Sam turned to see what she meant. Through the dark in the far
distance were lights.
"It's a cottage!" she said. "The lights of a
house!"
Sure enough, at some distance off there seemed to be the tiny
glows of windows. One extinguished as he watched, and another lit. People.
Without another thought – donning her ruffled wrap hurriedly as
she walked – Liddy took off in the direction of the lights, and Sam followed.
It was funny, but he realized that his spirits fell a little more
with each step they took. Civilization. He should be glad. They would probably
sleep under a roof tonight. He'd be warm enough without wrapping up in a lot of
women's ruffled underwear. Yet he wasn't glad. He almost wished he could stay
out here.
Wilderness
Man.
Liddy was
right. He felt better about himself out here than he had in a long time. A lone
wolf. He didn't screw up making a fire or killing a rabbit. Somehow neither of
these was as complicated as getting to the church or attending endless
engagement parties or simply getting his tail end across an ocean. No, out here
was …
simple
. And he'd forgotten how good he was at simple, at pure,
basic survival. It was the machinations of society that confounded him and made
him hurt.
Come to think of it, he hadn't been a completely lone wolf out
here. He glanced at
Liddy
. She was marching off
paces, eager for warmth; he didn't blame her. But he admitted to himself at
least: Civilization meant giving up his interesting, highly imaginative
companion. And, surprising as it was to discover, he didn't relish parting
company from Miss Brown, or whatever her name was.
For almost an hour they played hide and seek with the lights,
heading toward them, losing them, catching them again. Liddy was racing for
them with such vigor and single-mindedness that, at one point, Sam found
himself holding her arm – she kept tripping over stones, not watching what she
was doing, making her ankle give.
In the end, though, he and she stood with their toes sinking in
mud, staring at what turned out to be no house at all. Only when they were
right on top of the lights did they realize what they had beat a path for,
going for all they were worth: methane rising off a bog, spontaneously
igniting, burning, then going out.
Sam let out a long, loud laugh. "Oh, you gotta love the
Dartmoor
!" he
said. "A bog. Another bog!"
"Well, I don't. Not at this minute." After a pause, she
asked, "Have you any idea which direction we've walked? East? West?"
"Hm." He thought about it. "Maybe westerly. I'm not
sure."
She sighed. "Bog candles, I think they're called." She
laughed humorlessly, then added, "Pixie-led. That's what they say when
someone is lost out on the moor for days. That pixies, for mischief, love to
lead travelers round and round in circles."
"The pixies have had a good time with us."
"Indeed."
"Indeed," he repeated and laughed.
"I shouldn't find it funny, but I do." She laughed more
genuinely. "We're lost. We are ridiculously and completely lost, while
being probably no more than a dozen miles from where we started."
"I bet you're right."
"Should we feel dispirited, do you think?"
Oddest thing. Sam felt actually … relieved. "Nah. We'll just find
more wood and get another fire going. We'll find our way off the moor
tomorrow."
"Tomorrow." She laughed again. "Right."
Right
. He was coming to love the way she used
this word, her British pronunciation of it: his word. Their word.
"Right," he said.
They were still lost. Well, wasn't that just … a fine ol' thing.
9
F
inding wood was harder that night. Though visibility was better,
there was less wood to find. By the light of a larger, brighter moon, Sam and
Liddy took to the higher ground over the bog, but there found only clumps of
heather. Eventually, Sam dug some of it up, roots, peat, and all, to augment
their small supply of sticks.
This sort of fire pointed to its own kind of danger. The peat
around the roots – the very ground of the hillocks over the bog – was porous
and dry. It lit quickly, too quickly, suggesting that the ground itself could
catch fire. Thus, Lydia and Sam put out their first fire, then cleared the area
and covered the ground with rocks, before they lit what became a smoky fire –
smoky but better than none.
Even with their difficulties, though,
Lydia
found herself
having to fight the urge to hum a little tune as she threw twigs onto their
small campfire. Rabbit again. And Sam. She loved that she had his sexual
attention. She wasn't sure quite what to do with it, but she knew she adored
having it. Naked. She wouldn't get naked for him, of course. But the idea
fascinated her, and she wanted to think about it some more while staring across
a fire at Sam's ever more sharpening features – the bumps and bruising
continued to subside and reveal his face. It was angular, sharp-boned, even
rather patrician.
Thank goodness for bog candles, she caught herself thinking.
She drew in a deep breath and felt … wonderful, somehow. Happy. In
London
, this past
season, she'd known a growing and miserable feeling: discontent. Though, of
course, at the end of the coming season, since she'd be twenty-five then, she
intended to settle down. She would do as she ought: single her respectable
number of suitors down to one mate. It was expected. She needed to do this. She
needed to secure her future. Still, if anything, she felt hemmed in by all
society "expected" of her lately.
