By the son of my old friend.”

She hid a smile at his twisting of the facts. “Papa, you bade him go.”

“After he disregarded my injunction to stay.”

“’Twas an urgent family matter, he said. You cannot fault him for that.”

“Urgent? His brother’s betrothal urgent?”

“He feared the Elders erred in proposing that match,” she said.

“Nonsense. The Lot is cast and the Savior says ja or nein. The Savior makes no errors. No error with regard to Brother Blum, and none, daughter”-he punched the counterpane with knobby fingers-“with regard to you and Brother Huber.”

She held her tongue in order to avert another, worse outburst. She would never accept Huber’s proposal. But up till now her father had blocked all talk of her refusing it. “We are too far from Salem, Papa, to know the truth of his brother’s situation.”

“Towels, daughter,” her father ordered, sticking a swollen foot out from beneath the cover, a distraction he was wont to offer when her reasoning thwarted him.

She hurried to the basin of water and wrung out cool cloths.

“The problem is that you young people do not bow to the Savior’s will. The error is in young Brother Blum. In you.”

She bit back her protest and pressed the damp towel around his gouty limb. “There, now.”

He looked disapprovingly at his poor appendage. “The rascal owes me for lodging, food, patience.”

“Patience, Papa?”

“I loathe instructing young bucks.”

“He did rather well under your tutelage.” Never mind, she thought, that the tutelage had been hers. Never mind that she had lost her heart that way.

Her father grunted with displeasure. “I saw no evidence of his success.”

“You must have overlooked the ledgers from his last two trips.” She patted his hand. “We will do that after supper. Which you will take downstairs tonight.”

He glared his refusal.

“Supper, Papa. Downstairs tonight,” she said firmly, and left him to his complaints.

For she could not bear another hour cooped up in his airless room this late-summer afternoon. Nicholas’s departure had tangled her in extra work and obligations. It had tied her up in knots. Her world, which he’d expanded, shrank to her father’s concerns again. Without Nicholas’s contagious energy, the very rooms of the house and store were as inviting as a tomb.

A few hours later, she set out supper for herself and Christian Huber. His scrutiny tracked her from hearth to table, a final insult to her day.

Her father could not bear his upstairs exile either. Just in time to eat, he appeared in the kitchen doorway, a slight smile of improved temper wrinkling the corners of his mouth. “Perhaps I am a little hungry.”

She had added vegetables to his noon broth and boiled them to mush. He ate a bowl full, then another, and shortly the three retired to the parlor to check the ledger.

“You see the profit,” Abbigail said, after he had checked bills of lading and invoices against the entries in the book.

Her father frowned, a knobby finger marking his place. “All but here. What is this extravagance?”

She set aside her needlework and knelt beside his chair to read the ledger on his lap. “Watches, Papa. Brother Blum purchased five French enameled watches and brought them back for us to sell.”

“I haven’t seen them.”

“Nor I,” said Brother Huber, eyes glittering with something very like greed, Abbigail thought.

“That’s because he left them in the safe,” she snapped, more at him than at her father. “And we spent the day upstairs.”

“Show me, daughter.” He rose, steadied himself on her arm, and shuffled to the office, Huber attending. Taking her keys from her pocket, Abbigail opened the safe, withdrew the fine walnut case, and put it in her father’s hands.

He opened it and scowled in disapproval.

Irritation ripped her. She had exercised a saint’s patience with his bad humor all day long. “They’re beautiful, Father. Even you must admit iL Exactly the sort of expensive bauble outsiders empty their purses for.”

His scowl darkening, he snapped the case shut and handed it to her. Christian Huber stepped up to see.

“Really, Papa, you are too severe. I approved his purchase and his enterprise.”

“Open it,” he commanded.

She did. A chill slid down her spine.

“No watches!” Huber exclaimed, his face reddening.

“Stolen, I’ll warrant it,” her father said brutally. “I will have Blum’s head.”

“Father!” she gasped, appalled at his assumption and his instant ill will. Long moments passed before she could find the words to counter either. “Missing is not stolen.”

But the plush blue velvet where the watches had lain looked abandoned, like a bird’s nest empty in the fall. Conflicting images of Nicholas assailed her: the tireless tease, the earnest man, her comforter. But then there was the distracted man who had rushed off last night, his few possessions stuffed in a battered portmanteau.

With stolen watches? It was unthinkable.

“Misplaced, perhaps,” she argued. “He left in such a hurry.”

“We can always search, Sister Till,” Huber said helpfully.

“I would not have thought a son of Jacob Blum capable of such an act,” her father said, his mouth setting with disapproval.

Huber pulled at his chin, reasoning. “Perhaps he moved them to a safer place.”

“Safer than the safe?” her father asked. “Abbigail, you saw him put them there, did you not?”

“I told you so. But then there was the frenzy of his leaving.”

Her father shuffled painstakingly through stock and papers on his desk, sorting, stacking, straightening. “’Twas a ruse to hide the theft,” he concluded.

“Not the Nicholas Blum I know!” she said.

“Indeed,” said Huber. “I found him rather rash and reckless.”

“Unlike you, Brother Huber,” her father said. “Him I can easily suspect. You have served us faithfully these twenty-two months, running the shop without a hint of scandal.”

Indignation flooded Abbigail. She ran the shop. Brother Huber was an obsequious, self-aggrandizing toady. “My only complaint is that my daughter scorns you,” her father added.

She had no choice but to correct her father in front of her suitor. “I do not scorn you, Brother Huber.”

“You scorn his offer, daughter.”

“I merely do not want to marry, Father.”

“All good things in good time, Sister Till,” Brother Huber said, fawning shamelessly.

But she would not let him or her father sway her from Nicholas’s defense. “You cannot blame Nicholas Blum, Father. We have proof of nothing.”

Her father rummaged through the desk drawers, riffled though shelves that lined the office walls, and then checked under the cushion on the chair. “Aha!” he said, and shook it in her face. “Here’s your proof.”

Puzzled, Abbigail studied its worn cording. “What, Papa?”

“Look at the seat,” he said as if she were a ninny. “No key! Someone took the key we hide here.”

“Someone entering the shop,” she argued.

“Indeed,” Huber said guiltily. “I stepped out twice today.”

Till frowned. “You left the counter untended!”

“Custom was extremely slow,” Huber offered, abashed.

But Abbigail felt a weight lift. “Then someone slipped in and found the key.”

“Bah!” her father said. “Who would know where to look?”

Huber agreed with her, it seemed. “A thief might, Brother Till. We make no great secret of where we keep things.”

Her father grew animated, shaking a finger in the air. “No thief but Blum. This is how I see it. He left in haste, stealing the watches for his own profit.”

Nicholas had forgotten to leave the safe’s key when he put the watches in it. Abbigail saw that plain as day. Her father saw the opposite. On such differences of opinion, whole continents went to war.

“You are leaping to conclusions, Papa.”

Huber frowned gravely. “I must agree with your daughter, Brother Till. I cannot say I liked Brother Blum, but surely he is not your man.”

But her father was swelling with renewed vigor, with returning health. He took her hand with almost youthful energy. “I’ll have his head for this, daughter. If not his head, his livelihood, his reputation. We are off to Salem.”

A night’s sleep only strengthened Georg Till’s resolve.

“You cannot possibly manage three hundred miles in two weeks, the pace the coaches keep,” Abbigail argued over boded eggs and buttered bread.

His face firmed with rebellion. “I can and will. And you will accompany me.”

“Who will care for the store?”

“Christian Huber, of course.”

“Alone?”

Her father waved an impatient hand. “That gravedigger can help out. He knows the store from when he assisted us. I will go, daughter.”

“You must not think of this, Father,” she urged, growing desperate. “I cannot manage you, keep us in clean clothes, and find you proper food at inns. Suppose you have a spell like yesterday’s.”

His lower lip poked out. “Bah! Spells. Insubordination, not travel, brings on spells. I traveled but last month.”

Merciful heaven. Her heart contracted with dread. But heaven had no argument against his will. Oh, where was her mother when they both needed her?

“That was to Philadelphia, Papa. In our wagon, at your speed. You stayed with kind and caring friends. Travelers by coach are rousted out at three o’clock in the morning.”

He stabbed the bald head of his peeled egg. “A mere two hours before I usually wake.”

“To lie in bed,” she chided. “You require hot cloths to ease your aches before you break your fast at half past six. I doubt that inns supply hot cloths at dawn.”

“I will forgo them, Abbigail, as always when I travel,” he said with Teutonic pride.

She cracked and split her own soft-boiled egg and watched the gleaming yellow yolk spread across her plate. “Think, Papa! On the road from three o’clock every morning until ten at night for two long, hard weeks. The ruts alone will torment your affliction. To say nothing of hard beds and restless sleep and”-she had to make him see-“and fleas!”

He patted her hand. “I did not think you chickenhearted, daughter.”

His rare good humor melted her defenses. She almost wept. She could not bear to see Nicholas Blum again, not when it would take all her resolution, staying here alone, to close the book on her pathetic onesided romance. “It will be the death of you.”

“Rubbish, daughter. I am too mean to die.”

She gaped at him, astonished. She had had that thought herself. In mute apology, she covered his knobby hand with her own. “You will suffer so.”

He smiled as if grateful for her concern. “Then we shall bring Sister Rothrock. She will take your mind off me and teach you to laugh at bedbugs.”

Abbigail covered her face with her hands. She could not prevent the trip. Sister Benigna would grab at the chance to go. She had dear missionary friends in the Salem congregation, and Georg Till’s most maddening quirks amused her. Once again, her father would have his way.

And Abbigail would have to face a happily married Nicholas. For she had no doubt that his determination would have won the day-and the bride.

She could not face him, married, now that he had claimed her profane heart.

15

Through harsh moonlight, Nicholas saw a few familiar landmarks. Exhausted but resolute, he kicked his flagging livery mount into a gallop and took off on the last stretch of road into Salem. It was midnight, Friday night. On the first Sunday in September Matthias would marry Catharina.

He had to face his brother down. His perfect brother, the thief.

Nicholas reined in his horse at his parents’ door, thinking of rousing the household. The twins would fly to his arms, his stepmother would welcome him. Up the street, night watchman Samuel Ernst sounded the one o’clock hour on the conch shell he used for a horn. Too late. Later than Nicholas had realized. He would not alarm his family.

He wheeled his steaming horse toward the livery, past the brick-and-timbered Brothers House, a smaller, more inviting house than Bethlehem’s. Salem’s Brothers would take him in at any hour of the day or night He looked up at the rows on rows of windows, blank, black eyes onto the night. On second thought even they would be put out by his late arrival.

He no longer had a home here. He no longer knew where he belonged. Was that his fault or the Elders’? Should he have stood up like a man against their rule? Or did honor-manly honor-lie in submitting to their edict? Did his faith require submitting to their rule?

He had no ready answer. Unlike Matthias, he was not a contemplative man.

At the livery, not even the old groom Abraham was up. Rather than trouble the aging slave, Nicholas rubbed down his horse, found it hay and water, and tied it in a stall.

He was who he was. He could not change that. He had set the course of his life a long, long time ago, the day he ran away to war, thinking with a boy’s brash presumption to make amends for his whole community’s refusal to join in the fight. Restless, reckless Nicholas, everyone had said.

His striving to prove otherwise had fizzled. He had dabbled in the trades and floundered in affection, but he could right neither failing overnight For he had burned his bridges behind him. He had broken the agreement his father had made for him with Brother Till. He had thwarted a solid summer’s work with the old curmudgeon. He had ruined a budding friendship with Abbigad, nipped, clipped, crushed it.

Friendship?

That kiss had felt like something … more. He squashed that thought as she had obviously done. Abbigail was behind him now.

Catharina, before him.

Catharina, the pledge, the dream, the beauty. Self-censure pummeling his brain, he tramped toward his tin shop. Danke Gott, he still had that.

He did not, however, have Catharina, for all that she loved him. And she did love him. He was sure of it. What would a forced marriage to his brother do to her?

Forced? He stopped in his tracks, struck by the thought.

She had not waited for him. She had not refused his brother.

Why in heaven’s name not? he wondered. A flash of anger struck him, and betrayal knifed his heart.

But no. Catharina was not devious or capable of a deliberate breach of faith. She was a modest girl, true in her affections. She had honored every kiss he offered, and he would honor her. It was no doubt her mother’s fault. Even Abbigail had almost yielded to her father over Huber, and she had more mettle than anyone he knew. Catharina was a gender soul, younger, milder, less formed as a person, less tried by life. Always she had been open to suggestion, subject to persuasion. A tender empathy washed over him.

Her sweet, compliant nature flattered him. As his wife, he imagined her caring for him, honoring him. Looking up to him, as no one had ever looked up to restless, charming Nicholas, who charged about from here to there, jack of all trades, master of nothing.

Walking on past neat, trim, sleeping houses, Nicholas dragged his tricorn from his head in exasperation and swatted his breeches, stiff from sweat and the evening damps of four nights on the road. No, he thought, he had not done it all wrong. If no one credited him for his good, hard work over the years, so be it. His little tin shop was the town’s sole supplier, and after its first two years of predictable losses, it had garnered modest profits.

As for purchasing that land, his idea had been sound. With property, no man could predict which way the wind would blow. If the land had lost its value since he bought it, in time it would pay again. His two tracts were as likely to make him rich as make him poor. And he had done no other wrong. No grievous wrong, he amended.

A man was not hell-bound for stealing kisses.

Fingers fumbling, he unlocked the door and entered his shadowy shop. His bones ached, his skin was blistered, and his flesh bruised from brutal hours in the saddle. But he was home. Filings crunched beneath his feet. The oppressive smells of raw metal and moldy earth filled his nostrils. He stumbled through the front room, reordered in his absence by his fanatically neat assistant.

He needed sleep, if his teeming brain would let him. Catharina must not see him looking like the very devil. He could not confront his father tomorrow this exhausted. But when he saw his upstanding younger brother, he thought darkly, he would still have the energy to deck him with a well-placed blow for stealing Catharina.

In the upstairs dormitory of Salem’s Brothers House, Matthias Blum lit a tallow candle, stropped his razor, and brushed up a dense foam of soap in a redware mug. It was early Saturday morning, barely light, and his blood raced hot and keen.

His blood, which was by nature deliberate, methodical and even.

Three weeks had crawled by since his father had insisted on a talk-as if he were in trouble. Which he had not been for years. He had a positive aversion to scenes, strictures, strife. He never meant to turn into the paragon Nicholas taunted him for being. But he was, and he knew it. He was ploddingly straitlaced. Perhaps his mind was dull. Perhaps he lacked invention.

More likely, he thought, daubing thick foam on the harsh angles of his jaw, he had trodden the straight and narrow to spare his parents such turmoil as Nicholas stirred up.

Crossing the Square, his father had put a confiding arm around Matthias’s shoulders, an easy gesture usually awarded his older brother, the prodigal one. “Son,” Jacob Blum had said gravely, “we-the Elders–think it time for you to marry.”

Marry? Already? To have his own home, his own bride-to have children-would be a secret, cherished dream come true. But he had stifled his natural warm enthusiasm. “Am I not rather … young?”

His father had smiled. “Yes, son. Twenty-six is young. But you have done us proud. The Board of Elders thinks you ready for this and more.”

The prospect had more than tempted him, but natural diffidence had prompted him to say, “I suppose. But marriage?”

“If you can consent to marrying Catharina Baumgarten.”

His heart had stopped. Sister Baumgarten. It didn’t hurt that she was a stunning beauty, a walking spiritual lesson in conquering envy for every woman in the town. How could a woman be so beautiful, yet modest? So chaste, yet warm? Only in his wildest dreams had he aspired to her. Dreams that had grown wilder after Nicholas had charged him to keep an eye on her.

How could Nicholas have known he had long admired her from afar?

His wink had given Matthias everything-complicity, approval.

Matthais consented to the Lot. Catharina accepted the Elders’ proposal with sweet submission in her mild gray eyes. Matthias plunged headfirst in love with her very image, then chafed while waiting three long weeks, the traditional time between the betrothal and the vows. He would care for Catharina, morning, noon, and night. His heart desired it, the Elders approved it, and Nicky would be pleased.

This morning, the day before the wedding, Matthias would start courting her in earnest. Of course, courting was forbidden. That was why betrothals were so short. He had never even flirted because, unlike his older brother, he was too shy. There was no need, no room for shyness now. Anticipation set his heart to thumping. He breathed deeply, seeking his usual calm, even meditative, state.

It had vanished, he realized, smiling at his own expense. His pulse pounded through his extremities at the very thought of her.

All his extremities, he admitted for the hundredth time since Catharina had consented to become his bride. Had he known how insistently the prospect would have focused his … appetites, he would have asked to marry outright Instead, he had denied desire, fighting even this most chaste attraction. For who among the Single Sisters would want him, tall, quiet, awkward? Nicholas was every woman’s heart’s desire. Even happily Married Sisters had been seen to blush at his approach.

Matthias eschewed competition.

“Take this betrothal as a compliment,” his father had said. “We believe in you, your future. We acknowledge your singular success.”

Such praise embarrassed him to the roots of his teeth. A man could hardly shrug it off, however, with his father’s arm draped around his shoulders. But Matthias did not comprehend the fuss. He was merely the town’s appointed dyer, heir to his stepmother’s former trade. His craft neither fitted him for family nor prepared him for public duties.

What, after all, had he done? Retha had taught him plants and recipes. Enterprise had done the rest. He had balanced his books. Expanded his business. Brought in trade in cloth, dyed larger and larger lots of flax, wool, and cotton for outsiders. He worked as his father had, hard, steadily, honestly. What achievement lay in that?

This morning, to accommodate his great height, he propped a shard of mirror on the windowsill to shave, a task he almost never gave a second thought Today he did. He wanted to please Catharina, to impress her, to touch-perhaps-her slim hand to his smoothly shaven cheek. Exhorting himself to take all care, he stretched the skin across his jaw and scraped the blade’s edge across thick stubble, a dark shadow in the silvered glass.

It wouldn’t do to meet his bride cut up like an adolescent.

His stomach churned with scruples, accumulated overnight.

Perhaps it wouldn’t do to meet her at all. Two nights ago, while visiting his father and stepmother, he had complained of the wait to marry, joking but ill at ease within. In Salem, prospective brides and grooms were prudently kept apart until the day they wed.

So it had been with them, his parents had said. They too had fretted at their wait but honored it.

Others had not, Retha slyly added. Once a couple was betrothed, the community averted its gaze from slips of decorum and breaches of discipline. The Brethren did not oppose kindling the spirit of married love just before the nuptials. The next day, as he had labored over formulas for dyebaths, first Retha, then his father had dropped by his shop and urged him to meet Catharina privately.

“Go to her,” his father had urged. “Speak with her. ‘Tis too great a strain on a bride to share a bed when she has never shared a private conversation.”

Retha, earthier and more confiding, recommended kisses. It would spare him having to introduce every intimacy on what was sine to be a nervous wedding night. Then she suggested flowers.

Standing at the window in the Brothers House, Matthias scrubbed his hands with lye soap to lighten the stains. He disliked minding how he looked. But yesterday’s dyebath had been goldenseal, beautiful in fabrics but a glaring orange in the crevices of his skin and nails. He dried his hands and inspected the result. Glaring yellow. He smiled wryly. What was the proper courting color for a dyer’s hands? Then he rinsed his stinging face and checked it in the mirror. Shaved close, yet without a sign of blood-a triumph of will over nerves.

Anxious blue eyes looked back at him. He was sneaking out at first light for a rendezvous with a Single Sister he barely knew.

Never mind that tomorrow she would be his bride.

Taking a steadying breath, he rehearsed his plan. He would find her in the bam, milking. He would arrive just as she finished and offer to carry her bucket to the house. But first he would steal a kiss.

Caution born of a shy lifetime of inexperience almost crippled him.

Coward! he upbraided himself. Tomorrow afternoon, the woman would be his wife. Kisses were not theft, but duty. Besides, how hard could it be to confer a seal upon a woman’s lips? His older brother, rumor had it, stole kisses like a fox steals grapes.

Stopping by Retha’s garden, he picked the flowers she had recommended, a flamboyant bouquet of color, and put in two near-blown yellow roses for good measure. The Baumgarten barn was not so far away, and his father’s parting words pursued him: Go to her, son. Claim your bride.

They did not dispel a lingering worry that Catharina would take offense. How, exactly, did a man proceed to steal a kiss?

“Stehen Sie hier, Gertrude! Stand still.” Catharina Baumgarten slapped the cantankerous red cow on its bony rump.

Catharina knew for a fact that she had learned her every ounce of gumption fighting cows. Not that gumption helped her very much with people. Dunderhead! she berated herself for the hundredth time since her betrothal. She hadn’t had the nerve to say no to the Elders. Not with her mother breathing down her neck to marry this fine Brother now. Not with her own belief, in her heart of hearts, that she should not cross the Savior’s will. Not without Nicholas to bolster her up.

Not that he had given her a thought since he had left.

Today her gumption wasn’t even helping with this cow. Gertrude swung her haunches away from the milk bucket, upturning it and the good inch of foaming morning milk already stripped from the creature’s ample udder. Spilt milk seeped into the ground.

“Beast!” Catharina cried, poking the sleek red haunches in exasperation. “Stehen Sie hier, or we’ll be roasting you for dinner.”

The milch cow did not comply. Catharina rose from her little three-legged stool and looked for a switch. It might not make the old cow mind, but she would feel ever so much better. Hastily she glanced around the stalls, the hay mow, the storage barrels, and back to the wooden stanchion. Ah, that was it! Gertrude had no hay. No wonder her tail was in a twist.

“Ver Flixe!” Catharina bunched up the skirts of her worn barn dress as she clambered up the slatted ladder to the mow. She never forgot the hay. Absentminded to distraction since her betrotheal, today her mind had positively wandered off. No mystery in that. Yesterday her bridegroom’s stepmother had alerted her to watch out for a secret visitor. Sister Blum’s kind amusement left no doubt who that would be.

“Where?” Catharina had asked. “And when?”

Sister Blum had smiled mysteriously. Tomorrow, somewhere.

Since that exchange, Catharina’s head had whirled, and her heart had thumped with dread. Nineteen days had hurtled past. Tomorrow afternoon, she would be his. In thirty-four short hours, the last time she checked the clock. Oh, Nicholas! There was no stopping now.

She tried to console herself. Matthias Blum was, bar none, the town’s most settled, most eligible Single Brother. She should count herself fortunate. Rather, she corrected herself, she should thank the Savior for smiling on her with favor. But didn’t her heart belong to Nicholas? Hadn’t he all but asked her to wait? Hadn’t she all but promised to do so? For hours on end she had tossed in bed, weighing, worrying.

Surely this was the supreme test of her faith.

If the Savior had intended her for Nicholas, then the Lot would not have given her to his younger brother. She would have to reconcile herself to that Her mother expected it of her. And she expected it of herself.

It was no small comfort that Matthias Blum, with whom she had yet to share a score of words, was tall and dark and lean and … serious like her. Since agreeing to marry him, she had noticed from a distance his quiet ways. They intrigued her. And suited, she dearly hoped, her retiring.nature, whether or not they were in love.

Love, her mother had insisted, was not required for marriage. A match in temperament and a willingness to strive to live together amicably were far, far more important.

Catharina was not sure, but she clung to that advice.

That decree.

She tossed a pitchfork of hay from the mow, climbed down, and piled it before the cow’s wooden stanchion. For the last time, she thought, shuddering with anxiety … and the first glimmer of anticipation. She could hardly ask to leave her marriage bed at the crack of dawn to milk her mother’s cow, now could she? Tomorrow her sister Maria would take over at the barn.

“Easy, Gertie,” Catharina crooned, placing her bucket and mounting her stool again. Nose deep in fragrant summer cuttings, Gertrude stood without complaint while Catharina filled the bucket near to overflowing. Finishing, she stroked the cow’s flank, then stood and stretched. Shorter girls were better suited to low-slung work like milking cows. Danke Himmel, her betrothed was tall too.

“You are going to break my back with such full buckets,” she muttered to the cow, her mild good nature restored with her chore finished.

“I will take that for you,” said a low male voice behind her kindly, gently.

Matthias. Catharina gasped in surprise. Not him! Not here! Not with me in my old worn milking dress!

Before she could turn to greet him, the fractious cow hunched her back and kicked. Dodging cloven hooves, Catharina reeled, and the bucket tilted.

“The milk!” she cried.

“Got it!” the voice said, triumphant, then sobering. “Catharina, are you all right?”

The cow’s kick had thrown her, face first, up against the cobweb-festooned wall. She was mortified, not hurt

“I’m fine.” She straightened her work-worn Haube and for the first time ventured to use her shy groom’s given name. “Fine … Matthias.”

The kind voice hardened. “Matthias?”

She pushed against the wall and whirled around, palms sticky with cobwebs, heart hammering.

Nicholas was back, immense and blond and overpowering.

“So he’s Matthias to you now,” he said darkly.

Just now. Her face heated. Warned that Matthias would come courting on this, the day before their wedding, she had risked that intimacy.

“Nicholas,” she breathed, awash with pleasure at the sight of him. Awash with confusion and dismay. She had loved him almost half her life. Loved him, and feared his restless, questing energy. Why was he here? No one had expected him for the wedding, her least of all. The Brethren’s weddings were simple affairs. After the Lot was cast, banns were quickly posted, and the ceremony quickly, quietly carried out. Nearby family members and a few friends came, but no one from far away

“In the flesh,” he said caustically, his golden features gray and drawn.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came for you, Catharina.” He set the foaming bucket aside with easy, angry power. Instinctively she stepped back, folding her arms across her breasts. But he ran his fingers through his disordered hair, and his distress, his disarray, finally struck her. His rumpled clothes were dirty, not at all his usual attire, and they smelled of horse and sweat

“You came for me?” she repeated, her heart pounding at the welcome-yet unwelcome-news. He had wanted her. Liebe Gott, she had made a grave mistake. “You never even wrote.”

“’Twould have been improper, and easily found out.” His face twisted. “So I learn of this from my brother. How could you?”

“I never meant to hurt you, Nicholas.”

“Well, you did.” He paced away, paced back. “Gut Gott, Catharina, you will be the one hurt. You need not go and marry him.”

Her chin trembled with loss. She had vowed. “’Tis settled. I marry Brother Blum tomorrow.”

“No, marry me.” He looked fierce. “You can marry me. I can take you away.”

“But I am betrothed.”

A single step brought him within inches of her face, her mouth. He clasped her hands, still warm from the cow’s udder. His grip was strong but cold.

“You don’t have to marry my brother,” he repeated earnestly.

Her head whirled. She could not deny the authority of the Lot. “’Tis the Savior’s will.”

“Rubbish.” Nicholas’s grip tightened, alarming her. “Rubbish. Even now, late though the hour is, you can still say no to him. And yes to me.”

She could not. She slumped against the wall where the cow had flung her. She searched his face and saw more hurt behind his dark entreaty. She searched her heart and knew she had to hurt him more.

“Nicholas, bitte. The Savior’s will is sacred. Betrothals cannot be reversed.”

His face set with injured pride. “You promised me, I promised you. We were in this together.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“And so what happened?” His cold grasp seemed inescapable, frightening her more than his abundant energy ever had. “You loved me.”

She had loved him. She loved him still. She hung her head, shame spreading to her toes. Nearly a Married Sister, practically his brother’s bride, she summoned the gumption to deny it.

“Once. I was a foolish girl,” she said.

Inside, the barn had lightened as the sun rose.

“Catharina, I don’t understand. You kissed me. You allowed it.”

She remembered. She had let him. From curiosity, at the start. And then because his kisses pleased her. Then because the other girls would ask … Until finally, awed, flattered, impressed, she fell in love with his attentions, energy, good heart. A condemning blush heated her face. “Well, I…” She stammered. “I didn’t…”

His gaze bored into her, testing her nerve, her sincerity, she guessed. “You let me. You liked it,” he accused, his grip on her fingers tightening, menacing.

“Give me my hands,” she said through fear and pain.

Self-awareness flashed across his face, and instantly he let her go. Her back against the barn’s plain wooden wall, she flattened her palms against its rough support. She would have to put her actions in the worst light to drive him away.

“Your kisses flattered me.”

“You are very pretty, Catharina, but kisses are not flattery! They’re about affection, love.” He spit out the words.

Oh, how he frightened her. To be so angry, when he spoke of love. To be so impatient, when he meant to persuade. She recalled once more what she always feared in him. His restless energy swamped her. Over a lifetime, which he seemed to be proposing, it would swallow her whole. And all the charm in the world would not make up for that.

She owed him honesty. “The truth is …

Oh, so very hard to say when it would hurt a man you loved.

Nicholas stepped back, incredulous. With Catharina and himself. What had happened to his longtime sweetheart? What had happened to his old dream? He had raced to her in loyalty, in honor, knowing she loved him

She denied what he knew to be true. She was confused that he had come.

He returned, grimly committed to his mission. “Very well then. Tell me the truth, Catharina.”

“The truth is, you … charmed me,” she said.

Another of his endless blunders chalked up to charm? He scowled. “Don’t say that. Don’t dare blame my … my curse.”

“Everybody loves that in you, Nicholas. At least a little bit”

“A little bit?” He let out a great groan. “This is not about my vaunted charm! Don’t toy with me, Catharina. I came all the way from Pennsylvania to spare you from a fate … a fate …”

She was listening, her pale gold lashes blinking in disbelief. He trailed off, hearing his presumption. She missed his purpose utterly. “I went up there to build a life for us. I can support you now even if they throw us out.”

“Throw who out? What can you mean? My wedding is tomorrow.”

“Yes, to me,” he insisted, loyally, honorably, even as a certain tiny tyrant’s face mocked him in imagination. Overstepping, Brother Blum? Abbigail asked.

He plowed ahead. He had come all this way for Catharina. She was being so perverse. “You are not bound by the Elders’ dictum. A loveless marriage is worse than anything.”

She looked down. “Nicholas,” she said sadly, “I am betrothed, the banns are read, my decision has been made.”

Why would she not listen? “Gott im Himmel, Catharina. Don’t marry a man you don’t love. Remember how we kissed.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. Guiltily, he thought. He brushed her hand away.

“Kiss me now,” he entreated hoarsely, cupping the back of her head, the soft linen of her old Haube. “Kiss me as you always did.” His honor and old loyalties were at stake. As was the rest of her life. He covered her mouth with his, kissing her hard so she could have no doubt.

She sighed.

He shuddered in response.

Her cool hps trembled beneath his, compliant, innocent, and he deepened the kiss. He probed for the sweetness he once knew. He probed to erase her lies and strange equivocations, to recover his old vision of the ethereal woman he had come so far and given up so much to save. Catharina had been his plan when all his other plans had gone awry.

Then he realized he was thinking. Thinking, while kissing. It had not been like that with Abbigail. With Abbigail, ach, Gott! That had been lust, he told himself, a spiral into fleshly indulgences begun in his dalliance with Mistress Mary Clark.

He shoved all that behind him. He could not desert the woman he had come to save.

“Catharina, bitte, don’t marry a man you cannot-” A roar like a wild beast’s cry brought him to his senses. “Leave her alone!”

16

Strong hands clamped down on Nicholas’s shoulders and shoved him away from Catharina. From the corner of his eye, he saw her willowy body stagger back. And saw Matthias, rage contorting his face.

“Nicholas! What in God’s name are you doing?”

It should have been perfectly obvious what he was doing-what he’d always done, and with Catharina’s sweet cooperation. “I was kissing the woman I love.”

She stood alone against the dark barn wall, quivering between them, her face buried in her hands. He headed to comfort her.

“She’s my betrothed!” Matthias bellowed in disbelief, grabbing him from behind and jerking him to a standstill.

Nicholas pivoted to face him, wrenching free, the full force of his brother’s betrayal spiking his anger. “I asked you to keep an eye out for her, not take her away from me.”

Matthias looked stunned. Uncomprehending. “You encouraged my suit”

“Zum Teufel! I never!” he snapped, giving a flat-handed push of sheer belligerence, boyhood injunctions to protect his younger brother drumming in his ears.

Matthias shoved back with surprising power. It would be an even fight Nicholas thought with savage satisfaction. He had not come this far to he down and roll over, not with Catharina yielding to his kiss.

“But the Lot said yes,” Matthias protested.

“And Catharina said she’d wait for me.” Nicholas balanced, knees flexed, stance wide, fists clenched at his side, as warning darkened his brother’s face.

“She accepted me fast enough.”

“Against her will,” Nicholas goaded. “Against her heart.”

His brother charged him headfirst bull-strong for a man so tall and lean. Nicholas welcomed strikes and punches, each one justifying his frantic trip home-or punishing him for compromising her before his brother. He felt a perfect fool. But also honor-bound to save her from a loveless match.

“I went away … to make a … life for her.” He drove his fists into his brother’s gut.

“You have no life … to offer her. She chose me,” Matthias grated, punching back.

Nicholas was livid, at the blows, at his brother’s certainty, at the folly of his journey. He got a lock on Matthias’s arms and spun him around in the small barn’s aisle.

Matthias spun Nicholas back, slammed his flanks into stall doors, then cracked his shoulder against an open stanchion. Nicholas gathered up his forces, startled by his pious brother’s brutish anger. He hit a grazing blow on the side of Matthias’s face, then tackled his body and grappled him to the ground.

As best he could. His brother matched him in strength and wrath. They rolled over and over, up the narrow aisle and back. Dirt and muck and bits of stone flew out around them, and Catharina’s skirts. He glimpsed a flurry of gray and heard her sob as she stepped up, then back, in torment. Her hand reached in, then drew away.

He would kill Matty for putting her through this.

The heavier man, Nicholas flattened himself across his brother’s body. Sinewy and sly, Matthias struggled, almost impossible to contain. Nicholas pinned an arm; the free hand boxed his ear. He straddled a leg; the other kneed his ribs.

Nicholas fought for breath, each hot inrush of air burning into his lungs. Unjust, unfair, unbelievable.

She had been the constant in his wayward life.

“You cannot be … the man … she wants.”

With a grunt, Matthias surged beneath him. Reaching beyond exhaustion, Nicholas drove a cracking punch to Matthias’s left jaw. His head bobbled, his eyes rolled back. Raging, jealous, Nicholas had aimed to kill. For long awful moments in the dark barn, he heard no sound but Catharina’s weeping. For him, or for Matthias? He pressed his fingers to his brother’s neck and found a bounding, vital pulse.

“Matty,” he croaked. Slowly, woozily, his brother’s eyes blinked open. An arm snaked out, his body bucked. Exhausted, Nicholas clung to control.

“Jesu, I did not mean this.” But he could not let go.

He trapped Matthias’s arms above his head and rested his battered face against his own outstretched arm.

Wary, Matthias yielded to his brother. For the first time since their endless boyhood skirmishes, he could have taken him. But his older brother’s blow had paralyzed him. Not the man she wants. Looking up blearily, he took a primal pleasure in the damage he had wrought: blood flowed from his brother’s nose, a jagged cut blazed his cheek.

Liebe Gott, what had they done?

They had fought like Cain and Abel. Still seething, he could not say who had played which part. But he could not abide a rupture in his family.

“Nicky, listen,” he said hoarsely, reaching past his rage for reason. “Catharina is to marry me. You must accept this. I consented that the Lot be drawn for her and her alone. She accepted in good faith. The Elders posted banns. We are publicly, irrevocably betrothed. We are as good as wed.”

Nicholas’s face twisted with pain. “She promised me.”

Matthias swallowed pride, banked lethal fury. “She never said so,” he said, not quite evenly.

“No doubt you did not ask,” Nicholas accused.

“Of course not We have barely talked. We complied with custom. Unlike you.” Bitter censure colored his tone.

“I have known her all her life. Loved her.” Nicholas’s big, powerful hands tightened on his wrists. “Back out, Matty, now, for her sake.”

Incredible, outrageous, Matthias thought, trying to grasp his brother’s wild delusion. Then in a flash, he had it. With Single Brothers, obsessions with pretty Single Sisters cropped up from time to time. It was not something he wanted Catharina to hear. She was watching from the barn’s door, her white Haube gleaming in the light. She looked so lost.

He lowered his voice. “You are not the only man with eyes for Catharina.”

Nicholas gave a roar of indignation. “Gott im Himmel, I know that.”

“But understand,” Matthias pressed on, forcing quiet reason. “Whatever passing attraction you felt for her, she is mine now. Everyone wants this match. Anna Johanna knows Catharina from the School and is delighted for us. Father approves, Retha has not stopped beaming.”

Nicholas’s neck corded with the strain. “They didn’t know about me.”

“They put me up to courting Catharina here this morning.”

There was a long, black silence. His brother’s handsome face was gray with fatigue, red with blood, purple with bruises. Briefly Matthias pitied him for harboring a futile hope. Then his old insecurities reared up, resentment on their heels. This marriage was his chance to do something outside his dominating brother’s shadow.

That chance was ruined. By his own fault. He had written the letter that had driven Nicholas home enraged. Matthias was sorry for it, for Nicholas, for the mess. But he was most sorry for himself. Catharina should be his, free and clear.

Instead, she came with encumbrances. A past that threatened present happiness.

“Are you going to let me up?” he asked at last.

No, never, Nicholas wanted to say irrationally, childishly.

If he and Matty stayed in the barn forever, there could be no wedding. No sense of having failed Catharina. No failure to live up to the promise of his youth. He should have known the Elders would not entrust a paragon like Catharina to a ne’er-do-well like himself.

But she would make an ideal bride for his perfect younger brother.

Who once more had proved himself the better man.

Nicholas wanted to flail out in frustration at yet another plan gone wrong. At the Elders’ latest intervention in his life, this one the most personal, the most galling. But he was no longer the foolish lad, the restless Single Brother he had been; a man faced the consequences of youthful error. All his youthful errors.

So he stood, shaking his head, and gave his brother a hand up. Reluctantly. Each one of them was making the mistake of a lifetime, sacrificing the bright hope of finding true love to a peculiar, binding marriage tradition. No one outside their narrow sphere would honor it It paired men and women for the community’s convenience without a thought of love. If some found love, or a semblance of it, within their arranged marriages, so much the better. Some, he knew, did not.

Impulsively, he gambled on his brother’s sensitivity. “But you don’t understand. Catharina loves me.”

Matthias scowled darkly. “What do you mean?”

“She always has. Before I left-”

Nicholas barely registered the trajectory of his brother’s fist. Pinpoints of light and torches of color exploded before his eyes. Reeling, he staggered out the barn door into the road leading out of Salem–followed by a volley of filthy German oaths he had taught his brother long ago for the sheer pleasure of scandalizing his virtuous little heart.

“Scoundrel!” Matthias concluded, having run the gamut of his curses. “You bedded my bride!”

Nicholas hauled himself up. “Think what you will of me, but insult her at your peril,” he said dangerously. Then he spit out a bloody, four-pronged tooth from his cheek into his hand. “Catharina is as pure as the driven snow.”

Fisting the other hand, he gathered his last ounce of strength to swing.

“Nein, Nicholas, sei nicht so dumm!” Catharina launched herself from the doorway and grabbed his arm, deflecting the blow. “You’ve done enough!” she cried. Then she huddled up to Matthias. He pressed her to him for protection.

Nicholas sagged against a stanchion, stunned. Catharina flew to his brother. Not to him. Some pure, idealistic corner of his heart shriveled. How had it all turned out so wrong? Could she really mean to marry Matthias? She couldn’t love him, could she?

Bloodied, beaten, he glowered through swelling eyes, one fist clenched around the tooth and the other cocked to strike. He slackened his grip, dropped his hand, and noticed the larger world beyond the little bam. A modest crowd was assembling in the lane outside. Sister Baumgarten strode up to find out why her daughter had not come to breakfast Brother Steiner, hearing a ruckus while walking to his mill, had looked in. Brother Ernst arrived, his last nightly round complete.

Three long faces. Three disapproving frowns.

Nicholas cast a fruitless prayer skyward. Show them, Savior, somehow, this is not my fault.

But it would be seen so. Of that, he had no doubt.

“Go fetch Brother Blum,” Samuel Ernst told Brother Steiner gravely, his gaze moving from Matthias’s battered face to Nicholas’s equally bloodied one. “Jacob will want to see this.”

In minutes, Brother Steiner hurried back down the hill with Nicholas’s father and stepmother. In front of the Baumgartens’ little barn, silence and unease reigned. Inside, Matthias was angrily putting things aright. Catharina, escorted by her fuming mother, was leading the cow to its paddock.

Their distress made it doubly hard for him to watch his parents’ bleak approach. The early morning sun cast long bright shadows through the pines, across fields heavy with September harvest. His bear of a father did not show his fifty years except for a dignified sprinkling of gray in his blond mane. His tall, elegant stepmother, Retha, looked barely old enough to have borne four children, the twins nearly ten years old.

Solemnly his parents conferred with Brother Ernst, who left. Brother Steiner, who had stayed behind to forestall further fighting, discreedy walked on to his mill. Sister Baumgarten fiercely shepherded her erring daughter back to face her fate. Matthias put down a rake and straightened his stock uneasily.

