by Sara Donati
“Are you—is everything—all right?” she asked hoarsely.
Nathaniel captured her bare shoulders and leaned over her, his blood leaping at the feel of her softness against his chest. That she would need to ask such a question, that she would have no idea of her own beauty or of the value of what she offered him.
“Elizabeth,” he said, resting his forehead on hers. “You are the finest thing I’ve ever seen. But it’s been a good long while, and I’m having a hard time minding my self-control.”
She smiled then. “Nobody has asked you to,” she whispered, and she blushed, the color seeping down her neck and over her chest.
He followed her blush, forcing himself to slow down and start the whole game anew, light kisses and then more demanding ones while he explored her. With an open palm he drew circles over her nipple until she gasped, her fingers curling hard around his arms. When he found her breast with his mouth she cried out for the first time, arching up to him while he suckled. Her flesh swelling against his tongue, Nathaniel felt his whole body shudder with the pleasure of it.
She had broken out in a fine sweat; he licked it from between her breasts and her throat, working his way up to claim her mouth in a kiss as heavy and demanding as the ridge of flesh he pressed against her hip. As he rocked against her, hip to hip and tongue to tongue, he ran a finger up her thigh to touch her heat for the first time.
He realized that she was trying to talk to him, and he came back to himself a little. His name. She was summoning him to her. He drew it from her mouth, swallowed it whole. Gave her back her own name, fed it to her with his tongue. Between kisses he untied the thong that held his breechclout and leggings, and then he gathered her up against himself, wanting to feel her, all of her skin against his.
“Elizabeth,” he whispered.
She focused on him finally, her eyes cloudy with wanting.
“Richard Todd can’t have you, not ever. You have to leave your father’s home and come to me. Because once this is done, you are mine to keep and protect, and I am yours. Do you understand?”
“Oh, yes,” she whispered, her hands flitting over his shoulders.
“When I’m dying,” he said. “When I close my eyes at the last, it’ll be your face I see, right at this moment.”
When she could think again, the first coherent thought that came to Elizabeth was that she had lied. To Nathaniel, and to herself. I’m not an idiot, she had told him back in the snowy strawberry field. I know what it means to mate.
But she had been an idiot, to have thought it would be a simple, mechanical act of commitment. It had seemed the logical and the right thing to do; there was no clearer pledge she could make, no better way to make him understand that his jealousy of Richard Todd was unfounded.
And, she admitted to herself, she had suspected that she would enjoy it. His kisses had made her curious. But she had underestimated herself, her wanting and its own strength. The depth of her own response was as compelling and surprising as the burning mix of pain and pleasure he had brought to her.
He had pulled pelts over them, and Elizabeth moved tentatively underneath, appreciating the strange indulgence of fur against her bare skin, and the warm, damp trace of him on her thighs. Nathaniel was lying on his side behind her in the same curve, the hard length of his leg following the line of her own in a casual embrace which seemed to Elizabeth almost more intimate than the act that went before it. His breath on her shoulder, he stroked her arm from wrist to elbow and back again.
“What are you thinking?”
She turned to him then, determined not to be timid. “I was thinking that some things don’t lend themselves to rational analysis.”
He grinned, his teeth flashing white. “Is that good or bad?”
“Good,” she said simply, and then dropped her gaze, in spite of all her intentions. She studied the dark blue jagged line which crossed his chest and continued in a loop around his torso, to a destination somewhere on his back. She wondered where exactly it went, but she was too comfortable and too shy to follow it right now.
He raised her chin with his finger. “You’re not asking, but I’ll tell you anyway what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about how fine it is to have you here like this, next to me.” His gaze held her steady, as if daring her to doubt him.
“Oh.” Elizabeth could feel a slow warmth seeping through her bones, pooling in her breasts and lower, lower. This is how it starts, she thought. With words. With his voice, so deep that it echoes down inside.
“And I’m wondering if you’re regretting this, already.”
