To Wed In Texas

FIVE

KARLEE SPENT MOST OF THE NIGHT PRACTICING THE speech she'd say to Daniel. She'd promise to learn to cook and do her best with the twins and go to church, and keep house, and try not to kill any of his friends or relatives. She'd promise anything. This place might be the end of the world, but he'd made her a fair offer and she planned to live up to her half.

By the time she'd dressed in her wrinkled Sunday best and headed downstairs, Daniel had gone to church. He left her breakfast of oatmeal and bread warming by the stove and Wolf watching the twins.

Disappointed, Karlee sat down at the table with her bowl in hand. Finally, someone had asked her to stay, and she couldn't even remember saying thank you to him.

“What's the matter, Carrot Top?” Wolf lowered his huge frame into the chair across the table from her. A twin, dressed in white, climbed on each of his knees. “You sorry you didn't get to cook breakfast?”

“No. I only wanted to talk with Daniel. And please don't call me Carrot Top.” Once, she thought, I'll ask him nice once. “I hate that name. I don't call you Rootbrain or Tree head.”

She smiled at the twins, wondering if anyone usually brushed their curls before church. They were so beautiful, so perfect, like an angel mirrored before her.

“I'll try to remember.” Laughing, Wolf fed one twin a biscuit half topped with jelly. “As for Daniel, if he were here you could talk to him, but there's no guarantee he'll listen… or answer. From the stories his brothers tell, he never put more than a few words together in his life. Seems May, his wife, was the only one he ever really talked to.”

“But he's a preacher.” She thought about how hard it had been for Daniel to say all he did last night in her room.

Wolf nodded. “He's more a teacher. Always studying and writing papers. When he started preaching, folks said he would look straight down at May on the first row and talk to her like there was no one else in the church. They say his words were blessed, making a body feel closer to Heaven just from listening.”

Wolf buttered another biscuit and handed it to the twin on his left. “I ain't one to get within shouting distance of a church, but those who do say he still stares at the third place on the first pew like he was talking the whole time to his dead wife.”

An invisible icicle slid along her spine. “That's spooky.” She didn't want to think the man who'd held her last night might be a little mad. He hadn't said a word of comfort, but when he'd touched her he'd made her pain and loneliness go away.

“Maybe.” Wolf scratched his head. “I seen so much during the war, I ain't saying nothing's spooky now days.”

Karlee leaned closer, her breakfast completely forgotten. “Like what?” She'd lived with her aunts when the conflict ended. They'd allowed no stories of war told at their table. And this man, who looked like he might be the first person she'd ever met to have fleas and not mind, would never have been allowed in the aunts' house.

The corner of Wolf's lip lifted at her interest. “Once,” he whispered as if afraid to continue too loudly, “I saw a Yankee private, his head blown half off in battle, get up and walk off the field like he was out for a stroll.”

Karlee leaned closer. “What did you do?”

Wolf straightened. “I cocked my rifle and followed him for a spell. Pretty soon, he stuck his hands in his pockets and started whistling.” Wolf paused, his bushy eyebrows dancing.

“And?” Karlee couldn't wait.

“Well, I circled around the Yank, not wanting to shoot him in the back unless I had to. The sight of his face, half-missing from the cheek up, blood sloshing out with each step, stopped me cold. I never seen anything like it.”

Karlee closed her eyes, almost smelling the blood.

Wolf's Southern voice was low and slow as it drifted to her. “ 'Course, I can't be positive, him only having one eye and all, but I think he winked at me as he passed.” Wolf stared directly at her and winked. “I guess that proves Yanks don't need more than half a brain.”

Karlee jumped to her feet as she realized he'd been pulling her leg.

Wolf had the sense to look alarmed amid his chuckling. “I didn't mean nothing,” he mumbled as fast as the words could fight their way past the mass of hair around his mouth. “I was just joshing.”

She took a deep breath and pushed aside the thought of hitting him with the frying pan again. “Well, I'm more gullible than most, I guess.” She straightened, deciding not to fight the war all over in this kitchen. “But Daniel did talk to me last night. In fact, he asked me to stay.”

