Christmas Mail Order Bride - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides: Book 1) (11 page)

Anders only reappeared after supper ended and long after dark. He rode up the driveway and left his horse with one of the ranch hands at the barn door before going straight upstairs to his room and collapsing onto the bed, fully dressed and reeking of liquor. Penelope slept next to him, but underneath the blankets in her night dress. Once again, she woke before him and descended to breakfast before he regained consciousness. The same pattern followed for the rest of the week, with Anders rousing himself just enough to throw back a few drinks before he left for town again. Each time, he claimed to be meeting friends to play cards in town. Penelope, his parents, or anyone else questioned him or challenged him. They all breathed a sigh of relief when he left, and they gave the same sigh when he returned home to crash down insensibly onto his bed. Each person secretly rejoiced when he spared them the unpleasantness of his company, and Penelope doubly rejoiced that he never showed the slightest inclination to harass Caleb.

The same sequence of events continued, until one evening, when Penelope sat in the parlor with her parents-in-law after supper, passing the usual pleasantries, they heard a clamor outside in the yard. The three hastened to the window in time to see Anders, standing in the driveway with his horse’s reins dangling in his hand, accosting Caleb, who clearly intended nothing more than to take the horse from him and lead it away to the barn. As they watched, Anders swung the leather thongs of the reins around in his hand and struck at Caleb with a slashing blow. The whipping leather straps cut across Caleb’s shoulder, and his arm flew up to protect his head. With a cry, Penelope leapt toward the door, but Matilda detained her with a hand on her arm. “Don’t!” she cautioned her. “You’ll only make it worse.” Realizing the truth of the statement, Penelope returned to the window, holding her breath as she watched.

Anders brought his hand back again and delivered another stinging blow before Caleb retreated in the direction of the barn. In his haste to pursue the younger man, Anders stumbled in the gravel of the driveway and sprawled onto his face, giving Caleb enough time to escape into the dark doorway of the barn. When Anders regained his feet and some of his equanimity, he hollered across the yard toward the bunkhouse, and another man came out and took his horse from him. Then Anders spun on his heel and stalked up to the house, where he sequestered himself in his room without deigning to speak to anyone on the way.

Penelope expected him to follow his usual routine of going to town the next day but to the chagrin of everyone else in the house, he not only remained at home, but exercised his own manifest authority by sticking his nose into everything that everyone did, demanding explanations for everything he found amiss. Unfortunately, he found virtually everything amiss, and regaled everyone with admonitions and threats about executing their assigned duties according to his specification. Near lunchtime, Penelope found her mother-in-law in tears and her father-in-law hiding from his son in his own private study. Upon investigation, she found Anders tearing down some of their most diligently erected Christmas decorations, throwing things into boxes and even smashing the Nativity pieces Matilda so carefully set out on the entrance hall table.

“Anders!” Penelope gasped, when she saw him. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting rid of this trash!” he snarled. “I don’t want it, and we don’t need it. I’m getting rid of it.”

“But you can’t!” she wailed.

“Of course, I can!” he asserted. “It’s cluttering up the place, and it looks ridiculous! It’s stupid and ugly and I can’t stand it!”

“But it’s Christmas!” she squeaked. “You can’t!”

“We don’t need it,” he declared, and continued with his project.

The sight so distressed Penelope that she couldn’t argue any further. She fled from the room and hid in the scullery until he vanished upstairs again. He didn’t emerge for lunch and George remained secluded, so Penelope shared a tense and silent meal with Matilda. Only Janet seemed relatively unruffled by the disturbance. She continued in her reserved routine, serving and cleaning and attending to the needs of the occupants of the house without imposing herself on anyone. During lunch, Penelope marveled at her unique qualities, especially in light of Caleb’s disclosures about her. Penelope decided to seek her out after lunch, and according to her plan, she made her way to the kitchen after parting from her mother-in-law.

