A Texas Christmas Carol Page 3

  Desperate for distraction, Evan turned Fred off the road and took him cross-country, hungry for the challenge of variable terrain. Small jumps over rain-washed gullies and zigzags through brush and trees cleared his mind of all but the obstacles directly in his path. The freedom of it exhilarated him.

  Until an unforeseen obstacle nearly separated him from his horse.

  After slowing his pace to weave through a small copse of red oak, Evan prepared to canter across the field beyond. Just as he tightened his knees, however, a man materialized out of nowhere, like a ghost, waving his hat directly in the path of Evan’s horse.

  Fred reared. Evan leaned forward in the saddle, slackening the reins and adjusting his balance.

  “Whoa.” Evan shifted his weight to encourage Fred back to the ground and immediately directed him to step forward to settle his nerves. They circled the thin, stooped man, who acted as if nothing were amiss as he fit his hat back to his balding head.

  Evan’s temper flared. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just pop out of the brush like that and scare my horse. He could have thrown me.”

  “Didn’t,” the man said, completely unfazed by Evan’s ire. “Come on.” He gestured with a bony hand for Evan to follow him. “Got a man down. Need yer help.”

  Evan scowled but traipsed behind, stroking Fred’s neck as they walked. The horse was still a bit fidgety. Their guide turned out to be more spry than he looked, covering the ground at a good clip. After a few minutes of tromping north, Evan spotted the trouble.

  A man stood knee-deep in a mud hole—stuck. Another fellow sat cross-legged at the edge of the bog, jabbering at his compatriot as if keeping his friend entertained during his confinement was a sacred duty.

  Evan’s guide let out a shrill whistle that made Fred toss his head, but it gained the attention of the others. The stuck fellow tried to turn but only managed a glance over his shoulder. His friend, on the other hand, jumped up and waddled over to Evan with a stiff, bowlegged stride.

  “Tom! Ya found someone. Hallelujah!” The man’s voice boomed as if trying to cover five times the distance that actually stood between them. “I thought Ol’ Prez was a goner fer sure.” His weathered face sported a thick white mustache and more lines than Evan’s account ledgers, but his eyes held a definite twinkle. “Good. Ya found us a youngster.” He turned to yell back to Prez. “This ’un will get ya out of that muck in two shakes of a cow’s tail. Just see if he don’t.”

  Evan dismounted, not quite sure how he was expected to extract the man called Prez from his muddy predicament. He’d tended many a filthy cowpoke in his day, drawing baths, delivering food, and even tending their horses, but bellboys didn’t have much experience pulling folks out of mud holes. Neither did clerks or inn owners, meaning Evan was quite out of his depth. All he knew for sure was that he was not stepping foot in that muck. Plenty of people considered him a stick in the mud already. He had no intention of making that perception a literal reality.

  “Name’s Lester,” the bowlegged man said as he thrust his hand out for a shake.

  Evan clasped his hand. “Evan Beazer.”

  “Ebenezer?” Lester started cackling. “Well, how ’bout them apples? I knew a fellow named Ebenezer once. Older’n you, o’ course. Kinda crotchety, but he grew on me.” He clapped Evan’s arm. “Glad to meet ya, Eb.”

  “No, my name’s not Ebenezer. It’s Evan. Evan Beazer.”

  “What’s that?” Lester raised a hand to his ear.

  “Evvvan.” He raised his voice for the correction and vibrated the v with extra vigor.

  Lester’s brow crinkled, then cleared. He pulled a pocket watch from his vest and looked at it. “Sorry, Eb. It’s already half past seven. We might have ya home by eight, though, if yer as strong as ya look.”

  Evan inhaled, preparing to try again, but Tom caught his eye and gave a slight shake of his head. The man didn’t say a word, but the small gesture communicated quite clearly that any further attempts at correction would be futile.

  Fine. Evan had never seen these men before and probably never would again. They didn’t live in town. Probably just drifters passing through. Though why none of them had horses was a mystery. Not one he would waste any brainpower trying to solve, though. Thanks to Miss Wiggins ambushing him in his stable at the crack of dawn with her partnership proposals and dinner invitations, his brain was disrupted enough already.

  Leading Fred behind him, Evan followed Tom around to the far side of the bog.

