The Christmas Brides

by Linda Lael Miller

  He needed no lantern; even with the moon disappearing behind the clouds, enough light came through to illuminate the snow. Besides, he’d lived on this ranch all his life; he could have found any part of it with his eyes closed.

  He reached the orchard—years ago, when they were boys, he and Micah and Wes and Dawson had helped to plant those apple and pear trees—then made his way, sure-footed, over ground he knew as well as the back of his own right hand.

  Beyond the orchard was the little cluster of gravestones and markers where his father, his brother, the two lost babies—and Beth—were buried.

  He didn’t pause beside Josiah Creed’s grave, walked right past Dawson’s, too, even though he’d loved his brother.

  Beth’s resting place was marked with a stone angel, now cloaked in snow.

  Lincoln brushed off the shoulders and the wings with one hand. He crouched, ran his right forearm across his face. How many times had he come here, said goodbye to Beth? Sooner or later, there always seemed to be something more that wanted saying.

  And she wasn’t even here.

  Gracie believed her mother was in heaven.

  Lincoln flat didn’t know where dead people went, or if they went anywhere at all. Most likely, though, the journey ended in a pine box under six feet of dirt, but of course he wouldn’t have said that to Gracie.

  Graves weren’t really for the folks who’d passed on, he supposed. They gave the ones left behind a place to go and remember, that was all.

  “I got married today,” he said, feeling foolish, but needing to say the words all the same. They came out sounding gruff. “Her name is Juliana, and Gracie— Gracie wants to call her Mama.”

  A raspy chuckle escaped Lincoln then. If that grave had been some kind of pas sage way between this world and the next, Beth would have clawed her way right up out of it and given him what-for.

  “I loved you,” he went on, sober again. “I probably always will. But I’ve been too lonesome, Beth, and so has Gracie. I need somebody to wake up beside, somebody waiting when I come in off the range after a long day. I want Gracie to have a woman to look to so she doesn’t grow up to smoke cigars like Ma says she will. I know you can’t hear me, and wouldn’t like what I’ve got to say if you could, but I still had to say it.”

  As he stood again, Lincoln wondered what he’d expected—an answer? Beth’s ghost, absolving him of his promise to leave his heart buried with her?

  The snap of a branch in the nearby orchard alerted him that someone was approaching—as it had probably been meant to do. He almost expected a specter, though he knew who had tracked him even before he saw Tom moving across the snowy ground toward him. If that old Indian hadn’t wanted him to hear, he wouldn’t have.

  Lincoln waited, without speaking, as his friend drew nearer.

  “She’s not here, Lincoln,” Tom said. “Beth is not here.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Lincoln demanded, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “Where is she, Tom? With the Great Spirit? Or down in that hole in the ground?”

  “Why are you doing this to yourself?” Tom asked reason ably. “Coming out here in the dark and the cold when you’ve got a pretty bride waiting back at the house? Is it because you didn’t count on feeling anything for Juliana?”

  “I think Juliana is beautiful,” Lincoln said tersely. “I think she’s smart and brave, and I want her. But that’s all I feel, Tom. I loved my wife.”

  “Your wife is dead.”

  “So I hear.”

  Tight-jawed, eyes flashing, Tom reached out with a palm and shoved hard at Lincoln’s chest, so he had to scramble to keep his footing. “Let Beth go,” he almost growled. “Juliana doesn’t deserve to go through what your mother did.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, you damn fool, that your pa married your mother for pretty much the same reasons you married Juliana. He and Micah were alone after his first wife died, and he wanted to give the boy a mother. He never loved Cora, always mooning over his poor lost Mary, and your ma’s life was a misery because of it.”

  Lincoln’s mouth dropped open. He took a second or two to get his jaw hinged right so it would shut again. It was the first he’d heard of any of this, and that chafed at something raw inside him. It also explained why Cora couldn’t keep the names of Micah’s four sons straight, why she never visited them in Colorado or even wrote them letters. Maybe it even explained why Micah had lit out for another state the way he had and never looked back, as far as Lincoln could tell.

