“I’m sorry.”
Juliana turned onto her side, facing him. Touched his cheek. “Don’t be sorry, Lincoln,” she said. “It was the most wonderful thing.”
He chuckled, kissed her lightly. “Now will you go to sleep?”
She laughed. Kissed him back. “Now I will go to sleep,” she conceded.
With his arms still around her, Lincoln soon drifted off, his breathing deep and slow, his flesh warm. Perfectly content, Juliana lay there in the fire-lit darkness, marveling at all she had not known before this night.
AFTER THE CATTLE HAD BEEN FED the next morning— the weather remained mild, though Lincoln felt a rancher’s wariness and made good use of it while he could—he rode to town.
At the mercantile, he mailed Juliana’s letter to her brother and bought presents—a wedding band for his wife, along with several ready-made dresses and a bright green woolen cloak with a hood. He chose coats for the four children, too, guessing at their sizes, and because he’d so often seen Theresa reading, he added a thick book to the pile. There were other things, as well—a stick horse with a yarn mane for little Bill, a music box for Daisy, good pipe tobacco for Tom and a few things for the Gainers and their new baby.
While Fred Willand was wrapping it all in tissue paper, Lincoln crossed to the news pa per office, found it locked up and made for the Diamond Buckle Saloon.
Since it was early in the day, and Christmas Eve to boot, there were no customers. Kate, with her too-blond hair and low-cut dress, sat at one of the card tables, drinking coffee.
“Lincoln!” she said, beaming, starting to rise.
He motioned for her to stay in her chair, joined her at the table after placing a brotherly kiss on her rouged cheek. Like Wes, Kate was something worse for wear, a little tattered around the edges, but there was a remarkably pretty woman under all that paint and pretense.
“Is my brother around?”
Kate made a face. “He was up late, skinning honest working people out of their wages at five-card stud,” she said. “Then he decided to write a piece for the paper on how the Bureau of Indian Affairs does more harm than good. Last time I saw him, he was under the blankets, snoring for all he was worth.”
Lincoln chuckled at that. Wes had always been more alive at night—daylight was something he tended to wait out, like a case of the grippe—while Lincoln, a born rancher, wrung all the use he could from the hours between sunrise and sunset. “My new bride tells me you and Wes will be at the home place for Christmas Day,” he said.
Kate looked worried now, as though he’d forced her into a corner and started poking at her with a cue stick from the rack next to the pool table. “Wes shouldn’t have said we’d come,” she said, her voice small and sad. She looked down at her gold satin dress, and the cleavage bulging above and behind her bodice. “I don’t have anything proper to wear.”
Lincoln reached out, took her hand. She wore a lot of cheap rings, and a row of brace lets that made a clinking sound whenever she moved her arm. “Juliana is going to be mighty disappointed if you don’t come,” he told her. “Gracie, too. It doesn’t matter what you wear, Kate.”
“What do you know? You’re a man.”
He sighed. “All right, then. There are trunks full of dresses out at the ranch, up in the attic. Take your pick.”
“Beth’s dresses,” Kate scoffed, but there was hope in her hazel-colored eyes. “Lincoln, she was a little bitty thing and you know it. I’d never fit into anything she wore.”
That, Lincoln thought, was probably true. “How about something of Ma’s, then?” he suggested.
Wes appeared on the stairway just then, shirt un-tucked, feet bare, hair rumpled from sleep. He plunged his hands through it a lot when he was composing one of his hide-blistering opinion pieces for the Courier.
He scowled at Lincoln, even as Kate gave a throaty little chuckle. “Wouldn’t that stick under the old lady’s saddle like a spiky burr?” Lincoln remarked.
“What the devil are you doing here?” Wes grumbled at Lincoln, reaching the table, hauling back a chair next to Kate and falling into it as heavily as a sack of feed thrown from the back of a wagon. He winced when he landed, and closed his eyes for a moment, probably suffering his just deserts after a night passed drinking, gambling and puffing on cigars.
“I came to tell you that you were right about what you said yesterday,” Lincoln said, enjoying the visible impact this announcement had on Wes.
