“Bettina!”
I paused in the doorframe, half turned, and prayed that I would not have to speak or show my face.
“You will return in time to give your mistress tomorrow’s breakfast, will you not?”
I bobbed my hooded head.
“See that you do. I know how you dawdle.” The housekeeper swept away to scrutinize the rest of the staff.
Franz waited outside in the landau to take me—that is, Bettina—to town. If he noticed that I was not really his appointed passenger, he made no sign of it. An ideal servant, the coachman kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead and his nose out of others’ business.
Without a word, he delivered me to a small cottage on the outskirts of Liebeheim, which I presumed to be Bettina’s family home. I descended from the carriage and pretended to fumble with the latch on the garden gate until Franz drove off. Then I set off on foot toward the heart of the village.
No hammer clanged on the anvil as I arrived at the blacksmith’s shop, and the incandescent orange coals of its forge had gone cold and black.
Of course, I thought. It’s the Sabbath.
Neither the smith nor Stefan would be working that day. I cursed myself for my stupidity and despaired that my whole errand had been in vain.
Unwilling to give up, I circled around the shop and approached the modest house behind it. Because the gossips of the village all seemed to know my face, I did not dare to knock on the front door and ask the smith where I could find his apprentice. Instead, I skulked around the side of the house and tried to peer through the paned windows.
The house sat on a raised foundation, which meant I had to stand on tiptoes to peep over the sill and so could only catch brief glimpses of the home’s occupants. A trim, plain woman in the kitchen pulled a steaming pie from a cast-iron oven as a small boy tugged at her skirts, and I ducked out of sight when she brought the pie to the window ledge to let it cool.
I rounded the corner of the house and found one of the windows on the rear wall standing open. Again, I grabbed hold of the sill and stretched onto the balls of my feet to peek into the room above me. I caught sight of a rough cot like the one I’d had in Pastor Georg’s house. A male figure sat on the bed, pulling on a pair of scuffed leather riding boots. From behind, I could only see the back of his head, but the mop of blond curls identified him immediately.
I dropped back onto my heels. “Stefan?” I whispered hopefully. “Stefan!”
Gripping the sill, I pulled myself onto my toes again for another look. Suddenly an expanse of linen shirt blocked my view and hands like lion’s paws hooked beneath my arms, hauling me up until my wriggling legs slid over the window ledge.
Certain that the smith himself had caught me, I kicked my feet, but they danced helplessly inches above the floor. “I—”
A mouth pressed against mine, devouring my cry. Crushed against my captor’s chest, I could see—could feel—that it was Stefan who held me suspended above the floor. I squirmed at first, mistaking the violence of his passion for an attack.
His sure hands cupped my thighs, wrapped my legs around his waist. The sinews of his chest pushed up against the underside of my breasts, the snugness awaking nerves I had not known existed. His mouth seemed to draw the breath out of my lungs, then bellow it back in, hot with the fires of a forge. And through it all, his lips molded and melded with mine, now gentle, now fierce, as if seeking a perfect and impossible union.
This, I thought, is a kiss, a kiss for me alone.
I let myself drown in its deluge of sensation.
After a moment that seemed both endless and fleeting, he set me back on my feet, clasped my cheeks in his hands. “I knew you’d come. I knew he couldn’t keep us apart.”
Still breathless, I gazed up at his hero’s visage, alight with the virility and invincibility of youth, like David when he slew Goliath. I already wanted him to kiss me again.
“I had to see you,” I said truthfully.
“And I you. If you hadn’t come, I would have come for you, Trina. But here you are, and here you shall stay.” He caught me up in his arms and tumbled me onto the narrow bed.
I could not object to his audacity without admitting I knew nothing of our past intimacy, so I let him lay down beside me, his body against mine, the heady musk of his scent so close . . . I confess, I wanted him there.
Still, I glanced anxiously toward the door of his room. “They’ll hear us.”
He laughed. “I care not. Do you?”
