Threads of Grace (9 page)

“Seth told me that you’re expecting,” Grace said shyly.

Lilly looked up from the heavy iron and smiled. “
Jah
, we are. We’re so happy.”

Grace nodded in understanding. “Pregnancy can be a special time between a couple, I would imagine.”

Lilly brought the warm dress to her. “I’m sorry that you have to imagine such a thing. Did you not—I mean, was your first husband not affectionate?”

Grace shook her head. “
Nee
, he was not.”

“Well, Seth will be,” Lilly said stoutly. “And he’ll be an excellent father to Abel and all the
kinner
that come along.”

Grace knew she should feel reassured, but the idea of carrying Seth’s baby terrified her. She wondered if she would ever be able to trust him like a wife should.

She slipped on the dress and allowed Lilly to fuss with the folds. Her gaze drifted to the small bureau mirror, where she caught a glimpse of her own eyes. Purple pools of sadness in a wan face.

Not the eyes of a happy woman.

Not the face of a bride.

V
iolet skimmed a finger down the length of the flower’s stem and covertly eyed the man who was spending a lot of time tending to his horses. He wasn’t handsome in any conventional sense of the word, but there was something about him. Something . . . interesting. Mary Wyse had asked her to run outside and pick a few flowers for the table, and here she was dawdling, waylaid by her own thoughts.

She grabbed a few more flowers and then stepped behind a bush so she wouldn’t be seen spying on him. What was he doing? He had pulled something from his horse’s side and held it cupped in his hand. He bent over it for a moment, then straightened up and came straight toward her.

She ducked down as he approached the bush and deposited a green baby caterpillar on a large leaf. Then, just when she thought she was safe, he looked through the branches and saw her.

He flushed, visibly startled.

She shielded her eyes to blink up at him in the summer’s sun. “Hello. Are you here for Seth? I’m Violet Raber, the bride’s sister. I’m supposed to help greet the guests.” She glanced at the inching caterpillar. “And that was very nice.”

The man’s hazel eyes narrowed as he gazed down at her with a frown. “Then shouldn’t you be inside?” he asked.

Violet was undaunted. “I’m to greet the guests—you included, apparently.”

“Luke King,” he said tersely.

“
Ach
. . . may I call you Luke?” she asked, lifting the flowers to her nose in a coy gesture and stepping from behind the leaves.

“Nee,”
he snapped, then brushed past her to mount the steps of the house.

The thought dropped into her mind fully formed, and yet instinctively she knew it was true. There was something about him, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something she liked.

She found herself humming as she finished gathering the flowers. “Now that,” she murmured to herself, “is a man worth pursuing.”

CHAPTER 11

A
woman is like a wrapped gift . . .”

Bishop Loftus paused, and Seth resisted the urge to laugh. The sacred vows had already been said, and now the bishop had begun to give the traditional admonitions and exhortations. But Bishop Loftus wasn’t exactly traditional in his approaches, and there was simply no way to predict what the good man might say. He had an odd way of making his point.

“
Jah
, a wrapped gift,” the old man went on. “And if she will open herself to her community, her children, her husband, then she will be a continual source of blessing. But this gift needs to be handled with care—sacred care.”

Seth felt his mind begin to drift as the bishop droned on. He thought with pleasure of how
gut
Abel looked after he and Jacob had suited him up. He loved the way Grace’s eyes had shone with something like happiness when she’d seen her son, but there had
also been a soberness about her. Seth gazed down at his bride as she stood across from him, and then Beiler’s sinister words seeped through his mind like dark oil.

“Do you so promise, Seth Wyse?” The bishop’s voice snapped him back to the moment and he stared at the man, feeling his face flush as the keen, knowing old eyes swept over him.

“I—uh, of course. Of course I promise.” There was a general rustling and sigh of approval from the few family and friends seated behind them, and Seth slowly exhaled with relief, having absolutely no idea what he’d committed to.

“Gut!”
The bishop nodded with approval and a wry smile. “And, Grace, will you do the same?”

“Jah.”

Her soft reply sent an odd tingling down Seth’s spine and he shifted his weight.

Then there was a brief concluding prayer, and he turned with Grace to face the small gathering. Seth saw Jacob escorting Beiler out the back screen door and exhaled a sigh of relief and satisfaction. He had kept Grace and Abel safe.

Yet it was
der Herr,
his conscience reminded him, who had truly arranged things. He said a silent prayer of thanks, and then they were engulfed in the goodwill of those present.

V
iolet watched as Grant and Sarah Williams went to congratulate Grace and Seth, accompanied by Sarah’s brother, the enigmatic Luke King.

Grace and Violet were distant cousins of the King family, and
Sarah Williams was formerly a King, so although they barely knew each other, there was a very distant family connection.

Violet had gone to some trouble to have introductions properly made between her and her King relatives, including Luke. Then she went about the room, ferreting out every last piece of information that she could about Sarah and her family. Her husband, Grant, had been an
Englisch
veterinarian who moved to the community two years prior. Grant had fallen in love with Sarah and converted to be Amish.

And Luke? Twenty-three. Sworn bachelor. Farmer. Married to his work.

Violet smiled to herself.
He
doesn’t stand a chance.

