“So do I. So does Dr. Parrish. He’ll do everything he can to help Jacob get well, Toby. I can promise you that much, at least.”
The boy snuffled, relaxed a little more. And after that, no more words were needed. Savannah simply rocked, and Toby nestled against her until, at last, he slept.
Jacob survived that night, and the days and nights to come, as well. By the time the leaves began to change colors, he was up and about, with the use of a cane. He could not do his former heavy work, and he was pale and gaunt; it seemed to Savannah and to everyone else at Springwater, that something vital had gone out of him. He rarely preached of a Sunday morning, or even spoke of the Lord, fondly or otherwise. He even left off working on the beautiful cradle he’d been crafting for the Hargreaves baby, Rachel’s pregnancy being an acknowledged fact, now that Pres had properly examined her.
Savannah feared that Jacob was about the business of dying; he was simply taking his time with it. It was plain that he’d given up the struggle.
She felt guilty for the wild, private happiness she and Pres had found together. They made love every chance they got, often enough that it didn’t matter how inadequate their little rusted stove was because they didn’t need it to keep them warm. Pres treated a lot of patients—they seemed to come from nowhere—in off the surrounding ranges, down out of the foothills, from passing wagon trains, from line shacks and farms and ranches, far and wide. Savannah helped him, learned to sterilize wounds and even stitch them closed, and how to set broken limbs, too. Mostly, though, she just kept the sick and injured distracted while Pres did whatever mending that happened to be needed.
Autumn was on the horizon, and still Jacob’s spirits did not rise. Savannah knew Pres thought about the other man often, as she did as well, at a loss for how to help him. She didn’t need to be told that her husband had seen such cases before, and that he was very troubled.
The women of the community made no effort to hide the fact that they were curious about Savannah, apparently wondering if she went around Springwater and her husband’s office wearing feathers, face paint, and beads.
The last week of September brought a string of summery, blue-skied days. A celebration was planned, partly in the hope of raising Jacob’s spirits. That Sunday, after Landry Kildare had delivered a layman’s sermon, the men carried tables out of the station and set it in the withering grass under June-bug’s carefully nurtured trees; food was produced and eaten. Tales of bitter cold winters were told, perhaps as a hex against the trials of the one to come, of sick children and animals, and suffering Indians passing through. Then the men went off to play a game of horseshoes.
Evangeline Wainwright, eyes sparkling, produced a sewing box from the back of the family wagon, and the others did the same. Savannah, having nothing to fetch, stayed behind, as unsure of herself as ever.
The food and dishes were cleared away, and then the mysterious boxes and bags were opened, to reveal quilt blocks in every imaginable shade—blue and yellow, green and red, purple and brown. All were carefully stitched into the wedding ring pattern.
“Are we agreed, ladies?” Evangeline asked, of the assembly.
Rachel, already big with the forthcoming baby, was the first to nod in accord. She too had produced quilt blocks, having sent Emma across the way to fetch them. The others looked at each other, faces full of silent questions, but then they all nodded, too, and even smiled. Within moments, the tabletop was covered in colorful pieces of fabric.
“The quilt is for you, Savannah,” Evangeline said softly.
Savannah put a hand to her heart, overwhelmed. She had been wishing she had needlework to contribute, thinking that might make them more likely to accept her. “For me?” she echoed, sure there must be some mistake. “A stranger?”
“Most of us were strangers, one time or another,” said Mrs. Bellweather. “Out here, we all need each other.”
Rachel beamed, fairly bouncing with friendly excitement. “We said we’d piece a quilt for the next Springwater bride, remember? Back when the house was raised? You’re that bride, Savannah.”
Savannah blinked rapidly, but it didn’t do any good. Tears spilled down her cheeks anyway, and she smiled through them, as brightly, June-bug would later say, as the sun shining through clouds. She’d been the one to erect barriers between herself and the others, she realized, just as Emma had once said. She had been so afraid of being rejected that she’d never given Rachel and the others a real chance.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she whispered.
Evangeline laughed. “I’ll tell you how,” she said. “Sit down and help us finish this up. We’ll plan a quilt for the next bride as we work.”
