Lily and the Major

by Linda Lael Miller

  Lily smiled sadly. He wasn’t going to succeed, of course. She meant to wear a ball gown and glass slippers for a night, then forget she’d ever heard Caleb Halliday’s name.

  She found Mrs. Tibbet waiting patiently in the kitchen.

  The colonel’s wife chuckled at Lily’s shining face. “You don’t need to tell me, dear,” she said. “Your expression has done that.” She embraced Lily lightly, then stepped back. “There is a stage to Fort Deveraux on Saturday morning,” she added, pressing a coin into Lily’s hand. “Here is your fare.”

  Lily felt almost as though she’d been visited by a fairy godmother. “Thank you,” she said, a moment before Mrs. Tibbet opened the back door and walked out.

  In her room Lily got down on her knees, dug one of her Sunday shoes out from under the bed, and hid the coin in its toe. While in that opportune position she offered up a quick prayer that she might hear from Caroline and Emma soon and thanked God for her invitation to the officers’ ball.

  Mounted soldiers, row after row of them, filled the street outside the hotel when Lily arrived for work. Although she saw a few of the young men look at her in a sidelong fashion, there were no catcalls or teasing remarks.

  A glance toward the front told her why they were so well-behaved. Caleb, riding the same blue-black gelding that had drawn the buggy the day before, when they’d gone on their picnic, had called them to attention.

  Lily paused at the door of the dining room, fascinated by the man’s air of strength and command. She wanted him to look at her so that she could snub him, but he didn’t spare her so much as a glance.

  “Sergeant Haywood,” he said in a crisp tone. Before he spoke the street had seemed utterly silent, except for the nickering and fidgeting of some of the horses.

  A man in the front row saluted briskly. “Yes, sir.”

  Caleb returned the salute. “Take over my command. I’ll catch up to y in a few minutes.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered Sergeant Haywood, a heavyset man with a red beard and mustache. He rode up beside Caleb, lifted one arm into the air to reveal a crescent of sweat, then shouted, “Forward!”

  As the troops spurred their horses Caleb rode over to where Lily stood, dismounted, and wrapped the reins around a hitching post. Then, with his hat in one hand, he stepped up onto the wooden sidewalk to face her.

  It seemed a long time passed before the clatter of hooves began to recede into the distance. The air was full of dust, and Lily used one hand to fan some of it away.

  Caleb grinned at the gesture. “Sorry,” he said.

  Even though Lily had been on a picnic with this man, even though she’d been kissed by him, she still felt shy and awkward in his presence. “That’s quite all right,” she replied.

  He took one of her hands into fingers gloved in soft leather and stroked the chafed flesh lightly. “I’ll be looking forward to meeting the stage next Saturday,” he told her.

  Gazing up at him, Lily swallowed hard. She’d never known anyone who could affect her with ordinary words in quite the way Caleb did, and she suspected he had the power to make her exchange her old dreams for new ones. That was a frightening thing.

  “Lily?”

  She realized she hadn’t answered him. “I’ll be looking forward to Saturday, too,” she said. That was only half true, she thought, because a part of her dreaded the week’s end the way a sworn sinner would dread Judgment Day. Caleb had a frightening sort of power over her.

  For a moment it really seemed as though the major meant to kiss her good-bye right there on the sidewalk. In the end, though, he only smiled again, put his hat back on, and turned to stride back to his horse. Once he was mounted he studied Lily for a long moment, then rode off after his men.

  Lily was left feeling disgruntled and confused. She didn’t like Caleb Halliday. He was rude, arrogant, and insufferable. His intentions toward her were not at all honorable.

  So why had she agreed to have anything further to do with him?

  Lily sighed. Because she was starved for a little magic, that was why. Because one wonderful night was not too much to ask out of a lifetime of hard work. She opened the door of the dining hall and went inside, nearly colliding with a customer in the process.

  She smiled her apologies and hurried into the kitchen. Although the small restaurant was practically empty, the stagecoach from Spokane was due in only fifteen minutes. Before long the place would be brimming with hungry travelers and workers from the saw mill. After greeting Charlie Lily snatched a clean apron from the peg beside the pantry door and put it on.

