Harlequin Love Inspired March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 by Patrice Lewis (best large ereader .txt) 📕

seat on the kitchen table. He sat down in front of her and toyed with her tiny foot. “What’s a bachelor uncle going to do with a baby girl?”

He always thought his adult life would follow the usual course of events—courtship, marriage then babies. But here he was, unmarried and with a baby to care for.

The usual twist of agony at the thought of his sister’s fate hit his gut. After their parents had died in that horrible buggy accident, he honestly thought he could handle raising Eliza. At eighteen, he believed he was grown up enough to handle the responsibility.

But Eliza’s headstrong behavior taught him differently. Never easy to handle, the grief of losing her parents at the age of twelve meant she no longer had the steady guiding hands of their mother and father to rein in her rebellious nature.

That’s why seeing Jane surrounded by youngies at the Sabbath service disturbed him. All he could see was his sister…until she was gone.

And now… He tickled Mercy’s little foot. And now Eliza had a baby she couldn’t raise, and he had her baby who he refused to give up. It was all very confusing and frightening.

What was a bachelor uncle to do, indeed?

* * *

Jane showed up at Levy’s farm bright and early one morning a few days later. She felt refreshed by the sunny weather. But Levy, she soon found out, had gotten out of bed on the wrong side.

“Just overwhelmed, I guess,” he replied when she asked what the matter was. “I have so many things to do. Here.” He thrust Mercy into her arms. “I’m already late milking the cows.” With that, he stalked out of the house.

Jane stared after him. Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed his moodiness sprang from a different reason than his workload.

She gently bounced the baby. “Your uncle is cranky this morning.” She touched the infant’s nose. “But I’m not going to let him get to me. C’mon, I suspect it’s time to wash some diapers.”

Jane washed and hung the baby’s laundry, then gathered other dirty clothes, swept the house, fed Mercy, put her down for a nap and made lunch. Whatever the cause of Levy’s attitude, she would respond by making him a good meal.

She did not, however, eat lunch with Levy. She settled in the living room rocking chair to feed Mercy a bottle of formula.

He didn’t say a word, either before or after the meal. Instead, he finished eating, put his plates in the sink and went back to work. As Jane washed the dishes, she looked out the kitchen window and noticed the raspberry bushes loaded down with fruit. She knew how difficult it was to keep up with berries when they peaked.

Picking up Mercy and tucking her in the sling, she descended into the cellar. “Let’s go look for canning jars,” she told the baby.

The high windows in the home’s foundation gave dim light, and Jane was gratified to find hundreds of empty canning jars, which doubtless had belonged to Levy’s mother. She picked up a box holding a dozen jars and brought them back upstairs. Then she took a bucket, went out to pick raspberries and came back in to set about making raspberry jam.

In the midst of the hot and sticky process, Levy suddenly entered the kitchen. “I owe you an apology, Jane,” he stated without preamble.

Stirring the boiling jam, Jane looked up and wiped a trickle of sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Oh?”

“Ja. I worry about my sister, and sometimes I project my worries about her on to you. It makes me bad-tempered, and I’m sorry for that.”

Now that she was a bit more familiar with his background, Jane understood his fears. “But I’m not your sister. And I’m not doing anything against the Ordnung.”

“Neither did she, until she left. But she was always going to youngie events. I thought she was on the path toward baptism, but I was wrong.”

Jane softened. He was clearly tormented over the fate of his sister, not Jane’s social life.

“I have three sisters,” she said. “If any of them disappeared into the Englisch world, I would be frantic with worry too. Do you want to talk about it, or is it too painful?”

“Too painful.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, then dropped his hand. “How many brüder und schwestern do you have?”

“Five. Three sisters, two brothers. My older sister is married and expecting her first baby. I’m the second oldest. My younger sisters and my brothers, they’re all teenagers.” She smiled. “It’s a lot for my parents to handle at once.”

“Do you miss them?”

“Ja, sure, of course. But they’re all gut kinner. They don’t give my parents any trouble.”

“Unlike my sister.” He removed his hat, stared at the straw brim for a few moments then plopped it back on his head. “I need to get back to work.” He stalked out the side door.

Watching him stride away toward the fields, Jane wondered why he felt the sudden need to apologize. But she was right—if anything happened to her sisters, especially her younger sisters, she would be panicky. It seemed he bore a lot of guilt over Eliza’s fate. It must have been difficult to try to be a parent at such a young age. She supposed she could understand his odd quirks of behavior. Besides, his moods were none of her business. She was here to watch the baby and make herself useful. Nothing more.

By the time the jam was ready to jar, it was time to start dinner. She strapped the baby to her bouncy seat on the kitchen table, ladled hot jam into sterilized canning jars and set them in a pot of water to boil and seal. Then she made a simple dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

Levy came in carrying two buckets of fresh milk, which he strained into oversize jars and set down in the basement to allow the cream to rise.

“I