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By the time it was all over, her jaws ached from having smiled so much.
And although it was a fun evening, she was glad to finally be alone with her husband.
“This is the lodge of my childhood,” Strong Wolf said, gesturing with a hand around him at the inside of the cabin. His mother was asleep in the loft overhead, worn out by the day’s activities. A fire roared in the great stone fireplace. “When I dream of my childhood days, I dream of being here, sitting by the fire, popping corn with my grandfather and mother. The memories are sweet, those sort that a child enjoys carrying with him into adulthood.”
“I think that’s wonderful,” Hannah said, sitting down on a pallet of furs before the fire with Strong Wolf. “It is good to have pleasant memories of the past.”
She moved to her knees before him and twined her arms around his neck. “I shall always remember today,” she said, then giggled softly. “Darling husband, my stomach is so full of honey, bear meat, popcorn, persimmon bread, and ash-lye hominy. As my plate emptied, it was filled again.”
She laughed again. “Do your people see me as frail, so in need of food, that they tried to fatten me up like a little pig in one evening?”
Strong Wolf held his head back in a fit of laughter, then placed his hands to her waist and drew her onto his lap. “They did not even notice how much food they were forcing upon you,” he said, his eyes dancing into hers. “It was just their way of welcoming you, the wife of their chief. When much food is available, that is cause in itself to celebrate. My people are fortunate. They never lack for food, for the Potawatomis braves are skilled, valiant hunters, and the women are skilled in ways of gardening and storage of the food gathered from their gardens.”
“Then, I doubt our child will ever be hungry,” Hannah said, watching his expression, to see if he understood the true meaning behind what she said.
“Not as long as I have breath in my lungs will the child born of our love ever be hungry,” Strong Wolf said, drawing her into his embrace, gently hugging her.
“Strong Wolf, even tonight our child was nourished by the food of your people,” Hannah said, scarcely breathing as she listened for him to grasp onto the truth of what she was saying, for she was certain that she was with child! She had missed her menstrual period by a week and it was not ordinary for her to be late.
“What . . . did . . . you say . . . ?” Strong Wolf said. He gripped her shoulders and leaned her away from him so that he could look her square in the eye.
His heart pounded with hope that he had heard her correctly.
“I truly believe that I am with child!” Hannah said, her eyes filled with the excitement of th
e moment. “Our child, Strong Wolf.” She ran a forefinger slowly across his parted lips. “Yours . . . and . . . mine, sweet husband. Tell me that you are happy with the news. I am ever so blissfully happy myself!”
Strong Wolf was so taken off guard by the news, for a moment he was at a loss for words. Then when it truly sank into his consciousness that, yes, he was going to be a father, all doubts, all fears, were swept away in his pride and joy of the moment.
“My woman,” he said, yanking her into his arms, giving her a tight, warm hug. “You have given me so much already, and now you are going to give me a child.”
He placed a finger beneath her chin and lifted her eyes to his. “You have filled my life with a hope I hardly ever felt possible as a child after . . . after . . . that day with Doe Eyes,” he said. “And now this?” He laughed softly, again pulling her into his arms, gently holding her against his chest. “And . . . now . . . this!”
He swept her into his arms and carried her outside beneath the moon and the stars. He carried her down to the riverbank. He nodded toward the heavens. “Legend says that the Milky Way is a place of happy and endless hunting,” he said in his rich, soft voice. “Legend says that bright stars are wise old warriors. Legend says that the small, dim stars are handsome braves.”
“And what do your legends say about the women?” Hannah asked, watching the play of the stars overhead, so perfectly content as she clung around Strong Wolf’s neck. She had never realized that anything in this world could feel so perfectly sweet and wonderful as it felt to be married to Strong Wolf, and now to be carrying his child.
“What do they say?” Strong Wolf said, drawing her eyes to his. “They say that I am the luckiest man of them all, for I have you.”
He kissed her with a passion all consuming.
She returned the kiss, her soul melting into his, as though they were one person, one heartbeat.
She smiled to herself, for there was another heartbeat now, one that lay amid the cocoon of her womb, and she could hardly wait until she could lie with Strong Wolf in their house in Kansas and hear the breathing of their baby as it lay in a crib beside their bed. Oh, how her world was so quickly changing; to something magical and sweet!
Yet there were fears that lay just at the surface of her happiness . . . the long journey back to the Kansas Territory. Would it be too hard on her now that she was pregnant? If anything happened to the child, she would then feel only half a woman.
She clung to Strong Wolf and brushed those worries aside as she became lost in the moment of his lingering kiss.
Chapter 38
Oh, is it not enough to be
Here with this beauty over me?
My throat should ache with praise, and I
Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.
