MB02 - A Noble Groom (2 page)

Gott was probably at the farm across the road, helping her
family, especially her
vater
. After all, Vater was as religious as a good Lutheran could be and deserved Gott’s help.

“Look.” Gretchen tugged Annalisa’s hand. “Papa’s sleeping.”

Annalisa’s eyes flew open, and she straightened with a start. “What? Your papa? Sleeping? Impossible.”

She followed the direction of Gretchen’s finger, and the tumult in her mind came to an abrupt halt.

There, on the ground next to a pile of burning slashings, lay Hans. From the middle of the cornfield where they stood, it did indeed appear as if he’d decided to take a nap.

With the flames blazing nearby and the sparks shooting into the air, why would he do something so irresponsible?

Like all the settlers, he knew the dangers of fires fanning out of control and spreading.

“Come, liebchen.” She walked faster, and Gretchen’s short legs had to work hard to keep up. “He must be sick.”

Why would Hans waste time sleeping when he could amuse himself in more entertaining ways like playing cards and drinking?

Unless he was sick?

When she reached the edge of the cornfield, she halted with an abruptness that caused Gretchen to bump into her backside.

She eyed the bright flames dancing in the undergrowth of bushes and vines piled into a windrow. The dry burning brush popped like gunshots in the silent afternoon.

The distant scolding and chattering of a migrating flock of passenger pigeons echoed through the stillness. Otherwise, the farm was too quiet, too motionless.

“Hans?” She couldn’t bring herself to move another step toward him.

“Wake up, Papa.” Gretchen let go of her hand and skipped ahead. For as little attention as Hans gave their daughter, the girl’s love never wavered.

But even as Gretchen bent over to pat his back, wariness wormed through Annalisa’s unsettled stomach. “Don’t touch him!”

At her sharp command, Gretchen pulled her hand back as if she’d burned her fingers.

“Don’t touch,” Annalisa said again, trying to force a calmness to her voice she didn’t feel.

Gretchen stepped back, fear flittering in her widening eyes.

Annalisa forced her feet forward until she stood over her husband. “Hans? Are you sick?”

He didn’t move.

She stooped and jabbed him through the coarse linen of his homespun shirt. “If you’re not well, I’ll tend the fire for you.”

Still he didn’t respond.

Her heart thudded like a dasher beating up and down against fresh cream. Slowly she reached for his arm. At her slight nudge it fell away from his face, revealing charred skin with patches of roasted pink flesh underneath. Some places had burned away down to the white bone. Amidst the blackness, his eyes were open and stared unseeingly straight ahead.

A scream burned in her throat. “Gott, help us . . .” She stumbled backward, tripping and falling painfully to her backside, spilling the nuts they’d collected. “Oh, Gott, help us!”

Gretchen began to move forward.

“Nein!” Annalisa scrambled toward the girl, grabbed her and buried the little girl’s face into her empty apron. “Nein! Don’t look.”

What had happened to Hans?

Her body shook with sudden chills. She wanted to run away and hide, but her gaze returned to the awful sight.

Blood seeped from a deep gash near his hairline. Bright crimson smeared his sandy hair, turning it a muddy brown.

As angry as she was with Hans, as much as she despised his wayward ways, she hadn’t wanted him to die.

The truth was, she couldn’t survive without a husband. Not in this wilderness. Not as a woman alone on a forty-acre farm.

Bile rose in her throat.

A fly buzzed above the oozing and blistered flesh of his forehead.

Her stomach revolted. She turned away and retched on the hard barren ground.

“Annalisa must have a new husband.” Vater’s voice rose above the loud deliberating that had been ongoing since the men started their meal in the log cabin farmhouse that belonged to her parents.

“We are not disagreeing with you on this, Peter.”
Herr
Pastor reached for another slice of the thick brown bread on the platter in the center of the table.

With a crock of butter in one hand and a coffeepot in the other, Annalisa rushed to Herr Pastor’s spot. She plopped the crock next to him.

“Thank you, Annalisa.” He smiled and held out his mug for a refill. The whiskers around his mouth were spotted with the crumbs of all he’d already eaten.

She nodded but couldn’t form her lips into a smile, not even the barest semblance of one. She hadn’t been able to smile since yesterday—not since finding Hans.

Some of the neighbors had come to the consensus that Hans had merely suffered an accident, had hit his head and fallen unconscious into hot coals. But others—including Vater—decided that the greedy businessman, E. B. Ward, had murdered Hans so that he could finally get the land and build his mill.

It was all anyone had talked about at the funeral that afternoon, and now at the meal following the service. The men crowded together on the hand-hewn benches and scant chairs around the long table.

“We don’t disagree with you,” Herr Pastor said again. “But I’m only saying we may need to consider finding a God-fearing man from outside our own people. James McCann might be an Irishman, but he’s a Protestant and a hard worker—”

“Absolutely not!” Vater slammed the table. The spoons and knives rattled. Coffee sloshed over the edges of the steins. And silence descended through the crowded room. Even the women who’d clustered near the wood-burning stove ceased their chattering.

The sourness of a cabin full of sweaty men, unwashed after a long day of hard work, assaulted Annalisa anew. Her stomach swirled with the growing bouts of nausea. The stuffy heat, the spicy caraway of
Mutter’s rostbratwurst
, the tanginess of the sauerkraut—none of it eased her discomfort.

And it didn’t help that she was the center of the discussion.

“Nein! We won’t even consider it.” Vater pointed the nub of his missing forefinger at Herr Pastor. “It’s a good thing you’re a man of God or I’d send you running like Samson did to the Philistines.”

Annalisa leaned against the cool log wall with its mud and hay chinking and let it soothe the heat of her back. She longed to scoop up Gretchen, who was playing with the other children in the loft, and go home to bed.

