Coming Home for Christmas (19 page)

W
ill filled out the unknown mother's death certificate, attached it to the blanket shroud in the baggage car and arrived in the dining car in time to eat French toast doused with maple syrup. He felt almost too shy to look at either woman, then reminded himself not to be a fool in the presence of two capable ladies. They passed Olympia back and forth between them as they ate.

No one made better French toast than the Overland Limited. Or maybe he was famished from all that lovemaking. He decided, for once in his life, not to overthink the matter and just enjoy the pleasure of good food and whatever stimulus had come his way before breakfast.

Still, he worried. Will put down his fork. “Ladies, are we all agreed that Olympia is not going to any orphanage in Omaha?”

They nodded; even Olympia looked interested. Safe in Francie's generous grasp, she regarded him solemnly across the condiment bottles and then burped.

“
Really,
Olympia,” he commented. “How will we pull this off?”

As it turned out, the conductor made it easy. Clipboard at the ready, he met them in the passenger car, once breakfast was over and the upper and lower berths had become seats again. Francie held Olympia close, crooning to her. It touched Will to observe that Francie and the infant both had the same long eyelashes. Given time, no one would know they weren't mother and daughter.

“Your wife has taken quite a fancy to the baby,” the conductor commented, as Will signed one more paper.

My wife.
“Yes, she has,” he said without hesitation. “Mrs Wharton loves children.”

“Captain, may I depend on you and Mrs Wharton to see that the child gets to the proper official, once we detrain? I have to catch the next train heading west, and must leave it to you, if you're willing, to find an orphanage.”

“No fears,” Will replied. He wondered—as he had not wondered since his youth in Dumfries—if the Christmas Star was also a lucky star. After all, it had brought his mother a new husband, and him a father, so many years ago. He smiled to himself, also thinking of his grandparents and their amazing courtship in California. “We'll do what's right.”
We will, indeed,
he thought, his heart full, as he looked into Francie Coughlin's eyes and saw answers to all his questions about life and love and more practical things. Funny that it had taken him a year to realize he was in love.

It was a simple matter to watch as a security man accepted the shrouded body. Will initialed another document, then they walked away from the unknown
woman, the baby safe in Francie's arms. Francie had lingered a moment beside the shrouded body on its stretcher. She touched her fingers to Olympia's lips and then to the blanket shrouding the baby's mother. He swallowed and turned away.

He turned away in time to see Nora Powell hesitating on the platform, her eyes on the westbound train that the conductor was boarding. Will took her arm, relieved that she did not shake him off and run. His arm went around her then as she turned her face into his military greatcoat and sobbed.

“Nora, just let us take you to Utley,” he said, holding her close, not so much from fear that she would bolt, but that she needed something solid, which he knew he was now. “We're so close to Iowa.”

“Suppose there is no one from my family to meet me?” she asked, after he wiped her eyes with his handkerchief.

A day ago, he wouldn't have had an answer for her, but that was a day ago. “Then you'll come with us to Philadelphia,” he told her, without any hesitation. “You'll help my mother in her work with immigrants and I'll guarantee you one or two Whartons who are also attorneys.”
Provided anyone is still speaking to me, after I jilt Madeline Radnor,
he thought. “There are ways to get your children back.”

 

None of them seemed to take a breath as they saw their luggage transferred to an Iowa short line and then took their seats for the trip to Utley. Not until the train was under way did they all take a deep breath, then look at each other and laugh, conspirators in baby snatching.

That seemed to be the last smile Nora possessed. As
the day wore on, she withdrew into herself, staring out of the window, probably seeing nothing of the landscape and everything of the children she had left behind. Only Francie's hand in his kept Will's own doubts at bay. When she transferred her hand to his thigh—so proprietary—he felt only bliss, followed by an urge to find another lower berth, or, failing that, an accommodating linen closet; he was agile.

“Do you think someone will meet her?” Francie whispered.

He didn't know what to say. Nora had no place in either world; she wasn't quite Indian and she wasn't quite white now, either.

“Hard to say. There's such a stigma against white women returning from Indian camps.” He tightened his grip on Francie in sudden, irrational fear at the idea of Francie in such a situation. What would a woman do? He knew that some officers' wives had been told by their husbands to save a final bullet for themselves, if they were ever caught between garrisons by a war party. He glanced at beautiful Francie, trying to see the matter through a woman's eyes, even though he knew he could not.

“In the same situation, what would
you
do?” he asked.

Francie knew immediately what he meant. “What Nora did,” she said finally. “I want to live.” She squeezed his hand. “Would…would you want me back?”

His eyes filled with tears. “Do you even have to ask?” The smile she gave him said the world.

It seemed a strange time to propose, but he did, and found himself with two fiancées, one he was supposed to marry in a week, and the other one holding a baby
that everyone on the train assumed belonged to them.
How on earth did this happen to someone as prosaic as I am?
he asked himself. He had never given his mother or stepfather a lick of trouble; now he was about to become Maddy Radnor's worst nightmare and an embarrassment to his relatives, possibly as Nora Powell was surely an embarrassment to hers.

