“Good evening, Lorna,” Lyle paused and greeted her. “My family has arrived, armed with a basket of food which smells divine. Are you ready to join us?”
Lorna noticed Lyle always asked, giving her the option to decline if she didn’t want something Lyle offered, be it conversation or food. His refined manners were a nice contrast to so many men’s lack of manners she had to endure at the café.
“Good evening, Lyle. Yes, I’ve been looking forward to the evening with you.” Lorna tried to gracefully walk down the steep stairs, but was having problems since she couldn’t see her feet anymore because of her swelling middle.
“Watch the bottom step,” Lyle reached for her hand as she neared the last step, and she gratefully took it. How she missed such chivalry after moving to the wild west, but then she had been avoiding everyone except for the customers in the café.
Lyle tucked her hand in the crook of his arm like they were going to stroll down a tree-lined Boston neighborhood street. Once they had walked the very short distance to the other staircase, Lyle moved behind her as she turned to walk up the stairs, enjoying his hand on the small of her back supporting her as she climbed the steps.
Lorna straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath before walking into Lyle’s home. Then she stopped, enchanted with the feeling of being transported back to Boston.
“Welcome to my new home, Lorna,” Lyle softly spoke behind her.
“Lorna, it’s nice to see you again,” Cora walked forward with both hands extended. Lorna let Cora pull her into the living room, all the while taking in the thick rug cushioning her steps and the polished furniture strategically placed around the room.
“Hello, ma’am,” Dagmar politely added, standing near the wall with his hands clasped behind his back.
Lorna couldn’t hold back the laugh of surprise. “Am I still in an upstairs building in a new frontier town? I feel like I’m in one of Boston’s finest homes.” She couldn’t believe the transformation which had taken place. Lyle already had several landscape paintings adorning the walls, too.
“I’m as surprised as you are, Lorna. I never thought my brother would have a sense of decorating a home.”
“At least there aren’t glass knick-knacks everywhere to worry about.” Dagmar was still standing in the same spot although the other three continued to walk around the room. Lorna was drawn to the upholstered chairs gracing a section of the room. How long had it been since she’d sunk into a comfortable chair? She only had one hard, wooden, straight-backed chair in her room.
“You’ll have to excuse Dagmar’s uneasiness,” Cora said with a teasing voice. “He spent his life living outdoors on cattle drives between Texas and elsewhere, and anything ‘pretty’ and ‘breakable’ makes him very nervous.”
“Well, you can’t walk through the Bar E Ranch house without worrying about knocking something fragile with your elbow.” Lorna thought Dagmar was teasing his wife, but maybe not, because he had worry in his voice.
Cora just smiled at her husband, with a look of pure adoration in her eyes.
Lorna inwardly sighed, wishing she could see her husband in person, acting like a responsible husband and soon-to-be father.
“Come on, Lyle, show us the rest of your home.”
“After you, ladies,” Lyle slightly bowed and extended his hand to request they move on in front of him.
The next room featured a polished mahogany dining room table with six chairs around it, a tall glass-front china cupboard, and a waist-height side table for serving.
“And you already have china unpacked and in your cupboard?” Cora queried her brother.
“Well, I’m not busy with clients yet,” Lyle answered with a grimace.
“Don’t worry, you will be soon enough,” Cora replied while looking in the cupboard.
“That’s Grandmother Elison’s china! Did Mother give those to you?”
“Why, do you think I stole them?”
Cora’s reaction was to laugh. “I already guessed mother helped with setting up your new home. I’m sorry, but I’d bet you couldn’t have picked out all the matching furnishings even if you tried.”
“Okay, then you’ll recognize the bedroom furniture and paintings in my bedroom here. Mother shipped my bedroom items so she could buy new furniture to turn my old room into a guest room.”
It was interesting to hear the siblings chatter back and forth at each other as they moved into the kitchen next. Lorna had never experienced that type of life, since she had been an only child and had lived with her grandmother.
