Enchanted Christmas

by Craig, Emma

  “Don’t look so worried, Mr. Partridge. I won’t make you marry me.”

  What? What was she talking about? “I wish you would,” he muttered, because he meant it.

  Her hands left his shoulders, and he heard her laugh softly. When he looked again, she was making her way toward the river. She’d flung on her chemise, and he sighed with regret. What a lovely woman she was. Even her body was pretty, slender and well-rounded. Soft and curvy, not all hard planes and angles and ridges of scars like his. He wondered if she’d let him brush her hair. Then he shook his head and told himself to snap out of it.

  In the end, she did let him brush her hair. He enjoyed the job. Then she twisted her hair up into a bun and pinned it into place, and she looked as if he’d never touched her.

  # # #

  Mac frowned out of his front parlor window and puffed on his pipe, deep in thought.

  He’d been reading in his chair when he became aware that the relationship between Noah Partridge and Grace Richardson had achieved a new level. He wasn’t sure what it was at first. He’d contemplated the deep emotions he was receiving on his wizardly antennae, and after contemplating matters for a while, decided this new level was a good one. They were learning more about each other—and discovering the excellent qualities they could share with each other. Good. That was good.

  His plan was working out well. Quite well. All things considered, his plan was going better than he’d anticipated. It wasn’t until after he’d drawn Noah Partridge here that he’d truly understood how hurt Noah had been by life. But the poor lad was on the road to recovery now, thanks to Grace.

  And Grace was getting better too. She’d never forget her Frank, but she might, one of these days, come to understand that Frank hadn’t been the only good man on earth. Not by a long shot.

  Now, if only Mac could think of some way to keep those two from feeling guilty about what they’d done, perhaps the cure could continue for both of them. As Maddie slept an enchanted sleep, full of the happy dreams Mac had created for her, he contemplated Noah Partridge and Grace Richardson.

  “At least the lass is fair to understanding him now. If he could forgive himself for what other people have done to him, they might have a fine life together. Hmmm.”

  Since fantasy often helped him think, he conjured a troupe of actors out of the clouds. He used to enjoy traveling with theatrical companies in Will Shakespeare’s day. Even back then, most of his kinfolk had gone away from the world. The wizards, as a rule, never had liked people much, and they’d resented them like fire when they’d begun to multiply and take over. Mac liked people just fine. He only wished they weren’t so hard on themselves and each other.

  Since Noah and Grace had endured enough tragedy, Mac decided to stage “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for himself. As he watched Puck disport himself in the cloudy garden of the heavens, he thought of a good idea.

  If those two had something to worry about other than what Grace might come to think of as their sin by the river, Mac could probably have them back here and under his care before they knew it. Then he’d make sure they were both so busy, they’d not have time to fret.

  It was almost Christmas, after all, and Christmas, even in Rio Hondo, on the edge of the American frontier, was a busy time. Grace would be writing letters to the folks back home, and she’d be baking pies and such and taking goodies to Susan Blackworth and to a couple of her other friends in the area. She and Maddie would have a wonderful time decorating the Christmas tree Mac planned to conjure for them.

  Mac knew exactly what Noah would be doing as well. The old man grinned around his pipe. The poor fellow still had some learning to do, but he’d do it before Christmas. Mac guaranteed it. Christmas was a magical time. A holy time. It was a season during which miracles should occur if they were ever going to occur at all. Noah and Grace both deserved a miracle. And so did little Maddie.

  Yes, indeed. With luck and timing and Mac’s magical interference, Mac would have the two of them hitched and set up in housekeeping before either one of them realized Grace was carrying Noah’s child.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Noah squinted up at the sky. “Damn, I’ve never lived any place where the weather changed so fast.”

  Grace laughed. She’d been doing that a lot since they’d made love. She’d laughed during lunch, and as they’d packed up the blankets and leftovers, and then she’d laughed while he saddled the horses and strapped everything back on. Every time she laughed, Noah felt his heart melt a little more. He wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

  “Yes. Frank used to say that if you didn’t like the weather out here, all you had to do was wait fifteen minutes.”

