His yell started a chain of events. Fred turned to identify the trouble. Cora Olsen shoved against him and bolted across the train tracks, running across the field beyond. Kloha raced after her. With a dive through the air he tackled the older woman.
Meanwhile, the older stranger pulled Merrilee in front of him, using her like a shield. “Shoot and you kill my son’s wife.”
Sure that Kloha had captured Mrs. Olsen, Fred fixed his attention on this hostage situation. “Mister, you sure aren’t related to me. Since I know she’s my brother’s wife, she can’t be married to your son.”
The man looked over the top of Merrilee’s head and sneered. “I can’t help it if she duped your brother. The woman married my son three days before Christmas.”
Scorn narrowed Fred’s eyes. “Couldn’t have. She was on a train. Doubt the conductor performed a ceremony.”
The man’s face grew red and spittle flew as he spoke. “We have a certificate to prove it. It says she was with us five days ago, not on a train. Doubt you can prove she was traveling during that time.”
Merrilee’s eyes pleaded with Carl for help. He reasoned with the man. “Let her go. Then we’ll look at this certificate.”
“Thoundth like a good compromith, Pa. Leth do it.” The younger man lisped his support and the older gave a short nod before stepping away from Merrilee. Once free, she rushed for Carl.
Holding the shotgun in his right hand, he circled his left arm around her and breathed in her scent. Relief, concern, and fatigue rushed through him. The problem wasn’t over. He had to find a way to prove she was his. Only his.
Carl watched Fred read the document. His brother turned to him, concern making his face appear more haggard than moments before.
“It does appear legal, mister--?”
“Reginald Dyer, Merrilee’s stepfather. And this is William Cummings, my, uh, nephew.”
Merrilee protested and Carl hugged her. “Be quiet for now, sweetheart. Let Fred figure this out.”
Introducing the prosecutor, Fred passed the certificate to Randolph Perry for his opinion. The man nodded before facing Merrilee.
With an expression of regret, Perry gave Merrilee an ultimatum. “Unless you have a witness that places you on the train five days ago, I’m obliged to charge you with bigamy.”
Clinging to Carl as if she would hide under his arm, Merrilee softly said a name. “Pastor Nillson.”
Perry gave Carl a questioning look. Carl explained, “The man who married us.”
“That doesn’t help your situation. The preacher would just affirm that you were married and became a bigamist.”
Carl watched Merrilee’s lips move silently. He tried to read them and caught the words strong and courageous. Leaning down, he gently squeezed her shoulders and whispered, “Explain why you said the pastor’s name.”
She nodded. “Pastor Nillson sat across the aisle from me on the train. He’s my witness. I’ve only married once.”
Fred looked to Perry. “The preacher did arrive on the same train. I remember seeing him follow her down the steps of the passenger car.”
Pointing at Dyer, Merrilee’s voice roughened as she accused him. “There is a bigamist here. Reginald Dyer confessed that he married my mother while his first wife was and is still alive. There’s doubtless a warrant out for him in Charleston.”
Suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough lawmen to handle the two additional prisoners. Despite Dyer’s muttered protests, Fred snapped handcuffs onto both Dyer and William Cummings. He marched them to the train tracks to wait with the others.
Carl and Merrilee comforted each other. He murmured words of relief and caring. The moment was private and tender. He almost missed the cry that went up as Farley, the Biergarten’s owner, ran onto the platform.
“Sheriff, there’s a body behind my place. Someone strangled Olsen with a white apron.”
Epilogue
Red hearts decorated the store window. Merrilee had the idea that people would shop for more than the essentials if her husband put Valentine’s Day items in the window. He’d been impressed with the resulting sales.
She preened as she stood outside the store and remembered his words. “I’m continually impressed with you, sweet wife.” It felt good to be his helper. Much better than being the man’s keeper as she’d expected two months ago.
After Christmas, the lawyer arrived in Idyll Wood. With a signature, she inherited and then sold her family home. Carl wanted to stay near his family--their family now. With Dora and Darlene in her lap as they talked it over, she’d wholeheartedly agreed. Her home was now in Wisconsin.
