A Creed Country Christmas (7 page)

Juliana’s heart melted and slid down the inside of her rib cage. If Lincoln
did
propose, she might just accept. She wasn’t in love with him—but she adored his daughter.

W
hen Lincoln got back inside the house, he found Wes standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a dismayed Gracie in his arms.

“Well,” Wes told his niece solemnly, “we’d better get word to Saint Nicholas right quick, then.”

Shedding his coat, Lincoln raised an eyebrow.

“Christmas is only four days away,” Gracie fretted. “And the train won’t come through Stillwater Springs again until
next
week. So how can I write to him in time?”

Lincoln and Juliana exchanged looks: Lincoln’s curious, Juliana’s wistful.

“
Papa
,” Gracie all but wailed, “could we send a telegraph to Saint Nicholas?”

“What?” Lincoln asked, mystified.

“He won’t bring anything for the others, because he doesn’t know they’re here!” Gracie despaired.

Something shifted deep in Lincoln’s heart, and it wasn’t just because he was standing so close to Juliana that their shoulders nearly touched. When had he moved?

He thought of the gifts on the shelf in his mother’s wardrobe, the box of watercolor paints he’d bought on impulse back at the mercantile the day before. “Oh, I already did that,” he lied easily.

Gracie was not only generous, she was formidably bright. Her forehead creased as Wes set her gently on her feet. “When?” she asked skeptically.

“In town yesterday,” Lincoln said. “Soon as I knew we were going to have company, I went straight to the telegraph office and sent the old fella a wire.”

Gracie’s eyes widened, while her busy mind weighed the logistics. Fortunately, she came down on the side of relief rather than reason, and Lincoln felt mildly guilty for deceiving her, pure motives or none.

She beamed. “Well,” she said. “That’s fine, then.”

“’Course, he’ll probably have to spread things a little thinner than usual,” Lincoln added. “Saint Nicholas, I mean. Times are hard, remember.”

Gracie was undaunted. “All I want is a dictionary,” she said. “So I can learn all the words there are in the whole world.”

Lincoln wanted to sweep her up into his arms, the way Wes had apparently done upon arrival, but he figured that would be laying things on a little thick, so he just replied quietly, “I’m proud of you, Gracie Creed.”

Beside him, Juliana sniffled once, but when he looked, he saw that she was smiling. Her eyes glistened a little, though.

Seeing he was watching her, Juliana turned quickly and busied herself scraping the last of the stew from the kettle into a bowl and basically herding a clearly charmed Wes over to the table.

She didn’t even make him wash up, which might have galled Lincoln a little, if he hadn’t been so busy thinking what a fine daughter he and Beth had brought into the world.

Although Wes loved his woman, Kate, and to Lincoln’s knowledge his brother hadn’t been unfaithful from the
day the two of them had taken up with each other, his amber-colored eyes trailed Juliana’s every movement, danced with mischief whenever he met Lincoln’s gaze.

He
knew
, damn it. Wes knew Juliana had his younger brother’s insides in a tangle, and he was bound to rib him without mercy.

“You’d better spend the night,” Lincoln said to his brother, even though, at the moment, that was about the last thing he wanted. “Snow’s coming down hard.”

Wes shook his head, shifted slightly so Gracie could plant herself on his knee. “I’ve gotta get back. Poker game.”

It wasn’t long before he’d finished his meal and said goodbye to Gracie. This, too, was like Wes—he’d been uncomfortable in the house since Dawson died. Once, he’d even confided privately that he half expected their murdered brother to tap him on the shoulder from behind.

Gracie went off in search of the other children, and Tom and Joseph were still outside plucking turkeys. Avoiding Juliana’s eyes, just as he sensed she was avoiding his, Lincoln put his coat on again, followed Wes into the cold and walked alongside him toward the barn.

About midway, Wes chuckled and shook his head, then gave a low whistle. He hadn’t even hesitated when
his horse and mule weren’t where he’d left them; he knew Lincoln would have attended to anything he’d left undone.

