by Annie Boone
“I don’t want to say anything to Minnie,” Hazel interrupted. “In case, well. Perhaps, if Minnie is expecting a child, they are planning to make it a nursery but they don’t want to say anything yet until they are sure.”
“Of course,” Clara agreed. “Oh, Hazel, how splendid it will be to have them here. But there is so much planning to do. Christmas Day! We can’t buy presents, at least nothing like what they are used to. I cannot count on the mine,” she said with a sigh. “Mining is a very painstaking affair. Still, we shall be together and that is what matters.”
Hazel, thinking of the marvelous hats that, even now, were in hatboxes in the spare room, waiting to be put under the Christmas tree to be given to her sisters and her mother, smiled. “That is what matters,” she agreed.
In a whirlwind of activity, Hazel and Jane prepared the rooms for the arrival of the Ellises, after Hilda had given them a special cleaning that left the chambers pleasantly redolent of lemon. Jane was fascinated to see Hazel put sachets of lavender under the mattress so that the fragrance would keep the bed-linens smelling fresh. As part of the flurry, Hazel decided that new curtains were needed. As she and Jane sewed, Hazel enlisted Oakley’s help and the girl proved to be as deft at sewing as she was at managing a horse. She even found that she rather liked sewing.
“My mother has been ill,” Hazel explained, “and I want her to stay warm, so we’ll put these draperies over the windows to keep out any drafts.”
“There are comforters in one of the far rooms,” Oakley confided. “Those would keep your parents warm, even if it snows. Do they have snow in Boston?”
“Oh, my yes, every winter. And storms, too. Boston is on the coast and because of that, the city is at the mercy of its geography.”
“Do they have more snow than we do?” Jane wanted to know.
“If it storms, then Boston gets a great deal of snow. But in a typical year, no, not more than Colorado. Although I can only go by what I have been told,” Hazel said. “I have never been here for winter.”
“There is a lot of snow here,” Oakley said. “Your parents might be snowed in and have to stay until spring.”
Hazel smiled. “My sisters and I would not mind that.”
Jane finished her sewing and then left so that she could help Constanza with the cooking. The cook was baking Christmas treats almost daily so that there would be plenty of good things to eat once the company arrived and the sweet aroma filled the ranch; Constanza had joined in the excitement of the anticipation and wanted to do her part to make sure that when the Ellises arrived, they found a welcome at the table.
“Oakley, let’s go and see what we find in the rooms where my parents will be staying. Hilda has done the cleaning, and we’re doing the sewing for the curtains, but before Mr. Harley sends in the men to move the furniture around, I want to make sure we know what we need.”
Oakley was agreeable to this. Hazel decided not to tell the girl that preparing for guests was one of the tasks which fell to women. If Oakley knew that she was doing women’s work, she might decide against helping.
The rooms where the Ellises would be staying were on the far wing of the sprawling ranch house. They would be close enough to the rest of the rooms to be included in the routine of the ranch, but far enough from the kitchen and parlor to have privacy.
“In fact,” Hazel said thoughtfully, “we could make this room a parlor for them. Do you know if there are chairs elsewhere?”
Oakley knew.
“What about furniture for the bedroom?”
“There’s an armoire in one of the back closets,” Oakley said. “I never go there, no one does. But Pablo and one of the others can bring it here and then your parents will have a dressing room, a parlor, and a bedroom,” she said. “It will be like having their own home inside the ranch.”
“Exactly,” Hazel said, enjoying Oakley’s enthusiasm. “Let’s go see what we can find. I’ll make a list so we know what room has what furniture and we can save the men time that way.”
She followed Oakley through the warren of rooms, marveling that she had not taken the time to explore the rest of the ranch house, even though the rooms in this part of the house were not in use.
“Here,” Oakley said. “There’s a chair, and there’s the armoire.”
