Softly Falling

by Carla Kelly

  “You’re a fighter, Lily,” he reminded her. “You proved that in the schoolhouse, and you proved it again when the roof blew off.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “You’ll have a lot to learn, but you won’t let anyone steal my land.”

  “Of course not!” she exclaimed, leaping out of the rocking chair, which rocked harder. She looked at him, from his sandy hair to his frostbitten face with the war scar, to his capable shoulders that had hefted heavy loads all his life.

  “Why not Madeleine?”

  “I like her a lot, but she’s Métis, part French, part Ojibwa. The Denver lawyers would dismiss her claims faster than an envelope would burn in a furnace. Besides, she’s not the fighter you are.”

  She had to ask. “Jack, shouldn’t we maybe court each other a little first?”

  “We haven’t that luxury yet,” he said, each word plainspoken and solid. “Sit down. No, right here.” He patted his lap.

  She hesitated, then sat on his lap, which put her eye to eye with this man who had just proposed. “It’s a crazy notion,” she argued, but she couldn’t even convince herself.

  “Granted. Let’s do this: marry me, and if I die before spring, the Sinclair Ranch is yours. If I survive, and you have other plans, we can annul this and move on.” He shrugged. “And if you like me a little . . .”

  I’d be helping out a friend, she thought. No, a more-than friend. She leaned against him, and his arm seemed to naturally curl around her waist. “We can’t get to Wisner to find a vicar or a reverend, or whatever you call them in Wyoming. This has to be a legal arrangement.” There. That should end the matter, she declared to herself, which had the effect of making her suddenly miserable.

  He gave her a sunny smile, the triumphant sort of smile she had seen on the face of her father just before he said, “Checkmate,” and knocked over her queen, when they played chess. “Preacher is an ordained Methodist minister, someone called a circuit rider. I saw his certificate once. I couldn’t read it, but who lies about a thing like that? Well?”

  There was one more thing. His casual mention of his illiteracy reminded her. She got off his lap, startled at the look of disappointment in his eyes. “There’s another issue. When Pierre finds my trunk, I’ll show you.”

  “You can’t say yes or no right now?”

  “I cannot.”

  He nodded. “I’d better help him dig out that trunk.” He left the kitchen.

  When Lily came out a few minutes later after composing herself, Madeleine and Fothering both gave her questioning looks. Lily shook her head. If she said no, better that they never knew. And if it was yes, she wanted to explain this craziness only once.

  Lily helped the Sansevers move their cots—bed was too grandiose a word—into the dining area; then she consulted with Luella about their own bed. “We can pile some of my father’s blankets underneath, and the rest on top, and be quite cozy, my dear,” she told the child. “But you need to help me.”

  They worked together. Luella started to cry after their pallet was nearly finished, so Lily just cradled her in her arms until she was calm again. When her tears turned into occasional sniffles, Lily handed her another blanket to layer on top. “Get busy, missy,” she warned in a gentle voice. “I intend to be warm tonight!”

  By the time the men returned from the woodpile, the girls had moved two tables away from the sleeping areas. Amelie had already painted lines on one of the tables to denote their desks in the Temple of Education, which, although battered, was proving to be portable.

  And there was the trunk, bashed on top, but still intact. At her direction, Pierre and Jack set it by her pallet. She couldn’t open the trunk, but Jack took a crowbar to it and then stepped back, watching, worried, while she rummaged through it.

  Thank goodness the books were undamaged. She looked up. “No Ivanhoe,” she told Jack.

  He gave an exasperated sigh. ‘You mean you won’t . . .” He looked around and lowered his voice. “. . . say yes until I can read Ivanhoe? Lily!”

  “That’s not it. Let me look.” She searched through the trunk and found the pamphlet, not surprisingly, on the bottom under everything of importance. She had buried the foul thing as deep as she could. She held it up, wondering if he would remember.

  “Oh, that’s the pamphlet I gave you when you were asking for books,” he said, reaching for it. “Seems so long ag—” He stared at the words, which obviously made sense to him now. All the color drained from his face as, lips moving, he slowly read the diatribe against racial mixing that someone had given him years ago, maybe during the war. He read several pages to himself, then ripped the pamphlet in two and stuffed it in the pot-bellied stove. Without looking at her, he turned on his heel and left the cookshack.

