The Christmas Brides (20 page)

Sadness and frustration swept over Juliana, and it must have shown in her face, because, to her utter surprise, Lincoln laid a hand on her shoulder.

Some thing startling and fiery raced through her at his touch. She nearly flinched, and she saw by his expression that he'd noticed.

“Sit down,” he said, watching with amusement in his dark eyes as she blushed with an oddly delicious mortification. “I'll get you some coffee.”

T
HE SKY WAS A CLEAR,
heart-piercing blue, and sunshine glittered on fields of snow rolling to the base of the foothills and crowning the trees. Creek water shimmered beneath sheets of ice, and the cattle, more than a hundred of them, milled and bawled, impatient for the first load of hay to hit the ground. Lincoln sat in the saddle, his horse restless beneath him, and pulled his hat down over his eyes against the dazzling glare.

He watched as Joseph climbed into the back of the sleigh—the snow was too deep out on the range for a wagon to pass—while Tom soothed the two enormous draft horses hitched to it.

Ben Gainer, a young ranch hand who'd stayed on for the winter because his wife, Rose-of-Sharon, was soon to be delivered of their first child, rode up along side Lincoln on a spotted pony, a shovel in one hand.

“Best break up some of that ice on the creek,” Gainer said.

Lincoln nodded, swung down from the saddle. It was there to be done, as his father used to say. When cattle weren't hungry, they were thirsty, and they weren't smart enough to eat snow or trample the ice with their hooves so they could get to the water beneath. He went to the sleigh, helped himself to one of the pickaxes Tom had brought along.

Wishing, as he some times did, that he'd chosen an easier life—Beth's father had offered him a partnership in his Boston law firm—Lincoln went to the creek side and began shattering ice an inch thick, two in some places.

If he'd stayed in Boston, he reflected, Beth might have lived, the two babies, too. Gracie would have been able to go to a real school, too.

Inwardly, Lincoln sighed. Left in Wes's incapable hands, the ranch would be gone by now, his mother displaced, Tom Dancingstar ripped up by the roots and left to wander in a world that not only underestimated him, but often scorned him, too. All because he was an Indian.

He'd been caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, Lincoln had, and if he'd made the wrong choice, there was no changing it now. The ranch wasn't making him rich, but he'd gotten it back in the black with a lot of hard work and Creed determination.

But what a price he'd paid.

Tom appeared beside him, toting another pickax. Sent Gainer and Joseph back to the hay barn, nearer the house, where the two remaining ranch hands, Art Bentley and Mike Falstaff, waited to load the sleigh up again.

“You look mighty grim this mornin',” Tom observed.

“Hard work,” Lincoln said without looking at his friend.

“You've been working since you were nine. I don't think it's that.”

Lincoln stopped to catch his breath, sighed. Cattle
nosed up behind him, scenting the water. “You going to insist on chatting?” he asked.

Tom chuckled. Cattle pushed past them to get to the creek, so they moved a little farther down the line, out of their way. “Something's thrown you, that's for sure. I reckon it's Miss Juliana Mitchell.”

Lincoln felt a surge of touchy exasperation, which was unlike him. He started swinging the pickax again. “I might have had a thought or two where she's concerned,” he admitted.

Tom laid a hand on his arm. “She needs a place to light. You need a wife and Gracie needs a mother. Why don't you just offer for Juliana and be done with it?”

A growl of frustration escaped Lincoln. He drove the pickax deep into the hard ice, felt satisfaction as the glaze splintered. “It's not that simple,” he said in his own good time.

“Isn't it?” Tom asked.

“I'm paying you to work,” Lincoln pointed out, humor less, “not spout advice for the lovelorn.”

“Is that what you are?” Tom asked, and looking sidelong, Lincoln saw amusement dancing in the older man's eyes. “Lovelorn?”

“No, damn it,” Lincoln snapped.

Tom was re lent less. “You're a young man, Lincoln. You ought to have a woman. Gracie ought to have a mother, brothers and sisters. If you were willing to bring in a stranger from some place else and put a wedding band on her finger, why not Juliana?”

“I was hoping for a governess or a house keeper,” Lincoln said. “Taking a wife was a last resort.”

“All right, then,” Tom persisted, “Juliana's a teacher.
She would make a fine governess. Maybe even a decent house keeper.”

