The Heirloom Brides Collection

by Tracey V. Bateman

  Now she stood in the boardinghouse kitchen with her landlady, stirring cranberry sauce for a meal that was likely to be almost as special as the chicken fricassee. The two elderly sisters boarding at Miss Hattie’s had gone for a buggy ride to Victor. Cherise was spending the day with Kat and her children. And Nicolas’s three girls were playing at Nell’s house for the afternoon.

  Hattie looked up from the meat platter on the countertop and glanced at the small pot in front of Darla. “About ready?”

  Darla lifted a spoonful of sauce, watched the sauce flow back into the pot, and nodded.

  “So are the pork chops. The potatoes should be getting close.” Hattie resumed her task of filling the platter.

  Darla reached to the back burner and gave the roasting potatoes another stir.

  “It’s so kind of you and Mr. Sinclair to host us. Thank you!”

  “It’s our pleasure, dear.” Her landlady and friend set the last pork chop in the center of the platter.

  With the saucepan and ladle in hand, Darla drizzled the cranberry sauce over the meat. “It will be especially pleasurable for Nicolas and me to eat supper in the company of other adults.”

  Hattie tittered. “You mean with another couple, don’t you?”

  She and Nicolas were a couple. They had both admitted to feeling they belonged together that Saturday when she’d played checkers with the girls and stayed for supper. Darla set the empty saucepan and wooden spoon in the sink. “Just don’t pinch me. I don’t want to wake up from this dream.”

  Last night, after she and Jocelyn succeeded in preparing their first French meal, she had shared her chocolate with the family and beat Nicolas at checkers. When the girls were tucked in, he’d walked her home to the boardinghouse. Inside, she’d had a long conversation with Hattie before retiring to her room to dream about the possibilities that lay before her.

  Still, she’d feel better if she could cut the nagging tie to her past. Her diary. But Nicolas was right. Diary or no diary, she needed to trust God with her past as well as with her future.

  While Darla framed the pork chops with the roasted potatoes, Hattie poured the honey-glazed carrots into a cut-glass bowl. They both hung their aprons on a hook inside the pantry. When they swept into the dining room, carrying platters and bowls, both Harlan and Nicolas stood, the latter looking positively delicious. He wore a gray tweed jacket over a white shirt and blue string tie. His free-spirited curls cascaded above warm chocolate-brown eyes. Kat Sinclair had been right—she wasn’t likely to find a patient as charming as Nicolas Zanzucchi. Or a man as compassionate and courageous as this widowed father of three girls. This was the man she loved.

  Harlan took the bowl from Hattie and set it on the festive cherry-wood table. “We hesitated to appear too hungry or anxious, but we didn’t vacillate very long before seating ourselves.”

  “Darla and I are glad to hear you’re hungry.”

  Darla added the platter of pork chops to the mouthwatering spread.

  “That is a lot of food, and it all looks delicious.” Nicolas smiled at her and pulled out the chair beside his. “A feast.”

  “And rightly so.” Seated, Hattie pulled the napkin from her place setting. “We have much to celebrate.”

  They did have much to celebrate. Nicolas had recovered, and they were now a couple. And this afternoon she was spending time with him somewhere other than the company house.

  Following Harlan’s brief prayer, they each began filling their plates and passing the serving dishes around the table.

  Nicolas started the meat platter on its rounds. “I’m eating especially well this week.” He held the platter while Darla scooped a pork chop and potatoes onto her plate. “The girls do well enough, but I’m sure you heard Darla and Jocelyn prepared a French meal for us yesterday. The food was magnifique, as Jocelyn would say.”

  Darla loved the joyful sound of his baritone chuckle.

  A few minutes later, a knock on the front door quieted their conversation, and Harlan started to stand.

  The door clicked shut, and a happy baby’s chatter filled the entry. “Father? Hattie?”

  “Ida and Joshua.” Harlan settled back onto his chair and speared his last bite of potato. “We’re in the dining room, Ida.”

