A Promise to Love (8 page)

Ingrid had a hundred questions on the tip of her tongue, but she did not have the nerve to ask even one. If only she had had time to prepare herself for all of this! The judge, however, would have thought something was strange if Joshua had not taken his new bride home with him tonight.

A new bride.

She had never been a bride before. She wasn't certain how she should act or what she should do.

“This is it.” He stopped the wagon and horse in front of a small, sturdy-looking log cabin.

Ingrid drew a deep breath and looked around. There was much she could do with this place. There was a fine, big barn to the right of the cabin with a large corncrib. Neat split-rail fences created a roomy pasture where a healthy-looking dairy cow and two well-muscled plow horses stood contentedly cropping grass. To the left of the cabin was a large vegetable garden. Next to it was a smokehouse. Then came a low chicken house and a pigpen with two lean young hogs rooting in the earth. Behind the cabin, on a small rise, she saw the cherry orchard, which had a few white blossoms. Seeing all this gave her great pleasure. Joshua was no slovenly farmer. He took pride in his home.

“You and the girls go on in,” he said as he leaped down from the wagon seat, “while I put the wagon away and take care of the horse.”

Ingrid had seen George help Millicent down from their buggy many times. She had watched other men helping their wives down from various buggies and wagons. Perhaps this was what married women in America were supposed to expect. She did not want to make a mistake so soon after her marriage. She lifted her valise onto her lap and waited. While she waited, she fingered the unfamiliar wedding ring Joshua had placed upon her hand.

“Something wrong with your legs?” Agnes said as she jumped off the wagon.

“No.” Ingrid hurriedly climbed down.

“Oh,” Joshua said, rushing over. “I forgot to help you down. I'm sorry.”

“Is fine.”

“So many things on my mind.”

“Is fine.” She stood in the middle of the yard, unsure of what to do next. Although she was now supposedly the mistress of the house, it felt odd to walk into a strange home without first being invited. Joshua was no help. He had already gone back to unhitching the wagon.

“Don't be scared.” Trudy took hold of Ingrid's hand.

That small act of kindness gave Ingrid courage. Together, they entered the cabin.

The chaos inside was appalling.

Dirty dishes were piled on the table. Dirty clothes lay abandoned in a corner. A cold fireplace was filled with dead ashes, many of which were spilling across the hearth and out onto the floor. The remains of what appeared to be the family's breakfast sat in two skillets on top of the wood cookstove. Flies buzzed around the cold stove and blanketed the leftover food.

A little girl's yellow dress lay across a chair rung, the perfect imprint of a too-hot iron upon the bottom.

“It's even worse than I remembered,” Joshua said as he came through the door. He scratched his head. “It usually isn't this bad. I didn't want to be late to the inquest, and I was trying to get the girls ready this morning, and . . .”

“Is fine.” Ingrid sat her one piece of luggage on the floor and rolled up her sleeves. This, at last, was something she knew how to handle. “Is all fine.”

“I'll, uh, just put this in the bedroom.” Joshua opened a door and shoved it inside. She caught a glimpse of an unmade bed.

“I need water. And soap. And kindling.” Ingrid put her hands on her hips and took stock. The cabin had only two rooms: the big sitting room with the kitchen area at the end, and the small bedroom. Narrow stairs led to a loft.

“Of course.” He hurried out the door with a bucket.

“Are you gonna make us something to eat or what?” Agnes was still holding Polly. “Those biscuits and gravy sure did sound good back there.”

“We wash dishes. Then cook.”

“I don't mind washing dishes,” Agnes said, “if that's what we gotta do to get some food around here.”

The stove had a water reservoir that had retained some warmth from the morning. With the girls showing her where everything was kept and Joshua bringing her water, kindling, and firewood, Ingrid built a good fire in the stove, then helped Agnes deal with the stacked and dirty dishes, pots, and pans while they waited for the oven to heat. When the fire warmed to a temperature hot enough to bake biscuits, she could finally create the meal she had promised, and more.

It was difficult cooking with four hungry children underfoot, but by the time Joshua came in from caring for his livestock and doing his evening chores, she was setting supper out on the table. Fried potatoes. A pyramid of biscuits. Sliced ham from the smokehouse. Plenty of ham gravy made with flour and drippings. Plus a bowl of honey still in the comb. It was the best she could do with such little notice.

