Arms of Love (10 page)

“I’ve brought you a meal,” Lena whispered. “I know you were feeding Faith and Mary earlier and couldn’t come to sup. Will you eat something, please?”

Ruth blinked her bleary eyes and looked at the plate before her. When was the last time someone had offered to nourish her? Not even Henry, Lord bless him, had been one for such fussing.

She reached up and took the plate with hesitant hands while the Amish girl bent to arrange a linen napkin comfortably about her. Ruth stared at the steaming yams and crusty rolls drizzled with honey, and breathed deeply of the fragrant stew.

Lena slid into a chair near her. “One thing
my mamm
taught me was how to cook. I hope you like it.”

Ruth noticed how the young girl worked to steady her voice, and nodded her head. “It’s a piece of beauty, miss. I’m not sure I’ve ever been served like this.”

Lena nodded and smiled as Ruth began to eat. The older woman felt she should say something, but she wasn’t even sure she could begin to piece together her day aright—it had all happened so fast.

“I like you,” Lena said with sudden candor, and Ruth watched a pretty flush mount the young cheeks. “I mean that I want to thank you for helping today. I wish you might choose to stay for a bit, both you and Mary, as long as you want. But as I’ve told you, I have no coin.”

Ruth chewed reflectively. “Came here ten years ago as an indentured servant; met Henry the same way. We worked off our debts for some years and then built a life for ourselves. I don’t want to be no hired woman.”

Lena sat forward earnestly. “
Ach
, but I did not mean it like that. I need help . . . We all do. There’s no telling when or if my father will be released from prison.”

“What did he do?” Ruth swallowed the smoothness of the honey and thought it bliss.

Lena reached to rub her temple beneath her hair covering. “I guess I have not had time to explain much in this day. You know we are Amish? My father paid the extra taxes and we gave food to Patriots and British alike, but the local regiment came and meant to require one half of all of our stock and provisions. My mother was poorly, and my father had seen too much of this commandeering. He protested, and they took almost all of the stock and hauled him off to prison. That was about three weeks ago. We’d been managing, but then
Mamm
became sick . . . I should have walked into town to find a midwife.”

“No sense fretting about what’s done, what’s gone. I need to learn that for myself, I guess. But ain’t there a midwife among your people hereabouts?”

Lena shook her head. “One who travels by mule. It takes her nearly two months to circulate to all of the Amish spread about. If there’s a woman due, she’ll wait. There was no telling where she was.”

Ruth finished her plate and could not resist running a finger around the remnants of the stew. “That was fine eating, dearie. But things will be finer still if you let go of troubling yourself about what you might have done.”

“You are right. We—we believe in the Lord’s will. I should remember that.”

Ruth snorted. “The Lord’s a mite favorable toward some, it seems, and not so to others.”

“Will you tell me about your husband?”

Ruth gripped the edges of the pewter plate. “Not much to tell. Loved to laugh, but had a real stubborn streak in him too. He enlisted right off. There was a skirmish somewhere a couple of weeks past. A rider come to the house and told me Henry was gone. That’s all . . . until the house fire. I guess I got addlepated over Henry and forgot to tend the fire right. My fault.”

Lena stretched across the small space to put her hand on the other woman’s knee. “I am so very sorry. Your loss must be even greater than my own. I—I imagine that you lost everything in the fire.”

Ruth’s throat constricted at the simple touch. “Pretty much everything’s gone, though my babe was spared. I came here with nothing but a change of clothes, a few coins I grabbed, and one page of the Bible I tore out ’afore everything burned.”

“Just a page? What does it say?”

“Don’t know. Tore it out as a keepsake, like.”

Ruth was surprised at the girl’s excitement. She herself felt as if one page from the Good Book was about all there was coming to her from God, all that would ever come. Yet even now, the soft breaths of the two babes beside her soothed her heart. She heaved herself out of the chair and crossed the room to the heavy dresser where her bundle lay. She undid the knots on the twine, and the smell of smoke rose to her nostrils, bringing stinging tears to her eyes.

She crossed back to Lena and held out the tattered page with its ragged end. “Read and see what it says. My eyes are bothering me a bit.”

Lena tilted closer to the fire. “It’s from Ezekiel,” she murmured. “A difficult book to be sure, but I know one verse here from memory. The Lord says, ‘For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown.’ ”

“Ha!” Ruth gave a laugh, feeling like she couldn’t comprehend the full meaning of the words. “Well, I sure have been ploughed under, if that’s what it says then.”

