by T. S. Joyce
“Sure.” I slipped my hand into the curve of his elbow and he led me to the post office two shops down. My heeled, leather shoes made soft clomping sounds against the worn wood of the walkway and I nodded demurely to a couple of cowboys who tipped their hats to me. They burst out laughing as soon as we passed and for the first time in a long time, I wished I wasn’t dressed like a saloon girl. It certainly wasn’t making me any friends. A man whistled from across the street. Well, all right, it wasn’t making me the right sort of friends.
Jeremiah opened the door to the post office and waited for me to enter before following behind. He leaned against the counter and pulled a linen paper envelope from his duster pocket. His hat was the same color of brown as the counter, and he set it down respectfully and rubbed a hand through his short hair. It must’ve been a family habit because Luke often did that too. No one came immediately to the front of the store, so Jeremiah pressed the bell on the end of the table.
“What’re you mailing?” I asked.
“Another advertisement for a wife.” He winked and said, “This time I was a bit more specific in my wants.”
For reasons I couldn’t myself explain, my gut went cold. It could’ve been the realization that I really hadn’t been good enough for Jeremiah, or the worry over another woman coming into the fray out here in the wilderness, but likely it was the part of me that sang that Luke would like this new woman better. She’d be able to cook and sew and milk cows, and then he’d realize how completely useless I was to him.
Jeremiah’s eyebrows turned down slightly and his coffee colored eyes searched my face. “I still want a wife, Kristina. You get along fine with Luke, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. And I know I’ll grow to care for him in time. It’s just…” How did one explain matters of the heart to a man? I didn’t even understand my worry. “What if she’s some highborn lady with good breeding and education and taste, and Luke realizes what he’s missing out on?”
Jeremiah snorted. “Luke ain’t one to fall for proper ladies, Ms. Yeaton. He calls them uppity. You’re plenty safe if that’s what you’re really worried about.”
I gripped onto the wrapped dress and the paper made a satisfying crinkling sound as his assurances washed over me. Jeremiah should put another ad out. Anyone with eyes could see he was wanting for a woman of his own. I couldn’t let my insecurities ruin his chance at happiness.
“Well, I wish you the best of luck. Hopefully you don’t get another saloon girl. Could you point me in the direction of the dressmaker’s shop?”
“You take a left out the front door and it’s on this side of the street. It says Marta’s Dress Shop on the sign out in front of the store.”
Hesitating, I opened my mouth and closed it again. “Okay,” I said slowly. “What does the word Marta’s look like?” The heat in my cheeks was growing more uncomfortable by the moment.
Jeremiah lowered his voice and leaned forward. “Do you not have any words?”
“No, sir. I didn’t do much schooling in Chicago.” The admission tied my stomach in knots. Not the sort sailors used on their boats, but the kind of knots lawmen tied hangman’s nooses with.
He grabbed the package out of my hands and I stifled a yelp. He was going to see what I’d done to the dress and hate me for it and something deep inside of me wanted Jeremiah to accept me for Luke. He didn’t open it though. Instead he pulled a pencil from a wooden cylinder on the other side of the counter and wrote a jumble of letters across the front of my package.
“It looks like that. Look for this letter first because there aren’t any other stores that start with M.”
Mortified, I took the package from his outstretched hand and shuffled out the front door just as the postman entered. Not knowing my letters and reading hadn’t been as embarrassing in Chicago because the lot I hung around with weren’t of the highly educated sort. Most of us couldn’t read or write, but we didn’t need to either. Those were the skills of the frivolous. But here, I found myself silently hoping Jeremiah wouldn’t tell Luke of my shortcomings.
I couldn’t see the signs well enough without standing in the street, so by the time I matched the first word to that of a shop, the bottom six inches of my dress hem were soaked and a wet, dingy brown. And my shoes? Well those hadn’t even been cleaned after my first day fresh off the carriage, so now they boasted a second helping of muddy grit on them. I stomped my heels off as best I could on the wicker mat out front and trudged into the shop.
