Robin Lee Hatcher (3 page)

Chapter Four

K
arola didn’t get a bath her first night in Jakob’s home, for she fell asleep as she wept, still dressed in her traveling clothes.

Awakening as the sun rose, she sat up and glanced about the child’s bedroom, feeling grumpy and out of sorts. She was hungry, too, but she was certain she would be sick if she tried to eat a single bite.

Today was her wedding day.

Mother was right. What a fool I have been.

From the moment she’d received Jakob’s letter, asking if she would come to America and marry him, she’d purposefully deceived herself. She’d wanted so badly to believe he’d asked because he still loved her that she hadn’t considered any other reason. She’d created a fantasy in her mind that suited her rather than the truth. But Jakob had loved his wife. He’d wanted Karola only because he trusted her to be a good mother to his children.

Karola knew what Jakob was asking of her happened to women around the world every day. Second wives were frequently taken out of necessity to raise the children of the first, and third wives were taken to raise the children of both the first and second. It was a common occurrence, and there wasn’t any shame in it.

Would I have been better off married to the cobbler?
Karola shuddered at the thought.
Nein.

She closed her eyes. If she was going to be totally honest with herself, she must admit that her reasons for agreeing to marry Jakob had no more to do with love than his had. She’d wanted to leave Germany, to see America. She’d wanted her dreams to come true. Most of all, she’d wanted to prove the gossips in her village wrong. She’d wanted them to know she wasn’t an old maid. She hadn’t been forgotten.

A soft rap sounded at her door.

“Karola,” Jakob said softly from the hall.

She stood, touching her mussed hair with one hand. She must look a sight.

“Karola?” Another rap.

“Ja.”
She moved to stand by the door but didn’t open it. “I am awake, Jakob.”

“We’ll want to leave for the church in a couple of hours. Would you like something to eat? I’ve got ham and eggs frying in the skillet.”

Her stomach fluttered. “
Nein,
but I would like a bath, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“No trouble.” He cleared his throat, then added, “I’ll heat the water for you now.”

“
Danke,
Jakob.”

Karola’s mother had labored long hours on a wedding gown of ivory mousseline de soie. Laced, ruffled, and embroidered, the dress had been made with love for a daughter who was traveling far, far away.

The wedding gown remained in the trunk. Karola didn’t want to wear it. It seemed all wrong to her now.

After a bath, she donned a cream-colored blouse with a high collar and billowy sleeves and a pleated skirt of a soft dove-gray fabric. Over the blouse, she wore a sleeveless bolero with a buttoned front closure. It was a pretty outfit, but ordinary enough.

She didn’t bother to fuss with her hair either. Without so much as a glance in the mirror, she twisted it into a knot at the nape and secured it with hairpins, then placed a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head. Finally, she grabbed her gloves and her handbag from atop the chest of drawers and left the bedroom.

The Hirsch family awaited her in the parlor. The children were wearing what she guessed was their Sunday best, their faces shining. Jakob wore a striped wool suit, dark gray in color, and his leather shoes had been shined to a bright finish. In his right hand, he held a black bowler; in his left he gripped a bouquet of wildflowers.

“Maeve picked these for you.”

Karola took them, then looked at the young girl.
“Danke.”

The child cast an uncertain look at her father.

Jakob placed the bowler on his head. “
Danke
means thanks.”

“Danke.”
Maeve pondered the word for a moment, then grinned. “You’re welcome.”

Pleasure warmed Karola’s heart, and her nerves quieted.

“Karola,” Jakob said, “are you sure you don’t want to eat something before we go?”

The nervous flutter in her belly resumed. “
Ja,
I am sure.”

“Then I guess we’re ready.” He lifted Aislinn into his arms. “Let’s go.”

Jakob led the way out of the house, off the porch, and to the carriage that awaited them. The two older children scampered up onto the backseat while Jakob assisted Karola to the front one. After a questioning glance, he handed Aislinn to her.

For one panicked moment, Karola thought the toddler would burst into tears. But then her father appeared on the seat beside them, and Aislinn smiled.

It is clear he is a good man. His children love him. He is a
hard worker or he would not own a farm or house such as this.
Perhaps that will be enough for happiness.

If only it felt like enough.

Jakob gave the horse its head, allowing the animal to set its own unhurried pace. It took over a quarter of an hour to reach the main road.

As the carriage turned south toward Shadow Creek, Jakob cast a quick glance in Karola’s direction. She sat rigid on the seat beside him, Aislinn in her lap. She was staring at the passing countryside, but her grim expression told him she was too lost in thought to see what surrounded her.

This isn’t the wedding day she expected.

Looking away, Jakob set his jaw, determined not to feel guilty. He’d told Karola he was sorry, despite it not being his fault she hadn’t received his letter. He’d offered to pay her way back to Germany, even though he couldn’t afford to do so and hadn’t any idea where he would have found the money. He’d given her a way out. She had chosen to stay. Many women far younger than Karola were never given a choice. Arranged marriages hadn’t been uncommon in Steigerhausen. Back in Germany, two of his friends had married girls they’d never met before their wedding days. Wasn’t this better than that?

They weren’t strangers, he and Karola. They’d loved each other in their youth—a different sort of love than what he’d known with Siobhan, but love all the same. He and Karola had a shared past, as distant as it all seemed to him now. And he would be good to her. He was not an unfair man. He would not expect more from her than any other man, perhaps not even as much as some. No, he had no reason to feel guilty.

“Is it much farther?” Karola asked, breaking into his reverie.

He turned his head to find her watching him. “No. Not far.”

“The reverend. He is expecting us?”

“Yes.”

She nodded.

