Rose Red drew near to Bertie and slipped her fingers into the old woman’s gnarled hand.
“Aye, me,” Bertie said.
“The others will be home soon.” Rose Red spoke with more conviction than she really felt.
“That’s what they say.” Bertie sighed. “But I doubt it.”
***
Hours passed. At one point during the height of the afternoon, the village square resounded with a cacophony of sound as sobbing mothers, sweethearts, wives, and children embraced the returning soldiers. But now, as the long evening shadows of an eerily cold spring day passed across the ground, the flood of returning soldiers narrowed to a trickle, then to a few lone men, until at last no more figures hobbled across the green.
Edgar, Frederick, and Gustave returned home several hours later, but still there was no sign of Tarquin. Bertie scanned the horizon, searching for her last two sons, Colm and Harlan. “Where are they?” she asked, posing the question to nobody in particular.
Rose Red scrutinized the distant horizon, waiting for Tarquin’s solitary figure. She stole to Edgar’s side. He glanced down at her, his eyes warm and full. “Don’t worry, Rose Red. He will return. I know that both he and my last two brothers will come home.”
“How can you be so sure?” she asked, trying—and failing—to conceal the worry in her voice.
“Because,” Edgar replied evenly, “I’m strong in my faith.”
She laughed bitterly. “My faith’s been tested to the breaking point.”
At that moment, both she and Edgar saw a lone, solitary figure emerging from the dusky evening shadows. She let out a little cry and ran across the green. It wasn’t until she neared the stooped figure that she recognized him. It was Colm, and he appeared to be near death.
His footsteps slowed as he drew near to her and shifted his musket to his other shoulder. “Rose Red,” he rasped. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Where’s Tarquin?” Her words came out in a strangled cry.
Colm’s face shifted and a look of unspeakable sadness filled his eyes. Before he could answer her question, Bertie fell upon him, laughing and weeping at the same time. “My boy, my boy, my boy!” As she clutched her son, Colm’s brothers ran forward to embrace him and their mother.
“Mama,” Colm said, tears in his voice. “Harlan, he—”
Stricken silent for a long moment, Bertie reared her head back in an anguished howl. She fell against Colm’s broad chest for strength as he drew her close to him, stroking her back, murmuring soothing words into her ear.
Angus and Broadbane ran forward and took their mother from Colm’s arms, guiding her back to the village. Colm stood there for a long moment, lost in thought, then sighed and recovered himself.
“Colm?”
His gaze sought Rose Red’s. She dropped her head, her throat constricted with bitter tears. Colm didn’t have to speak a single word. She knew. She simply knew.
Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 12
Colm finally spoke. “Tarquin and Harlan were sent away to a distant hill to keep watch. We didn’t know at the time, but a band of rogue soldiers roamed those hills, men who wanted to hurt us for the losses they’d sustained.” His features clouded over. “We heard the musket fire, the blast of bullets. They struck our boys down at once. We returned the fire, killing more of them than they’d taken, but it was too late—too late—too late for Tarquin and for—” his voice caught in his throat “—and for Harlan.”
Without speaking, she reached for Colm’s rough, callused hand. He clutched at her, holding onto her as if he were a drowning man and she a lifeline.
“Your Tarquin—” he whispered “—and my brother Harlan—they died as heroes.”
“Oh, what care I for heroes?” She flung the words at him, rage and despair filling her heart. “I want him back. I want my Tarquin back!”
All her anguish, her guilt, her anger and her regrets, swelled up inside her, and she bent her head and she wept. Colm took her into his arms, holding her, stroking her hair, drawing her close against his broad chest. As she rested her cheek on his weathered muslin shirt, his bristly chest hairs brushed her skin. She’d expected Tarquin to hold her on this day, but it felt strangely comforting to be held by Colm.
Despite her grief over Tarquin, it felt comforting to be held by someone.
***
Tarquin’s dead.
His body, returned from the front, was now confined to a pinewood box on a pallet at his mother’s house so that his family could weep for him. All her hopes and her dreams were shattered, as dead to her now as Tarquin’s pitiful, cold corpse.
