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DECEMBER 11, 1891
With flour dusting her sleeves all the way to her elbows, Jessie greeted Clara at the back door. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She looked over Clara’s shoulder to Mr. Kincaid, who was about to lead the horse back to the barn. “You, too, Graham. Lena and I have been watching those clouds piling up there in the mountains and worrying that they might be moving in before evening. We’d sure like to get that tree cut before snow falls. Would you two mind going out to find one? Bart can come later and give you a hand if you need help getting it back. But I was hoping to have some greenery today so I could start making a garland and a wreath for the fireplace.”
“Me?” Clara asked. “You want me to go?”
“Well, yeah. I’d never trust Bart with such a thing. I did last year, and he brought back this scrawny thing a dog wouldn’t even consider worthy of lifting his leg for. But you’ve got a trained eye, and we want a perfect tree this year, something special for Rebecca and the twins.” Jessie frowned, looking at Clara’s coat and town boots. “Come inside and let me find something else for you to wear. You’ll get sap all over that coat, and I have a pair of barn boots that might fit you.”
A few minutes later, Graham watched as Clara emerged from the ranch house in a coat a few sizes too big for her petite frame. She took slow awkward steps across the yard in heavy boots equally too large for her feet. When he offered her his hand to assist her into the wagon, she gave him a surprising smile that he took for thanks.
Jessie ran out of the house carrying a heavy wool blanket and called out, “You might want to take this along in case the weather turns nasty.”
As Graham took the blanket from her, he leaned close and whispered, “It won’t work, you know.”
Jessie gave him a blank stare. “Whatever do you mean?”
“This matchmaking. Doesn’t the expression go ‘a match made in heaven’? Think such things are a little out of your control.” He gave her a wink to show her there were no hard feelings.
Jessie’s cheeks flamed.
He turned back to the wagon and lay the blanket across Clara’s lap. “Just in case, she says.” The girl looked somewhat alarmed, so Graham added, “Don’t worry. I won’t let us get trapped up there in a snow storm. I have a bit more sense than the woman gives me credit for. Besides, we don’t have to go far to find one.”
Graham patted his leg and whistled to his dog. Alec bounded across the yard and jumped in the back of the wagon. Looking pleased with his luck to be invited along, the dog settled himself behind Clara.
A recent rain had stripped most, but not all, of the leaves from both the aspens and maple trees, opening the views to the foothills and the higher peaks of the Sawtooths farther north. It was pretty, but he preferred the vistas from the higher valleys where one didn’t have to see smoke curling from chimneys. Up there, a man could experience true peace and a quiet not possible in cities.
“Doesn’t it get lonely?”
After traveling for some time in silence, he started at her sudden question. He turned his face to look at her. “Lonely?”
“Up there in those mountains without a soul to talk to for weeks on end. Isn’t it lonely?”
He pursed his lips and followed her gaze to the upper range wearing a fresh blanket of snow. “A few of us choose it. I don’t fear the solitude as some might. And I don’t think of it as lonely.”
“But no human voices, no conversations. To say the least, it seems an austere life.” Her brow was creased as though the idea of solitude disturbed her.
“Maybe they aren’t with humans, but I do have conversations.” He reached over the wagon seat and scratched Alec’s head. “Don’t we, old boy? We’ve had discussions ranging from the writings of Robert Burns to Robert Louis Stephenson.” He chuckled. “You’d be impressed by Alec’s erudite analysis of poetry, particularly those from our fellow Scotsmen.”
She smiled at that. It was a pretty smile, lacking in guile. Perhaps the women of the Hartmann house had traps laid for him, feminine notions of matchmaking, but he didn’t perceive such devious intentions in Miss Webster. He wondered what would bring such a young refined woman here to this wilderness. She was far too citified for a place like Idaho.
“So, you read?” she asked.
He slid a wry smile her way. “Actually, I do. Learned when I was a wee lad. Most helpful when I need to know which tin can holds the beans. The label, you know. It helps to be able to read the labels.”
Clara’s cheeks turned bright crimson. “I didn’t mean to suggest . . . You know what I mean.”
Graham laughed, feeling little compunction about rubbing her face in her own preconceptions. “If you mean, do I read books, yes. I enjoy taking a few favorite authors along with me each summer. They don’t take up much room and they don’t eat up my food supply.”
She laughed this time.
“My mother is to blame for that, I suppose. She was in the habit of quoting other people’s words whenever she wanted to make a point with us, my sisters and me.” He touched a finger to his temple, saying, “She had a library of proverbs up here, along with a few generations of distinctly Scottish wisdom.”
“How many sisters?”
“Three girls, all older than me.”
“Are they still in Scotland?”
“Aye, along with a perfect dozen of nieces and nephews.”
“I have an older brother, much older. We were never close,” she said wistfully. “I always wondered what it might be like to have had a sister to confide in.”
“Confiding in a sister wasn’t something a self-respecting lad was likely to do.”
She laughed. “I suppose not.”
The terrain changed, the trees taller, burying their roots in the steep hillside. Clouds still hovered in the crags and peaks far to the north. But the air turned from brisk to bitter as the winds increased. Graham noticed Clara tucking the blanket tighter to her sides.
