Holly: The Christmas Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch (Sweet Version) Book 9)

by Merry Farmer

  “They’ve been tightening the noose so tightly around the Cheyenne’s necks that our friends are growing desperate,” Katie said. She and Emma finished with the table and came around to join Holly in a conversational knot. “Two Spots, a wonderful woman who has been fighting hard for her people, says that even if they are granted permission to make camp where they choose for the winter, they have so few warm blankets now and not nearly as much food as they need, since they haven’t been able to hunt.”

  “That’s awful.” Holly pressed a hand to her heart. “And these are friends of yours.”

  “Yes,” Emma answered with a touch of defensiveness. “They are people, just like the rest of us, and I’m so tired of hearing ignorant folks say that the natives of this land are less than human.”

  Katie rested a hand on Emma’s arm. “I know. I am too.”

  “Can’t something be done to help them?” Holly asked.

  “We’re trying,” Katie went on. “We’ve been working to establish an Indian Aid Society in the hopes that if we can help people to view the Cheyenne as our neighbors and get them invested in everyone’s futures, we might be able to do some good.”

  Holly opened her mouth to tell her new friends to count her as one of their group, but Robbins butted in with, “I, too, have been called by God to provide deliverance and succor to our noble savage neighbors.”

  Holly jumped. She hadn’t seen or heard Robbins approach. Katie and Emma snapped to stiff silence, staring hard at Robbins. They dripped with indignation, but Robbins seemed blind to it.

  “It is our duty as God’s children, good Christians, to lift up those who are below us, to save the souls of those who are lost to His divine grace.” Robbins tilted his face up, his mouth spreading in something that may have been intended to be a smile.

  Katie and Emma remained stock still, their stares slipping into glares. “I could make the argument that the Cheyenne are God’s children just as much as whoever your ‘good Christians’ are,” Katie said, crossing her arms.

  “And we must fight a holy war to protect them,” Robbins went on, no indication that he’d even heard her. “We must fight for their bodies and their souls, even if we are fighting against they themselves.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” Emma growled.

  Again, Robbins went on as if he was giving a lecture instead of having a conversation. “That is why I have begun my efforts to aid the Indians. With the help and donations of this blessed society, God’s work can be done, the savages can be brought into His light.”

  The hair on the back of Holly’s neck stood up as soon as he said the word “donations.” She shouldn’t have been so instantly suspicious, but in her experience, anyone who spoke of money in the middle of a talking about salvation was more interested in the former than the latter.

  “Then we will both be looking to provide help for the Cheyenne,” Katie said, jaw clenched so that her words came out as more of a challenge than an agreement.

  “Why should the servants of God work in competition with each other?” Robbins asked. “Would His work not be better served if we acted as one?”

  Katie and Emma exchanged a glance. “If it’s all the same, we’ll stick to our own plans,” Emma said.

  Robbins’s face darkened. “Woe befall the selfish man,” he boomed, drawing the attention of several people standing nearby. “Selfishness is a sin in all men, but in women it is a vile serpent, intent on devouring the soul and turning those who should be doubly submissive to God’s will into harlots and evil-doers.”

  “Did you just call me a harlot?” Katie took a half step forward, her accent as thick as ever, her eyes blazing.

  “Excuse me.” A devilishly handsome man with black hair, blue eyes, touches of grey at his temples, and an accent as thick as Katie’s, stepped between Katie and Robbins. “I need my wife for a moment.” He whisked Katie away, glancing back to nod at Holly with a mischievous grin.

  “Keep a tighter leash on your wife,” Robbins grumbled after him.

  Holly’s brow flew up. Hers wasn’t the only one.

  “Excuse me,” Emma clipped, then marched off herself.

  That left Holly standing alone with Robbins. She would rather have been standing alone in the jungles of the Amazon, in the scorching sands of the Sahara, in her old bedroom, face-to-face with Bruce in one of his tempers.

  No, on second thought, she couldn’t even think of Bruce in one of his tempers without her stomach roiling. Instinctively, she touched her face where bruise after bruise had been for years. As soon as she recognized her gesture, she thrust her arms down to her sides.

  “I think it is noble of you to take up the cause of helping the Indians,” she said, her voice a little too weak.

  “It is imperative that those restless savages be tamed and brought into God’s fold,” Robbins said. “I trust, as a minister’s wife, that you will champion the cause and ensure that the good people of Haskell give their full effort.” And open their purses was implied in the silence following Robbins’s words.

  “I…I’ll have to ask my husband,” Holly mumbled, then turned and dashed off to find George. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d stepped in some sort of putrid puddle masquerading as holy water.

  Chapter 6

  “So by the time we get to the nativity scene in the pageant,” George explained as he and Holly sat side-by-side in one of the front pews, “the congregation is able to stand up and walk to the front to take a closer look.”

  “I see.” Holly nodded, eyes focused on the chancel where the manger and a few blocks and trees had been set up for rehearsal.

