walked with the children to the settle, needing desperately to sit down again. She began to help them take off their coats. She felt so ill at ease here. Everywhere she looked reminded her of Ann. Ann’s punched tin sewing box, the one decorated with sunbursts, sat on a small table by the settle. Their own mother’s English Stafford-shire china filled the corner cupboard. The numerous bright blue and white dishes had been Ann’s only wedding gift of any value from the Holt side of the family. And how Caroline hated seeing them in Beata’s kitchen. Ann’s heavy oak rocking chair still sat in the same corner. The back of the chair was decorated with carved roses. It had been a wedding present from Frederich, and Ann had always sat in it to feed her babies. It surprised Caroline that Beata had kept it.
There was no pig iron stove in the kitchen, only an iron box oven that sat directly on the hearth. Ann had wanted a real stove so badly. She had never really learned how to cook in the fireplace where everything had to be done over open flames or buried in hot coals. Once, she’d even set her skirts on fire.
Eli came in and began to light the oil lamps that hung on S hooks from the exposed overhead beams. She could see the room better now. The rest of the walls were lined with dressers for dishes and pots she didn’t quite remember. And there were several churns sitting about, and some small three-legged stools in the corners. One bare brick wall had been sponge painted with white lead. She had to grudgingly admit that Beata, for all her ill-tempered ways, kept a spotless house.
Eli moved from lamp to lamp, glancing at her from time to time as if he expected her to cry or run or both. He seemed to have taken over the task of acting as her champion, but she wished that he wouldn’t stare at her so. She was dangerously close to tears again.
I can’t live here with Frederich, she thought, but it wasn’t living with him that troubled her. The Graeber farm was twice the size she was used to. There would be more than enough chores for her and Beata to do. She could easily stay out of his way during the day, but what would she do at night?
Tonight?
She tried to find the numbness she’d felt earlier this morning, but it had been replaced by a kind of mindless panic. She was trapped, and the sun was going down. She had no night things. No dressing gown. No way to hide from her new bridegroom. She had only the clothes she’d arrived in. She glanced at Eli as he lit the last lamp. Perhaps he could help her. Perhaps she could just say it.
Eli, I’m afraid!
He left the kitchen for a moment and came back with a brimming pitcher of milk. Then he motioned for her and the children to come to the table. She got up reluctantly, while he found three large tin cups and filled them with milk. Then he disappeared into the pantry and returned with several pieces of cold corn bread.
“Beata doesn’t cook when she’s angry,” Lise said as if she thought Caroline needed some kind of explanation.
Caroline gave a resigned sigh. In that case, it might be months before Beata prepared another meal for this household.
“Sit,” Eli said, pulling out a chair.
Caroline hesitated, then sat down in the heavy Carver chair he wanted her to take, hoping that he wasn’t giving her Beata’s seat. All she needed was for Beata to come downstairs and find Caroline Holt sitting in her place.
Caroline Holt Graeber.
“Trink, Caroline,” Eli said, holding a cup of milk out to her.
She didn’t want to drink. She didn’t want anything. Except to run. Or to take back the marriage vows.
“Eli, I—”
She stopped because both children were watching intently, and when she didn’t take the cup, he walked to the worktable and lifted the lid on the honey pot, ladling a huge dollop of honey into the milk. He rotated the cup for a moment, sloshing milk over the sides, then brought it back to her.
“Trink,“ he said again.
She sighed, and she accepted the cup and the piece of corn bread he pushed at her. Then she drank the milk. All of it. Apparently, he’d heard somewhere of her weakness for milk and honey.
“Papa!” Mary Louise said, grinning broadly when Frederich came in the back door. He pointedly ignored Eli, but he stopped long enough to almost smile and to affectionately pat both children on the cheek. The gesture caught Caroline completely off guard. She had never once thought of Frederich Graeber as man who could be gentle with his children. He glanced at Caroline briefly on his way upstairs, and she was struck by the peculiar notion that he was feeling as trapped by the turn of events as she.
Beata must have been waiting for him on the top step, because Caroline could hear both their voices almost immediately.
And Eli stood watching her.
“Eli, don’t stare at me. Please,” she said finally, hoping he had enough command of English to understand.
Whatever he answered had something to do with Lise.
“I can tell her,” Lise said to him. “I like to talk for Eli,” she said to Caroline.
“Mary Louise needs to be put to bed,” Caroline said. “She’s falling asleep in her corn bread…” No one was listening to her. She didn’t want to have to endure any secondhand conversations with Eli. She didn’t want…anything. He spoke to Lise for a moment in German.
“Eli says to tell you this, Aunt Caroline. We…welcome you and we are glad you are here. Don’t be—” She stopped to ask Eli for clarification. “Don’t be afraid of us,” she continued. “No one can hurt you anymore.”
Caroline abruptly looked down at her hands, completely overwhelmed by how desperately she wanted to believe that. She had to fight hard not to cry.
“Eli says I’m to take you upstairs now. He says for you to rest—and try to sleep.”
She looked at him, but now he avoided her eyes.
Lise asked Eli another question.
“Come with me,” she said to Caroline after he’d answered.
Caroline nodded, then stood up. She let Lise take her by the hand, looking over her shoulder once at Eli before she climbed the stairs. He was wiping the milk mustache off Mary Louise’s mouth.
The room upstairs was Spartan and small and not the one Frederich had shared with Ann. Was this where Frederich slept now? Caroline wondered. There weren’t enough personal things in it to be sure, and she couldn’t ask Lise. She managed a smile when the child dutifully kissed her good-night, but she kept looking at the door, expecting Beata or Frederich or both and yet another unpleasant encounter.
She sat down heavily on the side of the bed after Lise had gone and took off her bonnet, hanging it by its ribbons on the one chair. She had no water to drink or to bathe in. She had no brushes or combs.
She sat there, numb again after all and staring at nothing. Then she lay down on top of the quilts and curled herself into a tight ball. All day long, she had been fighting the tears, but now that she had the privacy to shed them, none came. She lay there, huddled in her shawl, listening to the sounds of the house. Distant voices still raised in anger. Footsteps and slamming doors. The wind moaning against the eaves. And she listened to her
