My Name is Resolute (50 page)

The man turned his head one way, then another, eyeing me with gaiety and pleasure. Though it was not displeasing, it was uncommonly difficult to bear without turning away. He smiled broadly. At that second, he began to speak, and I saw he had a dimple on one cheek. “Resolute?” he asked.

My soul burst with the word as tears flew from my eyes and I cried out, “August!”

My brother swept me in his arms with no more care for decorum than the pirate he might be. No matter. No matter. I cared not the least. Here at last, my own brother, August Talbot, whole and hale and swinging me and my hoop skirts as if I were a bell tolling the return of a sailor long lost at sea. I cried out with joy. I held him with ferocity. When he put me down, all eyes were upon us.

I turned meekly to Lady Spencer, aware that I might lose her friendship by this odd display of bad manners, but the look on her face was one of triumph and a secret plan fulfilled. She held a glass of champagne in the air and said softly, “Here, here.”

The cry was picked up by people all around the room. Applause and laughter filled the hall, and the story of our separation spread about the room with plenty of ornamentation by the time we heard it. I held August’s arm tightly in both hands. He was lean and lithe and whole and alive. Gold chain glistened across his chest; he wore gold shoe buckles. I held his shoulder and shook my head. “I can hardly believe it is you.”

“And I, you,” he said. “Oh, it has been seven years too long.”

“But you live, as I do.”

“And what of Patience?” he asked softly.

“I know not where she is or if she lives. She left me on the path to Lexington.”

“And you waited for me all this time? Your note was brought to me.”

“I will have to tell you the whole tale, August. It is not a simple one. But what of you? How have you fared?”

“Excellently, once I overcame a certain obstacle. Uncle Rafe was—”

“A fiend. And are you still going to sea? Have you a house here?”

“I have two ships, my girl. No house.”

“You must stay with me, then.”

“I have quarters in town.”

“But I have a house.”

“A house? All your own? Well and aye, my girl. I should have known you would find a way to thrive. And a husband?”

I turned to Cullah. I said, “We are not yet wed.” Then to August I said, “Two ships. Two? Oh, la! You shall take us home to Jamaica! Take us with you! I have money to pay passage if you wish. August, take us home!”

August’s face went cold and all the merry light drained from his eyes. “Ressie. There is no home for me but the sea. Why would you and your betrothed want to go to Jamaica? It is not a place for an honest woodsman and a gentle young lady.”

Tears flooded my eyes and poured down my cheeks. “Do you know about Mother?”

“I have seen her grave. I had its location from Lucy, one of the slaves, when I freed her with some others back on the island. I put a stone there with her name carved. I stood at Ma’s grave and said a prayer for her.”

I felt Cullah’s hand on my arm. I trembled. His hand was so warm. My chest ached as if I were run through with a cutlass. I closed my eyes and said, “I want to go home.” When I opened them, Cullah’s face was all I could see.

He said, “Would you leave me, then?”

I hesitated. “No. Come with us. We three shall go. We shall be happy there.”

I heard August’s voice. “I have made our graces to Lady Spencer and family. I told her you were too overcome to continue to dance.”

For the next four days, in my little parlor, I heard all about how August had grown up aboard privateers’ ships until he had earned enough in wages and booty to buy his own rigs. He had fought Rafe MacAlister across the Atlantic and the Caribbean seas, had marooned the blackguard on a low-lying cay off the southern colonies, but from there Rafe had made his way north to find me.

I told him that Cullah and Jacob had killed the man, and August nodded, holding his mug of beer high. “My best to your man, then, and his father. No fouler devil ever stepped aboard a deck than MacAlister. Yet I never knew what his reason was to chase me all over the bloody, pardon, sweet sister, all over the forgotten sea.”

I told him what Rafe had said to me of our mother’s death, too. I did not tell him what I had suffered. August grew quiet. In those moments of silence, we exchanged looks that imparted to me some of the haunting sadness in his eyes, and I understood without hearing every dire nuance.

The house had seemed roomy enough with only myself, and had not lessened by Cullah’s presence, but August seemed to fill the room with vibrations and light. When we had our fill of sad things he told me of adventure and gold, treasures and battles, and that he had made the Cape of Good Hope once but swore never to sail it again. August said he might purchase a house in Boston to be near me, though I told him he had a house in Lexington anytime he wished.