One eyebrow shot up. “The truth?”

“Truth. I've been asked to remain and help.” Karlee nodded once. “In fact, he wants me to stay as long as I like.” She added the lie for good measure.

“Well, I'll be. The only woman Daniel has let within a hundred miles of him is Willow. She took over the twins' care at birth. Every other woman you would have thought was poison.”

“Willow?” She remembered Daniel saying someone named Willow sometimes slept on the bed in the twins' room. “Where is she, now?”

Wolf set one of the twins down gently. “We all thought Willow had a mountainsize heart and a child's mind, but there was enough woman in her for one man to love. She married one of the Buchanan boys last fall and will be calving by summer. They live down by Big Cypress Bayou in a house full of relatives. I'm sure you'll meet her. She doesn't let more than a day pass without dropping by to see the twins. You'll probably see her in church this morning.”

Karlee glanced at the open window, trying to guess the time.

Wolf read her mind. “Daniel will ring the bells when it's time to start for church.” As if drawn by his words, a bell began to toll.

“I'll be saying good-bye,” Wolf mumbled as he stood. He picked up his rifle as though it were an extension of his arm. “The twins are all yours.”

“But where…”

He moved to the door. “Just follow the bells, and you'll find the church.” He vanished without another word, not bothering to close the door behind him.

Karlee stared at the twins. One was crying because Wolf left, the other was busy spreading grape jelly from her finger to her white dress.

“Twins!” She hated not calling them by name. “Want to go to church?”

They scattered like baby chicks at the first sound of thunder.

“Twins!” Karlee shouted as she darted one direction, then another, not knowing which girl to chase first.

The bell tolled again.

“Come here, girls.” Karlee tried not to panic, but the children were like rabbits rushing just out of her reach. “Don't be afraid to go to church.” She reasoned.

Laughing, they used the long table as an escape tunnel. They weren't afraid. They were playing a game with her. A game she had no idea how to win.

Ten minutes later, she struggled out of the house with a firm grip on two little hands. Forget combing their hair or washing off jelly. She had to find the church before the bell stopped ringing.

The twin on her left was crying, begging to be turned loose with the earnestness of a condemned man being led to the gallows. The girl on her right pulled at Karlee's fingers one at a time, hoping to work free.

“We don't want to go!” the child shouted. “You can't make us. You're not our dad. You're just a cousin. We don't have to go with you!”

Karlee kept moving.

Since the day she settled in with her old maid aunts, she'd seen very little of children. The aunts made a point of never inviting anyone to tea who brought a child too young to hold a cup properly and sit quietly. All her knowledge of children lay deep in memory when she had been too young to do a full day's work and was assigned to watch younger cousins as she traveled from place to place.

She thought about the alternatives available. She could stop and have a talk with the girls, only what would she say? Or she could turn back and allow them to win, only what would the preacher say if his own daughters weren't in church? If she spanked them, Daniel might not believe in hitting his children. If she didn't, they most likely would out-yell the church bell at any moment.

Karlee stopped in the middle of the walk. She twisted the girls in front of her and knelt to their level. The mirrored angel had been replaced by tiny creatures with red runny noses and open hatred in their eyes.

“Stop crying and yelling!” she ordered.

The twins didn't seem to be listening.

“Stop this right now, or I'll tell your father.”

In one gulp of breath, both girls quieted.

“You'll really tell?”

“Tell him what?” the other added.

“I'll tell your father how you've acted from the time I mentioned going to church. I'll not leave out a detail of how you ran and cried and screamed.”

One twin wiped her face with her sleeve while the other stared at Karlee and whispered, “Do you promise to tell?”

Karlee studied them closely, not understanding the game, but guessing the rules. “I promise only if you'll be quiet from here on.”

Both tiny blonde heads nodded. Karlee stood slowly and took their hands lightly in hers. Neither made a sound until they reached the church door. She must have done something right. They'd stopped screaming, but somehow it didn't feel like she'd won the battle.

“Promise to tell,” one whispered.

Karlee nodded and stepped into church with a silent angel on either side.