  “Why tell me this now?” he asked bitterly, but his mind was still reeling, still scrabbling for some kind of purchase. Micah was his father’s son, but not his mother’s? In that moment, he under stood what folks meant when they said they’d had the rug pulled out from under them.

  “Because you need to know it.”

  “I would have appreciated somebody’s mentioning this before Micah left home for good,” Lincoln said, fighting down the old hurt. “I looked up to him. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. One day, he was just—gone.”

  “Micah didn’t leave because things weren’t good between him and Cora. He left because he’d always had leaving in him.”

  “And because his mother’s folks lived in Colorado,” Lincoln guessed.

  “Yes,” Tom said.

  Lincoln thrust out a sigh, felt a letting-go inside him. “Well, I don’t have to wonder what I did wrong anymore, I guess. Does Wes know all this?”

  A nod. “He knows.”

  “Am I the only one who didn’t?”

  “Let it go, Lincoln. Wes is a little older. He over heard more, that’s all.”

  “I suppose now you’re going to tell me my ma was so lonesome, you had to comfort her, and I’m your son, not Josiah Creed’s.” For a brief moment, Lincoln held his breath, hoping it was true.

  Tom clenched a fist, looked as though he might throw a punch. “If you were my son,” he said, through his teeth, “I’d have claimed you a long time ago. No woman ever loved a man more than your ma loved Josiah Creed. She bore him three healthy boys and raised the one he brought with him when they married. When Dawson was killed, Josiah told her it was her fault, because it was one of her kin that pulled the trigger. To the day he died, he never had a kind word for her.”

  Lincoln closed his eyes for a long moment, let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “But you loved my mother all these years, didn’t you, Tom? That’s why you stayed.”

  “I stayed because that’s what I chose to do,” Tom said coldly.

  Lincoln started back toward the house, and Tom fell into step beside him.

  They walked in silence with nothing more to say.

  THERESA, BILLY-MOSES AND DAISY were sound asleep in Mrs. Creed’s bed. Careful not to wake them, Juliana tucked the blankets in close and added wood to the fire in the stove.

  She looked in on Gracie next, found her sleeping, too. Felt her heart seize with love for this child, the fruit of another woman’s womb. It was a dangerous thing, caring so much, but it was too late. Just as it was with Daisy and Billy-Moses, Theresa and Joseph.

  Juliana adjusted Gracie’s covers and tiptoed out into the corridor.

  In Lincoln’s room, she lit a lamp. Slowly un dressed, took her own night gown from her satchel and put it on. After drawing a deep breath, she pulled back the covers and climbed into bed.

  There, she waited.

  Lincoln had promised to wait until she felt ready to give herself to him. That should have lessened her fears, but it didn’t, because it wasn’t the prospect of his lovemaking that frightened her most. It was her own desire to give herself up to him with total abandon.

  He came in quietly, with the smell of the outdoors on his clothes—snow, pine, fresh, cold air. Feigning sleep, she watched through her eye lashes as he lowered one suspender, then the other.

  “I know you’re awake,” he told her. “Most folks don’t hold their breath when
they’re sleeping.”

  Juliana huffed out a sigh and opened her eyes.

  After looking down at her for a long moment, he chuckled and reached to extinguish the lamp. “Move over, Mrs. Creed,” he said. “I’m going to need more than an inch of that mattress.”

  Juliana scooted closer to the wall, her heart pounding. Lincoln was not going to force himself on her, she knew that if little else. He wouldn’t touch her in any intimate way without her permission.

  She ought to relax.

  But she couldn’t. What did married people say to each other at night when they got into bed?

  He continued to undress. Dear God, did the man sleep naked? He didn’t seem the sort to don a nightshirt.

  She tried to take her thoughts in hand, but they wouldn’t be governed. Instead, they scattered in every direction like startled chickens, squaw king and flapping their wings.

  Sure enough, she felt the bareness of his flesh, the hard warmth with its aura of chill.

  He gave a long sigh. “Good night, Juliana,” he said.

  They both lay sleep less in the dark for a long time, neither one speaking, careful not to brush against each other.

