Mountain Christmas Brides

by Mildred Colvin

  She stood in stunned silence as E.V. and Mrs. Ellis took turns sharing all they’d heard about her being a drunkard.

  E.V. tucked strands of her loosened hair behind her ears. “Sweetheart, I didn’t—don’t—believe any of it. I’ve defended you when I could. Reverend Bollen says he’s gone privately to those he’s heard gossiping and spoken to them.”

  Mrs. Ellis added, “I told them all it wasn’t true. People tend not to listen to what I say.” Her voice had softened, reminding Larkin how wounded her heart was. Back to her normal bluster, she added, “If you said something publicly—”

  Larkin shook her head. She wouldn’t say anything that would cast negative aspersions on her mother. She’d rather people believed she was a drunkard than for them to know Mama was. Those who were her true friends would trust what they knew of her character and not believe any rumors.

  Remembering her agenda, she asked, “Is the hole deep enough?”

  Mrs. Ellis examined it. “A foot deeper than we need.”

  “You told me to—” E.V. glared at Mrs. Ellis. “Then why did you get another shovel?”

  Mrs. Ellis glared right back. “What did I tell you about talking so much? Don’t make me shoot you.”

  “I wasn’t—ugh!” E.V. looked to Larkin. “I take it we’re burying something?”

  “Yes.”

  When he didn’t ask what, she drew in a deep breath to still her apprehension and fear. Shame. She should have told E.V. this well before now.

  “Three days after my brother’s seventeenth birthday,” she said, focusing on him since Mrs. Ellis already knew everything, “he told Mama he had a cough that was bothering him. Papa said he was pretending to be sick and refused to call the physician. Mama believed Sean, so she gave him the honey-whiskey cordial she always gave us when we were ill. The more Sean coughed, the more Mama medicated him.”

  His brows drew together. “For how long?”

  “A week, maybe. He had a seizure and died. After that, we moved from Olympia to Tumwater.” Larkin swallowed to ease her dry throat. “Mama believes sadness of heart also needs medicating. Birthdays, weddings, holidays, all resurface her grief.”

  “That’s why her hands shook when she served me tea.”

  Larkin nodded. “She doesn’t drink regularly, but when you lose someone you love, the pain is so great that you’ll do anything to make it go away, to not feel anything.”

  Instead of giving his opinion of who was to blame or offer token platitudes such as life is hard, E.V. looked at her with compassion. With understanding. He brushed a kiss across her cheek, grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow, and pushed it over to where Mrs. Ellis stood by the hole.

  In the quiet of the night, with Mrs. Ellis shining a light down on them, they laid the bottles side by side in the dirt coffin. When E.V. promised he’d be at the soiree in case she needed him, Larkin paused long enough to wipe away the tear that escaped. Over the next day or two, Mama would eventually realize all her liquor was missing. She’d panic. She’d grieve. She’d break. Who knew what she’d do at the soiree if Larkin didn’t confess everything first and promise to help Mama face her grief.

  Dreading the conversation she would have later with her parents but loving them too much to keep living as they were, Larkin lifted the last bottle from the wheelbarrow. Naika ticky maika, Mama. Please, Lord, draw my parents to You, and heal my mother’s grief.

  After placing Mama’s crystal decanter filled with the sick tumtum medicine in the hole, Larkin stood and watched as E.V. shoveled dirt over the bottles. Bury the booty, hide the corpse. Allowing Mama to suffer was the only way Mama was going to face Sean’s death … and the only way Papa was going to realize Mama needed more help than he could give.

  Her heart ached. Her soul grieved. Only this time she wasn’t alone.

  Chapter 10

  As they stood next to the refreshment table, E.V. cheerfully handed Willum a punch glass filled with eggnog. That Larkin’s father hadn’t grabbed him by the neck and tossed him out made the evening rather … well, enjoyable. The candles around the room glowed brightly. The crystal chandelier glinted with every color of the rainbow. The musicians hit each note perfectly, and, thankfully, not a single person he walked past or stood next to smelled overpowering in either the bad or good range of the odor spectrum.

  “Now isn’t this more fun than measuring crown molding?” he said, grinning.