Retha took Nicholas’s hand and reached up to warmly kiss his cheek. “Nicky, we didn’t hope to have you home.” She inspected his ravaged face. “You look a perfect wreck.”

Despite his turmoil, Nicholas almost grinned at her fond, familiar scolding, then dismissed her attentions as he always had. “The other man looks worse.”

Concern furrowing his brow, Jacob Blum embraced him and released him. “I am glad to see you, son, but this is a sorry pass.”

Nicholas nodded, sure of his family’s love but equally sure of their disgust of grown men-brothers-fighting.

Jacob Blum turned sternly to Matthias. “’Tis an inauspicious beginning for a man slated to become an Elder.”

“An Elder?” Nicholas muttered, astonished that the Board had appointed him so young.

Catharina made a little cry of shock. Clearly, she had not been told. Matthias’s new position and the Elders’ haste in marrying him must somehow be connected. Nicholas felt a smug, unworthy satisfaction grip him. After today’s brawl, no one, not Catharina, not anyone, would think his maddeningly perfect brother fit to fill the role.

Matthias ducked his head to clear the doorway of the shadowed barn. “Yes, sir. I regret it” Squaring his shoulders like a martyr, he stepped into the light his face raw as butchered meat

With a gasp of concern, Retha went to him, whipped off her crisp white apron and raised it to the corner of his eye, clucking her tongue in a motherly, sympathetic way. “We cannot remedy your injuries by Sunday. Everyone will know what happened here.”

Matthias winced manfully as she blotted blood off bruises.

“Which of you is hurt the worst?” she asked, dabbing away.

“He is,” Nicholas said in unison with his brother.

Their father gave a cheerless laugh. “There’s a change. You both used to claim the worser injury.”

He laughed alone. Used to seemed very long ago, when Nicholas and his brother had been fast friends, true allies in whatever mischief Nicholas could devise.

Two farm families on their way to town for morning prayers slowed down. Curious children craned their necks. Bright-eyed Sisters averted their gazes to hide unseemly nosiness. Two bearded Brethren looked out from under flat-brimmed hats.

“Can we be of any help?” Brother Leinbach called out courteously.

Jacob Blum hurried him along. “Nein, ‘tis naught. Everything is fine.”

But it wasn’t. The gossip would start the minute the families passed on, and everyone knew it. Worse, Nicholas knew from hard experience that Catharina could not be shielded from it. Which was his fault, too.

After the worshippers went their way, his father herded the families inside the barn and turned to Nicholas. “This morning’s business, son, ‘tis not right.”

Unrepentant, Nicholas bridled at the injustice of it all. “No, sir. I grant you, ‘tis not right.” His own intended bride, stolen by his brother.

“I need to know what happened,” Jacob Blum said evenly.

Despite Nicholas’s simmering anger, his gaze instinctively sought his brother’s, unconsciously evoking their old accord. Deny all had been their boyhood motto.

“’Twas naught, sir,” Matthias said, true to their old form but unconvincing.

“A misunderstanding merely, Father,” Nicholas added smoothly. “Of concern to none but us.”

“Misunderstanding!” Jacob Blum rubbed the back of his neck, always a sign of how deeply he was disturbed. Had they been miscreant boys, he would have served up justice quickly, fairly. But they were men, responsible for their actions, and his reasoning tone allotted each of them respect. “Do you not think a stronger word is called for? Misunderstandings don’t draw blood. I cannot counsel you, but the Elders do not stand idly by when Brethren fight They will take it very badly, too, if there is reason to call off the wedding.”

“Reason!” Nicholas exploded. Would he have gone through this without one? “There was every-”

“I will not call off the wedding,” Matthias cut in, new fervor in his voice.

All heads pivoted toward him. Catharina was abashed, her mother softening, Retha somber. His father frowned, studying his second oldest son as if approving of his manly stand.

Nicholas’s heart compressed. Matthias had won Catharina He had lost his oldest dream.

“Tis a serious matter to take a wife under this cloud. You are prepared then to live with this, son,” his father said.

Matthias set his jaw with conviction. “As prepared as a man can be,” he said firmly. “Twould be unconscionable to turn her out I will not shame my bride by breaking our betrothal.”

He didn’t look prepared, Nicholas thought. He looked tormented.

His father nodded, apparently satisfied with Matthias’s response. “I will take it very badly if you resort to fists again,” he added.

Matthias shook his head bleakly. “So will I, sir.”

He must have broken every code of conduct dear to his straitlaced soul, Nicholas thought. Then his father turned back to Nicholas. All eyes followed suit.

“We didn’t expect you, Nicky. How is it that you came for this?” his father asked quietly.

I came on a horse, Nicholas nearly said. At a dead gallop. In the black of night.

Every cell in his body struggled to repress defiance. With a jerk of his head, he implicated his brother. “He wrote to me.”

“And you arrived …?” Jacob Blum began.

“Last night, after midnight. I slept in my shop,” Nicholas snapped, exasperated.

“You left everyone and everything well in Bethlehem?” his father asked kindly.

With remorse, Nicholas recalled the bruised look on Abbigail’s face when he said goodbye. Neither that nor anything else about his leaving was fit for telling here. “As well as could be.”

Retha stepped up. “Good, Nicky. Join us at our midday meal today. The twins will be overjoyed to see you. You can tell us all about your adventures.”

Then she inserted herself between him and his brother and took their hands in hers, a gesture of reconciliation that had worked when they were boys. “You cannot take this feud to tomorrow’s wedding. Let us begin by mending fences. Nothing is ever so bad that men of goodwill cannot mend it.”

But there was no goodwill between them. Nicholas knew it, and Matthias’s expression of affronted pride ensured that the matter between them would not soon be resolved.

Nevertheless, Matthias motioned him into the privacy of the barn’s shadows and lowered his voice. “Retha has the right of it, you know.”

Nicholas picked up his tricorn from the barn’s dirt floor and whacked it clean against his breeches. Bastard. Smug, superior bastard. Nicholas had won the battle of the fists. But the struggle for Catharina’s heart was hardly over.

Matthias held himself straight as a rifle. “I am willing to forgive, whether you are or not.”

Nicholas slammed a stall door shut and stalked from the barn. He hated this … goodness thrown up in his face.

But Matthias followed him into the lane. Well out of hearing, Catharina and their parents gawked. “Nicholas. Forgiveness … ‘tis Scripture.”

Doctrinal goodness was the worst. Nicholas stared stonily away, furious. His perfect brother was forgiving him for sins he’d not committed.

“You are coming to the wedding?” Matthias asked solemnly. “For her sake. ‘Twill be taken amiss by all if you do not.” Hurt creased his brow and glistened in his eyes. Actual hurt.

“I will come to your wedding,” Nicholas said hoarsely and walked off without another word. And without a backward glance at Catharina.

“Mother, please.” Catharina pulled against her mother’s tight chastising grip. The Blums had walked away, and Nicholas had stalked off, leaving only Matthias, standing in the barn’s door, dark and solitary. “Let me have a moment with Brother Blum.”

Anger splotched her mother’s face. “After what I have seen and heard in my own barn this morning, I think not! Catharina, how could you?” she hissed in a shamed and shaming whisper.

As if whispered secrets mattered now. The town would be spellbound with news of their private affairs, Catharina thought with dismay.

“Sunday he will be my husband!”

“Sunday you may talk to him”

“Mother…”

Matthias turned to leave. Catharina couldn’t let him.

Tearing herself free, she bolted after him.

“Catharina!” her mother called out.

“Brother Blum, bitte, wait! We must talk”

She overtook him in the road and dared to clutch his sleeve. He wheeled around, tall and lean and blazing.

“Brother Blum, you call me.” His poor battered mouth twisted. “But he is Nicholas to you. And you-he calls you Catharina. So intimate. So scandalous. What more is there to say?”

For the second time in one short hour, Catharina stood her ground with one of the dauntingly tall Blum brothers. It was a dizzy feeling for one so great and gawky that she looked down on almost everybody else. She gathered up her courage.

“You don’t understand … Matthias.”

“What is there to understand, Sister Baumgarten?” he asked pointedly, rejecting her familiarity. “A man has eyes. A man sees his bride, willing, in his brother’s arms. A man sees his brother claim a kiss. A man hears his brother say-” He broke off, clasped her arms, and looked deeply into her eyes. The pain that poured off him hurt her heart “How could you have accepted me, knowing you love him?”

“But I will come to love-”

“A simple no would have sufficed. ‘Twould have hurt my pride, but nothing like this. A man and his wife should be-are-pledged to one another for all time. You could have waited and married him.”

“The Savior willed that I should marry you.”

“That’s not how it works!” He was incredulous, furious. Matthias, aroused to anger, was a far more fearful sight than Nicholas because he was such a milder man.

She stood her ground, heart beating wildly. “I wanted to marry you.”

His blazing blue eyes narrowed in disbelief. “You did, did you? Why? Because your beloved had left town? Because your mother browbeat you into doing it? Because the Elders asked? Did you not think of me? That I might want a bride whose heart was still her own?”

How did he know? She studied her old shoes, poking out beneath her straw-strewn hem, completely shamed, found out The Blums had always been too smart for her, but this was surely the worst his seeing clear through all her motives. They were all of them as smart as whips where she was merely … a tongue-tied farm girl. But she did have common sense, and she summoned it They were pledged. He must have found her attractive, and she found him … safe. She offered up her mother’s litany for marital bliss.

“I want to love you, Brother Blum. I believe in time I can. As our fathers came to love our mothers, and our mothers our fathers, and our grandparents before them. After we are married. If only you will marry me.”

He looked down at her, his handsome, bruised face inscrutable. “Don’t mistake me, Sister. My word is my bond, and I am pledged to marry you. We will live together as man and wife in love and harmony. Spiritual love and chaste harmony.”

Catharina’s heart compressed with dread. Could he mean for them to live together without the very act that marriage sanctioned? She might not now feel for him all that she would, but she wouldn’t run away with Nicholas and ruin the three of them in God’s eyes, and the Brethren’s. Besides, for all that she loved Nicholas, she saw now for the first time how he had flattered her and swept her along with his energy and charm.

Matthias Blum led the quieter, simpler, safer life she craved. And she wanted to be his wife.

Dieu, how to ask for that? Shyly, with effort, she corrected him. “In married love, Brother Blum.”

His blue eyes chilled. “Not that. I cannot share your bed. Not while you love my brother. Given this morning’s evidence that you do love him, I do not expect, ah … married love”-he made the words a mockery-“to follow any time soon.”

For one so smart, so mild, he could be both plainspoken and quite harsh. A sob of frustration caught in her throat He hadn’t believed Nicholas. He wouldn’t believe her. But she must try. She forced a note of confidence. “I don’t love your brother in the way you think. But I will not lie and say we were not friends. We were simply friends.”

“You have an odd way of showing it, meeting him at the crack of dawn in your mother’s barn.”

“Brother Blum, I never agreed to meet him here.”

“Which is to say, you met him elsewhere,” Matthias said with the soft, alarming wrath of a man who had found a culprit out.

In lanes, behind the Sisters House, in peach orchards, she remembered. A betraying blush burned her face.

“Damnation! I knew it.” He flung his hat into the dirt. “I’ll murder him.”

She put out her arms to stop him from charging off. “Gut Gott im Himmel, no, Matthias! For the two of you to fight was terrible enough!” Anything to prevent disaster. “They were only innocent kisses!”

Rage, jealousy, desire raced across his face. “How could any man kiss you innocently?” he rasped, and caught her in his arms.

His mouth came down on hers, and the kiss was hard and deep, possessing her at a place inside she never knew existed. Not safe, she thought dazedly. Not safe at all. But his taste was sweet for one so angry, and his careful hands upon her face belied the anger in his kiss. He ended it and pulled away, his mouth a breath from hers, his chest heaving.

“So. There. Do you see why no innocence attaches to the kisses that you shared with my brother?”

Given that her stomach was doing somersaults, she saw iL Kisses were dangerous. Kisses with Matthias, that is. Sweet as she was on Nicholas, he had never turned her upside down like this. His taste had never burned her blood. Never coded into her inmost being. Her head whirled with these new insights. What had she felt for Nicholas all these years, if not love? Could she love Matthias differently? Could she love him more?

Maybe. Almost certainly.

But how to prove it?

“Brother Blum, Nicholas kisses all the girls.”

Matthias swooped down, captured his hat and jammed it on his head. “Not you, not any longer. Meet me in Gemeinhaus on Sunday afternoon. I stand by my vow. I will not turn you away.”

And he was gone.

She whirled around in a circle of confusion and distress, her skirts billowing around her, her thoughts scurrying in all directions.

What to do? Where to go? What to say?

Nothing, nowhere, not one word. She put her hand to her mouth, testing her lips, tender and alive from his bold kiss.

Nicholas had never claimed her soul.

Her mother peeked around a corner of the barn, holding a handful of trampled flowers Catharina had overlooked. “It appears that there will be a wedding after all,” she said, suddenly sunny. She thrust the bouquet into Catharina’s arms. “These must be for you.”

They were. Catharina gaped at their colorful array. Her heart flooded with gratitude, with belated pleasure. Matthias Blum had come to court her with sweet Williams, ragged pinks and mums, and two great, fullblown yellow roses.

Simple, pretty, thoughtful. And sincere.

Oh, dear, she thought. Dismay cloaked her shoulders like a coat of many sorrows. Her perfectly handsome, perfectly shy bridegroom had come to court her with a tender heart, and she had smashed his trust.

17

“Move over. You’re crowding me,” Harmon Blum complained, waiting in Gemeinhaus for the wedding to begin. The hulking fifteen-year-old already matched the stature of his father and his older brothers.

“Any farther, and I’ll push Papa off the bench,” Nicholas said through clenched teeth. To the left of the Saal, Married and Single Brothers jammed onto benches; Married and Single Sisters squeezed together on the right. His father and his youngest brother flanked him, as if, left to his own devices, he would flee the scene.

Not a chance, he thought. He was too exhausted, too filled with remorse. It was Catharina’s wedding day, and he looked the fool, beaten and battered and the odd man out. In the gaping space at the front of the Saal, the minister preceded the three bridal couples to the altar.

It could have been better, Nicholas told himself. By tradition, Brethren sometimes wed a dozen couples in one ceremony. It could have been worse. More rarely they wed only one.

“Papa told us to come early,” Harmon said.

“We are early,” Nicholas pointed out. Coming early hadn’t helped. Everyone who’d ever caught him in the wrong had turned out to see his brother wed. Masters, daughters’ mothers. Single Sisters he had kissed. He braced for scrutiny.

“Welcome home, Brother Nicholas.” Philip Schopp twisted on the bench in front of them to greet him. More likely his former schoolmaster wished to inspect his wounds, too fresh to be hidden. Much given to brawling as a lad, Nicholas had never been his favorite.

Nicholas forced a smile. Never mind that it cracked his split lip and made his bruised jaw throb. “’Tis a joyous occasion, is it not?”

Brother Schopp scowled, obviously disapproving that he had the nerve to show his face. But he had no retort. Since Saturday morning, rumors of the rift between him and his brother had ricocheted through town. With studied nonchalance, Nicholas brushed a drift of goosedown off the sleeve of the coat he had borrowed from his father.

One Brother down.

Two hundred forty-five caring, nosy Brethren yet to face, starting here today.

Beside him, Harmon made a face. “A coup for you, Nicky. If even Brother Schopp has heard, news must be all over town.”

In spite of himself, Nicholas grinned. “If you truly wish to make your mark in town, always do your utmost.”

Harmon smothered a giggle. Nicholas’s father rolled his eyes, almost indulging him. “Don’t try to corrupt this brother, too!”

Nicholas sobered. “Matthias was incorruptible.”

And unwavering. There had been no hint of hesitation that the wedding would go forward as ordained by Lot Not on his brother’s part, nor, so far as he’d been told, on Catharina’s. Now they stood before the altar, before man and God and all creation, a handsome couple, tall and elegant and stiffly apart.

Harmon elbowed Nicholas. “Matty looks angry.”

“Shhh,” their father said, for the minister was starting. Then very quietly, “Not angry, Harmon, serious. He’s getting married in a minute.”

Nicholas’s heart stopped at the very thought. Gut Gott, what had he done? He was losing Catharina and all that she had meant to him. And he had made his brother a miserable groom. For Matthias looked grimly resolved, showing nothing of the joy Nicholas felt sure he would display had he been the man standing up on this soft September afternoon with … Oddly, unasked, the precise porcelain image of Abbigail came to his mind.

Abbigail? He almost groaned aloud. It wasn’t enough for him to lose the woman he had so long loved. In coming here, he had lost his only friend.

Golden sunlight streamed in on oiled oak floors and lit the throng of celebrants, softly mocking Nicholas’s dark mood. The small brass band ended its festive wedding anthem with a flourish, retired their instruments, and took seats in the choir’s stall.

He bowed his head and closed his eyes but could not shut out the vows. His brother’s firmly spoken words mingled uneasily with bittersweet memories of Catharina. He invoked them as penance, memories of kissing her to dry her girl’s tears after he rescued her from the cow. Of kissing her amidst the blossoming peach trees before he left for Bethlehem, with no promise to return. Of kissing her in desperation yesterday and failing to persuade her of the error of her vow. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Lost to him forever.

He summoned these, only to be besieged with images of a smaller, darker, tougher woman he had left behind. Abbigail, his tiny tyrant, gave him something more important than Catharina’s sweet compliance, something more substantial than doe-eyed adoration. Miserable as he was, he almost grinned.

Abbigail had given him … no quarter.

She had managed him, teased him, bested him, he thought fondly, almost relaxing in the reassuringly familiar Saal. Burning beeswax candles sweetened the air. For a moment, the rich aroma of boiling coffee and the scent of just baked buns for the congregation’s love feasts comforted him. He had escorted Abbigail to one such gathering before he had left.

But not a wedding. Not his brother’s wedding to a stolen bride. He looked back to the altar. The sight of Catharina with Matthias knotted his gut.

Nicholas was jealous. Today he admitted it as he could not have only yesterday. He had been certain of Catharina, certain of himself. Certain that her mar riage to his once cherished brother would be disastrous for them both.

He almost doubled over with the ache of envy. It crawled through his veins, stifled his breathing, stuck in his throat. His brother was the better man, and he had lost her to him. That was the crux of it. Matthias had never stumbled; his path had been clear. Nicholas coveted his brother’s good fortune, his perfect life. A talent for hard work had earned Matthias singular successes, from apprentice to journeyman to master dyer-without a visible hitch. Now Matthias, piety incarnate, would soon be a respected Elder in the church.

Whereas Nicholas’s path had been marked by fits and starts, hairpin turns, blind alleys. Catharina had been his dream, his plan, when all the Elders’ other plans for him had gone awry. He had imagined respect and success crowned by a virtuous and adoring bride.

With the help, he conceded, of Abbigad, his smart, sharp, bossy little mentor in the complexities of trade, his best friend. Under her unstinting instruction, the dream had even seemed within his grasp.

Again the image of her precise porcelain face rose up to … scold him. His reckless departure must have destroyed her good opinion of him. Would she think him a knucklehead? He was that. A scapegrace, a bounder? Probably.

Still, warmed by the mockingly bright light that streamed in through the windows, he was confident that, told all sides of the story, his faraway friend would badger him.

A fine fix you’ve gotten into this time, Brother Blum, Abbigad Till would chide in her fine soprano. You left the woman you loved behind for your brother to claim. Then her brown gaze would narrow in on him.

What do you propose to do now?

The minister intoned the closing prayer, and the brass band began to play a celebratory anthem.

Stand up at my brother’s wedding like a man, Nicholas silendy answered his distant friend. And put my miserable, misspent life in order.

Easier said than done, he realized, a quarter of an hour later as he prowled the edges of the Saal, no asylum to be found.

“We need help moving benches. And beer kegs,” Brother Samuel Ernst called out, to Nicholas’s relief.

He put his broad shoulders to both tasks, glad of any work that would forestall his mingling with the curious or, worse, taking up his place beside his family.

Beside his brother and his stolen bride.

Not that he could get to them. His father, stepmother, and the Widow Baumgarten formed a beaming phalanx around the newlyweds. His two older sisters, Anna Johanna and Elizabeth, were merrily–obliviously–attempting to retie the new blue Married Sister’s ribbon on Catharina’s Haube. Catharina’s brothers John and Thomas crowded around her.

Like sentinels, he thought, guarding her.

Guarding them. From him.

The Baumgarten brothers had been his schoolboy partners in damming streams, stealing pies, and tying toads to cows’ tails. Partners-friends-no more. He imagined warning in their stance, and he hated his exclusion.

Well-wishers besieged the other couples, a widow and widower whose wedding united two families already large, and a farmer he barely knew, whose bride came from a community nearby. Backs were slapped, brides bussed, toasts raised without his help.

Too soon the tasks he’d taken refuge in were done. Nicholas stood beside the tables, feeling ungainly large and prominent, his usually advantageous height a detriment.

Everyone could see him. Many paused to look, and some stopped to speak. Doggedly, he smiled, shook hands, and spoke to anyone who dared endorse a reprobate.

No one said a word of yesterday’s fiasco.

“There he is!” a girl’s voice cried out from behind him. Two pairs of sticky hands grabbed his and tugged. He looked down. Matching amber curls tumbled out from under a pair of crisp white Little Girls’ Haubes on the heads of Margaretha and Christina, his twin half-sisters, dragging their precious new dolls along. The ten-year-olds had been sneaking bites of Strudel, too, he deduced, from the state of their hands and syrupy smudges about their mouths.

“Come on, Nicky!”

“Nicky, join us,” they said, their words spilling out on top of each other and their bodies leaning toward the wedding party.

No! he thought, panicking. He was as close to them as he could bear to be without someone getting hurt.

Not a sentiment to share with his little sisters.

He bent down and whispered with an air of mystery, “I can’t. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m holding up the wall.”

Margaretha sniggered at the absurdity.

Stubbornly, Christina shook her head and tugged again. “Papa sent us to fetch you.”

“Does too.” Margaretha grinned. She loved argument.

“He does need you,” Christina agreed. “He said”- she deepened her girl’s voice and puffed up her chest to ape her father-“‘Go get Nicky.’”

“’Because he … ‘” Margaret waited for her sister.

“’Belongs with us,‘” they concluded in unison.

Nicholas pulled a face, but his stomach churned. To join them! It was too much to ask.

Margaretha gleefully raised a warning finger. “Papa said so”-she enunciated every word-“so you better.”

Did he really have a choice? Resolving again to stand up at his brother’s wedding like a man, Nicholas surrendered his hands to sticky fingers. The twins hauled him across the room, a matched pair of pure-blood fillies dragging a cumbersome wagon, instead of the light trap that would match their pluck.

“Here, Nicholas.” Smiling his welcome, his stepmother gestured him to take her side, two people over from them.

He reminded himself to breathe.

In a moment, his father put his arm around Nicholas’s shoulder, drawing him away from the tightknit, celebratory group. Nicholas tensed. He did not want to talk, not even with his father, the revered diplomat.

“’Tis all done up now, right and tight,” Jacob Blum said quietly. “Whatever happened-or did not happen, son-between you and Matthias’s bride … you must put it behind you. You must forget. Their union is the Savior’s will, and it is their will.”

“I know that, sir,” he said, bridling. He had been facing that fact since yesterday’s fight. Perhaps he had been facing it since he got Matthias’s letter. It was just hard to admit he had been so wrong. So stupid. That Catharina had wanted this marriage. That she could turn her back on what they had.

“I know you do, Nicholas,” his father said gently. “But like me when I was young, knowing the right of a matter never swayed you from the wrong.”

Though it was kindly put, Nicholas felt admonished, like a boy. “Not fair, sir.”

“Perhaps not.” His father cleared his throat “Tis only that marital … adjustments can be so difficult Your brother and his bride deserve every chance to … make their way alone.”

Nicholas respected his father, loved his clumsy attempt at tact. But saw red anyway. “You think I … would interfere … with that!”

“I think you should return to Bethlehem tomorrow,” he said in a sad voice so quiet that no one in the joyful, humming crowd could overhear him.

All of yesterday’s leftover grievances boiled up in Nicholas’s blood. “What kind of man do you take me for?”

Jacob Blum did not waver. “I take you for a brilliant bold, impulsive man who does not always count the cost of acting on his convictions.”

“I’m counting the cost now.”

“So you are, son.” His father’s arm tightened around his shoulders, as if to press the pain from his predicament. “I understand that about you, Nicholas. I see myself in you. Your road, my road-they are not easy. Perhaps we are not best suited to our faith. But your brother and his bride need time. Time without you here reminding them of the awkward beginning they have made.”

As a boy, Nicholas had plagued his stalwart father, had fought his gentle, iron rule tooth and nail. As a man, Nicholas had come to realize that his father was held in high respect. This was why. He could tell a man to his face that he had blundered-badly-and set him on a noble path to right his errors.

If that man had not burned all his bridges behind him.

“I cannot return,” he said flatly.

The arm on his shoulders dropped away. “Cannot?”

“I was fired.”

“Fired?” Jacob Blum’s hand worried his neck. But he said evenly, “I’ve done business with Georg Till for years. I know he’s a difficult man. But you were there on my recommendation. In my name. For what possible offense could he fire you?”

“He would not give me leave,” Nicholas explained. “I… took exception to it.”

“You were his new assistant,” his father said. “He took you on because he needed you. His health is poor, you know.”

“I thought I was needed more here,” Nicholas said.

His father’s gaze saw too much. “And the day’s events have proven you wrong,” he said, not unkindly.

Well. Yes. Put in that light, he was a worthless pile of butcher’s offal. His father would not welcome the self-aggrandizing justifications that sprang to his mind-that Catharina loved him, that he had planned to fix his life for her.

Nor should a man give them. He had his own and Catharina’s honor to protect. He gritted his teeth. All his teeth, less one. His tongue worried the gaping hole where Matthias had claimed the first fraction of his pound of flesh. Yesterday Nicholas had taken the lost tooth for a badge of honor. He had fought hard and gone down fighting. Today the hole only reminded him of irreversible losses-not just Catharina, but, equally as bad, his new life as a tradesman, and worse, Abbigail Till’s regard.

Nicholas squared his shoulders. Brother Till had given up on him. And his father had new doubts. But he refused to give up on himself.

“I have my tin shop.”

A poor refuge, he reflected, but all he had left.

“So you do,” Jacob Blum said. “See that you make it work, son. You well know you are flirting with disassociation.”

18

If she had to endure one more shabby, rodentridden inn, Abbigail thought she would go stark raving mad. It wasn’t her father who had suffered on the trip. Not him. Sister Benigna waited on him hand and foot, bolstering his spirits, flattering his fancy, laughing him out of his practiced peevishness.

Abbigail felt useless and obscurely wronged. For years, her father’s moods and illnesses had ruled her life. Sister Benigna now ruled him, bringing back glimpses of the man he’d been before they lost her mother. And the Widowed Sister made it look so simple. “Oh, Georg,” she would say. “You must try this.” Forcemeat, pickled mushrooms, stuffed fowl.

His gout had not acted up one single day.

The coach lumbered to a halt and rocked on its heavy braces.

“White Horse Inn!” the coachman announced.

“The last inn-our last night on the road!” Sister Benigna sang out, and peered out the coach windows. “How charming!”

Abbigail leaned forward and saw unexampled squalor. A rude log inn with a lean-to for a livery, the most abject establishment of their journey. Summer hay lay outside, unracked, left to spoil in the weather. A broken oak bucket sat abandoned by the hitching post. A couple of tired horses stood. The lean-to really leaned. Rough posts propped up a stoop over the tavern’s door. She moaned, thinking of the fleas and bedbugs awaiting them inside. But the alluring aroma of roasting game wafted toward the coach.

Sister Benigna breathed in deeply. “Just in time for supper, Georg,” she said cheerfully.

Abbigail’s rejuvenated father opened the door, turned down the steps, and stepped down deliberately to help “his women.” Sister Benigna took his hand-as if the intrepid Widow needed help, Abbigail thought. Then he gallantly handed down his daughter, too, showing off his new vigor for the Widow, no doubt.

On the ground, Sister Benigna fluffed her skirts, stretched her arms over her head, then surveyed the scene. “’Twill do nicely,” she pronounced.

Abbigail smiled. “You must have been the most formidable missionary.”

The Widow’s gaze went dreamy. “My time in the Caribbean with Johann were the best years of my life. ‘Twas wild and dangerous.”

“And this backcountry wasteland is not?” Abbigad asked in disbelief.

A buxom, blowzy woman strode across the littered yard.

Sister Benigna’s eyes twinkled. “Ach, Sister, I believe it affords men all the comforts of civilization.”

Another tavern wench. Abbigail felt a blush rise. The trip had not inured her to meeting openly disreputable women. Carelessly yet cleanly dressed, the woman stopped in front of Georg Till and tossed her coppery curls.

“I have rooms, sir. Will ye be taking meals?” She looked him up and down. “Or aught else?”

Such brazen cheek crumpled her father’s crusty authority, and Abbigail was touched to hear him stammer.

Sister Benigna spoke for him, gently tolerant of the trollop. “A room for Brother Till, and one for his daughter and myself. And a hearty meal for all of us, madam, if you can supply it.”

The woman gave a saucy smile, clearly not caring where it landed. “I can supply your every need.”

“Food and rooms will do nicely, thank you,” Sister Benigna said.

The woman led them into her tavern with a flouncing step and laid out their table with ale and breads and a joint of venison. The food far surpassed the shabby tavern’s promise, and they ate heartily.

The woman returned with sweets. “Ye will make Salem by early afternoon,” she noted, perhaps predicting their destination by their plain dress. “Or so my Brethren tell me. My latest Brother wouldn’t even stay the night this time,” she added with a pout.

Abbigail’s face heated, heart jolted, and she almost bolted from the table. Hadn’t stayed the night this time. Nicholas? It couldn’t be. But the woman spoke as if she’d had him. A plague on him, dallying with strumpets! Abbigail should have guessed. Oh, the shame of having kissed such a … a womanizer.

Oh, the delight.

No wonder he had aroused her desire with such exquisite attention to her needs.

But they had only shared a kiss, she reassured herself, and Nicholas himself admitted kissing other women.

Her father scowled. “That would have been that scoundrel, Brother Blum.”

“Now, don’t go jumping to conclusions, Georg,” Sister Benigna advised.

The wench just grinned. “Nicholas Blum, yes. But I would hardly call such a fine specimen a scoundrel.”

Her father’s scowl darkened. “We call him a thief.”

The woman snorted. “Never a day! Or my name’s not Mary Clark!”

Abbigail retreated to her room, wishing she could bury herself in counterpanes and quilts. She had kissed that thief, that womanizer, with all her heart.

Heaven help her bear the shame of facing him tomorrow.

The shame of her father’s unyielding vendetta. For Sister Benigna, ministering angel that she was, had had no effect on that.

The shame of loving Nicholas still, in spite of his wanderings.

Abbigail barely slept a wink, too filled with misery and jealousy and, most shameful of all, anticipation. For whatever Nicholas had done with that slatternly red-haired woman, Abbigail wanted to see him again, to exonerate him from her father’s accusations, to see for herself that he was safe.

Well before first light, Mary Clark tapped lightly on their door. “Coach’ll be ready in a quarter hour. I made ye a bite to eat.”

The busy buxom woman was good at her work. Probably at all aspects of her work. Abbigail buried her head in a pillow stuffed with musky straw and wished her to the devil. But the clatter and bustle of travelers below forced her from her bed.

Mary Clark caught her at the bottom of the narrow stairs and took in her ravaged face. “Blast me, miss, I only meant to tease, not vex you over Nicholas,” she confessed, her good heart shining in her face. “He is a lusty one, but true in his own heart, I’d swear it.”

“Not true to me,” Abbigail said.

Mary Clark cocked a brow in disagreement. “’Twas plain as day that the man’s heart was all bound up with someone else.”

Catharina. Abbigail smothered a sob of desolation and fled to the coach. All bound up, indeed. In love and, likely now, in marriage. But she’d known of his allegiance for some time, hadn’t she? She gathered up the pieces of her solitary spinster heart and vowed to face him-if she must face him-like a distant friend.

Catharina did not need the cold, mean September drizzle that set in after her wedding to dampen her spirits further. A gentle heart, a peaceful soul, she had never felt quite the mix of misery that churned in her stomach as she and her husband of an hour entered the one-room log cabin that was their new home. Catharina Baumgarten Blum’s home.

The wrong Brother Blum, her dream gone up in smoke.

How to lay a dream to rest?

Oh, Nicholas. If only the image of his wounded face had not followed her here. If only the thought of him did not still pull at her heart. If only she had had the nerve to say no to the Elders, no to her mother. No to Matthias Blum. She rehearsed her mother’s litany: She would come to love him, she believed in time she could.

Here, in their new home. Around town, this cabin was fondly called The Hatchery. Newlyweds lived here until their broods outgrew it. Young families of the sort that she and Matthias would be expected to produce. Her heart put in an extra panicky beat. Love him or not, she was his wife.

Stone-faced but courteous, Matthias held open the plain plank door without touching her. Her heart sank. She had lost Nicholas and his brother over one reckless, disastrous kiss. During the wedding and the feast afterward, Matthias had not left her side. Hope had blossomed that he would put his hurt aside.

He had not.

Dull evening light cloaked the little room in shadows, and sweet-scented flowers bloomed in a vase on the mantel. The Single Sisters had scrubbed the modest cabin clean, but Catharina took no comfort in this bower for her wedding night.

Without a word, her new husband headed for the hearth. Banked coals glowed against an unexpected September chill that rose from the cabin’s tamped dirt floor. She crossed her arms over the stiffness of her new linsey-woolsey wedding dress. He fanned the fire, then ht a reed and proceeded around the room, striking up pools of light that banished the gloom.

She watched in dread. She had never been alone with a man at night. She watched, entranced. Despite the stains he tried to hide, his hands were strong and manly, yet shaped as if the Sculptor of Creation had molded them for grace and elegance. One hand held the reed and the other curled protectively around the flame as he paced the room. His long strides and great height shrank the little space they shared.

How would they ever fit together here on their current awkward terms of distrust and error? And with her thoughts of Matthias’s affront and Nicholas’s desire settling like shadows in the corners of the room. She said a silent prayer to vanquish Nicholas from her thoughts.

Matthias lit the lantern that swung above the hearth and moved on. On the sturdy oak table in the center of the room, two expensive beeswax candles flared, revealing more of the Sisters’ preparations. They had laid a late repast of sweetcakes, Strudel, a jug of fresh fall cider, and a flask no doubt containing brandy made of peaches, from the orchard out behind her mother’s farm. The orchard where she and Nicholas…

She wrung her hands in dismay; she had to let him go.

Matthias was her reality now. Before Nicholas came home, she had been content with the Lot’s decree. In faith, she was determined to make her marriage work, to make amends, to make Matthias happy he had chosen her. If only they could muddle past yesterday’s disaster. Her head spun at the thought. Seeing Nicholas had been sweet And kissing him sweeter–for one moment But being caught with him had mortified her. And seeing Matthias’s pain … She had never known remorse like this.

He lit a cobbler’s glass beside their cushioned chair, and the snug little room brightened till it almost hurt her eyes. Then the brilliance mellowed, cloaking them in a golden glow that recalled her lifelong dream of having her own cozy home.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, awed.

An odd look strained across his face. “’Tis but a one-room cabin.”

“I never had a room to myself.”

“You don’t now,” he said stiffly.

“Oh!” she said, flustered, desperate to think of a more proper thing to say. “I only meant…”

A slight, civil smile softened Matthias’s expression. “I know what you meant. We have spent our lives squeezed in with families, then crowded into dormitories with Single Brothers and Sisters. At home you no doubt shared a room with Maria, and I had”—the handsome planes of his face, marked by the candlelight, went stark-“Nicholas,” he concluded harshly.

Dismayed, she tightened her arms around her bosom. Nicholas would always be a fact of their lives. But how to assure his brother, her husband, of her commitment to her vows? How to assure herself? Gathering her courage, she circled the laden table to Matthias’s side. Boldly, she laid her hand on the deep cuff of his dark sleeve.

“Brother Blum-Matthias,” she corrected herself. “We cannot banish him from our past or cast him out of our thoughts.”

He stared at her hand as if it were a snake. “I would cast him to the devil.”

She stood her ground. “I vow to you that he does not deserve that.”

His dark features twisted. “I do not deserve this.”

No, he did not. Her heart moved with unexpected sympathy. Would to God she could have spared him this. They could have started properly, happily. They could be finding joy in one another, could begin to build the little family-no, the large one-that was all her heart’s desire.

“None of us do,” she whispered, bringing her hand back to the relative safety of her own body.

For one tense breathing moment, he searched her eyes. “No,” he agreed. “You deserve … better.” And taking up a book-a book! on their wedding night-he sat in the cushioned chair and began to read by the generous light of the cobbler’s glass.

She fidgeted. What was she to do with herself? With him?

Her new husband would not touch her; he spurned her, hated her.

The small clock on the mantel chimed a late hour. Feeling more awkward than ever in her life, she walked the few steps to the low rope bed and began her nightly ablutions. The Single Sisters had been here, too, setting out scented soap, rosewater, and an embroidered handcloth, rare among the Brethren’s women. She was touched by their thoughtfulness, and miserably self-conscious.

It did not help one whit that her husband turned his back to her. He did not seem to notice the splash of water as she washed her face and hands for bed.

Nicholas would have looked. She was sure of that She squelched that errant thought with savage determination. She didn’t want him looking at her now, she realized in a flash. Truly. She had made righteous vows to another man.

With a shiver of anticipation, she sat on the fresh counterpane. It was a gift from her mother, kept in a treasured hope chest begun when Catharina was four teen. She ran her fingers over the fine ridging of its appliqué.

They were shaking.

Bending forward, she unlaced her best Sunday shoes, polished this morning to a fare-thee-well. The second shoe slipped from her hand and thunked onto the clean-swept dirt floor. Not even for this did her husband’s dark head look up from the thick German tome.

Torn between rejection and relief, she unlaced her bodice, untied her skirt, and stepped out of it and the extra petticoats she had worn to the wedding.

Heat splintered through her body. She had never undressed in front of a man. But she had imagined it. Had imagined someone removing every pin, tie, lace, stay, and buckle, slipping every stitch of gauze and batiste and linen off her.

Had imagined someone’s hands on her.

Matthias’s hands, stained but strong and beautiful. The thought did not displease her.

Still, he did not turn around to see. Even so, once she had stripped down to her shift, she hesitated to change it for the one made for her wedding night. Instead, she opened the heavy paper wrappings, cringing each time the paper crinkled. He had to hear, he had to know. His own sisters had made the gown and given it to her with pomp and circumstance … and sly, delighted giggles.

And she had planned to be so proud to be their sister, to be the first to make them aunts. That hope lay sodden in her chest. For her to become a mother, her husband would have to take an interest in her. Her heart twinged with hurt. She took out the gown anyway and spread its fine linen across her lap.

Oh, it was beautiful, creamy white and fresh as dawn. Four pairs of hands had stitched for days to create the confection. Its delicate tucks would just show off her breasts. Discreet tatting would outline her throat. And at the hem, she found–flounces! How daring! How unlike the sisters’ usual dress, plain for generations. She could have smiled.

She could have cried. With a surge of anger, she pulled the fine linen on and fluffed the fabric out around her like a tent. Then she contrived to step out of her plain shift with perfect modesty. Had he been looking, she thought with injured pride, he would not have seen a thing!

He wasn’t looking. He was going to sit there till dawn. She had to go to sleep, but would not let him dismiss her without even a good night.

Pulling on her wrapper, she padded softly to his chair, gathering her courage. “’Tis time for bed,” she said. But her voice cracked.

He looked up then, his gaze traveling the length of her body, lingering, devouring, then pointedly avoiding. She shifted uncomfortably, then lifted her chin. Hurt and hunger warred in the sky-blue depths of his eyes. Let him take her, she thought, willing him to let the barriers down.

His eyes lowered like shutters, barring night. “You go on. You’re tired.”

“’Tis our wedding night!” she cried. The words just came out, pinched and wet with unshed tears of aggravation.

He lay the large heavy book on the small table, open, and stood up. To her rattled senses, he towered over her.

“So it is,” he said mildly. Ever so gently, he inclined his head and kissed her cheek.

As if she were his little sister! A gasp of protest lodged in her throat.

“And I bid you a good night,” he added in a controlled masculine rumble that fired her senses, even as it enflamed her heart. Then he sat down and picked up his blasted book!

Catharina knew herself to be the mildest of mild souls, and so she did not know whence came either the notion or the nerve to do what she did next. Taking a ladderback chair from the old oak table, she put it in front of him and sat down with a purpose. “We cannot start this way. You do not understand.”

He pressed his lips together. Quite nice lips, she noted, even thinned with resistance. Then he spoke with maddening detachment “But I do. You love my brother-”

“No, I-”

“You gave every appearance of loving him. And my brother loves you. For me to have … relations with you as my bride is untenable. Unconscionable.”