  No, no, no, Lily thought to herself. She grabbed up the nearest shawl, wholly inadequate to the deep freeze outside and ran after him.

  She didn’t have to run far. He stood with his back against the cookshack wall, chin down, staring at his boots. She took his arm. “It’s too cold to stand out here.”

  He turned bleak eyes on her. “I’m appalled,” he said. “How could I give that to you?”

  “You’re the goose now, Mr. Sinclair,” she said, tugging on his arm until he started to move. “You didn’t know what it said, did you?”

  He shook his head, mumbled something, grabbed her hand, and pulled her into the cookshack. A few tight-lipped words and the kitchen emptied out. He closed the door.

  “Even if this marriage ends in the spring, I have to know if you agree with any of that,” Lily asked.

  “I never did,” he told her, sitting in the rocking chair this time and rocking. “You need to understand: Pa was a poor farmer. He worked alongside slaves. So did I.” He stood up and took her by her shoulders. “There wasn’t much difference in us, except they stood on auction blocks and we got thrown off our rented land if the crops failed.”

  “Yes, then,” she said simply. “I couldn’t even marry you for four months if I thought you agreed with that pamphlet.”

  “I don’t. You will?”

  “I just said I would.” She moved and he let go of her. “And if I decide to stay, you’re going to get a lot of rude comments from others about my color.” Stay? What was she saying?

  She hesitated, but it had to be said. “And there’s my father, the thief and drunkard. You’ll have to live with that too. This might be too hard, Jack.”

  He took her hand again. “Lily, hard is freezing to death. Hard is finding yourself on the losing side in a war. Hard is eating out of trash cans. Hard is not marrying you.”

  My goodness, she thought. And he probably doesn’t even think he is eloquent. “I’ll help you. I . . . I might move on in the spring, but I can help you now. Yes! That’s twice now. Don’t press your luck, mister.”

  He smiled at her phony sternness, which had the unfortunate consequence of making his chapped lips bleed. She reached for Madeleine’s white salve—heaven knows what it was—and dabbed some on his lower lip.

  “I’ll go talk to Preacher,” he said. “Let’s do this in the morning. While the snow is holding off and it’s still light, I want to get the men and move the bodies out of the Buxton house.” He looked at her seriously, and his face flooded with color. “Uh, you don’t need to . . . this isn’t a . . . Oh, you understand.”

  “I do,” she said, her own face warm. “It’s no business of Denver lawyers if we’re husband and wife in name only.”

  He nodded and left the kitchen. She watched him go, wondering what on earth she had agreed to. You’re helping a friend, Lily, she thought.

  Preacher stared at Jack in openmouthed amazement. Once more, Jack patiently explained the whole reasoning behind the marriage, and still he stared.

  “Preacher, this isn’t hard to understand,” he snapped. “I’m protecting my interests.”

  They had reached the Buxtons’ ruined house, shovels in hand, to join the others. Great mounds of snow filled t
he space where the roof had crashed through the upstairs bedrooms. The men surveyed the destruction of the tidy clapboard house.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” Will Buxton said.

  Under Jack’s directions, some shoveled snow, and others removed debris from the stairs, hoping to use them. Preacher was the lightest, so he went up first, climbing what stairs remained and crawling under walls where there should have been floors. By the time night fell, the bodies were bundled into blankets and pulled from the ruins.

  Pierre had brought the sledge used to haul wood. Gently they placed Mrs. Buxton and her maid on it and tied them down. Jack sent Preacher to try to find Luella’s room and some of her clothes, since she still wore only the nightgown she had escaped in. Will volunteered to find whatever food hadn’t been destroyed by debris and snow.

  Jack and Pierre pulled the sledge to the tack shed where Stretch lay, still frozen into a ball. The blanket slipped off Mrs. Buxton’s face and Jack looked at her, noting how relaxed she appeared now. He covered her face. Some women just weren’t cut out for Wyoming Territory. He wondered how Lily would fare on her own managing his ranch, and he felt no fear.

