Enchanted Christmas

by Craig, Emma

  She cackled like a witch. “I’m sure you are. Grace wasn’t with them, though, so you don’t have to be too sorry.”

  His scowl deepened, and he didn’t bother to respond.

  “Did you get the papers you were after?”

  “Yes.”

  Noah brushed past her and headed for the back room he’d been using for the past two weeks. His work here was almost done, thank God. Then he’d be able to find out what was in store for the rest of his life. The possibilities scared him, but he wasn’t about to quit now, damned fool that he was.

  He’d been both surprised and glad when the wire he’d sent to Santa Fe had produced such quick results. He’d expected to have to wait until well into the new year before he could finish up his job at the Blackworth’s spread and head back to Rio Hondo. But now, maybe he’d be able to get everything done on Christmas Eve. The timing seemed appropriate to him, probably because he’d hated Christmas for so long. If his luck remained unchanged, he’d lose again. He didn’t look forward to it.

  He heard Susan’s cane on the hardwood floors as she hobbled after him. “Wait up there, Mr. Partridge. Mac left something for you.”

  Noah turned and frowned at her. “He left something for me? How the hell’d he know I was staying here?”

  “Oh, Mac has his ways.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. And I suppose you confirmed what he’d already figured out on his own.”

  “I told him you’d been staying here for a couple of weeks. I didn’t tell him what you’re up to.”

  That was something, anyway. He didn’t say so.

  “Maddie was sorry she missed you.”

  Her smile was a work of black art. Damn. Trust Susan Blackworth to muddy the waters of his life. As if they weren’t muddy enough already. He hadn’t wanted anyone from Rio Hondo to know where he was. He elected not to waste his breath telling her so. If Susan knew how irritated he was, she’d probably send for Grace for the simple pleasure of riling him. Her eyes glittered like black diamonds, and her grin was diabolical.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry I missed her too.”

  She cackled again. “I’m sure you are. Here.” She thrust a small package at him. “Mac said this was to encourage you.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  He took the package and ripped the paper from around it.

  “Aren’t you going to wait until Christmas?”

  Noah glanced up at her, and realized she wasn’t being sarcastic for once. He shook his head. “No.” Damn, he hated Christmas.

  “You’re a hard man, Noah Partridge.”

  “Yeah.” The paper fell away to reveal a very small scrap of wood upon which was painted, in pretty gold script, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are. Luke 18:11.

  Noah stared down at the plaque. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Susan Blackworth peered over his shoulder and shrugged. “That’s what Jesus said in one of His parables. Didn’t you ever go to Sunday school, Mr. Partridge?”

  “Yeah, I went to Sunday school. That was a long time ago.”

  “Well, I think the point of the story was that we’re all alike under our skins. And maybe that going through the motions of piety or whatever doesn’t make us right.”

  Noah squinted at her and thought hard. “What does that have to do with me?” He peered down at the plaque again.

  “I have no idea. That particular sentence Mac plucked out of the parable has you pegged, though.”

  He jerked his head up and glared at her. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  She gave him another one of her witchy cackles. “Just what it says. You cling to your isolation from the rest of the human race like other folks cling to life, Noah Partridge.” She gazed at him with her shrewd black-olive eyes until Noah felt like squirming. “I expect Mac’s trying to tell you that you’re all right in spite of yourself. Of course, I have no opinion on the matter.”

  He discovered he couldn’t speak for a minute. Then he forced a brief, “Of course you don’t.”

  Her wicked laughter followed him down the hall. He was relieved when the door shut behind him, cutting off the noise. What a strange woman Susan Blackworth was. She was damned near as strange as Noah himself.

  He picked up the plaque and gazed at it some more. It was small enough to fit into his shirt pocket, and he wondered if that’s what Mac had intended. But why?

  “‘God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are.’ What the hell does that mean? Damn, I hate being crazy. I’d give anything to be like other men.”

  Perplexed and annoyed, Noah opened the top drawer of the dresser beside his bed. He’d put his spare clothes in there—two shirts and two pairs of trousers—when Susan had told him he could stay at her house, and he’d discovered an old, worn Bible in the drawer. He thumbed through it until he came to Luke, and read the entire parable. It was about a Pharisee, for Pete’s sake. It still didn’t make any sense to him, so he read further.