Untenable? Unconscionable? Catharina’s head spun. He hadn’t listened to her, and she didn’t understand those smart Blum words.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He crossed his arms, closing her out with his formal address. “I am an ordinary man, Sister Catharina. Plainspoken and true. I never had my brother’s charm, his way of making friends, his ease with women. All my life I’ve fought wanting to be him. Wanting to have his place in my father’s heart, in my sisters’ eyes. ‘Twas envy, plain and simple, low and mean.” His mouth twisted, more with self-reproach, she thought, than the envy he regretted. Understanding touched her heart, and his words sparked hope. Among her schoolgirl friends, such confessions promised greater intimacy

“’Tis a great irony, then, is it not?” he went on in the same dark tone. “I cannot bring myself to bed the woman he loves. The woman who loved him.”

Never? she wanted to ask, the instant she recovered from his blunt admission. Are there no prospects for us? But she feared his answer.

“I pledged myself to you, not him,” she said instead.

His brow furrowed, control broke. “I saw you kissing him. I heard what he said. If you were not lovers, you soon would be.”

Anger stiffened her spine. Never would she have so abandoned virtue. “Then why did you not call our wedding off?”

For heart-stopping moments, he went absolutely still. Light from the cobbler’s glass danced across his face. She wanted to touch it, touch him with the dismay and tenderness she felt for his dilemma.

“I can live with our marriage, but I could not expose you,” he said at last. “I could not have lived with bringing you dishonor. Nor even him.”

“A simple kiss is no dishonor.”

He smiled politely, his meaning closed to her again. “So you say.”

A moan of indignation escaped her, and an alarming realization. “I can never prove my innocence to you.”

“You proved it. Both of you.”

“But you married me. We are the ones who are married, you and I.”

That smile again. Its perfect control chilled her. “So we are. In Christian charity.”

“Matthias! Please. I want a family. Children. Happiness.”

He looked at her, blinking, sadly, as if to say, So did I. But he had regained his mild demeanor, his perfect control. And he dismissed her by simply taking up his book.

She went to bed while he still read, pulling up the counterpane while the light still glowed. He was too perfectly in control of his emotions, of his life. Whereas she had bumbled badly. She hadn’t meant to, but she was paying nonetheless. She would pay no more. She would bring perfection to his household, and somehow win him over.

Her perfect husband had just gotten himself a perfect bride.

19

“Nicky! Are you in there?”

“Nicky, Mama sent us!” The twins clattered up the plank steps and banged through the door of Nicholas Blum’s tin shop. In five long days of tedious work since Sunday’s festivities, he had realized that he had no future but as a humble tinsmith. He was a man without a trade he cared for. A Single Brother still. A man without a bride. In time he might get over losing Catharina, but he missed the merchant’s life.

Or was it the friendship of the tiny tyrant who had trained him for it? No matter. On firing him, Till had made it clear he would never take him back.

His sisters swept into the smoky front room of his shop, their Little Girls’ skirts swirling dust devils of metal filings into the air. Beneath the light of one frugal candle, he hastily scooped his afternoon’s work into a drawer to keep them from seeing. Their birthday was coming up next week, and he was making miniature cups and saucers, a teapot, sugar caddy, and creamer so they could set a pretty table for their dolls. His work was exacting. But it beat repairing lanterns, wash basins, and sugar boxes in his new side trade as tinkerer to the universe, his once-large world shrunk to the narrow confines of his shop. The harmonies of Singstunde ended, and he hid here from a jewel-toned mid-September evening under the setting sun.

If truth be told, he was hiding from reminders of his folly in coming home to rescue his stolen bride. If his luck held, it might be days before he ran into the newly married couple about the town. Never mind that avoiding them meant skipping services and risking further censure. He refused to worry about that.

The twins sniffed around the room like curious puppies, their ever-present dolls trailing from their hands. Christina admired a mended kettle. Margaretha claimed his lap.

“We have a secret,” she said.

Despite his glum mood, he chuckled. “’Twill be no secret if you tell me.”

She primmed her mouth. “Then we won’t tell.”

“We have to, silly,” said Christina, the serious one, so like Matthias as a boy that Nicholas almost shivered. Heaven forbid that his beloved sisters should ever come to such an impasse as his and his brother’s.

“Maybe I’ll tell and maybe I won’t,” Margaretha chanted, tempting him to banter.

Whatever their purpose, he welcomed their arrival. It broke the exile he had sought in the day since his brother’s triumph. Still it rankled to sit here with nothing for company but his own stupidity. He had closed his shop for the day.

“Dare you,” he challenged, sure of Margaretha’s response. The twins were now the only females who looked up to him-and the only ones he wanted to look at.

Except for one so far away he couldn’t hope to see her.

Christina tugged at a thick braid. “It’s company …”

“Very pretty company,” Margaretha injected.

“For you,” Christina concluded emphatically.

Pretty! Oh no, he thought. It was too soon for the Elders to set him up for marriage. They had only just turned him down. They had not been wrong, he admitted with new insight Now that he was tied forever to his tin shop, he realized how limited his opportunities were, how burdensome his debts and encumbrances. No matter. He would take on extra business to resolve them, stay up long hours into the night, work his fingers to the bone. The profits from the stock he’d sold to Huber were just enough to tide him over until his efforts paid.

If not the Elders setting him up, then who? Neither Retha nor his father was above trying to put his life right by marrying him off. They believed in marital bliss. They had practically invented iL Exasperated, he almost crushed a teacup in his hand.

The twins danced at his feet. “Nicky, come!”

“Oh, very well, I’m coming.” He reached for his old coat beside the door.

Margaretha crossed her arms, and Christina pursed her lips in disapproval. “Take your good coat, Nicky,” she said.

“We mean really pretty,” Margaretha added.

He didn’t feign the groan that rose up from his chest. What were his parents planning? He shrugged into his father’s best old coat-the one worn in humiliation at Catharina’s wedding-and let his sisters drag him into the crisp September night, past the Square, and down the street to his paternal home, trusting that the newlyweds were in their cabin in the opposite direction. Up the rise, on the west road out of Salem.

The girls skipped beside him, their dolls bobbing bonelessly along.

“Aren’t you going to even ask, Nicky?” Margaretha prodded as the Blums’ substantial two-story brick-and-timber home came into view.

No, he would not ask. Whatever awkwardness awaited him, he would meet head on.

He chucked her chin and offered his most winning smile. “Not tonight, pumpkin. Surprise me.”

She relented, and in moments they were at the door, his sisters spinning around him like the last fireflies of summer.

Jacob Blum was waiting, worried, and he nudged the twins inside. “Go to your mama, girls.” Then he gravely turned to Nicholas. “There was no way to alert you, son.”

Alert him to what? “Sir?”

“To Brother Till, his daughter, and their friend, a widow, come down from Bethlehem.”

Abbigail here? Nicholas’s blood ran cold. Ran hot. With puzzlement, with anticipation.

“Sister Till?” His voice tripped on her name. “And Brother Till? And Sister Rothrock?” he amended, too late for propriety. “Whatever for?”

His father caught the slip and raised a brow. “I hoped you might know.”

“I have not the foggiest notion,” Nicholas said.

But his mind raced over his frenetic last evening in Bethlehem. He had unloaded the wagons, stowed all the goods in their proper places, and left up-to-date ledgers in plain sight. Under Huber’s watchful, indeed, vigilant eye, he had cleared his meager possessions from the Brothers House, sold the man his remaining stock, then stashed his hard-earned profits in his battered portmanteau.

Before that, earlier in the evening, he had … kissed Abbigail. He frowned. Yes, it had been impulsive, even disrespectful of him to touch her. But kissing was no hanging offense. No reason for the ailing Georg Till to make the arduous trek to Salem. No reason for Abbigail to come too. Never mind that Nicholas’s pulse pumped and his heart thudded at the thought of seeing her. But why had they come? It did not bode well.

His father gestured him into the parlor, his brow furrowed with concern. “Let us go in. I am with you, son.”

Nicholas blinked in the brightly lit room. Everyone spoke in hushed, expectant tones except for the twins. They played with the dolls they’d dragged all over town, enjoying their supremacy now that all their older siblings had moved into the Brothers and Sisters Houses. He looked for Abbigail and found her, sitting with Retha and Sister Rothrock, her face to the brightly tiled stove that warmed the room against an evening chill. Between the two stately women, she was tiny, scarcely larger than the twins, and seemed fragile the way only a trim, fine-boned woman could.

He knew better. His heart compressed with admiration. She was tough, she was shrewd, she was true. That was how she’d earned his friendship and esteem.

He crossed the room and greeted his stepmother with a peck on the cheek, hoping for a word, a smile from Abbigail. To his deep consternation, his onetime friend did not look up. Surely she had not come all this way to snub him. Perhaps she was angry. He would be the first to admit that she had every right to be. Perhaps the trip had been an imposition. Perhaps she was uncomfortable in his family’s home. He didn’t want any of that.

No, he wanted her to acknowledge him. Wanted her to greet him gladly. Wanted the reassurance of her bright, discriminating smile.

At a loss, he turned to her father and bowed deeply. “Sir. Tis a pleasure to see you looking well. I trust your journey was not a hard one.”

Till scowled. “’Twas an utter inconvenience.”

A bubble of foreboding stuck in Nicholas’s chest. “If I can help you while you’re here…” Nicholas said, mustering courtesy, mastering curiosity. There was no polite way to ask why they had come before they offered it. “I am at your service.”

“Too late for you to do me any service.” The old man was always blunt to a fault, but this was rude.

Nicholas bristled.

Jacob Blum moved closer, resting a calming hand on Nicholas’s shoulder. “My wife will put our daughters to bed, Brother Georg. Then we can all talk.”

With a flutter of skirts, Retha Blum escorted the reluctant twins upstairs. The silence in their wake sucked the comfort from the room.

Waiting respectfully, Nicholas chafed as he catalogued every move he had made on Georg Till’s behalf, grasping at straws for errors, sins. For some thing that would make Abbigad sit by the fire, avoiding the very sight of him.

Then she turned. For an instant, he relished the familiar precision of her pretty features. Then he saw that her large brown eyes brimmed with … hurt? Doubt? Scrutiny?

He felt his face burn. He could not hide his injuries. Taken off guard by her distance, he linked his hands behind his back, racking his brain to recall an offense against her. He had not hurt her. He had not breathed a word of his unseemly visit to her room or of their indiscreet embrace. Nor could anyone have seen them.

Then what had brought her to his parents’ home with hurt and blame haunting her dark eyes?

On the grueling eight-day coach ride to Salem, Abbigail had steeled herself for meeting Nicholas Blum. But nothing prepared her for the effect of his massive masculine beauty on her ungovernable heart. What a foolish, aging spinster, to have palpitations for the man who dallied with trollops and spurned her for another woman.

Who introduced her to desire.

She had tried those lips, tasted that mouth, pressed her body to his strength.

Oh dear.

She chided herself for her carnal thoughts. But he looked rakish, dangerous, desirable-and grim. His battered face was pale and drawn, and the ready smile was gone. He had come to Salem to stop a wedding and to claim a bride. He did not look like a happily married man. She smoothed the bodice of her dress, seeking composure.

Only a fool would hope him still free.

Her father sat beside her, one gouty foot tapping impatiently. Abbigail wished for a handkerchief or needlework or fresh fall nuts to crack-anything to occupy her hands in this forbidding silence. On the journey, Sister Benigna’s goodwill had curbed her father’s appetite for Nicholas’s blood. The sight of him revived it.

The stairs creaked under Sister Blum’s tread, light and agile for a woman so tall, and she took her place beside her husband. The handsome couple presented a united front, a unity that Abbigad remembered in her parents when her mother was alive. She envied Nicholas their support.

“Shall we sit?” Retha Blum asked.

Jacob Blum cleared his throat. “We are at a loss, Brother Georg. I take it Nicholas’s abrupt departure discommoded you beyond what he has told us.”

“Ah, that.” Her father brushed the idea off as if he had not ranted over Nicholas’s desertion even before they discovered the missing watches. “’Twas badly done.”

Nicholas stepped up, manly and contrite. “I acted in haste, in temper. I see that and regret it. I will of course repay you any losses.”

She thought his apology gracious, even generous. If, she realized with a pang, he were truly innocent. Which up till now she had believed him to be. Had prayed could be proven.

Her father noted Nicholas’s apology with an overly correct bow. “Handsome of you, Brother Nicholas. But this”-he reached deep into the pocket of his traveling coat-“is not so easily explained away”

And with a little flourish of triumph that made her wince, he took out the fine-grained walnut case from the safe and clapped it open, exposing its emptiness to one and all. Retha Blum gasped.

“Oh, Georg!” Sister Benigna cried. Even she must disapprove the meanness of his gesture.

He thrust the case under Nicholas’s nose. “Your tongue is glib, however, sir, so you will perhaps find explanation.”

Nicholas plainly recognized the case. Abbigail had expected that. He took it and inspected it, his broad brow furrowing.

“Your watches,” he said in evident disbelief. Honest disbelief, Abbigail felt certain. “What happened to your watches?”

Her father laid his snare. “Perhaps you thought them yours, Blum?”

Abbigail bristled at his smugness.

“No, sir. I bought them for you,” Nicholas explained with careful courtesy. “With your money. On my last trip to Philadelphia. From a reputable dealer who was none too pleased at the low price I bargained for. I had purchased silks and wines and stationery to such advantage that there was money enough for this … extravagance.”

“Then you took the first excuse that offered to run off with them.” Her father paused dramatically. “I call that stealing.”

Nicholas blanched. Abbigail could not wrest her gaze away from his unfeigned indignation. His father and stepmother moved nearer to support him, a gesture of family accord and parental trust she had long yearned for.

“You think I stole the watches,” Nicholas said evenly, somehow managing, she sensed, to control his anger. It spoke well of him, she told herself, both the reason and the restraint.

Her father puffed up, a small dog defying a great one. “I know it, sir.”

Nicholas’s throat worked with emotion. “I regret leaving you in haste, Brother Till, but I never touched your watches but to stow them in your safe.”

“And you expect me-you expect ai”-her father’s arm clamped down on Abbigail’s shoulder, including her in a most unwelcome way-“to believe that.”

Injured pride reddened Nicholas’s cheek. “I expect exactly that.”

“Tell him, daughter, what you told me.”

“Father, don’t…” Abbigad protested as she had that day, then on the trip, and then even as they had stood with Sister Benigna on the Blums’ doorstep.

“’Tis either now or before the Elders.”

In a rare rebuttal of her father’s will, Abbigail shook her head.

“Georg, must it come to that?” the Widowed Sister asked, disapproving, disappointed.

“There must be another explanation,” Jacob Blum said. “You have a senior assistant, do you not?”

“Brother Huber, yes. Christian Huber,” her father said impatiently.

“Could he not have … misplaced them?”

Her father huffed. “In over a year of faithful service, the man has not misplaced one farthing-not one cent. I check every receipt he touches.”

“Then you will have checked my son’s receipts as well.”

“Yes, and found them in error.”

Abbigail remembered that first trip and could not let her father distort it. “Minor errors, Father. Ripperton’s errors, on Brother Blum’s first receipts.”

“Errors, Abbigail, such as Brother Huber never made. I have every confidence that he could keep track of five valuable French watches. He knew they would profit the store.”

“Some other explanation, then,” Sister Blum interceded gently. “Lost, perhaps, among some other stock.”

“Truly, Brother Blum, Sister Blum, if you persist in defending your son, we must approach the Elders.”

Jacob Blum’s eyes filled with indignation. “Can you not see the likelihood that my son’s departure and the missing watches are a coincidence?”

“A convenience, more likely.”

“Brother Georg, I know my son. He left in a rash anger, not planning anything. But he was raised an honest man. Besides, to accuse him, you must have proof.”

“How can I prove anything without examining him?” Georg Till exploded. “I cannot even find the key.”

Nicholas had stepped back, as if embarrassed by his parents’ vigorous defense. But he muffled an exclamation at her father’s comment. All heads whipped around to him.

“Son?”

He lifted a shoulder in defeat. “I have his key. I was distracted while unloading the wagons. I forgot to put it back.”

A fierce blush of consternation heated Abbigail’s face. She had distracted Nicholas that evening. He had found her in angry tears and had consoled her. She looked down miserably, then up at him.

He must remember, too, for his determined gaze enjoined her sdence.

But her father pounced on any evidence that Nicholas was less than scrupulously responsible. “There, you see, Brother Blum. Negligence goes hand in glove with dishonesty.”

“I see only that the case is complicated,” Jacob Blum said evenly.

“The case is deplorable! Brothers have been censured-even dismissed-for drunkenness, for brawling, for marrying outside of our community. But has Salem ever known Brother to steal from Brother? Bethlehem has not. The case must be heard.”

Abbigad knew her father loved to drive hard bargains. Evidently the senior Blum knew, too. He continued with taut control. “Brother Georg, you and I have done business together for three decades. Business based on trust. I ask you to extend that trust to my son. No one condones his hasty departure. But he is innocent of any theft. Let us not be hasty now.”

“Two weeks have passed since the watches disappeared. Nor is this my only grievance. Tomorrow morning I will call on the Elders if you will not.”

Nicholas stepped forward abruptly, his face dark with anger he no longer tried to conceal. “Why bother with the Elders?” He turned to his father. “Call a search, sir. I have naught to hide.”

Abbigail shuddered. It was not wise to let her father have his way. Jacob Blum agreed, however, with Nicholas. Quickly assembling a few men, the senior Blum led the way to his son’s tin shop.

“Don’t forget the storage bins,” Nicholas called out to his father, confident of being cleared and intent on establishing his innocence. Jacob Blum was riffling through the contents of the front room of the tin shop. He had taken down every container arranged along the wall for sale, shaken them, and listened for a ratde, then turned them upside down. His brother Matthias, in his first duty as an Elder, was in the back room rummaging through Nicholas’s things.

No watches! Nicholas wanted to shout loud enough for all to hear. Particularly, he realized with a curious twist of his heart, for Abbigail to hear. Her doubting gaze had cut him to the bone.

Nicholas reined in impatience. Waiting was the hard part. To clear him, they had to glean the contents of the shop. His private quarters were not fancy, a Single Brother’s temporary lodging, a pallet and some clothes. His shop was large for one in Salem, built to accommodate large sheets of tin, an assistant, and some inventory. Not four large men, and one small vindictive one.

At Nicholas’s right, night watchman Samuel Ernst, friend of his father’s and unofficial proctor of the search, supervised them with a scowl. On his left, Georg Till stood, determined to see him in the wrong.

“Don’t forget my clothes, Matty,” he yelled to the back. “They have pockets!

Matthias peered around the door frame, straining to smile good news. “Empty,” he said in his forthright way and disappeared again.

“Can we be done with this?” Samuel Ernst fidgeted with his conch. “I have rounds to finish.”

Georg Till stood in the doorway still, dividing his attention between Jacob and Matthias Blum’s searches. “If they hope to clear you, Brother Blum, there should be no doubt of their assiduous effort,” he said.

“None whatsoever,” Nicholas said smoothly. But the back of his neck prickled.

Moments later, Matthias joined their father at the counter where Nicholas fashioned all his tinware. He wiped his yellow-tinged hands with a wrinkled handkerchief.

“Sorry about the mess, Nicky,” he said in an undertone. “But you said everything.”

Jacob Blum dusted off his hands, too, and said amiably, “Had you followed my profession, son, you would have found drafting paper not to be so dirty. I am done here as well.”

Nicholas frowned. It couldn’t be that easy or that fast. Had they searched everything? “Check the cash box, Papa, and the drawers.”

His father left Matthias to the task. His brother opened the cash box and dumped script and coin onto the counter. It had been a meager day, the customers gawking at the shop’s scandalous proprietor rather than buying his goods.

“Nothing.” Then Matthias attacked the drawers. Messy drawers, one crammed with broken tools awaiting repair, another filled with receipts and invoices, records of things done and things to do.

And no watches.

“No watches anywhere, son, Brother Till. As we knew,” Jacob Blum said.

For no reason Nicholas could understand, he almost sagged with relief. “Let that be an end of it then,” he said, his harsh voice giving away feelings he’d rather have kept private. He hadn’t thought the search he’d asked for would carve up his pride and crowd his sense of freedom. He pivoted and left the room, seeking the wider streets of town, the clearer air where he could breathe more easily.

His father and brother caught up to him halfway down the street. It was just as well they did, for he had no plan and no direction.

“Son, you are exonerated,” his father said firmly.

He stopped on his heel. “Strange. I do not feel exonerated.” He felt violated, snared in a net of his own making. A net of reputation. He always had been guilty-of pranks, misdeeds, and venial sins. But how did a man prove himself innocent when there was no evidence either way? The damage had been done the moment Till arrived in town spreading allegations.

“We know you would not have done it,” Matthias added, in what seemed to Nicholas a sacrifice of noble-mindedness, given what lay between them. What crueler irony? The righteous brother who stole his bride now defended him of theft.

“Proof of my innocence will be far to seek,” Nicholas said, suddenly savage. “As will proof that I did not compromise your wife’s affections.”

It was a bright night in the sleeping town, the full moon high. It shone on the resentment that flashed across his brother’s face.

“Restrain yourself, Nicholas,” his father interceded. “We will get to the bottom of this together.”

“With a hearing?” He gritted out the words, bridling against the insult of it.

“Till insists. The entire case must be laid out before the Board.”

Brother Ernst caught up to them and said sympathetically, “We’ll clear this up, Nicholas. Don’t worry. No one thinks you a thief.”

Till did, and Abbigail had entertained the notion. Nicholas had seen it in their faces, and it galled him and provoked him.

Nicholas and his father came home in such disorder that Abbigail had a fleeting fear that the watches had turned up. Jacob Blum dispelled that notion with a hearty recounting of the mess they’d made upturning Nicholas’s shop. But the Elders would still hold a hearing. Nicholas stood by the mantel, grave and silent. Abbigail’s father came in limping, his gout flaring with his disappointment.

“The hour is late, daughter. Come. We must go.”

Retha Blum was gracious. “You will stay here, of course, Brother Till. And Sister Till and Sister Rothrock.”

“Thank you, no,” her father said crossly. “I will stay at the Tavern. Sister Rothrock will stay with her friends and my daughter with the Single Sisters.”

Jacob Blum offered to conduct Sister Rothrock to friends if that was her preference. She had not seen them in years and was eager to go.

Retha Blum clasped Abbigail’s cold hand in her warm ones. “I fear the Single Sisters House will not do for you. It is full to overflowing. Town girls past the age to enter it are turned away.”

“A private home, then,” her father said.

“Most have barely room for their own children. In Salem, we grow families faster than we build homes. We may be your only choice, Sister Till, certainly tonight,” Retha Blum said matter-of-factly.

Abbigail could not bear to stay here, in Nicholas’s home, her father objecting and her testimony against him impending. “Then I shall take a room at the Tavern.”

Nicholas gave her the sternest look. “A public tavern, even ours, is unsuitable for Sister Till.”

Abbigail grimaced, feeling all the awkwardness of her position. “I cannot possibly impose …”

Retha Blum squeezed her hand and gave her a kind smile. “Let us not quarrel over this. Take our offer as a token of our friendship. And our belief in our son. He is cleared. You are not our enemy, Sister Till.”

Her testimony would prove she was. But under Retha Blum’s gentle insistence, Abbigail agreed to stay, her stomach churning with dread. Nicholas was not in the clear. Her father would make her testily. She could not lie about what she had seen.

20

The next night when the clock chimed two, Nicholas woke to nagging concerns and took to the streets. Tomorrow the Elders would convene, with his conduct their inquiry. Frustrated that the watches had not been found, Till had pressed for a meeting sooner, but the Brethren’s deliberate ways did not permit rushing to the hangman. On hearing Till’s objection, the chief Elder, Brother Marshall, suggested that he pray for patience.

Tonight, a waxing harvest moon blazed the sky as Nicholas walked off his restlessness. He had searched every scrap of belongings he’d brought back from Bethlehem, things overlooked last night: saddle, saddlebags, the lining of his battered portmanteau. Try as he might, he could not recall what he did with the watches. Perhaps he could go bang his head on some convenient rock until he unlocked the key to their theft.

The key. It all turned on that blasted key.

The stocky night watchman emerged from behind the linden trees that fringed the Square.” Wie gehts, Nicholas? Come to keep me company?” Samuel Ernst asked.

“The chimes woke me.”

“Ich verstehe dich. I cannot sleep through troubles myself.”

Nicholas merely nodded, the night bright enough for Brother Ernst to see him.

“Everyone prays it will go well for you tomorrow,” the man added.

Nicholas blew out a harsh sigh. “Prays and … gossips, do they not?”

He knew they did. Custom in his tin shop had been brisk with snoops and meddlers. Or the merely curious and concerned; he must force himself to think benignly of his fellow Brethren.

Brother Ernst cleared his throat nervously. “Ach, you must understand, Nicholas. Your return, the fight, the wedding, and now this. Visitors come from Bethlehem, who just happen to be the man you worked for-and his pretty daughter.”

Anger spiked through Nicholas. “What about his pretty daughter?”

Brother Ernst lifted his hand as if to erase any affront. “Nothing of truth to it, I am sure.”

“But there are rumors.”

“They do not bear repeating.”

“Except to me, the object of those rumors, Brother Ernst. I can fight rumor with fact.”

“Some may think he brought her because you …” Samuel Ernst started walking.

Nicholas fell in beside him. “Because I…?”

“Because you and she … Ach, Nicholas, everyone knows your eye for pretty women. It is easy to imagine you and Sister Till … and her father finding out-”

Nicholas let out a low roar of indignation. “Abbigail? Abbigail is innocent of…” He trailed off, remembering the sweet heat of her against him on her bed.

“Abbigail, Brother Nicholas?” Samuel Ernst prompted him.

“Sister Till is my friend! She has the strictest notions of propriety, the highest regard for her reputation.”

“That is not the impression.”

“Hang the impression!” Nicholas exploded. “We worked together in the store, day after day, under the uncharitable, watchful eye of that dour old man. She has sacrificed her life to him, her happiness.”

“No one here knew that, of course,” Samuel Ernst said defensively.

With his bare hands, Nicholas stopped the man. “Brother Ernst, I beg you. Defend her name to anyone who speculates idly about what is not. What could not be.”

“’Tis clear you care for her …”

“Of course, I care for her,” Nicholas snapped, roused to her defense. “She lives an admirable life of strictest duty. I wouldn’t harm a hair on her sweet head.”

“I see, Nicky,” Brother Ernst said gently, pulling away.

“Stop the rumors. You have much credit among us. Credit I have lost, so that any word from me could do her harm. If anyone slanders her, call them what they are-idle gossips, trucking in wicked lies.”

Samuel Ernst agreed, wished Nicholas well, and left him in the Square.

His life at a standstill. Last night he had endured his inquisition, disbelief pounding his senses, while Abbigail looked on. He could not fathom why Georg Till had turned against him, his abrupt departure notwithstanding. During his summer at the store, he had rearranged tired old stock until it sold. He had brought in new stock that flew off the shelves. He had turned a neat profit for Till and laid aside some money for himself.

He had found his talent. So why had he thrown it over to return to this backcountry town to rescue Catharina? Was it jealousy of his brother? Or the dream of his young manhood? He had thought to rescue Catharina and wrest control of his life from the stifling shelter of the Brethren.

Another signal failure.

Restless, Nicholas struck off across the Square, down the street, across the meadow that rolled gently down to Tanner’s Run. He had fished there as a boy, swum, built dams, splashed water in friends’ faces. He envied that boy. Full of boundless energy, endless optimism, a wicked sense of play, and yet charity for everyone.

He sat on a large rock and clipped a hand into the stream. It was icy cold. That boy was not meant to grow into the man he had become, jack of all trades, bound to the dullest of the dull, and rejected by the woman who had loved him. A man alone, debtridden, and accused of theft.

He could start a new life. Even before Till’s allegation, he had thought of striking out on his own, his shoulders aching as he crafted some trifling tin cup. West of Salem, the backcountry was opening up. A man could have adventures in the mountains and beyond. He liked the road. He wanted to be his own man. A brooding hour passed, or two. He lost track of time. Barely noticing the chill, he stood up by the stream. The water flowed, dark and lonely.

He could never leave his family. His affections ran too deep. He would miss his little sisters’ teasing adoration, his stepmother’s gentle love, his father’s stalwart support. As for Matthias, he couldn’t imagine their present impasse enduring until old age.

He headed up the sloping meadow back to his narrow bed. He wished he could protect Abbigail, too-from her sad isolation as her father’s drudge, from the assaults on her dignity that she faced daily in the store. From Salem’s gossip. Frustrated by his uselessness to her, he ground his teeth, only to rediscover the gaping hole where he had lost a tooth, rashly, stupidly fighting with his brother.

The best he could do was to protect her from himself, from his bad luck and ever-sinking reputation.

Halfway up the hill, he found himself behind his parents’ home, its back windows mournful eyes in dark brick walls. Except for one window. A candle burned in the bedroom he had shared with Matthias as a boy. A flash of movement in the corner window caught his eye. Who would be there now? And up so late?

Abbigail. He remembered her guilty blush when he admitted to the key. What did she know? What could she say at tomorrow’s hearing? What if she blamed herself-her tears, their kiss-for his absence of mind that night On the morrow she would say so.

And she would ruin herself.

Unless he stopped her. He broke into a run uphill through tall damp meadow grasses to his parents’ house. Behind the single-story kitchen, he found the young oak tree he used to climb to reach his bedroom window. The tree was larger and the limb he’d swung from higher. But he was bigger too. Hope pumped through him. There was, after all, something he could do.

It was not circumspect or wise. It was probably rash.

But he would not let Abbigatl Till put herself at risk for him, buying his pardon at her own cost. And he would have no other chance to dissuade her.

Hastily he discarded his only decent waistcoat, a choking stock, and slick-soled shoes. Then he hoisted himself up the tree, caught his heel over the limb, and pulled himself across it to the kitchen’s low slate roof. Under his great weight, the high limb sagged, dropping him gently atop the kitchen’s slightly sloping roof. He crept on hands and knees, spreading his weight so as not punch through the ceiling. The narrow window was cracked open. It would admit him if he squeezed.

Abbigail was sitting in a creaking rocker, reading by the low light of her chamber candle, wearing a simple white flannel gown. For a moment Nicholas paused, drinking in the sight of her, her thick, heavy hair restrained by a ribbon at the nape of her slender, delectable neck.

And the enormity, the idiocy of his impulsive visit struck him. What if she screamed? He could cover her mouth if he reached her in time. What if that protective gesture terrified her? He would not forgive himself if he caused her pain.

Of course, she might fight back. But she was quick and smart and sure of who she was. She’d think first. He took a chance on that.

“Abbigail,” he whispered as he cracked the window. “’Tis Nicholas-”

She bolted from her rocker and twirled around, the book clattering to the floor. Her knees buckled in alarm, her hand flew to her chest, and her mouth made a small 0 of alarm.

Feet first, he squeezed through the narrow opening and over the sill and stood, holding his arms out to his side. Hands up, palms out, in a gesture of-he hopedreassurance. Then he backed to the far side of the small room.

She did not faint, she did not scream, but jammed her knuckles on her hips and glared. “Jesu, Nicholas! What are you doing in my bedroom this time?”

He had not anticipated indignation. It pleased him and relieved him to have her to himself. He gave her his most repentant grin. “’Tis my bedroom, actually.”

Abbigail was mad enough to throw plates … if any had been to hand. What was Nicholas thinking, coming to her bedroom in the middle of the night? Her startled heartbeat slowed to a woodpecker’s insistent drumming. She snatched her wrapper off her bedpost, jerked it on, and knotted its sash, thankful for the late hour, the low light, but wary of the silence in the household.

“Are you insane?” she asked, her whisper as menacing as she could make it.

“I missed you, Abbigail,” he said, dimple flashing with all his old charm.

She stalked over to him, the soles of her feet slapping the cold plank floor, and tilted her face up-and up-to his. He was immense, larger than in her memory, almost alarming when she stood before him, barefooted and vulnerable.

“’Tis beyond the rashest folly for you to be here,” she scolded in spite of that.

He lowered his hands slowly and lifted a shoulder contritely. “But here I am, in the flesh, come to save you from yourself.”

She could have punched that flesh. Or caressed it, she admitted, a disturbing sensual awareness sparking deep inside her at the mere sight of him, bruised and battered though he seemed to be. Her sturdy nightclothes felt flimsy, revealing. She folded her arms across her breasts and glared. “Someone could wake up any minute!”

He backed against the mantel of the room’s modest fireplace and shrugged in his maddening, irresistible way. She always felt safe with Nicholas. Rejected, in an odd unexplored corner of her heart, but safe.

“They never have,” he assured her. “They always sleep like logs. I did this countless times.”

That softened her-the image of him, a great spirited boy, sneaking out for escapades on moonlit nights. But then, she thought, the boy had grown up. “Stole into women’s bedrooms, Brother Blum?”

A winning smile spread across his face. “Only yours, Abbigail.”

He was so sure of his effect on her that she could stomp her feet. But the genuine sweetness of his mellow voice glazed over her resistance like honey on johnnycakes, drizzled shivers of sensation into the core of her being.

She tightened her hold on herself. “You are a scoundrel.”

“Only if you let me be,” he teased, smiling still, one massive, sleeved forearm draped casually along the narrow mantel. Too casually for her comfort. He wore only breeches, stockings, and a linen work shirt, exposing his shoulders’ breadth and an intimate view of his strong, corded neck and the hollow at the base of his throat.

He fiddled with the little lantern, watching her all the while.

“Brother Blum, you forget yourself entirely!” Summoning annoyance to cover her distraction, she plucked the lantern from his hands. It rattled when she set it on the mantel. “You’re in trouble enough, my father’s accusation coming on top of interfering with your brother’s wedding.”

The sleek self-assurance washed out of his body, and he frowned. “They told you.”

“Very little.”

His throat worked. “The wedding went as scheduled. Whether Sister Catharina loves him or not, she felt honor-bound to her betrothal. And so”-this time his lazy shrug did not convince Abbigail in the least-“my brother is married and I am not.”

She fought the tug of pity, the pull of desire, the irrepressible springing of hope. “All the more reason you should not be here,” she said sternly.

He waved concern away. “No one saw. Samuel Ernst is at the other end of town, and the rest of the world is sound asleep. Yours was the only bedroom window lit. I came in secret.”

“But why now?” she demanded, irritated that he would be so careless. He was already in deep trouble. Her foot tapped out her impatience. “Well?”

“About tomorrow…” he began. But he was looking at the floor.

At her bare foot, bare toes, peeking out beneath her gown and wrapper. She shifted her hems to cover them and spoke with what aplomb she could summon. “Yes. Tomorrow. The Elders are convened despite the search that proved you innocent.”

His face clouded. “The search only proved, as your father said, that a man who’s clever enough to steal is clever enough to hide the evidence.”

“So he alleges.”

Nicholas looked up. In the candlelight, his golden lashes fringed doubting eyes of darkest blue. “What do you allege, Abbigail?” he asked softly.

She was hurt he asked. “Nothing.”

“Your father is convinced that I had the reason and the chance to do it. And you saw … what exactly did you see?”

She bristled at his probing, too conscious of the damning tale she had to tell. “I am sure the Elders will ask me tomorrow. It cannot be right for us to discuss this here.”

A hiss of frustration escaped through his teeth. “’Tis wrong for you, your father, the Elders, or anybody else to accuse me of something I would never do.” His vehemence softened. “What did you see, Abbigail? What do you think I did?”

His earnest entreaty touched her heart. She could not hold back as she ought. “You showed me the watches, placed them in the vault, then pocketed the key. I thought nothing of it. After you left I showed my father the case and found it empty. He was furious, instantly convinced you were at fault. I told him what I saw that night, but he stuck to his conclusion. Nothing I said could persuade him otherwise.”

His great hand grasped her small one. “What exactly did you tell your father, Abbigail? Surely nothing of what passed between us that night.”

She lifted her chin. “I told him you came home and found me crying. You were distracted by my distress. Enough to have misplaced the watches. Enough perhaps–as you left in haste-to have mistakenly packed them with your things.”

A slight tightening of Nicholas’s hand on hers was the only sign of his disapproval. “I did not, Abbigail. We looked everywhere. And today, I searched some more. I must have left the watches in the safe.”

“You couldn’t have. They were not there.”

“They are not here. They’re too large to lose. And they didn’t get up and walk off.”

“I distracted you that night. And so I shall tell them.”

“Don’t do it, Abbigail,” he warned. Entreated.

“But it’s the truth.”

“What if I did steal them? That could be the truth.”

She stamped her foot. “Rubbish.”

A grin spread across his face. “I appreciate the confidence.”

His gratitude warmed her. Charmed her. She grinned back. “You are welcome. That confidence and my confession will prove your innocence to the Elders.”

In a flash, he was solemn. “No, Abbigail. Think of it from their perspective. Just because they didn’t find the watches, doesn’t mean I didn’t steal and sell them. My innocence cannot be proved, no matter what you say. You must not defend me. I do not need your help. Whatever happens, I can take it. I have been in trouble all my life.”

“I will be sworn to tell the truth. How do you propose to stop me from doing that? You were distracted that night. I distracted you. If you did not pack the watches inadvertently, you probably misplaced them somewhere we failed to look.”

“Damn the watches to perdition!” Nicholas cursed. “’Tis not about the watches. ‘Tis about you and your reputation. As much as I appreciate your trust, you must not even hint at what happened between us that night. Already there are rumors.”

She cocked her head in doubt. “Rumors about what?”

“About us. You and me. Rumors that your father brought you here thinking we were … involved. Your reputation is at stake.”

She gave a feminine snort of exasperation. “My reputation means nothing to me. What has it gained me but a marriage proposal from a man I can’t abide?”

Worry prickled down his spine. Wrapped up in his own woes, he hadn’t thought of that. “You refused him, I hope,” he said as evenly as he could.

“The man dips snuff,” she said with bright vehemence. “It spots his shirts. Shirts that I would have to wash.”

This was the quick and clever Abbigail of whom Nicholas had grown so fond, making a joke of the least objectionable things about a thoroughly objec tionable man. A great peal of laughter almost escaped him as relief coursed through his body. But, conscious of being in Abbigail’s bedroom in his father’s house, he held himself to a low chuckle of pure pleasure. “Not to mention all those brown, snuff-scented kisses you would have to endure,” he teased back.

Her curls shook off the notion. “Disgusting, Brother Blum.”

He could not resist. “’Tis man’s nature.”

She crossed her arms beneath her bosom once again, completely unaware of how lusciously they plumped up, inviting thoughts he’d been at great pains to repress since he had sneaked into her room.

“You truly are a scoundrel, Brother Blum!”

He knew it. But not such a one that he could leave her here without a word of caution.

“Tomorrow with the Elders, Abbigail, remember. What happened between us in your room is not germane. You must not mention it. ‘Twould compromise your honor and ruin your reputation if in any way you blamed my foolish oversight on what we shared that night.”

Her mouth primped into a pout of resistance. A pretty, kissable pout. He averted his gaze heavenward for the strength to resist it, to treat her with the respect a friend and Single Sister deserved.

“Promise me, Abbigail. No word of your distress that evening. It does not figure in the watches’ disappearance.”

She glared at him, her brown eyes black in the dim light.

“Promise,” he insisted.

“Very well then.”

He was not the eldest of seven lively, slippery brothers and sisters for nothing. He knew weasel words when he heard them. “Not good enough, Abbigail. Repeat after me. ‘I promise not to implicate myself tomorrow.

She drew herself up, indignant.

He waited, admiring her resolve. “I know this trick. My sisters are even better at squirming out of promises than my brothers.”

From a long way away, Samuel Ernst’s conch sounded the hour. It was four o’clock. He would begin another circuit of the town. Nicholas glanced at the narrow window, already gauging how little time he had to make a clean escape. “I must go, but not without your promise. Say it, Abbigail.”

Her chin quivered, and she said, exhaling rapidly, “I promise not to implicate myself tomorrow.”

He sighed with relief. He had extracted her promise, and it would keep her safe.

“Bless you, Liebling,” he whispered, and bent his head to hers without so much as a thought to the impulse of his heart. Tenderly, he kissed her forehead, breathing in the delicate rosewater scent that clung to her wild curls, all he dared indulge.

Then he turned to the window. It was still narrow, and he was still wide. Headfirst, he squeezed through, arms scraping the jamb. Behind him, his shirt snagged. His only decent shirt.

“Zum Teufel,” he muttered in an undertone. He couldn’t afford to tear it. “Sister Till,” he quietly called for help.

Bare feet padded softly toward him. “You don’t need another sister, Brother Blum!” she murmured at his ear, a puff of her warm sweet breath skittering down his neck and rousing a riot of sensation in his loins. “Hold still for just one moment,” she added.

Her fingers picked at the small of his back.

He pressed his lips together, clenched his teeth, and sucked in a full breath. He needed to go. He wanted to stay.

A feather-light nudge, and she was done.

“You’re free,” she said, and released him to the moonlight and the new disorder of his thoughts.

