A Simple Vow (28 page)

Read on for an excerpt from
Charlotte Hubbard’s next Amish romance,

coming this October!

 

 

 

As Promise Lodge’s first wedding arrives, the evidence of a community building a foundation for the future is a cause for celebration. But the bishop’s narrow-minded wedding sermon doesn’t sit well with the Bender sisters, the town’s courageous founders, especially widowed Mattie Bender Schwartz. She believes marriage and family aren’t the most important of God’s gifts—even if she suspects her tender feelings for Preacher Amos Troyer run deeper than simple friendship.

 

Amos hasn’t given up hope that stubborn, spirited Mattie will change her mind about taking another husband, but when an accident threatens to change the course of his life forever, he wonders if the Lord has sent him a message. He’ll need faith, hope, and charity to find the right path—and a Christmas blessing to convince Mattie to walk it with him.

Mattie Schwartz slipped into her new navy blue dress earlier than she needed to because this was no ordinary October day. In about four hours, her younger son Noah would be marrying Deborah Peterscheim—the first wedding to take place in the Promise Lodge colony she and her sisters had founded last spring—and she’d been awake since three o’clock, too excited to sleep. She left her two-room apartment and went downstairs to join the Kuhn sisters, who were overseeing the preparation of the wedding meal in the lodge’s huge kitchen.

Mattie inhaled deeply. The entire building smelled of roasting chickens, vegetables, and perking coffee. The huge kitchen, which had at one time provided meals when Promise Lodge had been a church camp, bustled with the ladies who lived here now. As soon as Mattie stepped through the door, however, seventy-year-old Beulah Kuhn pointed at her with a vegetable peeler.

“This is the day that the Lord has made for your Noah to marry Deborah,” she paraphrased from the stool where she sat peeling potatoes.

“Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” Beulah’s sister Ruby added with a wide smile. “The mother of the groom gets time off from cooking and cleaning up. It’s your day to party, Mattie!”

“We’ve already sent Alma Peterscheim out of here,” Mattie’s sister Christine remarked from the stove, where she stood stirring gravy. “Didn’t want Deborah’s mother sitting through church with food on her new dress, after all.”

“You were here all yesterday afternoon baking pies with us, Mattie,” Frances Lehman, the bishop’s wife, pointed out. “So it’s your day to visit with your family and friends who’ve come to celebrate with you. We’ll allow you a cup of coffee and one of the biscuit sandwiches from the counter, and then you’re to forget all about the kitchen.”

Mattie shook her head and chuckled. As one of the three original owners of the property, she’d considered herself more outspoken and independent than most Plain women, but the other ladies who’d made their homes here were proving to be every bit as stubborn and insistent as she and Christine and Rosetta.

“All right, just this once I’ll do as I’m told,” Mattie teased as she picked up a warm breakfast sandwich. “But we’re not making it a habit, understand.”

The kitchen filled with laughter, a sound that lifted Mattie’s spirits. When she’d been widowed in Coldstream—and Christine had lost her husband, and Rosetta had been left alone after their parents had passed—they’d each known the lonely silence of roaming around in their separate farmhouses. Living in the lodge together, with Plain ladies who rented apartments from Rosetta, made for a far more cheerful life. Mattie closed her eyes as she bit into a big, soft biscuit filled with ham, a fried egg, and cheese that dribbled down the sides. Eating food someone else had cooked was a treat that made her Noah’s wedding day even more special.

“We’ve told Rosetta and my girls to stay in the dining hall, setting tables,” Christine remarked, pouring more flour and milk mixture into her gravy. “Phoebe and Laura are so excited to be serving as Deborah’s side-sitters. I didn’t want them getting their dresses dirty, either.”

“
Jah,
what with my Noah’s being sweet on Deborah all through school, your girls have waited a
gut
long while to sit up front with her,” Mattie said before taking another gratifying bite of her breakfast.

“And what a blessing that Noah and Deborah can hold the wedding in their new home,” Frances put in with a big smile. “It’s truly amazing, how many houses have gone up since Floyd and I moved here with the girls this past summer.”

“
Jah,
what with Preacher Amos’s being a carpenter and Floyd and his brother running a siding and window business, we’ve got one of the nicest-looking Plain communities I’ve ever seen.” Beulah rose from her stool to carry a big pot of peeled potatoes to the sink. “Ruby and I never dreamed we’d have our cheese factory up and running so fast, either, but the fellows here can build just about anything. And we couldn’t ask for richer milk than we’re getting from Christine’s cows.”

