The Christmas Brides

by Linda Lael Miller

  Lizzie wasn’t about to let the Thaddingses walk home, and quickly conscripted her good-natured uncle Jeb to drive them in his buggy.

  Later, when the McKettrick clan left Indian Rock for the Triple M, Morgan was with them, seated next to Lizzie in the back of her father’s wagon. Whitley, alternately scowling and looking bleak, rode in the other. The snow, so threatening on the mountain, fell like a blessed benediction all around them, soothing and soft, almost magical.

  The first sight of the main ranch house brought tears to Lizzie’s eyes. She’d thought, before the rescue, that she might never see the home place again, never warm herself before one of the fires, dream in a rocking chair while a summer rain pattered at the roof. But there it was, sturdy and dearly familiar, its roof laced with snow, its windows alight with a golden glow.

  Dogs barked a merry greeting, and small cousins, as well as aunts and uncles, poured from wagons and buckboards, their voices a happy buzz in the wintry darkness.

  Lizzie stood still, after Morgan helped her down from the wagon, taking it all in. Hiding things in her heart.

  Inside her grandfather’s house, a giant tree winked with tinsel. Piles of packages stood beneath it, some simply wrapped in brown paper or newsprint, others bedecked in pretty cloth and tied with shimmering ribbons.

  Concepcion, her grandfather’s wife, must have been cooking for days. The house was redolent with the aromas Lizzie had yearned for on the stranded train— freshly baked bread, savory roast goose, spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. Lizzie breathed deeply of the love and happiness surrounding her on all sides.

  The children were excited, of course, all the more so because, for them, Christmas was just plain late. At Holt’s suggestion, they were allowed to empty their bulging St. Nicholas stockings and open their packages.

  Chaos reigned while dolls and games and brightly colored shirts and dresses were unwrapped. Lizzie watched the whole scene in a daze of gratitude and love for her large, boisterous family. Morgan stood nearby, enjoying the melee, while Whitley slumped in a leather chair next to the fireplace, wearing an expression that said, “Bah, humbug.”

  If she hadn’t known it before, Lizzie would have known then that Whitley simply didn’t belong with this rowdy crew. Morgan, on the other hand, had soon taken off his coat, pushed up his sleeves and knelt on the floor to help Doss assemble a miniature ranch house from a toy set of interlocking logs.

  A nudge from her father distracted Lizzie, and she started when she saw what he was holding in his hands—Mr. Christian’s music box, the one he’d given her on Christmas Eve, aboard the train.

  She blinked. Surely they’d left it behind, along with most of their other possessions, to be collected later.

  “The tag says it’s for you,” Holt said, looking puzzled. Clearly, he didn’t recall seeing the music box before.

  Lizzie’s hands trembled as she accepted the box. A strain of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” tinkled from its depths, so ethereal that she was sure, in the moment after, that she’d imagined it.

  She found a chair—not easy since the house was bulging with McKettricks—and sank into it, stricken speechless.

  Whitley, as it happened, already occupied the chair next to hers. He frowned, eyeing the music box resting in Lizzie’s lap like some sacred object to be guarded at all costs.

  “That’s pretty,” he said, with a grudging note to his voice. “Did Shane give it to you?”

  Lizzie shook her head, made herself meet Whitley’s gaze. “Don’t you remember, Whitley?” she asked, referring to Christmas Eve on the train, when they’d all seen the music box, listened with sad delight to its chiming tunes.

  “Remember what?” Whitley asked. He wasn’t pretending, Lizzie knew. He honestly didn’t recall either the music box or Mr. Christian.

  “Never mind,” Lizzie said.

  Dinner was announced, and Whitley got up, reaching for his crutches, and stumped off toward the dining room. Most of the children had fallen asleep on piles of crumpled wrapping paper, and the adults had all gone to eat.

  All except Morgan, and Lizzie herself, that is.

  “Hungry?” Morgan asked, extending a hand to Lizzie.

  She set the music box aside, on the sturdy table next to her chair, and took Morgan’s hand. “Starved,” she said.