He opened his eyes, narrowed them suspiciously. Kate got up to head for the kitchen and fetch coffee for both of them. Lincoln could have done without, but Wes was plainly in dire need.
“Hold it,” Wes ground out, grinning a little and working his right temple with the fingertips of one hand. “You just said I was right. Will you swear to it in front of witnesses?”
“Kate was a witness,” Lincoln pointed out.
“I’m putting it on the front page. Two-inch headline. This is the biggest thing since McKinley’s assassination, if not Honest Abe’s.”
Lincoln smiled, picked up a stray poker chip left behind after some previous game and turned it between his fingers. When he spoke, though, he looked serious, and he sounded that way, too. “I’m in love with Juliana, Wes,” he confided. “And I’ll be damned if I know how to tell her.”
Wes leaned a little, laid a hand on Lincoln’s shoulder, squeezed. “Same way you told Beth,” he said quietly. “You just look her in the eye, open your mouth and say ‘I love you.’”
Lincoln shifted un com fort ably in his chair, wishing Kate would come back with that coffee, even though he didn’t want it, so the conversation might turn in some easier direction.
“You did tell Beth you loved her, didn’t you?” Wes challenged, looking worried.
“I thought she knew it,” Lincoln confessed. “By the things I did, I mean.”
“Keeping a roof over her head? Buying her geegaws and putting food on the table? Sweet Jesus, Lincoln, you’re even more of a lunkhead than I thought you were.”
Kate returned, a mug of steaming coffee in each hand and a big smile on her face—he’d struck home with that suggestion that she wear one of his ma’s dresses to Christmas dinner, evidently—but her arrival didn’t change the course of the conversation the way Lincoln had hoped it would.
She set a cup in front of each of them, and Wes scooted back his chair, caught hold of her hand and tugged hard so she landed, giggling like a girl, on his lap.
“I love you, Katie-did,” he said.
“So you claim,” Kate joked, blushing right down to the neckline of her faded dress. “But you’ve yet to put a gold band on my finger, Weston Creed.”
He feigned surprise. “You’d actually hitch yourself to a waster like me?”
“You know I would,” Kate said softly, looking and sounding wistful now.
“Then the next time the reverend comes through, we’ll throw a wedding.”
Lincoln, though pleased, wished he was else where. The trouble with Wes was, he had no idea what was appropriate and what wasn’t, but he seemed to be sincere enough, all things considered.
“Is that a promise?” Kate asked cautiously.
“It’s a promise,” Wes replied, setting her on her feet again, swatting her once on the bottom for emphasis. That done, he pivoted on his chair seat to look straight at Lincoln. “See, little brother? That’s how you tell a woman you love her.”
Lincoln merely shook his head. He reckoned Fred had the presents wrapped by then, and he was eager to get back out to the ranch. After all, Christmas was coming, and this one was special.
He stood. “You might want to ride out with me,” he told his brother. “Kate’s going to borrow one of Ma’s dresses, and she’ll need time to take it in a little first.”
Wes gave a guffaw of laughter that made Kate jump and got to his feet. “That,” he said, “will be worth seeing. But I’ll meet you at the ranch later on—I’ve got to put on boots and get my horse saddled, and I don’t w
ant to hold you up.”
“See you there,” Lincoln agreed with a nod. He was halfway home, with his sack of presents tied behind his saddle, when Wes rode up along side him.
They’d didn’t speak of serious things—there had been enough of that and it was almost Christmas—except when they reached the barn. Lincoln un saddled his horse, Wes didn’t.
“Are you really going to marry Kate?” Lincoln asked, half-afraid of the answer. She’d be mighty let down if Wes’s proposal turned out to be a joke, and by Lincoln’s reckoning, Kate had had more than her share of disappointments as it was.
“Didn’t I say that I would?”
“You say a lot of things, Wes.”
“This time, I mean it.”
Lincoln nodded. “I hope so,” he replied, and that was the end of the exchange.
Inside the house, Wes was greeted with an armload of Gracie, launching herself from the floor like a stone from a catapult, while the other kids hung back, looking stalwart and shy.
