The Preacher's Daughter (4 page)

Mrs. Chaney lifted the child onto her lap and kissed her pink cheek. “Nana’s going to sit here and visit with your mama today, darling.”

“You’re not gonna pway?”

“Not today. Next time.”

Anna scooted from her lap and ran to take Lorabeth’s hand. “You’re gonna help uth win, right, Mith Lorrie?”

Lorabeth glanced from Anna’s hopeful expression to the yard where the family was gathered. “I’ve never played croquet before, Anna. You’ll have to teach me.”

Anna’s eyes widened big as saucers, and she turned to her mother. “Mama! I’m gonna teach Mith Lorrie!”

Ellie laughed at her daughter’s delighted expression.

Anna grasped Lorabeth’s hand and led her down the stairs where they followed Patricia and Denzil into the side yard. “We’re the black-and-blue team!”

“Goodness! Is the game dangerous?”

“Only if you stand too close to another player who’s swinging his mallet,” Benjamin replied, walking forward with a crooked grin. “Or you hit your own foot, of course.”

“That’s where the black-and-blue part comes in?” she asked.

Lorabeth liked the sound of his laughter, though she wasn’t entirely comfortable that it was at her expense. He explained, “The girls will be hitting the black and blue balls, the boys the red and yellow.”

She took note of the curved wires protruding from the ground in two diamond shapes with double wires and stakes at each end.

“Do you know the point of the game?” he asked.

She shook her head. “But I want to learn.”

“Okay, well, there’s a pattern here,” he told her. “The object is to get your ball through all the wickets in this double-diamond pattern. You want to try to hit the other team’s balls. If you do, you get an extra turn, and you get to hit their ball in the wrong direction.”

“You get an extra strike for scoring a wicket or hitting the turning stake, too,” Flynn added. “Watch out for Ben, ’cause he likes to send another person’s ball flying.”

“It sounds rather complicated,” Lorabeth said, voicing her concern.

“Nah, it’s easy,” Flynn replied.

“You’ll get the hang of it as we go,” Benjamin assured her.

“I’m apposed to be teaching Mith Lorrie,” Anna admonished her adopted siblings.

“So you are,” Dr. Chaney agreed, setting a coin on the bent knuckle of his thumb. “Heads or tails?” he asked Anna.

“Heads!” she answered immediately.

With a flick of his thumb, Dr. Chaney sent the nickel soaring into the air and caught it. He slapped it onto the back of his hand with an impressive flourish, then raised his hand away. “Heads it is.”

“Hurray! We getta go firtht!”

Listening to garbled instruction from a three-year-old made learning a challenge, but every so often, Caleb or Benjamin would explain Anna’s meaning or supply a rule the toddler wasn’t aware of.

Lorabeth’s heart pounded as she prepared to take her first swing. She felt everyone’s attention, but was most concerned over Benjamin’s. She glanced up and found him watching.

“You should have let her practice!” Ellie called from the porch.

Benjamin waved away her comment and pointed to the black wooden ball in the short-cropped grass. “Go ahead,” he told Lorabeth. “You want the ball to land over here.”

Lorabeth swung her mallet and sent the ball in the wrong direction. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, my.”

“That’s okay,” Caleb called. “It’s just takes a little practice.”

She discovered she wasn’t the only one with a wild swing. The balls the girls struck rarely landed where they were intended. She caught Benjamin subtly rolling Anna’s blue ball closer to a wicket with the toe of his brown polished boot, and when he looked up to discover her watching him, he shrugged sheepishly.

He strolled closer. “We’d never get the game over this afternoon if we didn’t make a little magic happen,” he said in a low conspiratory tone.

On her second round through the wickets, Lorabeth accidentally hit one of the other team member’s balls. She grimaced. She really didn’t want to send one of the Chaney men’s game pieces in the wrong direction.

Groans escaped the men. Ellie cheered her on from the porch. “Whose was it?”

“Ben’s,” the elder Mr. Chaney replied.

“Whack it a good one, Lorabeth!” Ellie called.

“Yeah!” the little girls chorused.

“Oh, I don’t think I can.” Lorabeth gripped her mallet in hesitation.

“Sure you can,” Patricia said, good-naturedly. “He won’t hesitate to send yours flying, trust me.”