She stole a glance at Dagmar and was surprised at the big grin on his face. Dagmar walked up to her, ready to follow the others now as they toured the house. “Don’t mind that those two forgot we’re still here. Cora is enjoying having her brother nearby again.”
“And I believe your family lives nearby, too?”
“My twin sisters are married to two of the Wilerson brothers, Jacob and Noah. Both their ranches are south of the Bar E. The rest of my family is on their way, coming up with a cattle drive from Texas. Then we’ll all be settled in the area.”
“Lorna? You have to see this kitchen?!”
Lorna and Dagmar followed Cora’s voice into the next room, which was bigger than the room Lorna was currently living in. Besides the stove, sink, and two work tables along the walls, there was another table with four chairs around it in the middle of the room.
“This is ingenious!” Cora stood near the stove looking into an open cupboard. “There’s a dumb waiter to bring up firewood for the stove, groceries, and buckets of water…”
“There’s also water piped to the sink,” Lyle demonstrated by turning on a faucet attached to the back side of a large, tin sink, big enough to bathe a toddler. “There’s a cistern system so, hopefully most of the year, I can use rainwater instead of hauling water up from the well down the alley.”
“Did you do all this since you moved in?” Lorna hadn’t seen the sink carried up the stairs this week, and certainly not that huge stove.
“This kitchen was already in place and ready to use. This room is why I decided to rent this building. I have to be married by November tenth and I thought this kitchen would be a point in my favor.”
I have to be married by November tenth? What was Lyle talking about?
Lorna barely glanced around the two bedrooms, each filled with a full-sized bed, dresser, wardrobe and wash stand, but she stopped to run her hand over the side of the full-size, tin tub which sat in the separate washroom at the end of the hall. She hadn’t had a decent bath since she left the Paulson Hotel.
All these nice rooms were similar to what she used when growing up in her grandmother’s home, and she couldn’t help feel a tinge of jealousy. This was sitting next door to her dingy, stuffy, one-room “home”.
Cora insisted they eat in the dining room, although Lorna sensed Dagmar would have rather eaten in the kitchen. He just shrugged, happy to let his wife pull out her grandparents’ china and reminisce about the past.
Lyle had closed the heavy drapes on the west windows blocking out the heat of the day, so it wasn’t stifling hot in his apartment. He had other windows open to let in the breeze and circulate the air. What a contrast to her own place with only one small window.
Cora uncovered the cloth on the big wicker basket Dagmar had carried upstairs for her. Inside, neatly packed, were ham and cheese sandwiches, a jar each of pickled eggs, sweet pickles, and fresh watermelon cut up in chunks.
“I have a crock of lemonade to go with this delicious meal you packed, plus I promised to have a dessert on hand to finish the meal.”
“I hope you asked Millie Wilerson to make one of her mouth-watering pies,” Dagmar rubbed his hands in excitement. “This town was lucky when that mail-order bride walked off the train.”
“Just remember you have to share, Dagmar. You can’t eat the whole pie yourself,” Cora warned her husband as she opened jars and forked the food into serving dishes.”
>
“And here’s our lemonade—cool I might add—due to my ‘I won’t tell’ supply of ice,” Lyle said as he lifted the glasses off his tray and set one at each place setting.
“Ice? In Kansas? In August?” Cora exclaimed.
“Just another surprise in this building that I don’t want spread around town.”
“We’ll all swear to secrecy! Tell us!” Cora deviously whispered.
“Okay, but don’t tell a soul because there isn’t much ice left. This building was built on top of a rock-lined dugout. You probably noticed the cellar door entrance on the back of the building?” All of them nodded realizing there was a door almost flush to the ground, underneath the stair steps.
“The front of the cellar has been used for canned food, bins of potatoes and the like. But behind another smaller door is a small room filled blocks of ice packed in dried prairie grass and sawdust.”
“I’ve wondered why there wasn’t an ice house on the ranch. We had them back east.”
“And now I suppose you want one built by winter, Cora?” Dagmar sighed, apparently knowing his wife well already.