“What?” Lincoln asked, sounding peevish because he knew what the answer would be.

“You,” Wes said happily, snow gathering on his hair and shoulders and eyelashes again. “Every time you looked at that schoolmarm, I thought I was going to have to roll your tongue up like a rug and shove it back in your mouth.”

Lincoln felt his neck warm. He was half again too stubborn to honor Wes’s good-natured taunt with a reply of any kind.

Wes laughed outright then, and slapped Lincoln hard on the back as they slogged heavily through the snow. “She’s smitten with you, little brother,” he went on. “I figured I’d better tell you that, since you can be a mite thickheaded when it comes to women.”

“I suppose
you’re
an expert?” Lincoln bit out, raising his collar again. Damn, it was colder than a well-digger’s ass. If he could have willed green grass to sprout up right through the snow, he would have done it.

Wes laughed again. “If you don’t believe me, just ask Kate,” he said lightly.

Lincoln happened to like Kate, even if she was a “light-skirt,” as his old-fashioned mother put it, but he wasn’t about to put any questions to her, especially when it came to something that personal.

He was silent until they entered the barn, now nearly dark. Both of them knew every inch of the place, and neither of them hesitated to let their eyes adjust to the lack of light.

“Thanks,” Lincoln said awkwardly. “For the tree, I mean.”

Wes found his horse and opened the stall door, began saddling up. “That was for Gracie,” he said. “You want me to stop by Willand’s Mercantile and get some presents for those other kids?”

The offer touched Lincoln. “No,” he said, his voice sounding gruff. “Ma laid in a good supply of stuff before she left. There’ll be plenty to go around.”

Wes nodded. “That’s good,” he said.

“I guess you must have seen Ma recently?” Lincoln ventured. Their mother was a sore spot between them; Lincoln accepted that she was a little on the irritating side, while Wes still seemed to think she ought to change anytime now. “I dropped her off at the depot myself, and there was no sign of you.”

There was no humor in Wes’s chuckle this time. “She sent Fred Willand’s boy, Charlie, around to the newspaper office with a note. ’Course, I’d have lit a cigar with it if it hadn’t been for Gracie.”

Lincoln frowned. Just as their mother wasn’t fixing to change, Wes wasn’t, either. Both of them were waiting for the other to see the error of their ways and repent like a convert at a tent meeting, and that would happen on the proverbial cold day in hell. “You think it’s wrong, letting Gracie believe in this Saint Nicholas fella?”

Wes lowered the stirrup, gave the saddle a yank to make sure it was secure, then swung up. “She’s a child,” he said. Lincoln couldn’t make out his features in the shadows. “Children need to believe in things while they can. I’ll leave the mule here for a day or two, if it’s all the same to you.”

Lincoln nodded, stepped forward, hoping in vain for a better look at his brother’s face, and took hold of the reins to stop Wes from riding out. “Do you believe in anything, Wes?” he asked, struck by how much the answer mattered to him.

Wes sighed. “I believe in Kate. I believe in five-card
stud and whiskey and the sacred qualities of a good cigar. I believe in Gracie and—damn it, I must be sobering up—I believe in your good judgment, little brother. Use it. Don’t let that schoolmarm get away.”

“I’ve only known her since yesterday,” Lincoln reasoned. He was always the one inclined to reason. Wes just did whatever seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Maybe that’s long enough,” Wes answered.

Lincoln let go of the reins.

Wes executed a jaunty salute, there in the shadows, and rode toward the door of the barn, ducking his head as he passed under it.

“Rub that horse down when you get back to town,” Lincoln called after his brother. “Don’t just leave him standing at the hitching post in front of the saloon.”

Wes didn’t answer; maybe he hadn’t heard.

More likely, he’d heard fine. He just hadn’t felt called upon to bother with a reply.

T
HE TURKEY CARCASSES HAD BEEN
trussed with twine and tied to a high branch in a tree so they’d stay cold and the wolves and coyotes wouldn’t get them. Looking out the window as she stood at the sink, Juliana watched the pale
forms sway in the thickening snow and the purple gathering of twilight.

