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The loft was empty, and Frederich began pitching the hay into the stalls below. The cats mewed loudly for another handout, and Beata was awake. He could hear her complaining all the way out here.
He moved to the other side and looked over the edge. The door to the stall directly below him stood ajar, and the bay gelding that should have been there was gone.
Frederich stayed away from the house until shortly after noon. The kitchen was quiet when he came in, and he was surprised that there was no meal on the table. Even if Beata was still sulking, he expected Caroline to have at least managed something for the children. He didn’t see the girls anywhere, but she was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs.
“We observe the Mittagessen in this house,” he said.
She looked at him blankly.
“The noon meal,” he said as if to a backward child.
“Lise and Mary Louise have eaten.”
“Is there anything left?” he asked pointedly.
“I don’t know. Beata took it.”
“Took it where?”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
He swore under his breath and went looking for whatever Beata might have put aside for him—or missed hiding. There was nothing. He looked up from his search to see Caroline standing nearby.
“Have you…found Eli?” she asked, not quite meeting his eyes.
“One of the horses and a saddle is missing. Eli had some money put by. I expect he is long gone.”
“Oh,” she said, as if she hadn’t considered that possibility.
When he looked up again, she was putting on her shawl and opening the back door. “Where are you going?”
He saw the rise and fall of her breasts as she took a deep breath before she answered him.
“This—marriage—isn’t going to work. I’m going to ask Avery to let me come home.”
The remark took him completely by surprise, and his temper flared. He had given her the only chance she would ever have for any kind of respectability and she was about to throw it away?
“Avery will not let you come home,” he said bluntly.
“You don’t know that—”
“He made too much of a show among the men of disowning you.”
He walked into the pantry looking again for something Beata might have forgotten to hide. He supposed that the loss of her secret hoard of bread must have convinced her as nothing else could that the rest of them hadn’t suffered enough from her self-imposed absence. Certainly it would be much more difficult to cook and eat without her if no one could find any food. He wondered what terrible thing he had done in his life to deserve Beata. And Eli. And Caroline Holt.
When he came out of the pantry, Caroline was no longer in the room. He leaned over the table to look out the window. She was walking across the field he should have had plowed by now, her gait strong for a few steps then hesitant, as if she were being forced to give in to the pain she still had from Avery’s beating.
Good riddance, he thought. Let her grovel in front of Avery. And when he sent her back again, perhaps she would understand her situation better.
He looked around at a small noise. Both his daughters stood at the bottom of the stairs.
“Papa?” Lise said tentatively. “Did you let Aunt Caroline go?”
He sighed. “She went, Lise. There was no letting or not letting.”
“Aren’t you…worried? Uncle Avery—he might hurt her again, Papa. And we promised.”
“Lise, I can’t tie your Aunt Caroline to the kitchen table so she’ll stay here,” he said, trying not to be influenced by how hard she was trying not to cry. Lise was a gentle soul; she was concerned about all living creatures—whether they deserved it or not.
“Eli said we wouldn’t let anyone hurt her again. He promised, Papa.”
“Lise, there is nothing I can do,” he said, in spite of the fact that he’d made the same promise himself.
“Couldn’t you just—?”
“This is not your business.”
Mary Louise was tugging on his trouser leg. “What is it, Mary Louise?” he said more sharply than he intended.
“I think we might cry, Papa,” she advised him.
“Then you’ll just have to cry. Life is full of crying. I can’t fix everything.” He was very careful not to look into her upturned face, into those begging Holt-brown eyes.
“Can’t you please just fix this, Papa?” Lise asked. “Don’t let Uncle Avery hurt her again. Please, Papa! All you have to do is just stand there while she talks to him—he wouldn’t hurt her if you stood by. I know he wouldn’t!”
Her mouth trembled, but she worked hard not to give in to it. Clearly, Lise expected him to stand guard indefinitely.
“Your Aunt Caroline left by her own choice—”
“No, she didn’t, Papa! She left because Beata is going to be mean to everybody if she stays. Papa—”
He held up his hand to stop her.
“You don’t worry about your Aunt Caroline. You don’t worry about any of those people over there.”
Caroline heard the back door slam, and Frederich caught up with her before she reached the edge of the Graeber land.
“I have something to say to you, Caroline Holt. This is—”
“What do you want, Frederich?” she interrupted. She stopped walking, and she forced herself to look him in the eye.
“What do I want? I want to keep you from making the scandal any bigger than it already is.”
They stared at each other. She abruptly looked away.
“What is wrong with you?” he said angrily. “You behave as if you have some choice about what you will do! You don’t. You are pregnant. Avery doesn’t want you or your brat. It falls to me to keep my family from becoming any more of a laughingstock than it already is. I am going to keep the family’s honor—the honor you drag through the mud as if there is nobody to suffer the consequences but you. There is only one thing to be done. You don’t start everybody talking all over again about the marriage. Do you understand?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t!”
“My daughters are crying—Beata is starving us to death hiding everything she can get her hands on—Eli has disappeared! All this is your fault. Do you understand that? Going to Avery—begging Avery—will only make our trouble worse. Worse for you—worse for—”
She looked away from his penetrating gaze. She did understand after all. She understood perfectly. How terrible for Frederich to have to keep her when he wanted so desperately to be rid of her.
“Frederich, I—” she began, looking back at him. But he was staring at her clothes. “Come,” he interrupted. “We go see Avery now.”
