Clara's Mail Order Joy (Home for Christmas Book 5)

by Natalie Dean

“What’s left of it. My Pa died in the fighting at Vicksburg. Ma took sick and died when typhus went through the town. My sister Emma died in childbirth. I had a brother who died young, before the War. There wasn’t much in Kansas to stay for and I was fifteen and on my own.”

  “Fifteen years old?” she exclaimed. “Fifteen is just a boy.”

  “Not when you’ve no mother or father, and no land to call your own because there was no money to pay the taxes, and no family to take you in. So I left. Worked my way west and then joined the army at seventeen.”

  “How have you managed to stay so—so full of cheer?” she wanted to know. “I am sure that if I had encountered the misfortune that you have experienced, I would be quite bitter.”

  Peter pulled the wagon to a halt and put his arm around her. “Well, now,” he said. “It’s a funny thing, but bad as things might be, there’s always some poor chap who’s got worse to deal with. No matter where I went, I had two strong arms and I could earn my way. I was too young to fight in the War; that was lucky for me. I was raised by hard-working, God-fearing parents who taught me right from wrong; that was lucky, don’t you think? I was born in a country where, if fortune doesn’t seem to be shining in one place, there’s nothing to prevent a man from pulling up stakes and going elsewhere to make his mark in the world. And best of all, I could send an advertisement to a magazine and ask if there was a pretty brunette woman out there somewhere who’d want to marry me. Lo and behold, one did. I reckon I’m the luckiest man in the West.”

  He put the reins down and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her in broad daylight as if there were no one at all to see them, even though they were not entirely out of sight of the mining camp.

  “Peter,” she protested, “someone might see us.”

  “I reckon God sees us,” Peter said, “and it’s to my way of thinking that the good Lord won’t mind a bit. If a man loves his wife, why shouldn’t he kiss her?”

  “Peter . . . you speak of God a lot. But you didn’t go to church before, at least not here. That’s what you said.”

  “I want to kiss my wife and she wants to discuss theology?” Peter replied good-humoredly. “It’s like this, Clara. I don’t think God wants us to be miserable, crabbed cross patches. I think God wants us to enjoy what He’s given us. That’s a fine-looking sky up there, isn’t it? Did you ever see such a blue sky? Not back East, where I hear there are times when the sky is just a big gray dome over the earth because of the smoke from the factories and the mills. But here, it’s pure. I feel that God is here.”

  “He’s in Boston, too, Peter,” Clara defended her home.

  “Maybe so, I reckon God is anywhere He’s welcome. But maybe He’s a little bit happier out here.”

  It didn’t make any sense at all to her, what he was saying. It didn’t conform to any of the lessons that she’d been taught about religion or duty or service. But as he kissed her and she kissed him back, she knew that he meant what he said and he’d stand by it. That was something that Father would respect.

  “I know one thing for sure,” Peter said as his embrace tightened around her and his lips roamed from her ear to her neck.

  “What’s that?” His kisses left her breathless and wanting his touch in a way that she was sure no good woman could possibly desire. That was a secret best kept to herself, for what would Reverend Mains think if he knew that her husband aroused such a hunger in her?

  “The man who invented the corset ought to be hanged by the neck until he’s dead and after that, may his soul rot in perdition. What would possess a person to create such a garment that keeps a man from enjoying an honest hug from his wife?”

  “Peter!” she upbraided her husband. “How can you say such a thing? Of course a lady wears a corset! A lady would not dream of going without one.”

  “Maybe,” he said, a glint in his deep brown eyes, “there’s too much lady and not enough woman in some females.”

  Chapter 9

  After she had washed the week’s dirty clothes and hung them on the line to dry, Clara returned to the house and her sewing. Dinner would be ready in another hour or two, which gave her time to work on the shirt she was sewing for Peter. He needed new long underwear, too, she realized with a pragmatism that would have eluded her in the days before she was a married woman. She would mention it to him so that he could buy another pair at the general store. He would object, saying that he had two pairs and didn’t need more. But she was used to making her arguments on a point that mattered and she would not capitulate.

