Western Christmas Proposals: Christmas Dance with the Rancher / Christmas in Salvation Falls / The Sheriff's Christmas Proposal
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Pa patted the spot beside him on the bed. He pulled out the extra pillow behind his head, doubled over his own, and left a place for Ned beside him.
Ned tugged off his boots and did as his father asked, wondering when he had become too busy to do this. Never mind. He sprawled out beside his father, savoring the moment.
“You built a good ranch, Pa,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Tears came into Pa’s eyes.
Ned started to apologize, but changed his mind when Pa took his hand and kissed the back of it. He felt the years slip away, and some of the cares. All that he lacked now was to see Ma come into the room, put her hands on her hips and in her soft drawl, declare them useless layabouts, which was acres away from the truth.
He heard footsteps coming closer and looked up in anticipation, thinking of Ma, but it was just Katie. She had folded his ironed shirt so carefully. He watched her put the shirt on the top apple crate in his room, smoothing out what by now had to be imaginary wrinkles.
“We’ll have steak and potatoes in a few minutes,” she told them. “Ned, help your father to the kitchen.”
“I don’t think...”
“Mr. Avery, would you like to eat with us?” she asked, ignoring Ned.
“More’n anything.”
“Give yourself plenty of time,” she admonished, but kindly. He knew she was right. An old rancher with a new window and a view of the valley ought to have some say in where he ate supper.
It took Pa three pauses to get to the kitchen. To Ned, his look of triumph when he finally sat in the kitchen was close kin to his expression when he won a cow penning at the local rodeo a few years back. Maybe it was more than a few years. Time had crept up on them all. Ned couldn’t remember the last time Pa had sat at the table with him, and he wondered why it had taken the gentle insistence of a chore girl to give him enough courage to let Pa do what he wanted.
“Pa, I’ve been treating you like a China doll,” he said finally, pushing away his plate. He nodded to Katie, who took the plates to the sink. “I owe you a debt, Miss Peck,” he said.
She sat down again. The way Pa looked at her suggested that they had planned it this way. He knew better than to question whatever it was that had turned them into confederates. What is it about you, Katie Peck, Ned wanted to ask.
After the dishes, Katie told Pa to settle in. “Ned, we’re going to waltz,” she told him. “One two three, one two three. It’s simple.”
She came close and put her hand on his shoulder with no hesitation. “Put that hand on my waist, and I’ll take the other one,” she directed. “I’ll lead, until you figure it out. Mr. Avery, you may do the one two three.”
Pa did, waving his hand, as Katie Peck directed Ned around the kitchen. She told him not to look at his feet and he tried to do as she said. Her waist was small. His hands were large, and he felt like he was encroaching a bit on the pleasant swell that began her bosom. She made no objection, which relieved him, because she felt so good.
They banged knees a couple of times, and he stepped on her feet, but at least he had taken off his boots and wore only his stockings.
When Katie said, “You’re supposed to carry on pleasant conversation,” he stopped dancing.
“Like what?” he asked.
“The weather, the price of two-year heifers,” Pa teased.
Katie sighed, but there was no overlooking the fun in her eyes, and the soft way she looked at Dan Avery. “Mr. Avery! Instead of that, Ned, ask your partner what book she’s read lately, or maybe inquire about her family.”
“I’m supposed to do that and dance at the same time?” Ned protested.
She nodded, and put her hand on his shoulder again. “That’s why we’re going to practice the waltz every day until the dance. When is it, by the way?” she asked, standing there poised and ready to push off.
“A week from Friday.” He whispered in her ear. “Pa’s getting tired.”
“I know,” she whispered back. “Mr. Avery, Ned’s going to lead now. He can think one two three.”
He towed her around the floor to his silent one two three. They narrowly avoided the cooking range, but he kept one hand firmly on her waist, and the other clasped in hers. Around again, without stepping on her, and once more.
“I’m ending this dance,” he said. “How do I stop?”
“When the music stops, you give a little bow, and thank her,” Katie said. She turned to his father. “What do you think, Mr. Avery?”
“I think he might find a wife yet,” Pa said. “Do the two-step now.”
“It had better be simpler,” Ned told her.
“It is. And it’s fast. Hand on my waist again—oh, you never took it off—and take my hand again. It’s just one and two and.”
Off they went. It was simpler, Katie nimble and smiling the whole time. Third time around the room, he picked her up and she laughed.