21

Scoundrel, charmer, thief in the night. Abbigad sank into her rocker, equal parts misery and relief. If she had doubted for a moment on the wagon road to Salem that this man owned her heart, she did not doubt it now. How could she be unmoved by his efforts to mask how much he hurt? How could she not defend him?

How could she tell the truth and keep her promise too?

She picked up her book, a volume of meditations in heavy black German script. Usually it put her straight to sleep. But not tonight. Before Nicholas had come, her eyes had merely skimmed the pages as worry for tomorrow droned in her mind. Now that he had come and gone, she could not make out words at all. She lay the book down and buried her head in her hands. The masculine, musky scent of him that lingered on them filled her nose and her lungs. Remnants of his energy crackled in the air.

With a shudder of loss, she pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. Her body buzzed with unfulfilled desire.

How right it seemed to have him in her bedroom. His bedroom. How hard to watch him leave. She squeezed herself with frustration. In Bethlehem after they had met in her bedroom, he had turned from her and rushed to rescue Catharina. Tonight he left her with a humbling peck of a kiss to her forehead, as if she were one of the twins. A sister merely, or a friend.

A sob of yearning caught in her chest. She wanted to be so much more to him. He made her laugh, laughed at her, with her. He was so full of life and loyalties. There was nothing halfhearted or mean-spirited about him. With him, the duty that knit her to her father unraveled.

With Nicholas, she forgot that she was growing old and undesirable.

What a goose of a girl she was at heart, she scolded. To think such thoughts, to harbor hope. She should learn from her experience. His marriage thwarted, Nicholas was free, but not for her. He wanted someone young and beautiful, someone like the vaunted Catharina to bear him children and adore him.

For if Abbigail understood one thing about him, she understood this: Nicholas used his charm to garner adoration. And he reveled in it, whether the female who adored him be girl or wench or crone. Reveled in it, almost as much as she reveled in punching through that charm to the solid, worthy man beneath it. The man who wouldn’t let her reveal herself for his sake.

Even if that might be his only way to save his skin.

Her little candle sputtered and went out. She let it, preferring the warm quiet darkness, if only for a little while. Dawn, and Nicholas’s day of reckoning, would be here soon enough. Chasing sleep had proved a futile exercise. Miserable and sad, she sat there in the dark gathering all her resolution to defend him, come what may. She would not let her father triumph.

From downstairs came the muted clank of pots and kettles. Retha Blum had risen well before dawn to stoke the hearth fire and start the morning meal. Abbigail tucked her unbound hair under a Haube, took up the skirts of her nightclothes and her wrapper, and went down to help, with one lowering thought.

It would probably be the last useful thing she’d do for the Blum family today.

Across town, Catharina Blum stirred from an uneasy sleep, opening her eyes to a gloomy dawn, wondering where she was. Not the Single Sisters House which was large and white and open, nor her cot in the dormitory surrounded by the peaceful sounds of girls and women sleeping.

Here all was unfamiliar, cheerless, drab. A chink of window let in light. The table crouched in the middle of the room. The black hearth gaped against dark log walls. This cabin was Catharina’s home now, she instructed herself severely, and Matthias Blum her husband, for the rest of her life.

Catharina Blum. She tested her new name. No better than yesterday. Whichever man she had married, her name would be the same. But she was not, and Matthias was not. Beside her, in their bed, he slept, his back to her, his breathing deep but quiet. Heat poured off him, warming the space between the sheets. Which they did not share, she thought painfully.

After two nights of opportunity, they were virgins still. She pressed her lips together against an outcry of regret. Nicholas would not have spurned her. Nicholas, once her … Never mind that! she sternly told herself. Now he was her husband’s brother, and nothing more. Nicholas had no place in her heart or her marriage bed. But if Matthias kept his promise from their wedding night, she had no place here either.

She would be a public bride but a secret virgin, scorned in her bed at night.

Ver Flixe! Where was her gumption now? Fervently she prayed for patience and for faith.

She repeated her wedding vows.

She rehearsed her mother’s dictum: Learn to love him, in time she would.

But would he learn? And, heaven help her, how? He was so distant, so controlled-except in this unguarded sleep.

Perhaps the time was now. She took a deep breath for courage.

Whoever said the bride had to lie idly by?

Shyly she stretched her toes down toward his naked feet. They were far away. She had never felt delicate, but his sheer size made her feel feminine, womanly. The length of him. The strength of him. His stillness. As if he willed himself not to exist for her. But he did exist, his closeness charging her overwrought senses. Her gown had ridden up above her knees, and her shins grazed the rough hair on his calf.

So private, so exposed. To her and her alone.

A shiver of hope slid down her spine. Would he say no if she persisted in touching him, exploring him? She moved a hand toward his shoulder, turned as if to repel her, and found flesh. Her breath caught in her throat.

He slept naked. Bare.

Did she dare?

Yes, she was a married woman, and this stubborn stranger was her mate.

His upper arm made a ridge along the mountain of his body. She trailed her fingers along it, marveling at corded strength and length of bone and her freedom to possess them.

He flinched and shifted.

Toward her hand.

She continued down to his forearm, finding the dark hair there softer than on his legs. Her fingers followed its course, curving around to an underside of soft, veined skin, supple as a lad’s, almost as delicate as her own.

Her heart melted with tenderness for the man she married. The only man she had ever touched in law and with God’s good approval. In the dawning morning, her husband became real to her for the first time, less remote, more human. She was prepared, by covenant and in the secret reaches of her heart, to love every square inch of him. Growing bolder, she moved on to explore his wrist, fingers, knuckles, half hoping he was awake and knew, half hoping he would sleep.

Suddenly he jerked away and shifted again, his legs and buttocks bumping into her as he sought a new position. She held her breath. He still slept.

Her hand rested on his body. On, she guessed, his waist. What to do? Continue, for in truth, she did not want to stop, so immersed was she in the feel of him. She flattened her hand against the lean glide of his waist, letting its shape and silken texture fill her palm. She wanted to go farther down, craving to know more of the men’s secrets that Older Girls and Single Sisters spoke of in the dark. Barely skimming skin, she slid her hand around and forward to the front of him. Her fingertips met dense thick hair. His privacy. She stopped, her heart pounding at the daring she had mustered.

What would he say? Awake, he would say no.

Asleep, he let her have her way.

Stretching deeper into the thick thatch of hair, she found what she instinctively sought, his manhood, rampant and wanting her in sleep, even tf only as a dream. With the pads of her fingers she searched the outline of his desire, her own pulse pounding loudly in her ears. He was smooth and hard and longer and thicker than she had imagined men could be, and deep inside her body, she yielded to the thought of accepting him, welcoming him, if only he would take her.

He groaned, not from his throat but from the depths of his body. As if seeking her caress, his manhood pushed into her hand. Startled, she folded it around him, and he bolted up.

“Catharina! Liebe Gott, stop!”

She released him, the air cool to her palm where his heat had seared it. He rose from the bed and stood next to it, glaring at her in the pale dawn light that suffused the room. Glaring, and fabulously male, erect. He made no move to hide himself.

She sat up on her knees, straightening her shift and her disordered hair, trembling in frustrated desire. “You want me,” she insisted.

He shrugged angrily into his shirt “A man cannot help that.”

“Let us be man and wife, Matthias, please.”

His face, starkly handsome in the gray dawn light, tensed with pain. “Not while you love him,” he croaked. “Not while he loves you.”

“’Twas not the same with him,” she said, her voice breaking on the sudden inescapable conclusion. She had not loved Nicholas like this. She had loved him as a girl loves, awed and adoring. With Matthias, she was prepared to love his whole body with her whole heart. She summoned her last ounce of gumption. Matthias must know what had just happened. “I feel for you … powerful … in my body … something I never felt before, for him or anyone.”

Hope flashed in his eyes. In an instant, he masked it, reaching for his breeches and stepping into them in a quick fluid movement. Her blood pooled in her stomach. She did not want him clothed. She did not want him to go. She did not want this argument to stop.

“You kissed me once,” she reminded him.

“I won’t make that mistake again,” he said as if it had been poison.

A thin, fierce anger threaded through her. “Matthias, our children. If we don’t kiss and do … the rest … how can we have children?”

His back to her, he stuffed his shirt into his breeches, fumbled fiercely with his stock, then jammed his long arms into his vest and waistcoat. Finally he turned around, his handsome face still ravaged from the fight. “How, indeed? You could have thought of that before you consented to become my wife.”

Oooh, he was maddeningly stubborn and unforgiving, this smartest of the Blums. But she had common sense, and she put it to work. She stepped off the bed and walked right up to him, relishing his height, his manliness. His stock was an angry mess. Careful not to smile, she took her time and straightened it, performing the tender office as her highest, her only wifely duty.

“I know what you want, Matthias. I will reconcile you to it.” Barely needing to reach up, she kissed him as he had her, on his cheek. Then she said in the most routine manner she could manage, “I will see you at our midday meal.”

His face set, he watched her sharply. “Perhaps. Today is my brother’s hearing.”

It was not the note she wanted to end on. But it was the note he chose.

22

She must look like an owl, Abbigail thought after breakfast, dark circles ringing her eyes after her sleepless night. Bah! she admonished herself. What did it matter how a spinster Sister looked, today or any day? Even the day of Nicholas’s hearing, which started at nine o’clock.

Peevish but resolute, her father had just limped up the street from the Tavern, hurrying her and Sister Benigna toward Gemeinhaus. He had insisted that they break fast with him-as if to help him strategize against the enemy. As if, Abbigail thought indignantly, spending another moment with the hospitable Blums might soften her heart and spoil his design.

She hated her father’s stubbornness even as she struggled to honor him. She invoked habit, duty, and an old affection for the loving parent he once was. For years, she had shored up that memory against his defects and his lacks. But neither his loneliness nor his unremitting pain excused his quest to have Nicholas Blum tried, found guilty, and disassociated from the Brethren from now until forever after.

Her father and Sister Benigna leading, Abbigail mounted the few steps to Gemeinhaus, one hand sliding up a gracefully curved iron railing. Georg Till held open the heavy green herringboned door for Sister Benigna, then for her. His play of courtesy chafed while he refused so obstinately to hear their pleas to drop his allegations.

Was he simply jealous of Nicholas? His youth? His health? His energy and new ideas? Or did her father resent Nicholas’s influence over her? She knew her father believed she’d resisted Brother Huber’s suit because of Nicholas. Did he fear losing her to the younger, newer man?

He could have-if Nicholas had ever asked. But the charming Single Brother’s regard was merely friendly. Last night’s brotherly kiss confirmed that, to her own dreary certainty.

With a sinking feeling Abbigail entered the Saal, the Elders’ cavernous meeting room. Several Brethren had preceded them. Beneath its vaulting ceiling a reverent buzz of voices echoed. Benches used for morning prayers scraped over the bare plank floors as teams of Brothers ranged them along the far wall. A low laugh sounded under the rafters.

She peered through the morning shadows. It was unmistakably Nicholas, his massive shoulders bulging under a formal Sunday coat. Oblivious to the prospect of his own demise, he was casually helping rearrange the room. Her heart squeezed with affection. How like him-fearless and undaunted. Had he no foreboding?

He’d had none last night, climbing through the window to her bedroom bold as the very devil, to insist that she not take his side.

She should never have made that pact.

How could she protect him if she didn’t tell the truth?

Four men lifted a heavy table and moved it to the center of the room, Nicholas among them. No, not among them. Larger than them, stronger than them, more vitally alive. Not even his father, whom she had come to like, had such a presence. Nor that tall young Brother. She wondered who he was.

Then Nicholas glanced her way. A grin of recognition flashed across his face, and her heart skidded into a spin. Merciful heavens. Her efforts to quiet the palpitations she had suffered in the wake of last night’s visit were all for naught. And now he was coming toward her, the healing bruises and gashes on his face more conspicuous in daylight. The dark young man walked stiffly at his side.

“Sister Till. This is my older younger brother, Matthias Blum,” Nicholas said, so secure in his own innocence that he teased her with the very words she’d said the day he left. “He is our newest, youngest Elder, too, and as such attends our hearing.”

Up close, the dark, fiercely handsome man showed signs of a brutal fight, not unlike Nicholas. His cool, proud manner was at odds with his battered features until he mumbled a greeting, and a blush crept up his neck.

Uncomfortable herself, she said the first thing that sprang to mind. “I congratulate you, Brother Blum, on your appointment and your marriage.”

The blush rose higher, and he stammered thanks, rousing her compassion. He was not proud but modest, shy. This was not a man who schemed to steal his brother’s bride. Why had Nicholas torn off in a rage against him?

“’Tis awkward, this meeting, is it not?” she asked gently.

“For all but Nicholas, Sister Till,” Matthias Blum said gravely. “He never shrank from trouble in his life.”

“They will not hang me this time either, Matty.” Nicholas smiled, but Abbigail saw his strain in the set of his jaw. “Come, Sister Till, have you met these good people?”

“Some of them,” she said, following his gaze to the assembled Elders. The two women Elders stood together. With practiced diplomacy, Jacob Blum squired her father to them for introductions.

She shook her head in bemused disbelief. Where did the Blum men get their grace in the face of adversity? Did none of them fear her father’s purpose? She took a steadying breath. If they could face the present awkwardness with grace, she could, too. She collected her manners. “I met Brother and Sister Marshall at vespers, and your stepmother presented me to Sister Krause at the Single Sisters House.”

“Well, then you have met all but two of the Elders.” Nicholas’s fingers at her elbow directed her to two older men she did not know. His touch, proprietary on her elbow, gave her a shiver of pleasure.

Unwarranted and unwelcome, she told herself firmly.

Nicholas gave the men a polite, correct bow. “Brother Steiner, from the mill, who represents our tradesmen. And Brother Schopp, whose schoolroom I fear I disrupted more than once.”

Abbigail murmured a demure greeting. Brother Steiner nodded back solemnly. The tall, thin schoolmaster gave her a curt acknowledgment, then scowled at Nicholas as if at a truant child.

“Another scandal, Brother Nicholas. Surely you take this one seriously.”

“’Tis no scandal till there’s proof of sin,” Nicholas said, only a slight tightening of his fingers on her arm betraying his displeasure at the schoolmaster’s rebuke.

Brother Marshall tapped a gavel on the table, and Abbgail jumped, on edge. Schopp took his seat with a show of straightening papers. Sister Marshall touched a crepe-skinned hand to her waist and directed her to the table marooned in the center of the room.

“Come, Sister Till. Sit here beside your father.”

Here, next to Brother Schopp. Directly across from Nicholas, who looked strong and handsome and at his ease. As he had looked last night, alone in her bedroom, stripped to shirt and breeches-golden, intimate, and close enough to kiss. Shameful, she chided herself, to think about that now.

But now as then, she felt no shame at all.

Nevertheless, her palpitations began again. She struggled to master her thoughts. The hearing was starting, she told herself, and the outcome was in doubt.

With all the fuss of an invalid, her father took his seat, leaving Brother Schopp to pull out Abbigail’s chair for her to sit. The order of seating had been accomplished deftly: she, her father, and Sister Benigna across from the Blum men. Accusers facing the accused. She lowered her eyes, unsure where accusers looked, but her gaze fell on Nicholas’s large, rough hands. They bore nicks and cuts, no doubt from working with tin snips and shears. The tinsmith’s trade was too humbling a calling for a man of promise in the larger world of trade.

Sitting again, Philip Schopp drummed restless fingers on a page of precise script and glared at the Blum men across the table. “I still hold that their attendance infringes upon some rule.”

Frederick Marshall laid his gavel down. “Not so, Brother Schopp. We voted to admit them to the hearing. Especially Brother Jacob, as he arranged for his son to work with Brother Till. And if him, then his younger son. We have the prerogative to make such changes. Especially in such an unusual inquiry.”

“Family members are not allowed-”

“To vote. Nor Will they, Brother Schopp.” Marshall firmly called the meeting to order and briefly prayed for the Savior’s guidance, for temperance and truth. Without further ado, he introduced Abbigail, her father, and Sister Benigna to the Board, gave a brief background of the inquiry, and explained the charge.

“In short,” he concluded, “Brother Till accuses our Single Brother Nicholas Blum of stealing several valuable watches. I believe, Brother Blum, you purchased them yourself.”

Nicholas nodded. “I did.”

“Have you anything to say?”

His golden countenance, she thought, was clear of all wrong doing. “I deny it. Not the purchase-’twas a carefully considered acquisition-but the theft.”

The Single Sisters’ leader, round-faced Rosina Krause, spoke up. Her gray eyes revealed nothing, but a steel backbone propped up her pomp. “I have been chosen, Brother Blum, to ask our first questions. But first we would like to hear your version of what happened.”

“Beginning when?” Nicholas asked politely

“With the purchase.”

Omitting nothing Abbigail had heard before, he described buying dolls from an old woman and watches from a clockmaker by the wharf. Then he explained how he had carefully packed both purchases in the wagon, driven it home, unloaded it, shown Abbigail the watches, and secured them in the safe.

“Very good, Brother Blum,” Rosina Krause said. Her tone was not unkind but almost condescending. “I can understand buying dolls for the store. Perhaps you can explain what inspired you to buy such expensive watches.”

He nodded obligingly. “They were a bargain. And as such, they would benefit the store by selling at a reasonable but still higher price.”

“Yet they were not in keeping with our practice of plain dress.”

“True enough. But the outsiders who shop with us would buy them. We sell laces, necklaces, all manner of goods we ourselves do not wear. There is no sin in selling fine watches. Indeed, they should have drawn more custom into Brother Till’s store and thus increased his profit.”

Sister Krause’s gray eyes narrowed. “So … Brother Till had commissioned such a purchase.”

“Not that exact purchase. But he particularly instructed me to shop with an eye to expanding our inventory.”

“Ah, very well then. That answers all my questions.”

The old battle-ax had not actually asked questions, Abbigail noted. Still, she let out a breath of relief on Nicholas’s behalf. But she let down her guard too soon. Rosina Krause turned to Abbigail’s father.

“Now, Brother Till, if you would give your version of events.”

As if in pain, her father shifted, then to Abbigail’s astonishment began a tale of insubordination that could only blacken Nicholas’s name. To begin with, her father complained, the Single Brother had arrived in Bethlehem days late. And picked a fight with Brother Huber, a mild man. Every trip that Nicholas had made for trade had taken too much or too little time. He had faded to purchase everything required and heaped up bills in room and board. He had disregarded rationing and sold unauthorized meal to outsiders. He had even failed to attend to Sister Rothrock’s injured ankle properly.

Then he paused for breath.

Abbigail wanted to slink under the table. Her father skewed the truth. Sister Benigna could not repress a disapproving sigh. Jacob Blum’s deep displeasure showed in the way he unconsciously rubbed his neck. And this time poor Matthias Blum’s proud posture fooled her not one whit

Nicholas stayed calm, only his clenched jaw suggesting the strain he felt Unfortunately his failure to fold would deepen her father’s resolve to fight.

“Be that as it may, Brother Till, our concern is events surrounding the watch,” said Sister Krause.

“I have more,” he said.

“Papa, you have said enough,” Abbigail whispered urgently.

He ignored her, and she forced her hands to rest upon the table, curbing further protest until it might prove most effective.

The rest of his story was very nearly what Nicholas already said, but told aslant and threaded with innuendo and suspicion. Finally her father stopped.

“That shines a rather clearer light upon Brother Nicholas’s story. Brother Marshall … tf I may,” said Brother Schopp. The schoolmaster brought his notes up to his spectacles, scanned the page, then laid them down. “Ahem. Did you usually consign valuables to the safe, Brother Blum?”

“No. I had not purchased anything that valuable before.”

“Yet you knew where to find the key.”

“Despite Brother Till’s account of my conduct, Brother Schopp, I had been instructed about the key. Under Sister Till’s instruction, I learned the value, source, and station of every item in the store.”

“Even the safe, Brother Blum?” Philip Schopp asked doubtfully.

“Yes, she showed me its contents briefly once. ‘Twas empty but for a purse of guineas from the sale of a large lot of wine from Sicily.”

“Yet you remembered the location of the key.” The old schoolmaster dug like a dog after a prized bone.

“’Twas no great secret. ‘Twas kept beneath the cushion on Brother Till’s chair.”

“How is it that you did not return it there?”

Nicholas shrugged, but Abbigail’s sympathetic eye saw mounting tension in the shortness of his gesture. “I had unexpected news from home and left in haste.”

Her father pushed back his chair and stood up, favoring his weaker leg. “Which I strictly forbade you to do. You left without-”

“You will have your turn, Brother Till.” Sister Marshall cut into his tirade with a hand held high. “Pray continue, Brother Blum.”

“That must be why I pocketed the key. Which I freely admit to doing.”

“Do you have it now?” the schoolmaster asked

“I returned it to Brother Till the evening he arrived in Salem.”

Her father thrust forward in his chair. “But not the watches.”

“Because I do not have them,” Nicholas said.

Her father’s face reddened. “Because you traded them. You could have-”

Frederic Marshall intervened this time. “Brother Till! We will question our Brother. Brother Schopp is well prepared to do so.”

Abbigail groaned inwardly. The old schoolmaster was too prepared, too vengeful. Never would she have imagined Nicholas had enemies. Nor could she guess why. At her side, Schopp consulted his notes, his eyes darting up and down a page that the slightest glance told her was prepared meticulously.

“When did you discover-” Schopp said the word with a cynical curl to his lips-“that you had the key?”

“The next afternoon, when I changed horses. I reached into my pocket for change.”

“Where was that?”

“The Apple Tree in Gettysburg.”

“Ah. Gettysburg. A convenient town, was it not, in which to sell stolen watches?”

Nicholas’s square, strong jaw clenched at the insult. So Brother Schopp had sprung his trap and meant to wrest a confession by surprise.

“Convenient, had I stolen them. But I did not,” Nicholas said firmly.

Schopp rattled his papers importantly. “Now then, what were the watches worth?”

A very great deal of money, Abbigail thought, tightening her hands against the man’s disturbing insinuation. Enough to motivate a thief-even she, Nicholas’s staunch defender, had to admit as much. Niggling doubt crept into her certainty.

What if her father, what if Schopp were right?

She had not doubted Nicholas in her bedroom in the dark of night. Would his easy charm withstand the day? For she also recalled the enameled snuff boxes he had bought. Expensive baubles she had lost track of. Had they been his? Or theirs? Had they been sold? Or had they disappeared? For a miserable moment, she wasn’t sure. But to stake her reputation on his integrity, she had to be.

Across the table Nicholas met Schopp’s damaging implication head-on. “As a lot, the watches were worth about a hundred guineas. One hundred forty dollars at the current exchange.”

With relief, she unclenched her hands. Stupid, to let herself be drawn in. Thieves slithered, bluffed, or buckled. They didn’t glower righteously.

“And singly?” Schopp prodded.

“Singly, at a shop, they would sell for thirty guineas each.”

“A considerable sum, Brother Blum.”

“An estimate. Some would sell for less, some perhaps for more.”

“A profit of fifty guineas, shall we say?”

That was obvious, pedantic, and disputatious of the man, Abbigail thought, her own wrath rising for Nicholas’s sake.

Nicholas shrugged off Schopp’s attack. “Near enough.”

“Enough for a man strapped by debt to begin to clear his ledgers. As you have done since you returned to town.”

Abbigail gasped. Heads bobbed as murmurs rippled up and down the table.

“Why don’t you speak plainly, Brother Schopp?” Nicholas asked, his restraint breaking into sarcasm.

Philip Schopp smiled smugly. “You left Salem heavily in debt, as perhaps not everyone here quite knows. On your precipitate return, you commence to pay off those considerable debts. Ergo, you had access to the watches and a need for the profits they would realize.”

Georg Till gave a hearty sniff of satisfaction. “Just as I suspected. Precisely.”

Nicholas stood, flattened his hands on the polished surface of the heavy oak table, and leaned toward Abbigad’s father, banking defiance and disdain. The two men took an unchristian pleasure in making him out to be a thief. “I did not take your blasted watches, Brother Till. Had I wanted watches, I could have bought them for myself. With profits from my own purchases, which you encouraged me to make. Profits which I used to pay down my debt here.”

Till gave him a small, triumphant smile. “My daughter can say differently.”

She braced herself. Appearing before a Board of Elders for the first time in her reputable life unnerved her. The prospect of speaking to them was daunting. But she would do it on her own terms. “Not willingly, sir.”

“But you will.”

She would, for now. If her story lent credence to her father’s, she would have to stand up for Nicholas in another way.

Nicholas looked at Abbigail, and his defiance left him in a whoosh. She was pale and thin and somber. Dark circles ringed her large, intelligent eyes. She could not have slept Despite his best effort, she had worried herself to a frazzle. But she lifted her direct, uncompromising gaze to his, and his heart thudded in his chest.

His turn to worry. What did she plan? Danke Gott, he had extracted her promise to protect her reputation. He sat and waited, not quite trusting her forthright nature to be silent.

After a long moment, she lifted her chin. “Do not ask it of me, Father. You know I disagree with you.”

“Tell them merely what you told me,” Georg Till ordered.

Abbigail straightened in her chair, not using its back to support her arrow-straight posture. “It will mislead them, sir. It is not germane.”

His own words. Relieved, Nicholas let out a pent-up breath.

From the middle of the table, Rosina Krause gave an encouraging look. “My dear, if you could shed new light on this, we would be gratified to hear your version of the story.”

At the table’s head, Brother Marshall added words of wisdom. “We do not fear truth, Sister Till.”

Then Abbigail looked straight at Nicholas, her large brown eyes glittering with emotion. With, he greatly feared, apology. New worry slicked down his spine. He had believed she thought him innocent

He was innocent. He could not explain the absence of the blasted watches, but he knew nothing of it. Nothing. He felt accountable nonetheless, under her gaze, waiting for the ax to fall. Culpable, even guilty. He had always committed sins, venial, all of them. In this fiasco of the watches, had he omitted to do something and thereby sinned unawares?

“In truth,” Abbigail said, her voice sweet and strong, “I have nothing to add to Brother Blum’s account.”

Sister Krause nodded, not unkindly. “Of course not, dear. We merely want to hear it in your own words.”

“My story adds nothing to Brother Blum’s account,” she repeated.

“That would be for us to determine,” Schopp said reproachfully “Are we to understand that you were alone at home on the evening Brother Blum returned with the watches?”

Abbigail tilted her head as if the very question were distasteful. “Yes.”

“And was that usual, for you to be alone?”

Across the table, Philip Schopp shifted. It was all Nicholas could do to hold his tongue, to keep his seat. His schooldays had been filled with the man’s petty inquisitions. Since then, the old schoolmaster had taken up the private study of law and was clearly bringing all his wits to bear on the case at hand.

“No. Father had left me at home. We had a family… disagreement.”

“Where did Brother Blum find you?”

Nicholas glared a warning at her, too aware she was beyond his control.

“Brother Blum called out when he heard me crying.”

Georg Till’s sharp hiss of breath was the only sound in the room.

“Crying, dear?” Sister Marshall prodded sympatheticady.

“I Weis in my room, alone, distressed about some family matter of no import here.”

“Go on, Sister Till,” Brother Marshall said.

“I dried my tears. When I joined him downstairs, he had laid out the dolls on the counter for me to see.” Abbigail spoke with care, choosing her words, Nicholas noted thankfully, so as to omit everything that had passed between them in her room. Yet, clever woman that she was, she let the bones of the truth stand bare. “Then he showed me the watches. I thought them quite beautiful and his purchase of them quite shrewd.”

“So you saw the watches on the counter at the same time you saw the dolls?” Brother Marshall asked.

“No. He showed me the watches in my father’s office before he put them in the safe.”

“Ah,” Brother Marshall said, as if a great mystery were cleared. “Then you actually saw him put them in the safe, just as he says he did.”

“No, I did not see him do that. I left the room.”

Brother Schopp looked up from taking notes and made a stabbing gesture with his quill. “Are you saying that you cannot confirm his claim that he left them in the safe? Are you saying that he could have taken them?”

His triumphant tone, angled at Abbigail, infuriated Nicholas.

But not, evidently, her. She said calmly, “’Twas obvious to me he put them in the safe. It was open when I entered the office and closed when I next saw it.”

“How do you explain their disappearance?”

Abbigail’s mouth pursed in evident frustration. “’Tis not my place to explain anything. But, Brother Schopp-”

“Thank you, Sister Till,” Schopp said, cutting her off.

“But Brothers and Sisters, if I may be allowed to finish,” she continued bravely. “Nothing Brother Blum said or did in all his weeks with us and nothing I saw that evening suggests to me that he would take my father’s watches.”

Schopp laid his quill pen down with exaggerated resignation. “Then we are at an impasse. Nothing Brother Blum says and nothing you saw supports his claim of innocence. You have been most helpful, Sister Till.”

“Helpful?” she said angrily. “I have no desire to help you find an innocent man guilty. I do not understand why you-any of you, my own father-seem determined to declare Brother Blum guilty with no clear proof.”

Nicholas was proud, so proud that she would stand by him with such heart. But damn his luck, she was not supposed to defend him. That could be her ruin.

Till tried to silence her with a look. “Mind, daughter,” he said in a low voice. “’Twas your father crossed in this.”

But Abbigail went on, undaunted. “He is your Brother, Brother Schopp. Has no one consulted his character?”

“’Tis precisely that which we have consulted, Sister Till,” said Philip Schopp in a grave, disdainful voice. “You cannot know of his past transgressions, of his many failures in trade. Why even as a child, he ran off-”

“To war, did he not?” Abbigail interrupted, too fierce in his defense. Nicholas clenched his fists, unable to take a father’s, brother’s, husband’s place and stop her. If he intervened, it would only show they knew each other all too well. “Besides, he was but a boy.”

“A reckless, heedless boy.”

“But a boy. Was that a true transgression or a mere excess of boyish zeal?”

“He endangered many.”

“He helps many. I beg to differ, Brother Schopp, in your assessment of his character. And Father”- Abbigail gathered a fierce new courage she never knew she had-“I must disagree with you. I for one have witnessed conduct altogether different in our store. Brother Blum errs-call it sin if you will-on the side of generosity.”

“Ab-Sister Till … this is not necessary,” Nicholas protested. It was as he feared. He could not stop her now.

“It is necessary,” Abbigail insisted, ignoring Nicholas’s pained protest For she had found her wings in this storm of nonsense and flew to his defense, freed at last from restraint by her father’s and Brother Schopp’s willingness-no, eagemess-to condemn Nicholas. What she knew could clear his name.

She recounted how he had patiently carried out the most menial tasks, defended her before rude strangers, bestowed kindnesses on strangers in the store. She told how Mrs. O’Brien’s abject need had led Nicholas to sell the disputed peck of rationed flour for her and her weedy children.

“Those,” Abbigail concluded, “are not the acts of a thief.”

The plume of Brother Schopp’s quill pen danced with his annoyance. “Yours is the sentiment of a Sister who does not know the whole of Brother Blum’s past. Any appearance of generosity is beside the point. He always bent our rules. No doubt it amused him to break yours.”

Abbigail stood to her full four feet ten inches tall but felt very small and vulnerable in this group of mostly large men. She touched her fingertips to the solid oak table to hide the frustration that shook her. For no reason she could imagine beyond dour Germanic rectitude, Brother Schopp had joined her father’s crusade to blacken Nicholas’s name. And the respectable Elders seemed to allow iL

She had it in her power to defend him, if not clear him altogether.

“I am persuaded that Brother Blum is innocent. So persuaded that I would stake my reputation on his honesty and marry him tomorrow, by the Lot or not. Without a moment’s hesitation.”

A horrified silence fell in the great room. Abbigail looked up and down the long table, determined to meet the gazes of each and every somber, upright Brother and Sister gathered in judgment. Nicholas’s grateful gaze caught hers and held it. Grateful, and regretful. But there was nothing to regret. He would not be cast out if she could stop it.

On her right, her father shuffled gouty feet as if his pain had worsened, then stood. “She cannot mean that. My daughter is betrothed.”

Nicholas’s face froze.

“Not true, Papa!” Abbigail blurted out, stunned by her father’s lie into exposing him to this most respectable crowd.

Reactions rippled through the meeting. Brother Marshall coughed in disapproval while Sisters Marshall and Rosina Krause registered dismay. Nicholas’s father and brother gaped at her, astonished. Beneath the table, Sister Benigna clasped Abbigail’s hand in support.

On their left, Philip Schopp picked up his notes and painstakingly folded the pages of his cramped handwriting. “We will accept your father’s judgment of the matter,” he said smugly. “As I am sure you will be guided by it.”

Abbigail’s heart sank. In such a matter, a daughter’s word would not carry the credit of a father. Nor did she have his decades-long reputation as a man scrupulously honest in trade.

“I should know my own wedding plans, Brother Schopp,” she said.

He dismissed her assertion with a thin, insulting smile. “Your bold defense of Brother Blum might have swayed us, Sister, but for your father’s shocking revelation. The Board can only regret that you abandon a Single Sister’s modesty and add more scandal to the matter before us.”

Nicholas jumped up, glowering at Schopp, and Abbigail’s heart lurched in alarm. “No scandal whatsoever attaches to Sister Till. You should look to your own-”

“Nicholas! Please,” Jacob Blum said, reaching to restrain him, then leaning across the table, the pitch of his body reproaching Schopp. “You have yet to establish theft, Philip, let alone prove scandal.”

Schopp drew himself up, too pleased. “Sister Till’s testimony is scandal enough. Brother Nicholas always lured the innocent into his escapades. Now he corrupts a Single Sister. A wanton who declares her love for him while betrothed to another.”

Nicholas exploded. “No wanton! She-”

The assembled Elders started speaking all at once, their words jangling in Abbigail’s ears.

She had said she was not betrothed. They had not believed her.

Dizzy from her own daring, she steadied herself against the table. She did not care that she had spoken rashly. That her words were irrevocable. That a moment’s profession had erased a lifetime’s prudence. That her place among the Brethren would never be the same. Her father’s betrayal cut her like a knife, and Brother Schopp’s carping cast all she said in doubt.

Never mind all that. She felt no shame. She had stood up to her father. She would marry Nicholas, here or anywhere. She knew that now. Failing that, she had defended the man she loved, had almost vindicated him. If they disassociated her tomorrow, she could never do a better deed than that.

Disassociating her did not concern the Elders. Brother Marshall blandly invited her party and the Blum men to wait outside while the Board decided what to do. Evidently wary of another outburst, Nicholas’s father and brother practically hauled him from the room. The footsteps of the three massive men pounded across the floor like soldiers on a march.

Abbigail felt bereft, the object of her interest gone. Nicholas shot her one blazing glance, any attempt to speak to her forestalled by his relatives’ protective retreat. From now on they would be strictly separated, closely watched. She could no longer presume on their familiarity as shopkeeper to assistant and enjoy his secret friendship.

But what if he believed her father’s lie? She muffled an outcry of sheer frustration: Her father’s lie had robbed her of her small pleasure of being Nicholas’s friend. Even so, with Sister Benigna at their side, she helped her father creep across the room, unmoved by his doggedness or his frailty. For fourteen years she had repressed feelings, longings, truth … and honored him according to God’s law. She could do so for a few more minutes, through the door that creaked on heavy hinges, down the polished stone stairs, and out into a brilliant October morning in Salem Square.

There the Blums gathered under a linden tree, a well-matched trio of large, handsome men, all of them restless now.

Seeing them, her father headed for the opposite corner of the Square. Huffing from effort, he collapsed on a log bench and wagged his head at her as if she were a refractory child. “Shameful, upstart girl. The man’s a thief, and your ill-judged defense of him makes you little better.”

Sister Benigna, silent through the hearing, sputtered now in privacy. “Georg, you truly go too far. I like Brother Blum.”

“He is no thief, Father. But whatever you think of me, you lied about my accepting Brother Huber.”

His pale face reddened. “I will not countenance such disrespect from my own daughter.”

“You never before deserved it.”

He lifted his hands in angry explanation. “You will yield to this. I promised Brother Huber.”

“Promised him!” she cried. She could not see the world around her. Only an image of a too-tall man, pinched, fastidious, his breath marked, his teeth stained by his ever-present snuff, his soul constrained by excess piety. He would bore her, rule her, make her conform to his own sanctimonious code of conduct.

“You can have no objection to the man I have entrusted with my store.”

“I do object!” she cried out. “I cannot love him!”

“Georg, really,” Sister Benigna interjected impatiently. “You cannot make her love him enough to marry him.”

“‘Love is learned, love is earned,’” he said, citing an old saw. Some Brethren took comfort in it. “Everyone among us knows that and believes it.”

“He cannot earn my love, nor can I learn to love him,” Abbigail said.

Love, she realized now that it was too late, should flow like breezes, loft like birds, sail through the heart like songs of clouds.

“You have not tried,” he insisted.

“He has worked for us almost two years, and we are far from being friends.”

Her father’s eyes accused her. “Whereas you befriended the charming Brother Blum in a matter of mere weeks.”

Abbigail drew herself up. “I admit it He is kind, amusing.”

“Impetuous, feckless.”

“You don’t know that Father.”

“I do. I stand by every word I testified before the Elders. He is not to be trusted. Not to be vouchsafed your regard.”

Her father’s mind was cast in mortar! She bit off a cry of anger and sat down on the bench.

Softening, her father took her hand. His felt cold, unhealthy. “Ah, Abbigail, I promised your mother to do right by you.”

“Then do it Papa,” she urged, her chin trembling. “Let me be.”

But he did not hear. He had returned to a day he rarely visited in memory, tears glazing his eyes. “’Twas the last thing she required of me. I have kept you safely by me as she asked. I could never forgive myself-or you-if we fail her.”

Fail in what? Had he not already failed in simple charity, human decency, familial duty? Abbigail stared at him in disbelief. In all her years of thankless work for him, he had thought he cared for her, had thought her lonely life with him secured her best interests and honored her mother’s last request.

If God was merciful … An angry sob caught in Abbigail’s throat.

God was merciful, she believed with all her heart. But He had not made His way exactly plain. She could not believe that His will and her father’s ruinous plan for her were one and the same thing.

“Excuse me, Papa. I think we have nothing more to say,” she said, and turned to her friend, her father’s friend, who had come with them all this way. “Sister Benigna …?” she asked.

The tall competent Widow nodded. “Go, Abbigail. I will care for him.”

Lifting her skirts over the newly fallen linden leaves scattered over the Square, Abbigail flew back to her bedroom at the Blums’ home, hoping for privacy to settle the tempest in her heart.

23

After half an hour to repair herself upstairs, Abbigail went down to Retha Blum’s kitchen. It smelled of cinnamon and cider, and Retha plied a carved wooden paddle in a bubbling copper kettle of apple butter. Courtesy demanded that Abbigail pitch in. She perched on a nearby stool, peeling russet apples, then plopping them into the sauce.

“So … I hear you are to be married,” Retha said brightly after allowing her a short while to settle down to work.

“No!” Abbigail started another apple, her fingers too unsteady to peel it fast or neatly. “My father’s choice does not love me, nor I him.”

“Oh dear,” Retha said, quietly sympathetic. “Marriage without love is too sad to contemplate.”

“Marriage in middle age is too pathetic,” Abbigail countered.

Retha busied herself with checking other pots among the coals. “I would not call you middle-aged,” she said carefully.

Abbigail gave a mirthless laugh to cover her futile yearning. “I am a rather older Single Sister, Sister Blum-nearly as old as you, who have four growing children, the oldest almost grown.”

“Do you not dream of children?” Retha asked gently.

“To dream of them while still unmarried,” she answered in strict dogmatical correctness, “would be to put my wishes before the Savior’s will.”

“To dream is not to disobey.”

But Abbigail did not want to dream. It hurt too much to think of the ever more unlikely union with the handsome, supremely eligible man whose burning bedroom kiss still tortured her at night. “I know nothing of children. Not even of brothers and sisters, for I had none.”

There was a clatter at the back door. “Speaking of which …”

It would be the twins, home from school to eat. Retha brightened at the simple daily prospect of her children coming home. Despite denying it, Abbigail felt deprived of all the marital joys she’d missed-a husband to adore, his children darting like swallows through the bright skies of her days.

Had she deserved them, she would have them.

The terrible thought formed and stayed. What if she deserved to be her father’s drone, and nothing more? Had she been brave and loving like Retha Blum, instead of old and plain and too sharp for her own good, perhaps then she would have deserved a love, a family of her own. But not as she was, drying up and languishing.

It was a woman’s voice they heard. “Sister Blum, may I come in?”

Retha handed Abbigail the paddle and opened the door. “Of course, Catharina, we don’t stand on formality in this family. And call me Retha. Mother Retha, if you must.”

Nicholas’s Catharina. Abbigail’s heart pounded with feelings she could not exactly name. She wanted to hide, to gawk, to glare. But she couldn’t bring herself to look at the woman Nicholas had overturned his life for. She paddled furiously.

Tentative footsteps neared. “I fear I cannot find my… husband.”

