A Beau for Katie (11 page)

“What's that?” Jehu touched his ear.

Freeman knew very well his uncle had heard him. “I'm expecting Sara Yoder.”

“The matchmaker?”

“Yes,” Freeman agreed reluctantly. “The matchmaker. I sent word by way of Shad last night. I'm expecting her this morning.”

“And you had Shad take this message? Not Katie, even with her staying at Sara's house?” Freeman's uncle's mouth twitched into a smile. “Why would that be?”

Freeman sighed with resignation. He should have known there would be no way to do this privately. Not with him still laid up. “Because I didn't want Katie to know anything about it. I have business with Sara.”

“Ach.”
The older man nodded as he settled into a chair at the table, where he'd already arranged some of his leather working tools and a partially finished pony bridle. “Well, it's about time.”

Freeman didn't respond.

Jehu picked up a leather punch and rolled the head between his fingers, feeling for the correct prong. “You know, you couldn't do better than Katie. You should have taken a wife years ago.”

“I didn't say I wanted to speak to Sara about Katie.”

This time it was Jehu who didn't respond.

“Okay...I want to talk to her about Katie,” Freeman conceded.

Jehu searched for the right piece of leather. “Couldn't you just ask the girl to walk out with you yourself?”

“It's not that simple, Uncle. Picking a woman to live with for the rest of your life is serious business. I don't want to make a mistake I'll live to regret.”

His uncle scoffed. “You're talking about
her
, now. Not Katie. The one who left you at the altar.”

“She didn't leave me at the altar,” Freeman answered testily.
But it was close enough
. “I made a mistake once. How do I know that I'm not doing the same thing again? I want to talk to the matchmaker because...she knows about these things.”

His uncle frowned. “That was ten years ago. Susan's happily married with three children. It's time you let her go.”

“I'm trying. It's not so easy.” He considered how much more to say, and then went on. “I'm afraid I don't know my own mind. How do I know that I'm not grasping at straws, trying to convince myself that I could be happy with Katie because I'm lonely and need a wife and she's a good cook?”

“
Are
you just interested in Katie just for her cooking skills?”

“Of course not,” Freeman said. “She's kind and clever and she understands me. She understands my ways. And she makes me laugh. I like that she makes me laugh,” he said as much to himself as to his uncle. “And there's something about her that...” He didn't finish the sentence, because he didn't know how to explain the way she made him feel. It was as if when she was there with him, everything seemed right in the world and when she wasn't there, it was if something was missing, not from the mill, but his heart.

“Sounds like you've about made up your mind about Katie.” Jehu nodded. “Or you wouldn't have wanted to meet with Sara about her.”

“You know how I am,” he explained. “I need all the facts. I don't want to make a fool of myself. Sara's introduced Katie to prospective suitors, and there's some sort of arrangement with a farmer in Kentucky. I just want to know what's what. Not that I've made up my mind or anything.”

“There's no betrothal or they would have said so. I know Sara. She wouldn't have sent the girl if she'd been spoken for.”

Freeman wheeled his chair around to face his uncle. “Are you saying Sara Yoder set this up? Set
me
up? That that's why she sent Katie here to begin with?”

“Who's to say what goes on in a woman's mind? I asked Sara to make a recommendation for a housekeeper and I might have mentioned that I was concerned about the fact that you were still single. But I don't know why she sent Katie.” His uncle laid down the bridle with a shrug. “What I do know is that you better snatch Katie up fast before it's too late.” He chuckled. “Then you'll not have to eat your grandmother's oatmeal for breakfast every day for the rest of your life.” He got to his feet. “I think I'll take myself along to the mill. See if Ivy's in a better mood than you are.”

“Good idea,” Freeman said. “She enjoys your company.”

“Does she?” Uncle Jehu asked, turning to his nephew. “She tell you that?”

“
Ne
. But I know her.”

Jehu seemed to think on that as he placed his tools and the bridle back in a small leather chest. “Sounds like a horse and buggy just turned into the yard,” he remarked. “That will be your matchmaker.”

“And...”

“And?” Jehu asked, standing there.

“You said you were just leaving,” Freeman reminded him.

“So I was. Good luck with Sara.” Chuckling to himself, Jehu left the house.

Sara soon came up the porch steps in her cloak and black church bonnet, both splotched with dark spots of water. “Fit weather out there for ducks,” she said, walking into the house as Freeman held the screen door open for her.

“I appreciate you coming over, Sara. I'm still not quite up to traveling.” Freeman fought his nervousness as she hung her bonnet and cape over the back of a chair before he ushered her to the table. “Would you like coffee?” he asked.

For ten minutes they exchanged neighborly talk about crops and coming school fund-raisers and a visiting bishop from the Midwest who'd preached recently in Seven Poplars. And then, when all the polite greetings and inquiries after the families' health and the likelihood of abundant crops had been given and received, and he was feeling a little calmer, he turned to the important matter of Katie's availability.

