Cheryl Reavis (28 page)

N
othing has changed. I will never understand these people!

But she did understand. She understood how proud Frederich was. She understood that, because of Ann, he believed the worst of her, even after she’d dragged him more dead than alive all the way back from Richmond. She understood that on some level he needed her, was grateful to her, regardless of the fact that he’d left it unsaid.

But she was proud as well, and she couldn’t change that any more than he could. She had but one recourse—to stay away from him—for both their sakes—as he himself had once told her to do. She would take things to the house for him—what food she could spare, honey for his wounds, but she wouldn’t sit in constant attendance. Beata or one of the other German women could do that for him. And she would see the children until he forbade it.

She heard a horse and buggy approaching, and she stepped outside, relieved that the army wasn’t foraging again. She recognized the somber black clerical garb immediately. She had heard from Leah Steigermann that Johann had at last returned and that he hadn’t found Avery or any of the others. She was glad to see him, even if he was likely here to chastise her for her abandoning her husband. She walked out into the yard to meet him.

He got down from the buggy and took off his hat and began to fan himself vigorously. “Weather’s abominably hot today,” he said as if it hadn’t been weeks since they’d last talked—as if he weren’t here for a purpose.

“Is there any news about Avery?” she asked immediately, even if that was not the foremost thing on her mind.

“No. Nor any of the others. My friends in Richmond will continue to look—so we mustn’t give up hope.”

“You have been to see Frederich today?” she said, asking what she really wanted to know.

“Yes,” he said.

“How is he?”

“He’s…the same,” he said, and she earnestly believed it. Frederich never changed. Well or wounded, he still thought she had betrayed him.

‘You know that I’ve come to talk,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the porch.

“There is nothing to talk about—”

“Please!” he said, holding up his hand. “I am hot. I am tired. And I want you to start at the beginning.”

“There is no ‘beginning.’ Why don’t you go and ask Frederich if you want revelations?”

“I did. It didn’t do any good. He is no more forthcoming than you are. If I am to give my counsel—”

“Johann, I haven’t asked for your counsel.”

“Well, I intend to give it. I have to. It’s what I
do.
“

She paced around the yard for a moment, then turned over a pebble with the toe of her shoe. “Frederich asked me about Eli,” she said abruptly. She glanced at him, but for once his face told her nothing.

“Did you expect that he would not? You are his wife. It’s a matter of his pride—a personal attribute you know well, if you will pardon my bluntness. And he’s not a saint.”

“He did it after I told him to do so…would drive me from his house.”

“And?”

“And…” She gave an offhand shrug “I’m…here.”

“Which accomplishes nothing—except your mutual misery, as far as I can see. You think he asked the question unjustly, then.”

“Yes,” she said evenly.

“He thinks he has the right to know.”

“There is nothing to know! He can ask all he wants!”

“There
is
the money Eli sent you,” he reminded her.

She sighed.

“Does Frederich know you used it to bring him home?”

“No,” she said.

“It’s just as well. He wouldn’t be happy to find out he’s even more indebted to Eli than he realized.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Eli is the one who carried him from the battlefield and then stole a wagon to get him to Richmond—he brought Frederich and William both, and he was paying the German woman for Frederich’s care. That is the reason Frederich was so desperate to be away from there.”

“How do you know that?”

“Eli told me.”

“Eli—?”

“He’s here, Caroline. He came back yesterday. He came to make sure Frederich had survived the journey. And to work the land until Frederich can do it. He did make a promise to Ann, and he is determined to keep it.”

“Frederich must be—”

“Exactly,” Johann said.

She pushed the pebble around with her shoe again.

“Eli wants to talk to you, Caroline,” he said, and she looked at him.

“I want to talk to him,” she said quietly.

“When?”

“Now. Before he disappears again.”

“You’ll come back to the house with me?”

“Yes,” she said, understanding now the purpose of this visit. “I just wish…” She abruptly stopped and looked off in the direction of the Graeber place. But she couldn’t see anything of the house in full summer with the leaves on the trees.

“What? What do you wish?”

She looked at him. “I wish that, just once, Frederich had seen
me.
“

“He sees you, Caroline.”