  George studied her. There was such a light of intelligence in her eyes. Clearly, she was taking in everything he told her about the way they did the pageant every year and visualizing it. She always had been quick to figure things out. He’d admired her for it. He could even argue that it was the same quality that had caught his attention about her the first time he walked into her family’s store and asked for help.

  “And what does the congregation do after they’ve come forward to see the nativity?” She finished her practical question and turned to him. She caught him staring at her. Her cheeks flushed and her eyelids fluttered before she looked back to the chancel.

  For the thousandth time in the week since they’d been married, George cursed himself. Why hadn’t he been able to muster up the courage to apologize to her for…for everything? Why couldn’t he bring himself to talk to her about the wall between them that wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how much time they spent together? Their lives overlapped in almost every possible way. His work kept him in the church for most of the day, as did hers, but they could let hours go by in silence while working only a few yards away from each other.

  He cleared his throat and said, “After they’ve taken their seats again, we sing a hymn, then move on to the wise men. They enter from the back, and—” He twisted as he explained, but stopped at the sight of the new donations box that sat on a small table just past the church’s doorway.

  He let out a tense breath, scowling. It hadn’t felt right when Howard and Robbins came to see him the other day, insisting he set up a box for donations to Robbins’s Indian cause. Howard thought it was a brilliant idea, but one of the few things George and Holly had managed to talk about in their long, awkward days was their suspicions that Robbins wasn’t everything Howard thought he was.

  “He won’t let you take it down or move it?” Holly’s gentle voice cut into George’s thoughts.

  He shook his head and faced forward again. “Howard insists that Robbins comes on the highest recommendation of the WSGA. I tried to argue that the WSGA isn’t the be all and end all authority on spiritual matters. Howard agrees with me, but he says he needs to ingratiate himself to those cronies in Cheyenne, since they’re the ones who really run the territory.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I understand Howard’s drive to put himself in an influential position a little too well.”r />
  “Oh? What do you mean?” She shifted to face him more fully, bringing her knees in contact with his leg.

  That tiny contact made it that much harder for him to think. “I can’t help but wonder…” He stopped, uneasy about confiding in her. No, he needed to confide in her. There’d been a time when he would tell her all his secrets. It had felt so wonderful to have her take on the things that bothered him. Now more than ever, it was her right to know his mind. He rolled his shoulders and let out a breath, then dragged his eyes up to meet hers. “I can’t help but wonder if I’m prejudiced against Robbins because I’m jealous.”

  Holly’s brow flew up. “Jealous?”

  He winced. “Yes, jealous. Jealous because of the way everyone responded to his sermon on Sunday. Jealous because my congregation is giving him so much attention.”

  “You care deeply about these people,” Holly said. Her hand inched toward his as it rested on his leg, but she stopped and pulled back.

  George wished she’d gone ahead and taken his hand. He wished she’d go further and embrace him, snuggle up with him. Like a child, he couldn’t shake the feeling that a hug would make everything better right then.

  “It’s more than caring deeply about them,” he admitted, pouring his heart out even if he couldn’t draw her into his arms. “These people are my life. They are the reason I get up in the morning and the focus of my day. I want nothing more than for the people of Haskell to be happy and to feel God’s love. But in comes Robbins, and poof.” He threw his hands up. “The congregation comes alive during his sermon, and now there’s a donation box for his cause sitting right in the entrance to the church.”

  She was quiet for a moment before asking, “Are you bothered more by the potential that Robbins is up to no good or that the people you’ve looked after and trusted for years have warmed to him so quickly?”

  He smiled. He couldn’t help it. She’d hit the nail on the head so swiftly and so precisely. That was why he lo—

  He cleared his throat and lowered his head. What was he thinking, confusing the past with the present?

  “Honestly? Neither,” he admitted.

  She frowned, scooting closer by a hair. “Then what?”

  He wanted to take her hand in his more than anything. Instead, all he could do was look her in the eye. “What kind of man does that make me if every bit of my confidence is crushed by a single Sunday. How greedy and arrogant am I to feel so offended by one man?”

  Her gaze filled with compassion. More than that. It filled with a warmth that he couldn’t have dreamed of with all the turmoil between them. And she reached for his hand.

  The church door banged open like a gunshot.

  “Whoops! Sorry. It’s a bit windy today. We’re here for rehearsal,” Miriam Montrose announced, sweeping into the room like the actress she’d once been.

  Half a dozen of the townspeople George had cast in the Christmas pageant followed. The beautiful almost-moment between him and Holly was shattered. He launched to his feet, putting on a fragile smile to greet them with, “Welcome! Come right in.”

  He sent an apologetic look to Holly over his shoulder as she stood. They had come so close to breaking through the ice between them. That could have been the one chance he’d have to tell her how much he regretted their past and the awkwardness of their present. Now the moment was gone.

