The Christmas Brides Read online

  “Hurry up!” Woodrow crowed. “Hurry up! No time like the present! Hurry up!”

  Lizzie chuckled. The Thaddingses had become dear friends to her and to Morgan—and so had Woodrow. Once, Mr. Thaddings had even brought the bird to the schoolhouse, and the children had been fascinated by his ability to repeat everything they said to him.

  The door opened, and Zebulon stood on the threshold. He wore a red silk smoking jacket, probably left behind by one of Clarinda’s clients, and held a pipe in one hand. “Come in,” he said. “Come in.”

  “Come in!” Woodrow echoed.

  Gratefully, Lizzie preceded Morgan into the warm house. Once, according to local legend, there had been paintings of naked people on the walls, but they were long gone.

  Woodrow hopped on his perch. “Lizzie’s here!” he cried jubilantly. “Lizzie’s here!”

  She laughed and, as Morgan closed the front door behind them, Woodrow flew across the entry way to land on Lizzie’s shoulder.

  “Lizzie’s pretty,” the bird went on. “Lizzie’s pretty!”

  “Smart bird,” Morgan said, amused.

  Woodrow tugged at one of the tiny combs holding Lizzie’s abundance of hair in a schoolmarmish do.

  “Flatterer,” Zebulon scolded Woodrow affectionately. Then, to Lizzie and Morgan, he confided, “He’s been after that comb all along.”

  Lizzie laughed again. Stroked Woodrow’s top feathers with a light finger. “When are you coming back to school?” she asked him.

  “Woodrow to school!” he crowed. “See the pretty birdie!”

  “He’ll keep this up for hours if we let him,” Zebulon said, turning to lead the way into the main parlor.

  Just as they reached that resplendent room, Mrs. Thaddings—Marietta, to Lizzie—entered from the dining room, carrying a tray in both hands. She was gray and frail, but Lizzie had long since stopped thinking of Marietta Thaddings as elderly. She was an active member of Indian Rock society, such as it was, hosting card clubs and giving recitations from her vast store of memorized poetry. She was the soul of kindness, and Lizzie loved her like a grandmother.

  “Come, sit down by the fire,” Marietta said. “I’ve brewed a nice pot of tea, and supper is almost ready.” Lizzie sat.

  Morgan took the tray from Marietta’s hands and placed it on the low table between the settee and several chairs drawn up close to the fire. Although Morgan was always polite, his solicitude worried Lizzie a little. He was, after all, Marietta’s doctor as well as her friend. Was her health failing?

  Marietta’s eager smile belied the idea. She sat, and Woodrow flew to perch in the back of her chair.

  “We’ve heard from Clarinda,” she announced.

  Lizzie braced herself. Was the legendary Miss Adams about to return to Indian Rock, and upset the proverbial apple cart? During her absence, the Thaddingses had served as caretakers of sorts. If Clarinda returned, she would almost certainly reestablish her business.

  Morgan’s hand landed lightly on Lizzie’s shoulder, steadying her. There was so little she could hide from him; he sensed every change of mood.

  “Lizzie’s been a little nervous lately,” he said. “What with the wedding coming up in a few days and all.”

  Zebulon and Marietta beamed. “So it is,” Zebulon said. “Christmas Eve, after the church service the two of you will be married.”

  “It’s so romantic,” Marietta sighed sweetly.

  “Let’s tell them our news,” Zebulon said, after giving his wife a long, adoring look.

  “Clarinda has decided not to come back to Indian Rock,” Marietta told them. “She hired us as permanent caretakers, and we can do what we want with the place. Turn it into a hospital or a boarding house.” She paused, and she and Zebulon exchanged a glance. “Or a sort of school.”

  Lizzie’s eyes stung with happy tears.

  “We’ll need to do something,” Zebulon hurried to contribute. “To make ends meet, I mean, and the Territory is willing to pay us a stipend if we’ll take in Indian children. The ones with no place else to go.”

  “You wouldn’t feel we were—infringing or anything, would you, Lizzie?” Marietta asked, gently anxious.

  “Infringing?” Lizzie repeated, confused. “I think it’s wonderful.”

  Both Zebulon and Marietta sighed with relief.

  “Are you up to it?” Morgan asked them, ever the practical one. “Kids are a lot of work.”

