Mail-Order Christmas Brides Boxed Set (51 page)

“Never. But why on earth would you want me?” Glimmers of the past flashed into his mind, memories he would not allow to take hold. He stared at the hotel’s sign, debating what to do. Black letters on brass glinted in the waning sun, perhaps a sign he should not relent. He should stick to his decision and send her away. He hated how hard Gertie was crying. What should he do? “The way I see it, you’ve got to be hiding something. What is it, Miss Sawyer? If you are not desperate or in sad straits, then there is some other reason you’re here.”

“I never said I wasn’t in desperate straits.” Her hand on his remained, a physical link between them, and suddenly it became more. Her touch sank down as if trying to snare his emotions, somehow a bond between them.

“I lost my job as a seamstress. The town I grew up in began to die when the railroad bypassed it. First, a few businesses closed and left. Then the mill shut down. Jobs dried up. I didn’t want to leave, hoping my sisters whom I was separated from would return. How else could we find each other again? So I stayed longer than I should have, living on hope and my savings until even that was gone.” The fading light framed her, as if it hated to let go of such honesty.

He knew how the light felt, as he reluctantly slipped his hand from beneath hers, breaking the connection between them and any bond she tried to create. A tie
that could never be. He hardened himself to it and swallowed hard.

Don’t let her story soften you,
he told himself, but less bitterness soured him as he checked on his daughter. Still silently crying, shaking with sobs of loss. How could he leave her sitting there like that? Worse, how could he trust her with a woman who didn’t need her enough?

“I have nowhere to go, no prospects, no other advertisements I’ve answered. I love your daughter, Tate. I haven’t had a family since I was seven years old. I can understand what Gertie has been through. I can love her better than any other woman. Just give me the chance.” She glanced at the hotel sign, the tears in her eyes pooling, threatening to fall. She did not use tears to sway him, only her love that lit her like candlelight on a dark night, that warmed her like fire crackling in a home’s hearth. When her gaze found his daughter, longing shone within her. He could see a mother’s love as she ached for the crying girl.

“I’m not sure I can leave her. Please, don’t make me.” She whispered the words but they seemed to fill up the street, silencing the noise and chasing away the setting sun. Rosy light painted her, a coincidence, he told himself, not the hand of God pointing the way.

“I’ve had one wife run off on me. I can’t have another.” He gave the trunk a push, shoving it deeper into the wagon box. “Gertie can’t take one more loss.”

“Neither can I.” The tears standing in her eyes shimmered like pieces of a long-ago broken spirit.

He’d been quick to judge Miss Sawyer based on
her looks, perhaps so quick because he’d feared she would look at him and do the same. Now that he gazed deeper, he saw they were more alike than different. He was sorry for that. He knew what it was to wait for someone to return, refusing to give up hope. He knew what it was like for that hope to die and your soul right along with it.

The chains rattled as he secured the tailgate. He didn’t want to face her reaction. Best not to see the disappointment on the woman as she realized in gaining Gertie she would be getting him. “This means you will need to marry me.”

“I shall try to endure it.” A hint of humor played in her words, her silent message saying she didn’t mind too much, and it made the place between his ribs sting unbearably.

He refused to like her. Common sense whispered to him that he was a fool but he helped her step onto the running board, anyway. Gertie would have a ma. A ma he believed would stay.

He hoped he was right as he circled around to his seat and took the reins.

Chapter Three

W
hat am I getting into?
She braced herself on the seat as the runners struck another rut. Tate sat as stoic as a mountain, reins in his capable hands, attention on the late-afternoon traffic. She wanted to dislike him except for his words that stuck in her head.
I’ve had one wife run off on me.

He’d been abandoned? And Gertie, too? She studied the child’s small hand tucked into her own, lost in the too-large glove. Felicity sighed. That explained why he’d been unsure about her. He’d been trying to protect his child. Her child, now. She would not fault him for that. She’d never seen anyone with so much pain in him.

Festive candles flickered in shop windows, decorated for Christmas. This day that should have been filled with promise; she only felt a strange ache settling deep into her chest, refusing to budge. Perhaps her optimism had been a tad high for a mail-order bride. She thought of Eleanor McBride, the young
woman she’d befriended on the train. When they’d discovered they were both journeying to marry men they’d never met, they had struck up an instant bond. Eleanor had disembarked at Dry Creek while she’d gone on to Angel Falls, and during that last leg of her journey she had time to imagine an awful lot. But she hadn’t been prepared for the real Tate Winters. Had Eleanor’s experience been similar? Eleanor’s groom had not met her at the train.

