The Christmas Brides by Linda Lael Miller Page B

about the couple, and yet it would be obvious to anyone who looked that the marriage was a refuge for them both.
    She wanted to be like them. To get old with someone, to live out an unfurling ribbon of years, as they had.
    Presently, she turned to Morgan.
    â€œI thought they’d come,” Lizzie confided, very quietly. She was kneeling in front of the tree by then, breathing in the scent of it, remembering so many things. “I thought my family would come.”
    Morgan moved to sit cross-legged beside her. He said nothing at all, but simply listened.
    A tear slipped down Lizzie’s cheek. She dashed it away with the back of one hand. Straightened her spine.
    â€œMaybe in the morning,” she said.
    â€œMaybe,” Morgan agreed, gently gruff.
    She got to her feet, retrieved the bundle she’d brought from the baggage car earlier. She folded Whitley’s expensive overcoat neatly, placed it beneath the tree. John Henry’s paint set went next, and then the pocket watch. Her beautiful velvet-collared coat found its way under the tree, too, and so did the pipe and the book and a few other things, as well.
    She sat back on her heels when she’d finished arranging the gifts. Was surprised when Morgan reached out and took her hand.
    â€œLizzie McKettrick,” he said, “you are something.”
    She bit her lower lip. Glanced in Whitley’s direction to make certain he was asleep. He seemed to be, but he might have been “playing possum,” to use one of her grandfather’s favorite terms.
    â€œHe’s going to ask me to marry him,” she said, without intending to speak at all.
    Morgan was silent for a long moment. Then he replied, “And you’ll say yes.”
    She shook her head, unable to look directly at Morgan.
    â€œWhy not?” Morgan asked, his voice pitched low. It seemed intimate, their talking in the semidarkness, now that the lamp had been extinguished, the way her papa and Lorelei so often did, late at night, when they were alone in the kitchen, with the stove-fire banked low and the savory smell of supper still lingering in the air.
    â€œBecause it wouldn’t be right,” Lizzie said. “For Whitley or for me. He’s a good man, Morgan. He really is. He deserves a wife who loves him.”
    Morgan didn’t answer. Not right away, at least. “These are trying circumstances, Lizzie—for all of us. Don’t make any hasty decisions. You’ll have a long time to regret it if you make the wrong ones.”
    Again, Lizzie glanced in Whitley’s direction, then down at her hands, knotted atop the fabric of her ruined skirts. “Maybe I’m not cut out to be married anyhow,” she ventured. “Some people aren’t, you know.”
    She felt his smile, rather than saw it. “It would be a waste, Lizzie, if you didn’t marry. But I agree that you’re better off single than tied to the wrong man.”
    â€œMy pupils,” Lizzie mused. “They’ll be my children.” Even as she said the words, a soft sorrow tugged at her heart. She so wanted babies of her own, sons and daughters, bringing the kind of rowdy, chaotic joy swelling the walls of the houses on the Triple M.
    â€œWill they be enough, Lizzie?” Morgan asked, after a lengthy silence. “Your pupils, I mean?”
    â€œI don’t know,” she answered sadly.
    Morgan squeezed her hand again. “You have time, Lizzie. You’re a beautiful woman. If you and Whitley can’t come to terms, you’ll surely meet someone else.”
    Lizzie feared she’d already met that “someone else,” and he was Morgan. Normally a confident person, she suddenly felt out of her depth. The McKettricks were certainly prominent, and they were wealthy, but they lived in ranch houses, not mansions. Nobody dressed for dinner, or employed servants, or rode in fancy carriages, as Morgan’s people surely had.