Enchanted Christmas

by Craig, Emma

  He didn’t smile back. Grace got the impression he used his smiles sparingly. “Yes.” After a moment, as if he’d only just then remembered his manners, he added, “Thanks.”

  Mr. Partridge was definitely not a friendly man. Grace sensed that his detached manner sprang more from unhappiness than antagonism, although she had nothing upon which to base her feeling. Nevertheless, she persisted. “I’m sure Mac has already told you this, but if you get too cold out there, please feel free to come in and sleep by the fire in the front parlor. It can get perishingly cold here in the winter, even though we don’t get the snow and freezing weather some places do.”

  It took him a minute, but he finally said, “Yeah. He did mention it. Thanks.”

  Grace cocked her head to one side as she studied Noah Partridge. He didn’t look awfully old—maybe somewhere around thirty—but she sensed something almost ancient about him. With a little shake of her head, she decided she was only being fanciful.

  “Please let me know if you need help finding anything, Mr. Partridge.” She gestured to the jumble of thread on the counter. “We got a shipment of goods from Saint Louis. The package of sewing notions fell out of the wagon and broke open, and now I have to sort it all out.” She laughed softly.

  Noah stared at her as if he’d never heard a woman laugh before. Grace wondered if she’d done something wrong.

  He said. “Yeah. Thanks. I will,” and went back to inspecting the goods displayed in the mercantile.

  She wondered if he were a normally taciturn man, or if she’d annoyed him somehow. She hoped not. With a small sigh, she decided that if she had, it couldn’t be helped. She couldn’t be anything but herself; she knew, because she’d tried. Every time she’d attempted to live up to someone else’s expectations, she’d failed. Eventually, she’d stopped trying, and now she only endeavored to be the best Grace Richardson she could be. She still failed, but not nearly so dismally.

  That was one of the reasons she’d loved Frank so much. He hadn’t wanted her to change. With a little shiver, she yanked her thoughts back from where they seemed determined to wallow in memories and went back to her task.

  “Where’s your kid?”

  Grace looked up quickly and found Noah Partridge watching her from in front of the shelf of canned goods she and Maddie had arranged last evening. How strange that he should ask that question. Yesterday she’d gotten the strong impression that he didn’t care for children.

  She gave him another smile, because he looked like he hadn’t been given enough of them in his life. “She’s outside with Mac, pestering the chickens.”

  He nodded and didn’t smile. “He’s got chickens here, does he?”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. McMurdo is extremely self-sufficient.”

  He nodded again. His face remained stony. Grace wondered if he rationed his smiles out one by one—if he counted them and feared he’d run out.

  With a gesture that looked jerky, as if he were unused to such spontaneous actions, he said, “He’s got a pretty well-stocked store her, for such an out-of-the-way place.”

  Grace’s grin was genuine and entirely spontaneous—she wasn’t used to anything at all calculated herself. “Yes. He certainly does. And quite frankly, I have no idea where he gets everything.”

  “Saint Louis?”

  She let out another soft laugh. “Some of it. But he has other sources that remain a mystery to me. Frank—my husband—and I were astonished when we first set foot in Alexander McMurdo’s Wagon Yard. I’m still astonished.”

  He grunted and turned away from her. Grace stared at his back for a moment, then returned to her thread.

  An interesting man, Mr. Noah Partridge. Grace would like to hear his story, but she knew better than to ask. Especially out here in the territory, people were apt to be touchy about revealing too much of themselves. She knew that many of them had suffered ghastly losses in the war. Still others were running from things—the law, families, responsibilities, sorrows. Grace wasn’t about to rub the scabs from old wounds.

  Mr. Partridge looked particularly weighed down to her, although she knew her own soft heart often gave people the advantage of benefits they hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve. Still, there was something about him . . .

  Physically, he was lean and hard and haggard. His features were fine, almost classical. His nose was straight, his chin firm, and his eyes quite—quite beautiful actually. Green. They had looked green to Grace yesterday. They were probably hazel.

