Beckett's Birthright. Bronwyn Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ the Charleston women with their delicate complexions and their elegant gowns.

      And he’d thought all those whores in that big cement bathtub were something. It just went to show how ignorant a big old country boy could be and still stay alive.

      Once he’d located a boardinghouse, bathed the trail dust off and eaten his fill of fried fish, fried okra and corn bread, it had taken him less than a day to locate the man who had dragged his bleeding body out of that Arkansas saloon and delivered him to the sawbones. Having worked off and on as a lawman, Eli was skilled at tracking and the Becketts were a prominent banking family around those parts.

      Leastwise, they had been before the war that had ended some thirty years earlier. Here in the south, he learned, the effects still lingered like the scar of a near-mortal wound.

      He’d already learned that while Lance Beckett might look the part of a dandy, he was a damned good brawler. Now he learned that the Beckett family had lost a fortune during the war years and that Lance, the last of the Becketts, his father having died in a Yankee prison, was still struggling to recoup.

      Eli would willingly have paid him any amount for hauling his carcass out of that saloon and saving him from bleeding to death, but it didn’t take long to discover that Southern gentlemen were big on pride.

      Well, hell—who wasn’t?

      Once the greetings were over and the two men had shared a few drinks, Lance had invited Eli to move into what had once been an overseer’s house on the Beckett plantation before everything else had been burned to the ground. In the days that followed, while Lance had shown him the sights, the two men, as different as night and day, had become fast friends. That friendship was cemented by respect.

      Eli had to respect a man who would go to such lengths to save a stranger’s life against great odds, and Lance respected a man who would take the time and trouble to track him down and thank him.

      It hadn’t taken long to learn that even though the Becketts, once well-known in financial circles, had lost their fortune, the Beckett name was still well-known. Lance had already reestablished contact with a few men who were influential in investment circles. What he lacked to get back on his feet was seed money.

      While Eli was hardly uneducated—his grandfather had seen to that—he was a man of action rather than intellect. In his years of traveling since leaving Oklahoma Territory, he had earned his way, leaving the fortune he’d inherited from his grandfather intact while he tried to figure out what to do with it. He could shoot, break horses, even stay on a bull long enough to earn a prize. He knew cattle. Having been a lawman, he could do a right fair job of keeping the peace. It had once been said about him that he could track smoke on a windy day to bring to justice any man who broke the law, a talent that had helped in tracking the man who had saved his life.

      Only when it came to women was he out of his depth. One of his earliest memories was hearing his grandmother accuse his grandfather of being mean as a snake. A young Eli had silently agreed. What’s more, she’d added, she wasn’t going to stay there and take it any longer. She had left that very day.

      Theirs had not been a happy household.

      But all that had paled beside what had happened to the Becketts, and so Eli hadn’t mentioned it. He had, however, told Lance about the money he had inherited, and together they had made arrangements to invest it.

      “We should be able to triple it and then build from there, but it won’t happen overnight,” he remembered being warned. “This company I’m planning to invest in is going to grow like wildfire now that things are finally opening up.” According to Lance, even after the war had ended, recovery had been delayed by eleven years of devastating “reconstruction.”

      “I’m in no hurry,” Eli had replied. He’d been in no hurry because he’d just met the most beautiful woman God had ever created. His nebulous plans to build and stock a ranch could wait.

      Abigail Pindacross. Eyes the color of those blue flowers that bloomed out on the prairie, a mop of hair the color of yellow feed corn, and a waist he could have spanned with his hands if he’d dared to touch her.

      Hell, he’d even learned how to dance after a fashion, he remembered now with a twist of longing.

      His fingers were doing a two-step on the ledger when Streak poked his head through the doorway. “You coming to supper?”

      Eli’s feet hit the floor with a solid thud. He’d been so lost in the past he hadn’t even noticed when the lowering sun had turned the dust on the window glass opaque. “Yeah, sure—be there in a few minutes.”

      The talk over the long rough table was all about Miss Jackson. Eli hadn’t forgotten his own reaction to her. It was a little like being out on the prairie alone and seeing a big, colorful sunset all streaked with gold and red and purple reflected across a sea of wild grasses. Logic said it was just one more in an endless succession of sunsets that had been happening ever since the world began, and with luck, would go right on happening long after he was six feet under. Still, a man couldn’t help but be impressed.

      All the same, Lilah Jackson was just another woman. The world was full of women, women of all shapes and sizes, all dispositions. Always had been; always would be. He had to admit, though, that like sunsets, some made more of an impression than others, if for entirely different reasons.

      After hearing a particularly irreverent remark, Shem glared around the table and muttered a few threats. The men ignored him.

      “Wouldn’t mind seeing all that spread out on my bunk, nosiree, that I wouldn’t.” That from scrawny little Mickey Lane, who would have been fired on the spot except that he was the best brush roper Eli had ever seen, east or west.

      “Cover the whole damn mattress, I reckon,” piped up one of the men he’d hired only a few days ago.

      His voice dangerously soft, Eli said, “You’re expendable, Pete. Might want to think about that before you do too much speculating.”

      Shem nodded in approval, and Eli applied himself to his roast pork and sweet potatoes, determined not to get into a brangle over the boss’s daughter. He had trouble enough getting decent workers and keeping them on the job without that.

      Trouble was, it was May. Windows remained open, allowing the warm air to circulate, and in the still of an evening, with the humid air laden with the scent of manure and wildflowers, voices carried too easily.

      They were carrying now. When Lilah’s voice rang out clear as a bell, every man looked toward the main house. Not another sound was heard.

      “I damn well will not go back to school! I don’t need any damn diploma to run this farm, I can do a better job of it than that—”

      The next sound they heard was a string of curses that ended up in a fit of hacking. Then, “Oh, dammit, Papa, that’s not fair! Pearly May, bring Papa his medicine!”

      Every man in the cookshack was still turned toward the house, forks suspended between plate and mouth. Pete was smirking. Shem closed his eyes and assumed a prayerful attitude.

      “She telling it straight?” Eli asked quietly. “She’s actually planning on taking over?”

      “Over Burke’s dead body,” the old man replied.

      “I ain’t working for no woman,” one of the other men declared, СКАЧАТЬ