“We’ll move your things to the house tomorrow, if that’s all right.”
“That’s fine. I only brought a change and a few personal things.”
Not exactly packed for a honeymoon, he thought wryly.
She plucked Nate from his basket and seated him upon her lap so he could see the scenery and feel the breeze.
“You two will burn in this sun.” Caleb had never known a lady to travel without a parasol. Ellie was a most unconventional gal, and sometimes he felt as though she’d just arrived from a foreign country. Then she’d speak, sounding just like everyone else in Kansas, and confound him further.
She looked up at him with new worry creasing her lovely brow.
“Here.” He reached beneath the seat and handed her his black umbrella.
She expanded it and shaded herself and the baby. Caleb pulled his hat brim down over his eyes.
Perhaps she was just excited over being able to bring her brothers home. But the closer they got to Florence, the more nervous Ellie appeared. “You’ll have to show me the farm,” he said, and she nodded and shifted on the leather seat.
A few miles south of the town, she directed him along a rutted road toward a farmhouse. The morning was hot. Sweat trickled down Caleb’s spine and pooled at the waistband of his trousers. A youth stood in the blazing sun, hammering at a wooden trough, but he straightened at the sight of the buggy.
Ellie’s face broke into a brilliant smile, and she rose off the seat with Nate in her grasp.
The rear wheel hit a rut and Caleb grabbed her by the waist to keep her from plummeting off the side of the buggy.
She plunked back down on the seat and pulled away, glancing from him back to the lanky boy. “It’s him! It’s Benjamin,” she said, excitement lacing her tone. “Benjamin!” she called.
The boy dropped the tool he held and limped toward the road. He wore threadbare overalls without a shirt beneath. His thin shoulders, though deeply tanned, had blistered and peeled to an uneven, dirty brown color. A battered straw hat shielded his face, and Caleb couldn’t tell until the lad got close that his eyes were a vivid blue. “Ellie?” he questioned in a voice that cracked on the last syllable in that age-old way of growing males.
Caleb had halted the team.
Ellie fairly shoved Nate into Caleb’s arms so she could leap from the buggy and embrace her brother awkwardly with one arm. His long, slender arms wrapped her waist and back, and his hat tipped and fell. Shaggy sandy hair, thick and damp with sweat, fell forward. He pulled away self-consciously and, while glaring at Caleb, asked his sister, “What happened to your arm?”
“I fell. This is Dr. Chaney. He set it for me.”
He frowned when he looked back at her. “You gonna be all right?”
“I’m fine. This will be off in another week or two. Ben, I’ve come to get you. For good. Dr. Chaney and I are getting married, and you and Flynn are coming to live with us.”
He cocked a scornful glance up at Caleb. “That so?”
“That’s so. Your sister has her mind set on it.”
“He’s not makin’ ya do this, is he?”
“No, Dr. Chaney is a very nice man. You’ll see.”
“I bet I will.”
She touched his arm. “Where’s your brother?”
“Shuckin’ corn last I saw him. Over by the barn there.”
“Let’s go tell him!”
Benjamin picked up his hat and, favoring one foot, hurried after Ellie, who’d set out at a run.
Caleb urged the horses forward.
A woman stood on what couldn’t really be called the porch of the square, unpainted house. The yard was neat, the steps were swept, and the woman wore a clean calico dress.
Two girls sat in the shade beside the house, a blanket spread beneath them and cloth dolls on their laps. Placing the dolls on the blanket, they stood and moved up beside their mother. They wore cotton dresses, white aprons and polished brown shoes. Their hair had been braided and the ends tied with ribbons.
There wasn’t any shade except near the barn, so Caleb led the horses on, let them drink from a trough. He left them standing hitched to the buggy.
By the time he was finished, Ellie had found her youngest brother and the three of them were walking toward him. Ellie’s hand rested protectively on the boy’s bare brown shoulder. He, too, was shirtless, and Caleb frowned at the foolishness of not wearing protective clothing against the glaring prairie sun.
