A Texas Kind of Christmas

by Jodi Thomas

  Chase rejoined the other lawmen and military officers at the door to the poker room. They were hard men, cleaned up for the ball, but still rough in a way Asher had never been. Asher would never leer at any woman. No, everything with Asher had been an invitation, an outstretched hand inviting her to a life bigger than she’d ever imagined. She blinked back the tears.

  If only he’d come . . .

  Suddenly she didn’t want him to find her standing against a wall, waiting. If there were the slightest chance that he might come for her, he needed to know—and she did as well—that she could make a life here.

  For the next several hours, she met those who had come to the ball. Shopkeepers and craftsmen, headmasters and schoolmistresses, ministers and lawmen, ranchers and cattlemen, lawyers, judges, and a legislator or two. As the end of the dance drew near, she felt like she’d made polite conversation with most of Dallas and some of Texas. And still he did not come.

  Worst yet, in one of the conversations, she learned that a group of Dallas Rangers had left that morning for Fort Worth, about three hours away. There they would meet with other Rangers and travel south to join Rip Ford. She prayed Asher wasn’t with them.

  Near midnight, she was standing on the porch along the back of the hotel, planning to effect an escape from the ball as soon as she could. She gazed up into the sky, the cold air making the stars especially bright.

  He hadn’t come.

  She had her ticket for the stagecoach at least. She could leave on any of the days it came to Dallas. Her heart still ached to think that Asher would let her go. But that was the way of things, and she knew her place. Though she’d seen glimpses of what her life could be like in Texas—what she could be in that vast wild land—it was only a dream, fading with daylight.

  Her home, she understood it now, was in England. Safe. Without rattlesnakes or scorpions or alligators or stampedes. England was a civilized land. The problem was she felt . . . no longer civilized.

  Perhaps she would go to Galveston instead. She could start a school and wait to see if she wanted to take that ship back to London. Perhaps her mother was right, and she should give Texas a chance. There would always be England . . . if she needed it.

  But now she needed something she couldn’t have. A man who was too rough and tumble to understand how a book might speak so deeply to her soul, even when he was the one who had written it. A man who had shown glimpses of a soul like hers. A remarkable man. A man who didn’t want her.

  * * *

  The porch creaked behind her, and she turned hoping it would be Asher.

  But a man and a woman giggled in each other’s arms. She decided to leave the porch to them.

  As she walked back into the ballroom, Asher was there. Not as she had seen him last, dusty from the road, but sleek and polished in a pressed suit. He carried himself as if he wore such clothes every day. She stared. His face was clean-shaven, his dark green eyes flecked with gold. Without his beard, his jaw looked even firmer.

  He’d dressed and shaved for her. She knew it. He’d dressed as she’d described Garrand Kent: urbane, cultured, polished. Nothing else would make him wear such clothes.

  He caught her eyes and smiled, and she felt the warmth of it down to her belly.

  He had come . . . for her.

  But the fact that he’d waited almost to the end of the dance made her wary.

  He made his way to her, the crowd parting to allow him through.

  “Miss Eugenie Charpentier.” As before, his pronunciation was perfect, as if he had studied for years in France, not read a thesaurus on the plains of Texas. “Might I have the pleasure of this dance?” He held out his hand, inviting her—as he had in Jefferson—to trust him.

  “It’s Jeannie to you,” she whispered, wondering if every eye were not already watching them.

  She stretched out her hand, the long white of her glove fitting neatly into his. He led her onto the dance floor, and again the crowd seemed to part at their approach. Their first real dance was a waltz, slow and elegant.

  He placed one hand on her waist, and she placed one of hers on his shoulder.

  She felt the now-familiar thrill of his presence. The sense of electricity that came from their souls’ wings touching. But she refused to acknowledge it: he’d made her wait a week without any contact. Even so, he led her gracefully, expertly across the dance floor.

  “I thought all you could do was twirl a girl in the air. How did you learn to dance?”

