Where Grace Abides
Read Where Grace Abides Online
Authors: BJ Hoff
The
R
IVERHAVEN
Y
EARS
HERE
G
RACE
A
BIDES
BJ H
OFF
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
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All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Cover by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota
Cover photos © iStockphoto; Fotolia; Dreamstime;
Photos.com
BJ Hoff: Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370,
www.booksandsuch.biz
.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
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WHERE GRACE ABIDES
Copyright © 2009 by BJ Hoff
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoff, B. J.
Where grace abides / BJ Hoff.
        p. cm.â(Riverhaven years ; bk. 2)
ISBN 978-0-7369-2419-1 (pbk.)
1. WidowsâFiction. 2. Ship captainsâFiction. 3. AmishâFiction. I. Title.
PS3558.034395W37 2009
813.' 54âdc22
2009023852
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherâexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
09Â 10Â 11Â 12Â 13Â 14Â 15Â 16Â 17 / DP-NI / 10Â 9Â 8Â 7Â 6Â 5Â 4Â 3Â 2Â 1
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RRIVALS IN
R
IVERHAVEN
O
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XCELLENT
F
ICTION BY
BJ H
OFF
â¦
More fine Amish fiction from Harvest House Publishersâ¦
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
My ongoing thanks to the entire publishing community at Harvest House Publishers. It takes a surprising number of people to bring a book from its beginning to its release. These faithful folks apply their many and varied gifts to make every book they publish one of excellence and one that brings honor to the God they serve. To all of you and each of you, I am continually grateful for all your efforts to make every book I write the best it can be. If I tried to name each one of you, I'd be sure to leave someone out, but you know who you areâand I hope you know how much I appreciate you. Writing a book can be a long and stressful process. It can also be a lonely process were it not for all the help and encouragement I receive along the way.
Warmest thanks and appreciation to Nick Harrison, my infinitely patient and supportive editor. I couldn't begin to count the many contributions you makeâand make so cheerfullyâto my books. I genuinely wish my readers could somehow be aware of just how much an editor like Nick brings to a novel. I
am
aware of it on a continuing basis and extremely grateful for it all.
To Shane White, supreme motivator and tireless encouragerâthank you for your unfailing optimism and your faith in your authors. You're our hero.
To Janet K. Grant, my patient and long-suffering agent who gives the song “Wind Beneath My Wings” new meaning. I am so grateful for you, and you know all the reasons.
To Kelly Standish and the geniuses at PulsePoint Design who pray for me, keep me centered, and do all the technical stuff that gives me brain freeze. You are an absolutely incredible team.
To my familyâeach precious one of youâfor so many years you've made what I do not only possible but easier in every way. I am exceedingly blessed, and I never forget it.
And to my readers, let me say to you again what I've said many times before. For every note and email you've taken time to write, for every prayer you've offered on my behalf, for reading my stories and sharing my heartâGod bless you.
 P
ROLOGUE
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FACING THE
T
RUTH
If we could push ajar the gates of life,
And stand within, and all God's workings see,
We could interpret all this doubt and strife,
And for each mystery could find a key.
But not today. Then be content, poor heart!
God's plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold:
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apartâ
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.
M
ARY
R
ILEY
S
MITH
Amish settlement near Riverhaven, Ohio
Summer 1856
T
he truth weighed upon her heart, as heavy as a river rock.
Rachel stared out the window at the gloom of early evening drawing in on the meadow, bringing the long, dense shadows that held a hint of coming fall. A lonely quiet fell over the land every day now at this time, broken only by the sound of crickets sawing, an occasional barking of a dog, and in the distance the echo of the river running, always running its solitary way to other places she would never see.
He had pledged his love to her early in the spring. He meant to find a way to marry her, he'd said. He had asked her if she would be his wife, even going so far as to make her believe he would be willing to become Amish if she would have him as her husband.
“If you weren't Amish or if I weren't
Englisch,
” he said, “would you marry me?”
And she had told him she would. Because she loved him. More than life itself, that's how much she loved Jeremiah Gant.
For two blissful months, she had actually believed it could happen. She had walked around like a dizzy schoolgirl with mush for brains, finding it nearly impossible to think a thought that didn't contain something of him in it, equally difficult to not speak of her ever deepening love for him even to her mother.
