A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel (14 page)

Clay stood, though he suddenly felt bone-tired, because there was a lady in the room. “I never said I was broke, Mrs. McKettrick,” he replied dryly.

“Don't call me ‘Mrs. McKettrick'!” Dara Rose immediately responded. “We made an agreement. This is a marriage in name only.”

“Oh, I'm well aware of that,” Clay responded, thinking he'd wait forever for this woman, if that was what he had to do. “But you are legally my wife, and that makes you Mrs. McKettrick.”

She pulled so tight on the cinches of her wrapper then that it was a wonder she didn't split right in two, like one of those showgirls in a magician's act. “Why do you keep pointing out that we are married in the eyes of the law?”

Clay was enjoying her discomfort a lot more than was gentlemanly. “Aren't we?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Yes,” she retorted, setting her hands down hard on her hips now and jutting out her elbows, “but it was a matter of expediency on my part, and nothing more.”

“Gosh,” Clay said, playing the rube. “Thanks.”

“I would do anything for my daughters!” she blurted out. “Including marry a virtual stranger. I agreed to this arrangement
because
of them, not out of any desire to be your…your wife….” She stammered to a halt and turned a glorious shade of primrose-pink.

Clay waited a few moments before he spoke again. “That was quite a scene Maddox made today.”

Dara Rose hesitated, trembled once and hugged herself as if she thought she might suddenly scatter in every direction, and it was all Clay could do not to cross the room and take her into his arms. “I suppose he believed he had call to object to—to our getting married,” she continued, after a few moments of miserable struggle, “and it's true enough that he proposed—sort of.”

“Sort of?” He'd known about the situation between Dara Rose and Maddox from Ponder and the others, but he wanted to hear it directly from her.

It was a long time before she answered. “I was supposed to work as his housekeeper for a year, so he could be sure I'd make a suitable wife. Then, if I passed muster, he'd put a ring on my finger.”

Clay felt a fresh surge of rage rise up within him, and he waited for it to subside before he said anything. “Where did Edrina and Harriet fit into all this?”

He knew the answer to that question, too, at least in
directly but, again, he wanted the first-hand truth from Dara Rose herself.

Her eyes welled, but she looked so proud and so vulnerable that Clay continued to keep his distance. He figured she
might
actually shatter into bits if he touched her.

“They didn't,” she said, at long last. Then, speaking so softly that Clay barely heard her, she went on. “He wanted me to put my children in an orphanage, or send them out to work for their board and room.”

That was when Clay took a chance. He held his arms out to her.

Dara Rose paused briefly, considering, and then moved slowly into his embrace.

Clay rested his chin on top of her head. “No matter how things turn out between you and me, Dara Rose,” he told her, “you will never have to send your girls away, I promise you that.”

She looked up at him, her eyes moist, though she still wouldn't allow tears to fall. “How can you make a promise like that, Clay?” she whispered brokenly. “How?”

At least she hadn't called him “Mr. McKettrick.” Wasn't that progress?

“I just
did
make a promise like that,” he replied, wanting to kiss her more than he'd ever wanted to kiss a
woman before, and still unwilling to take the chance, “and you'll find that I'm a man of my word.”

She blinked. “There's so much you don't know about me,” she said.

He grinned, holding her loosely, with his hands clasped behind the small of her back. “There are, as it happens, a few things you don't know about me,” he replied. “I didn't come to Blue River to work as the town marshal for the rest of my life, for one. I mean to be a rancher, Dara Rose—I come from a family of them. That's why I bought two thousand acres of good grazing land, and that's why I plan to build a house on the site we visited today.”

“And that's why you wanted a wife,” she said, almost forlornly.

“Not just any wife,” he pointed out.

“Parnell and I—” She looked at the large likeness on the wall. And suddenly, she choked up again. Couldn't seem to go on.

“It's all right, Dara Rose,” Clay said, kissing her lightly on her crown, where her silken hair parted. She smelled sweetly of rainwater and flowery soap. “We've both got stories to tell, but it doesn't have to happen tonight.”

