Carson's Christmas Bride (Hero Hearts; Lawmen's Brides Book 3)

by Natalie Dean

  “There’s a well,” the oldest girl said sulkily. “Don’t have no lemons.”

  “Any lemons, Two. You don’t have any lemons.”

  The girl’s forehead furrowed in a puzzled frown. “We don’t have no lemons,” she repeated, as if Sarah had misunderstood.

  “Do you children go to school?”

  “Not since Ma died. Pa needs us here.”

  “Children belong in school. You shall go tomorrow.”

  “We have chores to do.”

  “You can do your chores in the morning before school and after school, when you get home.”

  “It’s up to Pa to tell us what we ought to do,” said the youngest girl.

  “Three, your father is not able, at this time, to perform his duties as your parent. Therefore, you are obliged to listen to me, as I am the adult.”

  “I’m not Three!” the girl shouted. “My name is Ruby!”

  “Ruby, I am pleased to meet you. My name is Sarah. Now, tomorrow morning, you shall be going back to school. Education is very important.”

  “Are you going to cook and clean?” the older girl asked slyly, as if she doubted that Sarah would concur.

  “I—yes,” Sarah said, her chin up. “I shall take care of things. We shall manage perfectly well. I am sure of it.”

  Chapter 5

  That night, however, when the evening meal was eaten, the dishes washed, the children in their beds, Sarah was not so sure that managing well was an accurate forecast. She knew how to cook, certainly; even though they had servants, Mother had insisted that her daughters must know the housewifely arts. But the Boone pantry was limited and it seemed as though the children’s meals consisted of pancakes, beans, and bacon.

  Tomorrow, Sarah decided as she began to undress for bed, she would go into town and purchase food from the general store. She had brought money with her; Father refused to let her go without sufficient means. She would have to get up early enough to prepare breakfast for the children before they went to school, and after that—

  Sarah screamed as she opened the lid of her trunk; three frogs hopped out, their croaking chorus mocking her as they escaped. From the room next door, she heard muffled giggles.

  The children. The devil’s imps. She scrambled about the room to capture the frogs, tossing them out the window as she caught them. When that was done, she peered anxiously into the trunk. What if they’d put a poisonous snake in there and even now, it was waiting to strike?

  She quickly reached inside, grabbed her nightgown, and slammed the trunk shut. She could not face the thought of opening the second trunk to check its contents. After putting on her nightgown, Sarah quickly extinguished the candlelight and jumped into bed.

  The sheets and blankets smelled crisp and clean. The room itself was neat and tidy. She doubted that Dr. Boone was responsible for the pristine state of the bedroom. It seemed unlikely that the children, who clearly resented her presence in their home, would have bothered to attend to the task. She would have to learn more about the children from the Deputy, she decided. Once she had the opportunity to get to know the town better, she would be in a position to decide what her future would be. She was not returning to Charleston.

  The next morning, when the children came to the table after taking care of their morning chores, there was a pancake on each plate and a cup of water for each child. Sarah, yawning, sat down to join them. “Let us pray,” she said, closing her eyes and bowing her head.

  Only to open them a second later to find the chairs vacant and the children running around the room, chasing one another.

  “Children!” she shouted. “Children! You will be late for school and your teacher will whip you—children!”

  But the children went on with their antics as if she were not there. The oldest boy picked up his plate and flung the pancake at his older sister, who promptly emptied the contents of her cup of water on him. The younger children, eager to join in the fun, promptly did the same thing with their breakfast. Sarah, her mother’s instructions to never raise her voice abandoned, yelled at the top of her lungs for them to stop immediately. As soon as she finished speaking, a cupful of water was flung at her. The children giggled as her hair absorbed the liquid and dripped down her forehead.

  “You vicious little horrors,” Sarah gasped. “How dare you behave in this manner!”

  She reached out to grab the nearest child but he wriggled away, laughing at her as he dodged away from her reach. When she moved away from the table to catch him, she slid on water that had spilled to the floor and found herself in the awkward position of sitting on the floor, her skirts up to her knees, revealing her stockinged legs and petticoats. The children, sensing that they had crossed a boundary of obedience, raced for the door, opened it and ran out.

  “What’s going on?”

  Sarah, still on the floor, turned at the sound of the Deputy’s voice.

  “Those children that you claim are so good,” she retorted, “they have wreaked havoc on this room, as you can see. I prepared breakfast for them so that they would have a meal before they went to school, but, as you can see, they refused to eat and they have instead chosen to be disobedient. Now they have run outside and frankly, I don’t care if they run all the way to Mexico!”

  Carson surveyed the kitchen. It wouldn’t take long to put it to rights, but first . . .

  He reached out his arm. “I’ll help you up, ma’am,” he said. “You can’t sit on the floor all day.”

  “I have no intention of doing so,” she said in anger, pulling at her dress so that her legs and petticoats were concealed from his view. Ignoring his arm, she struggled to her feet, aware that, in doing so, she offered a most ungainly glimpse of her undergarments.

  When she was standing again, her color high and her eyes snapping, the Deputy, although there was an amused twinkle in his dark eyes, maintained a sober expression.