She was tired of listening to everyone discuss Hans’s death, and she was tired of worrying about what would happen next.

But she couldn’t leave—not without knowing the fate Vater decided for her.

As hard as it had been with Hans, she knew there were men
who were worse, men who wouldn’t hesitate to beat her or Gretchen.

Herr Pastor took a bite of bread, seemingly unruffled by Vater’s outburst. Of all the men in the room, Reverend Hermann Loehe was the most educated and spoke English well enough to converse with the locals. He’d resided in Forestville the longest and had helped their community in countless ways since they’d arrived. They couldn’t afford to alienate him.

His wife,
Frau
Pastor, broke away from the group of women in the corner and bustled to the table with more
kartoffelsuppe
.

“I could post a letter to my former parish down in Frankenlust,” Herr Pastor offered. “They may have an unattached man who might be willing to relocate.”

“Good idea, dear-heart,” Frau Pastor said, ladling the soup into his bowl. Her fleshy cheeks were flushed and curved into a dimpled smile. She was the only woman who ever dared entering into the men’s conversations. “I’m sure there would be a man worthy of our dear Annalisa from among the congregation.”

“A complete stranger is no good,” Vater bellowed as he held out his plate to Mutter.

As if Mutter had been watching for his summons, she scurried to the table to do his bidding and refill his plate. She still wore the same woolen peasant garb she’d brought with her from the Old Country. In fact, the plain brown dress and matching headscarf were the same she’d worn on the ship six years ago when they’d sailed out of Hamburg.

Even during the long months when they’d had to live in Detroit before finding land to buy, Mutter had insisted on wearing her sack-like garb. Most of the other Saxon women, when faced with ridicule over their heavy woolen clothes, had quickly conformed to the American styles.

But not Mutter. She would not think of wasting even the smallest length of thread to reshape their dresses.

“It’s too bad Leonard was the last of our men needing a wife.” Vater crossed his hands behind his head, revealing round damp spots under his arms. His sweaty hair stuck to his wide sun-browned forehead. Even though the door was open to invite in the cool evening air, the windows were sealed with oiled paper instead of glass, and the welcome fresh air refused to enter.

At the end of the table, Leonard belched. “Maybe it’s not too late to make an exchange, Herr Bernthal.”

Vater only harrumphed and waggled his hand at Mutter, trying to hurry her along with his second plate of sausage.

“I’ll give you back Idette,” Leonard continued, “in exchange for Annalisa.”

Annalisa stiffened. Next to her, Idette sucked in a breath.

“Idette is a lazy wife, and she has no experience with children.”

Vater sat forward and stared down the length of the table at Leonard. “I don’t know what kind of nonsense you’re speaking. None of my children are lazy. I’ve raised them all to be hard workers.”

Annalisa groped for Idette’s fingers. At seventeen her sister was only two years younger than she. Even so, inheriting five children on one’s wedding day would have taxed the most matronly of women. So far her sister had done the best she could. Couldn’t Leonard see that?

“A cow could manage my children better than she does,” Leonard grumbled.

The muscles in Idette’s hand tightened under Annalisa’s hold. Color infused her sister’s pretty face, and she learned forward as if she would defend herself.

“Then maybe I should have given you a cow instead of my daughter.” Vater leveled a stern look at Leonard.

“She’ll adjust,” Herr Pastor said quickly, glancing between Vater and Leonard, his whiskery eyebrows furrowing.

“Yes, give the child time,” Frau Pastor added. “After all, the wedding was less than three weeks ago. She’s young, hardly older than your children. And these things aren’t easy.”

“I’m doing the very best I can,” Idette said.

Annalisa knew she ought to stop Idette from speaking disrespectfully to her husband. But she couldn’t, not when she’d always admired Idette’s spirit and courage and wished she could have just a small measure of it for herself.

Idette lifted her chin and continued, “And I do everything I’m told.”

Leonard rolled his eyes. “That’s the problem. I need a wife who will see what needs to be done and do it without having to be told like a child.”

“You must gently instruct her,” Herr Pastor said. But his words were drowned by the guffaws and loud protests of the other men at the table. Pastor’s advice was as foreign to them as many of the American customs.

Idette glared at Leonard. “He’s a brute,” she whispered to Annalisa. “You’re lucky to be rid of your husband.”

Lucky? Annalisa knew better. Having a
bad
husband was better than
no
husband. What hope did she have for her future without a husband?

For several minutes the room filled with the usual boisterous noise, as all the men were talking at the same time.

Finally, Vater swallowed his last bite of sausage and shoved his plate to the center of the table. “I still have not solved the problem of what to do for Annalisa.”

If only she had a golden apple, or a golden goose, or something
gold from one of the
Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales
. Then she would be able to provide Gretchen with a better life.

Vater’s voice rose to dominate all the others. “If she doesn’t have a husband, she’ll lose the land.”

“Why not sell it to Ward since he wants it?” someone said.

“Nein, I won’t sell—” Annalisa caught herself and reined in her words, even though everything within her rose in objection. How could she stand back and let them sell her home and property to a crook like Ward? Where would they live? What would she do? She had no training or skills. How would she take care of Gretchen?

She pressed a hand to her abdomen. And maybe she’d have another life to care for. With the increasing nausea and the tenderness of her bosom, she had begun to suspect she was with child. It wasn’t good timing. But she was sure she would love a new baby as passionately as she loved Gretchen.

As far as she could see, babies were the only good that came out of marriage.

But it would mean she must work all the harder. And how could she do that if she allowed Ward to take over the farm?

Thankfully, Vater was already shaking his head. “That
dummboozle
is as bad as Pharaoh enslaving the Israelites. We’ve already fought to free ourselves from the slavery of the dukes and barons of the Old Country, and we won’t allow any man to control us again.”