  Darla set her fork on her plate. Ida had probably only come to visit her father and Hattie, but she couldn’t help but hope she’d one day bring news from her husband concerning the whereabouts of the diary and pendant.

  Ida walked into the room with Joshua perched on one hip. A flour sack dangled from her other hand. “I’ve interrupted your supper.” Nicolas had stood, but Ida waved for him to be seated. “I apologize for my poor timing.”

  “No need.” Hattie pulled her napkin from her lap. “Would you like a plate?”

  “As you can see”—Harlan tipped his head toward the full table—“we still have ample.” He scooted his chair back and reached for the baby.

  “No, thank you.” Ida settled Joshua on his grandfather’s lap, then smoothed the bodice on her lavender dress. “I ate earlier. Before Tucker went to put the finishing touches on tomorrow’s sermon.”

  “Then you’re just in time for dessert.” Hattie patted the chair beside her. “Darla and I made peach pies.”

  “I’d like that. Thank you.” Ida walked around the table and paused beside Darla. “But first, I brought you something.”

  Darla stood with weak knees.

  A warm smile lit Ida’s blue eyes as she pressed the sack into Darla’s hand. “Tucker found the loose board and your things. He put them in a box and kept it behind some theology books on the shelf in his office in case someone came to claim them one day.”

  Darla gripped the sack as if her life depended upon it and pulled Ida into an embrace. “Thank you so much.”

  Nicolas stood beside her, his gaze tender. She drew in a fortifying breath, then untied the drawstrings and freed the box. Ida retrieved the sack, and Darla lifted the clasp on the box.

  Gram’s little velvet jewelry case lay nestled beside the diary, just like she had left it. She bent and set the box on her chair. Her hands shaking, she lifted out the diary. The double-granny knot she’d tied around it nearly four years earlier hadn’t been disturbed. A sigh of relief punctuated her silent prayer of thanksgiving.

  She reached for Nicolas’s hand, then looked at the others. “Will you excuse us?” When they nodded, she led him through the kitchen door to the coal stove.

  “Like you said, it’s time I truly let go of the past and embrace my future.” She gripped the diary with both hands, then looked at the stove. “Will you help me?”

  “I’d be honored.” He grabbed the towel from its peg beside the sink and wrapped it around the handle on the coal chute. When he opened the chute door, the acrid smell of burning coal stung her nostrils. She set the diary on the edge of the chute then pushed it into the miniature inferno. When the dry cardboard lit, she slammed the chute door on her past and looked up at the man she wanted in her future.

  “Will you go for a walk with me after some of your peach pie?” Nicolas asked.

  “Yes.” She’d gladly follow this man anywhere, but he’d piqued her curiosity, and she wouldn’t be able to down her dessert fast enough.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nicolas made a deliberate effort to take shorter, slower steps. Darla was doing a good job of keeping up, but her fashionable narrow skirt wasn’t suited for his anxious stride down Bennett Avenue.

  When they reached the corner at Second Street, he slowed down enough to cup her elbow and guide her across. Their destination wouldn’t remain a surprise much longer. “Any minute now—”

  “The watchmaker’s shop!” She looked at him, her eyes widening. “That’s where we’re going?”

  He nodded. Her smiles quieted the commotion around them, and he wouldn’t live long enough to get his fill of them.

  “What a great idea to look at it together. Even if we can’t see very much.” Off she went, h
er narrow pale blue skirt twisting with each step.

  At the glass door, he pulled a keychain from his trouser pocket and dangled a key from it.

  She stepped back from the window. “You have the key?”

  He placed the key into the lock, unable to believe the extraordinary turn of events himself. “As it turns out, I had supper with the owner today.” He pushed the door open and motioned for her to lead the way inside.

  Darla took slow steps over the threshold. “Hattie owns this building?”

  Stifling a chuckle, he followed her inside. He loved that Darla had the confidence to think first of a woman owning a business building in a mining town. “Actually, it was her husband who bought it from the watchmaker’s heirs.”

  “Oh. All of this came to pass in the few minutes you two were waiting for Hattie and me to serve supper?”