The shy catch in Catharina’s voice softened Abbigail, and she said, turning, “He was last in the Square with his father and-”

But she broke off at the sight of the tall, slim, ethereal woman, a fresh blue ribbon under her chin proclaiming her newly married state. Her creamy dress, crisp clean apron, and starched white Haube; taken altogether, made her almost glow. On one arm she carried a basket overflowing with greens. “For you, Mother Retha,” she offered sweetly.

Retha took mounded greens, then smoothly introduced Catharina as the newest member of the family. “Our son Matthias’s lovely bride.”

Lovely? The woman was a vision. Abbigail’s heart pinched with jealousy. No wonder Nicholas had hurried home. Every Brother in Salem must be in love with such a celestial being. Worn out from her sleep less night and a tumultuous morning, Abbigail felt small and plain. Short and dull. Insignificant. Anything but feminine, lovable, desirable, all of which Catharina so splendidly was. Abbigail would never have hoped for Nicholas to notice her if she had seen his Catharina.

But Abbigail would not be rude, no matter how unwelcome this unexpected visitor. With practiced courtesy, she steeled herself for pleasantries.

Catharina’s mild gray eyes shone approval down on her. “Oh, I am so very pleased to meet you, Sister Till. And thank you, it sets my mind at ease that you saw him there. I must have missed him, coming from helping my mother.” Then she slipped into a chair at the table and joined Retha in front of the basket of autumn dock and cress and spinach. “They need to be picked over, and I will help.”

The woman Nicholas held dear was pure sunshine. They all fell to work, Retha’s and Catharina’s fingers flying as they picked over the fresh fall greens, Abbigail’s paddle slurping and sucking through the thickening butter. And they chatted, a cozy female confabulation that Abbigail so acutely missed at home. The swiftly passing hour bore out Catharina’s naturally sweet temperament, which expressed itself in a disarming enthusiasm for pumpkins and a dozen ways to cook or dry and store them.

After days of hateful thoughts about her, Abbigail felt petty and mean.

Then Catharina said, “I worried so about that dreadful hearing, my … husband’s first duty as an Elder. On such a topic. Twas so-I beg your pardon, Sister Till, for your father brought the charges, but to all who know Nicholas-’twas so outrageous.”

Abbigail could only nod, accepting Catharina’s mild rebuke of Georg Till. “Some ideas set like mortar in my father’s mind.”

“How did poor Nicholas fare?”

Poor Nicholas! Abbigail couldn’t like that word applied to a man she thought so singularly rich in strengths and virtues, and yet … surely a woman wouldn’t speak of a lover in such a condescending way. An ordinary Single Brother perhaps, one with whom she had a mere acquaintance.

Hope spiraled and then sank. Despite her denial of her betrothal at the hearing’s end, the world must now think her betrothed. Or so outrageously outspoken-so ungovemable-as to be unmarriageable. With those sobering thoughts in mind, she miserably recounted the hearing.

“You can trust Sister Catharina with the whole story, Sister Abbigail,” Retha prodded, a note of teasing in her voice.

“Do not ask that of me!” Abbigail had purposely skipped her scandalous proposal and her father’s false claim.

Retha smiled encouragement. “’Twas very noble of you.”

Catharina’s mild gray eyes glimmered with schoolgirl interest. “Pray tell, Sister Till. I am very good at keeping secrets.”

Abbigail could not tell her. But Retha did, omitting the complication of Abbigail’s supposed betrothal but touting her courageous stand in Nicholas’s defense. Embarrassment skittered down Abbigail’s neck.

Catharina pressed her hands together like a prayer. “Oh, bless you! What a fine sentiment! To say that you would marry Brother Nicholas and never count the cost. I could not have put it more persuasively myself. Not that I could … not that I would want to…” She bit her perfectly shaped lips in confusion. “I am already married. Now.”

Retha rescued her. “’Twas a generous avowal, Catharina, was it not?”

“Very much so. Very kind,” Catharina said promptly. “Of course, Brother Nicholas is innocent, but who ever stands up for him?”

“Who, indeed?” Nicholas’s voice resonated from the door into the parlor.

Abbigail’s stomach coiled with yearning. He was leaning casually against the doorjamb, a great hon surveying his pride as if he had a particular claim to each and every creature in the room. Not smiling, Abbigail noted, but not downcast. And yet inscrutable: Was he hiding hurt? Rejecting her? Or did he disapprove of her words at the hearing?

The wooden paddle slipped from her hand, clanging against the copper kettle’s rim. His presence flustered Catharina too. She stood, then sat and fidgeted.

“Have you eavesdropped long?” Retha chided indulgently.

“Long enough to agree with Sister Catharina that Sister Till’s defense of me was brave.”

No mere kitchen fire, Abbigail thought, would explain the blush that seared her cheeks when she heard his words of praise. She felt hopelessly exposed. Hopelessly compromised by her father’s lie. He had been obsessed with proving Nicholas’s guilt. Her illtimed defense had only undermined his character further.

Catharina stood again, nervously wiping her long elegant hands on her apron. Facing Nicholas, she looked slim as a widow and brittle as straw. came to seek my … to seek Brother … Matthias,” she said to her avowed admirer. “He is not here.”

Nicholas descended the half dozen stone stairs to the kitchen. His bearing bespoke the public demeanor Abbigail had admired so often in the store: a man at ease with himself who put others at their ease. But she could not read the strained, sober smile he gave Catharina.

“He went home to meet you, Sister, complaining I had made him late.”

“Oh!” Catharina said. From her, the simple expletive seemed almost a curse. “And now I am the late one. Oh!” And she fled the room.

Gone. Danke Himmel, Nicholas thought. He had not come here for Catharina. He had searched the town for Abbigail, reeling from her sacrifice of reputation, stunned by her belief in him. Marry him tomorrow, by the Lot or not. Without a moment’s hesitation. He had heard her words with a boy’s quick pride, a man’s gratitude, a lover’s awakening.

She wanted him. Perhaps she always had.

What did that say for him? Who had thought of her as a sister, treated her as nothing more than a friend. Who had trampled her feelings in the road like dirt. Then mere moments after she had said it, her father had announced her betrothal. His heart had not believed the man, but his head doubted. She had not actually denied it to him last night in her room. Had her father prevailed? Had she hid it to spare him? Abbigail betrothed, her special friendship lost-the very notions shook him to his core. This morning it had sounded briefly as if she loved him. He met her at the copper kettle, barely noticing the flames that licked around it or his stepmother’s discreet retreat from the room.

Even with Retha gone, he lowered his voice. “Your father still presses you to many …” he began, unsure how to express his doubt. His hope for her that she was free.

She drew herself up, offended. “Really, Nicholas! Do you think I have so little self-respect to marry a man I cannot abide?”

The blood that had pooled in his gut pumped through his veins again, and he stood there grinning like an idiot.

Abbigail still glared. “Remind me not to save your skin the next time I have a chance to do so!”

“Ach, and as to that…” His thoughts returned to the loyal, reckless measure she had taken to defend him. In her place he would have done the same, but for her to take the risk appalled him. “You defied my wishes. ‘Twas needless to try to clear my wretched name.”

“Wretched, indeed. Have you no sense of your indebtedness?” In a little fury, she turned and poked the paddle’s handle in his chest. Brown butter sheeted down the paddle, landing in the simmering sauce in little plops. “You could at least be grateful.”

He was. She had been splendid on his behalf. She was splendid now. His voice, to his surprise, came from a deep new place inside his chest. “I am profoundly grateful, Abbigail,” he said, dropping all propriety. “But you gave me your word.”

“I said naught about our kisses,” she countered, still stubborn.

He could not help but be amused, struck by her stalwart nature. “Or your tears. But some would say you cheated on your promise.” Engaging her gaze, he took the handle in his fist, lifted it off his chest, and plunged the paddle back into the copper kettle, unable to repress a smile.

Slowly the corners of her mouth crooked up. “I never cheat, Brother Blum. Any more than you steal,” she said briskly, her large brown eyes bright with the frankness that had impressed him from the first.

She stirred the sauce, bubbles bursting as it thickened. He expelled a pent-up breath, distracted by the thought of the only thing he wanted: her sweet taste captured in an endless kiss. Which he had wanted since the day he saw her perched on the stool in her father’s store, dusting shelves.

There, he had admitted it to himself. This lust had been a long time simmering.

But it had not been lust. Except in so far as a man could count it lust when he yearned for the woman who fulfilled his dreams. A helpmeet, minds attuned, his heart’s desire. The revelation rocked him.

He loved Abbigail. He braced against the table’s edge, astounded by the sweep of his sudden, belated vision.

How blind he had been, chasing after gentie Catharina, rushing back to save her, when he had needed saving. When he had simply needed Abbigail: the pretty precision of her fine features in evening lantern light, the deceptive fragility of her fine-boned hand tucked under his arm, the trim waist his hands had only once encircled.

But more, her smart retorts, her quick understanding, her unflinching courage.

Irony of ironies, he had lost the woman he did not want and abandoned the one he loved-to a father and an erstwhile suitor heedless of her virtues and her needs. But who controlled her. Gott im Himmel he had well and truly lost her. Still he wanted to seal his new awareness with one of her sweet kisses. He felt her gaze upon him, looked, and saw her quizzing brow.

“Are you still with us, Brother Blum?” she teased, shopkeeper to indolent apprentice. “’Tis widely rumored Retha Blum puts all idle hands to useful tasks.”

Caught daydreaming. His face burned. As if Abbigail could read his thoughts. He gently freed her fingers from the paddle and brought them to his mouth.

“Not idle now,” he said, his voice husky beyond control as his hps brushed her sticky knuckles, apple sweet and warm from work. For an instant her hand resisted his, then surrendered. The memory of every kiss they’d shared exploded in him, ricocheting through him, wanton as firecrackers shot off all at once. Into his limbs, into his extremities, deep into his lonely loins.

Reality doused him. He could not ask that the Lot be drawn for them. He stood accused, his innocence unproved, unproveable. He was indebted, his debts outstanding. His life was unsettled, his only work a trade that bored him to tears. No right-thinking man would come to a woman in such a state.

“I can never repay you.” The words thickened in his throat. He kissed her knuckles one last time and freed her hand.

Her brows knotted as if she did not understand his words-or his retreat. “You owe me naught, Nicholas,” she whispered.

A masculine cough, carefully loud, sounded from the doorway to the dining room. Nicholas rose and saw his father, joining the family for the midday meal. His stepmother, returning, broke the awkward silence.

“Yes, tell us, Nicky, what the Elders decided this morning.”

Buoyed by Abbigail’s touch, Nicholas tried for lightness. “They concluded that I am neither innocent nor guilty, consigning me to limbo.”

“Don’t joke, Nicky!” Retha said.

His father propped against the hearth, his hand worrying the back of his neck. “We are to wait for word from one more witness.”

Abbigail’s pretty eyebrows drew down into a puzzled scowl. She had left before the Board decided. “But there is no other witness. Especially as there was no crime.”

“Brother Huber might shed some light, they think,” Nicholas said, his deep distaste for the man sticking in his throat.

“Brother Huber!” Abbigail said. “Exchanging letters takes a month, at least.”

“Not letters,” Nicholas corrected. “They want him here.”

Abbigail made an inarticulate sound of disgust.

“’Tis good news,” Nicholas insisted. “They had slim evidence to begin with, and he will bring no more.”

“He twists things, Nicholas.”

He purely loved it when she forgot form and called him by his given name. For that and other reasons, his sanguine nature told him his case with her, if no one else, was not hopeless. “He cannot succeed where your father failed.”

“Who is Brother Huber?” Retha asked, setting out redware plates for the midday meal.

“My father’s shop assistant, the one who wants to marry me,” Abbigail answered. “He knows worse than nothing. He has practically avowed an enmity for Brother Nicholas.”

“On what grounds, if I may ask?” Jacob Blum inquired, his tone respectful, Nicholas noted thankfully.

Abbigail lifted her hands. “On the grounds that Nicholas is better than he with stock and trade and customers and travel.”

And with you, Nicholas realized. Nothing must have vexed the dapper store clerk more than the easy converse he and Abbigail had found so quickly.

“He and Brother Schopp could make a damning case against you, Nicholas,” his father added.

Nicholas shrugged. “They may well try.”

Abbigail looked to his father. “I know the cause of Brother Huber’s spite. But why is Brother Schopp so prejudiced against your son?”

Jacob Blum regarded her steadily. “’Twas on his watch that Nicholas ran away to join the Continental Army. He almost lost his position as schoolmaster, though not at our behest. He let his guard down lecturing, I believe, on … what was it, son?”

“History,” Nicholas supplied. “Brother Schopp at his most pedantic. The brilliant Greeks and noble Romans. ‘Twas child’s play to slip away that day.” Yet Nicholas felt he had to set the record straight. “I tormented him with boyish pranks.”

His father rolled his eyes. “No doubt you did! I shall not ask what.”

Retha finished setting the table, then came to claim her husband’s hand. “What do we do now, my dear?”

“We wait,” his father said. “Two weeks for him to receive our letter, two weeks for him to come.”

Waiting would be torture, Nicholas knew. Scandal always sparked the Brethren’s interest. His guilt or innocence would be argued in the fields, the shops, the Saal, their homes. With the cloud of suspicion hanging over him, he couldn’t relish the wait for Huber to arrive. But he would handle it with such grace as he could muster. Abbigad would not see him dinch.

The twins arrived, and everyone sat and partook of the midday meal without another word of the morning’s events or the ordeal to come.

Before leaving, he managed another smile for Abbigail. “I return to my shop to work off those pesky debts.”

“Are they so very heavy, then, Nicholas?” she asked.

“Less heavy than the risk you took for me.”

She shook her head, turning away his compliment, turning him away.

“’Twill take hard work to clear them,” he continued, thinking that it would take months-years-for him to undo the mess he’d made. For him to pursue the Lot. For him to have a family of his own. For him to claim the tiny tyrant who had won his heart. Years.

If he had not already lost her.

24

Crossing the Square that afternoon with a light meal for her father, Abbigail ran an alarming gauntlet to the Tavern. Curious women gawked and gaped, and disconcerted men averted their gazes, thinking, she imagined, That scandalous Single Sister, her good name ruined!

She squared her shoulders and walked on, her reputation falling in pieces around her, the worst of her old fears realized. She had made herself an object of muffled chatter and callous curiosity. What was Nicholas Blum to her? they must wonder.

What, indeed? she wondered herself. After the midday meal he had led his sisters in a round of raucous, rollicking play before returning them to school, one on either hand. Now more than ever, she despaired of such a family, of such a father for the children she longed for. For even though her skin had sizzled when he kissed her hand, he had shown her only kindness.

At the Tavern, she tightened her neckerchief around her throat and braved the public scene. Outsiders here seemed cruder than at home. Back-country rabble, who used to be much worse! Retha had said cheerfully, urging her to go in unafraid. Abbigad hurried up a sturdy flight of stairs to her father’s room. It faced the street, so he could look out. Under any other circumstances, he had told her, he would feel at home in Salem. It reminded him of a smaller, sleepier Bethlehem, when her mother was still alive.

Abbigail paused outside his door, checking her litde pail of food, thinking she had brought too much. Inside, Sister Benigna scolded, “Think what you’re doing to your only daughter, Georg! Insisting she marry that wretched man! You did not used to be an imbecile.”

“She needs to marry,” he protested lamely. “Someone honest.”

“In your heart of hearts you know Nicholas Blum is honest as the day is long. Perfect for her and for your store.”

Abbigail shivered with keen regret. At least Sister Benigna saw that Nicholas was her match. But then she saw a lot of things. She knew Georg Till well, well enough to upbraid him when he needed it Her mother had not, if memory served, handled him as well.

“I’ll not have a stranger turning my store upside down,” he said petulantly.

The widow sniffed. “Christian Huber was a stranger only two years ago.”

“He brought testimonials from Brethren in Maine.”

“Mere papers, Georg! Brother Blum brought an honored father’s blessing.”

Her father muttered something, but Abbigail could listen to no more. She fiddled noisily with the latch. “Papa … I have brought your lunch,” she said, walking in with the tin lunch pail.

Her father sat in shirtsleeves, his gouty feet and legs swathed in wet white cloths. Pain etched lines deeper in his face.

“Daughter,” he said formally, his eyes not meeting her gaze.

Sister Benigna stood in complete command of her invalid, a simple repast of broth and bread already procured. Abbigail’s offering was not needed. She set it on a table by a trim tile stove. The Widow crossed the room and took Abbigail in her arms. “Ach, Leibling, I am so glad to see you.”

Her father was not. “I cannot approve of your exhibition this morning, daughter,” he said, still not looking at her, after she was released.

Tears of aggravation sprang to her eyes. “Nor do I approve of yours, Papa. You distorted everything. Nicholas Blum never cheated you. He is innocent, I know it.”

Her father did not look well at ad. His loss festered in him, as she had guessed it would. “His innocence has not been proven, Abbigail.”

Poinless to argue with a stone. She gave a heavy sigh. “How do you feel?”

He gave a tired one. “Sister Benigna is a godsend.”

“Don’t flatter me, Georg,” the Widow said sharply, almost fondly.

“Then we should be thankful she is here,” Abbigail said. “I only came to check on you. I must return to my hostess.”

He did not object. She dutifully kissed his cheek.

“You will see that Blum is guilty when Brother Huber comes,” he persisted.

“Papa!” she said, exasperated. But she refused to be tormented.

Sister Benigna followed her into the hall and closed the door. They whispered about her father’s health. He needed notice more than nostrums, the Widow said, then added, “The town is ablaze with speculation, my dear.”

Shaking her head, Abbigaill sought a moment’s refuge in her friend’s maternal embrace. “The entire town, I fear.”

“Rumor made it to the Widows House within the hour.”

Abbigail looked up and saw no censure. “I only meant that I am so convinced of his innocence I would marry him on the spot.”

Sister Benigna waited as the import of those words sunk in. Then she smiled. “’Tis progress in my little friend whose heart is sealed to love.”

“’Twas hypothetical!” Abbigail protested.

“Nevertheless, I can see how the rumor spreads that you proposed,” the Widow said, with amusement.

“But I didn’t!” Abbigad fought a tide of weakness that started in her shoulders and sank through her body to her knees. “Oh, they cannot say … I never meant… I said it to affirm my belief in his innocence. My faith in his good character.”

“’Twas good of you to stand your ground. But your father’s comment made it worse.”

“Yes, the supposed betrothal.” Abbigail grimaced. “Much worse.”

“I concede that Brother Huber is not my choice for you.” Sister Benigna put a confiding arm around her shoulders and they started down the stairs. “Nicholas Blum has so much more to offer.”

“I know,” Abbigail whispered, overcome. She had known for months. “But not to me.”

Sister Benigna clucked and tutted. “I must believe all will tum out right.”

“How?” Abbigail cried. “My father has spared no effort to make it wrong. But I will not sacrifice myself to Brother Huber.”

“Excellent! Brave girl! But you will have to face it when we return to Bethlehem.”

“I am safe here. So long as Brother Huber is there, they cannot even post the banns. As for when he arrives here …” She had a respite of four weeks, maybe more. She shook off apprehension. “The important thing is Nicholas’s future.”

Compared to that, the foolish longings of a Single Sister’s heart were nothing.

Nicholas Blum stood outside the door of his tin shop, arms crossed against impatience, itchy with discontent. For once in his life he was absolutely innocent, but the eyes of passersby judged him a guilty man. There was not a blessed thing he could do until Christian Huber came. Until then Nicholas faced weeks of doubting looks and whispers. Of tedious tinsmithing. Of seeing Abbigail about the town and treating her as if she were a mere acquaintance.

He gazed across the Square. There was no rush now, nothing to accomplish, nothing he could change. He must wait under this cloud, and wait some more, for Huber to arrive. The thought of that pompous, pomaded prig controlling his future galled him at a place inside not even the loss of Catharina had touched. Especially after he had sold the fruits of his summer’s labor to the man practically at cost.

He looked more warily up and down the street, bracing lest either his brother or his stolen bride stroll by. Stolen. The thought still stung, but not because he wanted Catharina. He didn’t. Rather, because he had once more made himself the town’s laughingstock. No, not even that. He was used to entertaining the town. It stung because he’d done it in front of Abbigail.

Just then she came marching up the street, past the clockmaker’s and the cobbler’s shops, trim and tiny, shoulders squared against scandal, eyes dead ahead.

“Stupid. Unthinkable,” he heard her mutter.

He took up her pace. “Some things are,” he said softly. Being accused of a theft I never committed. Living a lifetime without you.

She stopped and looked up, her delicate, porcelain features flushed from her walk. Or from running into him. His heart flipped, and he stopped too.

“Don’t stop. Or don’t follow. We cannot talk,” she whispered harshly.

“Not here, I know,” he said sadly, sorry he had acted on impulse, sorrier still he had distressed her by joining her.

“Not anywhere. Not even at your parents’ home.”

He knew that His parents’ sterling reputation in the town could withstand a very great deal, but he did not want to compromise it.

Her gaze skittered around the Square, to Sisters, Brothers walking, watching. He felt them too, their gazes turning, burning. But most of all he felt desire, like a magnet, pulling him to Abbigail, Abbigail to him.

“I must go,” she said, an ache in her voice.

He could not want her to go, but he owed her safe passage away from the cloud of suspicion that shadowed him. “Go, Liebling,” he whispered.

In public, he realized with a jab of resentment, everything had changed. The town’s eyes would watch every move he made and construe his actions ill. But now that he knew how precious Abbigail was to him, he had to find a way to see her.

Matthias Blum plunged his hands into dark waters, just come to his shop from his new bride. She had prepared a delicious meal for him, and to his relief, had been a punctiliously correct model of good wifely conduct, neither asking about the hearing nor trying to breach his defenses. Perhaps, after all, she would allow the distance he demanded.

So he could bury his hint in work.

He cast about for a color. What would it be this bright fall afternoon? Three weeks ago, on the eve of his betrothal, he’d imagined dyeing a lot of fabric honoring Catharina’s creamy complexion and flaxen hair. A yellow lot from dahlias, goldenrod, or Queen Anne’s lace, all blooming now, to set off the rare beauty of his bride-to-be.

Romantic sod.

That impulse, and the pathetic bouquet of flowers he had brought to her in the bam, made him cringe. He stiffened with resolution. He would not come to her a helpless, lovesick puppy.

Black suited his mood this afternoon, and fixing the dye properly would take all week. He dropped walnut leaves, bark, hulls, and roots into the vat and fired it. He’d given his apprentice a few days off, expecting to take time away himself. He still could. The downward spiral he was in could hardly get worse, he’d thought. Then it had. Twice since dawn, on only the second day of his new marriage.

Nicholas and Catharina, Catharina and Nicholas.

Despite their protests of innocence, he couldn’t separate them in his mind.

This morning in bed, before the hearing, he had been wide awake for every excruciating touch his bride bestowed on his feet, legs, shoulder, arm. Fingers. Fingertips. He’d never imagined them as a source of sensual awakening. For one blazing moment he had been poised to forgive everybody everything.

Then her hand had ventured knowingly to his all too willing manhood. Under her tender inquiry, it jerked and throbbed, not caring for an instant whether she was pure, or his alone, or someone else’s. Outraged, he had frozen. How did she know the very touch that pleased men? How could she be innocent? He believed Nicholas had not stolen watches. But his theft of Catharina’s virtue was something else entirely.

After an hour the dark, murky dye bath came to a boil, and Catharina stopped by, her cheeks rosy with exertion, her willowy shape gracing the door. Then she came in, her gentle beauty all the more ethereal in the steamy environs of his shop. Desire washed through his body, but he set his mind against her allure.

“I thought you might be hungry, working,” she said sweetly, and spread bread and cheese and ale on a counter, a picture of wifely industry.

Being served by beauty was novel and sweet. But he held out his walnut-blackened hands and shrugged the food away. Shrugged her sweetness away.

She laughed lightly as she eyed his hands. “Are you poison?”

“No.” Her good humor surprised him.

Her mild gray eyes sparked with interest in him and his work. “Will it stain the cheese?”

Peculiar question, naive and endearing. He fought a smile. “I should think so.”

“Will it mark the mug?”

The smile won. “I don’t know. I always wash.”

“Do you want to wash now?” Her eyes danced a dare. “Or do I get to see you eat black cheese?”

In the end, he ate black-stained cheese from black-dyed hands and drank his ale from a black-smudged mug. What a pair they made. The reluctant husband and his alluring bride. His seductive bride. She left before he knew what hit him.

Matthias stirred the pot. The walnut bits and pieces stained the dye bath, slowly, permanently blackening the wool he’d added. His bride might be a virgin; she might not. He could prove her innocence only if he tried her. But he could not endure the blinding rage, the crushing disappointment if she faded his test. If his suspicion was right, to the devil with her. If wrong, he would be her clumsy, hungry first.

Either way, he was a clod with women.

His brother was the man who won them over. Even Till’s daughter, who seemed as upright and upstanding as a Sister could be. Her avowal she would wed his brother had been the final straw. Had Nicholas had her too? The question tormented Matthias as she made her speech, renewed jealousy crawling through him, as ugly as maggots in a carcass. It crawled through him now. Jealousy was low and mean, and he hated feeling it. But he could not seem to stop.

What kind of man came to his bride in a jealous fever? Not the decent, level-headed man he prided himself on being. His body yearned, his manhood throbbed for her, so ethereal and yet so earthy, so real. What if she had come to him whole? His heart hurt to think that he was rejecting her out of misplaced pique. What if she were not? Was he reckless enough-or man enough-to find out?

Back at the Blums’, hickory nuts thudded on the kitchen’s slate roof like random rain. Abbigail tried to put the argument with her father and the sight of Nicholas behind her. She had expected to find her father alone, licking his wounds because he had not won outright. Instead he submitted to Sister Benigna’s tender, relendess care and counsel. As on the trip, she met his difficulties with tolerance, chiding and fussing with him very like a wife.

Abbigail had not expected to meet Nicholas on the way, to see the golden autumn sun glancing off the fading bruises on his face-or the new softness in his gaze. She had been riveted to the spot. Then he’d given her that look. It plagued her. Had it been pity? Or regret?

She would not fan the flames of gossip by approaching him to ask.

By late afternoon the fire beneath the copper kettle had heated the kitchen. She pressed the back of her hand to her damp forehead and wiped away a mist of perspiration. “This is worse than summer,” she said to her hostess.

The apple butter finished, Retha rested the paddle across the kettle. “I had so much rather be outside.” Then she came to check Abbigad’s progress. “But for your help, I would be here until nightfall.”

Abbigail cleaned the rim of a crockery jar, well satisfied with this part of her day if nothing else. “I enjoyed it.”

Retha arched a brow. “Putting up apple butter?”

“At home, I mind the store all day. Besides, I cannot concoct such spicy butters. They upset my father’s stomach.”

Retha squeezed her shoulder. “What a trial to tend an invalid.”

Abbigail instantly regretted her complaint. “He has his good days,” she corrected.

Retha busied herself cleaning up. Abbigail tried to lose herself in the rhythm of spooning the rich apple butter into crockery jars, but failed. Since running into Nicholas, she had endured an exhausting afternoon of visitors. Meddlers really, ever so polite and interested, had arrived in pairs, pried in tandem, and left, she feared, too well pleased at seeing her in disgrace, the object of their speculation. Every woman in town seemed to want a look at the first Single Sister daring enough to publicly declare herself for the desirable, unclaimed Single Brother Blum.

It hadn’t been easy, watching her reputation scudding away like mined leaves before an autumn wind. It could hardly get worse, she thought. But then an erect Sister Steiner and her buxom daughter peered in through the open top of the kitchen door. Retha let them in with an almost imperceptible shrug of annoyance and introduced them as the wife and daughter of the Elder Abbigail had met this morning.

“Danke Gott, you stood up for our dear Nicholas today,” the daughter volunteered, nosily looking around Retha Blum’s kitchen.

Our dear Nicholas, indeed, Abbigad thought, fluffing up inside like an offended wren. He was our dear Nicholas to everyone in skirts!

Seven women once, three twice, and one five times.

His confession leapt into her thoughts, and her stomach plummeted. Had he favored this blushing Sister once or twice?

Five times, she told herself grimly, would have been Catharina.

“Natürlich,” the daughter went on, “I would have done so too, given the opportunity.”

“Maria! You would do no such thing,” Sister Steiner hissed.

The daughter ignored her. “Truly ‘twould have been a pleasure to defend him.”

Practiced now, Abbigail blanked emotion from her face. She had defended Nicholas out of a heartfelt impulse, no casual pleasure, but a truer act than she had ever committed. She had not thought of consequences, of claims or petty rivalries or gossip.

The mother blinked her disapproval under thick, straight, manly brows. “It must come from running your father’s shop. Working with outsiders taught you, no doubt, your uncommon boldness.”

Retha gasped at the affront. “Sister Steiner, ‘tis not ours to judge.”

The Married Sister’s dark brows drew together. “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.’”

Maria help up a cautionary finger, not, Abbigail suspected, altogether sincere. “’Tis not ours to question the good Sister’s name, Mama. No matter what”- her voice dipped tellingly-“appearances suggest.”

They must have seen her at the tin shop during that brief moment she had stopped. What did they suspect, an assignation? Shaking with anger, Abbigail bit her lower lip to keep from giving the two busybodies a piece of her mind. This was insult, pure and simple. What did they hear of Brother Marshall’s sermons? She folded her hands in her lap, forcing courtesy.

“My father has long been my guide.”

“Then he must be just devastated-” Sister Steiner began.

Retha Blum flared in Abbigail’s defense. “I can assure you, Sister Steiner, that if he is, the Blums are not, not in the least. We are quite proud that Sister Till had the courage to speak up for our son. We have no doubt that the event will prove him innocent and her spolless. Now I must be about my business. And you would do well to mind your own.” She strode to the kitchen door, opened it to the narrow alley between her house and her neighbor’s, and waited for the Sisters to leave.

In the doorway, Sister Steiner turned and said fervently, “Just remember, Sister Till, that the price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies.”

Then she swept her plain gray skirts through the door, her daughter trading her.

Retha latched the bottom and top halves of the door behind them, then leaned against it as if to fend off ransacking she-bears or ravenous raccoons. “That should keep the old biddies out!” she said vehemently. Then she began to laugh.

Abbigail watched, astonished, still stinging from the insults.

“Do you suppose they practice being sanctimonious?” Retha gasped, laughing.

“All their lives, I think, to do it so effortlessly,” Abbigail choked out, freed by Retha’s laugh to laugh herself. Bless you, Sister Blum, she thought, for dousing my wrath with the ridiculous. What a liberating influence such a friend would have been for her, must have been for Nicholas. And suddenly, Abbigail understood one source of his great heart and daunless optimism.

“They were very thorough!” Retha said, repairing her mussed apron.

“Are all Salemites such sticklers?” Abbigail asked.

“Only toward those who grew up with the Cherokee, like me. Or you, a woman managing a store!”

They resumed their work, laughing each time they recalled another Sister’s admonition from the tedious afternoon.

Abbigail sobered. “I always had a horror of losing my reputation.”

“’Tis wed behind you now!” Retha said as if it mattered not a whit.

“The horror or the reputation?”

“Reputation is the horror!” Retha said firmly, leaving Abbigail to wonder what she had endured. And if she was right.

25

The horror did not come in sacrificing reputation. It came in having nothing more than stolen glimpses of Nicholas when she passed his shop. For days after the hearing, he turned down all of Retha’s invitations to take a meal at home, honoring Abbigail’s warning that they not be seen together. Apparently he dined and slept at the Single Brothers House, determined to shield her from further gossip. His precaution hadn’t made much difference. People still stared.

Well before vespers, she rushed toward the Tavern in a dreary, drenching rain. Better rain than another ran past the gauntlet of nosy, spying Salemites. Thanks to the weather, there weis not a soul in sight. In the week she’d been walking across the Square, their interest in her had not flagged. But she refused to be ashamed of standing up for Nicholas. Castigated and cut off perhaps, but not ashamed.

Nor would she neglect her father. Most days she went to the Tavern twice, surprised to find Sister Benigna there, too, mornings, afternoons, and once at night, with nostrums and good cheer. As soon as her father’s health improved, he met her in the public rooms downstairs. Remarkably his temper improved, too. Was it the Widow’s good-natured company? Or was it the prospect of Christian Huber’s arrival, now only three weeks off—if the letter arrived as planned and he didn’t break down on the Wagon Road?

The Square was empty, and the boardwalk slick. Today she hoped to get her father out to vespers if only the rain would stop. Glumly, she snugged her shawl up against the cold October wind, feeling the bleakness of her situation. Not that the Blums were not assiduously hospitable, and Sister Benigna full of good humor and support.

But Nicholas had brightened her life, and he had forsworn her now.

She peered ahead through veils of rain. No sign of him lounging in the doorway of his shop, waiting to catch her eye. Her spirits sagged. For five long days, she had held her head up and walked directly in front of his shop, refusing to skulk to the other side of the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of him and twice succeeding.

As she passed Nicholas’s tin shop, he reached out and grasped her hand and tugged her inside. “I miss you, Abbigad,” he said, shutting the door behind them and giving her the briefest Brotherly peck on the cheek. His hungry, awkward gaze swept her from top to toe. “You look … well.”

Despite a fear of being caught, she shuddered with a strange delight, her head bobbing foolishly, her heart fluttering with joy.

But he was shaking his head. “I made you a pariah, Abby.”

“’Tis nothing,” she murmured, staying his censure with her hand. For Nicholas, she would walk through fire. Tears spilled down her face from the relief of being with him. He lowered his tawny head and kissed them from her lashes, cheekbones, nose.

“’Tis a very great deal,” he murmured, and with a groan, he found her mouth and took it in a deep, exploring kiss-a munificent Nicholas kiss.

Which she answered, losing track of danger, time, and self, melting bonelessly against his enfolding bulk. After a while his callused fingers tipped her chin.

“Look at me, Leibling,” he entreated, his voice rough with emotion. “I never meant you harm.”

She opened her eyes. In daylight she had never been so close to him or to discovery and exposure. “I know.”

His brilliant blue eyes darkened with concern. “Jesu, if only…” he began, then bit his lips, then looked away and back.

If only he would, ask…. She could barely breathe.

“Liebe Gott, Abbigail, I was such a fool to come here. To leave you.”

She found her voice. “You had a dream. I saw her.”

Chagrin creased his brow. “But you are … you are …”

Made bold by his concern, she covered his mouth with fingertips. “The one who loves you.”

He hesitated, gratitude playing across his face. “Kiss me, Abby.”

His hands circling her waist, he lifted her smoothly onto a low stool and brought her level with his great height. Then they rested at her waist, their heat coiling into her core, burning ad the way up to her breasts. And she heard, then felt his breathing, each breath a breeze of banked desire.

“Kiss me like before,” he said, his voice breaking.

He wanted her but waited. He honored her innocence.

It was up to her to step beyond the sanctity of strictest chastity. She leaned into him, seeking his powerful arms, his solid chest, his approving manhood. Steadying herself, she lifted a hand to pull his head down to her, and he bent to her will. Shivering with anticipation, she ventured a trial kiss upon his lips. They were warm and soft but hesitant, still. She pulled away. He looked tormented.

“I have naught to offer you, Liebling,” he said hoarsely.

Nothing but your heat, your strength, your hands trembling at my waist.

“Yourself, Nicky. You are all I want,” she whispered.

Her words and her sweet use of his nickname sent him over the edge.

With a ragged groan he rocked into her, his deerskin breeches and her thick wool skirts no barrier to the surrender he sought of her. She did not yield, but answered. Parting her lips, she boldly kissed his mouth and crushed her aching breasts to his rocksolid chest, pressing the low center of her newfound desire against his fire, his stiffness. Her first need shuddered through her, and she rocked back, slighdy shocked that she yearned so for him, wholly thrdled by the delicious sensation. His hands taught her hips to move to an ancient, elemental rhythm. Then her body crested, broke, and she clung to him, the wonder of his passion bursting in her heart like birdsong. “Nicky …” she whispered, gradually aware of tremors in him, too, tremors of savage control.

The bell above the shop door jangled, announcing a customer come in the rain. Around the bulk of Nicholas’s shoulders, Abbigail caught the quickest look of a tall, dark man shadowing the door. Guiltily she sprang back, Nicholas’s great stature sheltering her from view, and he plunged her past a curtain into a small back room.

“I am an unmitigated fool,” he rasped into her ear, “risking you like this.” In an almost normal voice, he called out front to tell his customer he was on his way. Then he gently set her aside, whispered a quick goodbye, and showed her to a back door where she might escape unseen.

But escaping Nicholas was the last thing she wanted.

Reduced to selling tin cups on a dreary afternoon, Nicholas thought, angry at the interruption. He adjusted his stock and buttoned his coat to hide his arousal. Sensation gathered in him, low, and unfulfilled desire pulsed through his loins.

The sight of his brother squelched all that. Matthias strode into the center of the shop, walnut-brown hat in his brown-stained hands, a hitch of anger in his step.

“Matty.” Nicholas greeted him evenly, puzzled but alert. The last time they had been alone together, Nicholas had lost a tooth, some dignity, and the delusions of his young manhood. Although that last had been long overdue.

Matthias’s face clouded. “I cannot fathom the kind of man you are. Ruining one woman is not enough for you.”

Nicholas flared. Matthias had seen just enough to believe the worst of Abbigail. “A kiss is not ruin.”

“You ruined my bride.”

He curbed his temper. “I never touched your wife but to steal a kiss or two.”

Matthias’s hands fisted at his side. “After she was betrothed to me,” he said through clenched teeth.

Truth, Nicholas realized instandy, was not his wisest tack. But Matthias had saved him from marrying the wrong woman. And Nicholas owed it to all of them to clear Catharina’s name.

“I…” He ran his fingers through his hair, hating what he’d done, hating this discord with his brother. “’Twas reprehensible of me. I thought she … shared my feelings. Evidendy, as she married you, she did not.” He shifted uneasily, wishing his brother had been just another customer wanting to buy a cup. “Is this what you came for?”

Matthias looked down, looked away, fuming as he had when still a lad, Nicholas could tell, from the vein that pulsed down the center of his forehead.

“I came to make amends,” he said bitterly.

Nicholas wanted that. Relief trickled down his spine. “I too, Matty,” he began eagerly.

“But after seeing you with Sister Till…” Matthias made an inarticulate sound of disgust and stalked out of Nicholas’s shop, too controlled and too correct to slam the door.

Ignoring a rumble of male voices in the shop, Abbigail dashed out the back door into a narrow adey and turned toward Salem’s tavern, a few doors down the street. Her body shuddered, thrilled by Nicholas’s touch. But she was miserable that they’d been caught. The dreary rain had gone on unabated. The townspeople’s stares had not shamed her, but his quick dismissal made her feel turned out Worse, rejected. Lost in their quick passion, she had declared her love and almost given him her whole self.

But he hadn’t said he loved her in return.

Of course not she thought sadly, rising to his defense. He had only just lost his dream of Catharina. He probably still loved his brother’s bride. Perhaps he always would, no matter how the woman had betrayed his love. Only a cadow man could shed such old, deep feelings overnight.

Abbigail didn’t have to look at her reflection in a glass to know that she was too sharp, too old ever to take Catharina’s place. Never mind that the hot promise of Nicholas’s embrace eclipsed Abbigad’s most vivid dreams. She had caught his fancy but could not capture his heart. Only paragons inspired abiding love.

Inside the Tavern, she paused at the first-floor landing to stomp the wet off her shoes. The public room hummed with travelers delayed by rain. They might not mind the wait but today she minded everything-the damp, their noise, her sudden, biting loneliness. The stairs leading to her father’s room seemed steep and gloomy. Shaking raindrops off her shawl, she trudged up, hoping fervently he was not alone. She could not cheer him today.

Halfway to the top, Sister Benigna stopped her. “We’re in the public room … with a visitor.”

“Oh, not today! I am not fit for company,” Abbigail said, her stolen moment with Nicholas flashing before her eyes.

“’Tis Christian Huber, dear,” the Sister said with dismay. “Come to Salem early!”

Early? It was weeks before he had any possible reason to darken their doors! Aversion prickled through her.

“Be firm, my dear. I will be right back to stand beside you,” Sister Benigna said as she discreedy slipped outside. Abbigad folded her shawl and braved the large open room. So. She would confront him-themr-on her own.

Stale ale and harsh tobacco smells assailed her. Through clouds of smoke, three men played cards at a small table while another cleaned a gun, its pieces scattered on the floor. Laughter broke out but did not seem aimed at her. Across the room beside the fire, the back of her father’s gray head tilted in conversation. She smoothed her skirt and threaded her way past tables, chairs, travelers, bracing for battle.

He rose and Christian Huber stood, too, thinner and more forward than he had been at home. “Sister Till…” he began, a predatory gleam lighting his eyes.

“You’re three weeks too soon!” she blurted, exasperated to see him. She needed the month to sharpen her arguments and shore up her defenses.

“I am delighted to see you well,” Huber said, with excessive courtesy and a gendemanly bow over her hand.

The hand Nicholas had just held. She jerked it back, Huber’s attentions mocking the sweet flame of Nicholas’s kiss. “You cannot have gotten the Elders’ letter.”

