by Carla Kelly
Generous, it was. Nellie took Francie to a back bedroom with Olympia, where the redoubtable aunt made a bed for the baby in a bureau drawer. Will followed, just to lean against the doorjamb and watch with Nora. “She’s going to wonder why our baby is wearing a Union Pacific sheet and fragment of a blanket,” he whispered. “Maybe I’d better intervene before she thinks—ahem—Mrs Wharton and I are wretched, unprepared parents.”
He kept his explanation short, mainly because Olympia was starting to make those sounds peculiarly her own that he already identified with hunger. As Aunt Nellie listened, her eyes wide, he told of the desperate surgery in the immigrant car and their unwillingness to consign so sweet a newborn to some orphanage in Omaha, even if there was one.
“Perfectly understandable,” Nellie said in her crisp voice. “I would have done the same thing.” She gestured to her niece. “Nora, you are probably more agile than I am. Upstairs in the attic is a whole trunkful of your own baby clothes. Let’s pay a visit.”
Veterans now of the care and feeding of Olympia, Will traded a soiled Union Pacific napkin for a clean one while Francie prepared the proper bottle they had acquired in Omaha. In a moment she was sitting in the armchair, stockinged feet propped on the bed, while Olympia dined.
Will sat on the bed, leaning back against the bedstead. Francie lifted her feet into his lap and he massaged them. “Do we dare hope Nora will be all right?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
He might as well have asked if the moon was made of cheese, for all the attention Francie paid him. She had that look of supreme contentment on her face, one he had seen after most of his deliveries. Olympia had captured Francie’s little finger in her tiny grip and Francie stared at her in awe.
“During full moons I turn into a werewolf named Cecil,” he said softly. Francie nodded.
She paid him no attention as he watched Olympia’s proprietary grip and then Francie’s lovely face. A year ago, when Francie had first come to Fort Laramie, he had been mildly amused by her abundance of little freckles. Now all he wanted was the leisure to count each one and maybe kiss it. He knew that under her glorious red hair, much brighter than his, was a brain both shrewd and equal to his own. He might have known Madeline Radnor for years, but as Will watched the woman he loved, he knew Mary Francis Coughlin was worth the upcoming scandal.
“I won’t hold you to that proposal, you know.”
He gazed at her. “I won’t retract it.”
She gave him a wistful smile. “You know better than I do that a gentleman doesn’t jilt a lady for the granddaughter of a bog Irishman.”
“This one does,” he replied.
“At least think about it,” she said, moving her feet from his lap because she heard Nora and her aunt returning.
Thoughtful, Will joined them in the kitchen, leaving Francie to get Olympia to sleep. He sat at the table as Nora sorted baby clothes and told her aunt about life with the Ogalala Sioux. He had to hand it to Aunt Nellie; there were no clucks of dismay or looks of disgust at the life her niece had been forced to lead for thirteen years. He saw only genuine interest and then real dismay that she had a young niece and nephew motherless and fatherless at the Spotted Tail Agency near Camp Robinson.
“Captain Wharton thinks I need to get a lawyer,” Nora said as she folded and refolded a small mound of nightgowns and receiving blankets.
“We have those in Utley,” Nellie said, taking her niece’s hand and holding it to stop her restless agitation. “What we need is political influence, but no one’s ever heard of Utley.”
“I can furnish that,” Will told them. “My family knows a few people in Washington.” He knew he had said enough. No need to tell them now that his stepfather was related to the vice-president’s wife, and that he used to spend part of each school vacation in the home of the Secretary of the Treasury. “When Francie and I return to Fort Laramie, I’ll go to Camp Robinson and see what I can do. I’ll warn you that we might not get anywhere, but we can try.”
Nora was silent a long moment. She smiled faintly when Francie joined them at the table, then shyly pushed the little pile of clothing toward her. Francie took them and kissed Nora’s forehead.
Nellie took her niece’s hand again. “Since we are indulging in plain speaking, don’t worry about your reception here in Utley, my dearest. This is a kind town. There will be some looks, and maybe some whispers, but time will pass.”
