Western Winter Wedding Bells

by Cheryl St. John, Jenna Kernan

  I hope you enjoy this story and have a lovely holiday season full of the aroma of delicious family recipes.

  Merry Christmas.

  Jenna

  This book is dedicated to my grandmother, Ruth Cunningham, who would not let my mother wed until she knew how to make a proper cherry pie, and to my mother, Margaret, who rendered herself unconscious in the process through a combination of a short ladder, a cherry tree and a great fear of heights.

  Chapter One

  Butte, Montana, 1888

  Eliza Flannery dodged the railroad conductor, but he captured her upper arm. His meaty hand clamped about her and closed with viselike intensity, making her wince.

  “This is a mistake.” Her face flamed in shame as the passengers craned their necks to get a better look at her.

  “No ticket, no funds—no mistake.” He hustled her down the metal steps and onto the platform. “I’m turning you over to the authorities.”

  Oh, no. She absolutely could not allow that to happen, because the ticket was only one of the reasons she had fled. If he detained her, they might find out about the other.

  This morning she had been a decent woman with a respectable situation. Now she was without a position, stealing her passage from the Northern Pacific and running from the law. How had her life veered so badly off course?

  “Please. You’re hurting me.”

  “Common thief, that’s what,” he blustered. “Did you think I’d let you go because of those big blue eyes?”

  Eliza clutched her carpetbag in her free hand as they reached the crowded platform. She glanced about and spotted three lanky cowboys, faces still rosy and hairless. She made eye contact with one.

  “Help!” she cried.

  All three straightened, turning toward them. A moment later they surrounded the conductor.

  One placed a hand on his pistol. “Let her go, mister.”

  He raised one hand as if the cowboys were train robbers. “Boys, she doesn’t have a ticket.”

  “That true?” asked her would-be rescuer.

  She nodded.

  He grinned, grabbed her captor’s hand and twisted. Suddenly she was free.

  “Well?” he asked. “What are you waiting for? Run!”

  Eliza did, lifting her skirts and dashing as if her hem was on fire. The conductor’s voice followed her.

  “I’m calling the sheriff!”

  She glanced back and saw that the conductor had made an attempt to follow her, but one of the cowboys held him by the collar.

  Eliza darted between the passengers and slid around a pile of luggage, somehow managing to keep her feet on the icy surface. She slowed only when she was out of breath and out of sight of her pursuer. Thank goodness for those cowpokes.

  Eliza placed one hand on her middle and perceived she had drawn the notice of several of her fellow travelers. She struggled to gather her composure, walking stiffly along.

  Where was she going?

  She had not a nickel to her name. Where would she sleep tonight? How would she survive?

  A wet snow had begun to fall, adding to her misery. She clutched her bag before her as the red-hot flush of panic gave way by slow degrees to the icy cold of fear. She could not reboard the train and she could not stay where the conductor might find her. He said he would call the authorities. Had he already?

  Eliza continued on, weaving between passengers as she glanced back the way she had come.

  She was innocent. But wasn’t that what the last woman had told them? It hadn’t stopped them from believing her employer and arresting her predecessor. The cook, Flora, had recounted the tale of Miss Gram’s arrest and subsequent incarceration, frightening Eliza near to death. It proved adequately that declarations of blamelessness were pointless, for what thief would not declare their innocence? She had never been one to stand and fight. So, with Flora’s help, Eliza had fled from Mrs. Holloway’s residence before the police could be summoned, before she could be incarcerated for a crime she didn’t commit.

  Oh, why hadn’t Flora told her about her predecessor before this conundrum had reared its ugly head? And all because of a cameo brooch set with a diamond that Eliza had not even seen, let alone purloined. Her eyes burned and her vision blurred. She wiped at her eyes, glancing back to check for a pursuer and ran smack into something solid and unyielding.