This boy’s hair was dark, as dark as Nate’s was light, and his eyes were a rich warm umber. The skin on his nose and cheeks was pink and peeling like that of his shoulders. Like Benjamin’s shoulders. “This the doctor?” he queried in his little-boy gruff voice.
“This is him. Caleb, this is Flynn.”
Caleb shifted Nate to one shoulder and stretched out a hand.
The child backed up an inch and moved closer to his sister.
“He wants to shake your hand,” she said coaxingly. “It’s something polite men do when they’re introduced.”
Caleb thought it a little odd that she’d thought she needed to explain something so elementary to him.
Flynn looked from his sister to Caleb and stepped forward, hesitantly putting his hand out awkwardly. Caleb shook it.
“And you saw Benjamin,” she said, nodding at the taller boy.
Caleb extended his hand.
Benjamin gauged Caleb with those icy blue eyes and ignored his hand.
The three of them stared at Caleb and he stared back, noting finally that they looked nothing alike. There was some resemblance in facial structure between Benjamin and Ellie perhaps, but one would never know they were siblings.
“What’s goin’ on?” A man’s voice echoed from the other side of the barn, and a stocky man rounded the corner and hurried toward them.
Flynn turned toward Ellie, and when he did so, Caleb caught sight of dark blotches on his ribs. The boy was so tanned and so dusty that at first Caleb didn’t realize what he was looking at. But he was a doctor. When the realization struck him, it numbed his thinking for a moment.
The boy had been injured. “Flynn, what happened to your side?” Caleb asked.
Flynn turned so that his back was against Ellie. “Nothin’.”
“You’ve been hurt. Let me see.” Caleb moved closer to inspect. The child flinched and grabbed for his sister. Caleb slid the denim strap from his shoulder and exposed his scrawny back. Bruises marred skin that blended into untanned white, and there, where the sun hadn’t reached, the purple and green shone vividly. Another area revealed yellowish, almost healed bruising.
He knew immediately that someone had done this to the child. This was not from a fall. Some of the bruises were newer than others. “Who did this to you?”
Flynn’s expression was shuttered, and he looked down at his scuffed and torn shoes.
Caleb met Ellie’s eyes where tears pooled. A single tear ran down her snowy cheek and she swiped it away quickly. He saw anger and resolution in her eyes, as well as something he hated: fear.
He jerked his gaze to Benjamin, who glared at him with a muscle jumping in his fuzzy cheek. Benjamin turned his stare to the man who had reached them, and hatred flared in eyes too old and too jaded for someone so young. His belligerent behavior immediately became clear.
“What’re you doin’ here?” the man asked Ellie. “You’re not supposed to visit for a couple more weeks.”
“I’ve come to take my brothers, Mr. Heath.” Her voice trembled, but she kept her liquid gaze squarely locked with the man’s.
“Like hell you are. The county gave me these boys and they ain’t said they were takin’ ’em away.”
“We’ve had legal papers drawn up.” Her voice gained strength and she tightened her hold around Flynn’s shoulders. “I’m marrying this man and he’s going to adopt my brothers.”
“You got proof? You got a judge in that fancy buggy?”
“We have proof that you’re not fit guardians,”
Caleb said angrily, unable to keep out of the discussion any longer. Gently he turned Flynn so that his ribs and back were visible to the farmer. “This is no way to treat children.”
“He’s clumsy. He fell.”
“He did not fall.”
“Did you fall, boy?” Heath asked, jerking his whiskered chin at Flynn.
Flynn still looked at his shoes, but he nodded.
Caleb pulled Flynn’s strap back up over his shoulder and turned to Benjamin. “Why are you limping?”
The youth cast him a surly look. “I musta stepped on somethin’.”
“Let me see.”
“Go to hell.”
“Benjamin,” Ellie said with authority. “Take off your shoes right this minute.”
Benjamin looked from the Heath man to his sister, and after a moment, sat on the ground to comply. He wore no stockings inside the worn-out old work boots.