“My other aunt and uncle…”
“…are nincompoops,” Nellie said. “We just have to be brave a little bit longer.”
Will thought about her words as he shivered through a quick wash in the lavatory and returned to bed in a nightshirt. A soft bed in a peaceful town was a far cry from last night’s anguish in the immigrant car and he realized how weary he was. He knew he could have offered to sleep on the rump-sprung sofa in the room, but not when Francie had been so kind as to turn down the coverlet on what must be his side of the bed.
“No one’s going to need you tonight. There’s no emergency,” was all Francie said as she gathered him close. He was asleep almost before she finished the sentence.
He had been dimly aware when she got up once to feed Olympia around two, and again as dawn began to gradually lighten the room. He lay on his back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, comfortably warm. When Francie took off her nightgown and returned to bed, he wasn’t the man to turn down such an invitation. They made love as quietly as they could, considering that he could hear Nellie snoring in the next room.
“Francie, I love you,” he whispered, his arms around her. “It’s funny. All I wanted to do on this Christmas trip home was read my stupid medical journals. Maybe I owe Captain Hunsaker something. Do you love me?”
She nodded. “It’s probably not the smartest thing either of us ever did.” She moved a little and made herself more comfortable at his side. “Do you know why I was going home to Brooklyn?”
“Call me self-centered. I never thought to ask.”
“My brothers had arranged for me to meet a nice Irishman, a butcher from Killarney. They knew I would like him. ‘You’re thirty years old, Mary Frances,’ they told me. ‘Time you found a man.’” She raised up on one elbow. “Am I older than you?”
“Nope. I still have two years on you and I think I can take you in a fair fight.”
Francie made a face and kissed his chest.
He chuckled. “Maybe we should introduce your butcher to my fiancée.” He kissed the freckle beside her mouth. “One down. Thousands to go.”
“This really isn’t funny,” Francie told him, massaging his stomach to soften the blow.
“I know. Do that lower.”
“No! We have to catch a train.”
He sighed. “Killjoy. What we really have to do is follow Nellie’s advice and be brave a little longer. My family has good luck at Christmas.”
What about Maddy’s family? he thought, as Francie searched for her nightgown. Do they have good luck at Christmas, too, or am I the worst cad in all thirty-eight states?
Chapter Eleven
They changed trains in Chicago. He held Olympia to his shoulder while Francie dozed at his side. He smiled as the snowy Illinois countryside rumbled by, thinking of Nora’s last words to him as they paced the platform in Utley. She had asked him how long he had loved Francie Coughlin, which surprised him.
“I don’t think I even knew I did, until the train trip,” he said, as they walked to the end of the platform and started back—two people with abundant nervous energy, unlike Francie, who sat so peacefully with Olympia and Aunt Nellie. “What made you think that?”
“It was the way you looked at her,” Nora said, as the train whistle sounded in the distance. “It was the way my husband used to look at me, when I was down at the river, or gathering berries.” She smiled. “He was shy, too. But you put your blanket over her, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“I was hoping you would.”
“Nora Powe
ll, you’re an observant lady.” Impulsively, he kissed her cheek; she smiled.
“I’m a ruined woman that everyone in Utley will probably think should have killed herself.”
“No. Your aunt’s right, my dear. Give it time and make allowances for nincompoopery.”
Will and Francie changed trains again in Indianapolis. Will had enough time to send his parents a telegram, advising them that the train would be late and he would take a hack to the house. The last thing he wanted was to see Maddy waiting for him on the platform, or the shocked looks his parents would exchange when he stepped off with a baby and a strange woman.
Francie tried to change his mind one last time, but he knew her heart wasn’t in it. He knew his parents would love her and he doubted either of them could resist Olympia’s solemn, dark-eyed stare, the same look she was giving him right now as he held her, studying his face, memorizing it in some baby way that meant he was hers forever.
