Western Christmas Brides

by Lauri Robinson

  “Petting his horse,” the girl answered. “Not petting my horse—Jane-girl.”

  Christina blinked. “Your horse is named Jane-girl?”

  Roxanna shrugged. “My pa named her,” she admitted.

  Kurt snickered. “Jane-girl, huh? That’s a dumb name.”

  “Says who?” Roxanna shot.

  “Says—” Kurt broke off when the schoolhouse door opened and Annamarie stepped inside. She was bundled up to her ears in a heavy knit shawl, but Christina saw at a glance she was wearing her new blue wool skirt and a striped blue shirtwaist. The girl’s eyes sparkled and her cheeks were rosy.

  Kurt’s freckled face colored. He half rose out of his seat, his gaze fastened on her.

  “Whew,” Adam breathed, staring at her.

  His sister, Sally Lynford, huffed out a breath. “Adam!” she said. “Close your mouth. You’ve seen girls before.”

  “Not like her,” Adam murmured.

  Oblivious, Annamarie unwound her shawl, tossed back her dark curls and approached Christina’s desk. “I’m sorry I’m late, Miss Marnell. I stopped to help—”

  “Teddy’s been unsaddling his own horse since he was seven years old,” Edith Ness muttered. “I’m sure he didn’t need any help.”

  Kurt closed his mouth with a snap. Adam craned his neck to keep Annamarie in his field of vision, and Edith bit her lip and stared at the top of her desk.

  Christina swallowed a smile and rapped the ruler on her desk to call the class to order. “Now,” she said in her most teacherly voice, “this morning we will begin with reading aloud. Edith, would you start?” She handed a worn red volume to the girl.

  Edith rose and read the title in a bored monotone. “‘The Adventures of Robin Hood.’”

  An excited cry erupted from Sally. “Oh, Robin Hood, really? Really? Ooh, let me read, Miss Marnell, please? I’ve always wanted to read about Robin Hood. Please?”

  “Aw, siddown, Sally,” Kurt muttered under his breath.

  Christina sighed. All she wanted to do was teach her pupils how to read, to add and subtract with accuracy and to know something about the world beyond Smoke River. But she was finding that much of teaching had nothing to do with reading or arithmetic; it had to do with who her students were on the inside—what they liked or disliked or admired or envied, and how they expressed it. Some days she felt as if she were the student, not the teacher.

  The morning dragged on through arithmetic problems and reading recitations, and when lunchtime came the class pounded out the door in high spirits. Christina nibbled on her apple and focused her gaze through the window at the school yard outside.

  Three boys and a girl—Roxanna Jensen—hunched over a game of marbles. Sally and Edith Ness stood patiently turning a jump rope for Noralee, who seemed indefatigable as she skipped in time with their rhyme: “One for Monday, washday. Two for Tuesday when we iron. Three for Wednesday when we...” Adam was helping Kurt stack firewood, and Sammy Greywolf, Teddy MacAllister and Billy Rowell were gathered around Teddy’s roan mare, discussing horses or saddles or whatever boys discussed.

  Annamarie was nowhere in sight.

  Concerned, Christina ventured out the door and walked all the way around the schoolhouse. No sign of Annamarie. On her second slow circuit around the building she glimpsed a spot of blue some yards off the path, and there she was, leaning against the trunk of a red maple tree, her new wool skirt pulled down over her knees.

  “Anna, whatever are you doing out here?”

  “Oh, Miss Marnell. I am reading your book about Robin Hood. The girls wouldn’t let me jump rope with them. They said I was too short. I’m not too short, am I? I’m taller than both Noralee and Edith, so...” She studied the hem of her dress. “I think they just didn’t want me. Maybe they’re mad because...because Kurt and Adam are nice to me.”

  Christina’s chest tightened. The girl’s words made her hurt inside.

  “Besides,” Annamarie continued, her voice quiet, “I love these stories about Robin Hood.”

