“I hope he doesn’t come,” she confided, in a whisper that carried.
Weston looked genuinely puzzled, though Juliana suspected everything he said and did was exaggerated. “Why would you hope for a thing like that?”
“Because he doesn’t know the others are here,” she said, near tears. “And I don’t want any presents if Billy-Moses and Daisy and Joseph and Theresa don’t get some, too.”
Juliana’s heart melted and slid down the inside of her rib cage. If Lincoln did propose, she might just accept. She wasn’t in love with him—but she adored his daughter.
Chapter Four
When Lincoln got back inside the house, he found Wes standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a dismayed Gracie in his arms.
“Well,” Wes told his niece solemnly, “we’d better get word to Saint Nicholas right quick, then.”
Shedding his coat, Lincoln raised an eyebrow.
“Christmas is only four days away,” Gracie fretted. “And the train won’t come through Stillwater Springs again until next week. So how can I write to him in time?”
Lincoln and Juliana exchanged looks: Lincoln’s curious, Juliana’s wistful.
“Papa,” Gracie all but wailed, “could we send a telegraph to Saint Nicholas?”
“What?” Lincoln asked, mystified.
“He won’t bring anything for the others, because he doesn’t know they’re here!” Gracie despaired.
Something shifted deep in Lincoln’s heart, and it wasn’t just because he was standing so close to Juliana that their shoulders nearly touched. When had he moved?
He thought of the gifts on the shelf in his mother’s wardrobe, the box of watercolor paints he’d bought on impulse back at the mercantile the day before. “Oh, I already did that,” he lied easily.
Gracie was not only generous, she was formidably bright. Her forehead creased as Wes set her gently on her feet. “When?” she asked skeptically.
“In town yesterday,” Lincoln said. “Soon as I knew we were going to have company, I went straight to the telegraph office and sent the old fella a wire.”
Gracie’s eyes widened, while her busy mind weighed the logistics. Fortunately, she came down on the side of relief rather than reason, and Lincoln felt mildly guilty for deceiving her, pure motives or none.
She beamed. “Well,” she said. “That’s fine, then.”
“’Course, he’ll probably have to spread things a little thinner than usual,” Lincoln added. “Saint Nicholas, I mean. Times are hard, remember.”
Gracie was undaunted. “All I want is a dictionary,” she said. “So I can learn all the words there are in the whole world.”
Lincoln wanted to sweep her up into his arms, the way Wes had apparently done upon arrival, but he figured that would be laying things on a little thick, so he just replied quietly, “I’m proud of you, Gracie Creed.”
Beside him, Juliana sniffled once, but when he looked, he saw that she was smiling. Her eyes glistened a little, though.
Seeing he was watching her, Juliana turned quickly and busied herself scraping the last of the stew from the kettle into a bowl and basically herding a clearly charmed Wes over to the table.
She didn’t even make him wash up, which might have galled Lincoln a little, if he hadn’t been so busy thinking what a fine daughter he and Beth had brought into the world.
Although Wes loved his woman, Kate, and to Lincoln’s knowledge his brother hadn’t been unfaithful from the day the two of them had taken up with each other, his amber-colored eyes trailed Juliana’s every movement, danced with mischief whenever he met Lincoln’s gaze.
He knew, damn it. Wes knew Juliana had his younger brother’s insides in a tangle, and he was bound to rib him without mercy.
“You’d better spend the night,” Lincoln said to his brother, even though, at the moment, that was about the last thing he wanted. “Snow’s coming down hard.”
Wes shook his head, shifted slightly so Gracie could plant herself on his knee. “I’ve gotta get back. Poker game.”
It wasn’t long before he’d finished his meal and said goodbye to Gracie. This, too, was like Wes—he’d been uncomfortable in the house since Dawson died. Once, he’d even confided privately that he half expected their murdered brother to tap him on the shoulder from behind.
Gracie went off in search of the other children, and Tom and Joseph were still outside plucking turkeys. Avoiding Juliana’s eyes, just as he sensed she was avoiding his, Lincoln put his coat on again, followed Wes into the cold and walked alongside him toward the barn.
