Mail Order Melody (5 page)

When Abigail came over on Wednesday, Eliza had a list of questions to ask the younger woman about how to cook certain things. Christmas was only a couple of weeks away, so she was thrilled to learn how to cook some more complicated dishes for her husband for the holiday. While they were talking and laughing together, Eliza asked, "Why don't you and Stanley come over for Christmas dinner? Do you go to church on Christmas morning?"

Abigail nodded eagerly. "I would love that. We could come over right after church, and I'd help you cook."

Eliza loved the idea of spending so much time with the younger couple. As they sewed together, she sang softly. They each made an apron while Eliza sang and she and Abigail chatted.
By the time her new friend was leaving, she was sad that their time together was over.

She hadn't realized how much she missed having other women around until she'd made a new friend, and then she wanted to weep for the years of loneliness. Abigail made her miss Beulah more than ever, because her sister had always been her closest
friend. How could she possibly go for years without seeing her?

An idea slowly formed in her mind, and she thought about writing to Elizabeth Miller from Beckham and asking if she could find a husband for Beulah. She wanted her sister with her.

Letting the idea go, she shook her head, deciding that whatever happened would happen when the time was right.

*****

Before church on Sunday, Pastor Gibbons spoke with Eliza and asked her to sing at the Christmas service. She knew immediately it had been Abigail who had told him of her voice, but she shook her head. "I'm sorry. I don't sing in public." She silently added 'anymore.'

Calvin was standing beside her, and looked at her with surprise. "You have a real pretty voice. You should do it. I bet you'd sound good with Christmas songs and not just those old songs in other languages you usually sing."

The minister looked at her in surprise. "Old songs in other languages?"

Eliza smiled, not looking at Calvin. "I'm an opera fan. I mainly sing arias around the house." She forced herself not to panic and
to simply downplay her husband's words.

"Are you sure you won't grace us with just one song? 'Silent Night' is my favorite."

Pastor Gibbons was all but begging her to sing, and she felt that she had been given the gift, so she should use it for the Lord. He would protect her if she used it for His glory, right? Finally, she nodded. In a town the size of Pudville, there wasn't much chance that she'd meet up with someone who had heard her sing. "Yes, I'll do it." She hoped she wasn't making a mistake.

Calvin smiled and nodded at her, obviously happy she was going to sing a song he liked. "She'll do the whole church proud, Pastor. She's got a beautiful voice."

That evening as they had supper, Calvin asked her why she'd been reluctant to sing. She shook her head, tears springing into her eyes. She couldn't talk about it yet.

Calvin nodded sadly, wishing whatever was wrong, whatever she was hiding from, she could tell him about it. He hated that she felt the need to keep her fears bottled up inside her.

In bed that night, he held her close after making sweet love to her. "I'm here to listen if you ever want to talk about what is frightening you," he told her.

She shook her head and whispered, "Thank you." She trusted
him as she'd never trusted anyone else, but Beulah and the boys were too important for her to lose them.

Calvin listened to the words she didn't speak, feeling overwhelmingly sad that she didn't trust him with her secrets. He felt so much for her, and she obviously didn't feel the same.

*****

They opened their gifts before church on Christmas morning. She'd finished making his dark brown scarf and matching stocking hat. Both would help to keep him warm throughout the long winter. They were wrapped and on the table on Christmas morning.

He opened the package and smiled happily, trying the cap on with the scarf immediately. "These are wonderful! How did you find time?" He was delighted that she'd taken her time to make something special for him, because to him the hours she spent working on his gift showed how much she cared for him.

She simply shrugged, her eyes dancing at his obvious delight over the gifts. She picked up her gift at his urging. It was small, and she had no idea what he would get her. She carefully opened the gift to find a jewelry box inside. The only jewelry she'd ever worn off stage was the wedding band he'd given her the day they
married.

She opened the box to find a chain with a pendant shaped like quarter notes. She looked at him in surprise. Did he know more than he was letting on? Or did he just know that she liked music?

