MB02 - A Noble Groom (21 page)

For two days Annalisa watched Gretchen for any sign of sickness. And with every ache in her own head or muscles, she tensed. She couldn’t afford to get sick, not with the baby soon to be born, not when she had Gretchen to take care of, not with the rest of the garden that needed planting and the corn that needed sowing and the weeds that needed pulling and the berries that would soon be ready for picking and preserving.

And she had to finish the dandelion jelly.

Annalisa dipped her fingers into the bowl of flaxen petals. They were as soft as the down of a baby chick. Hopefully she’d have enough to make several jars so that she could keep one and sell the rest.

And I don’t want to keep one just so that Carl can taste my jelly,
she thought.
I want one jar for Gretchen
. Ja, she liked watching the pleasure in Carl’s face when he ate, and she devoured his compliments. But that wasn’t why she wanted the dandelion jelly . . . was it?

With a flick of her hand she dumped the petals into a pot of boiling water. Then she stirred the wilted yellow flowers in the water, inhaling the bubbling waft that smelled like freshly cut grass.

Through the open door Gretchen’s chatter was clear and sweet, followed by Carl’s low response to the girl. She had no doubt that Gretchen was watching him repair the crooked fence around her garden. Gretchen had already completed her morning chores, including making the bed. Except . . .

Annalisa’s stirring came to a jerking halt. The small crate under the bed had been shifted to an odd angle and wasn’t in its usual face-out position.

Had Gretchen moved it?

Annalisa let the wooden spoon slip into the honey-colored liquid and rushed to the bedstead.

She trembled as she slid awkwardly under the bed, her bulky middle hardly allowing her to fit anymore. But she knew that she could because she’d put her earnings in her crock just two days ago, the very evening they’d returned from their trip to town.

Her fingers shook as they made contact with the hidden crock.

Oh, Gott, bitte,
she prayed. “Bitte, bitte, bitte. Not Carl.”
Please, please, please. Not him. Not like Hans.

She’d wanted to think that maybe God had been smiling down upon her of late, but maybe she’d been mistaken.

Slowly she wiggled her way out from underneath the bed, knelt and poured out the coins. With nausea rolling through her stomach she counted every penny, making small stacks on the floor.

She hadn’t been able to save much since Hans had taken her money and gambled it away before he died. Over the hard winter she’d needed most of her earnings to buy supplies. But she’d managed three dollars and twenty-five cents, which was a good start. If she saved a little at a time, someday it would all add up to enough that perhaps she could send Gretchen to school.

In the Old Country, girls were allowed very little schooling, if any. Only boys could become teachers. But here in America she could give Gretchen and the new baby so much more than she’d ever had. If she worked hard and saved enough . . . and if she could keep her earnings from being stolen.

Her hands shook, and she almost tipped over the last stack of coins.

When she finished counting, she sat back on her heels and stared at the money. Four dollars? Had she added wrong?

She wasn’t very good at figures, had only learned just a little arithmetic during her time at the Detroit school.

With her pulse pattering faster she recounted the stacks. Once again her sum came to four dollars exactly.

How was it possible? She stared at the money, tempted to count it again. Had she miscalculated when she’d returned from town? But even as her mind scrambled to make sense of the extra coins, her heart cinched at the realization of what had happened.

She pushed herself up, the weight of the baby making her efforts cumbersome. She lumbered to the door and stopped at the sight of Carl in the yard.

The tight pinch around her heart moved into her throat. Tears stung her eyes.

Carl Richards was a good man. A very good man.

She couldn’t speak to him yet, not past the ache. Instead she leaned against the doorframe and gave in to the indulgence of watching him without his knowledge. He’d taken off his hat, and sunlight glinted on his dark waves, reminding her of the thickness and the forbidden pleasure she’d found in combing her fingers through the strands.

Longing pushed into her aching throat. She wanted nothing more in that moment than to have him pull her into his arms and to rest her cheek against his shoulder again.