Her teeth clacked together as the runners hit an extremely bumpy rut.
He needs to get to know me better,
she decided. Maybe once he saw who she was and how much this family meant to her, things would be different. Stubborn hope struggled for life as she dared to study him out of the corners of her eyes. Severe, he looked like a sculpture carved out of pure marble. How would a smile change his face? She pictured his unforgiving lines softening with humor and his midnight-blue eyes dancing with laughter.

Her stomach fluttered and not from nerves. She held on to the edge of the seat as the horse drew them over a small berm and into a side street, where twilight turned shadows into darkness. Tate became a silhouette, an impressive outline of masculinity and might, and the flutter moved upward toward her heart. He would be quite handsome, she guessed, if hopelessness didn’t rest so heavily on his iron shoulders.

“That’s the feed store where Pa works.” Gertie pointed out as the runners jounced onto the next street. The lighted windows of storefronts reflected warmly
on the long stretch of ice. “It’s Uncle Devin’s store. It used to be Grandpop’s store, but he died.”

Felicity caught a glimpse of a barrel behind the shop’s window before Patches drew them onto a residential street. She glanced around. Not exactly a prosperous place. One tiny shanty slumped in the darkness. Another one peered at them from behind a grove of scrawny trees.

“And that’s where we live. Right there. Do you see it?”

“It’s too dark.” She leaned forward, straining through the thickening duskiness. Emotion choked her and stung in her eyes, making it hard to see the dwelling. A lamp burned on the other side of a curtain, casting just enough light to see a crooked porch and lopsided eaves, yellow clapboard and a sturdy front door.

“Now do you see it?”

“I do.” No more boardinghouse meals and temporary rooms or a bed that had never been her own. This was her home. Her first real home in seventeen years.

Thank you, Lord.
She let the gratitude move through her. Hebrews 11:1 promised hope and a good future, and she’d never felt the words touch her more. Patches nosed down the narrow driveway, drawing them up to the small yellow house, shabby with poverty and neglect.

“It isn’t much.” Tate’s baritone held no note of emotion. He didn’t move, a brawny form, radiating a challenge. As if he expected her to find fault or prove him right by deciding to cut her losses and leave now.

Not a chance. He didn’t know her well, but he would. When she made up her mind, nothing could sway her. An icy plop fell onto her cheek, accompanied by a hundred taps onto the frozen ground. Snow. Heaven’s reassurance. Like grace, snow make things fresh and new.

“This house is just right.” She lifted her chin, determined to let Tate see she wasn’t going anywhere. “It’s the nicest place I’ve lived in for a long while.”

A deep “hmm” resonated from his side of the wagon, as if her answer surprised him. His movements rustled, echoing faintly in the silent stretch of dark as the last dregs of twilight vanished from the sky. Inky blackness descended in full, making Tate a part of the night as his steely hand gripped her elbow, helping her to keep her balance as she sank ankle-deep in snow.

“Careful there.” The smoky pitch of his words enveloped her briefly. Unaware of his effect on her he pulled away, leaving her to trudge along a shoveled path toward the porch steps.

“C’mon, Felicity. Follow me.” Gertie shivered with anticipation as she charged up the steps. The front door flew open in a wash of lamplight.

“I thought I heard you pull in.” A woman about twenty-three or twenty-four, Felicity’s same age, came into sight in a carefully patched dress. Her voice had a smiling quality, the sound of a friend. “Goodness, Gertie, don’t drag Felicity around like that. Felicity, I’m Ingrid, Tate’s sister.”

“Sister?” She hadn’t known. Gertie hadn’t written
of an aunt. She hurried up the steps. “I’m delighted to meet you, Ingrid.”

“Call me Ing.” Ingrid hauled her through the doorway and into a welcoming hug. “It is wonderful you are finally here. Gertie shared your every letter with me. I’ve been on pins and needles all day long waiting for you. I think we will be great friends.”

“I do, too.” Happiness lumped in her throat, making it hard to speak. “I didn’t know I was getting a new sister.”

