The conversation with his grandparents last night was upsetting—for all three of them—but they’d come to an understanding and had accepted his decision. Now Nolan hoped Holly would agree to his proposal.
“She’ll go, once she realizes you have markers for her family’s graves. But she was one devastated woman when I walked her to the parsonage.”
“Holly heard a rumor which was wrong, to begin with, and grew out of proportion at the open house,” Nolan explained.
“Hearing you were planning to propose to Mary tore her apart, Nolan. I don’t know how you could do that to her.” Kiowa looked like he was ready to knock Nolan’s head off for hurting Holly, and he deserved it.
“I was planning my proposal to Holly but didn’t make it clear to my grandparents. They assumed I meant to ask Mary. The rumor spread from there, without me realizing it.”
Kiowa stared at him slack jawed. “You’re...uh, not Mary?”
“No, I won’t be asking Mary to be my wife, but I will ask Holly as soon as I can.”
Why did Kiowa look so relieved? Nolan thought sure the man was interested in courting Holly himself.
“Anything going on between you and Holly I should know about?” If Kiowa was interested in Holly, they’d hash it out right now.
“We consider ourselves ‘cousins,’ so if Holly ever has any problems—even with you—she knows she can turn to me for help.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear she has another person on her side.”
“Thank you, Kiowa. I appreciate you making the markers so quickly. They will mean a lot to Holly, especially since you made them.”
“You’re welcome, and good luck.”
Kiowa shut the shop door, and Nolan crawled up in the wagon seat. Now it was time to talk to Holly.
“I don’t think you should see Holly yet. She barely ate anything for dinner and went back to her room after washing dishes,” Mack stood sentinel at the parsonage’s front door. Nolan should have walked in the back door without knocking as he usually did, but he was trying to be proper calling on Holly. And calling for Holly wouldn’t happen if he couldn’t get past the four Reagan brothers standing shoulder to shoulder in the doorway.
“You’re taking this ‘protecting your little sister’ pretty seriously, aren’t you.”
“Yep,” all four answered together.
“As I’ve explained to Mary, my grandparents, and Kiowa Jones...and now to you four bodyguards...I was planning my future with Holly when I hinted to my grandparents about living arrangements. They took it wrong, thinking I was going to ask Mary to be my wife instead.”
“Let him in the door so we can get the story straight this time,” Nolan heard Kaitlyn say somewhere behind her sons.
“Wait until I take off my boots. I’m in enough trouble as it is,” Nolan said before taking a step in the door.
“So what do you plan to make amends, Nolan?” Kaitlyn questioned him. Luckily she believed it was all a sad misunderstanding after he explained everything to the Reagans.
“If you’d talk her into going out with me, I’d like to drive her over to Fort Harker. Maybe she’d like to play some Christmas songs at the cemetery?”
“Good plan. I’ll have her downstairs in a few moments. Grab the heated bricks by the stove to keep your feet warm in the wagon. There’s an extra blanket in the parlor you can take along, too.”
Nolan waited, along with the five Reagan men, without saying anything. They all hated Holly was upset, especially when it was Christmas. Could Nolan turn Holly’s day into a joyous one? Only time and apologies could tell.
“Hello, Nolan.” Holly’s hoarse voice saddened Nolan, knowing he’d caused her so much pain. It also filled him with hope, because it meant Holly must truly love him, too, to be so brokenhearted. Her life would change for the better this afternoon if she accepted his apology and explanation.
“Merry Christmas, Holly. Thank you for seeing me today. I thought you’d like to take a drive out to the cemetery to play for your family?”
“Yes, thank you, I appreciate your thoughtfulness.” So formal, so polite and so sad.
“Well, let’s be on our way then.”
Seth opened the door, and everyone followed him and Holly to the wagon, being sure Holly was safe for her trip.
“I promise I’ll have Holly back by suppertime,” Nolan said with a nod, knowing there would be a posse looking for him if they were late getting back to the parsonage.
