The Christmas Brides: A McKettrick Christmas

“I’m a good judge of character,” he replied. “Mr. Carson doesn’t seem to have one, as far as I’ve been able to discern.”

“How could you possibly have reached such a conclusion merely by looking at him in a busy train depot?”

“He didn’t pull back your chair for you when you sat down,” Morgan went on, his tone just shy of smug. “And you paid the bill. It only took a glance to see those things—I saved the active looking for you.”

“Mr. Carson,” Lizzie said, mildly mortified, “is making this journey as my guest. That’s why I paid for his meal. He is, I assure you, quite solvent.”

“Planning to parade him past the McKettricks?” Morgan teased, after a capitulating grin. “I’ve only met one of them—Kade—a few weeks ago, in Tucson. He told me Indian Rock needed a doctor and offered me an office in the Arizona Hotel and plenty of patients if I’d come and set up a practice. Didn’t strike me as the sort to be impressed by the likes of Mr. Carson.”

All kinds of protests were brewing in Lizzie’s bosom, but the mention of her uncle’s name stopped her as surely as the avalanche had stopped the train. Though she wasn’t about to admit it, Morgan’s guess was probably correct. Kade, like all the other McKettrick men, judged people by their actions rather than their words. Whitley could talk fit to charm a mockingbird out of its tree, but he plainly wasn’t much for pushing up his sleeves and doing something about a situation. There was no denying that.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Lizzie conceded, bereft.

Morgan squeezed her hand again.

The wind lashed at the train from the side that wasn’t snowbound, rocked it ominously back and forth. Lizzie spoke again, needing to fill the silence.

“Did you practice medicine in Tucson?” she asked.

Morgan shook his head. “Chicago,” he said, and then went quiet again.

“Are you going to make me do all the talking?” Lizzie demanded after an interval, feeling fretful.

That smile tilted the corner of his mouth again. “I’m no orator, Lizzie.”

“Just tell me something about yourself. Anything. I’m pretty scared right now, and if you don’t hold up your end of the conversation, I’ll probably prattle until your ears fall off.”

He chuckled. It was a richly masculine sound. “All right,” he said. “My name, as you already know, is Morgan Shane. I’m twenty-eight years old. I was born and raised in Chicago—no brothers or sisters. My father was a doctor, and that’s why I became one. He studied in Berlin after graduating from Harvard, since, in his opinion, American medical schools were deplorable. So I went to Germany, too. I’ve never been married, though I came close once—her name was Rosalee. I practiced with my father until he died—probably would have stayed put, except for a falling-out with my mother. I decided to move west, and wound up in Tucson.”

It was more information than Lizzie had dared hope for, and she felt her eyes widen. “What happened to Rosalee?” she asked, a little breathless, for she had a weakness for romance. Whenever she got the chance, she read love stories and sighed over the heroes. The woman must have died tragically, thereby breaking Morgan’s heart and turning him into a wanderer, and perhaps the experience explained his terse way of speaking, too.

“She decided she’d rather be a doctor than a doctor’s wife and went off to Berlin to study for a degree of her own. Or was it Vienna? I forget.”

Lizzie’s mouth fell open.

Morgan grinned again. “I’m teasing you, Lizzie. She eloped with a man who worked in the accounts receivable department at Sears and Roebuck.”

She peered at him, skeptical.

He laughed. “Your turn,” he said. “What do you plan to do with your life, Lizzie McKettrick?”

“I mean to teach in Indian Rock,” Lizzie said, suddenly wishing she had a more interesting occupation to describe. A trapeze artist, perhaps, or a painter of stately portraits. A noble nurse, bravely battling all manner of dramatic diseases.

“Until you marry and start having babies.”

Lizzie was rattled all over again. What was it about Morgan Shane that both nettled her and piqued her interest? “My uncle Jeb’s wife is a teacher,” she said defensively. “They have four children, and Chloe still holds classes in the country school house he built for her with his own hands.” Jack and Ellen, living on the Triple M, would attend Chloe’s classes, because the distance to town was too great to travel every day.

