The next day, coconspirator of my father as he was, Brom appeared around midday just as we were rising from the lunch table. “Good morrow, Meneer Van Tassel, Mevrouw Van Tassel,” he said as we entered the front room, where he was waiting. He bowed to me. “Juffrouw Van Tassel. Hoe gaat het met jij?”
I did not deign to reply. Nox, well aware of my distaste for Brom, growled low in this throat.
Unfortunately, this did not discourage him. “I have come to ask if you might take a walk with me,” he asked. “Along the river, perhaps.”
I remained silent for as long as I dared, until my father’s face began to grow red with frustration. “Very well,” I said aloud. “But Mr. Crane is coming to give me my music lesson in an hour. We must be back before then.”
Brom’s face lit up at my reply, as though it were not the most reluctant of acceptances. “I am honored that you should agree,” he said, extending his arm to me.
I crossed the room to him as though walking to my own execution and took it. Nox followed closely at my heels.
“Heel goed, heel goed,” my father boomed, his good humor entirely restored by my acquiescence. He grabbed Nox by the scruff of his neck. “You stay here, boy.”
At Nox’s pleading amber eyes, I opened my mouth to object. I would feel better to have him with me, but in the end I did not speak. No point in arguing with my father more than I must.
“Enjoy yourselves,” Papa said. “It is a fine day outside, most fine.”
My mother did not say anything, but I fancied that she tossed me a sympathetic look as I went out.
Brom led me out the front door and toward the Hudson, helping me down the embankment so that we might reach the bank. I was determined to speak to him as little as possible, to give him no encouragement whatsoever; as such, I would be damned if I spoke first.
We had been strolling for a few minutes when he finally spoke. “It is an exceedingly fine day, is it not?”
“Ja.”
We walked along a few more feet before Brom withdrew his arm and turned to face me. “Katrina,” he asked, meeting my eyes, “am I really so repugnant to you?”
“I should think the answer would be obvious by this point,” I said. “And just to allay any foolish hopes you may have in regard to a betrothal between you and me: I am only going along with this because my father has insisted.”
“I shall look upon wooing you as a challenge, then.”
“Indeed? And are you so foolhardy as to set yourself a challenge that you have no hope of accomplishing?”
“Katrina, please,” he groused. “We were friends, once. How has that changed so drastically?”
I was nearly spitting with anger. “You know how! You know what you did!”
His expression darkened. “That is still what this is about? You would turn on me so completely over Charlotte Jansen?”
“Again, the answer should be obvious. Do you have even the slightest concept of what you did to her? Of what such slanderous lies mean for a woman, even in this day and age?”
“You were there, Katrina,” Brom said, his voice low, with a dangerous edge to it now. “You heard what she said to me. What was I supposed to do, when she threatened me so?”
“I would hardly call it a threat.” I sniffed. “And I was there, yes; so I also remember you begging her to tell you your future, how you pressed her even when she did not want to speak of it, and how you goaded her until she relented.” I was even angrier now, remembering it all. “Like the selfish child you are, you pressed her into saying something she did not want to, and when you did not like what you heard, you made sure she suffered for it.”
“You don’t know anything, Katrina,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Explain it to me, then. Explain to me what prompted such behavior—for Charlotte was your friend, too, Brom. If there is anyone who can rightfully be accused of turning on a friend here, it is you.”
“I was scared!” he burst out. “I was just a boy, and I was frightened of what she said. Are you happy now?”
“Humanity commits its worst sins out of fear, methinks,” I said. “And what on earth could you possibly have been frightened of, really? You know what she told you … it is impossible.”
Brom glared at me. “Don’t you remember how she said it? That look that comes into her eyes, like she is a … a sibyl, prophesying grim tidings.”
In spite of the warmth of the day, I shivered. I knew exactly what he meant, had seen that look on Charlotte’s face more than once. Her eyes had clouded over as she stared unblinking at Brom without really seeing him. I heard again the flatness of her voice as she’d spoken, so different from how she usually sounded.
Brom, damn him, had been watching me closely. “You remember,” he said. “You know just what I mean.”
I forced myself to draw my haughty air around me again, like a cloak. “And so?” I said. “That changes nothing. The Headless Horseman is not real.”
“Are you so sure of that, Katrina?”
“Of course,” I said, deliberately pushing aside thoughts of my dreams, of my panicked flight through the woods.
He turned his back to me and walked a few paces before returning. “I will apologize to Charlotte, if that will put everything to rights between us,” he said. “It is true that I was most impudent in my speech back then.”
I regarded him coldly. “Then apologize,” I said, “for you owe her that much and more. But do it because it is the right thing to do, not because you seek to win any sort of favor from me.” I could not resist adding, somewhat cruelly, “I will not marry you merely because you apologized to Charlotte, Brom. Know that.”
He scowled. “You’ll see, Katrina,” he said. “I mean to have you. I’ll win you over somehow, no matter what it takes.”
I turned and began to walk back toward the farmhouse. It was the only way I could contain my anger at his gall, his outrageous assumption that I was his for the taking, that he was somehow entitled to me. “By all means, continue deluding yourself,” I said. It took every ounce of my will not to scream in his face.
I had not gotten very far when he called after me. “Haven’t you seen him, Katrina?” he asked.
I stopped walking and turned back to him. “Seen who?” I asked, though I didn’t need to. I knew who he meant.
He drew closer. “The Horseman,” he said, his voice low. “Haven’t you ever seen him?”