It was a small room but smelled of clean fabric, and the two small windows out front held pretty sunflower yellow curtains. I smiled at the beautiful readymade dresses that hung from the wood panel walls in all of the colors imaginable.
A gray haired woman with a bun that sat right atop her head looked over her spectacles with a frown of disdain. “Don’t come in any further,” she said in a voice that cracked with age. “You’re tracking mud all through my store.”
I’d lifted the hem of my dress to avoid it but my shoes had, in fact, made little spots where the soles still held the remnants of my dirt laden hike. “Oh, terribly sorry.”
“What do you want?”
The malice in her voice made it hard to put my thoughts together and I stuttered. “I-I needed a dress mended. Redone, really, to better fit me.”
“I don’t make dresses for whores.”
“It’s not a working dress. I wanted a fine dress to wear to town. See, I’m not like that anymore.” She stared at me blankly and I arched my eyebrow. “I don’t whore anymore.”
“You and your kind won’t find any help here.”
A slow boil rose from my toes and I fought the urge to give that grievous woman the tongue lashing of her life. My kind? What did that even mean? I had to do what I had to do to survive. I didn’t have some frilly dress shop to be able to make a living, or a man to support me in Chicago. It was just me and if I didn’t work, I didn’t eat. And despite my occupation, I was still a person.
“You have a nice day,” I gritted through clenched teeth as I made my way carefully back out the door.
I sat with a huff on a wooden backed bench outside. If the only dressmaker in town wouldn’t help me, then how in tarnation was I going to ever get a proper dress? A traitorous tear slipped the corner of my eye and I wiped it with the back of my hand before it made a full trail down my cheek. I sniffed.
“Are you already done?” Luke said.
“Aaah!” I yelled in the most unfeminine sound that ever graced anyone’s throat. Lovely.
Luke rubbed his ear and reached for the door handle to the dress shop.
Panicked, I asked, “What’re you doing?”
He hesitated. “I’m going to pay the lady.”
“No need. I’ve decided to go somewhere else.”
“There is nowhere else,” he said slowly as a suspicious frown commandeered his face.
“Then I’ll try to fix it myself.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m hungry.”
His glorious emerald eyes tightened. “You know you play on my instincts when you tell me you need something like that. I think you do it to change the subject.”
“I know nothing about that,” I argued. It was mostly true. “I just know I’m hungry.” And with that I stood and stomped toward the saloon.
“Ho!” he said, gripping my arm. “We aren’t eating at the cathouse.”
“Well, why the devil not?”
“Because I’ve been with half the girls in there and it ain’t the place for us to have our first meal in public together. We’ll eat at Cotton’s instead.”
I stopped and searched his face. “Will they serve a girl like me?”
His eyes softened. “Cotton’s serves everyone. C’mon, it’s across the street.”
Fantastic. More mud. Except when I took the last step to plop my poor abused shoe into the filth, Luke bent over and lifted me easily into his arms. I was just as shocked as the choking gossipers in front of the land o
ffice. It did warm me up inside and the view of Luke’s smooth jawline was quite lovely, so I wrapped my hands delicately around his neck and enjoyed the ride. Once across, he offered his arm gallantly and smiled when I fit my fingers into the crook of it.
Chapter Seven
Kristina
Cotton’s was a boisterous eatery with long tables filled with town folks enjoying their meals. The smell of the place was a mixture of beef, gravy, and heaven. My stomach growled loudly, but I doubted anyone heard it over the noise. Luke pulled me over to a couple of empty seats on the far end of the room and we sat amongst a raucous group of arguing men, and a husband and wife with their six young children spread between them. I smiled at the woman but she was too preoccupied with her family of picky eaters to smile back. Or so I told myself.
A feminine voice with a thick southern accent sounded from behind me. “What can I do you for?”
The woman was young, around my own age, and thanks to the Emancipation, was a newly minted freedwoman. Her caramel colored skin was smooth and rich and her dark hair was pulled back out of her face. She might’ve very well been the prettiest lady I’d ever seen.
