A Creed Country Christmas (13 page)

“I stayed because that’s what I chose to do,” Tom said coldly.

Lincoln started back toward the house, and Tom fell into step beside him.

They walked in silence with nothing more to say.

T
HERESA
, B
ILLY
-M
OSES AND
D
AISY
were sound asleep in Mrs. Creed’s bed. Careful not to wake them, Juliana tucked the blankets in close and added wood to the fire in the stove.

She looked in on Gracie next, found her sleeping, too. Felt her heart seize with love for this child, the fruit of
another woman’s womb. It was a dangerous thing, caring so much, but it was too late. Just as it was with Daisy and Billy-Moses, Theresa and Joseph.

Juliana adjusted Gracie’s covers and tiptoed out into the corridor.

In Lincoln’s room, she lit a lamp. Slowly undressed, took her own nightgown from her satchel and put it on. After drawing a deep breath, she pulled back the covers and climbed into bed.

There, she waited.

Lincoln had promised to wait until she felt ready to give herself to him. That should have lessened her fears, but it didn’t, because it wasn’t the prospect of his lovemaking that frightened her most. It was her own desire to give herself up to him with total abandon.

He came in quietly, with the smell of the outdoors on his clothes—snow, pine, fresh, cold air. Feigning sleep, she watched through her eyelashes as he lowered one suspender, then the other.

“I know you’re awake,” he told her. “Most folks don’t hold their breath when they’re sleeping.”

Juliana huffed out a sigh and opened her eyes.

After looking down at her for a long moment, he
chuckled and reached to extinguish the lamp. “Move over, Mrs. Creed,” he said. “I’m going to need more than an inch of that mattress.”

Juliana scooted closer to the wall, her heart pounding. Lincoln was not going to force himself on her, she knew that if little else. He wouldn’t touch her in any intimate way without her permission.

She ought to relax.

But she couldn’t. What did married people say to each other at night when they got into bed?

He continued to undress. Dear God, did the man sleep naked? He didn’t seem the sort to don a nightshirt.

She tried to take her thoughts in hand, but they wouldn’t be governed. Instead, they scattered in every direction like startled chickens, squawking and flapping their wings.

Sure enough, she felt the bareness of his flesh, the hard warmth with its aura of chill.

He gave a long sigh. “Good night, Juliana,” he said.

They both lay sleepless in the dark for a long time, neither one speaking, careful not to brush against each other.

Juliana should have been relieved.

Instead, she bit her lower lip hard, and hoped he wouldn’t hear her crying.

L
incoln was on the range the next morning, having bid the Reverend Dettly farewell, his muscles aching from a long night of self-restraint, wanting Juliana and not taking her, when Wes rode up, looking as rumpled and dissolute as ever. The cattle had been fed and Lincoln was there alone, he and his horse, just looking at the herd and wondering if those critters were worth all the grief they caused him.

“Came to get my mule,” Wes said. “Tom told me you were out here.”

There were bulging bundles tied where his saddlebags should have been. Gifts for Gracie and the other children, no doubt—Wes and Kate were always generous at Christmas and on birthdays, having no kids of their own.

Lincoln didn’t say anything. Wes had known all along about Josiah’s first wife, Micah’s mother, and he’d never bothered to raise the subject. Now, after talking to Tom, he probably meant to make some kind of speech.

“A wire came for Miss Mitchell,” Wes said, surprising him. “I thought I’d better bring it out here.”

“She’s not ‘Miss Mitchell’ anymore,” Lincoln said, his tone flat and matter-of-fact. “I married her yesterday.”

Wes gave a bark of pleased laughter at the news. “So
that’s
why I met the reverend on the road out from town this morning,” he said. “Congratulations, you lucky son of a gun.”

“Thanks.” He gave the word a grudging note.

Wes pulled a yellow envelope from the inside pocket of his coat, squinting against the glare of sunshine on snow. Watched as Lincoln tucked away the telegram without looking at the face of it.

“It’s from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Lincoln,” Wes said quietly.

Trouble, of course—telegrams rarely brought good news. Lincoln swallowed and braced himself for whatever was coming. He’d been enduring things for so long, toughing them out, that he’d learned to dig in whenever a problem appeared. “You’d damn well better not have read it,” he said.

“I didn’t have to,” Wes answered easily. “The telegraph operator told me what it says. By now, half the town knows that that Indian Agent Philbert means to show up in Stillwater Springs some time before New Year’s and stir up a ruckus. The new Mrs. Creed is out of a job for sure, but I don’t suppose that matters now, anyhow, what with the wedding and all.”

Even though he’d expected something like that, the knowledge buffeted Lincoln like a hard wind. Made him shift in the saddle. “What else?” he asked, still avoiding his brother’s gaze.

“He’s bound on taking the kids back to Missoula,” Wes said.

Lincoln closed his eyes. Didn’t speak.