It felt so very good, just to take a place among them, to belong, to be a part of their plans, privy to their secrets, their hopes, their dreams and sorrows She fit in nicely between Rachel and Sue Bellweather.
“I say we do a crazy quilt this time,” Sue said. “Well just put the pieces together any old which way and see what happens.”
There was a brief conference, and everyone agreed. A crazy quilt it would be.
Savannah dried her cheeks with the back of one hand, trying to be subtle about it, and reached for a square of bright pink and white gingham. Never having participated in a quilting bee before, she was relieved that there wouldn’t be a complicated pattern to follow.
Evangeline was looking down the length of the table at Miranda, who carried her baby boy in a sling, close against her bosom, head down, snipping shyly at a piece of worn green velvet, shaping it into a triangle.
“Maybe you’ll be the next bride, Miranda,” Evangeline said gently.
“None too soon, either,” remarked Sue Bellweather, only half under her breath.
“Oh, hush yourself,” June-bug scolded. She was subdued, because of Jacob’s illness, but she was enjoying her friends’ company all the same. “Everything in this world happens when it ought to, and that’s a fact.”
Savannah thought of the wedding ring quilt that would soon grace the bed she and Pres shared, and felt a rush of joy so sweet and poignant that it hurt her heart. Then she took in the dear faces around that table, awash in firelight, and rejoiced that, at long, long last, she was home.
Miranda
For Gina Centrello Grazie
CHAPTER
1
Fall 1875
“I’VE GOT TWO KIDS to tend to, and hogs to butcher,” Landry announced forthrightly, that crisp, early October morning, in the dining room of the Springwater station. “Potatoes and turnips to dig, too, and fields to plow under. The fact is, I need a wife in the worst way.” He paused, hat in hand, colored up a little, and cleared his throat. “So I’ve come to ask if—well, if you’d marry me.”
It wasn’t the most romantic proposal, Miranda Leebrook reflected, but she’d wanted Landry Kildare for a husband from the moment she clapped eyes on him a couple of months back, while the Hargreaves house was being raised, and she wasn’t about to refuse his offer. Besides, she and little Isaiah-or-Ezekiel couldn’t expect to stay on with the McCaffreys forever. Heaven knew the baby’s real father didn’t want either of them, and Pa and his woman, Lorelei, were long gone.
Landry was a handsome man, with his mischievous hazel eyes and wavy brown hair, and Miranda enjoyed looking at him on any account. Now, gazing into that earnest face, Miranda tried without success to think up a bright and witty remark, something Rachel might say, or Savannah.
Landry glanced around—June-bug and Jacob McCaffrey were pointedly absent—and cleared his throat again. “Of course I won’t expect you to—well, what I mean is, you’ll have a while to get used to things.” A hot rush of crimson washed up his neck to pulse in his lower jaw. “Having a husband and the like.” His expression, normally boyish and winsome, proceeded from bleak panic to pure desperation. “What I’m trying to say is, you’ll have your own room and all the privacy you want. Until—until you’re ready—”
She couldn’t resist tou
ching him any longer, and laid the tip of an index finger to his mouth. His lips felt warm and supple, and an odd little jolt of pleasure rocketed through her hand and up her arm to burst, a faint, delicious ache, in a soft fold of her heart. “Jacob and Miss June-bug warrant that you’re a good man,” she said quietly. “That’s all the say-so I need. I’ll have you for a husband, Mr. Kildare, if you truly want me for a wife.”
He swallowed visibly. “I want you, all right,” he said. He averted his gaze, then made himself meet her eyes again. “I guess every woman likes to hear pretty words at a time like this. The plain truth is, I don’t have any to say. I loved my wife, Caroline, and I never got over losing her. I don’t reckon I’ll ever feel just that way about anybody again. But I’ll be good to you, Miranda, and I’ll raise your little one like he was my own. I’m not a rich man, but I can provide for the both of you, and I’ll never bring shame on you, nor lay a hand to either one of you in anger.”
