Cheryl Reavis (12 page)

Caroline glanced at him. Frederich had no idea how much Avery had already managed. If John Steigermann ever learned what had happened between Leah and Avery at the corn shucking, there would indeed be a dead body. The question was whose?

“We all have our troubles,” she said.

“And Leah is your friend.”

“No, she isn’t. But she’s been kind to me—for whatever reason. Her infatuation with Avery, I suppose. I’d hardly even spoken to her before…before John Steigermann took me to stay in their house. It’s hard accepting kindness from someone you think is…”

She didn’t go on, and Frederich made no comment. He sat down on the top step near her and looked out across the field as she had done. It struck her suddenly Leah had been right, that he really was not…unhandsome. He was in his late thirties, but he had a boyish look about him, when she looked past the beard. And he was tired. She felt a stab of guilt. Eli had run off the moment
she
came into the household, regardless of his fine welcome speech, and Frederich had suffered the consequences. If there was an innocent party in all this, she supposed it must be he. He had kept his marriage pledge—the sacred German
Verlobung—
and being cold and humorless was no sin to anyone but her. Actually, she had come to the realization that he really wasn’t cold
or
humorless—except toward Holts.

“Tell me what Lise said—about the fiddling,” Frederich said abruptly.

Caroline told him everything she remembered in spite of his imperious tone.

“Strange,” he said. “The things that make children feel better—safe. When I played the fiddle for her and Anna, I was still…”

He suddenly stood up, incredulous that he had been about to reveal even a small part of his private pain. He had to be on his guard with this woman. He had to remember who and what she was.

“I can be blunt as well, Caroline Holt,” he said, looking down at her. He moved slightly so that he could see her face. “Tell me. Why do you bolt your door at night? Tell me,” he said again, because she looked so startled and because she abruptly turned away from him. “Are you thinking that you can have a marriage that is not consummated annulled?”

She took a deep breath before she answered; he could feel her struggling for control.

“If the marriage was annulled,” she said, finally looking at him, “then my baby would be a bastard. I don’t want that. The reason I agreed to marry you in the first place is to keep that from happening.”

“But you have decided that we will have a marriage in name only—and you still expect me to take care of both of you—you and this other man’s leavings.”

“The child is innocent. Those were your words, were they not?” she said quietly, and she forced herself to hold his steady gaze. “The truth is I expect nothing from you. Nothing. I can’t even guess why you kept the marriage pledge.”

“I’ve told you the reason.”

“Christian charity?” she suggested.

Frederich ignored her sarcasm. “You are important to my children. You make them happy. But I don’t want them to be hurt ever again by your bad behavior—especially Lise. I expect you to remember that if—
when.
.. ”

She thought he was going to say Kader’s name.

“…the man—
comes around you again.” He stepped off the porch. “And as for locking your door, Caroline Holt,
if
I wanted you, I tell you now a locked door wouldn’t keep me out.”

Caroline stared at him, speechless, and she took his last remark for the insult it was. She didn’t have to lock her door, because, married or not, she wasn’t fit for Frederich Graeber.

Her throat ached. She could feel her eyes welling.

“I’m going to the fields,” he said, clearly indifferent to the fact that he had wounded her to the point of tears. “Finish the potatoes. I leave entertaining your brother to Beata.”

He walked away, and she sat trembling, struggling not to cry. She was still wiping furtively at her eyes when Avery reappeared.

“Where’s Herr Graeber?” he said as he walked out onto the porch. “You know, Caroline, I have to thank you for putting me in Beata’s pocket like that. The cake and the coffee were fine. And the conversation was really…what’s the word? Enlightening.”

“How nice.”

“Beata’s given me all her best theories.”

“Beata wouldn’t know a theory if she fell over it,” she said, careful not to look at him.

“Ah, now, there’s where you’re wrong, Caroline. She’s got some remarkable ideas about who tumbled you. I must say some of them I hadn’t even considered. She does have a logical mind, that Beata. And, of course, she doesn’t hold anything against
me.
“

“Lucky you. It’s too bad Leah doesn’t feel the same way.”

He suddenly grabbed her by the arm, his grip hurting “If you say anything about me to Leah—
anything—
you’ll regret the day you were born—”

“I already regret the day I was born, Avery. You’re wasting your time and your threats. You and Beata are just alike. I don’t
have
to say anything to make people think ill of you. Both of you manage that very nicely all by yourselves.”

