The Christmas Brides Read online

  For some reason she could not define, Lizzie wanted to cry. And it wasn’t because she was far from home on Christmas Eve, or because she knew she would have to turn down Whitley’s proposal and he would be hurt and disappointed, or even because all their lives were in danger.

  Not trusting herself to speak, or govern what she said if she made the attempt, Lizzie remained silent.

  Morgan brushed her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “Get some sleep,” he counseled. “Tomorrow’s Christmas.”

  Tomorrow’s Christmas. Lizzie found that hard to credit, even with the little tree and the presents so carefully arranged beneath it. She nodded, and she was about to get to her feet when, with no warning at all, Morgan suddenly caught her face between his hands and placed the lightest, sweetest kiss imaginable on her mouth.

  A jolt shot through Lizzie; she might have captured liquid lightning in a metal cup, like fresh spring rain, and swigged it down. She knew Morgan felt her trembling before he lowered his hands from her face to take hers and help her to her feet.

  “Good night, Lizzie McKettrick,” he said gruffly. “And a happy Christmas.”

  She found a place to lie down on one of the long bench seats, never dreaming that she’d sleep. Her heart leaped and frolicked like a circus performer on a trampoline, and she could still feel Morgan’s brief, innocent kiss tingling on her lips.

  To distract herself from all the contradictory feelings Morgan had aroused in her, she imagined herself at home on the Triple M. She stood for a few moments in the familiar kitchen, lamp-lit and warm from the stove, and saw her papa and Lorelei sitting in their usual places at the table, though they did not seem to see her.

  Mentally, she climbed the back stairway, made her way first to the room John Henry, Gabriel and Doss shared. They were all sound asleep in their beds, fair hair tousled on the pillows and flecked with hay from the customary Christmas Eve visit to the barn, and each one had hung a stocking from a hook on the wall, in anticipation of St. Nicholas’s arrival. The stockings were still limp and empty—Lorelei would fill them later, when she was sure they wouldn’t awaken. Rock candy. Toy whistles. Perhaps small wooden animals, hand carved by Papa, out in the wood shop.

  The scene was achingly real to Lizzie—it made her eyes sting and her throat ache so fiercely that she put a hand to it. As she stared down at her brothers, drinking in the sight of them, John Henry opened his eyes, looked directly at her.

  “Where are you?” he asked, using his hands to sign the words he couldn’t speak.

  Lizzie signed back. “I’ll be home soon.”

  John Henry’s small hands flew. “Promise?”

  “Promise,” Lizzie confirmed.

  And then the vision faded, leaving Lizzie longing to find it again.

  As she settled her nerves, she was aware of Morgan moving about the caboose, probably checking his various patients: Mrs. Halifax with her injured arm, Whitley with his broken leg, the peddler, Mr. Christian, who’d nearly gotten himself frozen to death, and last of all poor John Brennan, struggling with pneumonia.

  And over them all loomed the mountain, ominously silent.

  Finally Lizzie slept.

  CHRISTMAS.

  It had never meant so much to Morgan as it did that night. He wanted to give Lizzie everything—trinkets, the finest silks and laces, and beyond those things… his heart. For a brief fraction of a moment, he actually wished he’d granted his mother’s wishes and become a banker, instead of a doctor.

  Annoyed with himself, he shoved both hands through his hair, as he always did when he was frustrated—and that was often.

  He concentrated on what he knew, taking care of the sick and injured, knowing full well that sleep would elude him.

  John Brennan seemed marginally better.

  Mrs. Halifax would be fine, once she’d gotten some real rest.

  Mr. Thaddings was resting quietly, the bluish color gone from his lips.

  Even Christian, the peddler, who had come dangerously close to dying, appeared to be rallying somewhat. He might lose a few toes, but otherwise, he’d probably be his old self soon.

  Whitley Carson’s leg would mend; he was young, healthy and strong. Unless he was the biggest fool who ever lived, he’d pursue Lizzie until she accepted his proposal, married him and bore his children. Maybe he was smart enough to know that a woman like Lizzie McKettrick came along about as often as the proverbial blue moon, and maybe he wasn’t.

  Morgan hoped devoutly for the latter.