  He closed the door and stood with Pierre, surveying their world that was getting smaller and smaller. “If we can get a stretch of decent weather, we can dismantle the Buxton’s house and the sheds we should have burned years ago. Glory, I’m glad we didn’t. We need them now.”

  “We’re going to use it all, aren’t we?” Pierre asked. “Down to the toothpicks in Madeleine’s kitchen.”

  “I fear so.”

  Jack looked at the sky and watched the stars wink out one by one. “Here’s comes another one.”

  When everyone was accounted for and eating skinny beef and one potato each, Jack announced there was going to be a wedding. He looked for surprise on their faces and saw next to none. Maybe Lily had already told them. Pierre looked particularly amused by the matter.

  “Miss Carteret needs a dress and flowers,” Luella said.

  “Amelie and I will sing,” Chantal announced.

  Madeleine clapped her hands. “Monsieur Will brought me two quarts of flour and some sugar. Eh bien, there will be cake!”

  “No, no,” Lily said. “We need to conserve our victuals.”

  “ ‘Conserve our victuals,’ ” Fothering repeated in his peculiar English accent. “You’re marrying her because you love to hear her talk, aren’t you?”

  “You found me out,” Jack said, determined not to blush. “Y’all, it’s more of a business arrangement, and Lily is a good sport.” He glanced at Lily, who was finding the floor interesting. “Yes, cake. Luella, can you make paper flowers? Lily, your best dress, please, and that lace collar. I have one white shirt left.”

  “What about a honeymoon?” Will asked. “I hear the kitchen with the door closed is lovely this time of year.”

  Everyone laughed, no one harder than Lily, while the wind blew and snow slammed sideways into their last outpost, and while the roof stayed on and there was food. If they could cram the tables into the corners, there might be dancing to “Sur le Pont.” Lily could toss a bouquet of paper flowers and they would fling their own challenge to a winter unlike any other.

  Jack couldn’t help the feeling of immense satisfaction that washed over him like barely remembered spring rain. He thought of the Lily who got off the train, the Lily who insisted on tea, the Lily who cared about a pack rat, the Lily who kept him warm in a freezing ruin with tales of Barbados, the Lily who would fight and scratch and claw to stay alive and keep his ranch going, the Lily who looked so lovely, even with blotchy spots under her eyes and exhaustion drooping her shoulders, the Lily he wanted to grow really old with. That Lily. How in the world did stuff like this happen?

  CHAPTER 44

  Eyes fierce with concentration, Luella made flowers from newspaper that Madeleine donated, with the promise that they would go in the pot-bellied stove in the dining room when all was done. While she worked, Lily taught her students to sing, “The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring,” from The Mikado.

  “Miss Tilton took us to London to the Savoy to see it,” Lily told them.

  “You were in London last year?” Chantal asked.

  Lily nodded. Was it only a year? She had worn a beautiful dress with a bustle and sat in the grand tier of the mezzanine. And here she was, trying to stay alive in Wyoming, America, the new year upon them with no change in anything. She glanced at Jack, sitting in deep conversation with Pierre. Maybe he was one of those persons susceptible to suggestion, because he turned around and blew her a kiss. Shy, she looked away.

  There wasn’t much hope for her favorite dress, a green wool sadly wrinkled. Her bustle was buried under mounds of snow in her father’s house, not even surviving her removal to Jack’s house. Still, the lace collar constituted new, with an old dress. A borrowed and blue garter came from Will, surprisingly, who refused to say where he got it.

  Threatening death by butcher knife to anyone foolhardy enough to stroll into the kitchen, Madeleine went to work on the wedding cake. She had requested Fothering’s assistance, broken arm and all.

  Lily had no plans to sleep that night, not with the wind howling, but Luella cuddled close and warmed her. The room was dark and comforting because she had a roof over her head in no danger of flying off. Pierre and Nick had taken turns that afternoon nailing it down more firmly. The room was far from quiet, with snores and the occasional whimper from Luella, which meant Lily patted her bedmate, hoping to chase away a few demons. In spite of this, Lily felt her eyes closing.