“Holly, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Nolan started as soon as they were out of town, but Holly put up her gloved hand to stop him.
“Let’s just enjoy the quiet white scenery until we reach the cemetery, please?”
Nolan nodded, listening to the horse’s hooves crunching the crusted snow and watching his breath puff white clouds in the cold air. Nolan’s first word was ‘whoa’ to the horse as they stopped by the edge of the cemetery, closest to Holly’s family’s graves.
After he set the wagon brake and wrapped the reins around it, Nolan jumped off and came around to Holly.
“I need you to find the stone piles again. The last snow covered them up.”
“Why?”
Nolan didn’t answer as he reached to help her down to the ground. Then he went to the back of the wagon and pulled away the tarp which covered the tools and markers.
He carefully lifted out a three-foot metal cross from the back of the wagon and held it up to show Holly.
“I had Kiowa make cross markers for your family graves. We need to find the stones and set these in the ground.”
Holly gasped, then covered her mouth with her hands as she started to sob. Nolan wasn’t surprised by her reaction, knowing it would bring grief, but also peace once the shock wore off. Nolan set the cross against the wheel and opened his arms to comfort Holly. It took a while for her to pull away, but her big sighing breath told Nolan she’d be okay.
“I have two crosses for your mother and Ruth, and a small cross for your baby sister. I also had Kiowa make one for your father. You can either place it in this cemetery, or I’ll find a way to deliver it to Silver Crossing, your choice.”
“Thank you, Nolan. You can’t realize how much this means to me.” Nolan watched her wipe her eyes and nose with her gloved hand.
“I can guess because I’d hate for my parent’s graves not to have markers on them. Let me get the markers in the ground, then you can play if you want.”
Nolan reached for the pick axe, shovel, and the first cross as Holly walked to her sister’s grave and stood beside it.
It took a while to get the holes as deep as he wanted them in the frozen ground, but three new crosses marked the graves now, finally giving the cemetery the feeling of a sacred resting place again.
“I’d like father’s cross put on his grave.”
“That’s a good idea. We’ll take it back home for now.
“Play as long as you want, then we need to talk, Holly.”
Nolan stood by the horse as Holly played about every Christmas carol she could think of, or until her fingers were too cold to play, anyway. He waited until the violin was safely back in its case and the blankets wrapped around them before taking Holly’s hands in his own.
“I had hoped you would be anticipating this moment, as I had been planning it, but I blew it. I’m so sorry for not making myself clear, Holly...”
“Don’t! I was a fool to think you’d want me.”
“Let me finish my sentence. It’s very important. I’m sorry for not making myself clear to my grandparents that I was going to ask you to marry me. They assumed it was Mary because of our past.”
“What?”
“Miss Holly Elizabeth Brandt, I love you. Could I have the honor of being your husband? I promise on Pastor Reagan’s long list of vows that I will try to be the best husband—and the best father to our children—as I possibly can.
“Why?” Holly looked dumbstruck at his question.
“Again, because
I love you. You’re the most beautiful woman, inside and out, I’ve ever met, and I want to share my life with you.”
“But everybody thinks you’re marrying Mary.”
“So far I’ve told Mary, my grandparents, Kiowa—and all the Reagan’s—that I was going to ask for your hand in marriage this afternoon. That means the rest of the town will know of our engagement before we’re back to town.”
“Yes, news does get around Clear Creek rather fast.”
“So, are you ready to go back to town to celebrate our upcoming nuptials?”
“Nolan, I never thought I’d meet such a wonderful man as you, who would actually look twice at me.”
“I looked more than twice at you on that first day. I thank God every day for the snowstorm which stopped the train in Miller Springs.
“Now may I kiss you to seal our engagement?”
“There’s no kissing ball around.”
“I think from here on out we won’t need one anymore. I plan to kiss you as often as I can, just for the pure pleasure of kissing my wife.”
