Lily and the Major

by Linda Lael Miller

  Caleb made no comment; he only looked at Lily as though he wanted to take her into his arms and hold her.

  She drew a deep breath, let it out again. “I was adopted by a Presbyterian minister and his family as a—a playmate for their little girl.” The grim lovelessness of life with the Sommers family came back to her, as crushingly dismal as ever. If it hadn’t been for Rupert, she’d never have been able to endure those years, and how had she repaid him? By running off without leaving so much as a farewell note.

  “Were they cruel to you?” Caleb asked. “The minister’s family, I mean.”

  Lily thought of the beatings she’d taken, the sparse meals allotted to her, the thundering reprimands, and the tattered clothes from the donation box on the chur porch. She’d never been allowed to forget that she was a burden, taking up too much room. “Their son was good to me. He taught me to read and write and helped me with my work.”

  Caleb lifted her chafed, callused hand to his lips and kissed it lightly. “What do you want most in the whole world?”

  She searched his handsome face, wondering if Caleb would understand, or if he would think her silly and frivolous. “I want to find my sisters. And I want a home of my own where nobody can tell me what to do.”

  Caleb nodded, and if he’d made any judgments of Lily’s dreams, they didn’t show in his eyes.

  “I’ve been sending letters ever since I learned to write, trying to find them,” Lily finished quietly.

  “The west is a big place,” Caleb reminded her in gentle tones. “They’ve probably married and taken other names—”

  Lily glared at him. Maybe she’d just imagined that he empathized with her. “No matter what it takes, I’m going to find my sisters.”

  “How can you search for them and work a homestead, too?”

  Lily folded her hands in her lap and looked at the china-blue sky for a long, long time. “When I was little and we were still in Chicago, my mother used to send me out for bread or a tin of tea, and I’d get lost on the way home. Caroline taught me to stay in one place until she came looking. She always found me.”

  Caleb released Lily’s hand. “And you figure she’ll find you this time, if you just stay put?”

  Lily swallowed and nodded. Her eyes were stinging with tears. “She promised,” she said.

  Caleb didn’t comment. They finished their meal of fried chicken, potato salad, and apple pie, and then he took Lily’s hand and they got up from the blanket to walk around.

  Lily showed Caleb the stakes that indicated her property line, and even though it ran square through the middle, she considered the whole valley hers. After all, nobody had built on the adjoining half section, even though a claim had been filed on it.

  “What kind of crops do you plan to raise?” Caleb asked.

  Lily folded her arms and gave a self-satisfied sigh. “I’m going to raise apples and pears—and grain.”

  Caleb looked out over the fertile land. Already it was carpeted with spring grass, even though patches of March snow lingered in places. “How do you plan to get the plowing done?” The question was a reasonable one.

  “I’ve tilled fields before,” Lily assured him. “Rupert’s parents had a small farm in Nebraska. The reverend preached on Sundays and raised corn the rest of the week, and we had to help him. Except for Isadora, of course.”

  “Isadora?” They had returned to their picnic site, and Caleb was helping Lily fold the blanket. “Who’s that?”

  “She was Rupert’s sister,” Lily said, remembering the beautiful child with a certain bitter fondnessp>

  A simple pull on the blanket brought Lily improperly close to Caleb, but she couldn’t have let go to save her soul.

  “You looked sad just then,” Caleb said.

  Lily nodded. “Isadora died of diphtheria the year we were ten.”

  Caleb let his end of the blanket fall to the ground and placed his hands on either side of Lily’s head. His thumbs moved gently over her cheeks, and she was scandalized to find herself hoping that he meant to kiss her again. “You’ve had more grief in nineteen years than most people get in a lifetime,” he said softly. “What you need is someone to take care of you. Very good care.”

  The last three words were spoken as a whisper against Lily’s lips, and a shudder of need went through her as his mouth claimed hers. She would have sworn she felt his heart beating against her breast, but perhaps it was her own. She couldn’t tell anymore.

  Lily swayed slightly when Caleb withdrew, and he steadied her with strong hands. “If Mrs. McAllister ever found out about this,” she muttered, dazed, “she’d throw me straight into the street.”

