In Your Arms (Montana Romance)

by Farmer, Merry

  “My job,” she hissed back, “my reputation, my good standing. I would say yours too, but—”

  “It’s safe to say that’s already ruined?” he finished for her with a wink.

  She huffed in irritation. “No, it’s safe to say that as a man, a white man, you’ll be forgiven. As for me….” She would let him draw his own conclusions.

  “Stop now. Enough of this.” Christian chuckled, tucking his arm around her. “I’m not worried about you one bit.”

  “How can you say that?” She shook her head, hugging herself to keep her anxious heart from pounding out of her chest as much as to keep warm.

  “Because.” He leaned closer. “Because of the look in Rebecca Turner’s eyes.”

  Lily glanced at her shoulder at the wispy woman who sat wrapped in a blanket with her younger children. It didn’t seem to bother her that she’d been relegated to baggage in her own sleigh. Lily had insisted on sitting in the back while she rode up front with Grover, but Rebecca had refused, saying she always sat in the back. The implication still hung heavily in her gut.

  “I believe Rebecca Turner is one of the more forgiving souls in Cold Springs,” Lily muttered to Christian.

  He shrugged and pulled her closer. “We’ll see.”

  Cold Springs was bustling with activity by the time Grover drove the sleigh into the yard beside the new hotel where half a dozen others were already parked. The hotel itself was lit up with strings of electric lights lining the front porch. A few groups of children with one or two parent to guide them walked up and into the building, bubbling with excitement.

  “I have to go in early,” Grover explained, hopping down from the seat with more energy than Lily had ever seen in the boy. “Got to get my costume on and all. You are coming, right, Miss Singer?” he asked her for the dozenth time.

  “We’ll see,” she answered as she had each time.

  He smiled as if she’d agreed whole-heartedly and started unhitching his horse from the front of the sleigh. After his year of struggles, Grover was like a new boy, a new young man.

  “You let me take care of that, Grover,” Christian moved to intercept him once he’d helped Lily and Rebecca and all of the Turner children down. “I’ve got to take Ike Twitchel’s horses to the livery for safe-keeping anyhow.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Avery.”

  Grover scurried off. As he climbed the hotel stairs two at a time, Lewis Jones strode down, fixing his hat on his head. He noticed Christian and Lily and stumbled in surprise.

  “Mr. Avery!” He shifted direction to stride towards them on his long legs. “There you are! I’ve been looking for you since this morning when the train finally came in.”

  “Is that so?” Christian asked, continuing his work with the horses.

  “It is. A package came in for you. From Baltimore. I’ve never seen anything delivered so fast in all my life!”

  Christian jerked straight and shot a furtive look at Lily. “Sweetheart, why don’t you go find your brother and let him know you’re in one piece?”

  “I should.” Lily sighed and stepped around the carriage and onto the shoveled path. She was grateful for the excuse to leave the brightness and exposure of the hotel.

  “Lend me a hand with these horses, Lewis, and I’ll, uh, come pick up that package right away,” Christian said behind her.

  The snow had been cleared from the roads and paths in the heart of the town and heaped at the end of streets and between buildings. Lily was able to rush from the new hotel, around the corner to Main Street, and into the West’s store without being recognized or stopped by anyone. As much as she wanted to find Seeks For Her and assure him she was all right, she needed a bath and clean clothes first.

  “Good heavens, there you are!” Charlie greeted her with boundless enthusiasm the moment she stepped through the door. She rushed out from behind the counter and hugged Lily with all her might. “We were all so worried about you!”

  “Is that Lily Singer?”

  Lily glanced up from Charlie’s hug to find Delilah Reynolds rushing down a shop aisle towards her. Lily found herself jostled from one hug to another as Delilah threw her arms around her and sighed in relief, a sack of coffee still in one hand.

  “Honey, we were all beside ourselves!” Delilah said. “Your brother and the boys said that you and Christian rode out to find Sturdy Oak’s people in the middle of a blizzard!” She took a step back and swatted Lily with the sack of coffee. “Of all the stupid, foolhardy things to do!”

