“Huh? Oh. OH!” Marty stuttered, realizing that James had just told him that Billy was gay. “Well, they can adopt. That’ll be fine by us. I doubt Bibb will care if they’re ours by blood or by paper.”
Marty turned away to saddle his horse. Without asking, Wee Ian had taken his canteen and run down to the creek and refilled it. “Is there anythin’ else ye’ll be needin’?” Wee Ian asked.
“Not here,” Marty said, and mounted the horse, his smile still just as broad and bright as ever.
“Weel, then I thank ye fer all ye’ve done fer us. Safe travel to ye,” Wee Ian handed him the filled canteen, “and if ye do come back fer a visit, I hope to see ye again,”
James walked up to his father. “Give Bibb a kiss from both of us and tell her we love her.” He drew a deep breath to cover his disappointment, “Even if we never see her again. Tell her I’m sorry for being rude, too,” he said and sniffed.
“Ach!” Marty snorted with disgust. “Bibb’s already forgiven you, I’m sure. That is, if she ever felt like you were rude in the first place. She’s the nicest person in the world. And very shortly here, she’s going to be my wife!” Marty said, chest puffed out in pride.
He put his foot in the stirrup and slid into the saddle in one smooth move. “Let’s go!” he called to the horse, nudging her in the flanks. He turned around and hollered, “Be safe!” and waved good-bye for the last time.
All three upright people in the camp waved back at him. “Wow. That was a short homecoming,” James remarked dejectedly.
“I think that was all that was needed, though, wasn’t it?” Leah asked.
“Yeah, I guess so. Who’s cooking breakfast?” he said to change the subject. He didn’t want Leah to see the tears in his eyes, but he knew that she knew they were there. He sniffed one of them back. It was great to have someone in his life who he didn’t have to hide his feelings from, even if he did still try.
“Porritch can be ready soon unless ye want to try fer more fish,” said Wee Ian.
James shook his head rapidly. “No, we’ll be heading out just after we eat. Do you think you can help me saddle the horses, though?”
Wee Ian looked down his nose at his new brother-in-law. “No, but I’ll saddle them fer ye,” he said with a bit of mischief, then added, “Cousin.”
James blushed at the joke about their relationship and his still weak condition. “Thanks. I’ll let you do just that.”
Ӂ ӁӁ
It was a quiet but comfortable breakfast. The boy cleared the dishes as the newlyweds packed their slim belongings into their two bags.
Wee Ian saddled the horses, watching Leah out of the corner of his eye as she checked over his father one last time.
She called him over. “Now, don’t let him do anything for himself, save using the toilet…or whatever,” she muttered in frustration. She didn’t know the correct terminologies involving bathroom procedures in this era. She chuckled softly to herself when she remembered that all was forgiven with the boy because she was a fairy and unfamiliar with the nuances of language here and now.
“And remember to offer him water frequently and… What? Am I babbling?” Leah asked when she saw that Wee Ian was giving his now familiar look down his nose.
“Aye, jest a bit. I ken what to do. Ye showed me enough times, and I learn pretty fast, or so I’ve been told. Now ye remember to drink yer water. And ye may want to keep yer canteens out of sight.” He winked at the bottles. “They dinna look like they belong here, if ye ken what I mean,” Wee Ian said in the longest dissertation he had delivered in the 24 hours they had known each other.
“Aye, we’ll mind,” James replied in a Scots accent. “And make sure ye visit us at the Pomeroy’s when yer in the area…Cousin.”
“Aye, but dinna be lookin’ fer us too soon. We need to find a new tribe before winter sets in.” Wee Ian rolled his eyes like he had seen Marty and Leah do. “Or should,” he amended, as he glanced back at his father under the twiggy shelter.
“You’ll always be welcome at our hearth,” Leah said, then snorted and added the same eye roll and grin, “if we ever get one.”
Ӂ ӁӁ
Later that day, at a map check and water break under still another tree…
“You know, before I met you—before I even knew of your existence—when I met the older version of your mother, I remember thinking how interesting she was, and…and… Oh shoot—open mouth, insert foot. Never mind,” James mumbled, hoping that she hadn’t been paying attention to him.