She was certain she would never be hungry again.

Behind her, seated at the table, Tom Dancingstar puffed on a corncob pipe, making the air redolent with cherry-scented tobacco, while Joseph droned laboriously through the assigned three pages of a Charles Dickens novel. The other children had gathered in the front room near the fireplace; the last time Juliana had looked in on them, Theresa and Gracie were playing checkers, while Daisy examined one of Gracie’s dolls and Billy-Moses stacked wooden alphabet blocks, knocked them over and stacked them again.

The afternoon had dragged on, and Juliana wondered when Lincoln would come back into the house, when they’d get a chance to talk alone again, whether or not she ought to attempt to start supper.

It wasn’t that she didn’t
want
to cook. She hadn’t been allowed near the kitchen as a young girl—Cook hadn’t wanted a child underfoot—and every school she’d taught at until Stillwater Springs had provided meals in a common dining room.

Now, resurrected by Joseph’s account, the image of last
Christmas’s burned turkey rose in her mind. They’d managed to save some of it and eaten around the charred parts. After that, probably tired of oatmeal and boiled beans, the construction of which Juliana had been able to discern by pouring over an old cookery book, Theresa and Mary Rose had taken to preparing most of the meals.

A snapping sound made Juliana jump, turn quickly.

Joseph had closed the Dickens novel smartly. “Finished,” he said. “Can—
May
I go out and help Tom with the chores?”

Juliana blinked. A fine teacher
she
was—for all she knew, Joseph might have been reading from the back of a medicine bottle instead of a book. She had no idea whether he’d stumbled over any of the words, or lost track of the flow of the narrative and had to begin again, the way he often did.

So she bluffed.

“Tell me what happened in the story,” she said.

Joseph was ready. “This woman named Nancy got herself beat to death by that Bill Sykes fella.”

He’d been reading from
Oliver Twist
, then.

“He was a bad’un,” Tom remarked seriously. “That Sykes, I mean.”

“He was indeed,” Juliana agreed. “You may help with the chores, Joseph.”

Tom sighed, rose to his feet. “You reckon you could start that story over from the first, next time you read?” he asked the boy. “I’d like to know what led up to a poor girl winding up in such a fix.”

Joseph would have balked at the request had it come from Juliana. Since it came from Tom instead, he beamed and said, “Sure.”

“When?” Tom asked, starting for the back door, bent on getting the chores done, his pipe caught between his teeth.

“Maybe after supper,” Joseph answered.

Supper.
Renewed anxiety rushed through Juliana.

And Tom gave his trademark chuckle. The man probably couldn’t read, at least not well enough to tackle Dickens, but he soon proved he
could
read minds.

“I’ll fry up some eggs when we’re through in the barn,” he told Juliana. “And Mrs. Creed put up some bear-meat preserves last fall—mighty good, mixed in with fried potatoes.”

Bear-meat preserves?
That sounded about as appetizing to Juliana as the naked turkeys dangling from the tree branch outside, but she managed not to make a face.

“You have enough to do,” she said, with a bright confidence she most certainly didn’t feel. “I can fry eggs.”

“No, you can’t,” Joseph argued benignly. “Remember when…?”

“Joseph.”

The boy shrugged both shoulders, and he and Tom let in a rush of cold air opening the door to go out.

The instant they were gone, Juliana hurried to the front room and beckoned to Theresa with a crooked finger.

Theresa obediently left her checker game and Gracie to approach.

“Quick,” Juliana whispered, fraught with a strange urgency. “Come and show me how to fry eggs!”

W
HEN
L
INCOLN CAME IN WITH
an armload of firewood, he found Juliana and Theresa side by side in front of the stove, working away, and the kitchen smelled of savory things—eggs, potatoes frying in onions, some kind of meat. Gracie was busy setting the table.

His stomach grumbled. The venison stew had worn off a while ago.