  “I know,” Lily answered sheepishly.

  In her gut, a new emotion was growing. These people had missed her. They had cared what happened to her. She hardly knew Delilah Reynolds at all.

  “Michael wanted to send out a search party to find you, but Phin and Eric talked him out of it,” Charlie went on. “Good thing too. He ended up stuck here at the store while I was out at the house with Eloise all by myself!”

  “Eric told us that Christian had enough sense to take shelter when things got bad. Looks like he was right,” Delilah said.

  “He was. We reached Sturdy Oak’s place just as the snow really started coming down,” Lily explained.

  “Well, it’s a blessing the storm was a quick and mean one and not a long, miserable one,” Delilah declared.

  “We were still away too long,” Lily sighed.

  “Too long?” Charlie balked. “But it’s only been two days!”

  Lily shook her head. “The town council meeting was yesterday at noon, wasn’t it?”

  A bright grin lit Charlie’s face. “No, it was not. Everyone was stuck inside. The meeting never took place.”

  For a moment, Lily didn’t dare to breathe. Hope sprung up so fast and so hard in her chest that it made her faint.

  “You mean I haven’t lost my position yet?”

  Charlie exchanged a triumphant look with Delilah. “Not by a long shot. The meeting has been rescheduled for Friday.”

  “That’s two days from now!”

  “It certainly is. Half the town has heard about the whole incident now, including how you helped Christian nab those two useless pieces of trash, Bo Turner and Jed Archer.”

  “I’ve never seen Jacinta so silent in all my life!” Charlie added. “Finally, something to shut her up!”

  “It won’t last long,” Delilah drawled.

  “But…but they know how the two were apprehended?” Lily asked, sick butterflies fluttering in her stomach.

  “Yes, they do.” Delilah arched an eyebrow. “Congratulations, by the way.”

  Lily’s cheeks burned hot. “I hardly think causing a scandal and losing a position doing the thing I’ve trained my life to do is cause for congratulations.”

  “Did you have fun?” Delilah asked. “Did you hear the angels sing?”

  Lily couldn’t meet her eyes. Flashes of the last two days came to her, making her face burn hotter.

  “Then congratulations are most definitely in order,” Delilah finished with a sly grin.

  “Besides, everyone knows you and Christian have been secretly engaged for weeks now,” Charlie said, eyes sparkling.

  “They do?” Lily blinked. It was news to her.

  “Rumor has it that the two of you are married already and have been since Christmas,” Delilah said.

  “People think that?” It was beyond unbelievable, like something out of a pulp novel.

  “Oh, we made sure of that,” Charlie answered. She and Delilah exchanged cunning grins.

  There was more behind Delilah and Charlie’s smiles that Lily couldn’t put her finger on. It made her nervous to the point of quaking and light with hope at the same time. These were the people she was certain hardly knew she existed and disapproved if they did know. Their smiles tied her mind and heart in knots.

  “But enough about that.” Charlie waved the issue away. “The town’s all abuzz about History Night tonight! You are coming, aren’t you? I hear your students have quite a show to put on.”

  “I�
��I’m not sure,” Lily answered.

  Her emotions were in such a jumble that she didn’t know what to do. She certainly wasn’t ready to face a hostile crowd, but Charlie and Delilah’s reaction to seeing her safe, their implications of the rumors swirling through town with the snow, hadn’t been what she had expected.

  “I need to take a bath first.” She dodged the issue.

  “Then by all means, go upstairs and take one!” Charlie urged her. “But hurry. The performances start in less than an hour!”

  Lily nodded, then turned to head back through the doorway to the storeroom and up to the apartment. None of what Charlie and Delilah had told her made a lick of sense. Rumors that she and Christian were already married? Rumors the two women had had a hand in? But why? Why would two women whom she admired but had barely spoken to in her months in Cold Springs have spread such ridiculousness on her behalf?

