Eleanor’s thoughts were in shambles and she would have far preferred to stand right where she was and have her questions answered, but her aunt was cold, as the wind blew across the station platform when the train pulled away, and she was as well. She linked arms with her and led her to the warmth of the hotel lobby.

Aunt Brigid untied the ribbons on her hat and unbuttoned her coat. There was a fire in the potbelly stove and she stood before it, holding her hands out to warm them.

“How did you know how to find me?” Eleanor asked. “I fear the letter I sent you right after my parents died was hardly legible. I was hysterical, I think.”

“Of course you were,” Brigid said.

“Your aunt’s reply arrived by stagecoach on the first of December. I was in the mercantile buying the lamp oil when Mr. Fisher handed me her letter. I didn’t give it to you then, I should have, but I wanted to see if I could get her to travel here and surprise you. Her letter to you is unopened back at Paradise. Her address was on the outside of the envelope, and I wrote to her. I paid a man I met at the stables taking the train to Philadelphia to hand deliver my letter to her.”

“I received Mr. Gentry’s letter and closed my shop up and began making arrangements to travel here to you. I sent him a return letter the following day.”

“I got it yesterday, ma’am. I was ever so relieved that you were arriving. Eleanor is grieving sorely and she needs family.”

Eleanor felt the tears tumbling off of her cheeks. “Aunt Brigid. They are gone. All of them.”

“Yes, dear. I know.”

“Can I take you both back to our home, to Paradise? I will bring you back to the hotel this evening. That way you can have privacy to talk,” Beau said.

“Yes, please, Beau. Should we arrange a room for you, Aunt Brigid? I am sorry to say we don’t have a place for you yet in our cabin.”

“It’s already arranged,” Beau said. “I’ll tell the clerk to put her bags in her room.”

* * *

“After all is said and done, Eleanor, there is no one for me in my little town any longer, and why would I not want to be near my brother’s daughter? I can sew clothing in any town. Why not Winchester?”

“You would close up your shop?” Eleanor asked as she turned from the fireplace to serve her aunt a cup of tea. “Father said you were very successful making clothing for the wealthy women of Philadelphia.”

“Not every year has been profitable, but most have. My assistant wants to buy the store and has relatives willing to lend her the money. She has earned it, to my thinking, having put up with me for the last fifteen years. She is capable and will do well, I think. Fresh ideas will be welcome. What do you think?”

Eleanor cried then, in earnest. “I have felt very alone, even though Beau has been all I could ask for in a husband and more. I love him. I am certain of it. But I grew up with my sisters and Mother and Father and a large church family. I would be very pleased if you were here, near us. Beau has great plans for our property and future. I would want you to be part of it.”

“Then your husband will have to make inquiries for me for a storefront with living quarters above on one of the main streets. I will plan on spring to be here permanently.”

Eleanor clasped her aunt’s hands. “I am so happy. What a wonderful Christmas present you have been.”

Beau took Aunt Brigid to town to the hotel near sunset and returned cold and weary after dark.

“I have torn myself up inside, knowing that I withheld a letter from you. It was wrong of me.”

Eleanor walked to him where he stood at the mantel, poking and prodding the fire to life and staring at the flames. She put her arms around his waist. “You are high-handed sometimes; I can already tell that about you. That does not mean I am not grateful for everything you have done for me, and I know whatever you have done was to make me feel better, to comfort me. There is no one in this world I would rather be beside than you. I love you, Beauregard Gentry.”

“I love you, too, Eleanor.”

* * *

A brisk wind was blowing and swirling dry snow when Eleanor and Beau arrived at the hotel to pick up Aunt Brigid for Christmas church service the following morning. He had worn his best shirt, one of three he owned and the same one he’d worn the day they’d married. His hair was slicked back, and he’d scraped every bit of mud he could from his boots. Both women were dressed fancy and fine, just like Aunt Dorthea on Christmas Day. He drove them the few blocks to the church and climbed down from the wagon to help them down and to the church doors.

Eleanor kissed his cheek. “Thank you for bringing us. It will be an hour or more, I imagine. Where will you be?”

“I’ll be out front waiting.”

Eleanor and her aunt turned to the church and waited with many other townsfolk in line to greet that nitwit Buckland, all wrapped up in his self-righteous glory, shaking hands with the men and inviting the women inside. Beau’s wife and her aunt were already making new acquaintances with the family ahead of them. He stood and watched the procession as he leaned against the wagon where he’d parked it across the street. He hand-fed Bristol and laid a wool blanket over her and Nellie as they’d both worked up a sweat and now stood in the cold air. He supposed he could take the wagon to the stable. Theodore wouldn’t care if he got his animals out of the wind.

But he didn’t. Beau was watching his wife nod, shake hands, and hold some woman’s infant while the other attended a small child. His wife looked fine holding a baby. A tall man came down the street toward him then, and Beau wondered who he was and where he came from as he’d just seemed to appear from between the two buildings Beau was sheltering beside. The man walked up to him, smiled, and laid a hand on his shoulder. It was odd, Beau thought at the time and after, that it didn’t bother him in the least that a stranger was touching him.

“Merry Christmas,” the man said. “You are Beauregard, are you not?”

Beau tilted his head. “Yes, I am. You have me at a disadvantage, sir. I do not know your name.”

The tall man smiled. “I see you looking at your bride. She is the one there in the green and red silk with her aunt beside her. She is a beautiful young woman.”

Beau looked at Eleanor, at her smile, heard her laugh, watched as she touched the head of a small child. “Eleanor’s beauty lies within, although I consider her the loveliest woman I’ve ever met. There is no woman braver than she. I am in awe of her.”

“Then why do you stand here, son? Why are you not with her?”

Beau looked down at the ground as he moved a stone back and forth with the toe of his boot. “There’s a man in there that wanted her first. He wasn’t good enough for her, but he was one of her kind. I’ve drifted around and done some things, some killing even, that makes me not one of her kind.”

“The killing you’ve done saved her life, did it not?”

“Yes, it did,” he said, and wondered how much of Eleanor’s story had been told around town. He hated to see her be the subject of gossip. Yet, who knew those details except he and Eleanor?

“Do you love her?”

Beau looked at his wife, now shaking hands with Reverend Buckland. “Yes. With all my strength and being.”

“Then go to her. Hear the Savior’s story and the sacred music beside her. Be brave, Beauregard, as your wife is brave. She loves you above all others.”

He turned and looked at the man. He was familiar, yet Beau was certain he’d never met him. What was it about him that compelled him to do just what the man had said? To go to Eleanor and begin new memories for her, new Christmas memories, new traditions that they would share with her aunt and their children yet to be born.

“I will do just that,” Beau said as the man walked away. “Happy Christmas to you.”

The tall man turned. “Love them both, Beauregard. Keep Christ in your heart and guard Brigid and my dear Eleanor.”

“I promise,” he said.

The church bells pealed at that moment and Beau looked at the steeple. Brigid? His dear Eleanor? He turned quickly but the man was nowhere to be seen up or down the street or even in the alley behind him. He had vanished.

Beau hurried up the stone steps of the church and opened the heavy ornate door. He walked down the center aisle, hat in hand, looking for his wife, and found her near the front of the church. He slipped into the seat beside her, smelling the pine draped on the altar and the wax polish used on the oak pews. She looked up at him and smiled.

“Beauregard,” she whispered. “I am so glad you came inside. What changed your mind, husband?”

He covered her hand where it held her hymnal. “I made a promise which I will keep forever and a day. Merry Christmas, Eleanor,” he said and kissed her.