“What? You started the topic, now you’d better finish it, because I’m pretty sure that what I can imagine you were going to say is a lot worse than what you were going to say. Now, spit it out!”
James gulped, closed his eyes, and blurted out, “I thought how nice it would be if she had a daughter who was young enough to, well, you know, have children,” then he added softly, “with me.” He snorted with satisfaction at himself for being able to complete the uncomfortable revelation, then opened his eyes to see Leah glaring at him.
“What?” he asked, totally perplexed at her obviously angry attitude. He thought he had just flattered her with his disclosure that he had wanted to make babies with her.
“So you had the hots for my mother!” she accused rather than asked.
“No, no—not at all. I just thought that she was intriguing and smart, but…but,” James shook his head rapidly. “No! Besides, she was too old. I just thought… Oh, crap. There’s no way out of this one, is there?”
“So now that my mother has a younger body, do you think you’ll want her, not me?” Leah asked with a mix of sorrow and disgust.
“No! You were, are, the only one I want, and I swear to God, you are the only woman I have ever loved. I knew from the first day I met you that you were,” James’s voice softened to a whisper, “um, mine.”
Leah’s hard looks were softening, but weren’t yet where they should be. James sucked up courage from down behind his kidneys somewhere and continued, “But it took a few days for me to fall in love with you. It wasn’t love at first sight or even instantaneous lust. But I did know you were going to be in my life for more than a few minutes as soon as I saw you salute Bibb with your coffee cup at the airport bar. Now, are we cool?”
“Yeah,” Leah replied apologetically, “cool as a jumbo Slurpee. I’m sorry. I guess I have a huge case of nerves with a large side of insecurity. I just wish we were there already. I thought your map showed where Gibsonville was.”
“It does, but it doesn’t show where we are. That would involve having a GPS, and since there aren’t any satellites around, we just have to hope that we meet someone with a better sense of our location than my father. I think we’re farther south than what he said.”
“You’re wrong, but it really doesn’t matter,” Leah replied with a pinch of irony and a smile.
“What are you talking about? Of course, it matters!”
“No, not that. I mean, there is a satellite out there, and it’s called the moon. But since it doesn’t have any global positioning cameras or lasers or whatever generates the signals they use, it doesn’t matter. Come on, if you’re up to it, let’s put these ponies on the road and head north, north to Alaska!” Leah sang as she finished her moon joke.
James cleared his throat and said somberly, “No, not yet.” Leah frowned, then segued into her nurse/healer persona, and started toward him. He saw the clinical look in her eye and shook his head. “Not that; I’m as fine as I can be that way. I just told you about when I first knew that you were the one for me. Now I want to know: what was your first impression of me and when did you, well, get a feeling for or about me?”
Leah sidled up to him, then turned and snuggled into his arms. The temperature was already too warm, but she needed to be close to him. She buried her nose into his chest, rubbed it back and forth a couple of times for security, then pulled back and peered into his face. “The first time I saw you, I knew who you were. Bibb had borrowed a mark
er from me to make a sign with your name on it. You see, I had received a weird email that morning,” she paused, dipped her head and looked him right in the eye to make sure he knew she was talking about the email he had sent, “so I Googled the sender, a James Melbourne with a UK email server. His message indicated that he had met my mother the day of her disappearance.”
James shrugged his shoulders and grimaced as he realized that she had had an honest motivation for checking up on him. Leah rolled her eyes and said, “So I knew from the internet who you were by name and sight. But when I saw you in person, you looked so damned sexy! All I could think of was what a waste. Why couldn’t good-looking hunks like you be straight? Shoot, it was a good thing I thought you were gay, or I probably would have made a fool of myself. And then, when we leaned over in the bar and had that eye-to-eye moment, it was if I had a peek into our future. Not what it entailed physically, but a wisp of a warm, comfortable emotion—almost an aroma, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know what you mean because I felt it, too. Come on, let’s go that way. The day is only going to get hotter, and our water won’t last until sundown. Hopefully, we find either the Pomeroys’ place or a creek before then.”