Now, without anyone but herself to answer to – without witnesses,
as it were – she felt a sense of … self-discovery. Freedom. Perhaps it was the
notion that she could have drowned in a bog or starved to death or died of
chill.
Well, goodness, she told herself. She could have died last week or
the week before that. It was precisely what her parents worried about, that she
would die, and one day she undoubtedly would, though not any time soon, she
didn't think. For now, here she was, alive and thriving on a moor: in full
knowledge that every day was a gift. It was as if, since she hadn't sunk or
starved or shivered to death, she had regained something. As if her life
belonged to her out here, that she could make decisions more clearly in her own
best interests, do anything she wanted with her own particular days on this
earth.
She felt as if she'd been reaching for this feeling for years,
striving toward it. A sense of having shaken free of what others wanted for
her. All that mattered was what she wanted for herself. What did it matter what
she did, so long as it didn't hurt anyone else?
Or at least this was the fine speech she gave herself.
On their dry rise up from the bog, they settled in, cooking then
eating rabbit with a side dish of frogs' legs, courtesy of Sam's efforts and
tutoring. After making their fire, he took her down to the water again, where
he taught her to chase frogs by the moonlight and the light of eerie,
crackling, whiffing explosions of methane gas. After a while, though, what a
lark. Her eyes adjusted. She became used to the idea – the gas indeed lit the
bog as if by candlelight. Hundred-power candlelight. It was quite the perfect
way to chase frogs.
Even if the frogs didn't cooperate as they should:
Lydia
laughed till
her stomach hurt, splashing and grabbing till Sam's and her feet and sleeves
were both good and wet. In the end, though, they triumphed once more in the art
of survival.
"Frogs' legs
au lapin
," Sam said.
Which made her laugh, then made her blink. Sam's French was every
bit as Texas-drawled as his English. But he still could understandably
pronounce the word for rabbit.
When she asked him how, he said he'd spent three months in
Paris
last year.
"Ah, traveling with a Wild West Show, were you?" When he
threw her a mock-angry look, she offered, "Or more gunfighting?"
"Exactement,"
he answered with
satisfaction – his terrible accent sounded more like
eggs-act-a-moan
–
then laughed. "The French should all be shot. I only took a couple of them
down, though."
He wasn't serious, she knew. Or she didn't think so, at least.
Difficult Sam wouldn't say more. He enjoyed talking her in circles, never
answering her straight out.
After eating, they returned to a rivulet that emptied into the bog
that they'd splattered into on their frog safari – literally splattered, for
they hadn't seen it till they were ankle-deep. There, they washed, another
welcome relief. She was able to rinse off two days' accumulation of grit from
her face and arms. (While she and Sam argued over whether the rivulet offered a
promising direction to walk tomorrow. Surely,
Lydia
reasoned, it
came from a larger body, and where there was large, flowing water there was
almost always civilization. Sam thought they should simply locate south again
and make another attempt at finding the elusive road. They tabled their
disagreement, however, as a matter to consider by daylight, when their options
should possibly be more obvious.)
Meanwhile, as they washed and argued, then sat more peacefully by
their small fire, he and she kept up a constant stream of talk. They discussed
nothing, anything. By the end of the evening, they sat with their heads bent
together, their voices lowered as if someone might overhear them. Lost in a
conversation of two.
"So you saw the bulls run in
France
?" Sam
asked. He was stretched out on his side, leaning on one elbow. He had the gin
bottle in one hand – he'd been hitting it fairly hard for the last half an
hour.
"No. Bull
fights
. Would you have guessed they have
bullfights in
France
?"
"No."
"Well, they do. In the south near the
Pyrenees
. My uncle took
me. I hated it. It was bloody and confusing. The men wave capes, while these
massive, angry beasts attempt to kill them for doing it. It makes no sense. One
man was gored in the thigh and stumbled. The bull gored him twice more before
someone could drag him to safety. I have no idea if he lived; he bled and bled.
By the end, the bull's horns were red. I wanted them to shoot it."
"The bull?" Sam chuckled, not understanding, or else not
sympathizing with, how much the scene had horrified her. He said, "The
bull does nothing but defend himself. You don't like the bull?"
"He frightens me."
"They make him angry on purpose."
"Why does he let them? Why doesn't he just stop?"
"Sometimes he does stop, but they gouge him again." He
snorted. "Liddy, they take him from his home, confine him, then bait him.
Can you imagine? They drive you from the darkness into a bright, sunlit arena
where everyone is cheering for your blood." He let out a low, macabre
laugh, then said, "Me, I relate to the bull. It's the idiotic men I hate.