She watched him swallow, the column of muscles in his throat moving.
“Oh, no,” she murmured, pushing her face into the curve of his shoulder. “Quite to the contrary.” He smoothed her hair. “Is that so?”
With a little jolt of satisfaction, Elizabeth realized that Nathaniel was asking her for reassurance. This made her flush with pleasure, and it gave her the courage to say something she might not otherwise have said.
“I wasn’t sure that I would, but after a bit, I did like it. This. Being with you.”
“So did I,” he said solemnly, but Elizabeth could feel him smiling.
She moved closer to him, the feel of his chest against her cheek and the weight of his arm around her shoulders already familiar. The beat of his heart and the rush of the waterfall were hypnotic.
“It’s nice here,” she said groggily.
He took her head between his hands, forced her to meet his eye. “Elizabeth, we have to talk.”
“Of course,” she said. “But the questions that come to mind right now aren’t … seemly.”
He laughed then, a comfortable sound. “For instance?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes to gather her thoughts. Did I please you? she wanted to ask, and May I look at you, at all of you? and What is it that you think of while you’re holding me? Did you cry out at the end in pain, or pleasure? And Is your child started inside me now? But this last thought was too much; it filled her with anticipation and joy and a bottomless terror. She pushed it away.
He was watching her closely. Elizabeth thought that perhaps he knew all these things that were in her mind, and others that she could not yet put words to. She knew too that there wasn’t time for this now.
“Boots?”
“All right, if you must know.” She opened her palms on his chest, ran them over his shoulders, thick with muscle. “I was just wondering how often we would do—this.”
He laughed again, and cupped her face in his hand, rubbing a thumb across her lower lip before he kissed her. “I would say that we should get married first before we start negotiating that point—” There was a scuffle under the pelts as he held off the hand she raised to cuff his ear. “But out of curiosity, Boots, how often would suit you?”
Very much awake now, she beat on his shoulders until he captured both wrists and flipped her to her back, leaning over to pin her arms up and away. His hair fell forward to brush her breasts, his earring glimmering bright silver against his skin. Look, oh, look at you, she thought, struck by the wondrous beauty of him, the long, elegant body arched over her with muscles tensed. She closed her eyes because the sight of him blinded her.
“Constantly,” he whispered against her mouth. “We will do this at every opportunity.”
· · ·
Nathaniel brought her a bowl of water from the falls and tore strips from an old homespun hunting shirt so that Elizabeth could wash, but there was not enough time in the world to put herself in order. She brushed with increasing dismay at her wrinkled skirts and then, in near panic, she presented herself to Nathaniel.
“You look like you’ve been up to mischief,” he said finally. He himself looked as he always did; buckskin did not wrinkle, it seemed.
“Mischief, is it?” she muttered. “It’s not amusing, Nathaniel. I can’t go back home like this. You know I cannot.” In a fit of irritation, she turned her back on him while she tried to tuck her
lace more neatly into the line of her bodice so that it covered the red flush that still mottled her chest.
“Do you take a chill easy?” Nathaniel asked.
She pulled up, surprised. “What?”
“Are you one of those women who take a chill easy in the cold? Get sick and take to bed?”
Elizabeth raised her chin. “I haven’t been ill enough to stay in bed since I was twelve and I knocked my head climbing a tree. I can’t even remember the last time I had a fever.” She said this with some pride, and was surprised by Nathaniel’s grin in reply.
“Come.” He took her by the wrist to pull her to the next cave over her protests.
“Please, Nathaniel, think a minute. What am I to do? We can’t afford to have any suspicions raised—”
Just before the waterfall he stopped. “Has anyone taught you yet how to drink out of a stream?” He shouted, to be heard above the rushing water.
Mystified, Elizabeth shook her head. “Why?”
He grinned, grasping her firmly by her upper arms. “Because,” he bellowed. “Folks generally fall in once or twice until they get the hang of it.”