I remembered, vividly, Ichabod asking me the same question. And if I would not speak the truth of my dreams, my nightmares, to him, I certainly would not speak of them to Brom. “Of course not,” I said. “There is nothing to see, Brom. He is a fable, nothing more.”
His eyes looked over my shoulder, scanning the river and the rise of the fields above us. “I am not so sure,” he said. “I … I swear that I see him sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, riding toward me. But when I turn to look, there is nothing there.”
I struggled not to let him see how his words chilled me. “It is your imagination, nothing more,” I said, trying to sound disdainful. “You have this foolish superstition now, because of what Charlotte said all those years ago.”
“Or she has bewitched me, so that I see things that are not there,” he said, his voice low.
I wanted to slap him, but I settled for laughing in his face. “How ridiculous,” I said. “As if she could. As if such things were possible. And to think, just moments ago you were ready to apologize for the harm you’d done her.” I resumed my walk back home. “I could perhaps forgive you if I really believed you’d been young and foolish, and nothing more. But you have not changed. You still believe those lies you told about her then, and if it is possible, I like you less now than I did when you arrived at my house this morning.”
Brom caught up to me, placing my hand on his arm. “And yet I have your father’s approval all the same,” he said through gritted teeth. “This is not how I wished this day to go, but soon everything will be different. You will see, Katrina. You will see.”
I did not dignify his words with a response, even as a bud of anxiety bloomed in the pit of my stomach. What did he mean to do?
When we arrived back at the house, I was delighted—and relieved—to see Ichabod riding up earlier than expected on Gunpowder. “Miss Van Tassel,” he said, pulling up the horse when he drew near enough. “Master Van Brunt.”
“Good day, Mr. Crane,” I said, brightening. Brom merely grunted.
Ichabod swung down from the saddle, and as he faced us his eyes lingered on my hand on Brom’s arm. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. My discomfort returned in a rush.
“You are early for your music lesson, are you not, Mr. Crane?” Brom asked finally.
“I am,” Ichabod said, “but ’tis such a fine day for riding that I find I have spurred my horse on faster than usual, and so here I am.”
“I see,” Brom said. “And yet I find that I am not through with the lady’s company for the day.”
I pulled away from him. “You shall have to be.”
I glanced at Ichabod, but he was busy tying Gunpowder to the hitching post. “Farewell, Brom,” I said loudly. A disbelieving look crossed his face. His eyes darted to Ichabod, then me. He shook his head slightly.
The blossoms of anxiety in my stomach grew into a full forest of fear. He knows. Somehow, he knows.
But how can he? I had done nothing to give us away. Had I? The feeling of dread would not leave me.
“Very well,” he said at last. He kissed my hand, taking his time so Ichabod couldn’t help but see. “But I shall visit you again soon, Katrina. And mind you do not forget what we discussed today.” He spoke in English, making sure Ichabod understood every word.
Silently I turned away and went in the front door. Ichabod followed me soon after.
He did not speak until we were safely ensconced in the music room. “What was that about?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. He would not like this, but he needed to know. “Brom asked—demanded, rather—that I accompany him on a stroll today,” I said. “My father has given him permission to court me.”
Ichabod’s face drained of color, and he clenched his jaw in anger. “And you could not refuse, I suppose.”
“Obviously not. If I could have, I certainly would have.” I caught sight of his face, and my anger flared. “I could not have refused,” I said, my voice hard. “Whatever you are thinking, you may put it from your mind. Only under direct orders from my father would I give Brom Van Brunt a moment of my time, and even then it is grudgingly.”
“And if your father orders you to marry him, Katrina?” Ichabod asked. “What will you do then?”
“I would think a man as intelligent as yourself can see the difference between a walk beside the river and a walk to the altar.”
“Indeed. And yet if you can be compelled to one, why not the other?”
“You are being absurd,” I said coldly. “And after what I have just endured, I do not have the patience for this.”
“You have not answered my question, Katrina. What will you do if your father insists that you marry him?”
“Refuse!” I all but shouted. “He already knows of my objections. I am acquiescing in this so that I might refuse later. Can you really not see that? Are all men such jealous fools?”
Ichabod looked as if I had slapped him. Then he sighed. “You are right, Katrina. I am acting quite the fool.”
Yet I was not quite so easily appeased. “That you would doubt me, after everything—”
But he cut me off by pulling me into his arms. “I am sorry, my love. I am. You are right, we men in love are jealous fools. I do not doubt you. I could never doubt you.”
I remained rigid before slowly yielding, letting my body soften against his. But when I spoke again, my words were firm. “I am risking everything for this, for you,” I said, looking up at him. “Just as I know you are doing the same for me. So we must trust one another to see this through.”
His arms tightened around me. “You are right. Of course you are.”
I sighed, letting myself relax further into his arms. “I was angry at Brom, at the whole situation, and I did not mean to take it out on you,” I said. It was not an apology, exactly, for I did not feel I owed him one. Yet it was a concession I was willing to make.
“I know, my love,” he said. “You are in the most difficult position of all. As God is my witness, I will extract you from it soon, no matter what it takes.”
I smiled against his shoulder, the last of my anger draining away.
“Now, I suppose we must put up at least the pretense of a music lesson,” Ichabod said, releasing me.
“I suppose we must,” I said.
Yet I could not forget the expression on Brom’s face as he looked back and forth between Ichabod and me.
Even as I struggled to focus on the music on the page in front of me, I made a decision. It was time to ask another—and far more unusual—favor of Charlotte. One I hoped I would not regret.