Rexanne Becnel Read Online Free PDF Page B

had been his father’s home, not a school. The oaks were bigger, and the peach and pear trees that had been skinny little saplings now made up a mature, healthy stand. One of the four pines that had marked the walkway down to the lake was gone. Probably to a bad storm, he thought as he cast his experienced lumberman’s eye on the remaining towering trees.
    But these were incidentals. The house still appeared as it always had: huge and imposing. Ten fluted columns soared two stories on each side, and a wide, two-storied gallery encircled the entire building. Its whiteness gleamed even more brightly against the dark contrast of the deep purple slate roof. Five elegantly detailed dormers pierced the roof on each side, dormers he’d wondered about as a boy.
    His mother had always refused to speak of his father’s house, and of the wife and son and mother-in-law who’d lived there as well. But others in town had not been so discreet. As a boy he’d learned only too well that people were always eager to tell him about the father who never acknowledged him.
    Miles Dillon Kimbell had been a quick-tempered man, given to bouts of generosity as often as he was prone to acts of vengeance. Rich in his own right, he’d married Amelia Allen, the sole heiress to her family’s fortune, and thus had come to call Sparrow Hill his home. But his mother-in-law had been a hard-edged woman, swift to throw her son-in-law’s indiscretions in his face. Between her constant harping and his flagrant disregard, his pretty wife had not had a chance. Amelia’s sole comfort had been her son Frederick, and she’d kept him as much to herself as she could. Dillon wondered even now if Amelia had ever known about her husband’s bastard son.
    He dragged his eyes away from the house, wishing he could blot out all the painful memories of those days. With an effort, he focused on the stable that lay ahead. Frederick had built it shortly after the war. The old barn had been torched by drunken soldiers. Dillon had argued against the expense of building such a huge stable, for what did a school need with so many horses? He thought Frederick’s money would have been far better spent investing in the railroad lines that were springing up throughout the West. But Frederick had been adamant about building the stable.
    As Dillon stepped into the shadowy center aisle of the whitewashed structure, he clearly remembered the time he’d been in the old barn that had once stood there.
    He’d been caught picking pecans in the orchard behind the house. His friends had fled in a panic, terrified of the repercussions if Mr. Kimbell caught them. But Dillon had stood his ground. A scrawny twelve-year-old, tall for his age but skinny and awkward, he’d shaken off his captors’ grasp, then marched boldly toward the barn, where his father waited to punish the culprit. What had he expected of that long-ago confrontation? he wondered now as he led his rangy stallion into a vacant stall. Had he been so foolish as to think his father would finally acknowledge his bastard son?
    It was impossible to remember now what his motives had been. But he would never forget the agony he had endured that terrible afternoon. Miles Kimbell had been drunk and angry already. When he’d seen his bastard child he’d become even more furious. He would teach him a lesson, the older man had ranted. He would teach him a lesson about trespassing where he didn’t belong and about stealing from his betters. Then with a loop of coarse jute rope, he’d beaten Dillon until his shirt hung in bloody threads on his back.
    Dillon’s shoulders twitched even now at the memory. That was the day his childish dreams of his father had died. That was the day his animosity had turned into hatred of the Kimbells and the Aliens and all they stood for. That was the day he’d vowed to get even.
    But he never had gotten even, he admitted now as he removed the saddle and bridle from his horse. Frederick, the last of