The Amish Bride of Ice Mountain (3 page)

Then he was through the foyer and nodding to the servant who opened the door.

“See you in three months, Bas.”

“Yes, sir, Professor Lyons.”

“And tell my parents good-bye for me, will you, Bas?”
Because I am not going to listen to their crap about what I’m about to do . . .

“Yes, sir.”

He threw his bag in the back of the blue Expedition that had been brought round and climbed inside. Then he turned the key and started the drive to freedom . . . to Ice Mountain.

He sighed into the soft wind, coming back to the present with a wry smile on his lips.

Chapter Three

After
Grossmuder
May left, Mary went to sit on the small stoop of the cabin. She realized she’d have to go back to her
daed
’s cabin because she had no clothes with her, or any of her small possessions. She tried to think over the difference between a wedding and a marriage and sought
Gott
’s help in silence, as was her habit.

She rose, relieved in spirit, and turned her mind to the practical matter of what to have for supper. She had grabbed a pail to hunt for late huckleberries when someone came walking through the grass down the path near the cabin. She looked up, disappointed because she knew it was not her husband’s step.
More likely Isaac Mast . . .
wunderbaar
.

She fixed a smile on her face and waited until the boy ambled from the woods but felt surprise when Isaac seemed to stand taller and his booted steps turned to her. There was a suppressed aggression about him that made her nervous, and she swung the small pail back and forth.

“I heard the news. Expect the whole mountain’s heard it by now,” he spat.

She nodded with a calmness she didn’t feel. “
Jah,
the professor and I are married.
Danki
, Isaac.”

He caught her arm and pried the bucket from her fingers with an ungentle hand. She watched as he flung it far off into the weeds and caught the scent of alcohol on his breath.

“I didn’t come for no sayin’s of celebration, Mary. You know that. I figure if you was givin’ yerself to one man, you’d do as well fer another.” He took a step closer to her and she lifted her chin, reached up and flicked his straw
Amisch
hat off, trying to subdue the fear beginning to rise inside.

“Another man, Isaac? Where would he be? I see none here.”

She wasn’t prepared for the shaking he gave her and she felt her teeth rattle. Her heart began to pound.

“Ye’re a witch, Mary. A temptress and a witch, jest like my
daed
says. And I’ll show you what a real man is to be.”

He caught her around the waist and she began to struggle in earnest, but he was strong from working the fields and managed to drag her into the cabin. He flung her down on the bunk and laughed as he bent over her to flick a sprig of lavender across her face.

“So, the old crone’s blessed the bed already. Fair blessing on us, then, Mary, since you’ve no husband hereabouts.”

She tried to scream, but he slapped her hard, then climbed atop her, holding her down with his greater weight.

“Isaac, stop . . . think,” she tried to reason with him, but he was grabbing at her dress.

“
Ach
, I’m thinkin’, Mary. I’m thinkin’.”

She felt his hand pinch the inside of her thigh and she tried to bite his arm, but he slapped her again and she tasted blood.

“Now, jest lie still, Mary. Lie still and it’ll go better for ya,” he panted.

She squirmed against him and then they both froze when the click of a gun’s hammer sounded clear and tight.

“Get up.”

Mary couldn’t breathe for a moment when she recognized her husband’s voice. Isaac slowly began to crawl off her and Mary saw his hands go up as Jude held the revolver to the back of his head.

“I should kill you, Isaac Mast. Right here. Right now.”

Mary twisted as a bead of sweat fell from Isaac’s brow onto her face; she half sobbed.

“Mary, are you all right?” Jude’s voice was different now, soft, concerned, caring.

“He—he didn’t hurt me much, Jude. It’s all right.”

“If you had taken her, you’d be dead right now, Isaac Mast. So, this is what you’re going to do—turn around and run. Run from this cabin. Run from this mountain and keep on running. I don’t ever want to see your miserable face again. Do you understand?”

Isaac blubbered out a response and eased past Jude and the gun; then he took off running, his heavy boots clomping on the floor and out into the grass.

 

 

Jude drew a deep breath, uncocked the gun, then put it down on his desk. He turned and went with his heart pounding to the bunk. He dropped to his knees, then reached a shaky hand up to wipe the line of blood from his wife’s mouth, cleaning his fingers on the edge of the white sheet. Then he cupped her bruised jaw in his hand. “Oh, Mary. If I’d have been a minute later . . .”

“I-I can’t believe—Isaac. He—was so ugly, so mean.”

“Drunk too. What did he say?”

She shook her head and he felt her tears slip through his fingers.

“Come on, sweetheart. You’ll feel better to talk it out.”

She swallowed as he traced the line of her throat down to rub her shoulder.

“He said . . . if I gave it away to you that I’d do it for any man.”

“Fool,” Jude said with calm deliberation.
I should have pounded the kid’s head into the wall.

“Why do people call . . . that . . .
it
?”

His eyes flew to her face and he floundered for a moment, but then he got a grip on his sensibilities. She was asking a normal question, a question anyone who’d been assaulted might ask.

He moved to sit down on the bed next to her, gently threading a leaf of sage from her long hair, which had come undone in the onslaught.

Because men are crude idiots, English or Amish. “
Mary, I’m sorry he said that to you. And sex, well, you’re right . . . it’s so much more than
it
, but people cheapen the idea, the feelings . . . I suppose that’s what you’d call sin.”

“It felt like sin when he was talking.”

Should have strung him up right then. “
Well, that’s his problem, not yours. You’re the most pure, wonderful girl I know—like spring water from the mountain.”

“What about . . . well, you said you were engaged to marry. Shouldn’t she be the most wonderful girl you know?”

Jude laughed. “No . . . yes, but no. In away, you’ve saved me, sweet Mary, from a life of desperation.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll explain sometime, but right now, I want to know if he hurt you anywhere else.”