“Tate is in real trouble now, since we can conspire against him.” Good-humored brown eyes glanced out the open doorway, where a frigid wind gusted and Tate’s shadow knelt to lower the trunk onto the tiny porch.

Why did her heart jump at his shadow? Why did she strain to hear the departing crunch of his boots down the pathway? A moment later, horse hooves clinked a slow rhythm, growing faint.

“I’m sure he heard me and didn’t like what I said.” Laughing, Ingrid closed the door against the wintry night. “Let me hang your coat while you get warm by the fire.”

“Shouldn’t I fetch my trunk?”

“Tate will bring it in when he’s done stabling the horse.” Ingrid, petite and slender, apple-cheeked and energetic, helped Felicity out of her wraps. “You must be frozen through. I’ve heard some of those railroad cars can be quite drafty. Was it exciting riding a train all that way?”

“Very. The most exciting thing I’ve ever done.” She
thought of Eleanor as she surrendered her coat. She glanced around and noted the secondhand sofa with fraying cushions, a scarred wooden chair and a battered table tucked midway between the sitting area and the kitchen. She set her reticule on a rickety end table. “Have you ever ridden the train?”

“Sadly, yes. Many times.” Sorrow stole Ingrid’s smile as she hung the coats on a wall peg. Even Gertie bowed her head, as if saying anything more would dredge up a sadness neither of them could speak of.

What had happened to this family? Questions burned on her tongue, but she stayed silent, not wanting to sadden them more. The scent of a baking roast rose richly from the range. In the shadows, the kitchen took up the other outside wall of the main room with a pair of tall cupboards and slanting shelves. Wilting muslin curtains hung on the windows, the only adornment in the plain, brown room. This place needed a woman’s touch. Good thing she’d spent time sewing, embroidering and crocheting preparing for this day.

“What do you think of Tate?” Ingrid whirled away to light a lamp centered on the round oak table.

“He’s—” Words failed her. She thought of his frown. She thought of his cold manner. Then she remembered the love he had for his daughter. “I think he will make a fine husband.”

“He will. He is absolutely a good man.” Ingrid lifted the lamp’s glass chimney and brought a flickering match to the exposed wick. “I’m glad you see that in him.”

Gertie sidled close and pulled off the overly large
gloves one by one to watch her aunt light the lamp. The glass chimney clinked back into place like a bell ending the sadness. Light danced, driving the shadows from the room and Felicity was able to see more of her new home. Blue ironware plates sat on shelves, pots and pans rested on lower ones. The windows were large and bound to let in plenty of cheerful sunshine during the day. She could make this place feel cozy in no time.

Bless this house with Your love, Lord.
She smiled reassuringly into Gertie’s anxious blue eyes.
Help me to make it into a home. That’s what Gertie needs.

She needed it, too.

And Tate? She felt his approach long before the rhythm of his boots reached her. Remembering his desolate shadows, she wondered what she could do for him, this man who had given her this dream of a real home.

“Here are your gloves, Felicity.”

“Thank you, Gertie. Do you hear that?”

“It’s Pa!” Adoration illuminated her, making her as bright as a star in the heavenly sky. Her shoes tapped a beat to the door, which she flung open. “Pa’s got your trunk!”

“So I see.” She couldn’t explain why her gaze searched the shadows for a glimpse of his face. She longed for the sight of him. The side of her trunk hid him as he lumbered into the reach of lamplight. Without a word he bypassed her and disappeared behind a door in the far wall.

That’s it? Not so much as a hello, or where do
you want your trunk? She folded her gloves in half, smoothing them absently. She felt Ingrid’s curiosity, and then sympathy as she slipped the gloves next to her reticule. His behavior didn’t hurt her, at least that’s what she tried to believe. In reality it did, down deep.

A thump echoed through the lifeless rooms as her trunk hit the floor.

“Don’t take it personally. Tate doesn’t realize how cold he can seem.” Ingrid set a steaming teacup on the edge of the table. “Sometimes a heart is broken too many times and there is no way to put it back together again.”

Felicity considered those hushed words and her hopes sank. She’d imagined so much with each letter she received from Gertie. A wonderfully loving father, a happy home, a man lonely and in need of a caring wife. She could see now those were Gertie’s hopes, not Tate’s. It wasn’t reality.