Joshua stopped and stared. “Oh, my.” A slow grin spread over his face. “Real, honest-to-goodness food. Thank you, Ingrid.”

She did not feel comfortable sitting down with her new family. Instead, she stood beside the stove, ready to serve them.

“Sit down.” Joshua grasped her hand and tugged. “Eat with us. You must be so tired after everything that's happened today.”

She obeyed, as she believed a good wife should. Inside, she was greatly pleased. Many men would have gobbled the food with no thought for their wife's comfort, but her Joshua was not such a man.

Her mind was spinning with possibilities for the future. She had married a fine man who was respected by other men. He owned his own farm and a promising orchard, and took care of his animals before taking thought to his own needs. The fact that he had wrestled with an unfamiliar flatiron trying to make his daughters presentable melted her heart.

She could hardly believe that she was sitting here with her new husband who had eyes the color of the ocean she had crossed, and best of all—oh, how blessed a woman she was—he had just led their family in a fine prayer of thanksgiving before he put so much as a bite of food into his mouth.

One of the reasons she had longed to come to America—apart from the fact that there were jobs and inexpensive land here—was because she and Hans were Pietists, a group that strove to lead lives of piety and personal holiness. Those in charge of the well-established Lutheran church back home were not pleased that there were those who did not accept church doctrine without question. They were especially displeased that there were those who felt it necessary to study the Scriptures for themselves instead of putting blind trust in the Lutheran clergy. Things had gotten to the point that there had been some persecution, and many Swedish Pietists were immigrating to this new land for that fact alone. Hans had written her the good news that many American churches were now emphasizing the need for Bible study and personal accountability over the trappings of tradition and form.

Although the Bowerses occasionally drove a great distance to some church that Millicent approved of in a larger town, there was no church building in the small village of White Rock. However, there must be some sort of church since Susan had mentioned that she was a preacher's daughter. Perhaps, like the Pietists back home, there were people here who worshiped in one another's homes.

As Joshua and the girls dug into their heaping plates, she prayed her own silent prayer of gratitude and asked that the years would be good to them. That she would learn to be a good mother to these children. That someday her husband would give her children of her own. And that somehow, some way, God would give her a miracle and Joshua Hunter would learn to love her.

Two hours later, Ingrid rolled her sleeves back down. Joshua was busy tucking all four girls into their beds in the loft in the cleanest clothes she could find. The dishes were all put away. The bits and pieces of leftover food had been thrown to the hogs. She had rinsed a kettle of beans, which was now soaking for tomorrow's dinner, and she had swept the fireplace clean. Much had been accomplished.

Joshua came downstairs and sat down at the kitchen table, looking tired to death. There were dark circles beneath his eyes. She could only guess at the emotional toll this day had taken on him.

“You're still working,” he said. “What can I do to help you?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Go. Rest. I will come to bed soon.”

Joshua didn't argue. He disappeared into the bedroom. With pounding heart, she went out to the well to draw one last bucket of water. She drew the dripping bucket up and sat it on a small bench near the house.

She felt shy about getting ready for her wedding night inside the house, so she slipped her dress off outside in the dark and dipped a clean rag into the bucket of cold well water. With a sliver of lye soap, she washed herself as well as she could and then slipped on the only nightgown she owned.

She threw her bath water away and then quietly entered her new home. Pulse racing, she opened the door to the small bedroom she and Joshua would share.

He was sound asleep, fully clothed, facedown, sprawled out as though trying to claim every square inch of the bed for himself. Trying not to take up any more space than absolutely necessary, she carefully moved his arm and curled up beside her new husband.

A wolf howled in the distance, a mournful, lonely sound. She decided that she would not allow herself to be afraid of that wolf—or anything else. She would defend her new home with her life, whether the man of the house ever learned to care for her or not.

 7 

Joshua awoke in the early morning darkness from a vivid dream in which Diantha and he were still young and very much in love. It was in this half dream, while clothed in a foggy happiness, that he put an arm around the warm body next to him and pulled her close.

That was when he fully awoke. This person he had reached for was not Diantha. His wife had been a small, soft handful. Just the right size for a man to wrap his arms around. The person he was embracing was all bones and angles and nearly as large as himself. She also smelled of lye soap instead of the French-milled rose-scented soap that Diantha had hoarded for herself.

“Good morning,” the woman said.

Had her body been made of hot coals, he could not have let loose of her more quickly.

