“That’s different. When you were born, your mother had every reason to expect her marriage to last. I’m sure she never expected to be a single mother, but she coped. I worry about single mothers who have babies and keep them when there’s no father around to support them, either financially or emotionally. I know it works out well a lot of the time, but I don’t think it’s right.”
Tell him about the baby, said the voice inside Maggie’s head.
But this wasn’t the time. Maybe she’d tell him later. Or maybe she never would. And where was this voice coming from? Chalking it up to her condition no longer seemed a viable answer.
A distant rumble of thunder rolled down the mountain, and Maggie, who would have grasped at any interruption at that moment, said too brightly, “It sounds as if our afternoon thunderboomer is arriving early today. We’d better head back to my place before it starts to rain.”
“I’m game. Anything to get out of telling you the rest of my story,” he said.
“We got off the track, didn’t we? I still want to know how you ended up here, in Scot’s Cove. Don’t think you’re going to get out of telling me, Tate Jennings. I’ll remind you sometime that you left me dangling.” She grinned at him.
They got up and brushed the leaves and bits of forest debris from their clothes. Tate cast a worried eye at the dark clouds gathering above the trees.
“That looks like a big storm. We’d better hurry. We don’t want to be out on the river if there’s lightning,” he said. He slid his arm around Maggie’s shoulders and hurried her toward the canoe; her arm went naturally around his waist.
“You’d better ask those Little People of yours to send the lightning in a different direction,” she said, striving for a cheerful tone.
“I don’t think you can tell the Yunwi Tsundsi anything. They have minds of their own. Besides, the Cherokee say that when there’s lightning, you should sit under a basswood tree because of all the trees in the forest, they’re never struck. But personally, I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Seems to me everything is full of chances,” she said. “Like jumping into my canoe.”
He smiled down at her. “Are you still angry at me?”
“Don’t you think I should be?”
“If you were, we wouldn’t be friends,” he said soberly.
“No,” she agreed. “We probably wouldn’t.”
You’re much more than friends, you know, said the voice, and for the first time, Maggie had no desire to tell it to shut up.
Chapter Six
Maggie and Tate were running up the path from the river, borne along on a cool rush of air sweeping ahead of the storm, as the first drops of rain spattered on their faces.
“We made it just in time,” Tate said as an out-of-breath Maggie pushed open the front door and drew him inside with her.
Grazing out the window at the wind-tossed trees, she said, “I guess you’ll have to stay awhile,” and secretly she was glad.
Looking for something to do, Maggie picked up the wildflower bouquet that Tate had tossed through the window earlier and made a show of arranging it in a cut-glass vase. Tate busied himself by taking one of the books down from the bookcase and thumbing through it, then replacing it in its slot and studying one of the prints on the wall. “It looks like you’ve been keeping busy,” he said when he saw the quilt squares that she had arranged on the coffee table.
“This quilt as my mother planned it was a work of art. The first couple of squares show Peg Macintyre’s early childhood,” she said.
She spread the finished squares out so that he could see them. “Here’s the square that shows her living here in this cabin with her parents, all of them occupied by daily tasks. This one shows the family farm, and you can see the approach of a dark-haired boy through the cornfield. According to family history, Tsani was employed by Angus Macintyre, Peg’s father, to help out with the work.”
“So Tsani moved freely about the white man’s world,” Tate mused. “Or was he in it but not of it, like I always thought I was?”
“I wonder,” Maggie said quietly, and she and Tate shared a rueful smile.
Maggie rummaged in a work bag and withdrew the square she had finished yesterday. “Look, Tate. Here’s Tsani sitting in the cabin—this cabin. See how Peg is looking shyly at him out of the corners of her eyes and how the mother is hovering protectively over her daughter? My mother had already appliquéd the figures. All I had to do to finish this square was to whipstitch the loose edges.”
“I didn’t know you had any interest in this sort of thing,” said Tate as he picked up one of the squares and inspected it.
“I didn’t until now, but this was my mother’s last craft project. When I finish it, I’ll donate it to the local history museum as she planned to do. It will be a memorial to Mom. She loved these mountains.” Maggie, who had so eagerly gravitated toward the excitement and glamour of the big city after college, had never been able to understand her mother’s attraction to this place, but the longer she lived here it became more clear.
Outside, a flash of lightning forked through the dark clouds, and rain began to pour down in sheets. Thunder shook the cabin as Maggie ran to close the open living room window.
The robin’s egg reposed in its nest on the sill, quivering slightly from the reverberations of the thunder.
Maggie closed the window and picked up the egg, turning to confront Tate with what seemed like an inexplicable foible of his.
“Tate, why do you keep putting this robin’s egg on my windowsill? Is it supposed to be a joke? If so, I have to admit that I don’t get it.”
Tate put down the quilt square and regarded the egg cupped in her two hands with puzzlement that appeared to be genuine. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, moving toward her.
“This egg in its nest appears and disappears from one day to the next on the sill of the open window. I know you’re the one who is responsible.”
“Not me,” he said evenly, and she somehow knew that he was speaking the truth.
