Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River]
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Authors: Lonesome River
Dorothy Garlock
An Imprint of Warner Books, Inc.
A Time Warner Company
LONESOME RIVER.
Copyright © 1987 by Dorothy Garlock. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
For information address Warner Books, Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017, Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
A Time Warner Company
A mass market edition of this book was published in 1987 by Warner Books.
The “Warner Books” name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2283-1
First eBook Edition: June 2001
“Hold me.
Kiss me, Farr—”
His lips trailed down the side of her face to her throat. His heart was pounding violently against her soft breasts. He hadn’t meant for this to happen tonight. She was tired and sore after her ordeal today; but when she turned to him and touched him, he hadn’t been able to help himself. Even as he was kissing her, a small voice in his head told him to stop . . . that he would hurt her.
“Liberty . . . I’ve got to know. I want you, but not unless you want me too. Do you . . . want me to leave you?” he whispered the words against her ear.
“Oh, please! Don’t leave me now!” Whatever comes, this night was hers. The thought that followed her words was so tangible in her mind that she didn’t know or care if she had voiced it. “Hold me, Farr. Hold me as if . . . you love me—just for tonight.”
His kisses came upon her mouth, warm, devouring, fierce with passion . . .
“Dorothy Garlock writes about love in such a way that one would almost believe she coined the word.”
—Affaire de Coeur
“You’ll find yourself actually there, right in the picture. You can feel the heat of the campfire, you can hear the wagon creaking and the slice and snap of the bullwhip. . . . There’s good reason why Dorothy has been called the ‘Louis L’Amour of the romance novelists.’”
—Beverly Hills California Courier
Books by Dorothy Garlock
A
lmost
E
den
A
nnie
L
ash
D
ream
R
iver
F
orever
V
ictoria
A G
entle
G
iving
G
lorious
D
awn
H
omeplace
L
onesome
R
iver
L
ove and
C
herish
L
arkspur
M
idnight
B
lue
N
ightrose
R
estless
W
ind
R
ibbon in the
S
ky
R
iver of
T
omorrow
T
he
S
earching
H
earts
S
ins of
S
ummer
S
weetwater
T
enderness
T
he
L
istening
S
ky
T
his
L
oving
L
and
W
ayward
W
ind
W
ild
S
weet
W
ilderness
W
ind of
P
romise
W
ith
H
ope
Y
esteryear
Published by
WARNER BOOKS
Dedicated to my son Herb and his wife Jacky, who give me luck and logic, laughter and love
“W
e are not turning back!” The girl’s gaze was as direct as a saber thrust, and her voice was as cold as its steel blade.
Elija Carroll looked at his daughter for a full minute before he spoke. “I jist said 1811 ain’t a good year fer movin’. The whole country’s in a hell of a mess. It’s agoin’ broke, is what it is. We ain’t ort a left Middlecrossin’ ’n come out here where there ain’t no towns, no folks, no nothin’. But if’n ya had to go, why clear to the Indiana? Ya could’ve stayed in the Ohio. Folks is pouring in thar. But ya jist want to roam around and see country, don’t ya? Why, there’s places at home that’s wilder’n all get out, if’n it was backwoods ya was seekin’.”
“Any year that you have to work is a bad year for you, Papa. You didn’t have to come along, but you did. You know why we came. Jubal and I couldn’t stay in Middlecrossing. Stith Lenning would have killed him. Jubal wanted to come, and I go where my husband goes. And you’ll go with me because you have no one but me and Amy, and you’re afraid you’ll die alone.”
“Yo’re hard, Libby. Hard. That school learnin’ yore ma give ya has dang near ruint ya. Ya ain’t never learned a woman’s place. Them fancy notions has made ya hard as any man I ever knowed.”
“You have to be hard to get through this life, Papa. You can call it hard and stubborn if you want to. If you’d had your way I’d be nothing but a drudge during the day and a whore at night. That’s what Stith Lenning wanted. He wanted me to cook his meals, keep his house, milk his cows, raise a house full of younguns to grow up to work his fields. He wanted me to do all that and fornicate all night long!”