Mercy could’ve kissed Gabriel Getty for his observation: What she had overlooked in her agitation, Billy’s gangly, bespectacled best friend had stated with unwavering faith.
Billy boosted his sister into the buckboard’s seat, then clambered up to take the reins. He glanced back at Mercy, his expression apologetic. Then he clucked to the horse.
“Be careful,” Michael called after them. “Come home when you can!”
Mercy blinked back tears. Greater love hath no man, she mused. That girl has no idea what she’s turned her back on.
The two black-and-white dogs frolicked around the wagon, gazing expectantly at Billy for the invitation to hop on. But his hand signal left Snowy and Spot seated obediently at the edge of the yard, watching after them.
That’s all any of us can do now: watch and pray.
With a resolute sigh, Mercy turned to face Reverend Larsen again. As Michael clasped her hand, she concentrated on the warmth and strength flowing from his grip into hers.
“All right,” she murmured. “It’s our turn.”
Gregor Larsen, their longtime friend and pastor, spoke beneath the rustle of the crowd’s sitting down. “I hope you two, as man and wife, will insist on your turn together,” he admonished. “Children take their example from the parents who nurture them. If your marriage remains firm and faithful, it will be God’s mirror, and they will see themselves reflected in it.”
The pastor stood taller then, awaiting the guests’ attention.
“It is a special day indeed,” his voice rang out, “and I am honored to perform this ceremony here, at the home where we’ve gathered for seven years. As we witness this new beginning for Mercedes Monroe and Michael Malloy, I ask you to invite Christ into your hearts as our most honored guest. Let us pray.
“Holy Father,” he intoned, “we ask Your blessing on this couple, and upon the children You have given into their care. And we ask that You wrap Your guidance and grace around Billy and Christine Bristol as they reconcile their past and reunite their family. We pray in the name of Your Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Reverend Larsen smiled at them. “Dearly beloved!” he began once again. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the sacrament of holy matrimony . . .”
Mercy let his familiar Norwegian cadence flow around her, but it was the man beside her who held her attention. With his hazel gaze fixed on her, Michael Malloy looked head-over-heels in love. His skin, tanned from hard work in the sun, glowed with vitality. His lips parted in a smile meant only for her—and when the tip of his tongue skimmed over them, she felt a secret heat pulsing inside her. What had she ever done to attract this man?
“Mr. Malloy? I believe you wanted to read the Scripture today?”
Michael blinked. “Yes, sir, I do.”
He squeezed her hand, then turned to face her and their friends. “I’d like to share a passage from First Corinthians, which my mother drilled into me because I needed reminding about the proper way to treat my six sisters.”
As everyone chuckled, he thumbed through the Bible’s delicate pages.
“This is for you, Ma,” he said, raising his face toward Heaven, “and it’s a gift for my beautiful bride, Mercedes, to celebrate a love that delves far deeper than the King James translation calls up for us.”
Mercy’s heart raced and her eyes teared. Michael had a way of simplifying difficult passages with his own down-to-earth interpretation. He didn’t lecture on certain verses to prove his point. He simply lived his beliefs, and he lived his beliefs simply.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” he began, gazing at Mercy rather than at the page before him. “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love . . . I am nothing.”
She held her breath—and those behind her were listening just as intently. By replacing the word charity with love, this man was making a statement so eloquent that even the most devout among them would feel new meaning stirring in the familiar words.
“Love is patient and kind . . . love is not jealous or boastful . . . it is not arrogant or rude,” Michael continued, his eyes still fixed on her. “Love does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things . . . hopes all things. Endures all things. Love never ends.”
Tears streamed down Mercy’s cheeks: Michael never once looked at the page, but spoke to her as though no one else existed. He was predicting a long and happy life for them together—giving her these words to lean upon, as they raised the children who’d come to them in different ways, from different places.
As though again aware of their guests, he spoke more quickly. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then—face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.”
Michael handed the Bible back to Reverend Larsen, and looked over the crowd once more. “So faith, hope, and love abide—these three,” he said reverently. “But the greatest of these is love.
“And today, Mercedes,” he said, clasping her hands, “I set aside all that has come before, to become your husband as you become my wife. And I promise you this, sweetheart: No one can possibly love you more than I do. And I will love you even more, every day of my life.”
“Me, too, Papa!” Joel piped up.
“Me, too!” chirped the little girl beside him.
Still grasping Mercy’s hands, Michael smiled at the children in the first row. “Me, too, Joel. Me, too, Lily,” he responded softly. Then he looked toward Nell Fergus on the other side of the aisle, as she held the sleeping baby on her shoulder. “Me, too, Solace.”
“Me, too,” Mercy breathed.
He tucked her hand in his arm, and they faced the pastor together.
“You’ve left me at a loss for words, Mr. Malloy. You have a genuine talent for—”
“Let’s eat that big cake now!” Joel crowed. “Asa made it—”
“Shhhh!” Emma hissed, pressing her hand over the boy’s mouth.
“Cake! Cake!” Lily cried.
