Mistletoe Courtship

by Janet Tronstad

If you are feeling lonely during this time of year, find a church to attend where you can share the story of Christmas with others who hold it dear. I pray you have a joy-filled holiday.

  And, if you get a chance, I would love to hear from you. You can e-mail me at my Web site at www.janettronstad.com. Or send me a note in care of the editors at Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

  Sincerely yours,

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  Virginia Parker felt abandoned in Miles City in the beginning of the book. She had lost the home she had with her parents back east and then she’d lost the humble army quarters she’d shared with her brother when he died. Can you think of a time in your life when you’ve felt you had no place to go? Did you blame God? Others? How did you feel?

  When Colter Hayes found Virginia wandering the streets of Miles City, he felt sorry for her and hired her to play piano in his saloon. Later, he wondered if he should have just given her money instead. What do you think? When you see someone in need, do you debate about giving them money versus helping them in other ways?

  Virginia Parker tried to educate the men in the saloon about classical music. Have you ever tried to “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”? What happened? There is a fine line between improving someone and accepting them as they are. How should we decide what to do in such a situation?

  Virginia loved her father and worked for years for his approval. How did this impact her life? How did this influence her relationship with Colter? With Patricia?

  When Patricia steals one of her precious bells, Virginia decides to give her the whole set. What prompted her to do this? What would you give up to keep a child’s love?

  Christmas made Virginia more sentimental than usual. Do you feel your emotions change around the holidays, for better or for worse? The Christmas bells were a tradition for her. What are some of your traditions?

  THE CHRISTMAS SECRET

  Sara Mitchell

  To all who march to a different drummer and keep tripping over their feet. May you learn to hear the divine rhythm of God’s Voice, and keep time with Him.

  Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

  —Matthew 11:28

  Chapter One

  Canterbury, Virginia

  December 1895

  An eye-watering sun beamed from a sky the color of her favorite blue hydrangeas—a deceptive bit of nature hoodwinking housebound humans, whose calendars proclaimed the month December. Shivering, Clara Penrose buried her face in her muffler because the sturdy thermometer she had mounted beside the cottage’s door read thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit. The air smelled metallic, with a bite that stung her nostrils as she made her way along the uneven flagstone path toward the garden shed.

  For Clara, winter remained a difficult season, despite the determined jollity of Christians preparing throughout the entire month of December for the annual Christmas celebration. This particular Christmas, however, promised to be more than difficult. She tried with little success to convince her racing heart that it was doomed to disappointment, that a woman her age should have outgrown girlish dreams.

  Her heart refused to listen to reason.

  Congressman—no, now he was Dr. Harcourt—was moving to Canterbury. And…if the gossip was true…his wife was dead, and he had never remarried. Nobody knew what he’d done with his life over the past three years, including Clara’s brother Albert, who had known Dr. Harcourt when the gentleman was a congressman. Albert might be an annoyingly officious lawyer, and three years earlier he might have bullied Clara into attending that Christmas fete…but if she’d resisted, she never would have met the most fascinating man ever to cross her path.

  He won’t remember you, Clara, the relentless voice in her head repeated. There had been a crush of guests at Senator Comstock’s Annual Christmas Gala, over four hundred of them. Dr. Harcourt had still been a congressman, and couldn’t take a step without someone demanding his attention. As for his wife…Clara grimaced. An undeniably stunning beauty, Mrs. Harcourt certainly knew how to draw heads, as well as lop them off: she scarcely acknowledged Clara with a single dismissive glance. The skinny old maid in her four-year-old evening gown was about as memorable as a grain of sand. Her only conversation with Congressman Ethan Harcourt had meant nothing to him, nor had she nurtured—until now—any false expectations. He had been married, he had been kind to a clumsy gawk of a woman, and the connection Clara had briefly enjoyed was the natural consequence of someone not used to such kindness from a man, married or not.

  She wished she could remember more details about his wife’s tragic death. There had been a scandal—something about a fire, and an affair?