  “I would have told you, but you never asked.”

  “Is that all it takes? A simple question and you answer?”

  “I suppose it depends on whether the question is appropriate to the moment.”

  “What sort of question would be ‘appropriate’ to this moment?”

  “It’s another game: I get to decide once you ask.”

  Annoyed, she began to pull out of his arms, but he held her close, breathing in the hot-house roses in her hair.

  “Ask,” his voice pled.

  “How did you learn to dance . . . out here?”

  “I didn’t always live out here. For some years, I went to school in New Orleans living with my mother’s family.”

  “Your mother is French?”

  “Was. French Huguenots.”

  “Did you meet Sadie there?”

  “Yes. But why don’t you ask something more appropriate?”

  “What should I ask?

  “Like why I’m here, in this suit, dancing with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because after Sadie died, I refused to consider that I might love another woman. I refused to live in the places I’d lived with her. I refused to live without her.”

  She started to pull out of his arms.

  “But I find that you have crept into the very corners of my soul, and I can’t imagine a life without you in it,” he whispered.

  She blinked back the tears. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say that you love me. Say that we have a chance for happiness together. Say that you can love the ornery rancher who stands before you more than you love the polished ideal of a man you found in that damn book. Say that you’ll come to my cabin tomorrow for Christmas dinner. Say something, anything.”

  “Have you forgiven me for having it published?”

  He looked surprised, but still he answered. “I’ve thought about that—and you—every moment since we parted. Can a man be both angry and grateful?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If Lilly hadn’t sent the book to you, if you hadn’t read it, you might not have come here prepared to love this land as much as I do. You might even have refused to come—I hear you have a brother she could have sent for instead.”

  “She wanted me to come, not him.”

  “And if you hadn’t fallen half in love with that damn book, you wouldn’t have been able to fall half in love with me. Even if I’d met you on the street, you wouldn’t have known me, not the way you knew me after reading the book.”

  “You thought about me every moment?” The idea felt heady, but she couldn’t believe it.

  “I’m here, Jeannie, to try and make things right, though I find this outfit scratchy and uncomfortable.”

  “I wish you’d saved your money: I would have danced with you no matter what you wore.”

  “Is there something wrong with it—other than being scratchy and uncomfortable?” He looked down at his suit.

  “No, no.” She touched his face. “It’s handsome—you—are handsome in it.” Somehow the idea that he had spent money he didn’t have to come to the ball . . . for her . . . made her feel guilty.

  “Handsome until I go scratch my back against that column like a bear in the forest on a hot summer day.” He sounded relieved, even pleased.

  “Have you ever seen such a bear?”

  “If you see such a bear, make sure you are downwind, so that he doesn’t see you.” He gave her a twirl. “My suit may be handsome, but your dress—lo
vely as it is—isn’t half as becoming as the one you wore on our first day on the road.”

  “The one that ended up covered in mud and me along with it.”

  “Yes, but it showed your grit.”

  “Grit. As in sand?”

  “Here we use ‘grit’ to signal character, mettle, or even gumption, as the Scots would say.”

  “More words from your thesaurus?”

  “It’s a big book. It has lots of words.”

  “It’s important that you know: I don’t require fancy clothes or other frivolous purchases, not when you find yourself in such reduced circumstances.” It was an awkward moment to raise the issue of finances, but she should have told him earlier who she was and what her resources were. If there was any hope for them to be together, she had to broach the subject.

  “Who told you my circumstances are . . . reduced?” His face grew distant.

  “You did, when you criticized Garrand Kent, as a no-good, no-account rancher with little sense and less land. And when you admitted that without Eva’s help, you would have starved this year.”

  “I have enough means to be here with you.” He spoke firmly, before his voice turned questioning. “Does it matter so much to you whether I have money?”

  “Yes, I mean, no. I have money. You don’t need to have it, if I do.”

  He said nothing.

