by Jillian Hart
She had tried to stop the conductor on the train from talking about how wonderful it was going to be when she and Mercy met their respective husbands-to-be. The conductor had even brought by sprigs of mistletoe for the two mail-order brides. He’d said the mistletoe was for their first kisses on Christmas Day with their new husbands.
Maeve looked at Noah out of the corner of her eyes. He didn’t look as if a green sprig would tempt him to kiss anyone. His face was as foreboding as the storm clouds. He’d stomped down the wooden steps and stood on the snow-covered street, looking toward the west.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
If he was troubled about something, then she didn’t want to approach him about the baby.
“Just that we’re late,” he said as he turned to her. “The clouds coming in look worse. And now the clerk in the mercantile should be coming back from his noon meal and I don’t see him.”
“Oh, well, that’s—” Maeve stopped. He had a frown on his face, but he didn’t appear overly angry. If she didn’t tell him now, when would she?
She took a deep breath and glanced down because she couldn’t bear to watch his eyes as she said what she had to say. “Maybe he has a baby at home and is taking a moment to rock the wee thing. The little ones can be sweet, don’t you think? Makes us all wish we had one.”
She realized she had to see him to judge his reaction so she looked up at him.
“He’s not married,” Noah responded as he stood there, his eyes bland as they watched hers curiously.
“Oh.” She looked at his eyes and waited a moment longer.
His green eyes didn’t darken even with the clouds overhead. He showed no sudden spark of understanding.
Finally, his eyes broke away from hers.
“The clerk’s life is his own that way,” Noah mused idly as he stared down the street again. “No one to answer to.”
He sounded as if he envied the man. Maeve didn’t know what to say to that, but she apparently didn’t need to say anything as her future husband continued on.
“Of course, he’s not responsible for taking care of a bunkhouse of men so he might not understand how important it is for us to get our order in for supplies.”
“Working men need to eat,” Maeve agreed cautiously. Noah had been clear that he wanted a cook for a wife. She kept trying not to let that dismay her. Many marriages started out with less. She wished he had smiled at the thought of babies, though.
Noah gestured across the street to the general store. “We’ll have to hurry. We don’t have time to do much looking around. As it is, I’ll have to ask the boy who works there to bring most of what we order out in his wagon after the storm. And the preacher will be at the church soon.”
With that, Noah turned and held out a hand to help her down the steps. Then he gestured as if to lift Violet down to the street, but Maeve said she’d do it. Once she had her daughter next to her, she pulled the girl close and faced them both in the right direction.
As they walked across the snow-covered street, Maeve convinced herself there was something reassuring about the man. He might not be friendly, but he was clearly used to taking care of others. Besides, his gruffness would likely go away when he got to know her and Violet better.
She hoped she was right as she pushed back her fears.
Maeve felt the wind stop again as Noah stepped up onto a wooden walk that was in front of the mercantile. He stomped the snow off his boots.
Frost outlined the window that looked into the establishment. Various items were right inside on a table. Maeve’s breath caught when she saw a doll in a red dress lying near a flowered teapot.
Oh, no, Christmas Eve, she thought. She’d almost forgotten the holiday and it was four days from now.
She had no money for presents, not even for Violet. The girl had wanted a doll like the one in the window ever since she’d been able to crawl. Months ago, Maeve had decided her daughter would finally have her wish this Christmas. Her husband had been making money—he’d told her he’d gotten some work at the waterfront—and Maeve had been putting in extra hours as a scrubwoman.
She almost had enough saved up for a doll when everything turned upside down. She’d been fired from her job because the lady of the house didn’t want “that man’s widow” working for her any longer, even though all Maeve ever did was scrub the floors and do the heavy washing. She was given no references when she was told to leave. She’d finally bought a newspaper and read the awful things people were saying about her late husband. And about her.
People said that she had known about her husband’s scheme to seduce rich young women and then threaten to expose them unless their families offered up a fair amount of money. The reporters even speculated that she had some of that money left and creditors came to her door demanding payment on her late husband’s debts. They showed her papers he had signed for gambling debts and she’d been unable to pay them. She didn’t know what her husband had done with the money he’d forced from the families. Likely, he had gambled it away. The only thing he had ever given her was the odd coin here and there that he added to their savings for the doll.
They’d been destitute when Noah’s letter had come with the train tickets.
“Pretty,” Violet whispered and pointed. The doll had auburn hair and blue eyes like hers. “What’s her name, Mommy?”
The blanket no longer kept the cold away. Maeve shivered, but she noticed Violet didn’t hesitate in her speech at all, not when talking about the doll.
“Hush now,” Maeve said quietly. “The doll doesn’t have a name.”
“Oh.” Violet breathed in dismay. “Doesn’t she have a daddy to love her?”
Maeve almost broke down. As unfaithful as her husband had been, he’d always charmed their daughter. He told her he’d named her for his favorite flower, the most delicate, beautiful blooming plant in the whole world. The truth was, Maeve had discovered at his graveside, Violet had been the name of one of his several lovers. He must have thought it was quite the joke to name their daughter after a woman he had been free with since before he married Maeve.
