Lassoed Hearts, Pride and Prejudice Fanfiction
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Lassoed Hearts ~ Section IBy Amy I.
Section I,
Prologue
Posted on Friday, 19 September 2003
As someone who had been born and raised on a ranch, Lizzy knew better than to dawdle in between the backdoor of the large horse barn and the nearby corral. It was high traffic area and you just never knew who or what might pass through. Despite having had the mantra pounded into her head for all of her eight years, Lizzy still could not resist the draw of the irresistible lull the new litter of barn kittens had on an impressionable, young child.
Squatting near the ground, she took her time petting the mama cat and then each one of her four progeny. As her hands danced over the dappled gray fur of the runt of the litter, the ground beneath began to tremble in an ominous manner. The mama cat, lifting her head, seemed to sniff the air before giving a commanding meow and led her children off in a hurry. Lizzy watched them retreat to the safety of the barn, realizing as she did so that the ground was not just shaking, but that a thundering sound of hoof beats was also growing louder. She heard shouting sounds, some of them sounding awfully like her own name.
Lizzy turned around and stared wide-eyed at a runaway bull headed straight towards the open corral door, which was located right behind her!
Riding ahead of the rest of the crew, which had spent the better part of the last two hours trying to herd the spooked and fired up, runaway bull into an enclosed area so he wouldn't harm himself and others and could calm down, was Will, who was also the first person to spot Lizzy standing in the middle of the enraged bull's path.
"Lizzy! Lizzy!" he shouted out. "Get out of the way!"
Will waved his arms, trying frantically to get the little girl to heed his words. He saw a flicker of awareness in her eyes, but he could also see that she was too scared to move. Her feet, always on the go, had suddenly, and in a most inopportune moment, taken root.
"Damn!" he swore to himself.
Will knew it was too late to try and head the bull off in a different direction. Making sure his cowboy hat was firmly seated on his head, he leaned forward and dug his heels into the side of his horse, egging the horse to overtake the bull. Will wasn't an expert rider for nothing. Within seconds, he had passed the bull and pulled ahead of it. Making sure that he was holding to the horn of his saddle with one hand, with his other, he leaned to the side and grabbed Lizzy by the waist, hauling her over the saddle in front of him to safety.
The cheering sounds behind him turned into distant, whispering sounds of roars as he exhaled with relief.
The rest of the cowhands, still applauding and calling out loud accolades, followed the bull, making sure that it was penned safely within the corral where it wouldn't get out and hurt passersby, or hurt itself. Will walked his maple-colored horse, cooling it down, before sliding off its back, Lizzy still safely ensconced within his arms. Once his booted feet were firmly down on the ground, he threw the horse's reins around a wooden pole, and turned Lizzy around in his arms. She still had the look of shock and fear on her face.
"Dammit, Lizzy! You know you're not supposed to play back there," Will cried out, his voice still hoarse from all the adrenalin.
The reproof in his voice caught Lizzy's attention and as always, she turned petulant. Shaking off the remainder of her fear, she stuck her childish tongue out at him and snapped in her imperious voice, "I don't have to do anything you say! You're not my daddy!"
Absolutely stung and shocked by the lack of gratitude in the senseless child, Will did the first thing that came to his mind without even thinking about what he was about to do. He kneeled down on one knee, grabbed the little girl, and laying her over his bent knee, gave her a spank. "Yes you will listen to me, you ungrateful, little girl," he bellowed. "If you know what's good for you, you'll listen."
Standing her up straight again, he looked into her face and said sternly, "If you don't want to get yourself killed, you'll do as I say. You hear me?"
Lizzy stuck her tongue out at him again before wrenching free from his grasp and running towards her mother who had just come running outside from the kitchen where she was both the head cook and housekeeper. "Momma!" she cried. "Will hit me," she tattled.
Fanny bent down and caught her youngest daughter up into a large hug, holding her close. She'd just heard what had happened outside and her heart was still lodged deeply within her throat where it had risen after hearing the news and then stuck.
