Page 2 of The Outlaw and the Heir

Walter snorted. “Please, only one who can match your hardheadedness is your father. And with a few more years under your belt, you might even beat him in that."

I didn't know about that, but I wasn't going to argue. It was no secret that my father was set in his ways and wasn't prone to changing his mind once he was focused on something. Yet even I had to admit he could change his mind when given enough time and evidence, though that wasn't an easy standard to fulfill.

"I best get up there," I said, nodding toward the main house. "If I don't get a couple of morning meals in?—"

"You catch hell," he said with a nod. "Go on then. I'm sure I'll see you later."

I nodded and resumed walking toward the house. It was big, at least compared to other buildings on the property or anything in Rapture. Lizzie said there were other ranches with bigger houses, but I didn't see the point in having more rooms. There was enough space to house my family, down to the kids, and still have rooms for any guests we might have...and usually didn't. Adding more seemed unnecessary but I didn't know much about 'appearances' my sister was constantly going on about.

Mounting the steps, I entered the house without hesitation. Despite sometimes feeling like a stranger among my family, it was stillsupposedto be my home. The fact that my small cabin felt more like home than anywhere else ever had wasn't all that relevant as far as other people were concerned. I was an Isaiah, and this was the Isaiah home, built by my grandfather before his untimely death at the hands of a particularly angry steer.

"Good morning, sir," one of the house staff said, dipping her head and pausing her cleaning of a set of horns hung low on the entryway wall. The room was larger than my cabin, splitting in three directions from the entrance and housing a lot of trophies. My sister had been trying to talk my father into adding another floor to the house, though I didn't know how much success she’d had. I didn't really get the point of adding another floor, but she probably had a plan and reason in mind.

"Morning..." I began, searching for her name and coming up blank. I'd never been good with names, but Lizzie had recently called for a change in house staff, and I hadn't visited often enough to learn all the new names. "Sorry, I forgot."

Which should have earned a scowl, or at least a blank look considering she was 'staff,' but instead, she smiled. “Alice, sir."

"Well, good morning, Alice. I hope they haven't made you work through the night," I said. My older siblings could bedifficult when it came to the staff. Joseph was demanding for the sake of the standards he thought he inherited from our father, without our father's ability to measure people or his understanding. Which meant he was purely demanding until his exact standards were met with no middle ground. Lizzie was just...well, I loved my sister, but she could be quite spoiled. Sometimes, she was so caught up in her ideas and dreams that she forgot about reality, and sometimes, that reality involved other people being...people.

Alice flashed a smile in my direction. “No, sir. Miss Elizabeth has been most kind to us; there is no need to concern yourself."

Now I’d heard her speak, I recognized her if only because her accent made her stand out. I didn't know where she was from, but I knew it was nowhere around here or close, for that matter. It differed from the other girls who cleaned the house and looked after the family's needs. My sister was considered well-read and undoubtedly handpicked the house staff.

"That's good," I said, not feeling like that encompassed much of anything but knowing there wasn't much else for me to say. After a moment of awkwardly sharing a stare, I turned and headed down the left-hand hallway. It had been the original part of the house before my father started expanding before I was born. It showed in the way the wood creaked under my footsteps. It was where the guest rooms were, but it was also where the cooking and dining area was, the first for the staff assigned to make meals for us and the second for family only.

My family was waiting for me as I entered, all sitting around the circular table that had, again, been my sister's idea. It gleamed with fresh polish, and I sat between my sister's oldest son and my brother's youngest daughter. It put me across from my siblings and father, but I felt more at ease with my nephews and nieces than the rest.

"Morning, Alma," I said with a faint smile at my niece, earning a bashful smile from the six-year-old as she tried her best to maintain her composure. My brother was even more of a stern father than ours was and demanded the best from his children. Alma's best was apparently an attempt to emulate her aunt as well as she could. Still, a six-year-old girl could only emulate the dignity and airs of a full-grown woman with years of practice, so I got a giggle that was more childish than dignified and considered it a victory.

"And a good morning to you, Ambrose," Elizabeth said as she stared at me from across the table. Her smile was bright, but I could see the bother in her eyes as she picked up a piece of bread to nibble on. "I was afraid you wouldn't join us today."

"She means she thought you were going to eat with the pigs again," Joseph said with a snort as he stabbed his fork through a thick cut of pork and dragged it onto his plate. "Since you seem to like their company better."

"I don't eat with the pigs," I said, frowning at his words alongside his food choice. Not that I was an expert on what was classy but that just felt...classless. We'd all been raised to think of the animals as beasts to be herded and slaughtered, taken care of to a degree, of course, but no more than that. But I doubted my siblings had ever looked into the eyes of some of the animals we’d kept andreallylooked.

Pigs were far smarter than people thought, or at least I thought so. You only needed to look in their eyes and really see them to know there were thoughts behind those eyes and obnoxious sounds. I had watched some of our cows and seen the way they formed groups or preferred one cow over another as if they had friends the way people did. The sheep weren't bright, but they could look up at you with their big, empty-of-thought eyes, and you could feel the trust deep in their souls that you would take care of them because that was what they knew.

Sometimes, animals were better than people...and simpler.

"Staff, pigs," he said with a shrug as he picked up a plate to add a pile of eggs as if he wasn't comparing humans to animals.

"Enough of that," my father rumbled, shooting his eldest a dirty look before picking up a steaming pile of bacon.

"Sorry, Father," Joseph muttered, but I could see how he glanced my way, shooting me a scowl as if it were my fault he’d been chided. Then again, right or wrong, Joseph had always blamed me for things. I didn't blame him; I had killed our mother when he was seven, and that had to be impossible to forgive. Or at least, he had never forgiven me, and I couldn't forgive myself. "Just a joke."

"Well, itisnice to see you," Elizabeth added hastily, smiling. "We don't get to see you all that often, and I miss you. And I know the children miss you too."

That was met with varying degrees of agreement from the kids, which warmed me more than my sister's words. The kids were still young, given work and expectations, but not yet weighed down by everything around them. To have them like me meant more than anything, except for my father's approval, a hope I could never quite shake.

"I'm sure he's been busy working," Joseph told her, and while it sounded light enough, I could feel the annoyance and the dismissal.

My brother and sister never understood why I didn't care about the same things they did and with different degrees of hostility. As far as Joseph was concerned, my disinterest in the business was close to not caring about the family, especially its future. On the other hand, my sister was simply confused as to why I wouldn't want to let others do the work when we were more than capable of letting them, especially with our family's gains in the last decade.

And our father? Well, he’d never been all that fond of me, and it was impossible to know what was really going on in his head.

"I have, actually," I said, taking some of the eggs but avoiding the pork now I had the image of intelligent eyes staring at me from the dirt and muck. "There's a lot of hard work to be done out there. It's not all numbers and bookkeeping that makes this place run."

Hostility flared in my brother's eyes, but they darted to my father, and his mouth remained a thin line before he shoved cooked meat into it with a sloppy, wet noise. I knew someone like my brother was good for the ranch's prosperity. Book learning, math, and all that was good when you started growing and aimed to build even higher, and while I didn't like him as a person, I respected him for what he did.

---