Choices of the Heart Read Online Free PDF

closer to him than his brothers, fourteen and sixteen years younger. He and Zach had been born a day apart. Until ten years ago, they had spent more time together than with the rest of their families.
    And we took that vow together.
    Yet unfortunately, Bethann was right. Zach’s father and brother-in-law had broken every vow they had made.
    Including their marriage vows.
    Still, Griff didn’t want to tar Zach with the same brush and continue the feud. Too many had died already. They didn’t need to add to the numbers on the word of a bitter and resentful spinster, regardless of her reasons for her anger.
    “Lord, get me out of here.” He fell asleep propped in the corner and praying for a speedy recovery from his wound.
    He awoke to Bethann attempting to pour more of her draft down his throat. He pushed it away. “Food, not that swill. I need to get up.”
    “You still need rest.” In the dim morning light, her face glowed as pale as moonlight, her seemingly lipless mouth a slash of red like a cut.
    Gently Griff took her arm and tried to push it away so he could get to his feet. She resisted. His hand shook with the effort to move her. Weakness. Humiliating, dangerous weakness. He couldn’t lift a gun, throw a knife, or ride a mile if he couldn’t move aside his thin sister.
    But he managed to spill the contents of the tankard over his pallet.
    Bethann grumbled and sighed and backed away. “Don’t come crying to me when your side rips open and you bleed your veins out.” She stomped from the cabin, her heels thudding dully on the dirt floor.
    Griff used notches in the walls as handholds to pull himself to his feet. He staggered and swayed and moved with as much confidence as a baby taking its first steps, but he moved. The sun had risen by the time he reached the door. He longed for the strength to leave the cabin and walk far enough to stand in the bright rays, feel the warmth. A stream gurgled at hand, and the notion of diving into the icy water spread through him like hunger.
    He was hungry. He wanted meat. Bethann brought him porridge. Even though they would not find the wherewithal to stay in inns along the route, more from habit than necessity, they had packed provisions of oatmeal and flour, dried meat and bacon. Bethann preferred sleeping in the open and cooking over a fire to crowding herself amongst people. Griff wanted a real bed and fresh food.
    Bethann located some wild berries growing in a meadow. Lush and red, they satisfied Griff more than had the thick porridge. One more day passed by, then two, then three. Each one brought more strength.
    They also brought the schoolma’am closer, gave her more time in Zach’s company without Griff so much as knowing what she looked like.
    “We’re leaving tomorrow,” he announced to Bethann over a bowl of cornmeal mush flavored with jerky. “No arguments. Either you come with me or I go alone.”
    She didn’t argue. She didn’t speak at all until, with some difficulty, Griff was mounted on his roan gelding and Bethann on her gray mare. Instead of heading her mount east toward the road that would take them to the pass over the Blue Ridge, she headed back the way they had come, back toward the New River and home.
    He drew up. “Where are you going?”
    “To give you your proof of Zach’s treachery.”
    Sickness clenched his gut. “I’m not interested.”
    “In what? The truth? Griff.” Bethann drew her brows together over her long, slim nose. “Knowing will save your life next time.”
    Griff remained stiff in his saddle, though the rigidity pained his side. “There won’t be a next time.”
    “Why not? A Brooks hurt Pa and killed our other kin.”
    And paid for it with his life.
    “The fighting has stopped,” Griff insisted. “I won’t be a party to it starting up again.”
    “You won’t be a party to nothing if you don’t pay attention to the signs.” Bethann dismounted and lifted a sheaf of cut pine boughs. “I laid these here where