The Christmas Brides (22 page)

Oh, he'd probably lie awake, all right, but there would be something else on his mind.

He'd made a damn fool of himself, with all that talk about governesses and housekeepers and—he gulped at the recollection—taking a wife.

Unburdening himself of the wood, Lincoln bent to open the stove door. Methodically, he took up the short-handled broom and bucket reserved for the purpose and swept out the ashes. When that was done, he crouched, crumpling news pa per and arranging kindling. In an hour or so, the cold room would be comfort ably warm.

“Lincoln?”

Startled, Lincoln turned his head, saw Juliana standing in the doorway, looking like a red headed angel hiding wings under a thread bare dress. His heart shinnied up into the back of his throat and thumped there.

“Supper's ready,” she said.

Another wifely state ment. He liked the sound of it.
Smiled as he shut the stove door and rose to his full height to adjust the damper on the metal chimney. “Thanks,” he said.

She lingered on the thresh old, neither in nor out.

Lincoln enjoyed thinking how scandalized his mother would have been if she'd known. Strait laced, she'd have had a hissy fit at the idea of the two of them standing within spitting distance of a bed—especially when that bed was her own. “Was there something else?”

Juliana swallowed, looked away, visibly forced herself to meet his gaze again. “About the presents—the children would under stand. They aren't used to a fuss being made over Christmas, anyway, and—”

Lincoln smiled and went to his mother's massive wardrobe, opened the door. Gestured for Juliana to come to his side.

Reluctantly, she did so.

He pointed to the top shelf. Games. Dolls. Books. A set of jacks. A fancy comb-and-brush set. Enough candy to rot the teeth of every child in the state of Montana, twice over.

Seeing it all, Juliana widened her eyes.

“There's plenty,” he said. “My brother Micah lives a long way from here, in Colorado, so Ma never sees his boys. Wes never married, and as far as we know, he's never fathered a child. That leaves Gracie, and Ma's been bent on spoiling her from the first.”

Juliana stepped back, watched as Lincoln closed the wardrobe doors again. “You don't approve?”

“Of what?”

She went pink again. Fetchingly so. “Your mother, buying so many gifts for Gracie.”

Lincoln considered, shook his head. “No,” he said. “I guess I don't. But it doesn't seem to be hurting her any— Gracie, I mean—and anyhow, my mother is a force to be reckoned with. Most of the time, it's easier to just let her have her way.”

Juliana moved closer to the stove, though whether the objective was to get warm or put some distance between the two of them, Lincoln didn't know. What she said next side swiped him.

“The Bureau of Indian Affairs is probably going to put me in jail.”

Lincoln's breath went shallow. “Why?”

“I was supposed to send these children to Missoula for place ment in another school,” Juliana said. “Joseph and Theresa have a family, a home, people who want them. Daisy and Billy-Moses will either be swept under some rug or placed in an orphanage. I couldn't bear it.”

Lincoln went to her then, took a gentle hold on her shoulders. Tried to ignore the physical repercussions of touching her. “I'll pay the train fare to send Joseph and Theresa home,” he said. “But how do you know the bureau won't just drag them out again?”

Gratitude registered in her face, and a degree of relief. “They won't bother,” she said with sad confidence. “It would take too long and cost too much.”

“The two little ones—they don't have anyone?”

“Just me,” Juliana said. “I shouldn't have gotten attached to them—I was warned about that when I first started teaching—but I couldn't help it.”

A solution occurred to Lincoln—after all, he was a lawyer—but even in the face of Juliana's despair, talking
about it would be premature. His right hand rose of its own accord from her shoulder to her cheek. She did not resist his caress.

“After Christmas,” he said, very quietly, “we'll find a way to straighten this out. In the meantime, we've got two turkeys, a tree—” he indicated the wardrobe with a motion of his head “—and enough presents to do Saint Nicholas proud. For now, set the rest aside.”

She gazed up at him. “You are a re mark able man, Lincoln Creed. A re mark able man with a re mark able daughter.”

Embarrassed pleasure suffused Lincoln. “I think we'd better go and have supper.”

