Without Words (35 page)

Bret grinned at her. “The thing is I still want to kill him, which is to say I understand how you feel.”

“You want to buy this from your father,” Hassie said, making the same kind of sweeping motion Bret had earlier.

“A year ago, I’d never have thought twice. It’s a good offer. We’d be paying about what the government sells land for, and the government is fresh out of land this good.”

No, it was not a good offer. Instead of trying to squeeze more money out of his son by selling him land, Mr. Sterling ought to change his will, leave this to Bret and the land across the road to Will. Their father should let each of them work the land while he was still alive and playing with his horses. Hassie decided to keep that opinion to herself.

“What is different this year?” she signed instead.

“You are. I know you don’t want to live this close to them, and you’re probably right. Will would never make an amiable neighbor.”

“He feels g-u-i-l-t-y because of what he did to you.”

“Mary broke our engagement months before he married her. He has no reason to feel guilty.”

Maybe he had no reason, but as little as Hassie knew these people she suspected both Will and Mary had intended to hurt Bret, punish him for following his conscience instead of doing what they wanted him to do.

She changed the subject. “Will your father lose the farm without the money?”

“No, but he’ll have to sell some of the horses.”

“You want this land. You will be unhappy if you say no.”

“If my lovely wife augments my paltry funds with her fortune, we can buy something good enough to make me happy and far enough away to make you happy.”

Hassie put one icy hand on each side of his face and touched her lips to his. Heat where they touched and cold everywhere else contrasted in interesting ways. He ended the kiss and rubbed her nose with his. “I’ll tell Father what we’re going to do right after Christmas. He’ll try to change my mind so we might as well have a few quiet days first.”

Hassie laced her fingers through his as they started back, hoping Bret wouldn’t change his mind with or without importuning from his family and wondering what she would do if he did.

A
DMITTING IT CAME
hard, but Hassie did have to admit Bret’s family was not as terrible as she had imagined. In fact Caroline, accepting, curious, and laughing, already felt like a friend. The girl now carried paper and pencil in a dress pocket all the time.

“For when your slate isn’t right to hand,” she said.

Since Mrs. Sterling treated everyone from her husband to her grandchildren with the same unfailing politeness and consideration, her reserved manner no longer intimidated Hassie. Mr. Sterling’s bluff heartiness did put her off a bit. Was it real, or was he hoping to influence her in favor of accepting the land and handing over Bret’s money?

Mary and Will, though? Living here with those two would never be comfortable. This morning, sitting on the other side of the breakfast table, one on each side of their children, they made a perfect picture. Mary helped five-year-old Charlotte, called Lottie by everyone except her grandparents, with her food. Will didn’t need to give nine-year-old George much help, but he did keep an eye on the boy and murmur a few words to him occasionally.

The sight didn’t loosen the hard knot of dislike Hassie felt in the slightest. Will looked up, saw Bret’s attention focused on Mr. Sterling, and raked his eyes over Hassie in a deliberately insulting way that only increased her aversion.

Mary showed no sign of noticing her husband’s bad manners, her lovely face set in its usual serene expression. Hassie tried to work up a modicum of guilt over her prejudice against the woman and couldn’t. Maybe she could get over the bad feelings if Mary and Will showed any of the small signs of the kind of affection she had observed between Gabe and Belle Chapman or Dr. and Mrs. MacGregor, but so far everything between them had been all Sterling-like reserve and politeness.

Bret turned toward her. “H-a-m? B-a-c-o-n?”

“Ham.” Hassie suppressed the urge to show him more than a small sign of affection, wanting to believe what he felt for her was more than fondness, more than he felt for Mary or ever had.

Will had to comment on what Bret had done. “Is that your sign language? That looks different than what your wife does.”

“I’m not very good at it yet,” Bret said. “She uses words and phrases. I can’t do much more than spell.”

“You don’t have to do it at all. You can talk.”

Bret shrugged. “It’s how I learned.”

“And it gives you a way to talk about us behind our backs with us sitting right here.”

“Yes, it does.”

“I like your sister,” Hassie signed. “You should check for bounty on your brother. Maybe he has worth.”

