Free Wild Indigo by Judith Stanton Page B

think, his original bride, the adoring mother of his children? Would she wish only for Retha to be good to those children? Or would she also wish Jacob happiness, affection such as they had known together? A brief image of her quiet smile flickered in his memory and vanished. Was it approval, or portent?
    He sighed heavily. Few enough people found true affection in marriage, whether by lot or by random human choice that some would ascribe to love. With Christina, he had been fortunate that circumstance, proximity, and childhood ties had combined to bring together two like-minded, companionable people. Jacob was not without hope for himself, even this second time.
    If he could but clear up one bothersome question. He handed the horse to the tavern’s slave and prepared for an assault on the Single Sisters’ silence about one of their own.
    Â 
    â€œWhat is the matter with Sister Retha? Surely there was a reason you never proposed her for the lot,” Jacob said impatiently to Rosina Krause an hour later in her office at the Gemein Haus . At eye level, a rack of lightweight leather buckets, essential for the fire protection brigade, hung along the wall. He sat ignominiously under them, kindling a conflagration of his own.
    Sister Krause’s chin dimpled in hesitation. “There is naught the matter with her. Naught that could prevent her from being a suitable—”
    â€œThen why did you not recommend her in the first place? You said there was no one suitable.” He couldn’t keep an accusing tone out of his voice.
    Sister Krause shot a question back at him. “Are you the reason she was out that night we found her in the meadow?”
    â€œOf course not,” he said, indignant. What kind of Elder did she think he was? But then, he could understand why she might ask. What if he had stepped out that night for a rendezvous with Retha? Illicit trysts were not unheard of among courting couples, and his fellow Moravians were not intolerant of ordinary human passions. If he had been with her, the Sisters might well have dealt with her more lightly, not virtually locked her up.
    â€œBut you were there,” Rosina observed dryly, giving him his first view of how she held sway over a bevy of older girls and women.
    â€œAt the end, yes.”
    Sister Krause leaned forward, a commanding movement he recognized from Elders’ meetings. “Do you know what she was doing there?”
    Jacob wouldn’t lie, but he wouldn’t betray Retha’s confidence either. “I do now,” he said carefully.
    Instead of questioning him further, his fellow Elder pushed her ample body away from her desk and stood gazing out the window. Jacob knew the Square was virtually empty, the market done for the day, and anyone left driven inside by the blaze of heat. He had to admire the way the Sister dangled him, puppetlike, for her own purposes. He was a negotiator himself.
    After a long moment, she closed the shutter with a snap. “Then perhaps you know why Sister Retha has slipped out of the house night after night since the day we took her in.”
    â€œEvery night?” Jacob was dumbfounded. He had no idea.
    â€œWe don’t know if she went out every night.”
    Her simple answer couched a bleak confession of failure. Jacob understood at once. One of the first women to arrive in Salem, Sister Krause had a keen sense of duty and responsibility. She would not take failure lightly.
    â€œSurely Samuel Ernst would have detected her,” Jacob said, struggling to sound calm and logical as new and sharper doubts assailed him.
    â€œNo, not Brother Ernst. He never did. She hasalways been elusive. We tried to keep her…absences to ourselves, but Sister Holder and I could never be sure—”
    â€œSister Holder knows?” Jacob asked, all too aware of how knowledge traveled in a town that did not yet number two hundred citizens, counting children and infants.
    The