  Eliza spun about to find she had collided with a man. He reflexively clasped her by the shoulders, steadying her as he gazed down with smoky-gray eyes.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  The deep male voice rumbled through her, causing a vibration in her chest that reminded her of the hum of the locomotive gliding over the rails.

  He must have topped six and a half feet and wore a wooly buffalo coat that made him look as wide as its original owner. There was an inch of snow on his wide-brimmed hat that now tipped slightly as he glanced down at her. She feared the action might cause a minor avalanche, but the sticky wet snow clung tenaciously to the black felt.

  His cheek showed a darkening of whisker growth making his lips seem especially full in contrast. His nose was straight as a blade, but it was those eyes that transfixed her. Staring up at him, she momentarily forgot how to speak. Thankfully, he released her and her mind cleared in the crisp December air.

  “Ma’am? Are you all right?” he asked again.

  No, she wanted to shout. She had never in her entire life been further from right. But she couldn’t say such a thing, nor could she ask a total stranger for help. So instead she nodded woodenly. His hands slid from her shoulders, and he retrieved the bag she had not realized she had dropped.

  “I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Never saw you. Of course you’re just a slip of a thing.” He extended her bag and she accepted it, her gloved fingers brushing his.

  His smile made her breath catch again. He wasn’t handsome, exactly, but his intense eyes still seemed to befuddle her completely.

  “I am waiting for someone,” she said, then felt her cheeks heat at the lie. She was never one for untruths or hadn’t been until this morning. How she longed to go back just one day and be the woman she had been, with a bed and a situation and a little money put by.

  “Good place for it,” he said. “I’m waiting, too. Though I don’t know what she looks like, exactly.”

  She wished he’d go away, instead of hovering a little too close. He had a kind of predatory glint in his eyes that made her exceedingly nervous. A single glance told her that a fellow would think hard before crossing such a man and a woman could count herself lucky to be under his protection. Her eyes swept over him again, extremely lucky, she decided. For a moment she considered throwing herself against his wide chest and begging his help. Instead, she stood battling between her fear of the unknown and her need for assistance.

  She forced a smile and glanced about, trying to appear as if she were searching for a family member, when in actuality she was again looking for her pursuers.

  “I’d help you look,” he said, offering assistance without her having asked. “But I’m not from Butte.”

  Her smile felt as brittle as her composure.

  “Waiting on your sweetheart?” he asked, hazarding a guess.

  For some inexplicable reason she did not want him to think her attached. Why, she could not fathom, for she had long ago given up such fancies as having a man of her own. But the impulse led her to the next lie.

  “My no,” she added, giving him no more explanation. She wished he’d go, while simultaneously hoping he’d stay. “I have never met the man I’m waiting for.”

  If only that were true.

  He quirked a brow and his smile faltered.

  “You haven’t?”

  “No.” She held her breath as those gray eyes seemed to bore into her. Could he tell she was lying?

  “Another coincidence,” he said. He was definitely frowning now. “Did you board at Cincinnati?”

  She nodded absently, glancing the way she had come. Wou
ld it be safer to go through the station or duck around it?

  “You’re not Mrs. Guntherson, are you?” he asked. “No, you couldn’t be. Could you?”

  Eliza glanced over his shoulder and saw the conductor, flanked by several very intimidating-looking railroad police, all heading straight for her. Eliza sidestepped so she was hidden from view by the man in the wooly coat.

  “You aren’t, are you?” he asked again.

  What had he said? He was waiting for someone…someone he had never seen? Desperation made her voice quaver like a woodwind. “Yes, I am.” She hunched lower. They’d be on her in a moment.

  His jaw dropped. “But I thought…that is, I assumed from your letter that you’d be…a more…” He paused as if uncertain how to proceed. “Didn’t you write you had been married fifteen years?”

  Eliza’s bag slipped from her numb fingers at this. Whatever had possessed her? She doubted she could make anyone believe she’d been married a day, let alone fifteen years, though at twenty-three, she was well on the shelf. She might better confess than continue to play him for the fool.

