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

by Natalie Dean

  Peter took hold of her wrists in one hand. “Leave it here,” he said in a cajoling voice. “For me. Wear the other frilly bits, wear the bedsheets if you’ve a mind to, but leave this wretched thing behind. Just for today? Just for me?”

  Clara looked up at the corset, held above his head where she couldn’t reach it. She looked into his eyes, his loving, pleading, seducing, merry eyes. He was the very devil for sure!

  “Peter . . .”

  But he’d seen the moment of capitulation and he capitalized on it because now he knew what would work.

  “For me?”

  “Peter . . . I’d feel undressed without it, truly I would. You’re a man, you don’t understand.”

  “Would a doomed man feel undressed if he didn’t have a noose around his neck?” Peter asked her.

  “There’s no comparison. A corset is not a means of execution.”

  “It’s a prison. It locks your lovely body inside as if it’s held captive. When I hold you, I want to feel your skin against my hand. . . all your strength and your vitality. I don’t want to feel this!”

  “You do not understand, Peter,” Clara said, eyeing the corset above her, out of reach. “A lady—"

  “A lady doesn’t need a corset to be a woman.”

  “We are having an absurd argument and we are going to miss the train.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully, and released her wrists from his grasp. “Yes,” he said at last. “I believe we are.”

  Her eyes widened in shock and she jumped higher than she had ever jumped before. Her lack of inches made capturing the corset impossible, but the movement inspired her husband to capture her in one arm and hold her close.

  “I’ll be your corset,” he suggested, pinioning her within his arms.

  At first, she resisted. Then, she did not. Kissing him did not persuade him to relinquish his hold on the corset, but she had never before had such an attentive maid helping her dress.

  They were not late to the train station. A substantial crowd had already gathered to wait for the railroad to arrive, but the guest of honor was not present. Clara felt as if everyone must surely be noticing that she was not wearing a corset, but no one seemed to pay attention as they awaited the arrival of the train. She avoided her husband’s gaze; it was perhaps unwise, she thought, to allow a man, even a husband, the liberties he had taken while helping her with her garments.

  “Don’t tell Hazel that I am not wearing a corset,” she whispered after they had left the wagon and were talking to the train station, arm in arm.

  “I don’t fancy it coming up in the conversation,” he commented. “Now Minnie, maybe . . . I might tell her. Where is she?”

  “She’s busy helping Gavin,” Clara said. In truth, while Minnie was very busy these days, working with Gavin on the sheep raising venture that had replaced cattle, she had not seen her sister as often as before, when she first arrived. Nor had Hazel, and both sisters were worried.

  “I thought she’d be here. This is a big deal for your sister, isn’t it?” he asked.

  It was easy to forget that Peter, despite his genial manner, was also surprisingly perceptive. “It’s something that Hazel wants very much. We always sing . . .we did, that is, in Boston.” She decided not to mention that the family piano had been sold more than a year ago so that there would be money to pay for Mother’s treatment at the sanitorium where she had gone because she did not have the stamina to endure the encroaching threat of destitution which had crept ever closer to the family. Hazel and Clara were concerned for Minnie’s well-being but when they saw her on Sundays after church, she insisted that she was fine. She and Gavin had to take turns attending church so that one of them was always present to protect the sheep. That was the reason that Minnie had given for why the Cliffords no longer went to the Wyatt ranch on Sunday after church for lunch, but neither sister was convinced that the sheep were the only cause of her distance. And yet, what was the reason? It had been Minnie who had been the source for their travel to Colorado, Minnie who had found the advertisements for the men who were seeking mail-order brides. Her efforts had been successful; all the sisters were married. Clara was quite certain that Minnie was happy with her husband; Gavin was an upstanding, hard-working man who made no secret of his feelings for his wife and Minnie returned that love.

