My parents insisted Brom stay for dinner that night, and instructed Cook to prepare a celebratory feast. Many toasts were drunk, and plans for the wedding commenced immediately. The first week in December was deemed the soonest that the ceremony could take place. Meanwhile I practiced wearing the happy mask I would need to wear for the rest of my life.
When I went to bed that night, I was surprised to find myself filled more with relief than dread. It was done; we were betrothed and the wedding date was set. There was no turning back now.
Yet when I awoke the next morning, I was faced with a task that I did indeed dread. I needed to go to the village at once to tell Charlotte the news myself, before she could hear it from the village gossips—or, worse, from Brom himself.
Would Charlotte forgive me for marrying her greatest enemy, once mine as well?
I had lost so much; I could not lose Charlotte, too.
I knocked at the door to her cottage, and she answered almost immediately. “Katrina!” she said brightly. “Come in; Giles Carpenter is about to drop by, and…” She trailed off as she caught sight of the grave expression on my face. “What is it? Has … is there news of Ichabod?”
“No,” I said, feeling a wrenching in my heart at his name. “But I do have something to tell you, and I would rather do it before Giles gets here, if I can.”
“Come in, then; sit down.” She motioned me inside, and we took our usual seats in the front room. “Whatever is the matter?”
I studied the worn carpet on the floor. Now that I was here, I did not know how to begin. “I … I have made a difficult decision,” I said at last. “I have turned it over and over again in my mind, and I can see no other way.”
“What is it? Katrina, you are frightening me.”
I met her eyes. “I just … I hope you will forgive me.”
“Katrina, what have you done?”
“I…” I swallowed. “I have agreed to marry Brom Van Brunt.”
Silence.
Finally, she spoke. “If this is a jest, it is a very poor one.”
“It is no jest. I … I wish it was.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“As the grave. Oh, Charlotte—” I rose and moved to take her hand, but she snatched it away. I flinched. “Surely you must see that I do not have another choice.”
“There is always another choice,” she snapped. “I myself gave you one. You cannot truly believe you have no choice other than to marry the one person I hate the most, the man who tried to ruin my life and who would have likely seen me dead if he could?”
“I do not want to marry him,” I said. “It is not out of love or desire, and it is certainly not to hurt you. I truly do not have another choice that I can see. Not one that allows me to keep my child, my and Ichabod’s child, and raise her in safety and comfort.”
Charlotte went silent, and I realized that, for the first time, I had said her in referring to the child. A warmth spread through me at how right it felt. Hmmm, I mused to myself, my hands resting on my belly. A daughter, my and Ichabod’s daughter. I could not help it; though this was hardly the time, tears sprang to my eyes.
Charlotte’s face softened. “I hate that this is happening to you,” she said finally. “You should not be upset on my behalf. You should be upset at what your own life is going to become, married to one such as him.”
“I have thought of all of that, Charlotte. Believe me. But I can see no other way. I do not believe that Brom is any the wiser as to my motives; he never knew for certain that Ichabod and I were lovers. He will likely not doubt the child is his. It will come a bit early for it to be his child, of course, but such things happen.”
“And what will you do if you marry him and Ichabod returns?”
She had hit on the one question that threatened to hold me back, even at the last. “Then I will ask him why he left me, alone and carrying his child, for so long. And I will ask him what else he would have had me do.”
“But you do not think he will come back.”
“No,” I said, pained, even now, to admit it aloud. “No, I think that whether because he cannot or will not, he is never coming back.”
She sat silently. “This will not be easy for me, seeing you marry Brom Van Brunt,” she said at last. “I cannot pretend otherwise. But I know it will be much more difficult for you.”
I nodded. It was the most I could hope for right then. “Thank you for understanding.”
“You must do what you think is best.” She rose at last from her seat. “Just promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Promise you will still make me the child’s godmother when she is born.”
I smiled at Charlotte’s use of she. “You need not even ask. I will be counting on her Aunt Charlotte to help me raise her.”
“I will,” Charlotte said. “I will love her to pieces. And I will tell her stories about her true father, once she is old enough to understand.”
“We will both tell her such stories,” I said. Then I was weeping again as Charlotte held me.
