Cheryl St. John - [Copper Creek 01]

by Sweet Annie

  Charmaine pushed the wheelchair and Mildred walked behind them toward their home. None of them looked back.

  Luke moved to stand in the shade of the building, waiting for people to disperse, noted when the preacher left and Eldon Sweetwater walked in his direction.

  “Want to sit inside out of the sun?” Luke asked.

  Eldon shook his head, stuffed his hands into his pockets and paced the hard-packed earth. The only other building nearby was the social hall and no one occupied it today. They didn’t have to worry about eavesdroppers.

  “I want you to know I never felt right about deceiving you,” Luke said honestly, getting this off his chest immediately.

  “Deceiving me didn’t disturb you enough to leave her alone, did it?”

  He winced inwardly. “She’s of marrying age, sir. There’s no good reason why she shouldn’t be courted.”

  “The good reason was that we forbade it. She’s not like other young women.”

  “No, she’s not. I’m glad of it.”

  “We protected her all her life.”

  Luke tried to place himself in the man’s shoes. He nodded.

  “We never wanted her to be disappointed when she couldn’t do the things other children did.”

  “She was disappointed anyway. There are a lot of things she can do that you never let her.”

  “We felt that was best for her emotional development. You have no idea what it’s like to have a child like Annie.”

  “No. I don’t. But I do know what it’s like to love a woman like Annie. She’s hungry for life, so full of hopes and dreams.”

  “That’s why encouraging her fanciful ideas is harmful,” Eldon said, his face rigid with anger.

  Luke shook his head. “You smother her. We wired Dr. Mulvaney and he said there was no reason why Annie couldn’t walk and exercise and strengthen her leg. He said it might even be beneficial.”

  The older man stared with a stunned expression. “He said no such thing.”

  “He did. Annie has the telegram if you don’t believe it.”

  Eldon passed an unsteady hand across his forehead. “Her mother always dealt with the physicians. But she never had any news like this.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Eldon straightened, tugging the lapels of his tailored suit and lifting his chin. “What are you insinuating? That my wife kept vital information like that to herself?”

  Luke merely shrugged. He had no idea and wasn’t about to make an accusation. “All I know is what this doctor told Annie. And I know what Annie tells me. She wants to live a normal life.”

  “It’s not wise to let her believe she can do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look at you. You’re a strong, healthy man. Why would you want a girl like Annie, who can’t possibly do everything a normal woman can?”

  Those words pierced Luke’s heart—and lodged anger in his soul. “Annie’s limitations are there because you put them there. The few things she can’t do aren’t even worth mentioning! She can ride, she can sew, she can cook, she can care for a child. If she can’t win a footrace at the next Fourth of July picnic, who cares?”

  “She’s never done those things.”

  “She has. She’s ridden with me. She’s baked me an apple pie. She made that dress she wore yesterday, and if she hasn’t been able to help care for her nephew, it’s only because you people won’t let her. What more does she have to do to get you to listen? She’s been tryin’ to tell you for years. She’s become a woman. She’s capable of so much more. So much.”

  Maybe some of those words had sunk in. Eldon stared at the ground beneath his polished boots, one eyebrow twitching.

  Luke sympathized with the man’s confusion. Luke truly believed Sweetwater loved his daughter and wanted the best for her. He let him think in silence for a few more minutes before saying, “I’m afraid you’ll only push her away if you try to hang on so tight. She loves you. I know she does. But she wants her own life. And I believe she wants a life with me. I love her. You have to believe I would never do anything to hurt her.”

  The man raised his head, but he looked off toward the mountains.

  “Ever since I first met her, I wanted to see her happy. That’s all I want now. I want to make her happy. If I truly thought I was bad for her, I’d have to leave her alone. If I believed walking and doing things was harmful to her, I’d urge her to stop. But I don’t. All I’ve seen is good come from it. She’s more assured. She feels good about herself.”

  Eldon nodded. Finally he cleared his throat and spoke. “I’ll give you that. She’s been happier lately. Had more confidence.”

  Luke had said his piece. He waited for Eldon’s reaction.

  The man looked him in the eye. “I don’t want to drive her away. I don’t approve. But I won’t make her choose between us.”

  It wasn’t exactly a blessing. It was hardly a truce. But it was something. “I intend to court her properly,” Luke promised. “We’ll set a date.”

  “For a proper respectable wedding,” Eldon added. “Providing you haven’t already ruined her.” He glared at Luke with a suspicious eye.

  His meaning sunk in. “I’ll not take offense at what you’ve just accused me of,” he said stiffly. “Not to mention your disregard for your daughter’s sense of decency.” Truth be told, if Annie’d had her way, she probably wouldn’t be a virgin, but he’d never tell her father that. “I assure you your daughter’s chastity is safe with me until we’re married.”

  Eldon started to walk away, putting an end to their meeting, but he stopped and turned back. “She foolishly—blindly, believes she’s in love with you. Don’t take advantage of that.”

  Shaking his head, Luke struggled for a reply. “No, sir. I won’t,” he replied at last.

  Eldon walked away.