"It's beautiful! Thank you." She turned her back to him so he could fasten the chain around her neck. Looking into a mirror, she saw that the pendant was laying at the base of her throat, and she loved how it looked. He was everything she'd ever wanted and so much more. She fell a bit more in love with him every day.

When they got to church, she was surprised to find that she was nervous about singing in front of the congregation. She'd long since lost her stage fright when she appeared before others, because she'd done it so often, but these were people she knew, not total strangers. Her hand was shaking slightly as she sat beside Calvin in the pew, waiting for Pastor Gibbons to call her to the front for her solo.

When the time came, she moved to the front of the church, and the pastor smiled at her. He made a brief announcement introducing her. " For those of you who haven't met Eliza Simpson, she is Calvin Simpson's new wife. I have yet to hear her sing, but I have been told she has the voice of an angel. I couldn't let anyone else sing on Christmas morning. She's going to grace us with her rendition of
'Silent Night."'

Eliza waited a moment after the pastor finished speaking, expecting absolute silence. After all the opera halls and theaters she'd sung in, this small church should have been nothing. It wasn't though.

As soon as the first notes of the song rang throughout the small church, she saw people sit up straighter to take notice. There were a few gasps from people as they realized that she didn't have just a pretty voice. She had vocal training to go with it.

When the last note had faded away, many of the congregation were wiping tears from their eyes. Eliza waited a moment before walking back to her seat, the entire building silent.

Pastor Gibbons stepped forward. "I was told she had the voice of an angel. That was an understatement. Eliza, you are welcome to sing for us anytime you'd like."

Eliza inclined her head calmly, moving closer to Calvin and gripping his hand tightly. How had she been able to get on so many stages and not have this man to come back to when she was done? She rested her head on his shoulder as they listened to the sermon about God's love.

*****

Eliza and Abigail worked together to prepare Christmas dinner, each of them having prepared part of it before meeting up. Eliza had left the dinner rolls to rise on the work table, and the turkey was in the oven while they were at church. Calvin had gone out and shot a turkey just the day before because Eliza was so adamant that turkey was what needed to be served for Christmas dinner. She'd not had what she would consider a real Christmas dinner in years, and she'd gone all out to make up for that fact.

They all feasted on the huge meal the women made, and the men talked while the women worked on the dishes and giggled softly together. Afterward, they all gathered in a circle and sang Christmas carols, Eliza's voice leading them all. Calvin's voice constantly hit bad notes, but she just sang a little louder so she wouldn't hear them.

By the end of the long day, Eliza felt that their friendship with the other couple had been cemented forever. How could anyone doubt it after the beautiful day they'd spent together?

*****

It wasn't until he was just about to go to sleep for the night that the traveling salesman, John Turner, realized what had been
so odd about the girl singing in church that morning.

No matter where John ended up, he always made certain he was in church on Christmas morning, and he'd expected nothing from the service there in Pudville. When Eliza had gotten up to sing he'd been amazed by the beautiful voice filling the church, and somehow it had seemed familiar to him just as the girl's face had.

Finally, he understood why. She looked exactly like L'Angelina, an opera singer he'd seen several times during his travels. And her voice...yes, she was L'Angelina. He'd heard the girl was missing and her manager was looking everywhere for her. There was a reward for the person who found her, and it was over two hundred dollars. That was a lot of money in John's world.
Why, he could send that home to his family, and they wouldn't have to worry about finances for a good long while.

First thing in the morning, he'd go to the telegraph office and send word back east that he'd found the missing opera singer. Who would ever believe she'd be singing in a small church on Christmas morning in Missouri of all places?

*****

It was mid-January when Eliza started vomiting. Every morning like clockwork, she was throwing up everything inside her. At first, she thought she was just sick, but she quickly realized that she was late for her monthly as well. She was pregnant. She didn't know whether she should be ecstatic or scared to death.

