Jacob's Return (6 page)

Silk. Flowers.

Rachel’s breath caught and she grasped his shoulders as if to keep herself from falling.

He wanted to touch her with his lips again so badly, his insides clenched with need.

His hands stayed at her waist.

They stood forever like that, just looking into each other’s eyes. Hers were big, and round, and dark … like warm maple syrup. And Jacob wondered if he looked as shocked as she.

Such a tiny kiss, such a large feeling — in his heart, in his mind … in his body.

He dropped his hands from her waist, as if the warmth of her seared him. And he clenched his fists, whether to hold onto her warmth or to keep himself from touching her again, he wasn’t certain.

She moved her hands from his shoulders, but could not seem to release his gaze. A need so deep, it was solemn, engulfed him.

Tiny hands tugged on his trousers, patted his knee.

Jacob stepped back and swung both children into his arms, closed his eyes, and let out his breath.

When he looked at Rachel again, the tension between them had eased and he was grateful. “Let’s dry them off.”

Wet to the skin, the babies got stripped and wrapped, Aaron in Jacob’s shirt, Emma in Rachel’s apron.

Each with a warm, sleepy child, Jacob and Rachel rested against the trunk of a blossoming cherry tree, letting the insects’ song lull them.

Jacob cleared his throat. He needed to say this, needed to say it right. He closed his eyes, took a breath. “I talked to Jenny Moyer yesterday, about caring for the twins. She’d be fine, I guess.”

He beseeched her with his look. “But I want you, Mudpie. My babies want you.” He shook his head. “Maybe I’m not saying this right. We, the three of us, want you to leave your job at the school to care for them.” He shrugged. “Whatever you get paid, I’ll pay you double, ‘cause they’re double trouble, you know.”

Having Emma and Aaron to raise had been her dream since Jacob returned, and Rachel was almost afraid to believe. She cupped Emma’s head against her shoulder, and closed her eyes. “Lord, but, I want to. I love them so much.”

Jacob seemed confused by her hesitation. “Simon has wanted me to quit since our marriage,” she explained, “but I couldn’t, because my life would have been so empty without … children in it. If I agree to leave for you—”

“It wouldn’t be for me. It would be for Aaron and Emma. Simon will understand, and he’ll be glad to have you earning more.”

Simon
should
understand, she thought, but with Simon, who knew?

“Look at them. When they’re sleeping like this, how can you deny them?”

“I couldn’t deny them if they ran around the best room covered in mud with piglets at their heels.” Imagining the scene made her giggle.

“Give them a chance,” Jacob said. “They’ll try it. What do you say, Mudpie. Will you care for my babies?”

Oh God. Oh God. She’d never wanted anything more … except maybe early in her marriage when she wanted very badly for her husband to like her even a little. She couldn’t say no. She couldn’t bear the thought of Aaron and Emma running to another woman for kisses like they had with her at the schoolhouse. “Of course I’ll give up teaching, Jacob. For these two, I’d give up just about anything.” She reached over and squeezed his hand, and despite herself, tears came to her eyes. “Thank you. Nobody could love them more, besides you.”

“I know that.” Jacob pressed her knuckles to his cheek for a minute before he released her hand. With the gesture, her tears threatened, but she blinked them back. The night he’d returned, when he’d shown her the first tenderness she’d known in years, she’d lain awake long after, letting her tears fall silently. Tears of joy at his return. Tears of regret for her life.

But her life was her life and she must make the best of it. She would have his babies. And she had her newspaper. “My newspaper, Jacob! Without the schoolchildren to copy it, how will I print it? I don’t have enough money to buy Atlee’s press yet — oh, that’s a secret, Jacob. Don’t tell. Please.”

Jacob grimaced. “Simon doesn’t like the newspaper much, does he?”

Mild words. “Not at all.” She thought for a minute. “Maybe some of my students will still want to earn a few cents. Or, I could make copies when these two nap—”

“Hah! I hope you don’t expect them to nap at the same time, or for long.” He kissed the top of Aaron’s head. “Or at all, some days.”

“Last Sunday, I tried to keep them awake so I could play with them,” Rachel confessed sheepishly. “But they fell asleep anyway.”

