The Christmas Brides (21 page)

Juliana shifted in her chair. Folded her hands in her lap. “My brother would probably come here and drag me back to Denver by the hair if I did,” she said, and she sounded almost rueful. “Your brother?”
Yes, fool,
taunted an impatient voice in his head.
You know what a brother is. You have two of them yourself, three if you count poor Dawson, lying out there in the cemetery next to your pa.

A fetching blush played on her cheek bones. Lincoln tried to imagine her scrubbing floors, beating rugs, ironing shirts and emptying chamber pots, and found it impossible. For all that her dress had seen better days, there was something innately aristocratic about this woman, something finely honed in the way she held herself, even sitting in a chair.

“Clay had enough trouble reconciling himself to my being a teacher,” Juliana said after a few awkward moments during which she swallowed a lot. “So far he's left
me alone, but he'd have a fit if I took to keeping house. Unless I was married—”

Her voice fell away, and the blush intensified. Now, Lincoln suspected,
she
was the one wanting to bite off her tongue.

“What if you were a governess?” he ventured, lowering the spoon back to his bowl even though he felt half-starved.

She shrugged both shoulders and looked miserable. “I suppose he'd see that as an improvement over teaching in an Indian School,” she allowed.

Lincoln wanted to close his hand over hers and squeeze some comfort into her, but he didn't. “You do everything your brother tells you?” he asked, surprised.

“No,” she said, meeting his eyes at last, trying to smile. He'd intended no criticism by his question, and to his great relief, she seemed to know that. “If that were so, I'd be a wealthy widow now, living in Denver.”

Lincoln raised one eyebrow, waited.

She did some more blushing. “Clay wanted me to marry his business partner. I'd resigned myself to that, even though I was going to Normal School. But then my grand mother died and I'd graduated, and I realized I wanted to
use
what I'd learned.”

There was more she wasn't saying, Lincoln knew that, but he didn't push. The situation seemed too fragile for that. Slowly, to give her a chance to recover a little, he looked down at his bowl, stuck his spoon into the stew and began to eat.

“This Clay yahoo wouldn't like your being a governess?” he asked care fully, when some time had passed.

She laughed softly, probably at the term
yahoo
applied to her no-doubt powerful brother. “Probably not.”

“Why? Because he'd think it was beneath you?” Again, there was no scorn in the inquiry.

“No,” Juliana said, with quiet bitterness. “He'd think it was beneath
him,
and he's already despairing of my reputation. To Clay, my teaching other people's children—especially
Indian
children—is tantamount to serving drinks in a saloon.”

Again, Lincoln waited. Some process was unfolding, and it had to be let alone.

“It's starting to snow,” Juliana said wistfully, her gaze turned to the window again.

“What will you do, then?” Lincoln asked. “After you leave here, I mean?”

She sighed. Met his gaze. “I don't know,” she confessed.

“I guess we could get married,” Lincoln said.

Juliana opened her mouth, closed it again.

Lincoln felt crimson heat climbing his neck, pulsing along the under side of his jawline. “You heard Fred Willand say it in the mercantile yesterday,” he said, his voice raspy. “I've been advertising for a house keeper or a governess, or both, for better than a year. Failing that, I'd settle for a wife.”

Juliana began to laugh. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, and she put a hand to her mouth to silence herself.

“I didn't mean ‘settle,' exactly—”

“Yes, you did,” Juliana said. Her look softened. “You loved Gracie's mother a lot, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Lincoln answered readily.

“So much that you can't make room in your heart for another woman,” Juliana speculated. “That's why you'd marry a stranger, someone answering a newspaper advertisement. Because you wouldn't have to care for that person.”

She wasn't accusing him of anything; he knew that by her tone and her bearing. Most likely, the words stung the way they did because they were only too true.

“And that person wouldn't have to care for me,” he replied.

“But you'd expect her to—to share your bed?”

“Sooner or later, yes,” Lincoln said. “That's part of being a wife, isn't it?”

Juliana propped an elbow on the table, cupped her chin in her palm. They might have been discussing hog prices, she was so unruffled and matter-of-fact. “I suppose,” she agreed.

