Lyn Cote by The Baby Bequest

be American. You brought us here. This is where I will live.” Jabbing his chest with his thumb, he added, “Where I will take a wife.”
    Ellen thought of the Ashfords’ low opinion of Gunther. Obviously Gunther hoped that gaining education would help change their minds. She hoped so, too. “Then shall we begin?”
    Gunther nodded to her. “Yes, please.” His tone no longer was angry.
    “Since you mentioned it, I think we’ll start with helping you improve your pronunciation of English sounds.” She began with the difficult “th” sound.
    As she helped Gunther learn to position his tongue between his teeth to make this sound, she noted from the corner of her eye Mr. Lang and Johann silently mimicking her. So she would be teaching three, not one.
    A strange feeling came over her, and she realized that sitting in her quarters and helping Mr. Lang and Johann and Gunther while Mr. Lang held William was close to how she felt when with Ophelia and Martin. This was a disturbing thought, which triggered a disturbing sentence from Cissy’s letter.
    You must plan to come home for a visit at Christmas. Holton and I will meet you at Moline and bring you home in our carriage.
    She lost track of what she was saying to Gunther as the words rang in her mind. Home, Cissy had written. But she felt she would never go home again. She’d lost her parents to typhoid a year ago; her brother to his mean-spirited, pretentious wife and now her little sister to Holton.
    Despair over these injuries weighed like lead shot in her midsection.
    Then William gurgled in Mr. Lang’s arms. The man smiled down at her child, and his expression touched her heart. She would leave the past behind and make her own family here. With William.
    Oh, God, please make that come true.

Chapter Seven
    R emoving his hat, Kurt hesitated at the school door. Today after Sunday worship, everyone had shared a potluck picnic on the school grounds. Now the school board was going to hold a school dedication, an event new to him.
    He found himself looking for Miss Thurston, as he’d been doing all day. And all day he’d overheard bits of conversations about her and William. No one approved of her keeping the child. Had Miss Thurston heard them, too?
    Holding Johann’s hand, Kurt entered the school and sat on their usual half-log bench at the back of the room. Johann was excited about something but when Kurt asked, the lad had just grinned. Kurt noted that the three men who’d been elected to the board—Mr. Ashford and Martin Steward and another man he didn’t know—sat in the first row along with their families.
    Miss Thurston, dressed as fine as a fashion plate, sat at her desk. She wore a stylish dress of some shiny dark blue material. With her bearing both graceful and striking, she overshadowed the other women in the room. He tried not to stare at the lovely picture she presented, something he found he was doing more and more these days.
    On her desk perched the basket with the napping child. He watched as people kept looking at it and then looking away.
    An air of expectancy hummed in the room, the scent of pine and cedar emanating from the newly cut, rough log walls. He liked that. How different the village school he’d attended had been, which had stood for centuries before he entered it.
    He glanced around and glimpsed his brother sitting on the other side of the door. He noted a subtle change in Gunther. The boy still didn’t sit up as straight as Kurt would have liked, but he didn’t slouch quite as much, either. However, he was still gazing at the storekeeper’s daughter. Kurt shook his head, wishing he could spare the boy the pain of coming rejection.
    Mr. Ashford cleared his throat. “I’d like to welcome you all to the formal dedication of Pepin’s first school.”
    Applause and foot-stamping broke out amid the crowd. Kurt sensed the pride the young town was feeling. They had worked hard and contributed much to see this school finished. Johann