Arms of Love by Kelly Long Page A

own home. She pushed aside memories of the rather small but comfortable house she’d had in the countryside and tried to concentrate on the austere but functional room of the Amish farm. Trying to garner peace from the simplicity of everything being in its place, she closed her eyes, exhausted. A shadow crossed her face, and Ruth looked up in surprise.
    “I’ve brought you a meal,” Lena whispered. “I know you were feeding Faith and Mary earlier and couldn’t come to sup. Will you eat something, please?”
    Ruth blinked her bleary eyes and looked at the plate before her. When was the last time someone had offered to nourish her? Not even Henry, Lord bless him, had been one for such fussing.
    She reached up and took the plate with hesitant hands while the Amish girl bent to arrange a linen napkin comfortably about her. Ruth stared at the steaming yams and crusty rolls drizzled with honey, and breathed deeply of the fragrant stew.
    Lena slid into a chair near her. “One thing my mamm taught me was how to cook. I hope you like it.”
    Ruth noticed how the young girl worked to steady her voice, and nodded her head. “It’s a piece of beauty, miss. I’m not sure I’ve ever been served like this.”
    Lena nodded and smiled as Ruth began to eat. The older woman felt she should say something, but she wasn’t even sure she could begin to piece together her day aright—it had all happened so fast.
    “I like you,” Lena said with sudden candor, and Ruth watched a pretty flush mount the young cheeks. “I mean that I want to thank you for helping today. I wish you might choose to stay for a bit, both you and Mary, as long as you want. But as I’ve told you, I have no coin.”
    Ruth chewed reflectively. “Came here ten years ago as an indentured servant; met Henry the same way. We worked off our debts for some years and then built a life for ourselves. I don’t want to be no hired woman.”
    Lena sat forward earnestly. “ Ach , but I did not mean it like that. I need help . . . We all do. There’s no telling when or if my father will be released from prison.”
    “What did he do?” Ruth swallowed the smoothness of the honey and thought it bliss.
    Lena reached to rub her temple beneath her hair covering. “I guess I have not had time to explain much in this day. You know we are Amish? My father paid the extra taxes and we gave food to Patriots and British alike, but the local regiment came and meant to require one half of all of our stock and provisions. My mother was poorly, and my father had seen too much of this commandeering. He protested, and they took almost all of the stock and hauled him off to prison. That was about three weeks ago. We’d been managing, but then Mamm became sick . . . I should have walked into town to find a midwife.”
    “No sense fretting about what’s done, what’s gone. I need to learn that for myself, I guess. But ain’t there a midwife among your people hereabouts?”
    Lena shook her head. “One who travels by mule. It takes her nearly two months to circulate to all of the Amish spread about. If there’s a woman due, she’ll wait. There was no telling where she was.”
    Ruth finished her plate and could not resist running a finger around the remnants of the stew. “That was fine eating, dearie. But things will be finer still if you let go of troubling yourself about what you might have done.”
    “You are right. We—we believe in the Lord’s will. I should remember that.”
    Ruth snorted. “The Lord’s a mite favorable toward some, it seems, and not so to others.”
    “Will you tell me about your husband?”
    Ruth gripped the edges of the pewter plate. “Not much to tell. Loved to laugh, but had a real stubborn streak in him too. He enlisted right off. There was a skirmish somewhere a couple of weeks past. A rider come to the house and told me Henry was gone. That’s all . . . until the house fire. I guess I got addlepated over Henry and forgot to tend the fire right.