MB02 - A Noble Groom (3 page)

A chorus of
jawohl
s and nods met his words.

“I won’t give that man the satisfaction of buying Hans’s farm, even if he puts a gun to my head.” An angry scowl creased the thick beefy roundness of Vater’s face. “If we let him build that sawmill, he won’t do us any favors. He’ll only empty our pockets by overcharging us for boards.”

Like everyone in the room, Annalisa knew Vater’s hatred
wasn’t directed so much at Ward as it was at Baron von Reichart, the nobleman whose selfishness and cruelty had cost Vater the life of his oldest son.

If not for Baron von Reichart, they might never have left their homeland and all their family.

If not for Baron von Reichart, they might not have had to give up mining and learn a whole new way of living.

If not for Baron von Reichart, Vater would have two cherished sons, instead of one.

“Nein,” Vater said. “We’ll find a way to help Annalisa keep the farm.”

“Why bother helping her?” Leonard said. “As reckless as Hans was, she won’t be able to pay off the loan by next fall anyway.”

Annalisa ducked her head and moved away from the wall. Even in his death, Hans was still shaming her. She bustled toward the shelves where she had left her pies cooling earlier when she’d brought them from home, and she refused to meet the gazes of the other women.

No one else needed to say anything. They all knew Leonard was referring to Hans’s foolishness with their money.

“If she loses the farm next fall, so be it,” Vater declared. “But at least the land will default back to Jacob Buel, and Jacob is a good businessman. He despises Ward as much as we do. I have no doubt he’ll find another
Deutscher
to loan to.”

Idette whispered into her ear, having followed her to the pies. “Don’t listen to them. They’re all dummboozles.” Her sister’s scandalous tone mimicked their father’s.

Under normal circumstances, Idette’s playful banter would have cheered Annalisa. But not today. Not when she was tired and sick . . . and worried. She might be free from Hans and all of his problems, but she’d gained an even bigger problem.
She had exactly one year to pay the remainder of the loan on the farm or lose everything. The loan had been set at four hundred dollars plus interest, and she still had over one hundred left to pay.

After Hans’s poor management of their profits, she was already behind on what she needed to earn. Without the help of a strong man to run and maintain the farm, she was doomed.

Annalisa slipped her hand under the pie, baked from the last of the apples she and Gretchen had picked early that morning. The earthenware pan was warm against her palm, and she breathed deeply of the sugary cinnamon scent.

“Let’s hide the pies.” Idette reached for the other pan. “Then we can eat them for ourselves later.”

“Ach, you’re as silly as always.”

Idette flashed her an impish grin.

But Annalisa’s lips were stiff, like the crust of day-old bread. Her sister was only trying to coax a smile from her, but how could she ever smile again? Not now with so much at stake.

She wound her way to the table and slid the pie onto the edge near Herr Pastor. Then she stood back and watched his face.

His eyes lit, and he rubbed at the whiskers on his chin as if making space for more crumbs. “Annalisa, you bake the best pies I’ve ever tasted.”

The words of praise spread warmth to her heart as they usually did. What had she done wrong that Hans had never praised her?

She slid a fork under the perfectly flaky piecrust and lifted out a wedge for Pastor. She’d hardly slid it onto his plate before he sank his fork in.

Vater reached for his plate, and his eyes regarded her with narrowed seriousness. “I’ve made up my mind. The only thing left for me to do is write to my brother, Matthias, in Essen and
ask him to find a young man from among our kin to come over and marry Annalisa.”

The other men chorused their agreement.

Their calls fueled Vater’s plan. “Herr Pastor,” he said eagerly, “will you write the letter this very night? Then we can post it tomorrow.”

A husband from among their kin? From their homeland? Annalisa let the idea sift through her. Of course they had many relatives still living in Saxony. Would marrying one of her distant cousins provide the solution to her problems?