Looking past the decorations, she spied Myra in the store. Quickly entering, Merrilee searched for the baby. Holder sat with the precious bundle on a chair near the stove. Before she could approach him, blonde heads rushed toward her. Three sets of hands gripped her legs while a much taller body hugged her waist. Her girls!
“Happy Valentine’s Day my sweethearts!” Merrilee leaned down to kiss each forehead as her nieces smiled up at her.”
“Did Uncle Carl give you a treat?”
Johanna shook her head. “Mama says not until she finishes her shopping. She thinks it will make the little ones behave.” Since the birth of the new baby and Johanna’s birthday last month, she’d begun acting like a young woman rather than a girl. It worried Merrilee that the girl wanted to leave her childhood behind. As the oldest, Johanna had been given a great deal of responsibility. Perhaps in her mind the girl was more mature than her years.
Merrilee took each twin’s hand and walked to the stove. Sitting across from Holder, she asked for the baby. He handed the infant over with a relieved smile.
“Sam’s been putting on weight. He gets heavy after a while.” Holder smiled and left her to visit with his brother at the counter.
“Well, girls. Let’s unwrap this baby and see how he’s doing.” The twins gripped their hands in suspense. They saw the baby every day, but their aunt’s words were enough to make them think something unusual might happen. What an imagination!
Pulling the blanket away from the baby’s face, Merrilee looked down into crystal blue eyes. Eyes that were the same as his father and his uncles. Chubby cheeks dimpled as Sam smiled and wriggled at seeing his aunt.
“What a big boy you are!”
Dora patted her aunt’s arm. When she had Merrilee’s attention, the little girl scowled. “He not big. I is big.”
Merrilee laughed and put an arm around the girl. “Yes, you are a big girl. Almost three now.” Bossy Dora was secretly her favorite of the girls, though she adored each. Something about Dora’s adventurous spirit, so different from Merilee’s own, impressed her aunt.
She hoped her own child inherited it. Neither she nor Carl had that temperament. Both of his brothers did, though, so there was a chance for this child to be bold. Not like her shy mother. Or his shy mother.
Thinking about the baby, she smiled. Myra looked her way at that moment and gasped. Then she squealed.
“Look at you glowing. I know that secret smile. Congratulations!”
Behind the counter, Carl glanced at his wife with eyebrows raised. They’d agreed to wait another month before announcing the baby.
At his expression, Merrilee shook her head. “I didn’t tell her.”
Myra laughed. “No one had to tell me. Not with the way you’re looking.” She laughed joyously. “I can’t wait to be an aunt and help you.”
Amazing! The woman had five children and she was excited over a new baby in the family. Myra was truly the sister Merrilee always longed for.
At the ring of the bell on the front door, heads swiveled to see Fred enter. The man loped to the counter and stood with hands akimbo.
“Why didn’t anyone invite me to this family party?” Then he winked at his nieces and laughed. They threw themselves against his legs, trying to pull him down to the floor. Merrilee thought it was a good thing no other customers were in the store. The noise was almost d
eafening.
Carl held up his hands and yelled, “I want your attention.”
When silence settled over the room, he smiled. “Merrilee and I have an announcement.”
Myra smiled. “We already know.”
“What do we know?” Fred looked from one adult to the other before settling his gaze on Merrilee. “Am I going to have another nephew?”
She grinned shyly from her chair by the stove. “Or niece. I might have a girl.”
Carl cleared his throat meaningfully. “Yes, we’re having a baby in the late summer. That’s not the announcement.”
Grinning hugely, Carl opened his arms wide and proclaimed, “The store is ours. We signed papers with the lawyer yesterday.”
Fred and Holder wore equally stunned expressions. Holder hesitantly spoke. “I thought you were only helping out. Running it until a buyer came along.”
Carl looked at his wife. At her encouraging smile, he explained. “I belong here, not in a field. Between Merrilee and myself, sales are up. I checked Olsen’s books to be sure, but we are doing much better than they ever did.”
