Plum Pudding Bride (4 page)

“Not a good idea, my dear. He probably lives in a freezing soddy that leaks water every springtime.” Mrs. Clinton tsked and then turned back to Kitty and the admiring knot of women, who all offered very enthusiastic, premature congratulations.

This was exactly what he had been saying. Peter's one hand rose.

“He's a very successful rancher. Used his bare hands to build a two-story pine house with store-bought windows, most likely.” Patience crossed her arms.

“You'll still catch your death of cold. Montana's like that.” Mrs. Clinton rotated to Kitty. “Now about those peonies. Are you thinking the pink or the blue for a June wedding?”

“Speaking of bare hands, my groom, Mr. Dehaven, wrestled down a bear once.” Patience stood on her tiptoes on the pew. Her brown skirts fanned out, filling the row.

“It's not brawn. It's character that counts.” The woman with the four children clinging to her leg leaned over from the pew behind. Dark circles ringed her eyes and her cheeks were gaunt. “Wish I had known that at nineteen.”

“Oh, Mr. Dehaven's a pillar of his community. His reverend nominated him for church deacon just this last fall. I think.” Patience's fingers knotted around each other now. Last time Peter had seen that expression on her face was five years ago when she was telling little Kitty whoppers about tadpoles growing into dragons.

Mrs. Clinton made a scoffing sound. “He's probably the only other able-bodied man in the district. So it's not like there was competition.”

Dropping Kitty's hand and a conversation about what kind of diamond would best suit her fair skin tones, a lady clothed in maroon spun around. “What sort of man proposes over letter without even meeting a girl? He probably has something to hide.”

Exactly!
Peter brought his hand down on the pew in front of him. The man could be a criminal. The train conductor shouldn't even be selling a ticket to Patience for this wild venture.

“Mrs. Clinton said herself Montana was sparsely populated. There probably simply aren't any eligible young women in his town.” Patience hopped off the bench. Her boots hit the floor with a clatter.

“A likely story. Does he drink? You joined our temperance league the day you turned twenty-one. You know it's against our core principles to become one flesh with a drinking man.” Mrs. Clinton stuck a finger in Patience's face.

Above, gusts of wind blew through the cracks in the eaves. The organist thumped on the organ pedals impatiently.

“I'm certain he doesn't.” Patience's arms crossed over each other again. But instead of jutting out her shoulders, she drew them in.

“Certain? Most drunks are wifebeaters, you know.” Mrs. Clinton coughed loudly.

“He's not a drunk. He's a pillar of the community.” Patience glanced over at Peter. Her brown-eyed gaze met his for one moment. No spark of mutual affection there though, just a summary appraisal. “Like him, only much more so.”

“As a rancher?” Mrs. Clinton let forth a snort. “That set's a wild lot.”

“He's very charitable.” Patience's fingers played with the lace of her collar now.

Peter had seen her work the lace on Friday evenings when he'd found excuses to steal a spot at the Callahan hearth.

“Broke a rib climbing down into a mud pit to rescue a fallen traveler.” Patience's voice was like crystal—clear and bright amidst the chattering all around. If only she'd speak of Peter with that lovely voice.

“Charitable?” Mrs. Clinton clicked her tongue. “He sounds more like a wild animal. My John's been riding out West for nigh on fifty years now and never fell into a mud pit.”

“You'll see, one of these years, when we come back to visit with a parcel of well-behaved children raised in the invigorating air of the Montana ranch land.”

Up front, a crash sounded.

Faces turned up.

The organist pounded a chord, her plain face wrinkled in displeasure.

The reverend cleared his throat loudly. “We will start with ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.' Ladies?”

As the knot of women dispersed to their pews, Patience sank onto the bench where she had stood.

“He really is amazing, my Mr. Dehaven,” she mumbled. “They'd know it if they met him.”

No, he wasn't. Or maybe he was. But Mr. Dehaven could never love Patience the way Peter did. Couldn't Patience see that? The starched black of Peter's worsted churchgoing trousers made contact with the pew seat. The point of a hymnbook poked his leg.

Kitty held the other half. “Smile.”

