A Marriage of the Heart (29 page)

She swung her pillow fiercely. “Tell me about the girl.”

He dived at her feet, and she would have gone backward off the bed if he hadn’t hoisted her over his broad shoulder.

“Let me go,” she hissed, whacking the pillow against his lower back.

He dumped her without ceremony on the bed, then gave her a swift pat with the pillow.

She scrambled to rise and he sat on the edge of the bed, holding her down with one hand on her shoulder.

She realized she was trapped, so she sucked in a deep breath and regarded him through venomous blue eyes.

“If this is how far you’re going to keep from telling me, I’ll just have to imagine the worst.” She closed her eyes, ignoring his nearness. “Green eyes . . . a fine figure, brown hair . . . no, maybe red . . .” She peeked up at him.

There was a sudden tenseness to his firm mouth that bothered her.

“I’m right, aren’t I . . . red hair?”

He rose and pulled her quilt up around her, tucking it in at her shoulders. “Good night, Mrs. Lambert,” he said in a sober tone.

She watched him pick up his pillow and return to the bed on the floor. She felt lost somehow, adrift, and she admonished herself for the feelings. Of course there was another girl, an
Englisch
girl. Perhaps he’d been in love even, and she had stolen all of that with her careless plotting.

But then, he had been the one to rejoin the community and end any possibility of a life outside. Still, she swallowed and grasped a handful of her own hair. How completely opposite it was to red—he must despise her. She stifled a sniff and turned over, refusing to allow any tears to fall as she drifted into a fitful sleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

H
E WAS DREAMING
. H
E KNEW IT AND DIDN’T REALLY WANT
to wake. Molly was smiling down at him, her hands on his chest. They were sprawled on a picnic blanket in the summer sun in the middle of a park. He felt happy, sated. She bent to kiss him, and he could count the freckles on the bridge of her nose. He returned the kiss with ease, his hands threading through her wild red curls. But suddenly everything was being swept away by rushing water. He tried to hang on to Molly, but she was gone from him and he was drowning. He finally caught hold of a stand of honey wheat protruding from a creek bank and held on until the water slowed, then drifted to a lazy trickle. Shivering, he pulled himself up against the wheat and it turned into long blonde hair that wrapped around him with an intense warmth, making his chest feel tight. He clung to the hair and breathed in its sweet fragrance, like melting mint, and smiled as he buried his face in the hot strands.

He awoke with an uncomfortable gasp, hiking up to a sitting position and glancing over in the near morning light to the lump of covers that was his wife in her little-girl’s bed. He stretched his fingers to touch her hair, which still spilled over the mattress and to the floor. Then he half laughed at himself for the dream; he was clearly a fool when it came to women and their wiles. He let her hair go and hugged the quilt against his chest, realizing that he was cold. He considered rising before the sun came up to start the chores when Abby rolled over and sat straight up in the bed.

“Wh–what are you doing here?” She was still half asleep.

He put his glasses on and smiled at her. “Just me, Abby—your husband, remember?” He watched her curl up.

“Ya,”
she murmured. “I did that to you.”

“Did what?”

“The marriage . . . sorry,” she murmured, still half asleep.

“Now, now—no time for regrets. Why don’t you go start breakfast?”

She opened her eyes then, peering down at him with an annoyed look in the half-light. “Joseph?”

He was feeling for his shirt. “Mmm-hmm?”

“I might as well tell you something, a secret. It’s really bad.”

His hands stilled. With Abby, he should be prepared for anything: She only married him to make another man jealous? She knew where a body was buried?

“I can’t cook.”

“What?”

“I can’t cook,” she whispered, her tone taut. “All that food yesterday—it was from neighbors who wanted to know about us. I can’t cook.”

“So you’re a bad cook, so what?” He resumed looking for his shirt.

“You don’t understand, but you will. I make a mess of everything that an Amish housewife is supposed to do.”

“And what is an Amish housewife supposed to do?”

“Everything right,” she mumbled with sarcasm.

“Sounds boring.”

She let out a huff of frustration, then began braiding her hair. “You’re going to see—I don’t know what my father thought. It was probably the first time he wasn’t disappointed in me. Now you’re going to be disappointed, too, but it’s just going to have to be the way it is, because I am not going to try and change for you.”

He considered her words as he hitched up his suspenders and folded the quilts.

“I’ll help you cook,” he said.

“What?”

He’d taken his glasses off and was splashing water on his face from the bowl and pitcher on her bureau.

“I know how to cook. We’ll just get up a little earlier every day and go down and do it together. I can give you tips for lunch and dinner too.”

He dried his face on a towel that smelled like fresh mint and put it down with haste, recalling his dream. He turned to the bed.

She was staring at him, her fingers poised on her braid. “You’d help me? Why?”

He shrugged. “I’m your husband.”

“Ach . . .”
she whispered. She finished her braid and rose from the bed, careless of her nightgown this morning.

He turned to look out the window. “Do you want me out of here so you can dress?”

“
Ya
. . . I mean . . .
nee
, it’s all right. I guess I’ll hurry up.”

He felt the back of his neck grow warm as he listened to the various sounds behind him. The slide of her gown coming up her body, the pulling on of another. He closed his eyes against the wash of images going through his mind. His wife. She was his wife.

