Read Online Shawnee Bride by Elizabeth Lane - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Elizabeth Lane
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would not be so skittish when the time came to lead one away.
With purposeful steps, she strode back along the trail toward the village. Two braves rolling bark for a canoe greeted her with good-natured grins. From the doorway of a lodge, a tiny dark-eyed girl smiled shyly as she clutched her puppy in her arms. The world of the Shawnee was not all bad, Clarissa conceded. But it was not her world. Soon she would leave it all behind.
She swallowed the hardness in her throat as she approached the clearing where the horses were tethered. One distant day all of this would be like a dream. The river and the forest. The village and the people—SwanFeather and White Moon, Cat Follower and the battlescarred Hunts-at-Night. The women and the children. And Wolf Heart.
Clarissa choked back a little cry as the truth sank home.
When she left the Shawnee world, it would be forever. There would be no letters, no returning for visits. To these simple people, her going would be as final as if she had died.
Her own memory, she knew, would dim as well. In the long years to come—years filled with the trials of living—the faces so clear to her now would fade like portraits drawn in sand.
She would lose them all.
Wolf Heart eased his bruise-mottled torso upright along the willow frame, gritting his teeth against the urge to groan aloud. He was alone in the smoky darkness of the lodge. Swan Feather had hobbled off to tend her corn patch and Clarissa had left on one of her many errands. No one was here to fuss over him or cajole him to a show of cheerfulness. For once he could act as miserable as he felt!
A rivulet of sweat dripped from his armpit to trickle down his side. He had not bathed fully since before the vision-quest, and he smelled like a white man. The musky odor, which he had disliked all his adult life, had spawned his habit of swimming daily in some pool or river. Now the smell lay on his unwashed skin, rising like a miasma into the stale air around him. He felt dirty, prickly, sore and mean.
And Clarissa had just appeared in the doorway of the lodge.
“How are you feeling?” She still spoke to him in Englishwhen they were alone. As a result, his own memory of the language had sharpened, and he found himself speaking fluently, using words and phrases he had not heard since boyhood.
“How do you think I feel?” He glared at her and was wryly amused when she bridled in response.
“I was only being polite. You didn’t have to snap at me!” She set down the herb basket to brush away the grass blades that clung to her pathetic rag of a skirt. Why would she bother with such a small vanity? Wolf Heart found himself wondering. And why would there be torn grass on the front of her skirt, when there appeared to be none on the back? What was Clarissa up to now?
“Are you hungry?” She bent to the herb basket to inspect her gatherings. A finger of sunlight, probing through the bark roof, ignited the blaze of her hair. Wolf Heart watched the quick sure movements, of her hands, aching suddenly with the urge to reach out, catch those hands in his own and feel the roughness of her small chapped knuckles against his skin.
These past days and nights in the lodge, seeing her, hearing the velvet rasp of her breathing in the night, catching the essence of her woman-scent as she passed him in the small space had been sheer torment. He knew what the vision had told him. He knew that he and Clarissa could cause each other nothing but grief. But that did not stop him from wanting her.
It did not stop him from lying awake m the darkness, his loins feverish with the memory of holding her close. It did not stop his hungry gaze from following her about the lodge, lingering on the graceful sway of a hip or the exquisite bud of a mpple pressing against the threadbare fabric of her bodice. Only his injury and Swan Feather’s nearly constant presence had kept him from reaching outto catch Clarissa’s waist, pulling her against him and
With purposeful steps, she strode back along the trail toward the village. Two braves rolling bark for a canoe greeted her with good-natured grins. From the doorway of a lodge, a tiny dark-eyed girl smiled shyly as she clutched her puppy in her arms. The world of the Shawnee was not all bad, Clarissa conceded. But it was not her world. Soon she would leave it all behind.
She swallowed the hardness in her throat as she approached the clearing where the horses were tethered. One distant day all of this would be like a dream. The river and the forest. The village and the people—SwanFeather and White Moon, Cat Follower and the battlescarred Hunts-at-Night. The women and the children. And Wolf Heart.
Clarissa choked back a little cry as the truth sank home.
When she left the Shawnee world, it would be forever. There would be no letters, no returning for visits. To these simple people, her going would be as final as if she had died.
Her own memory, she knew, would dim as well. In the long years to come—years filled with the trials of living—the faces so clear to her now would fade like portraits drawn in sand.
She would lose them all.
Wolf Heart eased his bruise-mottled torso upright along the willow frame, gritting his teeth against the urge to groan aloud. He was alone in the smoky darkness of the lodge. Swan Feather had hobbled off to tend her corn patch and Clarissa had left on one of her many errands. No one was here to fuss over him or cajole him to a show of cheerfulness. For once he could act as miserable as he felt!
A rivulet of sweat dripped from his armpit to trickle down his side. He had not bathed fully since before the vision-quest, and he smelled like a white man. The musky odor, which he had disliked all his adult life, had spawned his habit of swimming daily in some pool or river. Now the smell lay on his unwashed skin, rising like a miasma into the stale air around him. He felt dirty, prickly, sore and mean.
And Clarissa had just appeared in the doorway of the lodge.
“How are you feeling?” She still spoke to him in Englishwhen they were alone. As a result, his own memory of the language had sharpened, and he found himself speaking fluently, using words and phrases he had not heard since boyhood.
“How do you think I feel?” He glared at her and was wryly amused when she bridled in response.
“I was only being polite. You didn’t have to snap at me!” She set down the herb basket to brush away the grass blades that clung to her pathetic rag of a skirt. Why would she bother with such a small vanity? Wolf Heart found himself wondering. And why would there be torn grass on the front of her skirt, when there appeared to be none on the back? What was Clarissa up to now?
“Are you hungry?” She bent to the herb basket to inspect her gatherings. A finger of sunlight, probing through the bark roof, ignited the blaze of her hair. Wolf Heart watched the quick sure movements, of her hands, aching suddenly with the urge to reach out, catch those hands in his own and feel the roughness of her small chapped knuckles against his skin.
These past days and nights in the lodge, seeing her, hearing the velvet rasp of her breathing in the night, catching the essence of her woman-scent as she passed him in the small space had been sheer torment. He knew what the vision had told him. He knew that he and Clarissa could cause each other nothing but grief. But that did not stop him from wanting her.
It did not stop him from lying awake m the darkness, his loins feverish with the memory of holding her close. It did not stop his hungry gaze from following her about the lodge, lingering on the graceful sway of a hip or the exquisite bud of a mpple pressing against the threadbare fabric of her bodice. Only his injury and Swan Feather’s nearly constant presence had kept him from reaching outto catch Clarissa’s waist, pulling her against him and
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