  It was troubling and as summer faded into autumn, and the season of holidays loomed ahead, neither Hazel nor Clara was sure how Minnie would be able to deal with a Christmas so different from the ones of her past. Christmas had been the Ellis family’s favorite holiday and music was a vital part of the observation of that holiday.

  The sisters and their husbands would be gathering at the Wyatt ranch for Christmas. Would the piano make up for the absence of their parents, or would it make the holiday emptier? Clara and Hazel didn’t know, but they prayed that Minnie, their beloved and brave sister, would take heart from the music that had always meant so much to them.

  A round of cheers erupted from the crowd as the noise signaling the arrival of the train filled the air, and the vibration of the movement on the tracks could be felt in the ground below their feet. Harley moved forward and Peter joined him as they waited.

  “It’s so exciting, isn’t it?” Clara whispered. “A piano!”

  Hazel smiled. “I could hardly sleep last night,” she confessed, “for thinking of it finally coming. It’s almost as if Mother will be here with us when we sing. You will sing, after it’s set up in the parlor? And I will play?”

  “Of course,” Clara answered. It had been her intention to baptize the piano with her singing from the moment she had learned the news that Harley had ordered a piano for his wife. Hazel was very lucky that Harley was so generous, and that he had the means to be generous. Someday, Clara knew, she would have a piano as well, when the Silver Belle Mine yielded its riches to Peter’s assiduous efforts. She would have servants and new hats and a horse of her own.

  “How lovely that dress looks on you,” Hazel said, noticing Clara’s attire. The folds of the dress enfolded her sister’s anatomy, spreading the warm coral print from her bodice to the hem, and giving her brilliant hair an added luster.

  Clara blushed. “You’ve seen me in this dress a dozen times back in Boston,” she said.

  “Yes, but it looks much prettier here. It looks . . . “

  “It’s the very same dress,” Clara insisted. “You must stop staring at me as if I am not outfitted in an appropriate manner.”

  “You?” Hazel laughed. “You are always dressed in complete adherence to what is appropriate. Oh, look, they’ve gotten the piano box onto the dray wagon.”

  It seemed to be taking quite a lot of the men to accomplish that feat, whether because of the weight of the piano or because everyone wanted to share in the occasion, the sisters were not sure. Clara thought it absurd that the arrival of a piano should be the cause for so much revelry and when the piano box was secured in the dray and Harley and Peter signaled that it could begin its journey, she was stunned to notice the townsfolk following it. Some of them walked behind it, a slow enough pace, to be sure, for the wagon, pulled by the sturdy dray horses, was going at a sedate pace. Others were in their own wagons, following behind in the cavalcade of onlookers who wanted to share in the excitement.

  “They are following the piano,” Clara said to Hazel, who was handling the reins of the Wyatt wagon with aplomb. Clara wished that she had as much ease in riding as Hazel had, but she was much more comfortable when someone else held the reins.

  “Yes, isn’t it thrilling?” Hazel said. “To think of so many of our neighbors caring so much about music.”

  “Do you think that is the reason?”

  “What else could it be?” Hazel asked, surprised by the question.

  “There is very little of moment in Newton or Darby,” Clara said. “Any cause for excitement will do.”

  “Perhaps,” her sister agreed. “But there’s no harm in their excitement.”

  �
��I wonder if they are fond of music,” Clara queried.

  “Who is not fond of music?”

  “I don’t mean the music that they dance to,” Clara argued. “I mean the great music that the masters have composed. Verdi, Mozart, Chopin . . .” her voice trailed off. Music had been her great avocation in Boston and it had been months now since she had heard the songs played. Could it be possible that these humble people, with their reels and country tunes, missed their music as much as she missed hers?

  Chapter 11

  Clara and Angel the camel had a mutual antipathy to one another, so much so that Peter tied the beast to the back of the house, or in the lean-to that he had built by the mine entrance, so that Clara need not set her eyes upon the creature she despised.