Bret made a sign anyone could recognize with one hand. Zero.

“What did she say?”

“She said she’s happy to finally meet my family.”

Hassie patted Bret’s leg under the table. He put his hand over hers and held it there.

George blurted into the silence that followed. “Father and I are going for the Christmas tree together after breakfast. He’s going to show me how to use an ax.”

“I want to come too,” Lottie said.

“Ladies don’t use axes,” Will told her, “and it’s cold out. If you bundled up enough to stay warm, you’d fall down on your back like a turtle and be stuck until we’re done with the tree and can pick you up.”

“I won’t fall down,” Lottie said, the beginnings of a pout showing. “I want to come too.”

“You’d better let her go,” Caroline said. “Without a feminine eye to help you choose the tree, you’ll drag home something flat on one side or with a scrawny top again.”

The idea of cutting a tree and bringing it in the house struck Hassie as so fascinating, she barely noted one of those knowing, married looks finally passing between Will and Mary, and there was nothing particularly affectionate about it anyway.

“Lottie and I will both bundle up,” Mary said. “We’ll choose a perfect tree and stand back while our menfolk handle the ax.”

“Christmas tree?” Hassie signed to Bret. “What is a Christmas tree? What do you do with it?”

Caroline hardly waited until Hassie stopped signing. “What’s she saying? What’s she saying?”

“She’s curious about the Christmas tree,” Bret told his sister. To Hassie he said, “It’s a pine tree we bring in the parlor and hang gewgaws all over.”

“Oh, you’ll love it,” Caroline said. “It makes the house smell so good. Decorating it is fun, and it’s so beautiful when we’re finished.” She threw Bret a quelling look. “Even if some people have no appreciation for gewgaws.”

Hassie’s hands flew. “I never heard of such a thing. Where did you get such an idea?”

Bret said, “Mother read about it in some magazine that had a story about what Queen Victoria and Albert did....”

“Prince Albert,” Mrs. Sterling said.

“Prince Albert. When they married, he introduced her to the custom of bringing a tree into the house at Christmas and decorating it. He was German....”

“A Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.”

“As Mother says.” Bret didn’t roll his eyes, but Hassie could tell he wanted to. “So as word spread, people who admire the royal family began to adopt the custom.”

Abandoning conversation limited to Bret, Hassie changed to writing on her slate.
“When do you decorate it? May I help? What kind of decorations? Do you have to make them? I will help make decorations.”

Caroline laughed, took the slate, and showed it to her mother. “We’ll bring down the boxes of decorations from the attic after breakfast if you like, and we’ll decorate the tree this evening, and we expect you to help. Doing it by lamplight is best, and when we’re done we put out the lamps, light the candles on the tree, and sing Christmas carols.”

Whole boxes of decorations? Candles? Hassie took the slate back.
“How big is the tree?”

“Oh, almost to the ceiling. There has to be room on top for a star—like the Star of Bethlehem, you know.”

A tree almost as tall as the ceiling. She couldn’t sing carols, but Hassie had every intention of hanging gewgaws.

B
RET SANK INTO
a chair near the fire and watched his father and Will struggle to get the tree into the parlor and anchored in place. Servants did not deal with Christmas trees and neither, thank God, did men with recently healed broken bones and bullet wounds.

Finished with their manly roles, the two men headed for the sanctum of the study and whiskey. They would grumble and complain but return when summoned to hang decorations on the highest branches the women couldn’t reach.

Bret didn’t want whiskey and didn’t want more pressure about the land from his father. He propped his leg on a footstool, feeling like grumbling himself.

Watching hours of tree decorating and admiring the thing afterward would be a lot easier after an uplifting bout in bed with Hassie, but prying her away from the boxes of decorations, much less the tree, would be impossible. Hassie’s enthusiasm dwarfed even Lottie’s.

Proving him wrong, Hassie tore herself away from the tree long enough to fetch a cup of willow bark tea and a pillow to go between his leg and the footstool. She left him feeling half pleasantly coddled and half like an old man with gout.

