Danielle Steel - Echoes

“He's from a good family, with a large estate. He's well educated and intelligent. He loves me, Papa, and I love him.” There were tears running down her cheeks.

“Then why have you kept this a secret? What are you hiding from me, Beata?” His voice was bellowing, and Monika could hear him from upstairs.

“He is Catholic, and French,” Beata said in a whisper, as her father let out a sound like a wounded lion. It was so awful that she took several steps backward as he advanced on her without thinking. He stopped only when he had reached her and grabbed her small frame in both his hands. He shook her so hard by the shoulders that her teeth rattled as he shouted into her face.

“How dare you! How dare you do this to us! You will not marry a Christian, Beata. Never! I will see you dead first. If you do this, you will be dead to us. I will write your name in our family's book of the dead. You will never see this man again. Do you understand me? And you will marry Rolf Hoffman on the day I tell you. I will tell him the deal is done. And you will tell your Catholic Frenchman that you will never see or speak to him again. Is that clear?”

“You can't do that to me, Papa,” she said, sobbing, choking for lack of air. She could not give up Antoine, nor marry the man her father had chosen, no matter what her father did to her.

“I can and I will. You will marry Hoffman in one month.”

“Papa, no!” She fell to her knees, sobbing, as he stormed out of the library and went upstairs. She knelt there for a long time, crying, until her mother finally came to her in tears. She knelt beside her daughter, heartbroken over what she had just heard.

“Beata, how could you do this? You must forget him…I know he's a good man, but you cannot marry a Frenchman, not after this terrible war between us, and you cannot marry a Catholic. Your father will write your name in the book of the dead.” Monika was beside herself with anguish, as she saw the look on her daughter's face.

“I will die anyway, Mama, if I don't. I love him. I can't marry that awful man.” He wasn't awful, she knew, but he was old in her eyes, and he was not Antoine.

“I'll tell Papa to tell him. But you can never marry Antoine.”

“We have promised to marry each other after the war.”

“You must tell him you can't. You can't deny all that you are.”

“He loves me as I am.”

“You are both foolish children. His family will disown him, too. How would you live?”

“I can sew…I could be a seamstress, a schoolteacher, whatever I have to be. Papa has no right to do this.” But they both knew he did. He could do whatever he wanted, and he had told her that if she married a Christian, she would be dead to them. Monika believed him, and she couldn't bear the thought of never seeing Beata again. It was far too high a price for her to pay for a man she loved.

“I beg you,” she implored her daughter, “don't do this. You must do as Papa says.”

“I won't,” she said, sobbing in her mother's arms.

Jacob was not entirely foolish. He told Rolf Hoffman that afternoon that Beata was young and foolish and appeared to be afraid of the…physical obligations… of marriage, and he was not sure that his daughter was ready to marry anyone. He didn't want to mislead the man, nor tell him the whole truth. He told him that perhaps after a long courtship, and if they got to know each other, she would feel more comfortable with all that marriage entailed. Hoffman was disappointed, but said he would wait as long as he had to. He was in no hurry, and he understood that she was an innocent young girl. He had been well aware of her shyness the night they met. And even an obedient daughter deserved the opportunity to become acquainted with the man who was going to wed her and take her to his bed. At the end of the conversation, Jacob was grateful to him for his patience, and assured him that Beata would come around in time.

She did not come to dinner that night, and Jacob didn't see her for several days. According to her mother, she had not left her bed. She had written Antoine a letter, telling him what had happened. She said her father would never agree to their marriage, but she was prepared to marry him anyway, either after the war or before that, whatever he thought best. But she no longer felt at ease in her home in Cologne. She knew that her father would continue to try to force her to marry Rolf. She also knew it would be weeks before she had a response from Antoine, but she was prepared to wait.

She did not hear from him for two months. It was May when she finally got a letter from him, and for the entire time she had been terrified that he had been hurt or killed, or that hearing of her father's rage, he had decided to back out and never write to her again. Her first guess had been correct. He had been wounded a month before, and was in a hospital in Yvetot, on the Normandy coast. He had very nearly lost an arm, but said that he would soon be all right. He said that by the time she got his letter, he would be at home in Dordogne, and would speak to his own family about their marriage. He would not be going back to the front, or even to the war. The way he said it made her fear that his injury had been worse than he said. But he repeated several times that he was doing well, and loved her very, very much.

Beata answered his letter quickly, and sent it, as always, via his cousin in Switzerland. All she could do after that was wait. What he had said in his letter was that he hoped that his family would welcome her to their bosom, and they could be married and live on his property in Dordogne. Although, no question, bringing a German woman into France at this point, or even after the war, would be no small thing. Not to mention the religious issues between them, which would be as upsetting to his family as to hers. A count marrying a Jewess in France would be as horrifying to them as her marrying a French Catholic in her world in Cologne. There was no easy road, for either of them. And once she had written to him, Beata spent her days quietly helping her mother around the house, and staying out of her father's way. He had made repeated attempts to get her to spend time with Rolf, and each time she had refused. She said she would never marry him, or even see him again. She had grown so pale she looked like a ghost, and seeing her that way broke her mother's heart. She begged her continuously to do as her father said. There would be no peace for any of them until she did. With the weight of the trauma she had brought into the house, their home felt like a morgue.

Both her brothers had spoken to her, to no avail, when they came home on leave. And Brigitte was so furious she was no longer speaking to her. She had become increasingly full of herself with the excitement of her impending marriage.

“How could you be stupid enough, Beata, to tell Papa?”

“I didn't want to lie to him about it,” she said simply. But he had been furious with all of them ever since. He held everyone responsible for Beata's foolishness and betrayal. More than anything, he felt that Beata had betrayed him, as though she had chosen to fall in love with a French Catholic just to spite him. In his eyes, she could have done nothing worse. It was going to take him years to get over it, even if she agreed to give Antoine up, which so far she had not.

“You don't really love him,” Brigitte said with all the self-assuredness of an eighteen-year-old about to marry her handsome prince. She had the world by the tail, and felt sorry for her stupid sister. It seemed ridiculous to her. What had seemed romantic to her for a few days in Geneva no longer made any sense. You didn't put your whole life on the line, and risk your family, for someone from another world. She was utterly enchanted with the match her father had made for her, and it suited her to a tee. “You don't even know him,” Brigitte chided her.