Sagebrush Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

thing, is how. He
stabbed ’n’ wrestled with nothing but thin air, and then he reared back to gut
it and stabbed himself in the—” She glanced up at him suddenly, her brows
furrowing.
    “Where?” Cutter demanded, inhaling deeply. It was
the wrong thing to do, because he caught her scent in that breath. The sweetest
feminine scent. His blood heated, surging like molten lava through his veins.
     
    “His er... his... lower posterior,” Elizabeth
whispered.
    It took a moment for him to register what she’d
said, but when it finally came, his roar of laughter was genuine, warm and
rich, much as her father’s had been. It set Elizabeth immediately at ease.
    “I can see it now,” he said, still chuckling as he
poured Elizabeth another brimming glassful.
    She stared at the glass numbly, thought briefly to
protest, but didn’t. She was feeling rather nice suddenly, cozy even. She
exhaled languidly, and something seemed to uncoil deep within her.
    Maybe Cutter was right, she thought. Maybe it
would help to forget for just a little while.
    “Did you know my father?” Elizabeth asked on a
whim. She was proud of her father. He’d been caring and loving—and never
once had he blamed her after her mother and sister had abandoned them...
despite the fact that she often blamed herself. Maybe if she’d been a little
more help? A better daughter? More accommodating? More like Katherine.
    He nodded soberly. “’Bout a year ago—real
fine man, Lizbeth.”
    Something about the way Cutter said her name made
her sigh with pleasure.
    “He was,” she agreed. “I miss him.”
    She would miss her sister, as well, though she hadn’t
seen Katherine in so many years that it wouldn’t be the same. The last she
remembered hearing from Katherine was when their mother had died of lung fever
four years past. Enclosed along with that letter had been a small photo of her
daughter Katie at five months: a plump little thing with no hair. Elizabeth had
cherished that photo.
    Four years? she thought, blinking.
    Had it been so long?
    That would mean it had been seven since her mother
had run off with Katherine to St. Louis.
    So very long ago... yet that miserable day was as
clear in Elizabeth’s memory as though it were yesterday.
    Finding the hastily scrawled message her mother
had composed on the back of one of her father’s notes had been the single most
painful moment of her life. Even the words were indelibly etched in the annals
of her mind. With every fiber of my
being, I loathe this infernal place. I can’t—I just can’t suffer it any
longer. Forgive me, Angus. Not a word about her. Not forgive me, Elizabeth.
Not farewell. Not anything at all.
    Being the elder of the two, and interested in
medicine as she was, Elizabeth had been with her father at the time, helping
him deliver a baby. For that reason, and because she’d understood how very much
her mother had despised the wilderness and feared the Indians, Elizabeth had
never entirely blamed her for leaving without her—especially since her
mother had been only the first of so many to abandon Sioux Falls. By ’62, most
of the remaining populace had fled in fear of the raids.
    She and her father had been close, so she wouldn’t
have wanted to leave anyway. It still, it hurt to know that her mother had been
so desperate to desert them that she would slip away without bothering even to
say goodbye. Her father had never been the same afterward.
    “Where were you?”
    “Hmmm?” She opened her eyes, unaware that she had
closed them, and looked into Cutter’s deep, dark eyes. They were fascinating,
the way they seemed to descend forever. But she thought she detected a flicker
of pity in his gaze, and a knot formed in her throat.
    “When I came through... I don’t recall making your
acquaintance.”
    “Oh... well...” She swallowed convulsively,
clearing her throat of its odd thickness. “No one ever sheems... seems to. But
I wash here,” she assured him. Blinking