  “These pies is burned!” Charlie bellowed once he’d opened the oven door.

  Sure enough, the kitchen was soon filled with black smoke. Coughing, Lily opened the back door to let in some fresh air.

  Charlie went right on swearing, just as though it were Lily’s faule’d forgotten to take the pies out of the oven. She filled a tray with clean silverware and fled into the dining room to begin setting tables.

  She was just finishing up when the stage rolled to a stop outside and emitted only two passengers. One was a beautiful dark-haired woman wearing an amethyst-colored traveling suit. The other was Lily’s adopted brother, Rupert.

  Lily stood perfectly still as Rupert opened the door for the woman in his usual courtly way and then stepped inside himself. His dark blue eyes blazed as he looked at Lily.

  “So this is where you’ve been,” he accused.

  In her mind’s eye Lily saw herself slipping out of the small house she and Rupert had shared, all her belongings stuffed into a single worn valise.

  Rupert had been unreasonable, but she regretted the worry she’d surely caused him. She noticed how tired he looked, and his shabby schoolmaster’s clothes were dusty from hours on the road. His dark, curly hair, normally so springy, was limp, and there were ridges where he’d run his fingers through it.

  The woman passenger glanced at Lily, smiled distractedly, and found herself a place to sit. “I’ll have coffee, if you don’t mind,” she called out in a voice that reminded Lily of the delicate chimes of a music box.

  “I have to work,” Lily informed Rupert, turning to hurry away to the kitchen.

  Rupert grasped her arm and wrenched her around to face him. “You might have written and told me you were all right,” he whispered furiously.

  Lily lifted her chin a notch but made no attempt to pull away. Rupert might be a schoolmaster, but he was strong. “You would only have come to fetch me and drag me home.’

  “That I have,” he ground out.

  “Lily!” roared Charlie from the kitchen.

  “Sit down, Rupert,” Lily hissed, “before I lose my job!”

  Surprisingly, Rupert obeyed. He looked a little stuporous as he took a table and gazed out the window.

  Lily fled into the kitchen. “There are only two of them,” she told Charlie.

  “I don’t give a damn if there’s two or twenty,” Charlie answered impatiently, dragging a few coins from the pocket of his trousers and handing them to Lily. “We have to have pie. You go over to Mrs. Halligan’s and see if she’s got any.”

  With a sigh Lily dropped the money into her apron pocket and slipped out the back door, closing the screen door carefully behind her so no flies would get inside.

  She should have known Rupert would come looking for her, she thought with a sigh, lifting her skirt so the hem wouldn’t be soiled as she crossed the alley behind the hotel. Now what was she going to do? She couldn’t run away again; this time she’d be leaving too much behind—her valley, for example.

  And Caleb.

  Not that it made any difference to her if she ever saw him again.

  The widow Halligan, who baked to supplement the small stipend her husband had left her, happened to have two sweet potato pies on hand, and Lily bought them both. She was crossing the alley, one pie balanced in each palm, when Rupert rounded the corner of the hotel.

  Lily smiled. “Thought I’d run away again, didn’t y
ou?”

  Rupert blocked her way into the kitchen, folding his arms across his brawny farmer’s chest. “When it comes to you, most times I don’t rightly know what to think,” he replied. “Get your things, Lily, because you’re coming back to Spokane with me.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not,” Lily answered. Her arms were getting tired, and Charlie was probably growing more crotchety by the minute. “I have a job here, and I have land of my own. Furthermore, next Saturday evening I’m going to Fort Deveraux and dance at the officers’ ball.”

  Rupert’s eyes were bulging a little. That meant his patience was seriously strained, and Lily retreated one step. “Land of your own?” he echoed, sounding horrified. “What the devil do you mean by that?”

  “I’ve filed a claim on a homestead,” Lily hissed, glancing toward the kitchen window. If she lost this job because of Rupert’s interference, she was never going to forgive him. “Now will you please let me pass?”