“No one else has been to the cabin since I arrived a little over a week ago. Who else could be doing it?”
He reached out toward the egg in her hands, whether to touch it or to take it from her she didn’t know. As his finger barely contacted the egg’s smooth surface, lightning struck so close in the clearing that Maggie felt a zing of electricity from her head to her toes. In sudden shock, she dropped the egg, and Tate’s outstretched hand caught it in midair.
Tate, his face limned in the blue-white light as thunder shook the cabin, looked as startled as anyone would be when lightning had struck so close. And then something shifted subtly in his expression; the air around them sharpened and grew heavy with a blue-green glow, and a huge buzzing arose in Maggie’s ears. When she lifted her eyes to Tate’s, she saw that he was looking down at her with an intensity that bespoke a deep emotion, and Maggie found that she could not look away.
The buzzing stopped suddenly. Maggie shook her head to clear it. And when Tate spoke, the timbre of his voice was familiar, although the accent was not. She stood transfixed, held captive by his gaze and by the impassioned delivery of his words.
“Dearest, I found this nest under the tree where we first kissed, and I thought it would be a fine memento of that moment. Now when you’re free to see me at night, all you’ll have to do is set the nest in the window as a signal, and when I walk by on my way to your father’s fields, I will know,” he said. His eyes burned into her, and she could look nowhere else.
Maggie hesitated. She felt light-headed under the intensity of his gaze, and her knees were weak. “What if my father finds out?” she heard herself saying, but the voice was not her voice. It originated in her head and emitted from her mouth, but the words were not those that she, Maggie Macintyre, would say.
Tate carefully set the robin’s egg in the nest on the windowsill and took her in his arms. “Your father will come to see it our way. He cannot
hold out against our love forever.”
“I hope not,” she said, her heart beating rapidly. Her palms were damp, and she felt very nervous. “I—I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me you love me. That’s all I need to hear.” He smoothed her hair back and looked deep into her eyes.
“I do love you, my darling, so much. That’s why I’m completely happy about what has happened.” She stared resolutely at his chin.
“And what is that, my Margaret?” He smiled at her, all warmth and invitation. She knew that he had no idea about the gravity of the circumstance that she was about to reveal.
“I am with child,” she whispered softly, her eyes searching his face. His expression changed to utter shock.
He gripped her arms so hard that she rocked against him. “Are you sure?” he said.
“I am sure,” she said, keeping her voice steady although she thought she might faint.
“How many moons?”
“Almost four.”
To her relief, he swept her against him and murmured into her hair. “Why did you not tell me sooner?”
“I didn’t know what we would do. Father wishes me to marry Old Garvey—”
“You can’t marry him, that should be clear,” he said biting off the words fiercely. “You will marry no one but me. It is what we have always wanted.”
“Yes, oh yes,” she said.
“Do your parents suspect your condition?”
“Father knows nothing. Nor does Mother. They will never let me marry you, Tsani. We both know that.”
“We will run away together, it’s the only way. Before the next full moon, I will make the arrangements. No more sneaking and hiding, Margaret. From now on we will live openly together far away from here where no one knows us.”
It suddenly came to Maggie in that moment. She and Tate were playing out a scene that had happened between Peg Macintyre and Tsani many generations ago. How or why this could happen, she did not know. And then she didn’t care, because Tate—Tsani—was threading his fingers through her hair and lowering his lips to hers. He kissed her with great tenderness, which slowly grew into passion. His hands traced the curves of her cheeks, slid down to cup her shoulders for a moment, and then he wrapped his arms around her slender body until the contours of her shape were fitted to his. Her own arms slid upward until they looped around his neck and loosened the leather thong that bound his hair, which slid forward and brushed against the sides of her face. She thought, Tsani, Tsani, and felt a sharp pang of love.
This scene might not be real, but the taste of the man who held her in his arms was certainly no illusion, and neither was the sweet seeking of his lips. Her mouth parted beneath his, and he kissed her deeply and surely as if he had done so many times before. She heard him moan deep in his throat, and she wondered fleetingly if it was Tate or Tsani whose tongue traced the outlines of her lips, and she wondered if it was Maggie or Peg who responded so eagerly. And then it didn’t matter; all that mattered was their tongues tangling in haste.
This man wanted her; she knew it, had known it and denied it. Now she felt as if she had been admitted somehow to the silent part of his soul where his deepest secrets lay, and opening to him, she tentatively let him know that she wanted him as well.
His lips feathered downward, his breath rippling against the soft skin of her throat. “Margaret,” he said. “Margaret, the mother of my child.”
Whoever she was, whoever he was, she was Margaret, his Margaret.
Now and forever, said the voice.
A quicksilver shiver coursed through her, and she clutched him tightly, feeling his muscles tense beneath her fingertips. It seemed so natural to slide her hands down his arms and interweave her fingers with his, to touch her tongue to his earlobe, to flutter her hands upward to tangle in his hair. Every cell of her body seemed electric, alive, joyous with the thrill of the moment, and when he slid his hands under her clothes and cupped the lush contours of her breasts, her senses swam with the knowledge that their lovemaking was absolutely right in whatever time and place they happened to be.
