Love Under Two Outfitters by Cara Covington (the false prince series .txt) 📗

“You’re both made of stern stuff, Ian,” Alice said. “You’ll do fine.”

Ian’s smile let her know her compliment pleased him. “Thank you, baby-girl.” He nodded to his grandfather and then headed back to Ken and those New York Kendalls.

Then she turned back to Noah. “Please tell me the story of how your father and uncles came to Lusty.”

“After the end of the war—call it the Civil War or the war of Northern Aggression—there were a lot of men who became, I guess you could say, rudderless. After four years of the most unholy, wretched conditions—not just the bloody battles, but the lack of food and equipment, and the horrible weather—the authorities cut the men loose, on both sides of the conflict.

“Some men were never fit to be in polite company again, and my grandfather was one of them. According to my father, Isiah Kendall became a permanent nomad. He’d been more or less forced to fight and had left his wife—my grandmother—with five sons and little else on a farm that even with hard labor never produced much. For a couple of years after the war, Isiah would drift home on an irregular basis.

“The last time, it was to discover his wife was ill and his children starving. So, he packed up his family and brought them here, more or less abandoning them on his brother’s doorstep.”

“He deserted them?” Alice asked. She wasn’t too successful at keeping the shock out of her voice.

“Actually, that was the first noble thing the man ever did for them. He’d already deserted them, and I think he’d done so in spirit even before the war. This time, he’d taken them someplace where he knew they’d be looked after.

“Two of his brother’s sons, Jeremy Kendall and Dalton Jessop, had married Chelsea Benedict only a few years before. Chelsea, God bless her, had compassion on my father and his brothers.” Noah shook his head. “Dad told us that living here, it was the first time he remembered not being hungry when he went to bed at night. All of the family had pitched in. Miss Amanda and Miss Sarah did their best to nurse my grandmother while Miss Chelsea took my father and his brothers in. Their mother died, and the people here laid her to rest in their cemetery.

“Dad, being the oldest, stayed here and worked for room and board, until the last of his brothers was old enough to be on his own. After that he left Lusty and ended up in Wyoming, which was where I was born. Even so, every couple of years, until he was too old to travel, he’d come here—come home—to visit the folks he considered his parents and grandparents—his family.” He looked over toward a high shelf, one that held a small collection of beautiful wooden carvings. “Those were gifts that my dad gave to Miss Chelsea. That horse, there, was the last one. I brought that myself, on a visit I paid here not long after Samantha’s car broke down as she was passing through on her way to Austin.

“My father passed on about two years after that.”

“And you took up visiting here, for him.”

“I did, and I brought my own sons with me. I left Wyoming for a time and worked in Pennsylvania, where my first wife left me and I met and married my Margaret. Then I accepted a transfer to Houston. But before long, I headed back to Wyoming. As my father had done, and no matter where I’ve been, I’ve always considered Lusty to be home.”

Alice now understood why it was that some of the Kendalls were referred to as being “nomadic” by the rest of the family. She also understood that family really was the heart of Lusty and that it always had been so.

“From what I’ve seen so far, sir, this is a good place to call home.”

Noah Kendall the elder reached over and patted her hand. “I’m taking a page out of Kate’s book,” he said. “Just call me Grandpa Noah.”

* * * *

Ian resisted the urge to look down at his side to see if he was bleeding. He certainly felt as if he’d been skewered soundly enough to be grilled over an open fire. He knew Ken felt the same way.

Until this moment I never knew I could be a drama queen. Or was it drama king? The only two things that made the teasing bearable both concerned Alice. The first was that Aunt Samantha had placed her between them. The second was that while she’d been wound tight as a spring before they’d arrived, now she appeared completely relaxed.

Her laughter is one of my favorite sounds.

“Hey, Ian, is it true what I hear about living way up in those Rockies?”

Ian took another bite of his aunt’s excellent ham and chewed slowly. “I don’t know, Morgan. What did you hear?”

“Well, I don’t want to be indelicate, especially at my mother’s table.”

“Wise choice,” Charles Kendall said.

Morgan nodded. “However, I heard that the higher up in the mountains you go, the faster water boils. And I was wondering, then, if everything is done…faster in Colorado? Maybe it’s not the elevation. Maybe it’s the cold. So, what say you? Everything’s done faster?”

“And much, much better, too,” Ian said. Ken grinned and gave him a high-five. He’d been sharp for that one, but actually, they were batting about five hundred.

Ian had become so preoccupied with the thrust and parry of cousin speak at his aunt’s table that, at first, he didn’t notice what Alice was doing.

She laid her left hand on his leg, above his knee, as the conversation flew and the food was passed and eaten. Initially, he’d thought the gesture her way of keeping grounded, making their connection solid. She’d lift her hand away for a few minutes, and then, she’d place it back. She gave him tiny, little absent rubs, and then she’d pull away again.

Ian’s cock reacted to Alice’s warm, teasing