Heart of a Dove

by Abbie Williams

  I hugged his left arm, closest to me as he handled the reins, pressing my face against him. I said softly, teasing him a little, “I gathered.” Although I was a little shy to admit such things openly, I told him, “It’s so good to touch you. It’s difficult for me to be near you and be unable.”

  His deepening smile made my heart start beating desperately all over again. I studied him almost greedily, the way his grin transformed his face and glinted in his golden-green irises, his sensual lips, the stubble on his chin, his straight long nose, the scar along his jaw. I was possessive of all of it, of him. He was mine, a force even deeper than instinct was insistent about this fact.

  “It’s so good to be touched,” he said, his deep voice husky with emotion. “You can’t know how much, Lorie.”

  In response I snuggled closer to his side, pressing my mouth to his shoulder. He leaned and softly kissed my temple before sitting straight and tending to the horses. Thankfully Malcolm was still paying us no mind, content to be riding Whistler over the prairie.

  “I love hearing stories about your childhood. I can picture it all so clearly,” I whispered.

  “I love telling you,” he said. “It makes them all seem alive again, not just figments in my memory. I had a wonderful upbringing, I truly did. I couldn’t have asked for a better. I cherish those memories, as you do yours, I know. It’s been years, but I still long for my family. It’s almost unbearable at times. So fast I was the last of them.”

  I tipped my forehead against him, whispering, “I know that feeling well.”

  “I know you do, sweetheart,” he said softly.

  Sweetheart. I thrilled to the endearment.

  “When were you born?” I asked him. “What month?”

  “November the eighth, in ’forty-three,” he said. “And you were born in July, you said.”

  “I thought you were sleeping that morning,” I said, recalling when I told the others.

  “No, I couldn’t stop tossing and turning,” he admitted. “Which day in July?”

  I tried to fit both of my hands around his upper arm, but couldn’t manage. My fingers didn’t even touch. I said, “The sixteenth.”

  He looked at me with surprise lifting his eyebrows, explaining, “That’s Whistler’s birthday. She would have been born the day you turned ten.”

  “I remember that birthday well,” I said, awed by this revelation. “Daddy was in Suttonville that very afternoon, Sawyer.”

  “That you were so close to me all those years, and I never knew,” he said, studying me intently. “You said you’d been to Suttonville. Do you recall the livery stable?”

  I closed my eyes to better picture the town. In my memory, it always seemed to be springtime in Tennessee, the entire state bursting with the ripe beauty of that season. I envisioned the awnings overhanging the shops of downtown Suttonville, the window glass painted to advertise each particular business. I saw the straight line of jet buttons that ran along Mama’s spine as she walked just ahead of me, my bonnet trailing down my own back. Lilacs planted between buildings, sending sweet richness into the air.

  “Was it to the left of the dry goods? Just across the street?” I whispered, eyes closed as I concentrated upon this picture in my memory.

  “It was,” he said just as quietly, and my eyes opened to his. He smiled softly at me and in his eyes was a gentle wistfulness as he held the same image in his mind. His home, his family, his birthright, all lost. My heart burned with the longing, futile though it was, to restore these things to him. His voice was slightly hoarse as he said, “I’m going to believe that somewhere in those years I was outside the stables, maybe cleaning out the corral, and I looked across the street and beheld you, looking back.”

  “Sawyer,” I whispered, and he curled his left arm hard around me.

  “Sweetheart,” he said against my hair, and for a time we rode in silence, holding one another. I inhaled the scent of him, absorbed the sound of his breathing and his heartbeat, and felt restored. I hoarded these precious feelings for later, gliding my palms over the strength of his chest.

  Slow down, I silently commanded Aces and Juniper. Please, please.

  “Where does your name come from? Lorissa, I mean. I’ve not heard it before,” he said.

  “It was a name Mama knew and liked,” I explained, growing bolder, pressing my lips along the side of his neck in soft, lingering kisses, tasting him. I wanted to put my hands under his shirt and feel his warm skin.

  “Lorie, I’m about to stop this wagon and haul you into the back of it, and then I’ll despise myself,” he said.