Wes noticed the way Juliana was glowing right away, and cast a sly look in Lincoln’s direction before kissing her soundly on the forehead.
After that, the two brothers headed straight for their mother’s bedroom and plundered the big mahogany wardrobe for a dress that would suit Kate without too much tucking and pinning. Flummoxed by the choices, they finally consulted Juliana, who chose a dusty-rose velvet day dress with a short jacket, pearl buttons and a nipped-in waist.
“Been a while since Ma could squeeze into this,” Wes observed, holding the getup against his front as if he meant to try it on himself.
“It will look fine on Kate,” Lincoln said drily. “Person ally, I think you’d look better in blue.”
Juliana took the dress from Wes, carried it to the kitchen and proceeded to fold it neatly and wrap it up in leftover brown paper, tying the parcel closed with thick twine.
Gracie, having worked out that her beloved uncle and Kate were coming out to the ranch to share in tomorrow’s celebration, issued an invitation of her very own. “Come early,” she pleaded, “because Papa probably won’t let us see what Saint Nicholas brought until you get here.”
Wes laughed, tugged at a lock of her hair. “Just what time is ‘early’?” he asked. Of all the people in the world, Gracie was probably the only one he would have rolled out of the hay for. Lincoln had known him to sleep until four o’clock in the afternoon.
Gracie considered. “Six o’clock,” she said.
Wes gave a comical groan.
“Uncle Wes,” Gracie said firmly, “it’s Christmas.”
“You could come out tonight,” Lincoln suggested care fully. “Sleep in your old room.”
Behind his grin, Wes went solemn, no doubt remembering how it had been when their father was still alive, and testy as an old bear with ear mites.
“Bed’s wide enough for you and Kate,” Lincoln added. “Since you and Micah used to share it.”
“Maybe,” Wes said thought fully.
“Say yes,” Gracie ordered, hands resting on her hips.
“Maybe,” Wes repeated. He glanced sidelong at Lincoln, an unspoken reminder of the warning he’d given out on the range the day before, probably. Gracie definitely did have a mind of her own, and as she grew up, she’d be a handful.
Nothing much was said after that. Wes took the gown, wrapped in its brown paper, and left.
Lincoln went to work on the adoption petition he’d been drafting, and Juliana visited the Gainers. The kids, having been given the day off from their lessons because it was Christmas Eve, chased one another all over the front yard until Juliana rounded them up on the way back from the cabin and brewed up another batch of hot cocoa.
For the rest of the day, Lincoln had half his mind on the petition and half on Juliana. The way she moved. The way she hummed under her breath and looked like she was all lit up from the inside.
Mentally, he rehearsed the words he wanted to say. I love you.
By sunset, the children were all so excited—except for Joseph, who showed a manful disdain for the proceedings—they could barely sit still to eat supper.
New snow drifted past the windows, and for once, Lincoln didn’t dread it.
The dishes were done, the fires were stoked for a cold night.
The kids were all in bed, asleep. Or so they wanted him to believe.
Just as Lincoln was about to extinguish the lanterns and join Juliana in their bed—he’d been looking forward to that all day—he heard a rig roll up outside.
He grinned, put on his coat and hat. There would be a wagon to unhitch, a team to put up in the barn.
Juliana appeared, still wearing her day dress, just as he was opening the door to go outside.
“Wes and Kate are here,” he said.
Juliana beamed, as happy at the prospect of company as any country woman would be. “I’ll start a pot of coffee.”
CHAPTER NINE
CHRISTMAS MORNING was joyful chaos, the younger kids tearing into their packages and squealing with delight at the contents. Juliana watched them with a smile, as did Lincoln and Tom, Wes and Kate. Ben and Rose-of-Sharon had joined them for breakfast with the baby, and so had the other ranch hands.
Theresa opened her gifts slowly, while Joseph examined the first one—a set of watercolors Lincoln had given him—leaving the others un wrapped beside him on the floor.
Juliana, quietly happy, paused often to admire the gold wedding band Lincoln had given her late the night before in their bedroom. They’d made love afterward—Lincoln had taken his time pleasuring her, and the wonder of it still reverberated through her, when she let herself remember, like the after shocks of an earthquake.
