Merline Lovelace Read Online Free

she might have learned to live with her husband’s weak character and perhaps even forgive his escapades. But she would never forgive him for bringing the tsar’s relentless fury down upon her and her father. She shuddered, remembering once more her horror when she’d learned of Aleksei’s involvement in an insane plot to curb Nikolas’s absolute power.
    When the plot was exposed, only the tsarina’s personal intervention had saved Tatiana from execution alongside her husband. Still young, but no longer naive, the frightened widow had been stripped of all but the poorest of her husband’s estates. In desperation, her father had tried to redeem the family honor by sinking every ruble he had into the tsar’s Russian American Fur Company. Now, with the fur trade almost dead and the Russian settlement at Fort Ross in dire financial straits, Tatiana’s father stood to lose everything he’d invested.
    She had brought them both to the point of ruin, Tatiana acknowledged, her ragged nails digging into the pole. She and her silly, girlish dreams of love. Now only she could pull them back from the brink.
    She...and this rude, uncouth American. This Josiah Jones.
    Tatiana raised her head, despair giving way to the implacable determination that had brought her across a vast continent and a winter-dark ocean. She had to convince the American to provide her escort to Fort Ross. She would convince him, one way or another.
    Her jaw squaring, she lifted the doeskin flap and stepped into the lodge. The warmth of many bodies and a bright, leaping fire welcomed her. Blinking to clear her eyes of the acrid smoke from the cooking fire, Tatiana made her way to a young, very pregnant woman seated on a rug of thick beaver pelts.
    Cho-gam’s fourth wife glanced up from the basket she was weaving and smiled a welcome. The cheerful, lively woman had taken Tatiana under her wing when the Russian had first arrived in the Valley of the Hupa, weak and confused from the fevers that still racked her on occasion. The countess would always be grateful for Re-Re-An’s skilled care...and for the way the beauteous Hupa had coaxed a sullen Cho-gam into her furs the first time Tatiana turned him away. She would miss Re-Re-An when she left the valley, which she must do most immediately!
    “Did you see him?” the young wife asked eagerly. “The fringe person?”
    “I saw him.”
    Re-Re-An patted the furs beside her. “Sit! Tell me what occurred!”
    Tatiana sank down into the nest of silky beaver pelts. Of necessity, she’d picked up a working knowledge of Hupa phrases these past weeks. Luckily she’d always possessed a facility for languages. She’d learned English during her father’s appointment as the old tsar’s ambassador to the Court of St. James. French had been the preferred means of address of the Russian aristocrats until that demon Napoleon had marched his armies into the heart of the Motherland. Tatiana spoke both tongues with commendable fluency, as well as several dialects of Russian. By comparison, she thought the Hupa language simple in construction, but more difficult to speak in that a single sound could have so many different meanings.
    “Is he not as I described him to you?” Re-Re-An demanded in her soft, musical voice. “Tall and straight and pale of face?”
    “No. He is a great, ugly, hairy bear.”
    The young woman stared in surprise. “Perhaps it was not the one called Jo-Sigh-Ah.”
    “It is he.”
    “And you think him ugly?”
    Tatiana picked at her braid, shooting a frown at the woman beside her. “Don’t you?”
    “He is not handsome as are the men of the Green Snake clan, it is true. Yet when he wintered here three years ago, he lured many women to his blanket with his smile and his generous gifts.”
    The Russian gave a little huff of disbelief. She couldn’t imagine any woman voluntarily bedding with such a man. He might be tall and straight and, yes, he was certainly broad of shoulder. His bushy