A Texas Kind of Christmas

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A Texas Kind of Christmas Page 19

by Jodi Thomas


  But my heart is here and so here I will stay.

  Merry Christmas, Mam.

  Your loving daughter,

  Birdie

  Spirit of Texas

  RACHAEL MILES

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the following for their assistance: Lynn Rushton, the Public Art Collection and Conservation Manager at the City of Dallas’s Office of Cultural Affairs, for telling me stories about Sarah Cockrell and her influence on Dallas; Joan Gosnell, University Archivist, at Southern Methodist University’s DeGolyer Library for providing access to their Cockrell family papers and artifacts; John Slate, Senior Archivist, City of Dallas Municipal Archives, for helpful direction; and Sam Childers, historian and author of Historic Dallas Hotels, who solved the puzzle of whether the St. Nicholas sat on the northwest or the northeast corner of Commerce and Broadway. It’s northeast.

  Chapter 1

  Some say that the Hudson Valley with its verdant

  greens and moody skies is the most picturesque

  landscape in these great states. They have never

  seen a field of bluebonnets and scarlet paintbrush

  under the blaze of a Texas sunset.

  —Garrand Kent, Texas: Her Land, Her Peoples

  “Miss CARP-in-ter.”

  Lost in her book, Eugenie Charpentier didn’t hear the hotel manager’s voice until he stood before her. When Eugenie lifted her gaze from the page, Jones—the manager—stiffened a little. She sighed inwardly. Ever since her maid had “confided” in the hotel staff that Eugenie’s grandfather was an English duke, Jones had treated her alternately like a sleeping dragon or an ignorant child.

  Eugenie had wanted nothing more than to be treated like any other guest, knowing that her family’s status in England had no claim in this wild land. But her great-aunt Judith had taught her how to respond in any situation—“Darling Genie, always signal your mettle by standing tall and looking anyone you meet straight in the eye.”—so Eugenie placed her finger in the book to hold her place, then rose, straightening her back.

  “Miss CARP-in-ter.” Jones looked around the drawing room. Seeing it empty, he lowered his voice anyway. “Your guide has arrived in town.”

  “Excellent. Please send him to me and bring us tea.” She waited, letting the silence emphasize her directions.

  Jones fingered the chain of his pocket watch nervously. Then he turned away from her to look out the window.

  If I remain in Jefferson much longer, he will have worn the chain completely through. Eugenie tapped her foot, and Jones returned his attention to her.

  “Do you object to me using this room to meet my guide?” Eugenie raised one eyebrow, a trick she’d learned as a child from her great-aunt. Years later, she’d realized that Judith’s strength of presence, not her eyebrow, caused dilatory servants and tradesmen to jump to attention. For Eugenie, the eyebrow worked only about half the time.

  “Oh no, miss, no objection at all. The next steamboat isn’t expected for hours. But he’s not here, miss. Your guide, I mean. He’s at the dry goods, loading supplies.” Jones, if possible, looked more nervous. He crumpled an envelope stuck partway into his waistcoat pocket. “Asher says a storm’s coming, and he wants to be halfway to Marshall before it hits.”

  “Asher? My guide is a Mr. Graham.”

  “That’s him, miss. Asher Graham. He’s a bit distant, and, like the other Rangers, you wouldn’t want to cross him in a fight, but no one knows this land better.” For the first time since her arrival, Jones spoke easily.

  “Ranger?” Eugenie said more to herself than to Jones, wondering what else her mother had neglected to mention.

  “Yes, ma’am. He fought with Rip Ford eight or nine years back, and I’ve heard he intends to join Ford’s new troop at Fort Brown by Christmas.” Jones returned to shifting his feet, all eloquence gone. “He’s called for your bags to be sent down. He will meet you here—ready to travel—on the hour.”

  “No.” She sat down, holding her book in her lap.

  “No, miss?” The man sounded stunned. No one, apparently, refused the order of a former Ranger.

  “My mother may say Mr. Graham is trustworthy. But I will use my own judgment. Please call for my maid and send tea.”

