“That I envy Hank and Velvet,” Lily said honestly. “It’s so simple with them. They’re just—well—together. And they’re not sure but they think they’re going to have a baby.”
Caleb turned Lily to face him. “And so are we,” he reminded her, his arms around her again.
She looked up at him. “Yes,” she answered, “it would seem so.” She drew a deep breath and let it out again. “I don’t think we should make love anymore, Caleb.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re not married, and we don’t have any intention of ever being married. That’s sinful.”
Caleb bent to taste her lips. “I couldn’t agree more. That it’s sinful for us not to be married, I mean.”
Lily stiffened when she felt herself beginning, already, to respond to Caleb’s touch. “But you aren’t willing to concede anything, are you?”
“I won’t promise to stay here for the rest of my life, if that’s what you mean.”
An overwhelming sadness filled Lily. What wild impulse had made her hope that tonight would be different? She pulled out of his arms. “Good night, Caleb,” she said, turning and starting toward the new house, where Lily would sleep for the first time.
Caleb did not follow, and even after Lily had done up the dishes and banked the fire there was still no sign of him.
It was at once ironic and fitting, she reflected later, when she was lying alone between her crisp, clean sheets, that she should spend this night by herself.
Tears burning in her eyes, Lily turned her face to the wall, huddled down in the covers, and tried to sleep.
She was awakened in the early morning by the steady smack-smack-smack of a hammer. Lily got up, made her bed, left her room, and crossed the cabin to pour a cup of coffee. But since Caleb had not slept in the house there was no fire in the stove and no coffee brewing in the pot.
Resigned, Lily dressed in the trousers and shirt she’d bought in Spokane for riding and strode outside to rinse and fill the coffeepot at the creek.
Caleb was making good progress on his house, even though he could work on it only in the morning hours, before he went to the post to carry out his duties, and in the evenings after supper. He had put up the framework—it was five times the size of Lily’s place, that house—and laid the floor.
Lily stood looking up at him, the coffepot full of water in her hands. “Good morning, Caleb,” she said.
He looked down at her, nails jutting from his mouth, and nodded in an abrupt fashion.
“I thought I’d go to Tylerville today,” Lily said, “after I water that corn I planted, of course.”
Caleb didn’t look at her again, but he did speak around the nails in his mouth. The words were garbled, but Lily translated them to: “Why would you want to go there?”
“I’d like to do some shopping. There are some things I need.”
He pulled the nails from his mouth and dropped them into his shirt pocket. “You’re going like that? In trousers?”
Lily nodded. “They’re much handier for riding than a skirt,” she informed him, though she privately thought any idiot would have been able to figure out such an obvious thing on his own.
“You’ll be arrested,” Caleb fretted, climbing down from the framework of his house to stand on the ground facing Lily.
“I don’t believe it’s against the law for a woman to wear trousers, Caleb.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. If they can throw you in the hoosegow for wearing lip paint—and they can—I figure trousers probably won’t endear you to them either.” He paused, grinning, to turn Lily around once, and then back to face him. “They do look pretty good on you, though.”
Lily glared at Caleb, but not out of any real ire. If she didn’t keep him at a distance, he’d soon have her sprawled on the bed or bent over a sawhorse, and she’d be carrying on fit to shame Jezebel herself. “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Caleb Halliday,” she said.
He laughed and caught his hands under her bottom, lifting her against him. “If you’re going to strut around in pants, sodbuster, you have to be prepared to face up to the consequences.”
Lily hated herself for the way her blood was heating and her heartbeat quickening. “Put me down, Caleb,” she fussed.
She was mildly disappointed when he did. “All right,” he agreed. “But if you’re going to town, change your clothes first.”
Lily started to speak, then closed her mouth. She went into her house and closed the door.
When she came out of the bedroom Caleb was standing by the table. Lily was wearing the obligatory dress, but she didn’t once meet Caleb’s gaze because she didn’t want to see the satisfaction there. “May I use your buggy?” she asked.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him set a coffee cup in her new porcelain sink. “I’ll hitch it up for you,” he answered. Then, without another word, he left the house.
