Colorado Courtship

by Cheryl St. John

  “I can help you.”

  “We’ll see what it looks like in the morning. I wouldn’t mind the company.”

  They ate, and the siblings were unusually quiet. Violet assumed they were tired from their long day.

  “I liked the biscuits,” Tessa told her.

  “Klenor,” Violet explained. “Sweet cream makes the difference. I made trivilies for dessert.” She brought a tray with a plate full of the pastries and cups of coffee. Hot tea for Tessa. The walnut and oatmeal sandwich cookies held a layer of date filling.

  “There wasn’t anything this tasty at the luncheon today,” Ben Charles said. “You go to a lot of work for us.”

  “I could make these in my sleep,” she said. “At the bakery I made hundreds at a time. Even a dozen seems like a lot for us. The extras will be in the pantry.”

  “Not for long,” Ben Charles said, reaching for another.

  The dining room was on the side of the house against the funeral home, so there were no windows. Violet was surprised when she returned to the kitchen to hear the wind howling against the door and window. She peered out to discover a flurry of swirling white flakes obscuring the backyard and the stable.

  “I grabbed the cloths that were in a heap in the yard,” Ben Charles said from behind her.

  “Oh, thank you. I’m afraid I dropped it when the moose startled me.”

  “Henry thinks he’s moved on. The animal must have sensed the storm coming and come foraging.”

  “I never knew a moose was so large!”

  “That’s why I cautioned you to be alert.”

  “I’d have run from that fellow even without forewarning.”

  Tessa helped her with the dishes, while Ben Charles went next door.

  That evening Violet selected a book and sat with Tessa in her upstairs getaway. Later the hallway grew chilly, so they decided to move to their rooms where they could stoke their fireplaces.

  Alone in her room with the wind battering the window, Violet was thankful for her job and for a warm place to sleep at night. This home was built of brick, and inside they were safe from the elements. She was comfortable here, and the Hammonds treated her well. Church and Ben Charles’s prayers were new to her, but he and Tessa set great store by God, and Violet had no evidence they were wrong.

  At a tap on her door she stood from her chair, with her shawl wrapped around her, and opened it.

  Ben Charles stood in the hallway, holding an armful of logs. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m afraid I got busy, but I wanted to make sure you had enough wood to last the night.”

  She took a step back. “Thank you. I’m keeping quite warm, thank you.”

  He placed the wood in the bin beside the fireplace and brushed bits of bark from his sleeve, then picked them up and tossed them into the fire. After striding back to the door, he turned momentarily. “Sleep well.”

  She closed the door behind him and listened to his footsteps move away down the hallway. A feeling of well-being akin to nothing she’d ever experienced washed over her.

  She wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she belonged here.

  Chapter Seven

  Ben Charles awoke to the sound of the wind. During the winter months when he wasn’t tending to graves or grounds, he had time to work on headstones. He found it immensely satisfying to create monuments that would last through the ages and bless the families of the departed.

  In his workshop were stacks of flat cut marble and he had been looking forward to time to work on them.

  The tantalizing smells of coffee and bacon drew him to the kitchen, where Violet coached Tessa on cutting circles from a layer of dough. “What are you ladies up to?”

  “Violet’s teaching me to drop doughnuts.” Tessa took two of the circles she’d cut and turned to place them in an enormous skillet of grease.

  The resulting popping sounds and the smell made Ben Charles’s stomach rumble. “I have an idea where you can drop a couple of those doughnuts.” With a grin, he poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “I’ll fix you a plate,” Violet offered.

  He stopped her with a raised hand. “I’ll get my own. You’re busy.”

  The oven held pans of bacon and a platter of pancakes she’d kept warming.

  “I helped make those, too,” his sister called.

  Ben Charles sat to eat, enjoying Violet and Tessa’s chatter as much as the food. “The road must have been too bad for Henry to venture out this morning.”

  “I can’t tell if there’s more snow falling or if all that snow in the air is coming from the roof and the trees,” Violet replied.

  Ben Charles got up for more coffee and stopped at the window. “Looks like a little of both.” He filled his cup. “Will you two be all right today if I fill the woodbins and then go work in my shop?”

  “We’ll be fine,” Tessa answered. “We’re making an applesauce cake after these.”

  He took a doughnut from the plate of finished ones and tasted the warm sugary goodness. “What will you do with extra baked goods we can’t eat?”

  Violet looked up with a stricken expression. “Is this wasteful?”

  “Not at all. I’ve enjoyed every single treat to come out of your kitchen so far. And it’s obviously an excellent learning opportunity for Tessa. She’s enjoying herself, and that makes me happy.”

  “Maybe we can take extras to people in town,” Tessa suggested. “Not today, of course, but when the weather permits.”

  “Good idea.” Ben Charles nabbed another doughnut. “Now I’d better go before I eat the entire batch.”

  “Will you be back at lunch?” Violet asked.

  He caught the expectant look on her face, and his stomach dipped unexpectedly. “Indeed, I will.”

  “What will you be doing today?” Tessa asked.

  “I have a couple of more days’ work before Ivan Chambers’s stone is finished.”

