CHAPTER 4
Matthew knew, as all the community did, that the bishop’s back door was always unlocked. Bishop Umble didn’t hold with not “being open,” as he called it in church, and this view extended to the very wood of his haus.
“Hiya?” he called, and when no one answered, he slipped off his boots on the rug beside the door and trod quietly across the pristine kitchen to take a seat on one of the comfortable living area chairs. He took off his hat and loosened his coat, glancing around with taut nerves. He hoped the bishop hadn’t forgotten, though it didn’t line up with the auld man’s nature.
He listened to the tick of the wind-up clock and the crackle of the woodstove and settled back further, willing himself to relax. Soon, the grueling nacht past caught up with him and he closed his eyes against a swimming wave of peaceful drowsiness. If I fall asleep, I’ll surely hear someone kumme in. . . .
Luke Lapp took his role as deacon to the small mountain Amisch community seriously. So, when an old widow stopped to ask for a bit of kindling from his scrap pile at the woodworking shop, he gave her his full attention.
“You’ll excuse me,” he muttered to the Englisch customer who’d made the trek up the mountain to look at some veneer wood for a daughter’s vanity.
“Of course.” The Englischer, Mr. Ray, was jovial. “I’ll poke about your shop, if you don’t mind?”
Luke smiled with a brisk nod. Of course I mind—it’s a workshop, not Kauffmann’s store.... But he’d learned that the Englisch had different social boundaries from the Amisch, and, after all, the customer meant no harm.
He filled the back of Frau Knepp’s sled in a few quick motions, then piled the auld woman back in under the blankets. “Don’t unload it alone, sei se gut,” he said politely to the widow. “I’ll kumme over shortly and do it for you.”
He was rewarded with a toothless smile, then watched her pull away. He waited to make sure she navigated the tight turn at the end of his lane and went back in search of Mr. Ray.
He found the Englischer admiring the tall gun cabinet that stood along a weather-tight back wall of the shop.
“Cherry, isn’t it?”
“Through and through.”
“Your scroll work is remarkable. What a gift you have!” Mr. Ray smiled.
Luke shifted on his booted feet, uncomfortable with praise. “As Derr Herr—The Lord—gives.”
Mr. Ray toyed with a latch on one of the glass doors. “Nice bunch of guns too—I collect a little. What’s the prize in the white sack?”
A small sound, a smothered sigh, escaped Luke’s throat as he gazed through the glass at the gun carefully shrouded in white cotton. “It’s—nothing. A relic, you might say.”
“I’d be interested in . . .”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ray. We were discussing those veneers? I’ve got a cabinet shipment to get down the mountain soon.”
The Englischer cleared his throat, obviously understanding that he was being warned off. “Of course.” He smiled. “The veneers . . .”
Luke turned his back on the gun cabinet. Today need not be a day for ghosts.... I have work to do.
Laurel knocked hesitantly on the back door of the bishop’s haus, and when no one answered, she finally gritted her teeth and went inside on tiptoe. Frau Umble was at the quilting of course....
She saw Matthew sprawled on one of the bishop’s chairs, his big, lean body deep in repose. His dark brown hair was tousled, his head tilted backward against the simple doily on the chair back.
Laurel smiled to herself as she realized they were alone in the haus. It was simply too gut an opportunity to miss. So many of their embraces had been stolen ones in the cold outdoors—the idea of kissing Matthew awake in the warmth of a home appealed to her impulsive nature and sent her senses racing.
She bit her lip and made her way to the back of the chair where he lay. Leaning over, she smiled into the perfect bone structure of his upside-down handsome face. A lone freckle, an angel buss, as Aenti June called the sun marks, sat parallel to the dimple in his chin and she couldn’t resist brushing her nose over the spot. He sighed in his sleep and parted his lips. She leaned farther, feeling the chair back in tight accord with the dizzying place in her stomach, and balanced on tiptoe.
