A Heart for the Taking

by Shirlee Busbee

  With every fiber of his being, Sam shrank from bringing up the subject to Letty. He did not want to arouse painful memories, remembering her dangerously fragile state all those years before when he had returned home to learn the crushing news that she had been delivered of a stillborn son. It had been years before she could even return to the place where their infant child had been buried. How much worse it would be for her if he were to give her the hope that a young man she had long loved was actually her own son— only to have to snatch it away later. It could very well destroy her, and Sam was not willing to run that risk, at least not yet.

  But he had to talk to her about that night. He had to know what she remembered. Standing in his office, staring broodingly at the glinting ribbon of river in the distance one afternoon, Sam sighed. Here it was, the middle of September, and he had been unable to discover anything that would lend credence to the wild supposition that Chance Walker was his son. Morely and Pru had remained at Walker Ridge for a week after Chance and Fancy left for Devil’s Own, and every moment he and Morely had been alone, they had speculated on that decades-old night. By the time Morely and Pru had left, the two men had grimly decided that if they were to prove Chance’s ancestry, they would have to take certain events as fact.

  The most obvious event that they had agreed upon was that Letty had to have given birth to twins that fateful night and that one of the twins was born dead, the other alive. The next most glaringly evident occurrence had to have been that Constance had determined instantly that the surviving twin was to disappear. There was no doubt in their minds that she would have delegated that highly risky deed to Anne Clemmons.

  Sam frowned, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. All that was well and good, as far as it went, but why didn’t Letty realize that she had given birth to a second child? Surely a woman would know such a thing?

  Those rare times she had been willing to talk with him about that night, it was obvious that she remembered clearly the birth of their stillborn son. Not only how perfect he had been, but every physical aspect of his dear little form, right down to the identifying six toes. But never a word or a hint of a twin.

  Sam took an agitated step around the room, painful memories and emotions roiling within him. Was he deluding himself? Grasping wildly at straws? Was he simply being an old fool to conceive, even for a moment, that Chance was his and Letty’s own flesh and blood? That Letty had unknowingly given birth to a second child, a strong and lusty one, and that Constance had swiftly attempted to get rid of it? That only Morely’s chance encounter had saved the infant’s life?

  It was incredible, he couldn’t deny it. Yet it seemed highly likely. No other explanation for Morely’s finding of the infant fit the situation quite as well, he admitted as he sat down and began to leaf idly through the old ledgers on his desk. Ledgers he had combed diligently for any clue that might shed light on that event.

  As much to disprove as to prove the truth of the matter, in the intervening weeks Sam had pored over any record of that time that he could lay his hands on. He had torn through the contents of dusty, long forgotten trunks in the back of the storerooms and attics to search out what letters and snippets of information he had from those painful days. Reading those accounts made his heart ache and brought back all the terrible anguish of that time. Reviewing his accounts of expenditures and receipts revealed little, except he discovered that he had made no note of any other children being born at Walker Ridge during that critical time. And he had always, he reminded himself slowly as he continued to turn the fragile, yellowed pages, been meticulous about such things. He had kept excellent records of nearly every event on the plantation, from planting and harvest dates to the weather, the births and deaths of slaves and others who worked for him, and even the birth of a litter of puppies by his favorite hunting dog. If another child had been born anywhere near the time Morely had found Chance, wouldn’t he have made note of it?

  Thoughtfully he stared at a notation that leaped from the page in front of him. It was dated March 21, 1740.

  Missy, a sixteen-year-old slave I purchased two years ago in Williamsburg, gave birth today to a fine healthy daughter this afternoon after a long, hard labor. We feared we would lose them both, but all ended well and mother and daughter, even as I write this, are sleeping soundly. ’Tis Missy’s first child and she has named her Ginnybell.

  The next child to be born at Walker Ridge, God willing, will be mine and Letty’s. I count the days until that joyous event.

