Dawn on a Distant Shore (53 page)

Nathaniel tensed, but
she pushed on.

"There's
something else at play here, some kind of real trouble ..."

His expression shifted
to disbelief. "You ain't worried about the earl? Boots, listen to me. Whatever
troubles the man has, there's one thing for sure: he won't take no for an
answer. We'll listen to his story and then wish him well and go home. You think
he'll be satisfied with that?"

Elizabeth shook her
head. "No," she said. "Of course he will not be satisfied. But
then neither will you, if you walk away and never hear what he has to say. Five
or ten years from now when we still look at every stranger who comes to
Paradise as a danger to the children, will you regret not seeing this through?"

The rain had picked up
again and it lashed itself against the transom windows in great sheets.
Nathaniel seemed to be counting the raindrops, so concentrated was his
expression.

"Let me ask you
this, Boots. If a ship was to come alongside this minute and offer to take us all
back home, what would you want to do?"

Elizabeth studied her
own hands. She could give him the easiest, the most logical answer:
I want
to go home
. And it would be the truth. She wanted to take her children away
from this place with such intensity that she sometimes woke from a deep sleep
to find herself out of bed and half-dressed, with no sense of where she might
be going except
away
. Away from Moncrieff and Carryck, away from the
faceless Campbells.

"When we go,
Nathaniel, then I want to leave all of this behind us. Forever. For good. I am afraid
if we go now, we will drag it all home with us, and we will never really be
free of Carryck."

Nathaniel pulled back,
his eyes narrowing into slits. He ran a hand through his hair as he turned
away, his shoulders rising hard against the fabric of his shirt. With his back
still turned to her he said, "I'm going up on deck for a while. I need to
think some things through."

Hannah had a game she
played with the twins when they were put down for the night. She would lean over
their crib, and in turn she would put a hand on each baby's chest to croon to
them in Kahnyen'kehâka.

"You are
Two-Sparrows, daughter of Bone-in-Her-Back, who took Wolf-Running-Fast as her
husband. Your sister Squirrel is daughter of Sings-from-Books, daughter of Falling-Day,
daughter of Made-of-Bones, who is clan mother of the Wolf longhouse of the
Kahnyen'kehâka people who live at Good Pasture. Sleep well, my little sister."

By the time she
finished, Lily's eyelids had fluttered closed. Even Daniel, who fought sleep as
a matter of course, quieted when Hannah began to sing to him. She called him Little-Fox,
the infant name that Falling-Day had given him when she came to them through
the winter storm. The baby listened with his brow furrowed in such a comical
way that Elizabeth might have laughed out loud.

Elizabeth wondered
where they would be when they put the children down tomorrow night. She glanced
again over her shoulder into the main cabin where Curiosity sat staring blankly
at a book in her lap while Charlie cleared the last of their meal away. He was
red-eyed still, and there was a vacant look about him. Elizabeth wanted to
speak to him, to offer some comfort; she knew very well what it was to lose a
brother. But in her current state of agitation she thought she would do him
little good.

Nathaniel had still
not returned from his walk on deck; the little rosewood clock ticked on resolutely
toward morning.

She did not think she
would be able to sleep, but Elizabeth slipped away immediately and dreamed of Margreit
MacKay. Mrs. MacKay paced the cabin, rocking her lost child against her breast
and murmuring to herself, the same words over and over again: Sancte
Michael
Archangele, defende nos in praelio
.

What danger?
Elizabeth asked her.
What
battle?

But there was no
answer, only the prayer said over the silent form of the child:
Archangel Michael,
defend us
.

Elizabeth snapped up
out of sleep, sweat running down her face.

"Boots,"
Nathaniel said from the dark. "You were weeping in your sleep."

She touched her face,
and found it wet.

"Just a
dream," she said, wiping her cheeks with her fingers. "Just a dream.
Why don't you come to bed?"

She could barely make
out his shape as he came to sit beside her. He smelled of salt air, and of himself.

"You've got a
neck cramp again."

Elizabeth had to
smile. "I do not know if I like the fact that you can see so well in the
dark."

His fingers were
strong and cold on her shoulder, his breathing was even and steady at her ear.
She shuddered a little as he sought out the coiled muscles and began to knead
them.

He said, "I
shouldn't have left angry. I'm sorry for it."

Elizabeth leaned back
harder against him, dropping her head to one side so that he could work the knot
of muscle behind her ear.

"We are all on
edge," she said softly.

He was still angry.
She felt it in his hands and heard it too in the way he pushed out what he had
to say.

"I guess you're
right about Carryck, but I wish to God you weren't."

She drew in a deep
breath and let it out again. "So do I."

Nathaniel's fingers
dug hard into her sore shoulder and she struggled a little against him.

"Easy,
Boots," he said gruffly. "Let me work."

Her nightdress had
slipped down over her shoulder and her skin rose to the cool night air, but a
drop of sweat trickled down her hairline. Nathaniel's hands coaxed and prodded,
and little by little the knotty muscles began to relax.

"You're wound up
like a clock."

"Oh, am I? And
there's the pot calling the kettle black."

He snorted softly
through his nose and dug his thumbs deeper into the muscles at the juncture of
neck and shoulder.

Elizabeth squeaked.
"You might just beat me, and get it over with."

He laughed. She
reached behind herself to swat him, only half in jest. Nathaniel caught her wrist
and in one movement he turned so that she was caught beneath him. He was
breathing heavily.

"It's not a
beating I've got in mind, Boots."