The Jefferson Congregational Church was polished and shining. The windows had been washed, the pews dusted and the floors swept. The church was perfect as any Karlee had ever seen… and completely empty.

For a moment, she thought she'd made a mistake. Maybe it wasn't Sunday. Maybe she'd stepped into the wrong place. Maybe she was too late.

But the bell's welcome still lingered in the air, and the doors were wide open.

The twins started down the aisle.

“Wait,” Karlee whispered. “No one's here.”

One little angel glanced up at Karlee with her head tilted slightly in confusion. “No one is ever here,” she answered and hurried to join her sister on the front pew.

Karlee followed slowly. Just as she sat down between the twins, Reverend Daniel McLain stepped from a side door to the pulpit. He looked very stern in his black coat and string tie. He stood tall, unsmiling as he faced the empty building. All hint of the shy, tongue-tied man she'd known last night had vanished. Here was a man in control, in full command. Even if his troops were missing.

He read from his notes in a clear, deep voice. Karlee thought, no welcome, no songs, no passed plate, no handshaking… no wonder the twins didn't want to come.

The only thing normal about the service was that within ten minutes Karlee caught herself nodding off to sleep. She jerked awake and twisted, fighting to keep her eyes open.

Daniel's rich voice continued to drift through the warm air. Karlee's wool jacket felt like a blanket wrapped around her. She jerked again as her chin touched her chest.

Stay awake! she screamed inside her head. But the hours of little sleep were catching up to her. She lost the battle.

• • •

Daniel tried not to look at Karlee as he read his carefully prepared speech. She'd combed her wild hair and tied it back into a respectable bun. Her dress, though faded, was quite proper for church, but something about her bothered him. Maybe it was the fact that, even properly dressed, he saw her as a woman.

Last night, all he'd wanted to do was comfort her when he'd found her crying, but the feel of her pressed against him had kept him awake most of the night. He was unprepared for how naturally she'd leaned against him to say “thank you” when they'd talked upstairs. He was unprepared for the effect her nearness had on him.

He pushed the thought from his mind as he jumped a few pages ahead in his sermon. Not that it mattered, no one would notice. A few minutes later when he closed his Bible, she jerked awake. His gaze met hers. She looked newborn, innocent, accepting, almost welcoming.

Frustrated, he turned away. He had no business noticing a woman, any woman so directly. He hurried down the center aisle to the open doors as though there were a hundred people he planned to greet as they left the church.

He watched her collect the twins and walk slowly toward him with a natural grace in her movements. She was too big, he thought. His May had been tiny, almost childlike and that's how he liked women. Karlee was taller than most men and rounded in places a woman should be rounded. She was no girl, but a woman fully matured.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered as he shook her hand with a stranger's formality.

“We'll talk about it later,” he answered as though there were crowds who might overhear now. “I promised the Buchanans I'd bring the twins to Sunday dinner if Willow didn't make it to the service.”

He crossed behind her and closed the doors, locking them carefully as though someone might try to break in the moment he was gone. “I'm sure you will be welcomed. They're good people who enjoy company. The twins and I lived with them when we first came to Jefferson.”

Daniel didn't wait for an answer. He lifted the twins and carried them to the only wagon tied in front of the building. He sat the girls behind the bench seat in what looked to be an old iron cradle that had been attached to the bench. The topless cage was padded with a quilt offering the girls a comfortable, safe ride.

They'd also grown sleepy during the sermon and curled into the cradle as though it were a feather mattress.

“Interesting,” Karlee studied the homemade compartment for the girls. “Very inventive and safe.”

The preacher frowned at her praise. “After Willow married, I drove her home every night and I didn't want to leave the twins alone in the house. We could make it fine while the twins sit between Willow and me, but on the way back there was no place to make sure the girls were safe while I handled the horses.”

He took a step toward her to assist her. She moved out of his reach.

“How far out is the Buchanan place?” Karlee moved to the front of the wagon.

He sensed an intelligence about her as well as a naivete´ of life and men. He could almost hear her thinking, reasoning out what she should do. Maybe she was afraid of new places, new people, or maybe she didn't want to go where she wasn't wanted. “It's not far, a few miles.”