***55 Lost in the 80’s
James was disgusted with himself. He was hot, tired, hungry and weak, and felt like crying. But, besides tears being a sign of extraordinary weakness, they wouldn’t help their situation. “I don’t know where we are…or even how to find a reference point. I feel so useless! I spent all that time making an exact map, and then fuck up by not noticing which direction we headed when we got here!”
Leah’s eyes widened at hearing him say the ‘F’ word. She did her best to swallow her shock, though, and stayed mum. She knew he was mad at himself, and besides, he’d let her curse without scolding if the tables were turned.
“Can’t you use the moon or the stars or something to orient us?” she asked timidly, unsure whether it was a smart or a dumb question. She was directionally challenged, which was why she had made sure her car had both a compass and a navigation system in it when she bought it.
James snorted as a reply, then shook his head apologetically. “I’m sorry for cursing; I try not to. It’s just that we’ve come so far, and I’m tired, and I feel like a complete failure. I can’t find the Pomeroys’ place and don’t know if I could even get us back to the Ians at the creek.”
“Sooo, you’re saying that we’re lost?” she asked, although she was pretty sure that they were.
James glanced over and gave her ‘a look,’ then brought out his handmade map. “It would help if it wasn’t so blankety-blank-blank cloudy. See, I didn’t cuss that time. All the clouds do is make the heat more miserable. Damn! Oops. Darn! It’s so muggy, the sweat won’t even evaporate,” he said, snorting and scowling as he pulled the damp linen away from his chest.
“Yeah, well, try it with a long skirt on. Actually, though, I’m going commando, so I’m getting a bit of a breeze as long as I’m off the horse.” Her eyes widened as an important thought smacked her. “Aren’t we supposed to brush them or give them grass or water or something after we’re done riding for the day?”
“Well, we don’t have that much water left, so they’ll just have to graze on green grass and hope there’s enough moisture in that.” James started to walk away from the tree to take care of the chore, but Leah stopped him with a glare and a palm-up gesture.
“I’ll lead them to their supper buffet. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out how to hobble a horse like they did in the Lost books. When I’m done, you and I can rest over there. And, since there isn’t anyone around, I’m going to take off my dress and lie down on top of it—bare-beamed and buck-naked!”
“You’re wrong,” James said slyly and chuckled.
“Huh?”
“I’m here. You said there wasn’t anyone around. But if you don’t mind being naked, I certainly don’t. I’ll just take off my shirt, though.” He yanked it off over his head. “It’s too much trouble to take off these boots, then the pants…” He sighed loudly. “Okay, I hear what you’re not saying. I’ll let you help. Thank you, dear; you are so considerate of the frail and infirm,” he said sarcastically. She hadn’t spoken a word, but she was thinking loud enough.
“Yeah, well, I’m the one who got you so frail,” she said, her voice solemn with guilt. She grimaced and tried to turn it into a smile. “I’ll be right back.”
Leah led the horses to the greenest area, then took the short roll of rope off of each saddle. She wrapped it around one front leg, twisted it in a loop, and then tied it to the other front leg, making little rope ‘hoof cuffs’ to keep the horses’ front legs about a foot apart. They could still take tiny steps in any direction, but certainly wouldn’t be able to run.
The horses’ backs twitched from the flies as they munched the sprouts of green at the base of a hillock of small boulders and big rocks, their ears flicking as if conducting a silent orchestra. They seemed content. She wasn’t, though, but didn’t want James to know that. She was afraid. The little bit of water they had left wouldn’t last another day, and she hadn’t seen any signs of a creek, a road, or civilization. She shook her head, trying to erase visions of vultures flying above, looking for a dehydrated dinner.
Her fear was replaced by a welcomed reason for spousal scolding. “Hey, you’re supposed to let me do that,” she hollered. James was gasping and tugging, trying to pull off his modified ‘colonial-styled’ cross trainer shoe. “Now lie back and chill!” she ordered, as she stomped toward him.