"I didn't hit you, brat," Will said, coming up behind the hugging mother and daughter pair. Will took off his hat and slapped it against the back of his dusty jeans. "I spanked you," he corrected.
Addressing Fanny, he said, "I'm sorry, Fanny. I shouldn't have presumed, but I was so shaken and she was so . . .." Will searched for an unoffending word.
"Unrepentant," Fanny finished for him. "Yes, I know how my daughter is. It's all right, Will. Thank you so much for saving my daughter's life."
Standing up, she leaned over Lizzy's head and gave the lanky teenager a hug of undying gratitude. "Bless you, Will," she whispered into his ear.
"As for you," she turned back to her daughter. Now that the shock of the moment had passed, Fanny put her hands on her wide hips and stared sternly at Lizzy. "I would spank you myself if my hands weren't still shaking so hard! You know better than to play behind the barn, young lady."
"But Momma," Lizzy gazed up at her mother with those doe eyes and long, thick lashes, and Fanny almost buckled. Almost.
"Don't you start sassing back at me, young lady. You've caused enough trouble around here for one day. Now you turn around and thank Will properly."
"Yes Momma." Head hanging, she turned around and grumbled a semblance of thanks.
Will nodded sagely, taking note of the gesture at least and then in a somewhat gruff voice said, "Well, I gotta go and see about the bull." Doffing his hat once again, he headed back in the direction of the corral. Without turning back, he called out, "I'll see y'all at dinner."
Peeking out from her lashes, Lizzy stared at his back. Tattle tale, she thought and stuck a tiny bit of her tongue out. She then quickly and covertly pulled the tongue back in lest her mother catch her in the act.
"Just you wait until your father hears about this," she heard her mother say behind her.
But Lizzy smiled to herself. She wasn't worried by her mother's threat. She knew her father wouldn't say anything. She had him wrapped tightly around her little finger. She knew that when he heard what had happened, he would simply hug her tight and say, "I'm glad you're safe, Lizzy-Bear."
And that's precisely what he did when he came in from the fields that night, much to Will's chagrin.
Chapter 1Mike stood nervously in the doorway of the office, watching the Boss Man furiously scribble away in the ranch's account books. He wondered how he was going to break the bad news without the Boss Man flying off the handle. Though the Boss Man rarely got boiled up enough to really lose his temper, it wasn't pretty whenever he did.
William Fitzgerald Darcy IV, the Boss Man, cut a pretty powerful image behind the heavy, oak desk that had been in his family for years. Every Boss Man before him had also sat at that desk, doing exactly what he was doing now. Most of them, however, hadn't been as young as him when they'd begun their tenures as the Boss Man. Though only thirty-two, with at least half of the cowhands having more years of experience under their belts than him, he'd been the Boss Man for five years, ever since his father had passed away when he was only twenty-seven, and the ranch had passed into his ever capable hands.
Mike cleared his throat and Will's bent head lifted up. He put down his pen and waved the young cowhand forward. "What's up, Mike?"
Mike took off his hat in a jerky movement, as though he'd just remembered he was inside and it was impolite to wear a hat indoors. Passing the rim round and around in his hands, he shuffled nervously.
Will took pity on the young man, who'd just started working for him three months ago, bringing with him his equally young wife and their two young children. Mike was a hard-worker with good values, and already Will had taken a liking to the man and his family, hoping that they would stay with the ranch for the years to come. "You're lookin' a little nervous, Mike? What's bothering you? I'd offer you a drink, but I don't like my men drinking on the job and it's afternoon yet."
"Um, no, that's all right. Thank you, sir. I don't drink anyways. What I came to say is, do you remember that fallen roof on the back cabin?" he finally managed to ask.
Will nodded his head slowly, "Yeah. I thought we agreed that after we put down the tarp we'd worry about getting it fixed next week, after the cows have been moved to the south pasture." Moving the cows that would be later sold for their meat to better pastures had seemed more important than an old cabin that wasn't being used at the moment anyways, especially when the weatherman hadn't forecasted any rain for weeks.