Rose Red found every letter he wrote to her and bound them together with a blue ribbon. She placed the packet deep into the bottom of the hope chest her mother gave her, which represented her hopes and aspirations for a happy married life.
***
Days later, Rose Red was still lost in misery. One day during tea, Mama and Rose Red engaged in a desultory conversation. Rather, Mama tried to engage Rose Red, but she remained mute and spiritless. She simply could not exert herself. This was a typical March day, promising sunshine and sweetness in the morning, but by mid-afternoon turning cloudy and dark. Now the weather outside matched Rose Red’s mood.
While stirring her tea, Mama glanced up idly, started and dropped her spoon. “Who’s that at the gate?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mama.” Rose Red frowned dismissively, not bothering to look up. “We’re not expecting anyone, are we?”
Suzie bustled in through the front door and dropped a curtsey. “Ma’am, there’s a young man here to see the miss.”
“Oh,” Mama said, her eyes growing large. “Indeed? Well, show him in, Suzie.”
In the next moment, Colm Rathbone’s hulking frame loomed in the doorway, blocking out all the light in an already murky room. Rose Red gazed up at him with surprise. He looked even more massive and bulky than she remembered from only three days ago, when he’d returned from the war.
His sea-foam green eyes, uncharacteristically dark and hooded, gazed at Rose Red for a long moment. Then he bowed to Mama. “Ma’am,” he said in a respectful tone.
Mama rose to her feet. “Dear Colm. Do be so good as to sit by the fire and take some tea with us.” She cast a significant glance at the maid. “Suzie, dear, if there’s a fresh cake in the pantry, bring it out.”
“Very good, ma’am.” Suzie bowed and hurried from the room.
During this exchange, Rose Red kept her gaze downcast, her eyes averted. At last, obliged to look up, what she saw in Colm’s eyes made her heart thud dully in her chest. There was no mistaking that look of longing in his eyes.
“Come,” Mama urged him. “Come sit here, by Rose Red.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Colm smiled shyly, seating himself between the two women. Suzie bustled back into the sitting room, bearing a sponge cake on a platter, with a knife and plates and forks. After she cut the cake and handed out generous slices, a measure of order finally returned to the room. Rose Red drank her tea with some semblance of pleasure, if not necessarily peace.
Mama cleared her throat. “My word, it’s a fine day, with the sun shining. I do believe you two should take a walk.”
“Oh, Mama,” Rose Red demurred. “I’m so very tired.”
“What a splendid idea.” Colm beamed, then gazed at Rose Red. “You do look peaked, I own, but I suspect a breath of fresh air will do you a world of good.”
Rose Red bit her lip and cast a look at her mother. who smiled with encouragement. “Run along, dear, before darkness falls.”
“Very well.” She rose, set her teacup on the tray and excused herself to collect a shawl.
They stepped outside into the crisp, wet afternoon. Despite the wrap around her shoulders, she shivered involuntarily.
“May I offer you my cloak?” Colm asked with a solicitous smile.
“No,” she replied quickly, then relented. “Yes, all right, then.”
Colm gallant
ly removed his cloak and draped it gracefully across her shoulders. His cloak—his military-style, regulation-issue soldier’s cloak—was warm and heavy. Instantly she felt better. Safer.
“Are you warm now?”
“Yes,” she said, “very warm.”
With no particular direction in mind, they wandered aimlessly for a good while. Then, slowly, almost as if irresistibly drawn to it, they found their way to the meadow, and to the bench seat that Rose Red like to rest upon. Colm stood back respectfully as Rose Red seated herself on the bench, then discreetly placed himself a short distance from her. As he dropped his frame onto the stone bench, he released a heavy sigh.
She glanced over at him, a smile glimmering through her tears. “I hoped till the last that Tarquin would come home to me.”
“Aye,” Colm said, kicking his feet at pebbles. “I know how he felt about you, Rose Red.” He gazed at her, his sea-foam green eyes alive with meaning. “He adored you, and you remained ever-present in his mind until the very end.”