Juliana smiled. “I think we'd better,” she agreed.

 

S
UPPER WAS A BOISTEROUS AFFAIR
with so many people gathered around the table, their faces bathed in lantern light and shadow. And to Juliana's surprise— she forced herself to try some, in order to set a good example for the children—the bear meat turned out to be delicious.

Tom and Joseph did the dishes, while Gracie sat in a rocking chair nearby, feet dangling high above the floor, reading competently from
Oliver Twist.

Juliana, banking the fire in the cook stove for the night, stole a glance at Tom and noted that he was listening with close and solemn interest.

Gracie finally read herself to sleep—Billy-Moses and Daisy had long since succumbed, and Lincoln had carried them to bed, one in each arm—and Tom seemed so letdown that Joseph took the book gently from the little girl's hand and picked up where she'd left off.

Juliana hoisted Gracie out of the chair and felt a warm ache in her heart when the child's head came to rest on her shoulder.

She met Lincoln in the corridor leading to the bedrooms. She thought he might take Gracie from her, but he stepped aside instead, his face softening, and watched in silence as she carried his daughter to her bed. A lamp glowed on the night stand, and Theresa, a pillow propped behind her, was reading one of Gracie's many books.

Juliana set Gracie on her feet, helped her out of her dress and into her night gown.

Gracie, half awake and half asleep, murmured something and closed her eyes as Juliana tucked her in, kissed her forehead, and then Theresa's.

She took the book from Theresa's hands with a smile, and extinguished the lamp, aware all the while of Lincoln standing in the doorway, watching.

He stepped back again, to let her go by, and smiled when she shivered in the draft and hugged herself.

“I want to show you something,” he said.

Curious, she allowed him to lead her to the end of the hallway, where he opened a door, stepped inside and lit a lamp, causing soft light to spill out at Juliana's feet. She hesitated, then followed, and drew in a breath when she saw a porcelain bathtub with a boiler above it, exuding the heat and scent of a wood fire.

Juliana hadn't enjoyed such a luxury since she'd left her grandmother's mansion in Denver. There, she'd taken gas lights and abundant hot water for granted. Since then, she'd survived on sponge baths and the occasional furtive dunk in a washtub.

“I mean to put in a commode and a sink come spring,” Lincoln said, sounding shy. “They say we'll have electricity in Stillwater Springs in a few years.”

Juliana was nearly overcome. She put a hand to her heart and rested one shoulder against the door frame.

He moved past her, their bodies brushing in the narrow doorway.

Heat pulsed at Juliana's core.

Without another word, Lincoln Creed left her to turn the spigots, find a towel and fetch her night gown and wrapper from the toasty bedroom, where Daisy and Billy-Moses were already deeply asleep.

The bath was a wonder. A gift. Juliana sank into it, closed her eyes and marveled. When the water finally cooled, she climbed out, dried herself off and donned her night clothes. A bar of light shone under the door to the room she supposed was Lincoln's, and if it wouldn't have been so brazen, she would have knocked lightly at that door, opened it far enough to say a quiet “Thank you.”

Instead, she made her way back to the kitchen, walking softly.

Joseph was still reading from
Oliver Twist,
seated at the table now, and Tom was still listening, smoking his pipe and gazing into space as though seeing the story unfold before his eyes.

Without making a sound, Juliana re treated, smiling to herself.

That night, she slept soundly.

 

T
HE SNOW HAD STOPPED BY DAWN
, but it reached Lincoln's knees as he made his way toward the barn. Even
the draft horses would have a hard time getting through the stuff, but the cattle had to be fed, and that meant hitching up the sled and loading it with hay.

Lincoln thought of Wes, hoped his brother had made it safely home to the Diamond Buckle Saloon. There would be no finding out for a while, since the roads would be impassable.

He thought about Juliana, and how pleased she'd been when he'd shown her the bathtub. His mother had insisted on installing the thing, saying she was tired of heating water on the stove and bathing in the kitchen, ever fearful that some man would wander in and catch her in “the al together.”

