Читать книгу The Bartered Bride - Cheryl Reavis - Страница 11

Caroline had to wear her same worn-out yellow-flowered dress on Sunday morning after all. Avery might have obliged Leah by giving her one of Caroline’s better dresses, but there was a limit to John Steigermann’s free hand. He would not allow Leah to go see Avery Holt, not even for the sake of Caroline’s pitiful wardrobe. He had seen firsthand Avery’s loss of control, and he refused to permit his beloved only daughter to have anything further to do with such a violent man.

The upstairs smelled of the morning breakfast—fried ham and potatoes and cabbage and freshly baked black German bread. The smell of the food and the Schmalz, a greasy, apple and herb-flavored pork fat the Steigermanns spread on the bread, had been more than Caroline could manage. She had abruptly retreated to her small room, and she sat down to wait by the fire until John Steigermann came upstairs to tell her it was time to go to the church. If he was surprised that she would do as he asked and let Frederich officially withdraw his marriage pledge, it didn’t show. But then there was no reason for him to be surprised. His fine expectations and her obligation to him made it impossible for her not to go. It was his suggestion that they arrive ahead of the rest of the congregation. She saw the wisdom of the plan immediately. The last thing she wanted was to have to enter the church after everyone else was already seated.

The day was cold and windy. Her face looked a little better, perhaps not so swollen, but she was grateful for the loan of one of Leah’s bonnets so that she could hide from the wind and from the curious stares she was bound to encounter.

She let John Steigermann take her by the arm to escort her to the wagon waiting by the back door. She felt dead inside, not afraid so much as empty. Leah was waiting for her in the downstairs hallway, resplendent in her fine brown and coral merino wool dress and her fur-trimmed cape. Caroline kept glancing at her, acutely feeling her own shabbiness both inside and out. She wondered if Avery would have abandoned Leah if their liaison in the barn had led to a baby.

No, she thought. Leah would have brought much more to a marriage than an illegitimate child. She would have brought money and prestige and land. And the rest of the men would have given Avery a pat on the back for being clever enough to get around John Steigermann.

It was a long, cold ride down the river ferry road to the German church. The church was a square, two-story edifice of natural stone built by the German settlers who had come here from Pennsylvania in the last century. It was a fitting monument to their faith and their perseverance. She tried hard not to let it remind her of the German schoolmaster.

In spite of their clever plan, Caroline and the Steigermanns were not the first to arrive. Avery stood in the sun on the front steps. He was dressed in what passed for his Sunday finery, a severe black broadcloth coat that always needed a vigorous brushing. Caroline didn’t see William anywhere, and she guessed that Avery would have made him stay at home. She prayed that he had. The Holts had been shamed enough without William having to witness the proceedings today.

Avery was obviously waiting for her, and there was no way for her to get inside the church without going past him. She got down out of the wagon with difficulty and walked a few steps away from the Steigermanns. The graveyard that surrounded the church was quiet except for the wind in the trees and the rattle of leaves blown against the low stone wall. Her mother and father were buried here. And Ann and her lost babies. For a brief moment, she thought about crossing the wall to stand at their graves, but she knew already that she would find no comfort among their cold headstones. There was no comfort anywhere.

The Reverend Johann Rial’s house was within sight of the church. She could see the glint of the sun on the tin roof and smell the wood smoke from the chimneys. And Avery was coming toward her. She had to force herself not to turn and run. She was afraid of him, but whatever he had to say now, she preferred to hear it alone. The Steigermanns had been privy to enough of the Holt scandal.

More buggies and wagons were arriving, and Leah came to take her arm. Caroline had to force herself not to look for Kader Gerhardt among the men who were beginning to congregate on the front steps where Avery had been. Would she think less of Kader if he came—or if he didn’t?

Avery was close now.

“My father won’t let him hurt you,” Leah said quietly, and Caroline drew a long breath.

“Please, Leah. Step away so I can talk to my brother alone.”

“Caroline, he is angry still—”

“Please,” she whispered, and Leah reluctantly went to stand with her father.

Whatever Avery does, don’t let me cry, Caroline prayed.

“You deserved what you got,” Avery said when he was close enough, not caring if the Steigermanns heard him.

“Yes,” she answered quietly. “The way Leah will if you aren’t careful.”

His cheeks flushed and he reached out to grab her by the arm. She drew back instinctively, expecting to be hurt again.

“What did you tell old man Steigermann about me?" Avery said.

“I didn’t have to tell him anything. He saw what kind of man you are.”

“Damn you, Caroline! You’ve ruined everything—”

“Come, Caroline,” John Steigermann said behind her. “We go inside now. Your brother will not want to keep you out here in the cold.” He offered her his arm, and she took it gratefully. She gave Avery one last look as she walked past him. The question was still in his eyes.

Who, Caroline? Who?