Asa turned to silence them with a stern look, but he was chuckling too hard to get away with it. “Cake’s for those who stay quiet while the preacher talks,” he said pointedly. “Watch for when your papa kisses the bride—”
“He’s gonna kiss her again? But he already—”
“Kiss me, too!”
This time Lily’s shrill voice woke Solace, who began to whimper despite Nell’s efforts to soothe her.
Reverend Larsen cleared his throat to begin the sacred vows they were about to exchange. Behind them, Mercy heard Rachel Clark’s whispered warnings about what happened to little children who didn’t behave in church. Meanwhile Solace, eight months old, was howling in a way that meant she was both wet and hungry.
When Mercy glanced up at Michael, however, she forgot about wailing babies and long-winded lessons from clergymen. Her groom’s mustache was quivering with the effort it took not to laugh out loud. The sparkle in his eyes suggested that he had disrupted a wedding or two as a child, and that such heartfelt outbursts from the children would never upset him.
Mercy giggled—and then couldn’t quit. Beside her, Aunt Agatha sniffed an indignant warning, but she didn’t care. This was her day! These little interruptions foretold the life ahead, and she vowed to treasure every precious moment of this patchwork family—to enjoy all the kisses and cake life brought her way.
“Do you, Mercedes, take Michael to be your wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Do you promise—”
“Oh, yes, I do!”
“Oh, no, you don’t!”
Billy glared at
his sister, who sat beside him on the buckboard. “Wheedle and whine all you want, but dang it, Christine, I ain’t takin’ a train to see a man who might not be in Atchison anymore! And he might not wanna see you anymore. So you’re not goin’ there, either.”
“You just try to stop me, Billy!”
“And how’re you gonna buy your ticket?” he challenged, his voice rising right along with hers. “If you tell me you stole money outta Mercy’s sideboard again—”
“I get paid for making dresses, you know.” Christine leaned sideways, so her flushed face was only inches from his. “Which is more than you can say, isn’t it? You’re fourteen now, Billy. You do the work of two hired hands, and I bet those do-gooders haven’t even offered you any money. Have they?”
He could argue until the moon turned blue, but his more worldly sister—who despised the prairie life—would never understand his gratitude to Mercy, her first husband, Judd, and now to Mike Malloy. This wasn’t the time to mention the new position he’d been given when the Malloys formed the new Triple M Ranch from their two homesteads. If Christine was going to be so snooty, why, it was none of her dang business what kind of wages he’d soon be paid.
“You’re changin’ the subject,” he replied archly. “We’re talkin’ about how you couldn’t wait one more day to chase after Mama—how you had to storm out durin’ the weddin’ and be the center of attention. Even Joel has better manners than that!”
“Manners!” she cried, flapping the letters she’d found in his face. “Here we go again, talking about manners, when you and I have been kept from the truth about our mother. By my headmistress and that paragon of virtue you live with.”
“Pipe down. You’re spookin’ Pepper.”
Her fist went to her hip—which at least got those letters out of his face. “You’ve been lied to and betrayed for more than three years by the family who took you in to work like one of their darkies! And you’re telling me to—”
Billy hauled on the reins and the buckboard lurched to a halt. He hated stooping to Christine’s mean-spirited level, but he felt a twinge of satisfaction when she grabbed the wagon seat to keep from toppling off.
“I’m tellin’ you to think about what you’re doin’, Sis,” he insisted. “Those letters and WANTED posters are three years old. Who knows what Mama and Richard Wyndham have been up to since then? How many miles do you s’pose they’ve traveled? Assumin’ he hasn’t dumped her by now?”
He leaned into this argument, going toward his most important point. “Assumin’ is a dangerous game, Christine. You ain’t even opened all those letters.”
“I don’t have to!” she snapped. “Tucker kept writing to me for nearly a year—when he could surely tell by my letters that I hadn’t received this information about Mama! That’s all I need to know. But what would you know about such things?” she went on, rolling her eyes. “You’re just a naive little idiot who—”
He grabbed her wrist until she yelped. “Get outta the wagon, then! I’m settin’ your trunk and your high-and-mighty backside on the side of the road, if that’s how you feel!”
Her eyes widened with fright, and she tried frantically to jerk free of his grip. Christine had used her dramatic talents against him ever since they’d been kids, but never had Billy resorted to violence.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. He dropped her arm.
His sister rubbed her wrist, watching him with wet green eyes. “Why are you so dead set against me finding Mama?” she asked in a quavery voice. “Lord knows, you were so much her favorite, Wesley and I might as well not’ve existed!”
Billy looked away. She was toying with his feelings again, but what she said was mostly true: Mama had made a fuss over him, long after his larger, rowdier twin rejected such affection.
“Bad enough that I lost Mama. Watched her ride away from that depot without even lookin’ back,” he breathed. His chest clenched with the pain of that awful day. “You’re all I have left, Sis. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
“Then come with me,” Christine pleaded—as though her request should seem perfectly logical. “You’re hanging back, just like you did last time!”
“You didn’t ask me to go last time. You snuck out like a thief in the night, on the preacher’s horse.” It was all Billy could do not to shake some sense into her. “You had no intention of takin’ your ten-year-old brother, so don’t let on like you did!”