Better now than never, Freeman thought. “I imagine you know why I asked you here.”

“I can guess. Katie,” she said simply.

“Katie,” he repeated, his nervousness coming back to him in one great flood. “Sara, I don't know how this works,” he admitted. “I've not brought up my—” he cleared his throat “—interest in Katie to her. She told me that there's a man in Kentucky who wants to marry her. But she said nothing about a firm commitment.”

Sara tented her hands on the table. “Katie's a fine young woman. She'd make you a proper wife.”

“So you think we're well-suited to each other?” he asked, unable to hide his excitement.

Sara looked at him with those dark eyes of hers. “I just said that, didn't I?”

“I've not made up my mind, of course,” he hedged. “I wouldn't want to have you think otherwise. I'm just trying to find out the lay of the land, as it were. Do you know how she feels about me? I wouldn't want to approach her if there was no chance she...” He felt heat rise on the back of his neck. “If she wouldn't be interested in me.”

Sara smiled. “So there
is
an attraction on your part? I can't say I'm surprised.” She looked around the kitchen. “She seems to have done a fine job in here. I saw Jehu on the way in and he speaks highly of her.”

Freeman's eyes narrowed. He had suspected Sara might have had an ulterior motive when she chose Katie to be his housemaid. Now he was afraid they'd all been in on it: Sara, Jehu...maybe even his grandmother. But that wasn't a good reason to change his mind; he had enough sense to know that. “She said something about you communicating with the man in Kentucky. I'm not hiring you as a matchmaker,” he said. “If I do decide to pay court to her, it wouldn't be fair or right for you to expect a fee from me as well.”

Sara laughed. “I can't say for sure if Katie would accept an offer from you to court her, but I
can
tell you that your pocketbook is safe. Whatever arrangement I may or may not have made with Katie's family, or a man's family in Kentucky, you and I have no such arrangement.”

He pushed his wheelchair a little from the table, his nervousness rising again. “Are you saying there's a betrothal agreement with this man in Kentucky?”

“There is a firm offer for a betrothal, in writing,” Sara replied. “Katie is in the process of deciding whether or not she will go visit him and his family and see what's what.”

He dared a glance at Sara's pretty, round face. “So what you're saying is that if I wanted to ask her to consider walking out with me, it's not too late?”

“That's something that you'll have to ask her. You know our Katie.” Sara shrugged, but her dark eyes sparkled with amusement. “She's a woman who knows her own mind.”

Chapter Ten

“I
've always liked the way the mill smells,” Freeman said to Katie as he took in the cavernous interior of the mill with a sweeping gesture. “Molasses, grain and water.”

“Me, too,” she agreed. She pushed his wheelchair closer to the now motionless grindstones. She'd worn a new lavender-colored dress today, with a white apron over it, and the simple lines of the plain but neatly-sewn garments gave her a wholesome look that was accented by her crisp white
kapp
. He couldn't keep from looking up at her. He'd missed her all weekend. Missed her more than he was comfortable with.

Their voices echoed slightly, taking him back ten years to another beautiful woman who'd stood beside him in this room, bringing bittersweet memories of someone he'd rather forget. Susan had been equally pretty, but in a much more delicate way, dark where Katie was fair, soft-spoken and modest rather than brash. And the contrast didn't end there. Being alone with him in the vast mill, with massive oak beams, shadowy corners and fluttering pigeons in the rafters had unnerved Susan. She'd been uncomfortable here, even a little frightened, but Katie gave no such impression. Instead, she appeared to be enjoying the experience as much as he was. Encouraged by her eagerness, Freeman pushed thoughts of Susan to the furthest recesses of his mind.

The huge millstones were motionless, the mechanism silent, but in his mind Freeman could almost hear the familiar churn of the waterwheel, the whoosh of tumbling grain down the chute, and the grinding rumble of the granite stones. Along the walls, baskets of corn waited to be ground into meal. A fine dusting of wheat flour coated the wide pine floorboards and every visible surface. There was too much dust to suit Freeman and he frowned. “Shad should have swept this up this morning. Wheat dust is highly explosive under the right conditions. The boy may not have the brains to make a miller.”

“No one's complained about the quality of your flour while you've been laid up,” Katie observed. “Shad's young yet, and as you say, there's a lot to learn. Maybe you're too hard on him.”

He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, mostly because he didn't want to argue with her, and maybe because he knew she was at least half-right.

Katie wandered over to run a palm over the furrowed surface of a millstone that rested against one wall and stared up nearly three stories at the hand-hewn oak rafters barely visible in the semi-darkness. This section of the structure soared from where they stood to the hand-cut cedar shingled roof. Two-thirds of the first floor supported a second story containing the granary.

