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

by Natalie Dean

  “You aren’t useless!”

  “I feel like I’m useless! Why didn’t you tell me you were going to buy out the store?”

  “I didn’t buy out the store! I bought—I want the children to have a wonderful Christmas. I don’t want them to mourn their mother’s death and I don’t want them to fret over their father’s actions.”

  “So you figured you’d bribe them into loving you the way they loved their mother?”

  “That—that is monstrous of you to say such a thing!”

  Carson stopped the wagon. They were out of town and no one was nearby. The landscape was not barren with winter’s ravages; this was not a climate where winter ruled with a heavy hand. But the air was cool and the sky did not have its brilliant summer blue hue. There was still sunshine, but the shadows were there too. It was not unlike her marriage, Sarah though unhappily.

  “Sarah,” he said. “You’ve got to figure out if you want to be a lawman’s wife or a rich man’s daughter. I can only be married to one, not both.”

  She was about to accuse him of being unfair when she noticed that his face was flushed. He was still not recovered from his illness. So she kept silent and said nothing. They didn’t speak the rest of the way home.

  Chapter 27

  “What in tarnation are you doing?”

  Sarah, startled by Carson’s voice, jumped in surprise. Coins that had been in her hand fell to the floor.

  “I’m . . . putting coins in their shoes,” she said.

  “What are you doing that for?”

  “It’s a Christmas custom among the Dutch,” she said. She had told the children to leave their church shoes by the fireplace before they went to bed so that she could polish them. She had done so, but Carson had come in from the barn to find her putting coins inside the shoes. “St. Nicholas Day.”

  “They’re Dutch?” he asked quizzically.

  “No—but it’s a custom that I thought they would enjoy.”

  “You want to put some money in my boots, too, while you’re at it?” he asked in a voice that sounded abrasive.

  She wasn’t sure if he was joking. He had returned to his work that week and his temper had improved now that he was busy again, doing the labor that he felt a man ought to be doing. School would open again after Christmas. The smallpox epidemic was lessening, but its effects were still being felt in the town. Sarah had returned several times to East Knox Mills to check on the community. She had not seen the man who called himself Laz; he was not among the patients, but when she asked for him, Preacher Shepherd said he could not recall who had been there that first day. She knew that was untrue, but she could not budge him from his account.

  “You will get coal under your pillow,” she told Carson crossly. “That’s what St. Nicholas brings to the bad children.”

  He wasn’t distracted by her reference to St. Nicholas or even at being compared to ill-behaved children who were punished at Christmas. “Sarah . . . how much Christmas do you think they need?” he asked, trying to be patient.

  “As much as I can give them! They’ve suffered enough.”

  “You can’t buy their love. You don’t have to. They already love you. You can’t replace Mrs. Boone and you shouldn’t be trying to.”

  “I am not trying to do any such thing, Carson Harlow, and it’s unfair of you to accuse me of it!”

  “Sarah . . . can’t you and me talk these things over? If I’m going to have any kind of place in their lives, I need to be included.”

  “You’d have told me not to do this, and I want to.”

  “I haven’t noticed you taking any account of what I say. You go ahead and do whatever you set yourself on doing, and devil take anyone who might have another view. Maybe if we talked about it first, I’d see things your way.”

  She suspected that he would try to talk her out of doing what she wanted to do when it came to giving the children the most splendid Christmas they’d ever had. He didn’t understand, and she was not sure she could explain. These children had had so much taken from them; first, they had grown up with a violent, unpredictable and unreliable father. Their mother, when she was alive, had done her best to protect their childhood, but an improvident husband did not keep a family secure. Then the smallpox took her and the children had been left, more or less, on their own, as Graham Boone had no willingness to consider their needs before his own. He had ended up in jail, and now he was in the hospital.

  She could not undo all that they had endured, but she could at least give them the sort of Christmas that children should have. It ought to be a merry time of happiness and rejoicing and she was determined to do whatever she could do to make it so for them. The main obstacle to her plan seemed to be her own husband. He cared about the children, she knew that much. From his own childhood, he had firm ideas of what a father should be. Sarah reckoned that she ought to be able to bring him around to her way of thinking. “I suppose we’ve gotten off to a rather unorthodox start in our married life,” she acknowledged with a winsome smile. “Maybe we ought to spend a bit more time together as husband and wife.”

  Carson was amenable to that. But later that night, as he held his lovely wife in his arms, he wondered if his Southern belle had used her wiles on him. She was the prettiest lady he knew, and she was smart, too. Smart in the way of a woman who knew that, one way or another, she could manage to get her way.

  “What’s the matter?” Sarah’s voice broke through the dark quiet of the night.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  She shook her head. Strands of her long hair brushed against his chest and shoulders. The smallpox was finally gone and so were its markings. He felt whole again, even though he still sometimes got tired faster than he wanted to admit. At least he was back to working once more and no longer sidelined.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No . . . just thinking about things.”

  He sensed a quickening in her wakefulness. “What things?”