His mother supervised Leda as she cleared a table top and set out hot cider and cookies. Caroline, Mary, and the children pulled decorations from their boxes, unwrapped them, and reminisced about past Christmases.

Enthralled by the tree, Hassie paid no attention to the others. She touched the end of one branch after another, a look of awe on her face. Finally, prodded by Caroline, she began tying decorations on the middle branches.

The scent of pine resin filled the room. The women’s voices blended into a soothing background sound. Bret’s mood lifted as he watched. They made a pretty sight. Even his mother looked relaxed, smiling as she unwrapped a glass ornament and held it to the light. Caroline and Hassie worked side by side, their dark heads close together. Mary helped Lottie, kept an eye on George.

He loved them all in different ways. Surprised by the thought, Bret examined it as he continued to study the women. Did he? He knew Gabe and Belle’s children better than his niece and nephew. Sensing their father’s hostility, George and Lottie kept their distance. The blood tie brought obligation, but love?

Loving Mary had been a constant in his life for as long as he could remember. Maybe the emotion had lingered without purpose or support because there had been nothing to take its place until now.

Hassie stretched high, her nimble fingers tying a bow on a branch she shouldn’t be able to reach. Finished there, she bent to take another decoration from the box at her feet. Lithe, less curvy than Mary or his buxom little sister, she moved with a supple grace they didn’t have.

Except for occasions like this, Mary and Caroline directed servants in their work. They didn’t do physical labor. No servants had helped Hassie keep the Petty house or care for a dying old man. This summer she’d spent days on horseback, lifted her saddle on and off her mare, carried supplies—and run across the prairie afterward for the joy of it.

Given the chance, other women would develop the physical strength, but how many ever had the inner resilience, the strength of spirit that kept joy alive no matter how oppressive the circumstances? He didn’t have it. He’d stolen some from her, and without her, it would fade away.

Hassie laughed, and every other thought flew from his mind as the sound shivered through him. Tonight she wore a dark green dress, a lace collar high at her throat. A vision of another green dress rose in his mind—a lighter shade, the skirt swirling, translucent in the sun. Her crow’s-wing black hair shone in sunlight then, gleamed in lamplight now.

The same force that had lured him into a ridiculous game of tag on the prairie pulled Bret out of the chair and toward the tree. Why wait to be summoned and grumble over helping when he could volunteer?

Intent on tying a painted wooden horse in place, Hassie didn’t notice him behind her until she backed into him. She turned and tipped her head. “We will always have a Christmas tree in our house.”

“We will,” Bret said. “And we’re going to have mistletoe too.”

He kissed her, knowing she wouldn’t pull away with dignified reserve. She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him back, her body melting against his.

“What is m-i-s-t-l-e-t-o-e?” she signed when they parted.

Bret laughed. Surprise flashed on his mother’s face. Caroline giggled, and Mary hustled the children to the table for cookies.

“I’ll show you later,” he said.

B
RET STEPPED OUT
into the cold with Gunner’s food hours later than usual. Still entranced with the Christmas tree, Hassie had merely nodded when he mentioned feeding the dog.

Gunner appeared before Bret whistled for him, prompting a twinge of guilt. Until tonight, he had been careful to take Gunner to his bed as soon as Sam Olson finished putting the Thoroughbreds in their stalls. If the dog started hunting on his own in this area, too many people, including Sam and Will, would be happy to shoot him and pretend they mistook him for a coyote.

Tonight, though, Bret had followed the rest of the family from the dinner table to the parlor, unwilling to miss the look of wonder on Hassie’s face as his father lit the candles on the Christmas tree one by one and extinguished the lamps. Bret had stayed through the first carols, his arm around Hassie, feeling her humming the songs.

If he hurried, he might get back before they stopped singing, put out the candles, and relit the lamps. Holding Hassie like that in the semi-darkness, his cynical attitude toward the tree and the fuss had dissolved. He wanted to get back, share more of her pleasure with things new to her.

“When we get our own place, there’s going to be a bed in the kitchen for you,” Bret told Gunner. “Now that she’s got the hang of it, she’s better about the dream than you are, but you have other talents.”