What did bother him was the deepening frown between Nora's brows and the way she kept twisting her hands until her knuckles were white. He accepted the sleeping Olympia when Francie moved across the space between the row and sat beside Nora. In another moment she cradled Nora in her arms, much as she had protected Olympia.
Bless your heart,
he thought.

Shadows lengthened across the land as the train rumbled on the Iowa short line. Snow fell in fits and starts, and he worried. He began to dread the moment when the conductor would call “Utley,” and everything would come down to the kindness or cruelty of Nora Powell's relatives, the ones who had stayed behind when she, her parents and brothers had decided to cross a continent and seek a better life.

 

They were reluctant to move when the train stopped. Nora had no luggage beyond a bedroll, but Will had asked the baggage handler to remove his and Francie's, too. If they had to stay a few days in Utley to see the outcome, he wanted to have his razor with him.

The other travelers were greeted by loved ones and led away. By some instinct, he and Francie knew to stand on either side of Nora. Maybe they wanted to shield her from the reality that no one wanted her. Maybe they wanted to make sure she did not bolt from
the platform, going where, he had no idea, because she had nowhere to run.

Soon it was just the three of them, plus Olympia, on the platform. The wind had picked up and was swirling snow around. Everyone had hurried away, eager to get indoors and out of the deepening cold. “Well, never mind,” Will said at last, touching Nora's elbow. “We'll find a hotel and keep going in the morning. There's a place for you, Nora. Please believe me.”

“I do,” she said finally, her voice faint. “It's hard, though.”

“I imagine it is,” Will replied, putting his arm around her. “Please…”

“Unhand my niece, young man!”

Startled, Will turned around to see a tall, angular woman bearing down on him, shaking an umbrella. He held his hands up. “Ma'am, are you…?. are you…?”

“Cat got your tongue?” she snapped, wielding the umbrella like a sword until he stepped back. She turned to Nora and her glare softened into something remarkably like love, as far as Will could tell.

“Nora Powell, you dear one,” she said softly. “I'm your Aunt Nellie Follensbee. I didn't mean to be late, but your uncle and his nitwit wife tried to argue me out of coming to get you. Passel of fools.” She gently tucked her arm through Nora's, shouldering Will aside. “Let's go home.”

N
ellie Follensbee took them all home, cooing over Olympia, who slept in Francie's arms, then leading them to a waiting conveyance, where a big man in a snow-covered overcoat sat in the box and shivered.

Nora introduced them to her aunt as Captain and Mrs Wharton, and Will couldn't think of a reason to contradict her. Maybe he was too tired to launch into a lengthy explanation that he didn't care to make anyway. Francie did nothing, either, beyond giving him a sideways glance that spoke volumes.

It wouldn't have mattered if Nora had introduced them as Attila and Mrs Hun; Nellie only had eyes for her niece. “You're named after me, you know,” she told Nora as they sat close together in the hack. “We're both Elinores.”

“I barely remember you,” Nora confessed, as the hack came to a stop in front of a modest house with a wide porch on the edge of town.

“Doesn't matter. I remember
you,
” was Nellie's
comment as she helped her niece from the conveyance. “Your mother was my little sister.” She dabbed at her eyes. “I have worried about you for thirteen years, and now you're home.”

The words were so honest and so kind that Will felt tears in his own eyes.
It's not that simple,
he thought, as he willingly let himself be dragged into the orbit of Nellie Follensbee's generous hospitality.

Generous, it was. Nellie took Francie to a back bedroom with Olympia, where the redoubtable aunt made a bed for the baby in a bureau drawer. Will followed, just to lean against the doorjamb and watch with Nora. “She's going to wonder why our baby is wearing a Union Pacific sheet and fragment of a blanket,” he whispered. “Maybe I'd better intervene before she thinks—ahem—Mrs Wharton and I are wretched, unprepared parents.”

He kept his explanation short, mainly because Olympia was starting to make those sounds peculiarly her own that he already identified with hunger. As Aunt Nellie listened, her eyes wide, he told of the desperate surgery in the immigrant car and their unwillingness to consign so sweet a newborn to some orphanage in Omaha, even if there was one.

“Perfectly understandable,” Nellie said in her crisp voice. “I would have done the same thing.” She gestured to her niece. “Nora, you are probably more agile than I am. Upstairs in the attic is a whole trunkful of your own baby clothes. Let's pay a visit.”

Veterans now of the care and feeding of Olympia, Will traded a soiled Union Pacific napkin for a clean one while Francie prepared the proper bottle they had acquired in Omaha. In a moment she was sitting in the
armchair, stockinged feet propped on the bed, while Olympia dined.