"Right, well," again Mike shifted in his stance. "A couple of the boys and me, well, we happened to be riding past there on our way back from mending that fence you told us to fix last night and we just happened to glance up and well, you see, sir . . .."
Growing increasingly impatient with Mike's rambling story and wondering what was wrong with him since Mike was known for his terse, to the point statements, Will tiredly asked, "Mike, what exactly is it that you're trying to tell me?"
"Lizzy Bennet's on top of the roof trying to fix it by herself," he blurted out in a rush, and then he breathed in just as quickly as though he had just committed the greatest sin by tattling on Will's one thorn in his side.
Will leapt up from his seat, his face an amazing shade of red. "The devil she is!"
Mike hadn't seen anything like this before. Wasn't he just telling his wife last night that his Boss Man was the coolest person he'd ever met? There was always a calm, controlled look about Will Darcy. Nothing ever seemed to set him on edge. He just took it all in stride, confident that the underlying strength of steel that he held within would see him through his problems. Yet, here he was completely, and surprisingly, aggravated.
"I," Mike gulped.
Will closed his eyes and pressed two fingers against his temple. He tried to stay calm. "Please. Tell me you and the boys are yanking my chain. She can't possibly be up there . . . all by herself, did you say?"
"No, sir!" Mike protested. "Me and the boys, we'd never play a prank like this. I saw her with my own eyes, sir. We asked her what she was doing and she said that she was gettin' done what the rest of us didn't have the time to do. Don, he tried to get her to come down, but she refused. You know how she gets, sir. Tom's not back from town and we figured that the only other person she'd listen to after Tom is you."
Will tried not to snort at that. The only person Lizzy Bennet listened to was herself . . . not her father, not her mother, and certainly not him.
"What is that girl trying to do?" Will asked no one in particular. "Kill herself? If she doesn't kill herself first, then she'll surely kill her mom by giving Fanny a heart attack. I'm surprised she hasn't already. Sometimes I swear that girl doesn't have an ounce of sense in that pea-sized brain of a hen that she has." He grabbed his black Stetson hat from the corner of the desk and jammed it on his head before striding out of his office.
Mike followed the string of curses out of the house and down to the stables where the men fetched their horses. It was strange, he thought. When he'd first met Will, he'd been surprised to find that the Boss Man didn't swear, like most men of his ilk did. In the three months that he and his family had moved to Pemberley Ranch though, he'd come to learn that there were occasions where the Boss Man did swear. And when he did, the name Lizzy Bennet was usually strung along with the swear words. It would appear then that she was the only person that could ever raise his ire.
The men raced along to the back cabin where they found Lizzy on top of the roof, just as Mike had described. Watching her from the back of his horse, Will seethed. Did the girl lack all senses? There she was, on top of a roof, with no one around to notice were she to trip and fall, blithely singing at the top of her lung as if it were a normal every day occurrence to find a girl hammering away atop a roof all by herself.
Will threw his reins to Mike and jumped down from the horse. Planting his feet firmly in the ground, one hand fisted at his side with the other shielding his eye from the bright sun, Will looked up and yelled, "Elizabeth Joyce Ann Marie Bennet just what do you think you're doing up there? Get your scrawny butt down here this instant! You know you're not supposed to be up there! Don't think I won't spank you for doing something idiotic and irresponsible. I've done it before and I'll do it again!"
Lizzy had been just about to stand to fetch more nails from the nearby pail. At the sound of the loud, booming voice, the shock and surprise caused her to lose her footing, and her back foot began to slide.
"Lizzy!" Alarmed and afraid, Will went running to the backside of the cabin where she'd propped the ladder.
