Wind and sun had burnished his cheeks with a ruddy glow. His blue eyes, Bjorklund eyes they called them at home, smiled tenderly down at her. Back in grammar school, she’d fallen in love with his eyes first. And she’d been in love with him ever since. She released the fold of his coat and reached up to the crinkled lines radiating from the corners of his eyes.
“But . . . but those stories of people being turned away. What if they won’t let me in?”
“You’re not ill with tuberculosis or something contagious. You just had a baby and a rough voyage. That’s all. Many were seasick; surely the authorities will understand that. I will tell them you’ve never before been sick, not a day in your entire life.”
“That is true.” She attempted to return his confident smile. But why, then, have I nearly died? Women have babies all the time and get right up and go back to baking bread or whatever else they were doing. She shook her head. “I’m just not very good at riding on a ship, I guess.”
“Roald and I should have taken you fishing on Onkel Hamre’s boat so you could have gotten your sea legs. Riding out a raging storm in the North Seas will take the seasickness out of anyone.”
She transferred her hand from his face to his fingers. On his left hand he carried the badge of a fisherman: a missing finger. He’d lost it in the rigging during a bad storm one night. She shuddered at the thought. “And you think farming will be any safer?”
“At least you can’t be washed overboard.” When he smiled that way, she could refuse him nothing. He leaned forward and touched his lips to hers. “Think, my love—our own land. Crops to feed our children and sell to a hungry city. Wheat for bread, hogs to fatten, cows to milk, butter and cheese to make. A white house of our own with sunlight streaming through the windows. A great shiny black stove where you can bake and cook anything you want.”
Kaaren closed her tired eyes and let him paint the pictures on the back of her eyelids. She would be the mistress of her own home, not at the beck and call of the lady of another house. For the last three years she had worked hard as a hired girl. Now Kaaren would be the lady of the house, and one day mayhap they would have their own hired girl. And hired men to help Carl and Roald work the fields. She could almost see the golden wheat swaying in the wind.
“Are you ready, then?” Roald’s deep voice cut into her daydream.
She turned her head to brush a kiss across her daughter’s forehead. God of heaven and earth, give me the strength to make it through the inspection. May your heavenly angels be with me now. She gently laid the infant down beside her. “Please help me with my coat, Carl. Ingeborg has all our things gathered together.”
“I found a handcart,” Roald said, entering the cabin. “A good man on the dock loaned it to me.” He began to load their valises and bundles onto the two-wheeled dolly. “Once we’ve been through Castle Garden, we’ll come back for our trunks that are stored in the hold.”
Kaaren could sense Roald’s excitement, even though his face was set in its normal sober lines. Sometimes she wondered how the two men could be brothers, they were such opposites in temperament. She looked into the eyes of her husband as he carefully slipped the buttons of her coat through their holes. She gave him an answeringsmile when he winked at her, his full lips tilting up in the grin she loved.
“Ready?” he whispered.
She nodded and picked up the still sleeping babe. “Ja, I’m ready.”
Slipping his strong arms around her shoulders and under her knees, he lifted her and Gunhilde in one smooth motion. “Ready or not, Mrs. Bjorklund, we have arrived in Amerika!”
Sheer terror cut off the scream choking Ingeborg’s throat.
The blue-coated officer loomed in front of her. “Ma’am, what is wrong?” His voice sounded clipped, gruff, like a soldier’s.
If only she could