She blew softly on his mouth and he shifted a bit, still visibly deep in sleep. Laurel smiled, then captured his bottom lip with her damp mouth, marveling that such a simple change in position could produce such heady sensations.
She kissed him with artful strokes, tilting her head, until she saw his dark, thick eyelashes flutter against the flush of his skin.
Matthew was dreaming. He had to be.... He recognized, in his subconscious, that he’d never burned to such an extent. He felt turned upside down and inside out, as if he were coming apart, and could only think about his next thickened heartbeat and the sensation that his mouth nearly watered with want....
A light hand on his shoulder brought him up from the first depths of sleep and he groaned aloud with reluctance, not wanting the moment to end. He felt like begging for another bit of time and taste in his half-dreaming state and pushed back against the surge of waking. The pressure on his mouth increased subtly and he drew a frantic breath, arching upward in an effort to follow the movement.
“Do you like this?” Laurel’s soft voice was a throaty shimmer of sound at the back of his mind.
“Ach, jah,” he breathed, the words tangled in his consciousness. “Please . . .”
“Please, what, Matthew?”
He smiled, coming half awake when he recognized the light tease in her tone, like a veil wafting through summer air. Then he remembered where he was and reached his hands upward to capture her sweet face, working his mouth hard against her until he heard her own soft sounds of harmonious pleasure.
“Ahem!”
Matthew fell out of the chair at the brisk clearing of the bishop’s throat. He staggered to his feet, then bent once more to snatch up his hat, wringing it between his hands. He moved quickly to grasp Laurel’s arm from the other side of the chair and then hauled her behind him, shielding her slight body with the bulk of his own.
“Bishop Umble, uh, sir . . .” Matthew resisted the urge to look away from the shorter man’s bright blue eyes and craggy raised brows.
“It doesn’t appear as though an explanation is necessary as to why you both wanted to see me.” The bishop’s voice was even but not condemning, and Matthew felt himself relax to a slight degree.
“Jah, we wish to marry.”
“To say the least,” Bishop Umble returned dryly, then indicated the couch with a sweep of his aged hand. “Sei se gut, let us sit.”
Matthew guided Laurel to the couch, then perched in a tense posture a more than safe distance from her hip. He was ashamed to have put Laurel in such a compromising position in the bishop’s own home.
“So,” Bishop Umble began without preamble. “By any chance, do either of your faters know?”
Laurel struggled to keep her voice level though she could feel her cheeks still heated from the impromptu kissing, but she felt she should speak up as she sensed Matthew’s nervousness.
“Nee, Bishop Umble. We—we have been courting in secret.” Normally, the mountain Amisch kept an impending marriage secret from all until their intentions to marry were announced at the end of a church service at least two weeks prior to the wedding itself. Courting, too, took place at nacht, when no other was around but the couple themselves.
The bishop raised a brow. “In more secret than normal, I would imagine.”
“Jah, sir,” Matthew muttered.
Laurel watched the bishop pass a hand over his brow, as if deep in thought. Then he sighed aloud. “I must make it known to you both that I have tried, over the years, to speak to your faters in an effort to mend their . . . discord.”
“Do you know why they fought?” Laurel asked, unable to contain her curiosity.
The bishop shook his head and spread his hands before him. “Nee, it is a secret lost long ago and known only between the two of them. There was a time, when I was a much younger man, that I can remember them as inseparable friends. But, like all fighting of this sort, the reason often becomes lost to time, but the disagreeableness goes on, fueled by pride.”
Matthew cleared his throat. “We were hoping that you might . . . prepare them both somehow before the announcement is made next week at church service.”
The bishop smiled grimly. “I fear there is no preparation for that moment save an intervention from Derr Herr’s own Hand.”
Laurel felt her heart sink. A miracle seemed a far-off thing at the moment.
The Bishop seemed to read her thoughts, then laughed with a wise look. “It is the season for miracles, my kinner. We will have to see what Derr Herr has in store.”