  Annie had been waiting on the porch for nearly an hour when her father walked up the lane. She took the stairs carefully, holding the rail, and met him as he approached the house.

  His expression revealed the novelty of having her walk toward him, but she didn’t see revulsion or embarrassment like she read on her mother’s face.

  She reached for his arm and he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and slowed his pace. “You’ve never met me on the walk before,” he said, and his voice shook.

  “I always wanted to,” she told him softly.

  He patted her hand and blinked.

  “What happened, Daddy?” she asked, unable to wait another minute.

  They had reached the porch stairs and Annie leaned on him to climb them. The screen door opened and shut and Annie looked up to see her mother’s disapproving observation.

  Annie ignored her. “What did you and Luke discuss?”

  “I am not going to fight you,” he said finally.

  Annie lowered her weight onto a wicker chair. Eldon sat across from her, but her mother stood, her hands folded over her waist.

  “He made me see that this is what you want, and that you are old enough to make that decision.”

  Elation burst through Annie’s ambivalent emotions. She blinked back tears.

  “You cannot be considering condoning this travesty!” her mother said sharply, then turned to Annie. “You have no idea what you are getting yourself into.”

  “I believe I do—”

  “You’re too young to know what you want. This is a passing whim that you will regret. When you’re older you’ll see that your father and I made the best choices for you.”

  “I’m not a child. Why can’t you see that?”

  “Because you’re not behaving like an adult,” she retorted.

  “Mildred, the girl is of age,” Annie’s father said. “She has a mind of her own. Would you rather she ran off and we never saw her again?”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Daddy,” Annie protested. She’d never even considered the possibility, and didn’t know why her father feared she had. “But I am going to marry Luke.”

  “
We could send her away,” Mildred said, her entire posture rigid. “We can keep him from finding her.”

  “And make our daughter a prisoner?” he asked, opening a palm toward his wife. “Do you really think she would be happy living God knows where with strangers? She would hate us.”

  “Do you think she will be happy when she realizes she can’t do all the things she imagines she can? Do you think she will be happy when that man leaves her for a normal woman?”

  “Mildred,” Eldon said in censure. “I give the man more credit than that.”

  A quiver of unease ran through Annie’s heart. Hurt and betrayal that her own mother thought so little of her, had such small regard for her feelings, pressed a bruise into her newly gained confidence.

  “I will not place my approval on this abomination,” she said.

  “Annie is going to marry him,” Eldon said calmly.

  “Not with my blessing. I will not lift a finger to help you make a fool of yourself,” she said to Annie. “And he will never be welcome in this house.”

  Hurt sliced through Annie’s chest.

  Eldon stood and faced his wife squarely. “Annie is our daughter!”

  Mildred turned her face aside. “Not the daughter I know.”

  He glanced down at Annie. Heart breaking, she struggled to keep her features composed. Why? Why had it come to this? It wasn’t even Luke who was the problem. It wasn’t that her mother considered him not good enough for her—it was that she considered Annie not good enough for anyone! It had always been this way.

  “Luke doesn’t care that I’m not perfect, Mother,” Annie said softly. “He doesn’t ask me to be anyone I’m not. He accepts me and loves me just the way I am. Why can’t you?”

  “You are trying to be someone you’re not,” her mother returned. “You are trying to be the woman you think he wants. But you’re not. You’re not capable of being that woman. I don’t want to see you regret your impetuousness later, but you will.” She turned and stormed into the house.

  Eldon seated himself slowly, his expression full of sorrow.

  “It’s not your fault, Daddy,” she assured him softly. “You’ve done the best you could—always. And I know you care about me—truly about me and what I want.”

  “I will not let her keep you away from this house,” he told her with conviction. “He has to properly court you, and that means calling on you here. And after you’re married, we will still have Sunday dinners every other week.”

  An irrepressible smile spread across her face at the idea of Luke properly courting her, but disappeared at the thought of Sunday dinners. No way could she picture anyone in their right mind handing Luke and Burdell croquet mallets. “We’d better let time work on that.”

  Her mother’s impenetrable mind on the subject didn’t give her much hope, either. But there, above the hurt of her mother’s lack of acceptance, was the unspeakable joy of knowing once and for all that she and Luke would be together.

  No more hiding. No more secrets.

  They could be together. The concept was as liberating as being free of her chair.

  And now she had real plans to make.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Luke is calling this evening.” Annie read the note Glenda had handed her in front of her mother and made the announcement.

  It was cleaning day, and Annie had dressed in one of the work dresses Glenda had given her in exchange for the dresses Annie had cut down and sewn for her daughters.

  Mildred said nothing, going about her dusting as though she preferred to pretend Annie didn’t intend to go through with this courtship.

  Because of his work on the house, he’d visited only once a week for the past few weeks. Each evening that he’d arrived, Mildred had gone upstairs with a headache while Annie entertained him on the porch. Soon it would be fall, and Annie didn’t plan to sit outdoors on brisk evenings.

  “Did you have much in your hope chest when you married Tim?” Annie asked the young housekeeper.