“What for?” Taking the other edge of the hymnbook, he commenced a dirge-like chant of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

“Patience's out of her faculties with envy.”

“No.” Peter rotated back towards the pew where Patience sat.

She stared intently at her raised hymnal as if she had no other thought but for it. Jealous?

“Trust me. I've lived with her for seventeen years.”

4

The brisk breeze caught Peter's scarf and tugged. The morning sun made the December day feel almost warm. His arms swung as he walked up the path. He even whistled a tune. He'd never had such good excuses to haunt the Callahan house. He should have started wooing Patience's sister seven years ago. Wait, Kitty had only been ten then. That would have been untenable.

Crossing to the back of the house, Peter picked out the shuttered window that belonged to Patience and Kitty. He picked up a pebble and tossed it at the cedar panels.

The window creaked open.

Kitty's blonde head popped out. “Bart?”

Peter crossed his arms, pulling his wool coat tight across his shoulders. “Does your father know you're meeting Mr. Hensley behind—”

“Oh, it's you.” Kitty's face fell, but she swiftly brought back a smile. “Good. I've come up with a brilliant new plot. Come in around the back and help yourself to some flapjacks while I finish up here.”

With a spring to his step, Peter twisted the handle to the back door. The wood gave in to his touch. Maybe Patience would be home.

And then she appeared.

His heart skipped too many beats to count.

“Peter?” Her voice sounded like a melody. And she had said
his
name. His Christian name.

“Good morning, Patience.” Peter swallowed hard.

“You're here to see Kitty?” Her slender hands hung at her sides without a trace of a ring.

His chin came down in a nod, but his gaze stayed locked on her, burning her image into his memory. Kitty was correct, right? Patience wouldn't take that train to Arnie. Would she? What if he never saw her again?

“Have some breakfast while you wait then. Kitty's a notoriously late riser. I hope you like that in a wife.” Stepping around Peter, she jerked her coat off the peg.

“Let me help you with that.” Taking the coat from her hands, he held it up. His fingers brushed hers with the movement. Her skin felt as soft as buttercream.

Their gazes met for the merest of moments. The red of the coat brought out the color of her eyes. Her lips were more vividly colored than any wool, and they pursed slightly. He so wanted to kiss those lips.

She turned and slid her arms into the fabric he held.

A stray strand of her hair brushed his fingers as he released the coat. If only he could steal that lock and keep it forever.

With a click of her leather boots, she left the door swinging and disappeared into the outdoors.

He made his way through the entrance into the sitting room. An abandoned composition notebook and slate lay precariously on one of the settee's pillows. Sun poured in through an unshuttered window into the kitchen beyond.

As he stepped into the space, the delicious smell of fresh-cooked bacon and lard-fried flapjacks assaulted his nostrils. Heat radiated from the woodstove. A few unwashed pans lay in the sink. But there on the counter to the left was a pewter plate heaped to overflowing with flapjacks and bacon.

Reaching forward, Peter's fingers touched the edge of a strip of juicy bacon—

A man slammed himself between him and the bacon. His hand grabbed Peter's wrist and shoved it away.

“Why, good morning, Mr. Callahan.” Peter sidestepped for the plate. His shoulders pushed against Mr. Callahan's as he muscled his way into position.

Mr. Callahan's fist came down next to the pewter, sending several flapjacks and bacon strips flying.

“That's my bacon.” Peter leapt to catch the flying deliciousness. He grabbed one piece out of the air.

“Not anymore, it isn't.” Mr. Callahan shoved the plate behind his broad back.

This was, after all, Mr. Callahan's domicile.

With a sigh, Peter stepped away from the scintillating smell. The fallen flapjacks had landed on the dirty dishes in the sink. They lay limp, soggy now from dishwater. The bacon sank to the bottom, submerged beneath potato peelings and grease blobs. He clung to his lone strip of meat.

“You have some nerve being in my house.”

Peter's eyebrows rose. He'd been in this house dozens of times before. “Kitty told me to let myself in.”

“That's Miss Callahan to you.” Mr. Callahan glared at Peter. His broad hands closed as if he wished Peter's neck was between them.

Peter blinked. “She's only seventeen.”