And with that he began planting soft kisses on my ear, my chin, my bosom. At that moment, I did not care, could not think, could barely breathe. Was this love? This all-consuming, infectious mania . . . it frightened me, yet I craved it, and the fact that I would crave such a thing frightened me all the more.
I gasped to clear my head and pushed Stefan back. “I can’t stay. Joseph will find out.”
“Then let us ride away together. By the time he notices you’re gone, we’ll be a hundred miles from here.” He brushed his lips along my neck, flicked his tongue out to tease the skin, came close to nudging aside the scarf that covered the scar around my throat.
I shivered and spurned him again. “I can’t. Not yet. There is something I must know first.”
Stefan propped his head on his hand and rolled his eyes in comic annoyance. “Yes, I really love you,” he sighed, idly tracing the curve of my left breast with his fingertip.
“No, not that,” I replied. “What did Joseph tell people when I . . . went away?”
“He said you were consumptive, that you’d gone to the South of France for your health.” Stefan’s words dripped acid. “All to avoid a scandal, of course, but I knew it was a lie.”
“Yes. It was.” And I tugged my scarf loose to show him the ugly white streak it concealed.
Stefan shook like a nest of angry wasps. He reached to touch the scar, but his fingers clenched into a fist before contacting my throat. “I’ll kill him.”
“It may not have been Joseph,” I said quickly, for he was on the verge of going to murder the old man right then. “I don’t remember what happened. But there is a man who knows.”
I thought of Meyer the gravedigger—the gape of recognition he’d given me in the churchyard and the familiar way he’d spoken of me to Fräu Hauptmann. She and Joseph knew the truth too, no doubt, but they would never tell it. But I felt sure a reprobate like Meyer would succumb to either bribery or intimidation.
“Where do we find this man?” Stefan demanded.
“I shall take you to him,” I answered, “at the proper time.”
The stablehand shifted restlessly, like a stallion confined to its stall. “I warn you, Trina—if I find the old man did this, nothing you say will make me spare his miserable life.”
“I understand.”
He tightened his arms around me. “After that, we go away together.”
“Yes.” I smiled. “Together.”
And I lost myself in another of his kisses.
CHAPTER 11
ELOPEMENT
I spent the rest of the afternoon in Stefan’s arms, luxuriating in his caresses. But when he fumbled to unlace my dress, I shrugged off his hands and jumped out of bed.
“I have to go.” I pulled Bettina’s cloak around me and raised the hood.
Stefan complained that he was not doing anything he hadn’t done dozens of times in the past. How could I make him understand that, in the blank memory of my new mind, I was as untouched as any virgin? All I knew of lovemaking was from the sordid memory of Pastor Georg standing sweaty, nude, and red-faced in the hallway of the parsonage. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Stefan like that.
“I’m not ready,” I said.
Stefan grumbled but relented. He took me home on a tawny Hanoverian stallion he borrowed from among the horses waiting to be shod in the blacksmith’s stables. “One day, I’ll own a herd of these beauties,” he vowed as he pulled me up onto the saddle behind him.
I had to
hitch up my skirts in order to straddle the hard leather seat, and even with my knees pressed against the horse’s sides, I nearly lost my balance as the animal’s flanks rolled beneath me.
Stefan laughed at my clumsiness. “I see you’ve forgotten everything I taught you. Well, here’s your first new lesson.”
I didn’t tell him how right he was. The ride both frightened and exhilarated me as I held my arms tight around the iron firmness of Stefan’s stomach, my thighs braced against his as he spurred the horse onward. The chill of the wind only heightened the delicious warmth of my closeness to him. I imagined how thrilling it would be to ride like this, not to Joseph von Kemp’s manor but to a home of our own in a distant land.
We arrived at the estate all too soon. I dismounted about half a mile from the house so no one would see me with Stefan.
“Next week, we shall go see Meyer,” I told him before we parted.
He frowned. “Bring as much money as you can carry. As soon as we talk to your man, we leave.”
He reared up the horse and rode off.