  Good for her, Christina exulted. Nothing her brother, Ivan, could say would squash Annamarie’s interest in learning; she would make certain of that. She left the girl to her reading and slowly made her way back inside. Did Annamarie talk with her brother about school? Did she tell him how unkindly she was still being treated or whether she was unhappy? She wondered if Ivan would blame her for not protecting his sister.

  Suddenly she realized she wanted his approval. That thought was so startling she sank onto her desk chair and stared absently at the open dictionary. Ivan does not matter, she reminded herself. It is Annamarie who matters.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Hey, Panovsky, ya goin’ to the dance?”

  Ivan lowered his peavey pole and stood to one side of the log feed chain, breathing hard. “What dance?”

  Smitty, the heavyset sawyer, stood at the opposite end of a big sugar-pine log, waiting for him to prod it onto the chain that would feed it into the saw blade. “Saturday night, out at Jensen’s barn.”

  A dance? In all the years he had lived in Smoke River he had never once attended a dance. Until he had laid eyes on Christina Marnell, there had never been a girl he was interested in dancing with.

  But he knew Annamarie would like going to a dance. He remembered dancing with his sister when she was very young, her tiny feet balanced on his shoes. She had loved it! He had even taught her the steps to the dances Mama and Papa had danced back in the old country.

  “Maybe I will come,” he called.

  “You dance American, don’cha, Ivan?” Smitty yelled. “We figured you never came to any of the dances ’cuz you were a Russkie and you didn’t know how to dance American.”

  Ivan snorted. “I bet I can dance better than you any day.”

  “Big words, Panovsky. Prove it! And get that log up here! We’re gettin’ bored with nuthin’ to cut up.”

  Ivan shoved the pine log forward and listened to the whine of the saw as it bit into the wood. Would Christina be at the dance? Just thinking about being close to her, maybe even dancing with her, made his heart race.

  * * *

  By Saturday Annamarie was so excited she could scarcely eat any supper. “I can wear my new dress!” she exclaimed. “It’s so pretty, Ivan. It has beautiful red and yellow flowers all over it, and a flounce at the hem, and—Ivan, you’re not listening! Aren’t you interested?”

  “What? Of course, Anna. You will be most pretty girl there.”

  “Oh, I want to dance and dance! Will it be like back home when I used to dance with you?”

  Ivan laughed. “It will not. Your feet are too big now to balance on my shoes.”

  “Oh, it will be such fun! I can hardly wait.”

  Neither could he, but for a different reason. Maybe he would work up the courage to ask Christina to dance with him. He swallowed hard. Or maybe not. The thought of being close to her made his mouth go dry as a pile of sawdust.

  * * *

  Jensen’s barn was overflowing with people—ranchers, storekeepers, gray-haired women who sat together on the sidelines gossiping while men in clean jeans and pressed shirts whirled about the floor with women in long ruffled skirts. In one corner a band of sorts—two guitars, a violin and a washtub bass—boomed a thumping rhythm into the overheated space. Long tables were laden with potato salad and coleslaw, baked beans, corn bread, platters of ham and fried chicken and apple and cherry pies. A rotund, balding man stood behind a two-by-twelve plank propped on two sawhorses that served as a bar, dispensing shots of whiskey and glasses of lemonade. The air smelled of ladies’ perfumes, hay bales, sweat and bay rum shaving lotion.

  Annamarie clutched his arm. “Oh, Ivan, just look! Everyone looks so beautiful. So dressed up. And all that food! I could eat myself silly.”

 
Ivan patted his sister’s hand. “You eat. I am going to—”

  “Hey, Panovsky!” A russet-bearded man punched his shoulder. “I see you made it. You bring your lady?”

  “This is my sister, Annamarie, from New York. Anna, meet Simon Smalley. We work at sawmill together.”

  Simon snatched off his battered hat. “How do, Miss Panovsky. Thought we’d never get your brother to a dance, but you seem to have done the trick.”

  Smitty popped up at Simon’s elbow. “So, Panovsky, where’s all this fancy dancin’ you been bragging on?”

  Just then there was a lull in the music. Ivan gave the plump sawyer a long, level look, then turned to his sister and held out his hand. “Anna?”