“The doll doesn’t care about love,” Maeve told the girl, her words more harsh than she intended. Her heart had been broken all over again when her husband’s lover had confronted her that day, demanding to have a token of him for a remembrance, preferably something with a precious stone that she could pawn.
Maeve forced her face to relax and smiled reassuringly at her daughter.
Violet didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t say anything more.
Maeve looked over at Noah, hoping he hadn’t been listening. He was reaching for the doorknob and didn’t seem to have been paying any attention to them. She was relieved.
“Maybe they’ll still have a doll like that next Christmas,” Maeve whispered finally, softening her voice and offering her daughter what hope she could. The girl nodded solemnly and Maeve resolved to put together a sock doll for Violet for Christmas. It wouldn’t be the beauty in the window, but her daughter would have something to hug as she went to sleep at night.
* * *
Noah stomped the snow off his boots as he opened the wide door leading into the mercantile. It was darker than usual inside because of the coming storm, but it was warm. The place smelled of coffee, and he saw a new barrel of pickles sitting on the floor by the counter. Bright bolts of cloth were on a shelf to his right. Cans of peaches and bags of dried beans were to his left.
Noah watched to be sure the woman and girl made it through the door. He had yet to even see the Flanagan woman’s face since she kept the blanket hooded over it. His impression of her on the railroad platform was of a tall drab woman with an awful hat pulled down to cover her ears. From what he could tell, she was thin. He hoped she was up to cooking for his crew. His men knew how to drive cattle and they were loyal, but there had been grumbling in the bunkhouse about the burnt biscuits and tough meat the ranch had served up for the past two years. Last fall, he�
�d ordered one of the cowboys, Dakota, to take over feeding the men. The cowboy hadn’t been much of a cook and he was anxious to have the duty taken away from him.
The men would give anyone who didn’t feed them better than Dakota a hard time. It was worse in the winter when they spent half of their time in the bunkhouse dreaming of donuts and pies—the kind of delicacies, they said, that required a woman’s hand to make properly.
He suspected it was all the idle time that had caused his men to come to him with the idea of placing an ad for a female cook. He told them there was no point. Women were so scarce in the Montana Territory that no woman would stay longer than a couple of weeks before she got married and left. They knew that as well as he did, but Dakota refused to accept it. He said he was going to find a way to get a cook who would stay.
The next thing Noah knew, he’d received a letter from a woman who had answered the ad Dakota and the men had put in a newspaper asking for a mail-order bride—for him. He’d demanded to see the ad and the ranch hands had given him a copy. He had been glad to see Dakota had some sense and had indicated the marriage would be in name only. Then he’d wondered if an older widow might just be interested in the kind of an arrangement his men had proposed. He checked the dates and saw that the ad had run for a full month and a half before he received even that one reply. He figured that meant there had been no confusion about the offer being made. Most women had discarded it.
Noah had intended to throw the letter he received away, but it had sat on his bedside table for two weeks. Every night he’d read it and tried to write some words to tell the woman there had been a misunderstanding. He’d had one wife and had no intentions of ever seeking another.
But the sparse words on the plain piece of paper had haunted him. He could almost feel the woman’s desperation as she penned the few words telling him that she was an immigrant from Northern Ireland, a mature widow who had worked as a scrubwoman until her husband had been killed and she’d lost her job. She had no other family and was looking for a home for herself and her child. She had taken lessons to improve her speech, she said, and she knew also how to sew. Maybe it was the lack of polish and detail that had spoken to him. He’d known discouragement so deep it threatened the soul. He’d sensed this woman had nothing but a fragile pride stopping her from begging for help.
Finally, one night he’d written to her, telling her to come if she hadn’t already found another position. And he’d prayed that she had. He had repeated that he had separate quarters for her, hoping to assure her that he didn’t mean to take advantage of her plight. Once she had saved some money, he would offer to have the marriage annulled if she wanted. He knew how easily women, especially immigrants, starved to death in cities like Boston after they lost their husbands and their jobs.
“I mean to pay you,” Noah said as he turned around to speak to the woman. “They didn’t mention that in the ad, but—”
She wasn’t there. She hadn’t followed him over to the counter like he had assumed. Instead, she was bent over the little girl, speaking in a low voice. All he saw was the top of her blanketed head, but something about her and the child made him uneasy. She hadn’t mentioned her age in the brief letter she’d written, but mature surely meant someone old enough to be a grandmother. He was thirty-three and he figured someone of that description had to be in her fifties. But not many women that age would have a young child.
The girl was probably her granddaughter, he told himself in relief. Maybe she thought he would frown upon her bringing a child who wasn’t hers.
Just then Jimmy, the boy who ran errands in the store, came out from the back room.
“Help you?” He nodded in greeting. “I got some of your order in the wagon. I left room for a couple of trunks. But I got in the ham you wanted and a side of bacon. I’ll bring the rest out later.”
“My wife is going to put in a full order for that later delivery, but you’ll need to pick up her trunk from the railroad station now,” Noah said loudly enough for the woman to hear. “Flanagan is the name.”
His words got her attention and she turned away from the display and started walking closer to him. He couldn’t see anything on that table to appeal to a woman unless it was the china teapot.