“She won't want to stay out here on this ranch,” Lincoln argued. “She's a city girl—you can see that by the way she moves, hear it in the way she talks.”

“Beth was a city girl, and she liked the ranch fine.”

It was all Lincoln could do not to fling the pickax so far and so hard that it would lodge in the snow on the other side of the creek. Tom some times went days without talking at all; now, all of a sudden, he was running off at the mouth like a lonely spinster at high tea. “Why? Why is this different, Lincoln? Because you think you could care about Juliana?”

Lincoln didn't answer because he couldn't. His throat felt raw, and a cow bumped him from behind, nearly sent him sprawling into the cold creek water. “I loved Beth,” he said after a long time, because Tom would have kept at him until he gave some kind of answer.

Tom laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know that,” he said. “But Beth is gone, and you're still here. You and Gracie. That child is lonesome, Lincoln—some times it hurts my heart just to look at her. And you're not doing much better.”

“I'm doing fine. And there are worse things than being lonesome.”

“Are there? You going to tell me you don't lie in there in that bed at night and wish there was a woman beside you?”

Again, Lincoln couldn't answer.

Mercifully, the talk-fest seemed to be over. Tom went back to work, another load of hay arrived, Joseph
and young Gainer threw it to the cattle and went back for more.

Toward noon, satisfied that the stock would neither starve nor perish of thirst, Lincoln sent the whole crew back to have their midday meal in the bunk house kitchen and then tend to other chores around the place, like splitting firewood and mending harnesses and mucking out stalls in the barn. Winter work could be miserably hard, but the season had its favorable side. There was a lot of time for catching up on lost sleep and sitting around a potbellied stove, swapping yarns.

Gainer, Lincoln knew, was always anxious about his wife, fearing she'd run into some kind of baby trouble, alone in the tiny cabin they shared, and he wouldn't be there to help.

God knew, the possibility was real enough. Beth might have bled to death with the first miscarriage if Cora hadn't been around. She'd gone out onto the back porch, Lincoln's mother had, and clanged at the iron triangle with vigor until they'd heard the signal, out on the range, and ridden for home.

What if Beth had been alone with Gracie, who was only two at the time?

Lincoln stuck a foot into the stirrup and swung up onto his horse's back. No sense in agonizing over something that was over and done with. He'd raced to town for the doctor, but it had been Tom Dancingstar who'd stopped Beth's bleeding. By the time Lincoln returned with help, Cora had bathed and bundled the lifeless baby, a boy.

Lincoln had sat in the rocking chair in the kitchen, holding his son, and wept without shame until sunset
when he'd carried him out to the grave yard beyond the orchard, dug a tiny grave and laid the child to rest. Eighteen months later, Beth had given birth to a second daughter, still born.

He'd wept then, too, though not in front of his distraught wife. That time, Tom and Wes had done the burying, and more than a month had gone by before the circuit preacher stopped by to say prayers over the grave.

Turning his horse homeward, Lincoln set the memories aside, but they seemed to trail along in his wake like ghosts. Clouds gathered, black-gray in the eastern sky, bulging with snow.

Feeding the cattle would be harder tomorrow, cold work that would sting his hands, even inside heavy leather gloves, but mostly likely the creek wouldn't freeze again.

His heart seemed to travel on ahead of him, drawn to the light and warmth of the house. Drawn to Juliana.

Reaching the barn, he un saddled his horse, rubbed the animal down with a wad of burlap and gave him a scoop of grain in the bottom of a wooden bucket. He was putting off going into the house, not because he didn't want to, though. No, he was savoring the prospect.

The first snow flakes began to fall, slow and fat, as he left the barn, and the sun was veiled, bringing on a premature twilight.

Lanterns shone in the kitchen windows, and Lincoln raised the collar of his coat, ducked his head against the wind and quickened his stride.

Gracie met him at the back door, her face as bright as any lantern, her eyes huge. “I'm learning the multiplica
tion tables!” she fairly shouted. “And I gave a recitation about Saint Nicholas, too!”

Lincoln smiled, bent to kiss the top of Gracie's head, then eased her backward into the kitchen, out of the cold. The table was clear of the slates and books that had come out of Juliana's satchel that morning after breakfast was over, and she was at the stove, stirring last night's venison stew.