  Instantly she stepped to his side and reached her free hand to his shoulder. Ivan laid his fingers near her collarbone and began to whistle a folk tune, and together the two of them began a series of intricate side and back steps, ending in a stomp.

  Simon stepped back as they danced past him, and suddenly Adam Lynford gave a yelp, shook his dark hair out of his eyes and reached out his arm to grasp Annamarie’s other shoulder. The steps weren’t complicated, and in the next minute Noralee Ness joined the line beside Adam.

  Then an elderly woman gave a shrill hollo and rushed across the floor to join in, grinning as Thad and Leah MacAllister linked arms with her. A smiling Verena Forester reached her hand to Thad’s beefy shoulder and began to step beside him. The violin player picked up the simple folk melody Ivan was whistling; a guitar joined in, and then the washtub bass player began thumping away in rhythm. Within five minutes the music was booming and the line of dancers snaked around the room and looped back on itself, with Ivan and Annamarie in the lead.

  On the sidelines Christina heard the folk tune and turned toward the dance floor, a glass of lemonade in her hand. She gaped at the sight. Good heavens, was that Ivan Panovsky out there in the middle of the floor? It was! One arm clasped his sister’s shoulder and the other was propped smartly at his waist. This was quiet Ivan, who chopped wood for the schoolhouse and scarcely spoke two words to her?

  My goodness, still waters certainly run deep.

  And what intriguing steps he and the line of dancers he led were executing! Annamarie obviously knew the steps, so she guessed it was a folk dance. She had to laugh at Adam Lynford’s face; he looked positively transfixed at actually touching the smiling Annamarie. Years from now perhaps they would both look back on this evening and remember it with a smile.

  At the head of the line, Ivan led the dancing townspeople around and around the hall, and when he glanced up, he caught her gaze. His eyes held hers as he executed a nimble turn in place with a double stamp at the end.

  Yes, still waters...

  He looked...commanding as he led the line of people that snaked behind him. His dark hair tumbled over his forehead like a little boy’s, but his movements were smooth and assured and all male. He and Annamarie were smiling at each other as if sharing a wonderful secret. Annamarie’s face glowed, and Ivan...

  Christina caught her breath. Ivan looked so boyish and yet so handsome at the same time, so much in control at the head of the line of dancers, his tall form moving with such assurance, she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  She set her lemonade glass on the bench beside her, stood up and joined in as the line looped and circled about the floor. Ivan led them around and around the hall, and when the line looped back on itself again he caught Christina’s gaze and gave another double stamp.

  Annamarie laughed and grinned up at her brother. Then a red-haired millworker grasped Christina’s shoulder and shuffled through the steps at her side. She vaguely remembered him; he worked at the mill with Ivan.

  Annamarie looked radiantly happy, but it was Ivan she watched. When his eyes met hers he looked both proud and a bit shy, and a little bubble of something fizzed in her chest. What an interesting man Annamarie’s brother was! She had never known anyone who could chop wood and execute these complicated steps with such panache and still be so pigheaded when it came to his sister’s schooling.

  At last he brought the dancers to a halt with a final decisive stamp, turned to Annamarie and bowed. The musicians who had picked up the tune finished with a flourish, and a cheer went up.

  Ivan conducted his sister to the bar, where she downed a glass of lemonade and he tossed back a shot of whiskey. And then another. The band started up again, this time playing “Oh! Susannah,” and Annamarie drifted off on the arm of Adam Lynford.

  Christina kept her attention on Ivan. Now he was talking with two millworkers who kept pounding him on the back and gesturing at the whiskey bottle behind the bar. Then a tall older man climbed up on an apple crate and called for a square dance, and the milling crowd quickly formed into sets of four couples each. In the next minute, the tall man began to call instructions.

  “Ladies to the center, gents to the side, don’t get lost, now swing ’em wide...”

  The caller’s words made no sense to her, but everyone else seemed to understand them, even Annamarie and Adam, who had joined one of the sets. Christina wondered if Ivan was as adept at this square sort of dancing as he was at his folk dance.

  The caller raised his voice over the raucous shouts of the dancers. “Swing ’er out and back once more, then walk her home and ’round the floor.”

