Rescued by his Healing Touch, page 25
“Are you still heading out to your folks’ later?” Mal asked.
That was right. His father wanted a meeting. Apparently, it was urgent. Tucker had been putting him off and putting him off for the last week, sending note after note saying he was too busy to go. He didn’t suppose his father would react well to another.
“I suppose so,” Tucker said. “Why? Do you want to come with me?” Slim chance of that.
Mal shook his head. “Just wondering.”
“Will you be back for dinner?” Angeline asked.
Tucker shook his head. “I want to go and see Enola and Sophie. It’s been a while since I saw my sister.”
“You deserve the break,” Angeline said, smiling up at him. She fixed his collar, which had turned up on the one side. “You work too hard.”
“You could come with,” he said suggestively.
She giggled and shook her head. “And leave these fellows to their own devices? I don’t think that’s wise, do you?”
Things between them had certainly taken a turn for the amazing. As it happened, her strong feeling was one of love. With no obstacles in her way, Angeline had finally been able to simply let herself feel, and she’d chosen to embark on a relationship with him. Tucker couldn’t be happier. He walked around grinning like a cat that had drunk all the cream in the dairy. The only thing souring his mood was this trip to visit his father.
Somehow, he suspected his father had bad news to tell him. Tucker couldn’t quite explain why he thought that. It was something in the way his father’s notes had been penned. They had started off in the usual fashion with some preamble, some lighthearted references to things they had discussed previously. But as the weeks had progressed, the tone had grown quite dark. His last note was brief to point of rudeness.
Come and see me. It is urgent.
“Tucker,” Dr. Henderson said, coming over to the fence, “you’ll be happy to know that your girls are in perfect health. They should have no trouble falling pregnant. Are you resting the others this season?”
“Yes, until spring,” Tucker said. “Then we’ll let them try.”
“Good. This new thing where people try to milk their cows all the time is ridiculous,” Dr. Henderson said.
He handed Tucker the bill for his services. Tucker paid him and that was everything done. Now nothing stood in his way except his own reluctance to go to Galveston.
The afternoon was cool and there were clouds coming up, looking like a late afternoon thunderstorm might be in the making. Tucker hated leaving the farm when there might be a storm. There was no way to know how bad it would be.
“Stop worrying,” Angeline said as she handed him a package wrapped in wax paper—sausage sandwiches and jam tartlets. She knew him far too well. He slipped them into his bag.
He smiled at her and leaned in to kiss her cheek. Touching her skin with his lips was thrilling to him. He longed to hold her in his arms and ignore the day, his father’s summons, everything. If it could be just the two of them for a while, that would be amazing. “Thank you.”
She laughed and nodded. “My pleasure. Can’t send you off hungry, now, can I?”
“Take care of them. Don’t let them get up to too much mischief,” he said, casting a look at George and Harris, who smiled and waved, oblivious of what he’d said.
“I’ll watch them like a hawk,” she said with a wry smile that he loved. It had just enough mischief in it. “Anyway, Mal is here. He’s very good at keeping things in check around here. Stop worrying and go make your father happy.”
“You know, you’re kind of lucky yours isn’t in your life,” Tucker said. Then, realizing how that sounded and how it must sting, he quickly added, “One less parent to answer to.”
Angeline regarded him for a moment too long before saying, “Go, already!”
He’d hurt her. He hadn’t meant to, and yet he had. It had been a thoughtless thing to say.
Reaching up, she planted a kiss of her own on his cheek. Tucker took that to mean she wasn’t too mad at him. Perhaps he’d get the hang of this relationship thing yet.
Smiling, he climbed in the saddle.
“Be safe,” she said.
He nodded, turned Apricot’s head, and started off up the drive.
***
Tucker found his father at the house he and his mother shared in a lovely, tree-shaded area of Galveston. The front yard had flowers and was neat and tidy, just as his parents liked things nowadays. It was hard to believe they had ever loved living on a farm where everything was always messy.
His mother answered the door.
“Hello, Mother,” Tucker said. “I thought you’d be at the store.”
“Hello,” his mother said, smiling. She looked immaculate, as always. “I was, but your father’s been in a mood and I thought it best not to leave him to his own devices too much. I’m glad you decided to come and visit.” She stood aside and let him in. “He’s in the drawing room.”
The wooden floors were polished to a shine and the whole house smelled of soap, as though it had been thoroughly scrubbed just that morning. Under it all was a slight hint of fresh paint. The house had suffered in the big storm and must have been repaired recently, because there wasn’t a blemish to be seen.