“Then why don’t I feel it? Why can’t I tell that I matter to him? I don’t know what to do, Johann. I just know I can’t live in Ann’s shadow.”

“Caroline, Caroline,” Johann said with a sigh. “You and Frederich both keep backing yourselves into corners without the slightest idea how to get out—when it’s perfectly obvious to me.”

“Is it?” she said, very close to becoming annoyed.

“Of course, it is. The past cannot be changed. It cannot be forgotten. But it can be forgiven. One forgives and one moves on. You see?”

“No,” she said, and he smiled.

“I am not the one who needs to be forgiven, Johann. I am not Ann.”

“Yes, well,” he said. “I suppose it’s all up to Frederich then, isn’t it?”

“Does he know you came for me?”

“He knows.”

She sighed again. “Then I believe we had best be on our way.”

Frederich sat propped up in bed, straining to hear the voices downstairs—Johann and the children, and a lengthy protest of some kind from Beata.

Had Caroline come?

He couldn’t hear her or Eli—but she must have come or Beata wouldn’t be arguing about leaving the house with the
children. He lay there looking at the ceiling, unsettled and helpless. The room was hot. His wounds throbbed and burned.

Caroline.

How could he feel so many things for one person? She infuriated him more times than not, and yet he had trusted her with his life and he had not been disappointed. He was about to do the same again, but this time he had no hope. None.

He looked around sharply at the sound of footsteps, and he thought for a moment that she had come to him. But it was Leah Steigermann.

“Good afternoon, Frederich,” she said with the considerable charm she had at her disposal.

He didn’t answer her. She was not deterred.

“I’ve come to keep you occupied for a time—Johann seems to think you need company.”

“I don’t.”

“That is what I told him, but you know Johann. He says you want to behave well while Caroline and Eli have their tête-à-tête—but you might not unless someone helps you." She brought a bottle of his own plum brandy out from behind her skirts.
“This,”
she said, “was my idea. Now. In answer to your questions—”

“I haven’t asked any—”

“In answer to your questions,” she interrupted pointedly. “Yes, Caroline has come to talk with Eli. Yes, both she and Eli are downstairs now—she is sitting at the kitchen table—he is pacing. He apparently has things he wants to say to her, but no, he hasn’t said what they might be. And whatever they are, Johann is on hand to translate so there will be no misunderstanding. Does that about cover it?”

“Yes,” he said, reaching for the bottle. He was reasonably certain that Leah knew about Ann and Eli, and she had been kind to Caroline. He supposed that if he must be
plagued by a keeper, it might as well be she. “I only have the one cup,” he said.

“None for me. It won’t do for both of us to get tipsy.”

“You shouldn’t be up here at all.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t look—”

“No, it doesn’t, does it? But if my father, the Reverend Rial
and
your wife have no objections, who am I to argue? Shall I pour that or can you do it one-handed?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what her fiancé might think about her being here, but he didn’t. And he didn’t intend to pour. He drank the brandy straight from the bottle.

He turned his head sharply at the sound of someone— Eli—talking.

“So,” Leah said. “It begins.”

He took another drink. It came to him suddenly that he was afraid. He was as afraid as he had ever been before a battle—perhaps more so, because there was nothing he could do. Nothing.

He stirred restlessly. He could hear Johann now, and a softer murmur that must be Caroline.

“Shall I read to you?” Leah asked.

“No—” he said impatiently, still trying to hear. “What does he want?” he said, more to himself than to her.

“He wants to make things right,” Leah said.

“It’s too late for that.”

“He is very…changed.”

“So are we all—particularly Anna.”

He glanced at her. She was looking at him thoughtfully.

“Say it,” he said. “And be done with it.”

