by Jillian Hart
“He left?” She stood straighter and asked Mrs. Baker.
Something about Annabelle’s voice must have made the other woman cautious. It was likely one thing to terrify a child, another to face an adult.
“Do you know him, dear?” the older woman murmured, her voice softer than it had been.
“I’m his bride-to-be,” Annabelle answered bleakly.
“Oh,” Mrs. Baker said in surprise. The feather on her hat bobbed. “Oh.”
Gabe thought things couldn’t get any worse and then Annabelle looked up at him. “Adam didn’t tell anyone he was getting married?”
Gabe glanced over at the counter. He wished he could climb behind it and hide. “Well, I’m sure he told—” Gabe cleared his throat. “That is—my brother was looking forward to—”
He stopped before he outright lied. Adam had seemed resigned to the marriage, but Gabe doubted it would be any comfort to Annabelle if he said that.
Mrs. Baker stepped closer. “So you’d be the children’s mother, then?”
Annabelle nodded.
“If the marriage happens,” Mrs. Baker added, her eyes squinting slightly as she studied Annabelle. Strangely enough, her tone wasn’t unkind even with the words she was saying. “From what I know of Adam, you don’t seem the kind of woman he would seek out. He likes those other kind of women, you know.”
Gabe wondered if things could get any worse.
“Adam is a gentleman,” Annabelle replied, her tone icy by now.
Mrs. Baker waved her hand around. “Maybe he was at one time, but surely you can’t think he is now.”
Gabe didn’t like the expression on Annabelle’s face. She looked frozen.
“Adam is a good man. He’s just troubled.” Gabe tightened his arm around Eliza. It was time for some plain speaking. “And the children still have me. There’s no call for an adoption.”
“Well, really,” Mrs. Baker said in exasperation, turning from Annabelle to him. “You’re a man—who lives up in those mountains.” She gave another vague wave to the west. “You can’t expect a judge to believe you know more about raising a little girl than my sister Ethel here?”
Her sister? Gabe thought. That couldn’t be good.
“I live here now,” he said firmly. He hadn’t stood up in church and made any announcements, but he knew she had seen him sitting there all those Sundays. He’d had his fill of trapping and liked his work with leather. He intended to make a home here. His heart sank when he realized Mrs. Baker might not care where he lived or what he did. She wanted the girl for her relatives. To replace their Mary.
He looked over at the sister and his gaze softened. “I’m sorry about your daughter.”
“Granddaughter,” the woman whispered.
“Granddaughter, then,” Gabe repeated. “But I’m going to keep the children with me until Adam is better. I live in the trading post my father used to run.”
She nodded at him, but didn’t say anything.
“See, what kind of a life—” Mrs. Baker shook her head as she turned to her sister. “A trading post! That poor girl needs a home. Some place warm, filled with love and laughter.” She turned back to Gabe. “Ethel here makes the most wonderful cookies. Why, I doubt you even have a doll for her.”
Mrs. Baker gestured to the one sitting on the shelf behind her.
Gabe had been making Eliza a leather doll for Christmas, but he knew it didn’t compare to the blond painted one on the shelf. That doll’s red cotton dress made it look like a little girl’s dream. He didn’t even have a dress for the doll he was making. He’d planned to cut off a corner of the wool blanket he used on his bed so Eliza could wrap her doll in that.
He could see Mrs. Baker making the same arguments to a territorial judge. One of them usually came to Miles City, too, to spend the holiday with family. Gabe remembered suddenly that he had heard somewhere the man was a cousin to Mrs. Baker.
“I have a good home for the children,” Gabe argued in desperation, realizing no one had mentioned his nephew. They must only want Eliza. It would be the separation of him and Adam all over again. No cookies or dolls could make up for losing a brother.
“Really?” Mrs. Baker’s voice challenged him.
“We’re going to have a Christmas party,” Gabe added. He wasn’t going to let the children be separated. Before he lost his nerve, he jumped off the cliff completely. “You’re invited.”
Mrs. Baker was speechless.
He turned to the couple. “You, too, of course. Please join us.”
Gabe had faced down a wounded bear a few winters ago along the tree line heading up to the Rockies. He knew what it was to bluff when a man was in a fight to survive. He figured unless he gave some invitation like this, Mrs. Baker would decide to visit on her own. She’d even bring the judge along. She’d look for every reason to say he wasn’t providing a good home for the children. But, if she thought he really had an adequate place, she wouldn’t bother. Everyone was busy close to the holidays.
“What time?” Mrs. Baker asked then.
Gabe kept his expression neutral. The secret to a successful bluff was to not flinch. “Five o’clock, Christmas Eve. Just before dark.”
He congratulated himself on making the hour late. Most people preferred to be snug at home by then.
“I’ll be there,” Mrs. Baker said. “My husband is on a business trip and won’t be home until after Christmas.”
“We’d love to come, too,” the wife of the couple said with a look at Eliza. “It’s been a long time since we’ve spent Christmas Eve with a little girl. We lost our own Mary about this same time last year.”