  If they got out of this situation alive, Morgan decided, and if Lizzie didn’t change her mind about marrying Whitley, by some miracle, he would court her himself.

  Did he love her?

  He didn’t know. He certainly admired her, respected her and, God knew, wanted her, and not just physically. She’d opened some whole new region in his soul, an actual landscape, golden with light. Should Lizzie refuse his suit, as she well might, he’d have that magical place to retreat into, for the rest of his life, and he’d find some sad solace there.

  He shook his head. Such thoughts were utterly foreign to his nature. He was a realist; did not have a fanciful bone in his body. He was a doctor, not a poet. And yet Lizzie had changed him, and he knew the alteration was permanent.

  The coffee was cold, and full of grounds, but he poured some anyway, and lifted it to his lips. Moved to the window side of the car to look out over the blue-white night. He sipped, pondering the irony of meeting Lizzie in this peculiar time and place.

  And before he’d swallowed a second sip of coffee, he heard the deep, growling rumble overhead.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE CABOOSE SHOOK VIOLENTLY, rousing Lizzie instantly from a shallow sleep. She sat bolt upright, the startled shouts of the others echoing in her ears, her heart in her throat, and waited for the railroad car to go tumbling over the side of the cliff.

  It didn’t.

  There was a second great shudder, and then… stillness.

  Was this what it was like to die?

  She looked around, but the darkness was as densely black as India ink. She might have been at the bottom of a coal mine at midnight, for all she could see.

  “Morgan?” she called softly.

  “I’m here,” he assured her, from somewhere close by.

  “What happened?” asked one of the children.

  “How come it’s so dark?” inquired the other, the words scrambling over those of the other child.

  “Dark!” Woodrow fretted loudly. “Dark!”

  “There’s been another avalanche,” Morgan said matter-of-factly, over Woodrow’s continuing rant. “The snow must be blocking the windows, but we’re still on the tracks, I think.”

  “Did the Christmas tree get ruint?” Lizzie identified the voice as Ellen’s.

  “Never mind the Christmas tree,” Whitley said, sounding testy and shaken. “And will somebody shut that bird up?”

  “Will somebody shut that bird up?” Woodrow repeated.

  “How long will the air last?” John Brennan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Morgan asked. “Everybody stay put. I’ll see if I can get the door open to have a look. Maybe we can dig our way out.”

  “We could smother in here,” Whitley said.

  “Hush,” Lizzie snapped. “We’re not going to smother!”

  “Stringy bird!” Woodrow prattled on. “Don’t eat the bird!”

  The baby began to cry, first tentatively, then with a full-lunged wail.

  Mrs. Halifax sang to the infant, her soft voice quavering.

  Mrs. Thaddings spoke tenderly to Woodrow.

  A match was struck, lamplight flared, feeble against the terrible darkness. Morgan stood holding the lantern, a man woven of shadows. The incongruous thought came to Lizzie that he needed a shave.

  Snow covered the windows on both sides of the car now, and it was clear that Morgan had been unable to force the door open. They were effectively buried alive.

  Remarkably, the forlor
n little Christmas tree still stood, the gifts undisturbed beneath it.

  “Look!” Ellen cried, nudging a blinking Jack and pointing to the spectacle. “St. Nicholas came!”

  Lizzie’s gaze locked with Morgan’s. Something unspoken passed between them, and Morgan nodded.

  Lizzie worked up a cheerful smile. “And there are presents for everyone,” she said, making her way to the tree. She took her prized coat up first, handed it to Mrs. Halifax. “For you,” she said. She gave John Henry’s paint set to Ellen and Jack, and Whitley’s hand-tailored overcoat went to John Brennan, the pipe she’d bought for her father to Mr. Christian. Whitley got the book, and Morgan the pocket watch. She gave Mr. and Mrs. Thaddings a small box of hand-dipped chocolates from a shop in San Francisco, specially chosen for Lorelei.

  “What about you?” Ellen asked, staring first at the paint set and then at Lizzie. “Isn’t there something for you, Miss Lizzie?”

  For the first time since he’d returned to the railroad car, clutching that little tree, Mr. Christian spoke a coherent sentence. “Why, St. Nicholas meant the music box for Lizzie,” he said weakly.

