A Creed Country Christmas (12 page)

Daisy, who loved baths, was on her feet in a moment. Billy-Moses’s small face took on an obstinate expression.

“I don’t
want
a bath,” he said, folding his arms.

Reverend Dettly turned from the sink, his big hands dripping with suds, smiling. It struck Juliana that his life was probably a very solitary one when he wasn’t preaching, but traveling from place to place and sleeping in people’s barns. No doubt he enjoyed evenings like this one, being around children and eating a home-cooked meal.

“This is not a question of what you want, Billy-Moses,” Juliana said firmly. “You
are
going to have a bath, and then you are going to bed. Period.”

“Are you going to sleep in Papa’s room again tonight?” Gracie asked innocently. This time, Theresa hadn’t been close enough to cover her mouth.

Juliana’s face flamed, and she couldn’t have looked at Reverend Dettly to save her very life. “Yes,” she said, because there was nothing else
to
say.

Lincoln had to pump and carry water to fill the boiler over the bathtub, and then it had to heat. When it was finally ready, Juliana bathed Daisy first with Theresa’s help, put her to bed and went in search of Billy-Moses.

By that time, Reverend Dettly had retired to the barn,
and Tom and Joseph to their shared room off the kitchen. Only Lincoln was there, seated at the table, reading a newspaper.

“Have you seen…?” she began.

“He’s hiding in the pantry behind the flour bin,” Lincoln said, taking in his harried bride. The front of the marvelous blue dress was soaked from Daisy’s happy splashing in the tub, and her hair was popping out of the braid like a frayed rope sprouting bristles.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Juliana answered, starting in that direction. Normally, she was not easily exasperated, but the day had been a long and eventful one, and it wasn’t over.

Lincoln leaned in his chair, caught hold of her hand and stopped her. Rising, he said, “I’ll do it. Brew yourself up a cup of tea. Ma likes the stuff, and there’s a tin of it around here somewhere.”

Juliana sank into a chair.

“Bill,” Lincoln said, approaching the pantry door. “Quit fooling around, now. It’s time to scrub you down a layer.”

Billy-Moses appeared in the pantry doorway, still looking petulant. “
Joseph
didn’t have to take a bath,” he protested.

“Reckon he’ll get around to it tomorrow sometime,” Lincoln said easily. Then he bent, hooked Billy-Moses around the waist with one bent arm and carried him through the kitchen.

Billy-Moses squealed with a little boy’s joy, kicking and squirming, and it was a sound Juliana had never heard him make before.

As soon as she was alone, Juliana folded her arms on the tabletop and rested her head on them.

Mr. Philbert would come, and soon. She could almost feel him bearing down on Stillwater Springs, on her, full of righteous wrath. How would she explain to Billy-Moses, only four, and Daisy, just three, that he would be taking them far away, handing them over to strangers? Would he even give her a
chance
to explain?

She stood slowly, crossed to the sink and pumped water into the teakettle, found the tin Lincoln had mentioned earlier and a yellow crockery pot. By the time the brew was ready, he’d returned to the kitchen, grinning, his shirtfront soaked with water.

“Bill’s been bedded down,” he said. “I’ve wrestled yearling calves with less fight in them.”

Juliana smiled. Here, then, was the reason Billy-Moses
hadn’t asked Gracie to spell out his whole name with her alphabet blocks earlier that evening; he’d wanted “Bill.” Because that was what Lincoln called him.

“Thank you,” she said, warming her hands around her cup of tea.

Lincoln poured lukewarm coffee for himself, drew back his chair and sat down. With a slight nod of his head, he answered, “You’re welcome, Mrs. Creed.”

Once again, the name soothed her, and conversely that very fact made her uneasy. “Do you think the reverend will be warm enough in the barn?”

“He’s bunking in between two bearskins, Juliana, and the animals put out a lot of body heat. The barn’s warmer than the house a lot of the time.”

Body heat. What an intriguing—and disturbing—term. She looked away, her tea forgotten.

And that was when Lincoln’s hand, calloused by years of ranch work, came to rest on hers. “Maybe you ought to turn in for the night,” he suggested.

She swallowed, nodded. Could not pull her hand out from under his, even—
especially
—when he began to stroke the backs of her knuckles with the rough pad of his thumb, setting her on fire inside.

Was this passion, this ache he aroused in her with the simplest touch of his hand?

Juliana was not prepared to find out.

“I’ll be along in a while,” Lincoln told her.

She stood.

He stood, too.

“Juliana?”

She met his gaze.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.

How
not
to be afraid? She’d never experienced anything more daring than John’s hand-patting and chaste pecks on the cheek during their brief and bland engagement.

She nodded and turned to leave.

L
INCOLN HAD LOST INTEREST
in the newspaper. The
Stillwater Springs Courier
came out once a week, if Wes got around to writing the articles and setting the type. As often as not, he didn’t—but he was a good writer when he had something to say, and Lincoln usually enjoyed his brother’s sly but often lethal wit. Hell, even some of the obituaries were funny, and the opinion pieces kept things stirred up around town.

With a sigh, Lincoln pushed the paper away and rose
from his chair. He carried his cup and Juliana’s to the sink and left them there, stood with his hands braced against the counter, staring out the window, looking past his own reflection and into the darkness.

Flakes of snow drifted down, and he wondered if they’d stick or melt away by morning.

He felt restless. He knew he wasn’t tired enough to lie down beside Juliana and keep his hands to himself. He’d wanted a wife—someone to share his bed, bear him more children, provide the motherly affection Gracie craved—but not one who touched his heart. No, he had not planned on that part.

Resigned, he went to the door, took his hat and coat from their pegs and put them on. Quietly left the house.

