stared at him, including Juliana, who had pulled little Daisy onto her lap.
“All of you,” Lincoln said, addressing the children, “gather up whatever things you’ve got and get into the back of my buckboard. You’ll find some blankets there—wrap up warm, because it’s three miles to the ranch house and there’s an icy wind blowing in from the northwest.”
Juliana stood, gently displacing Daisy, careful to keep the child close against her side. “Mr. Creed, we couldn’t accept…” Her voice fell away, and mortification burned in her cheeks.
“Seems to me,” Lincoln said, “you don’t have much of a choice. I’m offering you and these children a place to stay, Miss Mitchell. Just till you can figure out what to do next.”
“You’d let these savages set foot under the same roof with your little Gracie?” Mr. Willand blustered, incensed. He’d crossed the otherwise-empty store, shouldered Joseph aside to peer into the display window and make sure nothing was missing.
The air pulsed again.
Lincoln took a step toward the storekeeper.
By instinct, Juliana grasped Mr. Creed’s arm to stop him. Even through the heavy fabric of his coat, she could feel that his muscles were steely with tension—he was barely containing his temper. “The children are used to remarks like that,” she said quietly, anxious to keep the peace. “They know they aren’t savages.”
“Get into the wagon,” Lincoln said. He didn’t pull free of Juliana’s touch, nor did he look away from Mr. Willand’s crimson face. “All of you.”
The children looked to Juliana, their dark, luminous eyes liquid with wary question.
She nodded, silently giving her permission.
Almost as one, they scrambled for the door, causing the bell to clamor merrily overhead. Even Daisy, clinging until a moment before, peeled away from Juliana’s side.
After pulling her cloak more closely around her and raising the hood against the cold wind, Juliana followed.
LINCOLN WATCHED THEM GO. He’d hung his hat on one of the spindle-backed wooden chairs next to the stove earlier, and he reached for it. “There’s enough grief and sorrow in this world,” he told the storekeeper, “without folks like you adding to it.”
Willand was undaunted, though Lincoln noticed he stayed well behind the counter, within bolting distance of the back door. “We’ll see what Mrs. Creed says, when you turn up on her doorstep with a tribe of Injuns—”
Lincoln shoved his hat down on top of his head with a little more force than the effort required. His wife, Beth, had died two years before, of a fever, so Willand was referring to his mother. Cora Creed would indeed have been surprised to find five extra people seated around her supper table that night—if Lincoln hadn’t left her with enough bags to fill a freight car at the train depot before stopping by the mercantile. She was headed for Phoenix, where she liked to winter with her kinfolks, the Dawsons.
“I’ll be back tomorrow if I get the chance,” he said, starting for the door. With that storm coming and cattle to feed, he couldn’t be sure. “To see if any letters came in on today’s train.”
Willand glanced at the big regulator clock on the wall behind him. “My boy’s gone to the depot, like always, and he’ll be here with the mail bag any minute now,” he said grudgingly. “Might as well wait.”
Lincoln went to the window, looked past his own reflection in the darkening glass—God, he hated the shortness of winter days—to see Miss Mitchell settling her unlikely brood in the bed of his wagon. Something warmed inside him, shifted. The slightest smile tilted one corner of his mouth.
He’d been advertising for a governess for his seven-year-old daughter, Gracie, and a housekeeper for the both of them for nearly a year; failing either of those, he’d settle for a wife, and because he knew he’d never love another woman the way he’d loved Beth, he wasn’t too choosey in his requirements.
Juliana Mitchell, with her womanly figure, indigo-blue eyes and those tendrils of coppery hair peeking out from under her worn bonnet, was clearly dedicated to her profession, since she’d stayed to look after those children even now that the Indian School had closed down. A lot of schoolmarms wouldn’t have done that.
This spoke well for her character, and when it came to looks, she was a better bargain than anyone all those advertisements might have scared up.
Glancing down at the display, with all the toys Willand was hoping to sell before Christmas, Lincoln’s gaze fell on the corner of a metal box, tucked at an odd angle under the bunting beneath the tree. He reached for the item, drew it out, saw that it was a set of watercolor paints, similar to one Gracie had at home.
Was this what the boy had been looking at when Willand pitched a fit?
For reasons he couldn’t have explained, Lincoln was sure it was.
He held the long, flat tin up for Willand to see, before tucking it into the inside pocket of his coat. “Put this on my bill,” he said.
Willand grumbled, but a sale was a sale. He finally nodded.
Lincoln raised his collar against the cold and left the mercantile for the wooden sidewalk beyond.
The kids were settled in the back of the wagon, all but the oldest boy snuggled in the rough woolen blankets Lincoln always carried in winter. Juliana Mitchell waited primly on the seat, straight-spined, chin high, trying not to shiver in that thin cloak of hers.
Buttoning his coat as he left the store, Lincoln unbuttoned it again before climbing up into the box beside her. Snowflakes drifted slowly from a gray sky as he took up the reins, released the brake lever. The streets of the town were nearly deserted—folks were getting ready for the storm, feeling its approach in their bones, just as Lincoln did.
Knowing her pride would make her balk if he took off his coat and put it around her, he pulled his right arm out of the sleeve and drew her to his side instead, closing the garment around her.
She stiffened, then went still, in what he guessed was resignation.
It bruised something inside Lincoln, realizing how many things Juliana Mitchell had probably had to resign herself to over the course of her life.
He set the team in motion, kept his gaze on the snowy road ahead, winding toward home. By the time they reached the ranch, it would be dark out, but the horses knew their way.
Meanwhile, Juliana Mitchell felt warm and soft against him. He’d forgotten what it was like to protect a woman, shield her against his side, and the remembrance was painful, like frostbitten flesh beginning to thaw.
Beth had been gone awhile, and though he wasn’t proud of it, in the last six months or so he’d turned to loose women for comfort a time or two, over in Choteau or in Missoula.
The quickening he felt now was different, of course. Though anybody could see she was down on her luck, it was equally obvious that Juliana Mitchell was a lady. Breeding was a thing even shabby clothes couldn’t hide—especially from a rancher used to raising fine cattle and horses.
Minutes later, as