  His own words mocked him, and with a savage motion, he threw the leather-bound ledger to the floor. With his head buried in his hands, Sam cursed Morely for ever having told him about finding Chance. He had dealt with the knowledge that he and Letty would die leaving no heirs of their own bodies, and he had long ago sadly accepted that fact as God’s judgment. But now! Morely’s words danced dizzyingly in his brain, and joy such as he had not known since Letty had first shyly told him of their impending parenthood raced through his veins whenever he considered the stunning possibility that Chance Walker might well be his and Letty’s own son.

  Sam raised his head finally and with a sigh rose and picked up the offending ledger. His meticulous records had not helped him very much in his quest, he thought bitterly. All they had done was to remind him of a sad, mournful time. Again he flipped to the notation of the birth of Missy’s first child. Suddenly his gaze narrowed as the full import of his words hit him. If Letty’s child was to have been the next one born . . . Quickly he scanned the following pages, his heart beginning to pound. No births. None. Not until after he and Letty had left for England and Morely had taken over keeping the records and had noted that Patience Ragsdale, the wife of his overseer, had given birth to a daughter on April 30 of that fateful year. Ignoring the excitement building within him, Sam swiftly forged ahead to the following year. It had always been the practice to record the first birthday of all children born at Walker Ridge, since so many never lived that long. Sam found the entry where Ginnybell’s first birthday was recorded in Morely’s spidery handwriting.

  Telling himself that in his grief surrounding the loss of their child he might not have recorded any unexpected births in those few days before they left for England, Sam carefully examined all of Morely’s entries for late March and early April of 1741, looking specifically for mention of any child’s first birthday. Except for Ginnybell’s, there were none. Quickly scanning backward, he found Morely’s entry of November 3, 1740, revealing that, sadly, the Ragsdales’ daughter, born in late April, had died of a fever on that date. There were other notations of deaths on the plantation during that year, but not of any infants less than a year old.

  So. It was reasonable to assume that except for Ginnybell and the Ragsdale child, no other births had been recorded during the period that interested him. Except for the stillborn birth of his own son. Yet, according to Morely, Chance had been found with the birthing blood still on him that same night.

  Sam slowly closed the ledger. He had to talk to Letty. He had to find out what she remembered of that night.

  It proved to be easier than he had expected. Late the next afternoon, when the blistering heat of the day had faded somewhat, Sam, hoping to broach the subject gently, had suggested a stroll. He’d had no particular destination in mind, but he had unconsciously brought them to the family burial plot, a charming spot to which they had often strolled. Situated on a small knoll, well behind the outbuildings of the plantation, the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the area was festooned with honeysuckle and scarlet-trumpet vine. Old sprawling oaks and china-berry trees cast welcome patches of shade over the various headstones, some going back a hundred years.

  Letty did not appear to think that there was anything odd about the path their walk had taken them, and she was not the least hesitant as Sam pushed open the gate and they entered the graveyard. Stopping a short distance inside the area, she took in a deep breath and, turning to Sam, said, “Isn’t the scent of the honeysuckle a
bsolutely intoxicating this time of day?”

  Sam nodded. “I am glad that you suggested planting it after my father died. I think it would have pleased him.”

  Instinctively Letty began to walk toward the area where their child’s small grave was situated. Her face soft, she stared at the weeping pair of gray marble angels that marked where the infant was buried. “He would have been a fine man, Sam.”

  Tenderly Sam put his arm around her frail shoulders. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”

  They stood in silence for several moments, then Sam asked hesitantly, “Do you remember very much of the night he was delivered?”

  Letty shook her head. “No. It is all very hazy to me. I remember wishing that you were there with me and being afraid, at one point, that both the child and I might die and that you would be left all alone.”

  “You would not have lain in your grave very long without me,” Sam said huskily, his arm tightening. “I do not think I could have gone on living if I had lost you. Losing the boy was terrible enough, but losing you . . .”

  Misty eyed, she turned and kissed him on the cheek. “After all these years, Sam Walker, you are still the most romantic man I have ever known.”