  When she tried to step around Rupert he moved in front of her again. His jaw was set at an obstinate angle, and it was clear there would be no reasoning with him.

  Lily had no choice but to lob the pie in her right hand into his face.

  While he was still sputtering in shock and wiping away globs of sweet potato Lily marched into the kitchen and set the other pie down on the counter.

  “That’s all she had?” Charlie demanded.

  Lily drew a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out slowly. “Actually, there were two,” she answered truthfully. “My brother is wearing the other one.”

  Rupert burst through the back door at that very moment living proof that she’d spoken the truth.

  Charlie gave a hoarse snort of laughter, then shook a floury finger at Lily. “Brother or no brother, young lady, I won’t have you treatin’ my customers with disrespect. It ain’t like I don’t have anybody else that wants your job, you know.”

  Lily bit her lower lip, thinking of all the seed and lumber and tools she meant to buy with her earnings. “I’m sorry, Rupert,” she said after a long moment.

  Rupert was using his handkerchief to wipe the last of the sweet potato pie from his face. “My good man,” he said to Charlie in a serious tone of voice, “this young woman is a fugitive.”

  Charlie looked horrified. “You mean she done broke the law?”

  Rupert favored Lily with a brief, triumphant glance, and she tensed. Whatever Rupert said, Charlie would believe him. That was how it was with men.

  “Not exactly.”

  Lily let out her breath at Rupert’s answer.

  “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?” Charlie demanded.

  Rupert squared his shoulders like a man bearing up under crushing tragedy. “The truth is, this woman is my wife. She abandoned me and our two sick children just a month ago.”

  “That’s a lie!” Lily raged, knowing exactly what Charlie’s reaction would be. “Rupert is my brother!”

  “Shame on you,” Charlie scolded, shaking his finger at Lily again. “Sittin’ in church like a decent woman, ridin’ out into the country with the major—for shame!”

  Rupert gave Lily a discerning look. “What major?” he asked.

  Lily picked up the remaining pie and flung it into his face. Then she turned on her heel and left because she didn’t need Charlie to tell her that she was fired.

  She was halfway to Mrs. McAllister’s house when Rupert caught up with her again.

  “If I were any man but myself,” he said, “I would turn you over my knee and blister your backside!”

  Tossing the second sweet potato pie had not been revenge enough for Lily. She threw back her head and screamed, “Help! Somebody help!”

  Old Marshal Lillow hobbled out of the Blue Chicken Saloon. He peered at Rupert’s sweet potato-strewn countenance through thick spectacles and said, “What’s this? What’s this?”

  Lily didn’t quite have the heart to follow through and have Rupert arrested for a rascal. After all, he’d been her only real friend while she was growing up. He’d taught her to read and write, defended her against his own parents, provided for her after the Sommerses died. He had only her best interests at heart. “Everything’s all right, Marshal,” she said evenly, avoiding Rupert’s gaze.

  “Who was that screamin’ for help, then?” the lawman asked reasonably.

  Lily bit her lower lip.

  “We didn’t hear anyone screaming,” Rupert put in. Taking Lily’s elbow firmly in hand, he ushered her away.

  Looking back over one shoulder, Lily saw the marshal scratch his chin and wander back into the Blue Chicken. She stopped cold, refusing to go another inch.

  “I’m nineteen years old, Rupert Sommers,” she said, “and I will not be dragged home like an errant schoolgirl. I’m making a life for myself, and you have no right to interfere!”

  Rupert scowled at her, but she could tell he was beginning to see reason. “What did you mean back there when you talked about having land of your own?”

  “I’ve filed a homestead claim, and I intend to prove up on it,” Lily answered, meeting her brother’s angry gaze.

  “Unmarried women cannot homestead!”

  “You’re wrong, Rupert,” Lily replied. “They can, and I did.221;

  “Of all the—”

  “If you take me home, I’ll only run away again.”

  Rupert sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. He was a mess of road dust and pie filling, and the flies were starting to gather around. “Drat it all, Lily Chalmers!”

  She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cleft chin. “You’ve made me lose my job,” she sighed, “and I don’t know where I’ll get another.”

