The Seeker (45 page)

“He would,” the man in the bed beside them spoke up. “I heard him telling the girl not to let you get out your saws. Weren’t a shred of doubt in his words.”

“But did he consider what might happen if we delay proper treatment? You don’t think I like amputating arms and legs, do you?” The doctor sounded angry before he let out a long sigh as he wiped his hands on a towel stained with blood. He looked very tired. “Neither do I like pulling sheets up over men’s faces.”

“You won’t.” The words were barely audible, but yet it was easy to hear the determination in Adam’s voice as his eyes flickered open. He looked first at the doctor and then at Charlotte. He reached for her with his uninjured hand.

Charlotte took his hand and without thought raised it to her lips. With her other hand, she stroked Adam’s face as she smiled down at him. The stubble of his unshaven beard was stiff and welcome against her hand.

“So the two of you know each other pretty well,” the doctor said as he began to wrap a new bandage around Adam’s arm. He didn’t wait for her to say anything. “But aren’t you one of those Shaker women?”

“Yea,” Charlotte said. “In some ways.”

“But it appears not in every way.” The doctor glanced up at Charlotte with an amused look. “One of your Shaker sisters was telling me earlier that you all don’t hold with a man and woman knowing one another in the biblical sense of the word. Is that true?”

“It’s true the Shakers believe all should live as brothers and sisters. That the love of a man for a woman causes much distress,” Charlotte said softly with her eyes on Adam’s. “But I have not been able to forget the garden.”

Adam’s lips moved, but he seemed too weak to push out any words. He stared at her a moment before his eyelids drooped and then slowly closed. Charlotte’s heart jumped up in her throat as she gripped his hand tighter and bit her lip to keep from crying out. Relief washed through her when she saw his chest continue to rise and fall.

“What garden is that?” the doctor was asking. “The one where Eve met the serpent and sin came into the world?”

“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of the Lord,” the man in the next bed spoke up again.

“That’s God’s own truth. Preach it, Sebastian.” The doctor glanced over at the man he called Sebastian before he finished fastening the bandage and straightened up. Then he looked directly at Charlotte. “Keep watch and don’t neglect to let me know if his fever worsens. Better alive with one arm than dead with two. Artist or no artist.”

When the sun began to go down, the three other sisters returned to Harmony Hill, but Charlotte refused to go with them. She stayed by Adam’s bed, bathing his face and neck through the night to keep the fever at bay. Sometime after midnight his breath became more labored and he felt hotter in spite of the cold rags she was laying on his forehead. Torn between her promise to Adam and the doctor’s dire warning, she fell on her knees beside Adam’s bed and prayed in desperate silence.

Dear Lord, I spoke a promise I shouldn’t have spoken even as I have so many times before in my arrogance. Forgive me, Lord, and help me to know what you would have me to do for this man I love. I know Sister Altha would tell me that my sin of loving him has brought on this trouble, but I can’t believe it is a sin for me to love him. Is it? His fever burns so hot. Help me to know what to do. Must I keep my promise to him or should I wake the doctor?

She laid her head down on Adam’s chest and listened to the fast beating of his heart. In the bed next to Adam’s, Sebastian raised up to ask, “Is he worse, Miss?”

“He’s very hot. Do you think I should wake the doctor?” She lifted her head to look across at Sebastian. “I prayed for the Lord to help me know what to do, but I still don’t know.”

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

Charlotte knew that was Scripture and even as she heard those words, she remembered the verse Sebastian had offered her earlier. “Be not afraid, only believe,” she whispered. “I’m supposed to trust him, aren’t I?”

“We all are, miss. We all are. So just get still in your heart and see what he’s telling you. Then you gotta believe it. I ain’t never knowed him to lead me wrong.”

She shut her eyes and sought the peace of spirit that she knew Sister Martha had. The gift to be simple and depend totally on the Lord. She couldn’t be a Shaker like Sister Martha, but she could stop trying to fix everything herself and put her hand in the Lord’s hand. Bit by bit into the quiet stillness in her mind came the picture of a garden. Not the garden at Grayson. Not any of the gardens at Harmony Hill. But another garden. And there in its center was Adam with his sketchbook. Adam holding a pencil, capturing the beauty of the garden on his paper.

She stood up and dipped the cloth in the basin once more and gently swabbed Adam’s face. Across from her, Sebastian breathed out a satisfied sigh as he lay back on his pillow. “But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.”

As the first light of dawn began pushing through the windows, Adam’s fever broke.

Adam rose up out of the darkness that had held him captive and slowly opened his eyes. But this time instead of lifting his arm to see if his hand was still there, he sought sight of Charlotte. It mattered more that she be there than his hand. He tried to speak her name, but his voice came out as little more than a croak.

Even so she leaned over him. Tendrils of her beautiful red hair had escaped her Shaker cap to fall around her face. She smiled at him. “The doctor says you are better, Adam. Thanks be to the Lord.” She raised his head and held a glass to his lips. He swallowed the water greedily.

“And my hand?” He still didn’t raise his arm up to look at it. He kept his eyes on Charlotte’s face. With her there beside him, he could bear whatever she said. “Were you able to keep your promise?”

“It was a promise I should not have made, but one that the Lord honored.”

At last he lifted his injured arm off the bed and wiggled his fingers. He welcomed the pain that shot up his arm. His hand was still there. His fingers would hold a pen or a brush again. He moved his fingers again and laughed out loud at the pain.

Charlotte laughed too, understanding his joy without him having to explain. “He must have more pictures for you to draw,” she said.

“But not of the war,” he said.

“It’s not over.” All traces of her laughter disappeared.