  Jones, looking forlorn, worried the crumpled envelope. “My wife can pack some vittles for the road,” he cajoled. “It’s no trouble, you being paid up through the end of the week and all.”

  “No. If there’s a storm coming, we can wait it out here.” Eugenie sat silently until Jones nodded uncomfortably and hurried off.

  She turned Garrand Kent’s Texas over in her hand. Once she’d decided to make the long journey from England to Texas, Eugenie had gathered all the information she could, scouring the newspapers for any mention of the state and interviewing anyone who had ever made the trip. But in Kent’s book, she’d glimpsed the heart and soul of the state, one that made her spinster heart long for adventure. She opened Texas and picked up where she had left off.

  Unlike the appearance of the sky in other parts of the country, a Texas sky is limitless, high and blue. In the East, it’s easy to imagine that if one merely climbed a high mountain one could touch the sky. But that isn’t the case in Texas. No. A Texas sky is ferociously distant.

  A bellman delivered the tea tray, and Eugenie looked out the window. Ferociously blue skies as far as the eye could see. Hrumph. “Trust your own judgment, Genie, and you’ll do well,” Judith had always told her.

  A pang of grief and loneliness caught her off-guard, and she waited, breathing slowly, until the threat of tears passed. It wouldn’t do to meet her Ranger with tears in her eyes.

  To soothe herself, she traced the indentations of Kent’s name embossed in gold lettering in the center of the book’s deep green morocco leather cover. Her mother, Lilly, had sent the manuscript to England for publication, and she’d requested that Eugenie bring fifty copies from London. But Eugenie knew her mother too well to agree too quickly. Lilly had a penchant for mischief and had once brought a collection of erotic prints to Eugenie’s engagement tea. Eugenie could still see her mother’s look of gleeful pleasure when Eugenie had opened the portfolio and the rector’s wife had fainted. So Eugenie had read Texas first.

  But Kent’s Texas mixed philosophy, history, and reflection, and Eugenie had adored it from the start. Kent’s pages resonated with the heartbeat of an honest man, and sometimes, in the darkness of a lonely night, Eugenie even allowed herself to imagine what might happen if she could only meet him. Kent would be a man so unlike her suitors in England that she could imagine herself trusting again. He would be a man who would care more for her and her character than he did for her connections or her money. Though she’d never admit it to anyone but herself, she’d agreed to fetch her mother from Texas partially out of a hope that she might encounter the man whose sensibility so mirrored her own.

  She turned away from her reverie and back to Kent’s pages.

  Living under a limitless sky, Texans are a new breed, seeing possibilities where others have only seen obstacles. In lands where the sky sits heavy on its people, the old clothes of habit and custom bind men up. But Texas calls her people to cut new clothes out of new cloth, eschewing tradition and rules in exchange for honest lives and true hearts.

  Eugenie sensed rather than heard her guide enter the room. His movements were so silent that she imagined him as a raccoon-hatted Daniel Boone. But she didn’t look up.

  Her mother may have sent Mr. Graham to be her guide, but he needed to understand Eugenie was not some simpering young miss who needed to be delivered to her mother. No, she was a fully capable woman who knew her own mind and made her own decisions, one who had traveled halfway across the world to escort her mother back to England.

  Without raising her head, she glanced over the edge of her book at his shoes. Her uncle Ian swore that the cut of a man’s shoe indicated his character better than the cut of his jacket. She’d hoped he might be wearing Boone’
s well-known moccasins, but her guide—disappointingly—wore boots.

  They were neither Hessians as was currently fashionable in Europe nor Wellingtons as most colonists still wore. Nor did they look anything like the finely polished shoes of the tradesmen and gamblers in Jefferson. Instead, her guide tucked the legs of his trousers into tall stovepipe boots.

  The boots, decorated on the top and sides with stitched swirls, stopped an appropriate distance from her.

  “Eugenie Charpentier.” Her guide’s voice was deep, and the sound of it rumbled pleasantly in her belly. Even better, he pronounced her name correctly. A relief.

