FERN TRIED TO COMPOSE HERSELF ON THE WALK BACK to her grandmother’s house; there was no way she was going to let the keen old eyes see how flustered she had been by being held by Abram Fisher. Had he been going to kiss her?
It certainly had felt like it. But maybe it was just wishful thinking.
She entered the coolness of her kitchen and saw her mammi at the table, carefully taking rose petals off several of the big fragrant roses that they grew in the kitchen garden.
“I had a taste for some rose tea,” Mammi said with a smile.
For the second time that day, Fern looked at her mammi with concern. “I thought rose tea was only for special occasions.”
“It is.”
“Well, what’s so special about today, or is your bauch ailing you? You know, maybe we should pay a visit to Dr. Knepp. You haven’t been in a while, and I know that—”
“Fern, you’re warbling on like a pretty songbird on the first of spring. Everything is fine. More than fine, really.”
Fern blew at her forehead where a loose strand of hair had escaped her kapp, then flushed as she remembered Abram’s comment about her hair being down. She sat down at the table and plucked at a rose, accidentally tearing one of the petals.
Her grandmother eyed her with a faint smile. “Did the Fisher boys like the fruit?”
“And how is Abram faring?”
Fern looked at her squarely in a game effort to throw her off the scent. “He’s fine. Doesn’t need any help at all.” She didn’t quite succeed in keeping the dryness out of her tone, and her grandmother laughed.
“Gets to you, he does,” the old woman said, her brow wrinkled in satisfaction.
“Nee.” Fern told herself to remain calm. “He is going to give us a new ladder, though. Mary had a bit of a spill when I took the tomatoes over.” And I nearly did too, she reminded herself.
“Well, I guess you can get at those windows, then.”
Fern hesitated. “Uh . . . Abram said he’d bring the ladder round tomorrow and do the windows himself.”
“Ach . . .”
Fern rose abruptly. She felt flustered and distracted and needed to do something to unwind. “I think I’ll have a bath and wash my hair after supper.”
Her grandmother looked up. “Didn’t you do that yesterday?”
“Ya . . . but . . . what’s the special occasion?” Fern said, remembering the roses.
“Hmm?”
“You never said, Mammi . . . the special occasion for the rose tea?”
“Never mind, child. Simply something that makes an old woman have faith. You wouldn’t understand quite yet.”
And with that, Fern knew she had to be content. Her mammi would talk when she was ready.
By the time Abram had waved Joe off, spent a few pointed moments with Mark, and got the kids seated to supper under Matthew’s watchful eye, the gloaming had faded to darkness. He needed a lantern to light the way to the Zooks’.
He’d wrapped Luke’s burned fingers in a cool cloth, settling his tears somewhat, but the boy still let out a faint sob now and then as he hopped to keep up. Abram slowed his steps and looked down at his little bruder in the circle of light from the lamp.
“Hurt bad, does it?” He softened his voice, suddenly remembering pinching his own fingers as a child in between floorboards in the hayloft and then lying manfully to his fater that he’d felt no pain.
“Ya . . . a little now.”
“Well . . . she’ll make you feel better.”
She’ll . . . she . . . As though Fern Zook had become definitive of all that was healing and feminine, like he’d corralled an idea of her goodness and tenderness in a corner of his mind, a soft reference point on a lost map.
What had other girls been to him? Too skinny for one thing, too eager with their kisses, too many elbows and angles and hasty touching in the crunched confines of the buggy . . . and Englisch girls at that, not ones who’d know how to tend a little girl or soothe a boy’s pride . . . not like Fern Zook.
“Can we, Abram? Can we?” Luke was jumping up and down, and Abram realized he’d come to a full stop on the dark path while his mind wound with slow satisfaction toward the idea of a woman he’d seen all of his adult life and never given more than a passing glance before today. It was like he was under a spell.
“What do you want?” he moaned, more to himself than to Luke. But the boy’s face grew cheery in the ring of light.
“I said, for the thirteenth million time, can we catch lightning bugs on our way back? Can we?”
“Sure . . . ya. If the Zooks will loan us a jar.”
“Ach, she will,” Luke said with a confident grin that belied the pain of his burns.
She will. Abram felt the words pulse with curious promise down the back of his neck with each step he took toward Fern Zook’s home.
Her grandmother had retired to her bedroom on the first floor when Fern slid the metal tub and screen into place in the middle of the kitchen floor. Many Amish had modern showers, but that was an unnecessary convenience as far as her mammi was concerned. She said an herbal bath brought as much cleanliness, plus a sense of peace that no newfangled showerhead could ever provide.
Fern didn’t usually take such an early bath, as people sometimes came to the door seeking help after dark. But this evening she felt grubby and decided to take the chance. When she’d filled the tub with warmed water, she turned to consider various herbs in their neat rows of jars. Then she spied a bowl of citrus fruit on the end of the counter. The juice from a lemon and an orange, in addition to a few floating circles of fruit, soon gave off a zesty, pleasant scent that had her senses tingling.