  They smiled tenderly at each other. Sam glanced back at the small, neatly tended grave. Afrown between his eyes, he asked slowly, “Letty, is there nothing about that night that struck you as strange? Did anything happen that made you wonder . . .?”

  She touched the side of his face, and he looked at her. Questions in her eyes, she demanded softly, “What is it, dear? Why are you so curious about that night after all these years?”

  Not meeting her gaze, he cleared his throat uneasily. “I, er, we, ah, never talked about it a great deal. It was Constance who broke the news to me when I returned home and related all that had happened. You never said very much to me about it at all. For months after we were in England, you did not want to admit to anyone, even to me, what had occurred.”

  “I know,” Letty said with a sigh. “It just hurt too much. I simply wanted to forget and not think at all about what we had lost.” She smiled forlornly. “It was very foolish of me, was it not? I should have shared my grief with you.” Staring off at the woods in the distance, she said quietly, “The truth is, my dear, that I do not remember very much of that night. There was a terrible storm, I know that. And I remember that Annie handed him to me and that I held his dear little body in my arms and refused to believe that he was dead.” She shook herself, as if coming awake from a bad dream. “I am afraid that after that, my memory is even more hazy. I think I was hysterical, and as I recall, Constance gave me some laudanum to make me sleep.” She frowned. “The pain had lessened somewhat for a while after I had brought him forth—but then it started in again, hard. I remember Annie reassuring me that it was merely the afterbirth, but to me it felt as if I were still struggling to have the baby.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Sam gave no indication of the fierce jolt that went through him at her words. An unconscious note of accusation in his voice, he demanded, “They gave you laudanum immediately afterward?”

  Letty looked at him, puzzled. “Well, perhaps not immediately, but not long after the baby was born. Sam, I was hurting prodigiously. They were only trying to be kind.”

  “Were they?” Sam muttered, his fists clenched at his sides. “I wonder.” Letty’s earlier words had banished any lingering doubt he’d had about Chance’s parentage. In all his searching he had not been able to find one piece of proof that Chance was not his son. To the contrary, everything pointed to that young man very definitely being a twin to the child who had been born dead. Even Letty’s own words, that it had felt as though she were still having a baby, added to the growing circumstantial corroboration. For a moment, a wave of such joy went through him that Sam was dizzy. Chance was his son! He knew it! Felt it in the very depths of his soul. And yet he could not prove it.

  “What in the world is wrong with you?” Letty asked, her forehead wrinkled in a frown at his odd expression. “You have been acting almost as if Constance and Annie had done something wrong, instead of trying very kindly to lessen my pain and to let me sleep and escape for a little while from my grief.”

  There had never been any secrets between Sam and Letty, from the day he had asked her to marry him until the day Morely had told him about finding Chance. In the intervening time, Sam had found it extremely difficult not to relate Morely’s conversation with him to her—or to explain why these past weeks he had been digging around so frantically in all those old, dusty ledgers and trunks. Sam had been desperate to share with her his discoveries and beliefs, hungry for her opinion on the entire situation.

  Now he was hungry to see the ecstatic light blaze in her eyes when she realized the truth. It was time, he thought slowly, that Letty knew, past time to tell her what he and Morely had suspected and what he now firmly believed. Chance Walker was their son.

  It would bring him such indescribable joy to share his knowledge with the one other person most closely related to the tale, but still he hesitated. Letty was no dissembler. If she came to believe, as he did, that Chance was their son and that Constance had tried to get rid of him at birth, would she be able to maintain a normal facade in front of the other woman? And how would she feel about Morely’s years of silence? Would she understand? Or hate him for what he had done? Sam himself, while understanding Morely’s delay, could not help the occasional spurt of angry resentment against his old friend. But he had been able to put aside most of his ill feelings, too delighted that Morely had finally spoken to dwell overmuch on the past. But would Letty be as forgiving? Perhaps. The real problem, however, would be Letty’s reaction to Constance.