“Ya, well, if you
want
them to stay awake, then that’s different. Better find another way. Just in case. Are you talking about buying that old Gutenberg that Atlee’s great-grandfather brought to America about a hundred years ago? Ruben and I were fascinated by it when we were boys. It needs parts for certain, but it might work. It’s a simple enough machine, and it served our ancestors well.”

“That’s what Atlee says.”

“But will he sell it? He never lets go of anything. I think he’s still got the first tooth he ever lost.”

Rachel laughed. “He was pretty sick a while back. I brewed sassafras tea from
Grossmutter’s
recipe and made him Rivel soup, then I went every day to make certain he ate. When he got better he said he owed me. I said, ‘Sell me the press,’ and he agreed.

“He should have
given
it to you.”

“Jacob, this is Atlee Eicher we’re talking about.”

“Ach, right. How much?”

“Twenty five dollars. I don’t have near enough from my paper, and Simon won’t spend a dime from my teaching money on it. I don’t think there’s anything he wants more than for me to give up the paper.” Except maybe children, she thought.

“How much do you make teaching?” Jacob asked.

“One hundred dollars a year.”

“I’ll pay you two hundred, double like I said, and I’ll buy Atlee’s press and keep something back each month toward its cost. I’ll charge you what I pay Atlee plus whatever it costs to fix. That way you’ll know you earned it fair and Simon won’t think I’m giving you something I shouldn’t.”

Jacob’s generosity should not surprise her, but she had to swallow before she could speak. “I get the best deal.”

“No, I do,” he said. “I get the best woman to care for my babies, and they love her plenty.”

Rachel smiled, more pleased by the compliment than she supposed she should be. “I’ll walk to Abe’s later and give him my resignation. The school board can find somebody else to teach the last week before summer break. But, Jacob, Atlee said he’d sell me the press, not you. And you know how he can be.”

“I can handle Atlee.”

Rachel grinned. “This is a good plan, Jacob.”

“If it makes you happy, it certainly is. I’ll talk to Ruben about helping me move and fix it. Bet Atlee’s got some hopping good cider left. After a jug, he’ll sell me the press, don’t worry.”

Rachel pinched him.

“Ouch! What was that for?”

“Don’t come home singing that song about the woman on the dock and the sailor who—”

“Rachel Zook, mind your tongue!”

“I only ever heard
you
sing it. Fifteen years old you were, I think, and drunk from somebody’s cider.”

Jacob chuckled. “Ah, yes. And bold from so much cider, I kissed you for the first time.” He drank her in just then and knew he would love her forever. “Wish I’d never stopped.”

Birds chirped. Bees hummed. Leaves rustled.

“You’re going to have to find yourself a wife soon.”

Jacob wondered how long he could put it off. “Will you help me?”

“Me? Sure. But why?”

“I guess nobody knows what kind of woman I want for a wife better than you do, Rache.”

“Why do I?”

“We’re too far from the creek for you to be fishing, Rache.”

Chapter 4

Rachel remained silent while Jacob told Simon at supper that he’d asked her to quit teaching to care for the twins. “Emma and Aaron love her. They need her. She’s been so good for them.”

But Simon sat, silent as her, until a lima bean Aaron tossed stuck in his beard. Then he growled.

Aaron opened his arms. “Unk?”

Simon sighed and lifted him — holding him at arms length, as if trying to identify the object he held — then he frowned and placed him in Jacob’s lap. “You take him. Rachel, I want to talk to you.”

Rachel’s heart raced as she followed her angry husband to their bedroom.

He rounded on her the minute the door closed. “You would give up teaching for Jacob, when you would not for me?”

Rachel winced, despite facing the reaction she expected. “I gave my resignation to Abe Stoltzfus for the school board this afternoon. I
want
to care for those babies, Simon. I want to teach Emma things every little Amish girl should know. I want to show Aaron how to—”

Simon grasped her arms. “And your newspaper? You will give up your foolish paper? For Jacob?”

He hadn’t listened, much less understood. “No, not the newspaper.”

“How can you not?”

“Atlee Eicher has a printing press. Jacob is willing to fix it so I can print the newspaper here. That way, I can publish it weekly, instead of monthly, and get it to more people. I want to send it to other districts and invite them to send articles.”