She realized too late what he was about. Before she could protest or try to extract herself he had tipped her back headfirst into the falling curtain of icy water, and pulled her back out, sputtering, every nerve in her body jumping in protest.
“Nathaniel!” But he was tipping her back again, and this time he leaned forward to kiss her as she went, claiming a mouth already open in exclamation. She clung to him, her fingers twined around forearms as unyielding as oak as she kissed him back, feeling the hard graze of his jaw like a blessing, his mouth like a hot brand in the stream of water cascading over them.
“Now,” he said, when they had stumbled back from the precipice, dripping and gasping. “I expect you can go home without raising suspicions.”
It was well past midday when Nathaniel announced Elizabeth’s ascent up the cliff face with a three-note bird call. She came over the lip of the incline to find Hannah waiting for her. The child was sitting cross-legged on a flat rock in the sun, her braids gleaming blue-black. In her lap was a bouquet of wild iris not yet in bloom, slender purple heads nodding inside their paper-like sheaths.
“How beautiful,” Elizabeth said, but she was watching Hannah’s face.
“Grandmother promised to show me how to make a poultice of these for Otter,” the child said, matter-of-factly.
Elizabeth saw Hannah take in her damp hair and the sorry state of her clothing. For once, Elizabeth was supremely grateful for the Kahnyen’kehàka sensibilities which forbade personal commentary or questions of a kind which would have come naturally to any of the other children. She considered the various things she might tell Hannah, and quickly discarded them all; this was not just one of her students, but a child she would raise, her responsibility. Her daughter. Elizabeth wouldn’t start out by lying to her, and so she would say nothing at all.
When Elizabeth had put on her stockings and boots, they started back.
It wasn’t until they had entered the birch and maple grove closest to Lake in the Clouds that Hannah stopped suddenly. Elizabeth tensed, looking around herself, but she could see no sign of trouble.
“What will I call you?” Hannah asked in her straightforward manner, but without her usual grin.
“What do you want to call me?” asked Elizabeth, who had been thinking of the same thing.
“I remember my mother,” Hannah said, and for the first time there was a wariness there. Elizabeth wanted to touch the child, but thought better of it.
“That’s a very good thing,” she said. “My mother died when I was just a little older than you are now, and the memories I have of her are very precious to me.”
Hannah nodded thoughtfully. Then, with her chin, she directed Elizabeth’s attention to a steep hang deep in shadow, where Curiosity was crouched in a riot of new ferns. As Elizabeth watched, her long, thin frame unfurled and she waved in their direction.
“Hello, there,” she called. It was amazing how quickly the older woman could move. Before Elizabeth could think of what to say, she was with them, and handing Elizabeth a basket full to the rim with every sort of plant and root the forest had to offer.
“It’s time we got on home,” she said. “Although I’d like to know where you got them flag lily this early, Missy Hannah. Never mind,” she said with a halfhearted scowl in response to Hannah’s grin. “I guess I ain’t traipsing up to that spring on the ridge to get ’em. No, you go on now, get on back to Falling-Day so she can poultice that leg.”
For the first time, Curiosity seemed to look closely at Elizabeth. “We got to get this one home. Looks like she fell in a stream. That what happened?”
“Why, yes,” Elizabeth said lamely. “Exactly.”
“I thought me so.” But her sharp look said much more.
Hannah had already started off. Elizabeth called, and the child stopped, looking over her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she said, when everything else that went through her head turned out to be insufficient, or too complex to say right there and then. “And tell them at home, too, please. Thank you and—goodbye.”
Hannah nodded, and then sped on her way.
“Come on along now,” Curiosity said. “Got to get you back home and in dry clothes before you take a chill.”
“Curiosity,” Elizabeth began, but the older woman stopped and laid one long, cool hand on her forearm.
“No,” she said, not unkindly. “I expect it’s better if you let me tell the stories for right now. I got one or two might interest you.”