He abruptly let go of her and smiled, and it was only when she saw Frederich coming in their direction that she realized why. Avery was indeed on his best behavior with Frederich about.

“Don’t get too far above yourself, Caroline,” he said, and he walked off to ask Frederich for whatever favor he had come about.

She stared after him, mindful of her resolution to do the best she could for Ann’s children—even without Frederich’s admonishments. And she had the presence of mind to know that flinging the whole sack of Pennsylvania potatoes at Avery’s head would be contrary to that goal.

She took up her task again with great care and deliberation. But then she suddenly stopped and let the potato fall. She put her hands gently over her belly, waiting and still. After a moment, the soft fluttering in her womb came again. There would be no forgetting now that a baby was coming; she had felt her daughter or her son irrevocably announce its presence. And the question that had been in her mind for so long surfaced yet another time.

What am I going to do?

E
verything inside her, everything around her was changing. The days passed relentlessly, one after another, propelling her toward the event she couldn’t escape. The war that should have been over by Christmas raged on. More and more of the men—and boys—were leaving, and she worried all the time about William enlisting. Did a soldier facing his first battle suffer the same fear for his life as she did for hers? What would happen to her baby if she died in childbirth and wasn’t here to take care of it?

She gave a sharp sigh and tilted the mirror on the washstand downward to stare at herself. No matter how many petticoats she wore or how high she tied her apron, there was no way to hide her pregnancy now. Her back hurt all the time, and her feet swelled in the summer heat. She had to be careful not to take off her shoes until bedtime, because she couldn’t get them back on again.

How much longer?
she thought. Two months? Three?

She had quietly begun trying to get things ready for her confinement after everyone had gone to sleep, sewing together some of Beata’s hoarded newspapers and some pieces of rags to make a kind of pad to protect the bed. The rags had been easy to come by; she’d shredded one of her own shabby dresses. But she had had to slip secretly into the Graeber attic to look for the newspapers and for the herb
book Ann had brought with her when she married Frederich. The book had been useless in Ann’s last labor, but still Caroline wanted to have it at hand. It had been compiled by the first Holts who came to this country from England more than a century ago. The pages were filled with pressed specimens of native herbs and numerous spidery notations about the ailments they were supposed to treat. It had taken her a long time to find the book—it had been stuck away in the trunk that held Ann’s clothes and the rest of the remnants of her short life. Caroline had removed the book and carefully hidden it in her room. Beata would react in the extreme if she learned that Caroline Holt had been snooping through “her” attic, and while she should be used to Beata’s rantings by now, she was too tired of late to want to endure yet another tirade.

And she still had no plan as to what to do when her time finally came. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask Leah and Mrs. Steigermann for their help. Could she deliver the baby herself? She didn’t know, and she woke night after night dreaming of herself cold and dead like Ann and being carried out of the house with a lemon under her chin.

She abruptly moved the mirror so she could see her face. She barely recognized her own reflection these days. She was nothing but a pair of frightened eyes.

She realized suddenly that Lise was talking to her, and she forced herself to smile. “Woolgathering,” she said. “What did you ask me?”

“If we can take Papa a picnic basket—Mama and Mary Louise and I used to—when he and Eli were out working in the fields. He needs a picnic, Aunt Caroline.”

“He needs a picnic, Aunt Caroline,” Mary Louise said.

She looked down into their earnest faces, ashamed of how badly she wanted to say no. Of course Frederich’s children missed him. He was gone to the fields before they woke up and he returned long after they’d gone to bed. And they didn’t want to avoid him at all costs as she did.

“He’s very busy these days,” she said anyway. “He might not want to be bothered.”

“We wouldn’t bother him, Aunt Caroline. We could just bring him the basket and leave it in the shade—and he could eat when he rests the horses. He needs a surprise—please, Aunt Caroline.”

“Please,”
Mary Louise said. “He needs jelly bread.”

“Jelly bread,” Caroline said, trying not to smile.

Both children nodded.

She sighed, outnumbered. Ann’s children asked for so little, and there was no reason why they couldn’t take Frederich his
Mittagessen—except
that she could see no easy way to extract a basket full of food from the Holy Pantry without precipitating an attack from Beata. She decided to confront the problem head on, to grab the first basket she could find, fill it up and run—hopefully without having to wrestle Beata to the floor to get out of the house.