Lorabeth exchanged a look with Benjamin. There was an element of daring in his eyes.

Patricia demonstrated the technique Lorabeth had seen the others use. She placed Lorabeth’s ball against Benjamin’s and touched Lorabeth’s with the toe of her dainty leather shoe to hold it in place, then drew back the mallet as though she would swing to hit it. “Hold it lightly, just like that so you don’t hit your foot or trap his ball.”

Lorabeth glanced at Benjamin, assuring herself his expression was one of amusement.

Lorabeth did as Patricia had instructed, feeling self-conscious and inept as she placed her left foot on her ball and visualized striking it with enough controlled force to send Benjamin’s across the yard.

She didn’t do so well for her first attempt, only managing to send the ball about four feet, but the girls on her team cheered for her, anyway.

Their team won, though Lorabeth couldn’t for the life of her figure out how. The only players with any accuracy had been Patricia and fourteen-year-old Lucy. She suspected either Benjamin or Dr. Chaney had nudged a good many more blue and black balls with the toes of their boots than she’d actually observed.

“Nana and Ellie have set out cookies and lemonade.” Patricia rested her mallet in the wooden rack and gestured for the others to join her. She shooed Buddy Lee from the banister, and the cat sprang over the side into the yard.

The Chaney family laughed and teased each other as they picked up sweating glasses of lemonade, helped themselves to cookies and spread out in chairs and on the wide stairs of the enormous porch.

Comparisons slipped into her thinking, memories of Sunday afternoons spent reading their Bibles under her father’s watchful eye while the rest of the world shared meals and played games. On the very rare occasion that her father accepted an invitation for dinner, she and her siblings were instructed to sit silently throughout the meal and to decline offers of amusements with other children. Even her mother was expected to sit silently and show no interest in their hostesses’ furnishings or nonsensical chatter. But Lorabeth had seen it in her eyes. The yearning. The disappointment. And eventually, the hopelessness.

The Chaneys’ interaction and gaiety was all so natural, so informal and unlike anything Lorabeth had ever participated in that she was numb from taking it all in.

“We’re gettin’ a piano,” Lillith told her aunt. “Then you can play for us when you’re here, just like at Nana’s. Miss Lorrie’s going to learn to play songs we like, too.”

“Won’t that be grand?” Patricia said as though impressed. She gestured for Lorabeth to join her on a wicker settee. “Where did you learn to play?”

Lorabeth settled on the other end and rested her napkin and cookies in her lap. “My mother taught me.”

“Do I know your mother, dear?” the elder Mrs. Chaney asked.

“She died when I was twelve. You may have known her, but I doubt it,” she answered. Lorabeth’s mother had been hardworking and devoted to her family and the church. Socializing had never been a part of their life. If it didn’t relate to the church, they didn’t participate.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Mrs. Chaney said. “It must have been difficult for you to grow up without a mother.”

Lorabeth nodded. At her father’s decree, she’d taken over all the household chores and the church duties that her mother had performed. “I’ve played the organ every Sunday morning for the past seven years…except once when the roof was damaged during a storm and we were forced to hold service at city hall. There was no piano.”

“I remember that,” Caleb said thoughtfully.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” Patricia asked, and Lorabeth told her about her siblings.

“Lucy is our only child,” she said with a smile for her daughter. “She’s fourteen already.”

Lorabeth had had trouble taking her eyes from the lovely young woman with the dark hair and flawless fair skin. Dressed in a pale yellow dress with ruffled hem and bodice, she carried herself with incredible poise for one of such a tender age. The girl couldn’t know how fortunate she was to have this family in which she could flourish and be herself.

Not once today had any of the young people been asked to keep their voices down or hang back from the others so as not to appear forward or coarse. Outbursts of laughter appeared as natural as breathing air. And there was plenty to laugh about. Lorabeth felt as though she’d been transported to a bright new land where people interacted with one another and enjoyed life.

For a split second she thought of Simon left at home to sit through solemn meals and hours of evening prayer. But she’d made her own way, as had Ruthann and Jubal, and her younger brother would be fine. One more year and he’d be working in town. She turned her thoughts back to where she was.