Lizzy quickly bent back over, her hands seeking for something to grab, all the while cursing at Will. She would've recognized that nagging voice anywhere. It was always yelling at her and threatening to spank her even though he'd never done it but that once when she was eight and had been almost run over by a runaway bull. Not to mention, he was the only one that ever dared to call her out by her full name. Not even her parents did that.
She hated that she'd been named after every single one of her blasted great-aunts. Growing up, she'd been mercilessly taunted for having a name that spanned the entire width of a piece of paper, and sometimes, if you wrote big enough, you even had to go to the second line. Why couldn't her parents have gone for something simple, like they had with her older sister Jane, whose middle name was simply Liliana?
After some flailing and a few swearing words interjected in between, Lizzy caught the edge of the roof, just in the nick of time, and managed to get a firm foot holding, which allowed her to stand without a problem.
Meanwhile, Will had nimbly climbed the ladder and was now perched on the edge of the roof. "Lizzy, what are you doing up here?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" she asked cheekily. "I'm fixing the roof!"
Knowing this conversation could take forever Will leaned against the edge. "And who told you to fix the roof?"
"Nobody, of course."
"Of course," Will said drolly, as if that answered everything. "So, again, why are you fixing the roof then?"
Lizzy turned to stare at him and gave him a look as though he had sprouted three horns in the past minute. Will thought she looked pretty scary too what with the five nails she had sticking out of her mouth. He shook his head knowing that he had warned her about that bad habit time and time again. But, in true Lizzy fashion, each time he had warned her about the possibility of one day swallowing those nails and choking to death on them, she had tossed her head in derision avowing that she had more sense than to do something idiotic like that.
"Well," she drawled, taking out the nails one by one so she didn't choke on them. "I happened to hear one of the guys mentioning that the roof needed fixing, but everyone was too busy to get to it until next week. Since I happened to have some free time today, I thought I'd take a whack at it myself. I'm almost done," she said proudly, sweeping her arms in a ground gesture to show off her work.
"Hmph," was all Will could say. Even he had to concede as he took a brief survey with his eyes that neither he nor any of his men could have done a better job. She'd been efficient and neat in his work, not that he was surprised. He knew that Tom, his foreman, had taught his daughter everything she knew and you couldn't find a better cowhand than Tom Bennet.
"You shouldn't have come up here by yourself without telling anyone," he finally said. "That was stupid. You could've gotten yourself hurt, like you almost did now, and no one would have found out about it until it was too late or something. Gees, Lizzy, you're twenty-two now. Don't you ever stop to think before you go off and do something brash? That's what this is for," he lightly beat against the side of his head with his knuckles.
"Now get down before you break your neck and your daddy comes hunting after me for letting you stay up here. One of the other men can finish what you've started tomorrow."
As he started down the ladder, he muttered to himself, "Sometimes, I swear that brat was put on this earth to give me a heart attack and drive me to an early death."
"I heard that," Lizzy yelled at him, probably the only person on the ranch that dared to raise her voice to the Boss Man. But then, he was the only person on the ranch that called her "brat" too. "And I'm not coming down until I've finished fixing this roof! I'm a Bennet and I start what I finish," stating proudly the oft-repeated phrase of her father's.
Will slowed in his steps, narrowed his eyes, and began the climb back up the ladder. From his vantage point on the ground, Mike gleefully thought this was better than that daytime soap his wife was so keen on watching.
"You really are one stubborn mule of a person, you know that, Lizzy Bennet?"
"It takes one to know one," was the perhaps childish, but very accurate response.
"Then you know I won't leave until you leave. It's not safe for you to be out here by yourself," he pressed.
"I was doing just fine until you came along."
"Yeah, and you almost slipped and fell! How do you think I'd explain to your momma and your daddy that their 'Lizzy-Bear,'" he mimicked her parents, "had fallen and broken her neck while working on one of my cabins on my land?" He tried to keep a rein on his temper. He didn't think he was succeeding.
"You wouldn't have had to if you hadn't come along. I was doing just fine all afternoon, by myself, until you came, hollering at me. I wouldn't have lost my footing if it hadn't been for you startling me just as I was about to stand."