  I couldn’t help but giggle at his words, but I sat straighter and primly withdrew my hands.

  “No, don’t stop,” he said immediately, catching me back. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He kissed me sweetly, his tongue dancing into my mouth. I cupped his jaws and tilted into his kiss. Sawyer freed one hand from the reins and tenderly stroked my hair, tucking a strand behind my ear.

  “Tonight, I’ll be the one outside your tent,” he murmured against my temple. “We’ll walk a spell, once everyone is asleep.”

  I nodded, still close to him, even as in the distance we caught sight of Boyd on Fortune, heading for the wagon. Though Boyd had already seen us kissing, and I knew it concerned him. How quickly and terribly I forgot my own worries when Sawyer was near and overriding all else in my mind, my heart. I would tell Sawyer what I feared. I must, even as my heart seemed to shrivel with the pain of what would surely be his instant rejection. I moved a proper distance from him and folded both hands neatly in my lap, knowing that I could not let another night pass without telling him the truth.

  No, no, God please no. He is mine, I don’t know how I know this, but I do, and when I tell him I’ll have to let him go.

  “I see you’ve let the boy ride Whistler,” Boyd observed drily, as he cantered up and gave us a speculative gaze.

  “Well, he’s been begging,” Sawyer said easily, returning Boyd’s look with a steady one of his own.

  “Lorie, come on down, I’ll show you how to gut a deer, now that we’ve a larger one,” Boyd said then. “Gus held off for you to watch.”

  Sawyer jumped gracefully from the wagon and caught me around the waist, setting me carefully to the ground. I couldn’t look at him for fear everything I felt was too vivid, too obvious.

  “Here, come up behind me,” Boyd said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Sawyer, help her.”

  He did, and seconds later I was perched on Fortune’s rump, behind the saddle. I caught Boyd lightly around the waist and he muttered, “Hee-up, girl.”

  Angus wasn’t more than a hundred yards ahead, and between him and Boyd, I learned how to drain and gut a dead deer. It was a gruesome job and I ended up staining Malcolm’s trousers quite thoroughly, but I understood that I needed to learn these tasks.

  “Now, if we can just get someone to teach you to make pies,” Boyd joked, hovering over me, holding the creature by its back legs as I tugged the knife down its gut.

  “No, you mustn’t mention pies now,” I reprimanded him a bit breathlessly, almost gagging for perhaps the fifth time. I clamped my tongue between my teeth and refocused.

  “You’re doing well,” Angus said. “It’s not an easy task.”

  His gray eyes were gentle upon me, and I managed a smile for him; he smiled back immediately. Once the deer was drained of its blood, he and Boyd showed me how to carve out the internal organs. I was embarrassed at my shuddering stomach, moving away to vomit into the grass. Whistler’s legs appeared before me as I remained bent over and Malcolm leaned to say cheerfully, “Lorie-Lorie, it’s not so bad. Think of the venison we’ll have tonight!”

  I nodded incrementally. The wagon rolled to a halt and I straightened with effort, not wanting to appear such a weakling. My b
rothers would have had plenty to say about my feminine failings, I knew. Boyd finished the task and efficiently tied the carcass to the side of the wagon. Sawyer held the reins loosely in his right hand, sitting with forearms braced on thighs, and his lips were soft with a half-smile as he regarded my blood-stained trousers and milk-pale face. Angus used his handkerchief to wipe smears of blood from my cheek, curling his left hand lightly around my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I told him, slightly flustered at his ministrations. Though I knew he was just being polite.

  “It is a messy task,” he told me. “There, that should do it.”

  “Lorie, how’d you like to take Fortune for a spell?” Boyd asked, lifting his hat to swipe at his sweating forehead.

  My eyes flashed to Sawyer; I wanted to ride on the wagon and be near him.

  Boyd collected her reins and passed them to me, before I could say either way. He added, “I’ll take a turn on the wagon seat. You’ve not ridden all day.”

  I said helplessly, “Thank you, I would like that.”