  “No, I should be at the house working,” Willum grumbled. “I’m not going to get it done in time.” Yet instead of leaving, he sipped his eggnog and continued to watch the center of the Whitworth parlor where a dozen or so couples were dancing, including John Seymour and Natalie Bollen, who looked prettier than usual in her blue (or maybe green) dress.

  E.V. figured Willum would know the exact shade. The man had a good eye for color. But instead of asking, since he could feel tension emanating from his friend, he drank the last of his frothy eggnog in silence. No sense asking Willum questions Willum wouldn’t—or more aptly, wasn’t ready—to answer.

  As the music from the stringed quartet flittered through the open library door, E.V. scanned the parlor for Larkin or her parents. The silver Gorham bell E.V. had given Larkin when he and Willum arrived earlier rested on the fireplace mantel with the crystal bells from the two previous Christmases. Whatever feelings Whitworth had toward the gift, he hadn’t shown them. Mrs. Whitworth, on the other hand, had kissed E.V.’s cheek and said she liked how he’d matched his burnished-gold brocade vest with a burgundy frock coat.

  E.V. had never bothered much with being a dapper dresser. But the romantic in him had hightailed it to Olympia this morning to find something suitable for the soiree. After learning from Anna what Larkin would be wearing, that he’d match her burnished-gold gown had been his intention. That he had to drag Willum with him and force him to buy something new was because if anyone cared less than he about being fashionable, it was Willum, who, E.V. would acknowledge, looked quite debonair in a charcoal frock coat with a black velvet collar.

  Sensing someone gazing in their direction, E.V. looked around and met Reverend Bollen’s observant eyes. He and his wife rested near the piano that had been pushed to the corner of the parlor. Several other older couples lingered about the parlor’s perimeter, including the mayor and his new bride and Silas Leonard and the affluent widow he was courting. Some sat, some stood, most watched the dancers.

  E.V. turned his attention to the busy center of the room.

  Garrick Leonard, like the man in love he was, danced with his wife Kathleen, who looked like she was trying to have a good time but, E.V. suspected, was worried about her bedridden sister who, according to Tuck, was confident their baby would be a ten-pounder, at least.

  Next to Miss Bollen and Seymour, Martha Bollen danced with her husband, Isaac.

  Isaac’s younger brother, David, danced with Harvey Milton’s younger sister, both of whom managed to step on each other’s toes continually. Both, E.V. noted, were watching Abigail Leonard dance with the newest councilman, who kept glancing at Elizabeth Leonard, who’d recently begun courting Sheriff Phillips and was sitting at the piano moving her fingers above the keys as if she were playing in time with the quartet. At Elizabeth’s insistence, Sheriff Phillips was dancing for the second time with the councilman’s spinster sister, who was probably the most skilled dancer in the room and who, to E.V.’s amusement, occasionally cast admiring glances in Willum’s direction.

  The triangles of love in the Whitworth parlor could have populated a Shakespearean comedy.

  All that mattered to E.V. was that he wasn’t included in any love triangle, quadrangle, or hexagon. And with Miss Leonard having given him distance all evening, he held hope she’d transferred her affections from earlier in the week to a more suitable bachelor.

  With a humph, Willum gave his empty punch cup to a server walking by.

  E.V. quickly added his. “Thank you.”

  The server nodded and continued on.

/>   “Are you going to ask to marry Larkin tonight?” blurted Willum.

  From the corner of his eye, E.V. glanced at his friend. Willum looked … hopeful? “No,” he honestly answered.

  “Ever again?”

  “No sense to. Whitworth won’t ever agree.”

  “Maybe in time.”

  E.V. looked at the dancers moving—most of them—effortlessly to the music, the colorful gowns swishing back and forth like Christmas bells. People lived and loved. People died. Heartaches happened to everyone. Life was loss, and life went on. That was the order of things, and he could let reality steal his joy or focus it.

  When he didn’t answer, Willum said rather sadly, “You’ve cut your losses.”