  She lowered her book and examined him, boots to hat. His long legs were clothed in heavy dark trousers, utilitarian mostly, but with a narrow light-colored pinstriping that gave them a hint of fashion. His waistcoat was unbuttoned, revealing a starched white (and surprisingly clean) linen shirt and leather braces. His stomach was lean and his shoulders broad. A short, narrow neckerchief, more like a bandanna than a cravat, was tied near his neck.

  She’d expected her guide to be one of the wiry, weather-hardened men that she’d watched from the parlor window as they made their way to the local saloon. But even dusty from the trail, Eugenie’s guide was handsome: tall and lean as a birch, with raven hair and deep green eyes.

  She should have known not to trust her mother’s tepid description: “A man of the frontier, straightforward and honest, but largely unable to carry on a conversation on any topic but cattle or the weather.” Liliana, Countess of an extinct Habsburg duchy, would always prefer a man with polish and a veneer of court life to this strong, vital specimen of American life.

  Asher’s presence seemed to fill the room, and she imagined him as one of the heroes in the novels she’d read, picking her up in his strong arms and carrying her away to a romantic hideaway for a passionate affair. She pushed the fantasy away. She wasn’t like her mother: a dreamer, running from one great love to the next. No, all her life she’d been practical where her mother was whimsical; dependable where her mother was headstrong; plain where her mother was beautiful. Even so, she could still regret that she wasn’t the sort of woman a dashing Ranger would choose for a grand romance.

  Tamping down her unexpected attraction, Eugenie gave her guide the smile she reserved for visits from the rector’s wife. Welcoming but distant, her smile indicated that no matter the other appearances of civility, he was her hired guide and she was in charge.

  “Ah, you must be Mr. Graham.” She rose. Doing so closed some of the distance between them, but somehow her rising made him appear even taller. If they were to embrace, her head would nestle comfortably below his chin. Something about this man made her wish she were young again with a face almost pretty rather than a spinster firmly on the shelf. Resisting the unexpected impulse to touch his chest with her hand, she gestured to the chair across from the small tea table.

  “Graham is my father’s name; folks call me Asher.” He remained standing, his expression remote. “Your mother sent word to expect me.”

  “I have been expecting you every day for the last week.” She studied his face. His cheekbones and jaw were strong. His dark eyes flashed with a hint of irritation. Somehow that pleased her.

  He held out a crumpled envelope. “Jones sent this: your maid intends to stay in Jefferson with a young man she’s met.”

  His fingers brushed hers as she took the note, and Eugenie imagined a frisson of electricity passing between them. It surprised and unsettled her. Not even during her engagement had she felt such chemistry. She focused on unfolding the envelope. Her maid’s note began and ended with apologies, reserving the middle for her lover’s merits. “His name is Beauregard; I hope he lives up to it,” Eugenie reported, shaking her head. “Love at first sight. Foolish girl. ”

  She looked up to see Asher raise one eyebrow.

  “We arrived only two weeks ago.” She felt compelled to explain. “Not nearly enough time to know the heart and soul of a person.” Her finger rubbed the spine of Kent’s book.

  “Depends on the person, I reckon.” He stared at her intently, and the moment stretched out between them. She was about to speak, when he looked out the window to the waiting stagecoach. Several trunks were already loaded on the top and back.

  When she looked back at him, he was studying her face once more.

  “Mrs. Jones sent down those fancy trunks of yours. Should I load them with the rest?”

  “How many passengers are traveling to Dallas?” She counted the number of trunks, trying to estimate how many others he might be taking.

  “Just you. I would have brought a wagon, but your mother insisted on a carriage. Said you’d be more comfortable.”

  She felt her jaw tighten, wondering whose funds—hers or her mother’s—would pay for the hire of a guide and an entire coach.

  “I’m uncertain I wish to travel alone with a man I have only just met,” she objected. “I’ll need some time to find another maid.”

  “Time’s something we haven’t got.” He pulled a second note from a pocket inside his waistcoat and held it out. Her mother’s florid handwriting decorated the cover. This time, as his fingers brushed hers, she felt the spark of electricity run down her spine. “There’s a storm brewing out west that’s going to level trees here to Shreveport.”