  “I intend to switch every child,” she told him.

  “You’ll have to catch them first, ma’am,” he said, “and you’ll pardon me for saying that you’re not likely to run very fast in those clothes. I’ll catch them for you, but first, let’s put things back where they belong.”

  “They should be in school,” she said, fighting back tears of humiliation as she joined him in picking up the plates and cups that had been cast on the floor. “They would learn manners and decorum if they were in school.”

  “I agree that they should be in school,” he said as he took the broom and swept up the pieces of pancake that were strewn about the floor. “I’ll take them there.”

  Sarah supposed that she ought to be grateful to the lawman for stopping by to check on the children, but she could not help resenting the fact that he had witnessed her humiliation. As they worked together to restore the room to order, they did so in silence.

  “I’ll go to see to those rascals,” Carson said indulgently. “I’ll get them to school. Where are their lunches?”

  Lunches? She returned his gaze blankly. She had not thought past breakfast.

  “They’ll have to eat,” he said.

  “Then they ought to have eaten the breakfast that I prepared for them!”

  “It looks as though Boone didn’t provide much in the way of provisions,” Carson observed as he opened cupboards and examined shelves. “I’ll see that lunch is brought to them. Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Graves will have something on hand.”

  Tears stung her eyes. Sarah felt as if she had failed. It was not her fault that food was in such short supply; she had not come here to raise children. She had not even known the children existed. But she would be judged, and it was quite likely that the Deputy would spread the word of her humiliation at the hands of the children.

  “I was planning to go into town and purchase some things,” she said. “I’ll bring them their lunches.”

  “I’ll go round them up and then I’ll take you into town,” he offered. “I brought the wagon today.”

  She had not thought to check
the stable to see if Dr. Boone had a horse. She had simply assumed that he did, and she was an excellent rider. But a wagon would be more practical.

  “Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I am sorry to inconvenience you.”

  It wasn’t exactly an inconvenience, but Carson wasn’t going to reveal that he was just following Jack Walker’s orders to make sure that everything was all right. If being nursemaid to a hoity-toity Charleston belle was what he had to do to make sure that new arrival Justin Ward remained on schedule for working the overnight duty, then nursemaid he would be. At least she was pretty to look at. Boone was a fool for wrecking his chances with a woman who looked like she did.

  “What’s your name, anyway?” he asked.

  “Sarah Baker. And yours?”

  “Carson Harlow. I’ll see to those scapegraces and get them to school.”

  He was back within the hour.

  “Are they in school?” she demanded after he helped her into the wagon so that they could journey into town.

  “I said they are,” he told her. “What do you think?”

  “What if they don’t stay there? What if they leave?”

  Carson’s expression showed that he doubted very much if the children were going to flee school. “They won’t leave until Miss McCracken rings the bell and it’s time to go.”

  “I don’t know how you can be so certain.”

  “I told you, Miss Baker—"

  “Mrs. Baker,” she corrected him. Although she had returned to the use of her family’s name, she had kept the married title. “I am a widow.”

  She didn’t look any more old enough to be a widow than she did to have nursed soldiers after the Mexican War, but he didn’t express his thoughts. “Mrs. Baker,” he went on, “if a kid knows you’re afraid of him, he’s going to act up all the more. If he knows that you’ll be fair but firm, he’s going to learn to respect you.”

  “I am not afraid of them! They are unmannerly little wretches.”

  “They’re not. They’re just young’uns who don’t know where to turn. Their mother is gone, their father—well, you’ve seen for yourself what kind of fathering they get.”

  “Do you have children of your own?”

  “Me? Not likely. I’m not married. But I was the oldest of six and when you have younger brothers and sisters, you learn a thing or two.”

  “I am the youngest of six,” she said.

  That explained it. The youngest was the family pet, able to wheedle and persuade and manage the family into getting his—or her—own way. She’d have to figure it out on her own, somehow. She wasn’t the baby of the family anymore. She was the head of the household.

  Chapter 6

  Deputy Harlow told her that he had some things to attend to, and he’d leave her to her shopping. Sarah was relieved at this news, although she contented herself with assuring him that she would not be long. She didn’t want him hovering over her shoulder with unspoken opinions on her purchases and she certainly didn’t want him to know what she was buying. It was none of his business anyway, but Deputy Harlow seemed to think that everything was his business.

  “Take your time,” he said as he got back in the wagon after helping her to the ground. “I’ll find you. You can’t get lost in Knox Mills.”

  That was certainly true, Sarah thought as she opened the door to the general store. Accustomed as she was to the abundance of shops in Charleston, she found the crowded general store intriguing. The shelves, crammed with items, extended from the ceiling to the floor. There was a ladder in one corner of the store, presumably so that the merchant could obtain the items located on the top shelves if a customer wanted them.

  The light in the store was dim, aided somewhat by the presence of the stove in the corner which gave off heat to ward off the slight chill in the November day. Hanging from the ceiling above were ropes, buckets, and lanterns, as well as harnesses for horses. Throughout the store, she smelled the mingling aromas of coffee beans, tobacco, and peppermint; it made an interesting fragrance that evoked an atmosphere of coziness in the store. One side had shelves with household items and she went there first.

