1. The Legacy, Chapter 1: Three Oaks


    Date: 3/23/2015, Categories: Wife Lovers, Author: stormdog100, Rating: 21, Source: LushStories

    a school teacher back then, history and literature, before becoming the principal and then the county superintendent of schools. He’d retired four years earlier at age sixty-three to enjoy his life, his loving wife, Mary, and their horses. “What are you planting, Miss Elizabeth?” “Henry, please call me Beth. Haven’t we had this discussion about a thousand times already?” He chuckled. “Yes – at least. It’s a habit, Miss…umm, Beth. I’m sorry, but you’ve always been Miss Elizabeth to me, and I suppose you always will be.” She smiled, knowing he was right. “I’m planting some coleus. I know it’s late in the year – it’s already so hot, but I had this shady spot, and they were so beautiful…” He reached out and picked up a handful of soil, crumbling it between his long, graceful fingers. “It’s too dry, Miss Elizabeth; this is a good spot, enough shade, but with it being June you’ll need to keep them good and wet until they get some roots down. Don’t drown them; just water…maybe twice a day for awhile, when it doesn’t rain.” She turned her head to hide her grin; Henry was always advising her on anything to do with gardening – and his advice was sound, she had learned a great deal – but she’d been doing it for almost twenty years now! She was a pretty good gardener herself, by this point. “Thank you, kind sir, I will do that!” She put the last two plants in the ground, and made small talk with him as she wet them down with a gentle spray. Finished, she turned off the hose and coiled it ...
    back onto its reel. “If you’d like some company, I’ll walk up with you to look at that old oak tree.” She knew she should stay and clean up her flower bed a bit more – the weeds were already encroaching – but it was getting late and she needed to get back up to the house in any event. He positively beamed. “It ain’t in this old man to turn down the company of such a beautiful young woman! You know I’d love to have you walk with me.” They walked side by side, at ease with each other and talking comfortably. The path followed the route of the old drive that used to lead up to the manor house, the ancestral plantation home that had been burned to the ground by a roving band of General Sherman’s troops in 1864, on their March to the Sea. The old plantation, known as Three Oaks, was long gone, but one of the three massive, graceful trees from which it had taken its name remained; that was the tree they were going to look at. The other two remained only as images in old photos and daguerreotypes from an earlier era, although one dark, rotting stump, several feet in diameter, still existed. The sole remaining tree, with its huge canopy and wide-spreading branches, stood perhaps fifty feet from the timber frame farmhouse which had been built in the late 1870’s to replace the razed manor house. It cast shade over the broad porch of the house in the afternoon and evening, and was conceivably close enough to do some damage should it fall in that direction. They looked up into the wide, ...
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