She sniffled, smiled bravely, but otherwise she gave no response.

“Exactly why did you come out here in the first place?” Clay asked.

Dara Rose looked flustered. “I forgot to feed the chickens,” she said. “And I was hoping you'd be asleep so I could sneak past.”

Clay chuckled. “Well, I have to admit, that's some thing of a disappointment.”

“I
never
forget to feed the chickens,” Dara Rose fretted, chagrined. “The poor things—”

“I fed them, Dara Rose,” Clay said.

“When?”

“Before we went to find the Christmas tree,” he said, with a nod toward the tumbleweed.

She seemed to realize then that he was still holding her, and she stepped back suddenly, as though startled. “About Christmas,” she began.

“What about Christmas?”

“I'd really rather you didn't encourage Edrina and Harriet to entertain fanciful notions.”

“Such as?” Clay asked, feigning innocence.

Dara Rose bristled up again.

He loved it when she did that.

“Well,” she huffed, “there
was
that tall tale about seeing St. Nicholas flying past your grandfather's barn roof in a sleigh drawn by reindeer—”

He smiled. “Why, Mrs. McKettrick—are you calling me a liar?”

“You and your cousin must have been inebriated.”

“We were eight,” Clay said.

“Then you were dreaming.”

“The same dream, at the same time? Sawyer and I are blood kin, but we don't share a brain.”

Dara Rose sighed again. It was plain that she didn't know what to say next, or what to do, either.

Both were encouraging signs, Clay figured.

“Get some sleep,” he told her. “You've had a long day.”

She glanced at the settee, then took his measure with her eyes. Drew the obvious conclusion. “You are in for an uncomfortable night,” she said, without any discernible concern.

For more reasons than one,
Clay thought. But what he said was, “I'll be just fine. See you in the morning.”

Dara Rose nodded, turned around and went back into the bedroom.

Clay watched her go, rubbing his chin with one hand, calculating the number of settee nights he'd have to put in between now and spring, when the house would be ready.

In the end, he slept on the floor, next to Chester.

At least that way, he could stretch out.

 

W
HEN HE OPENED HIS EYES
again, it was morning, and Edrina and Harriet were standing over him, looking worried.

“We thought you might be dead,” Edrina said, with a relieved and somewhat wobbly smile.

“But you're not,” Harriet added emphatically.

“No,” Clay said, with a laugh, as he sat up. “I do believe I'm still among the living.”

Both children were dressed for daytime, with their curly hair brushed and held back at the sides of their heads by small combs. Their faces were rosy from a recent scrubbing and their eyes shone.

“Mama is taking us over to the O'Reillys' place to visit Addie,” Edrina said, “as soon as she's finished feeding the chickens and gathering the eggs and making breakfast.”

Clay yawned expansively and got to his feet. “Where's Chester?”

“He's outside with Mama,” Harriet replied. “She said he needed to do his business.”

“What time is it?” Clay wondered aloud. He owned a pocket watch but seldom carried it; there had been no real need for that, back on the Triple M. There, where there was always a full day's work to do, you started at sunrise and finished when you finished, whatever time it was.

Before either child replied, he caught sight of the time-piece hanging prominently on the wall. Eight o'clock.

“When we get back from the O'Reillys',” Harriet piped up, “can we decorate the Christmas tree?”

Clay hesitated to answer, realizing that he didn't even know if Dara Rose
owned
any decorations, or whether she'd take kindly to his buying some for her, over at the mercantile.

Reckon you should have thought about that before you cut down that sorry sprig of sagebrush you're calling a Christmas tree,
he told himself silently.

“That's up to your mama,” he finally said.

Both children looked deflated.

“She'll just say it's a whole week 'til Christmas and St. Nicholas isn't coming, anyhow, so what do we need with a silly tree,” Edrina said, in a rush of words.

Inwardly, Clay sighed. These were Dara Rose's children, and she had a perfect right to raise them as she saw fit, but he hoped she'd ease up on that rigid personal code of hers a little, and let them be kids while they could.