  But his face had a drawn look about it that she’d seen before in people who had recovered from bad accidents and illnesses. She wondered if he’d once been terribly ill. Perhaps he still was. He wouldn’t be the first consumptive person to come out to the dry heat of the high plains for his health. She understood doctors were moving out here all the time, hoping to cash in on the white plague by offering clinics to its sufferers.

  Studying him from under her lashes, she decided his gauntness looked more as if it had come from an old injury or illness. Like Uncle Henry. She remembered how Uncle Henry had looked after he’d almost died during the war. It had taken him months and months to recover, and he’d born the look of it afterwards—that emaciated tightness Grace thought she detected in Mr. Partridge’s face. She wondered if he’d fought in the war and been wounded.

  Poor Uncle Henry had suffered even after his physical wounds had healed, too. He’d had terrible nightmares and so forth. Grace understood that wasn’t uncommon among soldiers who had been through the horrors of battle.

  How sad. She didn’t understand why people couldn’t solve their differences in a manner less devastating than war. And this last one, with families torn apart, brothers fighting brothers, entire states ravaged—well, Grace couldn’t comprehend any of it. She realized her eyes had begun to leak, and wiped her tears away impatiently.

  For heaven’s sake! If she didn’t stop being so blessed sentimental, she didn’t know what would become of her.

  Of course, she didn’t know what was going to become of her anyway. With a sigh, she tucked the thought away. She’d survive. And she’d make sure Frank’s dream survived, too. Thanks to Mac, she had a way to do it, if only there was time enough.

  “Do you have any whiskey, ma’am? For snake-bite. I don’t want to go to the saloon if I don’t have to.”

  Noah’s voice penetrated her murky thoughts and made her jump. He spoke in a gravelly baritone, a little rough, as if he didn’t use his voice much and hadn’t worn the edges smooth. She gave a deprecating laugh to show how silly she was to have let him startle her.

  “Yes, we do, Mr. Partridge. Mac keeps it here behind the counter—just in case, you know.” She smiled.

  “Yeah. Reckon I do.”

  She got the impression he didn’t know at all and was merely humoring her. She asked kindly, “Would you like a bottle of whiskey?”

  “I suppose I’d better. Reckon it keeps.”

  Either Mr. Partridge wasn’t a big drinker, or he was going to pains to make her believe he wasn’t. She took a peek at him and decided he wasn’t the type to pretend. Maybe he was making a joke. Another look told her he wasn’t. She gave him another smile, because she sensed he needed as many as he could get. “I’ll fetch it for you.”

  He nodded and resumed his examination of the leather goods. Harnesses and leather strapping hung from hooks. Two neat piles, one of leather chaps and one of vests, resided on a table next to a pile of shirts.

  Mac had several good saddles on display, a couple of them used, and several pairs of shoes. Boots, too. Most of the cowboys in the area would wear their boots until one or the other needed to be replaced. Then they’d buy a boot, wet it, and wear it until it conformed to the shape of whatever foot they needed it for. Grace shook her head as she opened the cabinet built into the counter, thinking how painful breaking in a new boot must be. She emerged with a brown-glass bottle and a big smile.

  “Here you go. Guaranteed to cure snake-bite.”

  “Yeah?
” He took the whiskey and set it on the counter alongside two heavy blue flannel work shirts he’d collected.

  Was it her imagination, or did his mouth twitch slightly, as if he might be the tiniest bit amused by her medical opinion? His mouth seemed to have reverted to what looked like its permanently grim expression. It had probably been her imagination. She went back to her thread.

  The only noise in the room for several minutes was the sound of Noah Partridge’s heavy boots as he made a slow circuit around the store, and the rustle and click as Grace sorted spools of cotton twist. They were a mess, but at least none of the spools had unwound. The colors were a jumble, though, and there were at least a hundred different spools. The main problem was that when the package had broken open, several papers of pins had managed to get themselves mixed in with the thread, and Grace had a time of it not to prick her fingers on the sharp points of the pins as she gently pried the thread away.

  From time to time, her attention wandered from her work to her customer. There was something about him that intrigued her. The good Lord knew, men weren’t exactly scarce out here. Except for Susan Blackworth and those poor females who had to work in the saloon, the only people anywhere near Rio Hondo were men.