  “May we bring your lunch and watch you for a while?” She turned to Violet. “I love to watch him work. Will you join me?”

  It was plain Violet wanted no part of joining them beyond this side of the house. “Violet probably has other things to do,” he said.

  Tessa’s happy expression faltered. “I don’t want to monopolize your time.” She waved a flour-encrusted hand. “You go ahead with what you had planned.”

  Violet’s indecision turned to resignation and she set her shoulders. “I’d be pleased to join you. I’m sure it’s a fascinating process.”

  Tessa might have hugged the other young woman if they hadn’t both been wrist deep in dough. A smile wreathed her lovely face. “We’ll see you around noon.”

  It had taken a lot of courage for Violet to agree to visit his shop. He admired and appreciated her a little more each day. She was holding back, that was obvious, but whether her reticence was entirely due to her aversion to his work or something else, he wasn’t sure. The information she’d volunteered about her past had mostly been about what she’d learned from her father, and he was curious about more.

  Ben Charles was a patient man. He could wait.

  * * *

  The closer the hour drew to time for the noon meal, the more Violet’s stomach tied in knots. She dreaded walking through that door and discovering anything on the other side. Even though Guy Chapman’s funeral was over and, to her knowledge no one else had died, she didn’t want to cross that line.

  While Tessa timed the applesauce cake in the oven, Violet cleaned a chicken she had roasted earlier and chopped the white meat for sandwiches. She showed the younger girl how to make boiled icing and supervised as she spread a thin layer atop their cake.

  Lunches packed and ready, she tidied up in her room before joining Tessa, who held a sketch pad and several pencils. The girl opened the door and gestured for Violet to go first.

  Violet’s heart thundered. Her ears rang and her breathing grew shallow. She paused to collect herself.

  “Are you all right?” Tessa asked.

  �
�Y-yes. I’m fine.” She forced her feet into motion and crossed the threshold. Standing in a corridor with two windows like the one in the kitchen, the space was bright and she didn’t feel any different. Nothing pressed in or suffocated her.

  “All the way along this passage to that door on the far end,” Tessa instructed.

  Violet didn’t look into the rooms off to her right as they passed. A pounding sound grew louder as they approached. She kept her eye on the goal of reaching that door. Tessa reached it first and pushed it open, revealing a huge room lit by windows across the back of the house. The pounding was loud inside the cavernous room.

  Against one wall were two short stacks of flat stone. She noticed two massive carts with chains and pulleys, rigged for lifting the stones, and several above-waist-high stations made of logs, holding flat sandbags with works in progress atop them. Ben Charles spotted them and looked up from one, removed plugs from his ears and pushed a pair of goggles upward on his forehead. He wore a canvaslike suit that covered his clothing.

  “How far have you gotten?” Tessa asked.

  “The family asked for limestone, so this one’s going a little faster,” he replied. He gestured to another. “That one’s taking longer.”

  The marble stone he spoke of held the outline of letters ready to cut. Only one line of the engraving had been etched, and it read Hayden Langley.

  The top of the stone was curved, and there were fine lines showing where a scroll design and a cross would eventually be.

  “How do you decide which one to work on?” Violet asked.

  “I usually focus on them in the order of burial,” he replied. “But I like to work on two or three at a time, so I break up the more tedious work.”

  “Did you cut all those markers, too?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t have the equipment to do that. They’re cut into sizes at quarries and then shaped at a manufacturer’s before coming to me by rail.”

  “And these are your tools?” she asked.

  He straightened an array so she could better see. “Mallets. Straight, toothed and rounded chisels. Rifflers.”

  The last he’d mentioned looked like files to her.

  Tessa walked farther away. “There are finished markers over here.”

  Violet joined her and studied three finished gravestones. One was a striated stone, arched across the top, with an array of lilies above the woman’s name and the dates of her birth and death. Violet was drawn to touch the cold marble, run her fingers over the intricate cuts shaping the flowers.

  “Lilies symbolize Christ’s resurrection,” Ben Charles said from behind her. “Families often choose them because it reminds them of their loved one’s hope in eternal life. It’s an encouragement to generations to come.”

  Violet moved to the next stone and admired the vine motif across the top and down the sides and the lamb beneath the name. “What does the lamb mean?”

  “Innocence.”

  Violet noted the dates she’d overlooked before. This stone would identify the grave of a child of only four. She drew back her hand and experienced a deep sense of sorrow and loss.

  The last marker had rosettes carved into the shoulders and a dove in flight. Violet glanced at Ben Charles.

  “Holy Spirit, purity and love,” he clarified without her saying a word.

  She couldn’t imagine the laborious work that had gone into each detail. “It must take hours and hours and hours of backbreaking work to create a stone meant for a grave,” she said, thinking aloud.

  “It does.”

  “Who sees them?”

  “Their family. Generations of family.”

  She nodded and imagined the comfort families represented by these stones would derive. Even a hundred years from now, Ben Charles’s work would remain. Incredible, really.

  She noticed something she hadn’t seen at first. Low on the stone on the section that would be under the earth were three letters: B.C.H. His signature. A signature that would endure for centuries. Each finished marker bore the same small identification.