“I hope...you’re not...expecting...conversation,” he managed to gasp.
“Only...if the building...catches on fire,” she said, which made him give a shout of laughter and grab her up.
He held her that way, so they were on equal eye level, breathing hard. She put both hands on his shoulders, not to ward him off, but to remind him. He let her down, and she stepped away, her face red from exertion, but her eyes bright.
They both looked at Pa, who nodded. “That’ll for sure find him a wife, unless he’s dancing with another man’s missus.” He laughed. “Then we’ll have a shoot-out and a hanging!”
“We’ll practice every night,” Katie assured Ned. She started sticking hairpins back in place, but gave it up for a bad business and shook the rest of her hair down.
Ned hadn’t realized how long it was, almost to her waist, and the prettiest shade of just ordinary brown, with little bits of red glimmering in the light of the lamp.
He looked at Pa, whose eyes were closing. “No objections from you, Pa,” he said, as he carried his father back to his room. Katie trailed along behind, watchful, and Ned began to realize the strength of her attachment to his father.
“I’ll help him from here,” he told her. She went into her room and closed the door. He listened for her to lock it, then realized with a start that she had never locked her door, not even the first night when he handed her the key.
We’re doing something right, he thought.
Chapter Thirteen
They danced every night, and soon Katie had no fears for her toes. Ned’s conversation still suffered, but she knew him as a reticent man. A dancing partner would have to appreciate taciturnity, Katie decided. She knew she didn’t mind his silences. He had a lot on his mind.
“Did you mill girls have dances?” he asked one night.
“Ned, you’re wonderful!” she exclaimed. “You asked me that and didn’t look down at your feet.”
“Did Saul Coffin dance with you?”
“Now and then, but he was mostly all business around the looms.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t bring him up,” he said after another turn.
“Doesn’t matter,” she replied. “We may never know what happened.”
She didn’t mind the silence that followed, because she had a moment to reflect on how seldom she thought about Saul Coffin, the man who had partly paid her way to Wyoming Territory. She knew the truth, though: hard life had taught her not to expect anything. When Saul Coffin had been notable by his absence in Cheyenne, she quietly set about forgetting him.
She looked up at Ned, struck by the knowledge that she would miss him, when he didn’t need her any longer. Ned made another turn, and she glanced at Mr. Avery, sitting at the table and looking healthier. She decided that lying alone all day in a back bedroom wasn’t designed to cure any ailment, even if a bad heart is a fragile thing.
It struck her that a good heart was a fragile thing, too, and she hoped that Ned Avery found someone to share his life with. Maybe a wife, the right one, would ease his way in this hard land.
The day of the dance, she took the piece of forest-green brocade from her traveling case to make Ned a cravat. The matter gave her less of a pang than she thought, considering that the fabric was the only item remaining from her real father, a sailor lost at sea during the China run. Besides a pittance so small that Mama was forced to remarry, the skipper had given her a length of green brocade. She had no use for it, except to parcel it among her four children as their only legacy from their father.
After morning chores, Katie picked apart his old cravat, ironed the pieces and angled them here and there on the brocade to be her pattern. She hesitated only a moment before cutting.
“That’s mighty elegant,” Ned said, as he came into the kitchen, prepared for a day in the saddle. “You didn’t find that in Wyoming.”
Without thinking, she told where it came from and noted the dismay on his face. “You needed a new cravat, and I have the material,” she pointed out.
“It’s a treasure,” he protested. She had already cut into the fabric, so a man as practical as Ned knew the argument was over.
She continued cutting. The long strip remaining to her could easily be hemmed and turned into a bookmark for her Bible. That would do. As it was, she barely remembered her father.
That day, Kate skimped on reading from A Tale of Two Cities, which raised a protest from Mr. Avery. “Bad as he is, we cannot leave St. Evrémonde with a knife through his heart,” he reminded her.
“I fear we must,” she said. “If I am to finish the cravat, we’ll have to leave the marquis weltering in his gore.”
“You sound remarkably like Dickens,” he told her, but gave her no more argument.
She sat with Mr. Avery and sewed, determined to have the pretty thing finished by the time Ned carried in the milk bucket late in the afternoon. He had insisted on doing her chores so she could finish the cravat, even though she knew it was seven miles to Medicine Bow and the dance started at nine o’clock. She handed the cravat to him after the last stitch.
“No one will have a cravat this fine,” he said, and held it up to his neck. “I have an ironed shirt, too.”