  There were so many things to consider now that she was a wife and living in Colorado. In Boston, they had been consumed with making ends meet and maintaining the appearance that the Ellises had enjoyed in more prosperous times. Here, it seemed as though no one knew very much about anyone else, or perhaps didn’t care. It was known that Harley Wyatt was a rich rancher, but no one seemed to see anything amiss in the presence of what was surely his misbegotten daughter living with him and his lawfully wedding wife, Hazel. And the child wore trousers and a boy’s shirt and boots and nobody seemed to think this odd. Or if they did, they didn’t voice their thoughts. What sort of place was this where there were no set standards of conduct?

  And the mining camp . . . what a bleak place for people to live, especially those with wives and families. How could they possibly stand to live under such unprepossessing circumstances? What kind of a life did they have? Were there books to read in the camp? Could the miners even read? Was there ever music to brighten their days, the kind of music that made the soul leave its physical shackles and commune with the heavenly choir? Or art: what of portraits and landscapes and vivid images that brought to mind other worlds captured on canvas that opened the portals of the imagination? What was it like, she wondered as her needle swiftly moved in and out of the cloth, to spend one’s day down below the earth, and then to return to the camp above ground, where prospects were surely no less desolate? How did they manage it? How had Peter endured it when he had lived in the camp?

  But Peter’s zest for life was remarkable. The hard times did not seem to have scarred him and he had suffered much. To be an orphan at fifteen years of age with no one to care for him or look out for him . . . she’d had her parents and her sisters and she had never been on her own. Even when she was traveling West on the train, it was with a ticket that Minnie had paid for. True, Minnie had pawned their Grandmama’s sapphire bracelet to pay for the tickets, but she had done so out of love for her sisters.

  Clara wondered why Minnie did not speak of the journey to Colorado. Perhaps her trip has not been as comfortable as what Hazel and Clara had enjoyed on the Pullman cars. Or perhaps Minnie, the first of the sisters to leave Boston, had been too absorbed in the enormity of her decision to notice her journey. Perhaps someday, she would ask her. But not yet. Minnie was quite busy now that Gavin had decided, following the death of his herd in the sudden April snowstorm that had greeted Minnie upon her arrival, to raise sheep instead. Minnie was an integral part of the venture because Gavin could not afford to hire anyone to work.

  It was very different for Hazel. Her husband had plenty of money, cattle and land, even though the snowstorm had caused the loss of some of his herd as well. He had been on a cattle drive when it happened and he had not even been at the train station to greet Hazel when she arrived. Clara supposed it wasn’t his fault, but still, it seemed as if he had not planned well. Fortunately, Minnie and her husband had been there to meet the train and they had taken Hazel to their cabin. It was a small cabin, Clara thought. Of course, her house was small too, but it had aspirations of being larger. Peter had designed it himself and built it so that she would not miss the architecture of Massachusetts just because she was living so far away.

  Then Clara froze. She heard the doorknob turning. But it was not Peter; she would have recognized his footsteps had he been coming in.

  “Who is there?” she demanded, holding onto the needle in her hand as if it would serve as a weapon
.

  “I don’t mean to startle you, ma’am,” said a man as he entered the room.

  “Who are you? My husband is—"

  “I mean no harm, ma’am. I just arrived at the camp and folks told me that there’s quite a sight up here.”

  Clara eyed him warily, her hand still holding her needle. “To what are you referring?”

  “Ma’am,” he said earnestly, his sober intonation at odds with his worn clothing and battered hat; she could see his toes showing from his shoes. “They said that a miner—your husband, I reckon it would be—built this house and that it’s as fine as the great houses back East. But they said he also built the finest privy that’s ever been seen in these parts. And I just felt like I had to set my own eyes on these things to see for sure if they were real. I can see that the house is. You have a fine house, ma’am. I wondered if it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition if I might take a look at that privy. I hear that it’s quite spacious. A two-holer, they say. And—"

  “You have come here to see the outhouse?” Clara interrupted him, scarcely able to credit what he had said.

