Wild Embrace

Her heart pounded hard as she listened to her father and Murdoch laughing together and boasting about showing the Suquamish a thing or two. She listened to them as they planned to place the nets in the water before night fell.

This angered Elizabeth. She was hurt that her father was not even considering her feelings in his plans. He knew that she was going to return to Strong Heart, to marry him—to live with him, and that the salmon harvest was a large part of his people’s survival—which, in turn, also meant hers.

Her mind spun with confusion as to what she could do about it. She was only one person. There was no way she could destroy the nets once they were placed in the water. And she could definitely not destroy them beforehand, for her father and Morris Murdoch would not give her the chance.

“What can I do?” she whispered to herself, feverishly racking her brain. She felt bitter knowing that her own father had lied to her and Strong Heart. She could not help but believe that her father had planned the raid on the village with Morris. She could not allow their scheme against the Suquamish to succeed.

She had to warn Strong Heart. But how? she despaired to herself. Although she had become familiar with the forest, and the way to Strong Heart’s village, it was dangerous for her to travel alone through it.

She had to seek help from someone. But who?

Then the answer came to her. “Four Winds,” she whispered. “Yes, Four Winds!”

Maysie had said that Four Winds came often to see her now. If Elizabeth went to her mother’s brothel, she could wait until Four Winds arrived, tell him about the nets that would ruin the Suquamish salmon harvest, and see if he would take her to Strong Heart, and together they could warn him. Then Strong Heart could do what he must to save the harvest.

And this would be a way for Four Winds to prove once and for all whether or not he was a true friend of Strong Heart.

Her pulse racing, her knees weak from fear of being discovered before she reached the stables, she crept away from the fishery and made a turn which would take her out of view from the fishery.

She ran up the path, and once on level ground again, ran breathlessly to the stables.

Elizabeth was soon riding hard on the road toward Seattle, her red hair blowing loosely in the wind. Her shawl was tied securely around her shoulders, but gave her scant protection from the cool autumn air.

But she did not seem to feel the cold. Her thoughts were on her mother and where Elizabeth would have to go to see her again.

An involuntary shiver coursed through her at the thought of meeting her mother in the brothel. Her memories of her childhood, when her mother had been “Mama,” made it hard to accept the kind of life that her mother now led.

In her house there were certainly no storybooks read to small children before bedtime.

Although it seemed to take forever, Elizabeth finally reached the city. The hardest part now lay before her—finding her mother’s house.

Her horse walked in a slow gait down First Avenue. The skirt of her dress whipped above her knees as the breeze blew in from the Sound. Elizabeth blushed and smoothed her dress back in place when the men loitering along the thoroughfare began teasing and flirting with her.

Normally, she would ride on past, ignoring their taunts, but today she had to find answers that could help keep Strong Heart and his people fed for the long winter ahead.

And who but these brash, insulting men would know where the most lavish of whorehouses was located?

Although hating what she had to do, Elizabeth wheeled her horse around and headed toward a group of men. When she drew rein beside them, her face still hot from blushing, she summoned up the courage to talk to them. One man in particular stood out from the rest, his blue eyes as cold as winter as he ogled her.

She realized that these men must think that she was a loose woman, looking for a man who would pay her to lift her skirt for him.

The thought not only embarrassed her, but appalled her.

And the questions that she was finding hard to ask, the question alone would confirm what they thought of her—that she was, indeed, a prostitute.

“Might one of you gentlemen tell me where I can find the place run by Marilyn Easton?” she said. Those words were like stab wounds to her heart—words which joined her mother’s name to a whorehouse. Elizabeth did not know if she could ever accept what her mother had become.

She stiffened, and she tightened her fingers around the horse’s reins as the men did just as she had expected, treating her as if she were a whore. They said things to her that sent chills up her spine.

She bore all of their abuse and jokes until she got the directions to her mother’s house.

&nbs

p; She turned her horse around again, leaving behind the men, who still shouted filthy things after her. She was glad when a turn up another street took her away from them.

Soon she found herself staring at a large white house that looked innocent of its true nature. It was two storied with black shutters and flower boxes at the windows and a white picket fence surrounding a yard that displayed varieties of roses in full bloom. A swing hung from a porch that reached around three sides of the house.

It looked like the house of a happy family—not the home of women who sold their bodies. It looked like the house where Elizabeth had been raised as a child, before her mother had fled.