The furniture looked to be in very good condition. The chair was a dainty piece of furniture, clearly designed for a woman rather than a man. It would be perfect for Mother, Hazel thought. She could sit by the window and do her embroidery.
The armoire was of a rich, gleaming wood and ornate handles. It looked as though it would be perfect for her parents. But it had been out of use and Hazel knew she would have to make sure that there were no tiny occupants inside who had taken advantage of the vacancy to set up their own nests.
Gingerly, she opened the armoire doors.
Oakley gasped.
There were no rodents or insects. There was a painting. It was of a girl with long, fair hair and green-blue eyes, gazing at them with a calm expression on her face.
“It must be Mr. Harley’s sister,” Hazel said immediately. “You know he has a twin.”
Oakley nodded, but said nothing.
Hazel closed the doors to the armoire. “I shall let him know that his sister’s painting is here,” she said as if it were not important. “He will want her to have it. I wonder that she did not take it with her when she married. We will put these items on the list for the men to move. Oakley, will you go and see how close Mrs. de la Rosa and Constanza are to having dinner ready? I think we need to wash, this room is a little dusty. I am going to tell Hilda know that it will need to be cleaned.”
“I wonder why she hasn’t tended to it,” Oakley asked as they left the room.
Was she told not to? Hazel wondered to herself. Because the room and the painting have no significance. Or had the painting been left in the armoire and Harley had forgotten about it?
Except that they did. For Oakley must have realized, upon beholding the painting, that it was the woman’s image that she resembled, not Harley.
18
She waited until they were alone before presenting him with what she had discovered. Jane and Oakley were helping Constanza decorate cookies that had cooled from their baking.
“I’ve selected the furniture for my parents,” she said.
“I’ll have the men move it into the rooms,” he said. “We’ll need to do it soon; they arrive this week.”
Hazel was well aware of the date. She had put off telling Harley what she had found and Oakley had not discussed the discovery. Hazel wondered if the girl had found reasons to surreptitiously go to the forgotten room to examine the portrait in more detail.
“This armoire,” she said, studying her husband to see if he reacted.
He nodded. “I don’t suppose it’s been used since my mother was alive,” he said. “It’s well made. It’s been in the family since my parents were married; I believe—”
Hazel had opened the armoire doors. The portrait stared out at Harley.
“You—”
“We were looking for furniture,” Hazel said. “Oakley and I.”
“Oakley has seen this?” he asked, his face ashen as he realized what the image would convey to the girl.
“Yes. It would have been better if I had known, Harley. Now she must wonder, but she has no answers.”
“It—" she could see that he was truly shaken.
He closed the door.
“It is Violetta,” he said.
“Your twin sister.”
“Yes. It was painted when she was eighteen. That was the year Mother died. It was a very hard time for all of us,” he went on. “But hardest, I think, for Violetta. She was very close to our mother. Father was a good man, but not an affectionate one. His sense of duty would not let him grieve for Mother’s loss. I suppose I followed his example. The following year, months after Mother’s death, Father had an artist come. He thought that having her portrait p
ainted would lift her out of her grief. She seemed to take to the idea. Later, of course, we realized what had happened.”
Hazel blinked quickly and waited. Interrupting now would be insensitive. He was finally telling her his secret and she wouldn’t ruin the opportunity to build a bridge with her husband.
He inhaled. “She fell in love, or thought she was. The artist… well, I don’t know what he felt. He painted her and was paid for his work and he left. He was at the ranch for a long time, but we didn’t know—none of us knew how long it takes to paint a portrait. Violetta was very quiet after he was gone, but we thought—I thought, Father never mentioned it—that the portrait had taken her mind off her grief, but once it was done, she was missing Mother again. Then she told me she was carrying a child and she did not know what to do. She could not tell Father. Such a shame would have been too much of a blow so soon after the loss of our Mother. I was only eighteen myself, I hardly knew what to do. But I knew she could not bear the child here at the ranch and she agreed. I made the arrangements and she went to California. It was far enough away and Violetta was not a timid girl. There was a place where such things were taken care of, privately. Oakley was born. Violetta stayed there for a year. We told people that she had gone away to finishing school. I told them. Father trusted me to be cautious so that there was no damage to her reputation. But then, Violetta met Major Stapleton. They fell in love. She asked me to take the child. I agreed. A nurse brought Oakley to us when she was only two years old. Violetta stayed in California and married her soldier. They are very happy, although they have no children. Violetta is, as I told you, integral to her husband’s work. She is clever, resourceful and brave. She travels. She isn’t a typical woman. But if it were known that she had given birth to a child when she was not married, it would ruin her reputation and his career, even this many years later.”
