Lucky Bride

by Ana Seymour

  They rode in silence for several minutes as she tried to swallow down the bile that had gorged her throat. “We can cut across this way,” she said finally, pointing to a trail that led up a little hill. “There’s no need to go through town.”

  Parker shifted his horse to one side and let her take the lead. “As long as you know your way. Without the road I’m lost around here, I’m afraid.”

  At a slightly slower pace they went single file along a path cut through long prairie grasses. Molly tried to concentrate on the movement of her horse, on the whistle of the wind, on the bite of the November cold…on anything other than the memory of Ole Pedersson’s gurgling screams as the life had been slowly choked from his body. It was no use.

  “I… I’m sorry. I have to stop for a minute,” she called to Parker. Miserable and embarrassed, she jumped from her horse, fell to her knees in the grass and spewed up the remains of the Grand Hotel’s finest beefsteak.

  Parker was at her side instantly. “Damn! I asked if you were all right.” He pulled her against him, his voice becoming gentle. “Poor baby.” He took a kerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.

  Her insides felt better, but she was utterly mortified. A ranch boss didn’t throw up and have to be comforted as a “poor baby” by a hired hand. She snatched the cloth from his hand and wiped it across her mouth. Pulling away from his comforting arm, she struggled to her feet. “I’m fine. Let’s get going.”

  Parker stood more slowly. He didn’t touch her again, but he bent his head to look into her face. “Not so fast. We’re not in any hurry.”

  “Susannah and Mary Beth—” she began, but he interrupted her.

  “I told you, your sisters are fine. Mary Beth was sound asleep when I left, and I’m sure Susannah is, too, by now. You’re just feeling a natural anxiety because of what you’ve been through tonight. Because of what you had to see. I wish I’d been able to keep you from going.”

  “Because ladies don’t know how to deal with those things?” she asked bitterly, mimicking Jeremy. “I guess he was right after all.” She nodded toward the grass where she had been sick.

  “There’s nothing noble about being able to kill a man without conscience,” Parker told her. “And there’s nothing shameful about having the sensitivity to be revolted by a scene like the one we just left.”

  “My father used to ride out with the posse. I never saw him coming home to puke his guts out afterward.”

  “Has the posse ever lynched anyone before?”

  She shook her head. “Mostly they’d go after rustlers. One time I remember three young kids came in and tried to rob the general store. Mr. Simon whacked one of them with a broom and they ran away before they could get any money. The posse rounded them up and shipped them over to stand trial in Laramie. Canyon City’s just never been what you’d call a lawless town.”

  “But tonight there was a murder.”

  “There were two murders,” Molly said grimly.

  Parker didn’t argue. “Are you doing better?” he asked.

  The solicitude in his voice unnerved her. Her lip trembled. “I think so. I’m more embarrassed than anything at the moment. And tired.”

  “Aw, don’t be embarrassed, boss lady. I won’t tell anyone.” He pulled his handkerchief out of her numbed fingers and gave another dab at her mouth. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you to drink to wash away the bad taste.”

  Molly gave a wan smile. “I could use my snake-bite medicine.”

  “Snake-bite medicine?”

  “It’s whiskey, really. My father always made us carry a little flask when we were out on the range. He believed it had some kind of power to keep people from getting blood poisoning from a wound.”

  “Well, where is it?”

  “What?”

  “The snake-bite medicine. Get it out. I don’t know about blood poisoning, but it sure as hell is exactly what we need to warm us up enough to make it home without freezing to death.”

  “I’ve never actually drunk any of it.”

  “So tonight will be the first time.”

  She turned and dug in her saddlebags, pulled out a small tin bottle and handed it to Parker. “You go ahead. I don’t think I want any.”

  Parker untwisted the cap then put the bottle up to her lips. “Just a swallow to wash your mouth out and settle your stomach.”

  After a moment’s hesitation she put her mouth against the bottle and allowed Parker to tip it back. The liquid seared her throat all the way down, then settled into her middle like a toasty little fire. She took another swallow.

  Parker nodded. “Now one more to warm you up for the rest of the ride.”

  “Aren’t you having any?”

  “You first.”

  She took the flask from him this time and tipped it herself, downing one hefty gulp, then starting another.

  Parker reached out quickly and pulled the bottle away. “That’s… ah… probably enough,” he said. “That’s hitting an empty stomach, you know.”

  “It feels kind of good, actually,” Molly said. And it did. The wind was suddenly nowhere near as biting. And her arms and legs were starting to feel pleasantly a-tingle. “Is this what it means to get drunk?”

  The directness and the innocence of her question reminded Parker of Amelia. His sister had always been curious about new experiences, even if they were not ones that would be socially approved back in their upper class New York circle. He had always thought that he’d never meet another girl who could face life as forthrightly as Amelia.

  “One more swallow and you’d be just about there, boss lady,” he answered with a grin.

  “Well, this doesn’t feel so bad. I rather like it. Aren’t you going to have some?” she asked again.

  Parker twisted the cap onto the flask. “I don’t think so. And you might have a different opinion when you wake up tomorrow morning.”

  “I haven’t had enough for that, surely?”

