Deborah Camp Read Free Page B

void.”
    “But I have paid,” Lonewolf insisted.
    “The contract states that the money will not be returned if the contract is breached.
You’ve
breached it, don’t you see? You have no white wife. Your money is forfeited.”
    Penny wailed when Mrs. Gadstone tried to force her back to the train again. Her tear-stained eyes sought Elise, and Elise made calming motions. If only she could get her little sister to understand that everything was fine …
    “Don’t fret, child,” Mr. Charles said, smoothing Penny’s coppery hair. “You’ll be placed on the train and we’ll take you back to New York, where arrangements will be made for an adoption elsewhere.”
    Elsewhere
? Elise turned stone cold as the import of what the escort had said dawned on her. Penny would be adopted by someone living God only knew where. Not near the next whistle-stop, probably not even in Missouri! How could she keep the family together that way? Panic bounced through her head, scattering her logic, separating her common sense from her wildest impulses.
    Penny’s eyes swam with tears and her trembling sob slashed at Elise as if with the bite of a whip. Through the pain and panic, an idea bloomed; anidea so preposterous, Elise knew she must act on it without further contemplation or she’d lose her nerve altogether.
    Feeling as if she were living a nightmare, she moved forward, her body numb, her mind whirling like a windmill in a hurricane. She sensed Mr. Charles’s regard as she stopped beside the Indian. Slipping a hand into the crook of his arm, she looked up at Lonewolf’s brooding features and actually managed a smile.
    “What’s the problem, darling?” she asked in a voice that gave not one hint of the turmoil inside her. “Didn’t you tell this man that you have a new wife? Didn’t you tell him about me?”

Chapter 2
     
    S he didn’t look like a whore to him, so he figured the woman had lost her mind.
    Gussied up in a fancy town dress of dark blood red and wearing a hat right out of a mail-order catalog, she bore the mark of the upper crust. Laying a hand over hers, he tried to disengage himself from her grasp, but her fingers tightened on his arm and went digging for bone. For a little thing, she had one hell of a grip.
    “What’s this? Who are you?” Mr. Charles asked, echoing the questions spinning in Blade’s head.
    “Why, I’m Mrs. Lonewolf,” the lady in red said with such certainty that she almost convinced Blade of it. “And I’m going to be this little girl’s mother.” With that, she scooped up the orphan and bussed her freckled cheek. “Penny, isn’t it? I’m Elise St.—Lonewolf.” She beamed at Blade, then back at Mr. Charles. “We’re newlyweds.”
    “Newlyweds?” Mr. Charles repeated, his tone dripping with doubt. “Why didn’t you tell me about this new wife of yours, sir?”
    Blade had never seen a face so perfect. She was so pretty, he blinked, not believing his own eyes. He shook his head, snapping out of the spell theauburn-haired witch had cast over him. “She’s not my—”
    “No, she’s not yet,” the woman interrupted, “but she will be ours soon.” She hugged the child, and the youngster responded happily by dropping her sticky, half-eaten sucker and wrapping her dimpled arms around the woman’s neck. “You have a white wife—me—so the adoption can go through without a hitch. Isn’t that wonderful?” She narrowed her eyes, urgency shining in them. Blade knew she was trying to tell him to go along with her crazy talk, but he had no intention of falling in with her. He had enough troubles.
    He cleared his throat and started to turn away from the woman, but she edged closer to his side. “Mr. Charles, this orphan is promised to me, but I don’t know what this lady—”
    “Why, if it isn’t Mr. and Mrs. Blade Lonewolf!”
    The warm, incongruous greeting cut through Blade’s explanation and he found himself staring, slack-jawed, at Dixie Shoemaker. The plump