Hill Country Christmas by Laurie Kingery

Author:Laurie Kingery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-08-09T14:35:48+00:00

Chapter Fourteen Even though he had never attended services in the Llano Crossing Church, Jude felt a sense of coming home when he sat down in a middle pew with the Hestons. He watched the townspeople striding in in their Sunday best, smiling at each other—farmers, shop owners, laborers and their families—all of them God’s children.

Even Charles Ladley, Jude supposed, as he caught sight of the mayor’s son sitting proudly in the front pew next to Delia.

Yesterday, when Jude had spotted the exquisite thoroughbred mare outside Delia’s house, he had guessed it was intended as a present for Delia—the beast might as well have had a big red satin bow around its neck. And what would induce Ladley to be giving Delia such a costly gift?

Delia had said Ladley didn’t own her and had

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kissed Jude with every indication of sincerity and genuine feeling, but she and Ladley appeared very cozy together up front. Jude wondered if Ladley had been able to persuade Delia he was the better man.

He hadn’t thought Delia so changeable, but he must have been wrong. His heart ached with a crushing sense of loss.

But You didn’t bring me to church to spend my time envying Ladley, did You, Lord? Help me to concentrate on You, to hear what You have to say.

Jude resolutely wrenched his eyes and mind away from the couple. He opened his mouth to sing along with the rest of the congregation and felt a soothing peace descending upon him like a blessing. Even in the midst of the mayor’s rambling attempt at a sermon, Jude knew he’d done right to come.

“All right, you spent a pretty penny on that nag,”

Mayor Ladley growled almost three weeks later. It was once again time for the Committee for Civic Improvement to meet, and as usual, the two Ladleys had come early so they could discuss things they didn’t want Mrs. Ladley overhearing. “And why you didn’t make the gift conditional on her agreeing to marry you, I don’t understand—”

“Because I know that this way I’ll get what I want more easily in the end,” Charles Ladley told his father.

He wasn’t about to admit that Delia had told him she

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wasn’t ready to consider his proposal any time soon and wouldn’t accept the gift of the mare yet.

Ladley Senior harrumphed. “Time to move the project along, Son. We need control of Delia Keller’s money, and the only way that’s going to happen is if you’re her husband, not merely her adoring beau.

What’s next in the plan?”

The younger Charles took a sip of the rich port his father favored. He’d have preferred whiskey, but this stuff wasn’t bad.

“Perhaps we’ll go for a surprise moonlight picnic out at Ladley Hall one night, before it gets too cold.

Very romantic, eh?” He winked. Calling Delia’s new home “Ladley Hall” was a private joke between him and his father, a reference to when it—and Delia—

would be firmly under his control.

“Capital, capital! To success then—” his father said with a wink and extended his glass to clink with his son’s “—and control of the fortune.

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