“I have seen by the fine attendance this morning that you are all aware of what is about to take place today,” Johann Rial said from the high pulpit. He spoke in English now— for Caroline’s benefit, no doubt—and his eyes swept over the congregation, coming to rest on her. She felt physically ill, and she took a wavering breath. Leah reached for her hand.

Johann waited for a moment for someone’s fit of coughing to subside and for his words to be translated to the older members who spoke only German. “Those of you who are feeling relieved that my sermon has concluded,” he continued, “will be pained to hear that I have more to say. To you all. I now charge each of you to remember the Scriptures.

“Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Against Thee—and Thee only—have I sinned.

“I charge each of you to remember Our Lord’s admonishment— Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.

“It is also written that a bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord even unto his tenth generation shall he not enter.

“I further charge you that this child in Christ be not left without salvation. Brother Graeber must follow his own conscience. But I steadfastly hope that someone among you will see fit to make an honorable and Christian offer of Holy—”

Johann Rial abruptly stopped, and Caroline could hear whispering behind her and the shuffling of feet The commotion intensified, a collective murmuring and a creaking of pews as people turned in their seats.

“What is it?” she whispered to Leah, not wanting to look around.

“It’s Eli Graeber,” Leah whispered back. “He’s standing.”

Caroline could already hear him addressing Johann Rial in German, and there was more commotion among the congregation. Leah gave a sharp intake of breath.

“What is he saying, Leah?” she whispered, squeezing Leah’s hand hard. Did Eli know about her and Kader Gerhardt after all? Surely, surely he wouldn’t stand up in church and say that she had been with the German schoolmaster.

“Eli says he is willing to offer you marriage if Frederich withdraws his pledge,” Leah said.

“He what?” Caroline cried, turning around now. Eli was indeed standing—and Frederich had him by the arm.

“Sitzt sich!” Frederich bellowed, trying to make him sit down.

Eli pulled free and began to speak over the clamor around him.

“Eli says he owns half the land, half the farm,” Leah translated rapidly. “He says he has the right to take whoever he pleases—and his uncle is—”

Her translation was interrupted by another outburst from Frederich.

Sit down! Sit down! Caroline prayed, as if her litany could stop whatever Eli was doing by sheer force of will. Oh, dear God, she thought. Everyone will think Eli is the one.

Eli Graeber suddenly looked in her direction, but he was speaking to Johann Rial. Then he was making his way to where she sat, waiting at the end of the pew for Johann to join him.

“Eli wants to know what you say,” Leah said.

“I don’t say anything!” She sat with her head bowed, as if she could hide somehow. Everyone was staring at her— she tried desperately not to cry. She hadn’t expected this. In her worst nightmare she hadn’t expected this.

“Come, Caroline,” Leah said, trying to get her to stand up.

“No-please. No!”

“Caroline, Eli and Johann want to talk to you!” Leah whispered urgently.

“Leah, I can’t—I have to get out of here!”

She would have tried to run, but both John Steigermann and his wife had gotten up so that Eli could come into the pew and Leah was blocking the other way out. She was hopelessly trapped. Eli was actually going to address her here and now, in front of all these people.

“Caroline Holt,” he said.

She forced herself to look up at him, and she was immediately struck by two things. How determined he looked. And how unhappy.

“Eli, what are you trying to do?” she whispered, knowing he wouldn’t understand. Then she abruptly covered her face with her hands. I can’t bear this! I can’t!

“Caroline Holt,” he said again. “Sehen Sie mich an.”

“Eli says to look at him,” Leah translated.

“Bitte,” Eli said. “Don’t be…afraid,” he managed in English.

Caroline turned away from him. Afraid? She wasn’t afraid. She was humiliated.

He held his hand out to her, much the way he had that day he found her on the schoolroom stairs.

“Come. We talk now,” he said. “You come away from all these—” He gestured toward the people around them. “Their business is—not to know—”

He stopped struggling to find the English words and simply waited, his hand still outstretched.

A farmer’s hand, Caroline thought. A hand like Avery’s. Like Frederich’s and her father’s.

“Kommen Sie,” Eli said. “I…help you.”

Help? she thought incredulously. He had made a spectacle of her. How could he help?

He abruptly reached for her hand and she let him pull her upward, not because she intended to talk to him, but because he was the only way out of this place. When had she ever talked to Eli Graeber about anything? There was only that one time, that day in the church when he’d kept Mary Louise and Lise from seeing her. How much had he understood then? How much did he understand now?

She glanced at Johann Rial. He wanted to say something very badly. Then she took a deep breath and let Eli lead her out of the pew. They followed Johann, and she meant to keep her eyes straight ahead, to look at no one in their all too public trek to the vestry. But like a moth lured into the candle flame, at the last moment, she looked at the congregation. Her eyes immediately locked with Frederich Graeber’s, and she couldn’t keep from faltering. The raw emotion, the anger she saw there, led her to but one conclusion. Frederich Graeber wasn’t made of stone after all.

