Beckett's Birthright

Laughing and listening to the childish confidences, she followed the five young Randalls inside to where a thin, faded woman was putting away beans, sugar, tea and dried apples. Lilah herself carried the slab of bacon through the shotgun-style house to the coolhouse on the back stoop.

“Aren’t you home early?” Martha Randall queried.

“Yes, and this time I’m home to stay.” Lilah broke into a smile, her eyes twinkling. “Papa’s still grumbling, but I told him it would take blasting powder to pry me loose again.”

Martha cocked an eyebrow. She was a handsome woman, tall, calm and patient. Lilah had always liked her, although the older woman had not encouraged a closer relationship.

The children, though, were another matter. Soon, the sleeves of her shirtwaist turned back, Lilah was seated at the table surrounded by Randall children, from four-year-old Betty to nine-year-old Brantley, who took seriously his role as acting man of the house. Barbara, the eldest, was helping her mother put away food. “You just missed Willy,” Martha said, filling the kettle for tea. “He brought me a mess of fresh-caught fish.”

Willy was not a Randall. In fact, no one knew his last name. As for his age, it could be anywhere from twelve to twenty, although Lilah thought he must be about fifteen. Even Willy didn’t know how old he was, not that it seemed to matter. He had simply turned up at the cookshack one day a few years ago, looking for food. Streak and Shem had taken him in. With his freckled face, his overlarge ears and his guileless smile, he’d come in for more than his share of teasing from the hired hands until Shem had let it be known that teasing Willy was a firing offence. He slept in the wide-open loft or in an empty stall, depending on the season. He ate at the cookshack, ran errands and fed the buttermilks—the motherless calves. Between tasks, he played with the Randall children.

While eleven-year-old Barbara carefully measured out tea, four cotton-white heads leaned over the large picture book. Three pairs of blue eyes and one set of brown peered eagerly at the pictures as Lilah carefully spelled out the words beneath each one.

After almost an hour passed, the time filled with questions and earnest confidences about teeth lost, minnows caught in the creek, and how high Brantley could jump, Lilah handed around sheets of paper and pencils. “First, I want you to copy the picture of the boy on the raft. Then I want you to copy the words underneath. I have prizes for whoever remembers what the words spell, and for whoever draws the best picture, and—and for—”

Lilah tried to think of another category so that each child would receive a prize and, more important, so that each child would have bragging rights. She would think of something. She always did. She’d been coming to see the Randall family whenever she was home ever since Edward Randall, once her father’s blacksmith, had been convicted of stealing a box of shotgun shells from the hardware store in Hillsborough. He’d admitted the theft and gone to prison for eight years, leaving his family totally without support.

Lilah knew Martha did sewing and took in washing for Streak and Shem, but that would hardly provide much in the way of security.

Since then, in unspoken conspiracy, Willy brought fish while Streak hunted rabbits, which he skinned out and took to the Randalls. Lilah, when she was home from school, watched for an opportunity to help herself from Pearly May’s pantry. Burke Jackson would have turned them all out without a second thought, Lilah knew to her sorrow. If the man had ever harbored a single generous impulse, his daughter was not aware of it.

“Have you heard anything from Edward?” Lilah could remember watching the farrier as a child, fascinated by the glowing coals and the way the brawny man could shape metal by turning it fiery red.

“Not a word. He’s shamed, I know he is.”

What could she say? Of course he was ashamed. Edgar Randall was a decent man, but even decent men sometimes made mistakes.

“It’s not the stealing that shames him—well, I reckon it is, but what shames him worse is being shut up in that place and not being able to take care of his family. I should never have had so many babies,” she said, her voice low so as not to be overheard. “But they just kept on coming and every one was such a blessing.”

Lilah thought, damn you, Papa, for being a mean, miserly old man. Right or wrong, her father could have easily prevented the man from being sent to jail. He was certainly not without influence, being one of the wealthiest men in the entire area.

Both women glanced toward the table, where four pale heads were bent studiously over their tasks. The older woman smiled, a spark of animation momentarily brightening her lined face. “I never could say no to the man. Lord, he was a dandy.”

Which was not exactly the way Lilah had seen the burly blacksmith, but then, she didn’t know all that much about men. She’d never been offered the opportunity to learn.

“You know what I miss most with Edward gone?”

“I can probably guess,” she said, not wanting to get into the kind of things that went on between a married man and his wife.

“I miss the way he used to play with the young’uns. He used to hold Betty’s hands and let her walk up his legs and turn a somersault.” She shook her head. “Laugh? I swear, you never heard a child laugh so hard. Used to wet her pants near about every time. He knew it, too, my Eddie did, but he never let on. She used to run up to him when he came in from work and say, ‘Flip me, Daddy,’ and he’d hold out his hands to her. Never did it with any of the others, that was Betty’s special treat. With the boys, it was fishing. Lord, I don’t know what we’d do if there weren’t fish in that creek.”

