A Creed Country Christmas. Linda Miller Lael

bed where they’d conceived Gracie and two other children who hadn’t survived long enough to draw even one breath, Lincoln thrust out a sigh and rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

      Morning would come around early, and the day ahead would be long, hard and cold. He and Tom and the few ranch hands wintering on the place would be hauling wagonloads of hay out to the range cattle, since the grass was buried under snow. They’d have to break the ice at the edge of the creek, too, so the cattle could drink.

      He needed whatever sleep he could get.

      Plainly, it wouldn’t be much.

      JULIANA HAD BEEN an early riser since the cradle, and she was up and dressed well before dawn.

      Even so, when she wandered through the still-dark house toward the kitchen, there was a blaze burning in the hearth in what probably passed for a parlor in such a masculine home. The furniture was heavy and dark and spare, all hard leather and rough-hewn wood, the surfaces uncluttered with the usual knickknacks and vases and doilies and sewing baskets.

      Perhaps Lincoln’s mother—gone traveling, Gracie had said at supper, with marked relief—had packed away her things in preparation for a lengthy absence. As far as Juliana could tell, the woman had left no trace at all—even her room, where she and the children had passed the night, was unadorned.

      Entering the kitchen, Juliana stepped into lantern-light and the warmth of the cookstove. Lincoln stood at a basin in front of a small mirror fixed to the wall, his face lathered with suds, shaving. He wore trousers and boots and a long-sleeved woolen undershirt, and suspenders that dangled in loose, manly loops at his sides.

      He was decently clothed, but there was an intimacy in the early-morning quiet and the glow of the kerosene lamps that gave Juliana pause. She stopped on the threshold and drew in a sharp breath.

      He smiled, rinsed his straight razor in the basin, ran it skillfully under his chin and along his neck. “Mornin’,” he said.

      Juliana recovered her inner composure, but barely. “Good morning,” she replied, quite formally.

      “Coffee’s ready,” Lincoln told her. “Help yourself. Cups are on the shelf in the pantry.” He cocked a thumb toward a nearby door.

      Juliana hurried in to get a cup, desperate to be busy. Came back with two, since that was the polite thing to do. She poured coffee for Lincoln, started to take it to him and was suddenly tongue-tied again, and flustered by it.

      He chuckled, rinsed his face in the basin, reached for a towel and dried off. His ebony hair was rumpled, and glossy in the lamplight. “Thanks,” he said, and walked over to take the steaming cup from her hand.

      Tom entered while they were standing there, staring at each other, his bronzed skin polished with the cold. Behind him walked Joseph, carrying a bucket steaming with fresh milk.

      Juliana smiled, feeling as though she’d been rescued from something intriguingly dangerous. “You’re up early,” she said to the boy. At the school, Joseph had been something of a layabout mornings, continually late for breakfast and yawning through the first class of the day.

      “Tom needed help,” Joseph said solemnly.

      Juliana felt a pang, knowing why Joseph was so eager to be useful. He hoped to land a job on Stillwater Springs Ranch, earn enough money to get himself and Theresa home to North Dakota. With luck, the Bureau of Indian Affairs would leave them alone.

      “We can always use another hand around here,” Lincoln said.

      Juliana shot him a glance. “Joseph has school today.”

      Some of the milk slopped over the edge of the bucket as Joseph set it down hard in the sink. A flush pounded along his fine cheekbones.

      “School?” Lincoln asked.

      Just then, Gracie burst in, dressed in a light woolen dress and high-button shoes and pulling Daisy behind her by one hand and Billy-Moses by the other. Both children stared at her as though they’d never seen such a wondrous creature, and most likely they hadn’t.

      “School?” Gracie chirped, her eyes enormous. “Where? When?”

      Juliana smiled, rested her hands lightly on her hips. She hadn’t bothered to put up her hair; it hung in a long braid over her shoulder. “Here,” she said. “At the kitchen table, directly after breakfast.”

      Joseph groaned.

      “Can I learn, too?” Gracie asked breathlessly. “Can I, please?”

      “May I,” Juliana corrected, ever the teacher. “And I don’t see why you shouldn’t join us.”

      “Will you teach me numbers?” Gracie prattled, her words fairly tumbling over one another in her eagerness. “I’m not very good with numbers. I can read, though. And I promise to sit very still and listen to everything you say and raise my hand when I want to speak—”

      “Gracie,” Lincoln interrupted.

      Releasing Daisy and Billy-Moses, Gracie whirled on her father. “Oh, Papa,” she blurted, “you’re not going to say I can’t, are you?”

      Lincoln’s smile was a little wan, and his gaze shifted briefly to Juliana before swinging back to Gracie’s upturned face. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to say you can’t. It’s just that Miss Mitchell will be moving on soon and I don’t want you to be let down when she does.”

      The words shouldn’t have shaken Juliana—they were quite true, after all, since she would be moving on soon, though the means she would employ to do that were still a mystery—but they did. She felt slightly breathless, the way she had the day Clay told her she was no longer welcome in the mansion on Pine Street.

      Gracie’s eyes brimmed with tears, and Juliana knew they were genuine. She longed to embrace the child, the way she would Daisy or Billy-Moses, if they ever cried. Which, being stoic little creatures, they didn’t.

      “I just want to learn things while I can, Papa,” she said.

      Tom broke into the conversation, pumping water at the sink. Washing up with a misshapen bar of yellow soap. “I’ll get breakfast on the stove,” he interjected. His gaze moved to Juliana’s face. “We could use Joseph’s help today, if you can spare him.”

      Joseph looked so hopeful that Juliana’s throat tightened.

      “I’ll hear your reading lesson after supper,” she relented.

      Joseph’s grin warmed her like sunshine. “I promise I’ll do good,” he said.

      “Well,” Juliana said. “You will do well, Joseph, not ‘good’.”

      He nodded, clearly placating her.

      When Juliana turned back to Gracie, she saw that the child was leaning against Lincoln’s side, sniffling, her arms around his lean waist. The flow of tears had stopped.

      “Saint Nicholas is going to bring me a dictionary for Christmas,” Gracie announced. She looked up at her father. “Do you think he got my letter, Papa? He won’t bring me a doll or anything like that, just because you already have a dictionary on your desk and he thinks I could use that instead of having one of my own? Yours is old—a lot of words aren’t even in it.”

      Lincoln grinned, tugged lightly at one of Gracie’s ringlets. “I’m sure Saint Nick got your letter, sweetheart,” he said.

      “Who’s that?” Theresa asked, trailing into the room, hair unbrushed. Juliana wondered if Lincoln had heard her prayers, as he probably had Gracie’s. Told her to sleep well.

      “You don’t know who Saint Nicholas is?” Gracie asked, astounded.

      “We’ll discuss him later,” Juliana promised, “when we sit down for lessons after breakfast.”

      “I could recite,” Gracie offered. “I know all about Saint Nicholas.”