Will winced, knowing that she was right. He could have approached her in a calmer way instead of leaping upon her like a surprise attack. But, it was just that the sight of her up there had him crawling out of his skin.
"Besides, I really don't know what you're afraid of. You know I can walk the length of a ridgepole and back without falling."
Will narrowed his eyes once more, knowing exactly what she was referring to. She'd been thirteen at the time, and with no more sense then as she had now, he reflected. One of the Bingley girls, Caroline, had been over visiting with her mother from the neighboring Netherfield Ranch. Caroline was only a scant two years older than Lizzy, but they'd always rubbed against the grain with one another. Caroline had taunted the younger girl with an impossible tale of how she had climbed atop the barn roof and stood there for a full minute before losing balance and having to come down. Lizzy immediately boasted that she could do better, declaring that she could walk the ridgepole. And then she'd done just exactly that.
Just remembering that afternoon made Will shudder with goosebumps.
"You really aren't going to come down are you?" Will asked resignedly.
"Nope," Lizzy cheerfully replied.
"Got an extra pair of gloves and a spare hammer?" he asked with a sigh.
Lizzy pointed to the open toolbox and patted the right side of her tool belt. Nodding, Will climbed onto the roof and then clambered over to the edge closest to Mike. Leaning over, he yelled down, "Tie him up by the truck and then get back on the fence with the others. I'll see you at dinner."
"Sure, Boss," Mike yelled back.
Once Mike left, Will went back to Lizzy's side, fetched the gloves, tugging them onto his large, callused hands and then silently held out his left hand as he waited for Lizzy to relinquish one of her hammers. Tucking it into his back pocket, he grabbed a handful of nails with one hand and a wooden plank with the other. Then, he turned his back on her and proceeded to nail the plank into its place. Lizzy let herself pause for a second to look over her shoulder and smile at her success.
While she watched, she let herself appreciate the view his backside afforded. She had to admire his quick and efficient movements, the way his muscles flexed as he raised the hammer and then lowered it to the nail. She was also glad cowboys wore jeans, especially Will. They hugged his hardened thighs and backside perfectly.
All of the sudden, finding the rooftop to be incredibly warm, Lizzy fanned herself with her leather enclosed hand and made herself get back to work.
They worked in silence, but they worked in harmony. In no time they had the roof completely finished and cleaned.
As Lizzy searched for the last scraps of sandpaper and errant nails, Will stood and admired their handicraft. "It looks good," he finally said. "We did a good job."
"You mean I did a good job. You just came in at the end, even though I would have done fine without your help."
"But we got things done faster working together," he pointed out. Lizzy nodded in reluctant agreement.
"And just in time for dinner. Come on, let's get back to the house and see what grub your mom's cooked up tonight. All this work has made me work up an appetite!" And he still had the account books to finish, he remembered. It would be another long night poring over the tedious accounts. Running the ranch was a 24-hour job he thought not for the first time since he'd taken over his father's reign five years ago.
He swatted Lizzy's backside with his gloves as he walked past her on the way down. She yelped predictably. Will stopped on the third rung, held up his hand, and said, "Why don't you had me the toolbox and I'll carry it down."
"I can carry it down," Lizzy staunchly avowed. "I carried it up here and I can carry it back down, thank you very much."
Will wanted to lower his head and bash it into the side of the house repeatedly. Surely that would have been more comfortable than this persistent throbbing located somewhere near the front of his head.
Why did everything with Lizzy have to be a competition? A constant battle? "Lizzy, are you going to make me argue about this too?"
She grinned ruefully and said, "Fine, here. Take the stupid toolbox." She'd won one battle already anyways, and it had definitely been the bigger battle.