She didn’t know how he’d discovered her hiding spot, but he had. Instead of taking from her, he’d given of the little he had.

And he’d done it in secret, likely thinking she wouldn’t realize he’d added to her money, not knowing how carefully she kept track of how much went into the crock.

Should she thank him?

He’d repaired the garden fence and now stood next to the
clothesline, nailing slanted boards into the posts. In his spare time he always seemed to find something to make or fix. She never knew exactly what he was doing until he finished and showed her how the new contraption worked.

Gretchen had followed him, and he’d enlisted her help in holding the rope while he worked, taking care it didn’t touch the ground and become soiled.

“And the English word for
hund
is dog.” He had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt so that his bare arms showed. They were still white, but the muscles rippled with each stroke of the hammer.

“Dog,” Gretchen repeated.

“
Mein hund folgt mir,
” he continued. “In English we say, My dog follows me.”

Gretchen spoke the English words effortlessly.

Was Carl teaching her even though she was a girl?

She’d wanted Gretchen to learn the native language. Her daughter would have a much easier time fitting in and would have more advantages if she could speak English, especially at an early age. But Annalisa didn’t know enough to teach her.

She pressed trembling fingers against her lips, overwhelmed by his kindness.

A distant rattle of a wagon drew Annalisa’s eyes to the path that led from the road to the cabin. Her muscles tensed, and worry chased away the sweetness of the moment.

She held her breath and whispered a silent prayer that it wasn’t her groom.

Not yet.

She didn’t want him coming yet.

Every day when she awoke, she couldn’t keep from wondering if today would finally be the day he arrived. She knew it had to be any day, any hour, any minute. He was long past due.

Perhaps something had happened to him. Maybe he’d changed
his mind. Or what if he’d become too ill to come. In either case, she expected that he or his family would write to them if he was unable to travel.

As the rattle passed by the farm and grew faint, she breathed out her relief.

Because the truth was, she wanted Carl to stay. Ja, she had to admit it to herself—she wanted things to go on the way they were. With Carl there.

She didn’t want her groom to come because that would mean Carl would leave.

Now that she’d gotten a taste of what life with a kind man was like, could she really marry a stranger, someone who might not respect her, someone who might be like Hans or Idette’s husband, Leonard?

Carl paused in his work, smiled down at Gretchen, and spoke in English.

She repeated his words with a return smile of her own—a smile filled with girlish adoration. And love?

Was Gretchen starting to love this man?

“God help us,” Annalisa whispered. By prolonging Carl’s time with them and allowing Gretchen to come to love him, was she only making his leaving more difficult for her daughter?

Gretchen had already lost her papa. Even though Hans had barely spoken a word to Gretchen, she’d still loved him. She didn’t need to lose another man she’d grown to care about. The loss would devastate the girl.

Annalisa turned back into the shadows of the cabin, the agony of the situation churning her stomach like strong vinegar.

The bubbling of the boiling dandelions called to her.

But she hesitated. What if she could change Carl’s mind about staying? What if she could make him
want
to marry her?

Even as the questions flitted through her mind, she tossed
them aside. She was bound to Dirk, to her cousin. Vater had given the man his word. And she couldn’t disobey Vater’s wishes and cause trouble among her family. He’d done what he thought was best for her. He was only trying to help her.

Her head told her the best thing for both her and Gretchen was for Carl to leave soon, before it became even harder to let him go. But everything else within her urged her to hang on to him, to do whatever she could to prevent him from walking out of their lives.

Chapter
11

The sun burned the back of Annalisa’s neck as she knelt around the new hill of soil Carl had hoed. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades, making her dress stick to her skin. And her lower back cramped with the weight of bending over for so long.

The work of planting the corn was more difficult this year than in the past. With the growing heaviness of the baby, she had a harder time getting up and down to move from one hill to the next. Even though she’d trained Gretchen to drop six of the dried corn kernels in each of the holes Carl had dug, Annalisa still had to shuffle along behind the girl and cover the seeds with the right depth of soil.

