Chapter 5 #2
“What are you doing?” she laughed as the initial shock of her disappointment in not being kissed wore off.
“I’m shamelessly dancing with you in the middle of an upstairs hall in broad daylight.”
Miranda laughed out loud at his ridiculousness. “But how can it be shameless if no one is here to see us?” she asked, even as their lively dance steps pushed the air right out of her lungs.
He stopped his silly dancing so fast that Miranda’s head spun. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, back to being overly grave and serious once more. “Never mind that, then. We have whores’ bedchambers to clean out.”
Miranda slapped both hands to her mouth in shock over his frank language as he let her go.
She should have been horrified. She should have been furious over him being so blatant and indelicate with her.
But all she could do was laugh. Laugh until her sides hurt.
She’d never known anyone who could toss convention and propriety aside as deftly as Randall did and still remain unquestionably a gentleman.
And she had no idea what she would do once he was gone.
So far, the quest to clean up the upstairs rooms—or booths, as Randall was beginning to see them—had uncovered one riding whip, a handful of French letters, a phallus carved from soapstone, and more putrid sheets than Randall had ever wanted to see in one place.
He managed to hide the more offensive items from Miranda’s sight by burying them in the pile of sheets they’d decided to throw out instead of attempt to salvage by washing in lye soap, but who knew what else was out there?
“Now that the worst of it has been removed,” he began as they stood at one end of the hall as the afternoon sun sank toward the horizon, “the rooms almost look normal.”
In fact, each one held a small bed and a tiny nightstand with one drawer. Now that the contents had been cleared out, they could pass for hotel rooms. Extremely cheap hotel rooms.
“Do you think it would be possible to knock down some of these walls to make larger rooms?” Miranda asked, stepping inside the closed room and running her hand down the flimsy wall dividing it from the room next door.
Something about the tender way she stroked the wall, the way her fingertips brushed it lightly, caressingly, sent a jolt of fire thundering through Randall. He adjusted his stance to hide the sudden tightness in his trousers and focused on her question.
“Yes, you could do that. I doubt any of these walls are holding the structure up.”
She turned back to him. “The structure of the building is sound. It’s almost a shame it’s a saloon and not a house.”
He had to do something to cool the heat that pumped through him every time that industrious look came into her eyes.
That look and her stalwart spirit had kept him awake in the small hours of the night, debating whether he would like to master her or whether it would be far more enjoyable to let her have her way with him.
He scrambled to find the most innocent, the most humorous light he could shed on things.
“I can see this as a house filled with children, a nursery, as it were.” He cringed inwardly as his mind went straight to all the ways they could make those children.
“Do you think?” Miranda’s expression lit with thought and something far more innocent than he could ever manage. “Do you think we could turn it into an orphanage of some sort?”
And now his heart was melting into a gooey pool, even as another part of him grew decidedly more rigid. “I can imagine all the delightful young tots snuggling into bed on Christmas Eve night, eager to find out what Santa will bring for them.”
Her eyes glittered with fondness as she stepped into the hall to stand beside him.
“Goodnight, little Timmy,” she said, blowing a pretend kiss into the empty bedroom.
She pivoted to face the doorway of the room across the hall.
“Goodnight, Agnes. I’m sure Santa will bring you that doll you’ve wished for. ”
The power of her imagination was so beautiful and sweet that Randall could hardly stand it.
There was only one thing he could do. “Goodnight, James.” He played along, taking her hand and heading slowly down the hall toward the staircase leading to the ground floor.
“I just know there will be a set of tin soldiers with your name on it under the tree tomorrow.”
“And a tiny tea set for you, Jane,” Miranda added. She giggled deep in her throat at the game.
Randall’s heart squeezed in his chest. Never in all his years of traveling, in all of the mad schemes his father had pushed him into so that he could make something of himself, had he ever found the time to consider a wife and children.
But now, as he and Miranda stepped slowly down the hall, waving and blowing kisses into empty rooms, a hope or longing or the sheer boredom of being trapped in a snowstorm overtook him.
He found himself not only entertaining the idea of Miranda by his side forever and a parcel of children with them, he ached for it.
Even though it made no sense. He’d known Miranda for less than two full days.
But two days of close quarters felt more like two years.
“Oh!” Miranda perked up as they reached the end of the hall. “We don’t have any Christmas decorations for the children.”
The sweet joy of their make-believe tugged Randall along as if it was second nature. “We’ll just have to do something about that, then.”
His imagination blossomed as he tightened his grip on Miranda’s hand and led her downstairs. There was precious little in a saloon that made for good Christmas decorations, but he wasn’t about to give up this idyll, not when Miranda seemed so happy.
“Of course, the most important Christmas decoration is the tree,” he declared, heading for his trunk of brushes near the dwindling fire in the newly-clean saloon.
Miranda helped him search through its contents, and together they discovered that brushes had quite a way of looking like pine boughs when you were desperate.
In spite of their determination not to use the saloon’s main room because it was too costly to heat, they were soon constructing a mad Christmas tree made up of chairs and brooms, crates and smaller boxes, near the fireplace.
It was an ugly monstrosity, but it was also a balm to the hints of misery and pitifulness they’d uncovered by cleaning up the saloon’s bedrooms.
“I feel as though we should be singing carols as we decorate the tree,” Miranda said with a smile as she draped the rags she used to clean out glasses over the brushes and boxes to give the whole more of a Christmas tree shape.
“We should.” Randall nodded, then launched into a hearty tenor rendition of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”
Miranda beamed and giggled, then joined in with her own sweet soprano. When she reached the words, “Joyful all ye nations rise,” Randall suddenly knew what true joy was.
“Join the triumph of the skies,” he sang out clearly.
His father would tell him he was being ridiculous.
Anyone passing would think the two of them had lost their minds.
The wind was still blowing, the saloon was growing so cold his fingers were numb.
Miranda was close to being a complete stranger…
and yet she wasn’t. A voice in his soul whispered that he was on track to have the best Christmas of his life.
As mad as it was to sing Christmas carols while constructing a tree out of brooms, brushes, and saloon detritus, it was even more outrageous that he fervently wished the blizzard would never end.