  She pulled her hand back and looked out the window. The sky remained a limitless clear blue.

  Asher studied the clock over Eugenie’s shoulder. “If you want to be in Dallas by Christmas, you best come with me. Of course, you can wait until your mother finds another guide she trusts, but I won’t be back this way for some time.”

  The clock chimed the quarter hour.

  “I can give you until the hour to make up your mind, but if you aren’t outside then, I’ll leave that fancy luggage of yours on the porch.” He settled his wide-brimmed hat on his head. “Pleasure meeting you, Miss Charpentier.” His voice caressed the syllables of her name.

  With long purposeful strides, he walked away.

  A minute or two later, Eugenie saw him walk past the drawing-room window to the carriage. She moved to the window, watching Asher test each piece of the horse’s rigging.

  Growing up under Judith’s care, she’d learned to judge a man on how well he treated his livestock. “A just man respects the life of his animal, but a wicked man’s mercy is cruel,” her aunt would paraphrase her prayer book whenever they observed a man jerk too tight on his horse’s bit or use a whip to punish, not direct. Despite his hurry, Asher moved carefully, methodically, talking to each horse as he pulled, tightened, and adjusted the various leathers. Eugenie was relieved to see that the horses responded to his voice and touch with no hint of fear.

  She opened her mother’s note. It was brief. “You will find the bearer of this note, Mr. Asher Graham, a faithful guide. If luck is with us, you will arrive in Dallas in time for the Christmas ball at the St. Nicholas hotel—it will be, as you would say in England, the event of the season. The thought that I might spend Christmas with my daughter fills me with joy.”

  Eugenie rolled her eyes. Joy?

  It was much like the note her mother had left seven years before when she’d run off to America without saying good-bye: “If you were only older, we could travel together to that new land of limitless possibilities. As it is, fate leads us to live on different continents. But as your doting mother, I must enjoin you: do not marry that Sherman boy, he will give you only grief.” Eugenie had been twenty-one, more than old enough to travel with her mother. But she’d known, even then, that by leaving, she’d merely trade one sort of heartache for another.

  Pushing away the memory before it could do much harm, Eugenie tucked her mother’s note inside her book’s back cover and returned to her reading.

  But as limitless as a Texas sky is, it is also a difficult mistress. I’ve seen hail the size of a silver dollar fall from a clear blue sky—all because the weather shifted somewhere in the Oregon Territory. Texans learn fa
st that if the breeze turns cool and dark clouds roll in, you should run—not walk—for cover. Texas storms wait for no man—or woman.

  Stepping to the window, she studied the sky—still blue and clear—and Asher. He lifted her heaviest trunk without seeming to notice its weight, then strapped it onto the back of the carriage. Each of his movements were strong and fluid, even graceful.

  Asher saw her at the window and stared back with a strange intensity. The feeling of electricity, of attraction, shimmered between them, once more catching Eugenie off guard. She should look away, refusing the intimacy of his gaze, or frown disapprovingly as she would with an impertinent servant. But she didn’t.

  Somehow her mother’s note—and the memory of Jeremy—had made her feel defiant. London with its strictures and obligations was a world away. No one here was cataloging her every move. Indeed, other than the skittish Mr. Jones, no one showed any particular interest in her at all. It was liberating to be unknown, to set aside the rules that had governed every moment of her life, and to drink deep in the spirit of this wild, reckless land.

  And why shouldn’t she? No one would know—or care. And what was the purpose of traveling through a new country if one never let go of the old country’s rules?

  Recklessly, then, she held his long gaze. Asher was the sort of man she had always found attractive: strong, confident, a good horseman. But hard experience had taught her to be wary. Still waters might run deep if one were considering a river, but too often, she’d learned, a man of few words displayed little intellectual depth. No, if a spinster could find romance in this wild land, it would be with a thoughtful man like Garrand Kent, one who could see and feel deeply into the heart of things.

 

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