Cheryl Reavis - The Bartered Bride

“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 own wavering sigh.

In spite of the cold and the strangeness, she fell asleep, and she woke a long time later when the door burst open.

“Where is he?” Frederich demanded, realizing as he said it that in spite of his earlier certainty, Eli was not in the room.

“What?” Caroline Holt asked. The dazed question only fueled his anger.

“The sun is up! There is work to do! Where is Eli?”

Her hair was coming down, and it suddenly penetrated that his new wife was fully dressed and still wearing her shawl and that the bed had been slept on, not in. She sat up slowly and stared at him. Her eyes were big and afraid like a child’s, like Mary Louise’s when Beata scared her with witch stories about the cruel Eisenbertha.

But she took her own time about answering. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know where he is?”

“I’ve said I don’t know! I haven’t seen him since—” She broke off, and looked away, as if she had to shore up her courage. “Since yesterday,” she said, looking him directly in the eyes again. “He didn’t spend the night here, if that’s what you think.”

Taken aback by her bluntness, Frederich stood for a moment, then abruptly left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Now what? he thought as he clambered down the stairs. Where could Eli be? He wasn’t in the barn—none of the animals had been tended. The cows hadn’t been milked. The kitchen fire hadn’t been lit. Between Eli’s disappearance and Beata’s sulking, nothing had been done this morning. The north field had to be plowed and his children hadn’t been fed—and wouldn’t be at this rate.

He crossed the cold kitchen and opened the back door.

“Eli!” he yelled into the backyard, as if he hadn’t already looked. He listened for a reply, but he could only hear the crows in the pine tops at the edge of the field and the lowing of miserable, unmilked cows.

He turned and went back into the kitchen, and was startled to find Caroline Holt standing there.

“Are the children still asleep?” she asked.

He didn’t answer her.

“Why, yes, Caroline,” she answered for him. “The children are still asleep. Why don’t you build a fire so the kitchen will be warm when they come down? Perhaps you could even cook them a little Frühstück since they’ve only had milk and corn bread since yesterday.

“What a fine idea, Frederich,” she continued, her sarcasm the kind born of years of practice. “I understand it may be some time before Beata decides to participate in the household again. But you see, I don’t quite know what to do with such a huge fireplace. Perhaps if you would deign to instruct me—for the sake of your children—I could accomplish—”

“You find this amusing?” Frederich cut in. By God, she was a sharp-tongued woman, whether she was afraid of him or not. No wonder her brother had beaten her—except he was certain Avery Holt hadn’t beaten her for her sarcasm. He’d beaten her for the child she carried. For ruining his dream of finally owning the acre of land with a spring he’d begged the use of these past eight years.

“Oh, no, Frederich,” she said. “I don’t find this amusing. I find this a living hell. “

Frederich turned abruptly and went outside before he laid hands on her in spite of his promise. He was angry enough to do it, to grab her and shake her until all that superiority and arrogance dropped away. She was not his better, regardless of her fine education and her airs. He knew that she had never considered him a fit husband for Ann—but Caroline Holt had been tumbled by a man she was clearly too ashamed to name. She was like any other briar patch whore in the county, and she’d do well to remember that.