  When she reached the pile of leaves heaped at the back of the garden shed she sank down on the rough bench her brother Willie had fashioned the previous summer.

  Clearing her throat, she invested as much cheerfulness into her voice as she could muster. “Good afternoon, Methuselah. I trust you’re enjoying your hibernation. Sometimes I wish I were a turtle like you, especially this time of year. Hibernation strikes me as one of God’s most…tidy inventions. So much easier to crawl into a nice hole and close up inside my shell. Do you realize how many homilies human beings have fashioned around the habits of your species?”

  Her cat, NimNuan, his coffee-tipped tail swishing, darted past the bench and pounced upon the leaves.

  “Nim, you scalawag!” Laughing, Clara shoved to her feet to scoop up the feline, who instantly draped his forepaws on Clara’s shoulders and purred in her face. She hugged him, scratching behind his ear while she scolded. “How many times have I explained to you that you’re my very favorite companion? Methuselah’s a fixture, not your rival. He’s turtled around here at least forty years. Granddaddy used to talk to him when he and Grandmother lived here, you know. Methuselah’s the perfect listener—unlike the very demanding puss I’m holding.”

  Talking to a turtle she couldn’t see but knew was there, hidden in those leaves, offered Clara a bridge to a faith she struggled with daily to live. Most times, when her mind pretended she was talking to Methuselah, her spirit understood she was actually baring her heart to God. “So behave yourself,” she ordered Nim. “No more pouncing in the leaves.”

  “Clara!” Her younger sister’s voice dimmed the crystalline air, sundering Clara’s hope of communion with a hibernating reptile and the Lord. “Where are you? Botheration! Your rosebush is attacking me. Clara!”

  “I’m behind the garden shed.” Clara set Nim down, inhaled a bracing breath. Nim wisely disappeared around the opposite corner. “At least the rosebush was trying to respect my privacy.”

  Louise peeked around the corner. “I was afraid of that. You were out here talking to that stupid turtle again. Do you realize how bizarre your habits have become over the past years? Bad enough, moving out of the house to this decrepit little cottage, acting like an eccentric—”

  “I’m not in the mood for one of your scolding rants.” Clara dusted her gloves and gave her sister a look. “Actually, I’m never in the mood for your scolds, but on this day in particular either tell me what you’ve come for—or leave me alone to my peculiar habits.”

  Louise blew out an exasperated breath. “Sometimes I have to agree with Mother. Grandfather never should have encouraged your independent notions by bequeathing you this cottage, along with Grandmother’s trust fund. If only you could be more sensitive to how others perceive your—your…”

  “Don’t spare my feelings, now. We bluestockinged spinsters must develop thick skins.”

  “Clara.” Abruptly Louisa reached for her hands and gave them a quick squeeze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, thick skin or no.” They exchanged relieved smiles, the tension between them fading. “But never mind all that. I came on Mother’s behalf, to invite you to dinner Tuesday night. There’s to be a guest. Would you like to guess who it is?”

  “Ha. That doesn’t require
guessing. I’m sure it will be Canterbury’s new physician and ex-congressman, Dr. Harcourt. Albert’s been gloating for a month now.”

  Louise’s face fell, her mouth pursing in an unattractive pout while she studied her sister. “I suppose he has. But I’d never heard of the man until last week. You sound almost as though you know him already.”

  Clara shrugged. “I give piano lessons to children who gossip more than their parents,” she began, picking her way through the words. For some reason, she didn’t want to reveal the circumstances of the Christmas Gala three years earlier. Her sister would invest more importance in an insignificant event than prudence dictated. Worse, Clara’s rebellious heart might tend to believe it.

  She began walking back toward the cottage with her sister. “Since you and Mr. Eppling are engaged, I fail to see why you’re so excited over having the town’s new physician over for a meal.”

  “I’m excited,” Louise stated with exaggerated patience, “because he’s asked Albert about you. This morning Bertha brought the children over to visit, and she told me Albert mentioned as much.”

  “Did Dr. Harcourt mention my name specifically, Louise?”