“When do you marry?” he asked.

“Soon,” I said.

“I plan to sail before the snow flies again to get out of this heathen cold. I would be favored to leave you with a chest or two, to keep for me, if I may. I like your man. A straight and square fellow. And not a seaman; so much the better. And do you love him, or are you at least well suited to each other?”

“I do love him. But not as I thought love would be. Not so that I cannot think or carry on. I love him practically. I appreciate him, and I like his character. I am not charmed out of my mind by his presence.”

August laughed. “That sounds so like you. Always a head on your shoulders. Why stoop to dashing charm and passion when you can have a solid, hardworking husband?”

“Why, indeed,” I answered. The memory of Wallace’s kisses flitted before me like a moth that had been disturbed and settled again in a new place. I said, “I saw Patience swayed into doing things unconscionable because of passion or love or whatever it was. I am perfectly happy to find love that comes with steady and honest good thought. Have you a wife?”

His eyes shaded then, growing darker as if a veil had pulled across them. “No.”

*   *   *

Within a week, Cullah nailed our marriage banns to the door of the church. We spent days, he and Jacob, August and I, discussing where we should live, how we would make our ways together as one. It was decided that since I was literally the “lady of property,” he would live in this house with me, and add to it. August asked him to build a wing, too, saying he would finance it, so that he had a place “in the country,” to visit. Jacob declared he meant to live in Goody Carnegie’s house. Cullah blanched at that thought, but Jacob said he knew ways to keep fairies out, and that he feared nothing with or without skin. Cullah’s knee touched mine under our table when he said that. I knew Cullah to be mindful, indeed, of things which skin could not contain. Haunts, ghosts, fairy folk. The man was strong as any warrior, but worried about the wind.

When I asked what was to become of their shop in Concord, they both heartily agreed that it was time to move it to Lexington. The town had grown. Any who knew of them would come there, and those who did not would learn.

With more good fortune smiling upon me, the choice—on Cullah’s insistence—that I had worn my own creation in the lavender embroidered gown, had filled Johanna Parmenter’s slate with orders. She sent word within three days that customers waited anxiously for as much as I could turn out, and I could easily have a fortune by spring.

On the twenty-ninth of January, 1737, at noon I donned my lavender gown, my jewels, and a pair of white kid slippers that August carried in his trunk, to pledge my life and my fortune, my body and future, to Eadan Cullah MacLammond. I was yet seventeen, he twenty-five, though he looked younger than my brother who was twenty-three. Even as the minister said the words, I wondered what a marriage was to a man with so many names, and was I really now Wife Lamont or Wife MacLammond? Wife of Cullah or Eadan?

We celebrated with a small dinner with August and Jacob, and to my surprise, Johanna Parmenter came. They three left after the sun began to set. I could not be sure but there seemed to be a little too much fraternity among the three of them, and I suddenly wondered why I had met no husband of hers, since I knew she had had a babe. I wondered if it would be my brother she would bed before dawn.

Once again I was alone in the house with Cullah. All my previous desire turned to fear. Faced with the reality of him, the close physical presence, this surrender—filled me so with dread that my knees shook.

“I must clean the trenchers,” I said.

Cullah removed his scarf and opened his collar. “I will help you.”

“No. It is woman’s work, and I am not ill. If I were, I would let you.”

He put one hand upon my shoulder. “Will you come to me?” he asked.

I kept my eyes low and whispered, “If you will kiss me.”

“I will kiss you.”

I raised my face to his. Three candles—for I was sparing no luxury on my wedding day—gave a golden light to the room. He smelled of rosewater and beeswax, and I smiled, thinking of his boots, so shiny that he did not want to wear them outdoors, and had put on his work boots to walk out and put my goats into their shed. Cullah pulled the trenchers from my hands and set them before me on the table. He turned me to him. Then with more delicacy than I had used to don them, he raised the string of pearls from my neck and held them to his cheek. “They are still warm,” he said. “They smell of you.” He kissed the string of pearls as if they made a rosary, and then laid them on the table as he inspected my bodice. “I look at all these ties and ribbons and I am lost. I would help you but where do I begin?”