“What’s the special,” Luke asked.
“Trout’s been selling like hot cakes today, Mr. Luke.”
“Sold,” he said with an easy smile.
“And for you?” she asked me.
I wasn’t much of a fish eater. “I need something that’ll stick to my ribs. What’s your favorite?”
“My beef stew’s so thick you can eat it with a fork.”
“That sounds exactly right. I’ll have that.”
She hurried away and swished through the kitchen doors and that was when I noticed her dress. It was a fine looking garment with puff sleeves, and white eyelet lace accents. The fabric was floral and the fit looked lovely on her slim body. Moody Marta wouldn’t likely be making the woman’s dresses if she was opposed to working with a saloon girl, so where’d she get it?
“Are there a lot of freedmen around here?” I asked Luke.
“Trudy’s the only one that I know of around these parts.”
The gray-haired man sitting directly across from me spat on the floor. “And it’s a good thing too. One of them’s one too many around here, if you ask me.”
“Well, nobody asked you,” I gritted out.
Trudy returned and set metal plates overflowing with food in front of Luke and I, and the man sneered at her. “In fact, if I had my way, we’d be running this one out of town.”
“Shut your gaping pie hole or you’ll catch flies,” I spat. “I said nobody asked for your rotten opinion, and I meant it, sir.”
The man stood so fast his chair fell with a glorious crash behind him, and the room went deathly still. In his eyes burned the hellfire of hatred and it was aimed directly at me. A bone chilling sound I’d never heard in my entire nineteen years ripped from Luke as he stood in a motion so fast he blurred. And with a great shuddering thunk, he stabbed his hunting knife so deeply into the table, it could likely be seen from underneath. The gleaming blade landed just a hair away from the tender skin between the man’s pointer and middle finger. The air around Luke grew thicker by the moment until it was hard to breathe.
My breath caught somewhere in my throat and the fine hairs on my arms rose as something just below the senses filled the room.
“Advance another centimeter on my woman, and I’ll slit you from adam’s apple to cock,” Luke growled into the man’s face.
The man’s skin went pallid and the whites of his eyes shown all around the tired gray color of his irises. His pupils had all but disappeared and a fine sweat sprang up on his forehead. “My apologies,” he whispered.
Luke’s voice was as deep as it was quiet. “To her.”
The man cleared his throat and nodded his head to me. “My apologies, ma’am.”
At some point in the exchange, Trudy had placed her hand on my arm. “You two been disturbing everyone’s dinner and now you’re coming with me.” She picked up our plates and swished back toward the kitchen. “The rest of ya’ll get back to eating.”
Desperate for an escape and a bite of that beef stew, I followed before Luke even pulled his knife from the table. Something about having him at my back put a chill up my neck though, so I scuttled sideways and waited for him to catch up.
“Leslie,” Trudy said to a fair haired lady finishing up a plate of food. “I’m taking my break. You get on out there and let me know if they get too rowdy for you.”
The girl smiled shyly at me as she passed to put her plate in a deep bellied sink before she headed out to handle the crowd. Another woman worked tirelessly over a couple of stoves on the other side of the room and Trudy set our plates on the table Leslie had been eating at.
Luke ate in earnest like he hadn’t almost stabbed a man, and I put a bite in my mouth tentatively with one eye on him and one on Trudy.
“I know what you are, Mr. Luke. And if you keep carrying on the way you did in there, the whole town’s going to know what you are too.”
He looked up slowly from his meal and the expression on his face made my blood go cold.
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
Trudy’s dark eyes studied my face for a long time before she sighed. “I just mean a man with a temper is all. You’d do best to not trifle with a temper like his. Wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I’d never hurt her,” he said quietly.
“And I’d like to believe it, but I’ve been around and I’ve seen your kind say the same thing just before their poor girl goes missing.”
Luke went back to eating. “That ain’t me.”
“I’ve said my piece and now I’ll leave you alone. Thank you kindly for what you did in there, Ms.—”
“Kristina. You can just call me Kristina,” I offered.