The vestry smelled of hymnals and dust and candle wax. Caroline waited for Johann to stop talking. Her breath came out in a white cloud in the frigid room, and her hands felt stiff and cold. She wanted to move to the far corner away from the door, because she truly felt that if Johann hadn’t been standing in the way, she would have bolted.

“Do you understand what’s happened?” Johann finally asked her.

“Do you?” she countered. She had no idea how she’d come to be in this predicament.

“Caroline, Frederich wants to talk to you.”

“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

The door abruptly opened, and Frederich Graeber stepped into the room. Caroline caught a glimpse of the people on the nearest pews, all of them trying to get a better look. She stood with her head up, the way John Steigermann had counseled. She was not going to cry. She was not.

Frederich glanced in Caroline Holt’s direction, but he said nothing to her, closing the door firmly behind him. “I want to know what you—and Eli—are doing?” he said to Johann in German, lowering his voice so that Leah wouldn’t hear him.

“What I am doing?” Johann said incredulously. Johann’s German was corrupted by years of speaking English and sounded wrong to Frederich’s ears. “This uproar is no doing of mine, Frederich. If anyone is to blame it is you and Avery Holt. The girl didn’t even know there was a marriage pledge until the day John Steigermann took her to his house. My only concern is for this bastard child—”

“You know what people will think!” Frederich interrupted.

“Do you think the baby is Eli’s?”

“If I thought that, Johann, he’d be dead now,” Frederich answered, knowing full well that the only reason he didn’t believe it was the horrified look on Caroline Holt’s face when Eli made his bold offer. Clearly, Frederich wasn’t the only German she held in disdain.

“Yes, and the day isn’t over yet, is it, Frederich?” Johann said pointedly. “What is it you want done—or do you even know? She is your family member with or without the marriage pledge. Are you going to withdraw your pledge? Do you care if her baby is born a bastard or not? If you don’t, then leave. I will find whatever way I can to save this innocent child—even if it is a marriage to Eli.”

Frederich made an impatient gesture. “I will not be indebted to Eli!”

“How much has he to do with your making this marriage pledge in the first place?” Johann asked bluntly.

“Everything,” he said, meeting Johann’s gaze head on.

“You would put Caroline in the middle of the trouble between you and Eli and poor Ann—”

“Poor Ann? I am the one cuckolded!”

“Ann made a wrong choice, and she is the one who died for it. I think it would be better if you did withdraw the marriage pledge to Caroline. Let Eli take her. You carry too much pain and resentment still—”

“She won’t be any better off with Eli, Johann, and you know that. Eli has lived his whole life according to his whim. Ann was one of his whims. What if he changes his mind after he’s married Caroline? Who will be looking after her and her baby then?”

“I will ask if someone else will make the offer—”

“No! I don’t want any more scandal! And I told you. I can’t—won’t—be beholden to Eli. There will be less talk if I keep my pledge—at least they won’t dare say anything to my face. Caroline Holt is my children’s aunt. She has always been kind to them, and as much as I might dislike it, both of the girls need her.”

“And you, Frederich. What is it you need?”

“I need a mother for Lise and Mary Louise.”

“Can you be kind to Caroline? Can you keep from punishing her for Ann’s sin?”

“Look at her, Johann,” Frederich said. “We are alike, she and I. Neither of us cares what happens to us from here on. Perhaps we can do something good for an innocent child, and we can make everybody else happy in the process. I will keep the pledge. I am making the Christian and honorable offer you wanted someone to make.”

“Yes, but are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Johann.”

“I don’t think she’ll marry you, Frederich.”

“What choice does she have? Now go away so I can talk to her.”

“Go away? I can’t leave you in here alone with—”

“Leah is here. I don’t want you listening to what I say to Caroline—for her sake. There are some things that are none of your business. I want her to speak to me without you standing over her with the wrath of God.”

“I don’t do that,” Johann protested. “I never do that.”

“Go away, Johann!”

Caroline watched as the conversation between Frederich and Johann Rial abruptly ended. Johann was disturbed-she could tell that much—and one of his questions had made Frederich angry.

“What were they saying?” she asked Leah, trying hard to stand calmly and not wring her hands.

“I couldn’t hear,” Leah said.

Surprisingly and more than a little reluctantly, Johann left the room. Caroline needed to sit down. With Johann gone, there was no one to stand between her and Frederich Graeber’s anger. She was so tired suddenly, and in spite of everything she could do, she swayed on her feet. She moved blindly to one of the straight chairs in the room, and resisting Leah’s help, she sat down heavily.

