Merline Lovelace Read Online Free Page A

whiskers would rasp a woman’s skin painfully, however. And he stank. There was no other word for it.
    “It was not his smile that lured me,” one of the other women put in dryly. “The fringe person carries a veritable lodgepole between his legs. What’s more,” she added with a smirk, “he knows well how to use it to pleasure a woman.”
    Sputters of laughter rose from the other women, followed by astonishingly frank observations about the outsider’s manly attributes. Tatiana sat in silence during the ribald commentary. She had gone beyond being shocked by the ways of the Hupa, who considered sexual congress between men and women as natural as breathing. No, the Hupa could not disgust her, but this American did. Evidently he was much like Aleksei had been, she thought contemptuously. Eager to find his way under the skirts of any woman who would lift them.
    Re-Re-An caught her friend’s expression and sighed. Tatiana’s adamant refusal to lie with the wealthy, handsome Cho-gam had stirred a great deal of curiosity among the women of the tribe. The outsider had said little to satisfy that curiosity, only that she’d already had one husband and was of no mind to take another.
    “Someday you’ll want again the pleasure only a man can give you,” the young Hupa predicted softly. “You have too much of the eagle in you not to wish to soar.”
    “When I do,” Tatiana muttered, “you can be sure I’ll choose most particularly who I soar with. Now let us speak of other things...such as how I shall persuade the outsider to take me with him when he leaves.”
    “Cho-gam will attend to that matter,” Re-Re-An predicted, her dark eyes dancing. “With your strange ways and sharp tongue, you are a very costly wife. He wishes heartily to be rid of you.”
    When Tatiana huffed again, the Hupa smiled and picked up the half-finished basket. Her fingers flew as she twisted two weft strands of dried grass around stiffer warp stems of willow. After every dozen or so twists, she wove a downy white feather into the pattern. When she finished with the basket, Tatiana knew, its surface would feel as soft as a bird’s breast.
    She watched in silence for a few moments, marveling at the woman’s skill. She’d never seen basketry as fine as that produced by the Hupa. The people of the valley used their exquisitely crafted products for every imaginable purpose, from gambling trays and burial containers to the more mundane tasks of cooking and storage.
    Her gaze drifted to the far end of the lodge, where the oblong, lidded basket Re-Re-An had given her was propped against one wall. The straw container held all that remained of the tsar’s treasure...all that Tatiana had been able to salvage from the ocean’s depths.
    The seafaring men who’d snatched her from the huge chest she’d clung to through those endless, terrifying hours had tried to capture the chest, as well. Attaching long ropes, they’d tugged the wooden box through the crashing waves, only to have it break apart on the rocks lining the shore.
    Delirious and half out of her mind with fear, Tatiana had broken away from the men who held her and gathered what she could of the precious cargo. Through the weeks that followed, she’d guarded the remnants as ferociously as a mother would a child. The men who’d brought her to the Hupa didn’t recognize the value of the treasure she carried with her. No one did, except Tatiana, and her father, and the tsar.
    Unless she got the treasure to Fort Ross most immediately, however, it would lose all value. Chewing on her lower lip in worry, Tatiana could only pray that Cho-gam was as determined to be rid of her as she was to leave the Valley of the Hupa.
    The minutes passed slowly. The hours even more slowly. The men would talk for some time, Re-Re-An advised, sharing news of the mountains and negotiating trades. Then they would repair to the sweat house to relax and gamble and attempt to win back that which they’d just