  Ellen relaxed, much to Lizzie’s relief, and set to examining the paints and brushes and special paper she and Jack were to share. She wouldn’t accept the music box, of course, as generous as Mr. Christian was to offer it—it had belonged to his late wife, after all. It was an heirloom.

  They couldn’t build a fire, for fear the chimney was covered by a deep layer of snow, and the chill set in pretty quickly. If they were going to die, Lizzie decided, they would die in good spirits.

  She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, but before she could speak, she heard the first, faint clank, and then another.

  “Listen!” she said, shushing everyone.

  Another clank, and then another—metal, striking metal. Shovels? Distant and faint, perhaps up the line of cars a ways, toward the engine.

  “They’re here,” Lizzie whispered. “They’re here!”

  Everyone looked up, as though expecting their rescuers to descend through the roof.

  Time seemed to stop.

  Clank, clank, clank.

  And then—some minutes later—footsteps on the metal roof of the caboose, a muffled voice.

  Her papa’s voice.

  “Lizzie!” Holt McKettrick called.

  “In here, Papa!” Lizzie cried, on a joyous sob. “In the caboose!”

  She heard him speak to the others—her uncles and perhaps even her grandfather. The clanking commenced in earnest then, and the voices became clearer.

  “Lizzie?” Her papa again. “Hold on, sweetheart.”

  The door Morgan had been unable to open earlier jostled on its hinges, then creaked with an ear-splitting squeal. Holt McKettrick gave a wrench from outside, and then he was there, filling the chasm.

  Big. Strong. So handsome he made Lizzie’s heart swell with pride and gladness. Holt McKettrick would have moved heaven and earth, if he had to, for his daughter, for a train full of strangers.

  Lizzie flew to him.

  He scooped her up into his arms, clean off her feet, and kissed her hard on top of the head. She felt the warmth of his tears in her hair. “Thank God,” he murmured. “Thank God.”

  She clung, crying freely now, not even trying to hold back the sobs of joy rising from the very core of her being. “Papa…Papa!”

  “Hush,” Holt said gruffly. “You’re all right now, girl.”

  Behind him, she saw her uncles enter—Rafe then Kade then Jeb. Then another man, someone Lizzie didn’t recognize.

  “Pa!” Ellen and Jack screamed in unison, rushing to be enfolded in the tall, lean cowboy’s waiting arms. Over their heads he exchanged a look of reverent gratitude with Mrs. Halifax, who was holding the baby so tightly that it struggled in her embrace. Tears slipped down her face.

  Lizzie finally recovered a modicum of composure when Holt set her back on her feet. She gulped, looking up at him. “I knew you’d come,” she said.

  Holt grinned. “Of course we came,” he replied. “We couldn’t have had Christmas without our Lizzie.”

  “S-some of the others are hurt,” Lizzie said, remembering suddenly, feeling some chagrin that, in her excitement, she’d forgotten them.

  Her uncles were already assessing the situation.

  “We’d better get out of here quick, Holt,” Rafe said, with an upward glance. He was a big man, burly and dark-haired, his eyes the intense blue of a chambray work shirt.

  Kade, meanwhile, greeted Morgan with a handshake. “Hell of a welcome to Indian Rock,” he said, as Lizzie drank in the sight of him—well built, with chestnut hair and a quiet manner. He gave her a wink.

  Morgan looked solemn—and completely exhausted. “The engineer and the conductor didn’t make it,” he told Kade. “They’re in the locomotive.”

  Kade nodded grimly. “We’ll have to come back for them later,” he said. “Along with any trunks or the like. Rafe’s right. We’d best get while the getting is good.”

  After that, things happened fast, and Lizzie experienced it all through a numbing haze, shimmering silvery at the edges. They’d brought a large, flat-bed sleigh, as Lizzie had expected they would, piled with loose straw and drawn by four gigantic plow horses. There were blankets and bear hides, too, to keep the travelers warm, and flasks filled with strong spirits. Farther along the tracks, her father told her, half the hands from the Triple M waited, having set up camp the night before, when they’d all had to stop because of the darkness and the weather.

  Lizzie was bundled, like a child, in quilts she recognized from home, and her uncle Jeb, the youngest McKettrick brother, fair-haired and agile, carried her to the sleigh. She settled into a sort of dizzy stupor, the sweet scent of the fresh straw lulling her further.