  Grace had never had eyes for any of them. The only man she’d ever loved had been Frank, and she figured that was it for her. There were plenty of men out here who’d marry her in a minute if she’d give them an ounce of encouragement. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t bear the thought of another man in her life now that Frank was gone. Frank was the one man she wanted, and he was dead.

  Not, of course, that she had eyes for Mr. Partridge. Yet she couldn’t deny there was definitely something about him. It didn’t attract her, exactly. It was more a feeling of intrigue. Grace discovered herself curious to hear his story, even though she was almost certain it would break her heart, if her heart hadn’t already been shattered beyond repair by Frank’s death.

  The thought of her dead husband sent Grace’s mind spinning back to the happy days of her marriage, and she sighed heavily.

  “Anything the matter, ma’am.”

  Again, the sound of Noah’s voice startled her. She pricked her finger and muttered, “Ow!” Like the little girl she’d once been, she sucked her sore finger until she realized what she was doing and yanked it out of her mouth. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry, Mr. Partridge. This is such dull work, my mind wandered and I didn’t pay attention to what I was doing.”

  He gestured at her finger. “Hurt yourself?”

  “Not really. Just pricked my finger a little on a pin.”

  “That’s quite a mess you have there, ma’am.”

  She sighed again. “Yes, it certainly is. It wouldn’t be so bad without the pins mixed in.”

  “Reckon not.”

  With that, he set two pairs of heavy socks down next to the whiskey and shirts and wandered off again. Grace looked after him, and her sore finger found its way to her mouth once more. What was it about him? She wished some of the friends she used to know back home were here. They’d have a delightful time gossiping over tea about Mr. Noah Partridge.

  She shook her head. She really didn’t mind living out here, even though there weren’t any other women nearby. But without Frank . . .

  Grace told herself not to start dwelling on that again. Frank was dead; that part of her life was over; she was alone with Maddie. She loved her daughter more than life itself, and she owed Maddie her very best efforts. Frank would have expected no less from her, and she’d not fail him. She couldn’t help the way her heart ached, though, or the way she couldn’t get over missing him.

  Which was nothing to the purpose. At last, the final spool of cotton twist freed itself from the last pin on the paper, and Grace muttered a satisfied, “There! Finally!”

  The door burst open, and little Maddie Richardson dashed in, hands cupped in front of her, a huge grin on her piquant face. Grace’s heart lit up.

  “Mama! Mama! Mac and me, we seed a roadrunner, and looky here. I found a horny toad all by myself!”

  Maddie could barely reach the counter. Grace leaned over and saw the horned toad—it looked like a runt or a baby, although it was awfully late in the year for babies—resting in her daughter’s two grubby hands. Maddie held her hands together as if she were offering a gift to the gods.

  “My goodness, what a beautiful horny toad, Maddie! Are you going to keep him?”

  Maddie’s braids bounced against her back as she nodded. “Yes. And then after winter goes away, you can put him in your garden, and he’ll eat the bad grasshoppers that ate your carrots last year.”

  “What a clever fellow!”

  “Mac builded a box to keep him in, and I’ll feed him flies and keep him alive real good.”

  “I’m sure you will, sweetheart.”

  Grace heard Mac—she would recognize the old man’s step anywhere—and looked up. She did love him so much. He was like a grandfather to Maddie, and he’d been better than a father to Grace. She gave him the best smile in her repertoire. “Thank you for taking Maddie with you this morning, Mac. I appreciate it.”

  He winked. Mac was always winking. It was a charming trait, and Grace loved it almost as much as she loved him. “Ah, Grace, m’lass, Maddie was a big help to me.”

  “Were you?” Grace eyed her daughter and doubted it.

  “I was, Mommy, honest! I feeded all the chickens, and then Old Pete runned away, and I peeled my eye and looked and looked.”

  My goodness, that sounded perfectly ghastly. Grace glanced at Mac, a question in her own eyes.

  He chuckled. “Aye, that ye did, lass. Ye kept your eye peeled real well, and you spotted that old runaway mule before I did.”