  “The Comanche, for one thing.” It was not a lie, although it was not the reason that he had not fallen asleep. There was trouble brewing from that quarter and it bore thinking about.

  Sarah leaned her head on her elbow, abandoning efforts to fall asleep. “What about them?”

  “They’ve suffered from the smallpox. A lot of deaths. They blame white folks. They think we set it loose. They don’t realize that we suffered too. Justin—he says we shouldn’t wait for them to attack us, we should just ride in and get them first.” Carson shook his head. “I don’t know . . . he’s sure steamed up about them. More than normal. Jack knows we have to be prepared but Justin, I think he’s ready to kill them all before they even leave their grounds.”

  “Maybe something happened to his family,” Sarah suggested. “Maybe he has reason to feel that way.”

  “I don’t know much about him. He’s a Texan and he knows the area better than any of us. He has a sister who knows everyone in town, but she’s kind of private.”

  None of it added up. Justin Ward didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d be a mystery, but there were questions about his life and his past that didn’t seem to have answers. Well, that was his business. Texas was a sanctuary for folks who wanted to forget the past and build a new life. Justin was a year or two younger than Carson, but Carson realized that he’d come West to start over as well. So had Sarah. Did she have secrets, too? That husband she’d had, the one who had ended up dead. He was a gambler and from the little that she’d disclosed, no good.

  The big state of Texas was just chockful of secrets, it seemed. For some reason, this made Carson give a little laugh.

  “What made you laugh?”

  “I don’t know . . . just thinking.” He held her close, enjoying the scent of her hair and the softness of her skin.

  “What about?”

  “Oh, everything. And nothing. I’m going to ride into East Knox Mills sometime soon.”

  “Is the smallpox worse?” she asked anxiously. She ha
dn’t been there in recent days and when she’d last visited, Preacher Shepherd had urged her to stay away. He appreciated her help, he said, but he was fearful that she’d take sick. She had tried to explain to him that the vaccination had given her protection, just as it was giving him, but she realized that he didn’t really believe that. Only God, Preacher Shepherd felt, could heal and protect.

  “I don’t know. Not any worse, I don’t think,” he said. Not any better either, but he didn’t need to get her going on that. “No, this is about that runaway slave. Jack’s getting hassled. We’re going to have to ride in and do something.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as see if he’s there. The owner is in contact with Jack and he’s mighty irate. His people are coming to bring this Laz—back home”

  Laz. Laz . . . Lazarus. How stupid she was. The runaway was there in the community, of course he was. Where else would he be if he’d come this far West? If a man needed to hide, he would have to seek a sanctuary where he would not stand out. The freed slave community of East Knox Mills kept to itself and didn’t intermingle with those who lived outside of its self-imposed boundaries.

  “Sarah?”

  “Hm? Oh, nothing. I’m getting sleepy. I’ve been thinking that we should add a room onto the cabin.”

  “Why? Are you . . . no, you couldn’t be already.”

  “Eventually, I hope to be.”

  “So if you want to add a room onto this cabin, this must be where you want to live?”

  “It’s come to be home for me. What about you?”

  She’d successfully detoured him away from the presents she’d bought the children. She’d realized that the runaway slave was in danger and would need to be warned. She would go to East Knox Mills tomorrow and tell Preacher Shepherd. Sarah felt that she had managed everything quite well. Carson’s thoughts had veered, as she had intended, away from areas where his curiosity was problematic and instead, he was thinking about babies. She smiled contentedly. Perhaps marriage wasn’t going to be so difficult after all.

  Chapter 28

  As she had intended, the children were delighted with surprise that morning. Carson, despite his reservations about Christmas turning excessive, had to admit that it was a fine thing to see their faces light up as they saw the coins in their shoes. Erich immediately added the coins to the money he was saving for his own horse. Isaiah wanted to buy candy. Ruby wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. Lucy didn’t say what her plans were for the money, but it was clear from the expression on her face that she did have plans.

  Carson set off for the sheriff’s office, slightly late because he’d lingered to watch the kids enjoy this Dutch thing that Sarah had arranged. He didn’t see how he was going to explain that to Jack, who liked his men to be punctual.

  Jack and Benjamin were in the office when he finally arrived.

  “I thought you weren’t going to make it,” Jack said.

  “Sorry. Got tied up with family things.”

  Both men had serious expressions on their faces. It seemed unlikely that his tardiness was the reason for their demeanor.

  “Something going on?” he asked.

  “Those slave hunters,” Benjamin answered. “Jack just got word. They’re on their way.”

  “Here?”

  “They’re convinced that runaway is here.”

  “What makes them so sure?”

  “Where else would a runaway go but to a community of ex-slaves who are now free?”

  “I don’t know . . . I’d keep on going until I got to Mexico, if I were a runaway slave. Why are they so all-fired set on getting him back?”

  “His master paid a lot for him,” Jack said with contempt.

  Carson realized that Jack’s tone was not because he was disdainful of the slave, but because he despised the practice of buying and owning human beings. But it was the law and they were sworn to uphold the law, whether or not they agreed with it.