Epilogue
December 31, 1885
Holly was so thankful for the welcoming arms of Kaitlyn and Pastor—and her adopted brothers—when they returned to town on Christmas Day. Her first family may be buried, but her second family would always be there when she needed a hug, a laugh, or a prayer.
Today, on her twenty-first birthday, the Reagan’s love—and most of the townspeople—surrounded her again as Holly and Nolan stood in front of the church altar facing Pastor Reagan. Seth, Mack, Cullen and Tully Reagan stood solemnly to the right of Nolan. Iva Mae, Maridell, Avalee and Luella Paulson stood smiling to her left.
Kaitlyn had seriously played the role of “mother of the bride” as they planned their wedding. Kiowa was honored to walk her down the aisle of the church as her honorary cousin.
At Nolan’s request, she wore Iva Mae’s garnet red gown again, which reminded Nolan of the first time he’d seen her at Fort Ellis on Christmas Day, 1878. It was hard to imagine that their chance meeting seven years later would lead to their marriage.
It gave Holly great comfort knowing that her father and Nolan had known each other. Her father would have approved of their marriage. After all, he was the one who pointed Holly out to Nolan, reminding him to protect her in the first place.
“Nolan please take Holly’s hands and repeat after me,” Pastor Reagan instructed while giving each of them a serious look.
“Nolan, will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together with her in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful unto her as long as you both shall live?”
“I will,” Nolan stated with a clear, strong voice.
Nolan slid a thin gold band on her left ring finger and then squeezed her hand as he said, “Holly, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love, and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
“Holly, now it’s your turn to repeat the vows.”
“Holly, will you have this man to be your husband; to live together with him in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful unto him as long as you both shall live?”
Holly stood straight and proud as she stated to Nolan, “I will.”
Nolan had proved to her, time and again, that she could always count on him to be true and faithful to her, and their families, past, current, and future.
Nolan was a groom of honor…
~*~*~*~
I hope you enjoyed Nolan and Holly’s story. Please keep reading to see what happens in Elof’s Mission.
Chapter 1
June 1886
Silver Crossing, Montana Territory
“Clancy’s letter says Holly’s father, Mr. Brandt, is buried in the southwest corner of the cemetery.”
Elof Lundahl scanned the mounds of graves in the small Silver Crossing cemetery. Unfortunately, there was more than one grave in this area. Sergeant Brandt was buried just a little over a year ago so the soil should have settled down on the grave.
“I believe it’s this one here,” Lee Dalberg the wagon driver pointed to a particular grave. Elof had hired the young man to haul the three-foot iron cross, not counting the two-foot base to be buried in the ground, from Miller Springs, which was a two-days drive from Silver Crossing. The hand-forged metal piece was too heavy to carry by horseback, and being a grave cross, Elof hated to drag it behind a horse. Packing it on a mule would have been an option, but Lee Dalberg regularly made the trip between the two towns, so it was easier to load the cross into Dalberg’ wagon with other things he was carrying back to Silver Crossing.
“Worked out well that Nolan Clancy shipped the marker to Miller Springs so you could escort and place the cross on the man’s grave.”
Clancy, Brandt, and Elof had been stationed at Fort Ellis together. Brandt left Fort Ellis about a year after Clancy came in ‘78, trying his hand at mining here in Silver Crossing. Last year the widowed man died, leaving behind a daughter, Holly, who moved to Miller Springs.
When Nolan left the army last December, he was snowed in at Miller Springs and helped Holly, who worked in the town’s café, feed the waylaid travelers. Nolan grew up in his grandparent’s café and was on his way home to Kansas to run it. Long story short, Holly traveled to Kansas with Nolan, and they ended up marrying and running the café together.
Now Elof was leaving the army, and the Clancys had asked that this marker is put on Brandt’s grave before he left the area. Holly’s mother and sisters died in Kansas before she and her father moved west in the early 70s. Nolan commissioned a blacksmith to make markers for both the graves in the Fort Harker and Silver Crossing cemeteries. The Clancys had set the markers in the Kansas graves, and Elof was honored to place this marker today.