  “You’re safe now, Lizzie-bet,” Jeb told her, his azure eyes glistening suspiciously. “Pa kicked up some kind of fuss when we wouldn’t let him come along to find you. Too hard on his heart, Concepcion said. We had to hogtie him and throw him in jail, and we could still hear him bellowing five miles out of town.”

  Lizzie smiled at the image of her proud grandfather behind bars. He’d be prowling like a caged mountain lion, furious that they’d left him behind. “There’ll be the devil to pay when you let him out,” she warned.

  Jeb chuckled, ran the sleeve of his wool-lined leather coat across his eyes. “We’re counting on you to put in a good word for us,” he said, tucking straw in around her before turning to go back and help bring out the others.

  When they had all been rescued, and placed securely on the back of the heavy sled, Holt took the reins and shouted to the team. Kade and Jeb rode mules, as did Mr. Halifax.

  The going was slow, the snow being so deep, and it was precarious. Lizzie drifted in and out of her hazy reverie, aware of Whitley nearby, and Morgan at a little distance.

  Considerable time passed before they reached the camp Holt had mentioned. Cowboys greeted them with hot coffee and good cheer, and they lingered awhile, in a broad, snowy clearing under a copse of bare-limbed oak trees, safe from the possibility of another avalanche.

  It was past nightfall when they reached Indian Rock.

  A soft snow was falling, church bells rang, and it seemed the whole town had turned out to greet the Christmas travelers. Lorelei rushed to Lizzie, knelt on the bed of the sleigh, and pulled her into her arms.

  “Lizzie,” she whispered, over and over again. “Oh, Lizzie!”

  Next, Lizzie saw her grandfather, tall and fierce-faced, his thick white hair askew because he’d been thrusting his fingers through it. His gaze swept over his sons, daring any one of them to interfere, then he gathered Lizzie right up and carried her inside the Arizona Hotel.

  The lobby was blessedly warm, and alight with glowing lamps.

  There were people everywhere.

  “Lizzie-bet,” Angus McKettrick said, “you like to scared me to death when your train didn’t turn up on time.”

&n
bsp; Lizzie rested her head against his strong shoulder. “I’m sorry, Grampa,” she said. Then she looked up into his face. “I reckon you’re pretty mad at Papa and Kade and Rafe and Jeb,” she ventured. “For locking you up, I mean.”

  “I’ll have their hides for it,” Angus vowed, and though his voice was rough as sandpaper, Lizzie heard the tenderness in it. He loved his four sons deeply, and probably understood that they’d only been trying to protect him by throwing him in the hoosegow. “Right now, Lizzie-girl, all I care about is that you’re safe. Soon as you’ve rested up, we’ll all head home to the Triple M.”

  “I guess I missed Christmas,” Lizzie said.

  Angus carried her up the stairs and into a waiting room. He laid her gently on the bed, and stepped back to let Lorelei attend to her. Only then did he reply, “You didn’t miss Christmas. We held it for you.”

  “Leave us alone, Angus,” Lorelei said quietly. “I need to get Lizzie out of these wet, cold clothes and into something warm and dry.”

  Angus clenched his jaw, then inclined his head to Lizzie in reluctant farewell before leaving the room and closing the door softly behind him.

  “What happened out there?” Lorelei asked, as she deftly undid the buttons on Lizzie’s shoes.

  “There was an avalanche,” Lizzie said. The warmth of the room made her skin burn, and she wondered, briefly, if she’d been frostbitten. If she’d lose fingers and toes or maybe an ear. Tears scalded her eyes. She was alive, that was what mattered. And she was home—or almost home. “I didn’t let myself think for one moment that Papa and the others wouldn’t come for us.” Her conscience stirred. “Well,” she added, “maybe there were a few moments—”

  Lorelei smiled gently, continuing to peel away Lizzie’s clothes, then dressing her again in a long flannel nightgown. “You were McKettrick tough,” Lorelei said, when she’d pulled the bedcovers up to Lizzie’s chin. “We’re all very proud of you, Lizzie.”

  “The others—Morgan, Whitley…the children…?”

  “They’re all being taken care of, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”