by Carla Kelly
Lillian lost her will to live. Try as Juliette might to get her sister-in-law to look toward the future for her child’s sake, she could not draw Lillian out of her despondency. After Joe’s birth she grew even more morose. She wouldn’t eat or take the fresh air, choosing instead to sit in her darkened room and weep.
Until the chilly night she’d crept quietly out of the house to crouch in the rain. Juliette didn’t know how long her sister-in-law had been in the yard shivering. She only discovered Lillian was out there when Joe began to cry.
That had been the first time she took her nephew to her own breast. The poor baby was hungry and his mother refused him. As Lillian sat in front of the fire, shaking with cold, a distant look in her eyes, Juliette had known she’d set her sights on death.
For a week she had tried to get Lillian to eat, to smile at sweet baby Joe, to do anything but stare blankly into space. In the end, her sister-in-law caught a fever and was gone within three days.
“But I love you, Joe.” Juliette stroked his soft round head. “I’m yours forever.”
Juliette was more grateful for this unexpected son than she could say. He was her sweet little miracle in the ashes of what had been her life.
Smiling down at him, she was rewarded with the endearing sigh babies made when they nursed.
“What do you suppose this note has to say, sweet boy?”
Reaching for the hatbox, she could not even imagine.
The bell on the front door jangled. A young woman blew inside along with a gust of cold wind.
“Hello, Nannie,” Juliette said with a smile for her customer. “Just give me a moment. Coffee? Pastry?”
“Oh, I’ve no time to eat! I’ve found out a tasty bit of news that simply has to be shared.” Nannie’s small, closely set blue eyes glittered in apparent delight with what she was about to impart. “You know, Juliette, you’ll ruin your figure nursing both those babies.”
“I suppose that’s a risk I’ll have to take if Lena and Joe are to survive.”
Nannie Breene tipped her head to one side, frowning. Unless Juliette missed her guess, the girl would have spent no less than an hour and a half this morning arranging her blond hair in flirtatious curls about her face.
“I’m sure you know best, of course. But wouldn’t a wet nurse do as well?”
“A wet nurse in Beaumont Spur?” Juliette would not hire one even if there had been a woman wanting the job. Love and cuddles went into the feeding as much as life-sustaining food did. “Someday you’ll—”
Nannie cut her off with a crisp snap of her fingers.
“My news!” Her small eyes flashed in clear anticipation of Juliette’s coming reaction. “You won’t believe this!”
Nannie sat down in a chair across from Juliette, anchored her elbows on the table then stretched her neck forward, leading with her dainty, pointed chin.
“It’s hardly news that the bank has been robbed,” Juliette pointed out. “Can I get you some tea—a cookie?”
“How can I even think of it? Not knowing what I know—and it certainly is not something as common as the bank being robbed.”
For all that Nannie was bursting to repeat her news, she was apparently waiting for Juliette to drag it from her.
Very well. “What is your news? It must be something urgent.”
“Oh, it is!” Nannie leaned farther forward and whispered, “Trea Culverson is returning to Beaumont Spur.”
* * *
It was after midnight when Juliette wrapped a blanket about her shoulders and stepped onto the back porch of her small house. She stared up at the moon. It was full and bright. Not even halfway up the sky, it looked huge and close, almost as if she could reach out and touch it.
Her day had not ended when she bade the last customer good-night then put the Closed sign on the restaurant door. She’d wrapped the babies against the late November chill, tucked them in the pram then bundled her father-in-law up in a heavy coat.
As he normally did, Warren Lindor had insisted on being led to The Saucy Goose. As she always did, she pushed the pram with one arm and dragged the old man home by the coat sleeve.
Luckily, home was only a block away from her café.
By the time she fed the babies, tucked them into bed, gave Warren a snack and settled him into his room, and then baked the pastries for the next morning, it was late. Her neighbors had doused their lamps hours ago.
Perhaps she ought to do the same, but now was her time. No matter the weather, it was her custom to stand on her porch and listen to the quiet whispers of deep night. The sounds changed with the seasons, but her sense of peace in the moment did not.
In the beginning, when she’d first discovered this precious time, she had stood in this spot gazing up at the deep sky, often weeping while she held the image of Steven close.
But it had been a year since he went away to work for the railroad. She still thought of him. She always would, of course. But she did not do it as frequently now, and when she did it was with smiles more often than tears.
She had been blessed beyond reason with a daughter and a son. Oh, she might have been crippled by grief and loneliness, but because of the babies she carried a song in her heart.
After selling the big house she had shared with Steven and his family, she had been able to purchase her restaurant and this cozy cottage.
Each morning she had a purpose in waking, breathing, smiling at the new day and wondering what it would bring.
If the gossip was correct, it would soon bring the return of the prodigal son.
Although, unlike the prodigal, there would be no loving father’s arms open in welcome. For Trea there would be no fatted calf given in celebration.
Everyone in town, except a dozen girls with fluttering hearts, had been glad to see the last of him.
And Juliette? She had not been happy to see him go. It had broken her young heart.
Even after all these years, she remembered his expression in the instant he’d fled.
The reflection of flames consuming the livery that night had cast his face in a red-orange grimace. To many people his silence, his failure to declare his innocence while he risked his life leading horse after horse to safety, was the same as an admission of guilt that he’d set the fire.
That was not what Juliette believed. To her way of thinking, Trea would never have done anything to endanger an animal.
Was she the only one to have noted that every able-bodied man standing and witnessing the destruction had done so from across the street, leaving the rescue of the animals to a seventeen-year-old?
While it was true that Trea had always been the town bad boy—a hellion born of one—unlike his father, he was never mean-spirited.
More often than not his crimes involved kissing the girls in town. As far as Juliette could tell, none of them considered it a crime at all.
It did, however, cement his reputation as the black sheep begotten of a black sheep. Whenever a minor crime of any kind was committed, it was assumed that Trea was the perpetrator.
Juliette had valid reason to believe he was not the wicked child they had cast him as. Perhaps, in part, due to the fact that he had never kissed her. She might be the one girl in Beaumont who had never had her heart broken by him.
Which didn’t mean that she had not envied those girls and spent dreamy moments wondering about Trea’s kisses. How many nights had she lain awake in her bed imagining what it would be like to feel his lips, hear sweet whispers of affection, and all the while brooding over which of her friends might be finding out right that moment?
And now, if the gossip proved true, Trea Culverson was coming home.
Even though she was a woman grown, a widow with children, her heart beat a little faster, even her belly tickled.
She knew it was silly. Years had passed. Trea was no longer the da
ring, forbidden boy who’d taken her breath away.
He was a man grown. Heaven only knew who he had grown to be.
Copyright © 2018 by Carol Arens
ISBN-13: 9781488087028
Convenient Christmas Brides
Copyright © 2018 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
The Captain’s Christmas Journey © 2018 by Carla Kelly
The Viscount’s Yuletide Betrothal © 2018 by Louise Allen
One Night Under the Mistletoe © 2018 by Laurie Benson
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