  “So what are we doing?”

  “We’ll have to go in with them,” Jack said. “They don’t know the area. They want the law with them.”

  “Those folks in East Knox Mills . . . they’re not desperadoes,” Carson said. “They’re not going to start firing.”

  “It’s probably a good thing if we go in,” Benjamin said. “There’s nothing a slave hunter hates more than freed slaves. If they go in alone, they’d be likely to claim everyone was a runaway. This way, we can keep them focused on the one they’re searching for.”

  It made sense, in a hard, cold, practical way. One among the free community was not free; let the slave hunters take him back and the others would be left alone. They might not see it that way. But it was the law.

  Unaware that events were rapidly accelerating at a pace well beyond her managing, Sarah had told the children that she had an errand to run and when she returned, they would go into town. But only, she cautioned them, if they behaved while she was gone. She wanted them to work on their lessons. She gave each of them sheets of paper and told them that they were to write an essay about Christmas.

  “I don’t know that many words!” Ruby protested.

  Sarah laughed and gave the worried little girl a kiss on her forehead. “You can write what you know about the birth of Jesus,” she said. “Your brothers and Lucy will help you with the words you don’t know. Lucy, you have your mother’s Bible? Turn to Luke, Chapter 1 and you will have the words there. Remember, we’re only going to town if you do your assignment and you don’t argue with one another. Is that clear?”

  The allure of going to town to spend their St. Nicholas Day money was a powerful bribe. They promised that they would work and behave. As Deputy the horse, ably hitched to the wagon by Erich, trotted away, Sarah was confident that they would follow through on their promises.

  Winter was slowly making its way into northern Texas. As a South Carolinian, Sarah was glad that she was still living in a place where she wouldn’t encounter the worst of the winter cold. But she was glad, too, that she had a warm cloak, hat and gloves for the cooler air that had come with December.

  When she arrived at the church, Preacher Shepherd met her at the door. “Ma’am,” he said. “you sure don’t like to listen. You need to take care of your own. We’ll do fine here, God is taking care of us—"

  “Listen to me! There are slave hunters who are going to be coming here,” she interrupted him. This was a matter too urgent for manners.

  Preacher Shepherd became still. He was by his nature a vigorous and active man. To see him suddenly motionless and silent was the most convincing proof she could have asked for. “He’s here, isn’t he?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The runaway that they’re searching for. He’s here. He’s got to get away, don’t you see? If they find him, they’ll take him.” She echoed Carson’s words. “It’s the law.”

  “It’s a bad law, that one.”

  “He’s got to get away.”

  “Why are you here?” The Preacher had regained his control, his senses alert by his own years as a slave, she supposed, when there was always a threat to liberty.

  “I—what do you mean? I’m here to warn you, of course.”

  “How do you know that slavers are searching for a runaway?”

  “My husband is a lawman. He knows.”

  “He’s coming here? You told your husband that we’re hiding a runaway?”

  “No, of course not! What do you take me for?”

  “I take you for a good woman, ma’am,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Who don’t understand all that we undertake by holding fast to our freedom. You’ve never done without it. You can’t know what it’s like.”

  “There is no time to have a philosophical argument about freedom,” she said. “We have to make sure that this man is not captured.”

  “They bringin’ bloodhounds?” he asked calmly.

  “Bloodhounds! I don’t know. Would they—no, they would not bring bloodhounds so far,” she reasoned
. “They know there is a community here of slaves who are now free. They assume that he will be here.”

  “You sound mighty sure of that.”

  “What can we do otherwise?” Sarah challenged him. “If you won’t send him away—"

  “Missus, there’s no point in running.”

  The man she now knew to be Lazarus appeared without warning. She supposed he had gotten very good at the art of concealment as he fled his owners and escaped his shackles. There were slaves in Texas, but there were free men and women of color as well. She wondered how he had known where to go. Perhaps the Underground Railroad, although it did not travel through Texas, was responsible for spreading the word. She would never know, she realized. Her white skin would always make her suspect in the presence of people whose liberty could be stolen from them at any time merely because their skin was dark.

  “Then we must pray that they do not have bloodhounds,” she said quickly. “And we must devise a plan to keep you safe until they leave.”

  Bitter amusement revealed itself in Lazarus’ face. “What makes you think they’ll leave, missus?”

  “Of course they will leave. This is a place of illness and they will not want to risk contagion. If they fear—"

  Suddenly, a smile erupted upon Sarah’s face. “Of course,” she said. “They will not wish to spend very much time inside here, where the patients are. You must be a patient. You must have smallpox.”

  Lazarus backed away. “No thank you, missus. I’ve stayed alive so far and I reckon I’ve got enough fight left in me.”

  “You don’t really have to have it,” she said. “Preacher Shepherd, can you send someone to make oatmeal?”

  “Oatmeal?”

  “Yes, oatmeal. If we put oatmeal on his face and chest, and add just a bit of dirt, I think, it will look like the pox scabs have dried. Quickly now. I don’t know when they will be coming but it will do no harm for us to be ready, regardless.”