  Lester chattered at him the whole way. “Ol’ Prez startled a half-grown white-tailed deer this morning. Poor thing went boundin’ away without lookin’ where it wuz goin’. Bounded right into that there mud hole and got hisself stuck. Prez felt so bad, he marched in there after him and lifted him out. ’Course, he got his own self stuck in the process.” He chuckled, then elbowed Evan in the ribs. “Ol’ Prez ain’t exactly a planner. He likes to live in the moment.”

  “Better’n living in the past like you, you old windbag,” Prez called from the bog, easily overhearing Lester’s loud conversation. “Always jabbering about the good old days as if there ain’t nothing worthwhile in the here and now.” Prez glanced at Evan and tipped his hat. “Sorry for interruptin’ your ride, mister. Didn’t expect this mud to grab me and not let go.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve got a business to run, so I can’t tarry.” Evan looked at Tom. He seemed the most intelligent of the bunch. “You have a plan for extricating your friend?”

  Lester, however, was the one to answer. “All you gotta do is lasso him, tether him to yer horse, and pull him right on outta there. Just like a calf in a water hole.”

  “I’m afraid I have no experience with such things. I own inns. I don’t wrangle cattle.”

  Lester eyed him with a frown of disapproval. “Don’t wrangle . . . ? What kind of Texan don’t know how to wrangle dogies? Well, never ya mind. I can do the ropin’. Yer horse can do the pullin’. You and Tom can assist.” He lifted the rope from the back of Evan’s saddle and started shaping a lariat with the same ease most men would have in tying shoestrings. “Greenhorns,” he grumbled.

  Evan’s pride pinched. Keeping hold of Fred’s reins, he tromped forward, moving past Lester as he neared the bog’s edge. He might not know how to lasso a calf, but he knew his horse, and Fred wasn’t terribly fond of strangers. Well, except for Miss Wiggins.

  And there she was again. Intruding on his thoughts. His life. Could she not stay out of his head for five minutes?

  Thankfully, Lester knew what he was about and had Prez roped and tethered to Fred’s saddle horn in a matter of minutes. Evan urged Fred backward until all the slack in the rope pulled taut. The noose tightened around Prez’s torso until he leaned like a sapling in a windstorm, but the mud refused to release him.

  “Better get down there and help pull,” Lester said. “I’ll direct yer horse.”

  Fred showed no signs of balking as the little man came alongside him, but Evan still hesitated.

  “Go on, son,” Lester urged. “God gave ya them muscles fer more than just coat padding.”

  The old man’s words grated. Evan hadn’t taken orders since his clerking days. He’d worked hard to lift himself above the rabble and claim a position that demanded respect. To regain what his father had lost. Yet here he was, being made to feel like an insignificant bellboy again, ordered into the muck to fix a problem not of his making.

  “You one o’ them Levite types, then?”

  Evan raised a brow at the odd question. “What?”

  “Too full o’ pride and self-importance to help a feller in need?” Lester pierced him with a disapproving gaze. “If yer lookin’ fer the other side to pass by on, it’s over yonder.” He jabbed a thumb past his shoulder.

  The Good Samaritan reference cut through Evan’s sanctimonious armor and slid beneath his skin, stirring an itch of shame that couldn’t be ignored. Heaving a sigh, he followed the rope line until he reached the edge of the mud hole.

  “There ya go, Eb!” Lester’s joyful cackle echoed loudly behind him. “I knew you was the man fer the job.”

  Thankful for the riding gloves that protected his hands, Evan grabbed the rope and dug his heels into the mud at the edge of the hole.

  “Pull!” Lester yelled.

  Evan clenched his jaw and pulled. Every muscle strained, from arm to back to leg.

  “It’s workin’!” Tom proclaimed from his vantage point on the opposite side, where he was trying to shoehorn his friend out of the bog from behind with a fallen tree branch. “Hang on, Prez.”

  “What d’ya think I’m doin’?” Prez’s top half was nearly horizontal as he gripped the rope in front of his face. He groaned as the noose dug into his underarms.

