Chapter 2
Lilly envisioned a thousand granules of sugar quickening through a funnel to some dark, waiting center. She was sliding with them, covered in sweetness, until the rational part of her mind intruded. Substitute. Substitute teacher. Sarah’s substitute. She wrenched backward and Jacob made a strangled sound in his throat that jarred her senses, leaving her longing to soothe him. But she sank back to rest on her legs. Her mouth stung and her chin burned from the dark shadow of his jaw. She prayed that the Lord might forgive her for allowing such a thing. And then added her request that He also might bring someone, someday, to love her with as much passion as she felt through Jacob’s kiss.
She watched him come to himself, like a dreamer waking with reluctance. His heavy lashes lifted from his flushed cheeks and he sighed.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” she replied, surprised at the steadiness of her voice. “You wanted an escape; you got it.”
His green-gold eyes narrowed. “I think you got a bit of it too, Miss Schoolteacher.”
“You’re right, of course. I’ve never had the kiss of a man, only a father’s.”
A tenseness appeared around his handsome mouth at her admission, and he looked away.
“You need medical attention.”
He nodded, still concentrating on some unknown spot at the back of the barn. “Jah, but the only doctor around is the good Grant Williams, veterinarian at-large. And he, as you know, has other plans this morning.”
Lilly didn’t need to listen hard to hear the bitterness in his tone.
Dr. Williams was an Englischer who’d been baptized into the community only a few months past, but he was as accepted as one to the bonnet born. And, he was the man who had won Sarah King’s heart.
Lilly tapped her lips with her index finger as a half-formed idea began to take shape.
“What?” He swung his penetrating gaze back to her.
“If we go anywhere in town to have you treated by the Englisch, they’ll tell the police. Lockport is too small for the town not to know about the horse. So, you only have one person to treat you—the groom.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. Not for nothing was she a teacher, easily engaging stubborn students. “Have you lost yours? And have you stopped to think of how it will look if you don’t show up for the wedding?”
He glared at her. “What does it matter?”
“It matters because you’re not going to run away. You’re going to live here, work here, and so will the Williamses. And you also know how this place is—everyone is just waiting to see how you will react to the wedding. To not show up suggests weakness; something I’m sure is not part of your character.”
He snorted. “Really? You just got a literal taste of my weakness, Lilly Lapp. And seeing Sarah today—well, it’s something I could live without, no matter what people think.”
She shrugged. “It’s your life.”
The words hung with cunning in the chill of the air until he shifted on the bale of hay with a sigh.
“Ach, all right. But tell me, teacher, how do I separate the beloved groom from his beautiful bride so that he can do some stitching without her or anyone else’s notice?”
“At the eck, or as they’re going to be seated, I’ll create some kind of diversion.”
“A diversion? You, the schoolteacher, who’s supposed to be beyond reproach in behavior? What will the school board say? What will your mamm say?” He asked the right questions, but his tone provoked, as if he doubted she’d be capable of doing anything out of the ordinary.
She loved a challenge and smiled at him. “Likely, everyone will have something to say, but so what? I’m twenty-three, my own person, and I—” She swallowed; she’d almost said she cared about him even though she only really knew him from childhood and at a distance in the community. “I can do as I please—relatively.” She ignored the niggle of doubt that warned her that her widowed mamm would not be pleased by any diversionary wedding tactics and plowed on. “So, we’ll go back to your house and put up Granger’s horse. I’ll borrow a dress of your mamm’s, and we’ll go to the wedding.”
She waited to see if he’d dismiss her out of hand because she was a woman, and as her mother often pointed out, probably too decisive a woman at that.
But his own eyes narrowed in consideration and he finally grinned at her. “Lilly Lapp. Who’d have thought? But I don’t really want to get you involved in all of this.”
“Derr Herr involved me,” she pointed out. “The minute you opened that stable door. Sometimes things happen for a reason, Jacob.”
“I suppose there’s truth in that. All right, help me up then, Miss Independence.”
He leaned against her for just a moment as he got to his feet, and she tried not to notice the heat of his body through his cotton shirt. She helped him with his coat and hat, added her collapsed bonnet to the mess of her hair, and then they turned to the horses.
“The rain has slowed down,” he said, cocking an ear to the barn roof. “We’ll hitch Ruler to the buggy and tie the little mare behind with a lead. I’ll come back later for Thunder. Deacon Zook’ll figure I left him for shelter in the weather.”
And somehow, despite his injury and her hampering skirts, they made it back across the field with Jacob talking low and easy to the horses as if in some long-forgotten language. Lilly, only half-listening, concentrated on staying upright on shivering legs. She breathed a sigh of relief as she clambered into the buggy with the help of an undignified push from behind.
“Move over,” Jacob instructed. “I’ll drive.”
“But your arm—Ruler’s stubborn.”
“Is he now? I think he’s a lamb.”
“That’s not how he seems to me,” she complained.
Jacob glanced at her. “Is it just Ruler or are you uncomfortable around horses in general?”
“In general, I suppose. Actually, Alice Plank’s little brother, Jonah, usually comes over in the morning to help me get Ruler hitched up and ready. It was something Father arranged when he knew he was growing very ill. I really don’t care much for horses.”
“What about horse thieves?”
She sniffed. “Slightly more tolerable.”
“In that case”—he laughed—“I’ll say danki, Lilly, for tolerating this horse thief—for helping me.”
She nodded and he set the buggy into easy motion down the wet road.