Jakob felt a sudden anger. Anger that Siobhan had been taken from him, that he’d been left alone to raise their children, that he needed to marry again. Why did life have to be so hard? Why did so much bitter come with the sweet? Just once, couldn’t things go his way?

“Sure, and you know you’ll be needing a wife,”
Tulley Gaffney, Siobhan’s uncle, had told him more than once since she died.
“You cannot go on the way you are. The wee ones have need
of a ma to care for them, and well you know it, lad. And you’ll be
needing someone to look after you, too.”

In those first weeks after Siobhan died, women from town had come to the farm to take care of the children. Later, he’d hired a housekeeper, who’d also served as a nursemaid. Three, actually, over the course of several months. Each time something had gone wrong, and the woman had left him in the lurch. Finally, he’d known his only solution was just as Tulley had said: to find himself a wife. He needed a woman who would stay, and a wife couldn’t pack up and leave at the drop of a hat.

That only left one question: Who would that wife be?

Dorotea Joki, the twin sister of the Lutheran pastor, had made it obvious she would willingly consider a proposal from Jakob. But Dorotea was cold and stern by nature, and Jakob couldn’t imagine putting fun-loving Siobhan’s children into her care.

Then there was the young and very lovely Charlotte White, daughter of the town’s blacksmith. She’d begun flirting with Jakob even before the proper period of mourning had passed, and while he wasn’t immune to her inestimable charms—he was, after all, still a man—he knew Charlotte was in many ways as much a child as Maeve and far more spoiled. Jakob figured he was better off single than he’d be married to her.

Nadzia Denys was the widow who owned the millinery shop in Shadow Creek. She was pleasant enough in nature, though a less attractive woman Jakob had never met—square-jawed, thick eyebrows, gap-toothed, tall and large-boned. But even if he’d been interested in her, she didn’t seem to want or need a husband. She was clearly content to remain independent.

One by one, Jakob had dismissed the unmarried women of his acquaintance. Then he’d had that dream, and asking Karola to marry him had seemed the perfect solution. But what if he’d been wrong?

He frowned. Right or wrong, sure or not, what did it matter? It was done now. She was here, and they were to be wed this very morning.

He slapped the reins against the horse’s back and clucked with his tongue, asking for more speed.

Karola worried the inside of her lip, her thoughts spinning faster than the carriage wheels.

Her mother was right. Karola had
always
been a dreamer. From the time she was no more than five or six, she’d spun fantasies and made up pretty stories in her head. Her mother had said that every girl had to eventually grow up and put away childish things, but Karola hadn’t listened. The worlds she created in her mind were so much more interesting than the one in which she lived.

Her father had said Karola’s pride was her greatest fault. “You are the daughter of a baker, not a prince. Beware thinking of yourself too highly,
Tochter
. Beware of thinking yourself more worthy than your neighbors.” Her father had predicted her unchecked pride would bring her low.

And so it had.

Surreptitiously she glanced at Jakob. She’d loved him once, or loved the boy he’d been. She hadn’t imagined that. It had been real. But that was so very long ago. What did she feel for him now? In Germany, it had been easy to convince herself that she loved him still. But here … now …

The wagon turned a bend in the road, and Jakob said, “There’s Shadow Creek.”

She followed his gaze with her own.

“That’s the Lady of Mercy Catholic Church.” He pointed. “And there’s the Holy Shepherd Lutheran Church on the opposite corner.”

“That’s our church,” Maeve said from behind Karola.

“Yeah, our church,” Bernard echoed.

Jakob nodded. “Pastor Joki should be waiting for us.”

Karola felt suddenly chilled. In a short while, her life would be forever changed. She would be both wife and mother. It was what she’d wanted when she set sail for America, and now it was about to come true.

It didn’t take long to reach the white church building with its steeple and stained glass windows.

Through the Shadow Creek Hotel’s large plate glass window, Tulley Gaffney saw the Hirsch carriage stop in front of the Lutheran church. He stepped closer to observe Jakob as he took little Ais-linn from the woman’s arms, then assisted her to the ground.

“Ian,” Tulley called to his son who was attending to some paperwork behind the front desk. “I’ll be across the street.”

By the time he was out the door and had stepped off the sidewalk, Tully saw that Jakob and his bride, as well as his children, had disappeared inside the church. Then he noticed Father Patrick, his black robe flapping against his heels, headed in the same direction as he was.

“A good mornin’ to you, Father,” Tulley said as the two men drew closer to their destination.

“And a good morning to you, Tulley. It appears there’s to be a wedding.”

“So it does, Father.”

The Catholic priest smiled. “Have you met the bride-to-be?”

“No, Father. Sure, and it hasn’t been me pleasure. She was to arrive yesterday by train.”

“Then let us not delay.”

Tulley motioned for Father Patrick to proceed ahead of him through the church’s open door.

The sanctuary was cool and dim. Morning light filtered through colored glass, staining pews and floor in shades of green, red, and gold. Jakob and his bride stood at the front of the church, while his children sat in the front row. Rick Joki, the Lutheran pastor, was speaking to the couple in soft tones. His sister, Dorotea, sat at the organ, her brow pinched.

Everyone looked toward the back of the church at the sound of the new arrivals’ footsteps on the wooden floor.

Tulley’s gaze went straight to the bride. She had a willowy build, and everything about her—from her wheat-blond hair to her ice-blue eyes to her fair complexion—seemed soft, pale, quiet.

So unlike his niece.

Tulley glanced at Jakob. He had a tender spot in his heart for this young man. He’d been a loving and faithful husband to Siobhan and was a devoted father to their children. A harder worker couldn’t be found in all this valley. It seemed to Tulley that Jakob had suffered more trials and heartache than were his due at his age. It was time he was blessed with happiness, and in Tulley’s way of thinking, the right wife could bring that blessing.