  “Yes, ma’am. You see, I’ve been traveling for many a day and I haven’t seen much to inspire me. But when the miners got to talking, I knew I had to see this with my own eyes. If a man can build something so fine here, in the midst of God’s wilderness, is that not proof that there are better things in store for us?” he inquired.

  “My husband has a number of talents,” she said. “Carpentry being one of them. But I do not think he would say that what he has built could not be duplicated by a man with wood, nails and a hammer.”

  “May I see it, ma’am?”

  “Yes . . . if you wish,” she said. If she got rid of him, then she could take a kitchen knife in hand, in case his request was a ruse to rob her. Or worse. “It ... the outhouse—it’s over to the left of the house, back around twelve feet or so. There are trees around it; they are young trees and they haven’t grown very tall yet.”

  He bowed his head. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  He left the house. Clara watched him carefully and as soon as the door closed behind him, she hurried to the kitchen and took a knife in her hands. From the window she watched as he left her view, following her directions to the location of the outhouse. He was there long enough that she wondered, irately, if he had chosen to use the facilities. But then he reappeared. Seeing her face in the window, he tipped his hat to her and continued on his way, walking back to the mining camp.

  When Peter came home for dinner, he was surprised to find the front door locked. Clara opened it to let him in.

  He looked at her curiously. “Did something happen?” he asked.

  As she served the meal, she told him about the curious episode with the new arrival to the mining camp. “He wanted to see the outhouse,” she said, pouring coffee into Pete’s cup before sitting down and passing slices of bread.

  “Ever since I built it,” Pete admitted, “folks have stopped by to see it. I don’t know how they hear about it, but a week doesn’t go by that someone doesn’t want to know if what they’ve heard is true.”

  “It seems odd that people in Colorado would react to the existence of an outhouse as if it were a shrine,” she said.

  The soup was still too hot. She blew on it to cool it. Peter, impervious to its temperature, was eating eagerly, taking a generous spoonful of soup and then a bite of bread with zest.

  “Most folks around here won’t do you harm,” he said. “But I don’t like the thought of you being defenseless and me so far below in the mine that I can’t protect you. Gavin taught your sister to shoot. Maybe it would be a good idea if I taught you. I don’t take my gun down in the mine with me. I could leave it here for you in case you have need of it.”

  “I had a knife from the kitchen,” she said. “If I’d had to, I’d have used it. He was harmless, though; he went back to look at the outhouse and then went on his way. I could see that he was going in the direction of the camp. The knife would have served.”

  Peter shook his head. “If you have to use a knife to keep safe, you’ve got to think about how to wield it,” he said. “You have to decide where to stab. With a gun, you don’t have to think. You aim for the heart and you pull the trigger before you have time to think.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you,” she said. “It sounds so . . . I don’t know. It sounds like vengeance.”

  “Colorado isn’t like Boston,” he said. “Life is cheap here, especially in the mines. I’m not saying the miners are dangerous, but I don’t want you to be unprotected.”

  “I wasn’t unprotected. I told you, I took up the knife as soon as he left.”

  “What if he hadn’t let you get to the knife?”

  “You’re so sure he’d have let me get to your gun?”

  “If you’re going to protect yourself,” Peter told her. “You don’t have time to ponder it.”

  It was the first time that he had ever given any indication that there was danger here and his manner alarmed Clara. She began to wish that she had not brought up the episode. She wanted to tell Peter how the man’s words had confirmed what she had been thinking, independent of the miner’s entry into the house. The danger in Colorado, she thought, was not only that life was cheap, as Peter said. It was that the daily lives of the miners lacked inspiration; the culture that the world’s finest cities had nurtured and built had no place to incubate here. Men plied their trades, tended their cattle and sheep, performed their duties. Women cooked, cleaned, raised children, laundered clothes and tried to maintain homes against overwhelming odds. But where was the beauty that the soul craved for solace? She and her sisters had grown up accustomed to a place that culture, music, art and literature had in daily life. Could they last without those precious things? There was no way to obtain them in Colorado and she had never before been expected to do without them. Now, she was living in a barbaric outpost where a new arrival to the wretched mining camp had come by to ask permission to view the outhouse with his own eyes. Was this what Colorado offered instead of a play, a concert, a library, a museum? How could a state sustain its people if all that it had to offer was drudgery and labor?

