Read Judith E French for Free Online Page B

gurgled. “Oh, excuse me,” she said.
    “Missy-Wife eat,” Mary ordered. She took two battered tin plates from a wall cupboard and bent over the hearth. The pipe, unlit, remained firmly in Mary’s mouth.
    “We need to wash,” Caitlin said. “Derry’s hands are—”
    “There.” The woman pointed to a stone sink in the corner.
    “Thank you.” Caitlin led Derry to the sink. To Caitlin’s surprise, there was a continuous flow of water from a pipe attached to the wall. “How lovely,” she said, using her hands to splash Derry’s dusty face. “Where does the water come from?”
    “Spring.”
    “The water runs all the time?” Caitlin washed the child’s hands and looked around for a towel. Since there seemed to be no drying cloths, Caitlin ushered Derry to the table.
    “Good spring.” Mary placed the two plates none too gently on the scarred table. She removed her pipe long enough to say, “Stew hot. Eat.”
    “But Justice? Shane said that he could—”
    “Eat,” Mary ordered. “Mary take care of boy.”
    Derry grabbed a spoon and dipped into the lumpy gray stew.
    “Grace first,” Caitlin reminded her. Quickly she offered a blessing and then nodded to the child. Derry began to spoon the food into her mouth.
    “Good,” Mary pronounced as she dropped a flat pancake beside each plate. “Bread. Eat.”
    Caitlin offered another silent prayer that the swill would be edible and took a taste. To her surprise, it tasted delicious. The bread, however, was hard and flavorless.
    Mary stared at them for a few moments, then produced a slab of roast beef and sawed off several generous slices. Taking the meat and a handful of the bread rounds, she left the kitchen by the back door.
    Caitlin surveyed the room in dismay. Dusty herbs and a haunch of dried meat hung from the overhead beams. The cracks between the floorboards were filled with dirt.The only cooking utensils seemed to be the battered stew kettle, a long-handled frying pan, a Dutch oven, and a blackened tin coffeepot.
    “What have we come to, baby?” she murmured, absently stroking Derry’s dark tousled curls.
    Derry smiled up at her. “Mama,” she said.
    “Aunty Cait,” Caitlin corrected gently.
    Derry shook her head firmly. “Mama.”
    Caitlin sighed. “Mama,” she agreed. “Why not? Someone might as well be happy in this house.”
    In the barn, Shane tightened the cinch on his saddle and thrust his boot into the leather stirrup. As he swung up onto his second favorite horse, a leggy roan gelding, he noticed a movement in the shadows. “Justice?”
    “Oui.”
    When he was troubled, Shane noted that the boy used backwoods French that he’d learned from his mama. “You unharness the team like I told you, boy?”
    Justice nodded.
    The last light of a fading day cast a pool of liquid sunshine through the open doorway. Shane could see that Justice’s eyes were red. Justice never cried, not even when they’d watched his mother’s body lowered into the ground. “What’s wrong, son?”
    The boy chewed at his lower lip. Shane dismounted, crossed the distance between him and Justice, and laid a gloved hand on the child’s shoulder. Justice flinched, but not as much as he had when he’d first come to live at Kilronan, and he didn’t back away.
    “I don’t want her here.” Justice kicked at a heap of straw.
    “Caity’s a good woman. You’ll like her if you give her half a chance.”
    “She don’t like me.”
    Justice looked up into Shane’s eyes, and he read the fear and uncertainty flickering in the boy’s gaze. “You don’t know that. It never pays for a man to make quick judgments on people.”
    The boy’s dark eyes—his mother’s eyes—took on the sheen of wet obsidian. “I hate her. Her and her whining brat.” He kicked the dirt again with a scuffed boot. “We was doin’ all right by ourselves.”
    Shane swallowed, trying to dissolve the constriction in his throat. He wanted to pull the kid into his arms and reassure