She wasn't ready to tell Calvin yet. She wanted to wait until she was ready to tell him all her secrets before she told him about the baby. Soon, she promised herself. She'd tell him soon, and he'd be as thrilled as she was.

She began making tiny little clothes for the baby, hiding them away when she was done.
It was easy enough to hide her vomiting from Calvin, claiming she wanted to take off a few pounds and was going to not eat breakfast.

"But you're perfect just the way you are!" he protested. "I like you with your curves."

Eliza just smiled and squeezed his hand. "I appreciate that, but I don't feel comfortable with myself. I need to take off a few pounds so that I will." She hoped he believed her, because she didn't want to explain why she was vomiting her breakfast just yet.

Calvin shook his head at her. "What will be left to hold on to?"

She laughed. "I won't get that thin. I promise."

She was both elated and sad at the same time about the baby.

She knew that she would never perform on a real stage again if she was a mother. She wouldn't ruin her child's life that way. Never would she allow her baby to have to deal with the stigma of having a mother on the stage. No matter how much she enjoyed what she did.

"What are you doing today?" she asked one morning as she sipped ginger tea, trying to calm her heaving stomach.

He looked at her with surprise. "I'm just riding fences as usual."

She studied him carefully. "I'd like to come with you, if I may. I've never even seen the entire ranch."

He seemed to think about it for a moment before agreeing. "I think that would be fine. Do you ride?"

She shook her head. "No, I never learned how. Could I ride with you?" She liked the idea of riding with him rather than risking being thrown while she was carrying anyway.

He smiled as he thought about it. "Absolutely."

Thirty minutes later, she was on the front of his saddle in his lap, riding out toward the cattle. "What we do is just ride around, testing different areas for the fence strength. I want to make certain we don't lose any cattle to neighbors. It hasn't happened in a long time, but sometimes rustlers will come through and cut the fences
to steal some of the cattle. We don't need that at all."

When they reached an area where the fence needed to be fixed, they got down and she held the wires together for him so he could nail them down properly. Until that day she'd had no idea just how vast the property really was. While they worked, she sang one of her favorite arias, her voice carrying across the entire area. Several of his men stopped what they were doing and rode closer so they could hear her better.

He stopped her. "You need to stop singing. You're enticing my men." He couldn't explain the overwhelming anger that overtook him when he saw his men looking at her with admiration, not lust, in their eyes.

She looked at him with shock. "Enticing the men? When I sang at church was I enticing people there?"

"No, but now you're singing in another language. It sounds like a siren's song." He folded his arms over his chest and gave her a look that told her he was annoyed with her.

"Are you serious? You don't want me singing my favorite songs because they're in other languages? I can tell you what the words mean!"

"But it won't tell the men you're enticing what the words mean, so what good will that do you?" He knew he was being
ridiculous even as he said the words, but she was keeping secrets from him, and they had something to do with her singing. He was sure of it.

"Take me home, please. I want to be able to sing without enticing your men." She glared at him, angry that he would accuse her of trying to do something so ridiculous.

"I'd have to leave my work for thirty minutes to get you home now."

She was so angry she wanted to kick him. "I don't care. Take me home."

"If I take you home now, you'll never come with me again."

"Take. Me. Home."

"Fine!" He walked to his horse and held his hand down for her to help her up. She used his foot to step onto to get onto his lap again. Suddenly she wished there was another place for her to sit on the horse, but she knew it was a silly thing to wish for.

They didn't speak the entire way back to the house. He helped her down, and without looking at her said, "
I’ll
be back for lunch in an hour. Because I had to waste my time bringing you back, make me something I can carry with me, so I don't have to take a break."

She didn't agree, but walked into the house with her head held high. An hour later when he returned, she had three bacon
sandwiches for him and a jar of water for him to drink. She didn't much care if he choked on his food at that point.

She was fuming all afternoon as she moved her things from his room into the spare room down the hall. She wouldn't spend her nights with him when he thought she was trying to entice other men. He would learn just how much he'd hurt her.