LITMIR.BIZ

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strangled voice filtered through her suffocating grief. “Linden, honey, I would’ve never pulled it out if I’d known . . .”

      Linden inhaled and exhaled, fighting past yet another trigger, struggling to execute the breathing exercises her father swore in his considerable medical experience would help. But despite long years of counseling and medication, they never did.

      “I-I can’t—” Linden dodged her grandmother’s outstretched hand. “I can’t stay here. Why did I think I could do this? Do anything ever again?”

      Marvela blanched, as ashen as she’d been while prying Linden’s fingers off the sides of the hospital bassinet with its IV lines and electronic monitors. “Linden, don’t . . . You’ve come so far. Made so much progress.”

      Linden darted for the stairs. “I need some air. I need to—”

      If she didn’t escape, she’d either retch or hyperventilate. Her feet pounded down the steps and onto the second floor landing. The mauve tones her grandmother adored—aka Barbara Cartland gone American Victorian—blurred as she lurched toward an exit.

      Recalling the incessant beeping in the neonatal ICU, Linden clapped her hands over her ears as she stumbled down the main staircase toward the ground floor. Images flooded her mind. And the final, droning flatline of her nightmares.

      As long as she worked until she collapsed into bed each night, as long as she filled her days with New York’s subway sounds or the blaring horns of Raleigh’s rush-hour traffic, the white noise held those other sounds at bay. Preserving for Linden whatever sanity yet remained.

      Why had she come to this godforsaken place with nothing but the chirping of birds to drown out what she’d spent ten years trying to forget? Why Cartridge Cove, where nothing but the wind moaned? With nothing but reminders of those desolate days after the small coffin had been lowered into the ground. Reminders of a lost time when no one could console her.

      Dashing through the foyer, she stifled a sob. Who was she kidding? She was the godforsaken one.

      Hot tears burned. Everything her fault . . .

      White-knuckled, she grabbed the brass handle on the oak door, flinging it wide. And in her near-panic, she hurtled across the threshold and smack into a mountain whose hand was upraised in the motion of knocking.

      Linden bounced off him and into the doorframe. She screamed and the mountain yelled in surprised unison. Clutching her racing heart, she took a swift look at the scowling, immovable obstacle in her path.

      A Snowbird Cherokee mountain.

      Chapter 4

      4

      January 1838

      Sarah Jane stretched her arms skyward, billowing the sheet over the clothesline on the first, moderately mild day since Old Christmas. She reveled in the warmth of the sun on her cheeks beneath her woolen bonnet. And, she sensed his gaze out the window upon her. A smile flitted across her lips.

      His tiny cubicle in her father’s surgery overlooked the kettle where she boiled the linens over the fire outside the house. She often encountered his scrutiny as she tended to her papa’s household while her father gave Pierce a crash course in herbal remedies he’d gleaned from his Cherokee friends and incorporated into his own practice.

      And what was it her papa said yesterday, a teasing glint in his blue eyes?

      That Sarah Jane’s domicile had never looked so well kept and scrubbed? How “. . . not a streak of dirt dared rear its ugly head amidst such dedicated daily ministrations.”

      She blushed at the memory. Her papa knew her too well.

      Had it only been a month since Pierce arrived? She felt she’d known him forever.

      “Sarah!” Her father’s voice called from inside the house.

      Her head snapped up as a blur of movement around the corner of the house snared her attention. Straightening, she wiped her hands on the faded blue calico she wore on washdays. Hurrying forward, Sarah observed a tall, Cherokee man and his older

       companion leaning against the wood-framed farmhouse. The younger man wore fringed, deerskin leggings.

      Sighting Sarah, he scowled. He crossed his arms over the loose-fitting ribbon shirt most Cherokee favored. His thick mane of dark hair unbound and blowing in the slight breeze, he moved to bar her path to the door.

      Taken aback by the undisguised hostility on his face, Sarah faltered. She put a hand to her hair. Her fingers shook as she tucked an unruly tendril inside the bonnet.

      What ailed this young man? But everyone was tense these days. Soldiers swarmed over the valley settlements erecting stockades and recording names in some military census.

      She squared her shoulders. This wasn’t the frontier any more, although the copper-skinned man looked like a throwback to more primitive times.

      As if he had his druthers, he’d just as soon scalp her.

      She reminded herself the Cherokee were one of the Five Civilized Tribes and gathered her courage. “Excuse me, please.”

      He stood unmoving, rock solid in her path.

      Clearing her throat, she tried again. “Did you bring a patient?”

      Towering over her, he peered down his long nose at her, adept at the silence game the Cherokee often employed.

      Flustered, she felt the heat rise beneath her collar. One of the curses of her redheaded, Scots-Irish heritage. “My father called . . . He requires my assistance . . . If you’d just . . .”

      Maybe, like many of the Cherokee especially those with farms high in the mountain hollows, he spoke no English.

      His eyes darkened. One lip raised in a sneer, he muttered something in Cherokee. She reared back as much at the malice in his tone as the stinging, vulgar word he’d used. The old man made a motion of protest, halted by a sibilant hiss from the younger man.

      She bit back the reply that rose to her lips, reminding herself of her father’s admonition—also from Scripture—that a gentle answer turned away wrath. An inexplicable wrath on this young man’s part.

      “Nv-wa-do-hi-ya-dv.” Lifting her chin, she met his stare head on. But she took care to maintain a soft, even tone. “Peace. No harm,” she repeated.

      An uncharitable feeling of satisfaction bubbled in her chest as his smoldering eyes widened in confused surprise. He had the grace, if not the manners, to flush.

      Few whites, truth to tell, spoke the intricate, tonal Cherokee language, but Papa made sure Sarah Jane did as part of their mission. Along with his training of Cherokee convert laypersons, he believed to minister fully to the Cherokee’s body and soul, one must understand them. And speaking their language was a first step toward understanding.

      The back door squeaked open. Pierce, his starched collar open at the neck and his sleeves rolled to his elbows ready for doctoring, emerged into the sunlight. A muscle twitching in his cheek, he inserted himself between Sarah Jane and the Cherokee. Forcing her to peer over Pierce’s broad shoulder.

      Pierce jutted his jaw. “Is there a problem here, Miss Hopkins?” His gaze never left the Cherokee’s face.

      Miss Hopkins. Sarah swallowed an inward sigh. Pierce, always so formal and correct on the surface. But his cornflower blue eyes often danced merry as he teased her over dinner at the end of a busy day.

      Caught in her perpetual daydreaming, she’d been too slow to respond, Sarah realized, as Pierce angled toward her, concern etched across his features.

      “Sarah?” His eyes did not dance with amusement at this moment. Something else, fiercer and protective, however, shone.

      “I’m fine. I was just about to help Papa but . . .” Her gaze sharpened past Pierce’s chiseled New England features to where the Indian glowered.

      Pierce

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