They trap then taunt a dumb creature, who is helpless against its own nature.
It's human, I guess, to rile him, but it's man at his ugliest. We are the ones
who should stop; the bull has no choice."
She contemplated his face in the firelight. He'd closed his eyes
and lay back. He was relaxed, just talking into the dark.
"So do they have bullfights in
Paris
?" she
asked.
He laughed at that, a quiet sound, then answered, "No. Not
that I know of."
"So have you been to a bullfight somewhere else?" He had
surprising understanding of what she thought only she had seen.
"I know bulls."
Which wasn't an answer exactly.
He added, "The red cape. It treads somehow in his sacred
place. Everyone has places like that." He made a soft sound, mumbled
laughter, then said quite clearly, "Some of us are just loaded with
them."
She shook her head. But he was drifting off. She could hear the
faint change, the now familiar sound of his slightly heavier breathing when he
fell asleep. In one night, she had discovered that, if he rolled to his back,
he snored; she knew that a nudge made him turn, muttering apologies, then stop.
What intimate information. And dear somehow. He was a very nice man, this
American.
She took the gin bottle from his grasp, corked it, then rolled
over and scooted backward against him, enjoying his simple, human heat. She
hadn't realized, but, as the fire had died down, her back had grown chilly. He
turned toward her, molding the warm front of him to the cold of her muscles,
harboring her in the curve of his body.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes, she thought, please kiss me now.
He was relaxed, less defended than last night.
He was asleep, she realized. Oh, no. She turned slightly, thinking
to jostle him. He was more than asleep. He'd drunk most of what remained of
their bottle of gin – he was passed out.
Still, an hour or so later – of
Lydia
feeling
puzzled and churning and somehow angry – he pulled her tightly against him,
putting his face in the lee of her neck. He wrapped his arm round her waist,
his knuckles lightly curled to her stomach.
The feel of him, his intimacy, made her squirm. It did something
to her, something exciting, pleasing, sweet—
He muttered in his sleep.
"What?" she whispered. She didn't expect him to answer.
"Your hair" – the pause of a drowsy, deep inhalation,
exhalation – "it smells so—" He fell into unconsciousness before he'd
finished.
"So what?" She nudged him.
He jerked. "What?"
"My hair."
"Your hair?"
"What were you saying?"
"Oh." He laughed sleepily. "It smells good. Like
ginger or something, lemons, flowers. You have the prettiest hair."
The prettiest hair
. Talk about heat. That brought it. The
idle compliment made her whole body hot. The pleasant excitement from a moment
ago turned agitated. More yearning than interesting now: lacking.
Lydia
wished Sam
wasn't so full of exhaustion and gin, because suddenly she was wide awake. She
wanted to talk more. And she wanted to start with the topic of why it felt so
good for him simply to be smelling, and liking the smell of, her hair.
*
The
fire burned low but remained warm, glowing, for a long time. Sam nodded back
and forth beside it, half asleep. At first, he thought he was dreaming. He
found himself watching a vision with heavy-lidded half-attention, then, his
eyes still only slits, with full attention: Liddy by fireglow and the light of
the moon, sitting up a foot away.
He watched his puzzling fixation: the woman who was thin to the
point of looking unhealthy at moments, at angles. Yet with pretty features,
striking in certain light, from certain perspectives – glimpses of beauty that
were almost poignant when paired with her frailness. Like her soft, idle hands.
A lady's hands. They were lovely – small, graceful, softer than dew – yet their
long-fingered slightness reminded him of cobwebs, little clear dust spiders. A
fragility he could blow away with a good puff of air.
It was a surprise, then, when she reached under her hair, and,
elbows up, lifted it on her arms, stretching. She yawned, bathed in moonlight,
her full breasts, their high, round silhouettes, clearly delineated as she
stretched in three-quarter profile. What a unique combination she was. Fragile
of body, sturdy of spirit. Thin-limbed; full-bottomed; small, bony hands with
the ball of the thumb so plump he would like to sink his teeth into it. She was
voluptuous in that arching moment, eyes closed, arms up, her hair lifted, piled
on them. Like a woman recovering from a spell: becoming herself.
He'd watched her in the past two days slowly change. The story he
hadn't been able to remember last night suddenly occurred to him – that of a
swan slowly unfolding into a woman.
Swan
Lake
.
"Odette," he said. "The dark swan." The one
who excited the prince and made him lose sight of the white swan-princess. Was
that what was happening? He certainly didn't think much of Gwyn these days.
Truth be told, he hadn't felt as satisfied with life as he did right now in a
long time, and he'd never felt this content with Gwynevere Pieters.
Liddy jumped at the sound of his voice, but settled back after a
moment and looked at him. "What are you talking about?"