Free The Rich Shall Inherit by Elizabeth Adler Page A

Margaret went into labor two weeks later, Jeb was as nervous as a cat. It was a humid June day and the sun boiled a dark, sullen red in the leaden sky as he paced the verandah, wincing as Margaret’s helpless screams split the stormy stillness. He raged angrily at the doctor for letting her suffer and yelled at the midwife to hurry things up, terrified his son might be damaged by such a difficult birth. He sweated and stormed and prayed until, after eighteen hours of labor, the child was born. “A beautiful little girl,” the doctor told him wearily. “You’re a lucky man, Mr. Mallory, your wife had a very difficult time.”
    Without a word to Margaret, Jeb stalked across the bedroom and looked at the child in the crib. His hands were clenched into tight fists as he stared at the red crumpled creature he had been so sure would be a son … why, he’d even chosen the names—James Rogan Fitzgerald Mallory, after his grandfather, his father, and his mother….
    Silently, he walked over to the bed and kissed his wife on the cheek. But Margaret read the bitter disappointment in his eyes and knew that to him, she was a failure.
    “You will be all right,” he said stiffly, “Dr. Svensen assured me. Are you in pain, or uncomfortable?”
    Margaret shook her head, closing her eyes, fighting back the tears. “I got this for you, a present …” he said, thrusting a sapphire brooch at her, “for the birth ….” Abruptly he walked back to the crib. The baby looked quite anonymous to him; she might have been anybody’s child. He felt nothing—no emotion, no bonding with the tiny creature he had created.
    The storm broke suddenly, and as thunder pealed across the mountains he stared blankly out of the window.
    The rain fell in a torrent, turning the bright hill of poppies into a rippling scarlet and a silver stream. “We must give her a name,” Margaret said tiredly.
    Jeb shrugged, his eyes on the hill. “Call her Poppy,” he said carelessly as he headed for the door. At dawn he left for San Francisco without saying good-bye.
    A few days later Margaret lay on a chaise longue on the verandah with her baby in the crib beside her. Nik and Rosalia had been to see her, and though she’d made excuses for Jeb, she could tell they hadn’t believed her. “I know he wanted a boy,” Rosalia had whispered before she left, “are you sure he is happy—that everything is all right?”
    “He adores the child,” she’d lied, “why, he even decided her name.”
    “But why no family names, no remembrances?” Rosalia had asked, puzzled.
    Margaret managed a smile. “You know Jeb, he’s a man of the moment—he named her for the field of California poppies out there.”
    Though the doctors had warned her she shouldn’t yet be out of bed, she felt much stronger and with a sudden longing to feel the sun warm on her skin, she picked up her baby and walked slowly across the smooth lawns to the foot of the hill.
    Poppy lay quietly in her arms, gazing around her with wide, all-seeing bright blue eyes as Margaret waded knee-deep through the blossoms. With a feeling of pity she knelt among the flowers, holding out her child so that she might see them. “Look, little one,” she murmured, “just look at the beauty of these California flowers—and know why your father named you for them. See how the petals dance on the breeze—like a host of scarlet butterflies.” She held the child forward so that she might peer into the wondrous purple-black heart of the delicate flower. “Always remember this, my little one, your father named you for their beauty.”
    Lifting her head, she searched the land around her—all of it and beyond was owned by her husband and his partner. “And this will be yours, too, someday—all this wonderful, rich land,” she murmured, but the baby was still staring wide-eyed at the flowers, seeming absorbed in the colors and the scent.

CHAPTER 7
    1880, CALIFORNIA
    Rosalia glanced sadly over her shoulder as