“So Oakey was brought to the ranch and you have allowed people to assume that the child is yours?”
Harley nodded. “If a man fathers a bastard, he isn’t ruined,” he said.
“But Harley, it would be better if you did claim her,” Hazel told him. “Now she has seen the painting. You must tell her something. Not the truth, I understand why you cannot do that. At least, not now, but someday, perhaps, there will be a time when she can learn who her mother is. For now, she needs to know that she has a parent. That parent must be you.”
He didn’t respond.
“Harley,” Hazel said, the urgency plain in her voice, even as she could see that the subject of his sister’s disgrace weighed heavily upon him, “if you truly intend to salvage something from this so that Violetta will not be the target of calumny, then you will have to take it all on, even though it is a lie. She cannot grow up with a mysterious past and the face of a Wyatt. Surely you see that?”
What agony, she wondered, had Harley endured through the years, keeping his sister’s secret at the cost of speculation about his own conduct? He was, she knew, a man of fierce integrity, without the proof of manhood that other men would have claimed at the birth of a child. He did not judge his sister and that was commendable as many others would have. Perhaps his father judged her for what she had done. But Harley was correct; a man would be forgiven for the sin that would have banished a woman.
“How can I possibly tell her now? It’s a lie, in any case.”
“You have two options. You can tell her the truth and reveal your sister’s actions or lie and protect your sister while giving Oakley a name. She is Oakley Wyatt, in any case. That she is your niece and not your daughter is something only you and I— and Violetta—need to know.”
Harley scrutinized her with that searching, unreadable expression she had seen in his eyes before and could not interpret.
“You would accept this?” he asked her. “To be married to a man who was, in the eyes of his neighbors and his church, a sinner?”
How easy it suddenly was to go to him and put her arms around him. “Are we not all sinners?” she said tenderly.
“You are less of a sinner than any human alive,” he said, his voice husky with feeling. “You are generous beyond reason. That day when the piano arrived, you let Abel Markeli play it. It is your piano and you wanted it dearly. But you were not the first to play it.”
That incident seemed as though it belonged to another time.
“It was not important whether I played it first or he did,” she explained. “I knew that I would play it. What difference did it make who played it first?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. All these years, I have done my best to protect Oakley from speculation.”
“She is the image of your sister, Harley,” Hazel chided him gently. “And as such, she is the image of you. People have eyes and they have wits. They assume that she is your daughter. And so she must become your daughter.”
“If she is to become my daughter,” he said, his eyes unwavering, “then she is your stepdaughter.”
“Certainly.”
“What will your parents think?” he demanded, anguish apparent in his voice. “They will think that you came all this way to marry a man whose past concealed scandal.”
“They will think that I married a man who has a child,” she said. “Oakley will be ours. She will know her place here. We will not change how she thinks or feels. This is her home and she has fond memories of her grandfather teaching her when she was young. She will be a Wyatt and, as such, she will be entitled to the privileges of that name.”
“She will be courted by ranchers’ sons,” he said, repeating the words she had used before.
“Yes, because this is Colorado and her birth will not be held against her. She will be a woman in a state where females are needed. She is a Wyatt.”