Annalisa brushed her fingers across the coarse, dry soil, covering the kernels before giving the ground a firm pat. Then she sat back and wiped her sleeve across her damp forehead.

Carl stopped and rubbed his fingers over his eyes. He swayed slightly but caught the hoe and leaned against it.

Annalisa glanced to the jug of water at the edge of the field. They’d been out in the sun all morning and it was past time for a water break.

It was also past time for more rain. So far, the other crops had been slow in growing due to the dryness of the past couple of weeks. But now that the chance of a frost was mostly behind them, they could plant the corn and the rest of the garden vegetables.

She had no doubt the rains would come. They usually did, flooding the river and turning the land into a lush, dense wilderness in spite of the lumbering that had taken the white pine years earlier.

Carl straightened and tipped his hat lower as if to keep the bright rays off his face.

Gretchen chattered behind him. For some reason, he’d been quiet today, his usual banter and smiles gone.

Annalisa had just assumed he was focused on the planting and too busy to pay attention to Gretchen.

But as he took a step forward and swayed again, this time like a man drunk on beer, Annalisa’s stomach lurched. Something was wrong.

“Carl, are you all right?” she called, struggling to stand to her feet.

He swiveled toward her and clutched the hoe as if it was the only thing keeping him from dropping to the ground.

“I think it would be good for you to rest now.”

“I’ll be fine in a minute.” His eyes were glassy, almost unseeing.

He rubbed his fingers into his eyes again and started around a stump to the place where he would form the next hill. Yet he only made it two steps before he crumpled to the ground.

A scream slipped from her lips, and she lunged forward, tripping over the clods of dirt. She scrambled next to him, her blood running as fast as a flooded river.

“I want you to take Gretchen and go away from here.” His
breath came in labored gasps, and he pressed a hand to his forehead.

“Nein—”

“I’m sick.”

“Then you need help.”

“It’s typhoid fever.”

Fear gripped her—fear for him, for her, for Gretchen, and even for her unborn baby. They were all at risk now. And there was no way he could return to Herr Mueller’s where he’d been staying. Even if she could get him there, they wouldn’t take him in. Not when he was infected.

For better or worse, proper or not, he’d have to stay with her.

She reached for his arm. “You should be in bed.”

He lifted his head and scowled. His eyes were dark with an anger she’d never seen in him before. “Leave me. Now.”

She started to push herself up but hesitated.

“Go!” Carl said.

“Mama?” Gretchen skipped near.

“No!” Carl held up a hand to keep the little girl from approaching.

Gretchen stopped.

“Take her away.” Anguish laced his voice. “Take her someplace safe.”

She wouldn’t tell him that it was likely too late, that if he had typhoid fever, he’d probably already exposed them to the disease.

“I want you to leave with Gretchen.” His gaze met hers again. But the anger was gone, and desperation had replaced it. “Please . . .”

“I’ll do my best to send Gretchen away,” she whispered through a tight throat. “But I’m not running off and leaving you here by yourself to die.”

He didn’t protest. Instead he dropped his head, defeat hanging in the air around him.

Somehow she managed to help him back to the cabin, to the bed where he collapsed.

One touch was all it took to feel the burning of his fever. With a great deal of tugging and heaving she freed him from his shirt and boots, leaving him in his soil-stained trousers and undervest. In the stifling heat of the cabin she knew she ought to unclothe him even more, but her cheeks burned at the thought.

She spent the rest of the morning and afternoon bringing in buckets of cold water from the well and bathing his overheated skin with cool cloths.

When a wagon rolled into the farmyard later in the day, only then did she remember she’d forgotten to nail a white scrap of cloth to the cabin as a warning that they were infected. She rushed out to wave the traveler away, but at the sight of Frau Pastor, she burst into tears.

The older woman hopped down from her wagon and smothered Annalisa with a tight hug. “Oh, dearie, dearie,” she said, kissing her head and patting her back.

When Annalisa was finally composed, she pulled away and hung her head. What had come over her to cry in Frau Pastor’s arms?