  To Christina the directions were confusing, but they seemed to make sense to the square dancers. How did they keep track of all those instructions?

  “You would like to try?” a voice spoke at her elbow. Ivan stood near, still breathing heavily. He smelled faintly of whiskey and wood smoke.

  “Oh! I could never follow all those directions.”

  He lifted the lemonade glass out of her hand and set it on the bench. “I will show you.”

  He grasped her hand. “Come, they start a new set.” He pulled her out onto the floor, where they joined Leah and Thad MacAllister and two other couples to form a square.

  “Ivan, I don’t think I can do this,” she whispered. “I—I have trouble walking.”

  “Ah, that I know. But you will have no trouble, because I can do this. Trust me.” He handed her into the center of the square, where three other women were extending their palms until they touched and then walking around in a circle. She returned to execute something called a “swing” and suddenly found herself in Ivan’s arms. He turned her around and around, and he kept his arm about her waist during the caller’s next series of instructions. He was so close it was hard to keep her thoughts straight, and whenever he lifted his hand away from her, she missed it.

  She quickly learned that a “grand right and left” meant that she clasped hands with everyone as they walked around in a circle, and when she reached Ivan again he held her close and they spun round and round. Her entire body was flooded with warmth at being near him.

  She also learned that in square dancing her limp didn’t matter at all.

  When the dance ended, she admitted she had liked it more than she had expected to. Much more even than she wanted to. She didn’t want to think about why. She cast about for something to say.

  “Anna looks very pretty tonight.”

  “Anna always look pretty. Kurt, the boy who helps me stack the wood, cannot stop talking about her.”

  Christina smiled. “I expect the rivalry between Kurt and Adam, the boy she is dancing with now, will be even more intense after tonight.”

  “That is way of it,” he said quietly. “A pretty wom—girl can take her pick.”

  “I hope she chooses well.”

  “She will. I will guide her.”

  “Oh?” She couldn’t help but laugh. “You think she will let you guide her, do you?”

  His green eyes smiled down into hers and all at once she couldn’t breathe.

  “Yes. I will guide her. Why not?
”

  “Because,” she said slowly, “a young woman often has a mind of her own.”

  He hesitated, then sucked in a breath. “So does a young man.”

  * * *

  Ivan tramped twice around the outside of Jensen’s barn, hoping the crisp night air would cool him down. It did not. And not for one minute did it take his mind off Christina Marnell. If holding her briefly in his arms during a “swing your lady” left him this shaken, what would happen if he held her close during a waltz?

  God help him, he could not wait to find out.

  The minute he walked back into the overheated barn, Annamarie grabbed his arm. “Did you see me, Ivan? Did you?” She seized both his hands in one of hers. “I love square dancing, don’t you? Do you want some lemonade? Adam brought some for me, and it’s not too sweet.”

  “Adam?” he queried. “Who is this Adam?”

  “Adam Lynford. He’s in my class at school. His sister, Sally, is one of the girls who...” Her voice trailed off.

  “Who what, Anna?”

  His sister’s smile faded. “Who doesn’t like me.”

  “And her brother does like you, is that it?”

  “I think so. At least he doesn’t make fun of me.”

  Ivan clamped his jaws together. He wanted Annamarie to be happy here in Smoke River, not be made fun of or shunned. “Anna...”

  The music started up again, and Annamarie was whisked off by another young man. This time it was Kurt Jorgensen, the lad who sometimes stacked wood for him. An instant later he spotted dark-haired Adam Lynford cutting in, and a disgruntled-looking Kurt wandered over to stand beside him.

  “There’s no figurin’ a girl out, is there, Mr. Panovsky?”

  Ivan hid a grin. “No, there is not. But does not mean that a man gives up trying.”

  “Oh, yeah? Right!” Kurt turned back to the dance floor, his gaze scanning the circling couples.

  Ivan found himself doing the same thing, only he wasn’t looking for Annamarie; he was looking for Christina Marnell. He found her in the arms of Simon Smalley, and without a second’s hesitation he headed across the floor toward her.