T
obias Beiler yanked at his stiff shirt collar and drove the distance to Fibber’s Motel, outside of Lockport. The place was not to his liking, with its lime-green paint and flashing neon sign, but it was somewhere no Amish would ever come looking for him.

He entered his room and crushed a cockroach with a heavy boot, then made for the bed. There he picked up his Bible and began to read from Genesis. He liked the story of when Abram, later Abraham, gave the first choice over the best of the land to his nephew and Lot took it.

Tobias smiled. This no doubt hasty marriage of Grace’s was but a temporary setback until
Gott
gave him the choice of things most pleasant in life.

He picked up his heavy, leather-bound journal and a pen
and flipped through the unlined pages to mark the date.
My dear departed brother,
he wrote
, I toast you with wedding water. Grace is married, literally at the eleventh hour, but I am not yet vanquished. I will have her, and all that is rightfully mine . . .

CHAPTER 12

G
race caught Abel against her hip and watched with cautious pleasure as Seth bent to whisper in her son’s ear. It must have been a good secret, because a rare smile crossed the boy’s face. Seth straightened up and reached to hold her hand.

She was unused to such casual tenderness and touch. Over the years she had grown accustomed to Silas’s bruising grip, and she wondered what it would be like to truly relax into the calloused strength of Seth’s hand.

Her husband’s hand.

She smiled as Lilly and Jacob approached. They did indeed look like a couple expecting their first child as they touched shoulders and smiled. Grace wondered if she would ever look at her new husband with that much love.

“Grace, you look so beautiful, as always,” Lilly said gaily.

Although Grace nodded her thanks, a knot of anxiety twisted inside her at the words. She should have been pleased with the
compliment. But she had learned from Silas that beauty was a curse, not a gift.

“And, Abel, a happy birthday to you!” Lilly went on. “Jacob and I have a special present for you later.”

Grace prodded her son gently, and he murmured his thanks.

Seth’s mother came to lead them to the head seats at the kitchen table. There was no formal
eck
or bridal table, as there would have been for a first-time bride, but leaves had been added to accommodate the guests; and Grace appreciated all the effort Seth’s mother had gone to. The table was laden with ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, steaming gravy, cooked celery, and two huge frosted cakes, one with the fluffy white boiled icing Abel loved so much. She was grateful to her new family for acknowledging her son’s birthday.

They all bowed for a moment of silent thanks, and Grace prayed that she might be a good wife to the younger man next to her. It occurred to her that she had no idea how old he was. She’d have to ask.

She almost jumped when she felt him lean in next to her ear. “Prayer’s over, sweetheart. Can you pass the potatoes?”

Grace looked up with a flush of embarrassment. All eyes were on her, and Seth’s hand gently enfolded hers. She broke free of his grasp to lift the heavy bowl of potatoes, and then the moment passed and the guests began to laugh and talk and eat.

Grace glanced over at Abel, seated securely between Jacob and Samuel Wyse, and saw with relief that he was heartily eating the food piled in front of him.

“I think he’s having a
gut
time,” Seth said.

Grace turned to look at him, not prepared for the intensity
in his blue eyes. She nodded briefly in agreement and toyed with her food.

“You don’t want to be told that you’re beautiful, do you?” he asked under cover of the general talk. Grace felt a lump begin to grow in her throat.

“How . . . how do you know?” she whispered.

“Because when Lilly said it, you sort of tensed up. But I’d like to say it.”

“Well, don’t,” she said. She felt a catch of dismay and looked at him, expecting a rebuke. But he continued to smile at her, poised and patient.

“Grace Wyse, I think you’ll find that you can say just about anything and you won’t rile me. And I’ll try not to rile you, my . . .
fraa
.”

He didn’t say the word
beautiful
, but its implication hung in the air, laden with promise, a promise requested by the bishop that Grace knew she would have to struggle to keep.

S
o is it a waste of time to ask if you have any questions about the wedding night?”

Jacob spoke in the summer twilight air and Seth shot him a sour look. “Nice, Jacob. Thanks, but
nee
. Besides, you and Lilly—I mean, well, I know there were some problems.”

Jacob smiled. “It was worth the wait. But my wedding night? Well, let’s just say that after a few days I started sleeping on the floor.”

Seth shrugged. “Maybe that’s where I should start.”

“Two people can sleep in a bed, Seth, and just
sleep
. Maybe you should put a bundling board between you.”

They both laughed at the reference to the old custom of putting a board between an engaged couple and letting them share a bed. Then Jacob grew serious.

“Seth, that man, Grace’s former brother-in-law—there’s something not right there. I don’t think he’s going to let go as easily as he did today. I want you to be careful.”

Seth nodded. “I’ve thought of it. I’ll watch.”

“Then watch well. I don’t want to be an only child.”

Seth frowned. “You don’t think he’s as bad as all that, do you?”

Jacob thought for a moment, then drew a deep breath. “There have been times, when I’ve gone to buy a maimed or beaten horse from a cruel buyer—there’s a look in that person’s eyes. It’s almost as if they have to tell themselves that there’ll be another horse to abuse and they can let this one go. But there’s only one you, one Grace, one Abel. I think Tobias Beiler is capable of anything.”