“Far from it,” Adam agreed. “But I have drawn my last scene of death.”

“Then what will you draw? As well as I remember, you don’t care for doing portraits.”

“True.” He tried to lift his head up to see her better. She helped him to a sitting position and doubled up the pillow behind his back against the wall. After the effort of moving, he had to rest before he could find his voice again. She waited without speaking until he was able to go on. “But there are many scenes of life I can draw.”

She didn’t turn away from him, but her eyes seemed suddenly shielded as she asked, “And where will you seek those scenes?”

“Wherever you are.” He lifted his left hand to caress her cheek. He didn’t have the strength to hold it there over a couple of seconds, but the soft feel of her skin remained on his fingertips.

“Grayson is no more,” she said.

“Is Grayson the only place you dare seek life?”

“Nay.” She shook her head a little and changed her word. “No. The Shakers have taught me that love can flower in many places.”

“And have they taught you so well that you don’t want to leave them?” he asked.

“They taught me to believe, but not as they believe. I am not a Shaker.” Her eyes burned into his.

“Then will you come away from Harmony Hill and marry me, Charlotte Vance?”

Joy exploded in her eyes, but then the joy seemed tempered by something else as she turned her face away from him.

His heart constricted and he could not stay silent to wait for her answer. “I love you, Charlotte. I hoped you felt the same.”

She looked back at him. “I do love you, Adam. With all my heart, but I have made a promise to another.”

Now anger burned through him. “To who? Edwin?”

“Nay.” She didn’t seem to notice the Shaker word this time as she laughed. Then the laughter faded from her face. “It’s Landon who asked for my promise and I gave it to him. I promised that I would always be his sister and never desert him.”

“Landon?” Adam frowned. At first he didn’t know who she was talking about, but then the name dredged up a memory of a small boy hiding under a table. “You mean Selena’s son?”

“Selena’s son perhaps, but also now my brother. Selena left the night of the fire and hasn’t been heard of since. Landon’s governess brought him to Harmony Hill and the Shakers took him in, but I made him a promise. A promise as real and binding as the one I made you about your hand.” Tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks. “So even though I have often dreamed of putting my hand in yours and walking away from the Shakers, I can’t leave him behind to do so.”

“Are you saying my competition is a boy of six who wants to be a whaleboat captain?” The twitch of a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

Charlotte looked surprised for a second before she said,

“That’s right. I remember now. You wrote that you had met Landon.”

“Once.” Adam let his smile spread across his face as he reached for Charlotte’s hand again. “And to tell the truth, I don’t think he’s big enough to keep me away from you.”

“But . . . ,” she started.

He reached up and lightly touched her lips to silence her. “Your promise is my promise. Your brother is my brother.” He gently brushed away one of the tears on her cheek before he let his hand drop back to the bed. “I ask again. Will you marry me, Charlotte Vance?”

“Yea,” she said, smiling through fresh tears brimming in her eyes. She sniffed and wiped them away impatiently. “Wait. I can’t answer you with a Shaker yes.” She jerked off her Shaker cap and threw it up in the air. “Yes, Adam Wade, I will marry you. Today. Tomorrow. Whenever you want.”

“And what of Grayson?” He had to know for sure where he stood in her heart.

Her face softened as she leaned closer until he could feel the whisper of her breath on his face as she said, “You are my Grayson. Now and forevermore.”

Her love gave him strength to reach his hand up behind her head to pull her closer. She willingly surrendered her lips to his, dried and cracked by the fever though they were. And there in the midst of a roomful of groaning men, he found the love he’d been seeking. Nothing could ever separate him from that feeling again, for he would carry it always in his heart even unto death and beyond. Such was a gift of God.

The man in the next bed let out a whoop of laughter before he said, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

Charlotte raised her head to look over at the man. “That can’t be Scripture, Sebastian.”

The man laughed again. “Oh, but it is. King Solomon himself. He went down into a garden and found love.”

“And so did we.” Adam put his finger under Charlotte’s chin and turned her face back to him. He thought he might drown in the beauty of her eyes. “So did we.”

Acknowledgments

Writing a book can be a solitary journey, but few journeys are ever completed without the help of others along the way. That’s certainly true for me. I thank all those who have encouraged me over the years by cheering me on and then reading my stories.

I especially thank my editor, Lonnie Hull DuPont, for her enthusiasm for my stories and also her wise comments that help make my stories better. Thanks too to Barb Barnes who makes sure I have all my ducks in a row with her careful editing. I appreciate the great work of the whole team at Revell and Baker Publishing Group who take what I write and turn it into a beautiful book with an enticing cover that invites readers into my story.

I will never be able to thank my husband and family enough for their love and understanding over the years and my kids for learning to sleep over the sound of a clattering typewriter when they were babies.

And of course, I am forever thankful to the Lord for this gift of words and for allowing me the blessing of living my dream to write down stories.

Last but not least, I thank you readers. Without readers, a story is nothing but a bunch of words on paper. You bring the words to life as you let the story play out in your imaginations. Thank you.

Ann H. Gabhart
and her husband live on a farm just over the hill from where she grew up in central Kentucky. She’s active in her country church, and her husband sings bass in a Southern Gospel quartet. Ann is the author of over a dozen novels for adults and young adults. Her first inspirational novel,
The Scent of Lilacs
, was one of Booklist’s top ten inspirational novels of 2006. Her novel,
The Outsider
, was a finalist for the 2009 Christian Book Awards in the fiction category.

Visit Ann’s website at
www.annhgabhart.com
.

THEY LIVE IN A COMMUNITY
WHERE LOVE IS FORBIDDEN
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