  By the time he’d finished Luke, he decided he’d go ahead and read John. He remembered he’d used to like John because the language was so pretty.

  Still feeling unsettled when he’d finished John, Noah decided to flip to the beginning of the New Testament. Hell, why not? Christmas was coming. As much as he loathed the season, he couldn’t very well avoid it.

  He hadn’t read Matthew for years. Decades, maybe. By the time he’d finished the first two chapters of Matthew, Noah did something he hadn’t done since before the war ripped his life to shreds. He got down on his knees and prayed.

  # # #

  On Christmas Eve, Maddie knelt on Mac’s medallion-backed sofa and stared out the window into the bleak and barren wagon yard.

  The day before she and her mother had opened a big package that had arrived the week before from Chicago. Maddie had taken great pleasure in guessing what might reside in all the boxes inside the package.

  “Do you think Grandma Richardson got me a store-boughten dolly, Mommy?” she asked, holding out a big box wrapped in brown paper and twine.

  Grace had hesitated, wondering if Maddie wanted to replace Priscilla. She wouldn’t blame her if she did. Even though Grace had made both Maddie and Priscilla pretty new Christmas dresses out of green-and-red plaid calico, the doll looked pathetic. The least she could do, Grace decided, was stuff some more cotton wadding into her and perk up her embroidered face. Even then, she’d look like a poor girl’s doll—which is exactly what she was.

  “I don’t know, Maddie. Would you like a new doll?”

  Maddie had considered her mother’s question with great seriousness of mien. “Yes. Yes, I think I would.”

  Grace had felt minimally better when Maddie added, “If there is a store-boughten dolly in here, I’ll still love Priscilla best.” She’d set the box with a carefully printed label reading “To Maddie with much love from Grandma and Grandpa Richardson” under the tree.

  Now Maddie stared out of the window, searching the empty plains for Christmas-Eve visitors. Grace, setting a plate of Christmas candy on the table beside Mac’s chair, saw her, and her heart hitched painfully. Maddie was still hoping for Noah to come back; Grace knew it, and she knew her little girl was destined to be disappointed—again. She went over to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “What are you looking for, Maddie? Mac said Gus was coming for dinner this evening. Are you watching for Gus?” She hoped so, even though she didn’t allow herself to hope too hard. She’d learned a long time ago that hopes and dreams led one only to disaster.

  Maddie lifted her head and peered up at her mother. “Mr. Noah isn’t coming back to us, is he, Mommy?” She sounded intolerably sad, and Grace’s aching heart wept for her.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Maddie. I’m sorry.” Because her sympathy seemed inadequate, she asked, “Would you like a piece of candy?”

  Maddie’s eyes widened.
“Before supper?”

  “It’s Christmas. Things are special at Christmas.”

  “Are they?”

  Grace grieved when she saw the doubt in her daughter’s eyes. Blast Noah Partridge! He’d done this to her. In her suffering heart, Grace knew she was being unfair. It was her fault that Maddie lived out here in the New Mexico Territory. It was her fault that one man coming into her daughter’s life had meant so much—because she had so few other people to care about.

  If they lived in Chicago, with Grace’s own family and Frank’s family to supplement her supply of acquaintances, Maddie’s life wouldn’t be nearly so circumscribed. If they lived in Chicago, Maddie would have friends, playmates, relatives to brighten her days.

  She gazed out the window at the darkening day. The wagon yard gates stood open, and Grace saw the plains stretching out forever beyond them as dry, windswept, and bare as a bone today, in the dead of winter. Dust churned up by the bitter wind hit the fence like tiny, sharp spikes. The boards were already pocked with small holes from prior dust storms. The whole world looked tan and lifeless outside Mac’s window.

  When she turned around, even the decorations she and Maddie had arranged in the parlor looked meager and pathetic, as if they were only one inadequate woman’s feeble attempt to disguise the truth of an empty life. Which is exactly what they were, Grace acknowledged with a shaft of pain in her middle.