He pointed to a metal chute that ran from the grain bins to the wooden hopper above the millstones. “If I pull this lever, grain comes down the hopper into this mechanism called the shoe.”

Katie returned to stand beside his wheelchair as he pointed out the control that would open the gate on the sluice box, sending a flow of water over the wheel and bringing the mill to life. Freeman knew that he was running on, perhaps boring her with the details of turning corn, wheat and rye to flour and animal feed. He kept sneaking glances at her, half expecting to see her eyes glaze over as he prattled on about the proper distances you had to keep the rotating millstone above the fixed one for different processes. But, to his surprise, Katie listened intently to what he was saying.

“Shad has been grinding horse feed this morning, a special order for a customer who keeps a stable of harness horses west of Dover.”

Katie nodded. “I've seen his truck hauling away the bags of feed.”

“
Ya
, English. A good customer.”

He was surely prattling now. What was wrong with him? His uncle's advice to seriously consider Katie only added to his own conclusion that she was the right woman. And his talk with Sara Yoder had gone well. Now was the time to speak up, to ask Katie if he was someone she would consider courting. Courting wouldn't commit him to marrying her. Either of them could change their mind. So where was his nerve? Why was he going on about milling rather than speaking up about what was really on his mind?

The night before, he'd hardly slept for mulling the question over and over in his head. Was he making the right decision? Should he ask her to walk out with him? Maybe it would be a mistake. If he asked to court her and she turned him down flat, it would be impossible for her to go on working here. It would be too uncomfortable for them both. That would mean that she would go away, and he might not see her again.

But if he asked and she agreed, how could he be sure that he wasn't making another huge mistake like he had with Susan? Englisher couples might divorce after marriage if they were unhappy, but the Amish did not. They would be bound to each other for better or worse for the rest of their lives. There were issues with Katie's forceful personality that worried him. He didn't want to repeat his parents' mistakes in their marriage. His mother had ruled the house, making all the decisions while his father did whatever she told him. Was that what he wanted?

The loud flapping of wings and a hoarse caw broke through his thoughts and he turned to see what was causing the disturbance. Katie's reaction was even quicker than his. She hurried to a corner of the room near a dirty window. “Shoo, kitty,” she cried, clapping her hands.

A tiger-striped barn cat streaked away, ears flattened and crooked tail giving away the animal's identity. It was Mustard, a half-grown stray that Freeman had rescued from a watery grave when some heartless person had thrown him out of a car window into the millpond. The weighted bag had landed in shallow water, and Freeman, fishing along the wooded bank, had heard the pitiful cries of the drowning cat and adopted him.

But Katie had no eyes for the cat. Her attention was fixed on a black, feathered object crouching against the dusky wall. “It's a crow,” she pronounced. “I think he's injured. Poor thing.”

Black eyes gleamed as the bird hopped back, nearly losing its balance. “Don't get too close,” Freeman cautioned. “The state officials say that there's bird flu around. Crows are one of the types of birds that are most often affected.”

“Ne.”
She crouched down to get a better look at the crow. “He isn't sick. I think he has a broken leg. See how he doesn't put any weight on it? And the good leg is tangled in a length of corn string.”

One of the bird's wings drooped and his feathers were ruffled. “He must have had a fight with the cat and come out second-best.” Freeman wondered why the crow had come into the mill. Pigeons made their home here and they came and went through openings in the eaves. And sometimes owls nested in the granary, attracted by the mice that the cats missed, but he'd never seen a crow in here.

“Look how it's watching us,” Katie said. “He's frightened, but brave.”

He rolled his chair a little closer to see. “I think the string is knotted around his foot. Poor thing. Crows are said to be among the most intelligent of birds.” He looked at Katie. “It could be that I could put a splint on his hurt leg. But don't think I can catch it. It may fly if I come any closer.”

Katie stood up and looked at him. “You would try to heal it? A crow?”

He nodded, only slightly embarrassed at his show of tenderness. “I've always had an unnatural softness for creatures,” he admitted. “Abandoned cats, mostly, but a few dogs, the donkey past his prime that you see grazing in the pasture, a blind ox. Once I even brought home a skunk that had been hit by a car. But my
mam
put a stop to that. Out went the skunk, and me with it. She made me bathe in tomato juice and shaved my hair as bald as an onion. Still I stank for months.” He shrugged. “The bishops say animals have no souls, but they feel hunger and pain as we do. Surely a merciful God would expect us to do what we can to lesson their suffering if we can.”

“I agree,” she said untying her apron.

“Don't—” he began, but before he could finish, she'd thrown the apron over the crow and gathered the struggling bird up in it.

“Shh, shh,” she soothed, cradling the bundle against her.