  Noah glanced at her. She was smiling as if she believed her precious Frank had thought that one up all by himself. Noah had heard it said about every place he’d ever been in. Folks always thought they were being clever when they said it, too.

  Well, no matter how much he wished Frank’s revered memory could be wiped from Grace’s mind, he wouldn’t sully it. He’d only make her hate him if he did, and she was going to do that soon enough anyway.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Reckon he was right.”

  She pulled her woolen shawl more tightly around her. Noah wished she’d brought along something heavier; she was so small, and she didn’t have much extra padding to keep her warm. Hell, she looked like a strong wind might blow her away. He worried about her. When had he started doing that?

  He had his sheepskin jacket tied on the back of his saddle. “Let’s stop for a minute, Grace. I’ve got something you should be wearing now that it’s gone cold again.”

  He unstrapped the lunch bundle and reached for his jacket. They’d had a very pleasant lunch after they’d made love. Grace was a damned good cook. If he could keep eating her good cooking for a few months, he might stop looking like an ambulatory skeleton. He wondered if he’d still feel like one, or if his extra padding would protect him. Stupid thought. He scolded himself for being preposterous.

  Noah wondered briefly if Julia had known how to cook, and then decided he no longer cared. Hell, he hadn’t cared back then. All he’d known was that he’d loved the image Julia had projected of a delicate southern belle. And all the men in town had lusted after her. He’d considered it a major coup when she’d singled him out of the pack and agreed to marry him. It was only later that he realized she’d done so because his family had money and a good business.

  He shook his head as he unstrapped the jacket. He had to stop thinking about the old days. They were gone; he was here; he had a goal to achieve, and he had another woman with him, however briefly. Grace was worth a dozen Julias.

  “Here.” He shook out the jacket.

  “My goodness. That looks like it would keep anyone warm.”

  “Sheepskin. It is warm. Too warm for me.” He grinned up at her. His cheeks no longer felt as though they were splitting every time he smiled. Grace had done that for him. Noah guessed it was an improvement. He grinned inside when he remembered little Maddie Richardson telling him all he had to do was practice, and his smiles would come easier. She’d been right. The wisdom of children amazed him.

  “Thank you. If you’re sure you won’t need it . . .”

  “I won’t need it.” Hell, he couldn’t get enough cold weather to suit him. Maybe he should have moved to Montana. He understood the winters sometimes lasted nine months up there. No. Montana was too damned green. Noah wanted the desert. He needed the harsh barrenness of this land. This is where he belonged.

  After he’d made sure she was bundled up, they rode on. They hadn’t gone far when Grace’s exclamation broke into Noah’s dark contemplation of the landscape.

  “Good heavens! Is that thunder I hear? In December?”

  Thunder? Jesus H. Christ, they’d just been naked in the sunshine. Noah squinted at the rolling black thunderheads mounding up overhead. Where had those things come from?

  A thick, jagged streak of lightning cut through a c
loud to the west of them. “Criminy, I think you’re right.”

  “Eleven-one thousand. Twelve-one thousand. Oh, there it is.”

  A sharp crack of sound shook the air around them. Shoot. That was close. He looked over to see how Grace was taking this change in the weather. Her adored Frank had been struck by lightning, after all. Noah could understand how it might happen out here. There was sure nowhere to hide away from it. He could see nothing but low scrub, dead grass, and a few creosote bushes for miles.

  She looked nervous. “You all right, Grace?”

  “I guess so. It’s awfully close. I can’t remember how many miles each second means, but it was only about twelve seconds from that bolt of lightning to the boom of the thunder. I think that’s pretty close.”

  “It’s close, all right. We’d better speed it up some.”

  “All right, but we have to watch out for prairie dog holes, too, so the horses won’t stumble and break a leg. That won’t help us get home any quicker.”

