Cheryl Reavis - The Bartered Bride

He took a moment to look around the sanctuary. He saw no one, heard nothing, and he decided that he must have been mistaken. But then the sound came again, a faint whimper he might not have heard if he hadn’t already been listening so intently. He turned and walked quietly toward the back of the church, and he saw her almost immediately. She was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs that led to the schoolroom on the second floor.

“Bitte—” he began, but she jumped violently, startling him as well. He moved around so that he could see her better in the dim light, recognizing her now in spite of the fact that she turned sharply away from him. She wiped furtively at her eyes, bringing her feet up under her as if she intended to make herself as small as possible.

He stepped closer.

“Eli,” she said, making a great effort to look at him. She attempted a smile, but her mouth trembled and her voice was hardly more than a whisper. She turned away again, telling him something in rapid English he didn’t begin to understand.

He stood awkwardly, not knowing what to do. Her hair was coming down and one button at the neck of her bodice hung by a thread. If she had not been Ann’s sister and if his promise hadn’t included her as well, he would have left her sitting there.

“Caroline? You are…ill?” he said. He had neither the proficiency nor the inclination to ask anything more. Perhaps she’d had another argument with her brother Avery— in which case her current state was to be expected. He knew Avery Holt to be a bully, and he knew from Ann that Caroline did her best to provoke him. He wanted to just go, but for Ann’s sake, he stretched out his hand. Surprisingly, Caroline took it, her fingers cold and clinging in his.

“Was haben Sie?” he asked, making her look at him.

“…the children,” was all that he understood of her reply.

“Ja—yes,” he said, looking over his shoulder toward the open door. “Mary Louise is…here. Und Lise. Both— here—”

“Eli,” she said in alarm, trying to push him in the direction he’d come. “Mary Louise and Lise—please— bitte!”

He hesitated, but he understood that her distress was such that she didn’t want her nieces to see her.

“Bitte!” she said again, her eyes following his glance at the dangling button. She snatched it from its thread and shoved it into her pocket.

He stood up and walked quickly away, glancing back at her when he reached the end of the aisle. She was no longer sitting on the bottom step.

He stepped outside, firmly closing the church door behind him.

March 1862

Caroline Holt had been waiting all afternoon for her brother Avery to return. She kept walking to the window to look out across the fields toward the Graeber farm. That Avery would drop everything to answer a summons from Frederich Graeber was incredible to her. The ground had to be readied for the spring planting, and Avery despised their German brother-in-law.

It was nearly dark when he finally rode into the yard. She went hurriedly back to the churning, a task she’d let take far too long while he’d been gone. She worked the churn hard, determined not to give him the satisfaction of knowing she’d been so curious about his absence that she’d neglected the butter making. He came into the kitchen immediately, leaving the door ajar much longer than was necessary and tracking in mud with no concern at all for the backbreaking effort it took to keep the rough oak floor scrubbed clean. She shivered in the draft of cold air, but she made no comment.

“Frederich Graeber wants to marry you,” he said without prelude.

She looked up from the butter churn, but she didn’t break the rhythm of the churning. The statement was so ridiculous that her first inclination was to laugh. Her brother was not a humorous man, but still she thought he must be joking. Even if he had somehow guessed how badly she needed marrying, he wouldn’t have suggested Frederich Graeber— except as some kind of cruel joke.

“I want you to marry him. I’ve already answered for you,” he said. “They’re going to announce it in the German church Sunday—Frederich will make his formal pledge to you then.”

She continued to stare at him, realizing now that he was entirely serious and that this marriage plan must account for Frederich’s summons and for his willingness of late to bring her nieces here to the house to see her.

Poor Avery, she thought. He had no inkling of the impossibility of his arrangement. For the first time in her life she felt a little sorry for him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said in annoyance. “Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard you, Avery. And I can only suppose that you’ve lost your mind.”

He gave a little smile. “Now why would you suppose that?”

“You know I can’t marry Frederich Graeber.”

“Can’t?” he said, coming closer. His hair was sweated to his forehead. Before he had departed for the Graeber farm, he and Frederich’s nephew, Eli, had been shoveling horse manure into newly plowed ground all morning. Avery still stank of it, and somewhere along the way he must have lifted a keg of beer—to celebrate the bargain he and Frederich thought they had made.

“It’s done, Caroline,” he said, his voice still calm because he was used to having his way. Indeed, who ever said no to him? And who else refused to tolerate his arrogance but her? Certainly not their mother when she was alive. And certainly not the women here. Caroline couldn’t account for the fact that so many of them preferred the civilian Avery and his finagled farmer’s exemption to the boys who’d gone for soldiers and were fighting in Virginia—except for the fact that Avery was here, of course. And he was handsome. But his handsomeness was far surpassed by his fickle nature. The list of widows and maidens who’d aspired and failed to marry Avery Holt grew longer every day.

“I’ve already told Frederich you want it,” he said, and she abruptly looked away from him. She felt light-headed again and she concentrated hard on keeping the rhythm of the churning by fervently whispering the work poem that went with the task.

Come-butter-come

Come-butter-come

It was only at the last moment that she allowed herself to acknowledge her anger.

You-marry-the-German

This-time-Avery!

But Avery had no use for Germans—unless he needed manure shoveled or his man’s nature satisfied. She had happened upon how deftly he accomplished the latter at John Steigermann’s corn husking. The drinking and the dancing and the games on that cold October night had been incidental to the stripping of a roof-high pile of corn and John Steigermann’s daughter. Avery had bloodied a few noses to find and keep the first red ear, and Leah Steigermann was supposed to kiss him for it. She lifted her skirts to him as well—beautiful wine velvet skirts held high for Avery Holt in a cow stall, and Caroline a witness to it all because she’d thought to keep her other, too-young brother from hiding in the barn and sampling Frederich Graeber’s famous plum brandy.

Avery slammed his hand down hard on the kitchen table, making her jump. “I’m talking to you, Caroline! I don’t know why you think you can pick and choose here. I said you’re going to marry Frederich—you owe me, Caroline. You and Ann both owe me!”

“Ann is dead. Whatever you think her debt is, surely you can count it paid now. Just how is it I owe you?”

“I sent you to school in town. I stayed here working my tail off and I did without to keep you in ribbons and bread—”

“That was a long time ago. Mother’s inheritance paid for most of my schooling and you know it.”