The crow gave a hissing croak and quieted. “Let me see that leg,” Freeman said. She came closer so that he could examine the crow's legs. One leg was bent unnaturally and when he felt it, it seemed as though he could feel the bone move as if it was broken. The good leg had a corn string knotted tightly around it, cutting into the flesh. Freeman removed his penknife from his pocket and carefully sliced away the strands. The skin was broken but the injury to this leg didn't seem severe. “That's better,” he said. “It had to be painful.”

Katie crooned to the bird as she might a sick child. “Be still,” she murmured. “It will be better. I promise.”

“Don't make promises you can't keep,” Freeman warned. He was touched by the kindness in her eyes and the fearless way she held the crow. “And be careful. He has a sharp beak.”

“What makes you think it's a male?” she asked. “I don't think you can tell just by looking at him.”

“Male or female, it makes no matter. And I have to call him something. Let's take
him
to the house and see what we can do for the break.”

“If you think that's best, Freeman,” she murmured, smiling up at him with shining eyes. She passed the bird to him, and he held it gently, so close he could feel the frightened beating of the creature's heart. But the crow had stopped fighting against the encompassing apron.

“It's afraid,” he said. “Fetch one of those empty baskets, the one with the lid.” She did as he instructed and they placed the bird in it and fastened the lid.

“You hold the basket,” Katie said as she took hold of the wheelchair handles to push him back to the house. “You don't want to drop him and break the other leg.”

Freeman glanced back over his shoulder at her and felt something shift within his chest. He exhaled slowly, certain of his mind now, certain that he was already half in love with this kind young woman. He'd made a bad choice when he'd courted Susan, but Katie was nothing like Susan. He couldn't imagine Susan getting anywhere near an injured crow. So maybe he and Susan had been too different. Maybe losing her to another man was God's way of leading him to a happy marriage. To Katie.

“Wait,” he said when they reached the bottom of the ramp. “Stop pushing.”

“What's wrong?” Katie slowed the chair to a halt.

“I have something I need to talk to you about.” He felt short of breath. “Don't laugh,” he said.

She walked around his chair to face him. “I won't,” she promised. She waited.

Freeman wasn't sure what to say. He only knew that he had to say something and this was the time to say it.

“What is it, Freeman?” she asked when still he hesitated. She waited and then said, “You know you can talk to me about anything. Friends talk to each other.”

“That...that's just it, Katie. I was hoping... I wanted to ask...” He looked down at his cast and then up at her again. “I was hoping you see me as more than just a friend.”

The crow scratched at the bottom of the basket and croaked feebly. Katie took the basket from him and placed it on the ground. When she stood upright again, she looked him squarely in the eyes. “What are you trying to say?”

“Well...we get along, don't we?” His heart raced. If only he wasn't stuck in this chair. Surely, he'd have more courage to speak his mind if he could stand on his own two feet.

She nodded, her expression showing that she was clearly puzzled.

“So I was wondering if you...I mean...if we could see if...”

Katie waited, surprising him with her patience while he attempted to untangle his tongue.

“I was wondering if you would consider letting me court you,” he said in a rush, his voice louder and more forceful than he'd intended.

Her eyes widened. “Are you serious?” Then she clapped both hands over her mouth. “You mean it?” she asked, her words muffled.

He couldn't tell if she was for or against, for sure. “J-just to see,” he stammered. “A trial walking out. So we'd know if we're...” He exhaled heavily. Susan was the only other woman he had ever walked out with. When he had asked her, it had come so easily. He didn't know why he was finding this so hard.

She lowered her hands. “So we're not talking about officially courting but a...
trial
courting?” She was grinning ear to ear. “To see if we actually
want
to court?” she asked.

He nodded. “Exactly,” he said, relieved she understood what he was making such a mess of saying.

“Freeman!” she cried and flung herself at him, neatly missing his cast and wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him full on the mouth. “
Ya
! Of course I would. I could. I didn't think you—” She broke off and kissed him again, this time a tender and sweet caress. “Oh, Freeman,” she whispered. “I'd love for you to court me.”

“Katie.” She smelled as sweet and fresh as she looked. He loved the feel of her pressed against him and the taste of her lips. “Katie,” he repeated, unable to say anything else.

This time, it was she who became shy, suddenly pulling back. “That was inappropriate, wasn't it?”

He clamped the brake on the wheelchair and pushed himself up, awkwardly standing on one foot. “Maybe,” he allowed breathily. “But I liked it just fine.”

“So...” She backed away from him, her face radiant. “We've agreed? A
trial
courtship? You and me?”

He nodded. “Agreed.” He reached out a hand to her, hoping that she would kiss him again. Instead, she snatched up the basket with the crow and fled the mill.

“Katie,” he called after her. And then he was laughing too and savoring the sound of her name on his lips.