  She washed as quickly as she could and dressed in one of her nicer dresses. Everything was just as she had left it in the small apartment bedroom. Charlie and Michael West had every right to toss it out on the street when she was gone, but instead she had the feeling that it had been guarded with care.

  She blinked as she looked at herself in the mirror while putting her hair up. First Jessica, then Rebecca Turner, and now Charlie West and Delilah Reynolds. Not to mention Snow In Her Hair and River Woman. The woman in the mirror stared back at her and smiled. So many friends. She was blessed indeed.

  “Lily, are you up here?”

  She twisted away from the mirror to peer through the open bedroom door as Christian rounded the corner at the top of the stairs in the hall. He must have run home to clean up as well. His suit was fresh, and even though he hadn’t shaved, he was clean.

  “Are the horses taken care of?” she asked. It felt strange to be concerned with such mundane things, but the loan of the horses—even if it had been an emergency—had been another sign of friendship. She would return that friendship a hundredfold as soon as she could.

  “They’re safe and sound,” Christian answered.

  “And Lewis Jones. Did he get what he needed?”

  She hardly knew the man, but he was part of her world now, part of her community. Just the idea filled her with a need to be sure he was well. It was the kind of need Christian must have felt all along.

  “He certainly did.”

  To Lily’s surprise, Christian reached into his coat pocket then sank to one knee. He took her left hand. Without warning, she burst into laughter.

  “Another proposal?” she asked through her giggles. “Isn’t this the third one?”

  “Yes it is,” he answered. “My dearest sweetheart, Lily Singing Bird, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  She couldn’t still her giggles.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve just been informed that we are already married, that we have been since Christmas,” she told him.

  “Is that so?” He turned one hand palm up, revealing the most exquisite diamond and emerald ring Lily had ever seen. “I guess you don’t want this then.”

  She gasped. “It’s beautiful!”

  “It’s my grandmother’s,” he explained, sliding it onto her finger. “I sent for it last week. I should have sent for it a lot sooner.”

  He rose, taking her in his arms and kissing her thoroughly. She relaxed against him, arms fitting so perfectly around his body that she knew she must have been made for his embrace.

  “But if we’re already married….” He teased her by reaching for her hand as if to remove the ring.

  “No!” she exclaimed. “It’s perfect just where it is.”

  “No, sweetheart, you’re perfect just where you are.”

  He squeezed her tighter, arms holding her close.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The ballroom of the Cold Springs Retreat was packed with so many people that the windows had to be cracked open to cool it down. Lily and Christian had arrived late. Seeks For Her was waiting for them. He hugged Lily tight.

  “I’m so glad that you’re safe,” he whispered as the performances began on the stage. “I was ready to go out looking for you, both of you.”

  “Thanks.” Christian thumped his back as though they were friends, as though they were brothers. Lily’s heart swelled. Whether she lost her position as a teacher at the Cold Springs school or not, she had gained so much.

  There was no time for a longer reunion. Lily and Christian and Seeks For Her stood at the back of the room to watch the presentations. There was a recitation of a medieval poem by the fourth grade, a reenactment of a Roman chariot race by an enthusiastic group of first-graders, and a tribute to the American Revolution by the eighth grade.

  But it was the play about Lewis and Clark performed by Lily’s own students that squeezed her heart to her throat and brought tears to her eyes.

  “In 1803, the United States of America bought a large tract of land that made up most of the center of the continent from the French for fifteen million dollars. This land was known as the Louisiana Purchase.”

  Amos had memorized his narration and stood at the side of the stage to deliver his lines. Lily watched her students shuffling at the side of the podium in their costumes, props ready and waiting to make their appearance.

  “President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore and map this land. The Corps of Discovery set out from Camp Dubois on May 14th, 1804.”

  The students making up the Corps of Discovery shuffled across the stage with their handmade prop boats. So they had figured out how to make the boat manageable after all. Pride in the ingenuity of her students filled Lily from head to toe just as tears choked her. She would have done anything to continue on with this amazing group of young people.