The sun was already setting, so I lingered at the fringe of the property until after nightfall in hopes that most of the staff would retire to their quarters for the evening. When I finally crept inside through the servants’ entrance, I found the kitchen cold and deserted, its pots scoured and its counters scrubbed after the dinner hour.
My luck held as I climbed the back stairs and scurried to my bedchamber, for I met no one. Holding aloft a candle I’d lit in the kitchen, I unlocked the door and hurried into the room.
“Bettina?” I whispered as I eased the door shut behind me.
The bedchamber was dark, and the scant glow of the taper barely illuminated the hand that held it. I waved the flame toward the bed. The bedclothes lay flat and shriveled as a shed snakeskin.
“Bettina!”
I moved further into the room, gently sweeping the candle left and right so as not to extinguish the flame. I jumped when the yellow light fell upon a figure seated perfectly still in the chair by the fireplace.
“Good evening, Katarina.” In the wan light, Fräu Hauptmann resembled a dismal waxwork, her posture petrified, manikin hands folded in her lap, face unsmiling and unblinking. “I trust you had a pleasant afternoon.”
My heart sank. How long had she been sitting there, so calm, so still, waiting for me with the patience of a stone? How vain was I to think I could deceive her!
“Where is Bettina?” I demanded.
“Why, at home, where she is every Sunday. Only this time, she shan’t be back, for she is no longer in our employ.”
Poor, sweet, trusting girl! Guilt throttled me so much I could barely speak.
“How could you?” I asked the housekeeper.
“How could you, Fräu von Kemp?” She sprang to her feet, sneering my name with poisonous irony. “How could you betray the devotion of an old man whose only fault is to be foolish enough to love you?”
The accusation pierced me to the marrow. “I never asked for his love,” I protested.
“No, you had it handed to you on a silver platter, like John the Baptist’s head. The least you owed him was your fidelity.”
I could not deny what she said, for Joseph had been good to me. Torn between what I knew to be proper—faithfulness to my husband—and what I felt to be right—my infatuation with Stefan—I ached as if all my scars had been ripped open. Fräu Hauptmann’s face rippled in my vision, and my eyes burned so much that I thought there might be something horribly wrong with them. Then an unexpected wetness trailed down my cheeks.
I had never cried before.
Unable to defend my actions, I lashed out with childish scorn. “If you think he is so easy to love, why didn’t you marry him?”
“Because I never had the chance!” Her stone countenance cracked until she, too, trembled on the verge of weeping. “Landlords don’t marry scullery maids. So I ended up with Otto Hauptmann, the valet, and had to watch Joseph squander his affections on worthless wenches like you.” She sniffed, but her keen old eyes withheld any tears she might have shed. “And yet you would cast him aside for a stable boy. Well, you shall not wound him like this. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
We glared at each other across the candle’s flame. I had never before realized the depth of the loneliness and longing that underlay her loyalty to her master. But, obsessed with an irrational love of my own, I viewed her as merely another obstacle to my happiness with Stefan. And Fräu Hauptmann had provided me with a dreadful key to achieving my desire.
“If you care for Joseph half as much as you claim, then you will say nothing of this conversation,” I told her. “Because, contrary to what you might think, I do remember what he did to me, and I shall tell my father, the courts, and the King of Bavaria himself if you so much as mumble about me and Stefan.”
The lie was a calculated gamble on my part. I knew Fräu Hauptmann couldn’t be certain how much I truly recalled and would not risk having me divulge whatever secret crime she and Joseph had conspired to hide.
The housekeeper wheezed in apoplectic indignation. “I brought you back because I believed it would make him happy. I see now you’ve only brought him more misery.”
She swept past me with such ferocity that the candle blew out. I heard the bedchamber door open and slam, and I was left alone in utter darkness.
#
By the next morning, I could hardly believe the confrontation had ever occurred. Fräu Hauptmann herself brought me my breakfast, which she served with flawless propriety. Other than an excessive formality—and too great a stress whenever she addressed me as “Fräu von Kemp”—she played the perfect servant. Joseph, too, acted blissfully unaware of my meeting with Stefan. From their manner, I judged that the housekeeper had chosen to hold her tongue.