  Caleb chuckled. “What would you do then, Lily-flower?”

  “I d-don’t know,” she answered.

  He bent his head to touch his lips, just lightly, to the side of her neck. Lily shivered as a strange heat kindled there and danced along her flesh to pulse in the tips of her breasts. “You have other choices, Lily,” he muttered, “besides grubbing in the dirt for a living.”

  Lily stepped back, knowing she would drown in sensation if she didn’t get some perspective on things. She was entirely innocent when it came to the things men and women did together, but she sensed that Caleb was hinting at something scandalous. “Is this an indecent proposal?” she countered.

  He smiled down at her. “I guess that’s a matter of opinion,” he answered. “I’d like you to be my mistress. You could have a fine house—”

  Lily trembled with the effort to keep from flinging herself at Caleb Halliday in a hissing, spitting rage. Her words were evenly modulated and breathed, rather than spoken. “How dare you presume to suggest such a thing?”

  The handsome face hardened. “I didn’t ‘presume’ the way you reacted to that kiss,” he replied.

  Lily’s cheeks flared with hurtful color. Just because she was alone in the world, forced to earn her living putting up with brazen flirtations and crude suggestions from soldiers and traveling peddlers, Caleb thought she was a strumpet. She wanted to sob at the injury, but she spoke calmly. “I think we’d better be getting back to town,” she said. Not only had Caleb insulted her, but the sky was darkening and there were angry clouds gathering on the horizon.

  Caleb set the picnic basket under the buggy seat and then hoisted Lily into the rig. He jerked his hat on, then climbed up beside her to take the reins.

  A fanciful part of Lily’s nature took over, one that had flourished during the lonely, difficult time she’d spent with the Sommers family. She pretended things were different.

  In her mind, Caleb thought of her as a lady, and she didn’t have to leave her land. She imagined living there, and bringing cold creek water to Caleb in the fields. He’d be wearing plain clothes instead of a uniform, and his shirt, open midway down his chest because of the heat, would cling wetly to his flesh….

  She brought herself sharply back to reality. Caleb was no gentleman, and he’d already made it clear that he was no farmer, either. Besides, she didn’t know him well enough to indulge in such fancies.

  Mrs. McAllister was waiting on the front porch, her hands clasped together over her apron, when Lily and Caleb arrived at the boarding house. She smiled happily and hurried down the walk. “Would you care to come back at seven for supper, Major?” she asked, without sparing Lily so much as a glance.

  If she had, Lily would have discouraged her from tendering the invitation. The prospect of sitting across the table from Caleb Halliday, knowing he thought she was a trollop, was patently unappealing.

  Besides, one had to take a personality as strong as Caleb’s in small, measured doses. Like castor oil.

  “I’d like that very much,” Caleb said, hat in hand. He got down from the buggy and came around to help Lily. “Thank you, Mrs. McAllister.”

  Lily blushed and tightened her lips at the sensations stirred by the touch of his hands on either side of her waist. Avoiding both her landlady’s eyes and Caleb’s, she thanked the major stiff
ly, excused herself, and hurried into the house.

  She was brewing tea in the kitchen when Elmira McAllister joined her there.

  “Such a nice young man,” she said, going straight to the stove to check the ham. “You could do worse than a major in the United States Army, Lily Chalmers.”

  Lily sighed and sat down to wait for her tea to steep. She was too proud to say that Caleb was looking for a mistress, not a wife. “I’m not in the market for a husband, Mrs. McAllister—especially not a bossy one like Caleb Halliday.”

  “Humph,” said Mrs. McAllister. “If ever a young lady needed the strong guiding hand of a good man, you do.”

  Lily smoothed her hair. She didn’t understand what she’d done to warrant such an opinion. She supported herself, and she was a dependable tenant, always paying her rent on time, never venturing into the kitchen after eight o’clock or leaving soggy towels about after her bath the way the male boarders did.

  Mrs. McAllister seemed disappointed that Lily had let her remark pass. She touched the crust of a pie cooling on the windowsill with an experienced finger, then brought it to the counter. “Every girl’s got to use whatever blessings the good Lord’s given her, be they brains or beauty.”