  Juliana should have been relieved.

  Instead, she bit her lower lip hard, and hoped he wouldn’t hear her crying.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LINCOLN WAS ON THE RANGE the next morning, having bid the Reverend Dettly farewell, his muscles aching from a long night of self-restraint, wanting Juliana and not taking her, when Wes rode up, looking as rumpled and dissolute as ever. The cattle had been fed and Lincoln was there alone, he and his horse, just looking at the herd and wondering if those critters were worth all the grief they caused him.

  “Came to get my mule,” Wes said. “Tom told me you were out here.”

  There were bulging bundles tied where his saddle-bags should have been. Gifts for Gracie and the other children, no doubt—Wes and Kate were always generous at Christmas and on birth days, having no kids of their own.

  Lincoln didn’t say anything. Wes had known all along about Josiah’s first wife, Micah’s mother, and he’d never bothered to raise the subject. Now, after talking to Tom, he probably meant to make some kind of speech.

  “A wire came for Miss Mitchell,” Wes said, surprising him. “I thought I’d better bring it out here.”

  “She’s not ‘Miss Mitchell’ anymore,” Lincoln said, his tone flat and matter-of-fact. “I married her yesterday.”

  Wes gave a bark of pleased laughter at the news. “So that’s why I met the reverend on the road out from town this morning,” he said. “Congratulations, you lucky son of a gun.”

  “Thanks.” He gave the word a grudging note.

  Wes pulled a yellow envelope from the inside pocket of his coat, squinting against the glare of sunshine on snow. Watched as Lincoln tucked away the telegram without looking at the face of it.

  “It’s from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Lincoln,” Wes said quietly.

  Trouble, of course—telegrams rarely brought good news. Lincoln swallowed and braced himself for whatever was coming. He’d been enduring things for so long, toughing them out, that he’d learned to dig in whenever a problem appeared. “You’d damn well better not have read it,” he said.

  “I didn’t have to,” Wes answered easily. “The telegraph operator told me what it says. By now, half the town knows that that Indian Agent Philbert means to show up in Stillwater Springs some time before New Year’s and stir up a ruckus. The new Mrs. Creed is out of a job for sure, but I don’t suppose that matters now, anyhow, what with the wedding and all.”

  Even though he’d expected something like that, the knowledge buffeted Lincoln like a hard wind. Made him shift in the saddle. “What else?” he asked, still avoiding his brother’s gaze.

  “He’s bound on taking the kids back to Missoula,” Wes said.

  Lincoln closed his eyes. Didn’t speak.

  He’d get Joseph and Theresa on their way back to North Dakota before Philbert showed up, no matter what he had to do. Take them to the train depot at Missoula if it came to that, and put them onboard himself. Juliana had prepared herself for that particular parting—it was best for them to be with their own folks—but things were different with the two little ones. Orphans, the both of them. Some where along the line, Juliana had taken to mothering Daisy and little Bill, and letting go would be a hard thing, for her and for them.

  “Tom told you the family secret, I hear,” Wes said, when Lincoln had been silent too long to suit him.

  Lincoln turned his head then. Looked straight at his brother. “Why didn’t you tell me, Wes?”

  “Ma asked me not to,” Wes replied with the solemnity of truth.

  Still, Lincoln had to challenge him. “Since when are you so all-fired concerned with doing what Ma wants?”

  Wes’s smile was thin, and a little on the self-disparaging side. “I chopped down a Christmas tree and hauled it out here on a mule’s back because she told me to, didn’t I?”

  “You did that for Gracie.”

  Wes sighed, stood in the stirrups for a moment, stretching his legs. “Mostly,” he admitted gruffly. Then, after a long time, he added, “Things weren’t always so sour between Ma and me, Lincoln. You remember how it was after Dawson died—she was half-mad with the sorrow. Doc Chaney had to dose her up with laudanum. I was pretty torn up myself—we all were—but I felt sorry for her. I wanted to do what I could to help, and God knew there wasn’t much.”

  Lincoln took that in without speaking. He remembered how his ma used to howl with grief some nights, during those first weeks after the shooting, and how his pa had slammed out of the house when she did.