She waited until Will was back on the ground before beginning her own descent. She wrinkled her nose with distaste when she saw that he was holding onto the bottom of the ladder. But, she shrugged her shoulders, knowing that that was simply the way Will was. After she'd made her way back to the ground, he helped her fold the ladder and insisted upon carrying it to the truck and strapping it in. Lizzy chafed a bit at that. After all, wasn't it she who had packed the truck for the short drive to the cabin?
Once Will had secured the last rope, he gave it a final pat and said, "Well, I guess I'll see you back at the house then. Get someone to help you take down the ladder when you get back to the tool shed."
Lizzy rolled her eyes and bit back the words threatening to escape. She knew that if she didn't, they'd be stuck having another half our argument and her stomach was growling with hunger. Even Lizzy knew how to prioritize. She'd only taken a peanut butter jelly sandwich and a thermos of lemonade for lunch. Without saying a word, she climbed into the truck and took off without a backward glance. Will followed at a more sedate pace.
By the time Lizzy finished putting away the supplies and cleaned up, she was already fifteen minutes late for dinner. She rushed to the dining room and paused just outside, catching her breath, and then walking sedately through the doorway, hoping to slip in unnoticed. Without looking up from the pile of mashed potatoes he was heaping onto his plate, Will drawled, "So nice of you to join us this evening, Lizzy."
Lizzy grimaced and took her seat next to her father who, as the foreman, sat in the middle of the long table. He smiled indulgently at his youngest, the one most like him, and with a mouthful of peas said, "Heard you did some roof patching this afternoon, Lizzy-Bear."
"Yes I did, Daddy. And I did a good job on it too, ask Will."
"Oh? Did he help you with it?"
"Yes I did, and yes we did do a good job on it."
"No you didn't," Lizzy retorted. "Well, a little. But I did most of it by myself," she admitted proudly.
"That was a foolhardy thing to do, Lizzy-Bear. You could have gotten yourself killed working on the roof by yourself. You should have at least had the decency to let someone know you were going out there."
"But if I had, Daddy, you wouldn't have let me patch the roof!"
Tom Bennet narrowed his shrewd eyes and said, "Bingo."
He'd trapped his daughter fair and square and Lizzy knew it. She tried hard not to blush, knowing that everyone else at the table was struggling not to stare at the family discussion. She knew that at least one person at the table was grinning and thinking, "I told you so."
"What would you have done, Lizzy, if you had hurt yourself or worse, fallen off the roof. Who would have helped you then? How long do you think it would take for us to realize you were even missing before we sent out a search team?"
Lizzy stared down at her plate and played with the food, pushing it from one side to the other, with her fork. She couldn't help but notice that they were practically identical to the words Will had said to her just this afternoon.
Tom brushed the back of his daughter's dark, silken locks with his gnarled hands and said gently, "I just want my Lizzy-Bear to be safe. And I want you to promise me that next time you'll ask before you go flying off to work on some project, or at least tell someone where you're going if it involves something dangerous like climbing on rooftops. Okay?"
Lizzy nodded her head and tried to pretend that she hadn't heard her mother mumble, "There'd better not be a next time."
Tom bent over and kissed her on the forehead, whispering for her benefit, "I'm sure you did a fine job, Lizzy-Bear. I'll take a look at it first thing in the morning," knowing that her handicraft on the roof deserved praise, much like her artwork had when she'd been a little girl and brought home finger painting portraits of cats and dogs only she could have discerned.
The magic had been lost for Lizzy though. For the first time in her life her father had sided with Will, and in front of the entire dinner table no less. How could her father have sided with Will?
Deep down, Lizzy knew how. Will was perfect. He was the golden boy who had grown up and succeeded where his father had succeeded before him.
Many had predicted, with hope and glee, that Pemberley Ranch, the most successful ranch in western Texas, would crumble in the youthful hands of an inexperienced rancher when his father died. They were jealous of the ranch's continuous prosperity. But, Will had proven all the doubters wrong. He'd not only stepped in and done a superb job of running the ranch effectively, but he'd also made it even more lucrative, something most had considered impossible given the ranch's already vast and considerable wealth. The thing Lizzy had to grudgingly admire was she knew that Will didn't work as hard as he did because he was driven by greed. He did it because he was a man filled with purpose and he saw the ranch as a challenge to conquer. He was a man that simply wanted to be the best. And was.