Gabe figured he was fortunate he’d survived his encounter with that bear. His instincts were off. At least, this certainly wasn’t going the way he had expected.
Just then there was the tinkling sound of fine glass breaking. Gabe had an ominous feeling as he turned around and saw Daniel standing by the far counter, a stricken look on his face and the sleeve of his coat trailing over the top of the now-bare display case.
“I only wanted to touch it,” the boy said, his voice trembling, as he looked down at the shattered pear ornament.
“Look what he’s done!” Mrs. Baker said as she turned to Gabe. “That boy needs a good whipping. Someone needs to teach him how to behave.”
“Daniel is a fine boy,” Gabe answered back firmly and was rewarded when the boy lifted his eyes to him in gratitude.
“Nonsense—he’s running wild,” Mrs. Baker retorted. With that, she put her nose in the air. “You’ll have to pay for that, you know.”
Gabe heard the catch in Daniel’s breath.
“I planned to buy both of the pears anyway,” Gabe said calmly. And the thought had run through his mind.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Mrs. Baker turned to scold him, her face twisted in disgust. “What would you do with an ornament like that anyway?”
“We’ll put it on the Christmas tree in our home,” Gabe assured her. “Like every other fine family this holiday season that owns one of them.”
“Well, I never,” the older woman said with a sniff as she turned to leave. She led the couple over to the door and out of the store.
Gabe watched them go, wondering how he was going to transform his trading post into a suitable home in three days. Then he remembered that neither Mrs. Baker nor her relatives knew where he lived.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Some of the soldiers at the fort would have been around here long enough to remember his father’s trading post, but Mrs. Baker wasn’t likely to be friendly with any of them. He and the children were safe. All they needed to do was to stay away from Miles City until all of Mrs. Baker’s family left town, especially the judge.
He looked up when he heard the door open again. The gentleman had returned.
“That’s the old trading post the men used from Fort Keogh, isn’t it?” the man asked.
Gabe nodded.
“Good. Our son—Mary’s father—was as
signed to the fort some years ago. I know just where it is.”
Gabe almost wished that bear had gotten him. How was he going to put on a Christmas party?
He turned back to the clerk and pulled a gold coin from his pocket. “This should cover both pears.”
The clerk’s eyes grew big. “You don’t have to buy the second one. Don’t let Mrs. Baker give you a hard time. I’ll talk to the owner about the broken one, too. It was an accident. We’ve had those pears on the shelf for three years now. The owners didn’t think we’d ever sell them.”
“I know. I still want the second one.”
The clerk looked at him like he had lost his senses. First, French pins and then German fruit. Gabe didn’t say anything, but he would spend every penny he had if it would make Daniel stop looking at the floor in shame and cause people like Mrs. Baker to think the children were safe in their uncle’s hands.
He looked over at Annabelle. He’d spend even more to see her eyes smile at Christmas.
* * *
Snow covered the ground beneath the moving wagon as Annabelle sat on the front seat. Everything around them was white, too, she admitted as she shifted on the wooden planks, trying to keep the buffalo robe from touching her too closely. She had no idea what kind of vermin were crawling around on the hide even though the children were snuggly wrapped in another such robe behind her and they didn’t seem bothered by anything. She had been eager to leave the mercantile and now she was regretting it. Being humiliated was actually slightly more bearable than freezing to death, she realized.
“You could have told me Adam had left,” she complained softly to Gabe as she shifted the robe closer. Her hair felt like it was freezing solid to her scalp. At least, she had been able to slip her hat under the wool blanket that Gabe had put over the supplies in the back of the wagon. The poor headpiece was probably warmer now than she was although she couldn’t answer for its shape after being whipped around in the wind the way it had been.
“Wouldn’t have made any difference,” Gabe said, sparing her a glance before turning to stare at the backs of the horses as they plodded through the gathering snow.
“Well, it would have made a difference to me,” she said tartly, watching as her breath left in white puffs.
He didn’t respond to that and it was just as well, she told herself. Really, what would she have done if she had known? She supposed she could have asked if there was a position open at the mercantile, but she doubted the present clerk would be willing to tell her if there was one even though she surely could improve on the arrangement of the goods they had. She had done very well in her father’s store.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have the skills for any other kind of a job that might be available in a frontier town. And, as she’d figured out earlier, she didn’t have enough money to stay at a hotel until she figured out where to go next. She supposed her cousin would send her some money, but he had little to spare and she hated to ask it of him.
“I’ll bring Adam back,” Gabe said then. “Don’t you worry. He’ll do right by you.”
Annabelle wondered if that was supposed to be comforting. She had begun to hope for a declaration of love from her husband-to-be. She supposed that was foolish, but she had anyway. Giggling with Christina on the way here on the train had given rise to all kinds of girlish dreams.
Now all of the things her father had said about her came back to haunt her. At her age, she should know better than to dream of romance. Then she straightened her shoulders as best she could. She might be a drab woman, she told herself, but there was no reason a man needed to be forced to wed her. She could just see Gabe towering over her and Adam as they stood in front of a preacher. That would be ten times worse than anything her father had ever done.