  “You don’t know what it is like to have more money than others do,” she quickly added. “It changes things, relationships, people.”

  “I think I know.” He drew the words out slowly.

  She thought of Eva Payne’s log cabin where he had slept in the attic. “I never had a conversation with a man in England—an eligible man that is—who wasn’t somehow calculating my worth at the same time. And I wasn’t always wise enough to know that the desire they professed wasn’t for me, but was for my money.”

  “What matters in Texas is who you are and what you do. If you lost your money tomorrow, could you still be happy living with me in a cabin on the plains?”

  She paused, having never considered the question from that angle.

  He waited. “What are you going to say?”

  “I don’t think . . .” She searched for words to convey that as long as he was near her, she needed nothing more than him. But she hesitated too long.

  “You don’t think so.” Asher looked wounded. “I came here to tell you I love you. And you don’t think . . .”

  She opened her mouth to clarify, but before she could, Chase Johnson tapped her on the shoulder

  “This lady promised me a dance.” Chase pressed his way between them.

  “Of course.” Asher dropped her hand and stepped back. “We’re finished here.”

  And he was gone.

  The next moment Lilly was at her side, guiding her out of the ballroom.

  * * *

  She dressed for the Christmas service as if by rote, choosing a perfectly respectable dress of the sort she’d worn as Ian’s housekeeper. As soon as she’d arrived in Dallas, her mother had commissioned three pretty dresses for her, and Eugenie had agreed, imagining she would wear them for Asher. When she left Dallas, she would give them to one of the maids, unworn.

  Following Mrs. Cockrell and her mother, she walked to the church—a fine Methodist edifice for which Mrs. Cockrell had donated the land. Dallas already had five churches, and all were full to celebrate Christmas morning. The minister was apparently engaging, but Eugenie couldn’t focus on his words. At the appropriate moments, she repeated the Apostles’ Creed and sang the hymns.

  As she sat beside her mother and the widowed Mrs. Cockrell, she could see her future returning to the one she’d imagined before she’d met Asher, before her weeks in the wildness of Texas had held out other possibilities.

  She would return to her cottage in England. She would be once more a pleasant churchwoman of no close family devoted to good works and the care of others. She had been satisfied with it before, if a little lonely, and she could be satisfied again. It would be enough again. It had to be.

  But even as she thought the words, she felt her heart, already shattered, break some more.

  After the service, Lilly was, as usual, sociable, talking to each and every member of the congregation. For the first time, Eugenie was grateful for her mother’s social good will. It saved her from having to make more than pleasantries.

  Luckily, everyone wanted to return home for their own celebrations. In the crowd of well-wishers, Eugenie easily slipped back to the hotel and to her room.

  She took up a place at her window. Hours later, she was still there, watching the road, knowing he wouldn’t be riding it to her.

  As the sun made its way across the afternoon sky, she knew she should dress for the St. Nicholas Christmas dinner. But she didn’t have the energy.

  Sometime later, she heard her mother’s voice at the door. “Eugenie. Eugenie. Let me in.” But she ignored her, and after a while her mother left her alone with her thoughts and losses.

  Eventually, her mother returned. “Eugenie, let us in.”

  When she didn’t respond, her mother added, “We’re opening the door.”

  She wasn’t surprised to hear the key turn the lock and the door open: Lilly could be very persuasive.

  But she couldn’t object, not when grief made breathing hard.

  Her mother entered, followed by Mrs. Cockrell, who closed the door behind them.

  “We were surprised not to see you at Christmas dinner after services. We thought to see if you were feeling ill.” Sarah’s voice was kind.

  “I . . .” Eugenie started to say she was well, but the gaping hole in her heart made her unable to speak the words. Instead she tried to change the subject. “The street has grown quieter as the day has progressed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this still.”

  “You should go to him.” The firmness in Sarah’s voice startled her.

  Eugenie shook her head. “He doesn’t want me.”

