“This is sure a nice house, isn’t it, Papa?”
“Yes. It’s nice.” He glanced from Marlys down at August.
August pointed upward.
Sam looked up.
A sprig of mistletoe hung over Marlys’s head. She noticed where they were looking and glanced up. Her gaze shot back to Sam’s, and color flooded her face.
It became obvious that several guests were watching the scenario unfold as well, smiling expectantly.
“Others have been kissing under the mistletoe just like you said, Papa. I saw ’em.” August gave his father a gentle shove.
As Sam approached Marlys, her eyes widened in surprise. She wore a pretty blue dress he’d never seen before. Her glowing cheeks flushed in embarrassment. She had no idea how beautiful he found her. Perhaps because he’d never told her. Her confidence was in her knowledge and ability, not in her femininity. But she was feminine...and exotic in a way that lured him to her like a sweet mystery.
“You’re beautiful, Marlys.”
Her eyes widened. Her lips parted, but she said nothing.
“I’ve told you how smart you are, what a good doctor you are, but I’ve never told you how beautiful you are. How pretty your hair is in the sunlight. How I like the way your eyes sparkle when you’re pleased or flash when you’re aggravated. I’ve never told you a lot of things because I was a coward.
“Even if you decide to take that teaching job and leave, I still want you to know this one thing. I love you.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked.
“I loved you a dozen years ago when I asked you to marry me the first time. I loved you the second time I asked you to marry me. And I love you right now.”
“Sam.” His name came out on a distressing sob, but she stepped toward him and placed her hand on his shirt front. “I love you, too. I do. I wasn’t even sure...have never been sure what love is. But I know now. And I know it’s what I feel for you. I don’t want to leave you or August and go to Philadelphia. I don’t need the acceptance or respect I once believed was so important. Nothing could ever be as satisfying as loving you. You love and respect me for who I am.”
“I do.”
He wrapped his arms around her and drew her closer. Nothing else existed except this moment in time, except her smile and the hitch in her breathing when he lowered his face. He kissed her as tenderly and sweetly as he’d wanted to since he’d seen her standing here. He kissed her like he wanted to for the rest of their lives.
A smattering of applause caught his attention, and he drew back to look at her. Her cheeks were bright red now. He glanced aside at the same time she did to see their friends and fellow townspeople, including August, Leah, Hannah and James, all grinning from ear to ear.
“That mistletoe really works!” At August’s exclamation, laughter broke out.
August darted forward and wrapped his arms around Marlys’s waist. “You’re not leaving?”
“Never. I’m staying right here and marrying your father.”
“And you’ll be my mother?” he asked in more-than-adequate Chinese that Sam understood.
“If you want me to be your mother, I’ll be proud to have that title, and the hugs that come with it.”
“I do,” he said in English.
“Then I do, too.” She bent and kissed his forehead.
“I think we’re going to be hearing more ‘I do’s very soon.” Reverend Taggart’s grin split his face.
“This calls for a song!” Pippa exclaimed. “What would you like to hear?”
“I’d like to hear our song,” Sam said.
Marlys looked up at him. “Our song?”
“It’s a love song, but not the love song one expects.”
Marlys gave him a broad grin. “From the thanksgiving celebration.”
“I know now,” Pippa said. She took a pitch pipe from a concealed pocket of her full skirt, provoking a few chuckles, and blew into it, creating a note in the key she’d chosen.
“O worship the King, all glorious above, o gratefully sing His power and His love; our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days, pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise.”
Others joined in on the second verse. Sam held Marlys’s hand the way he had that evening in the ballroom, and they looked into each other’s eyes. The Lord had answered all of their prayers. Against all odds they’d found each other again after all these years, searched their hearts and discovered a broader and a deeper love than either had ever imagined.
“We have so much to be thankful for,” Marlys said near his ear.
“Like finding each other again after all this time,” he agreed.
“And making a family together.”
He smiled. “I could never have anticipated a reunion under the mistletoe.”
“There will plenty of Christmases,” she assured him.
“And plenty of kisses.”
“O tell of His might, o sing of His grace, whose robe is the light, whose canopy space. His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form, and dark is His path on the wings of the storm.”
* * * * *
Dear Reader,
I enjoyed heading back to Cowboy Creek, Kansas, to revisit the characters from my book, Want Ad Wedding, as well as those from Special Delivery Baby (Sherri Shackelford) and Bride By Arrangement (Karen Kirst). Once a setting as interesting and vivid as Cowboy Creek has been created, it’s a shame not to keep it alive and populated.
I adored the character of Dr. Marlys Boyd, an innovative and determined young woman ahead of her time. She came into focus on the pages when I read The Doctor Wore Petticoats, a book about early women doctors that my friend Julie Steele sent me. It’s shocking now to imagine, but in the 1800s miners, trappers, drovers and emigrants chose to suffer and die rather than be treated by a female doctor. Those women’s strength of spirit and determination forged paths equal to those fighting for the vote.