“I don't know…” she mumbled. “Maybe I should just go back to the house. I've a thousand things to do.”

Daniel cleared his throat trying to think of something to say that might make them more comfortable around one another. If the woman was going to live in his house, he had to be able to talk to her. “Come, you'll be welcome.”

Without another word, Daniel closed his hands around her waist and helped her into the wagon. He told himself he was only being polite; after all, he'd touched her before. She was his wife's cousin, not some stranger. He'd lifted Willow in the wagon hundreds of times while she'd been the twins' nurse. This was no different.

Only he knew better. He wasn't sure how, or why, but it was. The awkwardness between them had nothing to do with his shyness or her inexperience.

She didn't say anything as he climbed up and sat beside her, which suited him fine, he decided. He was not a man who liked idle talk. They just needed time to get used to one another.

Half an hour later, he sat at one end of a long table at the Buchanans' Sunday dinner, finding himself constantly searching the crowd for Karlee. She'd remained silent for the ride out, but once he introduced her to the farmers, she blended in like family.

The Buchanans were hardworking folks with a house built to hold generations. Their men had served on the frontier as rangers and scouts during the war, refusing to fight for the North or the South. At first they'd been alienated by the townsfolk and some still crossed to the other side of the street when a Buchanan neared. But as their losses matched any family's around, most of the neighbors accepted them.

They'd been the first to welcome a Northern preacher, even though the entire lot of them had a problem making it to church regularly.

Deuteronomy Buchanan was the eldest man. At fifty he had half a dozen grown sons, but Deut still answered to his ma. She might be called Granny by all her children and grandchildren, but she ruled like a general.

At the Buchanan Sunday meal, talk and food were plenty. Granny never turned help away and grinned when Karlee politely offered after the introductions. Karlee seemed to know what to do. She worked alongside the other women, talking and laughing as though she'd been to dinner a hundred times. Daniel couldn't help but notice she did what needed to be done, pitching in with the serving as well as the cleaning.

“My four oldest boys will be leaving at dawn tomorrow.” Deut drew Daniel's attention back to the conversation. “There's real money to be made in the drives.”

“I hate to see them go,” Daniel injected, “with all the trouble around.” He didn't have to say more, Daniel knew Deut kept up with the problems even if he rarely said anything.

“Me and the three youngest will still be here.” Deut chewed as he talked. “But those who are married need to fill their pockets and settle into their own places. They figure four months on a drive will pay them enough to do just that. This land will have several more homes on it by planting time next year.”

“You're probably right,” Daniel answered as he watched Karlee circle the room with a tray of seconds.

“You say your cousin is single, Reverend?” Deut Buchanan asked, with his mouth still full of mashed potatoes. “Fine looking woman to be left on the vine.” Except for his mother, Deut was the oldest and therefore given free range to state any opinions.

Daniel frowned. “Yes, she's single.” All the men within hearing distance of Daniel's comment were staring in Karlee's direction. The entire clan seemed to be on a population frenzy, birthing and marrying as fast as they could. “She came to Jefferson to help me with the twins,” Daniel added. “Not to marry any of you Buchanan boys.”

Deut laughed, spitting a snow of potatoes. “Don't get riled up, Reverend. We only took Willow away from you 'cause Sammy loved her so. We know you have to have a woman to help out at your place. If I'd had a few daughters and not so many boys, I might could have saved you the trouble of sending for a woman.”

“But Pa, she's got red hair and the greenest eyes I've ever seen.” Ray sighed deeply, “and her hair. Did you ever see a woman with so much red hair?”

“Now you forget about courting her, Ray. The preacher's got no woman. He needs her more than you do. Besides, you got another year before you're twenty and at the hurry-up stage for marrying.”

Daniel was thankful for all the people talking around him. He couldn't have said a word if his life depended on it. He wished he could scream that he had had a woman and wanted no other now, or ever. His grief had settled into anger over the years. Anger at the world and at himself for caring so deeply.

But Deut was right, Daniel needed Karlee. With all her imperfections and strangeness, he needed her. He couldn't raise his daughters alone. If he tried, he guessed Gerilyn would be knocking at his door demanding custody of the girls. She'd married a man with enough money and power to put up a fight if it came to that. They were just waiting for him to make a wrong move.