“Francie, I’ve delivered a lot of babies. Why on earth did I succumb to this one?”
His dear one had no answer. All she could do was fix him with her own solemn look and tuck herself closer. With a lift in his heart, he knew he was hers forever, too. Women!
Will wasn’t a total liar, because the train was late out of Indiana and late out of Pittsburgh, where they changed again, for the final time. After two days from Chicago of stop and start travel, overcrowding—it seemed like everyone in the midwest wanted to get to Philadelphia for Christmas—bad food and worse sleeping accommodations, they arrived late at night in the City of Brotherly Love, frazzled.
During that long layover in Indianapolis, Will had tried to coax his love into visiting the nearest justice of the peace and legalizing the until-death-did-them-part aspect of their already flourishing relationship. Francie wouldn’t have it. “I want your folks to meet me first,” she said.
“They’re going to love you, whether you arrive as Mrs Wharton or Miss Coughlin,” he assured her.
He was prepared to argue the matter until she succumbed, but her next reason stopped him, because it was so kind and so right. “It’s more than that, Will. You’re going to have to disappoint Maddy Radnor. Don’t arrive married. Imagine how that would humiliate her.” Francie kissed his cheek to ease his pain; he knew he had no comeback to so much consideration. Better to let Maddy down easy, without springing a wife and a child on her, too.
Still, he was greatly relieved when the conductor, sounding as weary as Will felt, called “Philadelphia.”
Will was in no hurry to rise from his seat, which had nearly adhered to his backside by now. Besides, Olympia was slumbering in his lap, still curled up in her prenatal position, which he had pointed out to Francie in Ohio or Indiana. Maybe it was even in Iowa. “She’ll stay that way a few more weeks,” he had told her, always the physician. “Then one day she’ll stretch out for good and leave the womb behind.”
At least until those moments she’ll want to crawl back inside, because it feels safer than the world around her, he should have added. The idea of facing Maddy was starting to make him wish for such a handy retreat. Since Pittsburgh at least, while Francie had slept against his shoulder, Will had let Maddy’s many letters about wedding details slowly unspool through his mind: her dress, brought all the way from Worth’s in Paris; the numerous bridesmaids and their Worth frocks; the food, the invitations, the flowers, the ever-lengthening guest list. There was even a photographer.
His stepfather had discreetly written in a letter of his own that the Radnors weren’t as high in the instep as they used to be and this wedding was costing them dear. Obviously, they expected some return from marrying into the well-heeled Wharton clan. Wilkie Wharton was an army surgeon, but Maddy was certainly trying her best to get him to resign his commission and earn better money—if he felt he had to work—by curing sniffles and piles from amongst the wealthy of their combined guest list.
The whole nightmare was going to make his ears bleed, if he kept thinking about it. I am a cad, a cad, a cad, he thought, the cadence matching the rhythm of the railroad. At the very least, he knew he would have to dip into family money to repay Maddy for his caddery.
It only took a glance at Francie to remind him that money was only money, after all. He had enough of it and he would still marry Francie and keep Olympia, too. No one would understand except, hopefully, his family, and they would return as man and wife to the frontier where they belonged. Some other rich physician could write prescriptions for hemorrhoid medication and throat lozenges. He’d stick to gunshot and arrow wounds, delivering babies under fraught conditions and tending to gangrene.
Somewhere in Chicago or maybe Indianapolis, he had left behind his medical journals, because he had needed room in his valise for diapers. This trip was not ending the way it had begun, but then, neither had his grandfather’s shipwreck off San Diego, or his mother’s difficult sojourn in Anatolia. Some day when she was old enough to understand, he would tell Olympia and their other children that it was best to be flexible in love and things that mattered.
His home had never looked so welcome, blazing with lights and sporting an enormous wreath on the front door. He was amused to see Francie’s wide-eyed stare at the size of what he knew was only a modest mansion in Philadelphia’s best district. His family had never been show ponies—just rich.
“I don’t know about this,” she said, sounding uneasy.