  Her sister ducked her head. “All right, no, he didn’t mention your name. He knows Albert has two sisters. Bertha did say Dr. Harcourt said he looked forward to meeting them. I thought—I just thought if you thought he was interested, you’d at least…” Her voice trailed away into a thick silence. “I’m sorry, sister.”

  Disappointment, sharp and bitter, coated Clara like sludge. She’d known, she’d known her sister’s penchant for tweaking the truth, but that downy feather of hope had persisted in tickling her heart anyway. And the rush of memories about her first meeting with Dr. Harcourt buffeted her until her legs all but trembled. She’d escaped the crush of elderly statesmen plying her with questions and slipped outside, onto a relatively un-crowded corner of a massive stone terrace. Dr. Harcourt had been sitting on a bench, invisible in the shadows until Clara, still night-blind, tripped. Hard arms had materialized out of the darkness, clasped her waist, gently steadied her. They had shared a conversation, not merely exchanged pointless social trivia.

  With an effort she focused on her sister. “Louise, I can no more turn myself into a curvaceous, green-eyed, golden-haired girl like you than I can fly to the moon.”

  “You could stop thinking of yourself as an ugly old stick. Because you’re not, Clara. If you’d look through some of the ladies’ magazines, let me help you with your hair, you’d be surprised by how pretty you are.”

  Disconcerted, Clara brushed off some dead leaves clinging to her old corduroy jacket. Pointed advice for the family spinster had evolved into family tradition. With Louise gazing at her with sisterly shrewdness, subtlety was useless. “Louise. Whatever you’re thinking, abandon it at once. Please, for my sake, accept that I am content with the lot God has designed for my life. Some people, like the apostle Paul, are not meant for marriage.”

  “My aunt Mitty! If we’re going to quote scripture, then I’ll remind you that the Lord also declared it wasn’t good for the man He’d just created to be alone.”

  “Well, that may be so, but at my advanced age of thirty-one, I’m convinced that God forgot to create the man who would relieve his aloneness with me.”

  “Perhaps we’ll be eating dinner with him Tuesday night.”

  After Louise left, bearing Clara’s reluctant acceptance to put in an appearance (“And whatever you do, please try to dress appropriately for the occasion, just this once.”), Clara wandered about the cottage, ruthlessly suppressing the tickling feather of hope. Emily Dickinson should never have written such an evocative poem.

  More likely than not, instead of perching on her soul, the feathers would make her sneeze.

  On the Sunday morning of his first week as a new resident of the town of Canterbury, Virginia, Ethan Harcourt reluctantly attended the same church as his old friend Albert Penrose, who had also extracted a promise from Ethan to come to dinner at his parents’ home on Tuesday. Ethan dreaded the socialization necessary to resurrect not only his former life, but a medical practice. Yet…he craved good friends and food again, he was starving for spiritual sustenance, and he needed to fully embrace what used to be his first calling from God.

  Of course, over the past three years he’d fallen back into doctoring in spite of himself, patching up broken miners out west, delivering babies to hardscrabble women, and mopping feverish brows. For two interesting months down in Nevada Territory, his medical skills had kept him alive—a notorious gang of thieves had ambushed the stage he was on. When they saw his doctor’s bag, they kidnapped him instead. He spent the next nine weeks patching up gun and knife wounds, and prayed over graves of thieves and murderers with considerably less charity than Jesus had dispensed from the cross. When the gang drank themselves into a stupor one night, Ethan helped himself to a horse and escaped.

  The stately little community of Canterbury reminded him of his western Pennsylvania roots, with its neat rows of clapboard cottages and brick homes in Virginia’s gently rolling hills and lush woodlands. Despite its proximity to Washington, Canterbury suited him down to the bone. He was weary of roaming the country like a homeless brigand.