  Lily waited resentfully.

  “You’ve a comely face and figure,” the older woman went on, slicing the pie into eight generous pieces. Normally there would have been twelve, but Mrs. McAllister obviously wanted to impress Caleb Halliday. “If you’re smart, you’ll encourage the major.8221;

  “Why?” Lily was willing to grant that Caleb was handsome, and he was a fine, sturdy man in the bargain, but neither of those qualities explained why Mrs. McAllister was so adamant. She certainly hadn’t displayed these sentiments when other men had come to call on Lily.

  “You haven’t been in Tylerville long enough to know, I guess,” sighed the landlady. “He’s from a very prominent family back east, Lily. Whoever marries him will have money, position, respectability.”

  Lily ached with fury. Caleb was reserving those assets for the woman he considered suitable to bear his name and his children. Well, maybe she didn’t have money and position, but she was respectable. She’d never done anything truly wrong, except perhaps for letting Caleb kiss her twice and enjoying it both times. And nobody knew about that. “What about love?” she asked. “Does it mean anything that I don’t love the man?”

  “It’s too early to be deciding that,” Mrs. McAllister retorted. “Many’s the marriage that began in friendship and blossomed into love as the years went by. It was like that with my own Mr. McAllister.” She paused to sigh. “I married him because my papa told me to—he had a farm that adjoined ours, you know—but I came to care very deeply for my husband, Lily. Very deeply indeed.”

  Lily was amazed. She had never seen this sentimental side of Elmira McAllister. “You must miss him very much,” she said gently.

  Mrs. McAllister nodded, looking wistful, but then she was her normal, stern self again. “There’s no point in pining,” she said briskly, and she swept out of the kitchen, leaving Lily alone with her tea and her thoughts.

  Lily refilled her cup, added milk and sugar, and went up the back stairs to her room. There she sat at the rickety little desk in front of the window, took out paper, pen, and ink, and began yet another letter, addressed to the marshal of yet another western town.

  She asked the same questions as always, signed the letter, and tucked it forlornly into an envelope. She’d probably mailed out a thousand such inquiries over the years to marshals and newspapers in Nebraska and points west, and she’d never received even one answer.

  No one, it seemed, knew the whereabouts of either Emma or Caroline Chalmers.

  Lily wondered sometimes if both her sisters were dead. Maybe they’d been struck down by cholera, or diphtheria, like Isadora. Maybe they’d been killed by Indians, or washed away in a flooded river….

  “Stop,” Lily instructed herself. Caroline and Emma were alive and well, she knew that in her heart. If she just stayed in or near Tylerville, just as she’d stayed by a lamppost or a street sign when she was lost as a child, one of them would find her.

  Only it seemed less and less likely with every passing year. Not for the first time, Lily considered the possibility that her siblings didn’t want to find her. In all likelihood they had husbands and children and no room in their busy lives for a lost sister.

  Maybe they’d forgotten she even existed, or given her up for dead.

  Lily’s mi drifted back into the past.

  “If you died, nobody would cry,” Isadora said, pouring real tea from a china pot into a doll-sized cup and shoving it across the toy table. She was an exquisite child, as beautiful as any of her dolls, with her glistening golden curls and cornflower-blue eyes.

  Nine-year-old Lily’s stomach grumbled, and she made a slurping sound as she drank the tea.

  Frowning with disapproval, Isadora reached out and slapped at Lily’s hand. “Don’t do that, Alva,” she said, using the made-up name Lily hated. “You sound like a terrible pig. Act like one, too. I don’t think anybody will come to your funeral.”

  “Rupert will,” Lily dared to say her chin quivering.

  Isadora shook her head. “Rupert’s going away to be a teacher,” she said. “He won’t ever think about you again, once he’s gone. Everybody’s going to forget you, except for me, of course.”

  Suddenly Lily was filled with unreasoning, aching rage. Isadora had spoken the truth, and Lily hated her for it. She leapt out of her chair, rounded the table, and slapped Isadora’s rosy cheek with all her might.