Benjamin observed the pretty young woman who seemed to have become a part of the family today. She’d lost her mother, and her father had done his best to guide and protect her. Lorabeth Holdridge was unlike any of the girls he’d known while attending school. She was less worldly and more disciplined than the girls he’d seen at the university. She’d been sheltered her entire life.

A young woman’s main goal was usually to land a husband to care for her and give her children. Lorabeth probably wanted those same things, but she didn’t seem the kind to care about social standing or monetary things.

He glanced at his sister to find her observing him with a question sparkling in her eyes. “How do the cookies suit you today, Benjamin?” she asked.

Coconut macaroons were his favorite as she well knew. “Nobody makes better,” he replied with a grin.

She returned a smile as fond as those she gave her own children.

“Are we going to change teams for the next game?” Flynn asked. “I want Miss Lorrie on my team this time.”

“Ask Miss Lorrie if she wants to play again,” Ellie suggested. “She may have had enough of your tomfoolery.”

The children turned hopeful gazes toward her.

“I’d be happy to play again.” She lent enough enthusiasm to her reply to assure them she meant what she said.

“You’ll have to do without Papa this time,” Ellie said, referring to her husband. “I’d like him to join me for a while.”

Caleb gave his wife a look with a measure of concern attached. When they divided into teams, Mrs. Chaney joined them, giving her son and his wife privacy on the porch.

They weren’t far into the match in which Lorabeth seemed completely absorbed, when Ben noticed that his sister and Caleb had gone inside. She’d looked tired all day, and he’d read the concern on his brother-in-law’s face. Benjamin lost interest in the game.

A twinge of something like fear stabbed his chest. Ellie held his world together. If anything ever happened to her, he wouldn’t know what to do. He glanced at his younger brother, laughingly engaged in a battle of boasts with their pretty cousin, Lucy.

Caleb’s father stood in the shade beside Ben. A tall handsome man with gray shot through his thick hair, he ran a ranch and his family with a stern but fair hand.

“Something botherin’ you, son?”

Matthew often called Benjamin “son,” and Ben didn’t take any offense to it. He held the man in high regard.

“Ellie’s looking a mite tired, don’t you think?”

“Probably no more than any woman ready to birth a new life,” Matthew replied. “Can you imagine the world if that chore had been left up to us men?”

Ben gauged his expression. “No, sir, I can’t.”

Matthew chuckled. He scratched his chin with a thumb. “I wanted my son to ranch with me, did you know that?”

“Probably seemed like the natural course,” Ben answered.

“He had a mind to be a doctor. Wanted it so bad he sold off a share of inherited land to pay for his first year of education. After I saw how much his dream meant to him, how bad he wanted it, I kicked in the next year.”

Ben nodded to show he was paying attention.

“He’s a damned good doctor. There’s nothing more important to him than your sister and this family. He’ll take care of her, you don’t worry yourself.”

Matthew was right. Ben had learned to trust his brother-in-law to do the best by all of them, and Caleb had never let them down.

Ben gave Matthew a nod and they strolled back to referee a disagreement between Nate and Lucy regarding a ball that had glanced off a wicket.

The sun was an orange sphere heading for the lavender-streaked horizon when Matthew and Denzil gathered their families. Ben had unhitched Matthew’s horses and tethered them in the shade, so he gave them water and hooked them up to the traces. Caleb’s father headed the black buggy toward Florence.

“Where’s Mama?” Lillith called as they entered the house.

Caleb loped down the staircase. “Did they head home?”

Ben nodded. “Just a few minutes ago.”

“Where’s Mama?” Lillith asked again.

“Mama’s tired and her ankles are swollen,” Caleb replied, including the entire gathering. “I’ve told her to stay off her feet. You’ll all have to mind me and help with chores.”

“Tomorrow is a school day,” Lorabeth said to the boys immediately. “Go lay out your clothing and books for morning. I’ll do the evening preparation for lunches.”

“Ellie told me earlier that there’s a ham to be sliced,” Flynn told her. “I’ll get it from the cellar.”

“That’s thoughtful,” she told Flynn, and he hurried off to his task.

“You’ll read us a story before bed like Mama always does, Miss Lorrie?” Lillith asked.

“Of course, dear.” She ushered the children up the stairs.

Ben gave his brother-in-law a direct look. “She’s all right?”

“She’s perfectly all right. She just needs some rest.”