He thought about how his mother had taken to dressing her girls in pants beneath their skirts when the seasons turned bitterly cold. The girls thought it humiliating, but at least they were warmer than those only wearing drafty skirts. And they rarely came down with the colds their classmates did. He felt a pang of sympathy for the girl beside him, and pulled up the reins on the draft. “Looks like there might be a few to pick from here, don’t you think?” He tipped his head to a stand of evergreens.
Clara nodded, her lips looking less rosy than when they’d started. As he helped her from the wagon, it surprised him to see her wearing only thin cotton gloves, prompting him to ask, “Are those the only gloves you have?”
She glanced down at her hands, before shoving them into the pockets of the oversized coat. “I’m fine.”
Graham reached into the wagon bed and pulled out a rucksack. He rummaged around for a few minutes before pulling out a pair of woolen socks. “Here. Try these.”
Confused, she looked up at him for explanation. He wiggled his fingers. “Put them on over your gloves.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“They’re clean. Wool will do a lot more to keep your fingers from freezing than those you’re wearing.”
He couldn’t help but smile as he cast a glance back over his shoulder. She made quite a comic sight with the coat hanging down to her knees and man-sized boots sticking out beneath her skirts. Somehow, she still looked attractive. Had that confounded Mrs. Long won!
Graham took mercy on the poor girl as she trudged gamely behind him, never once complaining about the rough footing or steep slope. He stopped, glancing back at her. She was standing, looking up at a copse of stately elms. He followed her gaze, seeing little that would have captured her attention. A few yellow leaves clung stubbornly to thin branches.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Listen,” she breathed.
Their steps had led them to a small vale, protected from the winds. He listened.
She met his inquiring gaze and whispered, “I heard a leaf fall.”
He watched her face, her lips parted in a kind of wonder. She was like a child, discovering a new world. She dropped her gaze from the tree canopy to look at him. “You think me silly.”
Shaking his head, he answered quietly, “Not at all Miss Webster. I find your delight in such things encouraging.”
Tipping her head to the side, her expression became a question. “Encouraging?”
“Yes.” It was all he chose to give her in response.
A few yards beyond, Graham pulled up, allowing Clara time to catch up.
“Did you find one?” she asked, breathing heavily.
“What do you think?” He waved a hand to a fair number of young spruce trees. “Any of these fit the bill?”
With her sock-covered hand, Clara brushed hair from her face, studying them. “I should think so. They’re certainly tall enough to please Jessie.”
They stood for a time, silently assessing the merits of each tree. Suddenly, they said in unison, “That one!”
Clara turned to him with a brilliant smile. “I think that might be the first time we agreed on something.”
He laughed, the sound scaring a crow from a nearby pine bough.
Graham had less trouble cutting the tree and pulling it down the hill than he did trying to squeeze it through the front door of the ranch house. But he’d had the horse to help him drag the tree. Only after he’d enlisted Bart’s help did the tree arrive inside the great room. After another half-hour of positioning and repositioning, the tree stood upright where all three women agreed was the perfect location. Filling the house with wonderful aromas of pine and pleasant Christmas memories past, the tree took center stage from that moment.
Lena picked up Rowena and twirled with her in a circle around the tree. “Isn’t it beautiful? And tomorrow we will begin to dress it.”
The child cocked her head, tugging at a strand of Lena’s hair, and asked, “Dress it?”
Lena laughed. “Yes, dress it, but not the way you dress your dollies.”
“Or your kitty,” Jessie quipped from across the room.
“We’ll string popcorn and berries for garlands. And your momma will bake gingerbread men to hang from its branches. Won’t that be wonderful?”
Rowena turned her large blue eyes to the evergreen, with its top branch brushing the ceiling, looking grand and regal. She tried to repeat the word, only managing a portion. “Wonder.”
Clara stood to the side, silently observing this happy scene, her face soft and reflective. She turned her gaze to Graham and they exchanged a smile.
As they returned to Ketchum, Graham couldn’t keep from stealing glances at Clara sitting relaxed beside him. There was a glow on her cheeks that the brisk temperatures couldn’t account for. This was something within her. He wondered if it was some memory or hope that the day had sparked to life. She swung her head to him, and he looked away, turning his gaze to the mule pulling the wagon.
“Mr. Kincaid, I spoke with Mrs. Reynolds this morning about—” She hesitated. “About the puppies. She told me that Dr. Reynolds thought you might be better prepared to take care of her when—”
“When she’s ready to birth them?”
Her cheeks blushed a fetching shade of pink as she dropped her eyes to her folded hands. “Yes. He thought if there were any complications, you might have the experience to handle them.” She said the last in a rush of words.
“I’m flattered the doctor thinks of me in such a way.” He thought for a time about the occasions when he’d helped deliver pups. It’d been a far sight better experience than tending cows with his arms bloodied to the elbows. He hoped she wasn’t one of those women who fainted at the sight of blood. “Are you asking for my help, then?”
She turned a hopeful face to him. “Would you?”
He could have refused. If something went wrong, she’d likely blame him. But those eyes, as soft as a doe’s, made refusal impossible. “I’d be glad to help.”
“I would be devastated should anything happen to Daisy.” Her voice broke as she said this, and she turned away.
She really was a lovely young woman, and despite misunderstanding the needs of her dog, she wasn’t without heart, just good sense.