Lily waited until he’d had time to harness Dancer to his buggy, then went outside. She managed to avoid looking directly into Caleb’s eyes when he handed her up into the seat of the rig.
“When will you be back?” he asked.
It was an odd question, Lily reflected, coming from a man who usually went wherever he wished without so much as a word to her. She shrugged. “I don’t see where that’s any of your business, Major Halliday,” she replied primly.
Caleb touched the brim of his hat, and it seemed to Lily that he was struggling to hold back a smile. “I’d like to make it my business, but you insist on living in sin.”
Lily barely restrained herself from slapping him. Without speaking at all she brought down the buggy reins on Dancer’s back and was off. Her cheeks didn’t stop throbbing until she was halfway to Tylerville.
Arriving there, she immediately went to the general store and asked the storekeeper to wire Spokane for the rest of her money. The bank there promptly wired back that the funds would be on their way to her in the next mail.
Because the storekeeper had been a witness to all this, Lily was allowed credit in his store. Since she’d brought the buggy, she bought food mostly—beans and dried pork, canned vegetables, and staples like flour and sugar and coffee.
Heaven knew Caleb wasn’t in her best graces that day, but she chose a pipe and tobacco for him anyway. She told herself she was only repaying him for the gifts he’d given her, so she wouldn’t be obliged to him.
She was making her most ambitious purchase, a crate containing two dozen chirping yellow chicks, when the storekeeper suddenly remembered something. “There’s a letter for you, Miss Chalmers. We was holding it to send out to you on Monday’s stage.”
Lily snatched the envelope hungrily from his hands. It was postmarked Chicago, but the handwriting was not her mother’s.
She tore it open and skipped over the salutation and greetings to read, “… regret to inform you of Mrs. Harrington’s untimely death. We have no knowledge of your sisters’ whereabouts, though of course it is possible that your mother knew. Sincerely …”
Lily crumpled the letter in one hand and sank into a rocking chair next to the store’s potbellied stove. This new defeat in the face of the secret hopes she’d held was devastating. Her mother had died and taken with her all knowledge of Emma and Caroline.
“Miss Lily?” the storekeeper asked worriedly. “Are you all right?”
Lily nodded and forced herself up out of the chair. “Y-yes,” she said, smoothing her skirts. “Tell me, is there any mail for Mr. Hank Robbins or Major Caleb Halliday? They’re my neighbors.”
The portly man rushed to check the pigeonholes allotted to the mail and returned with a letter for Caleb, addressed in a strong and forceful hand and postmarked Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania.
Lily could think only of her mother. Had she died alone, with no one to love her? Had she suffered pain?
Kathleen was gone, and so were Lily’s hopes of ever finding her sisters. She’d been silly and naive to think she’d ever be able to track them down. It wa
s time to stop dreaming and face reality.
She had to stop thinking of lives that were over and turn her mind to one that was just beginning After splaying the fingers of one hand over her belly and biting down hard on her lower lip to keep from weeping, Lily made one more sizable purchase and dropped it into her handbag.
The storekeeper managed to load all Lily’s purchases beneath, behind, and on top of the buggy seat, barely leaving room for her. She set off for home in something of a daze.
She had no mother.
Lily’s mind kept coming back to that fact, and even though she felt no crushing sense of grief, it was difficult to accept that she would never be able to ask Kathleen the million and one questions that had arisen since the day she and Emma and Caroline were put on the orphan train. Apparently she’d married the soldier who’d made her send her daughters away. Had she been happy? Were there other children by him?
Tears slipped down Lily’s cheeks; they dried in the bright sunshine and the fresh wind. When she arrived at home Caleb was gone.
Lily took the chicks inside first, setting their crate near the stove so they’d be warm. After giving them water and a handful of the chicken feed she’d bought, she carried in all the other supplies and put them away.
