Embrace the Day by Susan Wiggs Page B

Seth's modest plot near Dancer's Meadow. They had youth and hardiness and the beginnings of what would become an abiding love.
    The Adairs were a different story. Roarke was as strong and hale a man as Luther had ever seen, with his bright hair and keen eyes and hands that looked as though they could span a white oak. He'd do well by his uncle, who ten years earlier had carved out a good tract in Dancer's Meadow. Roarke was a likely heir to that legacy.
    Pity his wife wouldn't live to enjoy it, Luther thought with a sudden, unwelcome premonition. Prudence had a look about her that he'd seen before: a pallor, a languor that spoke of some weakness of blood—and of character. That, coupled with her utter lack of interest in this whole adventure, would finish her. Virginia's bounty was a wild one; to harvest it, one needed a good supply of mettle.
    At least Genevieve Culpeper wasn't lacking in that. But looking at her, her eyes bright with interest, her movements quick and animated, Luther concluded that she had a good chance. He had every intention of helping her. There was nothing he liked better than to see someone—woman or man, white or red—take a piece of land and shape it and make things grow. Odd, that bit about making things grow. Somehow the person working the land grew right along with it.
    Genevieve noticed Luther Quaid looking at her and gave him a bright smile. He was unlike anyone she'd ever met: long-jawed and hawk-nosed, clad in strange garments he'd claimed to have hunted from the land, with shoes he called moccasins laced up to his knees.
    She crossed to the tiller and sat down beside him, trailing her hand in the silky waters of the James. Along the banks the wind hissed through the cedars and catbirds flitted among the reeds.
    "All these trees make me feel awfully small," she commented. A mosquito hummed in front of her face, and she slapped at it.
    Luther handed her a small vial. "Pennyroyal," he said. "Keeps away the insects."
    Gratefully, Genevieve rubbed it on her skin. "You know the river well, Mr. Quaid."
    He nodded. "I was born in Albemarle County, right under the Blue Ridge. My pa was an Indian trader. Last thing he traded for before he died was a wife for me."
    Genevieve's eyes widened. "Your wife's an Indian?"
    "Chippewa. I took her to my hearth when she was a mite younger than you. But she claims I'm married to this here river."
    Privately, Genevieve agreed. Luther Quaid had an uncanny way of reading the river. He seemed to know every nuance of it, the way it reached over rocks, swirling, sucking, doing things that only Luther could anticipate. He was the proud captain of two boats, one that made the gentle run from the Falls of the James to the coast and another above the falls that braved the up-river rapids. They'd made the transfer a few days earlier. The new countryside was wild and colorful, and Genevieve decided she was more eager than ever to make her home here.
    The companionable silence on the boat was broken only by birdcalls and the constant thrum of mosquitoes and occasionally by Amy Parker's shy laughter, which Seth delighted in coaxing from her.
    Prudence stayed in the small cabin, hiding from the untouched splendor of the woods rising up all around them. She preferred being alone with her thoughts and her broken dreams, sharing little with Genevieve, sharing even less with Roarke.
    When he emerged from the cabin, looking somewhat bewildered and not a little frustrated, Genevieve caught herself smiling at him. When a biting fly buzzed near him, she held out the vial of pennyroyal.
    "Good hunting here," Luther commented. "Let's see if we can scare us a turkey for our supper."
    Genevieve watched as they brought the boat to a bank of deep-red clay. Roarke looked more rugged than ever in the Virginia wilderness, sleeves rolled up over strong, corded arms and his face growing ruddy in the sun. Although he was a newcomer to the colony, he already looked as though he belonged here.
    She