A Marriage of the Heart (17 page)

“Please, come in, Mr. . . . ah?”

“Mast. I’m Asa Mast, Samuel’s son.
Daed’
s down with the flu. He sent me out to drive you tonight if need be.” His voice was husky, inviting, making her think of the steady creak of well-worn rockers moving in unison. Anna decided the ride in the cold van had done more than rattle her nerves. She had never reacted like this to a man’s voice; the truth was she usually saw men as vague nuisances, always underfoot when she had work to do.

“I’m, uh . . . Anna, Anna Stolis. You must know my Aunt Ruth well. Please come in out of the cold.” She held the door open wider, but his tall form didn’t budge.

“
Daed
said I was to sleep in the barn.”

“
Ach
, right—I forgot. I mean, of course. If you’ll wait, I’ll get some blankets—”

He held up a large gloved hand. “No need. I’m warm.”

His words caused her to inadvertently trail her gaze down his high, ruddy cheekbones to his sculpted chin and on to his broad, bundled chest. He did radiate a certain warmth; she fancied she could feel it from where she stood. And he smelled as clean as Christmas, like pine and snow.

Anna decided she was truly addled.

“Well, all right then, Mr. Mast—”

“Just Asa. Mr. Mast’s my father.” He gave her a warm smile.

“Right. Asa . . . I . . . call me Anna. I’ll, um . . . I’ll wake you if the need arises.”

“Afraid I’ll have to wake you most likely, ma’am—Anna. The phone’s in the barn. Your
aenti
has a keen ear . . . or a sixth sense, they say.” He smiled, a flash of white teeth, and a stray dimple appeared in his chiseled jaw. “She left my
daed
an extra key. I’ll just holler up the steps, if that’s okay?”

“Fine . . . fine.” She watched him tip his black hat, then step off the porch; he was probably married, she thought, and the idea depressed her. Still, she decided she’d sleep in her clothes. She told herself that she had no desire to have Asa Mast “hollering” to her while she was in her nightgown.

A candle in the snow . . . Asa shook his head as his
daed
’s words echoed in his mind. He tried to relax against a pile of hay in the small barn, but the image of the nicely curved midwife danced before him like shadows thrown from a lantern. He couldn’t remember being so struck by a woman, not for years, not for a decade. It made him feel like a teenager again, and that, in itself, was something to pray about.

Anna was dreaming. It was summer, incredibly hot, and she was debating the merits of removing her shoes and socks to dip her toes in Pine Creek. It would only make her want to swim, she decided, something that adult women were forbidden to do in her particular community, and yet she felt herself searching the bushes with a furtive glance. She was far enough away from any
of the farms for anyone to see her, and her dark skirt was dreadfully warm. She fumbled with the waist, frustrated by the weight of something more than the skirt, when she heard her name being called in a low tone. She jumped, snapping her eyes open. She realized that she’d been in a deep sleep, buried under clothes, quilts, and her aunt’s cat, and that Asa Mast stood near the bed, holding up a kerosene lamp.

“What’s the matter? Is it a case?” She flung back the covers and the cat and made to rise.

“You sleep in your clothes?”

“All midwives do,” she quipped fuzzily.

“I never knew.”

“Trade secret.”

“Interesting.”

Anna sank back down on the bed, trying to get her bearings.

“Here . . . I brought you some hot chocolate.” He offered the mug and she took it with grateful hands. She loved chocolate.

“Danki.”

“You sleep like the dead. I tried hollering, but it didn’t work. I’m sorry to have startled you.”

“No problem.”

He smiled down at her. “Were you dreaming?”

She burnt her tongue on the chocolate. “Hmm? What?”

“You seemed all ruffled, like . . . I don’t know.”

Ruffled? She put a hand to the mousy brown hair escaping her
kapp
and looked down at his mammoth boots. Honestly, the man would be hard to dress in proper clothes at his size. She found a knot in the back of her hair and pulled.

“Here, don’t do that.” He put the lamp on the bureau and moved so fast she didn’t realize what he was doing. He pulled her hands down and quickly worked the knot loose with his long fingers, then stepped away. He cleared his throat, and Anna thought he seemed as surprised as she was by his actions.

“Your hair’s as fine as corn silk,” he said, seeming to try to explain his impulsive movement. “Pulling on it won’t do any good.”

She was mesmerized.
Corn silk.
No one had ever said anything as direct and complimentary about her before. And the way he touched her—as if she were a porcelain doll, not the hearty and capable woman she knew herself to be. There had to be a sin involved in this thinking, she considered, her thoughts muddled.

“
Danki
. . . for helping me . . . my hair . . .”

He nodded as a brief look of sadness crossed his face, but then he changed the subject. “The call’s out at the Loftuses’.”

She wracked her brain. Deborah. Two weeks out from delivery. First baby. Probably lots of time, but you never could tell. She pulled on her cape and her bonnet and picked up her bag, which she’d prudently filled with supplies before she lay down. Asa went ahead of her down the narrow staircase, holding the light high. She glanced out a window, and in the faint moonlight she saw that the snow had picked up.

“What time is it?” she asked, peering at her brooch-pin clock.

“Nearly ten.”

She nodded and yawned, then glanced around, trying to think if she’d forgotten anything. “We’d better go then.”

“I’ve got the buggy pulled up. My horse, Dandy, doesn’t fuss much, no matter the weather.”

A gust of wind nearly snapped the door out of his hand, and Anna had to catch her breath at the biting cold. She recognized more ice than snow in the air.