  When they reached the other side of the stage, Lily’s heart stopped. She clasped a hand to her chest as Red Sun Boy and Martha stepped up in their native costumes to meet the Corps of Discovery.

  “Christian!” Lily whispered, grabbing his arm. “They’re here!”

  “I see,” he whispered back, taking her hand and holding it like a lifeline.

  They searched the crowded room, craning their necks to find Sturdy Oak or any of his people in the packed room.

  “There,” Christian whispered at length.

  He pointed to the side of the room, near one of the windows. Snow In Her Hair and River Woman sat with Two Feathers. They were dressed like any other member of the audience, so much that they blended in. The sight sat uncomfortably on Lily’s heart, but there they were. Her friends were safe after all.

  “They have been staying at the hotel,” Seeks For Her informed Lily in a whisper. “They arrived a few hours after you left, before the storm shut everything down. I struck up a conversation with them this morning. The women’s father, Sturdy Oak, and the rest of their family is in Butte searching for work. They said that the children insisted they come to Cold Springs for the play, at least.”

  “Thank God, they’re safe,” Lily breathed. She squeezed Christian’s hand. As if he understood, he slipped his arm around her waist and held her close.

  “Lewis and Clark met many members of the Indian Nations on their travels,” Amos recited lines that Lily didn’t remember writing. Red Sun Boy and Martha stepped forward to shake hands with Isaac and Grover in their Lewis and Clark costumes. “They received important help from these people, who served as guides and interpreters. In fact, they wouldn’t have been able to discover anything without the help of the Indians, just like we wouldn’t have been able to learn anything without the help of Miss Lily Singer.”

  Lily’s breath caught in her throat. At the side of the stage, Alicia Kuhn popped her head up from the script and scowled at Amos. Amos wasn’t deterred.

  “Like the Shoshone guide, Sacagawea, Miss Singer has led us through dangerous subjects, like math and science.”

  A chuckle went up from the audience. The students who were part of the Co
rps of Discovery flipped their two-dimensional boats over to reveal painted chalkboards displaying math problems. Jimmy stepped forward to mime puzzling over one math problem. He burst into a cry of “I’ve got it!” and took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and wrote the answer.

  Lily laughed along with the audience, tears coming to her eyes.

  “Like the Indians who had lived on the land for centuries before us, Miss Singer has taught us to love the beauty of nature as well as the beauty of words created by men.”

  A group of girls came out from behind the chalkboard boats with various books, some with pictures of animals and birds on the cover, others classic works of literature.

  “I love this book,” Isabella Kuhn spoke up over the top of her volume of Pride and Prejudice.

  “Isabella! Sit down!” Alicia snapped at her daughter. “All of you, stop this at once and go back to the script!”

  “Miss Singer also taught us to get along with each other,” Amos went on, ignoring her.

  Grover and Red Sun Boy stepped forward, smiling and putting their arms around each other.

  Lily’s tears burst. It hadn’t been a waste. Everything that she had put herself through, every risk she had taken on behalf of the Flathead children and the children of Cold Springs was worth it to see two boys who had thrown punches at each other just a month ago embrace each other now.

  “This is a disgrace!” Samuel stood to protest.

  Both he and his wife were silenced by townspeople sitting near them and hushed back into their seats.

  “We are Miss Singer’s students, and we want her to be our teacher still,” Amos continued. “She’s the best teacher we’ve ever had. We want to continue to learn from her.”

  The other students on the stage agreed, nodding and smiling to each other with gestures that were clearly staged, but still genuine.

  “So we hope the town council will do the right thing, like Miss Singer has taught us to do the right thing, when they meet on Friday.”

  Through her tears, Lily scanned the room. More than a few sets of eyes were watching her and Christian, Hattie and Moses Wright, Rebecca Turner, and Ike and Mabel Twitchel amongst them. Not to mention Charlie and Michael West. Lily had the distinct feeling that the children had had help planning their coup. She was touched beyond telling.