She found the stocky housekeeper cooking over the big stove, stirring a cauldron of something fragrant with a long wooden spoon. She started in surprise when Penelope entered the kitchen. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

“Oh, nothing,” Penelope began. “I just wondered if you needed any help in here. I’d like to help you, if I can.”

“I don’t need any help, ma’am,” Janet asserted. “But if you want to work in here for a while, I’ll be getting out the recipes for some of the Christmas cakes and cookies later. You can help me with those, if you want.”

“Oh, I’d love to!” Penelope gushed. “Do you have special Christmas recipes?”

Janet nodded. “They’re the ones we used to use when Mr. Anders was a little boy. We haven’t used them in a long time, certainly not since he grew up. He doesn’t cotton to that sort of thing nowadays. But the Missus said you might like to use them now. She said you were
hoppin’ mad about Christmas, and she thought you would appreciate some of the old-time recipes. Because you’re here, you can help me make them.”

“Oh, thank you!” Penelope exclaimed.

“That’s the way!” Janet nodded to her, and Penelope noted once more that she stopped just short of smiling. “Now then, if you’ll get that wooden box down from the shelf over there—that’s right—in the very back of it is the Christmas section. Good. Now read through them. Call them out to me, and I’ll tell you which ones to take out.”

Dutifully, Penelope read out the titles on the cards, and Janet told her which ones to take out and place on the table and which ones to put back into the box. The recipes sounded marvelous to Penelope. They included German
stollen and pecan pie and marzipan cookies and triple chocolate torte. After the two women amassed their selection of recipe cards on the table, Janet ordered Penelope to put on an apron. Then, as Janet stirred her soup, she instructed Penelope in the assemblage of the ingredients for the items they intended to bake. After fetching and measuring this, that, and the other thing from the pantry and the scullery and the shed, Penelope began the painstaking process of mixing and stirring and rolling. She enjoyed kneading the stollen dough immensely, the rocking and punching motion permeating her body with a profound satisfaction. She chatted with Janet as she worked.

“What do you usually do for Christmas, Janet?” she inquired.

“Oh, I usually don’t get the day off,” the woman revealed. “I’m usually here, serving Christmas dinner and tending the house. Mrs. West can’t do without me, and if they have any guests over, I’m usually needed here. If I get a day off, I go home to my people sometimes, but it happens so rarely that I usually just stay here. The journey takes too long, anyway. By the time I got there, it would be time to turn around and come back. Unless I had the night before or after off as well, there would be no point in going at all, because I wouldn’t make it there in time, and I would have to turn around to come back before I even got there. I haven’t been home in a long time. Anyway, my son is here, so it’s better if I just stay here. At least I can be close to him here.”

“Are you very close to Caleb?” Penelope asked tentatively.

“Close to him?” Janet raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you mean by that. I’m here and he’s here, so we’re close to each other in that way.”

“I mean, are you very close emotionally?” Penelope found herself confused by this conversation. “I mean, do you feel very close to each other?”

Janet tilted her head on one side. “I still don’t know what you mean. We don’t spend much time together, if that’s what you mean. We both work all the time. When we’re here, we don’t see much of each other, and when we do, we never talk to each other. That’s just the way it is.”

“That’s what Caleb told me,” Penelope confessed. “He said you have some kind of unspoken agreement not to talk to each other around the ranch.”

Janet considered her. “That’s more than he’s ever said to me about it. It just sort of worked out that way. I don’t know why, except that Mr. Anders doesn’t like Caleb all that much, so Caleb thinks it’s better to keep quiet. That’s about the only thing I can figure out.”

“Do you know why he doesn’t like Caleb?” Penelope pressed her. “I just can’t understand it, myself.”

Janet shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t make much difference why he doesn’t like him. He doesn’t like him, and that’s the end of it. He won’t rest until he gets rid of Caleb, and who knows? That might be the best thing for everyone.”