  It was not merely that the two disliked one another. Angel disliked everyone except Peter and so her hostility to Peter’s wife was not remarkable. Clara was also bothered by the peculiar impulse, whatever it had been, that had driven her husband to decide that a camel was the perfect beast of burden for a miner.

  As much as possible, Clara ignored the existence of Angel. But for others who lived in the nearby mining camp, having a camel in proximity was almost as fascinating as being in the same neighborhood as the spacious outhouse which Peter had built.

  She had adjusted, with effort, to the occasional request from one of the miners in the camp to be allowed to see the outhouse for himself. Unfailingly, the miner had gone away impressed by the structure. It was, admittedly, roomier than the typical privy and had been designed to be more of a chamber than a box. Peter attended to its maintenance with diligence so that his wife need not be assaulted by the odors which one might expect to experience from a building dedicated to the natural functions of the body.

  But one autumn day, as Clara was outside waiting for Peter to come home from for dinner after his work in the mine, she saw a man walking toward the Edwards home. He was a miner, plainly; she had reached the point where she knew by sight. And even if she hadn’t been able to guess, he was coming from the direction of the mining camp.

  “Ma’am,’ he said, seeing her standing by the entrance to the house. “I’ve heard that this homestead has two remarkable attractions.”

  “Oh? What might they be?” Clara asked in a cool voice which did not encourage familiarity.

  “I should have said three,” the man said with a smile as he took off his hat. “There is a privy, the likes of which I am told have not been seen in any of the neighboring towns; there is a camel; and there is yourself, a lady of surpassing beauty.”

  “I do not regard any of these as attractions, sir.”

  “I do not mean to offend. But I have never seen a camel and I should like very much to do so.”

  “My husband will be up from the mine very soon; perhaps he will be willing to show you the camel. As to the outhouse, it is located in a diagonal direction to the house. If you go over there and walk to the back, you will see it.”

  “And yourself—"

  “I am not on display,” she snapped.

  “Of course, ma’am, I meant no harm.”

  “Gus! What in tarnation are you doing here?”

  Peter appeared, loping with a long-legged gait from the mine to where Clara and the visitor were standing.

  “I’ve been gone for too long, Pete,” the man, apparently known to Peter as Gus, said as the men shook hands in greeting. “I learn upon my return that you are married—to this vision before us—and that you have a camel, and that you have built an outhouse that is well worth seeing. Before I go on my way, I would like to see the latter two attractions.”

  “Sure,” Peter said agreeably. “What brought you back here and why are you leaving?”

  “It’s a long tale, too long for a simple chat.”

  “Then why don’t you join us for dinner,” Peter invited. “My wife here is as talented at cooking as she is at being a vision and whatever she’s made will send you on your way with a satisfied appetite.”

  Clara, whatever her private thoughts regarding dinner guests, knew that in the West, hospitality was something not to be trifled with. There were too few of them, the bold settlers who had left the populated centers of the American continent, for anyone to fail to offer companionship, a meal, a drink, a ride, to a stranger who might become a friend or who might save one’s life.

  “I’ll set another plate,” she said. Peter’s exaggerated account of her cooking prowess would not lessen the meal. Her cooking was satisfactory, that was all, but she had come to realize that for men in the camps, the fact that a woman prepared a meal made it take on an appeal which it did not intrinsically possess.

  When Peter returned, dripping from his ablutions at the pump, Gus was with him. He made the proper and expected comments about the house. Clara enjoyed hearing her home praised and she accepted his compliments and passed them to her husband.

  “Peter deserves the credit,” she said. “He designed the house and built it.”

  Over a meal of chicken and biscuits and tomatoes, Gus answered Peter’s questions. “I’m going back to St. Louis, Pete,” he said. “I’ve mined for gold in California and for silver here and all I have to show for it is lost years.”

  Peter acknowledged this with a nod of understanding. Mining made no promises. “What’s in St. Louis?” he asked.