He stood so suddenly half the room turned his direction as though expecting a speech. But when he said nothing, they returned to their conversations and food.

Daniel walked the length of the long dining room and entered the kitchen. Like everything else in the Buchanan homestead, the room had been built for a large family. Karlee was cleaning the table where everyone under twelve ate while several women hurried the children, including the twins, outside to play.

Daniel stood in the doorway for a minute, unaware of anyone in the room except Karlee. She might not be a cook, but she knew her way around cleaning. He couldn't help but wonder if she, like himself, pushed herself to work harder than anyone else so she would be exhausted enough at night to sleep.

When she finally glanced up, he asked, “We need to talk, Miss Whitworth. Want to see the bayou?”

“Now?”

“Now.” He walked outside, hoping she'd follow. There were plenty of women to finish and watch the twins. The Buchanans treated child rearing with the herd philosophy. Except for sleeping, the children all stayed together and the adults took turns sitting on the nest. They traveled in a pack, with older ones taking care of younger. His twins loved the attention.

Daniel marched past two huge live oaks and headed toward the bayou where old cypress trees tiptoed into the water's edge. He didn't bother to turn around. If she followed, she followed. He'd not beg for her attention.

When he reached shade so thick it seemed like twilight, he stared out across the bayou, listening for the sounds of passing boats. The air hung damp and warm for late February, but the wind off the water was cool. He could almost close his eyes and think he was back home in Indiana. As a boy, he'd loved rowing out to the center of the lake near their farm. When the day got hot, he'd lay down in the boat and let the sun warm him as he listened to water lap against the sides.

“I'm sorry.” Karlee broke into his thoughts. “I didn't mean to fall asleep in church. I know you're probably mad at me, but not speaking to me won't solve any problem.”

Daniel turned around to face her and was surprised to find her so close behind him. She still wore the tea towel she'd tucked into her waistband as an apron. “I'm not mad at you.” He tried to think of how to put words together as he backed away from her a few steps. “I can't blame you. I'm not much of a preacher.”

“Oh, no.” She lied. “You're fine, just fine. I didn't sleep last night. I was trying to think of some way to say thank you for letting me stay. I want you to know I'll try real hard to help out. I'll learn to cook and I'll take good care of the twins and I'll…” She paused, trying to remember a well-rehearsed speech.

“It's all right,” he interrupted. “I said you could stay. Fact is, I need you desperately.” Daniel watched her closely, sensing more than she was saying. “Is going back really so bad?”

He thought he saw a tear in the corner of her eye before she blinked it away.

She straightened slightly and looked directly at him. “Yes,” she said simply.

Daniel could see the truth in her eyes. A woman without money or family… where would she go? From the way she worked for her meal, he guessed she'd been working hard all her life, trying to pay back what she'd probably been told she had no right to.

He forced out what had to be said. “Promise me you won't leave, no matter what happens, no matter what you see, or hear, or think you hear.”

Surprise lifted her eyebrows. “All right.”

“If you left I could lose the twins, and I couldn't live with that. No matter what happens, the twins must stay.”

“I think I understand. They're very lucky little girls to be loved so much.”

“They're all I have.” His stance relaxed and he smiled. “So promise you won't marry one of the Buchanans. At least not for a year.”

She tilted her head slightly in an action that reminded him of his daughters. “I think I can promise that with some ease. Granny's smart as a whip, but the intelligence seems to be watering down through the generations.”

She'd expected him to laugh and agree, but Daniel only stared out at the water. “I'll stay,” she added wondering if he was even listening.

“Good.” He let out a long breath. “I need you on my side, Karlee, no matter what.”

He saw it in her eyes, a question, a doubt, a decision to trust. “I'll be there.”

“Preacher!” Deut shouted from the house before Daniel-could say more. “We got a rider who barely made it here. He's bleeding like a stuck pig and yelling your name.”

Daniel glanced at Karlee. “It's started,” he whispered. “Don't forget your promise. No matter what.”