  She hoped Gus would arrive soon. He was always cheerful, and he was a good friend to Maddie. Gus wouldn’t go away and leave them; Grace was sure of it.

  During the past week, she’d been thinking about Gus Spalding a lot; had even considered marrying him if he’d have her. She refused to let herself think about why she was contemplating doing such a rash thing—and why, if he ever asked, she couldn’t. She did press a hand to her abdomen for a second before she told herself she couldn’t be sure. Anyway, even if she was with child, anything could happen. Women lost babies every day. Especially out here, in the territory, life was uncertain.

  She told herself to stop thinking about it or she’d begin to cry. That was no way to be on Christmas Eve, in front of her daughter and her friends.

  Oh, but it was hard not to worry. Grace wished life could be different. Easier. She wished—

  “Somebody’s coming!”

  She swung around, saw Maddie pressing her nose against the window pane, and smiled in spite of her underlying misery. “Who is it? Is it Gus?”

  As Maddie squinted hard, Grace joined her at the window. It was about four-thirty in the afternoon, and the overcast day had begun darkening into night. Whoever it was had himself well bundled up, and she couldn’t make out his features. She supposed it could be Noah, although— No. Her heart plunged sickeningly when she recognized the horse. That is to say, she didn’t recognize the horse, and she would have recognized Fargo from any distance. It must be Gus.

  Maddie confirmed her suspicion a moment later when she said, “Yes. It’s Gus.” She sounded disappointed.

  Mac made it to the front door before Grace and Maddie got there and swung it wide, revealing Gus, stamping the dust from his boots and looking cold. “Welcome, Gus. Happy Christmas to ye!”

  Maddie rushed up to him, took him by the hand, and dragged him inside the house. “C’mon in and get warm, Gus. Mac says it’s as cold as a witch’s behind out there.”

  Even Grace laughed at her daughter’s appropriation of one of Mac’s less respectable expressions.

  “I reckon he’s right there, Maddie.” Gus let Maddie help him unwind the long woolen muffler he’d wrapped around his neck and lower face.

  “Your nose is all red, Gus. Is that from the cold?” Maddie reached up to feel his nose, which he wrinkled obligingly.

  “I expect it is, Maddie. It’s real cold out there.”

  The cowboy’s wide grin made Grace think of the young men she’d known back home in Chicago. It made her think of Frank, and her heart squeezed. Gus looked happy, pleased with life, eager to experience the world and everything in it. He looked as if he hadn’t been tested yet. Not like Noah Partridge, who’d been tested so hard he’d broken.

  With a sigh, Grace told herself yet again to stop thinking about Noah Partridge. She’d just have to deal later with whatever consequences her foolishness brought her. And Maddie. Oh, how she wished Maddie hadn’t become so attached to him.

  But that was neither here nor there. At the moment, Gus was looking at her like a puppy eager for a pet. She reminded herself that this was Christmas Eve, that Gus was a good friend, that he cared about her—if only as a friend—and that he deserved her best wishes and goodwill. She hurried to him with her hands outstretched.

  “Merry Christmas, Gus. It’s good to see you, and I’m glad you’ve come to take Christmas dinner with us.”

  “Thank you for having me, Mrs. Richardson. It sure smells mighty good in here.”

  “That’s the ham, Gus,” Maddie told him. “Mommy and Mac and me made dinner, and I was a big help with the yams. Mac said so.”

  “Aye, Maddie lass, ye were a big help.”

  “And we have pinto beans, too. Mommy said they didn’t have pinto beans in ‘Cago, but we gots a lot of them out here, so we eat them all the time.”

  Gus laughed again, and the atmosphere seemed lighter. “I expect pinto beans are about a cowboy’s best friend in these parts, Maddie.”

  Maddie’s bright braids bounced with her nod. “And I helped soak the beans too.”

  “You did, did you? And is soakin’ them beans a hard job for such a big gal as you?” Gus’s laugh was genuine and hearty, and even Grace felt herself cheer up a little bit.

  “Naw. It was easy.” Maddie grinned, enjoying the joke on herself. “It was just the pot that was heavy.”