  Ah. Grace understood now. Peeled eyes, indeed. She didn’t laugh because she didn’t want to hurt Maddie’s feelings. “I’m glad you were such a good helper, Maddie.”

  In truth, Mac had kept Maddie with him so she wouldn’t try to help her mother detach thread from pins. They both feared she’d end up stuck full of pins if she did.

  Maddie whirled around. “See my horny toad, Mr. Noah?”

  Grace took note of Mr. Partridge’s startled expression, and grinned. “Poor Mr. Partridge is doing some shopping, Maddie. I don’t think he has time for horned toads right now.”

  He glanced from Maddie to Grace, and Grace was shocked to her toes to see that he was actually smiling. Almost.

  “That’s all right, ma’am. I’ve always been partial to horny toads.” He looked at the toad.

  The neck ruff of Maddie’s bonnet, intended to keep the sun’s rays from burning the back of her neck, squashed against the little girl’s back as she tipped her head back far enough to look Noah in the face. “Wanna hold him?” she asked brightly.

  “Um, well, I seem to have my hands full right now, Miss Maddie, but he’s sure a fine looking horned toad.”

  Maddie tipped her head to one side. “You need some more practice, Mr. Noah.”

  Noah blinked down at her. “Beg pardon?”

  Grace, who anticipated her daughter’s next words—which she’d never keep to herself because she hadn’t learned anything about the world yet—hurried to intercept them. “You take your nice horny toad outside now, Maddie. Mr. Partridge is quite busy at the moment. You need to look for grubs and bugs for him, too. Have to get him big and strong for his work in the garden.”

  But Maddie, who had no playmates and was therefore unused to being sidetracked, continued staring at Noah. Noah stared back and looked nervous.

  “Mac says if you practice anything, you’ll get better at it. He says that sometimes even if you practice you won’t be bestest, but practice always helps. I practice my letters and numbers every day.”

  “Is that so?” A muscle jumped in Noah’s jaw.

  Grace, who could see plainly that he longed for escape, tried again. “Maddie, take your horny toad outside now, and leave Mr. Partridge alone.”

  Maddie turned, and Grace saw that sh
e’d managed to offend her. She sighed.

  “I’m not pestering him, Mommy. Honest, I’m not. Mac says that sometimes people don’t know how to go about things. I’m only ‘splaining to Mr. Noah that if he practices smiling, he’ll get betterer.” She peered up at Noah once more, her face a picture of earnestness. “Honest, Mr. Noah.”

  “Thanks, Miss Maddie. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  It looked to Grace as though the infinitesimally small smile he bestowed upon her child was the work of a mighty effort. She wondered what had happened to the man that smiles were such an effort for him. Maybe Maddie was right; he did seem to need practice.

  She shook her head when she realized her child wasn’t done with Noah Partridge yet. She glanced over to Mac, knowing he’d nod or something if he thought she should scoop Maddie up and haul her off before she could disconcert Mr. Partridge further. Mac winked again, and Grace knew he would solve the problem. God bless Alexander McMurdo.

  “Why, I do declare!” Mac’s exclamation drew everyone’s attention—even Maddie’s, and she was as persistent as a bulldog with a bone once she got started.

  Grace knew Mac well enough to know what her next line should be. “Why, whatever is the matter, Mac?”

  “I do believe I found me a licorice whip in my back pocket.”

  Slick as a whistle, Mac reached a hand behind him, and produced a long black twist of licorice. Grace looked from his hand to her daughter, and smiled when Maddie’s eyes grew huge with wonder.

  “Ooooh!”

  Grace’s daughter had been drilled too well in proper manners to ask if the licorice whip was for her, but her soft exclamation left no doubt of her hopes. She left off staring at Noah, who almost sagged with relief. In spite of herself, Grace grinned.

  “And, since one little girl I know ate a good breakfast, and since dinner is a fair ways off, I reckon her mama wouldn’t mind if I were to give this gift from heaven to her.”

  “My goodness,” said Grace, playing the game. She tapped her chin with the finger she’d recently stabbed with a pin and tried to look as if she were pondering one of life’s deeper mysteries. “I wonder what little girl you could possibly be talking about, Mac.”