Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River]

His hand slid across Mercy’s back beneath her hair and he wrapped her in his arms. He gathered her to him as gently, carefully, as if she were the most fragile thing in the world.

In a daze of joy Mercy clung to him. She wondered if he loved her as a woman or if he was fond of her because she was his foster Sister. Did she only imagine she felt his lips nuzzling her ear? In the warmth of his embrace, she longed to whisper that the love she felt for him was the all-consuming love of a woman for her man. She wanted to tell him to please take her as his mate, to join his body with hers, to plant seeds of his children in her womb. What would he say? Would he be shocked? Disgusted by her boldness?

Her words came in a quivering voice. “I can’t imagine life without you . . .”

Critics love Dorothy Garlock’s Wabash Trilogy:

BOOK I–LONESOME RIVER and BOOK II—DREAM RIVER

“A sprawling, gutsy saga . . . the Wabash trilogy promises to continue a career of shining triumphs.”

—Ann’s World,
Hearst Cablevision

“Vivid and real . . . there is joy, laughter, sadness, and tears in these pages . . . a gripping, endearing, and exciting read that is full of surprises and written in Garlock’s own magical style.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Again and again in compelling love stories, Dorothy Garlock writes of unforgettable characters who tamed the frontier.”

—Romantic Times

Also by
Dorothy Garlock

Annie Lash

Restless Wind

Wayward Wind

Wild Sweet Wilderness

Wind of Promise

Lonesome River

Dream River

To special people—

  
Candace Camp,

   
Pete Hopcus,

       
and Stacy—

with special love.

M
ercy cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder. It was silly, she knew, to be so jumpy about going home to an empty house, but the two men who had loitered across the road from the school for a good part of the afternoon bothered her. When at first she had glanced out the window and seen them there, she hadn’t thought much about them. Then later, in the middle of the afternoon, she noticed they had moved to the edge of the woods across from the school and had built a fire. Were they camping there? It was far too early to build a supper fire. The men were still sitting by the fire when the school day ended and Mercy dismissed the children, but when she left the school to walk the mile home, they were gone.

Travelers constantly passed through Quill’s Station on their way to or from Vincennes, the city that had been established by the French almost a hundred years ago in 1732. Quill’s Station, on the banks of the Wabash, sat astride the direct route to the city. The village of more than one hundred people, surrounded by rich timber and grassland, stretched along the river road.

With her shawl hugged to her, Mercy walked briskly down the well-packed dirt road. She called a greeting to Mike Hartman when he came out onto the porch of the store, owned by Mike and Mercy’s father, with several coils of rope over his shoulder. She nodded to the father of one of her students who was passing in a two-wheeled cart.

As she passed Granny Halpen’s rooming house, she waved to the elderly woman, who sat in her rocking chair on the porch, a quilt across her knees to ward off the chill, a snuff stick in the corner of her mouth. Granny knew everyone and everything that went on in Quill’s Station. Farrway Quill had once said that the village had no need for a newspaper when it had Granny.

The houses in the town, no more than two dozen, were hewn timber set upright in the ground and chinked with stone and mortar. Except for the Quill house, none was more than one story high. All had porches on at least two sides, some on three. Surrounding each was a garden and fruit trees. Most of the houses were evenly spaced on long, narrow tracts of land and were set close to the road.