“Sergeant Brandt was a good scout and interpreter. I hated to see him leave the Fort. Did you know him, by chance, since you work in these parts?” Brandt’s wife had been a Cheyenne, and he’d learned the language from her. There was more than one time that Elof was glad Brandt was with their troops when a band of Indians met up with the soldiers.
“Oh, just in passing since I spent my time going and coming. I remember when Brandt died. His girl was mighty sad to leave Silver Crossing and her papa’s grave, but it’s kind of a rough town with all the miners. Miller Springs was a better place for her to live.”
The cemetery was laid out on a ridge above town. The scattering of aspens and pines encircling three sides protected the cemetery. The warming May weather had changed the graveyard to a wave of fresh grass, covering older graves and surrounding the brown soil of newer graves.
“I’m going to miss this country. Nothing like the mountains rolling into the prairie,” Elof commented as he lowered the end gate of the wagon so he could pull the cross out of the wagon bed.
“Then why leave?” Dalberg countered back.
“Two reasons I didn’t re-enlist. I was ready to do something else. I was my troop’s farrier and veterinarian, and Clancy said there’s plenty of work for my trade in his area. And…I’m in the mood to marry and Clancy says there’s a Swedish community nearby so I can have my pick of a countrywoman.”
Dalberg laughed. “I knew you were Swedish by the way you said certain words, but I guess you’ve been in the states a while since you talk English so easily.”
“Left Sweden in ‘70 so been here for sixteen years, most of that time with the cavalry.”
“Why’d you go into the army?”
“Free food and shelter while paid wages. It fits the bill when you can’t find a job, and you’re half starved. And it was a way to see different parts of America.” Elof shrugged his shoulders. His father had been a career soldier in Sweden, so he knew the role of protector.
Dalberg reached for the shovel
he had in the back of the wagon. Elof needed to dig a hole over two feet deep to bury the base of the marker into the ground. At least the ground should be thawed by now so it shouldn’t take too long to dig the hole and set the cross.
“Look yonder,” Dalberg nodded his head toward the trail leading up to the cemetery. “Looks like someone else is about to be buried up here.”
Elof paused to watch the team of horses pulling a box wagon up the hill. A woman was driving, with a small boy perched sitting sideways on the bench seat beside her. A dark bay horse pranced beside the wagon, fighting the bit and the middle-aged male rider on his back. Elof hated to see horses in distress like that, because it was usually the rider’s fault, now or in the past.
The woman pulled the reins, halting the team of horses before turning to say something to the man on horseback. The man pointed to the area where Elof and Dalberg were standing watching the scene unfold.
The woman slapped the reins to signal the horses to pull again, and the wagon rumbled toward them.
“Right over there, pull the wagon close by so we can unload the body,” the man on horseback commanded as he motioned at the same time. Elof could tell it was hard for the woman to get the horses positioned where the man wanted the wagon to end up.
“I think we better offer our assistance, Dalberg.” Elof motioned toward the wagon, and Dalberg nodded in return.
“Grab the second shovel out of the wagon so we can help dig the hole,” he replied.
Elof was glad Dalberg didn’t hesitate to help because the man looked agitated and the woman and boy were obviously upset.
The woman’s shoulders relaxed as soon as Elof and Dalberg started walking toward them. Whom did the family lose? The body was wrapped in a quilt instead of being in a wooden coffin. Maybe one of the couple’s parents?
Elof studied the people as they walked closer.
The man on horseback, probably in his fifties, looked mad without a hint of remorse. The woman had a black scarf covering her head, but Elof could see wisps of white blonde hair framing her face. Elof guessed she was in her mid-thirties, even though it was hard to tell with her red-rimmed eyes. She was biting her lower lip, trying not to cry.
Nolan's Vow (Grooms with Honor Book 8) Page 19