LITMIR.BIZ

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sniffed the air like a bird dog. Scrunching her nose, she waved a hand in front of her face. “Phew, John Walker. Those boys were right. You stink. Make sure you go home first and hit the shower yourself.”

      Chapter 2

      2

      Late December 1837

      Sarah Jane pierced her finger with the sharp edge of the needle. Stifling a cry, she laid the quilt square in her lap and sucked the tiny, red dot of blood from her forefinger.

      “No blood on the quilt.” Leila smirked from across the drawing room.

      Glancing over to the mantel clock, Sarah Jane smothered an inward groan. Papa had promised he’d return from Charleston with his new apprentice this afternoon. But still no sign of Papa’s carriage.

      “Maybe a snowstorm hindered their return home,” Leila speculated.

      Sarah sent a prayer heavenward the apprentice doctor had the wherewithal and good manners to do most of the driving on the long, country roads between the bustling port city of Charleston and the backcountry trails in this isolated corner of the Cherokee Nation.

      “Your father’s getting slow in his old age.” Leila flashed even, ivory white teeth at Sarah.

      Sarah Jane silently concurred, not that she’d give Leila the satisfaction of knowing they agreed upon anything. Papa wasn’t getting any younger, although like a good plow horse he’d rather die in the harness than admit it.

      “Do you think Dr. Hopkins remembered to buy the blue silk for me?”

      Sarah Jane withdrew her finger from her mouth and studied it for any further evidence of blood before picking up the Carolina Lily square again.

      “I’m sure he did. Papa wrote it in his little notebook, and you know how careful he is about such things.”

      Papa wouldn’t be pleased to learn that, less than a day after his departure, Leila’s own father had been called away to yet another Cherokee council meeting.

      Her face clouded. And when Papa returned to find her alone with Leila and old Kweti? An inappropriate chaperone, he’d say, not thinking too highly of Leila’s tradition-bound Cherokee nurse with her chants and potions.

      Leila poked her aristocratic nose in the air. “I’m going to add this quilt to my hope chest.” Her eyes narrowed at Sarah’s paltry quilting effort.

      Those enormous, lively dark eyes the boys—Cherokee and white—found so bewitching.

      “Hard to believe you and I both took two years of needlework together at Salem Academy.”

      Sarah Jane decided it was best to let that remark lie.

      Leila fluttered her lashes, failing in her first attempt to rile Sarah and alleviate her boredom. “My father brought me a green trunk the last time the delegation went to Washington to plead our cause with the President. You do have a hope chest, don’t you, Sarah Jane?”

      She giggled and wound a curl of her rich, flowing blue-black hair around her finger. “Or do you no longer entertain any hopes?”

      Refusing to respond to Leila’s usual jabs, Sarah Jane inspected the clock again, skimmed across the book-lined walls, and then gazed out the parlor window. She fingered the scratchy wool homespun she’d donned this morning. Leila understood full well Sarah Jane’s father, a medical missionary to the North Carolina contingent of the Cherokee Nation, didn’t have the lavish funds the slave-holding planter, Ambrose Hummingbird, had at his disposal for his daughter, Leila.

      She stabbed the needle through the cloth, pondering the unfairness that plagued her life. When God gave out beauty, Sarah Jane figured Leila had not only pushed her way to the front of the line, but probably shoved one or two more—including herself—out of any chance of receiving any beauty at all.

      Leila, she suspected, had befriended her because Sarah Jane was the only white girl within a hundred miles of the Hummingbirds. And Leila Hummingbird, despite being a full-blooded Cherokee, was the “whitest white” Sarah ever met. Whiter than her. With the red brick manor house, the finest silk clothing and finishing school education to prove it.

      A five-dollar Indian, as the more traditional Cherokee referred to Ambrose Hummingbird. And it wasn’t meant as a compliment. He looked like an Indian. But acted like a white man. Neither he nor Leila spoke a word of Cherokee.

      Leila’s father wasn’t much of a churchgoer, and some of the things Leila said were nothing short of shocking. Leila didn’t practice traditional Cherokee beliefs despite Kweti’s best intentions nor evidence much spirituality in the Christian faith of her deceased mother, either.

      Fact was, sad to say, Leila Hummingbird didn’t believe in much of anything. Except herself.

      And bless his dear, always-believe-the-best heart, Papa actually maintained she, Sarah Jane, provided a settling influence on Leila.

      “Humph.” As if anything could contain a force of nature like Leila Hummingbird. One could about as easily harness the wind.

      “What did you say, Sarah Jane?”

      “Nothing.”

      Sarah Jane set her lips in a line as thin as the green stem of the lily and bent her head over her appliqué. What she wouldn’t give to be in her own house. She’d left her journal there, fearing it would fall into Leila’s meddling hands if she brought it with her to Chestnut Hill.

      Not that she’d written anything in it in the month since Papa surprised her with the birthday gift. He knew how she loved to “scribble” and vowed she might miss the rapture if she had her nose in a book at the moment of the Twinkling Eye. The journal, to Sarah Jane’s delight, combined the best of both of her passions.

      Who knows? Someday, somewhere, someone else might read what she hoped would be pearls of wisdom gleaned along the path of her life’s journey. And so, she’d resolved to record only the most momentous of events.

      As if anything of any importance would ever happen among the sleepy Snowbird Mountains.

      Her father contended Leila merely lacked the fruit of self-control—in Sarah Jane’s opinion not the only fruit of the Spirit Leila Hummingbird lacked. Then her conscience—and the voice of her own dead mother—smote Sarah Jane. She closed her eyes, repentant in the face of her self-righteousness.

      “Patience,” she prayed when dealing with Leila Hummingbird.

      Leila tossed a lock of luxuriant hair over her shoulder. “What are you mumbling about?”

      Although Leila’s mother died in the act of bringing Leila into the world, Sarah Jane’s mother only succumbed to pleurisy of the lungs a few years back. And Sarah’s mother had spent as much time on her knees for the motherless, little Cherokee girl as for Sarah Jane.

      For the sake of her dearly departed mother, Sarah Jane held her tongue and held fast to her temper when Leila Hummingbird’s irritating presence drove her out of sheer exasperation to the throne of her Consolation.

      Carriage wheels rattled on the gravel path. She and Leila, for once in total harmony, both flung their ladylike endeavors to the side and rushed for the window overlooking the circular drive.

      Sarah Jane steepled her hands under her chin. “Blessed be God.”

      Leila clapped her hands together, the red and green tartan ribbons bobbing in her hair. “Finally . . .” Her face fell. “Oh. Your father came alone. Wonder where the new doctor is?”

      At the sight of the brown parcel clutched in his hand, Leila squealed and darted on the tips of her patent leather shoes to the entrance hall. She flung open the door before the Hummingbird’s Negro butler, Samson, could grasp the door handle. Sarah Jane followed more sedately—something she’d learned in the two-year Moravian finishing school.

      Glimpsing Sarah, her papa paused on the wide veranda, his whiskered cheeks breaking into a smile. Leila

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