  She glanced around. A coal stove burned in the corner, taking the chill from his workshop.

  “I’m starved,” he said. “I need a minute to wash.”

  A pump stood at an enormous basin along the outside wall, but she assumed it was frozen. He used water from a pan on the coal stove to wash his hands.

  At a scarred worktable they stood and ate their sandwiches and the warm spicy cake. Ben Charles praised their efforts, but Violet compared her temporal travails to his everlasting accomplishments.

  “Don’t diminish what you do, Violet,” he corrected. “Without your contribution I couldn’t do my work and Tessa wouldn’t be learning. You are a valuable asset, and don’t you forget it.”

  Cheeks warm from his words, Violet removed lids from the Mason jars she’d filled with tea. Once they’d finished, she packed everything away. Tessa made herself at home atop a stack of crates and motioned for Violet to do the same. She did so and Ben Charles handed them each a small ball of clay and instructed them to shape it to the insides of their ears.

  Once he returned to his work, Violet was glad for the sound buffer. He worked with small precise and steady movements, making slow progress and pausing often to blow away chips and run his fingers over the indentations.

  Violet was captivated. She understood why Tessa enjoyed coming to watch. Time slid away while she appreciated his obvious skill and infinite patience. He often used a brush to clear away debris from the area he focused on, and occasionally he wiped the lenses of his goggles.

  He wrapped what looked like sandpaper around a long thin dowel to smooth roughness from the inscription.

  She thought about what he’d said. She prepared food that nourished him to do his work. She had taken part of the responsibility of caring for his sister from his shoulders. Perhaps she could make a contribution that would make a difference, even though her work wasn’t visible to the eye, nor did it bear her initials in stone.

  She could take sizeable comfort from that thought.

  Violet grew fascinated with the painstaking care Ben Charles took with each detail, with the strength apparent in his hands, arms and shoulders. He worked as though they weren’t there, occasionally glancing over and seeming surprised to find his audience.

  Tessa’s pencil moved across the paper, and Violet imagined she could hear it, but of course she couldn’t. Tessa hadn’t had time just now to draw all the sketches arranged around her. She had obviously saved them to work on in increments. She had chosen to work on a richly detailed drawing of Ben Charles’s hands, one holding a chisel, the other a mallet. Tessa had somehow captured each crease in his skin, every vein and the inherent masculine strength with her pencil and paper. It didn’t take long before watching the artist was as fascinating as watching the craftsman. How many times had they sat like this, brother and sister, together but working apart, silent in their concentration?

  Violet could have stayed longer, but after nearly two hours, she told Tessa she was going to plan their supper and make a shopping list. They wouldn’t miss her.

  Again she avoided looking into the other rooms on her way along the corridor to the kitchen. While her foray to the other side hadn’t been unpleasant at all, she felt more at home here. Definitely in her element. No wonder Ben Charles had been out of place and desperate for someone to relieve him of cooking duties. He probably felt as ineffective in here as she did in his workshop.

  She had undeniably enjoyed the glimpse into his work. His skills were called into requisition only in times of sadness and sorrow, which to Violet would be extremely uncomfortable. But he seemed focused only on attending families—not merely seeing to the immediate physical concerns, but to honoring their loved ones in posterity.

  Her admiration for the man only grew stronger with each passing day and each glimpse into his life.

  By five the sky had cleared. Tessa returned, with the news that Ben Charles would be heading out to th
e barn. “He said if you wanted to help him, to dress warm and meet him out back. Do you have warm boots?”

  “Not sufficient for all this snow, I don’t suppose.”

  Tessa headed for the pantry. “I have a pair back here you’re welcome to wear.”

  Bundled for warmth, she joined Ben Charles outdoors and surreptitiously checked the landscape for large animals. The daylight had already begun to fade. Ben Charles went ahead of her, following the rope line, though they didn’t need it for visibility, and creating footprints in the snow, which she used. Their breath made white plumes in the frigid air.

  Unblemished snow went on forever. The trunks of the heavily laden trees were all that broke up the ocean of white. Ben Charles turned to look back. “You doing all right?”

  “I’m good,” she replied, though she’d become winded from raising her feet high to plow into his prints in the drifts.

  After Ben Charles unbolted a stable door, he stepped inside and glanced around before backing out and gesturing for her to enter ahead of him. The smells of hay, horses and leather that engulfed her sent immediate shafts of memory through her senses and brought the sting of tears to her eyes. For a moment she couldn’t breathe.

  Pain as sharp as anything physical sliced inside her chest. She saw her father, tall and handsome, dressed for a ride. The scents mingled to create memory images as clear as day. Violet flattened her mittened palm against her chest and tried to breathe.

  Ben Charles turned to her, and an expression of alarm crossed his features. He grasped her arm through her coat. “Violet! Are you all right? You’re as white as a sheet.”

  Chapter Eight

  She struggled to bring some air into her lungs. Once she was breathing normally, she cast him an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry. For a moment the memories overwhelmed me.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Are they good memories?”

  “Oh, they’re good. Very good.” She swiped a hand across her eyes and blinked away the remaining tears.

  He released her arm and took a step back, but kept his gaze on her face. “Can you tell me?”