  Isadora emitted a startled shriek, which brought her mother trundling across the farmhouse’s big kitchen. Bethesda Sommers entangled a strong, work-hardened hand in Lily’s hair, wrenching her away from her daughter.

  “Willful child!” she screamed. “It was the devil’s doing, your coming here!”

  Tears of pain and fear burned in Lily’s eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall. She didn’t cry out once, not even when Mrs. Sommers dragged her across the kitchen and beat her with a wooden spoon.

  Lily was lying on her bed in the attic hours later, her body bruised and covered with welts, when Isadora arrived with her supper, which consisted of a glass of milk and a slice of bread.

  “Rupert went to town with Papa,” the child said smugly. “He doesn’t even know you have to stay here until Mama’s through being mad with you.” She paused to smile. “Like I said, nobody thinks about you but me.”

  Tears blurred Lily’s vision when she wrenched herself back to the present and reached for another sheet of paper. Resolutely, she dipped her pen and selected a town from the list she’d copied from one of Rupert’s geography books. Then she began a new letter.

  Wearing only his trousers, Caleb lay stretched out full length on the lumpy bed in his hotel room, his hands cupped behind his head. He recalled with pleasure how Lily had looked, standing beside the stream that day, telling him about her dreams of happy independence.

  He smiled. She honestly expected to work a piece of land all by herself—what an innocent she was.

  Caleb’s amusement faded as he considered how quickly the rigors of homesteading would turn Lily hard and cynical, her great expectations notwithstanding. In another year she’d be work-worn and gaunt, with lye-reddened hands and empty eyes. Some man would come along and marry her, and for a time maybe things would be better. Maybe, at last, she’d feel she belonged./p> height=“0em”>

  But then there’d be babies, one after another, until there were too many. Lily would die, taking her dreams with her. The man who had used her up would bring another bride to her cherished land, and the cycle would start all over again.

  The bedsprings complained as Caleb sat up, thoroughly depressed. He didn’t usually take such a dark view of things, but meeting Lily the day before in the hotel dining room had turned his thought processes upside down. He was obsessed with the woman, wanting to shelter her, to dress her in beaut
iful gowns and show her off, to make up for the hard years.

  To bed her.

  He’d even begun to have thoughts about going home and facing his family.

  With the bed railings pressing cold against his bare back, Caleb closed his eyes and returned, in his thoughts, to the sprawling Pennsylvania farm where he’d grown up….

  He was eleven years old, and he was hiding in the hayloft, fighting against the sobs that hammered at the back of his throat. His father had died six months before, and now his mother was dead, too—the doctor had just told Caleb so.

  And it was all because of that stupid baby. Caleb wished it had been the one to die, instead of his mother.

  “Caleb?” The voice belonged to his older brother. At twenty-one, Joss was already a man, and he’d been running the farm since the accident that had killed Aaron Halliday, their father. “Come on, boy—I know you’re in here somewhere, so speak up.”

  Caleb swallowed. He was afraid to answer, afraid he’d start bawling and never be able to stop.

  Joss repeated his name, and Caleb squeezed his eyes shut, sending a silent prayer toward heaven. Let him tell me it was all a mistake. Let him say Mama isn’t really dead.

  The rickety rungs of the wooden ladder creaked, and when Caleb opened his eyes Joss was climbing into the hayloft. His handsome face was streaked with field dirt and sweat or, perhaps, tears, and he wore the simple shirt and trousers of a farmer. Like Caleb, he had amber eyes and dark blond hair, though his was curly instead of thick and straight.

  “You sure don’t make things easy,” he said with a sigh, coming to sit beside Caleb in the hay, his broad back to the weathered wood of the barn wall.

  Caleb’s misery was pure and exquisitely painful. “It’s that damn baby’s fault,” he managed to get out. “She killed Mama.”

  Joss caught Caleb’s face in one huge, callused hand and gazed straight into his eyes. His expression was stern, and so were his words, though they were spoken gently. “Don’t you ever let me hear you say anything like that again, boy. If you do, so help me God, I’ll take you to the woodshed and whip you proper. That little girl in there is our sister, and we’re going to look after her. She’s a Halliday.”