Free Sundown Crossing by Lynne Wilding

through such agonies as a young man. She cast her mind way back to her childhood, remembering the father she had known since she’d been small. He had been stern, serious, but also loving, and devoted to his vineyard once he’d had the means to buy and develop Valley View.
    She supposed, knowing what she knew now, that he had an ingrained need to prove that he could be the winemaker he’d always wanted tobe but had been denied in his youth. Still, how was it that neither she nor her mother had gleaned anything of the burden he’d carried for years? Rolfe Kruger had built an impenetrable wall around that part of his life and never let them see a glimpse of it. He had fabricated the occasional story of his youth to satisfy their curiosity. That was so sad.
    She fingered the few remaining pages, almost finished. In the depths of her heart was a sense of foreboding but instead of guessing what had come to pass, she had to read to the very last page.

CHAPTER FOUR
    F or more than a week Rolfe stayed away from Stenhaus, claiming that getting the current harvest through to its next stage was his prime concern. Kurt had spoken to him the day after the storm, saying Marta would no longer be helping out at Krugerhoff—he had expected that. As the days passed and there was no contact with the family, Rolfe tried to quell the alarm bells that had begun to ring in his head, choosing to believe that Kurt’s reaction and the family’s silence was natural because everyone was still annoyed about having to search for Marta on the night of the storm.
    Not seeing Marta, even fleetingly, was hard on him. For the last two months he had seen her, sometimes only briefly but almost on a daily basis. Now he wanted to confirm his feelings for her and to ask her to marry him. However, he knew it was equally important to put some distance between each other and what had happened. It was a time during which they could explore their feelings foreach other and be sure. In Rolfe’s case he was sure. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Marta Gronow, and each night, lying in the single bed in Krugerhoff’s cottage, remembering how perfect their lovemaking had been, he dreamt about her.
    Saturday night at Stenhaus was the one night the family dined together formally in the long, wide dining room. The room housed a table that could seat twenty people comfortably. It had been furnished with reproduction Louis XIV pieces of furniture because Mutter had fallen in love with such furnishings during a holiday spent revisiting relatives in Germany and France, two years before her death.
    With some trepidation Rolfe returned to Stenhaus to shower and change for dinner. The only good thing as far as he was concerned was that Marta would be there, and if luck was with him he might have the opportunity to say a few words in private to her.
    The three-course dinner was an unusually quiet affair. Kurt remained stony-faced. He wouldn’t talk and when Rolfe looked in Kurt’s direction all he saw in his eyes was a well-defined but suppressed anger. Marta dared not make eye contact and even Lisel, known for her tendency to chatter on about everything and nothing, was strangely silent. That Papa refused to talk to him too but made a point of talking to everyone else at the table, even little Luke, added to his growing concern. The undercurrent of tension,emanating for the most part from Papa and Kurt, was something of which everyone was aware.
    When, as a long-established family tradition demanded, came the time for coffee and brandy, usually taken in European fashion in the drawing room, Papa turned his gaze towards Rolfe.
    ‘Come to the study, Rolfe. We have to talk.’
    Instinctively Rolfe knew they would not be discussing how the harvest was going at Krugerhoff or Rhein Schloss. The glare in his father’s eyes and his scowl, added to the sense of foreboding within him that all hell was about to break loose.
    As the study door closed behind them Carl