There had been no pain, only a little soreness afterward. Juliana had been as voracious as Lincoln, reveling in eager surrender, but that hadn’t been the best part, nor had the ring.
When they’d gone to their room, after several hours spent visiting with Wes and his shy but delightful Kate around the kitchen table, Lincoln had sat her down on the edge of the bed, knelt before her and taken her hands into his.
He’d looked directly into her eyes, cleared his throat out of a nervousness she would always remember with tenderness, and said, “Juliana, I love you.”
And she’d replied in kind. If she hadn’t already loved him, that declaration, and the way he made it, would have sealed the matter for sure.
They were midway through dinner, Tom having roasted the two turkeys to perfection, when the inevitable happened.
A buggy appeared in the side yard beyond the kitchen windows, and Mr. Philbert drew back hard on the reins.
Juliana barely stifled a gasp.
Laughing at a raucous story Wes had just told, no one else had seen or heard the buggy’s approach.
Lincoln, catching sight of the look on Juliana’s face, turned in his chair and saw the small man alighting, righteous indignation apparent in his every move. “Is that him?” he asked.
Juliana nodded, afraid she’d burst into tears if she spoke.
Mr. Philbert had reached the back step. He pounded on the door, his fist still raised when Lincoln swung it open.
Everyone fell silent, and Daisy and Billy-Moses both rushed to Juliana and scram bled onto her lap, clinging to her.
The Indian agent wore an avidly righteous expression as he stepped past Lincoln, all his attention fastened on Juliana. Triumph sparked in his tiny eyes, behind the smudged lenses of his spectacles; he’d planned to arrive early all along, just as she’d feared, hoping to take her unawares, cir cum vent any steps she might take to avoid him. She had hoped to have Joseph and Theresa safely away from Stillwater Springs before he got there, but that was not to be.
Tom and Wes both slid back their chairs to stand.
Kate, sitting next to Theresa, slipped a protective arm around the girl’s shoulders.
Philbert ignored them all, his gaze riveted on Juliana, trying to make her wilt. Jabbing an ink-stained index finger in her direction,
he finally spoke. “I have half a mind to charge you with kid nap ping!”
“Watch what you say to my wife,” Lincoln said evenly.
Wes stepped in, exuding charm and hospitality. “Sit down,” he told Mr. Philbert. “Have some of our Christmas dinner.”
A silence fell. Clearly, Mr. Philbert had not expected the invitation.
Wes found a clean plate and silverware. Gave up his own chair so the unwanted guest would have a place to sit.
Looking baffled and taking in the spread of food with undisguised hunger, Mr. Philbert sat down.
Lincoln, after exchanging glances with Wes, returned to his own chair. Reached for Juliana’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly.
Tom took Mr. Philbert’s plate and filled it to overflowing with turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans and rolls still warm from the oven in the cook stove.
Mr. Philbert hesitated, and then, to Juliana’s amazement, began to eat.
“My wife and I intend to adopt Daisy and Bill,” Lincoln said after a few moments. “I’ve drawn up the papers, and I’ll see that they’re filed right after Christmas.”
Both Daisy and Billy-Moses looked at Lincoln curiously, not understanding, but probably instinctively hopeful. Both of them adored Lincoln; he had a way of including them in the expansive warmth of his attention and affection without excluding Gracie.
Juliana held the little ones tightly in both arms.
His mouth full of mashed potatoes, Mr. Philbert couldn’t answer.
Joseph spoke up. “I’m taking my sister home,” he said. “And if you try to stop us, we’ll just run off the first chance we get.”
Mr. Philbert chewed, swallowed. He was red in the jowls, and his muttonchop whiskers bobbed. He waved a dismissive hand at Joseph. “Good riddance,” he said. “I’ve got all the problems I need as it is.”
Juliana’s heart rose on a swell of relief, even though his attitude stung. Was that all any of the children whose lives and educations he oversaw were to him? Problems? Daisy and Billy-Moses huddled closer, and Gracie came to stand at her side, staring at Mr. Philbert.
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