He’d get Joseph and Theresa on their way back to North Dakota before Philbert showed up, no matter what he had to do. Take them to the train depot at Missoula
if it came to that, and put them onboard himself. Juliana had prepared herself for that particular parting—it was best for them to be with their own folks—but things were different with the two little ones. Orphans, the both of them. Somewhere along the line, Juliana had taken to mothering Daisy and little Bill, and letting go would be a hard thing, for her and for them.

“Tom told you the family secret, I hear,” Wes said, when Lincoln had been silent too long to suit him.

Lincoln turned his head then. Looked straight at his brother. “Why didn’t
you
tell me, Wes?”

“Ma asked me not to,” Wes replied with the solemnity of truth.

Still, Lincoln had to challenge him. “Since when are you so all-fired concerned with doing what Ma wants?”

Wes’s smile was thin, and a little on the self-disparaging side. “I chopped down a Christmas tree and hauled it out here on a mule’s back because she told me to, didn’t I?”

“You did that for Gracie.”

Wes sighed, stood in the stirrups for a moment, stretching his legs. “Mostly,” he admitted gruffly. Then, after a long time, he added, “Things weren’t always so sour between Ma and me, Lincoln. You remember how it was
after Dawson died—she was half-mad with the sorrow. Doc Chaney had to dose her up with laudanum. I was pretty torn up myself—we all were—but I felt sorry for her. I wanted to do what I could to help, and God knew there wasn’t much.”

Lincoln took that in without speaking. He remembered how his ma used to howl with grief some nights, during those first weeks after the shooting, and how his pa had slammed out of the house when she did.

Saddle leather creaked as Wes fidgeted, leaning forward a little, looking earnest. “There was another reason I didn’t tell you,” he said, sounding reluctant and a little irritated.

“What was that?” Lincoln bit out, in no frame of mind to make things easy for his brother. Whatever Wes’s reasons for keeping that secret, he, Lincoln, had had as much right to know as anybody.

“You tend to hold on to things you ought to let go of,” Wes said, reining his horse around, toward the main house, looking back at Lincoln over one shoulder. “People, too.”

“Beth.” Lincoln sighed the name.

“Beth,” Wes agreed. Another silence fell between them, lengthy and punctuated only by snorts and hoof-shuffling from their horses and the chatter of the passing
creek. “Of the four of us, Lincoln, you’re the most like Pa. Tougher than hell, and too smart for your own good or anybody else’s. You’ve held on to this ground, just like he did, and made it pay, in good times and bad. But you take after the old man in a few other ways, too. If I hauled off and swung a shovel at your head—and I’ve wanted to more than once—it would be the shovel that fractured, not your skull.”

“That was quite a sermon, Wes.”

“Don’t get out of your pew yet, because I’m not finished. Right now, because you’re still young, that stubborn streak serves you pretty well—you probably think of it as ‘determination.’ Trouble is, over time, it might just harden into something a lot less admirable.”

As much as Lincoln would have liked to disregard the warning, he couldn’t. It made too much sense. He’d mourned Dawson in a normal way, but since Beth had died, he’d boarded over parts of himself, knowing it would hurt too much if he let himself care.

“What do you suggest I do?” he asked moderately, just to get it over with. Wes was going to tell him anyhow; he’d worked himself up into a pretty good lather since talking with Tom.

“You remember how different Pa was when we were little? How he’d haul one or another of us around on his shoulders, let us follow him practically every place he went? How he laughed all the time, even though he worked like a mule? Back then, he wouldn’t have believed it if somebody had told him he’d wind up turning his back on all of us, but he did. You know why, Lincoln? Because he decided to go right on loving a dead woman, when he had a living, breathing one right in front of him. It took a while, but that decision—that one bone-headed decision—poisoned his mind, and eventually, it poisoned his soul, too.” Wes paused for a few moments, remembering, maybe gathering more words. “Never mind Juliana. She’s prettier than Ma was, and she’s got a lot more spirit. She’ll be all right, even if you’re fool enough to keep your heart closed to her. But what about Gracie? She’s already got a mind of her own, and she’s only seven—what do you think she’ll be like at sixteen? Or eighteen? She’ll make a lot of choices along the way, and I guarantee you aren’t going to like some of them. You’re bound to butt heads—I suppose that’s normal—but if you aren’t careful, you might find yourself treating your daughter the same way Pa did us. Do you want that?”

Lincoln’s throat had seized shut. He shook his head.

Wes had finally run down, having reeled out what he had to say. He nudged at his horse’s sides with the heels of his boots and rode back toward the house to drop off the things stuffed into those bags tied behind his saddle and collect his mule.

Conscious of the telegram in his pocket, Lincoln waited awhile before following.

J
ULIANA WAS CROSSING THE YARD
, returning from a brief visit to Rose-of-Sharon and baby Joshua, when she saw her brother-in-law leading his mule out of the barn. Tom, meanwhile, carried two burlap bags, stuffed full of something, toward the woodshed.