She wished he could have claimed to love her, for she surely cherished deep if undefined feelings toward him, but at the same time she knew it was better that he hadn’t. He’d have been lying, and she would have known it full well, and never given weight to another word he said from that moment until the day one of them died. Young as she was, barely eighteen, Miranda understood that no alliance could stand, let alone thrive, without trust.
“I guess we should get on with it, then,” she said, and blushed herself. She was painfully certain that neither Rachel nor Savannah would ever say anything so stupid when their whole future hung in the balance, and with it, that of their child.
“I’ll speak to Jacob,” Landry said, with a slight, nervous nod. “About saying the words over us and all, I mean. You might want to get your things ready while I’m about that.”
She replied with a nod of her own. She had very few belongings—just four dresses, two made by the industrious June-bug, and two donated by Savannah Parrish, the Doc’s wife. There was a stack of flour-sack diapers and some little clothes for the baby, too, and a reading primer Rachel Hargreaves had given her. Rachel was a schoolmarm, despite her marriage and prominent pregnancy, and she’d been helping Miranda with her reading now and again. She could make out the words all right, it wasn’t that, but the task was difficult.
Perhaps twenty minutes had passed when Jacob hobbled in, supported by his cane. He was tall, but his big frame had wasted. The light had gone out of his eyes since his heart had nearly given out on him, and he didn’t hold forth of a Sunday morning as often as before, but the nearest justice of the peace was in Choteau, and he was the only real preacher for miles around.
June-bug hastily summoned Savannah for a second witness, and when she’d arrived, beaming with delight at the prospect of a wedding so soon after her own, Miranda and Landry took their awkward places before Jacob, both of them listening earnestly to every word he said and responding whenever he asked them to speak.
And so Miranda Leebrook was married, and became Miranda Kildare, all in the course of an October morning. She wore her best dress, a blue calico, and the cornbread June-bug had baked for the midday meal served as wedding cake.
There was no party, no dancing, like when the Doc and Savannah got hitched, but Miranda didn’t care about any of that. She and little Isaiah-or-Ezekiel were part of a family now; they had a home to go to, and folks to call their own, and a lifetime of unsullied days, just waiting to dawn.
Her heart sang when Landry helped her into the seat of his well-used buckboard, then stepped aside so June-bug could hand up the baby, solid and heavy in his bundle of blankets. Then Landry was beside her in the wagon, his right thigh touching hers, his strong callused hands taking up the reins. He released the brake lever with a practiced motion of his left leg, and they were on their way.
He raised his hat to the small assembly of well-wishers in front of the stagecoach station, still without smiling that famous smile that had made Miranda’s insides quiver, and urged the team of two mules to a faster pace with a raspy sound from his throat and a slap of the reins.
He did not look at Miranda, but kept his thoughtful gaze fixed on the track ahead. The far edges of the clearing where the town of Springwater was slowly taking shape were a fringe of gold and crimson, rust and dark green. The sky was a pristine, chilly blue, dabbed with white, and there was a quiet, thrilling sense of new beginnings, it seemed to her, woven in the air itself and into the bright, eager glow of the sun. She held her small son closer against her bosom as he began to fidget, and sat proudly beside her husband.
Her husband. Miranda let her thoughts wander back to the day the Doc and Savannah were married. There had been a party then, and dancing to the tunes of a fiddle, and she’d been Landry’s partner in a reel. When that spin around the floor of the Springwater station’s main room had ended, Miranda was a different woman, totally changed. She’d loved the smell of Landry Kildare from then on, loved the sight of him, and the sound of his voice.
Now, officially his wife, Miranda wanted to laugh aloud with joy, but she knew that would startle the baby and Landry, too, and maybe even the mules, so she held her exuberance inside, contained it, like a deep breath, drawn against a plunge underwater. In her mind, she rehearsed the life that lay ahead—Landry’s boys would come to love her like a second mother, she’d see to that. She’d stitch curtains for every window in the house, and keep the place so clean that folks were sure to remark upon it for miles around. She wasn’t the best cook—her fare tended to be plain and a little on the heavy side—but she’d learned a few things helping Miss June-bug in the Springwater station kitchen, and she’d manage just fine. With practice, she expected she’d be able to make biscuits as feathery as anybody’s.