He glanced away to get control of himself. Christine seemed so grown up in that pretty blue suit, it could’ve been Mama sitting beside him. But his sister would never understand his side of things, much less think about all the ways this situation could go wrong.
“I’ll take you into Abilene, and we’ll send Tucker Trudeau a telegram,” he finally said. “We’ll get us a room, and we’ll look at them letters real close, so’s we can come up with a plan.”
Billy looked her straight in the eye, so she knew exactly where he stood. “But if we don’t hear back from him in a couple days, I’m goin’ back to Mike and Mercy’s. If you wanna get on the train then, well—that’s your business. It ain’t like I’m gonna change your mind.”
Chapter Four
My dearest Tucker, Christine scribbled. But then, considering how many telegraph operators might read this message before it reached Atchison, she scratched that out.
From the window of their room at the Abilene House, she could see people bustling about their daily business—much as she had three years ago, when she’d walked along the sidewalk beside the photographer who spoke with a melodious French accent.
What if Billy was right? What if Tucker Trudeau had moved on, or had given up on her? His letters had stopped coming, after all. She must have seemed as scruffy as a homeless cat to the man who’d given her that portrait of Mama and Richard Wyndham. Maybe he’d just acted interested because he felt sorry for her.
Maybe he’d seen through her little fibs.
Memories of being abandoned—left behind while she used the privy at the stage depot—returned with a vengeance that churned her stomach. And vengeance was precisely why she’d chased after Mama right after the Monroes took her and Billy in. She needed answers. She wanted explanations for those flowery phrases in Mama’s diary, about secret meetings with Mr. Wyndham before the bank foreclosed on their home in Missouri.
So much bitterness and humiliation had been heaped on her shoulders, as the oldest child . . . Mama’s only daughter. Billy, at ten, had been too young to understand her devastation, her desire to set things right.
Three years at Miss Vanderbilt’s Academy for Young Ladies had softened the edges of her mother’s betrayal, much like an artist smudged the charcoal lines of a drawing with his fingertip. But finding Tucker’s letters brought it all back: the pain, the loss of her family and her home, the bitter realization that Mama had chosen the company of a fancy man with a British accent over her own children.
Biting her lip, Christine again considered her telegram to Tucker. If he were still in Atchison, she had to give him a compelling reason to respond. Like Billy said, the primrose paths Mama followed with Mr. Wyndham had grown over, and a search was probably a waste of time.
But another glance at that photograph, where Virgilia Bristol smiled delightedly while leaning against her partner in crime, wouldn’t allow Christine to leave her past—what was left of her family—behind. A WANTED poster might be the ultimate badge of shame for her genteel Southern mother, but it was the only connection she had.
And what if Billy was right? What if that weasel Wyndham had left their mother alone and defenseless? Destitute?
Christine took up her pen again.
Dear Tucker,
Just today I found those letters you sent to me at the academy—and discovered the lies that have kept me from finding my mother. May I please come and talk to you about them? Your help may be the only thing that saves Mama’s life. I will await your reply at Abilene House, in Abilene.
Thank you so very much for yo
ur kindness,
Christine Bristol
She glanced at Billy, who was pacing as restlessly as one of his dogs, from one window to the other.
“Here,” she said, holding out the folded note along with some money. “Take your time about getting back. Walk around town—pick out a place for dinner. My treat.”
Her younger brother’s auburn hair gleamed in the light from the window. Billy was taller now, lankier, yet his stiff new shirt didn’t disguise the whipcord strength he got from working in the stables and corrals. For just an instant, she saw his lean features as those of a grown man. A man who might turn heads other than poor, besotted Emma’s some day.
“I’ll be back by six,” he replied. “Got some things to look at in the Great Western mercantile, so Mike can finish out his new barn. Keep your cash.”
His blue eyes locked onto hers, as though she were a book he didn’t even have to open. “If you find anything in them letters—anything definite about Mama’s whereabouts—you tell me, ya hear? Not just ’cause I got a right to know, but ’cause you and me oughtta be on the same side of this situation instead of fightin’ about it. If there’s a way to find her—or if that Trudeau fella don’t answer your note,” he continued, going for the door, “you and me’ll be on her trail soon as we can get our things together for that long trip.”
Christine stared after him, listening to his purposeful footsteps in the hall: Mama’s baby boy had toughened up. But Billy would always have a cream puff for a heart, no matter how he railed at her for running after their mother. He’d tried to protect them from the emotional havoc Virgilia Bristol had wreaked when she abandoned them—and Mama’s misadventures with Richard Wyndham would probably appall them both, now that this Pandora’s box yawned open again.
She finally had a chance to read Tucker’s letters, so she put them in order by the postmarks. The first one—which Miss Vanderbilt had opened—took her back in time, to when she’d been so eager to hear from the man with the fascinating accent. She unfolded the pages with quivering fingers. The bold, loopy penmanship brought back the memory of glossy dark hair and a close-clipped beard that accentuated his lips. Lips that had kissed her hand as he held it between his own.
Journey to Love (Angels of Mercy) Page 3