He kissed her hand, then handed her Olympia, whose dark, solemn eyes were wide open, too. “If you want to meet my folks, this—to quote that rascal Brigham Young—is the place.”
He glanced across the street to the Radnor house, also decorated, and flinched to see what he thought was Maddy’s silhouette in the front parlor window. This is going to have to be the fastest explanation in modern American history, he thought, as he lifted the iron latch on the front gate and ushered his lovely lady up the carefully swept walkway.
Will felt a care or two leave his shoulders as he handed his overcoat and valise to the butler, whose eyes were lively with interest at the sight of Francie and the baby. His mother was next on the scene, hugging him, then stepping back in surprise when Olympia started to cry.
“What…?”
Will turned to see his stepfather, pool stick in hand, staring at Francie and Olympia. In another moment, Trey Wharton was grinning from ear to ear. “Wilkie Wharton, you are a dirty dog,” he said. “I feel a tidal wave of explanation coming on, so let us adjourn to the sitting room and close the door.” He laughed out loud and shook the pool stick at his stepson. “And if the first words out of your mouth are ‘This isn’t what you think,’ I’m going to thrash you.”
Will knew that tone. More of his care slid away, as he put his arm around Francie’s waist and ushered her into the sitting room. “This isn’t what you think,” he said, and grinned when both of his parents started to laugh. Francie stared at them in frank amazement.
“It’s an old family joke. Tell you later,” he explained, deftly plucking Olympia from Francie’s arms so his stepfather could help Francie with her coat. “Have a seat, my dear, unless you are as tired of sitting as I am.”
She was, so they stood close together—somehow, Olympia was now in his mother’s arms—and explained the last four days, taking turns. Will knew it had to be a rapid discourse, because he knew the next knock on the door would either be Maddy alone, or Maddy and her father with a brace of dueling pistols.
“That’s the whole story. I…we…couldn’t put Olympia in an orphanage. And a very kind and brave lady we dropped off in Iowa was smart enough to notice before I did that I have been in love with Mary Francis Coughlin for the better part of a year. Mama, I can’t marry Maddy.”
“No, you cannot,” his mother said. She was on her feet, too, handing him back Olympia and embracing Francie, who burst into tears. “Welcome to this ramshackle family, my dear,” she said. “What we lack in good sense, we make up for in dumb luck. When are you getting married?”
“T
he sooner the better,” Will said, feeling his face go red.
“That’s how it is?” his stepfather asked. “Francie, you and Olympia come along with Lily and me and we’ll install you in Will’s bedroom right now.” He shook his finger at Will. “And tomorrow we’re going to escort you lovebirds to the local registry.”
“What about…?”
“Your fiancée?” Trey Wharton chuckled. “I doubt she has any better aim with dueling pistols than your not-so-future father-in-law has with trap guns! He’s never hit a clay pigeon, to my knowledge. You’ll probably have no more than a flesh wound.”
Arm in arm, his parents left the room, holding the door open for Francie and Olympia. He was all by himself when he heard The Knock, and the butler showed Madeline Radnor into the sitting room.
Chapter Twelve
Maddy was as lovely as he remembered: dark hair, cobalt-blue eyes, lips full and lush, her figure slim and curved in all the right places. Every curl was firmly in place and her dress stylish and as neat as a pin.
Feeling like the worst hypocrite who had ever attached captain’s bars, Will went forward to kiss her. To his surprise, she stepped back and folded her hands primly in front of her breast.
“Willie, it’s good to see you, but we have to talk. Now.”
Willie. She always called him that, even though he had pointed out more than a few times that there was a K in his name. Thank goodness Francie preferred ‘Will.’ Maddy must have seen him escorting Francie up the front walk, his hand on her back. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth.
Before he could speak, Maddy held up her hand. “I should go first, Willie.”
“Ordinarily I would agree with you, my dear, but I…” Am a real cad and need to spill the beans, he thought, as she held up both hands this time, as though she were orchestrating him. Maybe she was.