“G-good morning.” He scrambled out of bed so fast, his feet got caught in the blankets and he stumbled and fell. As he lay on the floor, tangled in blankets, she rose from the bed and knelt beside him.

“You are hurt?” she asked.

The shock of falling had jarred a little sense back into his dream-muddled brain, but for the life of him, he could not remember the name of the woman he had married yesterday.

“No, no, I'm not hurt.” He untangled himself from the bedcovers, grateful that he was still fully clothed.

“I fix breakfast?” the woman asked.

What
was
her name?

“Yes, that would be good, thank you.”

To his surprise, she immediately set to making the bed. But instead of simply drawing the covers up, which had been Diantha's habit, she unbuttoned one side of the straw tick and reached in and smoothed the mounds of straw out more evenly. Then she straightened and tucked the bedcovers.

“I'll go milk the cow,” he said for lack of anything better to say.

“Ja. That is fine.” She gave the neatly made bed a satisfied pat.

What was this woman's
name
?

By the time he had finished milking, strained the milk, set it to cool in the small cellar out back, and brought yesterday's already-cooled milk into the kitchen, she was completely dressed, her hair was neatly braided, and she was standing in front of the stove.

“I'll go get the eggs now,” he said.

“I already do.” She nodded toward the cast-iron skillet, in which eggs spluttered in bacon grease. Thick pieces of fried bacon from the smokehouse lay on a platter nearby.

“Oh.”

“Coffee is ready. Please sit.” She gestured with the spatula. “I take care of everything.”

And so Joshua sat at his own kitchen table feeling like an awkward guest while she placed a cup before him and filled it with coffee.

“Good?” She avidly watched as he took a sip.

It was the blackest, strongest coffee he had ever tasted.

“Yes,” he lied, “very good.”

She studied his face with a worried expression. “Not good.”

“It's a little strong, and I like cream.”

“I fix.” She poured hot water into his cup and added cream that she skimmed from the top of yesterday's milking.

He sipped again. It was rich and delicious. “Very good.”

Her face lit up like he had given her a gift. Smiling, she turned back to the stove.

An aroma of something sweet came from the oven. She folded a dish towel and brought out what smelled like a bit of heaven. Somehow she had managed to find some raisins and nuts, which now studded the golden pastry.

“How in the world did you manage
that
!”

She shrugged modestly.

He pinched off a piece of the hot pastry, placed it on his tongue, and felt it melt in his mouth.

She waited for his appraisal.

“That is delicious, um . . . ma'am.”

Her face fell. “I am Ingrid.”

“I know.” It was a lie, and they both knew it.

She turned back to the stove while he chastised himself for having unintentionally hurt her. Living with a woman he barely knew was not going to be easy—even if she was a good cook.

Silence descended upon the kitchen. He watched while she carefully spooned hot bacon grease over the frying eggs. The girl was certainly no beauty. Everything about her looked used, from her borrowed men's shoes to her frayed brown dress.

She brought the eggs, still spluttering in the skillet, and sat them in the middle of the heavy oak table. Then she refilled his cup, took her place at the table, and sat with her hands folded in her lap and her head down. Waiting.

Her submissive posture unnerved him. She was trying so very hard to please that it made him uncomfortable. Something needed to change if they were going to get through this.

“Do you like coffee, Ingrid?” He deliberately used her name.

She nodded.

“How do you like it?”

“With sugar.” She started to rise.

“No.” He put a hand out. “Don't.” He took one more sip of the coffee she had brought him. “Let me.”

Hoping to break the ice between them, he rose from the table, filled a cup, put in a heaping teaspoon of sugar, and brought it to her. She accepted it with wide-eyed wonder.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Is the coffee to your taste?”

She took a sip and nodded. Her eyes were a light blue, and her eyelashes were the same light blonde of her hair. Her features were even, and her complexion was creamy white. Her body—well, the shapeless work dress she was wearing didn't give away much. Her hands were roughened and red from work. When she was standing, she was only a couple inches shorter than him, and he was not a short man. Had he tried, he could not possibly have brought home anyone more different from Diantha.

“Breakfast looks tasty,” he said lamely.

“Do you want I wake the children now?”

“Yes, please.” He desperately wanted to have the girls sitting here at the table with him, absorbing some of the awkwardness between him and his new . . . wife.