In the near distance, the back door opened, and Clay felt the rush of cool air where he stood. Dara Rose called out, “Girls? You're not bothering Mr. McKettrick, are you?”

Chester trotted through the inside doorway, came over to greet him.

Clay smiled and ruffled the dog's ears.

“We don't want to call you ‘Mr. McKettrick,'” Edrina told Clay.

“We want to call you ‘Papa,'” Harriet said.

The backs of Clay's eyes stung a little. “I'd like that,” he said quietly, “but that's another thing that's got to be left up to your mama.”

“What's to be left up to me?” Dara Rose asked, standing in the doorway. Her hair was pinned up, unlike last night, and like the girls', her cheeks were pink with well-being.

“Whether or not we can call Mr. McKettrick ‘Papa,'” Harriet answered.

“And if we can put baubles on the Christmas tree,” Edrina added.

Both of them stared expectantly at their mother.

“Oh,” she finally said, shifting the handle of the egg basket from one wrist to the other. Her gaze flicked to Clay's face and then back to the girls. “It's too soon to address Mr. McKettrick in such a familiar fashion,” she said. “But I don't see why we couldn't get out the Christmas things.”

So she
had
Christmas things, Clay thought. That was something, anyway.

Edrina and Harriet swapped glances and made what
would seem to be a tacit agreement to take what they could get.

“Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes,” Dara Rose said. “And there are plenty of eggs this morning. We can each have one—Mr. McKettrick may have two, if he wishes—and there will still be enough left to sell over at the mercantile.”

“One egg will suit me fine,” Clay said, gruff-voiced. Soon as he'd put in a few hours over at the jailhouse and walked through the town once or twice to make sure there wasn't any trouble brewing, he'd head over to the mercantile and stock up on foodstuffs. See if old Philo would agree to deliver what he bought.

Dara Rose wouldn't like it, he supposed, when the storekeeper turned up with sugar and coffee beans and a wagonload of other goods, but he already had an argument ready. He didn't expect her to feed him and Chester; therefore, he wanted to contribute to the grubstake.

Plus, he had to have coffee of a morning, to get himself going.

So they ate their simple breakfast, the girls so excited, between the promised outing and the tree waiting to be festooned with geegaws, that they could barely sit still.

Dara Rose cleared the table while Clay donned his duster and his hat and summoned the dog. He'd left his gun belt and pistol over at the jailhouse, because of Edrina
and Harriet, but he'd strap on the long-barreled .45 before he set out on his rounds. It wasn't that he expected to need a firearm, but he wanted any potential troublemakers to know the new marshal was serious about upholding his duties.

“Thanks for breakfast,” Clay said, with a tug at his hat brim.

Dara Rose nodded, then looked away.

 

T
HE VISIT TO LITTLE
Addie O'Reilly was necessarily brief since the child was bedridden. Last night's snow hadn't stuck, thank heaven, but there was still a bitter chill in the air, and Addie's two younger brothers sat on the bare floor near the odd, cobbled-together stove, playing with half a dozen marbles.

Peg tried to put a good face on things, but Dara Rose could tell she was embarrassed. There was no place to sit, except on one of the two beds or an upended crate—undoubtedly the same one that had contained last night's donated supper.

The girls, meanwhile, chatted with Addie.

“Somebody left a box of hot food at my doorstep,” Peg said, following Dara Rose's gaze to the crate. Four clean plates, plus utensils, were stacked beside it. “We sure did have ourselves a fine feast, and there's enough left to get us through today, too.”

“That's…wonderful,” Dara Rose said.

“I figure it had to come from the dining room over to the hotel,” Peg went on, wiping her hands down the skirt of her calico dress. “I mean to take the plates and silverware back later.”

Dara Rose merely nodded. Clay must have wanted to keep his part in the enterprise a secret, so she didn't say anything.

Fortunately, neither did Edrina or Harriet. They were busy telling Addie all about the little girl, Madeline, whose papa was a dentist.

“You'll never guess who stopped by here yesterday,” Peg said, taking Dara Rose by surprise.