  “Come in and I’ll give you a quick summary of how the pageant will—”

  George stopped short, halfway to the back of the church, as Robbins stepped through the door. He was dressed in his usual black, his beard as wild as ever, but there was a new kind of sanctimoniousness in his eyes that sent dread swirling to the pit of George’s stomach. Worse still, it deepened into malevolence when he met George’s eyes.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  George flinched. He hadn’t heard Holly step up behind him. Now she took up almost all of his awareness. She leaned in so close to his back that he could feel her heat, smell her fresh, flowery scent. He didn’t want to think of anything else, but he had to. It came as a surprise to him that Robbins was a bigger problem than his gnarled relationship with Holly.

  “I don’t know,” he murmured to her, turning his head but keeping his eyes trained on Robbins. Robbins broke eye contact to greet some of the townspeople who were arriving for rehearsal. “But I intend to find out.”

  He stepped forward, adjusting his posture to present as strong a front as possible as he approached Robbins. Whatever tough image he wanted to project was dampened by the enthusiastic greetings of pageant participants greeting him and wishing him a happy marriage, but by the time he reached Robbins at the back of the church, George’s shoulders were still squared and his head held high.

  “Rev. Robbins.” He made his greeting firmly without being rude. “What brings you by the church this afternoon?”

  Robbins turned away from greeting Vivian, Melinda, and Bebe Bonneville to smile at George. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  George blinked. “I’m conducting a rehearsal of the Christmas pageant.”

  Robbins leaned in closer. He smelled of expensive soap. “A man should render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”

  George frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What do taxes have to do with Christmas pageants?”

  “A man who is newly married should give his devotion to his wife.” He leaned back and spread his arms as if lecturing a crowd. “As Isaac devoted himself to Rebecca, so a man should devote himself to his wife.”

  A few of the women standing nearby nodded in approval or sighed at the romance of the notion.

  George sent them a fleeting sideways look, then focused on Robbins. “This from the same man who insisted at the ceremony itself that it was better to marry than burn?”

  Robbins somehow grew even more supercilious. “Your patron wishes for you to take time off for a honeymoon, and yet here you stand, disobeying the very man who endows your church.”

  “Howard agreed that I should continue to organize the pageant. You know that as well as I do.”

  Robbins’s smile widened even as his eyes hardened. “I would think that a man who has just married such a pretty wife would want to spend as much time with her as possible. Unless there is some sort of problem.”

  George flinched and took a half step back, not because Robbins had hit his mark with his implied insult, but because George realized that within the space of a minute, Robbins had tried three different tactics to undermine him. The man was definitely after something.

  George’s glance flickered to the donation box for Robbins’s supposed Indian efforts, then extended an arm to lead Robbins to the side of the room. More people were arriving for rehearsal, and the two of them were standing in the way. Fortunately, Robbins moved with him.

  “The pageant is not part of my honeymoon time off,” he insisted, then breezed right on. “Howard wants you to preach to our town for a while, and I can respect that. But I question your tactics.”

  “God’s word is not delivered by means of tactics, like some common battle,” Robbins balked.

  “It is the way you deliver it,” George fired back. Immediately, he scolded himself for letting the argument get under his skin. He shook his head and started over. “Haskell is used to a different kind of ministering. My approach has always been to emphasize God’s loving and forgiving nature.”

  “God loves the righteous and the good, but he will eternally condemn sinners,” Robbins argued, if making a statement as if it was already a proven fact could be considered an argument. “It is an abomination to allow harlots and thieves in His temple.”

  “Bonnie’s girls are valuable members of this community.” George defended them. “Their profession is far from ideal, but not one of them has a chance of being saved through exclusion and condemnation. Besides—” he rushed on as Robbins opened his mouth to argue. “Those girls have done a lot to help the people of Haskell, and Haskell know
s it. If you come down too hard on them, you risk alienating the congregation.”

  “And if they persist in their sins, they risk alienating the Almighty.”

  George pushed out a breath and rubbed his chin. “I’m simply trying to tell you the character of the congregation you’re preaching to. These are good people. Some would argue they are more sophisticated than others, even if their lives are those of simple labor. They don’t want to be beaten over the head with pictures of doom and death. They respond better to messages of love and heavenly encouragement.”

  “Are you trying to tell me how to spread God’s message?” Robbins snapped, more like an offended lawyer than a man of God. “I know how to preach.”

  It was all George could do to keep his expression under control. “Everything I’ve seen of your preaching would be just as much at home on the stage as in the pulpit.”

  “Are you accusing me of treachery and deceit?” Robbins pulled himself up to his full, intimidating height, his eyes flashing, his beard quivering.

  A lesser man would have been terrified, but George had seen much worse in his wilder days. “Anyone can pretend to speak on God’s behalf.”

  “I will have you know that I was trained in some of the finest institutions, dedicated to His cause,” Robbins insisted.

  “Really?” George crossed his arms. “Which ones?”

  “The Theological Institute of Hartford, for one,” Robbins said, as offended as he was argumentative. “With an extensive course at the Chicago Wesleyan Seminary.”

  George’s shoulders dropped and his frown deepened. He’d expected Robbins to stumble when pressed, to admit that he was a sham. So much for that theory. It didn’t change the rest of it, though.

  “Rev. Pickering, are you ready to start?” Miriam called from the front of the aisle.