She turned her head, favored him with a shy smile, and it struck him that she was not just womanly, but beautiful. She made that faded calico dress of hers look like the finest velvet, and he wanted to touch her fiery hair.

Instead, he hung his hat on its peg, shrugged out of his coat and hung that, too. “School over for the day?”

She nodded. “We accomplished a lot,” she said quietly.

Lincoln smiled down at Gracie again. “So I hear,” he replied. “Where are the others?”

“Theresa's putting Daisy and Billy-Moses down for their naps,” Juliana answered, seeming pleased that he'd asked. “Joseph is with Tom—they spotted a flock of wild turkeys and they're hoping to bring back a big one for Christmas dinner.”

Christmas. He'd for got ten all about that, and it was coming up fast. Fortunately, he'd already bought Gracie's dictionary, and his mother had taken care of the rest. There was a stash of pep per mint sticks, books, doll clothes and other gifts hidden away on the high shelf of Cora's wardrobe; she'd shown him the loot before she left on her trip, and admonished him not to forget to put up a tree.

As though reading his mind, Gracie tugged at his sleeve. “Are we getting a Christmas tree?”

Lincoln thought it was a foolish thing to cut down a living tree, minding its own business in some copse or forest, and he flat-out refused to allow any lighted candles in the branches. But he always gave in and hiked out into the woods with an ax, and nailed two chunks of wood crisscross for a stand, because it meant so much to his little girl. “Don't we always?” he countered.

“I thought you might change your mind this year,” Gracie said. “You said it was a very
German
thing to do. What's German?”

It was Juliana, the schoolmarm, who answered. “Germany is a country, like the United States and Canada. People from Germany are…?”

“Germans!” Gracie cried in triumph.

“Very good,” Juliana said, with pleasure growing in her eyes.

“Go take a nap,” Lincoln told his daughter.

“Papa, I never take naps,” Gracie reminded him. “I'm not a
baby.
”

“Neither are Daisy and Billy-Moses,” Lincoln said. “Go.”

Gracie turned to Juliana. “Is
Theresa
going to take a nap?”

At that moment, Theresa entered the kitchen, and it was apparent, by the sparkle of collusion in her eyes, that she'd heard at least part of the exchange. She held out a hand to Gracie. “Come,” she said. “We'll just lie down for a while and rest. We don't have to sleep, and I'll read you a story.”

“I'll read
you
a story,” Gracie insisted.

Theresa smiled, nodded slightly.

Gracie could never resist any opportunity to show off her uncanny mastery of the written word. When she was barely three years old, Beth had taught her the alphabet, and after that, she'd been able to divine the mechanics of the reading process. It was as if the child had been
born
knowing how to make sense of books.

Lincoln felt a pang, thinking of Beth when he wanted so badly to be alone in that kitchen with Juliana, for whatever time Providence might allot them. It wasn't as if he meant to touch her, or “offer for her,” the way Tom had suggested out there by the creek. She warmed him deep down, that was all. In places where the heat from the cook stove didn't reach.

When Gracie and Theresa were gone, though, he just stood there, mute as a stump.

“Wash up,” Juliana told him, keeping her gaze averted. “You must be hungry.”

He went to the sink, rolled up his sleeves, pumped some water and lathered his hands with soap. It was harsh stuff, fit to take the hide off, as his mother complained.

Juliana fetched a bowl and spoon, dished up stew for him. The task was ordinary enough, but it made Lincoln think about the conversation with Tom again.

He drew back his chair at the table, sat down. “Did you eat?” he asked, because he wanted Juliana to join him.

She nodded. “Coffee?”

“You don't have to wait on me, Juliana,” he replied.

“Nonsense,” she replied, bustling off, returning to the table with a steaming mug. “You've given us food
and shelter, and I want to show my gratitude.” A twinkle sparked in her eyes. “But I draw the line at polishing your boots, Mr. Creed.”

“I guess you wouldn't be looking for a housekeeper's job,” Lincoln said, and then wished he could bite off his tongue. Juliana Mitchell might have fallen on hard times, but she wasn't cut out to be a servant, even if she
had
poured him coffee and heated up last night's stew for lunch.

She sat down, though, and that was encouraging.

“Are you offering?” she asked, almost shyly.

Lincoln went still, his spoon midway between the bowl and his mouth. “Would you accept if I did?”