“Ah, yes, about the missing watches. Tis well I came ahead then, is it not?” Huber’s gaze was calculating, but he contrived to sound sympathetic, even gravely interested. “Your father explained about the hearing and the letter.”

“No doubt he did,” she said.

“The watches never turned up at the store,” he volunteered. “They have not, I take it, turned up here? No doubt there is some simple explanation. Brother Blum always brought such odd pieces home.”

“You should know. You inventoried everything,” she said dryly. Prying snoop.

“As was my duty, Sister Till. As on the evening Brother Blum packed to leave, which I spent taking an inventory of our stock and his.” He smiled blandly. “So many extra, unexpected pieces, ours, his. Dolls, stationery, watches.”

Something in his tone tweaked her. Too placid, too accommodating, like a snake behind a rock, waiting to strike. “You know all about the watches,” she said, voicing her thought. She could not be sure when or how or where he had purloined them. But he had everything to do with their disappearance.

“Of course I know about them. One might even say I had a hand-an inadvertent but well-intentioned hand-in Brother Blum’s escape that night,” Huber said sdkily.

Abbigad flared. “Nicholas didn’t escape! He didn’t need to. The only thing he is guilty of is having a good heart.”

“As you say, dear Sister. Though he always was a litde … overzealous, perhaps? For profit.”

She almost spat. “Whde you are only after my father’s store,” she said, her voice rising over the drone of men at cards and guns.

Her father pinched her arm in reprimand. “Abbigail, shame! To suggest that our friend Brother Huber-”

“The only thing I ever wanted from your father’s store was you,” Huber said smoothly, but loud enough for all to hear.

Silence thickened in the room like smoke, and all eyes turned on them. Strangers’ eyes, coldly interested in the spectacle of a woman abandoning decorum. Her father glared a warning. Straightening her Haube, Abbigail summoned her resolve.

Huber stepped toward her, deferential and overbearing at once. “Ah, dearest Sister Till, let us not quarrel. I have come such a great distance to see you.”

“’Twas a wasted trip,” she snapped, vexed by his presumption and his tone.

“Abbigail, your manners!” her father said angrily, glancing at the witnesses, their eyes turned to the brewing storm.

Huber gave an ingratiating smile and again reached for her hand. This time she permitted it, deferring to their audience and her father’s reprimand. But she recoiled inside. The Single Brother’s lips were cold, and his clammy grasp was frigid. “Dearest Sister Till, you must know I am here because of you. I came because the wait was too wearing on my nerves.”

“So wearing that you abandoned the store?” she asked pointedly.

“No, no, Brother Johann minds the store for us,” he assured her. “’Twas wearing, dearest, to wait for your return.”

“You have no claim on me, sir, now or ever.”

“I beg to differ, Sister,” he said, placidly confident. “We have your father’s blessing on our marriage.”

“You may have his blessing, but you do not have my consent. I refuse your suit. I have the right.” Weeks ago, Nicholas had given her the words, but she made them hers.

Huber’s face pinched, his self-possession breaking.

“Daughter, you cannot deny him,” her father said.

Oh, but she could. She might not have Nicholas’s love, but he had shown her passion. On the strength of that alone, she would never submit to Huber’s claim. “You misspeak, Father. I denied Brother Huber at every tum. I deny him now.”

“I will not tolerate defiance, Abbigad.”

“You cannot rule me in this.”

He made a quick, desperate gesture to direct her. “Daughter, you are upset. Calm yourself and sit.”

She stayed standing, sure of what she wanted. “No, Father. You shamefully misrepresented me last week. You misrepresent me now to Brother Huber. Except for the fact that you want him here, he wasted his time to come.”

Huber’s hps thinned. “Rubbish! No time is wasted if I spare you Blum’s unwanted attentions!”

“Unsought, perhaps,” she shot back. “But never unwanted.”

Afternoon shadows sharpened the angles on Huber’s face, making everything about him mean. “Blum may have helped himself to the watches, but he cannot steal my bride.”

Anger burned her throat. “Nicholas did not steal the watches, and I will never be your bride.” She turned on her heel to go and ran toward the hallway, straight into … Nicholas. He was formidable with indignation.

But he bundled her in his arms. She could have wept with sweet relief.

Beside him, quite formidable herself, Sister Benigna said softly, “I thought Brother Blum should have his say.”

Nicholas caught his balance, his arms too full of Abbigail to lunge across the smoke-fdled public room and rip Huber’s gullet from his throat He had heard Huber’s sly accusation and his presumptuous claim. Bad enough that Matthias had caught him kissing Abbigail a quarter hour earlier. He did not have the patience or reserve for this.

Banking rage, Nicholas gently released Abbigail. “Stay, Leibling,” he entreated hoarsely, barely noticing the endearment that slipped off his tongue. “I need you here.”

She looked at him with large, consenting, dark brown eyes, and tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow. Together they crossed the room, her presence calming and strengthening him. Till blustered up to separate them, but Nicholas ignored him. Huber was his goal. Huber waited, stance spread as if to fight.

He looked the fastidious Brother up and down. “I should pummel you to powder for distressing her. But I will not fight you here in front of her.”

Huber brisded like a boar, very unlike a godly Brother. “I will meet you any time, on any terms.”

Nicholas clenched his fists. He wanted to bludgeon the toady.

Abbigail squeezed his elbow. “No, Nicholas, not for me,” she whispered for him alone, her almost inaudible words a balm.

He nodded assent. For once, for her sake, he would not be reckless, careless Nicholas. He would be his father’s son, calm, even-handed, reasonable. “I can arrange that,” he said to Huber. “I will call a meeting of the Elders, and we will setde everything-the watches, the money, Sister Till’s affections.”

Huber twitched with frustration, apparently craving a brawl as much as Nicholas did.

Sister Rothrock intervened, speaking too softly for onlookers to hear. “It needn’t come to that, Brother Blum. Let us sit here and discuss it now. The sooner this matter is cleared up, the better.”

“The Elders should be …” Abbigail’s father began.

“Georg, I insist,” Sister Rothrock said.

Uneasily the five of them sat flanking the fire, Till and Huber on one side and Sister Rothrock between Abbigail and Nicholas.

“Now, Brother Huber,” the Widow said, “our first concern is your account of the night Brother Blum left.”

Huber made a obsequious gesture of consent. “Anything I can do to help.”

With difficulty Nicholas sat and listened to Huber’s numbingly exact account. The shop assistant remembered everything correctly, exactly as they had unloaded it: casks and crates and barrels as wed as the more expensive dolls and watches already in the store. Nicholas listened stonily for omissions or inconsistencies. There were none he recognized.

Then why did Huber’s frank, factual recital seem to implicate him?

“In short,” Huber concluded, “I never saw the watches. I merely listed them on the inventory, assuming that they were locked in the safe as Brother Blum reported.”

Abbigail’s father cleared his throat. “Not proof enough, Brother Huber. Surely you saw some irregularity-”

Abbigail flushed with indignation. “Father! Leave off! Brother Blum took nothing!”

Staying her protest with a hand, Nicholas added, “’Tis God’s truth, sir. Nothing but my horse, my saddle, my battered portmanteau, and presents for my litde sisters.”

Huber looked down his aquiline nose. “Presents? Did we inventory presents, Brother Blum?”

Till arched a brow. “What sort of presents?”

Abbigail flared. “Just a pair of dolls! You cannot find anything suspicious in that.”

“Or in them?” Huber murmured.

Till’s eyes narrowed. “Explain your meaning.”

Sister Rothrock looked shocked. But Huber, looking down, said almost apologetically, “It simply occurred to me-an idle thought, provoked by all the speculation-if perhaps something could be hidden on the dolls. Or in them?”

A reckless pride lashed Nicholas. He’d be damned d he would stand still while Huber insinuated and Till accused him. “Search the dolls, then.”

Abbigail, with a caution born of years of Huber’s stratagems, protested involuntarily, “Nicky, no!”

Across from them, Christian Huber stared at the floor, his face carefully blank.

26

Yourself, Nicky. You are all I want, Abbigail had whispered while he held her in his arms. And this was what she got, Nicholas thought savagely: a man of blighted reputation, some of it deserved, the rest of it believed. The rain had stopped, and Nicholas paced ahead to warn his parents, hoping to separate the twins from their beloved dolls with the least amount of fuss. Behind him, like a small and righteous army, came the Tills, Sister Rothrock, and Christian Huber. Georg Till’s limp slowed their hard march to a crawl.

A few Brethren on their way to vespers intently watched him and his little procession. More fodder, their transfixed expressions said, for the endless chains of gossip that would loop around the town. This latest complication would make a spectacular finish.

He and Abbigad had had no privacy to speak. But they had traded warning glances. He had nothing to hide, he repeated to himself, and her smile promised her trust. But her eyes were wide with doubt. What did she fear … or suspect?

Georg Till had agreed that this second inquiry need not be formal. No Elders need attend, not even Nicholas’s brother. That afforded some slight relief. After Matthias’s anger earlier this afternoon, Nicholas could not want him for a witness.

Supper simmered on the hearth in Retha Blum’s warm kitchen when Nicholas walked in. But the aroma did not whet his appetite. He hadn’t been home since the hearing because Abbigail was still a guest there. His parents had insisted: They had no quarrel with her; they would not turn her out.

Inside, Margaretha and Christina shinnied up his legs like happy kittens. He hoisted Christina up to ride him piggyback, then lifted Margaretha to the rafters. Little girl shrieks were sweet music on this lowering day. They must not know the cloud that hung over him.

“You’re off to vespers, aren’t you, pumpkins?” he said casually, but gave Retha a pointed look.

She glared back, teasing. “Only if their favorite brother doesn’t wind them up so tight they can’t sit stdl.”

He swung Margaretha to the floor and knelt for Christina to clamber off him. “I know how it is on rainy days, but you will sit still for me, won’t you?”

He extracted a promise of best behavior, mouthing to Retha to take them away just as Till’s party knocked at the front door. She shooed the twins to the basin to wash up, then peered into the parlor and recognized the visitors.

Her brow furrowed with concern. “What is this, Nicky?”

“We never searched the dolls.”

She threw her hands up in disgust. “Ridiculous.”

Her immediate faith bolstered his. “So I said. But take the twins. They must not see their gifts cut up like Sunday chickens.”

“Jacob and I were going anyway.”

“I need him to stay.”

She nodded and left with the girls before the army had set up camp in Nicholas’s childhood home. Nicholas took his father aside and explained what had transpired. Jacob Blum listened gravely, then headed upstairs to retrieve the dolls.

In the comfortable parlor, Nicholas’s accusers sat in brittle sdence, warring armies stalemated, Abbigail on his side, Huber and Till against him. Strangely, Sister Rothrock sat to herself as d torn between the daughter and the father. Nicholas couldn’t fathom the Widow’s turnabout. In Bethlehem, she had supported Abbigail, disapproving of Till’s pursuit of Nicholas as well as his allegiance to Huber. But since the hearing, she had been Till’s most loyal visitor.

Jacob Blum clumped down the stairs, a great bear carrying two large dolls, their leather arms and legs flopping against his chest. He offered the dolls in his large, blunt hands. “I fear I would mangle my daughters’ treasures.”

“I won’t harm them.” Abbigail accepted them from his father and sat with them on her lap. Their combed wool hair and delicate china heads were pretty, innocent. Their muslin pinafores, once crisp, showed signs of loving, if not care. Abbigail inspected one, and the room held its breath.

Nicholas held his, too, not for fear of finding the watches. He was watching Abbigad’s slender fingers press into the straw-stuffed body, regretting she had to play this part and see him under such duress. He moved closer to her, to the inevitable.

She gave a genteel shrug. “I can ted nothing. ‘Tis well packed with sawdust or batting.” She flipped it over, lifted its little pinafore, and made a small sound of consternation.

Even to a man who couldn’t thread a needle, the alteration was obvious. Its back seam had been stitched crudely, hastily. He passed Abbigad the sewing basket, and she rummaged in it, drawing out the tiny silver scissors women used for fine work.

It took her a few minutes to snip the thread, pull it through, spill out pale blond sawdust stuffing. A few minutes to unravel his fife.

Deep inside sat a boldly colored enameled watch, quietly ticking.

Cockeyed optimist that he was, he’d truly believed their search would prove his innocence. But now … How could Huber have guessed … or known?

Unless he planted them there himself.

A scald of indignation caped Nicholas’s back. He had been cunningly, damningly framed by the upstanding, righteous Brother Christian Huber. But when? And where? The other doll was simdarly undone, and it, too, under Abbigail’s careful undoing, coughed up another watch.

Abbigad looked up, her eyes blazing, and displayed the two handsome enameled watches in the flat of her palm.

Huber flicked lint off a lapel. “’Twas a very clever stratagem, don’t you think, Brother Till, to let his little sisters cover for his sins?”

Nicholas grabbed the pompous Brother’s neckcloth, lifted him out of his seat, and roared in his face. “I do not have stratagems. I do not steal. I do not involve my little sisters. You’re the one who knows the when and where of it.”

Huber tdted back his head to look down his narrow nose and answered as coolly as he dared. “I am not the one who raced off in a stew, fuming over a woman betrothed to his own brother, leaving debts unpaid and agreements broken.”

Nicholas stifled the urge to shove him back down. But he let him go, then turned on Till. “You are in league with the devil.”

His father shouldered him out of the parlor. “Anger is not our way, son.”

It was an order and a plea but a goad to an angry man. “Reason and charity only go so far,” Nicholas protested. “To date, they have not helped me.”

“Nicky,” Jacob Blum said sadly, softly. “Nicky. We help each other. We will get to the bottom of this calmly, reasonably.”

He didn’t want calm and reasonable. He wanted muskets and cannons. The boy in him who’d run off to war, desperate to protect his family, wanted to see bodies strewn, fields trampled, towns burned.

“He framed me,” Nicholas said hoarsely. But in the face of the bare facts, his assertion felt flimsy, juvenile.

“So it would seem, son,” his father said, returning to their guests.

Nicholas headed for his own chair, braced for inquisition.

“’Tis odd that there are only two,” Sister Rothrock was saying neutrally to Till. Or was she suspicious? Even her!

“Don’t forget, the thief sold off the other three watches to pay his debts,” Nicholas said bitterly. He could take no more. There would be another hearing. He would have to relive every humiliating error of his life. Pivoting, he left them, seeking the wider streets of town, the clearer air to stanch his knife-fresh wounds.

Let them come and apprehend him, criminal that they made him out to be.

His father caught up to him and laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “We stand behind you, son.”

“No one outside our family will.” Nicholas had seen condemnation forecast in Sister Rothrock’s face.

“What do you know of Christian Huber?” his father asked abruptly, as they walked on.

A slanderous epithet on the tip of his tongue, Nicholas forced himself to explain instead that Till valued the man. “As Brother Till said, he has been almost two years a loyal clerk, entrusted with the business, and never a complaint. In fact, he is Till’s choice to wed his only daughter.”

“Cause enough to make the man your enemy,” Jacob Blum said. “Jealousy is a dangerous thing.”

Nicholas’s head whipped up. His father knew? They had hosted Abbigail to honor him? His face heated. “So I have discovered,” he mumbled.

They stopped outside the tin shop. Till and Huber, heading down the street to the Tavern, stopped too. Huber facing Nicholas, Nicholas glaring Huber down.

His father rubbed his neck, as he always did when troubled. “The Board of Elders will want to review this new evidence. We will have to set another date.”

Till said, “Sooner, I would hope, Brother Blum, than later. I have been a long time from my store.”

Jacob Blum gave him a withering look. “Given the gravity of our discovery, Georg, the Board will take its time.”

Brother Huber put in gravely, “I fear I had to leave the store attended by men with other obligations.”

Nicholas set on him, rage returning. “You got here quickly enough. I am sure you could go back as fast.”

Huber brisded, then said sanctimoniously, “Not without my bride, Brother Blum.”

Nicholas lunged. His father caught him before he could ram into the dapper Single Brother. “Nicky, Nicky,” Jacob Blum whispered hoarsely. “Things look bad enough.”

Nicholas struggled against his father’s strength to spend his anger. But d he did not let go until morning, Nicholas still would tear the man apart.

Watching, Till quivered with indignation. “Until this matter is settled, Brother Blum, I expect you to keep your son under control,” he said. “And in town.”

Nicholas slumped, his fight drained away. He had lost the little credit he’d brought home. He was well and truly framed. “Where would I go?” he asked bleakly.

Abbigail was here. He may have lost her by his debt and carelessness and rotten luck, but he would never leave her again.

Catharina wanted to be happy, she truly did. A week ago, walking to vespers on her husband’s arm would have been a thrill beyond compare. But all was not well in her new life. Her crusade to be a perfect bride had not won Matthias’s affection, and her hope of winning it was waning. Since fighting Nicholas, Matthias had been somber in public, and since their wedding, remote from her at home.

And now he was late as well. Estranged though they were, her solemn husband faithfully came home well before vespers each afternoon. Until today. She put a stew on the fire to warm for his return, set out simple dishes, and looked around for something else to do. Her cabin was spodess. Her clothes, his clothes were clean and mended. She didn’t have the heart to start on his new shirt.

And so she waited. Waited while the conch sounded time for vespers, while the faint, distant sounds of voices raised in closing song, while the few neighbors at the end of her street strolled by, going home. Finally she stepped out to look for him, wild, unnamable fears rising that he was hurt or dl or never coming back.

He was striding up the street. Her heart tripped in relief and then in alarm. A storm of anger marred his handsome face. But she hurried to meet him anyway and fell in with his long-legged gait.

“What happened?” She didn’t say Matthias. He wouldn’t let her get that close. He waved her off. He didn’t want to tell-or he wanted her to press him into talking.

“Something obviously is wrong,” she insisted breathlessly.

His well-cut mouth thinned in disapproval. “If you must know, it’s my brother.”

“Harmon?” She hoped it was not the other, older brother.

“No, Nicholas,” he bit off.

“Ah,” she said. Nicholas. Of course. She studied Matthias’s glowering face. “You haven’t fought again.”

He stopped, then claimed her gaze. “No. Worse. I caught him kissing Sister Till,” he said acidly, his Blum-blue eyes daring her to react.

But she reacted inside with a twinge of regret, a nibble of jealousy, then a glow of hope. Nicholas was already kissing other women. How odd. It did not hurt as much as she would have thought. She, who had adored him, even worshipped him! What a milksop she had always been, to let a few sweet kisses tum her head.

In her short week of marriage to Matthias, his constant company was winning her over to his quiet, steadfast manliness. Except for the fact that he hated her, she admired his serious, hardworking nature. Nicholas was too rash, too bold, too … much for her. She truly preferred her husband’s quieter company, somber though it WEIS. He was considerate of her in their home. Neat in his habits, courteous in his appreciation. She took unexpected satisfaction from his compliments on her housewifery, rather than on the beauty she did not see and could take no credit for.

Besides, if Nicholas had found another, didn’t that release her from her girlish devotion?

“Where exactly did you catch them?” she asked, intrigued.

“In his shop.” His disapproving look discouraged further vulgar questions.

But curiosity spurred her on. “You went there today, in the rain?”

“I thought to find him alone on such a dreary day,” he muttered.

“So you could fight again?”

He cleared his throat. “So we could make amends. Our rift, it is not right.”

“But minding who he kisses is?”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Sister Till is hardly a suitable object for his ill-considered attentions.”

“I know he admires her,” she said carefully. The town buzzed with rumors of that “admiration.”

“Admires her!” he exploded. “He lacks ad restraint. Kissing her where anyone could come upon them. Kissing her at all. One week ago, you remember, Sister Catharina, he admired you the exact same way.”

“Perhaps not the exact same way,” she said gently, aware of the power of words to wound. Aware too of a pinch of jealousy behind his angry memory.

Now that was promising.

“After all, Sister Till spoke for him at the hearing,” she added.

But her husband walked, nursing his anger. “The problem with Nicholas always was-”

It rubbed her wrong. “Nicholas is not our problem, Brother Matthias. You are,” she interrupted bluntly.

“My brother casts a long shadow over this union.”

“Only because you let him.”

He opened the low door of their smad log home, and she went in. Only a short time with her tad husband, and she already watched for him to duck his head to enter. Their quarters were too cramped for a couple barely speaking. Low ceilings and log wads crowded them together. For all his courtesy, she believed he wanted to be shed of her. She longed to make him want her.

If only she knew how.

Matthias sat down at the table and waited civilly to be served, allowing her this wifely office, if not her duty in his bed. She put out stew and ale, then sat across from him, marshaling her spirits. She yearned for the shy and gentle Single Brother, the ardent, thoughtful suitor who had brought her flowers in the barn the day before their wedding.

She saw precious few signs of him.

Finishing, he aligned his spoon beside his bowl and said gravely, “I cannot touch the woman my brother loves.”

Well. She caught her breath. He hadn’t spoken of their union since their wedding night. Should she be dismayed or heartened by his introducing the topic now?

“Not loves. Loved, if that. I am your wife, Matthias.”

Matthias grunted. She studied his face, handsome despite the trouble that shadowed his eyes and crimped the comers of his mouth. A sensuous mouth that had kissed her, once, with passion. His long hands lay on the table, elegant and sensitive, tinted brown today.

Now he would not even touch her, no matter what she tried.

A week of mortification made her bold. She reached across. “Your wife,” she repeated softry.

He pulled away. “But you love—loved-each other.”

He sounded more defeated than angry, she noted with a ray of hope. “Your brother never loved me as I truly weis.”

He looked at her without emotion and spoke with studied neutrality. “And who were you then, Sister Catharina?”

“A girl, Brother Matthias. An impressionable, innocent girl,” she repeated. Perhaps hope had been precipitate, but she clung to her purpose and stood up for herself. A lifetime of nothing shared but quiet meals and polite words was intolerable, no matter how handsome and courteous he was or how perfectly she carried out her duties.

Duties which included tossing out the scraps before sitting down to knit into the night while he read his books.

With relief she stepped out into the damp evening and crossed her small dirt yard to the edge of the abandoned garden. This past year the cabin had been untenanted and its garden untilled. Such women’s work was hard and unrewarding, and spring would bring much labor to ready the fallow ground for planting. Labor she had foolishly imagined with new life in her.

She flung the peelings wildly before noticing that her little plot had changed. Through the gathering darkness she peered at it, confused. From the neighbors’ windows, lamplight usually reflected on skeletal cornstalks never cleared.

Usually. All that was gone. She sank to her knees and patted the soil with her hands. Freshly dug, loamy soil, settling in for winter, ready for the spring.

Matthias must have tilled her garden, yesterday, before the rain, while she was helping at her mother’s. Hiding there from him and their sad little cabin, if she told herself the truth. And he, her tad silent husband, had given her this gift, taken on her chores, a pledge-despite his anger and his doubt-that he too looked toward their future.

27

Jacob Blum stalked back into the spacious parlor, his massive presence shrinking the room. Looking up, Abbigail dropped the doll she was repairing in her lap.

No Nicholas.

Misery lashed her. He had never seemed to be a man to run, but he had left in a white heat of anger. Cunningly, convincingly framed. But how to prove it when she could not accurately remember where he or she or anyone had been that night? She had been in and out, directing Nicholas to put the stock in its proper places, her mind on the glory of their kiss and the pain of his devastating revelation. Huber had been … on the wagon, in the cellar, in the office, alone scarcely a moment as best she could recall.

Pious, plotting ferret. The thought of him sitting in the Blums’ parlor accusing Nicholas clumped in her stomach like cold porridge. But she had to admit that, given how the hearing had gone against Nicholas, Huber might appear to all but her to be a righteous man.

Grim-faced, Jacob Blum acknowledged her briefly then strode across the room to his wife. He muttered a few private words to her and led her to the kitchen. Plainly he felt this setback was none of Abbigail’s affair. Or, despite her championship of Nicholas last week, they now lumped her with her father.

But it was her affair. Her hands shook over the abandoned doll. Nicholas had her heart, and what happened to him as good as happened to her. She would stand by him unto Judgment, but she had no say, no proper connection to him. Only her defense of him linked them in any public forum. They were not one in legal fact. She resumed her mending with a purpose, hiding concern behind industry.

And discovering in a new and terrible way the isolation of a Single Sister far from home, unattached and unacknowledged. She had to leave the Blums, her position now untenable. They could not want her in their private sanctum after she and her father had brought such trouble to it. She finished the doll, set it on a chair with its companion, then marched into the kitchen to face the parents of the man she loved.

Apparently unaware of her, Retha and her massive husband sat talking in hushed tones, holding hands across a comer of the table. Trust and confidence flowed between them, even more evident in troubled than in tranquil times. What consolation they afforded one another. Husband to honored wife, wife to constant husband. The intimate sight moved Abbigail almost to tears of admiration and of envy. She felt so alone.

Jacob Blum saw her and gestured her to join them. “My apologies, Sister Till. I scarce knew what to say with the watches found.”

His admission thawed a little of her icy isolation. “I feared we would find them.” She walked closer but could not bring herself to sit.

He gave her a quizzing look. “You suspected him?”

“No, never,” she said emphatically. “The Nicholas I know would not have taken them.”

“No, he would not.” Then Jacob Blum gave a heavy sign. “But his capers have taken us to the very gallows more than once. I cannot see our way past this.”

Retha moved her hand over his. “Jacob, he denies it.”

“’Tis one thing to deny he did it. ‘Twill be another altogether to prove that he did not.” Sadness marked the lines of Jacob Blum’s handsome face, a face so like the son he worried over that Abbigail had to tum away.

In the parlor after dinner, Abbigail sought Retha’s soft, troubled gaze. “I can stay with you no longer.”

“The fault is not yours, Sister Till,” Jacob Blum said.

“The fault is Brother Huber’s … and my father’s.” She turned again to Retha, Jacob’s pain too sharp to watch. “Grateful as I am for your hospitality, I cannot stay here in the face of this. ‘Tis a gross imposition to ask you to extend that hospitality any longer.”

“No need to go tonight, dear,” Retha said kindly. “Everyone is exhausted. Even on the morrow, I know of no household with an empty bed.”

“But…” Abbigail wanted to protest. Nicholas needed their support, not her. They should not worry if her pillow were a rock. “As you wish,” she conceded.

Bone-tired, she trudged up the stairs to her room and lit her little lantern off a low tallow lamp. A week ago, Nicholas had come and left before dawn, but she still felt him here, charging the room with his vitality, bringing to life her spinsterish heart, her celibate flesh. Jacob and Retha Blum’s intimate whispers floated down the hall as they retired. Her heart ached for like intimacy with Nicholas. She longed to talk with him, comfort him, plan a way to clear him of the deed he had not done.

Abbigail sank onto the edge of her bed, her arms clamped tight around her frustration. Her lack. Without Nicholas, she felt partial, unfinished, unfulfilled. He had cracked the shell she’d formed around her heart and made her laugh. He had broken down her dutiful defenses and brought her a taste of joy He had given her wings, a chance for a fledgling’s flight.

If she did nothing to exonerate him, she would return to Bethlehem disgraced in her own conscience. Somehow she and Nicholas must prove Huber’s guilt. Merely to accuse him would not be enough. They needed evidence.

Huber had presented testimonials from other Brethren, so her father had not delved into his past. But perhaps there was some deeper, darker side to him, some sin committed before he joined the Brethren. Who would know? The Brethren proceeded largely on trust and relied on intuition. Christian Huber had learned their liturgies and embraced their catechism with pious and convincing zeal.

She could do nothing here tonight, she thought, too tired to undress. The damp autumn chill seeped into her lonely bones. She pulled a small quilt over her shoulders, chafing over Nicholas’s troubles. Downstairs the clock chimed three times-three quarters of an hour past something-but she had lost track of the hour. Gradually her plan formed.

She would go to him now while the whole town lay asleep. She padded softly to the window and peered out. Nicholas had gotten in this way. Could she get out? The gentle slope of the roof was not so daunting. She opened the window slowly in order not to risk betraying squeaks or creaks. Shedding the quilt, she slipped over the sill and tiptoed across the roof, pulse pounding in her throat. Outside, the rain had stopped and winds had blown the clouds away. A full moon lit her way.

One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, carefully crossing the roof s tiles, feeling her way with her toes to its very edge. She looked down. The tops of her thighs cringed with a primitive fear of heights, and her stomach heaved. Could she leave the slippery security of the roof to … climb a tree? She had never done such a thing in her sheltered life.

She steadied herself against the rough bark of an overreaching limb. The great oak’s dark and dying leaves still clung to it, slapping each other wetly in an idle evening breeze. She tested her weight against the limb but couldn’t bend it low enough to mount. The trunk was too great to scale. Nicholas had done it, but his great bulk misled her. The tree fit him, not her.

Chicken-hearted coward! she upbraided herself. What use was she to him?

She slunk back across the heavy tiles, regained her room, and closed the window, shivering more from defeat than from her unaccustomed daring.

But she had to see him. She waited in her rocker, thinking what to do. A tomblike silence filled the house. Then a child cried out, one of the twins. Footsteps padded down the hall, and a feminine voice murmured comfort. After a while footsteps began again, a latch snicked softly, and then silence.

Abbigail could simply take the safer route, she realized now, down the steps and out the parlor door onto the street. She smiled wryly. She had just enough courage to do that. Gathering the quilt about her shoulders, she stole down the hall, seeing her way by moonlight.

In the street, the shadows of the trees were as clear as afternoon. The sky was high and black, the stars dimmed by the brilliant disk half risen in the sky.

Never in her life had she risked such an escapade. The freedom of the night thrilled her even as she kept a watchful eye. To get to Nicholas’s shop, she would be traveling toward Samuel Ernst. A few minutes earlier, the night watchman had sounded the hour from the other side of town. Ten o’clock? Eleven? She hurried ahead, clutching the quilt tightly over her bosom, darting into alleyways between the houses to avoid being seen.

Down the street, moonlight glinted off a tin coffeepot, the sign of Nicholas’s shop. She paused, her hand on the latch to his door. Hearing an almost human grunt, she stiffened. A cat, she told herself, or raccoon. Next she heard a ping and then a thunk. More of the endless fall of acorns and hickory nuts that had bombarded roofs for weeks.

Now, coward! She thought, prodding herself to dip the latch. Nicholas needed her. He deserved the selfsame comfort Retha brought his father.

And more. Abbigail yearned to bring Nicholas her love, her touch-her body, if he’d have it. And just that simply, she sloughed off the remnants of her reputation, cherished and preserved at the expense of some true inner self. She no longer needed it, or the regard it earned her. It bound her to endless, thankless duty: to hard-boiled eggs, hot compresses, bland apple butter. To piles of invoices and endless scrip.

No longer. No more praying for forbearance, fortitude, restraint. She dipped the latch-mentally molting the worn-out feathers of righteousness and respect-and cast her lot in with the man she loved.

Whether or not he was ready for her.

Inside, she was inundated with strange smells and shadowed sights, unnoticed in the afternoon. Nicholas’s shop smelled of the unfamiliar places where men worked-of metal, cheap spermaceti oil, spent embers. Utensds, his stock in trade, ranged along the opposite wad in lumpy disarray. She scanned the rest of the room, looking for Nicholas. He was nowhere to be seen. Worry knotted her stomach. She had thought him here. Hadn’t someone said he slept here at night? Retha, perhaps, or Nicholas himself?

Remembering the path that she had taken in her hasty exit, she stepped across the door, filings crunching under the soles of her shoes. An archway led to the small back room.

She went in. Nicholas’s large shape lay prostrate on the door. On a humble pallet, she surmised, deeply touched to think that he had come home to nothing more than this and yet had not complained. Had not even seemed to suffer in his pride.

She smiled to herself. Ah, Nicholas, who valued naught but kisses.

With wonder she knelt beside him, rocking back on her heels, and surveyed his form in the silvery light, her heart throbbing in her chest at such a rare and intimate sight. So new to her, a risk, a marvel. Unclad, he lay on his back, one brawny arm under his head, the other resting lightly on his tautly muscled stomach. From there down a woolen blanket covered him, tented over a leg drawn up casually as if he were about to turn. Even asleep his body seemed unable to contain its resless energy. But his massive torso was bare. Breathless but not shy, she studied the beauty, the sheer male power, of those bunched muscles, limned in silver light.

A dense thatch of tawny hair covered his chest. It barely rose and fell, he was so deep in sleep and so at peace with who he was—the discovered watches notwithstanding. He expelled a puff of breath, then inhaled silently, his chest scarcely expanding. She listened and she watched-in and out, the even rise and fall, perfect strength, perfect conscience, the perfect miracle of all that vitality at rest.

A great sense of loss swept over her. Long ago she had subdued a naturally loving nature and bound herself to her father and his work, never suspecting the cost.

She would waste no more of her life guarding reputation and discharging duty.

“Nicky,” she whispered, laying one hand on his stomach and placing the other along his cheek, the scratch of stubble astonishingly masculine. He flinched and moaned softly.

“Nicky.”

His lids lifted slowly, widened in surprise, and a beautiful smile of welcome spread across his face.

“Ach, Liebling,” he muttered, his voice thick with sleep. “You should not be here. I am in disgrace.”

He said so as a certainty. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I still believe in you,” she said.

She saw his struggle not to look too pleased. “But the watches are found.”

“Yes. How did Brother Huber do it?”

He propped up on an elbow. Fascinated, she studied the muscles of his abdomen and chest and shoulders as they bunched and flexed and eased—a much more sensuous sight than when he’d merely worked for her, shirted, vested, in public. He moved beneath the blanket, adjusting it without revealing himself below. She wasn’t sure how she would respond to the sight of him, but she was ready to find out.

He saw her looking and trying not to look, and gave a lopsided grin, but answered the question. “In a very great hurry, that’s for sure and certain.”

“That… that…” Foul epithets she scarcely knew came to mind for Huber. But she was not yet so abandoned to impropriety that she could use them.

Nicholas’s free hand wrapped around hers, entwining her slender fingers in his large thick ones. Then he pressed the back of her hand to the rasp of his beard, reflecting. “’Twas his villainy brought you to Salem. I cannot fault him for that,” he drawled, teasing.

“Be serious,” she chided.

“I am very serious.” But amusement broke through his low earnest voice, and his eyes, dark and colorless in the moonlight, watched her with warm affection. He carried her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles one by one, lips clinging moistiy and releasing them, then leaving them exposed. The cold air kissed them in his stead. She drew in a sharp breath of pleasure.

Then his gaze shuttered. “But I am condemned.”

“Not yet. Not formally,” she insisted. “We will find our way out.”

He was silent, and then his breathing and her breathing were the only sounds. She felt the beauty of the moment, intimacy she had missed, privacy she had sought, and a knife-sharp edge of yearning she could not quell. Desire flooded her body, tickling the back of her throat, banding her lungs, and coiling into her core. His presence had affected her so before, but never everywhere at once. Her very veins began to pulse with love. So she bent forward at the waist and found his mouth and kissed him from her heart. His generous lips and warm mouth were inviting, and Abbigail sipped at them like a hummingbird at her favorite blossom.

He tolerated her inquiry with what she recognized as restraint.

She leaned back, not satisfied. “Kiss me, Nicholas,” she entreated, “like before.”

“Jesu, Abbigail!” He sat up abruptly, and the blanket slipped away. She glimpsed his manhood, thick and dark with desire, jutting from its denser thatch of dusky hair. It frightened but also amazed her and intrigued her. Then he yanked the blanket back, crossing his legs beneath it and salvaging his privacy. His gaze raked her face. “You do not understand. We are all alone,” he explained tenderly. “There is naught to stop us.”

Her breath caught on the hope: Nothing would stop them now. “For a man who kisses all the girls, you are being maddeningly righteous.”

She fingered the ribbons of her Haube, the symbol of her virginity.

His eyes widened with alarm. “Abbigail, we cannot.”

“We can,” she said, not sure whether she ordered him or begged. In either case, she utterly trusted him not to break faith with her, not tease or mock or actuady tum her away. She rose up on her knees, braced her hands on his broad shoulders, and inclined her head to kiss his forehead, eyebrows, lids, claiming every special feature that had stirred her blood in darkness and haunted her in dreams. So much more precious here alone, in the flesh, under the silvery moon. She went on kissing more of him: high cheekbones, raspy, stubbled flat-planed cheeks, strong chin. Eagerly, she returned to the mobile lips that had initiated her into desire.

Kisses, kisses.

He groaned beneath her mouth and broke away.

“Damn it. I will not ruin you too,” he said harshly

Her blood was singing with the taste of him. “’Tis not min to love.”

He took her arms in his enormous grasp and held her away, attempting to sway her with his rare earnestness. “You are a Single Sister. One wrong step is your undoing.”

She disagreed. An utter certainty streaked through her. “Make me a Married Sister, then, tonight. Make me your bride.”

He gave his head a violent shake, as if to dispel dreams or summon reason. “No,” he said unconvincingly. “As things stand with the watches, I will be reprimanded at the very least. But if you turn up with child, they will disassociate us both.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “but I don’t care. To be expelled does not worry me, but the thought of our child is so … so …” She trailed off, too moved to speak.

“Abby!” he persisted, sounding desperate to uphold the virtue she wanted to abandon. “The Brethren are your life. You are good.”

Goodness-her life’s ambition up till now-sounded like a curse. Exile with him was preferable to another day alone.

“I already decided, Nicky. I choose you.”

She heard his breath hitch. “You’re sine?” he asked, his low tone rimmed with desire.

“Absolutely certain.”

“Danke Gott,” he said slowly, with conviction. “Danke Gott, Abbigail.”

In the silvered silence of the room, he raised up and let the woolen blanket fad away. He was naked, on his knees before her like a pledge, and when he pulled her to her knees before him, she was amazed: kneeling made them equal. He was not so large, nor she so small, as when they stood side by side and he towered over her, and that gave her new courage. Not quite enough to look beyond a stolen glance at his body, splendidly naked, magnificently male, revealed for her. For she was too aware that she was clothed and he was not, too self-conscious that she did not know where to place her hands or rest her gaze.

He tilted his head toward her and claimed a short sweet kiss. “Afraid?”

“No.” A shaky breath betrayed her. “Yes.”

Her answer must have pleased him. His gaze heated with fierce masculine appraisal. Then, never looking away, he took her idle hands in his, drawing first one and then the other to his mouth, kissing her palms with his lips, then licking them with his tongue. Sensation exploded in the centers of her hands like biting into tart fresh fruit, and her stomach dipped alarmingly.

“Ahh-Nicky,” came out of her mouth on a hissing breath.

“There will be more, but ‘twill be no worse than that,” he said softly.

But his dimple flashed with pleasure and his crooked smile teased. His kisses traveled up her arm but encountered sleeve. “Every thread of this must go.” He ran his fingers over sleeve and slip and skirt to show what he intended. “This first” He touched the ribbons under her chin that held on her Haube.

She nodded, worrying her lower lip but agreeing. Whatever else she wanted, most of it still unknown, she knew she wanted no more starched and woolen barricades between them.

“I am going to touch you,” he said more urgently. “Everywhere.”

Silent she gave him her permission, her facility with sharp retorts stilled by the marvel of his scrupulous attention. He released the Haube first then ran his fingers through her freed, abundant fall of hair, lifting it arranging it over her shoulders, over the bodice of her dress.

“So thick,” he said. “So dark, so beautiful.”

It was very strange to feel his blunt fingertips knead her scalp, his great strong hands gently comb her hair, strange to watch fascination play across his face as he unhurriedly arranged her hair to suit himself. When he had finished to his satisfaction, her scalp tingled. Everywhere her hair brushed her skin, it was as if he touched her still himself.

His fingers deftly sought the pins within the folds of her bodice and quickly bared her bosom. Her heavy breasts swung free. She gasped. Cold air, warm breath, hot hands-a welter of impressions assailed her. He stripped off her bodice, skirt, and shift, and tumbled them aside. He knew the ins and outs of women’s garments, she noted at the far back corner of her mind. And the ins and outs of a woman’s body shed of them. His hands wandered over her newly bared skin, savoring, testing, claiming her.

“I want every inch of you,” he told her, his voice grown taut but his touch steady as he cupped her breasts. He balanced them in his hands, weighing, even slightly crushing them as if to test for shape and density. She could not look, could only feel sparkles of sensation, on her skin and then within, then coming to a point. His fingers squeezed her nipples into tighter buds, pinched them into yearning, and the yearning spiraled into her core. Then he took one in his mouth and suckled gently.

“Nicky,” she gasped, her hips curling toward him, out of her control. “Nicky,” and then ad speech turned into sighs and moans.

“Perfect, perfect,” he murmured, taking the other breast and pulling it to the same hard peak, suckling her until a tremor shook her body.

While he stayed calm.

“Not fair!” she cried out. She was breaking into fragments ad around him while he watched, testing her, observing the indiscretions of her body. She had been alone all her life. Wherever he was taking her now, she didn’t want to go there by herseif.

He released her nipple, exposing its wetness to the chill. “What?” he muttered thickly.

“You are … you are …” Making me do this without you, she wanted to protest, but could not eke out the words.

“I am loving you, Liebling

“I am doing nothing,” she protested.

“You are making me burn. And it feels so good to please you.”