Before things could go any further, Tom and Joseph banged in through the back door, their faces white-slashed with broad smiles.

“Christmas dinner's outside,” Tom said. Then his glance traveled between Juliana and Lincoln, and he sobered a little.

Joseph, being so young, and buoyed by the pride of accomplishment, didn't notice that they'd interrupted something, he and Tom. “We got two turkeys,” he announced proudly. “Tom's already gutted them, but we have to pluck them yet, and I might have to pick some buckshot out of the one I got.”

Juliana winced.

Lincoln smiled. Pushed back his chair and stood, carrying his bowl and spoon to the sink.

“Better have some stew,” he told Tom and the boy.

“And then I'll hear you read today's lesson,” Juliana told Joseph.

The boy's face fell briefly, then he smiled again. A deal, he must have decided, was a deal. Juliana had allowed him to skip his school work earlier so he could work with the men out on the range. Now she wanted her due.

“After I pluck the turkeys?”

“After you pluck the turkeys,” Juliana conceded with a fond sigh. “And you're not bringing those poor dead creatures into the house to do it.”

The command was down right wifely, and that pleased Lincoln, though he didn't let it show. The idea had taken root in his mind, and in Juliana's, too, and for now, that was enough.

Joseph's grin faltered a little. “Remember last Christmas, Miss Mitchell, when you tried to roast that turkey that farmer's wife gave us and it smoked so much that we had to open the doors and all the windows?”

“Thank you, Joseph,” Juliana said mildly, “for that reminder.”

Tom smiled at that.

Lincoln glanced at the windows, saw that the snow was coming down harder and faster. Through the flurries, he glimpsed his brother Wes riding up, leading a pack mule behind him, a huge pine tree bound to its back.

“I'll be damned,” he muttered with a low, throaty chuckle, and headed for the back door, pausing just long enough to put on his coat.

Wes wore no hat, and snow flakes gathered in his
dark chestnut hair and fringed his eye lashes. His grin was as white as the snowy ground, and even from ten feet away, Lincoln could smell the whiskey and cigar smoke on him.

“Ma said she'd have my hide if I didn't make sure Gracie had a Christmas tree,” Wes said cheer fully. “So here I am.”

Lincoln laughed and shook his head. “Did you happen to credit that there's another blizzard coming on and it'll be pitch-dark by the time you get back to town?”

“I've got enough whiskey in me to prevent any possibility of freezing,” Wes answered. He took a cheroot from the pocket of his scruffy coat, fitted at the waist like something a dandified gambler would wear, and clamped it between his perfect teeth. “Fact is, I might need a swallow or two before I head home, just the same.”

Dismounting, Wes went back to the mule and began untying the ropes that secured the Christmas tree to the animal. The lush, piney fragrance his motions stirred reminded Lincoln of their boyhood. They hadn't been raised to believe in Saint Nicholas, but there had always been fresh green boughs all over the house, and modest presents waiting at their places at the breakfast table on Christmas morning.

“Are you just going to stand there,” Wes grumped, grinning all the while, “or will you lend me a hand getting this tree into the house?”

“It's too wet to be in the house,” Lincoln said, sounding a mite wifely himself. “We'll set it in the woodshed, let it dry off a little.”

“Whatever you say, little brother,” Wes replied affably,
even though he was six inches shorter than Lincoln and only two years older. “Fred Willand told me when I stopped off at the mercantile to see if you'd gotten any mail—you didn't—that you've got a woman out here. That pretty teacher from the Indian School.”

Lincoln took hold of the sizable tree. It was a wonder the weight of the thing hadn't buckled that poor old mule's knees—he'd have to saw a good foot off the thing to stand it up in the front room. “Fred Willand,” he said, through the boughs, “gossips like an old woman.”

Wes laughed at that. “Hell,” he said, “if it weren't for Fred, I wouldn't know what you were up to half the time. It's not as if you ever stop by the saloon or the news pa per office to flap your jaws.”

