Page 99 of Courting the Country Miss

“No! I forbid it!” He boxed her ears.

“Stop!” Leticia rushed forward but Tristan caught her by the arm.

“Sir.” Tristan’s voice, filled with authority, caught the man’s attention. “There is no cause to strike the child.”

“She disobeyed me. I won’t ’ave a willful girl, getting’ no ’igh falutin’ ideas.” He spat on the floor and grabbed Molly by the arm.

Molly burst into tears. “Please, Papa, please let me stay.”

As the girl’s father raised his hand to strike her again, Tristan grabbed the man’s arm. “If you hit that child in my presence again, I will flatten you.”

The man swung at Tristan who neatly dodged it and landed a punch of his own. The man staggered back but as he lunged, Tristan pulled out a pistol. The sight checked the man’s step.

The girl’s father stared hard at Tristan. “Molly. Out.”

Molly shuffled toward the door.

Leticia called. “Molly, wait. You don’t have to go with him. Remember when I said I would help you? You can stay here, or…”

“Shut yer trap, woman!” the girl’s father snarled. “My girl. Not yours. She goes wit’ me.” As if remembering the pistol trained on him, he snapped his mouth shut.

“No,” Lectica said. “I won’t allow you to take her. You—”

Tristan’s voice cut across hers, gentle but decisive. “He’s right. As her father, he has a legal right to keep her.”

She turned to Tristan, angry and helpless. “He hurts her.”

Tristan kept his focus on the man, steady, grim. He flicked his gun toward the door. “Go. Do not return.”

The man cast a sneering glance at all of them and dragged his hapless daughter by one arm. He left the door wide open behind him.

Peter closed and bolted the door. “Sorry, Miss. I’ll keep better watch.”

Mrs. Harper shepherded the children back to the classroom and instructed them to recite sums aloud.

Leticia rounded on Tristan. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t let me—”

“Keep her?” Tristan supplied. “Then what?”

She struggled to come up with an answer. “I don’t know, but I can’t stand the thought of her living with such abuse.”

Tristan tucked away his gun and put a hand on each of her shoulders. “If you tried to take her from her father, you would be in danger of the law.”

Leticia struggled against anger, helplessness, sorrow.

Gently, Tristan pulled her in close and held her. “I know, Tish.” He let out his breath. “Fathers should love and protect their children, not hurt them.”

Enfolded in the soothing comfort of his arms, her distress faded. She held on to him as a deep place inside her sighed.

He let out a caustic laugh. “Although, I suppose some children are full of the devil and deserve a few beatings.”

She pulled away to look at him. “No child deserves any beating.”

“Not like that.” He glanced at the door through which Molly and her father exited.

“Not like what your father did to you, either.”

Memories surfaced of, as a child, often finding Tristan, grim and teary-eyed but trying not to cry, curled up in the hollow of the oak near the brook after his father had whipped him. She had always put an arm around him and tried to reassure him that he was a good boy. Eventually, he stopped believing her. Now, as it did then, the idea of the gentle, dreamy-eyed Tristan she knew as a child being subjected to harsh punishment sent pain through her.