  Lilly put her hand on Eugenie’s arm. “Darling, he’s merely afraid, afraid of losing another woman he loves in this inhospitable land.”

  Eugenie said nothing, letting her mother believe that was the conflict between them. When Lilly folded her in her arms, she let herself accept her mother’s comfort.

  “I know that you’ve thought I was wrong to send his book to London without telling him. But now I hope you can see why: that book was his heart.”

  Eugenie pulled back to study her mother’s face. “When he said he wrote that book for Sadie, he meant you published his love letters, didn’t he? All the chapters were his letters to her about the places he’d visited and seen.” Eugenie brushed tears back. “Eva told me Sadie had bound them into a book, but she thought he’d burned it. How did you even get the manuscript?”

  Lilly and Sarah looked at each other, as if deciding what to say.

  “Sadie copied out the letters, retaining only the parts about Texas and leaving out all of the more personal sections,” Lilly spoke first. “She was surprised to find he had written so much. She asked us to read it to see if it was worth printing.”

  “She was considering offering sections to Mr. Pryor at the Dallas Herald. She’d even chosen a pseudonym, using the last names of men who died at the Alamo,” Sarah added.

  “When we told her that it should be a book instead, she was so pleased.” Lilly brushed a tear from her eyes. “She was thrilled to have it published. Knowing how little Asher likes being on display, she wanted to present it to him, all printed and bound, as a surprise.”

  Sarah touched Eugenie’s arm. “In all the time they were together, he never dressed up for a dance the way he did for you.”

  “He loves her still.” Eugenie shook her head sadly.

  “Do you love Judith still?” Lilly countered.

  “That’s different.”

  “Eugenie, we do not stop loving those we’ve lost.” Sarah’s face turned sad and wise. “Love isn’t a commodity that one must ration o
ut like grain in a famine or water in a drought. No, the more we love, the more we are capable of loving.”

  “He’ll always love Sadie, yes.” Lilly set her hand comfortingly on Eugenie’s shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean he can’t, doesn’t, also love you. And in that book, his loves exist simultaneously. For Sadie, the book recorded their courtship. For you, it offered a glimpse into his soul.”

  “That book is also a love letter to this land, to his home, with all its beauties and dangers,” Sarah added. “Asher has always been a bighearted man. As a Ranger, he was never interested in the glory or the fight. No, he wanted to care for the people of this land and protect them.”

  “When he lost Sadie, he lost the ability to see the beauty. The whole land became a dangerous place, not to be trusted or enjoyed.” Lilly paused. “But with you, he found that joy again.”

  “Do you love him?” Sarah asked the question quietly.

  “How can you ask such a question? I’ve only known him for a few weeks.” Eugenie shrugged.

  “But you know his heart; you’ve seen it in how he treats people, his friendships, his regard in the community . . .” Sarah’s voice trailed off.

  “And in his words. You loved his book, the feeling intellect you found there, before you knew Asher wrote it.” Lilly knelt down before her daughter. “Can you honestly tell us that you do not love him?”

  “No, I can’t.” Eugenie let the tears fall on her cheeks without wiping them away. “But I hurt him, and he said we were finished. He won’t come back. If I were Sadie, he would have come back.”

  “That’s true.” Sarah said the sentence with an absolute conviction that would have crushed Eugenie’s heart, if she had any heart left. “Every love is different. Every love brings out different strengths and weaknesses in us.” She placed her hand on Eugenie’s shoulder. “Asher treats you as his equal. No different from how he treats Rafe or John or Eva. He treats you as someone he admires and respects. So you are right: if your words sent him away, he will not return.”

  “But you can go to him.” Lilly squeezed Eugenie’s hand. “I’ve never been one to apologize, or even to forgive. If you follow my example, you’ll let him go, despite how much you love him. You’ll wait for the next mail coach to Matagorda Bay, then you’ll be gone, traveling back to your safe life in England. Or you can follow Judith’s example and act.”