“Matthias is a wise man. He’ll find someone good for Annalisa.” Vater nodded at her, as if to tell her he understood the difficulties she’d endured with Hans and that this time he hoped to find her a better match. “If we’re very lucky, he’ll come to us in time for spring planting.”

She nodded in return. She knew Vater was doing what he thought was best for her. And she would submit to his authority. But she still couldn’t keep from wishing somehow things could be different—that she could be more important to the men in her life, that she could make them love her, that she could find a way to earn God’s attention.

Maybe if she’d been a better daughter or wife . . .

“In the meantime,” Herr Pastor said between bites, “we must all work together to help Annalisa through the winter.”

His suggestion was met with several unenthusiastic ja’s.

“You’re right, dear-heart.” Frau Pastor patted her husband’s cheek with an affection that Annalisa often saw between them but couldn’t understand. “I don’t like the idea that Annalisa will be all alone. We all know E. B. Ward can’t be trusted.”

Vater shoveled in a forkful of pie from the slice Idette had given him. “I’ll send Uri and Eleanor over to check on her and to help.”

The tension eased from Annalisa’s back.

Her younger sister would soon be of marriageable age and could shoulder a woman’s work. And if her brother came to help—even though he was only twelve—she would be just fine. She hoped . . .

At least until her groom arrived.

Chapter
2

J
ANUARY
1881
E
SSEN
, G
ERMANY

Carl von Reichart peered out the lone barred window of his dungeon cell.

In less than four hours, he would die.

The frigid January air squeezed through a crack in the window and reached around his neck, grabbing him, sending chills over his skin, reminding him that all too soon his head would be severed from his body.

He pressed his thin cheeks against the icy steel of the bars.

He didn’t know why he wanted to look outside. He should be on his knees in prayer—as he’d been most of the night.

But he couldn’t help himself. It was as if some unseen force had magnetized him and wouldn’t let him rest. The tormenting force kept fanning the hope that maybe—just maybe—he’d look out and see that things had changed.

And yet there in the earliest hours of dawn in the middle of the courtyard in his father’s ancient
schloss
, stood the guillotine, in exactly the same spot it had been only an hour before. And
the hour before that. Exactly where one of his father’s servants had erected it the previous day.

It was still there with the winter moonlight gleaming upon the sharp blade, and the stone positioned where he would lay his cheek. Even the basket sat where it would capture his bloodied head.

His father had spared no effort for the public spectacle.

With a mirthless laugh Carl lowered his heels back to the bench. He stepped off the rickety slab of board that boasted the only furniture in the cell that had been his home for the past two weeks.

The flicker of an oil lamp in the dungeon’s long dark hallway cast a gaunt light over the rotten straw that covered the floor. A rat scurried along one of the stone walls, probably stealing the crumbs that remained on the platter from his last meal.

Carl dropped to the bench and gave a half grin. “Rat, you have committed more crimes than I have with your thieving ways. How is it that you have the freedom to come and go, while I am stuck in here?”

Of course, the rat didn’t stop to answer but instead scuttled through the bars on the door and disappeared into the blackness of the passageway. He hadn’t expected the creature to strike up a conversation, but the loneliness of the cavern pressed upon him more heavily this night than on any other.

“Too bad you cannot speak to me audibly, Lord.” He lifted his eyes, but all that met his gaze were the low beams of the ceiling. “I know you’ll remind me that many innocent men have been martyred in centuries past. Perhaps one sat in this same spot praying to you the night before his execution just as I am.”

Carl leaned his head against the damp wall, heedless of the mold that covered the stone. He’d lost all sense of cleanliness
many days ago. The stench of excrement and decay that had overpowered him for the first couple of days had all but disappeared, likely deep into the pores of his filthy skin.

“But I cannot complain. At least my father has had the civility to feed me well.”

The problem was that he had no appetite and hadn’t since the awful night two weeks ago when the bomb had exploded in the duke’s palace, killing a servant and severely injuring one of the nobleman’s sons.