  He eyed her slight form. “I don’t know. You’ve never drunk the stuff before, and it doesn’t seem that it would take much to intoxicate a wisp of a thing like you.”

  She gave a half laugh and flapped the arms of her big coat. “That’s the first time anyone’s called me a wisp of a thing.”

  She looked, in fact, like a child dressing up in adult clothes. Her nose was red from the cold. Her face was still white and strained, making her blue eyes look enormous. “Sorry, boss lady, but I’ve already figured out that you’re not anywhere near as tough as you talk.”

  She tipped her head to glare at him. “Oh, you have?”

  He reached up and tucked a stray lock of hair back up under her hat. “Yes.” For just a minute as his hand brushed her cheek he felt a familiar softening in his gut. Before he knew what he was doing, he leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. He pulled away immediately, appalled. What in heaven’s name was he thinking?

  Molly lifted a hand to her lips, startled. The liquor had set up a hum that resonated through her, moving suddenly now in a great crescendo toward her mouth and at the pit of her stomach. She clutched at Parker’s arm to keep from falling off balance.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I…I’m sorry,” he repeated, as if for lack of any possible explanation to his impulsive action.

  Molly straightened and blinked her eyes, trying to get her head clear and her body under control. When she’d been young and still foolish enough to imagine that she would be kissed some day by a lover, she’d pictured it as a grand, formal occasion, the climax to a wonderful courtship of flowers and poetry. She’d never imagined that her first kiss would be from a cowhand who had eyes only for her sister. Never imagined it would be in the middle of the night as she rode home from a hanging, the sour taste of revulsion still lingering at the back of her throat.

  “Let’s just forget it,” she said finally, but her voice sounded shaky.

  Parker hesitated a moment, looking as if he wanted to say something more, but finally he nodded
and turned away from her to put the flask of whiskey back into her saddlebag. “Are you feeling all right to ride again?” he asked.

  She took the reins from him and mounted up, ignoring the hand he offered to help. “I’m fine. I just want to get home.” And suddenly her voice was as frigid as the cold November night.

  If anyone noticed a strain between Molly and Parker the next day, no one commented on it. There was a good deal of talk about the murder and the subsequent lynching. Mary Beth had cried when she had been told the news. Ole Pedersson had once smiled at her and called her a pretty little thing, which was enough to make her mourn his passing, especially in such a horrible manner.

  Molly had had dark circles under her eyes and had winced when Smokey tried to heap some sausages on her breakfast plate. But she had divided up the day’s chores with her usual efficiency and had gone off herself to slop the pigs as soon as the meal was finished.

  Parker finished up the baling by himself while Smokey rode out with Susannah to check on the cattle they had boxed in. After riding half the night he was just as glad not to have to get up in his saddle, and the baling was just the kind of work he needed at the moment—hard, steady, requiring little thought.

  His mind was occupied in other areas today. He didn’t know if it was due to the lack of sleep or the inexplicable moment on the road with Molly, but today his head was full of thoughts of Claire. Up to this point, all his flirting with Susannah, his admiring study of all three sisters, had not seemed to have much to do with that part of him where Claire still ruled in his heart. But there had been something different last night. Something about Molly. The way she’d stood up to those men like a staunch little general, then collapsed to her knees in the road, pale and shaking. She had moved him. She’d come close to reaching a place inside him that he didn’t want touched. It was Claire’s place, locked and barred, and it would hurt too much to open it up again.

  When she came by at midmorning to check on his progress, his voice was as detached as hers—polite, respectful, indifferent. Worker to employer. Hired hand to boss lady. He’d do his best to keep things that way.

  Chapter Nine

  “Just don’t see how we can have a traditional Christmas with Papa gone,” Mary Beth said sadly, tucking a pine bough around the end of the mantel.

  Smokey was filling out the greenery on the other end. “Your father would be the first one to insist on it, child. When your mother passed, he said that the best way to honor the dead was to live well.”

  Mary Beth gave her gentle smile. “I can picture him saying that. But he didn’t completely follow his own advice. He never married again.”

  “No, he devoted himself to you girls and the ranch, and that was plenty to keep him happy. But I tell you, there was never a Christmas on the Lucky Stars without gifts under the tree and a plum pudding on the table. And this year won’t be the first.”

  “Smokey’s right,” Molly agreed, entering the big living room with her arms full of garlands. “It’s what Papa would have wanted. I’m bringing all the decorations down from the attic, some that we haven’t used for years. It will do us good to see them again.”

  Susannah came in behind her with another armload of boxes and the three sisters sat together on the floor pulling out treasured pieces of the past.

  “Remember the time we tried to stay up all night, Mary Beth?” Susannah asked, holding up a candle in a tin star. “We got scared after Papa had put out all the lights so we decided to light the candles on the tree.”

  “And almost burned the house down,” Molly added, laughing.

  Mary Beth was cradling an angel in her lap. “I remember the year I said the only thing I wanted for Christmas was a mother.” A single tear rolled from the corner of her eye. “Papa said I had the most special mother of all, because my mother was an angel who would be watching over me no matter where I went or what I did.”

  “And he gave you a Christmas angel that he said looked just like her,” Molly added, leaning over to squeeze her sister’s hand.

