Chapter One

      Harmony Creek Hollow, New York

      The day had started out as Jeremiah Stoltzfus had planned.

      It didn’t stay that way after a woman dropped into his arms.

      For most men, playing the hero for a beautiful woman would have been a dream come true. But most men didn’t discover that woman trespassing on a tumbledown farm in northern New York. A farm Jeremiah couldn’t wait to call his own.

      He’d been invited by the current owner to visit when he reached Harmony Creek. In a couple of days the farm would be his.

      At dawn Jeremiah had left his family’s home in Paradise Springs, Pennsylvania. He was joining others to build a new Amish settlement near the Vermont border. He’d made arrangements during the past few months, purchasing the farm based on a few photographs sent by his Realtor. After saying goodbye to his mamm, brothers and sisters along with their spouses and kinder and knowing it was unlikely he’d see them again for a year, he’d taken a train north to Albany. There, he was met by a van, which drove him the last fifty miles to Harmony Creek Hollow.

      The valley edging the creek was set outside the tiny town of Salem. Rolling hills covered with trees and meadows would support dairy farms for the Amish families moving into the area.

      The owner of the sixty-acre farm he was buying, Rudy Bamberger, had invited him to stop by before the closing in two days. Jeremiah suspected the old man wanted to size him up first.

      Rudy had already asked him a lot of questions through Kitty Vasic, Jeremiah’s Realtor. Personal questions that Kitty told Jeremiah he didn’t have to answer. However, Jeremiah had no problem with the questions, because the old man had been selling his family’s farm. Jeremiah had written a long letter, explaining his background and his plans for the farm and his future. His answers must have satisfied Rudy, because the old man accepted his offer on the farm the next day.

      When he’d arrived, Jeremiah had carried his two bags as he crossed the snowy yard past neglected barns. No tracks had been visible. Nothing had gone in or out of the big barn since the last snowstorm. Allowing himself a quick glance at the other outbuildings, which needed, as he’d known, a lot of repairs, he’d walked through the freshly fallen snow to the main house.

      The large rambling home had a porch running along the front and the side facing the barn. Through a stand of spruce trees, he could see another house, where a tenant family once would have lived. The few remaining shutters hung awkwardly at the windows, a sure sign the house was a fixer-upper, too.

      He looked forward to beginning—and finishing—the tasks ahead of him as he made the farm viable again. His skills as a woodworker would be useful while renovating the barns and the sap house near the sugar bush farther up the hill.

      Climbing onto the porch, he’d set down his bags before he knocked snow off his well-worn work boots. He’d gone directly to the side door. Rudy had told him to use that door when he arrived.

      “Don’t knock,” the most recent letter had instructed him. “My ears don’t work like they used to, and I don’t want you standing in the cold while you bang and bang. Come in and give a shout.”

      He’d thrown the door open. “Rudy, are you here?”

      A shriek had come from close to the ceiling. He’d looked up to see a ladder wobbling. A dark-haired woman stood at the very top, her arms windmilling.

      He leaped into the small room as she fell. After years of being tossed shocks of corn and hay bales, he caught her easily. He jumped out of the way, holding her to him as the ladder crashed to the linoleum floor. His black wool hat tumbled off his head and rolled toward the wall.

      “Oh, my!” gasped the woman.

      She was, he noted because her face was close to his, very pretty. Her pleated kapp was flat unlike the heart-shaped ones his sisters wore. Beneath it, her hair was so black it gleamed with bluish fire in the fading sunlight coming through the door and tall windows. Her brown eyes were large with shock in her warmly tanned face, where a few freckles emphasized her high cheekbones. She wore a pale pink dress with white and green flowers scattered across it in a subtle pattern. No Amish woman from Paradise Springs would use such fabric. It must be allowed in the new settlement along Harmony Creek. What else would be different here?

      But first things first.

      “Are you okay?” he asked, not surprised she wasn’t the only one who sounded breathless. His heart had slammed against his chest when he saw her teetering. And from the moment he’d looked into her lustrous eyes, taking a deep breath had seemed impossible.

      “I’m fine. I had just a little farther to go. Just a little...” Her voice trailed away as the shuddering ladder, which had landed on its side, clattered to the floor.

      Jeremiah frowned. There was nothing on the wall to prevent her from falling. He saw the ruined wallpaper and chipped crown molding along with scraps of paper she’d already pulled off were piled on the floor. Why was she tearing off wallpaper in Rudy’s house?

      “Who are you?” he asked at the same time she did.

      “I’m Jeremiah Stoltzfus,” he answered. “You are...?”

      “Mercy Bamberger.” Her face shifted into a polite smile, and he guessed she’d collected her wits that had been scattered by fear. “Thanks for catching me.”

      “Why are you here?”

      Instead of answering, she said, “You can put me down.”

      Jeremiah was astonished his curiosity about why she was in what would be his house had let him forget—for a second—that he was still cradling her in his arms. He set her on her feet, but caught her by the elbow when she trembled like a slim branch in a thunderstorm.

      Hearing uneven thumps upstairs and hoping they heralded Rudy’s arrival, he steered her to the left. There, a staircase was half-hidden behind a partially closed door. Seating her on the bottom step, he picked up his hat as he asked, “Are you all right?”

      “I am.”

      He didn’t believe her, because her skin had a gray tint and her voice quivered. He wouldn’t push her, because he guessed she was embarrassed by the circumstances. But one question remained: What was Mercy Bamberger doing in his house?

      “Bamberger?” he asked aloud. “Like Rudy Bamberger?”

      “Yes. Do you know my grandfather?”

      Well, that explained who she was and why she was in the house. Glancing up the stairs, his eyes widened when he saw a shadow slip across the top. It was far too small for a grown man and appeared to have four legs.

      He watched, saying nothing as he realized the silhouette belonged to a kind. A little girl, who looked about seven years old, had braided hair as black as Mercy’s. She leaned on metal crutches with cuffs to go around her skinny arms. Her legs were encased in plastic and Velcro from the tops of her black sneakers to her knobby knees. Who was she?

      As if he’d asked the question aloud, the little girl cried, “Mommy!” Rushing at a pace that forced his heart into his throat again, because he feared she’d fall, the kind flung her arms around Mercy’s neck. “Are you okay?”

      “I’m fine,” Mercy reassured her.

      The kind glanced at him with a scowl. “I heard the ladder fall and—”

      “I’m fine, Sunni.” She hugged the little girl. “Jeremiah kept me from getting hurt.”

      “Who?”

      “Jeremiah.”