Something flickered in the Cherokee’s face. He sidestepped a pace, allowing her and Pierce access to the porch. But with another murmured epithet, the Cherokee screwed his face and spat, releasing a wad of saliva and tobacco, which landed square on the toe of Pierce’s shoe.
Gasping, she grabbed Pierce to prevent him surging forward to answer the Cherokee’s disrespect.
His pale face engorged with blood fury. “What did he call me, Sarah Jane?” Pierce hissed between thin, fine lips.
She fought to hold on to him as Pierce and the Cherokee strained toward the other like cocks at a fight. “Nothing. Ignore him.”
The older man jerked the younger’s sleeve. He repeated Sarah Jane’s earlier salutation of peace. “Nuh-wah-doe-he-yah-duh.”
In rapid-fire Cherokee, the old man reminded the younger man of his grandmother’s condition. The old man sent Sarah Jane an imploring look.
“U-lo-gi-dv,” the old one remonstrated.
His grandson stalked away toward the front of the house. She released a ragged breath.
U-lo-gi-dv? So the hostile one’s name was . . . Touch the Clouds.
The old man lifted his hands. “Excuse . . .” He shook his head at his broken attempt at English. “Young men . . .” He raised one shoulder and let it drop in resignation. “Angry these days.”
Pierce shrugged free of her grip. He extended his hand toward the old man. “Nuh-wah-doe-he-yah-duh,” glancing at her to make sure he’d pronounced it correctly. “Peace to you and to your family in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
The old man narrowed his eyes at his reference to the Lord, but accepted Pierce’s hand. Pierce, Papa had remarked for her ears only, possessed great medical expertise, head knowledge, and religious zeal.
Practical application? Her father had shaken his head. Not so much. Not yet.
She tugged at Pierce to follow her into the house. “Better to show him our Christ first through our medicine and compassion.”
“We’ll take good care of your wife,” she told the old man in his own language.
The old man, like his grandson, would prefer to remain in the habitat he knew best.
Yielding, Pierce allowed the door to bang shut. His lanky beanpole posture stiffened as his nose wrinkled. “Not sure why the Doctor feels it necessary to soil your fair hands in such professional matters.”
Untying her bonnet, she strode toward the washbasin and pitcher on the kitchen table and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Speaking of soiled . . .”
Papa had found Pierce an apt and able assistant. He predicted a bright future for Pierce in furthering God’s kingdom among the Tsalgi or Principal People, as they called themselves.
Just as soon, Papa had added, as God took down the young doctor and his notions a peg or two first.
“You said the patient was a woman. An old woman?” She scrubbed the lye soap against her skin all the way to her elbows. Another one of Papa’s medical protocols Pierce found inexplicable, but followed under Dr. Hopkins’s tutelage.
Grabbing a dishtowel, she wiped her hands and made room for Pierce. She poised the water pitcher over the bowl.
A mutinous expression on his face, he pushed his lips forward.
“Papa will insist you wash again.”
Grimacing, he thrust his hands over the basin, and she poured a steady stream of water over his hands as he lathered his hands and arms once more.
She tried her best to prevent her eyes from lingering too long on the corded muscles of his forearms. “The Cherokee, most of them anyway, even after Papa’s labor among them all these years, prefer their own shamans to treat their ills.”
He snorted.
She ignored his outburst. “The shamans are powerful figures, especially among the Snowbird Cherokee, less so in Georgia or—”
“The more civilized parts of the Cherokee Nation.”
“In the more prosperous regions, I was going to say.” She handed another towel to him. “Once it’s gotten beyond the shaman’s skills or enough fear for the injured has had time to set in, they will—with trepidation—seek out the white man’s medicine. The women and children usually prefer another female on hand during diagnosis and treatment.”
He flicked water droplets over the pan. “Yes, she’s an old woman. A bad cut on her leg from a misaimed axe stroke now infected, your father surmised from his questioning of her. In Cherokee.”
Pierce threw Sarah Jane a pointed glance. “I’ve almost finished my study of the herbs. Maybe . . . ?” He twisted the cloth around his hands.
Such strong, long-fingered hands.
A surgeon’s hands, Papa said. Her insides aquiver, Sarah Jane drew her gaze out the window. A mockingbird sang in the winter-bare branches of a dogwood tree.
“You want I should teach you the language?” she whispered. She kept her gaze averted to spare his male dignity the indignity of seeking help from a member of the fairer sex.
Pierce maintained such inconvenient ideas of what was proper and what was not she reflected, not for the first time in their short acquaintance.
Ideas—Papa had commented with a wry twist of his lips when Pierce objected to her attendance over a child’s broken arm—of which necessity would soon disabuse him.
Pinching his lips together, Pierce folded the towel in exact thirds, draping it over the ladder-backed kitchen chair. “If it led to the greater efficacy of my mission, I’d . . .” His eyes fell to the puncheon wood floor.
Efficacy. Pierce and his words. Must be how folks talked in the North.
Sarah Jane wouldn’t know. She’d been born and reared in these smoky blue hills, home to the Cherokee for millennia.
A sunbeam made its way through the glass pane, highlighting the curly, close-cropped blond locks on his head. A ping went through her. She ran her gaze over the angular line of his strong jaw.
Blessed be God. She’d never met a handsomer man.
Not white, leastways. And though she suspected her father schemed for someday Pierce to take over the mission—and perhaps wed his daughter—Sarah Jane, plain as she was, realized the possibility of Pierce ever thinking of her in that light was slim to none.
But she wouldn’t pass on a chance to spend more time with him.
Her heart hammered.
“I’d be happy to instruct you in the rudimentary elements of the Cherokee language. Perhaps a lesson every night after dinner?”
He raised his eyes to hers. A slight smile quivered on those oh-so-fine lips. “Perhaps over the washing and drying of the supper dishes. I’ve been told I’m quite handy when it comes to cleaning up.”
She returned his smile. There might be hope yet for Dr. Pierce if he was willing to disgrace himself with menial, womanly chores. “You have yourself a deal.” She extended her hand and then retracted it. “I’d shake your hand, but then we’d both have to wash again.”
He grinned, shuffling his feet. And being the lovesick creature she was, she grinned back at him.
“Sarah Jane! Pierce!” her father bellowed down the hall.
Pierce blinked and Sarah Jane jolted.
“Coming, Papa!” she yelled in her not-so-ladylike nurse voice.
Plucking a clean, white pinafore off the hook on the wall, she hurried to assist him. She schooled her heart, as she had a thousand times this last month, to pay better attention to her patients.