Authors: Brianna Lee McKenzie
“No thank you,” Linda said with a smile. While she walked away, she said, “We need some things from the market.”
Caid watched the woman skirt around the velvet curtain with a flurry of fabric before he told his hostess, “What a proficient servant she is.”
Greta’s expression was one of puzzlement for an instant. Then she laughed and corrected, “Oh, she’s not a servant. She’s part of the family. She’s just helping me while I am healing. Buck took her in years ago. We don’t expect her to do the chores but she does them in return for her room and board. When I am healed, she’ll probably still insist that I allow her to continue as she has been. The quarrel will keep us playfully bantering for years!”
She leaned closer so that she could whisper, “Linda is a Godsend. But never tell her that. She is proudly humble.”
Caid whispered his question, “Why does she call you Mrs. Greta?”
“That is what she calls me,” Greta answered, raising her shoulders. “I can’t get her to call me just Greta. I guess it is her way of showing that she respects me.”
“She sounds like a good friend to have,” Caid said as he turned his head toward the kitchen to make sure that Linda could not hear their conversation.
Greta nodded with a smile. Then she leaned back in her chair and lifted her brow to ask, “So tell me, Caid, what has kept you from finding us?”
“Blizzards, boys who wanted a brawl and inadequate maps,” he answered with more than a little ire in his voice. He leaned toward her and put his forearms on the table before he said, “Now tell me about Marty. What has kept her busy while I was gone?”
He was hinting that Greta might know something about why Marty had chosen to ignore him when he had gone to see her. But just as Greta began to speak, Linda entered carrying a heavy silver tray laden with the appropriate accoutrements for a proper taking of tea.
“She’s a teacher at the school,” Greta said with a serene smile as she poured a cup of tea on the small table.
Caid watched her tilt the silver tea pot over a china cup and he noticed something very different about her and it must have been this change in her that had made him think that she was Marty earlier. Greta had gained some weight and her face was filled out. Her cheeks were no longer hollow and her eyes did not sink into their sockets as much as they had before. Her long red hair flowed in a cascade around her shoulders and she was all aglow, almost radiant as she smiled at him and handed him the cup.
He heard her saying, “She moved to the boarding house after Buck and I got married.”
“Buck?” Caid asked with a brow raised in question as he gazed upon the woman who had certainly healed and now seemed to blossom with some secret therapeutic quality.
“He found us in the cave a day after you left us and he took us to his cabin where he operated on my leg and saved my life,” she explained before she took a sip of tea.
“Operated?” Caid asked with brows flying in confusion.
“Buck is a doctor,” she told him. “Isn’t it funny how a doctor who lived in the mountains found us and saved my life?”
“Funny,” Caid said without laughing. “Lucky is more like it.”
Finally, he realized that Buck was the Comanche boys’ father but he did not ask Greta if he was correct in the assumption because she interrupted his thoughts.
“Yes, we were lucky,” she said. “But Daniel was not. You see, he was killed by Indian boys, Buck’s sons.”
“I know,” he said with remorse filling his heart that he had left that poor boy to defend the two women and he had been killed doing just that. “Hunts-with-a-knife and Rising Sun,” he said almost to himself, for they had told him of the incident.
“Yes,” she said with a perplexed expression. “But, they tell me that Daniel had tried to shoot them first.”
She tilted her head slightly before she asked, “Do you know them?”
“Let’s just say that we’ve met,” he said, not wanting to change the subject just yet.
“It was all a misunderstanding,” Greta said as she sipped on the cup. “Poor Daniel. Anyway, Buck and ‘the boys’, as he calls them, took us to the cabin but we couldn’t stay because a blizzard was coming. They brought us here where we have lived ever since. Well, until we got married two months ago and that is when Marty moved to Josie’s House.”
“I saw her there at the boarding house,” he said. “She didn’t see me, though.”
“She misses you terribly!” Greta declared to him as she touched a fingertip to his forearm. “You should have called out to her.”
“I was a little confused at the time,” he said and he apologized for the kiss that had sent him into a bewildered circle back to the woman whom he had inadvertently violated.
“There was no harm done,” she assured him with a smile. “It was a good thing that Buck wasn’t home or he’d have attacked you.”
“Like those two Comanche braves did?” Caid asked with sudden anger.
She sucked in a breath of surprise before she asked, “They attacked you?”
“It was all a misunderstanding, as you say,” Caid said with a wave of his hand. “It seems those two react first and ask questions later,” Caid mused aloud. Then he continued, “We eventually worked it out and they bandaged me up and stayed with me until I healed. But it was almost two months until the snow started melting before I could make my way here.”
“I’m sure that Marty will be glad to see you,” Greta assured him with a tender smile.
“I hope so,” he said with his head lowered in worry that she had forgotten her promise to him.
“Are you going to the Spring Fling tonight?” she asked. Then she explained exactly what a Spring Fling was, “It’s a dance, a cotillion.”
“I didn’t know there was one,” he said. “Will Marty be there?”
“I’m sure she will be,” Greta said cheerfully. “Her students are sponsoring it in order to raise money and she has to be a chaperone.”
“Then I’ll be there,” Caid said with finality in his voice. Then he asked her, “Will you and—Buck was it—be going?”
Greta ducked her head with sheepish pride before she said, “I won’t be. My leg is still healing. Besides, I am with child and I have to keep quiet. No excitement for me!”
“Well, congratulations!” Caid said in genuine joy for her as he rose to hug her. “I’m sure you’ll get all the excitement you can handle when that little one comes.”
“I hope so,” Greta said, and then a sad expression crossed her face as she thought aloud, “I just wish my first little one was here.”