  Instead of escorting her into the dining room, where everyone else had gathered—their voices were like a muted symphony of laughter and happy conversation, sweet to Lizzie’s ears—Morgan drew her close. Held her as though they were about to swirl into the flow of a waltz.

  “If what I’m feeling right now isn’t love,” Morgan said, his lips nearly touching Lizzie’s, “then there’s something even better than love.”

  Lizzie’s throat constricted. She whispered his name, and he would have kissed her, she supposed, if a third party hadn’t made his presence known with a clearing of the throat.

  “Time for that later,” Angus said, grinning. “Supper’s on the table.”

  BY NEW YEAR’S, the tracks had been cleared and the trains were running again. Lizzie waited on the platform, alongside Whitley, the sole traveler leaving Indian Rock that day.

  A cold, dry wind blew, stinging Lizzie’s ears, and she felt as miserable as Whitley looked.

  You’ll meet someone else.

  That was what she wanted to say, but it seemed presumptuous, under the circumstances. Whitley’s feelings were private ones, and she had no real way of knowing what they were.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked quietly, as the train rounded the bend in the near distance, whistle blowing, white steam chuffing from the smokestack against a brittle blue sky. “We could have a good life together, Lizzie.”

  Lizzie blinked back tears. Yes, she supposed they could have a good life together, she and Whitley, good enough, anyway. But she wanted more than “good enough,” for herself and Morgan—and for Whitley. “You belong in San Francisco,” she told him gently. “And I belong right here, in Indian Rock.”

  Whitley surprised her with a sad, tender smile. “I hate to admit it,” he said, “but you’re probably right. Be happy, Lizzie.”

  The train was nearly at the platform now, and so loud that Lizzie would have had to shout to be heard over the din. So she stood on tiptoe and planted a brief, chaste kiss on Whitley’s mouth.

  Metal brakes squealed as the train came to a full stop.

  Whitley stared into Lizzie’s eyes for a long moment, saying a silent fare-thee-well, then he turned, deft on his crutches, to leave. She watched until he’d boarded the train, then turned and walked slowly away.

  In the morning, her first day of teaching would commence. She headed for the schoolhouse, where her father and her uncle Jeb were unloading some of her things from the back of a buckboard.

  Jeb nodded to her and smiled before lugging her rocking chair inside, but Holt came to Lizzie and slipped an arm around her shoulders. Kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  “Goodbyes can be hard,” he said, knowing she’d just come from the train depot, “even when it’s for the best.”

  Lizzie nodded, choked up. “I was so sure—”

  Holt chuckled. “Of course you were sure,” he said. “You’re a McKettrick, and McKettricks are sure of everything.”

  “What if I’m wrong about Morgan?” she asked, looking up into her father’s face. “I don’t think I could stand to say goodbye to him.”

  “Don’t borrow trouble, Lizzie-bet,” Holt smiled. “You’ve got a year of courting ahead of you. And my guess is, at the end of that time, you’ll know for sure, one way or the other.”

  She nodded, swallowed, and rested her forehead against Holt’s shoulder.

  Later, when she’d explored her classroom, with its blackboard and potbellied stove and long, low-slung tables, for what must have been the hundredth time, she went into her living quarters.

  Her father and uncle had gone, and her personal belongings were all around, in boxes and crates and travel tru
nks. Her books, her most serviceable dresses, a pretty china lamp from her bedroom at the ranch, the little writing desk her grandfather had given her as a Christmas gift.

  Lorelei had packed quilts and sheets and fluffy pillows, meant to make the stark little room more homelike, and before they’d gone, her father and uncle had built a nice fire in the stove.

  Lizzie searched until she found the music box, set it in the middle of the table, and sat down to admire it. And to wonder.

  Truly, as the bard had so famously said, there were more things in heaven and earth than this world dreams of.

  A light knock at her door brought Lizzie out of her musings, and she went to open it, found Morgan standing on the small porch facing the side yard. His hands stuffed into the pockets of his worn coat, he favored her with a shy smile.

  “I know it isn’t proper, but—”

  “Come in,” Lizzie said, catching him by the sleeve and literally pulling him over the threshold.