  “You’re a good helper, Maddie lass,” Mac repeated, grinning around his pipe.

  “It sure sounds like it,” said Gus. “And I have a couple of things here that maybe you can help me set under that pretty Christmas tree over there.”

  Maddie’s eyes twinkled like the candles Grace’s German grandmother used to put on the Christmas trees of her childhood. They couldn’t use candles on the piñon trees out here, because their branches were bushier, and they’d catch fire.

  “Is there something there for me?” The little girl sounded breathless with excitement. She skipped over to the tree with Gus.

  “Why, I do believe there is,” he said with another laugh. “You seem pretty happy this evenin’, Maddie. You like Christmas, I reckon.”

  “Oh, yes!” She sobered almost instantly. “But Mr. Noah didn’t come back, Gus. I thought sure he would, but he didn’t. I’m sad about that.”

  Gus, kneeling beside the tree, shot a quick glance at Grace and Mac. Mac shrugged. Grace hurt too much to do anything but maintain her smile, which almost killed her. Gus’s gaze lingered on her for only a moment, but it felt like forever. “Well,” he said at last, “maybe he’ll still get here, Maddie. The evening’s young yet.”

  Maddie heaved a sigh that seemed too big for her small self. “I don’t think so, Gus. Mommy told me not to hope too hard, but I did anyway, and now I’m sad about it.”

  Grace swallowed and refused to give in to her emotions. Her throat ached with the effort.

  “Aye, well, how’s about I fetch us all some holiday eggnog,” Mac suggested cheerfully.

  “I’ll help,” Grace forced out through her aching throat.

  “Thank’ee Grace, m’lass.”

  For several minutes, it seemed to Grace that Mac was the only happy person in the house. She prepared Mac and Gus’s eggnog with a shot of brandy for the sake of the holiday. She sprinkled nutmeg on her own cup and Maddie’s. Mac carried the tray into the parlor, and Grace handed the drinks around.

  Mac lifted his and smiled at the small assembly of Christmas revelers. “To the season! May it shower its blessings on us all!”

  Grace bit back a bitter rejoinder and raised her cup. “To the season.” She wished she’d t
ried harder to sound happy.

  “Merry Christmas to y’all,” said Gus, looking as if he meant it.

  “Merry Christmas!”

  “May the good Lord smile upon us,” Mac added, and they all drank their eggnog.

  The rich drink tasted like brine in Grace’s mouth. Nevertheless, she managed to drink it down and even smile afterwards.

  “Well, I’ll leave you three to ponder the joys of Christmas while I get dinner on the table.” She set her cup back on the tray.

  “Do you need any help, Mrs. Richardson?”

  If there was one thing Grace didn’t need at the moment, it was to have a love-sick Gus Spalding help her lay out their Christmas dinner. She gave him what she hoped was a gracious smile. “No, thank you, Gus. You just rest in the parlor with Mac and Maddie. I’ll set the supper out. I’m sure you need a rest after your long ride from the Blackworth place.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He looked disappointed, but he didn’t argue. Grace appreciated him very much in that moment.

  She had just opened the oven door and moved the ham to a big platter when Maddie’s shrill voice nearly startled her into dropping it.

  “It’s somebody else! It’s somebody else coming, and he’s in a wagon! Oh, Mac, look! What’s that in the wagon?”

  Grace set the ham platter on the kitchen table with a clank. Someone else was coming? Who on earth could it be? Mac hadn’t told her to expect anyone but Gus for dinner. Not that there wasn’t plenty of food, but—

  “Well, by golly.” That was Gus, and he sounded impressed. “It looks like he did it.”

  It looks like he did it? What was Gus talking about? Puzzled, Grace puffed a lock of hair out of her eyes and set the cloth she’d used as a hot mitt over the back of a chair. Still in her apron, she decided she was too curious to finish laying out supper until she knew who it was who had invaded the wagon yard.

  She’d almost made it through the door into the parlor when she heard Maddie cry out with delight, and then call, “Oh, look, Mac! It’s Mr. Noah!” Grace’s knees gave out, and she had to grab the door jamb and brace herself or she’d have fallen flat on her face.