A Noble Groom (Michigan Brides #2)(6)
A husband from among their kin? From their homeland? Annalisa let the idea sift through her. Of course they had many relatives still living in Saxony. Would marrying one of her distant cousins provide the solution to her problems?
“Matthias is a wise man. He’ll find someone good for Annalisa.” Vater nodded at her, as if to tell her he understood the difficulties she’d endured with Hans and that this time he hoped to find her a better match. “If we’re very lucky, he’ll come to us in time for spring planting.”
She nodded in return. She knew Vater was doing what he thought was best for her. And she would submit to his authority. But she still couldn’t keep from wishing somehow things could be different—that she could be more important to the men in her life, that she could make them love her, that she could find a way to earn God’s attention.
Maybe if she’d been a better daughter or wife . . .
“In the meantime,” Herr Pastor said between bites, “we must all work together to help Annalisa through the winter.”
His suggestion was met with several unenthusiastic ja’s.
“You’re right, dear-heart.” Frau Pastor patted her husband’s cheek with an affection that Annalisa often saw between them but couldn’t understand. “I don’t like the idea that Annalisa will be all alone. We all know E. B. Ward can’t be trusted.”
Vater shoveled in a forkful of pie from the slice Idette had given him. “I’ll send Uri and Eleanor over to check on her and to help.”
The tension eased from Annalisa’s back.
Her younger sister would soon be of marriageable age and could shoulder a woman’s work. And if her brother came to help—even though he was only twelve—she would be just fine. She hoped . . .
At least until her groom arrived.
Chapter
2
JANUARY 1881
ESSEN, GERMANY
Carl von Reichart peered out the lone barred window of his dungeon cell.
In less than four hours, he would die.
The frigid January air squeezed through a crack in the window and reached around his neck, grabbing him, sending chills over his skin, reminding him that all too soon his head would be severed from his body.
He pressed his thin cheeks against the icy steel of the bars.
He didn’t know why he wanted to look outside. He should be on his knees in prayer—as he’d been most of the night.
But he couldn’t help himself. It was as if some unseen force had magnetized him and wouldn’t let him rest. The tormenting force kept fanning the hope that maybe—just maybe—he’d look out and see that things had changed.
And yet there in the earliest hours of dawn in the middle of the courtyard in his father’s ancient schloss, stood the guillotine, in exactly the same spot it had been only an hour before. And the hour before that. Exactly where one of his father’s servants had erected it the previous day.
It was still there with the winter moonlight gleaming upon the sharp blade, and the stone positioned where he would lay his cheek. Even the basket sat where it would capture his bloodied head.
His father had spared no effort for the public spectacle.
With a mirthless laugh Carl lowered his heels back to the bench. He stepped off the rickety slab of board that boasted the only furniture in the cell that had been his home for the past two weeks.
The flicker of an oil lamp in the dungeon’s long dark hallway cast a gaunt light over the rotten straw that covered the floor. A rat scurried along one of the stone walls, probably stealing the crumbs that remained on the platter from his last meal.
Carl dropped to the bench and gave a half grin. “Rat, you have committed more crimes than I have with your thieving ways. How is it that you have the freedom to come and go, while I am stuck in here?”
Of course, the rat didn’t stop to answer but instead scuttled through the bars on the door and disappeared into the blackness of the passageway. He hadn’t expected the creature to strike up a conversation, but the loneliness of the cavern pressed upon him more heavily this night than on any other.
“Too bad you cannot speak to me audibly, Lord.” He lifted his eyes, but all that met his gaze were the low beams of the ceiling. “I know you’ll remind me that many innocent men have been martyred in centuries past. Perhaps one sat in this same spot praying to you the night before his execution just as I am.”
Carl leaned his head against the damp wall, heedless of the mold that covered the stone. He’d lost all sense of cleanliness many days ago. The stench of excrement and decay that had overpowered him for the first couple of days had all but disappeared, likely deep into the pores of his filthy skin.
“But I cannot complain. At least my father has had the civility to feed me well.”
The problem was that he had no appetite and hadn’t since the awful night two weeks ago when the bomb had exploded in the duke’s palace, killing a servant and severely injuring one of the nobleman’s sons.
The investigators had easily located the supplies left behind by the murderer. The wires, chemicals, and other items of destruction had all belonged to only one person in all of Essen—Carl von Reichart. Him. Everyone knew Baron von Reichart’s son was a physicist and an inventor and had a laboratory full of every kind of chemical imaginable.