Of course, Mamma's own growing relationship with Dr. Sebastian made it easier than it might have been otherwise for Rachel to keep her silence. At any other time, her mother's sharp eye for the slightest change in her children almost certainly would have noticed the onset of an uncommon restlessness in her oldest daughter or the nearly giddy happiness that prompted her to smile when least expected.
And Susan Kanagy did have her ways of finding out what was going on in the lives of her young.
Oh, it had been so hard! At times Rachel had to stop herself from crying aloud that she loved Jeremiah Gant and he loved her. For the first time since Eli's deathâgoing on four years nowâshe felt alive again, once more living in shining moments rather than in shadowed hours.
But the Plain People didn't discuss their courtships or romances, not even with their families, until after the banns were published two weeks before the wedding. Even a conventional courtship between two young Amish people was typically carried on in secret. The couple usually managed to be together only after dark. If their parents or other family members were aware of their trysts, they pretended not to notice.
Rachel and Jeremiah's love for each other was anything but “conventional.” Truth be known, Rachel could be put out of the community for loving an
auslander.
Despite the fact that the People
seemed to think highly of the former riverboat captain, if it were known that she had admitted her love for an outsider and allowed him to avow his affections for herâhad even welcomed his embraces, chaste though they had beenâshe would be in deep trouble with the leadership of the church. She would almost certainly face the
Meidung
âthe shunning.
Plain married Plain, and there were no exceptions.
Even Mamma and Dr. Sebastian never spoke openly about the near certainty that they would one day wed. Despite the fact that David Sebastian had been the physician to the entire Amish community for years and was treated with the utmost respect and friendship, until he had “proven himself” by living among them, learning their language, and in every way that mattered evidenced his sincere intention to convert to the Amish faith, the moments he and Mamma were able to spend together would be extremely rare and shared in secret.
But at least Dr. Sebastian's resolve to become Plain could be seen by all who knew him, and his pursuit of conversion met with the approval of the church leadership.
Jeremiah was another story.
Rachel had seen him only once in the past three weeks, at the carpenter shop he'd bought from Karl Webber. But her brother, who worked for Jeremiah, had also been there the entire time. No doubt Gideon believed Rachel had come solely to visit him, and of course she couldn't dare to tell him otherwise.
Not that she wasn't always glad to see her brother, especially since he'd left the Amish community to strike out on his own. Still, she'd been hoping for at least a few minutes alone with Jeremiah.
And just what did she think she could accomplish if she
had
managed to speak with him alone?
She could hardly come right out and ask him if his feelings for her had changed, even though that was exactly what she feared. Certainly he'd done nothing to make her think otherwise. He'd made no move to see her alone, and so far as she knew, he hadn't
taken the first step toward becoming Amish himselfâtheir only hope for ever being together as man and wife.
He knew she would never leave the People and had promised her he would never ask that of her, acknowledging that he would be the one to change. And yet as far as Rachel knew, he'd done nothing toward that end.
Was it possible that she was being unfair? After all, Jeremiah knew she was forbidden to be alone with him. Could it be that he was merely trying to protect her by keeping his distance?
And how could she be so sure that he
wasn't
talking with the leadership about the possibility of converting? Perhaps they simply hadn't given him their answer yet.
All her efforts to rationalize their situation brought little reassurance. Here it was, coming on to August, and so far nothing seemed to have changed. More than four months had passed, and their relationship remained the same as it had been back in April.
The questions, the doubts, and the seemingly endless waiting were quickly eroding her early happiness. Moreover, her faith in Jeremiah and his love was rapidly giving way to a sickness of the heart, a canker of discouragement and disappointment.
Rachel wanted to trust him, longed to believe in him. There had been a time when she'd been almost convinced that God had led him here to Riverhaven. Jeremiah, especially, had seemed so certain they could somehow overcome the obstacles to their being together that she'd found herself desperately wanting to share his belief.
Now she had to question if she'd simply fallen into the sin of believing that the Lord God's will was the same as
hers.
Had she been so eager for someone to fill her loneliness, so needy to love and be loved, that she'd only
assumed
Jeremiah to be God's answer to her prayers?
Shame and a bitter sense of humiliation swept over her. Might she have been so foolish, so naive, as to trap herself in a lie to her own spirit? It was a terrible thing to try to second-guess the Lord
God, even worse to assume that because she wanted something to be so, He willed it.
Would she ever be able to forgive herself if her love and her dreams had been based on nothing more than a flimsy cloud of self-deception?
More to the point, would
God
forgive her?