A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [55]
“Ezra Maddox,” Peg said. “He’s offered me housekeeping work, Mrs. Nolan. The job doesn’t pay much, but at least there’ll be plenty of good farm food for these kids, and if things work out, Mr. Maddox and me will be married come the spring.” She paused. “You don’t mind, do you? Now that you’ve married the marshal and all?”
Dara Rose smiled. “I don’t mind,” she was quick to say. Then, cautiously, afraid Peg O’Reilly might have misunderstood Maddox’s offer, she asked, “He didn’t object to your bringing the children along?”
“He did,” Peg confided, in a whisper, “but I told him I wouldn’t be parted from my little ones for anything or anybody, and he finally agreed to take them in.”
The boys were still busy with their game of marbles, and Edrina was telling Addie that there wasn’t going to be a Christmas program over at the schoolhouse this year because that last snowstorm threw everything out of whack. “What about—?”
“My husband?” Peg asked. “Ezra knows about him, of course. Says we’ll look into getting me a divorce if it comes to that.”
Dara Rose’s heart ached for Peg O’Reilly. “This is what you want to do?” she asked, very quietly.
“It’s the answer to a prayer,” Peg replied, looking a little surprised by Dara Rose’s question.
Ezra Maddox, the answer to a prayer?
It just went to show, Dara Rose thought, that one woman’s idea of hell was another woman’s idea of heaven.
Chapter 9
Full of consternation, Dara Rose studied the Closed sign on the door at the mercantile, the handle of the egg basket looped over one wrist, and wondered what on earth could have prompted Mr. Bickham to close his establishment at midmorning. Edrina and Harriet, meanwhile, climbed onto the bench in front of the store and peered in through the display window.
“Mama!” Harriet suddenly cried, so startling Dara Rose that she almost dropped the egg basket. “She’s gone! Florence is gone!”
Dara Rose caught her breath, the fingers of her free hand splayed across her breastbone to keep her heart from jumping right out of her chest.
Florence?
Harriet let out a despairing wail.
“Hush!” Edrina told her sister, speaking sternly but slipping an arm around the child’s shoulders just the same. The two of them looked so small, standing there on the seat of that bench, like a pair of beautiful urchins.
The doll, Dara Rose realized belatedly.
Of course. Florence was the doll Harriet had been admiring—yearning after—ever since it first appeared in the mercantile window, the day after Thanksgiving. And now the doll was gone.
It would be set out for some other child to find on Christmas morning.
Although Dara Rose had never for one moment believed she could buy that doll for her little girl, Harriet’s disappointment grieved her sorely. Like any mother, she longed to give her children nice things, but that was a pleasure she couldn’t afford; they needed practical things, and some small measure of security, be it the egg money she squirreled away a penny at a time, or the ten dollars resting between the pages of her Bible.
Hurting as much as her child was—maybe more—and doing her best to hide it, Dara Rose set the egg basket down carefully and gathered Harriet into her arms, lifting her off the bench and holding her tightly. “There, now,” she whispered, her throat so thick she could barely speak. Not that there was a great deal to say at a moment like that, anyway. “There, now.”
“I should have sold my hair!” Harriet sobbed. “Then I would have had the money to buy Florence!”
Once again, Dara Rose thought of Piper’s gift, safe at home, and ached.
Edrina jumped down from the bench, tomboylike, and tugged at Harriet’s dangling foot. “Stop carrying on, goose,” she commanded, but there was a slight quaver in her voice. “You’ll have the whole town staring at us.”
Harriet shuddered and buried her wet face in Dara Rose’s neck. “I—really—thought—I—could—have— Florence—for—my—very—own,” she said, punctuating her words with small but violent hiccups.
“Shh,” Dara Rose said gently, still holding the child. “Everything will be all