Caid was reminded again that he had left her daughter with Elsa at Fort Concho and he promised her, “I’ll go back to get Sera Dear now that the snow is gone.”
Greta squeezed his arm with appreciation before she told him, “Not before you and Marty settle things. She loves you. You must know that.”
“I am beginning to wonder,” he sighed with exasperation. “We’ll see tonight, I suppose.”
He excused himself and went back to the hotel to freshen up before the dance. While he sat in the tub, soaking in the warm water, he could think of nothing else but Marty and how she would throw herself into his arms and how their relationship would be back to the way it was before they were separated. Then, he dressed in a new suit of clothes, combed his curly black hair, shaved the two-day-old beard from his face and then stood in front of the mirror in his hotel room to admire his handiwork. What woman in her right mind could resist such a handsome fellow, he asked the man in the mirror with a cocky smile. In a perplexed answer, a dark brow raised high above deep blue eyes that swam with longing for Marty’s loving arms.
****
She was dressed in a silk gown the color of aquamarine, not quite blue and not quite green. The fabric reminded her of the ocean that she had crossed with her family many years ago. The color that she favored more, though, was the deep blue silk that she had toyed with the idea of buying a few weeks ago but someone had bought most of it so she went with her second choice.
She looked in the mirror at the dressing table while Josie watched her twirl around to check the fit. The older woman smiled proudly at her handiwork before she said, “My, my, don’t you just look like a regal porcelain doll?”
“All thanks to you,” Marty told her friend with a hug.
“Awe, I didn’t do much,” Josie replied with a cluck of her tongue. “A stitch here, a stitch there…”
“Josie, you made the whole gown—even the beautiful trim!” Marty argued while she ran her hand over the ornate trim at her neckline, which dipped to reveal the impressive swell of her breasts. “You are a remarkable seamstress!”
“I’m afraid I’ve lost the skill that I used to have,” Josie argued with a shake of her head.
“Not so! Why, I would have paid you handsomely for this, but you insisted on it being a gift,” Marty said with an expression that suggested aggravation.
“And I would not accept a penny for any of the work that I did,” Josie replied with her arms crossed over her ample breasts. “I don’t charge my friends for something that I do out of love.”
“You should make dresses and sell them again.”
“And where would you propose I sell these wares?”
“Why not Tyree’s store? You used to sell them there before…”
“Before that hound dog bought it. The day he took it over was the day I stopped sewing and I gave all of the dresses that I had made to the theater for costumes! I wouldn’t have my things hanging in that man’s store to save my own life!”
“Tyree’s not so bad,” Marty argued but her words were waved away with a plump palm.
“Not a syllable more about it! Now, let’s get your hair set. It’s almost six o’clock!”
“Aren’t you going to get ready?” Marty asked, to which Josie lifted her hefty shoulders as if it meant little to her what she looked like at a dance for youngsters.
“I’m just wearing some old frock,” she replied while she peered into the mirror at her reflection. “Not much will help this body anyway. Besides, no one will be looking at me. All eyes will be watching you!”
“I don’t know about that,” Marty argued. “I’m not going to the dance to be seen. I’m going so that I can keep an eye on the children. It’s my job as their teacher and mentor.”
“There won’t just be children there, you know,” Josie debated with a wink.
“I know, but I should just watch.”
“And waste this dress and all my marvelous work?”
Marty giggled and then hugged Josie again before she turned to look at herself in the mirror. “You definitely do marvelous work!”
She turned around again and said, “Now I’ll finish here. You go and get dressed. Wear that beautiful burgundy gown that you showed me! I’ll bet you look fetching in it.”
“I don’t know…”
“Please?”
“I’ll try it on and if it doesn’t fit, I’m wearing my church dress.”
“I can’t wait to see you in it!” Marty exclaimed with a clap of her hands.
“I’ll be digging up my corset, that’s for sure!” Josie quipped while she stepped toward the door. “There was a day when I was as trim as you are. Just like you, I had no need for such ridiculous foundation garments. Now, I’d be lucky to fit into a circus tent!”
“Nonsense!” Marty called as she left the room.
After she had piled her hair into a curly golden-brown mound on the top of her head and strategically placing baby’s breath flowers among the curls, Josie returned wearing the burgundy gown. Marty sucked air into her lungs in surprise before she walked toward her friend and cried, “You look beautiful, Josie. You truly do!”
“I can’t breathe!”
“Tiny breaths,” Marty instructed as she led her friend to the mirror. “See how beautiful you are?”
“Next to you, I’m horse apples,” Josie argued but her face lit up at the woman in the reflection.
Marty stepped sideways so that her visage was removed from the mirror’s frame so that Josie could look upon herself standing there alone. Then, she reached for Josie’s hand, assuring her, “I will be proud to accompany you to the cotillion.”
“Why did you turn down Tyree when he asked you?”
“I didn’t want to go with Tyree.”
“You’re still pining for your fiancé aren’t you?”
Marty nodded and sadly admitted, “I’m afraid that something has happened to him. Caid loves me. He wouldn’t leave me and never come to find me.”
“I’m sure he will,” Josie reassured her. “In the meantime, you have a wonderful time tonight. Kick your heels up, turn some heads and take a few turns on the dance floor.”
“It’s been so long since I have danced, I might have forgotten how to.”
“Naw, I didn’t forget how to sew.”
“You certainly didn’t!”
“Well, are you ready to break some hearts?”
Marty giggled and took Josie’s arm, walking with her to the door of her bedroom where they were forced apart by the doorway that would not accommodate both of them. Then she reclaimed her arm and they pranced down the stairs to the first floor of the house where they picked up their receptacles and then sauntered out the front door.
To their surprise, Tyree was waiting for them at the bottom of the steps with a guilty grin on his face.