They held each other in an embrace in which desire played no part. This was not the sudden, temporary ardor of the night. It was much deeper, a sharing of one another in spirit as they sought each other’s strength. Hazel knew that this secret could not be shared. She would tell her sisters what she would tell her parents when they arrived. Harley was Oakley’s father. Minnie and Clara already believed it, just as Hazel had thought it to be true. It would take no convincing. Her parents would accept the story as they heard it.
In Boston, such an episode would be damning to a family. But here, in the Wild West, it seemed that there were tamer moments, when a past mistake need not color the future. Oakley— and Violetta too, if she but knew it— were luckier than their Eastern counterparts would have been in the same situation.
This secret would remain so. It would be a secret that she and Harley would share. If the time came when Violetta wished to claim Oakley as her own, they would have to deal with that possibility. But Hazel’s instincts told her that Violetta would not trade the life she had made with her husband for the brief lapse that had created a child.
“Why is she named Oakley?” Hazel asked when she and Harley’s embrace ended.
“It’s the town in California where she went. Where Oakley was born.” He smiled. “Violetta always hated her name, she thought it was frilly. She was a tomboy, I reckon. We played boys’ games when we were young and she always wanted to beat me at races, at riding, at everything. Mother did her best to teach Violetta the ways of a woman, but Mother was gentle and she would not insist, not when it meant so much to Violetta to be unencumbered. She was outside as often as she could be and Mother didn’t have the heart to force her to come inside when it was plain that she was more suited to being out of doors.”
“Maybe that’s where Oakley gets her love of the outdoors from.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t pretend that I knew how to bring her up, but I’m glad you’re here to help me,” he said. “I know I haven’t been much of a husband in a lot of ways. I didn’t know how to be a father, I don’t know how to be a husband. Ranching is all I know.”
Hazel hugged him around his waist with a ferocity that surprised them both. “You’re not an easy man to understand,” she nod
ded. “But you’ve been nothing but generous with what you have. You’ve been generous to Clara and Peter, she doesn’t know that the furniture in their home mostly comes from the ranch. Now, with my parents coming, well, it means so much to us. It will mean everything to Minnie when she sees them.”
“I’m sorry she’s not happy here,” Harley said. “She seemed to be, in the beginning.”
“I don’t think she’s unhappy. She loves Gavin and she wouldn’t trade him for Boston. I just think she misses our parents.”
“Might she be in the family way? Women get mighty mopey when—” he stopped. “I hear things,” he said. “I don’t know on my own, except for Violetta.”
“Was she melancholy?”
“I thought it was because of Mother’s death. She would cry for what seemed no reason, but to me, the reason was clear. I envied her being able to cry,” he said. “After Mother died, even though I was a man, I felt like I was lost. Father was lost without her. I didn’t think I’d want that to happen to me, but now that you’re here, I can’t fathom what I’d do if you left me.”
“Why would I leave you?” she asked him. “When my sisters and I came here, we knew it was for keeps.”
“For keeps,” he repeated, smiling. “Violetta and I used to say that.”
“My sisters and I did too, when we were growing up.”
“For keeps,” he whispered, bringing her closer to him so that he could kiss her and claim her. “For keeps.”
19
Hazel watched as her mother surveyed the faces around the dining room table, taking note of her daughters and their smiles as they took part in the conversation. At a Boston social occasion, husbands and wives would never be seated next to each other, but this was Colorado, and the pairings were by marriage. Except for Harley and Hazel; Oakley was seated between them.
Mother’s eyebrows had risen when she met Oakley and saw that the girl was dressed in male attire, but she said nothing, her innate courtesy coming naturally to her as it always did. Her eyes went to Minnie, now merry and laughing at something Father had said while, at her side, Gavin’s expression showed his pleasure in his wife’s mirth. Were they expecting a child? If they were, they would share the news eventually, for the arrival of a child was a secret that could, in time, be shared. That was not the case with the secret that she and Harley shared, but it was a secret that had forged a new understanding between them and a new intimacy.