  Zebulon’s eyes shone. “We never had children of our own, as you know, and we love them so. We’ll be fine.” He turned to Lizzie, looking worried again. “It will mean more pupils for you,” he said. “The schoolhouse will probably have to be expanded. Usually, these little ones have been shuffled from place to place, and they’re the ones without a family to take them in. They might get up to some mischief.”

  “After the wedding,” Morgan said diplomatically, “Lizzie won’t need the teacher’s quarters anymore. If the town council agrees, it would be easy enough to knock out a wall and add a few desks.”

  Both Zebulon and Marietta looked relieved.

  When it came time to serve supper, Lizzie followed Marietta back to the kitchen to help in whatever way she could.

  “What’s it like to live here?” she asked, because curiosity was her besetting sin and she hadn’t stopped herself in time.

  Marietta looked gently scandalized. “Early on, several confused gentlemen came to the door,” she admitted, cheeks pink. “For a while, there, we got at least one caller every time the train stopped at the depot.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked,” Lizzie said.

  “It’s natural to wonder,” Marietta assured her. “And Lord knows, I’ve done my share of wondering. Clarinda and I were raised in a decent, God-fearing home. My sister was always spirited, that’s true, but I certainly never dreamed she’d grow up to run a…a brothel.”

  Marietta took a roast from the oven and placed it carefully on a platter. Lizzie picked up a bowl brimming with fluffy mashed potatoes, answering, “People are full of surprises.”

  “Whatever she’s done in the past, it’s kind of Clarinda to let Zebulon and me live here. Heaven only knows what we’d have done if she hadn’t given us shelter. Why, she even wired the people at the mercantile, instructing them to let us buy whatever we needed on her account.”

  When the four of them were seated in the massive dining room, huddled together at one end, Zebulon offered grace. After the amen, they all ate in earnest. Woodrow remained in the parlor, squawking away.

  “It hardly seems possible,” Zebulon said, “that a whole year has gone by since we all met.”

  Morgan gave Lizzie a sidelong glance. “It seems like a long time to some of us,” he said.

  Lizzie elbowed him and smiled at Zebulon. “When will the children arrive?”

  It was Marietta who answered. “Right after New Year’s,” she said. “We’ll have a lot to do, Zebulon and I, to get ready.”

  “I can promise a whole crowd of McKettrick women to help out,” Lizzie told her, with absolute confidence that it was so.

  After supper, Lizzie and Marietta attended to the dishes while Zebulon, Morgan and Woodrow talked politics in the parlor.

  A fresh snowfall had begun when Lizzie and Morgan left the Thaddingses’ house. Instead of heading for the schoolhouse, Morgan steered Lizzie toward their cottage on the outskirts of town.

  To Lizzie’s surprise, lights glowed in the windows, and the tiny front room was warm when they stepped inside. They visited the house often, separately and together—Lizzie liked to imagine what it would be like, living there with Morgan, and she suspected the reverse was true, too.

  The plank floors gleamed with varnish, the scent of it still sharp in the air. Two wing-backed chairs faced the small brick fireplace, and lace curtains, sewn by her stepmother and aunts, graced the many-paned windows. A hooked rug, Concepcion’s handiwork, added a splash of cheery color to the room.

  Dreaming, Lizzie moved on to the kitchen, w
ith its brand-new cookstove, its stocked shelves. There was a table with four chairs; her father had built it himself, in his wood shop on the ranch.

  In addition to the parlor and kitchen, there was a little bathroom with all the latest in plumbing. A bedroom stood on either side—the smaller one empty, the larger one furnished with a bureau and a wardrobe, donated by Lizzie’s grandfather, but no bed.

  “Where are we going to sleep?” Lizzie asked.

  Morgan laughed and drew her into his arms. Kissed the tip of her nose. “I’m not planning on doing all that much sleeping,” he said. “Not on our wedding night, at least.”

  Lizzie’s cheeks burned with both anticipation and embarrassment. “Be practical,” she said. “We need a bed. Shouldn’t we order one at the mercantile?”

  Morgan held her close, and then closer still. “Stop worrying,” he said. “Things always turn out for the best, don’t they? Look at Zebulon and Marietta—at John Brennan—and us.”