  “Lord?” Lester’s voice rang out behind Evan with even more volume than before. “We’re just poor, humble folk struggling along in this life best we can. All of us been stuck, whether in habits, sin, or good ol’ Texas mud, like our friend Prez, here. We’re doin’ our best, but only you can free us from what holds us down. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, we could really use a little Psalm 40 action about now. Bring him out of the miry clay, Lord, and set his feet upon a rock.”

  A shiver passed through Evan’s chest, as if the prayer were meant for him, not Prez. He shook it off and focused on the job at hand. Yet his effort didn’t seem to matter, for before he reset his grip, a loud sucking sound ensued. Evan suddenly found himself on his backside as Prez pulled free. Evan released the rope and let the horse drag Prez the rest of the way onto solid ground, then scrambled over to the old man’s side. His wheezing breaths were worrisome. Fiddling with the slipknot, Evan loosened the noose beneath Prez’s arms as quickly as he could.

  “Hallelujah, Lord!” L
ester cried. “You done did it! Thank ya, thank ya.”

  Shaking his head at the unconventional prayer yet unable to argue with the results, Evan added his own silent thanks, oddly moved by being part of the rescue.

  Something Felicity had said that morning echoed in his mind. Something about the power of being present in God’s work.

  After tossing the rope over Prez’s head, Evan offered the man a hand up.

  “Thanks, young feller.” A wide smile separated Prez’s hairy upper lip from the bearded chin below. “I wuz startin’ to think I’d be spending the rest of my days stuck out there.” He shook his head, then clamped Evan on the shoulder. “No man wants to live out his days alone. Family and friends are what make life worthwhile. And now I got me a new one to add to my collection.”

  Evan tried to follow. “A new one?”

  “Yep. A new friend. You!” He slapped Evan on the back, apparently fully recovered from his ordeal. Then he extended his mud-slimed hand. “Name’s Madison, but my friends call me Prez.”

  Evan grimaced as he fit his palm to the mud-caked one offered to him. “I’m Evan.”

  “Evan. That what yer friends call ya? ’Cause I aim to be on friendly terms from here on out.”

  His friends? His business associates called him Mr. Beazer, as did his staff and the London townsfolk. His friends . . . Did he even have any?

  All at once, he recalled Felicity Wiggins smiling up at him in his stable that morning. Extending him an invitation to her home to dine with her family and asking him to join her in her charity work. Calling him by his first name.

  “Yes,” he finally said. “That’s what my friends call me.”

  four

  FELICITY SIDESTEPPED BETWEEN HER MOTHER, who stood at the stove whisking gravy, and her sister mashing potatoes at the counter in order to rescue the dinner rolls from the oven before they burned. She was notorious for her overdone rolls, but she was the best baker of the Wiggins clan, so the duty always fell to her. Her cookies, cakes, and pies always tasted splendid. Probably because she baked those when no one else was in the kitchen, which allowed her to focus on one task. But put her on roll duty with her mother and sisters in the kitchen, and the distractions invariably led to bread closer in tone to deep bronze than light gold. Today, however, she was determined to have golden perfection, even with one of her nieces tugging on her apron strings.

  “Aunt Lissy, why’d you invite the scary man to dinner? I don’t hafta sit by him, do I?”

  Unable to ignore the worry in the little girl’s voice, Felicity turned around, picked up four-year-old June, and plopped her on her hip. “Mr. Beazer will sit between me and Papa George,” she said, tapping her niece’s nose. “And he’s really not scary. Just a little grumpy. And sad. He doesn’t have a big, fun family like we do, so I thought we could share ours for tonight. Nobody’s family is as fun as ours, you know.”

  “Or as noisy and chaotic,” Felicity’s sister Charity mumbled between mashes.

  Felicity bumped her unoccupied hip against her sister, causing Charity to stumble sideways. “You love the chaos. Admit it. Why else would you add to it three times in the last six years?”

  Charity chuckled. “Can’t argue with that.” She dropped the masher, drew close, and rubbed noses with her daughter. “I do indeed love this bit of chaos.”

  June giggled. “Silly Mama. I’m not chaos. I’m June!”

  “Yes, you are.” Charity took her daughter from Felicity, then set her on the floor and gave her a playful swat to her backside. “Now, go find your father and Papa George. They probably need help with the baby.”

  June scurried out of the kitchen, ready to play big sister. Felicity’s heart gave a little twinge of longing.