But Beata wasn’t standing guard over the pantry for once, and Caroline managed to put enough into the basket for all four of them—she and the children could picnic, even if Frederich chose not to join them.

The walk was pleasantly cool and unobstructed on the wide, shady path that led to the field where Frederich was working. And, if one kept going, one would eventually reach the Steigermann house. The path was part of an intricate off-road network that enabled the men and their horses or oxen to get to each other’s farms more quickly during the harvest season—and the army to shamelessly forage.

But she didn’t see the army out and about today. She thought she could hear the faint jangling of tack and harness and Frederich’s low commands to the team off through the trees. She hadn’t talked to him or even seen him for days, and she slowed her pace in dread of having to encounter him now, walking along and trying to listen to Lise
and Mary Louise singing about the chicken who wouldn’t lay an egg instead of listening to the pain in her lower back.

Did all pregnant women suffer this constant ache? she wondered. She couldn’t remember Ann having complained of it, and today it seemed to have crept around to the front as well. She felt vaguely ill, not sick enough to lie down and not well enough for this outing.

“I hear Papa,” Lise said abruptly, but it wasn’t Frederich she heard. It was a horse and rider coming along the path behind them.

Caroline took Mary Louise by the hand to keep her out of the way, but she didn’t turn to see who approached until the rider was nearly abreast of them. She looked upward and directly into Kader Gerhardt’s eyes.

“Guten Tag,
Frau Graeber,” he said cheerfully, reining the horse in.

Caroline kept walking, and she didn’t answer. She would not exchange pleasantries with Kader Gerhardt as long as she had a choice.

“Frederich allows you out here alone with the army around?” he persisted, letting the horse—a fine sorrel gelding the congregation had provided for him—keep pace with her. The saddle and bridle looked new—and expensive. Caroline wondered idly who would have bought them for him.

“We’re taking Papa a surprise,” Lise said proudly, holding up the basket of food.

“Ah! I just saw him through there,” he said, gesturing toward the trees and the field beyond. “You and your sister will run along quickly now and take the basket to him, yes?”

“Wait,” Caroline said, trying to intervene, but the girls were only to happy to scamper ahead. She stopped walking.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, forcing herself to look up at him. He was a fine figure on a horse, and the handsomeness she had once admired so was still apparent.
But how insignificant it had become now that she knew the ugliness within. He was so much like Avery, and why hadn’t she seen it?

“Because I want to speak you, Caroline—”

She abruptly started walking again, causing the horse to shy and toss its head.

“You and I have nothing to speak about,” she said.

“I want Lise to come back to the school,” he said, sending the horse along after her. “People are talking.”

She stopped to give him an incredulous look. “Are they?” she said.

“It doesn’t look good, Caroline.”

“I’m afraid you will have to see Frederich about that,” she answered. She gestured toward the field. “I believe you know where he is.”

“But you must explain to him.”

“Explain what, Kader?”

“That his taking Lise out of the school the way he did is a slur upon my reputation.”

“I have done all I will ever do for
your
reputation.”

He stared at her for a moment. “Forgive me,” he said stiffly. “I had thought that you maintained a certain regard—”

She couldn’t keep from laughing at his injured tone. “Oh, Herr Gerhardt, please,” she said, walking again. “You credit me with much too much Christian charity—or stupidity.”

“What is it you want, Caroline? I thought you understood my situation!”

“What do I want? I want to attend your funeral, Herr Gerhardt—wearing a red taffeta dress. Good day, now. Do enjoy your ride.”

She walked away from him, stepping off the path to cut through the trees. The ground was too uneven for her no longer light-footed tread, and she was out of breath almost immediately. But she pushed herself to walk faster, startling
Frederich in the field when she burst forth from among the pine trees. She was certain that his frown deepened the closer she came. He looked over his shoulder toward the children, who were standing in the shade at the edge of the field waiting for him to come around again and toward the path where Kader must surely have just come past.

She stopped for a moment to catch her breath, then approached Frederich across the hot field, squinting in the sunlight and trying to fight down the light-headedness that threatened to overtake her. It occurred to her suddenly that perhaps she was glad to see him.

“Now what’s wrong?” he asked as soon as she was close enough, immediately taking away any notion she had that she might welcome being in his company.

“Nothing is wrong. The children only wanted to bring you a picnic.”