“He must be a
gut
friend then,” she shouted. He nodded and flashed her a fast grin, and then the giant of a man swept her up and into the warm buggy.

“How far to the Loftuses’?” she asked, attempting to break the intimate quiet of the buggy as they started off. She felt as though she and he were the only two alive in the world at that moment, insulated by the press of the weather.

“Five miles, give or take.”

She nodded, understanding “give or take” to mean anything from nearly another whole mile to less than a quarter of a mile farther. She watched him handle the reins with ease.

“You cold, Doc?”

She turned, surprised, when he addressed her so. No one back home could get past her being Anna Stolis, the eldest of three sisters, even though she had her training and had delivered babies as regular as rain for the past two years.

“I’m not a doctor,” she said, feeling obliged to make this known.

“Close enough for Miss Ruth to leave—that’s saying something. What’s your husband think about you being gone?”

She started at his question. “I’m not married.”

He grinned. “Me neither.”

She gave a tentative smile back and then looked out the small side window. It occurred to her that she’d never once
thought of herself as a pretty woman. Passable, yes, but too curvy in the bosom and hips to be of interest when other women were as slender as reeds. But here she was, sitting in a snowstorm with an unmarried man and a dependable horse, thinking for the first time in the twenty-six years of her life that she actually might be pretty.

“Are you cold?” he asked again.

“I’m okay.”

He pulled a neatly folded Jacob’s Ladder patterned quilt from beneath the seat and began to spread it across her lap with one hand.

“
Ach
, it’s beautiful.” She loved quilts as much as she loved hot chocolate, and she ran her gloved hands over the fine workmanship, apparent even in the half-light. The color-play of the triangles somehow made Anna feel comforted, soothed.

“My
grossmuder
’s. She gave it to me last year before she died.”

“Really?” Anna asked, knowing that quilts were usually left to female relatives.

“Yep. Said I should carry it with me to—” He broke off, almost in confusion.

“To what?” Anna couldn’t contain her curiosity.

“Well, she said I should carry it with me in my buggy to warm the girls up. She was afraid I’d never . . . marry.” He stumbled over the last word.

“Ach.”

“I’m sorry—I’ve never told anyone that. I didn’t mean to be forward.”

Anna’s heart warmed to him even as she blushed. “Please
don’t mind. People tell me lots of things in my role as a midwife . . .”

In actuality, her mind was alternating between the images of girls snuggling with Asa beneath the quilt and her curiosity as to why he hadn’t married yet. He was probably her age at least . . .

“Twenty-eight.” He smiled.

“Girls under the quilt?”

He laughed, a sound that managed to tickle her spine.

“
Nee
, I’m twenty-eight, and you’re the first girl to have ever used the quilt.”

“I’m twenty-six,” she confessed.

He nodded.

She stared at his perfect profile, the dark edges of his hair standing out only a bit lighter than his hat. He’d called her a girl . . .
a girl
. . . who was long past marrying. She’d even taken to sitting with the married women during church meetings, and nobody seemed surprised. Girls got married at twenty or twenty-one, or sometimes twenty-two—but not twenty-six. And, if he was telling the truth, that she was the first female under this warming quilt . . . her mind spun with stars and dreams and things long forgotten.

“Why haven’t you married?” she asked, deciding she had nothing to lose by being so bold. She’d be going home tomorrow and would never see him again.

At first she thought she’d offended him because he didn’t answer right away. But then he smiled and gave her a warm look and a sidelong glance that made her clutch her hands beneath his grandmother’s quilt.

“I’m just picky, I guess.”

She shook her head, feeling sleepy and spellbound. Surely he couldn’t be implying that he was being preferential in showing attention toward her.

“Is that your only reason?” she asked, refusing to allow herself to give in to the pull of his words.

A tightness seemed to come over his strong features, but then she decided she’d just imagined it when he gave an amiable shrug.

“That and the fact that I’m not very good at being anything but myself. You don’t get to practice charm when you’re just a farmer and the hind ends of horses are all you see for half the year.”

“What?”

“Guess that didn’t come out right.” He chuckled, and she shifted on the seat, clapping a hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle. A giggle . . . she, Anna Stolis, Anna the serious, the studious, the stern even, was giggling.

“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you.” She took a breath. “I— I’ve just never met anyone like you.”

He swallowed, his throat working. “Well, like I said—you’re the first one under that quilt.”

She savored her surprise at his response, not even caring when the snow picked up. A dim light shining in the distance alerted them to the turn, and he swung the horse with ease. He drove down the short lane, stopped the buggy, then jumped out to come around and help her. He lifted her down as though she were weightless, then grabbed her arm and her bag, steering her to the porch in the thickening snowfall.

“Step!” he hollered when they’d reached the porch, and she did.

They piled in through the front door as an anxious Amish man opened it, his light hair and fine blond beard betraying his youth and concern.

“Miss Stolis? Your aunt told us before that it might be you. I’m John.” His voice quivered a bit.

He shook her hand, then Asa’s. “Asa? Your father is ill, I heard today?”

“
Jah
, making tough weather of it, but he’ll pull through.
Danki
. How is Deborah?”

Anna glimpsed the anxiety in John’s face as he took her wet cape and hung it on a hook behind the door. “I’m not sure . . . We hosted the family here, but then everyone left early because of the storm. Deborah seemed fine, but then she started feeling sick and her contractions started.”