Will sat on the bed, leaning back against the bedstead. Francie lifted her feet into his lap and he massaged them. “Do we dare hope Nora will be all right?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

He might as well have asked if the moon was made of cheese, for all the attention Francie paid him. She had that look of supreme contentment on her face, one he had seen after most of his deliveries. Olympia had captured Francie's little finger in her tiny grip and Francie stared at her in awe.

“During full moons I turn into a werewolf named Cecil,” he said softly. Francie nodded.

She paid him no attention as he watched Olympia's proprietary grip and then Francie's lovely face. A year ago, when Francie had first come to Fort Laramie, he had been mildly amused by her abundance of little freckles. Now all he wanted was the leisure to count each one and maybe kiss it. He knew that under her glorious red hair, much brighter than his, was a brain both shrewd and equal to his own. He might have known Madeline Radnor for years, but as Will watched the woman he loved, he knew Mary Francis Coughlin was worth the upcoming scandal.

“I won't hold you to that proposal, you know.”

He gazed at her. “I won't retract it.”

She gave him a wistful smile. “You know better than I do that a gentleman doesn't jilt a lady for the granddaughter of a bog Irishman.”

“This one does,” he replied.

“At least think about it,” she said, moving her feet
from his lap because she heard Nora and her aunt returning.

Thoughtful, Will joined them in the kitchen, leaving Francie to get Olympia to sleep. He sat at the table as Nora sorted baby clothes and told her aunt about life with the Ogalala Sioux. He had to hand it to Aunt Nellie; there were no clucks of dismay or looks of disgust at the life her niece had been forced to lead for thirteen years. He saw only genuine interest and then real dismay that she had a young niece and nephew motherless and fatherless at the Spotted Tail Agency near Camp Robinson.

“Captain Wharton thinks I need to get a lawyer,” Nora said as she folded and refolded a small mound of nightgowns and receiving blankets.

“We have those in Utley,” Nellie said, taking her niece's hand and holding it to stop her restless agitation. “What we need is political influence, but no one's ever heard of Utley.”

“I can furnish that,” Will told them. “My family knows a few people in Washington.” He knew he had said enough. No need to tell them now that his stepfather was related to the vice-president's wife, and that he used to spend part of each school vacation in the home of the Secretary of the Treasury. “When Francie and I return to Fort Laramie, I'll go to Camp Robinson and see what I can do. I'll warn you that we might not get anywhere, but we can try.”

Nora was silent a long moment. She smiled faintly when Francie joined them at the table, then shyly pushed the little pile of clothing toward her. Francie took them and kissed Nora's forehead.

Nellie took her niece's hand again. “Since we are
indulging in plain speaking, don't worry about your reception here in Utley, my dearest. This is a kind town. There will be some looks, and maybe some whispers, but time will pass.”

“My other aunt and uncle…”

“…are nincompoops,” Nellie said. “We just have to be brave a little bit longer.”

 

Will thought about her words as he shivered through a quick wash in the lavatory and returned to bed in a nightshirt. A soft bed in a peaceful town was a far cry from last night's anguish in the immigrant car and he realized how weary he was. He knew he could have offered to sleep on the rump-sprung sofa in the room, but not when Francie had been so kind as to turn down the coverlet on what must be his side of the bed.

“No one's going to need you tonight. There's no emergency,” was all Francie said as she gathered him close. He was asleep almost before she finished the sentence.

 

He had been dimly aware when she got up once to feed Olympia around two, and again as dawn began to gradually lighten the room. He lay on his back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, comfortably warm. When Francie took off her nightgown and returned to bed, he wasn't the man to turn down such an invitation. They made love as quietly as they could, considering that he could hear Nellie snoring in the next room.

“Francie, I love you,” he whispered, his arms around her. “It's funny. All I wanted to do on this Christmas
trip home was read my stupid medical journals. Maybe I owe Captain Hunsaker something. Do you love me?”

She nodded. “It's probably not the smartest thing either of us ever did.” She moved a little and made herself more comfortable at his side. “Do you know why I was going home to Brooklyn?”

“Call me self-centered. I never thought to ask.”

“My brothers had arranged for me to meet a nice Irishman, a butcher from Killarney. They knew I would like him. ‘You're thirty years old, Mary Frances,' they told me. ‘Time you found a man.'” She raised up on one elbow. “Am I older than you?”

“Nope. I still have two years on you and I think I can take you in a fair fight.”

Francie made a face and kissed his chest.

He chuckled. “Maybe we should introduce your butcher to my fiancée.” He kissed the freckle beside her mouth. “One down. Thousands to go.”

“This really isn't funny,” Francie told him, massaging his stomach to soften the blow.

“I know. Do that lower.”

“No! We have to catch a train.”

He sighed. “Killjoy. What we really have to do is follow Nellie's advice and be brave a little longer. My family has good luck at Christmas.”

What about Maddy's family?
he thought, as Francie searched for her nightgown.
Do they have good luck at Christmas, too, or am I the worst cad in all thirty-eight states?