When it was all done she took the last item she’d purchased from her bag and held it up to the light. It was a man’s golden wedding band, and it glinted in the sunshine.
Lily looked around the little cabin she’d fought so hard to have and sighed. When Caleb returned from Fort Deveraux that evening she meant to propose.
Chapter
21
Caleb was surprised and a little worried when Lily met him almost halfway between the homestead and Fort Deveraux. She wasn’t carrying a gun or even riding Dancer, just striding along with her skirts hiked up, an intent expression on her beautiful face.
He was struck, not for the first time, by the magnitude of his love for her. It was an enormous thing, and frightening in its power. He reined in the gelding he had ridden for three years and never bothered to name.
She let her skirts fall back into place around her ankles as she stopped and looked up at him. “I’ve decided to marry you, if you’ll still have me,” she said matter-of-factly.
Caleb was an astute man, and he knew something was very wrong, but he wanted Lily too much to question her sudden change of heart. There would be plenty of time for working out details after he’d gotten his wedding band on her finger and bedded her as his wife. Without a word he reached down for Lily’s hand, and when she gave it he hoisted her up onto the horse, positioning her between the saddle horn and his abdomen.
He kissed her thoroughly and turned the gelding back toward Fort Deveraux.
It was no trouble getting the special license; Colonel Tibbet took care of that. Caleb had a ring for Lily at his house—he’d bought it when he followed her to Spokane—and he went to fetch it while Gertrude was fussing over the bride.
Caleb had once dreamed of bringing y to his house, of having her fill it with flowers and laughter, of showing her off to his friends, of pampering and spoiling her. Now that he meant to leave the army, he would do those things in some other house.
Preferably the house he’d grown up in, outside of Fox Chapel.
Hastily Caleb bathed and shaved and put on his best uniform. He didn’t let himself think about that troubling expression in Lily’s eyes; he considered, instead, as any bridegroom might, the pleasures of the coming night.
The dress was old, since Mrs. Tibbet had been married in it herself, but it was still very beautiful, and it fit Lily after only a few tucks had been taken. It was ivory silk, of the finest quality, and there were tiny cream-colored pearls stitched to the fabric. Although the neckline was high, much of the bodice was sheer lace, showing a tantalizing amount of skin, and the sleeves were filmy, revealing the flesh of Lily’s arms.
“You look wonderful,” Gertrude Tibbet said with satisfaction.
Lily inspected herself in the mirror and sighed. “Thank you,” she said. “Has anyone sent for Velvet and Hank?”
Mrs. Tibbet nodded. “I’m sure they’ll be here soon. The chaplain is already downstairs having a brandy with the colonel, and his wife is going to play the organ.” She took a flowing, gossamer veil from a box on the bed. “This will provide the finishing touch,” she said.
Lily sat patiently in the chair in front of Mrs. Tibbet’s vanity table while that lady pinned the veil carefully in place. When it was done she laid gentle hands on the bride’s shoulders. “You do love Caleb, don’t you, Lily? He’s a fine man, and he deserves a wife who loves him.”
“I love him,” Lily answered truthfully, “very much.”
“You don’t seem very happy about this wedding, though.” Lily lowered her eyes. She supposed she should tell her friend that it wasn’t marrying Caleb she was unhappy about, but the death of her mother and the loss of her dream of finding her sisters. She couldn’t bring herself to talk about those things, however. Not then.
“Lily?” Mrs. Tibbet prompted kindly.
Lily found a radiant smile somewhere inside herself and lifted her face to show it. “You needn’t worry. Caleb will never regret marrying me.”
The older woman looked mildly exasperated, but she patted Lily’s lace-covered shoulder and changed the subject. “Will you be going on a honeymoon?”
Lily hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Who would feed my chickens?”
In the vanity mirror she caught Mrs. Tibbet rolling her eyes. “Lily, Lily—there isn’t another girl like you in all God’s creation.”
