To Find You Again

Chapter 1

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound..."

The voices of the Sunset Methodist Church members blended with wheezy organ notes to circle Emma Louise Hartwell with its rhythm. Emma's lips moved with the remembered words, but no sound came forth. Although she held her head high, and, aimed at the front of the church, her gaze followed dust motes, which drifted aimlessly through sunlight slanting in between boards covering one of the windows. Next week the shutters would be removed, heralding the church's official recognition of spring.

Emma shuddered as the four walls closed in on her, and her heart pounded like a war drum. She should've waited until next Sunday to make her first public appearance. At least, then, she would have the illusion of freedom as she looked through the glass panes. Now there was only warped wood and shadowed comers, so unlike...

No!
She didn't dare think about that, not while surrounded by those who had judged and sentenced her even though they didn't know the truth. Of course, if they knew everything, her total condemnation would be assured.

Her attention wandered across the congregation, and she recognized many people from her childhood. Biddie Little, the organist, who still hit the wrong key at the most inopportune time. Thomas Lyndon, the owner of the Sunset Bank and Trust, who had his nose so high in the air that Emma wondered how he could walk without tripping. Sally Warner, a childhood friend, who was now married to George Orton, another of Emma's classmates, and already with two children—another reminder of the time she'd lost.

A hushed scuffle between the Morrison children caught Emma's attention. The boy and girl were tugging and punching at one another as their parents ignored them.

A Lakota child would never be so disobedient during a religious ceremony. They were taught from infancy to remain quiet and to honor their elders, as well as to revere their traditions and rituals. But then, the Lakota children wouldn't have had to sit on hard benches surrounded by four walls for two hours either. Emma, who'd grown up attending Sunday service, found herself anxious to escape the confinement. However, the intervening years had taught her to remain still and silent, like a mouse when a hawk passed overhead.

The final hymn ended with a concluding groan of the organ, and Emma herself nearly groaned in relief. She wished she could forego decorum and run outside like the children, but this was the first time she'd attended service with her family since her return five months ago. Her mother said they had wanted to spare her the pitying looks. Emma believed her parents wanted to spare
themselves
the town's censure. However, enough time had passed that they hoped for a parcel of acceptance.

Familiar townsfolk greeted John and Martha Hartwell, as well as their fair-haired daughter Sarah, but only a few acknowledged Emma's presence. Even Sally and George, whom she'd known for years, didn't stop to visit with her, but only sent her guarded nods, as if she had a catching disease. Still, Emma could understand their wariness. They had all grown up with the same stories she had heard about the "red devils."

But they hadn't lived in a Lakota village for almost seven years.

Emma followed her family to the doorway where the minister stood, shaking hands with the members of his flock.

"Fine job, Reverend," Emma's father said. He'd spoken those same words to the minister every Sunday that Emma could remember. It was another one of those oddly disconcerting reminders that some things hadn't changed.

"How is Emma doing?" the reverend asked.

Emma bristled inwardly, but kept her outward expression composed and her eyes downcast. They talked about her as if she wasn't standing right beside them. She hated that, but had promised her parents to remain as inconspicuous as possible.

"She's fine, Reverend," Martha Hartwell replied.

Emma risked sneaking a look at her mother and recognized the strain in her forced smile.

"We're thinking of sending her to visit her aunt back in St. Paul," her father interjected.

Emma gasped and opened her mouth to protest, but his warning look silenced her. Her cheeks burned with humiliation and anger. Her parents were going to rid themselves of their embarrassment one way or another. And they hadn't even deemed her important enough to discuss their plans for
her
future. Bitterness filled her and the air suddenly seemed too heavy.

"Excuse me," Emma whispered and stumbled past her sister, her parents, and the minister.

Her face burned from all the looks—pitying, accusing, and morbidly curious—directed toward her, as if she were a wolf caught in barbed wire. Her eyes stung, but she lifted her head high and held the tears at bay with the same stubbornness that didn't let her despair overcome her. She had lived a life that few white women could even imagine. Nobody had a right to judge her.

Nobody.

Although her long skirt and petticoats encumbered her movements, Emma continued marching down the road, away from the church and the townspeople who now seemed like strangers. She knew her father would be angry and her mother disappointed in her behavior, but they had no right to treat her like a simpleton. She was twenty-two years old and perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Her parents, however, didn't see it that way. They saw a daughter who'd become a blemish on the oh-so-respectable Hartwell name, and it was their responsibility to remove the rot.