Author and journalist Sam Mason has already had his feathers singed by the ambitious lady doctor, so when he encounters her in the town where he’s only recently started a newspaper, he’s not likely to fool himself into thinking she might take a shine to being a wife and mother. Her headstrong ways bring out his protective instincts, however, so it was fun to discover all the ways Marlys made him crazy—and crazy in love with her.
I can’t wait to hear what you think of Sam and Marlys’s story. Email me at [email protected].
MISTLETOE BRIDE
Sherri Shackelford
To Barb. I miss you.
Thou wilt shew me the path of life:
in thy presence is fulness of joy;
at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
—Psalms 16:11
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Dear Reader
Chapter One
Kansas, late October 1868
Colton Werner knew death. He’d survived the War Between the States. He’d seen enough men perish to recognize mortality was rapidly overtaking the woman in front of him. She was heavily pregnant, her stomach full and round beneath the blankets.
The promise of a new life contrasted sharply with her ashen face and glazed eyes. Kerosene lamps scattered throughout the doctor’s examination room offered wan circles of illumination. The flames seemed to battle the darkness, as though sorrow was s
apping their glow on its way to claim the woman. The mingled scents of alcohol, laudanum and chloroform sent his stomach churning.
Sweat slicked the woman’s skin and plastered her dark hair against her forehead. Propped into a half-sitting position on the bed, her head lolled against the stacked pillows. She was young and might have been pretty. He couldn’t really tell under the circumstances.
Catching the woman’s desperate gaze, Colton sucked in a breath.
“Bitte,” the woman spoke weakly. “Hilf mir.”
Please, help me.
The foreign words echoed deep in the recesses of his brain, clicking into life the rusted gears of a language he hadn’t used in over a decade.
“Wo ist Quincy Davis?” the woman asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Where is Quincy Davis?
Colton’s chest seized, and he caught sight of Leah Gardner near the foot of the bed. Leah was married to his friend Daniel and also served as the town midwife.
Leah beckoned him nearer. “Thank the stars you’re here. She’s gone into labor. She was speaking some English before, but she’s delirious, and she’s slipped into speaking only German. I think she understands what we’re saying, but I can’t be sure.”
Colton backed away, bumping into the doorjamb. “I can’t.”
He was done. Done with death. Done with the dying. Done. He wanted his own peace.
Leah crossed the narrow space in two strides. Catching his sleeve, she urged him through the door and into the narrow corridor of the doctor’s offices. Always calm and efficient, Leah wore her blond hair in a neat roll at the base of her neck, and a white apron covered her elegant yellow dress. She’d clearly come from a formal engagement—a dinner at the Cattleman Hotel with her husband or a trip to the local opera house.
“You’re the only one who can help her,” she asserted, her voice low and urgent. “You speak German, don’t you?”
“As a youngster. With my grandparents. That was years ago.”
“You’re the best we have under the circumstances.” Sorrow glistened in Leah’s cornflower-blue eyes. “She doesn’t have much time.”
Not much time. A euphemism. Refusing to say the words didn’t hold the reaper at bay. “What’s wrong with her?”
“I’ll spare you a lengthy medical explanation, but I will say I’ve only seen a few cases during my time as a midwife, and I’ve never had a mother or baby survive.” The midwife’s expression grew pleading. “I’ve also never seen the illness this late in the pregnancy. She’s already in labor. I might be able to save the baby.”
Colton flinched away from her optimism. “What about the doctor? Can’t he help?” Even as he asked, he feared he already knew the answer.
His gaze slid over the pregnant woman, and he shied away from the gravity of the situation. It seemed the woman recognized she was combating death. He’d caught the torment in her dark eyes. A death prolonged in the young was all the more tragic. That’s what his brother Joseph had taught him. That’s what the war had soldered into his soul. First there was shock, then the inevitable ‘why.’ Why me? Why now?
Leah’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “The doctor has gone to fetch Reverend Taggart.”
“I see.”
If she’d sent for a clergyman, Leah was not as optimistic as she’d have Colton believe.
“I need your help.” The midwife splayed her hands. “The only clue we’ve discovered is a name.”
“Quincy Davis?”
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
Whatever the pregnant woman wanted from Quincy Davis, he wasn’t coming. Rubbing the back of his neck, Colton stared down the darkened corridor. Quincy, the former town sheriff, had been killed by the Murdoch Gang the previous spring.
“Where did she come from?” Colton asked, unable to contain his morbid curiosity. “Why is she here?”
“She arrived on the evening train. We need your help to find out the rest.”
“I shouldn’t be here.” He wrestled with his honor, wanting only to push through the front doors and run as far and as fast as his feet would take him. “What about the Schuylers? They speak German. A woman would be better.”