  Inside, Morgan made such a comical effort not to notice the bed, which dominated the tiny room, that Lizzie laughed.

  “I can’t stay,” Morgan said, making no move to leave.

  “People will talk,” Lizzie agreed, still amused.

  His gaze strayed past her, to the music box. “This was quite a Christmas, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “Quite a Christmas indeed,” Lizzie said, watching as he approached the table, sorted through the stack of little brass disks containing various tunes, and slid one into the side of the music box. He wound the key, and the strains of a waltz tinkled in the air, delicate as tiny icicles dropping from the eaves of a house.

  Morgan turned to Lizzie, holding out his arms, and she moved into his embrace, and they danced.

  They danced until the music stopped, and then they went on dancing, in the tremulous silence that followed, around the table, past the rocking chair and the bed. Around and around and around they went, the doctor and the schoolmarm, waltzing to the beat of each other’s hearts.

  CHAPTER NINE

  December 20, 1897

  “MISS MCKETTRICK?” lisped a small voice.

  Lizzie looked up from the papers she’d been grading at her desk and smiled to see Tad Brennan standing there. Barely five, he was still too young to attend school, but he often showed up when classes were over for the day, to show Lizzie his “homework.”

  “Tad,” she greeted him, cheered by his exuberant desire to learn. In the year Lizzie had been teaching, he’d mastered his alphabet and elementary arithmetic, with a lot of help from his father. By the time he officially enrolled in the fall, he’d probably be ready to skip the first grade.

  “Mama says you’re getting married to Dr. Shane soon,” Tad said miserably.

  “Well, yes,” Lizzie said, resisting an urge to ruffle his hair. She knew her little brothers hated that gesture. “Dr. Shane and I are getting married, the day before Christmas. You’re invited to the ceremony, and so are your parents and grandparents.”

  Tad’s eyes were suddenly brilliant with tears. “That means we’ll have a new teacher,” he said. “And I wanted you.”

  Lizzie pushed her chair back from her desk and held out her arms to Tad. Reluctantly he allowed her to take him onto her lap. Like her brothers, he regarded himself as a big boy now, and lap sitting was suspect. “I’ll be your teacher, Tad,” she said gently. “The only difference will be, you’ll call me Mrs. Shane instead of Miss McKettrick.”

  The child looked at her with mingled confusion and hope. “But aren’t you going to have babies?”

  Lizzie felt her cheeks warm a little. She and Morgan had done their best to wait, but one balmy night last June, the waiting had proved to be too much for both of them. They’d made love, in the deep grass of a pasture on the Triple M, and since then, they’d been together every chance they got.

  “I’m sure I’ll have babies,” she said. “Eventually.”

  “Mama says women with babies have to stay home and take care of them,” Tad told her solemnly.

  “Does she?” Lizzie asked gently.

  Tad nodded.

  “Tell you what,” Lizzie said, after giving him a little hug. “I promise, baby or no baby, to be here when you start first grade. Fair enough?”

  Tad beamed. Nodded. Scrambled down off Lizzie’s lap just as the door of the schoolhouse sprang open.

  The scent of fresh evergreen filled the small room, and then Morgan was there, in the chasm, lugging a tree so large that Lizzie could only see his boots. The school’s Christmas party was scheduled for the next afternoon; Lizzie and her students, fourteen children of widely varying ages, would spend the morning decorating with paper chains and bits of shiny paper garnered for the purpose.

  “Miss McKettrick promised to be my teacher in first grade,” Tad told Morgan seriously, “even if she’s got a baby.”

  Morgan’s dark eyes glinted with humor and no little passion. Late the night before, he’d knocked on Lizzie’s door, and she’d let him in. He’d stayed until just before dawn, leaving Lizzie melting in the schoolteacher’s bed.

  “I just saw your pa,” he told the child, letting the baby remark pass. “He’s wanting you to help him carry in wood.”

  Tad said a hasty goodbye to Lizzie and hurried out. John Brennan had come a long way in the year since they’d all been stranded together in a train on the mountainside, but his health was still somewhat fragile and he counted on his son to assist him with the chores.

  “Did you really meet up with John?” Lizzie asked, suspicious.