  Afternoon passed into a lovely blue evening, the clouds on the western horizon streaked with a startling, blazing violet, sizzling with gilt-edged, ruby radiance. My trousers were stiff with dried blood; Angus chose a spot near the river, which rushed and sang in its never-ending chatter. After the tents were set and the horses watered, I stripped and changed into my own clothes, then hauled the washboard from the wagon bed. The mosquitoes were thick on the bank, but I knelt with determination, scrubbing Malcolm’s trousers and the shirt I’d worn all day, using a smidgen of a cake of lye soap from our limited supply. The soap was the same butter-cream color as the box of candles in the wagon and its scent called to my mind the hours I’d spent helping Mama on Mondays, our wash day.

  The deer was butchered into pieces; faintly, I could hear Boyd and Sawyer joking as they worked together, some distance down the river’s edge. There seemed to be no tension between them at present, for which I was truly grateful. Malcolm came to the river with me for a time, hauling along a stack of additional dirty garments. As I worked, he strung the clothes line. The air had cooled as the sky darkened, though sweat streaked between my breasts from the exertion of scrubbing. After the last shirt was clean, I stood just as Malcolm trotted down the bank; he caught his toe on a root and squeaked in alarm, crashing into me and taking us both into the river. The rushing water closed over our heads, obliterating all other sound; when we surfaced, I choked on an inadvertent mouthful of murky liquid, shuddering at the coldness. Malcolm floundered and cried, “Lorie, I’m sorry!”

  I rolled to my knees, the water flowing around my waist, as Malcolm laughed joyously at the situation, splashing water over my head, ducking under like a river otter as I gasped at the icy droplets. Malcolm tugged at my arms and cried, “Let’s swim a little, Lorie-Lorie!”

  “Son, absolutely not,” Angus said firmly, wading into the water and grasping my forearms. “It’s getting dark, and you’ll catch a chill.”

  He helped me to my feet; I moved ungracefully, slogging in my wet skirts, and then had to bend forward to vomit up river water; it tasted unusually foul. To my dismay, Angus tucked me to his side, soaking himself in the process. He observed, “Lorie, you’re frozen.”

  “I’m just soaked,” I said hoarsely, though my teeth were chattering. “It was…an accident.”

  In my tent, shucked bare for the second time in an hour, I shivered violently as I dried myself with a linen, the firelight dancing orange against the canvas. I heard Sawyer and Boyd return from butchering the deer, and Malcolm offered a breathless explanation for why he was sopping wet.

  “An’ Lorie-Lorie threw up all over the place!” he concluded.

  “Lorie, are you all right?” Sawyer was instantly at the entrance to my tent, concern rife in his voice. I ached to untie the lacings and pull him inside with me…I was so cold and he was so very warm. My heart only increased its frantic pace at these futile longings.

  Still naked, wrapped in the damp linen, I moved close to him and assured, “I am. I’ll be out straight away.”

  I pressed my palms to the canvas, sensing him so near.

  “Dress warm,” he said, low. “You’ll be chilled.”

  I dressed and wrapped in my shawl, hurrying to rebraid my hair, and finally joined them, the scent of roasting meat rich in the air.

  “Lorie, I didn’t mean to pitch you into the river,” Malcolm said apologetically, looking over his shoulder at me. His hair was damp and standing on end, though he was in dry clothes. He’d filched a piece of venison, his lips shiny.

  “I know,” I assured him, sinking carefully to his left side, again closer to Sawyer.

  I was still icy, even wrapped into my shawl, and held my numb hands to the fire.

  “It’s a bit late for a swim,” Sawyer teased, though his eyes told me, I wish I could hold you. I’ll warm you, Lorie, my sweet Lorie.

  I want to be in your arms with all of my heart, I told him back, though I said, “For Malcolm, it’s never too late for one.”

  “Thought I saw a snake swimmin’ along,” Malcolm added. “I jumped out right quick at that.”

  “A hoop snake?” I giggled.

  “Them things don’t swim,” he told me, as though I should have known better.