“You don’t really think that, do you?” Penelope gaped at her. “You don’t really think it would be the best
thing if he left, do you? You might never see him again.”

“Maybe not,” Janet admitted. “But at least he’d be out of danger somewhere else. And he’d probably make more money, too. I don’t know.”

“Well, I hope for all our sakes that he stays here,” Penelope declared. “I would hate to see him run off. It would be a tragedy, especially if the only reason is that Anders doesn’t like him. That’s no good reason to deprive someone of their livelihood.”

“Never mind,” Janet changed the subject. “Let’s get the
stollen into the oven, and then we can start on the fruit cake.”

They worked together to lift the
stollen onto the baking sheet to put it into the oven, with Penelope cradling one end of the thick roll of dough and Janet manipulating the other end. They giggled and joked as they draped it into place. Flour coated Penelope’s arms up to the elbow, and butter smudged her face, but she laughed delightedly at the awkward chore, so pleased was she to be sharing this informal time with Janet and, in her mind, coming closer to the woman in her own environment. In the middle of the most delicate part of the operation, the door banged open, and a harsh voice ringing through the kitchen startled both of them so much, they almost dropped the stollen onto the floor.

“What are you doing in here?” Anders bellowed.

“Oh, Anders!” Penelope cried, making every effort to stabilize her portion of the dough. “Just wait a moment! We almost have this positioned on the tray. Then I can explain everything to you.”

But Anders didn’t wait until she finished. He burst into the kitchen and thumped both his fists down on the table. “I told you before to stay away from that woman!” He waved a derisive hand in the direction of Janet.

Clumsily, Penelope laid her end of the stollen in its place and Janet whisked the tray away to the oven as Penelope addressed her husband. “It’s alright, Anders. I was just helping her with the Christmas baking.”

“It is not alright!” he shouted. “I told you to stay away from her, and here I find you doing her work for her and chatting away like old friends! You’ll be sorry you crossed me!”

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong!” Penelope insisted. “We’re getting ready for Christmas.”

“Christmas!” he roared. “All I hear around here anymore is Christmas! If you learn anything in this house, it’ll be that you’ll obey my orders. I told you to stay away from
those
people, and you’ll do as I say, or you’ll suffer the consequences! And you!” He rounded on Janet. “You better keep your place, if you want to keep working here. If you step out of line, you’ll find yourself on the street!”

“I can’t stay locked up in the bedroom all the time,” Penelope interrupted, drawing Anders’s attention back to herself. “I have to get out and talk to some people some of the time. I’ll go crazy if I don’t. Janet’s the only person around to talk to, besides your parents. I don’t see anything wrong with talking to her.”

“That’s just your problem!” he screamed. “You don’t see anything wrong with it. Well, I’m your husband, and I do see something wrong with it, and I told you not to do it, and you did it anyway! If you can’t see something wrong with
that
, then I don’t know what’s going to get it through your thick head, except maybe a good hiding!”

“Anders, you wouldn’t dare!” she gasped in horror.

“Wouldn’t I?” he shrieked. “Get out of here! Get up to your room, before I lose my temper!”

“But we aren’t finished with the baking yet!” she complained.

“You’re finished!” he shrilled. “You’re doubly finished! And look at the state of you! You’re covered in flour! You look like a blamed serving woman! It’s a scandal! Get out of here, before I forget myself and make you really sorry!”

His excessive rage made her think twice about arguing further. She untied her apron and threw it onto the table, muttering, “I’m sorry, Janet.”

Anders interrupted even this miniscule communication with another screech of “Get out!” and flinging his finger toward the door. As Penelope reached the doorway, George and Matilda appeared in it.

“What’s going on?” George asked.

“I give the orders around here!” Anders cried at the top of his voice. “This
woman
…!” he curled his lip at Penelope. “…deliberately contravened my orders and is in here doing a servant’s work!”

“What is she doing?” George ventured curiously.

“She’s baking!” Anders squealed. “She’s doing Christmas baking!”