Her heart nearly stopped when he took her hand and kissed it. Impulsively she put her free hand on his head for no reason, except that she wanted to touch the man who had been so kind to her. He had helped her when he had no idea if she would steal the spoons in his house and vanish the next day, and he had built her a room. Her heart was full.
Kate wiped her eyes. “Go find someone nice,” she whispered. “I’d better read to your father while you take a bath in the kitchen.”
“You won’t scrub my back?” he teased.
“Not for thirty dollars a month,” she said, and he laughed.
* * *
A fellow could hope, Ned told himself, after he filled the galvanized tub in the kitchen and eased himself in for a quick soak, which turned into a longer one, because he had not enjoyed such luxury since his visit to Cheyenne. Ordinarily, a fast wash at the bowl and pitcher in his room sufficed. He sat so long in the cooling tub that he could have used one more bucket of hot water from the cooking stove’s reservoir. He doubted Kate would pour him one, but he could ask.
She surprised him by coming to the doorway of the kitchen, her head averted. “Another bucket?” she asked, and he heard the timidity in her voice.
“Yes, please. I’ll cover up. Just pour it behind my back,” he said, and hunched over his middle, his washcloth in place.
She did as he said. His hair was already damp so he lathered in soft soap. “If you could dip out half a bucket of hot water, and add an equal amount of cold from the kitchen pump, I can rinse this.”
“I’ll help,” she said, sounding businesslike. “A body can’t rinse his own head.”
Kate rinsed his hair without a complaint, even though it took two buckets to meet her apparently exacting standards.
“There. If you can’t manage the rest of this bath, you’re too young to go to a dance,” she scolded.
He sat a little longer in the water, wishing he could stay at home and listen to more of Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, too, as read by his chore girl to his dying father who had taken on a new lease on life. Ned had enjoyed the book years earlier, but there was something almost royally sinful about having enough time to listen to another read it. Ned almost resented losing an evening at a dance, when he could be home, lying beside his father, listening to Katie read.
Or maybe he just didn’t want to dress up and ride through the dark to a dance where there might not be anyone young and even remotely eligible, Wyoming being what it was. I’m getting set in my ways, he thought. Kate is kind to rescue me.
Katie had managed to repair his one pathetic collar, stiffening it, and sewing it together to fit on his shirt. He called to her to button his new cravat in the back. He sat down on the corner of his bed so she could reach him. When she finished, she told him to stand up and turn around so she could adjust the handsome bit of brocade to suit herself. She stood back for a better look, and finally nodded her approval.
“You’ll do,” she told him as he put on his vest. She helped him into his black coat, smoothing the back of it near his shoulders. He liked her touch, but what man wouldn’t?
“You’ll do? That doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement,” he teased.
“It is in Maine,” she assured him. “I mean what I say.”
Ned stood in the doorway of his father’s room, hesitant to leave. He understood his reluctance as Katie looked back at him. He saw the pride in her eyes that looked a little like ownership, which bothered him not at all. He owed this whole evening to her.
As he mounted his horse and started for town, he had another idea, one that bore some thought: he really didn’t want to go dancing without Katie.
Chapter Fourteen
Medicine Bow must have grown during the past year. Ned Avery had no trouble filling out a dance card with a new schoolteacher in town, the banker’s daughter, a widow roughly his age who danced even better than Katie and the Presbyterian minister’s cousin from Ohio.
He remembered not to mumble one two three when he waltzed, came up with enough small talk to get him through a dance and stepped on nothing except the wooden floor.
By the time the dance ended, Ned had the name and address of the banker’s daughter, and had promised to take Sunday dinner with the minister’s cousin before she left for Ohio in the spring. The schoolmarm spent more time dancing with a rancher ten miles farther out of town; she’d find out soon enough he was a widower with five rowdy children.
Still, they weren’t Katie. Besides, if Katie had come with him, she could be filling up a dance card and looking over the local bachelors. She could also be dancing with him. He missed the sweetness of her breath on his neck when he whirled her around the kitchen.
He found himself comparing his dancing partners with Katie. Excepting the widow, none were as light-footed. The schoolmarm appeared as trim as Katie, but the whalebone corset he felt against his hand suggested otherwise. On the plus side, they were all easy to understand. He made a joke with the schoolmarm at Katie’s expense, imitating her Maine accent until the lady laughed, then felt ashamed of himself. Katie couldn’t help where she came from.
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