Morgan’s eyes darkened a little as he assessed her, or seemed to. Maybe it was just a trick of the light. “How does Mr. Carson fit into all this?”

Lizzie sighed. Looked back over one shoulder to make sure Whitley wasn’t eavesdropping. Instead he’d gone back to sleep. “I thought I wanted to marry him,” she answered, in a whisper. “Why?”

“Well, because it seemed like a good idea, I guess. I’m almost twenty. I’d like to start a family of my own.”

“While continuing to teach?”

“Of course,” Lizzie said. “I know what you think— that I’ll have to choose one or the other. But I don’t have to choose.”

“Because you’re a McKettrick?”

Again, Lizzie’s cheeks warmed. “Yes,” she said, quite tartly. “Because I’m a McKettrick.” She huffed out a frustrated breath. “And because I’m strong and smart and I can do more than one thing well. No one would think of asking you when you’d give up being a doctor and start keeping house and mending stockings, if you decided to get married, would they?”

“That’s different, Lizzie.”

“No, it isn’t.”

He settled back against the seat, closed his eyes. “I think I’m going to like Indian Rock,” he said. And then he went to sleep, leaving Lizzie even more confounded than before.

“I HAVE TO USE THE CHAMBER POT,” a small voice whispered, startling Lizzie out of a restless doze. “And I can’t find one.”

Opening her eyes, Lizzie turned her head and saw the little Halifax girl standing in the aisle beside her. The last of the lanterns had gone out, and the car was frigid, but the blizzard had stopped, and a strangely beautiful bluish light seemed to rise from the glittering snow. Everyone else seemed to be asleep.

Recalling the spittoon she’d seen at the back of the car, Lizzie stood and took the child’s chilly hand. “This way,” she whispered.

The business completed, the little girl righted her calico skirts and said solemnly, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Lizzie replied softly. She could have used a chamber pot herself, right about then, but she wasn’t about to use the spittoon. She escorted the child back to her seat, tucked part of Mr. Brennan’s quilt around her.

“We have to get home,” the little girl said, her eyes big in the gloom. “St. Nicholas won’t be able to find us out here in the wilderness, and Papa promised me I’d get a doll this year because I’ve been so good. When Mama had to tie a string to my tooth to pull it, I didn’t even cry.” She hooked a finger into one corner of her small mouth to show Lizzie the gap. “Schee?” she asked.

Lizzie’s heart swelled into her throat. She looked with proper awe upon the vacant spot between two other teeth, shook her head. Wanting to gather the child into her arms and hold her tightly, she restrained herself. Children were skittish creatures. “I think I would have cried, if I had one of my teeth pulled,” she said seriously. She’d actually seen that particular extraction process several times, back on the ranch—it was a brutal business but tried and true. And usually quick.

“My papa works on the Triple M now,” the little girl went on proudly. “He just got hired, and he’s foreman, too. That means we get our own house to live in. It has a fireplace and a real floor, and Mama says we can hang up Papa’s socks, if he has any clean ones, he’s been batching so long, and St. Nicholas will put an orange in the toe. One for me, and one for Jack, and one for Nellie Anne.”

Lizzie nodded, still choked up, but smiling gamely. “Your brother is Jack,” she said, marking the names in her memory by repeating them aloud, “and the baby is Nellie Anne. What, then, is your name?”

The small shoulders straightened. “Ellen Margaret Halifax.”

Lizzie put out a hand in belated introduction. “Since I’ll be your teacher, you should probably call me Miss McKettrick,” she said.

“Ellen,” Mrs. Halifax called, in a sleepy whisper, “you’ll freeze standing there in the aisle. Come get back under the quilt.”

Ellen obeyed readily, and soon gave herself up to dreams. From the slight smile resting on her mouth, Lizzie suspected the child’s imagination had carried her home to the foreman’s house on the Triple M, where she was hanging up a much-darned stocking in anticipation of a rare treat—an orange.

Having once awakened, Lizzie found she could not go back to sleep.

The baggage and freight cars beckoned.

Morgan, the one person who might have stopped her from venturing out of the passenger car, slumbered on.