  “I expect not.” He grinned to show her he appreciated her common sense. She’d worn that silly Stetson hat again today. Now she yanked it resolutely lower on her head, and pulled the strap up under her chin. The gesture tickled Noah, who hadn’t been tickled by anything in a long time. She was game for whatever life threw at her, Grace Richardson. It was a good quality to have, especially out here. He admired her for it.

  “But if we keep our eyes open, I suppose we can go a little faster.” She shot him a huge smile. “This should be fun.”

  It should? Her attitude astonished Noah, who was used to females who whimpered and screeched every time thunder dared sully their ears. He wondered why he was surprised. Grace was as stubborn as a mule; he supposed she must like adventure, or she’d have run home to her family when her husband died. Hell, she wouldn’t have come out here in the first place.

  “If you say so,” he murmured.

  She laughed again, a big laugh, one that threw her head back and almost dislodged her Stetson. She slapped a hand on it to keep it on her head. “When we get to the road to town, we can go much faster, because the path has been beaten down. No self-respecting prairie dog would dare dig a hole on the road, because he’d be squashed like a bug every time a wagon or a herd of cattle rolled into town.”

  “Well, then, let’s get to the road.” Noah discovered he was laughing, too.

  The wind picked up until it was a fierce, cold presence, like a huge hand held up in front of them, trying to impede their progress. The horses manes and tails flew out behind them, and twice Noah turned to check on the bundle strapped to Fargo’s saddle.

  Grace looked like a fuzzy lump on the saddle of her mare, hunched over in his sheepskin jacket and gripping the reins in her gloved fists. But she never stopped smiling. She was enjoying this. Damn, maybe she should have gone to war instead of him. He’d known men like her, men who became exhilarated and fearless in the face of danger. Noah’d always wished he’d been one of them. Maybe he could learn from Grace.

  They saw the rain before it hit them. It hung like a gray sheet suspended from the clouds directly in front of their horses. Noah hadn’t ever seen rain like that. The rain in his neck of the woods was more general. He’d heard Mac talk about “local showers” once or twice, but he hadn’t understood what he’d meant until now. He had the whimsical thought that God had decided to water ten square yards of the earth at a time with a giant watering can, and that He was moving the can around as it suited Him.

  “You think we can outrun it?” he asked Grace who was squinting into the wind.

  She laughed again, and his insides lit up as if one of those lightning bolts had struck his chest. “I don’t see how, since we’re aiming directly at it.”

  “Maybe the wind will blow it off our course?” Noah suggested, mostly to see if he could make her laugh again.

  She did. “I doubt it. The wind’s blowing straight from the southwest, as usual, and pushing the storm right smack into our path. I expect we’ll be as wet as drowned kittens before we get back home.”

  Back home. Didn’t that sound nice? Noah guessed he’d better not dwell on it.

  A sheet of lightning lit up the entire sky in front of them. “Lordy. I’ve never seen lightning like that.”

  “We get it here most often in the summer. Folks call it heat lightning, although it sure isn’t hot today. It comes not in forks, but blankets. It’s strange, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Oh, look! There’s the road. I guess we can speed up now.”

  “You sure?” Noah glanced at Grace just as huge, fat drops of rain began to pelt down on them.

  She gave him a smile that nearly knocked him out of his saddle. “Sure as anything!”

  “All right, then.” He nudged Fargo, thinking he’d take his cue from Grace as to how fast she thought speeding up meant. He was startled, but not surprised, when she kicked the old sway-backed mare she was riding, and the animal sprinted ahead of Fargo. He laughed out loud when he nudged Fargo into catching up.

  # # #

  They were riding on the well-beaten road into Rio Hondo, but it had begun raining fit to kill. Grace knew what that meant. She made them slow down when the road started to run like a river with rain water the ground was too hard to absorb.

  “It’s dangerously slippery.” She had to shout to be heard over the roar of rushing water and the pelter of rain. “Around here, the ground’s clay, you know. Even horses and cows slip and fall sometimes.”

  “Yeah, I reckon they might.”