  He retrieved her satchel once more and placed a hand on her elbow when he noted that she was swaying precariously. He now stared at her as if she were some dangerous and unpredictable creature.

  She was a terrible liar and could never keep her face from flaming at any untruth, so she considered running again. But surely the police would see her then. She peeked over his shoulder. The men were searching the faces of the females on the platform. Cold terror washed over her. She would not be locked in a cell and was prepared to do anything to prevent that.

  “Fifteen?” Her laughter bordered on hysterical. “Dear me, no. There must have been a stray mark. Five years, only.”

  “I see. Well, I’m Trent Foerster.”

  She stared blankly at him.

  He lifted his eyebrows and leaned forward. “I’m the one you’re waiting for.”

  She could hear the conductor’s footfall now. She extended her gloved hand and tried valiantly to hold her smile as he clasped hers briefly. At the contact, her stomach gave an unexpected flutter.

  “Shall we go?” she asked, taking a step in the opposite direction of the approaching menace. “I’m afraid this coat is insufficient for the cold here.”

  That set him in motion. “Oh, of course.”

  He moved to grasp her elbow, hesitated and instead relieved her of the small carpetbag that held everything she owned in the world. “I have a sleigh out front.” He glanced about then faced her, his brow knit. “Your baggage?”

  The conductor was now only ten feet away. Eliza felt positively dizzy with fright. She leaned against him for support. Trent Foerster, bless the man, set them into motion.

  “A terrible mix-up. It’s been misplaced. The railroad has promised to forward it to your address.”

  Mr. Foerster glanced over his shoulder, but continued with her, which was fortunate, because had he not, she would have been forced to leave her bag and run.

  He guided her to the steps at the platform’s end and assisted her down the icy stairs. He led her to a lovely sleigh complete with many buffalo robes, but the contrivance was, sadly, an open one.

  He seated her on the bench that was so cold the leather made a crackling sound. Mr. Foerster draped her with a buffalo robe. Goodness, she had no idea that it would be so heavy. She did not think she could lift a leg if she tried. It was just as he took the reins that the conductor and his associates burst onto the street. Eliza ducked down in her seat, trying to lose herself in the rough bison blanket. They made eye contact and he shouted, waving his arms as he charged into the road, nearly colliding with a buckboard. Mr. Foerster seemed oblivious to the hullabaloo behind them.

  They were leaving the city limits of Butte before she could properly catch her breath. Only then did she think to wonder what position he thought he had hired her to fill.

  Gracious, what had he called her? She could not remember the name he had uttered, her name now, if she was to continue with this charade.

  A thought jumped into her mind, unbidden. What if he were expecting a mail-order bride?

  Chapter Two

  Trent cast a sidelong look at the beauty seated beside him. This was not what he had envisioned when he had hired an experienced woman to run his household. Mrs. Viola Guntherson, born to German immigrants, married fifteen years or five, he wasn’t certain now. But either way she did not look old enough to have been married at all.

  The horse trotted on as Trent resisted the impulse to turn the sleigh around and bring Viola back to the station. What would folks say, for heaven’s sakes? He was unmarried. He couldn’t have a woman who looked like this under his roof. He’d have to explain things to her, admit that there had been a mistake and compensate her. But she’d come all the way from Cleveland and he just couldn’t muster the guts to fire her for no other reason than that she was young and pretty.

  He wanted a mature woman, a widow, like his mother. For the hundredth time he wished his mother were still alive. She’d know what to do. Trent braced against the rush of grief. Three months already and still he could not believe that she was gone. It might have helped if his mother had been ill, but there had been nothing, no sign. One minute she was reading and the next she was slumped in her favorite chair. The grief was made all the more sharp by the fear that raising a young child had been too much for her. But what else could he do? He couldn’t leave her with a mother who would not even look at her own child.

  He glanced at Mrs. Guntherson again and she smiled. Lord help him, that smile could melt ice faster than July sunshine. He could hardly breathe around her.