Few things had ever pleased Ingrid more than the sight of those four little girls lapping up her breakfast like hungry puppies. Of course, it was a challenge to find things to cook when she had not been the one to choose the contents of the family's food supply, but she had long ago mastered the art of putting together things that tasted good even when ingredients were sparse.

“Should we make a trip to town?” Joshua asked. “For supplies?”

“Today?” She shook her head. “No.”

He seemed relieved. She didn't blame him. The last thing she wanted to do was go back into town the day after their very public wedding.

By nine o'clock in the morning, she had gathered eggs, set a nice, even fire in the cookstove, fed her new family, washed the dishes, swept the floor, put the overnight-soaked beans to simmering on the back of the stove, and, while the children helped their father weed the vegetable garden, scrubbed the wooden floor on her hands and knees with lye soap. She threw the dirty water outside and stood surveying the damp, clean floor with satisfaction.

“You gonna do the wash today?” Agnes asked. “It sure has piled up lately.”

“Ja. I do laundry,” Ingrid agreed. “Today is fine day for drying.”

“And there's some mending that needs doing.”

Ingrid nodded. “Tonight I mend.”

Agnes contemplated her through narrowed eyes, as though evaluating how far she could push.

“I sure could use me a new dress,” Agnes said. “And so could Trudy. I've about grown out of this one, and Pa ruined Trudy's best dress with the iron.”

Ingrid put both hands on Agnes's shoulders and turned her around. The dress was shorter than it should be for a girl her age, and it was getting too tight beneath the arms.

“You have . . . material?”

“Not that I know of, but Mama had some real pretty dresses. Do you think it might be possible to cut one of them down to fit me?” Agnes's voice, usually so very grown up, grew hopeful. It was the first time Ingrid had heard a hint of the child's voice hidden beneath Agnes's prickly grown-up one.

“I sew you fine dress.”

“Can you do smocking?”

“Ja. I smock too.”

“Huh.” Agnes stared at her in amazement. “How about that.”

Ingrid was amused at the child's surprise. “After we wash, we sew.”

“Sounds good to me, lady.”

Lady? That did not seem like something a child should call a mother—not even a new stepmother.

What she secretly longed to hear coming out of these children's mouths was “mama,” just like she had called her own mother, but it was too soon to hope for such a thing.

“Please call me Ingrid,” she said. “Not ‘lady.'”

“You sew me a nice dress,” Agnes said, “and I'll call you anything you want.”

Joshua had carefully explained to her exactly where he would be if she needed him. He had even taken her outside and pointed to the far pasture where he would be plowing ground for corn. This made her feel protected and cared for.

Before he left, he had also taken the time to show her his new pride and joy, a John Deere plow, which he said was going to revolutionize farming. It was a fine thing, indeed, and Ingrid, who had helped Hans plow their small acreage back home, genuinely admired the exquisitely made tool. It had been a nice, friendly moment between them.

With a light heart, Ingrid drew water from the well and filled the two washtubs. Then she lit a fire beneath a large kettle outdoors. It was a beautiful spring day, and laundry was one of her favorite chores when the weather was fine. Agnes brought the washboard, and without a word, the child began to scrub a dress while Ellie and Trudy played with Polly beneath a large maple tree nearby.

Ingrid stood back, watching Agnes with her skinny arms trying to do a grown woman's job, and it made her ache to think of how hard this child had struggled to care for her family since her mother's death. Agnes was a force to be reckoned with, but she was still, deep down, just a little girl.

“You want to play with sisters, ja?”

Agnes looked over her shoulder at the three little girls. “We got work to do,” she said and went back to the scrub board.

“No.” Ingrid gently pulled the wet dress out of Agnes's hands and turned her away from the washboard. “You go be little girl.”

“Are you serious, lady . . . I mean, Ingrid?” Agnes cocked her head to one side, taking her measure. “You want me to go play? There's an awful lot of clothes here.”

“This job, for
me
, is play.” Ingrid nodded toward the laundry tubs. “You go be
liten flicka
, a little girl.”

Agnes's big gray eyes slowly filled with tears, and her skinny arms suddenly encircled Ingrid's waist. For one brief, fleeting moment Ingrid felt the thrill of an unexpected hug from her new daughter. Then Agnes ran to her sisters.

The rest of the morning went by like a song.

Their dinner was not elaborate, but Joshua, once again, seemed inordinately grateful for her cooking, and the children had good appetites. She had noticed, when she came back inside after hanging out the laundry, that the cabin smelled much better from all the cleaning she had done.