Caleb handed Nate to Ellie and knelt to examine Ben’s dirty feet. His soles were blistered and callused, and he had red, infected sores on his heels as well as on several of his toes.
Fury, like nothing he’d ever known, welled up inside Caleb, and he saw nothing but a red haze for a full thirty seconds. When it cleared, he looked up at Benjamin, but the boy’s jaw was set and he’d cast his belligerent gaze aside.
Slowly, Caleb rose to his feet and deliberately looked at the sturdy pair of boots on the Heath man’s feet before looking him in the eye. In all his life before he’d never wanted to strike a human being or an animal, but the desire to pummel this man standing before him beyond recognition was a living, breathing beast inside of him.
He could probably do it, too. He was bigger, younger…His fingers flexed and formed fists with the consuming need to make this man suffer, but that was exactly what he couldn’t allow himself to do.
These boys had seen their share of violence, and had obviously been on the receiving end more than once. Behaving the same way that this man did was not the way to show them a wiser choice. Nor would it assure them that Caleb was any better, and he suddenly wanted their trust badly.
He silently counted to ten…then to twenty…. Sweat trickled down his temple. He took a breath and relaxed his stance and his hands. Then he allowed himself to look at Ellie.
Stark terror had blanched the color from her face. That did it.
“It’s obvious that these children have been treated cruelly,” he began in the calmest voice he could manage. “Flynn has bruises in various stages of healing. They’re not the result of a one-time incident—or an accident. Benjamin’s feet are in need of medical attention. He has blisters from poorly fitting shoes, and they have become infected and gone untreated far too long.”
Because he didn’t want to frighten the boy he didn’t mention that it would take skill and probably prayer to save a couple of those toes.
“Both of them have been exposed to heat and sun without proper clothing. I’d bet my horses that they’ve had very little nourishing food in their stomachs for months. Both are underweight and appear to suffer from exhaustion. Your animals don’t look like they’ve been treated as badly as these boys.”
“What do you think you are, a doctor?” the man asked with a snarl.
“As a matter of fact that’s exactly what I am. I’m taking these boys with me, and I’m reporting their condition to county welfare.”
“You don’t have any right!” the man blustered. “Get the hell off my land.”
“Even if the papers for their adoption weren’t already filed, I’d have enough legal rights to take them away from here. You’ll never do this to another child, Heath. Your days of starving and smacking foster children are over.”
Caleb walked toward the two girls huddled against their mother’s skirts and observed their clean, healthy appearance and well-nourished complexions. They were obviously this woman’s own children—probably Heath’s daughters, but not farmhand material.
Though assured that they weren’t treated like the foster children the Heaths had taken in, the comparison sickened him, and he imagined the mental anguish of those two boys, seeing these girls being fed and pampered while they were mistreated.
He looked into Mrs. Heath’s eyes, where a deep and abiding shame was reflected. She dropped her gaze. He took a brief inventory of her face and hands, wondering if she’d received any of the abuse her husband dealt so freely. He couldn’t even think of anything to say to her.
Caleb turned and walked back to Ellie, who stood trembling. Nate looked perplexed and hot in her grasp. Caleb took his baby from her one good arm, freeing her to guide her brothers toward the buggy.
“If you have anything you want, go get it,” Caleb said. “I’ll see that Heath stays right here while you do.”
Benjamin spoke up. “I want the clothes Ellie bought me.”
“No, Ben, let’s just get,” Flynn said with a tremor in his voice.
“I want them clothes,” his brother insisted.
“Go get them.” Caleb stood between Heath and the barn while Benjamin limped barefoot toward the barn.
“You’re not gonna get away with this!” Heath bellowed his anger at losing two unpaid farmhands.
Caleb ignored him, knowing the weasel wasn’t man enough to attack someone his own size.
Benjamin returned a few minutes later and bent to retrieve his boots.
“Leave them,” Caleb ordered.
Benjamin straightened. He studied the dilapidated boots only a moment before carrying the bag and tossing it up into the buggy. He assisted Flynn up into the vehicle, then helped Ellie. He finally climbed into the back where he moved Nate’s basket and Ellie’s satchel to make room for his own long legs, then he gingerly sat.