“Put the pot in the window in our wagon, too,” Noah whispered as he leaned in and spoke quietly to Jimmy. “Wrap it in a sack and see if you can find some red ribbon to go around it, too.”
Noah was pleased with himself. He hadn’t bought anyone a Christmas present since his wife ran away over two years ago. Oh, he always gave the ranch hands a twenty-dollar gold piece each. But a woman liked a gift.
“I’m sure you know what to stock for supplies in the kitchen,” Noah said once the woman reached him. “Just tell Jimmy here. He can write it down.”
“I don’t know.” She sounded a little alarmed.
The wind had made it hard to hear her earlier, but inside here he caught a hint of gentle Irish brogue in her voice. He liked it.
“They have almost everything you’d want in the mercantile here,” he assured her.
She was silent for a moment.
“I’ll just get your usual order,” she finally said, sounding hesitant. “Until I’ve had a chance to check on what spices you have and everything.”
Noah frowned. “There’s not much on the shelves. We haven’t had a cook on the place since my wife left two years ago.”
“Your wife?” The woman looked up at that, no longer timid in her tone. If the sky outside wasn’t going dark, he would have been able to see her face fully. He was sure there’d be some spark there, but the shadows hid her.
“She divorced me.” He didn’t like talking about his wife, but the woman deserved to know his past, especially since he’d brought it up. “She didn’t think I could give her enough fancy things—you know, clothes and furniture. Things like that.”
Flanagan didn’t say anything and he was grateful for her tact.
“She wasn’t much of a cook,” he added. “Could barely make pancakes. Either raw in the middle or so thin there was nothing to them. But she did order in spices and tins of oysters.”
He supposed it was during his marriage that he had become accustomed to poor cooking. His wife had had visions of entertaining visiting dignitaries, but he didn’t know any such people so the few imported tins gathered dust on the shelves. He’d been so miserable during that time, he hadn’t cared about eating and his men, maybe sensing how bad things were between him and his wife, hadn’t complained much about the food, either.
Noah turned to the boy behind the counter. “Add a few cases of canned peaches to the order.” He figured his men deserved something festive to eat. And maybe their ad would work out better than he’d expected. “Put the peaches in the wagon. I think there’ll be room since there’s only one trunk.”
“Oh, and tell the clerk when he gets back that he’ll be taking his supply orders from my wife from now on,” he added with a nod to Maeve.
Jimmy looked between him and the woman and nodded solemnly. “Yes, sir.”
Noah suddenly realized the youngster had learned more about him in the past few minutes than most adults in town had learned in the decade he’d lived here.
“Well, we best get going,” Noah said as he turned to the woman. “The church is only a few doors down.”
“I’d like to talk to you before we see the preacher,” she said then, her voice low and serious.
Noah felt his heart sink. He feared she was going to back out. Although why she would, he wasn’t certain. She hadn’t seen much of the country around here. His wife had always said the mercantile wasn’t as well stocked as stores back East, but that seemed a small reason to leave. It might be the weather, though. Some people couldn’t tolerate the bad storms they had here, especially if they found themselves snowbound. But she was Irish. And from Boston. Shouldn’t she be used to the cold?
Noah looked around. There were no private places in the mercantile and h
e didn’t want his business spread all over the territory. If he was going to be left at the altar, he didn’t want everyone to know. The divorce had done enough damage to his pride.
“We can take a moment in the church,” he said finally.
The woman nodded and took the hand of the girl.
They walked to the door.
“The preacher is expecting us,” he added as he stepped over to open the door. “So he’ll be there when we arrive.”
He turned back to Jimmy. “You’ll have to finish loading the supplies in the wagon. Remember the peaches.”
A knowing twinkle appeared in the boy’s eyes. “I’ll get them there. And congratulations.”
Noah frowned, but nodded his thanks. He supposed it was impossible to keep the wedding plans a secret even if the woman backed out. The ranch hands had probably already announced it to everyone they’d seen in the days since he’d told them Maeve had boarded the train in Boston and was heading south to pick up the rail line that would bring her west.
Noah reached over and opened the doors.
“Just follow me,” he said to the woman as he stepped out to the street.
The wind hit him and he hunched his shoulders. He was a God-fearing man and he didn’t believe in superstitions, but he wondered if it was wise to get married with a snowstorm brewing. His first wife would have been calling the whole thing off by now. Maybe the widow was wise to have second thoughts.
Chapter Two
Tiny hailstones were still falling as Maeve followed Noah out of the mercantile. The damp cold hit her face and she reached down to scoop Violet into her arms. She wrapped the blanket around both of them, even though she could barely carry her daughter.
A huge amount of snow covered the walkway. Maeve had worn her best leather shoes and didn’t want to ruin them so she began to gingerly place her feet in the trail of footsteps Noah had left behind. These were her church shoes, and, before she left Boston, she had promised Violet that they could go to church when they got settled here. She didn’t want anyone to look down on her and Violet so she’d need the shoes. The church people in Boston had been very particular about what a woman wore on her feet and on her head. That was even before they’d rejected her on account of her late husband.