  “When Mrs. Barter tried to put it away after Christmas, you bit her,” Susannah added.

  “I did not!”

  “Yes, you did,” Susannah and Molly said at once. And then both older sisters put their arms around the youngest. They hugged and giggled as they had so many Christmases past, their wet eyes the only sign of the ache they were all feeling.

  Smokey had started the preparations for a Christmas Eve feast that would occupy him much of the day. Mary Beth had volunteered to help. Molly had declared that no work other than the essential chores would be done for the next two days. They would act as if their father was still here, spending this special day decorating the house and smelling the tantalizing odor of apple pie and roast goose coming from the kitchen. Secretly, each person would sneak away to prepare the little gifts of the season that had always been a family tradition.

  After breakfast Parker had watched the bustle for a few minutes, looking a little lost and out of place. Then he had said that if there was no work to be done, he’d head out to the bunkhouse.

  “We ought to invite Parker in to help with the tree,” Susannah said as she stood and began to untangle a garland of stamped tin stars.

  “He’s probably missing his family on a day like this,” Mary Beth added.

  Molly jumped to her feet. “He heard what we were planning at breakfast. I suspect if he’d been interested, he’d have stayed.”

  “He might not have felt welcome,” Mary Beth said softly, exchanging a glance with Susannah. Since the night of the lynching of Ole Pedersson, Molly had been unusually curt with their new hand. Susannah and Mary Beth had discussed whether they should talk to their sister about it, but had decided to wait and see if things got better once Molly got over the horror of that night.

  “He knows he’s welcome,” Molly snapped. “He eats here three times a day, doesn’t he?”

  They went back to work in silence. “I think I’ll ask him, just the same,” Susannah said after several minutes.

  “I think we should,” Mary Beth agreed.

  Molly didn’t say a word. She brushed some clinging angel hair from her buckskin trousers, then turned to head up to the attic for another box.

  There would be no snow for Christmas. The remains of the storm that had blanketed the prairie when Parker had first arrived had long since melted, leaving a shriveled brown landscape that was as desolate as Parker’s spirits.

  He and Claire had never even had a Christmas together. Not a single one. She’d come into his life with the heady blooming of a new spring… and had left it just as fall was beginning once again to teach its ageold lesson on the inevitability of death. Parker leaned against the door frame of the bunkhouse, looking across the Lucky Stars corral toward the foothills in the west. Is that where he would find peace at last? Past those hills and beyond, to California? Or should he seek it back home? Should he give up this fruitless search for a new life and return to the family he loved—to New York Christmases full of sleigh rides and hot chestnuts on the streets, Yule logs and caroling and mulled cider?

  He scanned the horizon and sighed. Amelia and Gabe were having their first Christmas together. The older Prescotts, as usual, would spend part of the day helping out at the soup kitchens, but then the family would gather for a grand dinner. Gabe’s nine-year-old son would be there, the son he hadn’t known he had until just a few months ago. And the way his sister and Gabe had been after each other, Parker supposed that before long there’d be a new brother or sister for the boy—Gabe and Amelia’s this time. Parker would be an uncle. He gave a bleak smile.

  It was cold, but he didn’t feel like shutting himself up by the stove inside the empty bunkhouse. He blew on his hands and stomped his feet just as the door to the ranch house opened and Susannah came out. She wore no coat, but was wrapped up in a yellow shawl, a bright spot of color against the brown countryside.

  “Parker,” she called to him, skipping lightly toward him acro
ss the yard.

  He tried to put some enthusiasm into his smile. “How’s the decorating coming?”

  She drew nearer. “We’ve just put up the tree, but we’re going to wait to trim it until after lunch. Molly and Mary Beth are helping Smokey.” She shivered and pulled the shawl around her. “Aren’t you cold standing out here?”

  He hesitated a moment, then stepped to one side to allow her access to the bunkhouse. “Come in, if you like. The stove’s still going from last night.”

  Susannah peered in the door as if she expected to see a naked man hiding underneath one of the empty beds. “We were never allowed in here when Papa…” Her voice trailed off as she stepped over the threshold.

  “Forbidden territory, eh?” Parker asked with a grin.

  She smiled back at him. “There was a lot of forbidden territory when Papa was around,” she said, her expression turning mischievous.

  “I’m sure he was just trying to protect you all.”

  He followed her into the room, leaving the door open. She stepped around him and firmly closed it, looking at him with a glint of daring in her eyes. “You’ll let out all the heat.”

  Parker moved a little uneasily into the center of the room. “Maybe your sister wouldn’t like you being out here with me.”

  “I thought we’d settled that the other day. I’m too old for her rules anymore.” She looked around, then chose a bunk and sat on it, smoothing her skirts around her. With a nod toward the other end of the bed, she added, “Come on and sit down with me.”

  Parker looked amused. Susannah was not practiced at the art of flirting, but it didn’t make the least bit of difference. She just naturally had that indefinable quality that made a man want to take her in his arms almost the minute he saw her. It was more than beauty and an attractive figure. It was a kind of openness—no guards, no barriers to cross. Totally unlike her older sister, who seemed to live inside a walled fortress.