When kindred spirits uni.., p.1
When Kindred Spirits Unite, page 1
When Kindred Spirits Unite
A WESTERN ROMANCE NOVEL
CAROL COLYER
Copyright © 2021 by Carol Colyer
All Rights Reserved.
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Website: Carol Colyer
Table of Contents
When Kindred Spirits Unite
Table of Contents
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When Kindred Spirits Unite
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Epilogue
When Love Comes in Disguise
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
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When Kindred Spirits Unite
Introduction
After the terrible loss of her parents in a fire, Nora Henning finds shelter among the Comanche natives. But the time when she wants to make peace with her past comes, leaving her no other choice but to dig in the ashes. Danger lurks in the shadows, but she is committed to do what it takes to uncover the truth. What she doesn’t expect, though, is to find a valiant man that will kindle fires unknown to her.
Will she be able to overcome her doubts and follow her heart?
Theodore Anderson is looking for yet another job that would satisfy his sense of unfulfillment. Joining his uncle’s ranch would be his salvation, but his meeting with Nora gives him a whole new purpose. With her fiery spirit leading the way, he comes to question his own beliefs and family. Afraid of what he might discover, but even more terrified in the thought of losing her, he is determined to shed light on the dark secrets that torment her. This will prove to be a great challenge...
But the heart fights for what it wants, no matter the risks…
Even though they are both suspicious of each other, their paths begin to entwine more than either of them could have ever foreseen. As the twisted truth is slowly untangled, the two of them will have to join forces to face it. Yet, can they even trust themselves enough to listen to their hearts? Will they be able to face the past and come out unscathed, or will they be dragged in the heart of its maelstrom?
Prologue
“Chores are dumb. And chickens. Chickens are dumb,” Nora muttered to herself.
She was eight years old, which meant that she was practically an adult. That meant people should listen to her. She had better ideas of what to do with her time than having to clean up after chickens.
It just didn’t make sense. Why keep animals when they couldn’t clean up after themselves? She thought this was very silly business. There were eggs and meat that could be bought in town, meaning they didn’t need to deal with these dirty creatures.
“Smelly, too,” she added with a slight huff.
Nora Henning stumbled clumsily over the uneven ground over to the chicken coop. It was an inconvenient little spot because it sat right next to the road while the family house was a fair distance behind her. Shuffling the hay for the horses was harder work, but at least the barn was right next to the house.
With her ninth birthday right around the corner, she wondered if she would get more or fewer chores this year.
She hoped for less. It already felt as though she did a lot. When her older cousin, Leslie, moved in with them last summer, Nora had thought that she wouldn’t have to do as much work as she used to. But that was wrong. If anything, she had even more work to do.
“After the chickens, then there’s the laundry. And after the laundry, there’s the butter. And after the butter, there’s dishes,” she chanted in annoyance.
There was school in the middle of the day, with her duties before and after them. It was all terribly exhausting being eight years old. All she wanted to do was go wade in the nearby creek or ride her horse. She loved riding horses and hated how there were days she couldn’t go riding.
An idea came to mind. “Maybe after supper, Father will….” She turned back to the house once she had collected the bad hay into a pile.
However, she suddenly grew still when she looked toward home. An itch climbed into her spine as she stared. It wasn’t hard to tell that something was terribly wrong.
Feeling her stomach clench, Nora took a minute to comprehend the black smoke rising through the small grove of trees right in front of her. They weren’t very tall or thick, so her father had been planning to cut them down. He just hadn’t gotten to it yet, and this meant she couldn’t really see the house.
All she saw was the smoke.
“Father? Mother?”
Part of Nora knew that they couldn’t hear her right then, but she felt that she needed to at least try. She sensed something was wrong. But how could it be? A shaky breath escaped her lips. Leaving the chicken coop behind, she slowly started toward the house.
Within a few steps, she was running.
Around the trees and on toward the house. It was mostly a small cabin with a bedroom for her parents and a loft above the kitchen that she shared with Leslie. They had come from the Canadian border to Minerston, Wyoming, to start a life nearly three years ago. She didn’t remember much of it, mostly just them building one house, only for a storm to ruin it.
This new one had been finished just before the last harvest. Her parents had promised to build her a room just for herself once they had the time and the money. It was something she had been looking forward to for what felt like forever.
Nora’s eyes widened as she saw the little house covered in flames. Her steps faltered only for a moment before she pumped her legs to move faster.
It had to be a bad dream, she told herself. Nothing bad could happen to their house like this. Her gaze scanned the area in search of her parents. Where had they gone? Certainly, they weren’t in the house. They would have gotten out before this sudden fire.
“Mother! Father!” Nora cried out.
Her next words were a loud yelp as the roof collapsed on the house. Loud crackling sounds followed afterward, making her flinch. She was yards away but could feel the heat all around her.
Wiping her brow, Nora looked around. Why was she alone? She spun in a circle in search of her family. Something wasn’t right. She could feel it inside of her.
She hurried over to the side of the house in the hopes of finding someone nearby. There was no one talking and nothing moving but the flames. So, where had they gone? Nora jogged around the house, panting for breath as her fears grew.
Panic had overcome her. She hardly remembered how to breathe as her eyes darted around to look for her parents. They had all been there just moments ago. How long had she been gone? Nora knew she wasn’t particularly fast, but surely, they couldn’t have wandered off that far away without her.
Lungs aching, the fear grew. The smoke was beginning to make her dizzy. None of this made any sense. It felt as though she was dreaming. She flinched as another wall caved in.
Though Nora had meant to keep walking, something caught her gaze.