  “Oh, yes, I had tea towels and aprons my grandmother made, and a cast iron skillet my father bought from a traveling salesman. I do love that skillet.”

  “Does a man expect his bride to have those things?” This trousseau thing had become a worry on her mind. She understood she was supposed to be bringing something to contribute to the household, and so far it didn’t look like she had much to offer.

  “You’ll have wedding gifts,” Glenda reminded her.

  “Yes, of course.” They had set a date, a date her father had frowned at and her mother had met with stony silence because it wasn’t a year or two away. Neither Luke nor Annie wanted to wait any longer, so they’d chosen the last Saturday of October.

  Her mother rarely spoke to her anymore, as though Annie had done something to deliberately hurt her. It grieved her that the woman could be so cold to her own daughter, that she refused to share in her happiness or simply get past her objections and treat Annie kindly. Annie watched Mildred polishing the brass candlesticks that sat on the mantel.

  “Where did those come from, Mother?” she asked, an attempt to spark some communication.

  “Your father brought them from a trip East when you were a baby,” she replied.

  “He’s often brought you gifts, hasn’t he?”

  Mildred’s expression took on a faraway look.

  “Was he terribly handsome and charming when you first met him?” She’d never asked her mother anything so bold or personal, and she didn’t know what kind of response to expect.

  The woman rubbed the base of a candlestick vigorously. “He was the man my father preferred.”

  Annie’s parents had moved here with her widowed grandfather only a few years after their marriage. Mother’s father had been a banker, too, and had the vision to move to Colorado and invest in real estate during the early days when land was cheap and lumberjacks were free with their pay.

  “What do you mean? Didn’t you have a say-so in who you married?”

  “Young women did what was best for their futures when I was a girl,” she said.

  Annie looked at her with growing understanding. “Was there someone else you would have preferred to marry?”

  “No.” Mildred glanced at Glenda, who was occupied with the sooty task of cleaning the fireplace.

  “Something you would have preferred to do?”

  “I had some talent,” she admitted. “I might have liked to study the arts.”

  “What kind of talent? Acting?”

  “Goodness, no. Painting.”

  “Really? Why didn’t you pursue it?”

  “Our future was here, in Colorado. I wasn’t one to waste frivolous thoughts on things that couldn’t be.”

  “Or things you were told couldn’t be.”

  Mildred’s lips pinched shut and the conversation was over.

  That evening, sitting beside Luke on the wicker love seat, a warm breeze blowing across the porch, Annie related what she’d learned that day. “She didn’t come right out and say it,” Annie told him. “But I got the impression that she would have preferred to wait for marriage.”

  “Plenty of people marry for reasons of economy and politics,” Luke told her. “It’s been happening for centuries.”

  “I wonder if my father even knew. I believe he truly loves her.”

  Luke took her hand. “You can be sure that your husband will love you.”

  She leaned her shoulder against his. “And you can be sure I’m marrying you because wild horses couldn’t stop me.”

  He grinned. “Are you sure you want to end this courting stuff? We’re getting pretty good at it.”

  Remembering her mother’s words, she asked, “We’re supposed to be getting to know each other better. Do you think it’s working?”

  “Sure. I know you can talk about the wedding for thirty minutes straight without a breath. I didn’t know that before.”

  “And I know you must have promised my father something, because we haven’t had a m
oment alone together since he found out about us. I mean alone, like we were at your place.”

  “I did promise him something, and I’m a man of my word.”

  “Does it have anything to do with my virtue?”

  “It does.”

  She pressed against him and he wrapped his arm around her. “How many weeks until the end of October?”

  “I don’t know.” He kissed her gently. “But it’s seventy-three days.”

  She smiled against his lips.

  Sometimes those days crept by, especially when a week passed without seeing Luke, and other weeks it seemed as if the time had flown by and there was always something that needed to be done. Without her mother’s assistance, Annie relied on Charmaine and Aunt Vera and Glenda to help with the wedding plans.

  After all the ruffled dresses she’d taken apart and remade for Gerta and Gwen, her own wedding dress was a simple piece of work: white satin with lace trim, capped sleeves and a pinaforelike lace flounce in a V-shape with the edge of the lace hanging from the side of her waist like a scarf.

  Lizzy’s mother showed her how to stitch ruching of the same fabric as the gown along the hem, and Lizzy made her a coronet of crystal-beaded flowers and leaves, to which Annie secured the floor-length sheer veil.

  “If this is a dream come true, it might as well be the best dream I can come up with,” Annie told Charmaine and Lizzy one afternoon as they made the finishing touches to the dress. A sultry breeze barely fluttered the curtains in Annie’s room.

  “You could earn a living with your sewing,” Charmaine told her. “This is the most beautiful gown I’ve ever seen.”

  “Remember I have an account in my father’s name at the milliner’s and the mercantile,” Annie said wryly. “He paid for this gown.”

  “But you saved him a fortune by making it yourself!” Charmaine touched a satin sleeve reverently.

  “I promise to help make yours, too,” Annie told her. “When that too-good-to-be-true fellow comes along.”

  “You will? Oh, Annie, you’re a dear!”