The drawing room was bathed in sunlight and Tucker found his father staring moodily out at the garden through a lace-curtained window.
“Nice of you to decide to join me,” Tucker’s father said. “It only took, what, six or seven notes?”
“Sorry, I had some things to do at the farm,” Tucker said. His father didn’t look around, he only kept staring out of the window.
Tucker moved to the chair opposite his father’s. It was a comfy thing, padded and cushioned, no doubt where his mother sat of an evening. He found her reading glasses and a ball of yarn with two knitting needles stabbed through it in a pouch down the side. That confirmed it. He let his hat and bag rest beside the chair and waited. His father would speak when he was ready and not before.
Since it had taken Tucker so long to come and see his father, he had assumed the man would be bursting with his news. And yet his father seemed uninterested in actually speaking to him now that he was there. Tucker began to grow impatient as the minutes ticked by, measured by the grandfather clock that stood in the corner of the room.
His father sighed.
“I wanted to leave you a legacy,” he said, so softly that Tucker wasn’t sure his father had spoken at all. “I wanted to give you something that would only grow from strength to strength.”
He paused, the silence stretching out between them once more.
“And you have, Father,” Tucker said. His pulse quickened and he sat up straighter. There was something very wrong here. “The farm is growing from strength to strength. You know that. With—”
His father shook his head and for the first time in his life, Tucker saw how old his father was looking. The man he’d known his whole life, robust, strong, and sure, seemed diminished, weaker, and small. He looked at his son with tears in his eyes.
“I’ve done something, Ethan, something I did meaning well, but…I think it has grown into some sort of monster and we are teetering on a precipice,” his father said.
It couldn’t possibly be that bad, Tucker reasoned in his mind. It couldn’t possibly. What could his father have done that was so dreadful and dire? Nothing. He was clearly overreacting. Perhaps it was simply his age. Or perhaps his father needed to take a vacation. Perhaps a spell back east would do him good. He could go to the theater, the opera. He loved those people singing in languages he couldn’t understand.
Tucker was about to suggest this when his father began to speak again.
“I made a mistake, Ethan,” his father said flatly, now studying his hands as though they were the most interesting things in the world. “I let a fox into the henhouse.”
“What are you talking about?” Tucker asked, frowning. “Father, what is going on?”
It took a while, but his father finally told him everything, and it was more than Tucker could ever have guessed at. It seemed that things had been going awry with the farm for a while. At least, financially. That was why his father had considered investors in the first place.
Edwin Tucker was a farmer by trade. Not a negotiator, not a businessman, certainly not a trader. He’d thought he was doing well. He’d thought he was in control and that he had it all well in hand. What he didn’t realize was that he was in a pit of vipers and they were looking at him as though he were fresh prey. They played with him—toyed, really—while getting promises, things in writing that he never should have put down with pen and ink. He’d made a terrible mess of things. Especially when it came to Oswald Greene.
Although the man had seemed mild-mannered and a little stupid, he was anything but. He’d played Edwin like a fiddle, and when Edwin had contacted him and told him that all deals were off, Oswald, like the viper he was, had pounced.
“What does that mean?” Tucker asked, leaning forward.
“It means your father has let a shady man into our business,” his mother said, coming into the room. She perched on the arm of his father’s chair. “Well, go on, Edwin. Spill the rest of the beans. Our son deserves to know the vast extent of your betrayal.”
“I never signed over the deed,” Edwin said defensively.
“Small mercy, that,” Tucker’s mother said. “You would have if that snake had plied you with more brandy.” She sniffed. Elmira was a teetotaler and never touched alcohol. “Luckily, your father came to his senses before taking that final step. But that horrible man is not one to give up. He’s been pestering your father for it. Hounding him. This is the one place he can’t get to Edwin, and so your father is stuck here.” She indicated the house with her long-fingered hands.
“You never said anything about this,” Tucker snapped. “Why not?”
“I…” His father shrugged and sighed at the same time, making his look of utter defeat even more pronounced. “I…didn’t think.”
And that seemed to be it.
Tucker’s mother rolled her eyes and shook her head. “That would be the understatement of the year. He didn’t think. No, don’t bother, he won’t be able to justify his actions more than that. He didn’t think, and that’s the end of it. There is nothing more.”
Tucker held in a breath while his thoughts ran around like headless chickens. He could lose the farm. He would lose the farm if his father signed it over to Oswald. But why would he? What had he signed with the man so far? Had money changed hands? How far down the whirlpool had they gone?