  “Lily?”

  It was Jack, squatting on his haunches by her pallet.

  “I have no plans to change my mind,” she whispered. “Go to sleep.”

  He kissed her cheek. “I just wanted to say thank you.” He sighed and lay down on the cold floor beside her. “You’re not exactly hitching your wagon to a star, Miss Carteret,” he whispered.

  “Getting cold feet?” she teased in turn.

  “Lily, I wish I had a wedding ring for you.”

  She turned on her side to see him better. “And I wish I had straight hair and a bank account.”

  He couldn’t help his laughter, which made the other residents of Bar Dot Manor groan and demand silence. Someone threw a pillow.

  “Y’all are supposed to be asleep so I can creep around and visit Mrs. Almost-Sinclair,” he protested.

  “Go to bed, Jack,” she whispered. “You’re worse than my students.”

  The wedding was nothing to complain about, all things considered. She dressed in the kitchen, then took the newspaper bouquet Luella handed her.

  “I wish they were real flowers,” Luella said.

  “I don’t. They’d freeze in no time. This is perfect.” She kissed Luella.

  Before Madeleine opened the door, she pressed a dried sprig of sage in the Cheyenne Tribune bouquet. “Jean Baptiste gave this to me when we were married,” the cook whispered. “He wanted roses, but we live here. Just give it back when you are done.”

  Madeleine opened the door, and Lily wished she had tucked her handkerchief in her sleeve. Nick cleared his throat and began to hum Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” loud enough to compete with the wind.

  Jack stood at the end of the cookshack, wearing his last white shirt and a handsome paisley vest with someone’s watch fob stretched across the front. Preacher stood next to him.

  To Nick’s enthusiastic accompaniment, Lily took her first step toward Jack and his crazy arrangement to keep his ranch. Chantal, Amelie, and Luella stepped in front of her and walked forward, tossing out smaller newsprint flowers with each measured tread. She wasn’t certain, because Nick was loud and so was the wind, but Lily could have sworn she heard Luella counting “one, two, three, four.”

  Another step and Fothering stood beside her. He crooked out his arm. “I’m giving you away,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

  Ten more steps saw the journey over. As well-trained
as if they were bridesmaids in St. Paul’s Cathedral, the girls moved to the side. While Lily stood there with Fothering, the girls sang “The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring,” coming in extra loud on each “tra la,” almost in defiance of the storm.

  Delighted, Lily looked around at each face in the room. The men had frostbite scars. Will Buxton scratched discreetly at his chilblained fingers. Madeleine was already dabbing at her eyes. And there was Jack, a half smile on his face, but calm. She wondered what it would take to make him really angry and hoped she might never find out.

  “Dearly beloved!” Preacher shouted to be heard above the storm. Startled, Francis arched his back, and Chantal giggled.

  Fothering gave her away to Jack, who stood beside her in front of Preacher, her arm through his now. He trembled noticeably, or maybe she did.

  Preacher read a verse from the book of Ruth, which made Lily swallow a few times. He asked them seriously if they would take each other for richer or poorer, better or worse, in sickness and in health until death did them part.

  Or spring, Lily thought, unsure of herself. “I will.”

  Jack’s answer was more firm than hers, but she already knew he was not a man to harbor many misgivings about events.

  There wasn’t a ring, which moved them right along to Preacher’s man and wife pronouncement and their first kiss. It wasn’t more than a nervous peck, but at least they didn’t bump noses.

  The wedding dinner was hardly more than the usual fare, but with the menu written in French in Will’s lovely handwriting. Each place at the table had a stiff card announcing Haricot avec des oignons (beans with onions), Rôti de boeuf (roast beef), Pain san buerre (bread courtesy of the Buxton’s, without butter), and Raisins sec dans le riz (raisins and rice, thanks to the recovery of rice from the Buxton pantry).

  The wedding cake was a smallish loaf cake, sweetened with Buxton sugar and a little lemon juice from Jack’s hoarded anti-scurvy supply. Madeleine had somehow worked the canned milk and a little more sugar into frosting.