  Malcolm and I adjourned before anyone else; for nearly an hour after, the men chatted quietly. The scent of the fire was comforting, as was Boyd’s tobacco, though I rolled restlessly, knowing that I must tell Sawyer what I suspected. Agony ripped through me at the thought. At long last they retired, banking the fire and murmuring quietly. I listened, tensile with anxiety, as Sawyer said quietly, “I’ve got it, Gus.”

  Heart throbbing, I went to one elbow and strained to listen. Angus replied too quietly for me to hear, but moments later I shivered and glowed with relief as I knew that Sawyer was settling near the entrance to my tent, rolling a blanket to put under his head. I waited as long as I was able, until I was certain that everyone else had disappeared into their own tents; to the right, Malcolm mumbled sleepily to Boyd. I crawled to the entrance and unlaced the bottom tie, allowing me to reach my left hand and touch Sawyer. He took it immediately within his, between his warm strong hands.

  I moved as close as I could, my heart thrusting, begging me to put the rest of myself into his hands. I sensed that he had turned to his side, facing me as I faced him, the canvas between us; we could not risk more, not before everyone was asleep. He tipped his head and kissed my folded fingers, the back of my hand, then my palm, before enclosing it once more between his. My breath was fast and uneven at this tenderness, the incredible warmth of his lips.

  “Lorie,” he whispered. “You’re so cold. Have you your shawl?”

  “I do,” I whispered.

  “I’m here, sweetheart,” he told me, low and soft. “Wrap in your shawl, and I’ll be right here.”

  In the next tent, Boyd and Malcolm were talking, albeit quietly, their voices gently rising and falling.

  “You rest, I’ll be right here,” Sawyer whispered, so close, and I took a measure of comfort in that.

  He kissed my hand and cradled it to his chest, where I could feel his heart. I curled even closer, wrapping my fingers into his, holding fast. For a time I slept, despite everything, my other arm braced under my head on the ground. When I woke again, the stillness of night was deep and complete. My hand rested on Sawyer’s chest and I could hear his steady breathing; he was asleep. I untied the rest of the laces and crawled directly out, finding him on his back, a rolled blanket under his head, another beneath him. In the dim glow of the banked fire, I knelt and studied his face, one arm sprawled above his head, the other palm-down upon his chest. My heart ached with so many things, love and hope and fear that what we’d found would be dashed upon the rocks in far too short a time. I knew, looking down at him as he slept, that I mu
st tell him.

  Oh God, not yet, not yet. Not yet. You don’t even know for certain, not yet. You’ll bleed soon. It was just the once.

  I swallowed and looked nervously to the other tents, silent in the night, and then I curved against his side, wrapping my arm over his chest, holding him close. Sawyer stirred, turned at once and collected me directly against his warmth and strength.

  “Sweetheart, you’re still so chilled,” he whispered into my ear, kissing my cheek, my temple. “I was so worried when we returned and I couldn’t warm you at once. Come here, let me now.”

  “Come inside with me,” I pleaded in a whisper, and his eyes drove into mine.

  “Lorie, I don’t…” he paused, holding me close; it was clear from his expression that he was determining how to say what was on his mind. At last he continued, softly, “Sweet woman, I don’t want you to think I’m just after…just after the gift of you. God knows I long for you,” and my heart thundered against him, as I could feel his thrusting back. “I long so for you, but I won’t have you thinking I would take advantage of you that way.”

  “I don’t think that,” I whispered honestly. “Sawyer, I don’t think that. What’s between us is…so much more.”

  He nodded, cupping my face with one hand, his eyes unwavering from mine. He traced my bottom lip with his thumb, before leaning to kiss me softly. He whispered, “Come, we’ll walk a spell.”

  He grabbed the blanket and wrapped it over my shoulders before drawing me to my feet, and then whispered, “You best put on your shoes.”

  I hurried to do so, noiselessly, and he held my hand tightly as we made our way towards the horses, out beyond the tents. At the base of a group of cottonwoods, Sawyer sat and drew me upon his lap, resettling the blanket so it was around the both of us. He tucked me close to his chest, and in the brilliant starlight our eyes held fast. Just as when he’d kissed me before the storm broke, I was struck with the knowledge that we were meant to be here under this sky, in this place.