Navajo Sunrise
Miranda Howell grieved for the Navajo and yearned to educate their children for the future they'd face, not the past they mourned. But her every effort was thwarted by a proud warrior who desired only to keep his people strong–and help Miranda free the passion in her soul.…Ahkeah knew his duty to his People, his daughter, his wife's memory. Yet he was unsure of how to treat an enemy who wore skirts and smelled of lilacs. Miranda Howell had come to the desert full of curiosity and compassion…and a tenderness that was slowly turning the wall that surrounded his heart to dust.
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His black eyes flashed in warning,
but when he met her gaze, Miranda was overcome by the strange tenderness she saw there. Something moved inside her, warming, unfolding like the bud of a flower. Her lips parted as she struggled to break the silence with words that would not come.
“I know your heart is good, Miranda Howell,” Ahkeah said, “but your efforts to help the Dine will only make enemies for you—dangerous enemies, on both sides.”
“Including you?”
Time froze as he loomed above her, his eyes smoldering with unspoken secrets. His thin lips were sensually curved, his sharp bronze face much too close to her own.
“Including me?” His husky voice echoed her question as his gaze held her captive. “Make no mistake, bilagaana woman. You and I have been enemies from the first moment we set eyes on each other.”
Acclaim for Elizabeth Lane’s recent books
Bride on the Run
“Enjoyable and satisfying all around, BRIDE ON THE RUN is an excellent Western romance you won’t want to miss!”
—Romance Reviews Today (romrevtoday.com)
Shawnee Bride
“A fascinating, realistic story.”
—Rendezvous
Apache Fire
“Enemies, lovers, raw passion, taut sexual tension, murder and revenge—Indian romance fans are in for a treat with Elizabeth Lane’s sizzling tale of forbidden love that will hook you until the last moment.”
—Romantic Times
#607 HER DEAREST SIN
Gayle Wilson
#609 BRIDE OF THE ISLE
Margo Maguire
#610 CHASE WHEELER’S WOMAN
Charlene Sands
Available from Harlequin Historicals and
ELIZABETH LANE
Wind River #28
Birds of Passage #92
Moonfire #150
MacKenna’s Promise #216
Lydia #302
Apache Fire #436
Shawnee Bride #492
Bride on the Run #546
My Lord Savage #569
Navajo Sunrise #608
Other works include:
Silhouette Romance
Hometown Wedding #1194
The Tycoon and the Townie #1250
Silhouette Special Edition
Wild Wings, Wild Heart #936
Author Note
Navajo culture is so rich and complex that an outsider, trying to describe it in a story, is bound to make mistakes. For any errors contained in this book, I ask the forgiveness of my readers and all those whom my words may have offended.
Navajo Sunrise is set against a background of real historical events, but the story itself is the product of my own imagination. Except for Barboncito, Manuelito, Theodore H. Dodd and General William Tecumseh Sherman, the characters are fictitious and bear no resemblance to actual persons, living or dead.
Elizabeth Lane
Contents
Prologue
New Mexico
March, 1864
Ahkeah stood in the cold moonlight, staring down at the grave the bilagáana soldiers had forbidden him to dig. His hands were raw and bleeding, the nails worn to stubs from scraping away the half-frozen earth. His eyes and throat stung as if he had just walked through a forest fire.
Even now that the grave was finished, the top piled high with stones, he feared it might not be deep enough to protect his wife’s body from the marauding foxes and coyotes that would close in after he was gone. She had died that afternoon, on the fifth day of the long walk from Dinétah to the place the soldiers called Fort Sumner—died in agony, her body swollen with a child that would not have lived even if she’d had the strength to give it birth. The passing soldier who’d fired a bullet into her temple had probably done her a kindness. Even so, it had taken three of Ahkeah’s friends, gripping him from behind, to keep him from leaping on the blue-coat and tearing him apart with his bare hands.
At the time he had wanted the soldier to shoot him as well. He had wanted nothing more than to lie on the icy ground beside the body of his sweet young wife, free from the burdens of grief and shame and from the hunger that gnawed at his vitals. But even then reason had whispered that it was his duty to live. There were people who needed him—his small daughter, Nizhoni, whose name meant beauty, and his mother’s elder sister, who had watched her entire family die on the cliffs at Canyon de Chelly, and had not spoken since. And there were others—so many others who needed his strength and his voice.
The crescent moon that hung above the mesa cast ghostly shadows across the desolation of the high New Mexico desert. Through the darkness, the lonely wail of a coyote drifted to Ahkeah’s ears. The yelping cry was echoed by another, then another. At one time Ahkeah would have welcomed the calls of his wild brothers. Now they only chilled his blood, because he knew that the sharp-nosed creatures would be gathering around the bodies of the Diné who had fallen along the trail.
He had begun scraping out the grave as soon as he knew his wife was dead; but the soldiers, jabbing him with the points of their bayonets, had forced him to leave her and move on with the rest of his people. Only after the dismal procession had made camp for the night and settled into sleep was he able to slip past the sentries and race back along the trail to where she lay.