She peeked behind the screen once to make sure she’d latched the door, then hastily stripped off her clothes and let down her hair. She wiggled her toes in the water, flicking at an orange slice, before slowly sliding in with a murmur of satisfaction. She had just finished pulling on a clean dress and stockings when she heard a knock at the door. She listened carefully, hoping she’d misheard, but the sound came again. Yet why should she be surprised—it was why she changed into clothes and not a nightgown after a bath. Perhaps she should call for her grandmother. But then, the old woman had not quite seemed herself today, and Fern hated to disturb her. She quickly bent over and bound her long hair up in the towel, turban style, and decided that it would have to be gut enough for whoever had come calling, needing treatment at this hour.
She padded over the hardwood floor and flung the door open in frustration, then felt the color drain from her face when she saw Abram Fisher, his blue eyes gleaming in the light of a lantern.
“What do you think you’re doing, answering the door like that?” Abram heard the angry words but somehow couldn’t connect them with his own voice.
“I beg your pardon . . . I was having a bath,” Fern Zook snapped. “My hair might be down, but it’s well covered.”
“Well, obviously you were having a bath. Do you realize that anyone could come along here, any stranger, and you fling open the door, carefree as a bluebird, when you look like—” He broke off in midbluster, unsure how to describe how she looked without giving away how much of an effect it was having on him. He felt his face flush with warm blood when he took in the way that the towel turban she wore only revealed more of the soft contours of her face, widening the twin pools of her green eyes and forcing her light brows into a higher arc. And she smelled like Christmas, all citrus and spice, enough to make a man forget everything but the pleasure of the moment. He wondered briefly what it would be like to come home late from the fields and find her waiting, like this, for him . . .
“My fingers are burnt bad!” Luke’s interjectory wail shook Abram from his treacherous thoughts.
He glared at Fern. Clearly, she could not provide treatment without her hair up properly . . . and safely. They’d have to come back tomorrow.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Fern asked, widening the door so that her small feet became evident.
Abram swallowed hard. “It’s only a bit of a burn; it can wait until tomorrow.”
But Luke jerked from his hand to run and cling to Fern’s waist, leaving Abram to wish he might exercise the same privilege.
“Of course you’re not leaving,” she sniffed. “Come in and I’ll help.”
Oh no, you won’t . . . , he thought grimly. Not with what apparently ailed him. He swallowed his thoughts with determination, trying to get the idea of touching Fern Zook’s delicate ankles out of his foolish brain.
“Are you coming?” she asked, then let go of the screen door so that he had to catch it quickly with his elbow. He entered the kitchen and saw the puddled floor, the screen, and the silhouette of the tub. He rubbed the back of his neck and tried to look everywhere but at her while he listened to her soft voice soothing Luke as she examined his fingers.
“This should have been attended to sooner,” she murmured. “Why did you wait?”
Abram felt irritation mingle with attraction in a strange dance down the center of his chest. “Look, at least I knew enough not to smear it with butter.”
“I’m simply pointing out that it might have spared Luke some pain to have had it looked at sooner.”
“I had the kids to feed, and I—”
“Never mind.” She waved him off and turned to the windowsill, half in shadow, and broke the pointed stems off a healthy aloe plant. She returned to Luke and squeezed the juice of the plant out onto his fingers.
He gave a small gasp of relief, and Abram couldn’t resist the half smile that tugged at his lips. So simple. Aloe vera. His mamm probably had some growing in a pot at home.
“I should have thought of that,” he said.
“It’s not always easy to think of the right thing to do in a stressful situation.”
“Ya,” he agreed, his irritation forgotten as he considered her words.
Ya, stressful . . . like right now, when my bruder’s a half foot from your hip and the lantern light’s illuminating you like a candle, and I feel that if I touched you, you would disappear into a fevered dream.
Abram swung on his heel away from her abruptly. “Luke, let’s move. Who knows what the kids will have gotten into by now.”
“But I thought we wuz gonna ask for a jar to catch lightning bugs,” the boy protested.
“I’ve got plenty of jars,” Fern offered.
Abram felt the light brush of her dress against his back as she swept past him.
“Never mind,” he said hoarsely. “Come on, Luke. I mean it.” He spoke over his shoulder to Fern. “I’ll do the downstairs windows tomorrow too, to pay for tonight.”
“Forget it—the aloe was nothing.”
“I said the downstairs too . . . Gut night.” He shepherded a glum-faced Luke out the door and escaped the citrus-smelling, feminine torture chamber.
Fern doused the lights and went to lie down in her simple bed upstairs. She snuggled deeper under the nine-patch quilt her grandmother had given her long ago and tried to sleep, but she was met with visions of Abram Fisher’s not-too-happy face at every toss and turn. She should have known that a man who’d be bothered by a loose strand of hair would have no tolerance for a woman answering the door with a towel on her head.
“Besides, he probably thinks I’m plump,” she muttered aloud to herself. Most likely Abram Fisher favored someone as slim as a wand—and someone who definitely would not come to the door with her hair wrapped in a wet towel. She found a comfortable position and started to pray, but long before her petitions and praises were finished, she fell fast asleep.