“
Nee
, I’m fine.”

He thought she spoke too quickly and seemed to wince away from his hands.

“Please, Mary. I won’t hurt you.”

“I know that.” The affirmation in her tone did something to his heart and he smiled.

“All right then.”

She sighed and slipped off the bed to stand between his knees. She undid her apron, then sought the pins that held her dress in place. Jude knew a sudden regret for his words. Did she mean to simply undress in front of him? He cast his eyes to the log wall behind her, then gasped when he saw her exposed side. The skin between her fragile rib cage and the curve of her hip was badly bruised.

“Oh, Mary.” He stood up and caught her close, moving her to the fall of sunlight near one of the two glass windows.

He slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose and peered closely at her side. Already, deep blue and purple blotches marred her white skin. Jude swallowed hard. Being in this proximity with her was more than hazardous to his senses, and he straightened fast.

“Anywhere else?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
Nowhere else. Please, nowhere else.

She shook her head, holding her dress up, and he helped her lie back on the bunk.

“I’ll get some cool cloths from the creek and you can stay here and have a bit of a rest, all right?”

“You won’t leave then?”

Her voice sounded small and he could have cursed himself for seeming so calm. He’d been trying to reassure her and he’d probably come off as uncaring. He lifted one of her small, reddened hands from the bed and drew it to his mouth, kissing her carefully.

“I won’t leave, Mary. I promise.” He put her hand back to her side and forced himself to smile at her. His words echoed with anxious cadence in his mind
. I won’t leave, won’t leave, promise . . .

Mary had known the occasional outburst of violence from her
bruders
fighting or arguing together but she’d never been assaulted, and her mind kept replaying Isaac’s actions until she was so jumpy that a skittering chipmunk, moving from the windowsill to the desk, made her sit up in fear.

Jude came back into the cabin from the creek with a dripping pail of water and looked at her in alarm.

“What’s the matter?”

She tried to smile. “A chippy . . . on your desk. It startled me.”

“Oh . . . yeah, those little guys are all over. I’ve brought the water.”

She lay back down but couldn’t quite control the shaking of her hands as he knelt by the bed. She carefully arranged her dress so that her side was exposed and he wordlessly wrung out a wet cloth and pressed it with gentle hands against her.

“Feel good?”

She nodded, trying not to replay the images of Isaac hurting her in her mind.

Jude leaned over her, tenderly stroking her fast-swelling cheek. “Mary, I don’t like the idea of leaving, but I do have all that I need for my book. We don’t have to wait the two weeks. The only thing I haven’t seen is that new beaver dam up the mountain stream.”

“You mean . . . you want to leave sooner because Isaac might be here?”

“Yes, that and I’d like some distance to settle between our wedding and the gossip surrounding it. In another six months or so, you could come back without being so much as a blip on the radar.”

“A—blip?”

“Sorry. Without causing too much notice.”

She was silent for a moment,
Grossmuder
May’s words tangling in her mind. What could she accomplish in so little time in his world? And yet, it also seemed like an eternity to be away from the mountain.

She drew a deep breath. “It’s August now . . . I’ve told you, the mountain becomes near impassable sometimes as early as October, sometimes as late as March.”

“Well, that should do us, sweetheart. What do you say?”

“I have to go to my
daed
’s to get my things and say good-bye.”

“And I’ve got to pack up this pile of notes and books. We could hike out tomorrow afternoon, if you feel up to it. If not—we’ll wait.” He wrung out another ice-cold cloth and exchanged it for the one on her side.

“I’ll be well. I’m sure of it.”

“We’ll see. Now, what do you want for supper?”

She frowned and struggled to rise. “I’ll get it.”

He pushed her back with a gentle hand. “Oh, no, Miss, er, Mrs. . . . it’s on me. Tell me what you like . . . stew, stew, or stew?” He gave her a lopsided grin.

“I’ve never had a man bring me food. It—seems wrong somehow.”

“Mary, I’m afraid you’re going to find a lot of things ‘wrong’ or upside down in my world, but that doesn’t mean that they’re really wrong. It’s okay to try new things.”

“Then I’ll have stew.”

She was pleased at his answering smile and settled back in the bunk to watch him move about—a man, her husband, making supper for her. It was something worth watching.

 

 

Jude tried not to remember that the beautiful girl in his bed was his wife. She’d been through a forced marriage, a near rape, and the looming possibility of leaving her home, all in one day. She certainly didn’t need to know that his mind felt pulled in a thousand directions where she was concerned. It wasn’t something he could truly understand himself.

He supposed that if he were a praying man, today would have been the day for it. But no words would come from inside. He’d studied too much in college not to believe that organized religion was anything but a crutch . . . not that it wasn’t a commendable crutch and not that the
Amisch
didn’t handle it masterfully, but man would always be what he was with his baser nature at the forefront—like Isaac Mast.
Like me.

He clanged the cast-iron lid of the stew pot and turned over his shoulder to apologize to Mary for the noise, only to find her fast asleep. Against his will, he was drawn to the side of the bunk in the waning light of day. He lit the kerosene lamp on the small, carved bedside table, then sat down on the edge of the bed.

There was no doubt his little friend of summer was truly a beautiful woman. She looked like a sleeping princess from a fairy tale and he smiled at the thought. He’d seen her shoot small game with a bow and deadly accuracy, making sure the animal did not suffer.

He suppressed a sigh and thumbed his way across the half-closed fingers of her hand, then peered closer at her palm. He realized with a sudden tearing sensation in his heart that she held a handful of the now-dried herbs and flowers that
Grossmuder
May had used to bless the bed. It was as if she’d still hoped . . . wanted . . . He shook his head and drew a single rose petal from her palm, then got up from the bed.