Rose Red opened her mouth to speak, but her throat filled with tears. She bowed her head and wept.
Colm drew closer. He murmured soothing words under his breath and patted her hand ineffectually, but she, fully alone in her sorrow, could not respond. She’d been pinning her future on a life with Tarquin, and now, with news of his death, she couldn’t quite bring herself to order. She needed the luxury of time to come to terms with his death. Yet time, with its overbearing presence, pressed down upon her, and the man seated beside her seemed to want to pay her court. In the fullness of time, she supposed, she would come to feel affection for Colm. But first she must resolve her grief.
Colm appeared to understand this and held her hand respectfully. A tiny bud, a newly forming flower of respect toward him bloomed in her heart. She wondered, even as she sobbed out her sorrow, if respect could turn to love.
Colm pressed a handkerchief into her hand, and she thanked him with an inaudible whisper. After a time, she recovered a little of her composure and sat back, taking the measure of the surrounding fields. The cornstalks from last season still stood fallow, husky and dead. Soon, the farmers would be tilling the ground to begin the planting for yet another season. It would be a vibrant summer, full of growth. But then there would come the inevitable autumn and with it the harvesting of crops. And then autumn would pass into winter, and then back into springtime, and yet another season, and another year would pass. And Rose Red’s life must carry on, without Tarquin.
Will I be married to Colm by this time next year and carrying his unborn child? Will he return to his work at the blacksmith’s? Will that be my life forever after, married to the blacksmith and producing his children for him, sons to serve in future wars?
A sudden image of herself in forty years’ time, as gnarled and as bent over as his mother Bertie, flashed into Rose Red’s mind. At the prospect, she shuddered with revulsion.
Colm, misinterpreting, edged closer. “Are you cold? A trifle damp. Perhaps we should move on.”
“No,” she gasped, drawing his cloak closer around her shoulders. “I’m fine, thank you.”
She felt reluctant to leave the clearing, and he, sensing her cue, snuggled beside her against the cape, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. Finally, he spoke. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“I’ve grown so accustomed to seeing danger lurking behind every tree that the idea of sitting near this woods is starting to unnerve me.”
“Really?” she gazed behind her. “I’d never considered that.”
“Why would you?” he asked with a hopeless smile. “You’ve not gone to war. You haven’t seen your best friends, boys you’ve known since childhood, getting their heads blown off by cannon and musket fire.”
She craned her neck to gaze steadily up at him. “No, indeed I haven’t. You witnessed horrors.”
Colm’s eyes filled with anguish and he looked away. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t talk in this way to you.”
“Why not? You need to unburden yourself of these woes.”
Colm sat much closer to her now, so close to her, in fact, that his thigh grazed hers. A sudden frisson of desire licked her loins and she groaned inwardly. She glanced shyly at Colm from half-hooded eyes. Two years ago he left for the war a half-grown boy. Now he returned, a fully formed man. Perhaps her life with him would be drab and dull, filled with the monotony and fatigue of a hard life, but surely some passion beat in that heart of his, a quality that drew him inexorably to her? She imagined him lying in bed next to her, his warm body drawn up against hers, pressing himself into her—
“Truth be told,” Colm said quietly, “I grew rather envious of your Tarquin.”
“Did you, Colm?”
“Aye.”
“Oh.”
His thigh still pressed against hers. Surely he must sense it as well as she. The last time she came to this meadow with a man—Tarquin—she let him make love to her. Back then, it stemmed from a sense of desperation, of wanting to show Tarquin just how far she was willing to go to keep him. Nothing came of it, and her womb remained barren. But now she found herself here again, alone with a different yet very desirable man. Colm Rathbone.
Almost as if he heard her thinking his name, he turned to gaze at her, his sea-foam green eyes large. Watching him, mesmerized, her lips parted.
A tiny groan escaped his mouth.
“Oh, Colm.”
Wordlessly, he drew his cloak from her shoulders, spread it on the ground before the stone bench, and offered his hand for her to take. He helped her lie down upon the soft, silky lining, then lay beside her on the cloak. “Are you warm enough?”