“Yes, please,” she sweetly replied. “You could make it at least half underground and use rocks from the hills around the ranch to make thick walls.
“And who’s digging this giant hole in the ground?”
“Any cowhand who wants to enjoy a churn of homemade ice cream every holiday next year,” Cora promptly answered back.
“You’re the boss, Cora. I’m sure your hands will do it for you,” Dagmar assured her.
Dagmar leaned toward Lorna sitting to his left at the table. “Cora owns the Bar E, not me, and I’m proud of her being in charge.”
“Oh, Dagmar… Don’t listen to him, Lorna. My name may be on the land title, but it’s his hard work and management that keeps the ranch running.”
Lorna felt a twinge of jealousy when the two stared like love birds at each other.
Lorna looked over at Lyle, who shrugged his shoulders and whispered, “They’re in love.”
“Yes, we are, I’m happy to say. Who thought running off to the Kansas plains to escape my third blunder at the altar would result in a happy marriage?”
Lorna couldn’t help raise her eyebrows. Three trips to the altar?
Lyle shook his head to confirm and held up three fingers.
“Stephen was a sailor who died in a boating accident. I think that marriage would have been lonely, personally, with him at sea all the time.” Lyle looked to Cora and watched as she acknowledged his opinion.
“Probably, but he was a good man, and I still think of him at times. He was my first love.” Lorna was surprised Cora openly said such with her husband sitting beside her, but apparently they had talked about it.
“Then there was Charles, the university professor….” Lyle continued.
Cora dramatically groaned. “I couldn’t believe it! We’re standing at the altar, we’d already said our ‘I dos’, he has hold of my hand and about to slip the ring on my finger…and he says, ‘I want to become a priest instead of getting married’. He drops my hand, turns around and walks down the aisle and out of the church!”
“Well, if he felt that strong about his religion it was probably for the best,” Lorna trying not to snicker as she pictured the scene.
“The coward! Charles wasn’t even Catholic!” Cora hissed, then grinned apparently no longer mortified thinking about it.
“And fiancé number three was….” Lyle held his palm up indicating Cora could finish telling about the third man she almost married.
“Robert, a banker, who decided two days before the wedding he wanted to marry Evelyn, my best friend and bridesmaid, instead of me.”
“Oh, no! Now that’s sad.” Lorna felt terrible for Cora.
“What’s worse was I stood up as Evelyn’s bridesmaid, because Robert chose to keep the wedding date we’d already reserved at the church…then I left for Kansas.”
“But what about Jeffrey? Your groom who traveled from Boston with your parents and brothers last month for that wedding?” She’d heard the gossip in the café so knew a little bit about that situation.
Lorna didn’t know which of them had had worse luck with grooms. Cora had been engaged several times to be married, but Lorna married only to have her groom disappear.
“I hadn’t planned on marrying Jeffrey or anyone last month, but I had to marry someone to inherit my grandfather’s money.
“You see, I had to marry by my twenty–fifth birthday to inherit my share of my grandfather’s Will. My father tried to find a way to break the Will for me, but it was iron clad. So…my parents brought a friend from Boston for me to marry so I could have met the deadline.”
“So if you hadn’t married by your birthday, what would have happened?” Lorna had to know what was at stake.
“My share would have gone to my grandfather’s favorite ‘Gentleman’s Club’, which would have kept the roughly one hundred members in liquor and cigars for a decade—or two.”
Lorna’s mouth dropped wide in surprise until she thought to clamp it shut.
“My grandfather knew my weak spot, as I had helped with charities in Boston. So, to goad me into marrying, he thought up this contingency.”
“But you had tried to marry three times in the past. Didn’t that count?” Lorna asked.
No, and I couldn’t stand the thought that the money would have been wasted on liquor when it could help so many families in need.” So the clothes Cora gave Lorna were bought with money from Cora’s grandfather’s fund? Yes, Lorna might have been a rich woman at one time, but she’d become a charity case in an instant.
“So you decided to marry…” Lorna pulled her mind back to Cora’s story.