“And you take that as reason enough to take liberties with her?”

“Sir?”

“I heard about you consorting with her in church. Telling the entire town you were marrying her. Have you no sense of shame? What about asking the father's permission? You're twenty-eight years old. What are you doing taking advantage of a seventeen-year-old—”

“Actually, sir,” Peter started hastily, “Kit…your daughter and I are just pretending to be coupling off to make Patience jealous. I want to marry Patience, you see, and now with this Mr. Dehaven, Kitty and I thought. I mean. I know it's terribly improper…” Peter dropped his piece of bacon into the sink beside its comrades. Now that he said it aloud, his plan sounded plain exploitive. Fake wooing one daughter, manipulating the other into a marriage proposal.

Mr. Callahan would throw him out of the house on the spot, and he'd never get to speak to Patience again, even long enough to beg her not to board that Montana-bound train. Maybe he could sneak on her train the morning she was about to leave.

“Oh, thank heaven.” Mr. Callahan's sweaty body wrapped around him in a bear hug. “Here.” Kitty's father shoved the pewter plate of remaining bacon and flapjacks at Peter. “Would you like some syrup too? Grits? Apple pie?”

Extricating himself from the man, Peter received the plate Mr. Callahan thrust into his hands. Blinking, he took a piece of bacon and put it in his mouth.

“You absolutely have to save us from that man. Have you read the letters he writes our Patience? He can't even spell. And he keeps going on about breaking an arm chasing wild horses or snapping a collarbone in a raft. How does the clumsy oaf think he can rear children?”

So true. “Will you forbid your daughter from marrying him then?” The strip of bacon in Peter's mouth turned pungent at the thought of Patience trapped in a blizzard with a newborn babe while the broken-boned dimwit couldn't even stay out of mud pits long enough to come home.

“Definitely. If you also have a locked tower and pack of guards to loan me, that is. The moment I tell Patience no, she'll be northern bound on a train to Montana.”

Her ticket was for six days from now.

Peter dumped the plate on the counter. The noise of crockery clapping against wood echoed his heart. He had to find a way to make her stay.

~*~

The noise of Christmas shoppers filled the store. Women's voices rose and fell as they sorted through candies and children's books. Mrs. Clinton held up bolt after bolt of fabric to the weak winter sunlight that sifted down through the clouds outdoors. Susannah Johnson ran lengths of ribbons through her appraising fingers.

Work apron knotted neatly around her slim waist, Patience cleaned the floor with firm strokes. The brown of her dress sleeves clung to her arms as she swept.

Peter's hand slipped off the ledger he was supposed to be balancing as his gaze followed her.

Broom against floor, sweep. Broom against floor, sweep. It was a motion he'd made a thousand times before. The sound of broom straw against pine floor was one he'd heard a thousand times more.

Only two more days until she left. Was she weakening at all? Next week, would it just be him in this shop? Only his solitary broom beating the floor, a dirge with no harmony?

“Did you need something?” Patience's beautiful face leaned towards him. Her delicate hands rested on the tip of her broom handle, her pert chin balanced on top. She smiled at him. Her lips were so pink. He'd never seen lips quite that pink.

“Yeah. Here's the second present.” From his seat on a crate, Peter reached to the shelves beyond and pulled out a brown paper package. Inside was a copy of Alexandre Dumas's
Count of Monte Cristo.

“I'll give it to Kitty.” Patience had a dimple on the edge of her right cheek when she smiled.

“Thank you.”

Patience's cheeks were flushed from sweeping. One lock of hair had escaped her off-kilter cap.

Was he never to see that lovely face again? “When do you leave on the train? Morning? Evening?” Did he have forty-eight hours left, or maybe fifty-some?

“Before dawn Christmas day.”

Less than forty! He brought his heel back against the crate. The wood splintered with a satisfying crack. “Who even runs a train on Christmas day?”

Patience's voice fell to a whisper. “Don't tell. But Mrs. Clinton said a shipment of silver is being collected from the mine Christmas Eve. Mr. Clinton doesn't want it sitting at the station all Christmas day while the guards are off-duty.”

The sleigh bells on the shop's door tinkled.