The Amish Blacksmith (39 page)

It didn't matter how much Priscilla tried to tell her mother she was wrong, she wouldn't listen. And the more she tried to tell her, the more Priscilla became aware of how devastated she was that her time with Connor was over. She hadn't realized how attached she'd grown to him in the three weeks she
had known him. He was her only friend, and now she was forbidden to see him. When Priscilla begged her
mamm
to reconsider letting her see Connor, Sharon told Priscilla she had to trust her on this. Nothing good could come from her continuing to see that boy.

Priscilla told her
mamm
his name was Connor and she moved past her, went upstairs to her room, and shut the door.

That night, the moon wasn't full, but it was bright and the sky was awash with stars. When Priscilla got into bed she heard a tapping at her window. She moved the curtains and saw Connor standing below. Priscilla raised the window and asked him what he was doing. He said he was waiting for her to take him on that ride she had told him about. That was the first time Priscilla snuck out of the house to be with Connor. It wasn't so hard. Her
mamm
was already asleep in her room. Priscilla knew which stairs creaked, and she knew how to open the front door without making a sound. She haltered Shiloh, and together they walked him slowly across the gravel so that his hooves didn't make a racket. As soon as they were past the back paddock, she got on him and Connor climbed up behind her. Shiloh was a big horse, and Connor was slim and not much taller than Priscilla. The horse did not seem to mind the extra weight. Connor put his arms around Priscilla's middle and in doing so, pulled her close to him. Priscilla's heart fluttered at his touch and his nearness.

“Do you know how to ride?” Priscilla asked Connor, as she attempted to gain control of her pounding heart.

He had replied with, “How hard can it be?” and tightened his hold on her.

Priscilla told him that when she went up, he had to go up. And he said all right. Priscilla didn't let Shiloh canter until they were well away from the farm. And then, when they were on the farm trail where the stump was, she let Shiloh take them away. After a few strides Connor fell into an easy rhythm with her. Their bodies moved as one with Shiloh. The moon was pearl-white and brilliant and the stars sparkled. It was a beautiful night. It didn't occur to Priscilla that she was disobeying her mother. It was as if she were numb to everything she had been taught about honoring her parents. All she sensed was wonder and delight. They arrived at the copse of birch trees and got off Shiloh to let him rest and drink at the creek. Connor told her that was the most thrilling thing he had ever experienced and he put his arms around Priscilla's waist and pulled her to him. He told her he wished he could take her back to New York with him, that he felt as though he was a stronger person
when he was around her, and that she was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. And then Connor's lips were on hers. She had never been kissed before. She had no idea how scary and amazing and breathless a kiss could be. Priscilla said she could have drowned in that kiss. Would have drowned if Shiloh had not whinnied then and she broke away.

As she told me this, Priscilla stopped, and a faraway look seemed to overtake her gaze, even though we were in the exact spot she'd been in when Connor kissed her. I felt as though I were an intruder on that memory, and yet I was also inexplicably jealous.

A few moments passed before she continued.

Connor started to kiss Priscilla again, but she told him they needed to get back before her
mamm
realized she was gone. He reluctantly agreed. On the way back they took a slower pace, and Priscilla told him her mother would be bringing his and his mother's breakfasts for their last week at the cottage and that she had been forbidden to see him. He said, “Just because she saw us holding hands?” and he pulled Priscilla closer to him. He laughed, as though it was the silliest thing he'd ever heard. She told him it would be hard for her to find ways to be with him, and he said he would find a way to steal kisses from her. He wasn't bothered by any of it. Not even her
mamm
's outrageous edict that she not go near him.

At this moment in her telling me this story, Priscilla seemed at last to realize her hair was loose and falling around her shoulders. It was as if the memory of this episode with Connor Knight reminded her of how close she had been to laying aside her Amish upbringing to be with this
Englisch
boy. She reached for the loose strands and tucked them back into the bun in a haphazard way. Several seconds passed before she continued.

“I should have realized then, when nothing about that day fazed him, that I was far more invested in him than he was in me,” she said as she slowly pulled her
kapp
back on her head. “But I didn't. I had completely fallen for him. He had held my hand, held me close, and kissed me. He told me he wanted to bring me back to New York with him. I wasn't thinking with my head anymore, Jake. I wasn't even thinking with my heart. I just wasn't thinking. I was lost in the fog of desire and delight.”

She paused, waiting for me to respond to her honest and transparent confession. I suppose she thought I would say I knew what it was like to feel that way, especially when you're young.

But the blistering truth was that I didn't know what it was like to feel that
way about someone. I didn't think Amanda felt that way about me. I never sensed her getting lost in any of my kisses.

And I had never felt myself lost in one of hers.

Our kisses were sweet and playful and preliminary. They hinted at what we would share as husband and wife. I looked forward to the marriage bed like any other man my age, but those longings seemed purely physical, unifying, and necessary in comparison. I wanted to be with Amanda because I had been created to be with a woman. God had not designed man to be alone.

But I had never been in the kind of fog Priscilla described.

I didn't even know it existed.