“Go see—Frederich, you just said you didn’t—”
“You are beginning to stink. You need your clothes. We’ll go and get them, and you don’t say anything to your brother about this notion you have of coming home. You can manage that, surely.”
He took her by the arm to start her walking, letting go almost immediately as if he found touching her distasteful. And he kept giving her wary glances as they crossed the field.
“Say nothing!” he admonished her as they neared the house, and she had to bite her lip to suppress an angry reply. She wasn’t stupid about everything. Just her choices of lovers and husbands.
She could see John Steigermann standing in the yard-perhaps advising William of her marriage as she’d asked. Under better circumstances and with a different companion, the walk here would have been pleasant enough. It was cold still, but without the biting wind of yesterday. Spring always came quickly in this part of the country; winter one week and budding leaves the next. She noted with some surprise that she was looking forward to the dogwoods and jonquils just as she always did. And she noted, too, that she was actually going to try to have a civil conversation with Avery after what he had done.
Better to ask for her clothes than for sanctuary, she thought.
John Steigermann and William and Avery were all staring at her as she and Frederich approached. They would, of course, be surprised to see her out today. She was newly married and should be attending to her wifely duties.
“Ah!” John Steigermann said immediately, waving her closer. “Frederich! Caroline! Come hear this. You will want to know the news.”
“What news?” she asked, glancing at Avery as he swallowed whatever unpleasant thing he would have said to her if both John Steigermann and Frederich hadn’t been there.
“The army has gone through again foraging supplies,” Steigermann said. “Penn Palmer says they took every decent horse he had. Steal is what they do. Paying with pieces of paper no one wants to honor. I say we go to the garrison in town—we see what they will do about paying real money for what they take. And look at this, Caroline,” he said taking a folded newspaper from his coat pocket. “You will read what this says, yes? I can’t read the English so good.”
She took the paper he handed her. “New call for troops,” she read aloud. “The following is under proclamation of the President, extending the call under the Conscript Act, to embrace all residents of the Confederacy between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, not legally exempt—”
John Steigermann frowned and motioned for Caroline to keep reading.
“Foreigners,” she went on, “who are actual residents, will be called upon to do military service in defense of the country in which they reside.”
“Let me see that,” Avery said, snatching the newspaper out of her band and reading it himself. “That’s what it says. I’ve got my farmer’s exemption—but this is going to get a lot of you Germans if you aren’t careful.”
“And how can we Germans be careful, Avery?” Frederich asked. “Do we go hide in the woods and leave the women and children to work the farms?”
“You can go into town and see about a farmer’s exemption the same as I did,” Avery said.
“That is not so easy when the man who takes the bribe changes every week.”
“It isn’t a bribe, Frederich. It’s a fee.“
“Call it what name you will, Avery Holt. It is what it is.”
Caroline stepped away as the discussion became more heated. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She was tired from the walk. And from arguing with Frederich, and before him, Beata.
Isn’t there someplace where I can just live in peace?
“Caroline,” William said.
She looked around at him. He was standing awkwardly, clearly embarrassed by her new status and not knowing what to say.
“Hello, William,” she said, forcing a smile she didn’t begin to feel.
“I got something for you,” he said, motioning her toward the house.
Avery glanced at him but didn’t intervene.
“What is it?” Caroline asked, letting William take her by the hand.
“I got your clothes all together,” he said. “I reckon you’re going to need them until Frederich can buy you some more.”
“William—”
“I got your dresses bundled and everything else in Mama’s old straw valise—I reckon the handle will stay on. I was going to sneak them over to you first chance I got. But since you’re here, I can give them to you now. And I reckon you’ll be wanting your books and all—me and Avery sure ain’t going to be reading them.”
“William—”
“It’s all right now, ain’t it, Caroline? You’ll be all right with Frederich, won’t you? You know I never in a million years thought he’d be the one you’d end up marrying. See, I never thought you’d marry at all—” He broke off, apparently realizing that his comment was less than tactful. “It’s good Frederich could come over to help you carry this stuff,” he decided, and he was looking at her so earnestly.
I have to come home, William.
She pursed her lips and tried to say the words, but she couldn’t manage it. William was so happy for her. He thought she was safe now.
“I’ll get your clothes,” William said, turning and bounding up the steps into the house.
She stood there still wanting to ask Avery—to beg him to let her come home. Surely, surely, he’d let her. He wouldn’t lose face. She could tell him that people would think the better of him—John Steigermann would think the better of him if he did this for her.
Frederich came and stood next to her as if he could feel her wavering, and William bounded out of the house with her dresses and the valise.
“Here you are, Caroline,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “Hey, Frederich, you’re not mad at Caroline anymore, are you?”
Frederich took the valise out of William’s hand without answering.
“There is more to bring or not?” he asked Caroline.
“I can get your books, Caroline,” William suddenly offered. “Since Frederich’s going to be carrying your things for you. I can put them in a pillow slip, all right? I’ll be right back—”
He was off running again.
Caroline abruptly bowed her head. How could she let Frederich haul her back? And how could she ask Avery for anything?
“Stay here,” Frederich said, slinging the valise at her because the ground was too muddy for him to set it down. “I will speak to your brother.”
She stood there, meekly holding everything she owned in her arms, feeling like the fallen woman she was as she watched Frederich approach Avery. Her brother was wary at first. And he kept glancing at her, his righteous indignation all too apparent.
“Ja! Gut!” John Steigermann said, listening intently to whatever Frederich said.
She couldn’t hear anything else.