The remark made Lily feel sad again, since there were two, somewhere, who could be expected to have similarities. She put Emma and Caroline out of her mind for the moment and laid a hand on top of Mrs. Tibbet’s beringed fingers. “I’m grateful to you and the colonel for all you’ve done. You’ve been so very kind.”
“Caleb has practically been a son to us,” Mrs. Tibbet replied, “and now you’ll be a daughter.”
“But you’ll be returning to Fox Chapel once the colonel retires,” Lily pointed out.
Mrs. Tibbet’s expression said she expected Lily would be living in Pennsylvania as well, but she was far too polite to make such a statement outright. “I’ll just go downstairs and see how the bridegroom is bearing up. Can I bring you anything, Lily? A cup of tea, perhaps?”
Lily’s taste ran more toward the brandy the men were having, though she wouldn’t have indulged because of her fear of turning out like Kathleen. She shook her head and said, “No, thank you,” and Mrs. Tibbet left the room.
Rising from the little stool in front of the vanity, Lily went to the window. It was light, but soon there would be stars in the sky, and the birds, now twittering in their elms and maples, would be still. This night would be different from all other nights before it, for even though Lily had given herself to Caleb, she had never lain with him as an honest-to-goodness wife.
Standing there, gripping the lace curtain in one hand, Lily wondered why she had resisted marriage so strenuously. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to marry Caleb, to give the child growing within her a name and a home. There was a certain sweet resignation in it, a peace that comes of accepting the inevitable.
The door opened behind her, and Lily looked back over her shoulder to see Velvet standing there, smiling as happily as she had on the occasion of her own wedding.
“You’ve made the right decision, Lily,” she said. The two women embraced briefly, then Velvet straightened Lily’s veil. “My, what a lovely thing you are.”
Lily smiled. “All brides are beautiful, aren’t they?”
Velvet nodded. “When they’re marrying the right man, I reckon they are. Hank’s going to take photographs of you and Caleb—that’s our gift to you.”
“I couldn’t think of a better present,” Lily said. Hank had already developed the images of Velvet and Lily standing together in front of her t
ransported house, and the ones of the party, and they were among her most cherished possessions.
Soon the sound of Mrs. Tibbet’s parlor organ came up the stairs, and there was a firm rap at Lily’s door. She opened it to find Colonel Tibbet standing there, looking very handsome in his uniform, his white hair and mustache gleaming.
“Are you ready, Miss Lily?” he asked and, when Lily nodded he offered his arm and escorted her to the top of the stairs. Velvet stepped down ahead of them to take her place as matron of honor, and when the wedding march began they descended at a stately pace.
Caleb was standing next to the chaplain, in front of the parlor fireplace, and he looked magnificent to Lily in his long blue coat with its glistening braid and epaulets, and the trousers striped in gold on each leg. He smiled and extended one hand, and Colonel Tibbet surrendered Lily with a gracious nod and a subtle clearing of his throat.
The ceremony passed very swiftly, eemed to Lily. She promised to love, honor, and obey, and Caleb promised to love, honor, and cherish. It didn’t seem right, but Lily was too dazed to weigh the inequities. She simply made her vows, and when Caleb kissed her her knees weakened, as always, and her spirits lifted a little.
There was cake, albeit a raisin cake Mrs. Tibbet had baked for her husband, being bereft of a housekeeper again, and afterwards Hank took the photographs. Lily was only sorry that Rupert wasn’t there to give his blessing.
Once the union had been adequately celebrated Caleb caught Lily by the arm and ushered her out the front door and down the steps. The stars were out in legions by then, glimmering against the sky.
Looking up at them, Lily sighed with contentment. “Have you borrowed a buggy?” she asked her husband.
“We’re not going home tonight, Lily,” Caleb answered, opening the gate for her. His touch was light on her elbow, but forceful, too.
Lily bristled. “Don’t I have a choice in the matter?”
“Not really,” Caleb replied with amusement in his eyes.
“I have baby chicks to think about,” Lily protested. “Twenty-four of them.”
Lily and the Major Page 31