Simon’s fingers bit into her arms. “A printing press cannot be managed by a woman.”

“Jacob will help me.”

He tossed her like a rag doll and she lost her balance. “Of course, Jacob. But we have no money for a printing press, so it is out of the question.” The truth of his statement pleased him and he smiled looking down at her on the floor.

Rachel rose aware she was treading water. “The press is part of the price Jacob will pay me to care for the children.”

Simon’s bark of laughter surprised her. “Your love for those children has a price, I see.”

“Jacob is replacing my teaching salary, so you will have nothing to quibble about.”

Simon jabbed her shoulder with his finger. Hard. “Did you speak of my quibbling, you and Jacob?” His next jab forced her to step back. “Did you?” He poked her, again. She stepped back again. And again. And when the backs of her knees hit the bed, Simon pushed on her shoulders to make her sit. “Have you been discussing our marriage with my brother?” he asked, face close, voice scary soft.

“That would be a sad discussion, Simon.”

He growled and whipped her kapp off and downward, catching it on the bodice of her dress, pins scattering.

Rachel tried to get away from him but cried out when something stung her.

Simon held a pin, resolve and maybe satisfaction, in his eyes, as if, as if … He’d pricked her on purpose?

But Rachel had no time to ponder it before he grabbed a hank of her hair. “You are not happy in our marriage, Rachel?”

“As happy as you are.”

By her hair, he pulled her closer. “We will be married for the rest of our lives,” he whispered into her ear.

“God help us both.”

He raised his hand. Lowered it.

Had she spoken aloud? Rachel released her breath when he turned away, but, like a cat, he turned back. “Jacob favors Esther. Let her take care of the twins so she can begin to know her children.”

“Jacob and Esther have not even talked privately—”

“Which cannot be said for Jacob and you!”

Rachel inched back toward the headboard. “Do you think Esther should move in here? I could move home. You would like me out of your sight. Then you would not be repelled by me.”

Simon’s rigid stance frightened and emboldened her at one and the same time. “Esther can conceive a child,” she said. “Perhaps you would like to have her in your bed, instead of me. Perhaps she could make you man enough to do the deed.”

Her shock at those words was no less than Simon’s. His look — detached, feral — made her scoot off the opposite side of the bed, and for the thousandth time over the past years, she wondered why she married him.

Any affection she’d ever had for him, he’d crushed, ruthlessly, day by day, night by night, beginning the day they married.

He smiled his devil’s smile and examined her with interest. “Look at yourself, strumpet. With your sloppy breasts hanging from your dress and those harlot’s curls falling down your back. Has Jacob seen you like this? Is he man enough to want you? Has he had you? Even before we married?”

Something in Rachel snapped, and the years of fear stretching before her were more than she could bear. “I will tell you this, Simon Sauder, no
man
has ever had me.”

Like a jackrabbit, he leapt.

She tried to run, but he caught her by her hair, wrapping it around his wrist, bringing her closer. And closer. Then he shoved her against the wall. Pain made her eyes water.

“Is Jacob the reason you have avoided our marriage bed these last weeks?”

“I have stayed up late to make Emma dresses.” Rachel found her mouth pressed so hard against the wall, her foolish excuse became distorted. “And Aaron needs—”

“Real women care for their children and still do their duty by their husbands.” Simon spoke so softly, so calmly, Rachel shivered.

She tried to lessen the pressure of his hold on her hair by reaching up to pull it from his grip, but pain blurred her vision. “Sewing for children is difficult,” she added, wondering why she bothered. “And when I come to bed, you are already asleep.”

“As is your plan.”

“Yes, God help me! I did it to avoid the agony of your touch.”

“Because of Jacob.”

“Because of you!”

Simon pulled a work-knife from his pocket and shoved her down on the bed, holding her there. “Look at these curls,” he sneered. “They cannot be tamed any more than you. But the Bible says, a woman must submit to her husband in all things. Here, now, we will begin anew,” he said, dancing the knife-blade before her eyes.

Prickles ran along Rachel’s limbs, black dots clouded her vision, while she concentrated on every breath to keep from allowing the encroaching darkness to swallow her whole.