Wild Indigo Read Free

lived separately—were kept separate—for a reason. To say nothing of overwhelmed Widowers. “I meant no—”
    â€œEveryone calls me Retha,” she said lightly, snatching the stained shirt from his hands and spinning on her heel, linens scooped up to her breast.Samuel Ernst bolted after her, opening the separate door to the part of the Gemein Haus where the Single Sisters lived. She disappeared inside, the her-ringboned wooden door banging behind her.
    Jacob stood, thunderstruck, in the middle of the Square in the hot June sun. The little wildcat! She had been here all along, through his long wait, through every lot that had been cast. A Single Sister, and available. He should have thought of her himself, but hadn’t because she had lived so quietly among them. Because, to him, she was still that lost child. And because Sister Krause had never mentioned her. She had even denied there were any suitable single women.
    He could see for himself that was not so.
    How old would Sister Mary—Sister Retha—be by now? They had never been sure of her age. As a child, she had neither known nor said. She had spoken little in those days, struggling to learn German. In time, she told of years spent with the Cherokee, the tribe that found her and took her in when she was too young to keep an account of her age. Today she could be seventeen, nineteen, twenty. Of an age to marry, surely.
    Still, what did she know of children? Until her recent marriage, Sister Eva Reuter had taught the girls. Perhaps the Sisters had kept Retha away from children on purpose. Rumors of trouble had stalked her from the first. Rumors that she couldn’t speak, started fires, had been raised by wolves.
    Nonsense to all of that, he thought. Especially to the fires. As the town’s planner and builder, he had organized all fire protection after a rash of minorfires. If a chimney so much as clogged, he knew of it.
    And clearly, Sister Retha had learned to speak German—with his older son’s spirit and his little daughter’s sass. Jacob had the feeling Retha was either’s equal on their worst day.
    The equal of his children! It was a dangerous, powerful thought. He let it rumble around in his head, like thunder from a distant storm. Dangerous. He could fight fire with fire. Powerful. He could manage unruly children with a woman who had lived more wildly than anything in their wildest dreams.
    â€œJacob,” Samuel called. “They want you back.”
    Lost in thought, Jacob scowled at his friend’s amused face.
    â€œYour Board. The Elders.” Samuel pointed to Philip Schopp waving from the door of Unity House. “They want you.”
    Resolutely Jacob crossed the plank walk, for once barely noticing how well his crew had built something. In the meeting room inside Gemein Haus , the Elders arranged themselves along both sides of the long, narrow table. He hung up his flat-brimmed hat and sat among them.
    â€œBrother Blum, we have consulted the lot,” Marshall began. He turned the wooden bowl reverently in his hands. “We must meet at the earliest time next week. You may ask then about a wife.”
    Beside him, Elisabeth Marshall looked glum. “We recommend no one, however. We have come to the end of our tether. The only other widow is too old to take on children.”
    Jacob felt her unspoken words: children such as yours .
    â€œAnd Sister Reuter, whom the lot denied you, truly was our only candidate,” Rosina Krause added, her round face firm. Jacob all but snorted. He knew better. What was the woman trying to hide? “The marriageable among us are spoken for or already married. We have always had more men.”
    Frederick Marshall scanned the Elders’ faces and stopped at Jacob’s face. “We can ask at the farm settlements.”
    â€œUnless you have a better idea,” Sister Krause added.
    He did. Jacob closed his eyes. Amber eyes dared him, amber