"Roberts, Nora - Mind Over Matter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

was cocked, his hat tipped back, a bullwhip curled in one hand. Many
felt that those hard blue eyes damned them as they sat drinking his
whiskey and toasting his death.

For Lily Mercy, the second daughter Jack had conceived and discarded,
it was terrifying. The house, the people, the noise. The room the
housekeeper had given her the day before when she'd arrived was so
beautiful. So quiet, she thought now as she moved closer to the rail
of the side porch. The lovely bed, the pretty golden wood against the
silky wallpaper.

The solitude.

She wanted that now, so very much, as she looked out toward the
mountains. Such mountains, she thought. So high, so rough. Nothing
at all like the pretty little hills of her home in Virginia. And all
the sky, the shuddering and endless blue of it curving down to more
land than could possibly exist.

The plains, that wild roll of them, and the wind that seemed never to
stop. And the colors, the golds and russets, the scarlets and bronzes
of both hill and plain exploding with autumn.

And this valley, where the ranch spread in a spot of such impossible
strength and beauty. She'd seen deer out the window that morning,
drinking from a stream that glowed silver in the dawn. She'd heard
horses, the voices of men, the crow of a rooster, and what she
thought■hoped■might have been an eagle's cry.

She wondered whether, if she found the courage to walk into the forest
that danced up those foothills, she would see the moose, the elk, the
fox that she had read about so greedily on the flight west.

She wondered if she would be allowed to stay even another day■and where
she would go, what she would do, if she was asked to leave.

She couldn't go back east, not yet. Self-consciously she fingered the
yellowing bruise she'd tried to hide with makeup and sunglasses. Jesse
had found her. She'd been so careful, but he'd found her, and the
court orders hadn't stopped his fists. They never had. Divorce hadn't
stopped him, all the moving and the running hadn't stopped him.

But here, she thought, maybe here, thousands of miles away, in a
country so huge, she could finally start again. Without fear.

The letter from the attorney informing her of Jack Mercy's death and
requesting her to travel to Montana had been like a gift from God.

Though her expenses had been paid, Lily had cashed in the first-class
airfare and booked zigzagging flights across the country under three