She nodded. Yes, curiously enough, she did feel warm. A tingling sensation crept through her as he gazed down at her. She’d once thought Tarquin’s eyes beautiful, but something entirely different in Colm’s vivid green eyes captured her senses.
He kissed her, softly at first, with a tentative air, as if a little uncertain of himself. She yielded herself to him, her lips moist, yearning, and when he kissed her again, he pressed down harder. He moaned under his breath, easing himself gently over her body. Oh, he felt so powerful, so strong! His legs pressed down upon hers, coaxing her thighs to part. She groaned, arching her back.
“Aye,” he murmured, “that’s the way.”
He reached under her petticoats and stroked his fingers along the length of her thighs. The tickling sensation inside her grew as his fingers brushed against her skin. A creamy moistness rose from deep inside her, and when he reached his fingers into her cunt, she groaned with pleasure.
“Come inside me,” she gasped.
“Aye, that I will.”
He lifted up, and with a fluid motion, released his cock from his britches. Out it sprang, glorious, proud, erect, and he positioned himself at her v and thrust his cock inside. Then instead of moving right away, as she expected him to, he rested his chest on her and kissed her more fully on the lips, his tongue exploring, then filling her mouth.
She moaned as together their bodies moved with the fluid grace of an enormous river. It felt as if they came together as one, his hips moving languidly with hers. Her tiny tickling feeling growing and becoming full, until she felt filled to the core with him.
Such a big man, yet he moved with such a stately grace, in no particular hurry. She felt as if they were the only two people alive in the world. She kissed him back, exploring his mouth with her tongue as he languidly stroked his cock up and down the length of her cunt.
The tickling sensation grew until her body fairly throbbed with it. She must find her release or she would surely die. Colm appeared to sense this moment, this impending crisis drawing near to her, for he slowed, then thrust his cock back in, slowed, thrust, as the first reverberations of her tickling sensation roiled through her with a sweeping waterfall of bliss.
She screamed out with the searing joy and agony of it. She blinked, surprised to feel tears brimming in her eyes.
Why should she weep when she felt such a tremendous release, such exquisite joy?
Colm thrust his cock more fully now. His gestures became almost jerkily spasmodic as he reached his own crisis, sending his seed soaring into her welcoming womb.
A tiny trickle of their combined juices slipped down her thighs. He’d filled her up. She felt complete, fulfilled.
“My darling,” Colm breathed.
After a time, she stirred, and Colm obliged her by withdrawing his cock. He tucked it into his britches, then pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket and used it to help tidy her up.
Then she snuggled deeper into his embrace, but Colm’s chest stiffened against her. Surprised, she gazed up at him. “What is it?”
His gaze focused on a dense thicket in the deep woods. “A noise.” At the same moment he asked the question, he released Rose Red from his arms and rose seamlessly to his feet, reaching instinctively for his sword.
“It’s probably a deer or a buck,” she said, following his gaze. But the moment she saw what Colm looked at, the smile faded from her lips.
Stepping into the clearing with the jaunty air of one who knows he’s about to perform a mischief, the dwarf smirked at Rose Red, thrust his hands onto his hips, and laughed.
Rose Red’s heart turned cold with dread.
Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 13
“Oh, ho, ho!” the dwarf chortled. “Look who’s putting on airs!”
Rose Red withdrew inside herself. It had been a mistake, a terrible mistake, to come here with Colm. She looked about her wildly, to see if she could create a distraction, a diversion of sorts, in order to draw Colm away from the dwarf’s malicious tongue.
Colm, for his part, appeared curiously intrigued by the diminutive creature. “Well, well, well, what have we here? And who are you, little man?” he said with a humorous, condescending air. His hand, which had drawn toward his scabbard, now relaxed and hung limply at his side. On a sudden impulse, Rose Red wished she could grab the sword herself. She imagined herself wielding it with a deadly fury, swinging it low and wide, lopping off the hideous dwarf’s head.
Rose Red and Black Bear Page 5