If he undid buttons, she didn’t know; if he grappled with sleeves or armholes, she didn’t notice. It seemed to her that her clothes drifted away, wafted elsewhere by a magic wind, and the first she knew of being naked from the waist up was when he held her breasts in his hands, his mouth abandoning her lips to touch his seeking lips first to one rosy tip, then the other. His tongue was damp upon her skin, and his breath was hot upon her nipples. And she floated along with him downward to the rug beside the fireplace, whispering urgently, “Quickly, we must hurry, someone may walk in.” As she gazed up at him in wonder, he slid his body over hers.
His eyes were darkly luminous in the glow of the fire in the grate, and his lips were eager upon her mouth, his hands gentle upon her breasts. The fire warmed her body and his kisses warmed her soul; she heard nothing but the sound of their quickened breathing and the beat of her own pulse in her ears. Her fingers knotted in his hair, urging him closer.
She wanted more than anything to feel him tight inside her, and her eyes closed as she reveled in the liquid fire rippling though her veins, the same as the fire that crackled and sparked beside them in the fireplace. She was lost in the sensation of his mouth upon her, of her body rising to meet his, of two spirits blending in sublime pleasure, of longing beyond longing to know him in the most intimate way.
Twin forks of lightning rent the sky, and the ensuing thunder rattled the window panes, startling her. She said, “Tsani?”
When she spoke the name, Tate recoiled in consternation, the light of reason flaring in his eyes as he stared down at her, his body poised above.
“What? What did you call me?” The words uttered on a gasp, sharp and incredulous.
In that moment, Maggie knew she could not let this go on. You can, you can, you can, chanted the familiar insistent voice, but she pushed Tate aside and rolled away, distracted by the rain clattering against the window and the bewildered look in Tate’s eyes.
They stared at each other for a time, and they might have been miles away from each other, not inches apart on the hearth rug. The dulcimer music that Maggie had not even realized she heard until now terminated suddenly on one discordant note.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. Finally Maggie stirred, pushing her tumbled hair away from her face.
“Tsani,” she said dully. “I thought you were Tsani. And you thought I was Peg.” She reached for the afghan spread across the seat of the couch and pulled it across her, not daring to look at Tate. There was no fire in the fireplace; there weren’t even any logs, and the cold ashes from last year’s fires had been swept away long ago.
Tate sat up and adjusted his clothes, staring at her. “I don’t understand what happened,” he said.
Maggie closed her eyes, hoping that this was all a bad dream but certain that it wasn’t. She took her time answering, waiting until she was sure that her voice would hold steady.
“Somehow we became them.”
Tate digested this, his features dimly lit in the pearly gray light from the rain-washed window. “We must have been replaying something that happened between them long ago,” he said.
Maggie, drained by the experience, shivered. “I knew something was happening, but I was powerless to stop it,” she said.
“I knew it, too,” Tate admitted. “It was as though I could think and feel but another person was inside me.”
“We were two other people,” Maggie said in a small voice. “We weren’t us.” She was lying on the hearth rug, her hair spread out around her, the afghan pulled across her bare breasts. She knew she had behaved wantonly, and she was embarrassed at her lack of control. She had, during those moments, felt love for him, and she was totally bewildered by the feelings.
“Tsani was only doing what I’ve been wanting to do since I met you,” Tate said slowly, touching a finger to her cheek.
“And I—” she began, but she couldn�
�t possibly tell him how deeply his kisses had affected her.
“You liked it,” he said. “You might as well admit it. I sensed your thoughts, knew that you were willing.”
“It wasn’t me,” she said resolutely. “It was Peg.”
“It wasn’t Peg’s hand that touched me like this,” he said, drawing her hand toward him and placing it on his nipple. It was hard and tight beneath her fingers, and she felt a thrill of misplaced anticipation.
“And it wasn’t Tsani’s mouth that kissed you like this,” he whispered, his lips seeking hers.
His kiss was warm and thorough and completely absorbing, and yes, she liked it better when she, Maggie, was experiencing Tate’s kisses and not Tsani’s. He infused the kiss with a tantalizing blend of longing and barely suppressed excitement so that she felt an answering tremor spiraling up from somewhere deep inside her. He ended the kiss prematurely, leaving her with an unsatisfying sense of disappointment.
Tell him about the baby, said the voice, Peg’s voice, and this time Maggie heeded it. They couldn’t go on, not like this, becoming increasingly intimate when she was in an Awful Predicament.
She took a deep breath. “Tate,” she said, “I have to tell you something.”
His eyebrows shot up, but not as if he didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Gently he caressed her lips with a fingertip. “What could you possibly have to tell me at a moment like this?” he said.
She stared at him, at his eyes black as ebony, at his lips curved upward in an indulgent smile.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
He recoiled, an expression of disbelief washing over his features. “You…what?”
“I’m going to have a baby. Kip’s baby.”
He shook his head in denial. “You’re joking. Right?” he said, even as the recognition dawned that she was entirely serious.
She swallowed and shook her head.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I came here to think it over. To decide what to do.”
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