He pressed his mouth
against her neck just below her ear, his tongue flickering. Elizabeth drew in a
hard breath and buried her fingers in his hair, held his head as his mouth
moved down. He set his teeth in the curve of her shoulder and she cried out a
little, in pain and something more.

Suddenly he stilled
and pressed his face to her skin. "Oh, Christ," he whispered.
"God help us."

Frightened now as she
had not been before, Elizabeth clutched at his shoulders.

"Nathaniel--"

"They might as
well put me in chains, for all the good I am to you."

There was a swelling
in her throat, things she wanted to say and could not, should not. Instead she rocked
him while his tears wet her nightdress, hot enough to scald skin and bone. Too tenderhearted,
he had called her, and he was right.

When the worst was
over, he let out a terrible sigh. "I swear I'll get us out of this."

"I know that,
Nathaniel. I know that as well as I know how to breathe."

He nodded absently,
rubbing his eyes. "There's still no sign of the
Jackdaw
."

"Perhaps
tomorrow," she said. "I suppose Mr. Moncrieff must be very ill at
ease."

Nathaniel grunted,
sounding more himself. "He spends all his time in the round-house,
watching the water. They've posted an armed guard on deck."

"Perhaps they are
worried about thieves," Elizabeth murmured.
One more danger
, she thought,
but kept it to herself.

Nathaniel pulled her
closer. "Or the Campbells."

"Or the
Campbells," she echoed. "But I must admit that right at this moment
the Campbells are as real to me as the Green Man."

"Let's hope it
stays that way." He tugged on her hair. "Tell me, Boots, don't you ever
get tired of being logical?"

She laughed. "Now
that you mention it, yes. Sometimes it is a relief to stop thinking."

"Ah," he
said. "Now there's something I can help you with."

His tone had changed,
not to anger or irritation or even worry, but in another direction, one that she
knew very well. The air was chill and she had lost both her blanket and most of
her nightdress, but she flushed with a new heat.

His mouth was at her
ear, and an old teasing rhythm: "It's late, Boots. The logical thing would
be to sleep."

"I suppose it
would," she agreed. "You must be very tired."

He smiled against her
neck, his fingers tracing gently, rousing every nerve. "And if I was, it wouldn't
matter. The smell of you would wake a dead man."

Elizabeth put her
hands in his hair and brought his face to her own to kiss him. She whispered
against his mouth.

I dreamt my lady came
and found me dead ...

And breathed such life
with kisses in my lips

that I revived, and
was an emperor.

He laughed, and
stripped the rest of her nightdress away so that they could curl together, legs
entwined and arms and mouths, belly to belly. His body was a map she could read
in the dark: the tiny hooked scar under his left eye; the cleft in his chin;
the puckered bullet wound on his shoulder and another low on his right chest; a
raised ridge carved into the hard plane of thigh muscle, leading her curious
fingers up and up.

He caught his breath
and let it go again. Kisses soft and softer, until every pore was saturated and
he came to her in a single heavy stroke: the deepest touch. His place inside of
her, where no one else knew her; where she did not know herself.

Nathaniel hovered over
her, joined completely yet completely still. She touched his face, wound around
him and murmured, a question half asked.

He hushed her.
"Wait," and then hoarsely, "listen."

And then she heard
what he meant her to hear: his blood and her own, surging like the sea itself
in an endless circle between them.

Margreit MacKay was
uneasy in death, or perhaps she was just lonely; she came to Elizabeth again to
pace the cabin. This time her arms were empty, and in her dream state Elizabeth
began to search for the lost child in every corner.

Mrs. MacKay took no
notice of her loss; all her attention was on Elizabeth. "Be wary o' the
cold damp," she sang in her clear, deep contralto. "Be wary o' the mists.
Be wary o' the nicht air. Be wary o' the roads, and the bridges and the burns.
Be wary o' men, and women, and bairns. Be wary o' what ye can see." Her
voice grew faint and fainter. "And what ye canna."

It was just after dawn
and the rain had stopped when Elizabeth roused herself to see to the babies.
Behind her, a clean summer light filtered into the cabin through the shutters:
the last day they would spend on the Lass in Green.

She looked like a
fairy, or one of the selkies that Nathaniel's mother had told stories about,
with hair as deep and dark as sleep itself against the white skin of her
shoulders. It floated in tangled curls to the small of her back, and he could
barely contain the urge to put his hands in it, to wrap it around himself so
that he could breathe in her smell. He wanted to sleep the day away like that
with her head tucked under his chin. But in the next cabin Daniel babbled, and
he would not be content for long.

She lifted her arms
over her head and took up her hair to plait it, her elbows pointed to the ceiling.

"Let me," he
said.

She glanced at him
over her shoulder. Her eyes were the color of a sky set on rain. "You could
sleep."

"Could I? Come
then, let me do that for you."

In the soft early
light her expression managed to be both severe and sleepy, but she held herself
steady while he worked.

He finished and let
the plait drop over her shoulder. "I kept you up too late."

"Don't be
absurd," she said, her voice muffled as she pulled her nightdress over her
head. Then she leaned over to kiss him, a quick stamp of her mouth with a
wayward curl caught between them. "I did not need very much persuading. Or
don't you recall?"

"Oh, I recall
very well," he said solemnly. He reached out to trace a finger along her
collarbone where the skin was still mottled. She blushed, new color flooding
her chest and throat, and grabbed his hand to still it. "You take delight
in embarrassing me."

"That I do,"
he said. And then, "Promise me you'll still blush like that when you're
seventy."