  “No, I haven’t. I’ve …” E.V. wasn’t sure how to explain. What he couldn’t tell Willum was that last night—this morning, actually—when he was burying the liquor bottles, he realized how his actions had been as misplaced as Larkin’s parents’ were. In order to have Larkin for his wife, he’d been desperately grasping and arranging and worrying over what he needed to do to earn Whitworth’s permission to marry her. He loved her so much that he’d made her an idol in his life. Rather like Mrs. Whitworth and her need to medicate away her grief.

  All he truly needed was God. All he really desired was God. God had created him to desire Him, but he’d allowed that desire to be sidetracked with something good but something not God.

  The walk back to his lonely one-room apartment had brought him to the place where, once he closed the door behind him, he’d fallen on his knees in worship and repentance.

  “No,” he repeated. “When God is in His rightful place in my life, all my other desires fall into place. If God makes a way for Larkin to be my wife, I’m content. If He doesn’t, I’m content.”

  This time Willum nodded and said nothing.

  The dance came to an end, and several couples made their way to the refreshment table.

  “I wonder where she went,” E.V. heard Kathleen Leonard say.

  “She’s probably off having a drink,” came her sister-in-law’s loud reply. “Poor thing can’t go a day without imbibing. Anna befriends her out of pity.”

  The room silenced.

  Kathleen nudged her husband, who immediately glared at his sister.

  “Abby,” Garrick chastised, “you know that’s not true. You shouldn’t gossip.”

  Though her face flushed, Miss Leonard glanced at the dozen people around the table. Panic flittered across her features. “How come you can say you saw Larkin at the mercantile and it’s not gossip, but if I say I saw her drunk then it is? The truth isn’t gossip.” As she spoke, more of the soiree guests crowded around. She turned to E.V., pointing in his direction. “Just ask Mr. Renier. He was there. He smelled the whiskey on her breath. He saw her stumbling about.”

  E.V. nipped at the inside of his cheek, debating his response. When the murmuring quieted, he noticed Larkin across the parlor standing under the mistletoe. Truth was, as he admired how the fitted bodice of her gown with its waterfall of ruffles on the skirt accentuated her lovely figure, he couldn’t quite remember why everyone was looking at him for a response.

  As the grandfather clock struck nine, Larkin stood in the parlor’s entrance with her parents, holding the basket full of ribbon-wrapped gifts for their guests. Since Mama had abruptly stopped and grabbed the sleeve of Papa’s black frock coat, halting them, Larkin assumed she wanted to say something before they handed out the gifts. Only Mama didn’t talk, allowing them to hear every mortifying word Abigail uttered.

  Almost directly across from them, E.V. and Willum Tate stood at the refreshment table, with their other guests forming a half circle.

  Not at all fearing what E.V. would answer because she trusted he’d keep her secret, Larkin tilted her head until she could meet his gaze. His attention drifted briefly to something above her. The moment she realized what she was standing under, the corner of his mouth indented into a half smile, which made her give him a look to say—Don’t you dare. Were it not for Mama favoring Victorian Christmas traditions, Larkin would banish the mistletoe from the house, sparing all from possible embarrassing moments.

  Papa muttered under his breath, “Why is he still here?”

  “Patrick, don’t make a scene,” Mama cautioned.

  “Did you send him an invitation?” Papa asked her.

  “I was wondering when you would ask.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “No, I did not.”

  To Larkin: “Did you?”

  “No sir,” Larkin answered honestly, although she had her suspicions who had. She reached forward with the hand not holding the basket, and gripped Papa’s fingers. “I love E.V., but I’d never dishonor you by marrying him or any man without your approval. I choose our family.” And although she didn’t want to resurrect the pain she’d brought her parents after confessing over breakfast what she’d done with Mama’s liquor, she reminded him, “That’s why I did what I did last night. That’s why I will endure any untruths spoken of me. And that’s why you will be a gracious host to all of our guests. Please, Papa.”

  His mouth clamped in a thin line.

  Larkin watched his chest rise and fall underneath his cherry jacquard vest that matched in fabric and shade Mama’s gown. Before the soiree began, the photographer had captured their images—Papa sitting in a chair and Mama standing elegantly behind him with her left hand gracefully resting on his shoulder. Pity the black-and-white image couldn’t depict the depth of love they showed when gazing upon each other. Larkin blinked at the moisture in her eyes. Her heart ached with yearning to grow old and in love.