“I was in love in Dagmar, so I finally convinced him to marry me.” Cora beamed at her husband.
“Now that’s a story to pass down to your children and grandchildren.” Lorna was happy it had turned out well for the couple.
When Lorna’s grandmother died and her will was read, all her estate went to her grandmother’s church except for fifteen hundred dollars to Lorna. She cringed when she thought how her inheritance slipped through her fingers. A third of the money was used for living expenses in Boston, and then her train ticket to Kansas. And the other two thirds….disappeared with her husband, wherever he may be.
“Were you and Carl listed in the Will too, along with stipulations?” Lorna was too curious not to bluntly ask Lyle.
“Of course, although Carl’s directions were sealed in an envelope and given directly to him, and he’s kept mum about it. Carl has until his thirtieth birthday to marry,” Lyle explained.
“And Lyle’s stipulations are…” Cora pretended to do a drum roll with her fingers on the dining room table.
Lyle looked over to Lorna and gave a dramatic sigh.
“I have to marry by my twenty-seventh birthday…or all the funds go to bet on one horse in one sulky race at the Beacon Park—with the winnings going to the Boston Children’s Mission.”
“All the money on one horse?!”
“Yes, and you know the odds of the children getting any of that money would be slim to none. I know Grandfather frowned on my gambling habit, and he knew I have a soft spot for children.”
“You better be looking for a bride,” Cora teased her brother. “It might take a while for someone to accept your proposal.”
“Ha, Ha….” Lyle shot back
“You only have two months, so you’d better start checking out the single women in church this Sunday.”
“If Lorna wasn’t already married, I’d ask to court her,” Lyle playfully noted.
Lorna blushed with Lyle’s soft-spoken words. She shyly studied his smile and dimple from under her lashes. Ever since Lorna had mistaken Lyle for her husband last month in the café, she had been thinking of him. Why couldn’t he have been her groom instead?
“There aren’t too many single women in church to choose from, if you want to
wed someone under sixty,” Dagmar chided Lyle.
“Isaac Connely’s niece, Faye Longoria, could use a husband and father for her child,” Cora tried to keep a straight face when saying it, but then broke out in a laugh.
“What’s wrong with the woman?” Lorna hated for them to make fun of a woman who had a child. She’d be in the same situation in a few more months.
“Oh, Faye’s a sweetheart. She’s only eighteen but she grew up in a brothel, and oh my, the stories she innocently tells. Her baby, Violet Rose, is a little darling. Faye named her daughter for her favorite customer’s wife and daughter.”
Lorna choked on the lemonade she’d just taken a sip of after hearing Cora’s final words. Lyle reached over and patted her on the back. “Faye has her sights on Rusty Tucker, the Cross C Ranch foreman, so I don’t think I’d have a chance with her.”
“How about Henry Barclay’s granddaughter, Henrietta?”
“I’m sorry, but I’d be afraid of what our children would look like.”
“Lyle, that’s terrible to say!” Cora scolded him.
“Zeke Hanson’s daughter, Bertha?” Dagmar added another woman to Lyle’s potential wife list. “If you were a farmer, she’d have been the perfect helpmate with her brawn and brains.”
“I think Bertha would be a little bored in town, what little I know about her.” Lyle shook his head to dismiss Dagmar’s suggestion.
“You could go over to Ellsworth and find a woman from a saloon. I’m sure there would be a few who’d like to be a lawyer’s wife.”
“I’m sure that might be a solution to finding a wife, but some potential clients might frown on that.”
“How about Maeve Ramsey, the school teacher? She’s well-mannered, and I hear the children and their parents like her.”
Lorna squirmed in her seat, listening to the trio discuss women Lyle could court. Not that it really mattered, but she didn’t know who they were talking about. She hadn’t made a point of making friends and now she felt bereft because of it.
“Miss Ramsey may be a candidate. I’ll make a point to chat with her at church next Sunday,” Lyle nodded his head like he was beginning to like the idea.
Lorna Loves a Lawyer: A Historical Western Romance (Brides with Grit Book 9) Page 4