  Morgan grinned, leaned the tree against the far wall and crossed the room to bend over her chair and kiss her soundly. Electricity raced along her veins and danced in her nerve endings. “I could have,” he said. “Walked right past the mercantile on my way here.”

  Lizzie laughed, though the kiss had set her afire, as Morgan Shane’s kisses always did. “You’re a shameless scoundrel,” she said, giving his chest a little push with both palms precisely because she wanted to pull him close instead.

  “We’re invited to supper at the Thaddingses’,” Morgan replied, still grinning. He could turn her from a schoolmarm to a hussy within five minutes if he wanted to, and he was making sure she understood that. “They have news.”

  Lizzie stood up, once Morgan gave her room to do so, and began neatening the things on her desk. “News? What kind of news?”

  Morgan stood behind her, pulled her back against him. She felt his desire and wondered if he’d step inside with her, after walking her back from supper at the Thaddingses’, and seduce her in the little room in back. “I don’t know,” he murmured, his breath warm against her temple. “I guess that’s why it will come as—well—news.”

  His hands cupped her breasts, warm and strong and infinitely gentle.

  “Dr. Morgan Shane,” Lizzie sputtered, “this is a schoolroom.”

  He chuckled. “So it is. I’d take you to bed and have you thoroughly, Miss McKettrick, but I saw your father and one of your uncles coming out of the Cattleman’s Bank a little while ago, and my guess is, they’re on their way here right now.”

  With a little cry, Lizzie jumped away from Morgan. Smoothed her hair and her skirts.

  Sure enough, a wagon rolled clamorously up outside in the very next moment. She heard her father call out a greeting to someone passing by.

  Lizzie put her hands to her cheeks, hoping to cool them. One look at her, in her present state of arousal, and her father would know what she’d been up to with Morgan. If he hadn’t guessed already.

  Morgan perched on the edge of her desk, folded his arms and grinned at her discomfort. “Damn,” he said, “you’re almost as beautiful when you want to make love as just afterward, when you make those little sighing sounds.”

  “Morgan!”

  He laughed.

  The schoolhouse door opened, and Holt McKettrick came in, dressed for winter in woolen trousers, a heavy shirt and a long coat lined in sheep’s wool. His gaze moving from Morgan t
o Lizzie, he grinned a little.

  “Lorelei sent some things in for the new house,” he said. “Rafe and I will unload them over there, unless you’d rather keep them here until after the wedding.”

  “There would be better,” Lizzie said.

  Over Morgan’s protests, when their engagement had become official on Lizzie’s twentieth birthday in early August, her grandfather had purchased a little plot of land at the edge of town, and now a small white cottage with green-shuttered windows awaited their occupancy. Angus, Holt, the uncles and Morgan had built the place with their own hands and, little by little, it had been furnished, with one notable exception: a bed.

  When Lizzie had commented on the oversight the week before, while they sat in the ranch house kitchen sewing dolls to be given away at church on Christmas Eve, her stepmother had smiled and said only, “I was your age once.”

  Morgan, whistling merrily under his breath, gave the evergreen a little shake, causing its scent to perfume the schoolhouse, and nodded a greeting to Holt.

  “We’ll be going, then,” Holt said, with a note of bemused humor in his voice. His McKettrick-blue eyes twinkled. “Lorelei and the other womenfolk are wanting to fuss with your wedding dress a little more, so you’d best pay a visit to the ranch in the next day or two.”

  Lizzie nodded. “I’ll be there,” she promised.

  Her papa kissed her cheek, glanced Morgan’s way again and left.

  As soon as Holt had gone, Morgan kissed Lizzie, too, though in an entirely different way, asked her to meet him at Clarinda Adams’s place at six, and took his leave as well.

  “COMPANY!” Woodrow squawked, from inside the once-notorious Clarinda Adams house. “Company!”

  Morgan smiled down at Lizzie, who stood with her cloak pulled close around her, shivering a little. The ground was blanketed with pristine white snow, and it glittered in the glow from the gas-powered streetlight on the corner. Curlicues of frost adorned the front windows. “That bird takes himself pretty seriously,” Morgan observed.