Lena turned to her with steady eyes, blue like the sea. “
Ach
, I know it sounds hard. Even for me to listen to since I learned it as a child. But we turn the soil when we farm, to make room for new growth . . . and the Lord promises the seeds of that growing. But more than that, Ruth, He says that He is for us. He’s on our side.”

Ruth considered for a sad moment before shaking her head. “
Our
side? For us, dearie? Who does that mean in a war, then? I know you’ve been trained to believe, but I ain’t. I told you, it’s a keepsake, ’tis all.”

She reached out for the page and Lena handed it back with visible reluctance.

Ruth cleared her throat. “I expect you’ll be wanting us to move on, then?”

The girl looked at her in surprise. “Whatever for? Because we believe differently?
Nee
. I think the Lord brought you and Mary to us, and us to you. I want to help you, Ruth, and will be glad if you will stay as my friend.”

Ruth nodded, feeling like she’d just been graced by the touch of a faerie’s words. “A friend. Well, then, that I will be to you, dearie. A true friend.”

Lena squeezed her hand, and Ruth allowed her rough fingers to encircle the slender palm, willing to try to do all she could to keep her promise of friendship to the slip of a girl.

“There’s a man out at the grave.”

Lena looked up in surprise as she entered the room half an hour later. She had finally found time to bathe and to change into her other black dress and a clean kerchief and apron. She’d also dampened her hair and added a new prayer covering.

Ruth turned from the dusky window, and Lena reflected that since her father had been imprisoned, she and her mother had been more nervous of strangers about the place. But perhaps Isaac had returned to express further regrets.

“Do you want me to go and be rid of him?” Ruth asked, hands on ample hips.

“
Nee
, I will go. Perhaps ’tis a wanderer in need of food.”

Lena slipped outside, drawing her cloak close about her as she stepped off the porch and into the twilight.

The broad-shouldered, long-legged stance of the shadowy visitor was unmistakable, and she nearly stumbled in her anxiousness to get to his side.

“
Ach
, Adam. I missed you so today. I—I thought you might come back for the burial.”

She heard him draw a deep breath.

“
Nee
. I—I had some things to attend to in town.”

“Oh.” She shivered a bit, longing for him to pull her close, but he made no move. Again she reasoned that he must be as distressed as she over her mother’s death. And perhaps he did not know how to share his grief. She curled a tentative hand into his large palm and felt him stiffen. She drew away, hurt and confused.

He cleared his throat. “Lena . . . I must tell you something. I have been thinking of enlisting in the fight.”

The words spilled from him in a rush, and she struggled to make sense of what he’d said. Surely she had misheard.

“What do you mean?” she asked softly, looking up at his profile, chiseled hard in the moonlight.

“The Patriots have need of
gut
farriers and horsemen. I—I could make money, more than I do from
Fater
, and build a new life.”

She scrambled to keep up with the strange conversation. “A new life? But our life together has yet to begin, Adam.”

“I meant that I could build a new life for myself, Lena.” His tone was sober, deadly serious, and she put a hand to her heart.

“What are you saying? My
mamm
died today, and you . . . and you . . .” She broke off, unable to suppress the sob that came from her throat.

He turned to her then, catching her arms in a tight grip. “Lena, listen to me. Your father has never liked me, never trusted me. Maybe he is right—maybe there is something about me, about my life right now, that is not good for you.”

“
Nee
, ’tis not true. You’ve never let Father’s opinions affect you before; why should you now? And you are a
gut
man, Adam . . .
a gut
and faithful man.”

“Stop!” he snapped, dropping her arms. “I came here to tell you that what we had between us is over.”

“But . . . I have loved you since I was a mere child,” she returned dully, trying to absorb the stabbing hollowness of what he said.

“I know that,” he whispered.

She faced him, stretching to see his expression in the pale light.

“You have . . . fallen in love with another, perhaps?”

He shook his head, his jaw tensing as if her question struck him with physical pain. “
Nee
, Lena. ’Tis not that. I simply feel the call to build a life for myself that rings with freedom.”

“And what is more free than the air of the field? Or the turn of a leaf? Or the cry of a babe at dawn?”

He closed his eyes against her words, and for a moment she thought she had reached him through this strange fog. Then he stared down at her once more, the moonlight highlighting the gold intensity of his eyes, and what she saw there, she saw to be truth.

Adam was stricken with pain so deep, he knew he’d rather take a hundred beatings from his father’s hand than do this to Lena. Part of him questioned Mary Yoder. Could she have known that what she asked would hurt her daughter so? It would be so easy, even now, to stretch out his arms and gather Lena to him, to dampen her mouth with kisses and to whisper promises of hope in the shell-like softness of her ear. But he could not . . . not if he meant to keep his word.