“All right. Caroline told me once that you had no affection, no regard, for Ann. If she felt that—as an outsiderthen how must Ann herself have felt? Perhaps she even said as much to Caroline—I don’t know. But you must understand this small thing about us women. We don’t need
things
to make us happy, Frederich. We need to know that we matter, that our simply
being
is important to the man we marry—apart from the things we do for him and the things we bring him as dowry. Perhaps Ann felt her lack of importance—whether you intended it or not—it was a very sad time for you then, yes? And Beata would have surely helped foster such a notion—”

“Leah—”

“Wait—there’s more. The thing I really want to say is that perhaps you are making the same mistake again—with Caroline. I think I know her as well as anyone, and I am telling you this. If she is important to you, you had better swallow your pride and let her know it—in no uncertain terms. You won’t have her otherwise—”

It’s too late,
he was about to say, but a sound came from downstairs and they both looked toward the door. Someone crying—sobbing. It grew louder. Frederich forced himself upward, trying to slide his good leg to the floor, the effort it took making him cry out in pain.

“Wait!” Leah cried, catching him by the shoulders to keep him from falling. “Wait—! It’s not her, Frederich. It’s Eli.”

It seemed a long while before the downstairs grew quiet again. Then he could hear Caroline’s voice, speaking quietly, on and on. He lay there, imagining her comforting Eli. Perhaps she had her arms around him—perhaps she would agree to go with him.

He gave a shuddering sigh.

“Someone’s coming,” Leah said. She stood up so that she could see out the door. “It’s Eli. I’ll go now. You remember what I’ve said—”

“Leah—” he protested, because now he wanted her here. He was not ready to listen to Eli!

But she slipped out and left them staring at each other. Eli came farther into the room without asking and he closed the door behind him. He looked haggard, exhausted, his eyes
red-rimmed from weeping. Frederich searched deep, but he could find no compassion for him, because of the way he did
not
look—guilty.

“I have something to say to you—” Eli began.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Frederich said listlessly. He turned his face away as if that would be some kind of deterrent. He could feel Eli waiting, and his own impatience began to get the best of him. After a long moment, he asked the only thing he really wanted to know.

“Caroline is…all right?”

“She is very sad,” Eli said, taking the chair Leah had vacated—again without his leave. “We have talked about William. Don’t worry—” he said when Frederich was about to protest. “I guessed that for her sake you said the boy died easy. I didn’t tell her otherwise. But now I have something I want to tell you.” He stopped, waiting until Frederich looked at him. “It’s over, Frederich. We are even—”

“What do you mean?”

He held up his hand. “Johann says you accused Caroline wrongly—because of the money and the letter I sent. I regret that, but I had to do it. I had to keep my promise to Anna to take care of the people she loved. Beata wrote to me—

“No one knew where you were!”

“She did. I told her where I was going the morning I left. And she wrote to me about how badly you treated Caroline—she was proud of you for doing it—proud that you would be so cruel to Anna’s sister, because they both deserved it.”

Frederich stared at him. He and Caroline had had their differences, and more than one clash of wills, but he had never been cruel. Had he? How could he have been? He had loved Caroline Holt—even then.

“You…believed Beata?”

“Why would I not believe her? I knew how much you hated me—and Anna. But she was dead, and Caroline was
in your house and already suffering. She didn’t deserve to suffer for
our
sin as well. I thought all the time about how uneasy Anna must rest knowing what was happening to Caroline and about how I had made the promise to her—”

“You had no right to promise her anything!”

“I loved her!”

“You killed her!”

Now,
Frederich thought.
Now he looks guilty.

Eli took a wavering breath. “What happened between Anna and me happened—and none of us are blameless. But what you say is true. I had no right to make promises. Even so, I gave my word to her, and then, instead of keeping it, I ran away. In doing so, I made what I felt for her—what we felt for each other—worthless. So I asked our cousin to write the letter in English for me and I sent Caroline a way to escape—only Beata got the letter and gave it to you and she kept the page where I wrote the
why
of it and her part in it—”

“I want to know what you meant about us being ‘even.’”

“What? Do you still think that Caroline and I were lovers? If you do, I feel sorry for you. I meant, Frederich, that I don’t have to beg your forgiveness anymore. I meant that my debt to you has been paid. When I found you on the battlefield and brought you out, I gave you back your life. And I gave you another chance—with Caroline. What I took away from you by loving Anna, I have given you back again. You can make use of it or you can throw it away—but I am free.”