Frederich immediately pulled up another chair and sat directly in front of her. He needed to be able to see her face when he talked to her, and he watched her closely. She was more afraid than she was willing to let on, and she was very pale. But she was not an older version of Ann. She looked nothing like his dead wife, and if anything in this situation pleased him, it was that.

“I know what you think of Germans—” he said.

“You know what Avery thinks of Germans,” Caroline replied. “You don’t know what I think about anything.”

“I also know what you think of marriage,” he went on as if she hadn’t interrupted. Ann had told him once that Caroline was determined never to be trapped in a loveless and hurtful union like their parents’.

Caroline didn’t respond to that remark, and Frederich waited. After a moment, she reached up and took off her bonnet, as if she wanted him to see her face better. She was not beautiful. He had always thought she had a kind of wasted prettiness, the kind that would have been fine enough for any man—if only she would have smiled more. She was not pretty today. Her face was bruised and swollen, and her dark hair was roached back so that it hid nothing of the damage Avery had done.

“Do you want to marry Eli?” he asked.

“No,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I don’t know why Eli is doing this. And I don’t want to marry you. I never wanted to marry you. I didn’t even know what you and Avery had planned—” She abruptly broke off and looked away. She was not going to explain this again.

“Why doesn’t the father of this baby marry you?”

Caroline glanced at him, but she said nothing. Then she intently smoothed down her skirt as if that were much more important than his questions.

“Do I…know the man?”

Again, Caroline refused to answer.

“Are you that ashamed of him then?” Frederich asked next, and Caroline’s head came up sharply. She looked him directly in the eyes.

“Take your marriage proposal and be damned,” she said.

“Caroline!” Leah chided her. “We are in the church!”

It surprised him that he was not in the least offended. He was far happier knowing that she was still the strong person Ann had described to him. He intended only to provide her child with legitimacy, nothing more. He wanted no whipped puppy or helpless clinging vine to have to look after.

“I have decided to keep the marriage pledge,” he said, holding up his hand when she would have interrupted. “Before you are so quick to say no, I remind you that you are the one who needs a marriage ceremony. I also remind you that my children—Anna’s children—need a woman who cares about them. Beata is no mother to them. It has been hard to see them so lonely since Anna died. Perhaps you will think of a marriage to me as a way to help your sister’s children as well as yourself. If you agree to it, I give you my word that I will take care of you as best I can. But I will expect you to be a good wife. I will expect you to be civil to me. I do not take Avery’s place as someone you must do battle with at every turn—”

“How can you speak of marriage? You think I’m not fit to have anything to do with your children,” she said.

“Yes,” he answered. “I do. But you are innocent in my children’s eyes and you are important to them. I have never had cause to think you unfit until now.”

Caroline looked abruptly away.

“You…don’t say anything about the baby,” she said, realizing even as she said it that she sounded as if she were actually considering the possibility of marrying him. She looked up at him. “Can you be kind to another man’s child?”

She saw a flicker of emotion cross his face. He took a moment to answer.

“The child cannot help how it got here. If you marry me, then it will be mine. There is nothing left to say about this and we are wasting time. Do we marry or not, Caroline Holt? Antworten Sie entweder ja oder nein. Answer yes or no.”

Her eyes met his briefly, but she then quickly looked away. She said nothing, her hands clutching the folds of her skirt.

“Your right to pick and choose husbands you have forfeited, Caroline Holt. You can sit and cry and live on John Steigermann’s charity or you can marry me,” he said impatiently. “If the answer is yes, we will have the ceremony right now. Everyone who is still here will be invited to stay to witness it. There will be no hiding. People already know the reason for our marrying—or not marrying. There will be no more shame about what has happened.”

“I don’t even know you,” Caroline said abruptly. “You’re a stranger to me.”

“Every person who marries marries a stranger,” Frederich said. “No one knows that better than I. But I am less a stranger than most. We are part of the same family.” He stared at the bruises on her face. “I give you my word now that I will not beat you. I will not let Avery or anyone else beat you. What else do you want?”

What indeed? Caroline thought.

The door abruptly opened.

“I can’t wait out here any longer, Frederich,” Johann said in German. “I’ve been talking to Eli and he—”

“This matter is between Caroline Holt and me. Eli has no part in it.”

“I know that, Frederich. It’s Beata I’m worried about. She’s becoming a…problem.”

“Beata is always a problem.”

“She is threatening to swoon,” Johann said in English.

“Swoon?” Frederich asked, not familiar with the word.

He smiled at Johann’s explanation of this terrible thing Beata would inflict upon him to have her way. He had no doubt that their sire would have capitulated immediately at such a dire threat from his spoiled daughter. The old man was long gone—and Beata still believed that the mere possibility of her keeling over in public would turn the world according to her wishes.

“Caroline Holt,” he said, getting up from the chair. “We have wasted enough time. Tell me now. Do we go make Beata swoon or not?”