Caleb climbed up, handed Nate over to Ellie and flicked the reins over the horses’ backs. The team pulled them away from the Heath farm.
Ellie’s heart finally settled down to a normal beat. For a while there she’d been afraid it would burst from her chest. Caleb had been furious. She’d barely breathed, waiting for something dreadful to happen, for him to yell and hit that man. What would she have done if he’d been seriously hurt?
His reaction had caught her completely off guard, and his calm and deliberate words and the meaning behind them had diffused the explosive situation.
Guilt and pain tore through Ellie’s chest, and she bit her lip to keep from crying. If only she’d known what had been happening on that farm. Why hadn’t her brothers told her? What could she have done if they had? She’d have had to take the boys and run from the county authorities, because she’d already tried to get them legally and had been denied.
Those bruises on Flynn’s skinny ribs were like arrows stabbed into her heart. He’d endured so much in his short, painful life—both her brothers had. And the thought of them hungry and hurt and without someone to love them twisted her insides into a knot of racking torture. It was so unfair…so unfair….
Nate had fallen asleep and her arm ached from holding him. “Flynn, can you help me lay Nate in his basket between you two?”
“Where’d you get this baby, Ellie?” the boy inquired as he moved the basket and clumsily helped her place the baby.
“This is Nate,” she said. “He’s Dr. Chaney’s little boy.”
“Dr. Chaney’s really gonna ’dopt us?”
“Yes,” Caleb replied, turning his head so he could glance at Flynn. “And you’re to call me Caleb.”
“If we’re ’dopted, then does that make Nate our brother?”
“I guess it does,” Caleb replied.
Flynn grinned, and his frank pleasure brought more tears to Ellie’s eyes. She blinked them away.
Benjamin sat with his hat brim over his eyes, looking out across the fields.
“Where we goin’ anyhow?” Flynn asked.
“Caleb has a beautiful house in Newton,” Ellie supplied. “You’ll be able to go to school—he promised.”
“School’s for babies,” Benjamin snapped.
Ellie glanced at Caleb, but he said nothing, just faced forward as though the horses held his attention.
“I wanna go to school.” A note of wistfulness tinged Flynn’s voice.
“You will,” she promised.
They entered Newton, and the boys studied their surroundings. Caleb pulled the buggy up in front of Gerson’s Clothing Store. “We’re all going in,” he said, reaching into the back for Nate’s basket.
They followed him without question. In a state of numbness, Ellie watched Caleb speak to the store owner, who obliged him by measuring the boys and selecting items from his shelves. With a stack of clothing and shoes already piled on the counter, the balding, spectacled little man approached Ellie and looked her over.
“I think I have a few dresses that will fit.”
“Oh, I don’t need a dress—”
“Choose something for today, Ellie,” Caleb said gently from beside her. Flynn was inspecting his surroundings with awe and Benjamin was trying to act uninterested. Apparently Caleb wanted her to have a nice dress for the ceremony.
She nodded mutely.
Joseph Gerson led her to a display of ready-made dresses. The man’s perusal of her height and size made her want to run out of the store, but he turned aside, all businesslike, and gestured. “These three should fit you without alterations.”
“I’d need to take out the seam in the sleeve for this cast.”
“My wife will do that for you. It’ll only take a minute.”
She selected one of rose fabric with a white insert bodice and a full pleated skirt. “I like this one.”
“She’ll take all three,” Caleb said. “And a pair of opera slippers, something stylish. Kid if you have it.”
Mr. Gerson’s face lit up. “I have just the pair! French kid with a bow across the arch. Let’s test the fit.”
Self-consciously, Ellie took the two pairs he handed her and sat on a stool to remove her plain black boots. They were good boots and she’d been proud to purchase them with her first pay from the hotel. The first pair of soft leather slippers fit perfectly. She tied the black bow and admired the dainty shoe.
“We’ll take them,” Caleb said. “Send me the bill.”
The Doctor's Wife Page 10