  Chapter 10

  The end of summer was approaching but the days were still bright and clear in Colorado. September brought with it the hint of autumn but the day that the piano was to arrive dawned sunny. It was like a reflection of the temper of the town, which was gathering to welcome the musical instrument, the one that Harley Wyatt had bought for his wife, as if a famous person was expected to disembark from the train.

  Pete smiled in amusement at his wife as she struggled to decide which dress to wear to the train station. “You’re dolling yourself up for a piano?” he teased. “We’ve got plenty of musical instruments right here in the mining camp; I don’t see why you’re going for the lacy duds there.”

  “Guitars and banjos are not classical instruments,” she said. “Do you think this one?” She held up a soft, coral print dress that added brilliant highlights to her hair. It was simpler than the other choice, which was a green and gold dress with a sewn-on lace jacket over the bodice, but she thought the coral might be better for singing. For she knew that once the piano arrived at the ranch, Hazel would be agreeable to playing and naturally, Clara would sing.

  “Sweetheart, I haven’t seen you look any less than beautiful no matter what you wear. If you look like Venus in one and Aphrodite in the other, what’s the difference?”

  “Venus and Aphrodite are the same goddess,” she responded, then realized, belatedly, that Peter knew that. She smiled in appreciation for the compliment. “I’ll wear the coral,” she decided. “Harley will probably have something new for Hazel and I don’t want to look as if I’m competing with her.” Her out-of-style dresses didn’t really matter in Colorado, she had found, for they looked new to the fashion-starved women of the West who admired her appearance whenever they saw her.

  She was beautiful in her clothes
, but Peter thought that covering up all her loveliness was next to a sin. Then he saw her reach for the corset.

  “I don’t know why you have to wear that,” he grumbled, crossing the room to hold her against him, her flawless curves so reminiscent of the delight he took in her. Standing behind her, he held her close to him, his arms around her waist, his lips buried in her slender neck. “If I wanted to hug a board, there’s plenty of trees in Colorado that could oblige me. Leave it . . .” he coaxed in a low voice. “Leave it behind.”

  “Peter! I couldn’t do such a thing! A lady always dresses completely, I’ve told you that. Why—I can’t imagine what it would be like to leave it behind. Now, you must let me go so that I can dress. We don’t want to miss the arrival of the piano.”

  “I can think of reasons worth the missing,” he answered.

  His kisses had a way of making her forget what she was thinking and what she intended to say. For a single moment, she leaned back in his arms and surrendered to the delight of his touch. Then she pulled away. “We must be on time,” she said. “If the train should arrive and we aren’t there, I would feel as if I’d failed Hazel. What are you doing?”

  Peter, a grin on his face, had taken her corset out of her hands during the moment of weakness when she succumbed to his embrace.

  “Peter—Peter, you give that right back to me!” she ordered. “I must wear it.”

  “Why?” he challenged, holding it out of reach when she grabbed for it. “You’re perfect without it.”

  “No woman is perfect,” she answered, lunging at him as she tried again to grab the corset.

  She didn’t know how fetching she looked, her charms both revealed and hinted at by the drawers and chemise that were next to her skin. Then she’d put on that infernal corset, and then petticoats, not just one, no, but sometimes two or even more, depending on the dress. By the time the dress went on, Peter thought, a woman was a prisoner of her clothing. If it was intended to preserve her virtue, why did a married woman need to be shielded from her husband? He had posed this question to her before, but without the corset as a hostage, he hadn’t been able to make his argument with success.