Because she liked Weston Creed, she changed course, smiling, and went to greet him.

His smile flashed, but his eyes were solemn, almost sad. “My brother,” he said, “is a lucky man.”

Juliana blushed. She wasn’t used to compliments; schoolmarms didn’t get a whole lot of them. “We’ve got two big turkeys for Christmas dinner,” she told him, feeling self-conscious. “I hope you’ll join us.”

He slipped a loop of rope around the mule’s neck and
paused to look toward the house. “Is Kate welcome, too?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he moved to stand beside his horse and tied the other end of the rope loosely around the horn of the saddle.

“Of course,” Juliana said.

“Do you know anything about her?” Weston asked, and while the inquiry sounded almost idle, Juliana knew it wasn’t.

“I suppose she’s your wife.”

He chuckled, but it was a bitter sound, void of amusement. “Something like that,” he said. “Kate owns the Diamond Buckle Saloon. She and I have been living in sin for some time now.”

“Oh,” Juliana said. She was intrigued at the prospect of meeting such a colorful personage, but perhaps she should have spoken to Lincoln before she’d issued the invitation.

“Yes,” Weston said wryly. “Oh.”

Juliana’s cheeks stung with embarrassment. When she’d asked Lincoln for permission to bathe Daisy and Billy-Moses the night before, he’d said the ranch house was her home, too, and she didn’t need his permission. She hoped that liberty extended to other things. “We’ll sit down to dinner around two o’clock,” she said. Since she wouldn’t
be roasting the turkeys, the hour was a mere guess. “But whatever time you and Kate arrive, we’ll be glad to see you.”

He rounded the horse to stand facing Juliana. His mouth, sensuous like Lincoln’s, twitched at one corner. “You do realize, Mrs. Creed, that the roof will surely fall in, either the instant Kate sets foot over the threshold or when my mother finds out?”

Even without meeting the woman, Juliana was a little afraid of Cora Creed. Just the same, she wasn’t one to let fear stop her from doing anything she thought was right. Raising her chin a notch, she replied, “I guess we’ll have to take that chance.”

Lincoln’s brother chuckled again, but this time, it sounded real. “Brave words,” he said. “But I think you might just mean them.”

“I never say anything I don’t mean, Mr. Creed.”

“Call me Wes,” he said, grinning now.

“Only if you agree to call me Juliana,” she retorted.

He leaned in, kissed her forehead. “Welcome to my brother’s life, Juliana,” he told her. “God knows, he needs you.”

Something made her look up then. She saw Lincoln approaching on horseback, a distant speck, moving
slowly. Her heart quickened at the sight. “What makes you say that?” she asked Wes.

Wes sighed, and after glancing back over one shoulder, favored her with a sad smile. “He’s lost a lot in his life. Beth, of course, and two babies. Pa and our brother Dawson. He’s a good man, Lincoln is, but he’s—well, he’s mighty careful with his heart, as a general rule.”

Juliana laid a hand to her chest; she had been too careful with her own heart, until Daisy and Billy-Moses and other special students had somehow gotten past the barriers.

Wes turned, stuck a foot in one stirrup and mounted the horse. After glancing in Lincoln’s direction once more, he said, “I’ll be going now. We’ve had a few words, my brother and I, and there will be more if I stay.” He tapped at his horse’s sides with the heels of his boots, tightened the rope to urge the mule into motion. “Unless there’s another blizzard,” he added, “Kate and I will be here Christmas Day.”

Juliana smiled, though she was a little troubled by talk of he and Lincoln “having words.” “Come early,” she said.

Wes nodded and started off, the mule balking at first, then trotting obediently along behind his horse.

Although it was sunny out, the weather was cold.
Juliana huddled inside one of her mother-in-law’s cloaks, hastily borrowed, and waited for her husband.

When he rode up to the barn, she approached, slowly at first, and then with faster steps.

The confession burst out of her. “I’ve asked Wes and Kate to come for Christmas dinner,” she said, all on one breath.

He swung down from the saddle, stood looking at her with amusement on his mouth and sadness in his eyes, just as Wes had done. “Did he accept the invite?” he asked.

She took a breath, let it out and nodded quickly.

He laughed then, and hooked one stirrup over the saddle horn, so he could unbuckle the cinch. “Well, Mrs. Creed,” he said, “you’ve succeeded where I failed, then. I’ve never been able to persuade Kate to set foot on this ranch, let alone sit down to Christmas dinner, and if she stays in town, so does Wes.”

Juliana took a single step toward him, stopped herself, reading the set of his face. “Something is wrong,” she said. “What is it?”

He went still for a long moment, then reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small yellow envelope.

Seeing it, Juliana felt her blood run cold. She was suddenly paralyzed.

Lincoln held out the envelope to her, and her hands trembled as she accepted it. Fumbled as she tried to unseal the flap.