She looked at the man now and was struck at how fiercely he was frowning as he faced into the snow. Flakes were falling on his dark beard and gave a little sparkle even in the failing light. She doubted he was upset about her, though. Maybe his face just naturally looked gruff no matter what he was feeling.
“I didn’t understand why Mrs. Baker was so interested in Eliza,” she said then, telling herself she needed to get over her nervousness around the man even if he was disgruntled.
“She wants her sister to adopt the girl,” Gabe said, his voice low so it wouldn’t reach the children behind them.
“But she can’t do that,” Annabelle protested as she forgot her own problems. No wonder the man was surly. “Adam is her father.”
Her mother had died, too, and Annabelle’s father had never been particularly nice to her, but no one ever thought of taking her away from him. People just didn’t do that kind of thing.
“The laws are different out here,” Gabe said. “And Mrs. Baker has some sway with a territorial judge. She doesn’t think a father like Adam is adequate. Or an uncle apparently.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Families belonged together, she told herself, even if there weren’t two parents left.
“She might get the judge to agree with her,” Gabe added bleakly. “A girl Eliza’s age could sure use a mother. You know, for dolls and cookies and those kinds of things. I don’t even know how to braid her hair very well. I try, but it turns out stiff. And she wants curls.”
“I can teach you to curl her hair.” Annabelle put her hand on his arm. She suddenly had that fluttery feeling around her heart again. She wondered if it was stress. She’d have to write Christina and ask her about it. Maybe there was a change in altitude or something that she was unaware of.
The man’s face was still in shadows, but she could see the light in his dark blue eyes as he looked at her.
“Thank you,” Gabe said, smiling. “I’d appreciate that.”
“You’re welcome,” Annabelle replied a little shyly. “I’ll teach you how to make some cookies, too. Anyone can make sugar cookies and, if you sprinkle a little cinnamon on them, too, they’re really good.”
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say so she put the buffalo robe up higher to try and cover her neck. One good thing about this kind of weather, she told herself, was that any flea would surely freeze to death before it could bite her.
She glanced sideways at the man again. Somehow sitting this close to him didn’t make her as nervous anymore. A mean-spirited man wouldn’t worry about a little girl’s hair, would he? Her father certainly never had. She decided as she stole glances at his face that he might not be as fierce as she had thought at first, either. She really had no objection to his face, she decided. In fact, it was kind of nice.
Annabelle must have closed her eyes with that thought, because she found herself startled awake when the horses stopped.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured as she tried to sit upright and found she couldn’t.
She wondered what was wrong and then figured out that she was being held in place by the man’s arm. To her dismay, she realized she must have been using his shoulder for a pillow, with the buffalo robe tucked around her to keep the snow off her hair. Even as a child, her father had never permitted her to fall asleep against him and to do so to a stranger was unthinkable. She looked up to see if he was angry. Her father would have been boiling by now.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she moved her injured arm closer to her side. The cold was making it ache more than usual. The way the scar from the burns had healed made it hard for her to use that arm fully and it went stiff if she left it in the same position for long.
The snow was falling like a blanket around her and she tried to forget the soreness. The sun was setting and, while even white flakes were sprinkled on the man’s beard, his face was mostly shadows. He didn’t look upset. About ten feet in front of them, she saw a vague shape through the blizzard. It looked like the house had been built into the side of a small hillside. With snowdrifts on every side, the place looked more like a dumpling than a building.
“Easy,” Gabe said then, his voice low and soothing as he pulled the horses to a stop. “Let me get
these reins tied up and then we’ll get you inside.”
The heat rose up in Annabelle’s face. She could still feel his muscles as he moved his other arm to take care of the reins. He was certainly very solid.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I don’t know what came over me.” She tried to keep the nervousness out of her voice. Her father only punished her more if she sounded weak.
“You were tired.” Gabe tied the reins to a corner of the wagon. The horses stood in place.
“Still,” she said, wondering if he was sincere. “A lady never forgets where she is.”
She chanced another look at his face.
“I hope you won’t mention it to Adam,” she added, suddenly remembering who her intended husband was. “I know some men would be anxious about the virtue of their mail-order bride and—”
“Adam has more sense than that,” Gabe said, his voice clipped, as he put his hand on the back of the seat and jumped off the wagon. “I’ll only take a minute to carry the children inside then I’ll be back for you.”
“I can—” She started to slide across the wooden plank that served as a seat.
“No need,” he said, his voice muffled as he lifted a child in each arm and turned toward the building.
She watched as Gabe opened a tall wooden door. Except for some square windows, fluffy snow covered the outside walls and smoothed the way back to the sloping hillside. Her cousin had cautioned her to expect unusual things out here in the territories, but she rather liked the snow. It seemed heavier than the flakes back in Connecticut, but surely that was just a fancy of hers.
A minute later, Gabe stepped outside of the structure and walked back to the wagon. He held his arms out to her. “Try to keep the buffalo robe around you. No need to get cold now that you’re here.”
Annabelle slid across to the edge of the bench, clutching the robe around her. “I can walk.”
“No need,” Gabe repeated as he scooped her up.