I smiled. “Kiss me again, and I will tell you,” I said, then I fell into his arms as he complied.

“You are trembling,” he said at last. “So am I.”

“I have not,” I started, but found my mouth dry and my tongue stilled.

He smiled. “I know you have no experience. You promised that for a kiss, you would tell me which cord to pull.”

I pulled first at the cords that bound my stomacher to the waist. Then I loosed the sleeves. He pushed them back and down. “This next,” I said, “is a ridiculous contraption of fashion, making it seem I am half caught in a birdcage. It is only two ties; one in front, here, and one you will have to find in back by my waist.” In a moment, I felt the hoops and panniers fall to the floor and my skirt sink in on itself like sails in doldrums. I opened the skirt and stepped out of it, standing before Cullah in my shift alone.

The season had turned, the week before. A chill crossed me with the natural moistness of the shift after wearing a heavy dress gown. My nipples made two hard buttons that held the shift from my body. With the candles behind me, he must see through the light linen shift! My trembling increased. “I am so cold, now,” I whispered. “I should wait in bed for you to undress.”

He flung his shirt over his head and pulled me to his bare chest, holding me closely. My hands traveled the curves of his muscles as a blind woman would explore a statue, finding every swale and swell to my great liking. Then he sat upon the bed and pulled off his boots, letting them hit the floor with a solid bang. Cullah smiled and patted the bed beside him. “Come to bed, wife, but pray, for a moment, endure the cold and let me have a look at you.”

He reached upward and pulled the shift over my head with no more care than he had his own shirt. It caught in my hairpins and sent them flying about the room like so many scattered grasshoppers. My hair fell upon my shoulders, and I pulled at it as his eyes traveled the length and breadth of me. “Oh, my love,” he crooned, “you are so much more beautiful than all my dreams, all my ponderings and imaginings.” Suddenly he straightened his back and his face showed mistrust. “Are you not a fairy? You must tell me if I ask, for fairies cannot lie.”

“Oh, husband. I assure you I can lie and that alone proves I am of this world. It is my abiding sin and I struggle with it daily. I promised to be true to you, and with all my heart, I vow honesty and loyalty. I am no fairy.” I drew in a breath so loudly it was as a sigh on the wind, for at that last word with one arm he drew me to him. His lips suckled one nipple as his fingers dimpled and caressed the other. The sound of his breath stopping and starting as he pressed and rolled his face into my breast gave me fear, but the feeling of pulling and suckling drove me mad with heat and a softening in my knees so that I nearly fell upon him. “Eadan,” I said, surprised at the depth of my own voice. His hand against my back slid to my buttocks and explored the curves of them as I had his chest only moments before. “Eadan, my husband, take me to the bed, for I am chilled.”

His powerful arms swept me up and over him, putting me gently upon the bed on the side against the wall. He doffed his trousers and curled under the blankets next to me. “Shall I build you a fire, Resolute, my wee wife?”

“I shall require a fire this night, and many others, I trow.” He kissed my lips, and as he did I found his hand and put it against my breast again. “What is this fire, Eadan? What is it?” I could not contain my own longing. I cried out. I kissed him.

Eadan’s other hand slid down my belly and rested between my legs. Rather than the violence and affront I had felt when touched thus by Rafe MacAlister, when Eadan moved his fingers through all my hidden places, as if he knew them but at the same time as if he had waited his whole life to find them, I felt only joy. He said, “All fire, especially this fire, is God’s gift to mortals. We want it even before we know it.” He stroked. My back drew into an arch, even against my bidding. He did it again.

“You must stop,” I croaked.

“Why?”

“I shall perish.”

He laughed softly, his voice so low as to be barely audible. “Take me with you.” Then he rolled atop me, kissed me, and thrust himself inside me.

CHAPTER 23

September 1737

In the second week of September our first child tumbled into this world, nearly missing the sheets prepared for him. A boy. Eadan brought me beer-and-barley soup while I nursed. Jacob wanted us to name the babe after him. I had wanted him named after his father, but both men wore me down. Brendan Fergus Argyll Lamont, the third generation of Lamont clan on this shore, would be known to the world as Brendan MacLammond II. The four of us made a family. Well and aye.