About midway, Wes chuckled and shook his head, then gave a low whistle. He hadn’t even hesitated when his horse and mule weren’t where he’d left them; he knew Lincoln would have attended to anything he’d left undone.
“What?” Lincoln asked, sounding peevish because he knew what the answer would be.
“You,” Wes said happily, snow gathering on his hair and shoulders and eyelashes again. “Every time you looked at that schoolmarm, I thought I was going to have to roll your tongue up like a rug and shove it back in your mouth.”
Lincoln felt his neck warm. He was half again too stubborn to honor Wes’s good-natured taunt with a reply of any kind.
Wes laughed outright then, and slapped Lincoln hard on the back as they slogged heavily through the snow. “She’s smitten with you, little brother,” he went on. “I figured I’d better tell you that, since you can be a mite thickheaded when it comes to women.”
“I suppose you’re an expert?” Lincoln bit out, raising his collar again. Damn, it was colder than a well-digger’s ass. If he could have willed green grass to sprout up right through the snow, he would have done it.
Wes laughed again. “If you don’t believe me, just ask Kate,” he said lightly.
Lincoln happened to like Kate, even if she was a “light-skirt,” as his old-fashioned mother put it, but he wasn’t about to put any questions to her, especially when it came to something that personal.
He was silent until they entered the barn, now nearly dark. Both of them knew every inch of the place, and neither of them hesitated to let their eyes adjust to the lack of light.
“Thanks,” Lincoln said awkwardly. “For the tree, I mean.”
Wes found his horse and opened the stall door, began saddling up. “That was for Gracie,” he said. “You want me to stop by Willand’s Mercantile and get some presents for those other kids?”
The offer touched Lincoln. “No,” he said, his voice sounding gruff. “Ma laid in a good supply of stuff before she left. There’ll be plenty to go around.”
Wes nodded. “That’s good,” he said.
“I guess you must have seen Ma recently?” Lincoln ventured. Their mother was a sore spot between them; Lincoln accepted that she was a little on the irritating side, while Wes still seemed to think she ought to change anytime now. “I dropped her off at the depot myself, and there was no sign of you.”
There was no humor in Wes’s chuckle this time. “She sent Fred Willand’s boy, Charlie, around to the newspaper office with a note. ’Course, I’d have lit a cigar with it if it hadn’t been for Gracie.”
Lincoln frowned. Just as their mother wasn’t fixing to change, Wes wasn’t, either. Both of them were waiting for the other to see the error of their ways and repent like a convert at a tent meeting, and that would happen on the proverbial cold day in hell. “You think it’s wrong, letting Gracie believe in this Saint Nicholas fella?”
Wes lowered the stirrup, gave the saddle a yank to make sure it was secure, then swung up. “She’s a child,” he said. Lincoln couldn’t make out his features in the shadows. “Children need to believe in things while they can. I’ll leave the mule here for a day or two, if it’s all the same to you.”
Lincoln nodded, stepped forward, hoping in vain for a better look at his brother’s face, and took hold of the reins to stop Wes from riding out. “Do you believe in anything, Wes?” he asked, struck by how much the answer ma
ttered to him.
Wes sighed. “I believe in Kate. I believe in five-card stud and whiskey and the sacred qualities of a good cigar. I believe in Gracie and—damn it, I must be sobering up—I believe in your good judgment, little brother. Use it. Don’t let that schoolmarm get away.”
“I’ve only known her since yesterday,” Lincoln reasoned. He was always the one inclined to reason. Wes just did whatever seemed like a good idea at the time.
“Maybe that’s long enough,” Wes answered.
Lincoln let go of the reins.
Wes executed a jaunty salute, there in the shadows, and rode toward the door of the barn, ducking his head as he passed under it.
“Rub that horse down when you get back to town,” Lincoln called after his brother. “Don’t just leave him standing at the hitching post in front of the saloon.”
Wes didn’t answer; maybe he hadn’t heard.
More likely, he’d heard fine. He just hadn’t felt called upon to bother with a reply.