Yes, she assured herself, she would make it all work. Landry Kildare would never be sorry he’d taken her for a wife. Maybe one day, he might even come to love her, if she worked at things hard enough. It made her heart pound a little, just to imagine him looking at her the way Trey looked at Rachel, for example, or the way Doc looked at Savannah.
The ride to his home—glory of glories, it was hers now, too, and the baby’s—was short by comparison to the distance to say, the Wainwright place, or Choteau. Or Ohio, for that matter.
The thought of Ohio, and the home place where her ma was buried, took a little of the shine off that magical day, bringing the farm to mind as it did and, with it, her lost mother. Miranda set the memories firmly aside. No sense looking back, longing for places and people she would never see again. No, sir. Miranda Leebrook Kildare meant to fix her gaze straight ahead, from that moment on.
*
Miranda was a pretty little thing, Landry thought guiltily, as the team covered the last couple of miles, the buckboard rattling along over a rocky, rutted track. Eighteen, no more than that, and here he was, thirty-five, come next June. Nearly twice her age.
He ground his back teeth. It wasn’t like he was betraying Caroline; she’d been gone a long time, and he’d been lonely enough to howl ever since. He’d never stopped loving her, not for a moment, but he’d taken something of a shine to Rachel Hargreaves, when she’d come to teach at Springwater the year before. She’d been Rachel English then, spirited as a filly raised on the open range, but book-smart, too, and pretty. Alas, she’d married Trey Hargreaves, then half owner of the Brimstone Saloon, and never thought of Landry as anything more than a friend.
Just as well, he supposed, given the fact that Trey and Rachel clearly loved each other as deeply as he and Caroline ever had. Landry couldn’t have offered Rachel that kind of sentiment, much as he admired her, so she was better off with the man she’d chosen.
Landry sighed to himself, and prodded the mules to travel a little faster. Maybe he’d lost his mind, waking up that morning with the intention of getting married before the day was out, but here he was, with a bride in tow, and sunset still a good four hours off.
Oh, he’d been mulling the idea over for a long while, of course. Ever since Rachel English’s arri
val at Springwater, anyway. Maybe before that, if he wanted to be honest with himself.
Well, in any case, the deed was done. He and Miranda were hitched, right and proper, and even though they could probably get an annulment, given that the marriage hadn’t been consummated, Landry had no intention of seeking one. He’d thought the whole thing through, the way he did every new undertaking, looking at all the fors and againsts; he’d made his decision and he would abide by it.
He set his jaw.
“Mr. Kildare?”
At first, he didn’t know who she was talking to; proof enough of his state of mind, he thought ruefully, given the fact that he was the only one there, besides the baby and a pair of jackasses. “You can call me Landry,” he said, and for the first time since he’d opened his eyes before dawn and set his mind on getting married, he smiled. “My boys are Marcus, he’s eleven, and Jamie, he’s nine. I don’t mind telling you, they’re a handful.”
Just for a moment, a shadow of uncertainty moved in her eyes. She’d met his sons, of course, Springwater being a small place. Heard tales about them, no doubt. Hell, they’d all be lucky if she didn’t take to her heels before supper was set out. “How do they feel about having me and little Isaiah-or-Ezekiel around?”
Landry ran the tip of his tongue along the inside of his lower lip. “I didn’t mention that I was planning to get married today,” he said. “I had enough to do, just getting those little heathens off to school.”
She stared at him, held her baby a little closer. “You haven’t told them?”
He started to pat her knee with his free hand, then thought better of the gesture. Better not to touch her, lest he start getting ideas he didn’t have any right to entertain. “Don’t go fretting yourself about my boys,” he said. “They’ll be glad enough to eat somebody’s cooking besides mine.”
Miranda didn’t look all that reassured. He’d have sworn she gulped, as a matter of fact, and he fully expected her to say she’d heard his boys were monsters, which, regretfully, they were. Had been, ever since their mother died. Instead, she asked, “What made you pick me? For a bride, I mean?”
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