  His past had shown he had no sense where women were concerned. Apparently, his bad luck continued. Trent gripped the reins tighter.

  “Nearly there,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I’m anxious for you to meet Addy.”

  She nodded, but said nothing. He might as well be speaking to the horse. Why on earth would a woman with her looks take such a position? It made no sense. So there had to be something wrong with her. Maybe she wasn’t a widow; maybe she got fired from her last job. Had she been caught fooling with someone’s husband? Either way, he’d get to the bottom of it, starting with that letter. Fifteen years, she’d written; she’d been married fifteen years, a childless widow. No one could sleep next to a woman like this and fail to conceive a child, unless…was there something wrong with her husband or with her?

  He looked her over, seeing nothing more than her head, peeking from the robes. But she seemed fit enough, made for having children, lots of them, enough to fill a big empty house. Trent had always thought to have a home just like that.

  His frown grew deeper.

  “My mom’s passing struck Addy hard.” So hard that she had vowed to hate Mrs. Guntherson on sight out of fury at his attempt to replace her nana. “I’m determined to keep everything as it was. She needs stability and she deserves to have a traditional Christmas, same as it’s always been.”

  “I’ll see to it, Mr. Foerster.”

  He knew his mother had made the house a home, but Lord help him, he never realized how strongly he depended on her advice until he could not seek it. “As I said in my letter, I have all my mother’s recipes. Some are in German. But you wrote that you read German, ya?”

  She didn’t return his smile. Instead, she looked extremely pale. He fidgeted with the reins. Perhaps he was not what she expected, either.

  “Shouldn’t be hard for a woman with such experience preparing meals to make a few simple cookies, cakes and pies.”

  Viola Guntherson’s pretty blue eyes widened to startling diameter as if she’d just sat on a pincushion. “A cook?”

  His smile slipped again. He’d been very clear about the cooking responsibilities, hadn’t he? Managing his household, that’s what he had said, all aspects of his household. Did she think he was wealthy enough to have a cook and a housekeeper?

  Well, what had he expected,
that he could just hire a new grandmother for his little girl?

  The fear came back, trickling in, like water through an earthen dam. What if Addy turned out like her mother? No. He was here to see that never happened.

  “She’s used to a kind of Old-World Christmas. You understand? A tree covered with candles, cookies and nuts. Do you know many carols?”

  She nodded stiffly and her lip quivered again. It was what had first drawn him to her, that gesture that made him think she might cry.

  They glided into town at midday, but already the sun’s final cold rays of light were spilling over the roof of McVane’s General Store. Days were short now. He judged he only had about an hour of daylight left. The traffic had stirred the snow into a muddy, frozen mess, which caused the sleigh to bump along. He steered the horse wide, avoiding the center of the thoroughfare.

  “My home is just up on the right a little so you can walk to everything, such as it is. Not like Cincinnati, I expect. Early’s a cattle town, but we have some miners, too, of course. We have a good grocery, butcher, even a bakery next to the hotel and several churches.” He realized he was blathering on. Trent snapped his mouth shut.

  Eliza nodded her understanding and only belatedly realized that Early was the name of the place. She didn’t know if she should be relieved to learn she had been retained as a cook, since she had no experience whatsoever in that field, but it was a better choice than a bride-for-hire.

  She still hadn’t learned who Addy was. Likely it would not matter once Mr. Foerster learned she couldn’t tell a whisk from a carving knife. She wondered if she should just tell him now, explain the entire thing. It would be better to do so before the real Mrs. Guntherson appeared or he found out on his own.

  But where would she go? She shivered.

  No, she must tell him. It was one thing to lead him on to escape imminent harm, but to continue with such a charade was quite another. She opened her mouth and then stared at the forbidding visage. He scowled, glaring at some point beyond the horse’s bobbing head, lost somewhere deep in thought. She mustered her courage, fear jousting with her moral compass. How she hated confrontations.