* * *
After that, plans for the wedding—which soon became the talk of the village—happened at a rapid pace. My mother and Cook were all too happy to handle the arrangements, and I was just as happy to let them. I did not care about any of the details; what food would be served at the wedding feast or what gown I would wear. It was all rather painful, actually, when I realized how much joy and care I would have taken in such decisions had I gotten the chance to plan my wedding to Ichabod. But as it was, I simply wanted it over and done with, the sooner the better.
In addition to the generous dowry he settled on me—and with the promise of assuming ownership of both the Van Tassel and Van Brunt farms someday—my father snapped up a cottage in the village that had recently become available as a wedding gift for Brom and me. My heart ached anew at this reminder of the life Ichabod and I had planned, and the bleak reality that I would now be living that future with another man. The only thing that gave me any solace was that the cottage was near the Jansen cottage, only a few houses down and slightly larger. Brom could hardly be thrilled by this proximity to the woman he so hated and feared, but by taking me as his wife he had assured Charlotte’s presence in our house whenever I saw fit to invite her. And he would hardly say no to a house bought and paid for.
Soon after Brom and I had announced our intentions, my mother came to see me in my room one morning. “Katrina,” she said, sitting beside me on the bed, “are you sure this match is what you want? I hope you are not simply acquiescing because you know it is what your father would have chosen.”
I gave her my most winning smile. “I have had a change of heart, Mama. I have known Brom forever, and it is a good match, as Papa has always said. It is time I married and moved ahead with my life.”
My mother had nodded, still searching my face probingly, but in the end she seemed convinced enough and was more than willing to let herself be swept up in the excitement of the wedding plans.
Maybe she did not know me as well as I had always thought. Either that, or I was a convincing enough actress to grace the stages of Europe.
As it turned out, though I should not have been surprised, Nancy was the one who truly remained unconvinced.
The night before the wedding, she came up to help me undress and found me sitting motionless on my bed, legs crossed beneath me in a most un-ladylike fashion, staring absently as I stroked Nox’s head. This was the last night I would spend in this room, something that had not occurred to me until just that moment.
“Miss Katrina,” she said, coming to stand before me. “You all right, girl?”
I looked up at her blankly, unsure how to answer her.
She sat beside me. “Miss Katrina,” she said, her voice soft and serious now, “you sure about this? You really want to marry him?”
I drew a deep, shuddering breath and looked down, picking at the threads of the quilt. “Yes.”
“That don’t sound very convincing to me.”
I didn’t reply.
“Look, Miss Katrina,” she said, “you don’t have to marry this man. You can still change your mind. Your parents might be upset, after all this fuss, but they’d forget about it soon enough. They love you.” I could feel her scrutinizing me closely. “And I know you don’t love Mister Brom.”
Finally, I looked up at her. “What difference does it make?” I asked softly. “Love rarely enters into marriage. You know that.”
“It makes a difference,” she said, her voice suddenly heated, “because I know well that that isn’t the kind of marriage you wanted for yourself.” She paused. “And it’s not what I wanted for my baby girl.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, for oh so many reasons: because Nancy was right, because she had seen right through me, because she had seen what even my own mother had been unable—or unwilling—to see. “I don’t have a choice,” I said through my sobs.
Had she asked me, then, what I meant, I would have told her all. I knew she wouldn’t betray me. But either she already knew, or was willing to wait until I was ready to confess unprompted, for she didn’t say anything. She only drew me into her warm embrace, just as she had when I was a child, letting me wring myself dry on her shoulder.
“Come with me to my new house, after I’m married,” I said, when I recovered myself. “Come work for me. Please. I need you still, Nancy.”
“I’d be glad to,” she said. “So long as your mama can spare me, of course.”
“I’m sure she can. I’m sure she will, if I ask it of her.”
“And I’m thinking your husband might have something to say about what servants are hired,” she added.
I rolled my eyes. “He can say whatever he likes, but it need not make a difference to me,” I said. “He is making himself very rich with my father’s money, and as such I shall hire whatever staff I desire.”
Nancy chuckled and patted my cheek. “Now that’s my girl.”