Rising, Merrilee carried the baby to his father and handed him off. Then she moved around the counter to take her husband’s hand.
“It might seem odd to be happy in the home of a murderer. It doesn’t bother us, though. We’re busy with the store and enjoy seeing so many different people every day.”
Fred rubbed his jaw and then grinned. “Carl always was a gadabout, wanting to visit the farms around us. Expect this fits him to a T.”
Suddenly, the tension evaporated as his brothers shook Carl’s hand as shouts of “Congratulations” rang in the room.
No, she’d never fulfilled her role as her husband’s keeper. Merrilee happily lived as his lover, friend, helper.
He looked down at her and whispered, “I love you!" She whispered back the words and smiled with contentment. It appeared at that moment that a few romantic fairytales did come true.
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A Farmer for Christmas
Spinster Mail-Order Brides #4
Chapter 1
1887, Idyll Wood, Wisconsin
The milk had curdled again. The sour smell filling his nostrils seemed appropriate. Life had turned sour since the birth of the twins.
If Lydia were alive, she would have made cookies or bread from the tainted liquid. Reinhold Sittig--who answered only to Holder unless his mother was speaking to him --snorted in disgust. He supposed he should take the stuff over to his mother to see if she could use it for sour dough bread. That thought brought a sigh from him.
Lately, his mother’s condition worsened daily. His shoulders sagged as he thought about her. The once jolly, vibrant woman now appeared to drag herself from her bed to the kitchen and back. Thank goodness she had his oldest daughter, Johanna, to help with meals and chores. Holder hoped that Johanna’s younger sister, Berta, also helped. Since Berta had only recently turned six, he couldn’t be sure of how much she could be counted on yet to do. Still, at least she could watch out for the one-year-old twins when she wasn’t in the barn with the animals.
How deeply he regretted the twins. Each time he looked at their curly flaxen hair or saw their mother’s eyes mirrored in the color of their own, he remembered that they led to her death.
This brought his thoughts back to the jar he held. If Lydia were here, she’d take care of this spoiled milk.
Stiffening his spine, he mentally shied away from thoughts of his wife. What was the saying? There’s no use crying over spilt milk. He supposed that applied to spoiled milk as well. If he refused to cry over a dead wife, he certainly wasn’t about to allow this milk to get him down.
Deciding to dump the smelly milk in the pig bucket on the porch, Holder grasped the door handle at the same time as someone pounded on the other side. Pulling it open, he saw his brother’s hand raised to strike the wood again. Surprise had his ice blue eyes opening wide before he chuckled. “Eager for a visitor brother? Standing by the door?” Frederick joked with this usual light-hearted attitude. A deputy in town, he only seemed serious when he was on the job. At home, Fred was much like their mother Jennie, jolly and energetic.
Without saying a word, Holder stepped aside and signaled with his free hand for Fred to enter his cabin. Eager to close the door against the nippy fall air, he urged, “Get in here so I can keep the cold out,” when Fred merely stared at the jar of milk instead of stepping inside.
His brother laughed. “Do you plan on drinking straight from the jar?” Taking off his coat, Fred hung it on the chair and then took a seat in that chair.
Holder decided to enjoy the spoiled milk after all. “How about a glass of it? I’d be happy to share.” At Fred’s nod, he poured a small amount of it into one of the jelly jars placed on the shelf above the kitchen pump.
Setting the small jar in front of Fred, Holder smiled charmingly at his brother. That man returned the smile before picking up his glass. When he took a huge drink, Holder stepped back and away from him. The milk exploded from his brother’s mouth and dripped down his neatly trimmed blonde beard, causing Holder to erupt into deep belly laughs.
“You no-good skunk! Why’d you do that?” Fred moved to the sink and yanked a flour-sack towel from the nail on the wall. Wiping his face and shirt with it, he glared at his brother. Then he pumped the handle furiously, desperate for water to rinse his mouth.