This only lasted for a moment. He was there and then gone so quickly that she stopped, wondering if she was imagining what she had just seen. It didn’t make any sense to her. The young girl stopped in her tracks, feeling her heart pound.
And then she saw it again: a face.
It appeared through the smoke in a haze, terrifying her. Nora screamed loudly and took a step back. She thought about running away, but there was no time.
One minute, she was backing away from whoever or whatever that might have been. And in the next moment, she felt something behind her before it all went dark.
Chapter 1
Just as the darkness reached out for her, Nora woke with a start.
Gasping, she looked around to find that she was safe. Still seated where she had fallen asleep the night before, she had not gone anywhere. Her eyes scanned the space carefully.
She was grasping her woven blanket tightly in her hands. The familiar feel brought her some comfort in the dim light. It was clear that the sun would be rising soon. Dawn was creeping through her tent.
The soft golden light brought her comfort as her breathing slowly returned to normal. While this time she didn’t quite recall the dream she’d had, except for the fear and the darkness, she had a feeling that it was related to all the other nightmares that she had experienced over the years.
When she was six, there had been a string of dreams about black bears. But ever since she was eight, they had changed into something more terrifying and twice as dark.
She wiped the sweat from her brow before letting out a deep breath she hadn’t realized that she was holding. She promptly gulped and then reached for her waterskin to drink. Water droplets spilled down either side of her mouth, but she didn’t mind.
“Just a dream,” Nora reminded herself. “It doesn’t matter. Just a dream.”
Three other figures slept nearby on their thick blankets. She could just make out the outlines of her adoptive mother and siblings. None of them had woken up. They were all getting the rest they would need for the long day ahead of them. The seasons were changing, and so, they would be making their way to a new campground for the summer months.
Reaching out, she grabbed her dress for the day.
It was a deerskin dress that went down to her knees. With a flared skirt and wide sleeves, she felt the soft familiarity of it as she put it on. Brushing the buckskin fringe back down, she paused to run her fingers over the beaded design. It was a habit she had picked up after wearing her first dress. The patterns held a lot of symbolism to her people, and she had loved them more and more over time.
The beads were small and colorful in the right light. She had grown quite good at sewing them onto the dresses and clothes for everyone in their village over the last couple of years. They were even on her moccasins that she put on before rolling up her blankets.
She was quieter than a mouse upon stepping out of the temporary tent.
There had been many lessons for her to learn ever since she joined this Comanche tribe. Sewing, walking quietly, harvesting, and more. On top of that, she had learned to enjoy the labor and hard work of creating something. She’d had so many teachers that had helped her to find joy and peace.
“There we are,” Nora murmured to herself as she turned to the other side of the tent.
Putting her hands on her hips, she looked around so she could admire the rising sun. Gold merged with pink and blue to light the sky. It felt to her as though it were a young child reaching out its arms to stretch after a night’s rest.
She hoped the sky had slept better than she had.
Trying to shake it off, Nora told herself there was no reason for her to linger on such bad dreams. They did nothing for her. Her adoptive mother had given her teas and herbs to help her sleep when she was younger, though she hadn’t enjoyed the bitter roots.
Besides, it used to be in those nightmares where she could see her parents again.
The faces of her mother and father had faded over the years. Now that she was twenty-one years old, or thereabouts since the Comanche tracked age differently, Nora knew that they only lived on in her memory.
It had been such a long time ago. She recalled her frequent whining and how she was always running off to play among the trees or their few horses. But then she also could remember their arms around her in tight embraces. When she tried very hard, she could even hear their voices again.
But they were gone now.
Even Leslie, her cousin, was only a shadow in the back of her mind. All three of them were gone and had left her alone in this world.
The question came back to Nora like it always did on the rare moments she allowed herself to muse on the past: why hadn’t she died as well?
But then, this question always led her off with her thoughts in all sorts of other directions that she never tried to go down for very long. She knew that thinking about the past never did her or anyone else any good. Yet, she still pondered what life might have been like if her parents hadn’t passed away.
Where would she be now? What would she be doing? What would they be doing? Would they still be in that house, and would her father have ever added that second room?
“Maybe, maybe not,” Nora mumbled to herself.
“Nadua?”
Someone was calling out to her. It was the name that had been given to her all those years ago when she first joined these people. The name stood for ‘something found’, and it was quite apt. Upon their move that summer, they had found her and took her with them.
“Good morning,” she called out to her mother.
“Talk to the gods again?”
Suppressing a smile, Nora started back toward the tent. No one else in the tribe seemed to talk to themselves. Or, if they did, they certainly did it much more quietly than herself. It was a bad habit that she’d always had, and no one had ever been able to break her from it. There were some in the village who considered she might either be crazy or connected to the spirits.
“Good morning, Pia,” Nora said, using the Comanche word for mother. “Is it time for us to leave?”
The woman nodded before inviting her to her side.
Learning the language of these people had not been easy for Nora. She remembered the winter months, dressing in thick buckskin and skins, as she tried to understand what was going on around her. It was the children who first helped her to start picking up the language.
Topsannah had been around her age now when they met. She was the daughter of the medicine woman. Recently married, the woman had taken Nora in to give her space, clothing, and food. Two children had come along through the following years. Her husband had never considered Nora one of theirs, which had been hard at times. The man had died from an illness two years ago.
Now, it was Nora with her little adoptive family.
She glanced at the woman beside her as they began untying the skins from their poles. The buffalo hides were heavy and large, requiring the two of them to work together on each of them. Three of them covered the long wooden poles that they would have to untie and then carefully take them down to travel.