XX
“You know how many babies I delivered in my time?” Curiosity began. To Elizabeth’s relief, she answered her own question. “Don’t know myself, but I expect it’s close to a hundred since I come to Paradise, more than thirty year ago. Ain’t been called on too often since the doctor decided he know more about birthin’ than I do. He will come an’ fetch me, however, when he needs smaller hands. What is so very particular about that, Elizabeth, is that the very first child I put in his mama’s arms was Richard Todd hisself.
“I see I surprise you, but it’s true. In ’61 that was, the very year your granddaddy Clarke bought me and Leo free and sent us up here to work for your mama. I hadn’t started to breed yet, myself, and neither had she, but with Cora’s help we managed when the time came.”
“There was no doctor in Paradise then?”
Curiosity laughed. “No ma’am. No doctor, no trading post, nothing. In ’61 there was only four families up here besides your folks, remember. Hawkeye and Cora had been up on Hidden Wolf for a bit by that time—Nathaniel was two that summer that Richard was born. The others were all Carlisle’s tenants, including your daddy, to start with. Has the judge told you about Carlisle? The old Tory who owned all this land until after the war when it was took away from him and sold at auction. Let’s see, there was Horst Hauptmann and his first wife, the one that took the yellow fever and run off with it. James and Martha Todd and their oldest boy, Samuel, and the Witherspoons too. No, there was no doctor here then—it was up to us women, always has been and I don’t expect that will ever change much. Your mama had a way about her in a birthin’ room. I have always been sorry that she left before I could get to know her.”
Elizabeth had never spoken to Curiosity about her mother. She knew very little about those few years her mother had spent in Paradise, and the circumstances surrounding her removal to England, except that she had been carrying Elizabeth, and the pregnancy had not been easy. There had always been a slight worry in her that if she asked Curiosity for the stories of her mother, she would hear something she might have to hold against her father.
The older woman had stopped to forage in a pile of moldering oak leaves, her quick fingers uncovering a crowd of peaked mushroom caps tinged scarlet.
“Mind you never et nothing looks like that, now,” she said, distracted. Then she brushed her hands on her apron
and carried on. Her step was slow and measured, moving along at the same pace as her story.
“Now Mrs. Todd wanted a doctor for her laying-in, being used to things as they was done back then in Boston. She come from a family with money, you see. But her time come upon her unexpected like, and your mama and me was called on to attend, green as we was. It was Martha Todd’s good luck that Cora was at hand, too. A levelheaded woman, was Cora. I learned a lot from her. Just a year ago it was that a fever took her and I miss her every day.
“Mistress Todd was a particular woman but she brought that boy into the world without much fuss. And given the size of him, I think to this day she had misreckoned her time.” Curiosity hiccuped a little laugh. “A big, fat child, with a shock of red hair like a rooster’s comb. And lungs. Lordy. So you see, I know Richard as long as anybody here in Paradise.”
“I wonder why you’re telling me this story,” Elizabeth said, slowly.
“Do you?” Curiosity stopped to look at her hard. “Well, now, Elizabeth. I’m telling you what I know about Dr. Richard Todd because I think you’re underestimating him. And that’s a dangerous thing to be doing.”
When it was clear that Elizabeth was not going to enter into a discussion just yet, Curiosity started to talk again.
“It was in ’65 that the trouble came, in the fall. Your mama was long gone to England to bring you into the world. Your daddy had just come back hisself, went over that summer to try and fetch you’all back, but come home empty-handed. Left your mama with Julian on the way, though, so I guess they got along a’right.”
Curiosity sent Elizabeth a sideways glance.
“Richard was just three, but a likelier young’un you’ll never see. Big for his age, and sassy, and smart. Worshiped his brother, Samuel, followed him everywhere, as little brothers will do. A few more families had settled here by then, the ones that was braver than most. This here a mighty lonely spot, you understand, and the Mohawk hung on for a long time.