“Kristina. Now it was mighty sweet of you to defend me, but it’s pointless. They’ll say what they want and then come in here tomorrow and say it again. You can’t change their stubborn minds about anything.”
“Where’d you get your dress?” I blurted out. She was the first woman to talk to me civilly since I’d been here and I didn’t want her to leave.
Her smile was a surprised one. “I made it myself. I was a house servant and did a lot of sewing and cooking. I picked up the same habits after the war, but the difference is now I get paid for the work.
“Will you make one for me? I tried to sew one yesterday but it turned out awful, and I can’t just keep going around town in a whore’s dress when I’m not one anymore and Ms. Marta…well—”
Trudy raised her hand and stopped my ramblings. “Enough said. I’ll work on your dress and charge you less than that snooty old windbag would anyhow.”
“No, we’ll pay you the same,” Luke said, tossing a napkin over his empty plate. “I insist.”
“That’s not what I usually charge,” Trudy argued.
“Well,” Luke said through a sly grin. “You ain’t seen what she’s done to that poor dress yet.”
I slapped him on the arm but it only made his obnoxious grin bigger.
****
Luke
Trudy was lying. She didn’t mean I was just a man with a temper. She knew the truth and it was written all over her face when she talked to me. I’d have to corner her and find out how she knew about me. She’d obviously rubbed elbows with wolves before and I was itching to see if I knew them or not. I knew most of the families from here to Texas, but that wasn’t too hard. There were very few packs left. If what she said was true and a girl disappeared…the thought of man-eaters made my stomach lurch. I wouldn’t ever hurt a hair on Kristina’s head, no matter how hard she pissed me off. I wouldn’t let myself, but no amount of convincing was going to comfort Trudy. Over time, I’d just have to prove I wasn’t a danger.
Trudy’s knowledge of our dark secret put us all at risk, and if she took a fancy to protecting Kristina from a threat she imagined, and decided to share that
information with the town? Well, me and Jeremiah would be hanging by a noose with our boots on fire at dawn.
Trudy led us down the street to the tiny house she shared with her man. She needed Kristina’s measurements before she went to work trying to save that tattered dress. A little shiver of excitement lit me up. You could tell a lot about the quality of a person by their reaction to unexpected situations, and so far Kristina had been entertaining to watch. She’d stood right up for Trudy in Cotton’s, and even if it was none of our business, pride had filled me when she popped off to that jack-wagon, Ray Ellerby. He’d been asking for it for years, and it was tiny, pretty, spirited little Kristina who gave him the walloping he deserved. Maybe I’d gone too far with the knife, but the animal inside was happy with the way I’d defended my mate, so it was pretty hard to stay mad at myself.
Trudy opened the front door to her home and I watched Kristina’s face as she introduced her man.
Elias Jones was tall, good-looking, easy smiling, and unquestionably white. Kristina’s eyes went wide with surprise just before she burst out into a grin bright as the sun when he shook her hand. I swear, I was going to get more enjoyment out of watching her animated expressions than I’d ever know what to do with.
Kristina’s hair was right pretty all done up in pins, and her face was clear and glowing without all that powder. Her lips were full and a shade of pink I’d only seen on wildflowers. A delicate nose and fine eyebrows just a shade darker than her sandy colored hair graced the feminine shape of her face. I wanted her and even the meanest, most stubborn bits of me had been taken with her and given up without a fight. I made a pathetic monster.
I had trouble paying attention to my conversation with Elias because Trudy was delicately wrapping Kristina’s chest with a flimsy measuring tape. I wouldn’t miss other men’s eyes on her cleavage, but I’d miss the dress for my own pleasures. Maybe we’d better keep it for fun later on.
Fifteen minutes later, Kristina came out of the back room wearing a fine dress of pinstripe navy with cream details. It fit her everywhere but the chest and the women laughed as Trudy let the stitches out a bit to better fit her shape. I was proud to have her on my arm in her whore get-up, but now I’d be dragging her to town every chance I got.