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me.”
    â€œHumph,” he grunted. He didn’t sound convinced. “Fighting upsets a lot of people, but no one else cried.”
    She felt her cheek and found it wet. “’Tis only perspiration, Brother Blum. From the heat.”
    He leaned in to inspect her face, possessively, as if he had a right. He smelled of dirt and horse and manly endeavor, and she felt her face flush. “Heat doesn’t damp your lashes,” he said firmly, trailing a finger just beneath her eye for proof. Her breath caught at his tender touch. “I know a dirty, tearstained face when I see one. I have a great deal of experience.”
    â€œSo you do,” she said, his confession reminding her of his troublesome daughter. “But I never cry.”
    â€œAnna Johanna says much the same.” A corner of his mouth crooked up, but he controlled it.
    â€œNever,” she repeated, even as she felt the tears herself. Tears were only tears, she told herself, scrubbing away evidence with a corner of her apron. It wasn’t crying until you sobbed.
    â€œSo.” He drew away from her, his countenance turning decidedly sober. “Tell me what you were doing in Gottlieb Vogler’s arms.”
    â€œBecause of the fight,” she offered, loosening her grip on her apron and letting it fall back down.
    His eyes followed her gesture, but his voice softened dangerously. “In his arms,” he repeated slowly.
    â€œThe Voglers were protecting me.” She carefully cited the couple, not the man. In fact, she had flung herself away from Jacob’s fight, a scream lodged in her throat, heedless of impropriety.
    Jacob arched an eyebrow.
    â€œAlice and Gottlieb are my friends,” she explained.
    â€œYour friends.” Jacob’s eyes narrowed. “Sister Retha, what am I supposed to think—what is the town supposed to think—to see you in the arms of a man like that?”
    She didn’t like his commanding tone and almost said so. “You should think naught of it. I was scared.”
    â€œA man who, apparently without regret, disassociated from us by his own choice.”
    â€œHe has regrets,” she said impulsively, and bit her tongue. Jacob Blum wouldn’t like knowing the Voglers confided in her about such private matters.
    â€œHow would you know of his regrets?” He guided her by the arm farther from the edge of the crowd and stopped in the middle of the Square. “Tell me the truth, Sister Retha.”
    He probably ordered his children around like this. By all reports, it hadn’t worked with them either. Her irritation rose.
    â€œThe truth? The Voglers are my friends. I needed them, and they comforted me. ’Tis none of your affair.”
    â€œPerhaps not,” he said flatly. “Not yet.” But the muscle in his square jaw rippled with tension.
    â€œNot at all.”
    An odd look crossed his face, and he shifted his weight from one large leg to the other. “Surely Sister Krause has spoken to you.” Exasperation laced his voice.
    And suddenly she understood everything, his touch, his concern, his anger, every word he’d said since he stomped over. He was thinking of her as his betrothed before he’d even asked.
    Her heart raged. She was fairly sure that Brother Ernst hadn’t prefaced his proposal to her friend Sister Eva in this blunt, unfeeling way. “Oh. Your proposal. ’Tis hardly the time or place.”
    A rueful smile creased his face. “At least we agree on that. So she spoke to you.”
    â€œShe did.” And it hadn’t been pleasant. Retha gave him as frank a look as she could manage. “Sister Rosina told me to think long and hard about marrying you and your children.”
    He dropped her arm and stalked off, describing a tight circle before returning to loom over her. He was so big, so rugged, racked with anger, and yet, as his flushed face told her, so embarrassed.
    â€œShe said