Beckett's Birthright. Bronwyn Williams

to do.”

      Eli stepped out into the hall and looked around for Pearly May. The old woman was used to handling him. Must be, else she’d have been fired long before now.

      “It’d please me mightily to see my little girl settled down with a husband,” Burke Jackson said wistfully. He coughed again, as if to underline his words.

      Lilah was first to react. Eyes widening, breast heaving, she cried, “Your little girl! Why, you wicked, scheming old son of a bitch, don’t you dare try to push me off on another man! You’re damn well stuck with me, whether you like it or not! And whether you know it or not, I’m a damn sight smarter than that son you never had that you keep whining about!”

      Eli had never heard any mention of a son, whining or otherwise. He did know when it was time to leave. Less than a minute later he found himself outside the front door staring at a row of grinning cowpokes, elbows and booted feet propped on the rail fence. They had obviously heard every word.

      Streak and Shem weren’t among them, but that didn’t keep him from thinking it might not be a bad idea to get out before things got any crazier.

      A husband for Delilah? The man would have to be seven feet tall, with brass balls and the hide of a rhino.

      Through the open door he could hear raised voices. Hers and his. God knows, that was one argument he didn’t want to get in the middle of. What the devil did the man have against his own daughter? All she’d done was show proper concern. Was that any reason to shout curses at her?

      For that matter, why should she be surprised that her father wanted to find her a husband? Any decent man would want to be sure his daughter was secure before he passed away.

      Something crashed noisily. Glass, from the sound of it. If he had to guess which one had thrown it, his money would be on Delilah. She had a temper to go with all that red hair, and from the looks of him, Jackson didn’t have the strength to spit more than two feet, much less grab something breakable and throw it.

      Early the following morning Lilah hitched up the buggy, neither waiting nor asking for help. Three men paused in what they were doing to watch. Eli was one of the three.

      “Going somewhere?” he asked, knowing he was risking a set-down in front of his men, something a smart manager avoided whenever he could.

      “What does it look like?”

      “Then you won’t mind if I take Demon today? I’ll be out all morning, so if you were planning on riding later…?”

      She opened her mouth to retort, then clamped it shut again and swung herself up into the buggy.

      Watching her ride away, snapping the whip so that it curled just above the little mare’s shiny rump, he had to admire her style. Underneath all that flash and fire, he had a sneaking suspicion there lurked a woman no one knew. What kind of lady would go out of her way to alienate everyone around her, including her own father?

      A daughter whose father didn’t approve of her? Didn’t even appear to like, much less to love her?

      At least Burke seemed to have her best interests at heart, Eli told himself as he saddled the stallion and set out toward the south pasture to look over the crop of fall calves one last time before the final cut was made.

      As much as he hated to admit it, his own childhood had not been all that different as far as family relationships went. According to Shem, during one of their late evening, front porch discussions, Lilah’s mother had given birth to a stillborn son, and a year later she had died giving birth to a daughter, leaving behind the helpless infant and a brokenhearted husband. Both had evidently survived, after a fashion.

      His own mother had waited until her son was eleven years old to run off, claiming in equal parts her father-in-law’s nasty disposition, having to work her fingers to the bone, and the freakish Oklahoma weather.

      The irony of it was that the Chandler family had had plenty of money. They could have hired help if there’d been any help to be found in the desolate area Matthew Chandler had chosen to settle in. The trouble was that like Burke Jackson, the old man had been a skinflint of the first order. He figured that as long as he had women in the family, why go to the trouble of hiring outsiders? He didn’t like strangers in his house.

      For that matter, he hadn’t much liked having his own family there. Eli had grown up in a house so big and empty it echoed, set out in the middle of nowhere. The nearest settlement, consisting of a jail, two saloons, and half a dozen shanties, was three miles away. By the time he was old enough to give much thought to women, he’d been convinced that the Chandler men were congenitally incapable of forming a lasting relationship with any of them. Nothing that had happened in the intervening years had changed his mind.

      At least after Grandmother Ianthe had left, his grandfather had channeled his bitterness into amassing a fortune by buying up more land and reselling it, mostly to the railroads. Randolph, Eli’s father, had drowned the sorrow of his wife’s desertion in a bottle. When the old man, furious at his son’s weakness, had threatened to take custody of young Eli, Randolph had made an effort to sober up and find work. His good intentions hadn’t lasted. Drunk again, he’d been riding point on a herd of longhorns for a neighboring rancher when he’d started firing at imaginary rustlers. The cattle had spooked; Randolph’s horse had bolted and Randolph had been trampled to death in the ensuing stampede.

      No sooner had his son and heir been laid to rest than Matthew Chandler had set out to tame and educate his grandson, who’d been fifteen years old at the time, wild, tough and already towering over most men.

      There followed a string of major battles between the two remaining Chandlers, with the old man usually winning. Gradually, mostly against his will, Eli had been educated and a few of the roughest edges polished off.

      Now, looking out over the tall pines, a rocky stream and acres of lush green pastures, all so different from the barren land he’d inherited—thinking of the fortune his grandfather had worked so hard to acquire, and that his only grandson, on inheriting it, had given away, Eli had to wonder if there was a pattern to the things that happened over a man’s lifetime. He’d about come to the conclusion that God simply scattered his children over the face of the earth like handfuls of confetti and left them to the will of the four winds.

      A few miles to the south at the train station, Lilah waited impatiently for the last of the passengers to disembark. She was certain she had the right day. If Isobel had changed her mind, she would have written or sent a wire. It was one more way in which the two women differed. Lilah was prone to barging full steam ahead once she’d set her mind on a course of action. Small, timid Isobel Dinkins would hang back, awaiting permission before ever making a move.

      “Growing up in a parsonage,” she had once explained, “you learn early not to offend a single soul for fear of finding your whole family uprooted and moved to a new charge before the cat can lick her paw.”

      Isobel’s parents had perished in a house fire that the church board felt somewhat responsible for. They’d been told that the chimneys in the parsonage were in sad condition, but had put off having them repaired in favor of more important matters, such as new carpeting for the church.

      Lilah had been sent off to school by a father who didn’t approve of her, didn’t want her around and could well afford to pay someone else to contend with her. He’d been sick to death of the constant wrangles between his housekeeper and his daughter. The two women had despised each other since the day Pearly May had been hired to look after the house, the man and his newly weaned daughter.

      “There you are, the last straggler off the train. I might have known,” Lilah exclaimed, rushing forward to embrace her friend. “Where’s the rest of your luggage? Is this it? I told you you’d be staying here all summer, didn’t I? Well never mind—we’ll just start all over again. I know a woman who can make you a dress in a day’s time. Shall we shop for cloth while we’re in town, or come back next week?”

      “Whew!” The smaller woman caught her breath and readjusted the bonnet that had been knocked