“You are going to have to walk me through this, step by step,” Tucker said to his parents. “If you want me to save the farm, you’ll have to tell me everything.”
His mother nodded. “You’re old enough to know.”
It took hours to go through everything. There were papers and notes, ledger entries, and a lot of lies and hogwash to wade through. The gist of it was that for years now, Edwin Tucker had been gambling. Nothing extravagant, just a little wager here and there—a flutter, as he called it. He’d win some and lose some and that was all fine and dandy. Until, one night, he met Oswald Greene at the poker table at a little drinking hole he liked in town. That was when things started getting bad.
Oswald played the part of a stupid, naïve greenhorn who just had a bit of luck now and then so well that he completely fooled Edwin into betting far too big. Of course, he lost and then he was into Oswald for a lot. This came out of the farm and store’s profits. But it was fine. It was under control. He’d win it back next week.
Next week came and went and he didn’t win it back but got himself in deeper and deeper. That was when Oswald had suggested he might want investors for his farm. It sounded like such a marvelous place, surely some extra cash to make it even better was in order. Edwin agreed. Of course, it was. That would be fabulous.
And that was how it happened—slowly, over months, Oswald wriggled his way into a position where he could call the shots. It was criminal, except that apart from the gambling, it wasn’t. Everything was perfectly legal.
“We have a lawyer looking into it,” Tucker’s mother said as they finished up what had been an excellent dinner. “So, from a legal standpoint, we will have some direction soon.”
“It will be too late, though,” Edwin said. He’d not touched his food, but merely pushed it around his plate in a lackluster fashion.
“What do you need me to do?” Tucker asked.
His mother looked at his father and then, when he seemed unwilling or perhaps unable to answer, she said, “We will need to keep Oswald off the property. Our lawyer is afraid he might push his advantage and try a hostile occupation. Like a medieval siege.”
Tucker couldn’t believe his ears. “Are you sure?”
“It’s been done before,” his mother said. “And for some reason he hasn’t divulged, our lawyer feels this might be Oswald’s plan. To occupy the dairy farm and evict you. And it would be mostly legal. Especially if he strong-armed your father into signing something else. It’s a mess, darling, and we need you to help us fix it. Just keep Oswald and any other strangers off the land. Then we might have a hope.”
Tucker nodded. In this rat’s nest of legal issues, keeping people out was probably the easiest thing he could have to do.
“I’ll leave first thing in the morning,” Tucker said.
“Good,” his mother said.
All plans to see Enola and Sophie evaporated. Saving the farm was far more important than anything else.
Chapter 25
October 1882
The Tucker Dairy Farm
As Tucker cantered up the drive on Apricot’s back, Angeline felt a pang of loss. Since the revelation that he was not, in fact, in love with her friend, she had found her own feelings for him growing by leaps and bounds. He was such a kind, thoughtful, generous person and his sense of duty was inspiring.
Yes, he’d said the wrong thing to her about her father, a man she’d never met who still managed to hurt her in his absence. But he’d almost instantly recanted it, and she couldn’t expect him to get everything right, all the time. She was certain that right now, Tucker wished his father was off somewhere not bothering him. And that had been the inspiration for the comment.
She went inside and made dinner as usual, and they ate together in the kitchen, as always. George and Harris were full of jokes, her mother and Henry continuing lively conversation, and Mal listening and laughing along.
She felt Tucker’s absence most acutely, and though the talk was pleasant and fun, she retired early. Her mother would most likely not be in at all, as had been happening of late. It seemed that when one had been married before or was of a certain age, then all social norms were tossed out of the window. Her mother and Henry were having the time of their lives. Never was one seen without the other.
Well, her mother certainly deserved happiness, and if it came in the unlikely shape of Henry Williams, then who was she to complain?
Angeline slept fitfully. It was as though a void had opened up in the big farmhouse and she could feel it missing Tucker. It drew her and moaned to her, and she tossed and turned in her little cabin thinking of his lips, his strong arms, and his wonderful laugh. She’d hear itin a couple of days. This wasn’t the end. Tucker would go and see his father and talk about whatever it was that was bothering the old man. Then he would go to his sister’s and see Enola and Sophie. Then, he would come home. Still, even in her dreams, she wished she was with him.
The next morning, the sky was gray and dull and mirrored her mood perfectly. Breakfast was porridge, which Angeline stirred in a great big pot with a huge wooden spoon. It was only once the grain had grown thick that she realized she’d forgotten to put salt in.