  Two nights ago he’d finished transforming the first-floor rooms of the rambling old house he’d bought into his medical offices. After this morning’s appearance at church, he’d officially be back on public display again. A kernel of dread tickled the back of his throat. Time hurled him backward three years, to the memory of a hotel engulfed in smoke and flames. Thirty-six guests had perished, one of them his wife—found next to the newly elected senator from one of the midwestern states. Public display…

  His stride slowed as he walked the last block to the church, and he wondered if he would ever be free from his abhorrence of public humiliation. The mysterious letter that had arrived the previous evening hadn’t helped:

  So…you’ve returned at last. I knew you couldn’t hide forever. How convenient that you’ve chosen the town of Canterbury.

  That was all. Penned with careful precision in plain black ink and plain lettering. No signature and no return address, though the postmark was Washington, D.C.

  Ethan spared a few moments puzzling over that note, then tossed it back onto the pile of other welcoming missives. The writer would identify himself eventually; a doctor was almost as public a figure as a congressman. When Ethan made the decision to stop wandering and set down roots again, he’d accepted the associated risks.

  All the same, the brief note niggled his mind at odd moments.

  When he arrived at the hundred-year-old brick church, the congregation was already singing the second verse of a Christmas carol. Ethan slipped into a pew near the back, beside an elderly couple who gave him their hymnbook.

  People rubbed shoulders and shared hymnals in every pew, no doubt because this was the first Sunday in December—Advent, the beginning of the Christmas season. Pine boughs, sprigs of holly and dozens of lighted candles filled the sanctuary with their fragrances. Tensed muscles slowly relaxed as Ethan trained his gaze upon the minister and tried, mostly successfully, to hold bittersweet memories at bay.

  The sermon was delivered well, he decided, with enough punch to keep listeners awake without firing off points like a cannonade. Been a long, long time since he sat in a church pew and heard the gospel preached with honesty as well as passion.

  “…how we shared in last week’s message, the celebration of God’s gift of His Son does not always sit well within our private lives. Many of you carry such a heavy sack of burdens you’ve no room in the inn of your hearts for Jesus. Instead of tidings of great joy, this season prompts naught but despair and resentment and pain. You cannot accept the Almighty’s gift, much less present gifts of your own to the Christ child, as did the Magi—the gift of your time, your service. Your very selves. So…” palms planted on the lectern, the minister leaned forward, and a portentous aura filled the church “�
�how many of you remembered, and brought a symbol of those burdens this week? How many of you have the courage to come forward, leave them at the altar, with the One Who promised to help carry them? Only when you release these burdens can you truly celebrate Christmas.”

  He spread his robed arms in an inviting gesture. “Come, come, ye faithful yet fearful. Come while the organist plays ‘Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus,’ place your symbols in the manger, leave with hope in your hearts, and on Christmas Day, when we sing ‘Joy to the World,’ the words will resonate with truth…with the birth of your new life in the newborn Christ.”

  Movement and murmurs rippled through the pews as the organist began to play. Ethan watched, feeling a hollow sense of detachment shadowing his soul again. What would his symbol have been? The wedding ring he’d never been able to throw away? The stiffly formal letter accepting his resignation from Congress? Or perhaps the blank-paged Morocco-leather memorandum still tucked inside his coat pockets that stood for three wasted years wandering about the country in search of a cure for past mistakes?

  The elderly couple beside him excused themselves to join the growing stream of people filling the aisles. Ethan slipped out, moving to the back of the church, and watched the progression. The manger rapidly filled with objects. He watched a woman tenderly lay a doll on top of the hay, which was soon covered by a man’s shirt…a small string-tied journal…eventually the objects had to be placed around the feet of the manger, spilling across the dais.

  “Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free;

  From our sins and fears release us;

  Let us find our rest in Thee…”

  When the organist launched into the hymn for the fifth time, Ethan’s restless gaze fell upon the tall figure of a woman who glided from a side door across to the pile of “burdens.” Winter sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows, highlighting the solemn curve of her cheekbone and a wide unsmiling mouth. Her dark hair was worn in an uncompromising knot on the top of her head. Unlike most of the ladies present, she wore no hat. Something about her struck Ethan as both poignant and proud.