He moved past the privy, past the Gainers’ cabin, past the bunkhouse. The night air was cold, sweeping inside him somehow, scouring like a bitter wind.

He needed no lantern; even with the moon disappearing behind the clouds, enough light came through to illuminate the snow. Besides, he’d lived on this ranch all his life; he could have found any part of it with his eyes closed.

He reached the orchard—years ago, when they were
boys, he and Micah and Wes and Dawson had helped to plant those apple and pear trees—then made his way, sure-footed, over ground he knew as well as the back of his own right hand.

Beyond the orchard was the little cluster of gravestones and markers where his father, his brother, the two lost babies—and Beth—were buried.

He didn’t pause beside Josiah Creed’s grave, walked right past Dawson’s, too, even though he’d loved his brother.

Beth’s resting place was marked with a stone angel, now cloaked in snow.

Lincoln brushed off the shoulders and the wings with one hand. He crouched, ran his right forearm across his face. How many times had he come here, said goodbye to Beth? Sooner or later, there always seemed to be something more that wanted saying.

And she wasn’t even here.

Gracie believed her mother was in heaven.

Lincoln flat didn’t know where dead people went, or if they went anywhere at all. Most likely, though, the journey ended in a pine box under six feet of dirt, but of course he wouldn’t have said that to Gracie.

Graves weren’t really for the folks who’d passed on, he
supposed. They gave the ones left behind a place to go and remember, that was all.

“I got married today,” he said, feeling foolish, but needing to say the words all the same. They came out sounding gruff. “Her name is Juliana, and Gracie—Gracie wants to call her Mama.”

A raspy chuckle escaped Lincoln then. If that grave had been some kind of passageway between this world and the next, Beth would have clawed her way right up out of it and given him what-for.

“I loved you,” he went on, sober again. “I probably always will. But I’ve been too lonesome, Beth, and so has Gracie. I need somebody to wake up beside, somebody waiting when I come in off the range after a long day. I want Gracie to have a woman to look to so she doesn’t grow up to smoke cigars like Ma says she will. I know you can’t hear me, and wouldn’t like what I’ve got to say if you could, but I still had to say it.”

As he stood again, Lincoln wondered what he’d expected—an answer? Beth’s ghost, absolving him of his promise to leave his heart buried with her?

The snap of a branch in the nearby orchard alerted him that someone was approaching—as it had probably been
meant to do. He almost expected a specter, though he knew who had tracked him even before he saw Tom moving across the snowy ground toward him. If that old Indian hadn’t wanted him to hear, he wouldn’t have.

Lincoln waited, without speaking, as his friend drew nearer.

“She’s not here, Lincoln,” Tom said. “Beth is not here.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Lincoln demanded, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “Where
is
she, Tom? With the Great Spirit? Or down in that hole in the ground?”

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Tom asked reasonably. “Coming out here in the dark and the cold when you’ve got a pretty bride waiting back at the house? Is it because you didn’t count on
feeling
anything for Juliana?”

“I think Juliana is beautiful,” Lincoln said tersely. “I think she’s smart and brave, and I want her. But that’s
all
I feel, Tom. I loved my wife.”

“Your wife is dead.”

“So I hear.”

Tight-jawed, eyes flashing, Tom reached out with a palm and shoved hard at Lincoln’s chest, so he had to scramble to keep his footing. “Let Beth go,” he almost
growled. “Juliana doesn’t deserve to go through what your mother did.”

“What the hell is
that
supposed to mean?”

“It
means
, you damn fool, that your pa married your mother for pretty much the same reasons you married Juliana. He and Micah were alone after his first wife died, and he wanted to give the boy a mother. He never loved Cora, always mooning over his poor lost Mary, and your ma’s life was a misery because of it.”

Lincoln’s mouth dropped open. He took a second or two to get his jaw hinged right so it would shut again. It was the first he’d heard of any of this, and that chafed at something raw inside him. It also explained why Cora couldn’t keep the names of Micah’s four sons straight, why she never visited them in Colorado or even wrote them letters. Maybe it even explained why Micah had lit out for another state the way he had and never looked back, as far as Lincoln could tell.

“Why tell me this now?” he asked bitterly, but his mind was still reeling, still scrabbling for some kind of purchase. Micah was his father’s son, but not his mother’s? In that moment, he understood what folks meant when they said they’d had the rug pulled out from under them.

“Because you need to know it.”

“I would have appreciated somebody’s mentioning this before Micah left home for good,” Lincoln said, fighting down the old hurt. “I looked up to him. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. One day, he was just—gone.”

“Micah didn’t leave because things weren’t good between him and Cora. He left because he’d always had leaving in him.”

“And because his mother’s folks lived in Colorado,” Lincoln guessed.

“Yes,” Tom said.

Lincoln thrust out a sigh, felt a letting-go inside him. “Well, I don’t have to wonder what I did wrong anymore, I guess. Does Wes know all this?”

A nod. “He knows.”

“Am I the only one who didn’t?”

“Let it go, Lincoln. Wes is a little older. He overheard more, that’s all.”

“I suppose now you’re going to tell me my ma was so lonesome, you had to comfort her, and I’m
your
son, not Josiah Creed’s.” For a brief moment, Lincoln held his breath, hoping it was true.

Tom clenched a fist, looked as though he might throw
a punch. “If you were my son,” he said, through his teeth, “I’d have claimed you a long time ago. No woman ever loved a man more than your ma loved Josiah Creed. She bore him three healthy boys and raised the one he brought with him when they married. When Dawson was killed, Josiah told her it was her fault, because it was one of her kin that pulled the trigger. To the day he died, he never had a kind word for her.”

Lincoln closed his eyes for a long moment, let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “But
you
loved my mother all these years, didn’t you, Tom? That’s why you stayed.”