  Lizzie rested her forehead against Morgan’s shoulder, content to be there, wrapped in his strong embrace. Things had turned out for the best—the Halifaxes were living happily on the Triple M, Ellen and Jack attending Chloe’s school, rather than her own, because the ranch was a long way out of town. Whitley had written recently to say that he’d met the woman he wanted to marry; they’d met at a party following a polo match. Morgan’s practice was thriving, though he earned next to nothing, and Lizzie loved teaching school.

  “Do you ever think about Mr. Christian?” she asked.

  Morgan stroked her hair. “Sometimes,” he said. “Especially with Christmas coming on. Mostly, though, Lizzie McKettrick, I think about you.”

  She tilted her head back to look up into his face. “I love you, Dr. Morgan Shane,” she said.

  He kissed her, with a hungry tenderness, then forced himself to step back. They had been intimate, but never in the cottage. They were saving that.

  “And I love you,” he said, after catching his breath. “Does it bother you, Lizzie, to take my name? You won’t be a McKettrick anymore, after we’re married.”

  “I’ll always be a McKettrick,” Lizzie told him. “No matter what name I go by. I’ll also be your wife, Morgan. I’ll be Lizzie Shane.”

  He grinned, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. His eyes glistened, and when he spoke, his voice came out sounding hoarse. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I never once thought—”

  Lizzie stroked his cheek with gentle fingers still chilled from being outside in the snowy cold. “Hush,” she told him. “Stop talking and kiss me again.”

  THE MAIN RANCH HOUSE seemed about to burst at the corners, the morning of Christmas Eve, as Lizzie stood obediently on a milk stool in Angus and Concepcion’s bedroom upstairs, feeling resplendent in her lacy wedding dress, while Lorelei and the aunts, Emmeline, Mandy and Chloe, pinned and stitched and chattered.

  Katie, the child born late in life to Angus and Concepcion, now eleven-going-on-forty, as Lorelei liked to say, sat on the side of her parents’ bed, watching the proceedings. With her dark hair and deep-blue eyes, Katie was exquisitely beautiful, although she hadn’t realized it yet.

  “When I get married,” she said, her gaze sweeping over Lizzie’s dress, “I’m not going to change my name. I’m still going to be Katie McKettrick, forever and ever, no matter what.”

  “You won’t be getting married for a while yet,” Chloe told her. Married to Lizzie’s uncle Jeb, Chloe was a beauty herself, with copper-colored hair and bright, intelligent eyes. She taught all the children on and around the ranch in the little schoolhouse Jeb had built for her as a wedding present. “By then, you might have changed your mind about taking your husband’s name.”

  Stubbornly, Katie folded her arms. “No, I won’t,” she said.

  “You’re just like your father,” Concepcion told her daughter, entering the room and closing the door quickly behind her, so none of the men would get a glimpse of Lizzie in her dress. “Katie, Katie, quite contrary.”

  Lizzie smiled. “You’ll make a very lovely bride,” she told the little girl.

  Katie beamed. “You look so pretty,” she told Lizzie. “Like a fairy queen.”

  Lizzie thanked her, and the pinning and stitching went on. Finally, though, the sewing was done, and she was able to step behind the changing screen, shed the sumptuous dress and get back into her everyday garb. That day, it was a light-blue woolen frock with prim black piping and a high collar that tickled her under the chin.

  Ducking around the screen again, she was surprised to see that though Concepcion, Lorelei and the aunts had gone, Katie remained.

  Lizzie sat down on the bed beside her and draped an arm around Katie’s shoulders. Although Katie was much younger, she was actually Lizzie’s aunt, a half sister to Holt, Rafe, Jeb and Kade.

  “All right,” Lizzie said gently, “what’s bothering you, Katie-did?”

  Tears brimmed in Katie’s eyes. “You’re getting married,” she said. “Everything is going to be different now.”

  “Not so different,” Lizzie replied. “I’ll still be your niece.”

  Katie giggled at that, and sniffled. “I missed you so much when you went away to San Francisco,” she whispered.

  Lizzie hugged her. “And I missed you. But I’m home now, and I’m staying.”

