Cherokee Storm. Janelle TaylorЧитать онлайн книгу.
never thought of you,” she lied.
“You did,” he corrected. “Your spirit calls to mine. It always has.”
“No, that’s not possible.”
“When I first saw you as a woman grown, it was in teeth of a great storm.”
“At the cave.”
He nodded. “In the strike of lightning. It was a sign.”
“No, it wasn’t. I was chasing a cow and got lost. How can that be a sign?”
“Shan-nan!” Oona’s voice. “Shan-nan!”
“I have to go,” she said. “Please, let me go.”
“Then your spirit must cut the bond between us.” He stepped aside and she dashed down the path without looking back.
Oona waited at the bend in the trail. “Your father is asking for you,” she said. “Why did you not come?”
“Tell him that,” Shannon said, suddenly breathless. She pointed back along the path toward the spring. “He’s here. Storm—” She glanced around. He was gone. “He was there,” she insisted. “Storm Dancer was here.”
“I do not see him,” Oona said.
“No, he’s not here now. But he was. Don’t you believe me?”
“I think you play with fire, Shannon O’Shea.”
“What fire?”
The Indian woman’s sloe eyes narrowed. “Storm Dancer is not for you. Do not meddle with what you do not understand.”
“I’m not meddling. Don’t you understand? It’s him. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“You did not bring the water. I need water for the house.” Oona brushed past her. “I will fetch it.”
Frustrated, Shannon stalked toward the cabin.
“He is a prince among the Cherokee,” Oona called after her. “A great one.”
“I don’t care,” Shannon flung back.
“And he is promised to another.”
“He’s nothing to me! Nothing.” But even as she shouted the words, she knew she was lying. And she knew because her stomach knotted and she could see that the sunlight had gone out of the morning, leaving all the brilliant greens and blues and browns of the forest muted and gray.
Chapter 6
A week passed, and then two, as Shannon eased into the daily routine of her father’s trading post. She became accustomed to the luxury of sleeping in a bed and having a room all to herself without being awakened by someone snoring or the stench and tinkle of another woman using a chamber pot inches from her head. If she heated water at night, she was free to drag the big copper washtub into her private space and bathe from head to toe with real soap.
A handful of beeswax candles hung in a leather case on the wall near her window. Shannon could read by candlelight with ease instead of squinting until her eyes ached, as she had for so many years. At the tavern, where she’d been apprenticed since she was thirteen, the only light after dark was a fireplace or tallow burning in a smoky Betty Lamp. And, to her delight, Flynn had given her the silver-backed antique hand mirror that her mother—afraid it would break—had carried from Baltimore every step of the way over the mountains from the coast when they’d first come to Cherokee territory. Shannon could gaze into the precious mirror as often as she liked, squint her eyes and imagine she could see her mother’s beloved reflection staring back at her.
Shannon felt like a princess in one of her father’s old tales. Each morning, Oona prepared a hot breakfast for the three of them, and Shannon was encouraged to eat as much as she wanted. She could put honey on her hot-cakes and stir fresh berries into her porridge. No one tossed leftover scraps retrieved from tavern customers’ plates into a pot of soup for her to share with the other serving girls, and no one watched to see that she didn’t take a second helping of bread. And after she and Flynn and Oona had eaten, he would take her to the store to teach her the art of trading.
Soon she’d realized that the post’s account book was a mess. Flynn was repeatedly making errors in his arithmetic, and his handwriting was so bad that often he couldn’t read it. Was that “8 trade mirrors” or “no trade mirrors”? Zero pairs of French scissors remaining or nine?
And the picture darkened once Shannon began taking inventory of glass beads and trinkets, clay pipes, cheap cloth, men’s hats, and bottled medicinals. It was obvious that the store had far too many boxes of those frivolous items gathering dust on the shelves, while the trade goods the Cherokee seemed to desire most, such as steel knives, hatchets, needles, powder and shot, were in short supply.
Worst of all, Shannon found lists of customers who bought supplies on ticket and never paid with the promised furs or gold nuggets. Some debts went back a decade, and others were simply written off. Shannon had even discovered sales of gunpowder or knives that were marked “no charge.”
In theory, the isolated trading post was a solid business. No other store existed for days in every direction, and her father had enjoyed the friendship of the prosperous Cherokee nation for many years. But the account books proved that Da had made less profit every season for the past five years. And the money he’d paid to buy her indenture and pay her passage west had cost him most of his savings.
When Shannon questioned him about the problems, he laughed off her concerns, saying that she was like her mother, thinking she could teach a rooster how to crow. He knew the Cherokee, he insisted, and he knew his trade. Some customers might be slow to make good on their promises, but in the end, most would honor their obligations. As for the items he’d given away, the recipients were on hard times and needed assistance rather than a debt. That was the Cherokee way, and to live among the people, he was expected to adopt some of their ways.
In those two weeks, while Shannon struggled to understand her father’s business sense, they had no visitors. And although Storm Dancer continued to invade her dreams and her pulse became erratic every time she went to the spring to fetch water, she saw no sign of him in the flesh. Neither she nor Oona told her father about Storm Dancer’s visit that first morning. At least, Shannon assumed that Oona had kept her secret, because Da said nothing to her about it.
And as for her lustful dreams, they were most disturbing…so lascivious, that an unwed maid should be ashamed of knowing such behavior between a man and woman existed, let alone being party to it in her mind. If her bedroom door hadn’t been barred from the inside and her window too small to admit a grown man, she would swear that Storm Dancer had been with her in her bed every night. She would swear that Storm Dancer had licked and nibbled and kissed every inch of her body from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, and that she had eagerly done as much to him.
She wondered if she were bewitched. Was she too weak to resist the temptation of her nightly fantasy orgies? If she couldn’t banish the dreams, decency should have compelled her to try to stay awake, to sit late by the kitchen fire, refuse to lay her head on her pillow and give herself over to her wicked imagination. Instead, to her shame, she welcomed them…seeking her bed early and savoring the licentious memories the following day.
And worse, after she’d gone to bed, in the moments before she fell asleep, she would touch herself…rubbing her nipples until they tingled…massaging the mound where her nether curls sprang…sliding her fingers into her woman’s cleft until she shuddered with pleasure.
Usually, her dream lover came to her in her soft featherbed within the four posters, but sometimes the two of them sought out secret places in the mountains. There, they would swim naked in the creeks or race hand in hand into an enchanted hollow where wild strawberries and violets grew thick and the air smelled of perfume.
There, with trees for walls, sky for a roof, and thick moss for their bed, Storm Dancer would sprawl on his back and she would fling herself