Sometimes she found him incredibly nauseating.
Lizzy, rousing herself from her ruminations, was relieved to find that the dinner conversation had turned away from her and moved on. It was now focused on Georgiana, Will's younger sister, who sat at the other end of the table. One day, when Will married, the mistress of the ranch would sit there. But until then, the seat was reserved for the only daughter of the house.
Georgiana Mae Darcy was only fifteen years old and her brother doted upon her, as did the rest of the household. But for all the attention she received, she was not a spoiled child. She was the sweetest, most unaffected person Lizzy had ever met and she genuinely loved the girl. Since Will's mother had died when Georgiana was just a baby, Fanny had been a mother to the girl and Lizzy a sister. Their relationship was a very close one, and Georgiana looked sympathetically at Lizzy, knowing how she must be feeling.
"Lizzy," Georgiana said now. "Are you coming to my piano recital?"
Lizzy shook away the cobwebs of her disappointment. "I'm sorry, Georgie, what's that?"
"My piano recital. It's on Friday night. You will come, won't you?" Georgie bit her bottom lip nervously. She loved playing the piano, but she wasn't keen on performing in front of others. Having Lizzy there would help though. She was the only person Georgie felt comfortable performing in front of since Lizzy so often sat in on her long practice sessions to keep her company.
"Of course I will, Georgie. With my bazooka and whistle in hand too," she managed to tease, in spite of her depression.
"Your two hands will be enough, I'm sure," Georgiana laughed.
"Well, who wants dessert?" Fanny asked as she stood up from her seat across her husband.
Don, one of the senior cowhands, leaned back in his seat, propping his hands on his belly, and said, "Fanny, if you've got some of your apple pie hiding in the kitchen, I'll have me a big ol' slice of pie."
"Me too," her husband agreed. "My mouth's been watering ever since I smelled that sugary cinnamon of your pie."
"I'll have some vanilla ice cream with mine!" Georgiana called out.
"That sounds good," her brother agreed.
"What about you, Lizzy?" her mother asked.
Lizzy's stomach churned at the thought of ingesting any sort of pie. "I'm stuffed and tired. May I be excused?"
Will zeroed in on her plate, still filled with food that had been mashed together.
"Sure Lizzy-Bear, if that's what you want," her father patted her gently on the back. "You're probably tired after working on the roof. What you'll need is a good soak and then get yourself on to bed early tonight, hm?"
The thought of Lizzy soaking in a bathtub conjured up all sorts of images that Will knew he shouldn't be having, especially at the dinner table where her parents were sitting right in front of him.
"Night, Daddy." She gave him a quick buss on the cheek, repeating the same with her mother when they crossed paths in the doorway. "Night, all," she called out, before retreating to her room above stairs.
Most of the ranch hands lived separately from the Boss Man and his family in the big house. The single men lived in a bunkhouse and their dinner was carried down to them from the kitchen, though they did have a kitchen for their own use too. The married men lived in cabins, with their families. Some of the wives worked in the nearby town, a half hour drive away; others worked in the big house. A few of the senior cowhands, though single, also lived in cabins and they came up to the big house to share their meals. Only the Bennets lived with the family in the big house; the family had their own suite of spacious rooms over the garage.
Lizzy entered the bedroom she'd once shared with her older sister, who now lived on the neighboring Netherfield Ranch with her husband, and without turning on the light, navigated her way to her twin bed by the window. It was on nights like this, when she was feeling blue, that she especially missed Jane, her best friend. But, Jane was happily married now and had been for the past year. It wasn't going to be long before they had their own brood to be worrying about, Lizzy thought ruefully.
The house was absolutely quiet when Lizz...
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