She was feeling braver, finding words. Her hands wanted a task. “I want to please you too. With my hands.”

“We can arrange for that,” he said formally. But for the first time, his voice was raw. She felt a thrill of power to affect him. Still, she did not know what to do.

He did not move to show her right away.

“How?” she asked, impatient with him, with her own innocence.

His half smile was tender, hot with readiness. “Like this, Liebling. ‘Tis simple.” He placed her hands flat against the landscape of his chest, inviting her caress.

“Oh!” she said, astonished at the mat of hair, crisp beneath her sensitized palms, at the bum of skin, at the rock-hard muscle underneath. His chest barely moved with breathing. Then he sucked in a breath. Her hands explored him, touching lightly, pressing harder, testing the texture, shape, and limits of his body as he had tested hers; she could feel him, strong and manly, could feel the drumming of his heart. “Oh, Nicholas,” she murmured, understanding his absorption when he touched her. Her fingers found his smaller nipples, budded and excited as hers were. She teased them with her fingertips as he had done. Gendy, then harder.

“Abby!” He flinched and ducked one shoulder back to escape her torture. Then it seemed he couldn’t speak at all. With a groan of surrender, he pulled her to him. The fullness of his embrace claimed her, breasts to chest, belly to belly, thighs to thighs, his swollen manhood nudging at the juncture of her legs. She wriggled close, then closer, feeling the landscape of his surfaces against her tender skin and her thin angles. Feeling all exposed.

Then he gave her his massive strength, contained to protect her, released to ravish her. And she was alone no more. He crushed her mouth with his, his teeth to her teeth, then his tongue demanded entry. She opened and received him, his insistence mirroring the sharpness of her yearning. He deepened the kiss, and his arms lifted her to him, his hands kneading her buttocks as he pressed her to his groin. The searing heat of his hard shaft throbbed against her belly, and she coiled into him wantonly, shocked by the force that drove her, moaning on the edge of her desire. He eased off abruptly, yet left not enough space to slip a feather in between them.

“Hold on, love. I want your legs around me,” he murmured as he sat back on his heels and easily lifted her onto his lap. Not sure what he wanted of her, she circled her legs around his powerful torso. Disconcerted, she discovered her very innocence splayed wantonly against his manhood. He shuddered.

“Nicky …?” she whispered.

“Shh, Liebling, trust me,” he said, his voice grating with effort

She felt his breath now falling upon her budded breasts. Too taut with arousal to pucker more, they shivered exquisitely. She was shivering all over, when she had never been so warm.

“Give me your body, Abbigail, your heart, your soul,” he whispered urgently. His head tilted up to claim her mouth, for perched so on his lap she was now just slightly taller. And he began again to kiss her with the earnestness that lay at the heart of all his charm. She surrendered to that earnestness, to his charm and strength and power, and kissed him back from the bottom of her heart. Then he slipped one hand free and found the pulsing nub protected by the thatch of thick dark hair between her legs. She almost bolted from the shock of his intimate touch, but he held her fast, whispering, urging, telling her what to do. He made deep sweet squeezing pinches with his fingers there, launching her up against his manhood.

And then she was sailing, soaring, flying into blinding light.

His powerful body absorbed the force of her convulsions as she shattered around him, bucking as the spasms rocked her, crying out her passion and amazement. She clung to him for the longest time, breathing in great gulps, his breath harsh and ragged, too.

“Ah, Abbigail,” he muttered finally. She thought that she could feel no more, but his moist breath at her ear set off a bright cascade of tingling down the side of her neck. She let out a whimper of pleasure.

“I never should have shown you how to kiss,” he said, his voice rich and full. She looked and saw his grin, a man’s joyful pride in conquest freely granted.

But she was embarrassed to the tips of her toes. She had made herself an utter wanton for him. She bravely tried to tease, managed a muffled laugh. “’Twas a tragic error on my part, Brother Blum.”

Nicholas sobered. He should not have teased her. He didn’t want her teasing back, losing the knot of their intensity, blunting the press of their passion. He was about to explode in his desire, but his mind was mush. If she changed courses now and said to stop, he would honor her, but it would kill him.

“I wanted you to have this first. Make sure you want me now,” he rasped, control fraying. “Once done, ‘tis done forever.”

She nestled into him, in apology, her body slippery and wet and willing still. “I want you, tonight, forever.”

He said a silent prayer of thanks and promised to uphold her trust as he arranged them, side by side, on his pathetic pallet in the back room of his shop. Hardly a bedchamber, or a bed, for a bridegroom to offer his bride for her deflowering.

And now what to do! For the first time in this night of unexpected delectations, he did not know what next. It pricked his conscience to recall the positions Mary Clark had taught him. But it pricked him worse to use them!

He did not know which one would work in this. It had gratified and pleased him to have learned enough of love to satisfy the woman who had won his heart. Not to be the bumbling Single Brother he had been in the spring.

Should he be grateful to poor Mary-or ashamed? The former, he thought, if what he’d learned from her brought Abbigail more pleasure. The latter, if Abbigad ever found out. She would pin his hide to the smokehouse wall and pde coals beneath his feet. No, Mary Clark’s name would never pass his lips.

Abbigad lay there, warm and slick and sweet, abandoned to his will. He recognized the languor of love in the lines of her body. Assiduously he set about to arouse her once again, knowing only that what came next would hurt her. And so he told her as he ran his fingers up and down her silken skin, from breast to belly to the tempting bush of hair that protected her innocence.

“I know that!” she said sharply.

Oh, do you now! he thought, amused by her bravado. “And just how does a proper Single Sister come by such forbidden knowledge?”

She was smiling; he could see her profile in the moonlight. Before she had been pretty. Now she was beautiful to him, smart and jaunty, boldly striking out on this new and unfamiliar path.

“Women talk, Brother Blum,” she said smugly. “Birthing hurts, and that hurts.”

He was back in control. “That what!?” he quizzed her.

“You know. You.”

Moonlight did not betray her blush. But he knew precisely how she turned the most exotic shade of coclico, a shade of red he had learned from the ribands in her store. He grinned with pure male pride. Abbigad had felt his manhood up against her innocence and had liked it, but could not bring herself to to say the words. Equally pleased by her courage and her modesty, he ached and throbbed and burned for need of her.

“Touch me.” His voice shook at the thought of those small hands taking him.

“Nicholas!”

“You can,” he assured her. And he clasped her hand, her slim, fine-boned, hot hand, and directed it to his erection. She was shaking. “Abby. Hold me.”

Slowly, tentatively, her soft fingers closed around his hardened shaft, and between his teeth he let out a hiss of pent-up passion.

She jerked back as if she’d touched fire. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Taking her hand in his, he gendy guided it to his shaft again. “It doesn’t hurt, exactly. Move your hand.” She hesitated. “Slide it. Like this. Up and down.”

She tried. His whole body strained with the effort of holding back. But beads of ready moisture spilled out, affording no release and wetting her small hands. She stopped caressing him. He was bursting, bursting. He started kissing her, quick kisses, deep kisses. Nothing was enough. He broke away.

“I have to, Abby,” he grated out the words. “Be in you. Have … to.”

He moved above her, showing her how to spread her legs to let him in. He took his shaft in his own hand and guided himself to her petaled center. She was still wet, the silky damp of passion, and the head of his shaft slipped in. So far and no farther. He tried to dip in deeper. The maiden barrier would not yield. He battered at it briefly, as innocent as she, her hot, silky tightness taking him to the edge. She moaned in sweet surrender-or in pain. Her flinching stopped him, scared him. He would not hurt her; she was so small, so precious. He waited, shuddering, throbbing painfully, not yet halfway inside her.

“Do it, Nicky,” she commanded. “Do it, now.”

Freed by her command, he drove through, gasping from the suddenness of rupture, the warmth of welcome. She contained him, enfolded him! Tiny as she was, all of him drove deep into her, lost, abandoned to her sweet heat. Finish now, instinct told him, and he did in quick short strokes, his seed so near the surface he exploded almost instantly, crying out, his new-claimed bride quivering around the orgasm that rocked him to his core.

His lungs burned, and every fiber of his being fired with aftershocks. He could die happily here above her on his elbows, his arms trembling, his life’s blood drained, his man’s seed spent for love. Or he could crush her, too depleted to suspend his exhausted bulk over her for long. He slipped a hand beneath her buttocks to hold her to him, rolling onto his side and then his back, spreading her slight weight across him. She complied, completely trusting, completely his. The fierce male pride of total possession jolted through him. But it was her inmost core cleaving to him that hardened him again.

“Don’t leave me, Nicky,” she whispered breathlessly.

“Never,” he said fervently. “Never.”

But her demand was more immediate. To his utter astonishment, her tight sheath began to clip and squeeze his new erection in the unmistakable rhythm of love. Awed, exhilarated, he put both hands around her slender hips, his fingertips ad but meeting, and lifted her up and down, her sheath clasping his erection. She moaned and arched her body, lowering her head and her dark fall of hair. It brushed his face, his throat, his chest, taunting him with siren’s song.

“There’s no rush. I wdl be here for you all night long, my love,” he said, something between a joyous laugh and a rapturous moan coming up from deep inside. In the silvered light he smiled at this miracle. His Abby had an awesome aptitude for love.

“Deeper,” “More,” and “Now,” were the only words she said, and she said them intently, in rhythm with the way her body stroked his shaft And he willingly obeyed his tiny tyrant, as he had done since the day they met, driving up as she ground down onto him, finding her fulfdlment and igniting his.

“Abby?”

She opened her eyes. She must have slept The moon was at the window’s height, and beneath her Nicholas’s body warmed her, heated every inch of her. She could smell his musky, manly scent and the sharp salty scent of the love that they had shared. Goodbye, goodbye, she thought, to tedious reputation and tiresome virginity. For the first time in her life, Abbigail Till was so perfectly happy, perfectly loved, that she could not move her hps to say a word.

“Abby?” He sounded worried.

“Hmm.” She managed just a mumble, to reassure him.

Gently he eased her onto the pallet and propped up on his elbow. A devilish grin spread across his face. “Aha! I now know how to silence your sharp tongue.”

But she had a new and better answer for him now. In the moonlight she reached up and threaded her fingers into his lion’s mane of mussed hair, drawing him down for more of his munificent kisses.

28

In the black of night, Abbigail woke slowly. The moon had set, she thought idly. How would she get home? She didn’t want to leave. She was stiff and sore inside and out, and wonderfully besotted. The musky scent of Nicholas was all around her, on her, a scent of earth and wool and man with the faintest hint of cloves and rum. She nuzzled her face into his crisp chest hair, swept by a tenderness she had never known. Soft, sweet tears of joy welled up. To touch him while he lay at rest, at peace, to know that he was sated with her, to have pleased him-Nicholas who pleased and charmed so many others…

To be his. For him to be hers, in this utter intimacy.

That was what love was. Not words.

The words he had not said. But he had given her all he could, ad a woman could ask, she told herself. The act, if not the words, of love. Or the words of utter commitment. She sat up cautiously, not wanting to arouse him. She grinned. She should not awaken him, but she very much wanted to arouse him, confident he would be ready and willing for her if she did.

But it was past time for her to go.

Neither of them needed for this night to become public knowledge. She shuddered to think of the furor that would erupt. Her father would have fits. With outstretched fingers and flat palms, she searched the floor for her clothes, shoes, and quilt. Finding them, she quickly dressed, then turned back and kissed him softly on his lips. He murmured and reached for her, never waking. She waited until his breath was deep and even, sleeping still, then stole out the back door into the dark silence of the alley.

Fingers of fog licked down it, and anxiety nipped her. How would she see to get back to the Blums? One building at a time, she supposed. She touched the wall of Nicholas’s tin shop and gathered up her nerve. It wasn’t as though she didn’t know the way after days of walking past it to visit her father.

She took a few bold steps.

An arm crushed across her breasts, and a scented hand clamped down on her mouth. She screamed beneath it and kicked back with her heels.

The man grunted, then said silkily in her ear, “Scream again, Sister Till, and we’d be caught and I’ll tell everyone who you have been with.”

She pulled his hand down.

“Brother Huber!” she gasped. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

“Saving you from yourself, dearest,” he said smoothly, his breath at her neck.

She flailed against him. “I am not your dearest, and I do not need saving!”

“Indeed?” he asked coolly, absorbing her punches as if they were the wingbeats of tiny birds. In a dash, he wrapped a soft, thick cloth-one of his own stocks-around her mouth and knotted it tight at the nape of her neck. “You must be saved. Now trust yourself to me.”

She couldn’t even scream.

He half dragged her behind the tin shop, then plunged down the back street of town. Beyond the alley it was not pitch black. But a heavy fog shrouded everything, concealing her from rescue and her captor from arrest. He swung her up in his arms, his oft-lamented, temperamental back miraculously healed. Even his disability had always been a lie, she realized with alarm. How much deeper did his deception run?

She struck out repeatedly, desperately, sdendy, but he only pinned her arms and held her to his chest, forcing her face into the fine wool of his coat. It was meticulously clean, scented with cedar, all of it much more of him than she wished to know. Choking on the sickening sweetness, she tinned her head away and struggled harder, fighting his arms and kicking his shins. He grunted, clutching her tighter with a cruel, crazy strength, dragging her down streets, past houses, past the graveyard.

On the outskirts of town his great ungainly roan stood tied to a leafless tree. The fool was abducting her! He set her down. She yanked down her gag, but it was too late to scream. “You will never get away with this,” she hissed.

“Remember, dearest,” Huber threatened sweetly. “With what I know of you and Blum last night, I can ruin him with his family and the town.”

He could, and so she yielded, biding her time and plotting furiously. She was more than a match for the fastidious, self-indulgent store clerk, she reassured herself. If she played it right, she could ruin him instead. If he were crazy enough to abduct her, wouldn’t that prove he stole the watches? With surprising strength, he placed her in the saddle and mounted behind her, and they headed north.

Nicholas woke and the moonlight was gone and Abbigad was gone. Gone home, he realized, to his parents’. Sensible of her to leave in the darkest hour before dawn, to take precautions against discovery. No need to pour more oil onto the conflagration of his current scandal. Still, she should have wakened him.

He curled around the empty space where her precise, lush little body had lain and rubbed his face in wonder. She had fit just so. He might have dreamt her, but for a sore and happy lassitude in his loins that assured him he had taken her more than once in their first night together.

No, he thought, he had not taken her. In the darkness of his shop, he laced his fingers behind his neck and grinned broadly for the benefit of no one but himself.

Abbigail had sought him out, freely giving herself to him, pledging herself to be his bride. In this world and the next. By the Lot or not. In this community or … wherever they might end up. She had suggested asking his father as an Elder to protect their status here. But Nicholas did not want to wait for his parents to approve. Instead, he wanted them to be married by a magistrate and return to town, come what may. The Elders couldn’t unmarry them. No one could part them now.

“No one will,” Abbigail had promised.

Her trust had sharpened his resolve to clear himself of theft and pay off his remaining debt, half settled already with his personal earnings from the summer’s trade. Abbigail had attacked the debt with the same brisk competence she showed running her father’s store. Days ago, on a walk with Retha, she had seen his swamp. Somewhere in the darkness between kisses, laughter, and embraces, talking of their future, she had suggested he build there.

“Build what?” he had murmured, idly threading his fingers through the weight of her dark hair.

“Something larger than this.” She had suggested-she had already thought of this for him, for them, he marveled-that it be drained to erect a paper mdl like the one at Bethlehem. Didn’t Salem need one too?

His hand had stopped. The idea appealed. “How large?”

“Large enough to occupy your talents and energy. Three stories, a dozen men. A modest ouday, to keep you out of trouble,” she had added saucily.

“What oulay? I’ll have no more debt!” he had protested.

“Do you suppose, Brother Blum, that a shopkeeper’s smart daughter balanced books for all those years and failed to set aside a little nest egg?” she had asked, ad her brisk self-confidence snuggled up to him.

“I could not ask you for money.” The thought had mortified him.

She had silenced his lips with her fingertips. “Nicky, you would not have to ask your wife.”

Alone now, he lay back on his pallet, his manhood lifting as he recalled their joyous joinings. What a surprise his little wren had been, what a marvel of passion and invention. What a match for that questing, reckless side of him that no one in the world had ever understood.

He should sleep. He should be exhausted. He should be wallowing in despair over the blasted watches. Instead he felt inspired, renewed, eager for daylight, for morning prayers, for meeting friends, for industry. Last night had been the most important of his Ufe. Too bad he could not shout his love to the world or share it with his family. Not yet.

He waited in his room, listening to the old familiar sounds of the town waking as he planned his precarious future with Abbigail. Just at dawn the last conch of the night had blown, its haunting blast as comforting as sunrise. Some women had lit their ovens hours earlier, and the scent of baking breads wafted through the streets and permeated his little shop. He was ravenous! A wagon trundled down the street, some travelers northbound from the Tavern. After a while townsmen murmuring softly passed on their way to early worship.

Nicholas rose, sponged hastily, and dressed, anxious to see Abbigail, to make sure she was wed. To make sure, he realized, suddenly edgy and uncertain, that she was truly his. He regretted he had not fully wakened when she left. He would see her at morning worship, he told himself. Besides, he had never been such a reprobate as to forget prayers of gratitude. Shrugging into his better coat, he headed for morning prayers, determined to be impervious to glances, hints, and whispers.

He stepped outside into a fog-cloaked morning, cool and quiet and mystical. He peered into the wall of white, barely able to distinguish the main street’s older half-timbered houses from the newer ones made wholly of brick. Through the mist, the forms of Brothers and Sisters clarified eerily like lumps of butter in thick cream.

But not a sign of the one Sister he had come to see.

Retha and the twins materialized, ambling up the shrouded street. His heart squeezed, disappointed by Abbigail’s absence. Since coming to town, she had been as reliable as a clock about services. Then he remembered her sinking swiftly into sleep after they made love. Of course, he thought, excusing her delinquency with a rush of masculine pride. He was not the only one exhausted from their night of passion.

The woman he pledged to marry was sleeping late.

Inside Gemeinhaus, his father and Matthias soberly flanked him, claiming a back bench in the Saal. Brother Till walked in alone and looked right through him.

So be it! Nicholas thought, with a twinge of regret that Abbigad’s father-soon to be his father-in-law-was so severe and unforgiving. Till may have wrongly accused him of stealing watches. But soon Nicholas would rob the man for real, stealing something he held far more dear.

Other Brethren drifted in, some acknowledging him with their eyes, others already in an attitude of prayer. No overt censure or blame. It didn’t matter. It was torture to sit here delirious with joy from his stolen night with Abbigail. He wanted to shout about his newfound, new-claimed love.

Instead, he bowed his head and blessed his sleeping bride.

By midmorning the fog lifted, and Abbigail was furious, hungry, and sore. And, she admitted at last, more than a little scared. The wagon road to Bethlehem stretched before her and her abductor, the bright sunlight marking every rut and glinting off every puddle. A miserable road, but public. Surely help would come along. Surely Nicholas would come.

Huber’s horse balked again. His twitchy and id-tempered mount cultivated a growing terror of the glistening puddles, perhaps in protest over its double load. An inept horseman, Huber had long since ruined the cantankerous roan. Now he sawed the reins at the poor thing’s mouth to make it move.

“You’ll not force me into marriage this way either!” she harangued Huber, seizing the moment of his distraction to launch another verbal assault.

“’Tis neither the time nor place to discuss our marriage, dearest Sister.” His tone was doggedly civil.

Less civil than before, she noted, with growing worry. So far, he had been maddeningly considerate, as if courting her. She had been simply maddening, harassing and harrying him any way she could. Perched precariously in front of him, she clung to the saddle for safety. He kept one arm around her waist and pressed his belly to her back, revolting her ad the more after a night spent in her lover’s arms.

Huber must have chosen to go by horse instead of wagon to humiliate her. He wanted to hold her like this. He had given up on wooing her, but he meant to marry her no matter what. Nausea bubbled in her throat. Not even if he ravished her would she take his hand when she belonged to Nicholas.

Which left her more vulnerable than ever.

For she knew now in her heart and in her tender inner flesh what she had only sensed about the holy state of matrimony.

What was bliss with Nicholas, with Huber would destroy her.

Huber flapped the reins, scolding and clucking at the balking roan. Finally, it picked a detour around the puddle and resumed its rolling amble. Thank the Savior for small favors, Abbigail thought. Her poor exhausted body could not have borne an all-out trot. How degrading to be sitting here, her aching legs splayed around some beast at the insistence of a man she loathed. In a nauseating parody of last night’s …

Oh, Nicholas! The thought, the taste, the feel of him. Her heart clutched. What would he do if he caught up to them? If he found her in Huber’s clutches, she could not prevent murder.

“There is no marriage to discuss,” she told Huber, once the horse moved on.

“I beg to differ,” he said in an unnervingly conciliating tone. “Nothing-neither fire nor brimstone-would have driven me to this extreme, but the sight of you emerging ad alone from Brother Blum’s shop at half past four in the morning.”

“Abductors of Single Sisters are subject to disassociation, too,” she countered.

“An abductor would be, dearest, but I am rescuing you.”

“Rescuing me?”

“From fading into the pit of Brother Blum’s attractions.”

Too late for that, she thought. She had faden, she had soared.

She forced a change of subject. “Why were you linking there?”

“I was watching your precious Brother Blum, if you must know. There are three watches unaccounted for.”

“No doubt the Board of Elders solicited your aid,” she bit off. As the long day wore on, his effort to maintain the guise of tender admirer exasperated her. But she was grateful for it. He had not yet ravished her. His sham respect might yet preserve her.

“No, they did not, and that is why I acted. I sought to prevent his escape and uncover more stolen goods.”

“Bah! Nicholas is no thief. No one knows that more than you.”

Ignoring her insinuation, he tried placating her again. “’Twas ad for you, dear Sister.”

“’Twas all for yourself,” she snapped, sick of his piety. “Make no mistake about iL I am not, nor ever will be, your dear anything.”

“My dearest Sister Till, you have no choice. Utterly ruined as you are in the eyes of God and all mankind, none but I will have you now.”

“Nicholas would never abandon-”

“Blum can go to the devil,” Huber snarled, ill will overcoming his unctuous civility for the first time since they had left Salem. The malice in his voice, she feared, was but a shadow of what lay ahead. The tall pines that lined the road slid by, and she plotted. She could not hope to overpower him. But she had always had a sharper tongue, the stronger mind. She would trick her way to freedom, swapping Scripture for pieties.

“’Thou shalt not envy,’ dearest Brother,” she exhorted sweetly, changing tactics. “The handsome Brother Blum is much admired by ad the Sisters. But surely ‘tis a sin in you to envy him.”

His body stiffened in anger, driving the roan into a nervous jig. A painful gait, but she would bear it if it upset her captor. Down a hid and up another as the terrain grew more mountainous, the roan calmed and slowed, blowing hard. The way was becoming harder, harder on them ad.

Huber spoke at last, his voice unnaturally gentle. “Your father will never permit your marriage to Blum, dear Sister, despite your sinful hope. The Lot decreed our union. Brother Till wants it for you, and I want it for us. A virtuous woman could not ask for more. Tis a sign and a blessing. Moreover, after what you did last night, redemption.”

“Just what do you suppose I did?” she asked sharply.

“I heard what you did.”

“You … listened?” Perverted wretch! Her heart thudded with humiliation.

“But do not fear,” he added smoothly. “I will still take you.”

“Never!” she burst out, stunned by his pious depravity. Impulsively, she grabbed the saddle’s pommel and drove a heel into the roan’s right dank. It sidled left; the bulky Brother swayed precariously right.

Swearing by ad the saints and the blood of the Precious Lamb, he righted himself clumsily, then salvaged his control. “One more stunt like that, dearest Sister Till, and you will walk,” he said ominously but evenly. As if it pleased him to upbraid her. “Now I commend your precious self to silence.”

“I won’t walk, and I won’t stop talking.”

But she would worry. His taut control and surprising strength betrayed a deeper lunacy than she ever had imagined.

Vespers. He would see Abbigail at vespers. Patience thinning, Nicholas returned to his shop after a midday meal and took up a piece of tin to make another lantern. Every fiat of tin he fired and bent and hammered into shape was a promise of their future.

Today she was safe in the protection of his parents’ home, resting, he told himself, with a new, acute pride in their love. He had not called on her there ad week, and she could not want to risk their meeting now. One look would betray all. And so, obedient to her desire and careful of her reputation, he waited for vespers.

But it was damned hard.

In the middle of the afternoon the bell above his door jangled. He finished squaring off an edge of tin to make a comer and looked up to see his father. Nicholas braced for the worst: The Elders would meet tomorrow, the Elders needed a month.

“Ah … Nicholas,” his father began, turning his tri-com in his hands. “We are looking for Sister Till.”

“We who?” Nicholas forced himself to ask calmly.

“Retha and I. Her father, Sister Rothrock. No one has seen her since last night.”

Alarm threaded through Nicholas. “She was not at morning prayers.”

“Retha noticed that. But when Sister Till missed our midday meal, we thought her with her father, who thought her with Sister Rothrock. I’ve sent Matthias to inquire of Christian Huber.”

“She would not go to him,” Nicholas stated positively.

“No. Unless she felt compelled to by your father’s case against you.”

“Not even then.”

“Then …” His father cleared his throat. “Perhaps she came to … you?”

Nicholas drew in a breath and let it out. His father already knew he cared for Abbigail, but Nicholas had married her last night, body, heart, and soul. He was proud of that. He faced the fire, again. “Yes.”

His father’s low-pitched “ah” of dawning understanding whispered around the shop. “You walked her home?” he asked, his tone even and unjudging.

Nicholas fought a rising tide of terror and self-blame. “Would to God I had. When I woke up she was gone. Home, I thought, to you”

His father clasped his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nicky. Nothing ever happens in Salem. Women, even children, are safe as safe can be.”

“No one steals expensive watches either and plants them in his sisters’ dolls,” Nicholas said grimly.

“Huber?”

Nicholas headed for the door. “We should put out a general alarm.”

“No!” His father stopped him. “Not a general one. She is Brother Till’s daughter, and he, as you know, favors Huber’s suit. At least let us consult her father. He is distraught.”

Nicholas followed his father home, to the parlor. Till was waiting in the best chair, his feet swathed in heated flannels, rocking anxiously. Sister Rothrock attended him while Catharina sat at Retha’s side, holding her hands. Matthias came in shortly, fresh from his inquiries, and went straight to Georg Till.

“Brother Huber has not been seen today, and the livery found his horse gone.”

Till scowled. “Are you accusing him of abducting my daughter?”

Jacob Blum joined them. “Possibly, Georg,” he said gravely. “Probably.”

Till half rose in distress. The flannels sagged around his legs. “No, I cannot believe it. He wants to marry her.”

Sister Rothrock pressed him back, rewrapped the flannels, and scolded. “But she does not want to marry him. Abducting her was his last desperate measure.”

Nicholas walked over to Georg Till, half expecting a rebuke. “You must believe it, sir. Her safety is at stake.”

Till glowered at him. “You! It all started with you!”

Nicholas knelt until he was eye-level with the man. “Sir, I am in love with your daughter. And she with me. She and I are certain Brother Huber stole the watches and planted them in my sister’s dolls. His desire to marry her is nothing but a plan to take over the store. I pray you believe me in her time of need.”

Till set his face. Sister Rothrock bent over and said with soft vehemence, “Don’t be an old fool, Georg. I will stand by you in anything but this.”

The old man’s face crumpled. “Benigna, how was I to know?”

“Because we told you. We all told you.”

Nicholas pressed in. “Sir. With your permission, we need to put out a general alarm and launch a search. Now, sir.”

Till looked at him through damp, invalid’s eyes. “Go then, Brother Blum, and bring my daughter home.”

29

“You could have procured a horse for me and a ladies’ saddle as befits a proper Sister,” Abbigail complained, goading her abductor.

She needed him to stop. She was sick to death of his pieties, false pleasantries, and demented purpose. She was queasy from pain and fatigue. The afternoon had worn down, and she despaired of Nicholas catching up. Despite protests for her comfort and well-being, Christian Huber did not care a whit for how she felt. The ride had not hurt him. For all his malingering at the store, regular trade had kept the dapper Single Brother fit. Walking to worship was her only exercise. She had not ridden a dozen times in her life.

The shadows of the towering pines lengthened across the wagon road, then disappeared as the sun dropped behind the ridge of mountains to the west. It was nearly dark. Surely Huber did not think that either she or this jughead of a horse could carry on all night! Especially her. Her heart ached, yearned for Nicholas. To think that she had been forced to go from his warm and tender arms to the indignity of Huber’s perfumed clutches. And to endure, sore and tender as she was, a torturous day on a horse.

“Let us not quarrel, dearest Sister. You are safer, warmer, near me.” He let go of the reins to pat her hand.

She fisted it against him. “Not safe at ad, I warrant. Nor warm without my Haube.”

Hours ago, immune to her protest, he had insisted she remove her cap. As d nothing else would give them away-his drab clothes and flat hat, her equally plain dress, and their heavily accented English. It was small comfort to recognize that he feared pursuers, but worse to realize they were making good time.

Reluctantly, she had removed her Haube and, to her dismay, lost her dignity and identity. Her abundant thick, dark hair was exposed to men who were not her husband. She grew cold quickly, too, but dared not ted Huber lest he embrace her. Trying to numb herself to his touch and his insinuations, she drew Nicholas’s old quilt around her.

The day dragged on, and Huber assailed her with pompous pieties about loyal Ruth from the Old Testament and devoted Martha from the New. Hypocrite! But she held her tongue. Afternoon slid into dusk, and he slyly slid in verses from The Song of Songs with embarrassing detail about the lover and his “beloved”-detads she now understood. Chills crept down her neck. Exhausted as she was, she feared the man’s intentions. If he acted on them, she was too weak to repel him.

Where was Nicholas? He had to come. She beieved with all her heart in his strength and his devotion. But would he be in time? What if the entire Blum household had overlooked her absence? Ad week, she had come and gone, no questions asked. Now she was at the end of her tether. Huber had passed three taverns, stopping once sometime after noon. He had dashed inside and procured stale bread, moldy farmers’ cheese, flat ale. A meager meal.

Finally the brilliant sky muted into evening streaks of gray and rose, and they came upon a two-story log tavern with a lean-to for a livery. Instantly she saw it was Mary Clark’s poor tavern. And perhaps-dare she hope?-refuge, even rescue. But under duress, the brazen tavern wench might prove a chancy ally, might even side with her crude customers.

Huber reined in the horse and asked a rickety old groom about accommodations.

“They’s room for anyone with money. A stall for the horse, and”-the old man winked-“a private room for man and wife.”

Wife! She almost exploded. But she would hold her tongue-for now. As Huber’s supposed wife, she had a slim protection from other men. If taken for his companion, they would think her a strumpet. What if she escaped Huber only to be ravaged by some drunken, grizzled woodsman?

Huber took out a bulging purse and paid for the horse. Throwing a leg over die roan’s neck, Huber dismounted, then reached to lift her off.

She spurned his aid and shinnied down. Her booted feet touched solid ground, and her legs crumpled. In the middle of the filthy stableyard, she sat with a graceless “oof,” the roan, the rickety old groom, and Huber towering over her. Tears of pain and aggravation trickled down her cheeks. She fought to stand but could not rise.

“Dearest, I am so sorry,” Huber said loudly, for the old man to hear, leaning in and pulling her to her feet. “I feared ‘twould be too much for you.”

She could have spit with anger but was too tired and hurt for that.

With a display of great concern, Huber helped her up two rough-cut stone steps into the tavern. Downstairs three small round tables were laid with greasy cloths. A middling fire crackled in a badly laid stone hearth. Every inch the strumpet in her low-cut dress, Mary Clark whisked in and out of a booth, serving ale and liquor to rough backcountry men. Large and lean and dirty, they lifted tankards, gamed, and talked of harvest.

Until they noticed Abbigail. They stopped and leered like vultures lurking. Mary Clark appraised her briefly. Abbigail cringed, once more conscious of her hapless state. How protected she had always been. How defenseless now without her Haube, her father, and Nicholas. She almost took a lesson from Huber’s rebellious horse and balked. But she dared not protest his hand at her waist guiding her across the room. Not until she knew the lay of the land.

Two trappers in stained buckskins swapping hides asked Mary Clark for more cider. She served them, skirts swishing and cleavage showing, and garnered a hearty swat on her backside for her trouble. Laughing, she strutted away.

For a coin, Mistress Clark belonged to any man. Even perhaps to Nicholas, as she had hinted when they passed this way before. What a coil Abbigail was in. Lost in the clutches of a petty thief, and her best hope for rescue was … Oh, surely not, she tried to persuade herself. Yes, Nicholas had probably kissed Mary Clark. He had kissed many women. But, Abbigail reasoned, with a ripple of relief, he had not done that.

Christian Huber supported her crippled steps to a table near the fire, and she stumbled forward.

“Come, dearest,” he said, a perfect gendeman. “Let me take your wrap.” He reached for the quilt from Nicholas’s room. Noticing her in it, one of the trappers ogled her. A hot blush seared her face. She must look as brazen as Mary Clark, come straight from an illicit bed! Abbigail blushed hotter. She had come from an idicit bed. Folding the quilt in quick, awkward movements, she clutched it to her breasts like armor.

“Perhaps, dearest,” Huber hovered, intimidating her even as he acted the love-smitten groom, “Mistress Clark has a woolen shawl, or a muff to warm your hands.”

Abbigail wanted neither. And nothing of Mistress Clark but an ally in escape. The woman promptly supplied a triangle of thick, if mothy, wool, catching her gaze as if to say… she remembered her? Suspected something wrong? Or expected money? Abbigail could not tell.

Lacking coin, she swallowed all her pride and tendered thanks instead.

Huber held a chair and seated her, and she draped the quilt over her knees for warmth.

The woman brought wine and ale.

“Dinner, Mistress Clark, and afterward a private room,” Huber ordered.

A private room! How to escape his expectations-his demands? He took a mug of ale and offered her one. She asked for cider. In her exhausted state, inebriates would go straight to her head. Every passing minute showed how much she needed all her wits about her.

“There is but one private accommodation,” said Mistress Clark.

“One will do,” Huber said, his attention on the food.

“That’ll be one pound, and three shillings extra for the second person.”

Huber the shopkeeper haggled. “Three shillings extra for my bride? Have pity, mistress. We are newly man and wife.”

Mary Clark grinned at him through a near-full set of bright white teeth. “Congratulations, sir. ‘Twill be one pound three, or naught. In advance. The public room costs eight shillings for each party.”

While Huber counted out coin from his plump purse, Abbigail studied Mary Clark, feeling ever more confused. Up close, she was pretty, though no longer young and not quite clean. Abbigail bit her tongue to check her runaway imaginings. She must not think about Nicholas with her. She could not change the past. She wasn’t sure she could affect the future.

She huddled under her quilt. She was at Huber’s mercy. Should she escape, a roomful of men with vultures’ eyes awaited her. Huber, Mary Clark, Nicholas-she could count on no one. She had to free herself.

Mistress Clark brought mounds of dinner, piling the table with potherbs, dainty quail, hearty wild turkey roasted on a spit and stuffed with forcemeat, and an autumn cabbage salad with oil and vinegar. Abbigail picked at her food, too fatigued to lift the fork from her plate to her mouth.

Huber shoveled in big bites of food and nudged her plate nearer to her. “You should eat, dear wife,” he said, eyeing her with appetite, now that they were face to face. Eyeing her with lust.

“I do not feel quite … well,” she said, horrified to see his loathsome urges undisguised-and horrified so many men were watching. “The jolting of the horse …”

“You were lively enough in Brother Blum’s shop,” he said, and pushed more dressing toward her. “The greens are good.”

She shrugged and dressed the cabbage and took a bite. Bitter vinegar spiked into her throat, and she strangled. Tears started, her throat burned, and she gasped for breath.

Huber blustered up from the table, frantic with concern. “Water, Mistress Clark! She’s choking. Bread and water, now!”

Mary Clark did not come instantly. Abbigail coughed on, miming strangling long after her throat cleared.

“Mistress Clark!” he cried out desperately, unmanned, utterly unable to cope with a woman in dire straits. Could she feign dlness to escape? Mistress Clark arrived and pounded Abbigad’s back. Slowly Abbigad pretended to regain control.

“I am all-right, I will-be fine,” she stammered, coughing weakly

“Precious!” Huber said breathlessly, patting her back clumsily.

The men in buckskins laughed. What a milksop Huber was, and how easily deceived. She lifted her chin with new hope and a plan. Such a vain, selfish man might not trouble with an ailing woman, let alone bed her. The Brethren did not forbid acting, but they never practiced it. Abbigail steeled herself for the first and last-and most compelling-performance of her life.

With apologies for causing such a fuss, she took dabs of turkey, spicy forcemeat stuffing, and seasoned potherbs on her plate, then picked at them with distaste.

He reached over and patted her hand, his own gone cold and clammy. “Eat, dearest Abbigail. You will need all your strength tonight.”

Queasy at the thought of his intentions, she toyed with her food, taking a lesson from her father. “What I need is porridge,” she said weakly, worrying. Mary Clark had not yet taken sides, while every bite Huber took brought them closer to bed.

Huber tackled a second plate with relish. Abbigail dully pushed her food around. In the stark light of smelly tallow candles, he looked beakish, predatory in a way she had not fully understood till now. She had seen that look in him before, at home, in softer candlelight. Over the years, she had ignored her premonitions. He had been too courteous, too pious. Too attached to personal indulgences-his snuff and pomade and perfume-to truly be a Brother.

Her stomach lurched from exhaustion, and her gorge rose. It would not be hard to feign real illness. She covered her mouth and mimed extreme distress. “Brother Huber, I feel… unwell.” Gagging, she stood and fled the room, racing for the privy. When she found it, she dashed inside and barred the door.

In the dark stench of the two-hole outhouse, she choked and cleared her throat and gasped and groaned. Brother Huber soon rapped on the door.

“Dearest, dearest, do you need help? I can send in Mistress Clark,” he said, profound distaste in his tone.

“Send her …” Abbigail wheezed weakly. She leaned against the wall, contriving to sound still more pathetic. “And towels …”

Shortly, the door was tried. “’Tis locked, dearest.” His voice wobbled with relief.

“Unbar the door, madam,” Mary Clark said genily. “I have ye a basin of warm water and hot cloths.”

Abbigail let her in and glimpsed Huber fleeing to the tavern. She barred the door against him anyway

She tilted her head, taking in their cramped, down, ottered a steaming towel, and held a lantern to her face.

Did she recognize her or did she not?

“So very sorry, madam,” she said as to a stranger. “Was it my food? No one else-”

Abbigail shushed her and clung to her charade. “’Twas not your food. ‘Twas my exhaustion. I fear I am overset.”

Mary Clark clucked her tongue sympathetically. “You are perhaps … with chdd?”

Abbigail shuddered at the awful thought. “Not by him!” she blurted.

“Ah,” said the woman, with a knowing smile. “A jealous swain has spirited you away. But I suspect another left behind.”

“No-I mean, yes, I mean-oh, Mistress Clark, this is so dreadful! I pray you will believe me!”

She tilted her head, taking in their cramped, indecorous surroundings. “’Tis an odd spot for a confession.”

Abbigail wrapped her arms around herself, shivering with dismay. She had left her quilt behind, the privy was cold, and she was at her wits’ end. It was time to ted the truth. “I am a Single Sister of the Brethren, just come up from Salem.”

The woman met honesty with honesty. “I thought you came from Bethlehem with your father and that kind Widow.”

Her tone was kind. Hope fluttered up. “You do remember,” Abbigad said, expelling a pent-up breath. “You did not seem to.”

“I was waiting to understand your situation. You and the good Brother are not my usual pair of runaways.”

“He is a lecherous, thieving villain,” Abbigail burst out.

Nodding in agreement, Mary Clark took her towel and handed her a fresh one “And you are so obviously modest, innocent, and in distress.”

Abbigail brushed off her assessment. Last night she had been anything but modest and innocent. “Not I …”

“I know purity when I see it. May I call you Sister?” she asked gently.

“My name is Abbigail Till. Brother Huber abducted me last night, thinking to force me into marriage. I despise him. I know I shouldn’t, and I try in Christian charity to care for him. But never, ever will I be his bride.”

Mary Clark crossed her arms over her generous bosom. “Because there is another.”

“No, I-well, yes, there is another.”

Mary Clark smiled broadly under the lantern’s low light. “On his way to rescue you, no doubt”

All the terrors and fatigue of Abbigail’s day caught up with her, and she fought hot, stinging tears of wretchedness and want. Dare she tell Mary Clark who she hoped was coming? How had she dived from last night’s pinnacle of bliss with Nicholas, to this? Jammed into a miserable privy with a woman who bedded men for coins, her abductor lurking outside, expecting to ravish her tonight. Whde the man to whom she had given herself, body, heart, and soul might-or might not-come in time to save her.

Last night in the silvery light of Nicholas’s shop, they had matched hands, and she had felt his pulse beat in time with hers. They had gone perfectly still. Marveling, mingling blood and life, harmony and trust. She bit her lip and looked into her liberator’s eyes. No. She couldn’t tell her who he was.