T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

S
haron had watched Priscilla like a hawk after finding her and Connor holding hands in the barn, but she couldn't trail after her daughter every single second. Connor and Priscilla found ways to see each other on the farmstead. It had been almost like a game. Priscilla would come around the corner of one of the outbuildings, and Connor would pop out from behind a wagon or a grain bin or doorway and pull her into his arms and kiss her deep and quick. Then he'd walk away as if nothing had happened. He'd look back at Priscilla and wink as if he couldn't wait for the next time he could catch her alone and kiss her again. Elaine always stopped writing and researching by six, and she and Connor would go into town to eat or shop or see a movie. Priscilla would hear them coming back each night through her open bedroom window. That last week she was especially tuned in to the sound of their car returning.

Two days after the first ride to the trees, Connor hid a note in the petting barn telling Priscilla he wanted to go on another moonlit ride before he left. The previous night had been cloudy and too dark to risk another trip. Priscilla was just starting to write a note in return that she very much wanted to do that, but that they needed a sky without clouds. It was as she was writing her answer that Connor snuck into the barn from behind and swept her into
his arms. She nearly fell over in shock. Priscilla tried to tell him her
mamm
might see them and he just laughed and kissed her neck. Priscilla staggered back against the wall of the pen she was standing in, breathless with surprise and dread and desire. She told Connor he had to stop, he had to leave. But his kisses were so wonderful and sweet. She might not have gotten away from him had his cell phone not trilled in his pocket. She had not seen him with a cell phone up to that point because his mother had taken it from him when they got to Lancaster County. But he had it that day.

He frowned at the interruption but yanked the phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. She was afraid he would get into trouble, and she asked him if his mother knew he had his phone. Connor smiled and said that Priscilla had been such a good influence on him that Elaine had given it back to him a week early. He told Priscilla he was pretty happy that decent coverage was in that part of the county because he had a lot of catching up to do. She didn't know what he meant by “coverage,” so she asked. “Bars,” he replied, but she still didn't know what he meant. He leaned into her again, kissed her forehead, and said she was adorable.

The phone made another noise. Connor looked at it again, tapped the little keyboard, laughed, and typed some more. Priscilla said he should probably go as her mother was liable to come into the barn any minute to check up on her. He smiled wide and said he had looked on the Internet and saw that there would be a full moon the next night, and that they should meet out at the back paddock at nine o'clock for another ride, clouds or no clouds. She told him ten so that she could be sure her
mamm
was in bed and asleep. He kissed her again and then they heard Sharon's voice nearby. He scooted out the back door.

The next evening, Sharon was up later than usual, and Priscilla kept waiting for her to go into her room, shut her door, and turn out her light. It had been tense in the house between the two of them, and Priscilla could tell the situation between them weighed on her mother. They had barely spoken at supper. Sharon had tried to engage her daughter in conversation, but Priscilla was nervous about meeting Connor. She just wanted the clock to hurry up and get to ten o'clock, and for her mother to hurry up and go to sleep. She needed a few minutes to get to the barn, get Shiloh out of his stall, and then get out to the paddock without being noticed. Rushing him would make him noisy. Priscilla had hoped to be tiptoeing out to the barn a few minutes before ten. But at five minutes before the hour, Sharon was still moving about in her
room and Priscilla could see a thin line of light under her door. Priscilla had long since turned out her light so Sharon would think she was already asleep. She would have to just be extremely quiet and leave.

It was a humid night, clear and warm, and she hoped the sounds of crickets outside the house's open windows would mask her footfalls as she passed her mother's room and headed for the stairs. She opened the front door as quietly as she could and stepped out into the moonlit night. There were no lights on in the big house, or in the new house Mahlon was building. A lamp shone out of the window of the guest cottage, but she didn't know if that meant Connor's mom was still up or that Connor had left a light on to return to. She ran across the wet grass to the barn. Priscilla had purposely left Shiloh's halter on him from earlier in the day so that she could just lead him out. She stepped inside to get him and spoke softly so that he wouldn't nicker or whinny. She had just started to lead him out when Sharon appeared in the doorway.

Priscilla stopped. She hadn't heard or seen her coming. All of the sudden she was just there, demanding to know what Priscilla was doing with Shiloh at that time of night. Priscilla tried telling her that she was just taking him for a walk because she couldn't sleep, but Sharon didn't believe her. She kept asking Priscilla where she was going. Priscilla repeatedly told her nowhere. And then the very thing she didn't want to have happen next, happened. Connor, who had probably begun to wonder what had become of her, walked back to the barn from where he had been waiting. He stopped just at the entrance when he heard Sharon's voice and saw that she was in the barn with Priscilla. And then Sharon saw him as well, and she put two and two together. She asked them both what was going on, and Priscilla's eyes grew wide with feigned innocence. Nothing. She said nothing was going on.

Connor thought up a quick lie and asked if everything was okay. He said he had heard voices in the barn, and he'd come out to see if someone needed help or something. But Sharon didn't believe him. She knew the two of them had planned to meet up and have Shiloh take them somewhere.

Sharon turned to Connor and thanked him for his concern, but in the most ungracious tone ever. Then she told him he'd best get back to the guest cottage before his mother worried where he was. She said it as if she was two seconds from going to his mother herself and telling her, paying guest or not, that Connor was to stay away from her daughter. Priscilla could tell Connor wanted to say something in her defense, but she pleaded with her eyes
in the dusky moonlight spilling into the barn to say nothing. Then Sharon took Shiloh's lead out of her hands, walked the horse back to his stall, and slammed the stall closed. She grabbed Priscilla's arm and steered her back to the house, all while Connor stood there and watched.