The Promise of Breeze Hill by Pam Hillman

Author:Pam Hillman [Hillman, Pam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Christian / Historical, FICTION / Christian / Romance
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2017-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

“Miss Isabella! Miss Isabella!”

“That Lizzy, always caterwauling about something.” Martha tsked and shook her head. “Somebody needs to teach that girl some manners.”

Isabella chuckled, knowing that Martha was just as fond of the motherless child as the rest of them. Most nights—every night, if truth be told—Martha made sure to cook enough food for the Mews family.

Lizzy rushed headlong onto the porch of the summer kitchen, where she and Martha sat peeling potatoes. “Riders.” Lizzy’s face was almost as red as her hair. She pointed. “They’re tearing up the cotton.”

Isabella ran for the dinner bell and pulled the cord, summoning the men to the house. Mews and the other field hands came running, followed quickly by Horne and the boys who’d been working at the sawmill.

“Lizzy saw riders in the cotton.”

Mews addressed his daughter. “Which field, girl?”

“The one next to the trace.”

Anger rumbled through the workers. They’d just finished plowing it last week. And to think that someone cared so little as to trample it.

The men rushed to drive the interlopers out, some with guns, others with hoes, axes, whatever came to hand. Isabella hurried toward the house. She was halfway to the field with her father’s musket when he and Jim arrived in the pony cart.

“I heard the bell.” He eyed the gun in her hand. “What’s wrong?”

She explained quickly, then hiked her skirts and took off toward the field.

“Isabella, come back here. Let the men handle it.”

But Isabella didn’t stop. Her family’s livelihood was at stake here. She gripped the cold steel in both hands, anger warring with common sense. She’d blow these highwaymen away before she’d let them destroy her family.

Tears blurred her vision as she ran, the gun growing heavier with each step.

She couldn’t deny that someone wanted to destroy her family. Her father was right. Somebody wanted to lay spoil to everything they’d worked for.

They’d burned the cotton last fall, almost killing her father and Leah in the process, murdered Jonathan, and most recently put Leah and the babe’s life in danger. No one with any respect for human life would try to run down a pregnant woman.

She could see the field in the distance when Mews and the others fired their first shots. Sporadic gunfire answered them; then the riders spurred their mounts away, angling across the field toward the trees to Isabella’s left.

White-hot anger arched through Isabella as the slashing hooves tore up even more of the precious plants, and without thought to her own safety, she jerked the gun to her shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The recoil of the heavy gun knocked her on her backside, but she didn’t care. Whether she hit anybody or not, she couldn’t tell, but satisfaction coursed through her as they ducked low over their mounts and raced toward the cover of the trees on the opposite side of the field.

She struggled to her feet just as the little pony cart came bouncing along the wagon trail. Her father gripped the reins in his gnarled fists, his fire-ravaged face mottled with pent-up rage.

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