  “You’ll just have to come home with me,” Rupert insisted. “Besides, I didn’t get you fired. You did that yourself.”

  There didn’t seem to be any point in arguing. “Come along,” Lily said with a sigh, linking her arm through her brother’s. “I’ll take you to Mrs. McAllister’s and see if she won’t let you take a bath.”

  Rupert balked at that. “I’ll have a bath at the hotel, thank you. After all, that’s where my baggage is.”

  “Very well. We’ll go there, then. While you’re having your bath I’ll try to talk Charlie into taking me back.”

  Rupert rolled his eyes, and they walked toward the hotel again.

  The dining room was full of mill hands wanting coffee and pie, and Charlie was at his wits’ end trying to fill their mugs and explain that there wasn’t any pie to be had.

  Lily walked up and took the heavy blue enamel coffee pot from his hand. “I’ll do that,” she said crisply. “You just go in and do your baking so we don’t have this problem at suppertime.”

  Charlie glared at Lily for a moment, but he let her stay. Rupert collected his valise and rented himself a room, and when Lily saw him again an hour later he was his usual tidy, if somewhat frayed, self.

  “You’ll let me stay in Tylerville, won’t you?” she asked when her shift was over and she was washing a mountain of dishes.

  Out of habit, Rupert took up a dish towel and began to help with the task. “I shouldn’t.”

  “But you will?”

  “I don’t see that I have any choice. Knowing where you are will be something of a comfort, at least. I was very worried about you, Lily.”

  Lily averted her eyes for a moment. “I know,” she said softly. “And I’m sorry.”

  “About this major you went out riding with—”

  “It was all perfectly respectable, Rupert. I had Mrs. McAllister’s blessing.”

  Rupert narrowed his eyes. “Any chance you’ll marry this fellow?”

  Lily hated to disappoint him. It would have settled his mind to know his sister planned to wed someone like Caleb Halliday. “None at all,” she said with a shake of her head. “He’s a soldier. Besides, he’s not cut out to be a farmer.”

  “We’ve got farmers aplenty around Spokane, if that’s what you want.”

  “I don’t want a farmer, an
d you know it,” Lily reminded her brother patiently. “I want to be a farmer.”

  “I’ll leave you here to learn your lesson on one account, Lily Chalmers. You’ve got to promise that you’ll come home to Spokane when you fail.”

  Lily smiled and patted his cheek with a sudsy hand. “Very well, Rupert—I promise. If I fail at being a farmer, I’ll come home.”

  Rupert nodded, though he still looked a little uncertain. When they’d finished the dishes he waited while Lily locked up the dining room and then walked her to Mrs. McAllister’s house.

  That good lady appeared on the porch when they arrived. She was carrying a lantern and holding Lily’s carpetbag in one hand.

  “So,” she hissed, at the sight of her tenant. “There you are! And I thought you were so sweet and innocent—”

  Lily’s mouth dropped open.

  “Now see here—” Rupert began lamely.

  “I wouldn’t think you, of all people, would defend her,” clucked Mrs. McAllister, inching her way down the front steps to hold Lily’s bag over the front fence. “Poor, deserted husband. And those little babes at home, crying for their mama—”

  “I don’t have a husband!” Lily cried, catching hold of her bag before Mrs. McAllister dropped it.

  “There’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” protested Rupert.

  “I should say there has,” huffed Mrs. McAllister. “Just wait until Major Halliday hears that he’s been courting a strumpet!”

  Lily stomped one foot in frustration. “Now look what you’ve done, Rupert Sommers,” she cried, near tears. “You’ve ruined everything!”

  “Madam,” Rupert reasoned sturdily, “this young woman is not my wife, she is my sister. It should go without saying that there are no babies.”

  Mrs. McAllister looked deflated. “Then there’s no husband?”

  Rupert shook his head solemnly.

  “I see,” said the landlady, opening the gate.

  Lily stepped through it with her head held high. “I trust that I still have a room.”

  Mrs. McAllister sighed. “I reckon you do—for the time being, anyhow. But I still want to know how that story got started.”