Lori Benton Read Online Free

from the travois and was sitting up on it, looking about, blinking those eyes as blue as bits of sky fallen to earth. Dark brows soared at the sight of her, before he offered a tentative smile.
    “ ’Tis not the first time I’ve waked to find myself cast upon the mercy of strangers,” he said, the words rolling over her, thick as corn porridge. “Though come to that—”
    Whatever more he meant to say was cut short when the dog, hearing his voice, pushed past her, bolted joyfully across the cabin, and hurled itself at the man.

T HREE
    Neil MacGregor got an arm half-raised before the filthy mass of fur vaguely resembling his dog barreled into him. Shielding his injured parts from the wriggling onslaught left his face open to a slobbery barrage. “Easy, sir—down, I say!”
    He’d meant to say a deal more, but the collie swung its rump, tail whirling like a pinwheel, and swiped the wagging appendage against his swollen wrist. Pain forked like lightning up his arm, searing the words to his tongue.
    “Dog. Come away.”
    The command came from the Indian who’d entered the cabin. From his glimpse of her stroud cloth and deerskin garments, Neil hadn’t expected her to speak a word of English. More startling was his dog’s response. The collie backed away and sat, pressed against the rock hearth, two paces from where Neil had awakened, lashed to what appeared to be a travois.
    Removing his teeth from his lower lip, he peered at the woman in the doorway, squinting to bear the daylight streaming past her. Not an Indian, he realized. The thick braid of hair fallen over her shoulder was a light brown, glinting nearly auburn in the glare of sunlight. Her face, while tight-skinned and high-boned, had a golden cast, not the bronze of the Indians he’d encountered.
    “D’ye mind terribly shutting the door?” he asked her, shooting a warning look at the dog lest it think itself released. The collie glanced at the woman and lay down. Neil was likewise tempted, but warring with a pounding, woozy head was the need to make sense of his circumstances—a far cry from the last he recalled—and to ascertain the extent of his injuries. Nothing too alarming, save for his right arm. Fractured, judging fromthe splintering pain when he moved it, and the bruised swelling of the wrist.
    The woman did as he’d asked, bringing a blessed dimness to the cabin. She made no reply, however, nor any other indication she’d understood him. Perhaps she’d shut the door of her volition, not at his request. She
had
spoken English, hadn’t she? The fading imprint of blinding pain told him he’d had another of the cursed headaches. They could scramble his brains for hours after waking.
    Unnerved by the woman’s silence, he looked at his dog. “Ye reek to high heaven, lad—and you’re a sorry sight, forby.”
    The collie thumped the floor with its tail, pleased to be addressed.
    “He is as I found him,” the woman said. “Or as he found me.”
    That
had been English, though the sound of it was odd, spoken with a faint accent Neil couldn’t place, and a careful, almost halting manner, as though she was thinking hard about the words she chose to speak.
    “Aye, well, he’s inclined to attach himself to passersby. He found me near Schenectady—down on the Mohawk River. What his given name is I canna say, but I call him Capercaillie. That’s a kind of bird,” he explained at her blank stare. “In Scotland. Cap does for short.”
    He checked his blethering and dropped his gaze. The woman’s feet were encased in stitched moccasins, beaded or quilled—he couldn’t tell from that distance—in a flower design, their edges dark with moisture and mud. Above them, leggings of faded scarlet, similarly decorated, disappeared beneath a wrapped skirt of tanned hide, its edges fringed. Over this she wore a long tunic of stroud cloth like the leggings, only blue, and much worn. From her neck hung a necklace of shells and a bone-handled knife