  “Yes. And the best part of it is that Mr. Sinclair said he had me in mind when he signed the papers two weeks ago. I’m thinking of renting it from him.”

  Darla’s emerald-green eyes glistened behind a pool of tears. She squared her shoulders, her rounded chin jutting out. “What’s there to think about? You are a gifted artist. Don’t you want to pursue your craft, to have your own business? If you opened a woodworking shop, you wouldn’t have to go back to the mine.”

  Emotion threatened to clog his throat, and he swallowed hard. “I knew what I wanted to do, but I can’t begin to tell you how good it feels to have someone beside me again who cares.” He watched a tear slide down Darla’s cheek and brushed it away. “I’ll go tell them at the Mollie Kathleen Mine first thing Monday.”

  “That’s wonderful news! The girls will be so happy to hear it. I know I am.”

  He strolled to the middle of the showroom. The walls were faded except where clocks had hung, and the building had gaslights, which would have to be changed out. “Mr. Sinclair said he’s having electricity brought in. It needs a little work, but—”

  “The five of us working together could whip it into fine shape in no time at all.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” He winked.

  Blushing the color of a summer sunset, she gazed at the back corner. “I can’t wait to see you standing at a lathe back there. Crafting chair spindles and table legs. Making animal carvings. And of course, your impressive wall carvings.”

  He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “That’s what I love about you, Darla Taggart. You’re a dreamer.”

  Her eyes glistened. “You do?”

  “I do.” He glanced at the closed door in the center of the back wall. “Uh, there’s more to see.” He led her past the few boxes scattered on the floor and opened the door into a room about half the size of the front one with shelves on two of the four walls. “This would make a good supply room. Wood. Tools. Items waiting for pickup or delivery.”

  “It’s seems so perfect.”

  He nodded. The only thing missing was a kiss, but that would come. Soon, if he had a say in it.

  Darla watched Nicolas examine a storage cabinet just inside the back door. He’d been walking through the shop like a child in a candy store, full of wonder—running his fingertips across the surfaces. She loved that he was just as ready for a fresh start as she was.

  He loved her. She’d seen it in his eyes when she showed up at his house with the groceries. When she suggested he didn’t have to return to the mine, that he could pursue woodworking. She’d seen love in his eyes when she surrendered the diary to the burning coals and stepped into his embrace. She was a dreamer, and in this moment, she was dreaming of walking into the shop full of his wooden kittens and birds rising up out of the ashes, and living as his wife in the apartment upstairs. She glanced at the staircase just inside the storage-room door.

  “Mr. Sinclair said the apartment has two bedrooms. I’m guessing it’s comparable in size to the company house. Only with stairs.” He glanced from her hobbling skirt to the staircase. “Do you think you could make it up there?”

  “Certainly. I want to see it all.” She’d make the climb, if she had to crawl. She didn’t want this dream to end.

  Fortunately, there was a smooth wooden railing on either side of the staircase and the steps weren’t deep, so she had no trouble ascending as long as she wasn’t in a hurry.

  At the top, Nicolas unlocked another door and pushed it open. They stepped into a sparsely furnished sitting room with light coming from an alcove window that overlooked the street. The perfect niche for reading or sewing, and it was opposite an open kitchen with a good-sized dining table in the center.

  Nicolas went to the bedrooms and met her in the sitting room. “It comes complete with a toilet room between the bedrooms.”

  “It’s a nice layout and seems very comfortable.” She did a slow spin, taking it all in. “A certain rocking chair. Some quilts and curtains. That’s all it needs.”

  He crossed his arms and looked around. “It needs a woman’s touch.”

  “Yes.” Heat rushed up her neck and into her face. She wanted nothing more than to be that woman.

  Nicolas ran his finger along the inside of his collar as if it were suddenly too tight. “Would you mind sitting for a minute?” He looked at the caned chair beside the small potbellied stove in the corner.

  She sat down and looked up at him.

  “I was going to speak to you on the porch at the boardinghouse, but this building in the heart of town now seems like a better time and place.”