  “You’re getting married,” Katie repeated insistently. “You’re going to be Lizzie Shane, not Lizzie McKettrick. What if Morgan decides he doesn’t like living in Indian Rock and takes you somewhere far away?”

  “That isn’t going to happen,” Lizzie said.

  “How can you be so sure? When a woman gets married, the man’s the boss from then on. You have to do what he says.”

  Lizzie smiled. “Now, where would you have gotten such an idea, Katie McKettrick?” she teased. “Does your mama do what your papa tells her? Do any of your sisters-in-law take orders from your brothers?”

  Katie brightened. “No,” she said.

  “Morgan and I have talked all this through, Katie. We’re staying right in Indian Rock, for good. He’ll do his doctoring, and I’ll teach school.”

  “Will you have babies?”

  The question made Lizzie squirm a little. She’d checked the calendar that morning, for a perfectly ordinary reason, and realized something important. “I certainly hope so,” she said carefully.

  Katie wrapped both arms around Lizzie and squeezed hard. “The little kids think St. Nicholas is coming on Christmas Eve,” she confided. “But I’m big now, and I know it’s Papa and Mama who fill my stocking and put presents under the tree.”

  “Do you, now?” Lizzie countered mysteriously, thinking of Nicholas Christian—Mr. Christmas, as the Halifax children had called him.

  “You’re all grown up,” Katie said. “You don’t believe in St. Nicholas.”

  “Maybe not precisely,” Lizzie replied, “but I certainly believe in miracles.”

  “What kind of miracles?” Katie wanted to know. Young as she was, she had a tenaciously skeptical mind.

  “I think angels visit earth, disguised as ordinary human beings, for one thing.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Maybe to help us be strong and keep going when we’re discouraged.”

  “Have you ever been discouraged, Lizzie?”

  “Yes,” Lizzie answered. “Last Christmas, when Morgan and I and all the rest of us were trapped aboard that train, up in the high country, I wondered if we’d make it home. I kept my chin up, but I was worried.”

  “You knew Papa and Holt and Rafe and Kade and Jeb would come get you,” Katie insisted. Lizzie nodded.

  “Then why were you scared?”

  “It was cold, and folks were sick and injured, and I was far away from all of you. There had been an avalanche, and one avalanche often leads to another.”

  “And an angel came? Did it have wings?”

  Lizzie laughed. “No wings,” she said. “Just a sample
case and a flask of whiskey. He went out into the blizzard, though, and came back with a Christmas tree.”

  Katie wrinkled her nose, clearly disappointed. “That doesn’t sound like any angel I’ve ever heard of,” she replied. “They’re supposed to fly, and have wings and halos—”

  “Sometimes they have bowler hats and overcoats instead,” Lizzie said. “I know I met an angel, Katie McKettrick, a real, live angel, and you’re not going to change my mind.”

  “How did you know?” Katie wondered, intrigued in spite of herself. “That he was an angel, I mean?”

  Lizzie glanced from side to side, even though they were alone in the room. “He disappeared,” she said. “I was talking to him last year, around this time, in the schoolyard in town. I turned away for a moment, and when I looked back, he was gone.”

  Katie’s wondrous eyes widened. “Are you joshing me, Lizzie?” she demanded. “I’m not a little kid anymore, you know.”

  Lizzie chuckled. “I’m telling you the truth,” she said, holding up one hand, oath-giving style. “And you know what else? He didn’t leave any footprints in the snow. Mine were there, and so were Morgan’s, but it was as if Mr. Christmas hadn’t been there at all.”

  Katie let out a long breath.

  Lizzie gave her young aunt another squeeze. “The point of all this, Katie-did,” she said, “is that it’s important to believe in things, even when you’re all grown up.”

  “I still don’t believe in St. Nicholas,” Katie said staunchly.

  A knock sounded at the bedroom door, and Concepcion stuck her head in. “We’re all leaving for town early,” she announced. “Angus says the way this snow is coming down, we might be in for another Christmas blizzard.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE WIND RATTLED THE WALLS and windows of that sturdy little church, and as Holt McKettrick waited to walk his daughter up the aisle, following the Christmas Eve service, he thought about miracles. A year before, he’d come closer to losing Lizzie for good than he was willing to admit, even to himself. Now, here she stood, at his side, almost unbearably lovely in her wedding dress.