He was watching her closely, for what she had no idea— a guilty countenance because she’d run across Kader Gerhardt in the woods? She was completely innocent, but still it was all she could do not to avoid his eyes. “I have no time for picnics, and you know that,” he said.

“Very well. They’re your children. I’ll send them out here and you can look into their little upturned faces and tell them that. Heaven knows, it won’t bother
me
if you choose to go hungry.”

“Choose? You think I choose—”

“No,” she interrupted, immediately regretting the remark. He was sweating profusely in the heat, and she could see, almost feel, his weariness. “I don’t think anything of the kind. Lise and Mary Louise miss seeing you, that’s all. I…just couldn’t say no to them. We’ll leave the basket for you.”

“Wait,” he said when she turned to go. “You are here now. I might as well eat. You can help me with the horse.”

She looked back at him. Help with the horse?

He called to the children, motioning for them to come to the wagon he had left under the big hickory tree in the middle of the field.

One of the Belgians was limping badly.

“Caroline,” he said, unhitching it from the harrow and leading it into the shade. “Come and stand by his head.”

“Why?” she asked. Surely he didn’t think that she could control such a huge animal.

“Because he likes women better than he likes men. You talk to him while I see to his hoof.”

She hesitated, wary of any creature so large as this one. It easily dwarfed any horse she’d ever ridden.

“Koenig—Caroline. Caroline—Koenig,” Frederich said impatiently, as if it were the lack of introductions that stood in the way.

She tried not to smile. Frederich stepped forward and took her by the arm, leading her to where he wanted her to stand, much in the same way he’d led Koenig.

“How do you do?” she said gravely to the horse. It gave a soft rumble and began pushing at her pockets with its nose.

“Hold his head,” Frederich said.

“Frederich, I can’t keep this horse from doing whatever he wants to do.”

“I know that—but he doesn’t. Talk to him.”

She frowned, then abruptly talked as Frederich lifted the ailing hoof, her words of praise halfhearted at best, and less so when she realized how amusing Frederich was finding this.

“Keep talking,” he said.

She sighed and talked on, her conversation punctuated by the scraping noises Frederich was making against the hoof.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

“Bad enough. He will have to stay out of the fields a few days. I didn’t know you were afraid of horses.”

“I’m not. I’m
not,
“ she repeated in response to the look he gave her. “This isn’t a horse. This is a giant.”

“Did you know this about horses—that some like a man’s voice and some like a woman’s?”

“No.”

“When you buy a horse, you find out which one he is before you part with your money.”

“As you did, I suppose?”

“I didn’t buy Koenig. I bred him. I had to take what I got.”

“You could have sold him.”

“Not with two little girls treating him like an overgrown dog—”

Koenig suddenly shied, and she hung on to his bridle, talking to him again as if he were a puppy or a kitten.

“Does Avery come to the house again?” Frederich asked.

“It’s not my doing,” she said defensively. “I gave him no invitation.”

“Have I said anything about anyone’s
doing?”
He finished with the hoof and tied up the horse. “Come,” he said to the girls, lifting them into the back of the wagon so that they wouldn’t have to sit on the ground. He lifted Caroline as well, without prelude, taking her by surprise. She lowered herself carefully to the sack of feed he had brought for the horses, letting the children sit next to her. And, pressed for time or not, she would have had to say Frederich was making an effort to be cordial. He let Mary Louise and Lise empty the basket, and he ate heartily, more than properly appreciative of the purloined bread and cold boiled potatoes and cheese and blackberry jam they had brought him.

“I must remember to say thank you to Beata,” he said.

“I…wouldn’t do that,” Caroline said, wiping the remains of Frederich’s jelly bread off Mary Louise’s face. When she looked up, he was actually smiling.

“No? Why not?” he asked with great innocence.

“You know why not,” Caroline assured him, and he surprised her by laughing out loud. She wasn’t comfortable with a Frederich who laughed, and she still wasn’t at all certain whether he had seen her talking to Kader.

The shade was cool and dappled in sunlight. The birds sang, and the bees buzzed around them. A noisy flock of crows roosted in the tall pines at the edge of the field, and the pungent smell of newly turned ground filled the air. And, well-fed and happy in the wake of the success of their surprise, both Lise and Mary Louise fell promptly asleep in the back of the wagon, their heads resting on the feed sack.