“I pray so. I believe so. But I cannot think that he will find me here. And if he does not…” Her voice broke. “Brother Huber plans to bed me this very evening in your private room. And so I am”-a tear spilled over-“here, and obviously unwell.”

Mary Clark dumped the contents of the basin down the hole, gathered up the now cold towels, and slipped an arm through Abbigail’s. “I have just the answer. If you would get the door, Sister Abbigail, perhaps you could help me take a sick guest to her private room.”

“Mistress Clark, how-”

“Not a word. For all they know, ‘twas my food that brought on your distress. Therefore, ‘tis my bounden duty to nurse you through the night.”

Appreciation bubbled up through all of Abbigail’s troubles. “Mistress Clark, how kind you are.”

“Think nothing of iL I had rather share your bed and get a good night’s sleep than share anything with those louts in the common room for a mere coin.”

With a savage curse, Nicholas mounted his great draft horse and thundered up the wagon road under the setting moon. Nothing, again. As it had been ad night. No strapping, id-tempered roans. No hulking, dapper Single Brother.

No tiny, vulnerable Single Sister, a captive, doubting he would come.

Matthias rode beside him in sdence. No general alarm was called, a compromise between Nicholas’s impulse to warn the world and his father’s more considered approach. Eight men held formed the search, each pair taking a main road out of Salem, one to Cross Creek, one to Salisbury, his father and Samuel Emst west to ford the Atkin. And Nicholas with Matthias, north on the wagon road, the most likely route. Everyone insisted on pitting the two fittest men against the abductor. It was damned awkward, Nicholas thought. At the start, he dreaded his brother’s disapproving eye but now was grateful for his silent, steadfast support.

They spurred their horses on, certain Huber was ahead. By day’s end, no clear tracks confirmed it. Nicholas did not lose heart, reasoning that Huber’s petty mind would not be subde or adventuresome. He would stick to the routes he knew.

Nicholas’s hands fisted around the reins, poor substitutes for Abbigail’s sweet person, but his only way to reach her. Why had he been so complacent in the morning? Abbigad never missed prayers. Vanity, he berated himself, stupid male vanity that his loving had exhausted her in the night. Despair curdled in his stomach, ran rancid through his veins. Instead, she could be humiliated, hurt. Or violated, after a night with Huber.

Up till midnight, he had wakened every innkeeper on the way, checking for Abbigail and Huber. No one had seen anything. The last man he roused had cocked a musket at him. Nicholas had stood down. He was no good to her dead. Now, in the ghostly hour before dawn, he and Matthias were reduced to sneaking into barns and liveries and holding up his lantern to look for Huber’s horse.

And saw nothing, anywhere.

Slowing his mount to a steady trot, Nicholas rewrapped a muffler around his neck against the chill of night. Matthias had soldiered on, but Nicholas was tiring rapidly. He had hardly slept in days. Abbigail must be beyond exhaustion. The image of her precise, pretty features turned to him in trust had driven him up hills and down, through streams, past farms sleeping under a glaring moon.

Driven him, and haunted him.

The moon set, plunging the men into blackest night. Matthias lit a lantern and held it up to pierce a path into the darkness. Nicholas walked his horse, too tired to push it harder but too troubled to rest At last the eastern sky lightened faintly, and he made out what looked to be another tavern. A poor log budding. Signaling his brother to stay back, he crept closer through the gloom. Two stories, but no barn. A rickety lean-to for a livery. The White Horse Inn. Hope, doused at every other tavern on the way, trickled up through Nicholas’s fatigue. Huber could have gotten Abbigail this far by suppertime, and stayed the night.

All night. Nicholas would beat him to a pulp. From the lean-to, he heard voices, early morning travelers readying to leave. Or perhaps to dee?

“Take the horses, Matty,” he said in a low voice, “and see who’s in the Tavern.” Nicholas dismounted and handed him his horse’s reins. Matthias killed the wick on his lantern and rode ahead, tying the horses to the tavern’s hitching rail and disappearing inside.

Nicholas crept back closer to the lean-to. It had no door. Through the opening, he saw the rear end of a huge roan horse. A skinny old man bent over its off fore hoof.

“Lame horse ain’t worth a tinker’s dam to me,” he was saying in thin, nasal tones.

“I brought that horse sound, I’d swear it. I only stopped to rest him. I don’t want to trade him out” Mounting anger edged the man’s voice.

A voice Nicholas knew too wed.

Raw hatred surged through his veins, and a quick savage desire to kill. He clamped down on it forcing caution. For Abbigail’s safety, he had to know where she was before he acted. Later he would murder Huber.

“Some lameness turns up overnight” the old groom said. “Yore horse had been rid hard.”

A fist shot out the horse shied, and the old man hit the dirt, Huber hovering over him. “You lamed him yourself, you bug-eyed little runt.”

“No sir, no sir,” the old man cried in a high frightened voice. “Ain’t never lamed nothing in my life. Ain’t got a horse to trade you neither. Not that your missus is in any shape to travel.”

Abbigail! Nicholas almost yelled.

Ditching caution, he plunged into the lean-to and drove both fists into Christian Huber’s gut, lifting him off the ground. The roan reared up, kicked out, and bolted. The old man scrambled to a stall. Nicholas grabbed Huber’s lapels and pushed him against a precarious post that propped the lean-to up. The flimsy structure shuddered, and dust and chaff rained down from the low rafters.

Nicholas tightened his hold on Huber’s coat. “Abbigail, you bastard! You tell me where she is.”

Huber’s mouth stretched into a provoking smile. “Sister Till is upstairs in my room. Almost recovered from last night.”

With a savage roar, Nicholas slammed his body into Huber’s, plowing him backward into the lean-to wall. It creaked, buckled, and collapsed, wood cracking and splintering ad around them. Nicholas staggered and fell through it with Huber into the dull dawn fight. Arms locked, legs struggling for purchase, they rolled man over man, brutal, heavy, big men, breaking boards, crushing weeds, and breathing dirt.

Half blinded by dust and muck, Nicholas got on top and stumbled to his feet, wiping his eyes to see. Too late. With a vulgar oath, Huber swung a thick flat board. Instinctively, Nicholas flung up his arm. The board cracked against it and struck Nicholas in the face. He staggered, caught his balance, shook his head to clear it.

But his vision blurred, and there were two of Huber, taunting, “Too late, Blum. She’s mine now. Last night we-”

Nicholas punched wildly, aiming for both Hubers with his right fist, then his left slamming into flesh and skull. Huber yowled in pain and anger, and tore at Nicholas’s eyes, fingernails raking the flesh of his face.

Nicholas butted him with his head. Huber slumped and fell, landing on his back. Straddling the man with his full weight, Nicholas pummeled his face and jaw. Right fist, left fist. Right, left, for Abbigail. Mayhem. Murder. Bone crunched, blood spurted. For Abbigail, for Abbigail.

Hands pulled at him. “Mister, mister.” He swung backward at the old man once, heard him grunt, and returned to battering Huber’s body, wild, rabid, furious.

“Mister! Stop!” the man went on. “She don’t want no murder here. You done gone and knocked him out. Clean out.”

The hands again, like little cats’ claws on his shoulders, nothing he couldn’t handle. He struck out; they clung to his arm.

Suddenly the hands were bigger, stronger than an old man had a right to be. They arrested him. “Nicky, stop! For God’s sake, stop,” Matthias shouted. “She’s here, I found her.”

“Where?” Nicholas rose up to his knees, roaring. Murder, later. He had blood on his face, his hands. “Where in heaven’s name is she, man?”

Matthias stayed calm. “Inside, somewhere, they wouldn’t let me in.”

“Safe?” He was shaking, panting, fuming. “Is she safe?”

“Alive, Nicky,” Matthias said softly. “That’s all I know.”

He grabbed the old man by his collar. “The tiny one, the pretty one, the one he brought? Where?”

The old man quailed. “The women’s in the private room.”

Nicholas shook him. “What private room?”

The old man cowered, and self-disgust flooded Nicholas. This man was not his enemy. He loosed his grip.

The old man brushed at his grimy coat and stammered, “Private room, sir. Top O’ the stairs, sir.”

Nicholas pivoted and headed for the tavern, shouting back to Matthias, “Tie Huber up, and bed the horses,” and then from the stone steps, “don’t let him get away.”

He took the stairs in threes and dung open the first door he saw.

A head of thick dark hair popped up from under a fluff of downy covers.

“Abbigail!” he roared, relief pumping past his rage. Sife. He had to believe her safe. Protected by … A second head lifted, red and rumpled. “Mistress Clark!” he blurted.

His deepest, wildest secret. Mary Clark, his one-night paramour! And his only other … woman. Mary had shared her bed with Abbigail? Mary smiled wryly, teasing him with her knowledge of who he was and who he’d come for. He shrank inside, purely mortified. Abby must not know the outer limits of his sins.

All innocence, she threw off her covers, limped painfully around the end of the bed, and hurled herself into his stunned arms. “Nicky, Nicky. Danke Gott, you came, you’re here.”

Looking up to his clawed, battered face, she whispered, “Liebe Gott, you look terrible.”

“I’m all right, love, I’m ad right,” he whispered back. “You’re safe.”

Filthy, bloody though he was, he hauled her to his chest and buried his face in her hair. Her tiny body clung to him, alive and whole and his. For long moments, he savored the assurance of her light breathing, the affirmation of her feather touch. Then he cautiously lifted his gaze.

Mary Clark sat up, slid her voluptuous, practiced charms out of the bed, and tied on a heavy wrapper. Slowly, seductively, making sure he saw.

His chin rubbing the crown of Abbigail’s head, he scowled at her.

Mary Clark winked back. “Now I cad that a good night’s work.” She sashayed from the room, pausing at the door to speak to Abbigail

No! Don’t tell! he almost cried out, desperation raking him. Everything precious to him was within his grasp. Abbigail would be hurt, would not understand. He wasn’t sure he understood that night, the liquor or his lapse. Abbigail must not know.

But Mary asked gently, “This Brother is the right one, Sister Till?” winning Nicholas’s lifelong gratitude for her kindness to the one he loved.

Abbigail smiled, a happier smile than he had ever seen. “This is the forever one. Danke, Mistress Clark.”

He could have leapt and touched the ceiling where it vaulted high above him. Forever. He was willing, he was here.

Grinning ad too knowingly, Mary Clark passed through the door, then turned. “You turtledoves can have this room until nine O’ the clock. ‘Tis paid for in good coin.”

30

Nicholas tucked his exhausted, crippled Abbigail into her bed and limped downstairs. He was fairly well crippled himself. His head pounded, his face ached and stung, and a rib knifed him with every breath.

He found his brother in the public room, guarding Huber. Matthias had bound his wrists and ankles to his chair. Huber watched from swollen, hostile eyes, his face a purple, mottled mess, his pomaded hair hanging in hunks, his dapper clothes in muck-smeared tatters.

“Ach, Nicky,” Matthias said as Nicholas hobbled up. “You look much the worse for wear.”

“I’d rather fight him than you,” he said.

Matthias paused, surprised, and grinned wryly, then he sobered. “How is Sister Till?

“She says she’s all right,” he said hoarsely. “She doesn’t look all right.”

“Stay then until she can ride,” Matthias said earnestly. “I need to get back.”

To Catharina, Nicholas realized through dulled senses, blessedly unmoved by the thought at last. “What about him?”

Matthias’s gaze hardened. “I take him to the Elders. This was in his pocket.” He reached inside his coat and drew out a gleaming, brightly enameled watch. It matched the others.

Proof, but… “Only one?” Nicholas asked.

“So far. I asked him. He admits nothing.”

Nicholas leaned over Huber. “You don’t have to confess anything, you bastard. Abducting Sister Till shows your true colors clear enough.”

Huber pressed his thin lips together and glared.

Matthias fetched ales from Mary Clark and walked Nicholas toward a table by the fire. Nicholas drank a deep draught and put his mug down.

“I thank you for finding the watches,” he said. “Unless, that is, you think I put them there.” He was joking, but he was not sure how far he had regained his brother’s trust.

Matthias looked at him with clear blue eyes. “Given you were beating him to a bloody pulp, I think it unlikely you had time to plan it. Besides, I never doubted you in this, Nicky.”

Nicholas blinked. “All Salem doubted me. Why not you?”

Matthias frowned, pressed a brown-stained fist to his mouth, then spoke. “I mean, in this, I knew that you, my brother … you never would have stolen anything.”

A lump of gratitude lodged in Nicholas’s throat. He swallowed hard and forced a shrug of nonchalance. “Pies, Matty. We were first-rate pie thieves.”

Matthias’s eyes softened. “You were quicker, but I stole more in the end. I was always hungry.”

“So you were,” Nicholas said carefully. It felt like a truce.

Matthias forged ahead. “’Tis awkward after …”

“Our falling out over Sister Catharina?” Nicholas said quietly.

Matthias’s face crumpled, and he spoke in a low, confiding voice. “I have not … we are not…” He drew a harsh breath. “Not while she loves you and you love her. I will not,” he added firmly.

Nicholas caught his brother’s gaze, unsure of what he meant. His eyes were big blue pools of pain. “You have not…?”

“Loved her, as a husband. I thought you would want to know.”

Nicholas was stunned. He had never imagined such damage could come of his young man’s infatuation. Not now that he and Abbigail had found a deeper union of hearts and minds and habits. Catharina was his brother’s bride, and he wished them wed. He regretted the pain he’d caused her. Her, and Abbigail. He had set aside the jealousy, the obsession that had driven him from Bethlehem. But a new gudt stabbed him. He had hurt his brother perhaps beyond repair.

“Matty, she was never mine that way.”

Matthias lifted a shoulder, not an ounce of fight behind the gesture. “I saw you kiss her in the bam that morning. You said, ‘Kiss the one you love.’”

“I said that?” Nicholas knocked his forehead with the heel of his fist.

Matthias nodded without rancor. “You and I-we always vied to best the other. I will not contest you in this.”

“Matty …” Nicholas couldn’t find the words for so serious a matter.

“I will honor Sister Catharina,” Matthias continued as if he had prepared a speech. “She will have no complaint of me. We can do the Savior’s work. We can find love in our way.”

“Matty, no.” Love, married love, was glorious, was bliss. Love ordained for procreation. Love ordained for sanctioned hearts. Love such as Nicholas aspired to now with Abbigail-and had within his grasp.

“I believe that Sister Catharina misses you, but will in time be reconciled to this.”

Nicholas reached across the little table and clamped a hand on his brother’s broad strong shoulders. “She doesn’t miss me, Matty. I only kissed her, never more than that. She never pledged herself to me. That morning she was begging me to go away.”

Matthias’s brow creased skeptically, hopefully. “But you came all the way from-”

“Gott im Himmel. You know me for a rash impetuous fool. What else would you expect of such a man? I left Salem because the Elders wouldn’t let me marry. I left Bethlehem because Brother Till said I had to stay.”

“But you wanted to many her.”

“Didn’t every Single Brother of our generation hope to marry her?”

Matthias grinned sheepishly at that home truth. “I suppose.”

“Once, when she was but a child, I rescued her. Thick-skulled dolt that I am, I took that for a sign that we were meant to marry. She never promised me to.”

“Never?”

“I assumed her … interest. ‘Twas vanity on my part. And, well”-he lifted a shoulder, helplessly confessing-“your bride is very pretty.”

Matthias’s gaze narrowed. “Beautiful,” he corrected.

In his most self-effacing bit of prevarication ever, Nicholas said as if it had just occurred to him, “Beautiful? She might be. To the man who loved her.”

His serious-minded brother fought a smile and won, but Nicholas cuffed him lighdy on the shoulder anyway They finished their ale, and Matthias hurriedly readied Huber for the ride back to Salem.

Nicholas helped tie the man to his saddle. “He’ll slow you down. I know you want to get back.”

“Yes.” Matthias ducked his head, but Nicholas caught his blush. “Besides, Sister Till needs you here.”

And Catharina needs you to come home, Nicholas thought, all his old fondness for his shy, correct brother flooding him. “I … thank you for that. Godspeed, Matty. Go home to your bride.”

Returning to Abbigail’s room, Nicholas found her fast asleep, not at ad what he had hoped. But he stripped off his outer clothes and got into bed, bracketing her tiny body in his arms to protect her for all time. Exhausted, he was instantly asleep himself and slept until after noon, entwined in the comfort of her warmth.

He woke before her, sun dooding the room, dancing over the pretty delicacy of the woman he would wed. He wanted her with a tormenting ache, but she moaned at his slightest touch. If Matthais hadn’t already left with Huber, he would kill the man for putting her through this ordeal. Sighing heavily, Nicholas got up and crept out to the common room to buy food so they could leave.

Mary Clark worked at figures behind her little booth.

He pushed coins to her over the bar. “For the room. And the lean-to. And food to take with us.”

With a saucy grin, she swiped them off the counter and dropped them down her bodice in the cleavage between her ample breasts. “I like a man who covers all his debts.”

He took her meaning in every possible way, grinned back, then sobered. “I owe you, madam, a very great deal indeed.”

She laughed. “So you do, Nicholas. So you do.”

When he looked up, Abbigail was limping down the stairs. He rushed up to help her down.

On returning to Salem, Matthias delivered Huber to the senior Elder Brother Marshall in the middle of the afternoon. For the trip, he had tied Huber’s hands to his saddle, attached a lead-line to the horse, and given the man the exclusive pleasure of a singularly id-tempered roan. It wasn’t lame, Mary Clark had explained to him before they left. She and Abbigail had secretly asked the hostler to cord the old roan’s pastern just tight enough to make it favor that leg. The limp had fooled Huber and delayed his flight.

The man complained and whined about injustice, but Matthias barely noticed him over the insistent drumming of his thoughts. Beautiful. To the man who loved her. Of course, he had fallen in love: with her beauty before their marriage and with her dignity in the face of his jealous accusations afterward. Some upstanding Brother and Elder he had turned out to be, allowing covetousness and spiteful thinking to spoil his beginning with his bride.

In Salem, Marshall rolled the enameled watch in his hand and put Huber in custody in the Single Brothers House. Now tired, edgy, and filled with self-reproach, Matthias strode up the rutted road to the newlyweds’ cabin. Coming home to his poor wronged Catharina would be harder than he thought. Fool! he berated himself. Seven times a fool. How could he make amends to her? How could they start over?

He was so lost in his remorse that he was at the door of their modest cabin before he noticed the acrid smell of something burning. Shouldering past the catch in the door, he rushed inside. Smoke bidowed from the bricked oven beside the hearth, clouding the little room. His bride bent toward the oven, sobbing, her apron twisted around her hands.

Burned! In an intolerable panic, he raced to her side. “What is it? Are you hurt? Catharina! Are you burned?”

She pulled a tin sheet from the oven and looked up. Her mdd gray eyes were pink around the edges, and tears glistened in her golden lashes. “It’s ruined.”

Ruined? We knew that. He had ruined everything so far. He squeezed her shoulder gently. “Catharina, it will be ad right.”

“No, it won’t be. Ever.”

“Let me see. I will make it ad right,” he said, reaching for her blistered hands.

“You can’t make these all right.” She held out the tin for him to see-the usual molasses-brown rounds and stars and diamond-shaped cookies were all burned black. “My ginger crisps. I burnt them to cinders.” Her voice was tremulous with wrath and self-disgust.

“Ach, Catharina,” he said in the voice his father used to comfort distraught females of all ages in their household. “’Tis not the end of the world.”

It seemed so for her. She looked down at the tin in her hands, at the ruins of her day’s work, and burst into tears. Grievous tears with gulping sobs-he couldn’t bear to hear her suffer. It was worse than smad wounded animals, worse than when the twins cried, worse than anything.

But he knew nothing of women. He drew close to her, awkwardly putting one arm around her shaking, shuddering shoulders. Slim, strong, tall.

“There, there, Catharina,” he said sofdy.

But she had many days worth of tears to shed, which took another arm around her and required a head drawn down to his shoulder and a hand patting gendy at the center of her back. His throat closed on a lump of tenderness. It was hard to speak. “Catharina, ‘twill be all right.”

“Between us?” she choked out.

It was an opening he had not dared to hope for and could not afford to lose. “Between us,” he said fervently.

“I meant to make everything so perfect,” she lamented.

He pulled her closer. “You are perfect.” She was pliant and elegant in his arms, and he ached with the effort not to haul her body to him and crush her with his kiss.

She looked up self-consciously. “Not when in tears, I think.”

He tilted her face toward his and drank in her creamy, celestial beauty. His, for the first time. His to claim, his to cherish, his to love. Then with his fingers, he btushed the tears away. “Either way, tears or not,” he murmured. “Beautiful, either way.”

Her chin trembled. Hoping to forestall another round of tears, he reached for a brick-hard, slate-black cookie and held it to his mouth to show her: He was with her, for her. “You see. I’d eat one.”

With a small smile, she levered his hand away from his mouth. “I can’t let you eat that! They’re awful.”

“I will take anything you make for me,” he offered.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and frowned. “What if I want to give you more than cookies?”

His heart flipped in his chest. “Anything,” he said hoarsely.

She blushed and looked aside but did not pull away, evidently as stunned as he by this unexpected shift in their troubled union. They were married. They were alone.

“I went out to admire my new-tided garden,” she said nervously, budding a fence of words between them. Perhaps, he thought, there was more that needed to be said. “And I forgot to come back in. I wasted them.”

A mound of stiff brown molasses dough lay upon the table. “You have enough left to make cookies for the town.”

“The garden is beautiful,” she said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

His throat closed again. “I did. I have to do a great deal more to make it up to you. I have been a jealous fool.”

She raised her head and looked at him. “But Nicholas and I-”

“He’s in love with Abbigad.” He let the thought ratle around in his head. Abbigad, for Nicholas. He liked her. He liked the idea of his great reckless, impulsive brother being ordered about by one so small, so capable, so bright.

Catharina chanced another smile. “I could have told you that!”

“You should have,” he murmured. “I have been so blind.” Then he swung his bride around the room, taking care to do no further damage in their cramped quarters on this fine October afternoon. Then he set her on her feet and claimed a kiss, glad that she was tall and willowy and, oh, so compliant. When he lifted his mouth from hers, for just a breath, the world spun and his heart thumped in joy.

“But the oven’s hot,” she said. “I must finish before vespers.”

“The oven can wait….” he said, claiming another kiss, a deep, drinking kiss. “Vespers can wait” It didn’t matter if the oven was hot when other things were heating up.

“Shouldn’t we go?” she asked, a very long time later.

“The world can wait….” he muttered, moving his hps on hers, tasting the ginger-spice, cookie-dough flavor of her perfect mouth. In a moment, he barred the door and drew the curtain on the little window that looked out on the street. Their small rope bed was only a half a dozen steps away. “We can build another fire.”

Slowly, carefully. As he should have done on their wedding night, he thought ruefully. He took a step with her and untied her Haube, her pale blond hair spilling over his fingers, stained nut-brown from his latest batch of dye. Another step, and he untied her neckerchief, unveiling the petal-soft skin of her throat and chest and the creamy tops of high full breasts he had deprived himself the sight of. The touch of.

In a folly of righteousness.

Then she took a step and pulled him closer to the bed, unpinning her bodice, untaping her stays. “Hurry,” she whispered. “We have waited long enough.”

Startled, pleased, he looked into her eyes and saw a hunger shining there he had not hoped that they could share. “Too long. Forgive me?”

She forgave him with her hands, her willingness, her unexpected earthy pleasure, stripping his stock and her laces, while he removed his gaiters and piled her stockings-everything—arounthing them on the clean-swept, packed dirt floor. Laughing. She was laughing, and she made him laugh. They stumbled into bed, and he pulled her to him, skin on skin, flesh to flesh.

Perfection. Earthly perfection. “Catharina…” he began.

She pulled away, arched a pale blond brow. “Sister Catharina?”

His voice found a new register, hoarse and soft at once. “Catharina, be my bride.”

“In married love, Matthias,” she insisted.

And Matthias Blum let go of his reserve and all his doubts. With the same fierceness he had gathered to reject her, he touched every part of her. Kissing ear-lobes, nibbling her neck, suckling nipples into diamond points, discovering how a belly quivered under his very breath. “Matty,” she said in an aching voice. Matty, as she would have said when they were young and innocent and ignorant of claims. “Matty, I am ready, I have been for weeks.”

She parted her thighs for him, and he drove in, breaking maiden barriers, her barriers and his. He heard her cry, he felt her flinch, but her arms stayed strong around him. Her inner self pulsed around him. And a deeply buried carnal self within him, beyond thought and virtue, answered, moving, learning, seeking, finding, waiting for her, driving, driving home.

Nicholas found a magistrate and married Abbigail the day they left the Tavern-with a little help from Mary Clark, who had a friend. Nicholas held his tongue about her reference, pleased and relieved to reclaim his stolen bride. Their marriage wasn’t sanctified by the Brethren, but it was fully legal in the sight of God. That was good enough for him, for now-forever, if need be.

Traveling back to Salem, he resolved to take it slow. He carried Abbigail before him on the saddle for short distances each day, not only reluctant to let her out of his sight but unable to let her out of his arms. She was small, and he was strong, and his big horse was more than equal to their weight.

Of course, holding his bride so close required a great deal of restraint on Nicholas’s part. But Huber’s forced ride had badly injured Abbigail. For ad the care that Nicholas took, at times she withdrew in pain. So he cradled her and cuddled her and deployed all his charm to cheer her, there being no question of resuming where they had left off on the pallet in his shop. Yet.

But at night, he held her and kissed her, and they talked about the trials of his quest and the triumphs of her adventure. For, daundess woman that she was, she would see it so. He was proud that she had been clever and resourceful, disposing of the horse and saving herself from Huber’s attentions in the night. By their third night he slipped into bed behind her, hoping she was rested now and healed. If she wasn’t…

He would not dwell on that. He would dwell on the downy softness of her skin where her breasts plumped into his hands beneath her shift, her nipples budding into desire at a feather touch, the tempting curve of her buttocks against his aching loins. He drew in a ragged breath of anticipation and nuzzled the dark coils of her heavy hair, unbound for him in full candlelight.

“Abby,” he rasped, the ache traveling throughout him, loins to lungs to throat, making speech hard, harsh. “Wife. Tum.”

She turned slowly, scowling, as she had done too often since they left the White Horse Tavem. He lowered his head to kiss the scowl away. She put her hand between their mouths, pressing him to come no closer.

She wanted to talk! He groaned and reined in runaway desire. “Liebling? Are you scared? ‘Twill not hurt this time.”

Her brow knotted. “The woman who helped me … knew you.”

“Mary Clark?” he asked, in haste to oblige her. He could have bit his tongue.

“You know her name, too.” There was a tremor in Abbigad’s voice.

He went on alert. Of all the women in the world, he wanted least of all to hear of Mary on the first night he bedded his bride. “Of course I know her name. We owe Mistress Clark a great deal for your safety.”

Abbigail clenched her teeth. “She calls you Nicholas. I heard her.”

From the stairs, he realized, as Abbigail walked down. Mary had been her usual, outrageously brazen self, dropping his coins down her bodice. “Mary Clark is mistress of her own tavern,” he said, deliberately light. “It serves her wed to know men’s names.”

Abbigad’s brown eyes went black. “Her customers’ names. Don’t think I don’t know what she does. You kissed her. Even her.”

Then Abbigail’s hand drew back in a gesture he remembered from another evening on another bed. Not again! he thought. The hand darted for his face, but he caught her narrow wrist, holding onto it and thinking, fast. For three days, her scowls and frowns and withdrawals had augured jealousy! When he had craved her touch, her trust. Possessiveness was not unflattering …

But he was aching to love her. “This must not become a habit with you, Abby,” he said gently, wrapping his fingers around the fine bones of her wrist. Ad the way around it, he noticed, amazed all over again by his tiny tyrant’s fragility. But also by her wrath.

“Nicholas Blum, is there anyone from here to Philadelphia that you have not kissed?”

He frowned. He could not outright lie. “Well, yes, there is. There are dozens, hundreds, thousands of women I have never, ever kissed.”

But she had started now, sitting cross-legged on the bed before him, indignant, her shift fluttering thinly over her shapely breasts.

“If you think, Nicholas Blum, that I am going to spend the rest of my life with a man who kisses every female who crosses his path, you had best think again. I am a self-respecting and respectable Married Sister now, and if I have to keep you in my sights every day, day in and day out, believe that I will contrive a way to do it.”

To a man who had not spent a waking, sleeping, or breathing moment out of his bride’s sight for three whole days-and still had not made love to her-he was more than ready to put himself at her constant disposal. He waited for a languorously long time, stretching out his legs and getting comfortable. The rope bed creaked beneath his weight while she expounded on her plans for keeping a strict watch on him.

When she finally broke for breath, Nicholas just grinned at her. She was at heart a managing woman, and he was ready to submit, for now and for a lifetime.

He dashed his dimple hopefully. “Does this mean you forgive me?”

“Not for one single, solitary minute!” she said with spirit, his tiny tyrant come to life. He wanted her to stop so he could kiss her, but had no idea what to say. “You did what I accuse you of.”

“I kissed a few women. What is so wrong with that?”

She started in again, telling him exactly what was wrong with having to live in a town where every other-if not every-comely woman had tasted her husband’s kisses …

He stopped her. He sat up on the bed and took her pretty face in his too-large, too-clumsy hands and faced her. “But it’s you I love, Abbigail.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She almost smiled but drew in a preparatory breath instead and started again. “It certainly took you long enough to say so,” she said. “I am, as you well know, not getting any younger.”

He relaxed, smiling, on the bed beside her. “Dieu, if you had been here all my life.”

“We would have fought like cats and dogs.”

He laughed. She was his match, his mate. He drew her down to him.

“I may have kissed a couple of other women, Liebling,” he teased tenderly. “But clearly I have not kissed you enough.”

Her delicate features, pretty in a pout, softened, lightened. “Not lately, Brother Blum, nor very well, as I recall.”

And using what he’d learned from all those other women, Nicholas Blum proceeded to kiss his new bride with everything he knew about kisses … and with all the love in his earnest heart.

Epilogue

SALEM, CHRISTMAS EVE, 1796
THE CHILDREN’S LOVE FEAST

Joyful, reverent Brethren crowded ad the benches in the curtained Saal to celebrate the birth of Christ. Abbigail breathed in the honeyed scent of golden beeswax candles; their scent and light purified and made the great room holy for the congregation. Her throat ached with tenderness at the new beauty ad around her. In a twinkling, her lonely life had changed, expanding to include her in an enormous, loving family.

On the Brothers’ side of the room, she could see the center of that family, her husband, his head bowed, tawny in the gentle light. Only a few feet separated them, but he touched her deep within her heart. Privately she celebrated two months of perfect happiness, selig-bliss-with Nicholas. With the tolerance they were known for, the Board of Elders had waived any question of drawing the Lot, endorsed their marriage, and urged them to settle in Salem.

“I thought they would never ask,” Nicholas had teased irreverently.

“You belong here, and they know it,” she had insisted.

They belonged, she had discovered. Last month, at her request, Brother Marshall had remarried them in the Saal on a sunny November day complete with songs, friends, family-and not a few sad Single Sisters. Abbigail feared it would take years to learn how to gracefully be the wife of the most adored man in town. Her charming husband still turned heads, still had a smile for everyone.

After prayers and songs and services, Nicholas and his brother rose to help pass out the Love Feast buns and coffee. They carried in great wooden trays with the sweet, steaming brew and fragrant rolls for all the Brethren, young and old, from twin Little Girls to gouty Widowers. Nicholas came to Abbigail’s row, a quiet content on his face.

They shared a private smile. They had a happy secret, one that would be theirs for only a few weeks more.

One at a time she took the mugs from him and passed them down her row to Sisters Retha, Catharina, and Benigna, feeling the blessedness of communion when surrounded by friends old and new. For Abbigail had women friends now, adding her mother-in-law and beautiful sister-in-law’s lively fellowship to her older friend’s wise support. But Sister Benigna would soon be more than a friend. In a twist that had shocked everyone but Catharina Blum, who saw, it seemed, into people’s hearts, the woman who had been a second mother to Abbigail would soon become her stepmother.

“Never say Father went down on his knees!” Abbigail had said, astonished.

Sister Benigna had blushed. “Only after the Elders’ letter came from home that they had cast the Lot for us. And then I had to help him up.”

“But my dear Sister, he is such an old curmudgeon.”

To Abbigail’s further astonishment, Sister Benigna’s eyes had dashed. “You forget, Abbigail, that a daughter may not see the same man as a wife.” Then she had recovered her brief temper. “Besides, perhaps you will soon need a pair of grandmothers.”

It had been Abbigail’s turn to blush. But it was too soon to tell, even her oldest friend.

The coffee warmed her, the sweet roll filled her, and the brass band played a carol which her father-in-law sang. Abbigail’s eyes brimmed with tears at the beauty of Jacob Blum’s singing. She was learning that his heart was like his song, bold and warm and stalwart. He had put his engineering skills behind Nicholas’s latest project, the paper mdl, showing a faith in her husband that made amends for any discord in their past.

She chewed her sweet bread thoughtfully. Gerhard Huber had been cast out of Salem and Bethlehem, his identity discovered by a visitor from the Maine Congregation. The traveler recognized him as a fugitive from their community, his reputation unsavory, his recommendation forged. Apparently he’d thought to find rich pickings among the Southern Brethren, with Abbigad to be the prize for his apprenticeship in her father’s store. Instead he’d been returned to Pennsylvania, tried in public court for theft, and sent to jail.

Abbigad struggled to forgive him and forget, but forgiveness seemed easier than forgetting. She had had nightmares. But she had Nicholas to hold her until the shaking stopped.

The Children’s Love Feast ended, and the quietly joyful crowd spdled out onto the street. Torches lit their procession this Christmas Eve, glinting off the light fresh snow which had dusted yards and trees and rooftops white. Abbigail’s father sought her out to wish her the graces of the season. Under her and Sister Benigna’s persuasion, he was selling his portion of the store back to the Bethlehem community. He and his bride would make Salem their home. Taking a room in the Single Brothers’ house until the wedding, he had become the town’s treasurer, a position that used his talents without taxing his health. He was more at peace than he had been in years.

“Father and Retha expect us for the family supper, LieblingNicholas said, suddenly at her side, immense and utterly comforting.

He greeted her father with reserve. There was still constraint between them, but each strove for courtesy for her sake. She hoped the child who was growing in her belly would ease their rift.

She looked up at her husband, the singing in her blood that he so readily aroused already started. He had not kissed her since morning, and even then tepidly, as d afraid to hurt his newly pregnant wife.

She wanted a better kiss, a Nicholas kiss. “Must we go there straightaway?”

He looked a little puzzled. “No …”

“Can we take a walk? I have not seen the progress on your swamp in days.” Not only did Nicholas have his father’s support, but the Board of Elders endorsed and funded it in part. Their faith in his plan had made Nicholas optimistic about settling in Salem. He had been absolved. Of everything.

“That’s a quarter hour’s walk from here.” He instantly grew concerned. “At night, and in your condition …”

She touched his arm, slightly aware that the crowd was receding around them under a moonlit sky. Even three would seem a crowd if she did not have a few moments alone with him before the evening’s festivities.

“Walking helps my condition. I am no invalid. Else we would not share a bed.”

He grinned the grin that still made her stomach dip, acknowledging the tender love they had shared only just this morning. Too tender. Her joyous news had made him cautious, patient. It was something about the baby, something sweet and vulnerable. This morning in their bed, he had taken too much care of her. She wanted to drag him back, do it over, do it right-hot and messy and wild, just as he had taught her.

But she would settle for a kiss.

He escorted her past the houses of the town, out of sight and sound of Brothers and Sisters celebrating an ancient and redeeming birth. A waxing moon glancing off snow ht their way like day. Pale plumes of clouds raced across the sky. The swamp had been completely drained, and the foundation already laid. The paper mill promised to bring new work and new prosperity to the town and the backcountry.

“Nicky, so far along! Wed done! ‘Twill soon be up and running and you will be a busy mein. ‘Tis such a vindication. Such a tribute.”

He shrugged uneasily. He was not yet used to praise. Her confidence in him made him almost shy. From behind, he put his arms around her, moving a hand to her still flat belly. “This is the tribute that matters.”

She turned in his arms and saw a look of wonder on his face. But neither of them was made to endure such a poignant moment long.

“Ours,” he said.

Her heart soared. “’Twill be a hellion,” she warned.

He shifted her carefully in his arms and took a lighter note. “Hoyden,” he corrected.

Laughing, he turned her toward town. Unkissed. She noted that, and formed a plan. For the evening would be long and public, filled with family fellowship and song and no more privacy. Everyone would be there, brothers, sisters, twins, all. Matthias and Catharina, too, of course. From an air of mystery about them, she suspected that they cherished a secret of their own. She and Nicholas came up behind his father’s house to the alleyway that led to the street.

Still unkissed. She wanted her scandalous Brother Blum back, the one who had kissed all the girls and now kissed her alone.

“Nicky!”

He halted on his heel, his face filling with concern. “Are you ad right? I knew it was too far.”

She could have put her hands on her hips and stamped her feet and fussed, he was so dense. So handsome, standing there, a loving frown marking the golden features of his face beneath a bright December sky.

“Nicky, kiss me,” she commanded.

He looked around furtively. “Here?”

“Were you not the Single Brother who had a knack for stealing kisses?”

His frown deepened. “Now?”

Impatient, she leaned into his massive body, reached up and up, and pulled him down to her. “Now, Nicky. I know you know how.”

With an astonished groan, he took her up on that, and showed her that, yes indeed, a certain Married Brother had not lost his knack for stealing kisses.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to Taylor Chase, Sabrina Jeffries, Virginia Kantra, Judy Mills, and my agent Pamela Gray Ahearn for insights, arguments, and epiphanies in the storytelling process. Patricia Rounds at Pittsboro Memorial Library suggested sources tirelessly and tracked them down expediently. The archives of the Moravians and Salem, Inc., their beautifully restored village in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, continue to inspire me. And my husband, Peter Harkins, came to the rescue one more time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JUDITH STANTON grew up on a farm in North Carolina. During a successful career as a university professor, she taught writing and feminist theory and also traveled widely in England researching eighteenth-century romance writers. She and her husband live in the country and have two horses and a dozen rescued cats.

She loves to hear from readers. You can contact her by e-mail through her web site at www.catcrossing.com or write to her at P.O. Box 1714, Pittsboro, NC 27312.

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Praise for Judith Stanton and Wild Indigo

“An impressive debut…. A strong new voice. Don’t miss this unusual and captivating story.”

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—Romance Communication’s Reviewer’s Award

“One of the best historical novels I’ve read all year. Bravo for a fine story, Ms. Stanton!”

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“For a glimpse into little-known pages of our country’s history, pick up this book–you won’t be disappointed. Very highly recommended.”

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“A sweet story of love and devotion; an inspiring read.”

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Afterword

In 1796, the thriving Moravian trading communities of Salem, North Carolina, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, stayed in as close touch as the weather, the difficult three-hundred mile journey, and the new postal service permitted. Ordinarily it took about two weeks to make the journey or receive a letter. Tradesmen and apprentices moved to one town or the other as need arose, and Single Brothers and Single Sisters who did not fit well in one town were often encouraged to move to the other.

In matters of marriage, Moravians continued to prayerfully cast a lot asking for the Savior’s guidance in selecting mates. Usually, the lot was cast to answer questions: Should Brother Blum propose to Sister Baumgarten? If the reed drawn said Nein, that match was never pursued. If it said Ja, the Elders put the question to the Single Sister, who was then expected to examine her own wishes and conscience and answer accordingly. Catharina Blum’s belief that she should say yes as a matter of faith was somewhat extreme, but on the whole, Moravians had more confidence in God’s will than in romantic love. Romantic love won out, however, a few decades later. The last marriage lot was cast in 1835.

Men and women and boys and girls were divided into ten choirs of Little Girls and Boys, Older Girls and Boys, Single Brothers and Sisters, Married Brothers and Sisters, and Widows and Widowers. By fourteen years of age, Older Girls left their parents’ homes and went to live in the Single Sisters House, and Older Boys in the Single Brothers house. If required by his apprenticeship, however, a boy might five with his master.

Sometimes Older Girls or Single Sisters returned to live at home to help a widowed mother with small children, to stay with a sick parent, or to manage a household. While I found no exact precedent for Abbigail Till’s work for her father, there are several similar instances of Single Sisters returning home to work in some capacity.

The Moravian Church still maintains an active worldwide program of missions. In the late eighteenth century, the two missions most familiar to Salemites were in the Caribbean, where Sister Benigna Rothrock served, and in the North Carolina mountains, where Moravians tried to set up schools for Cherokee children. The Methodists, as it turned out, did rather better with the Cherokee than the highly structured Moravians.

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher

Copyright © 1999 by Judith Stanton.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03499-1

ISBN 0-06-109787-X

HarperCollins®, ®, and HarperPaperbacks™ are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Cover illustration © 1999 by Jon Paul Ferrara

First printing: December 1999

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