“I don't have much time for flapping my jaws,” Lincoln answered. In spite of nearly losing the ranch because of Wes's well-intentioned mismanagement, he'd always loved his brother. After Dawson's death, the old man had taken his grief out on his second son, since Micah, being the eldest, would have given as good as he got. Lincoln, taking Dawson's place as the youngest in the family, had stayed clear of his pa and taken to following Tom Dancingstar every where he went.

Wes looked up, his eyes serious now. “Ma's gone,” he said. “I can feel the peace even from out here.”

Their mother didn't approve of Wes's drinking, his poker playing and cigar smoking, or the woman he loved, and she made that clear every time she got the opportunity. So Wes stayed away from the ranch house when she was around.

Lincoln started for the woodshed, dragging the
massive tree behind him. “Go on inside and have some of Tom's venison stew,” he called over one shoulder. “It's probably been a month since you've had a decent meal.”

“I wouldn't miss a chance to drag my eyeballs over a good-looking woman,” Wes responded.

Lincoln didn't dignify that with an answer, but it made him grin to himself just the same.

When he came out of the woodshed, he saw that Wes had left the horse and mule standing. Lincoln led them both into the barn, out of the icy wind, un saddled the horse, fed and watered both creatures, and rubbed them down the way he'd done with his own mount earlier.

He'd been doing things his brother should have done for as long as he could remember, but he didn't mind, because Wes was always the one who showed up at the most unlikely times with the most unlikely gifts.

 

A
LTHOUGH
J
ULIANA PUT ON A GOOD
show, she was shaken inside, and it wasn't just because Lincoln Creed had all but proposed marriage to her at his kitchen table a little while before. She might actually say yes, if he did, and that jarred her to the quick.

John Holden would have made a perfectly acceptable husband, despite his obnoxious daughters, but she'd refused him. Other men had tried to court her during the intervening years, too, though she'd discouraged them, as well. She'd always imagined that if she ever married, it would happen in a fit of wild, roman tic passion. She'd be swept off her feet, overcome with desire.

Lincoln stirred something in her, something almost
primal—that was undeniable. But wild, romantic passion? No.

On the other hand, she knew he was kind, generous. That he worked hard, was an attentive father and didn't judge people by the culture they'd been born into. That he let his suspenders loop at his sides in the mornings while he shaved.

She smiled at the image, even as Tom introduced her to Weston Creed, and Gracie ran shrieking for joy into the kitchen, hurling herself into her laughing uncle's arms.

He swung her around. “Brought you a Christmas tree,” he told her. “Your papa is putting it in the woodshed to dry off a little. What's Saint Nicholas going to bring you this year?”

Gracie paused at the question and her lower lip trembled. A troubled expression flickered across her perfect face.

“I hope he doesn't come,” she confided, in a whisper that carried.

Weston looked genuinely puzzled, though Juliana suspected everything he said and did was exaggerated. “Why would you hope for a thing like that?”

“Because he doesn't know the others are here,” she said, near tears. “And I don't want any presents if Billy-Moses and Daisy and Joseph and Theresa don't get some, too.”

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
L
INCOLN 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 ex changed 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.

Some thing 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 water color 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 un daunted. “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 un com fort able 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 along side 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 eye lashes 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 thick headed 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 news paper 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 fire place; 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 under foot—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 trade mark 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 pre serves last fall—mighty good, mixed in with fried potatoes.”

Bear-meat pre serves?
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.

“Where have you been, Papa?” Gracie asked, all but singing the words, and dancing to them, too. “Did you ride all the way to town with Uncle Wes so he wouldn't get lost in the snow?”

Lincoln smiled and shook his head no. “Wes's horse
knows the way home, even if your uncle doesn't,” he said. Actually, he'd been in the Gainers' cabin, admiring the spindly little Christmas tree Ben had put up for his child-heavy wife and drinking weak coffee. And at once avoiding and anticipating his return to the house, to Juliana.

Gracie nodded sagely. “That's a good horse,” she said.

Lincoln proceeded through the kitchen, then the front room, and along the hallway to Juliana's door. Tonight, he thought, entering with the wood and kindling, he wouldn't have to lie awake worrying that she and the little boy and girl were cold.