At the time, he'd thought it was plain foolish, a waste of good money, but then Beth—destined to die in just a few short months—had pointed out that she'd had a bathtub of her very own back in Boston, and she missed it.

Lincoln had ridden to town the same day and placed an order at Willand's Mercantile. Weeks later, when the modern marvel arrived by train, shipped all the way from Denver in a crate big enough to house a grand piano, half the town had come out to the ranch to see it unloaded and set up in the smallest bedroom.

Husbands pulled Lincoln aside to complain; they were being hectored, they said. Now the wife wanted one of those infernal contraptions all her own.

He'd sympathized, and proffered that a bathtub with a boiler was a small price to pay for a peaceful household. Hell, it was worth the look of de lighted disbelief he'd seen on Juliana's face when she saw it.

Guilt struck him again like the punch of a fist as
he entered the barn, lit a lantern to see by so the work would go more quickly. He'd bought that bathtub for
Beth,
not Juliana.

The cow began to snuffle and snort, wanting to be milked.

Lincoln soothed her with a scratch between the ears and gave her hay instead. Once he'd fed all the horses and Wes's mule, he under took the arduous task of hauling water from the well to fill the troughs.

By the time he'd finished that, milked and started back toward the house, bucket in hand, it was snowing again.

For a moment, Lincoln felt weary to the core of his spirit. Ranching was always hard work, always a risk, but in weather like this, with cattle on the range, it could be down right brutal.

Finding Juliana in the kitchen, and the coffee brewed, he felt better.

Tom was nowhere around, though, and that was unusual enough to worry Lincoln. He was about to ask if Juliana had seen him when Tom came out of his room just off the kitchen, tucking his flour-sack shirt into his pants.

“Too much reading,” he said. “That Oliver feller has me worried.”

Lincoln chuckled, poured himself some coffee. “What's for breakfast?” he asked. “Gruel?”

Tom looked puzzled, but Juliana smiled. “How about oatmeal?” she suggested brightly.

“No gruel?” Lincoln teased.

She laughed. “You haven't tasted my oatmeal.”

The gruel, he soon discovered, would have been an improvement.

Joseph, turning up rumpled at the table, made a face when he saw it. “Is there any of that bear hash left?” he asked, his tone plaintive.

Only Tom accepted a second bowl of oatmeal.

When the three men left the house, they met Ben Gainer in the yard, and he looked worried. His freckles stood out against his pale face and his brownish-red hair stuck out in spikes under his hat. “Rose-of-Sharon is feelin' poorly this morning,” he said.

“You'd better stay with her, then,” Tom said quietly.

“I told her she ought to let you come and see if the baby's on its way, but she said—” Ben fell silent, blushed miserably. Turned his eyes to the snowy terrain and looked even grimmer than before.

All of them knew what Rose-of-Sharon Gainer had said. She didn't want an Indian tending her, no matter how “poorly” she might feel.

“It's all right, Ben,” Tom told the boy. “Things get bad, you send Joseph out to the range to fetch me.”

Glumly, stamping his feet to get the circulation going, Ben nodded, his breath making puffs of steam in the air, like their own. “With all this snow, I don't see how I could get to town to bring back the doctor.”

Joseph had turned to Tom. “Don't I get to go with you? Out to the range?”

“Mike can do that. You'll stay here and help Art load the sled with hay.”

There was a protest brewing in the boy's face, but it soon dissolved. He sighed and went on toward the barn.

They hauled the first load of hay out to the range half an hour later, and found the cattle in clusters, instinctively sharing their warmth and blocking the wind as best they could. The air they exhaled rose over them like smoke from a chimney.

The creek was slushy, but it flowed.

They went back to the barn for another load of feed, and then another. Tom scanned the surrounding plain for wolf or coyote tracks, and found none.

They headed back and met a panicked Joseph, all but stuck in snow reaching to his midthighs and waving both arms.

Lincoln, driving the team while Tom rode behind him on the sled, felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

The boy shouted something, but Lincoln couldn't make out the words. It didn't matter. Some thing was wrong, that was all he needed to know.

He drove the draft horses harder, and Tom scram bled off the sled and crow-hopped his way through the snow toward the boy.