“And my bees love the orchard, too,” Ruby said happily. “Every morning when I get up and look out the window, I see their white hives amongst the apple trees and tell myself we’ve found the Garden of Eden.”

“The produce stand’s open later in the season than I’d figured on, too,” Mattie said with a nod. “Local folks are snapping up our pumpkins and the last of the squash now, and I suspect they’d come all winter long if Deborah kept selling her baked goodies there.”

“Maybe she could sell them from the cheese factory,” Beulah mused aloud. She ran water into her pot and put the potatoes on to boil. “Truth be told, we could use her help running the counter out front while we stir up batches of cheese. But she might change her mind about working now that she’s getting married.”

“Last I heard, Deborah was excited about having a new kitchen to bake in, especially while Noah’s out on his welding jobs,” Mattie said. “At least until she’s got wee ones to watch after.”

“Deborah was amazed at how well her breads and bars sold over the summer,” Christine said. She turned off the gas stove and smiled at Mattie. “I suspect she sees the three of us Bender sisters running businesses and understands what an advantage it is for a woman to have some income. For us unattached gals it’s our living, but for a wife it means a little more freedom—more leverage—when things around the house wear out or need fixing.”

Frances was listening to this thread of conversation as though Mattie, Christine, and the Kuhn sisters were speaking a dialect she didn’t understand very well. “Where I come from, the menfolk have always brought home the bacon and the women have cooked it up,” she said softly. “Married women are homemakers without any businesses, and widows and
maidels
depend upon the men in their families to support them.”

“That’s how it was for Beulah and me before we ran away from home,” Ruby said. “Once we
maidel
schoolteachers retired, our brother Delbert took us in—”

“But we felt he and his wife should be raising their five kids instead of having to support us, as well,” Beulah continued. “Delbert was against us living here—”

“
Jah,
he came in his truck and hauled us back home,” Ruby recounted.

“—but when his mother-in-law had to move in after Carol’s
dat
died, we decided that was just too many folks in a one-bathroom house. So here we are,” Beulah said, raising her arms victoriously. “We’re making our own way with our cheese and our bees, living in Rosetta’s lodge. Life is fun again!”

“We’re too young to get old any time soon,” Ruby chimed in matter-of-factly. “God is
gut,
and so’s the life He’s led us to here.”

Frances smiled at all of them as though she might know something she wasn’t telling. “It’s invigorating to come to this new colony where everyone’s starting fresh—and I’m grateful to everyone for being so accepting of my Mary Kate,” she said in a voice that quivered a bit. “With Floyd’s being the bishop in our previous settlement, and Mary Kate’s being in the family way after that English fellow took advantage of her, we prayed that Promise Lodge would be a safe haven for her and the baby.”

“I think she’s very brave, raising the baby rather than giving it up for adoption,” Mattie remarked. She took one of the paper plates on the counter, placed three biscuit sandwiches on it, and covered them with a napkin. “If I don’t take these to Preacher Amos and my two boys, they might not eat anything before church and the wedding.
Denki
to you ladies for cooking on our special day, and for seeing to our breakfast, too.”

As Mattie passed through the large dining room, she smiled at the way white tablecloths had transformed the old, careworn wooden tables into the perfect setting for their celebration. Her younger sister, Rosetta, was setting a glass to the right of each plate. Christine’s girls, Laura and Phoebe, were going down the sides of the tables with forks and knives while Mary Kate Lehman followed them with the spoons.

“Looks like you’ve got a
gut
system going, girls,” Mattie said brightly. “How many folks can we seat at once? This’ll be the first time we’ve filled this room.”

“A hundred and fifty—which includes the wedding party up on the
eck,
” Rosetta replied, gesturing toward the raised table in the far corner. “We figure most of the guests will fill up the first sitting, and then we worker bees and our families can eat during the second sitting.”

“It’ll be
gut
to see our friends from Coldstream, along with our cousins, aunts, and uncles who’re scattered around Missouri,” Phoebe said. She turned toward Mary Kate with a smile. “We used to live about three hours from here, but the bishop’s son Isaac was causing so much trouble—”

“Setting barns afire and drinking with his English friends,” Laura put in with a shake of her head.

“—that our
mamm
and aunts decided to move away,” Phoebe continued. “And as if that weren’t enough, Isaac came here with one of his buddies, thinking to get back at Deborah for calling the sheriff.”