Still chuckling, Holder almost uttered a sincere apology. Almost, but he couldn’t quite smother his chuckles as he explained, “I know you love a good joke so I couldn’t resist. Kind of like you couldn’t resist bringing me a whole plate of cookies with blackened bottoms last week.” This tit for tat between him and his two brothers had been happening for as far back as any of them could remember. Until Carl’s beating.
The thought sobered Holder. Carl had been a bloody mess when he and Frederick found him last month.
By the look on Fred’s face, he knew his sudden change in mood had confused his brother. “I was just thinking about Carl. Wonder if he’s gonna be himself again and start pranking us?”
Shaking his head, Fred suddenly slipped into his role as a deputy sheriff. “Redmond and I have followed the few leads, but found nothing. At least, I haven’t.” His face showed his doubt about the sheriff and confused Holder. He hadn’t heard anyone say a bad thing about the man.
Fred didn’t comment further about the sheriff. Letting out a deep breath, he continued with a sort of wistful sound in his voice, “I sure wish Carl would tell us who beat him like that. After all, I wanna catch Ralph Stinson’s killers. You gotta know those men who beat Carl also beat that man to death.”
Both brothers worried when Carl started running to town most nights and not returning, according his mother, until the crack of dawn. Ralph Stinson had been a terrible influence on his brother, but Holder still wouldn’t have wished the man dead.
Fred continued in a tone that hinted at secrecy, “All Carl will tell me is that the red man did it. That sounds so much like Sheriff Redmond’s name that I’m keeping an eye on him.”
Silence filled the cabin as if it permeated the very air they were breathing. Exhaling loudly and deeply, Fred broke the quiet first. “I come for a reason, other than to give you a chance to prank me.” The expression on his brother’s face had Holder tensing.
Nodding his head for his brother to speak, Holder waited to hear the idea his brother would tell him. He knew that look, and it usually meant Fred had something to say he knew Holder wouldn’t like or want to hear.
Clearing his throat, Fred blurted out, “You need to get a wife.”
Stunned, Holder’s mouth gaped open and his eyebrows rose a notch. Reaching up, he ran a hand through his dar
k blonde waves. “What you wanna marry me off for?”
The sadness that dogged the family for the last two years, since the sudden passing of their father, showed itself on Fred’s face. “Ma and those girls of yours can’t keep up. Don’t know if you ever really look at ‘em, but those twins are holy terrors now that they’re walkin’.”
At the mention of his two youngest children, a chill entered Holder’s eyes and he turned away from his brother. Fred reached a hand out to his shoulder and pulled him back around so that they faced each other again. “She’s sick, Holder. You can’t expect Ma to chase after those kids of yours, even with help from Johanna and Berta.”
“Did Ma send you to tell me this?” Holder asked defensively with arms crossed defensively.
“Nah, you know better. She’d give any of us her last drop of blood if we needed it,” Fred answered with eyes that seemed suspiciously wet.
Inclining his head to show he agreed with what Fred said about their mother, Holder gulped. “I see her getting’ skinnier every day. Don’t know how she can be thin and still have that round ball in her belly. The girls tell me they’re helpin’ though.”
Fred shrugged and then looked his brother in the eye. “You can’t rely on girls that age to run a house, so I figured a way for you to get a woman to do it for us.”
When Holder didn’t say anything, the other man continued. “Pastor Nillson’s wife talked to me after church last Sunday. She says her spinster sister found a woman who sent her to a man as a mail-order wife. Thought you might be able to write the woman and get a helper here for Ma.”
Searching his mind for a reason to prove his brother’s idea wouldn’t work, Holder stood silently and stared out the kitchen window. Then he voiced the only argument that came to mind. “Carl could help more, now that he’s healing from that beatin’. I know his mind ain’t right, but that don’t stop him none from working.”
At his brother’s snort, Holder reddened. Fred followed up his noise by complaining, “We can’t even keep Carl home now that he’s met Carlene Strong.”
A Keeper For Christmas (Spinster Mail-Order Brides Book 12) Page 8