The sun's rays were warm, but the breeze chilly as it struck Emma's face and cut through her long cape like it wasn't even there. Her hair, done up in a proper bun beneath her bonnet, escaped its confines and tendrils whipped about her cheeks.

She rounded a bend and her gaze blurred as the tears finally defeated her control. Now that she was out of sight, she surrendered to the anguish twisting in her belly, making her gasp for air. But she didn't slow her pace. She prayed to God and Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, to escape the suffocating life that was now hers.

Nobody knew what she had left behind when she was returned—not even her family.

Pain arrowed through her breast and Emma stumbled. A firm hand caught her arm, steadying and shocking her.

"Easy, ma'am."

She whirled around and the stranger released her. The man hastily removed his hat and fidgeted with the brim. He wore brown trousers with a tan buckskin jacket and a red scarf around his neck. Thick, wavy brown hair hung to his shoulders and his dark blue eyes were steady, but guarded. The man's black-and-white pony stood patiently on the road, its reins hanging to the ground.

"I'm sorry if I startled you, ma'am. It's just that I saw you stumbling-like and thought you might be sick."

The man's voice was quiet and husky, as if he didn't use it very often.

Emma's cheeks warmed and she dashed a hand across them to erase the telltale tear tracks. "No, that's all right. i didn't hear you."

A cool spring breeze soughed through the tree's bare branches and Emma shuddered from the chill beneath the too-light cape.

The man removed his jacket, revealing tan suspenders over a deep blue shirt, and awkwardly placed it over her shoulders. "You shouldn't be out here, ma'am. You'll catch your death dressed like that."

Emma's fingers curled into the soft material and the scent of cured deerhide tickled her nose with memories of another life. She caught herself and tried to hand the jacket back to him. "No. I can't—"

"I'm fine. You're the one who's shivering like a plucked sage hen."

She almost missed his shy, hesitant smile.

Trembling from the cold and from her thoughts, Emma snuggled back into the coat, grateful for the warmth. "Thank you," she said softly. Besides the leather, she could smell woodsmoke, horses, and the faint scent of male sweat in the well-worn jacket. "You're right. It was stupid of me to run off like that."

The man dipped his head in acknowledgment, and his long hair brushed across his shoulders. His gaze dropped to the hat he turned around and around between work-roughened hands. His reticence was oddly comforting.

"Are you from around here?" Emma asked.

"Yes'm. About four miles northwest."

That would make him a neighbor.

The steady clop-clop of hooves directed Emma's gaze to the road. A man dressed in a cavalry hat and pants and a sheepskin coat rode into view. He drew his black horse to a halt.

"I was wondering what happened to you, Ridge," the man said, eyeing Emma like she was a piece of prime rib.

She shivered anew, but this time it wasn't from the cool wind.

"Ease off, Colt," the man called Ridge said without force. "The lady needed some help is all."

"She all right?" the man asked.

"The lady is fine," Emma replied curtly. She'd had enough of people talking about her like she was invisible to last a lifetime.

The clatter of an approaching buckboard put an end to their stilted conversation and Emma's heart plummeted into her stomach when she spotted her father's stormy expression.

The soldier backed his horse off the road as the wagon slowed to a stop beside them.

"Get in, Emma," her father ordered in a steely voice.

Words of refusal climbed up her throat and she swallowed them back. She wouldn't humiliate herself or her family in front of two strangers. With tense muscles, she returned her Good Samaritan's jacket. "Thank you."

She kept her chin raised and her backbone straight as she climbed into the wagon's backseat, which was covered by a thick blanket. Ridge's hand on her arm aided and steadied her until she sat beside her sister.

"Stay the hell away from my daughter, Madoc. She doesn't need the likes of you," her father ordered.

Shocked, Emma only had a moment to give Ridge a nod of thanks before her father whipped the team of horses into motion.

She knew she was in big trouble by the fearful looks her sister kept casting her. Her mother, too, was pale. There would be little mercy from her father for embarrassing the family with her abrupt departure from church, and for her improper actions with the man called Madoc.

A man her father thought wasn't good enough even for her.