  They had been speaking all afternoon, had they not? “A better time and place?”

  “To discuss our future.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small satin box.

  “Oh!” Good thing she was seated, because she was sure her legs wouldn’t have held her.

  Kneeling, he held the box in front of her and opened it.

  Her breath caught at the sight of the rings. A pale blue sapphire graced a gold band with silver accents. Beneath it, a gold wedding band. A matched set. “They’re beautiful.”

  “My papa’s papa gave the rings to Nonna Zanzucchi when they married.” He lifted her hand from her knee. “Miss Darla Taggart, I may have loved you from the moment you lost that first checkers game to Jaya, but I know I love you now. And those days without seeing you showed me that I don’t want to live apart from you.”

  Tears of joy streamed down her face.

  “Would you do me the honor of being my wife and the mother to my girls? Would you marry me and wear this ring of eternal love and commitment?”

  “Yes!” She reached up and brushed the cascade of curls on his forehead. “I may have loved you before I read those words you tried to erase—and affection—but I know I loved you then. Yes. Let’s be married.” Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to his and experienced a sweetness she’d never known.

  Twenty minutes later, she and Nicolas reunited with the three girls on Nell and Judson’s porch. Nell was inside pouring them all some lemonade while Nicolas leaned against a post. Darla rested the hand without an engagement ring on the railing and looked at her soon-to-be family. Jocelyn sat at a small metal table with a book, while Jaya and Julia knelt beside a playful beagle.

  Darla cleared her throat, careful to keep her left hand hidden in her skirt. “Your papa and I have some very big news.” She quickly had their undivided attention and glanced at Nicolas, then back at them. “Your papa won’t be returning to the mine. Instead, he will rent the watchmaker’s building from Mrs. Nell’s father and open a woodworking shop.”

  “Oh.” The smile on Jaya’s face faded. “I thought maybe you were getting married.”

  Jocelyn closed her book. “When I saw the sappy looks on your faces, that’s what I thought, too.”

  Nicolas stepped up beside Darla. “It’s all true. I am going to have a woodworking shop, and I’m not returning to the mine.” A grin filled his face. “And…”

  With that cue, Darla displayed her left hand. All three girls gasped.

  “Miss Darla has agreed t
o marry me.”

  A chorus of cheers erupted. While the girls encircled them, Nell spilled out the open door with William toddling behind her.

  “Papa and Miss Darla are getting married!”

  “What wonderful news!” Nell leaned over the top of Julia and pulled Darla into a warm embrace. “Congratulations to the both of you.”

  Yet another member of the Sinclair family had come alongside Darla and the Zanzucchi family, cheering them on. God had indeed brought her back to Cripple Creek for so much more than she’d planned. She brushed Nicolas’s arm and breathed another prayer of gratitude.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Darla wouldn’t have thought it possible that six weeks could fly by and drag at the same time. But they had. She’d prepared to wed the man of her dreams in a flurry of activity that included cleaning the apartment above the shop, setting up the displays of Nicolas’s carvings, sending several telegrams to her parents to arrange for their trip west, and sewing parties with Hattie and the Sinclair sisters. But at the end of each day, when she returned to the boardinghouse alone, it seemed time stood still and May 27 would never arrive.

  But this day had already been worth both the rush and the wait. Starting with breakfast at the boardinghouse with Father, Mother, and Peter. Attending the Sunday service with her first family seated on one side and her new family on the other. She and Father were once again under the same roof. This time, when past mistakes and hurts returned to weigh her down, the truth in Hattie’s words echoed in her heart. “That was then, and this is now.”

  As she stood in the foyer beside her father, she couldn’t be more ready for now, with the past in its rightful place.

  Father reached for her hand and laid it on his arm, as if to punctuate that fact. “I couldn’t be more proud of the woman you’ve become, Darla May.”

  Tears threatened to spill over, and she blotted her lower lids with the embroidered handkerchief her mother had loaned her for the ceremony. “Thank you, Daddy.” Pressing her hand to his arm, she raised up onto her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m so glad you’re here.”