Beckett's Birthright. Bronwyn Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ Lilah looped the reins around a catalpa tree and began unpacking her bulging saddlebags. Then the door burst open and a child shouted, “It’s Miss Lilah! Mama, Miss Lilah’s here!”

      The yard was suddenly alive with children.

      By the time the last bundle had been carried reverently inside Lilah’s eyes had taken on a soft, damp glow. Her hair was tumbling; there were dusty smudges on her dark skirt and small, grimy handprints on her shirt from all the eager hugs she’d received, but she felt enormously full of…love?

      Well, yes. Love. And it felt damned good, too.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