“You were the closest. She doesn’t have time for us to fetch someone else.”
A muffled cry interrupted Leah’s next words. With a last beseeching look, she hurried past him and into the examination room once more.
Colton braced his hands against the opposite wall and rested his forehead against the rough plaster. He’d served in the war with Leah’s husband, Daniel. The life of a soldier consisted of long days of boredom punctuated by hours of sheer terror. The hazardous conditions had forged unbreakable bonds of friendship. The thought of refusing to help his friend’s wife went against the grain.
Before the war, Colton had apprenticed as a blacksmith beneath his grandfather’s tutelage. After the war he’d moved to Cowboy Creek at the invitation of three men he’d known in the war—including Daniel. His fellow soldiers had founded the town, and they’d needed a farrier.
The years peeled away, and he was boy again thrust into an unknown situation. Though his father was fluent in German, his parents had spoken only English when he was a child. For the first few months after being sent to live with his grandparents, the language barrier had left him completely and utterly isolated in their home.
There was no greater loneliness than being surrounded by people, yet trapped behind an invisible wall of words. He’d remained quarantined in his own misery until he’d finally managed to grasp a few phrases. The poor woman in the other room was dying, which was terrifying enough. He couldn’t leave her alone, divided from the people trying to help her by the lack of a common language.
After a long moment, he pushed off and joined Leah by the woman’s bedside.
“Ich bin Colton Werner,” he said. “Wie heissen sie?”
“Beatrix,” she replied. The startled relief on her face shamed him for hesitating. “Beatrix Haas.”
Her next words tumbled over each other in frantic succession, and he struggled to comprehend. His German was eroded, buried beneath years of disuse. She’d traveled from Austria, and her accent was unfamiliar, as well. He knew little of the country beyond what he’d recently read in the papers. Following the Austro-Prussian War, Austria had been unseated as the head of the German Confederation. But that was the extent of his knowledge.
He held up his hands. “Bitte langsamer,” he urged her. Speak slower.
Her face screwed up, and she hunched forward.
Leah put her hand on a blanket covering the woman’s bent knees. “Breathe through the pains.”
Colton translated the words. He must have spoken passably well, because Beatrix nodded and followed the instructions. Long seconds passed before she collapsed against the pillows once more.
For the next hour, between the contractions, he pieced together her story. When Beatrix completed her tragic tale, Colton relayed her story to Leah. “Her name is Beatrix Haas. The father of the baby refused to marry her. To keep them apart, his parents arranged his marriage to someone more suitable.”
Beatrix clutched his hand, panting and moaning amid torrents of rushed speech. With each agonized groan, with each tragic piece of her story, his heart ached for her. He’d never been able to separate himself from the suffering of others.
“Good,” he said in German, the words weak and insufficient. “You’re doing well.”
He was out of his depth in a sickroom.
Metalwork had always made more sense to him than people. Following the war, he’d immersed himself in his calling. He understood the personality of each ore—the melting points, the yielding points. He was a farrier like his grandfather before him, but he also excelled at other forms of metalwork. He found the mechanisms involved in crafting lock
s especially fascinating.
“The poor thing.” Leah rinsed a cloth in the basin at her feet and extended her arm. “I have a feeling I know how this story ends.”
Colton draped the material over the woman’s forehead. The sound of her own language soothed her, and she turned her forehead into the palm of his hand.
Beatrix was stronger than he’d first supposed. This was not a woman who’d slip away quietly without a struggle.
“Her father shunned her.” Colton quietly relayed the final piece of her story. “The pastor of her village arranged her marriage to a distant cousin of his, Quincy Davis, but her would-be groom never sent the tickets for her travels. She sold most of her belongings and gathered enough money to make the trip.”
“I was afraid of that,” Leah said. “We must tell her.”
“She’s already weak,” Colton said. “What if she’s not strong enough for the truth?”
“If the baby lives, we’ll need to make arrangements. She must know the truth.”
Colton gathered himself and spoke in his halting German.
Beatrix’s eyes welled, and she blinked rapidly. Though he was only relaying the news, a sense of disgrace filled him, as though he was the one who’d shattered her hopes and dreams, and not simply the messenger.
When she finally spoke, her words were faltering, and he interpreted as best he could.
“She doesn’t want her baby born illegitimate,” he said, his chest tightening. He understood her sense of shame. He’d disgraced his own family. More than dishonor, he’d brought death. His brother Joseph’s death. “She doesn’t want more shame on her family.”
Beatrix clutched his hand. “Bitte.”
Please.
“The shame is not hers to bear.” Grim but sympathetic, Leah wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “This is no time for a lecture on the responsibilities of men in the making of children. I’m afraid it’s too late. This baby is not waiting.”
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