“But we sent him packing!” Rosetta recalled with a chuckle. “I doubt the Chupps will come today, what with the three of our households plus Preacher Amos and the Peterscheims moving here to get away from them.”

Mary Kate stopped placing spoons on the tables. Her hand slid over the swell of her belly as her eyes widened. “You—you’re sure Isaac won’t be coming?” she murmured fearfully. “After that English fellow pulled off the road and—and tackled me in the ditch, I don’t ever want a man getting that close to me again, or even
looking
at me.”

Mattie quickly set her plate down and hurried over to the bishop’s daughter. “Mary Kate, don’t you worry about a thing,” she murmured as she slung her arm around the girl’s slender shoulders. “If my boys or Preacher Amos spots Isaac Chupp, they’ll be swarming around him like Ruby’s bees. Here at Promise Lodge we don’t tolerate men who bully women.”

Mary Kate was breathing rapidly, sucking in air to settle her nerves. “Maybe when we’re finished setting up here, I should go home instead of attending the wedding. Dat says that in my condition, I shouldn’t be showing myself in public anyway.”

Mattie chose her words carefully, not wanting to contradict the bishop—yet hoping Mary Kate would feel comfortable enough to enjoy today’s wedding festivities. At seven months along she was obviously pregnant, but her guilt and shame bothered Mattie more than Mary Kate’s appearance. It wasn’t as if this shy eighteen-year-old girl had gone looking for trouble the day she’d been raped while walking home from a neighbor’s.

“I don’t see the harm of sitting with your
mamm
during church and the wedding,” Mattie said gently. “What with Laura, Phoebe, and Deborah—and your
dat
—all sitting up front, you and your mother could keep one another company. There’ll be a lot of folks here that neither one of you knows.”

Mary Kate looked down at her clasped hands. “
Jah,
there’s that, but—”

“And it might be a long while before we have another big event—unless Rosetta and Truman Wickey decide to get hitched,” Phoebe said with a teasing glance at her aunt.

Rosetta waved them off, but she was smiling. “Don’t hold your breath for
that
wedding, seeing’s how Truman’s Mennonite and I’m Old Order Amish.”

Laura let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t see why that’s such a big deal,” she protested. “Everybody knows you and Truman are sweet on each other. In some Plain settlements, folks are fine with interfaith marriages.”

“Well, that’s an issue to take up on another day,” Mattie remarked in a purposeful tone. Her nieces meant well, but their romantic notions about Truman and Rosetta would get Bishop Floyd going on another one of his lectures. As bishops went, he was very conservative and insisted on following traditional Old Order ways. “Our concern now is for Mary Kate, and we want her to enjoy our special day instead of feeling she has to hide herself away. Think about it, all right?” she asked softly.

Mary Kate nodded. “You and your sisters keep telling me I should have some fun before the baby gets here. I’ll give it my best shot—unless I chicken out, come time for church.”

Squeezing the girl’s shoulder, Mattie left her sister and the girls to finish setting the tables. When she stepped out onto the lodge’s big front porch, she stopped for a moment to take in the plowed plots where they’d grown vegetables all summer for their roadside produce stand . . . the small white structure alongside Christine’s red dairy barn, where the Kuhn sisters made several varieties of cheese . . . the new road that wound between homes and barns belonging to Noah and Deborah, Preacher Amos, the Peterscheim family, and the Lehmans . . . as well as the partly completed homes, one for their newest residents, Preacher Marlin Kurtz and his kids, and the other for her older son, Roman. Every morning she stood here gazing toward the orchard, Rainbow Lake, and the tree-covered hills that provided such a rustic, lovely setting for their new friends, amazed at how their colony had progressed since spring.

Denki,
Lord, for Your providential care
, Mattie prayed.
We ask Your blessings on Noah and Deborah today as they become man and wife. If You’d bless Mary Kate with health and healing and more confidence, that would be a gift, as well.

When she saw Amos Troyer step out onto his porch, Mattie waved her arm high above her head and started walking toward him. His new home was modest and small compared to the others, because as a widower in his fifties, he wasn’t going to raise another family—although it was no secret that he hoped Mattie would marry him someday soon. Truth be told, she savored her independence after enduring a husband who’d mistreated her, but she enjoyed Preacher Amos’s company.

“I’ve got a surprise for your breakfast,” she called out as she approached his tidy white house. “The Kuhn sisters were kind enough to make us some biscuit sandwiches—”