  With another deeply drawn-in breath, Papa offered his arm to Mama. He squeezed Larkin’s hand, and they walked toward the crowd together.

  E.V. simply didn’t know what to say. It was an unsettling, unmanning, unfamiliar feeling, really. While he never considered himself a fluent conversationalist—he preferred to be known for being a good listener—when times called for him to say the right, wise, or practical thing, he’d always known what to say.

  But now with all eyes on him, he was speechless.

  Even Whitworth looked at him as if he expected—feared—E.V. would share everything Larkin had told him last night about her mother and brother. Only Mrs. Whitworth’s hold on him seemed to keep him from intervening.

  “Mr. Renier,” Kathleen Leonard questioned, “do you have something to add?”

  E.V. turned from Kathleen to her sister-in-law, who stood there with a smug grin on her face. And everything became clear. “You started the rumors about Larkin being pickled and about Milton courting her. Why? Because I love her instead of you?”

  Everyone’s attention shifted to Miss Leonard. Her mouth twisted into a scowl. “Good gracious, no!” she spat out. “I only wanted to stop her from getting another thing she wanted. Larkin is a drunkard, an imposter, and a thief.”

  “A thief?” Larkin pushed through the crowd. “What did I steal?”

  “My friend!” The bottom of Miss Leonard’s face trembled. She sniffed. “You stole the only friend I ever had. So I don’t feel bad for telling everyone the truth about your drinking.”

  “Oh Abigail.” Larkin answered, in tears. “I wanted to be your friend, too, but you pushed me away.”

  “Because I didn’t want to be your friend! You have everything and I only had Anna. Now I have no one.” She broke into sobs and ran from the room.

  Garrick and Kathleen took off after her with her father and his lady-friend following.

  E.V. looked about the room, seeking the right words to say to break the awful silence and knowing he would never share Larkin’s secret.

  “I’ve been everything Larkin has been accused of being,” he confessed. “And worse. Thanks to Jesus, who I was isn’t who I am today. Who Larkin is, is what you know her to be, and that’s not anything she’s been accused of. Trust what you know of her character and not any rumors you hear, because tha
t’s what you would want others to do for you.”

  “Renier!”

  The crowd separated like the parting of the Red Sea.

  E.V. swallowed what little moisture he had left in his mouth.

  Patrick Whitworth motioned to one of the members of the string quartet standing outside the library entrance. “You, play something lively for my guests to dance to. Larkin, Renier, you two come with us.” He swiveled around then grabbed his wife’s hand and walked to the empty front foyer.

  Feeling uneasy, E.V. stepped to Larkin’s side, and taking care not to step on the train of her gown, he touched the small of her back and nudged her forward before dropping his arm to his side. “Does he know about—”

  “Yes,” Larkin interrupted. “And he knows who my accomplices are.”

  Somehow E.V. managed to find a little more moisture to ease the tightness in his throat. In this moment, he’d prefer fisticuffs to a lecture.

  They stopped in the foyer. Standing at the end of the staircase, Whitworth rested his right foot on the bottom stair and his right elbow on the handrail, the fingers on his right hand tapping his chin.

  “You’ve been cavorting with my daughter,” he stated.

  E.V. nodded.

  Still holding his wife’s hand, Whitworth drew her close. Gently he turned their enclosed hands, raising them so he could place a kiss on her knuckles in what seemed to E.V. to be a comforting manner. “Renier, you pegged me accurately that day in the rain. You missed one thing, though. I can admit when I’ve been wrong.”

  E.V. stared in silence.

  “I’ve been wrong about you.” Whitworth’s eyes narrowed, yet the corners of his mouth pinched upward. “In some things. Others I’m still deciding. What you did last night helping Larkin—” He cleared his throat. “Your faithfulness to her then and now is why in about thirty seconds I’m going to give my wife the dance she’s been asking for, leaving you two alone here in the foyer. If my daughter so happens to stand under the mistletoe and you so happen to kiss her a little longer than decorum permits and Reverend Bollen happens to see, well, considering you admitted you’ve been cavorting with Larkin, you’ll have to marry her. You understand?”