  Suspecting what he did about his stepmother, Sam had found it difficult enough these past weeks to smile and converse casually with Constance, but how much more difficult would it be for Letty? And Chance? How would Letty act around him? She had always been very fond of the boy, but how would she behave around him now, believing that he was actually her own son? Sam didn’t even know how he, who was the less emotional of the pair of them, was going to react the first time he was face-to-face with the young man he was now convinced was his very own son. Would Letty be able to control her emotions? Would he?

  Sam had no answers, but he knew what he was going to do. Taking Letty’s wrinkled hand in his, he led her over to a sheltered spot beneath one of the spreading oak trees, where there was an old stone bench. After seating her gently on it, he joined her. Clasping her hands between his, he said softly, “I have something to tell you . . . something you might at first find unbelievable, but something that I know, with every beat of my heart, is true.”

  It took him a while to tell the tale as they sat there beneath the oak tree, an elderly couple who had long believed that their dearest wish had been denied them. Letty’s eyes never left Sam’s face, never wavered, as gruffly he revealed all that he had learned and why he so strongly believed that she had given birth to not one child, but two, on that long-ago night.

  Beyond the gradual paling of her delicate features and the ever-increasing tightness of the grip she kept on his hands, Letty showed very little reaction to his words. A small silence fell when he finally finished speaking.

  For several moments Letty did not move, her eyes fastened almost beseechingly on his, her fingers digging painfully into his hands. Then a shudder went through her small body, and releasing Sam’s hands, she stared blankly into space.

  “I always wondered,” she murmured, half to herself.

  “What do you mean?” Sam demanded sharply. “You had some idea that you had given birth to twins and that Constance had tried to dispose of our child? And you never said anything to me?” His voice rose accusingly on the last words.

  Letty shook her white head and smiled tenderly at him. “No, dear. Nothing as cruel and terrible as that. But Chance always reminded me so very much of you . . . always. I think that is why I have loved him since the mo
ment I first laid eyes on him, and why I have been so grateful that Morely seemed so willing to leave so much of his care to us.”

  There was a stunned, affronted expression on Sam’s handsome, craggy features. “You thought he was mine? That I had betrayed you?” At Letty’s slow nod, he said stiffly, “Well, I cannot thank you, madame, for your low opinion of me.”

  In spite of the tenseness of the situation, the gurgle of laughter that had charmed him for decades suddenly came from Letty. “Oh, Sam, darling, do not be so pompous. What else could I have thought? To me, you and Chance are as alike as two peas in a pod. And Morely’s refusal to acknowledge him, and the way he was forever pushing Chance at us, certainly seemed to lend credence to my suspicions.”

  Still looking rather ruffled, Sam admitted grudgingly, “I suppose you are right, but dammit, Letty. You have to have known that you have always been the only woman in my heart and in my arms.”

  Misty eyed, she bent forward and kissed him at the corner of his mouth. “Indeed, I always hoped it was so and have told myself dozens of times over the years that there had to have been some sort of extraordinary situation that would have resulted in you fathering a child on another woman.” She looked away. “Even believing that Chance was your bastard, I never blamed you, you know. Every man wants a child of his own, and I had failed you.”

  Sam pulled her close. “You never failed me. Never. Not even when we thought that we would be forever childless.”

  She rested her soft white head against his shoulder, the enormity of what Sam had revealed these past several moments only just now sinking in. Her voice full of wonder, she murmured, “We have a son. Astrong, fine, healthy boy.”

  “Chance is no boy,” Sam muttered huskily, “but he is a son any man would be proud to call his own.”

  Her face suddenly alight with an incandescent joy, Letty bounded to her feet with the lithe movement of a young girl. Tugging excitedly at his hands, she cried, “Oh, Sam. We must go to him. I cannot wait to look into his dear face and know that he is ours. Oh, do come! ’Tis too late to leave this afternoon, but by dawn we could be on our to way to see our son.”