  Saddle leather creaked as Wes fidgeted, leaning forward a little, looking earnest. “There was another reason I didn’t tell you,” he said, sounding reluctant and a little irritated.

  “What was that?” Lincoln bit out, in no frame of mind to make things easy for his brother. Whatever Wes’s reasons for keeping that secret, he, Lincoln, had had as much right to know as anybody.

  “You tend to hold on to things you ought to let go of,” Wes said, reining his horse around, toward the main house, looking back at Lincoln over one shoulder. “People, too.”

  “Beth.” Lincoln sighed the name.

  “Beth,” Wes agreed. Another silence fell between them, lengthy and punctuated only by snorts and hoof-shuffling from their horses and the chatter of the passing creek. “Of the four of us, Lincoln, you’re the most like Pa. Tougher than hell, and too smart for your own good or anybody else’s. You’ve held on to this ground, just like he did, and made it pay, in good times and bad. But you take after the old man in a few other ways, too. If I hauled off and swung a shovel at your head—and I’ve wanted to more than once—it would be the shovel that fractured, not your skull.”

  “That was quite a sermon, Wes.”

  “Don’t get out of your pew yet, because I’m not finished. Right now, because you’re still young, that stubborn streak serves you pretty well—you probably think of it as ‘determination.’ Trouble is, over time, it might just harden into something a lot less admirable.”

  As much as Lincoln would have liked to disregard the warning, he couldn’t. It made too much sense. He’d mourned Dawson in a normal way, but since Beth had died, he’d boarded over parts of himself, knowing it would hurt too much if he let himself care.

  “What do you suggest I do?” he asked moderately, just to get it over with. Wes was going to tell him anyhow; he’d worked himself up into a pretty good lather since talking with Tom.

  “You remember how different Pa was when we were little? How he’d haul one or another of us around on his shoulders, let us follow him practically every place he went? How he laughed all the time, even though he worked like a mule? Back then, he wouldn’t have believed it if somebody had told him he’d wind up turning his back on all of us, but he did. You know why, Lincoln? Because he decided to go right on loving a dead woman, when he
had a living, breathing one right in front of him. It took a while, but that decision—that one bone-headed decision—poisoned his mind, and eventually, it poisoned his soul, too.” Wes paused for a few moments, remembering, maybe gathering more words. “Never mind Juliana. She’s prettier than Ma was, and she’s got a lot more spirit. She’ll be all right, even if you’re fool enough to keep your heart closed to her. But what about Gracie? She’s already got a mind of her own, and she’s only seven—what do you think she’ll be like at sixteen? Or eighteen? She’ll make a lot of choices along the way, and I guar an tee you aren’t going to like some of them. You’re bound to butt heads—I suppose that’s normal—but if you aren’t careful, you might find yourself treating your daughter the same way Pa did us. Do you want that?”

  Lincoln’s throat had seized shut. He shook his head.

  Wes had finally run down, having reeled out what he had to say. He nudged at his horse’s sides with the heels of his boots and rode back toward the house to drop off the things stuffed into those bags tied behind his saddle and collect his mule.

  Conscious of the telegram in his pocket, Lincoln waited awhile before following.

  JULIANA WAS CROSSING THE YARD, returning from a brief visit to Rose-of-Sharon and baby Joshua, when she saw her brother-in-law leading his mule out of the barn. Tom, mean while, carried two burlap bags, stuffed full of something, toward the woodshed.

  Because she liked Weston Creed, she changed course, smiling, and went to greet him.

  His smile flashed, but his eyes were solemn, almost sad. “My brother,” he said, “is a lucky man.”

  Juliana blushed. She wasn’t used to compliments; schoolmarms didn’t get a whole lot of them. “We’ve got two big turkeys for Christmas dinner,” she told him, feeling self-conscious. “I hope you’ll join us.”

  He slipped a loop of rope around the mule’s neck and paused to look toward the house. “Is Kate welcome, too?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he moved to stand beside his horse and tied the other end of the rope loosely around the horn of the saddle.