Read Online Silver Tears by Becky Lee Weyrich - Free Book Online

turn and run back to her room, but his commanding gaze riveted her to her spot. She watched, hardly daring to breathe, as he reached up, grasped his Indian maiden about the waist, and helped her dismount. Hand-in-hand, they walked toward Alice. Unconsciously she backed away a few steps.
    “Lady Alice!” Gunn’s voice boomed over the silent crowd. The only other sound Alice heard was her own heart pounding. “May I present Ishani, princess of the Abenaki nation.”
    Ishani, silent and unsmiling, stepped forward and offered Alice her hand. As their cool fingers touched, Ishani nodded and said, “’Ady A’ice, we’come.”
    Alice looked to Gunn. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand her language.”
    “She’s speaking English,” he assured her. “The Abenaki language has no sound for our letter ‘I,’ so they find it impossible to pronounce. Ishani bids you welcome, Lady Alice.”
    A faint smile trembled on Alice’s lips. What was she supposed to say? She had no idea what the proper protocol was in this situation. As Lord Balfour’s wife, she had learned to greet British royalty, but she hadn’t the faintest notion how to deal with an Indian princess. She dropped a curtsy, smiled, and said, “Thank you, Princess Ishani.”
    The dark-eyed girl, still unsmiling, glanced up at Gunn. For what seemed a very long time to Alice, they continued staring into each other’s eyes—so long in fact that she cleared her throat to regain their attention. Then Gunn nodded slightly to Ishani, who cast her gaze down for a moment. Alice watched her breasts rise and fall in a deep sigh. Finally Ishani bit her bottom lip, then looked directly at Alice. Her hand went to her night-black hair, and she drew out three shining feathers.
    “I give. You take,” Ishani said simply.
    A gasp went up from the crowd. Then a murmur of excitement passed from man to man.
    “Damnedest thing I ever saw!” Alice heard one man exclaim.
    Another added, “If he wasn’t a Scotsman through and through, I’d swear Gunn had the luck of the Irish.”
    A third man groaned, “Me with a hard-on you couldn’t beat down with a stick and no one to tend to it, and he’s got two.”
    Alice wondered vaguely, Two what?
    When she accepted the three feathers from Ishani, a roar went up all around them. She glanced this way and that, then looked up at Gunn for some explanation. He was grinning broadly.
    “Was that what I was supposed to do?” she asked him.
    He bellowed a laugh, then gripped her shoulder with one big hand. “That was exactly what you were supposed to do. Now I’ve business to attend to with your captain. I’ll come by your room after I’ve finished.”
    Alice stood clutching the feathers and watching as Gunn and Ishani turned and walked away.
    “Lady, that’s some deal you just struck!”
    “What?” Alice turned to find a bewhiskered trapper grinning at her with a gape-toothed smile.
    “There ain’t many a woman would agree to that kind of bargain.”
    She shook her head, frowning at the man. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
    His eyes went wide for a moment, then he squinted hard at her and leaned closer. “Well, I’ll be damned! You mean you don’t know about them feathers you’re holding?”
    Alice shrugged. “An offering of friendship, I assume.”
    “Well, lady, you assume wrong. Them three feathers stands for you, Gunn, and Princess Ishani. Her giving them means she goes along with the deal. You accepting them means you got no objections, neither.”
    “Objections to what?” she demanded, feeling the hair prickle a warning at the back of her neck.
    “Everybody knows Princess Ishani’s Gunn’s woman, but they ain’t likely to marry, her people hating us Britishers like they do. She knows that, and so she’s agreed to let him have a wife of his own kind—you.”
    Alice felt suddenly warm all over and happy through and through. She smiled at the grizzled old man and pressed his hand. “That’s