  “Schools, doctors, books, music, pretty ladies in fine dresses—not of your caliber, Mrs. Edwards, but at least there are more of them there than here—who might find it to their liking to marry a man with a few miles on his belt. I miss civilization, Pete. I never thought I would, but those things, they take root in a man.”

  “You are fond of music, Mr. . . .”

  “Augustus Nicolay, at your service, ma’am.”

  “Gus was the bugler for our troop when I was in the army,” Peter explained.

  “And you miss bugle music?”

  “I miss all music, ma’am. I miss the harp and the piano, the violin . . . I miss it all in the way a lover misses his paramour. I thought I would be content playing my bugle in the army, but I was not, so I lit out for the mines to make my fortune. But it’s taken me this long to learn that my fortune was right where I left it, back in St. Louis, where my mother taught piano lessons and my father repaired instruments. I’m going back there where I belong. There are band concerts and parades and recitals and I intend to attend every blessed event until I’ve filled up the empty hole in my being where there has been no music for these too many years. I don’t expect you understand ma’am, but—"

  “She understands,” Peter told him. “She understands very well.”

  By the time Gus was ready to take his leave, Clara’s farewell was a good deal warmer than it had been when she greeted him upon his arrival. Her warmth was not diminished when Gus told Peter that the camel, Angel, was surely a hellbeast who belonged in the depths of Hades for her vile temperament. Peter remonstrated with his old friend, protesting that Angel simply took a long time to warm up to some folks.

  That evening, after Gus had left and the work of the day was done, Peter and Clara sat in the parlor. It was just cool enough to need a fire and Peter built it up then sat down on the chair across from Clara. He enjoyed this time of day, when she sat at her sewing and the firelight danced bright copper patterns in her hair.

  He was carving wood. She was about to chide him for the wood chips that were on the floor when she looked more closely at what was materializing in his hands.

  “Who is that for?”

  “Oh, I thought I’d make a few of these for some of the kids in the camp,” he said. “Mostly I don’t know what they’re saying when they talk, but I don’t know a child yet who doesn’t speak the language of a toy. It’s not likely that they’ll be expecting much for Christmas, so I thought I’d make a few of these and leave one for each kid to have on Christmas day.”

  “That is very kind of you,” Clara said. “I didn’t know that you were so skilled.”

  He held up
the early stages of what she could see would be a horse. “It doesn’t take much skill,” he said.

  “Peter . . . are there many children in the camp?”

  “Some, not a lot, I reckon, but some. The camp isn’t much of a place for a family, but they do come here with their wives and where there’s husbands and wives—or men and women, in case the preacher hasn’t shown up yet—there’s kids.”

  “Do they even know what Christmas is? How do you know if they are Christian?”

  “I expect they are. They’ll know what Christmas is, even if they call it something else where they come from.”

  “They don’t go to church,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone who looked like a miner when I’m at worship.”

  “Miners are a rough lot,” he said. “I don’t know as they feel welcome in town. And even if they were welcome. . . I don’t know as they’re much for Sunday church.”

  “Will they know what Christmas is for?”

  “I’m not fussing over that. I reckon Jesus knows who they are and He won’t think less of me if I leave a toy for them instead of a prayer book on His birthday.”

  Clara returned to her sewing. Gus wanted music again. Christmas was coming. The children in the mining camp didn’t have toys. People might know about Christmas but not in one language. Wisps of thoughts swirled in her mind but she could not catch them; they were too vague. In Boston, as the Christmas holidays approached, there were parties and balls so that the city’s elite could celebrate the joyous festivities with fine wines, excellent food and of course, presents. But Advent was celebrated in worship as well, the church and congregation preparing for the birth of the Christ. It was an event marked by great ceremony and anticipation.

  Here, in the mining camp, there would be no tree garlanded with popcorn and cranberries strung together to create a majestic scene in the high, vaulted ceilings of the mansions. What sort of Christmas feast could be prepared and cooked on stones over a campfire? Did mining camp children believe that Father Christmas would visit them and bring toys?