  Noah looked happier than Grace had ever seen him. She felt happy too, and their respective good humors seemed strange to her under the circumstances. After all, they were caught in the middle of a deluge, and might very well catch their respective deaths with pneumonia if the lightning didn’t get them first. She didn’t think so, though, and she was having more fun than she could remember having since she’d grown up. Imagine, that. She was having fun and playing like a kid with Noah Partridge, of all people, and in a dangerous rain storm, of all things.

  By the time they rode through Mac’s double gates, which he’d obligingly left open for them—Grace presumed so they wouldn’t drown trying to open them—they were so full of giggles, they could hardly sit in their saddles. She was soaked to the skin, too, in spite of Noah’s sheepskin jacket. He must be freezing to death in his flimsy duster. He didn’t look it. He grinned from ear to ear, as if he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.

  She shouted, “If you take care of the horses, I’ll run inside and make us some hot cocoa.”

  “Fair exchange.”

  To the boom of thunder, Noah slid off Fargo’s back and made his way to Grace’s side. He skidded on the slippery soil and almost fell on his butt helping her to dismount. The near accident precipitated another bout of laughter, and Noah had to hold onto her tightly to keep them both upright.

  Sopping wet, Grace looked up into his eyes, and her heart melted. The wariness he wore like armor had disappeared somewhere during the day, either out there by the Pecos or during the last hectic minutes as they rode through the rain storm. For the first time Grace got a glimpse of the man he was underneath it.

  “Oh, Noah.” The wind carried her whisper away on a flurry of raindrops.

  “May I kiss you?”

  “You don’t have to ask.” And even though her feet were wet and cold and she was standing in three inches of mud, Grace lifted herself onto her tiptoes and gave Noah Partridge a kiss from her very heart. She suspected she loved him, knew it to be false to Frank’s memory, and couldn’t make herself care at the moment to save her life.

  Mac and Maddie had made popcorn balls in her absence, and Mac had a pot of cocoa already steaming on the stove. After she changed out of her dripping clothes, Grace prepared some cinnamon toast. When Noah came in, he changed too, and they sat at the parlor table to consume their afternoon feast.

  Then the two of them replayed their wild ride through the storm t
o the accompaniment of many excited questions from Maddie. This mode of entertainment lasted until supper time, when they dined again—this time on some of Mac’s famous stew and cornbread. After supper, they played hearts until Maddie’s yawns became too big to ignore. Noah and Grace helped Grace tuck her into bed.

  As far as Grace could tell, Noah’s demons didn’t trouble him for the whole rest of that day. He slept in the parlor that night, out of the rain. When she went to bed, she wished he could join her there.

  She prayed that God would forgive her. And Frank, too.

  # # #

  Noah received an answer to his wire to the territorial government in Santa Fe the day after he and Grace picnicked on the Pecos.

  Because he felt his demons ganging up on him, he excused himself from breakfast, and fled out of the house at first light. He took care of his horse before he decided to visit the telegraph office, and ate some of the jerky he’d packed because he was hungry. It tasted like sticks, and he wondered if he was only punishing himself by not eating breakfast with Grace. Probably.

  The jerky left him feeling hungry. He could have eaten another strip of it, but he couldn’t quite face it. His growling stomach accompanied him down the street.

  By that time, the prior day’s events had begun to seem remote to him, as if he’d only heard about them from someone else. Those good things couldn’t have happened to Noah Partridge.

  Could he have made sweet love to Grace Richardson by the banks of the Pecos River? Could he have laughed with her through a treacherous thunderstorm as they raced home? Could he have played hearts with her, an old man, and a little girl? Could he have joked and laughed some more as they ate popcorn balls and cinnamon toast and drank hot cocoa?

  An anomaly. Yesterday had been an anomaly, and a cruel one. He walked through the muck and mud to the telegraph office and brooded. It wasn’t really fair of the fates to have given him yesterday. They had evidently decided he wasn’t suffering enough, because they’d taken to taunting him by showing him fleeting peeks of what he was missing in his life.