  “Felicity, dear,” her mother said, breaking into her wishful thoughts, “don’t forget your rolls.”

  Her rolls!

  Felicity gasped and rushed to the oven. As her mother stepped to the side of the stove, Felicity grabbed the oven handle with one hand and a folded towel from the counter with the other. She pulled out the roll pan and set it on a trivet. Well, at least they weren’t charcoal rocks. More brunette than blond but still edible. It could have been worse. Still, she’d hoped for better.

  “They’re fine, dear.” Mama smiled in that soft way of hers that made every crisis feel like a mere bump in the road. Even when Mama had been so sick three years ago that she’d been unable to rise from her bed for months, that smile had remained in place. Felicity thought of it as her Jesus smile. The one so steeped in faith that worry couldn’t touch it.

  Felicity sighed. “I’ll brush some extra butter on the tops. Maybe that will help.”

  “You never cared about your rolls this much when Mr. Warren came to dinner,” Charity observed with a wink.

  “Yes, well, I wasn’t trying to convince Mr. Warren to partner me in a charitable endeavor.”

  “No. Mr. Warren was trying to convince you to partner him in a matrimonial endeavor.”

  “Charity.” Heat flushed Felicity’s cheeks as she fetched the butter crock and scooped a few tablespoons into a saucepan to melt. “You know I was never interested in Bruce Warren that way.”

  Her sister shrugged, her eyes twinkling. “Maybe not, but he was definitely interested in you.”

  “I think our Felicity has had her eye on another gentleman for quite some time now,” their mother said, making Felicity’s cheeks heat even further.

  Maybe she should just hold the saucepan to her face. At this rate, it would probably melt the butter faster than the stove.

  Mama set the gravy pan aside and laid a hand on Felicity’s forearm. When Felicity finally managed to meet her mother’s gaze, the concern radiating there made her heart catch.

  “Are you sure Mr. Beazer is the right man for you? He’s so . . . dour. I can’t bear to think of my Felicity’s sunny exuberance being dampened by a man who cloaks himself in storm clouds.”

  “I’m not sure,” Felicity admitted softly. “But I’m hoping that spending time in his company will clarify matters. There’s something about him that calls to me, Mama. Maybe it’s just God urging me to befriend him and bring a little joy into his life. Or maybe there’s something bigger at work. I don’t know. I’m praying that by Christmas, things will be clear.”

  Her mother gave her arm a squeeze. “I’ll be praying the same.”

  A surge of love for her mother welled up inside Felicity and relieved a bit of the uncertainty that had been plaguing her since this campaign with Evan began. She’d initially been so focused on providing for the children that she hadn’t paused to consider what damage her scheme could do to the man she secretly admired.

  Yet the moment she asked for a donation and disappointment flashed in his eyes, she’d realized her error. He had feelings. He hid them behind a sharp tongue and cold glances, but they existed. And she’d hurt them. Worse, she’d inadvertently fortified the idea that his worth lay only in his wealth. Her conscience had demanded she make restitution.

  That was when the purpose of her campaign shifted. Yes, the children still needed Christmas cheer, but so did Evan. Maybe even more so. It might be presumptuous of her to foist friendship upon him and entangle him in her charity project without his consent, but he was too good at isolating himself for her to take a more conservative approach. Perhaps if he could experience the genuine affinity of family, the joy of doing for others . . . the esteem of a particular young lady . . .

  “Sorry, I’m late.” Serenity Sullivan, Felicity’s middle sister, pushed through the back door, looking anything but serene as she jostled a toddler in one arm and a platter of deviled eggs in the other. “Felicity, can you . . . ?”

  Setting thoughts of Evan aside, Felicity hurried forward and grabbed the glass egg plate before her nephew’s kicking feet punted the yolks all over the kitchen.

  “Thank you.” Serenity blew out a breath that ruffled the hair falling loose around her face. “I had to change Casper twice before we left the house. Then Amy had a temper tantrum about wearing mittens. If Randall hadn’t intervened, we’d probably still be trying to pry her away from the porch railing.”

  Eggs safely settled atop the pie safe, Felicity returned to her sister and took the wiggling Casper out of her arms even as Charity moved to take her sister’s coat.