“Yeah, right,” he drolled. “Not much chance of chillin’. With all these clouds, I don’t think the temperature is going to drop much tonight. That means tomorrow’s going to be even hotter and more humid.” He sighed deeply and closed his eyes, a smile emerging as he recalled the chill of the car’s air conditioning after he had asked Leah to marry him, the fan blasting frigid air at high speed to cool him off before going back to their first home to consummate their handfast marriage. “Hmm,” escaped his lips as his subtle smile grew into a full sweat-prickled face grin.
Leah already had his shoes and socks off, and was working the ties on his pants when, “Hey, what’s this?” she exclaimed, seeing his very firm cock. “I didn’t think you had that much blood left in you.”
James looked down at his exposed manhood. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, giddy and light-headed from the quick movement of lifting his head. He chuckled then lay back and looked straight up at the sky, “I can’t have blood in both heads at the same time. And that’s your fault. I was remembering you and the car’s air conditioning…hmm.”
“Well, hopefully it was me that caused Mr. Happy to stand up and say hi. I’d hate to rely on air conditioning to get you aroused. I’d be a very sad and deprived woman, if that were the case.”
“Um, no worries there, but if you don’t mind too much, I’d like to pass on the passion tonight. I think I’ll need my strength tomorrow. Plus, I don’t want to work up a thirst. We’re running pretty short on water.”
“Okay, but I’m still going to take off my clothes. An air bath is better than no bath at all. Now, turn your head,” Leah said, and began unbuttoning her dress.
“Uh, no,” James replied indignantly, and then laughed. “Just because I can’t eat at the banquet doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate the table you set.”
“Okay, but no crumb snatching,” she said, and slipped off the dress, revealing that all she had on was a sports bra. She shook out her mother’s former dress, enjoying the quick breeze it created, and then laid it on the ground next to him. She carefully stretched out on top of it, trying to keep the fabric between her and the dry grass-covered ground.
“So that’s what you were calling commando,” he said, gently moving his hand across the outside of her hip where she would normally have panties.
“Hey, hey, hey,” she said, picking up his hand, and putting it back at his side.
“I’m not snacking.
I’m just checking out the dishes. Nice table setting, my lady.”
“So which is it: Mrs. James Melbourne or Lady James Melbourne?” she asked, a little embarrassed at what seemed to be a vain question. She realized that there wasn’t any pride or shame between the two of them and relaxed her attitude.
“Well, if we went back to England, then you’d be Lady James Melbourne or Lady James. But since we are here to see our families, and I don’t want to call attention to my family title, then you’ll be Mrs. Melbourne. But either way, you’re mine!” he crowed, then grabbed a handful of flesh at her hip bone.
“That’s a big ten-four!” Leah exclaimed. She moved his hand away and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, then pulled back and looked at him to see if he knew the phrase. Obviously not, by the exaggerated frown on his face.
She explained. “That’s truck driver talk from the old CB—citizens band—radio days. It’s another way of saying you betcha! or boy howdy!”
“Or yes-sir-ree Bob?” James asked. He knew a little about American colloquialisms, but still had a lot to learn. He put his hand back on her hip and grinned.
“Aye,” Leah replied, then sighed and patted his hand. He was spunky and fun, even when they had to be platonic.
***56 A Scary Situation
August 19, 1781, pre-dawn
Still lost
They jerked straight up out of their deep sleep; arms flailing, legs kicking—like tangled marionettes—confused and terrified by the sudden explosion of thunder. Leah didn’t know where she was, who she was, or if anyone was there with her. Her heart suddenly felt eight sizes too big, thump-thump-thumping, like a fifty pound chipping hammer pounding against her sternum, trying to escape her chest.
James touched her arm and asked, “Are you okay?”
She batted his hand away, and grunted rudely, “Wait! Wait just a minute,” as if she were directing traffic. Emotionally, she was lost, disassociated from everything, and although no longer sleepy, she wasn’t fully awake either.
Aye, I am a Fairy Page 47