Half an hour later, Lilah rode away with the sound of children’s laughter ringing in her ears. Candy prizes had been handed out for the neatest lettering, the best drawing of a foot, of a smile, of a fish, and for remembering to sign the drawing. Lord knows, she thought ruefully, if Edward had lured Martha into his bed many more times, Lilah would have been hard pressed to come up with enough categories to reward.

She was halfway back to the horse barn when she heard someone riding up behind her. Turning, she shaded her eyes against a blinding sun. Most of the men were over near the creek cutting the first crop of hay.

Chandler. Her hand rose instinctively to the hair that was tumbling from its pins, thanks to so many enthusiastic hugs. “You’re riding Demon,” she accused. It was the first thing that popped into her mind when she saw him ride up on the big bay stallion.

Actually, it was the second thing, but she wasn’t about to acknowledge the way her stomach quivered at the sight of those yoke-wide shoulders and his lean, unsmiling face.

He nodded to the docile mare. “Jenny’s a bit tame for you, isn’t she?”

It was a perfectly innocent observation, Lilah told herself. So why did it instantly set her teeth on edge? “She needs the exercise.”

“She gets enough exercise, Shem rides her every day.”

“Yes, well…”

She could hardly tell him that Demon couldn’t be trusted to behave around children, much less to stand patiently while she read to them for more than an hour. She had learned that lesson soon after Edward had been sent to prison, when she’d first started riding out to see to the family’s welfare.

Head held high, she did her best to look down on a big man who sat a tall horse. “Don’t you have anything else to do today? Shem can’t do it all, you know.”

Shem could do little more than offer advice. Which he did freely, and which Eli gratefully accepted. “I thought I’d ride out and see how soon we can start planting corn. We’re more than a month late, as it is.”

“Shem always had the corn in by the middle of April.” It was an open accusation.

“Shem never had to wait out a solid month of rain.”

“We’ve had sunny days this spring.” She hadn’t been here, but the weather in Salem couldn’t have been all that different.

“Not enough to dry the ground.”

She couldn’t argue the point. She’d heard Shem complaining too many times about the poor drainage of the fields nearest the creek. He’d wanted to try ditching, but her father had complained that it would take too long and cost a fortune besides.

“There’s ways of draining a soggy field, you know,” he said mildly. Demon was stamping and flicking his tail.

“Of course there are.” She could hardly argue with him. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of several ways to go about it.” She’d been thinking of no such thing, but her thoughts were none of his business.

He looked—the term magnificent came to mind, and she dismissed it. He looked…capable. Big, with large hands, muscular arms and straw-colored hair that showed the marks of his hatband whenever he removed his curl-brimmed black Stetson. Gray eyes…at least she thought they were gray. She’d never been close enough to be sure.

The thought of being close to that muscular body and those tanned, blunt features made the breath catch in her throat. She hadn’t reacted so physically to any man since she’d been fourteen and one of the young hands had had to carry her to the house after she’d tried to jump off the fence onto the back of a half-wild horse.

Elias Chandler bore no resemblance to the scrawny cowpoke who had staggered up the front steps with her long legs dangling over his arm all those years ago. For one thing, there was his arrogance. Some women would probably consider him attractive, but if he thought that just because he’d been hired to manage her father’s farm he was going to manage her, he was sadly mistaken. She didn’t take orders from any man, not even from Burke Jackson.

“I’m planning on getting the field turned by week’s end as long as the weather holds. Conditions here are some different from Oklahoma, where I’m from.” He gazed out over the rolling green pastures as if he had nothing better to do than to sit on top of a restless horse and talk about the weather.

Demon had a notoriously short fuse. Chandler controlled him as easily as if he were the gentlest of mares. One more thing to chalk up against him. “If you don’t like our weather,” she snapped, “why don’t you go back to Oklahoma?”

Here we go again, Eli thought, amused. He could tell by the way her cheeks flared up, the way she set her lips together in a tight line, that she was hankering for a setto. He was just as determined not to give in to her.

“Well, as to that,” he began, struggling to hide a grin, but before he could finish, she waved a dismissive hand.

“Don’t bother,” she said, gigging her placid mount into a trot. “I’m really not at all interested.”

He held the impatient stallion back while she rode off ahead, watching her as she jiggled on the saddle. Wishing he were the saddle.

What the devil ails you, Chandler? What you need is to take a few days off and spend some time enjoying the delights of a willing commercial lady.

He made a mental note to ask Shem more about the family that lived in the dilapidated old cabin, and whether or not Miss Jackson had any business sneaking off there.