THE TURKEY CARCASSES HAD BEEN trussed with twine and tied to a high branch in a tree so they’d stay cold and the wolves and coyotes wouldn’t get them. Looking out the window as she stood at the sink, Juliana watched the pale forms sway in the thickening snow and the purple gathering of twilight.
She was certain she would never be hungry again.
Behind her, seated at the table, Tom Dancingstar puffed on a corncob pipe, making the air redolent with cherry-scented tobacco, while Joseph droned laboriously through the assigned three pages of a Charles Dickens novel. The other children had gathered in the front room near the fireplace; the last time Juliana had looked in on them, Theresa and Gracie were playing checkers, while Daisy examined one of Gracie’s dolls and Billy-Moses stacked wooden alphabet blocks, knocked them over and stacked them again.
The afternoon had dragged on, and Juliana wondered when Lincoln would come back into the house, when they’d get a chance to talk alone again, whether or not she ought to attempt to start supper.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to cook. She hadn’t been allowed near the kitchen as a young girl—Cook hadn’t wanted a child underfoot—and every school she’d taught at until Stillwater Springs had provided meals in a common dining room.
Now, resurrected by Joseph’s account, the image of last Christmas’s burned turkey rose in her mind. They’d managed to save some of it and eaten around the charred parts. After that, probably tired of oatmeal and boiled beans, the construction of which Juliana had been able to discern by pouring over an old cookery book, Theresa and Mary Rose had taken to preparing most of the meals.
A snapping sound made Juliana jump, turn quickly.
Joseph had closed the Dickens novel smartly. “Finished,” he said. “Can—May I go out and help Tom with the chores?”
Juliana blinked. A fine teacher she was—for all she knew, Joseph might have been reading from the back of a medicine bottle instead of a book. She had no idea whether he’d stumbled over any of the words, or lost track of the flow of the narrative and had to begin again, the way he often did.
So she bluffed.
“Tell me what happened in the story,” she said.
Joseph was ready. “This woman named Nancy got herself beat to death by that Bill Sykes fella.”
He’d been reading from Oliver Twist, then.
“He was a bad’un,” Tom remarked seriously. “That Sykes, I mean.”
“He was indeed,” Juliana agreed. “You may help with the chores, Joseph.”
Tom sighed, rose to his feet. “You reckon you could start that story over from the first, next time you read?” he asked the boy. “I’d like to know what led up to a poor girl winding up in such a fix.”
Joseph would have balked at the request had it come from Juliana. Since it came from Tom instead, he beamed and said, “Sure.”
“When?” Tom asked, starting for the back door, bent on getting the chores done, his pipe caught between his teeth.
“Maybe after supper,” Joseph answered.
Supper. Renewed anxiety rushed through Juliana.
And Tom gave his trademark chuckle. The man probably couldn’t read, at least not well enough to tackle Dickens, but he soon proved he could read minds.
“I’ll fry up some eggs when we’re through in the barn,” he told Juliana. “And Mrs. Creed put up some bear-meat preserves last fall—mighty good, mixed in with fried potatoes.”
Bear-meat preserves? That sounded about as appetizing to Juliana as the naked turkeys dangling from the tree branch outside, but she managed not to make a face.
“You have enough to do,” she said, with a bright confidence she most certainly didn’t feel. “I can fry eggs.”
“No, you can’t,” Joseph argued benignly. “Remember when…?”
“Joseph.”
The boy shrugged both shoulders, and he and Tom let in a rush of cold air opening the door to go out.
The instant they were gone, Juliana hurried to the front room and beckoned to Theresa with a crooked finger.
Theresa obediently left her checker game and Gracie to approach.
“Quick,” Juliana whispered, fraught with a strange urgency. “Come and show me how to fry eggs!”
WHEN LINCOLN CAME IN WITH an armload of firewood, he found Juliana and Theresa side by side in front of the stove, working away, and the kitchen smelled of savory things—eggs, potatoes frying in onions, some kind of meat. Gracie was busy setting the table.
His stomach grumbled. The venison stew had worn off a while ago.