The investigators had easily located the supplies left behind by the murderer. The wires, chemicals, and other items of destruction had all belonged to only one person in all of Essen—Carl von Reichart. Him. Everyone knew Baron von Reichart’s son was a physicist and an inventor and had a laboratory full of every kind of chemical imaginable.

Carl had been mortified to think
his
laboratory supplies had killed a man and almost murdered an innocent child. In fact, he became sick to his stomach every time he thought about it.

But he hadn’t expected everyone to turn on him, to think him capable of the horrible deed, even if the evidence pointed directly at him.

How could anyone believe him guilty of such a heinous crime? What reason did he have to murder the duke or his son? He was a wealthy nobleman, not one of those whining, malcontent peasant rebels.

With a groan Carl slid off the bench and got on his knees. He bowed his head and folded his hands. “
Pater noster, qui es in caelis
 . . .”

Should he try something besides the Lord’s Prayer? Maybe something in his native German language instead of Latin?

Would anything really help?

The words of the prayer died on his lips.

It was January first,
anno Domini
1881, the year he would turn thirty-one.

But he would not live to see the light of that future day, nor any other.

He might as well stop praying for deliverance and accept the fate that had been handed to him—whether he deserved it or not.

Today, he would finally meet his Lord and Maker. He would stand before the throne of the Almighty.

Part of him trembled with anticipation. But the other part rebelled against the idea of having to leave his life on earth so early, and in such a gruesome fashion.

“Lord, couldn’t you have put me out of my misery sooner?” The echo of his voice sounded weary, as weary as every nerve in his body. “Maybe you could have had one of the rebels bomb me instead of the duke?”

The Lord only knew how many of the miners hated his father as much as they hated the duke. As owner of most of the surrounding coalfields and several large iron and steel plants, his father’s industry had brought him great wealth and prestige.

But with the growth had come all the problems inherent to the working class. The miners were never satisfied no matter what concessions were made. They always wanted more, and of late had become more obstinate in their demands.

Carl was sure a band of rebels was behind the bombing. Recently they’d been grumbling about the duke’s new villa overlooking Lake Baldeney, that it was too extravagant, that the duke should use his money to improve living conditions among his workers.

Of course, Carl hadn’t agreed with the rebels and wanted to tell them to stop all of their complaining. But he’d kept out of their problems as he usually did. They’d never been his concern.

Until now . . .

Now, he couldn’t prove them guilty, especially since the evidence had pointed squarely at him. Not even his friends nor his family had believed him or stood beside him.

In a few hours everyone would join together in the parish church to celebrate The Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord. Then afterward they would gather inside the old walls of the castle to watch him die—their entertainment for the New Year’s Day.

He rubbed his stiff fingers together and blew into them for warmth.

A creak at the entrance of the dungeon pricked the back of his neck and raised the hairs there. He sat up and peered down the passageway.

They weren’t coming for him yet, were they? Had they decided to change the time of his execution?

The scuff of footfalls drew steadily nearer.

Carl rose to his feet, unfolding his lanky body like a corroded length of copper. He held his breath, waiting.

Without a light to guide the way, the cloaked figure moved toward Carl slowly. Each step closer filled him with greater dread.

Finally the figure reached the bars of the cell and stopped.

“I suppose this is it,” Carl began.

“We must be quiet” came a muffled reply.

Carl scrutinized the outline of the face hidden within the folds of the hood. “Matthias?”

“Shhh . . .” The man pulled a set of keys out of the deep pocket of his cloak, revealing his thick arms and hands.

The bulky torso belonged to only one man—Matthias, his manservant, the one who had raised him from boyhood, the one who had been there for him far more than his father ever had.

“It
is
you,” Carl whispered as relief burst through him.

“We don’t have much time.” The keys jangled together much
too loudly, as if Matthias held a hundred of them instead of half a dozen. “We must hurry.”

Suddenly Carl realized exactly what was happening and his heartbeat sped up.