At my insistence, Bettina resumed her duties before the week was out. Not only because I wanted to make amends for getting the poor girl discharged—I would also needed her help to conceal my next planned visit to Stefan.
He and I had arranged to meet the following Sunday, when I would again pose as Bettina and have Franz drive me to Liebeheim. This time, however, I would not be coming back.
As Stefan had instructed, I brought only a small satchel. It contained all the jewelry Joseph had given me. Its treasure would fund the new life Stefan and I intended to create together.
As before, I wore Bettina’s dress and hood so that none of the staff would report my departure to Joseph. Once more, Fräu Hauptmann accosted me as I made my way out through the servants’ door in the kitchen.
“Good-bye, Bettina,” she said with disconcerting finality. Yet she made no move to stop me, although she knew perfectly well who I was and where I was going.
When I reached Liebeheim, I descended from Franz’s landau and walked to the blacksmith’s shop in the village. Stefan awaited me there, dressed in his riding habit, his horse already saddled. “You can’t imagine how I’ve yearned for this day,” he said softly when he saw the satchel in my hand.
“As much as I have, I hope,” I said.
“We needn’t go back there, you know.” He regarded me somberly. “We could ride west and be in the Rhineland by tomorrow.”
He peered at me with those cerulean eyes, and part of me wanted to say, Yes, yes! Let’s go far away, right now!
“After we talk to Meyer,” I insisted. “Not before.”
Frowning, he helped me onto the saddle, slid my satchel into one of his saddlebags. He didn’t speak again during the entire five-hour journey to Darmstadt.
Although it didn’t appear to bother Stefan, I cringed every time we passed other travelers on the busy road, for I could swear that they all stared at us as if we were fugitive criminals. I kept my face hidden beneath Bettina’s riding hood, but it failed to calm my conscience. Did the strangers recognize us? Would their chatter get back to Joseph?
It doesn’t matter anymore, I thought.
Yet my mind continued to spin h
alf-formed fears. When we had departed Liebeheim, a top-hatted coachman driving a landau swung in behind us, trailing our horse for miles. I stole glances at him over my shoulder but couldn’t make out the driver’s face. He looked like Franz . . . but hadn’t I seen him leave the village after depositing me at Bettina’s house? Had he remained behind to spy on me?
When he turned off onto a side road, I dismissed my fretting as silly fancy. Shortly, though, a lone rider on a gray mare appeared behind us, and my overheated imagination set to work again. While other riders sped up to overtake us, the dark-coated man on the gray lagged behind us at more or less the same distance all the way to Darmstadt. When we slowed, he reined in his horse; when we sped up, he spurred his animal to keep pace. I tried repeatedly to glimpse the rider’s face, but his stooped posture and broad-brimmed black hat shaded his visage.
As we entered the city, the traffic of carts, wagons, and carriages thickened around us, and I lost sight of the rider. The mass of travelers dispersed down different avenues, and the dark figure on the gray mare apparently wandered off on business of his own.
Simply another visitor to the metropolis, with no interest in us at all, I assured myself.
In the reddening light of dusk, the long finger of the church spire touched us with its sundial shadow as we finally tethered our horse near the Stadtkirche. There seemed to be no one in sight, and I feared Meyer might have already gone home for the night.
Then my heart quickened, for I saw the groundskeeper’s slovenly bulk emerge from the front doors. In my absence, Pastor Georg must have put him to work tidying the nave after Sunday services, and Meyer’s laziness had made him dawdle until he was all alone in the church.
Before I had any notion of what he planned to do, Stefan stalked up the steps to stand within inches of the man. “Any chance of sanctuary for a sinner?” he asked.
Intent upon chaining and padlocking the double doors, Meyer didn’t spare him a glance. “Your sins will wait, my friend. God can forgive you tomorrow.”