“All right,” she said, snapping him out of his reverie. He turned, feeling awkward, to watch her adjust her
kapp
. “I’m ready.”

He nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

He waited until she’d scooped up the kitten in its box, then followed her down the stairs to enter the still-dark rooms below. She went about turning up the lamps while he peered into cabinets in the kitchen. He found a frying pan but no spatula, then went to light the woodstove.

Lighting a woodstove was like riding a bicycle, he thought; you never forgot how to do it. There was always a firebox in the left-hand corner that contained shredded paper, wood chips, and small pieces of wood. He knew that the type and amount of fuel
used were one of the easiest ways to control the heat. Good cooking required a low, slow burn and no raging fire. The woodstove also had two dampers, which he fooled around with for a minute to get them just right. The chimney damper controlled the amount of smoke moving out of the woodstove into the chimney, while the oven damper regulated the amount of heat moving between the firebox and the oven.

When he’d adjusted the dampers to his satisfaction, Joseph rose and put the frying pan on top of the stove. The entire surface of the stove could be used for cooking, but you had to spend some time getting to know a stove’s quirks to get adept at moving pots and pans around to capitalize on the hot spots. When he was done, he turned back to Abby.

“All right. When you say you can’t cook, how bad do you mean?”

She frowned. “I can’t even scramble eggs without them being watery.”

“Why?” he asked.

“What?”

“Why can’t you cook—I mean, really?”

She scuffed her small shoe on the wooden floor. “My
mamm
died . . . you know that. Father never taught me anything . . . and there’s never been other womenfolk around. He wouldn’t allow it. So I’ve just tried to figure it out, and I haven’t been very good at it.”

“You mean to tell me that your father let you try and run this house from the time you were little?”

She nodded. “I know . . . I should have it figured out by now.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. You were a baby girl—five years old. You could have been badly injured in the kitchen or even filling the lamps.”

“Well, I have been burned a few times.” She absently rubbed at her left arm under its long sleeve. “But
Mamm
taught me a few
things before she died—how to peel vegetables, just not how to grow them . . . and how to make up the beds and do the laundry.” “You were five years old,” he repeated, his heart aching for the image of a blonde, tumble-curled little girl trying to cook breakfast all alone.

“
Ya
, but I’m not anymore, and I . . .” She grimaced. “I thank you for helping me.”

He looked carefully at her face, recalling the circumstances of their marriage, and hardened his heart; she could be lying even now. He turned to the stove, then glanced at her over his shoulder.

“I hope that you can at least gather eggs,” he remarked with sarcasm, ignoring the sudden flash of hurt on her pretty face.

“Ya.”
She nodded. “It’s the least that I can do.”

She marched out the back door, leaving him alone in the cold kitchen.

CHAPTER EIGHT

S
HE STOMPED TO THE HENHOUSE, WIPING WITH THE BACK
of her hand at the unbidden tears of frustration that stung her cheeks. He’d seemed so kind, yet she forced herself to admit that she knew next to nothing about him, really. And just because he’d been amiable the day before didn’t mean that he was in any way over his anger about her deception in their forced marriage. She sighed as she felt for the eggs beneath the warm, feathered hens that clucked at her in disapproval. She had no right to expect anything from him except anger . . . but she’d had enough of that from her father.

Yet she had patience on her side. One of the few times she’d received positive affirmation from a female in the community had been from her seventh-grade teacher. Miss Stahley had noticed her persistent efforts at the more difficult math problems and had touched her shoulder. “I do believe that
Derr Herr
has gifted you with patience, Abigail. You’ll wear down those sums yet.”

It was funny how she’d kept that stray observation tucked away in her heart through the years, probably because such encouraging remarks were so few and far between in her young life. But as she gathered the last egg, she found herself praying that the gift of patience would continue to bless her as she puzzled out her new husband.

She returned to the house with the egg basket and a much refreshed attitude. Joseph had found the bacon and had a good portion frying in a pan. She always managed to either overcook it to charred crispness or leave part of it underdone.

He glanced up. “Abby . . . look . . . I’m sorry for snapping at you. I’m just as new as you to this idea of marriage.”

She nodded, feeling a strange surge of relief in her chest. “
Ach
, that’s all right. I’d want to snap, too, if I were you. Here are the eggs.”

“All right, let me show you the perfect way to scramble them.”

“How did you learn to cook?”

He was cracking the eggs into a blue mixing bowl with a large chip out of its rim. “Well, first when I was a kid, I guess. My mom and dad, after they left the community, drifted from here to there and kind of drank—a lot. It was either learn how to cook or go hungry. My kid sister needed me, too, so I suppose that helped.”

“Your sister?” Abigail was surprised. She didn’t recall a little sister.

“Yep. She’s twenty now, five years younger than me. She got a full ride—a full scholarship—to NYU. That’s New York University. She’s going to be an artist.” He laughed. “She’ll really be surprised that I’m married. We write to each other a lot.”

So he’s twenty-five
, she thought, ignoring his comment about his sister’s surprise at their marriage. He looked younger, except when he was serious, like now.

“And your
mamm
and
daed
?”