  The cabin seemed to need everything. She had gone through the pantry and the springhouse and every room but had noticed very little in the way of staples. She chose soaps and cleaning items; although the cabin was surprisingly clean, she intended to leave it the way she found it, for sooner or later, she would need to set up residence in her own lodgings, no matter what Deputy Harlow had to say about the matter. For the same reason, she intended to buy enough food so that the children would be able to eat after she left. As long as she stayed in Knox Mills, she could make sure that they had enough to eat, even if she was residing in a boarding house or renting a room. She would need to find out if any rooms were available, but she wasn’t going to ask Deputy Harlow. He would just lecture her for not taking care of the children, as if they had somehow become her responsibility, when it was their father who deserved the scolding, not her.

  The children needed clothing; that much she had noticed, but she didn’t know their sizes. She stood before the overalls and ready-made dresses, considering whether she ought to take a chance and make the purchases.

  “May I help you?” inquired a voice behind her, the words laden with an accent that reminded her of Mr. Heidendorf, her music teacher when she was a girl.

  Sarah turned. A spry elderly man with spectacles stood behind the counter, watching her with bright blue eyes.

  “Only if you can guess what sizes the Boone children wear,” she smiled.

  The man left the counter. “Ahhh, perhaps I can help you then,” he said. “I am the proprietor of this store, but Frau Wiessen, when she returns, will tell me if I was right or wrong. She and I have been married thirty years and after so many years, she enjoys telling me when I am wrong. It is the way of wives. You are married?”

  How to answer such a question? “I am new in town,” she answered.

  “Yes, I can see that, I know everyone in Knox Mills, yes? Everyone comes here. You talk of the Boone children. You are taking care of them? I understand that Herr Boone is in jail again.”

  “Yes . . . if you know the children, then you can recommend sizes? The boys . . . they need new overalls, and the girls each need a new dress. Shoes . . . I’d better wait on those until they can try them on.”

  Herr Wiessen was quite content to help her make her choices. The store was not busy, and he was clearly a man who enjoyed his customers; as she was the only one in the store, she received his full attention. He told her all about the Boones; how Mrs. Boone had died in the smallpox epidemic over the summer, leaving the poor children with a father who spent more time in the saloon than he did at home.

  “We have three saloons now,” Herr Wiessen said with a frown. “That is not a good thing. Everyone wants to see Knox Mills prosper, but the whiskey, that is not prospering. That is the way to the devil’s torment.”

  “Yes . . .” she agreed politely, her attention elsewhere. “I think that I’d like ribbons to go with the dresses.”

  “Of course,” he agreed, moving to another shelf. “The red and the blue? Like the dresses?”

  “Yes, thank you. I think . . .” she hadn’t noticed toys in the cabin. Surely the children ought to have toys to play with. “I’d like two of those dolls, please.” What about the boys? She knew nothing about what boys liked. “What do you recommend for boys?”

  Her Wiessen had sons and grandsons, he told her, and boys did not change much over the years. He thought it likely that they had not changed at all over centuries. He led her to the toy section and pointed to the yo-yos and marbles. “They will play with these,” he promised.

  “Yes, those will do nicely,” she said.

  “If you’re going to bring the kids lunch,” Deputy Harlow’s voice came from behind, sounding out of temper, “you’d best get moving.”

  “I lost track of time!”

  “You’d better find it, then, or they’
ll go hungry. They didn’t have breakfast.”

  As if that was her fault! She had made breakfast for them and they had chosen to behave like savages instead of sitting down to eat it as proper children ought to do.

  Hastily, Sarah finished her shopping, mindful of Deputy Harlow’s scowl as she made her choices. She selected flour, potatoes, sugar and corn meal; cooking oil, molasses, salt, and yeast; and canned food that she could feed the children until she was able to cook for them. No, Herr Wiessen said, he didn’t have any baked bread, but he had excellent jam that one of the ladies in town made and sold in the store, and jam on bread was always a favorite with children.

  “I’ll go over to the hotel and see if they’ll make up some sandwiches,” Deputy Harlow said, “while you settle up here.”

  His disapproval was apparent. Herr Wiessen frowned. “I did not know the Deputy was courting anyone,” he said as he tallied up the purchases.

  “Could you add peppermint sticks to my order? I don’t know if he’s courting anyone,” she said. “And gumdrops. I’d like a bag of gumdrops.”

  “He is with you, is he not?”

  “Oh, no! No, indeed!” Sarah exclaimed in dismay. “He—he drove me into town, that is all. No, he is not with me.”

  “Then who are you with?”

  Sarah handed him the money for her purchases and gave him a generous smile. “You’ve been very helpful, Herr Wiessen, and I shall look forward to meeting your wife the next time I am in your fine establishment.”

  Deputy Harlow and Herr Wiessen loaded the purchases into the wagon. Herr Wiessen gave her a sack so that she could put the sandwiches from the hotel, along with the candy, inside for the Boone children. The Deputy drove the wagon somewhat faster than Sarah thought was necessary, but she said nothing.

  When they arrived at the schoolyard, he pulled the reins on the horse, jumped out and came over to her side to assist her.