“Where have you been, Papa?” Gracie asked, all but singing the words, and dancing to them, too. “Did you ride all the way to town with Uncle Wes so he wouldn’t get lost in the snow?”
Lincoln smiled and shook his head no. “Wes’s horse knows the way home, even if your uncle doesn’t,” he said. Actually, he’d been in the Gainers’ cabin, admiring the spindly little Christmas tree Ben had put up for his child-heavy wife and drinking weak coffee. And at once avoiding and anticipating his return to the house, to Juliana.
Gracie nodded sagely. “That’s a good horse,” she said.
Lincoln proceeded through the kitchen, then the front room, and along the hallway to Juliana’s door. Tonight, he thought, entering with the wood and kindling, he wouldn’t have to lie awake worrying that she and the little boy and girl were cold.
Oh, he’d probably lie awake, all right, but there would be something else on his mind.
He’d made a damn fool of himself, with all that talk about governesses and housekeepers and—he gulped at the recollection—taking a wife.
Unburdening himself of the wood, Lincoln bent to open the stove door. Methodically, he took up the short-handled broom and bucket reserved for the purpose and swept out the ashes. When that was done, he crouched, crumpling newspaper and arranging kindling. In an hour or so, the cold room would be comfortably warm.
“Lincoln?”
Startled, Lincoln turned his head, saw Juliana standing in the doorway, looking like a redheaded angel hiding wings under a threadbare dress. His heart shinnied up into the back of his throat and thumped there.
“Supper’s ready,” she said.
Another wifely statement. He liked the sound of it. Smiled as he shut the stove door and rose to his full height to adjust the damper on the metal chimney. “Thanks,” he said.
She lingered on the threshold, neither in nor out.
Lincoln enjoyed thinking how scandalized his mother would have been if she’d known. Straitlaced, she’d have had a hissy fit at the idea of the two of them standing within spitting distance of a bed—especially when that bed was her own. “Was there something else?”
Juliana swallowed, looked away, visibly forced herself to meet his gaze again. “About the presents—the children would understand. They aren’t used to a fuss being made over Christmas, anyway, and—”
Lincoln smiled and went to his mother’s massive wardrobe, opened the door. Gestured for Juliana to come to his
side.
Reluctantly, she did so.
He pointed to the top shelf. Games. Dolls. Books. A set of jacks. A fancy comb-and-brush set. Enough candy to rot the teeth of every child in the state of Montana, twice over.
Seeing it all, Juliana widened her eyes.
“There’s plenty,” he said. “My brother Micah lives a long way from here, in Colorado, so Ma never sees his boys. Wes never married, and as far as we know, he’s never fathered a child. That leaves Gracie, and Ma’s been bent on spoiling her from the first.”
Juliana stepped back, watched as Lincoln closed the wardrobe doors again. “You don’t approve?”
“Of what?”
She went pink again. Fetchingly so. “Your mother, buying so many gifts for Gracie.”
Lincoln considered, shook his head. “No,” he said. “I guess I don’t. But it doesn’t seem to be hurting her any—Gracie, I mean—and anyhow, my mother is a force to be reckoned with. Most of the time, it’s easier to just let her have her way.”
Juliana moved closer to the stove, though whether the objective was to get warm or put some distance between the two of them, Lincoln didn’t know. What she said next sideswiped him.
“The Bureau of Indian Affairs is probably going to put me in jail.”
Lincoln’s breath went shallow. “Why?”
“I was supposed to send these children to Missoula for placement in another school,” Juliana said. “Joseph and Theresa have a family, a home, people who want them. Daisy and Billy-Moses will either be swept under some rug or placed in an orphanage. I couldn’t bear it.”
Lincoln went to her then, took a gentle hold on her shoulders. Tried to ignore the physical repercussions of touching her. “I’ll pay the train fare to send Joseph and Theresa home,” he said. “But how do you know the bureau won’t just drag them out again?”
Gratitude registered in her face, and a degree of relief. “They won’t bother,” she said with sad confidence. “It would take too long and cost too much.”
“The two little ones—they don’t have anyone?”
A Creed Country Christmas Page 6