When he spoke, his voice was soft and husky with emotion. He traced the side of my face lightly with one hand as he said, “Lorie, you recall the story about the cave in the holler?” At my nod, he continued, “I never finished telling you about what happened the next morning when I went back for my boot. It was freed from where it had been stuck, which was strange enough, but when I bent to collect it, I heard two words spoken to me.”
“From within the cave?”
“To this day, I don’t know exactly, but I heard a voice. It spoke two words: ‘the angel.’ Then all was quiet. Since that morning, I’ve dreamed of my angel…I’ve longed for her. Lorie, the moment I looked at you that night in the saloon, something struck at me like fists. I suddenly heard my granddaddy telling me that when you know, you just know. I hadn’t thought of him saying that since I was a boy, and he told me the story of meeting Granny Alice. He said he’d taken one look at her and understood that she was meant for him. And there you were on that staircase, your beautiful eyes so overwhelmed by what was happening. Clear as day, I knew you were for me. You are my angel, the one I’ve been searching for.” He whispered, “Do you think me crazy?”
Tears spilled over my cheeks, the strength of my feelings pouring forth as I clutched the front of his shirt.
“Sawyer,” I whispered. “You’re not crazy. I know your words for truth. I do, and I know that you are also mine. I can’t explain any better than that.”
He gently wiped my tears with his thumb and whispered, “Do you know what it means to me to hear you say that?”
The lump in my throat didn’t allow for words, as more tears came gushing. He made a sound of concern and drew me close, cupping my head and cradling me. I thought that if he would hold me thusly forever, I would never ask for anything, never want for anything more.
“I don’t mean…to cry,” I whispered against his chest. And in a rush, because I had to tell him, heart stabbing my ribs, I drew enough back to see his eyes and said in agony, “I’m afraid because I may be carrying a child, Sawyer. I won’t know until I bleed again.”
He blinked once, slowly, almost like an owl, absorbing this news. At last he said, “Gus’s child.”
I closed my eyes and nodded.
“Lorie,” he said then, intently, and my eyes flashed open. He said, “It doesn’t change how I feel. Nothing could change that. I told you that you are mine, and I know this for truth.”
Relief and a tiny, sparking flame of hope flared within me at his words. I whispered, “Sawyer, I can’t bear it. I can’t bear thinking of being apart from you, not anymore.”
“Nor I you,” he said. He kissed my lips, softly, and added, “I will do what’s right by you, I swear to you.”
“We can’t tell anyone else, not yet,” I said desperately. “But if it’s true, I’ll have to tell Angus.”
For an instant naked panic flashed across his face, before he gathered himself. I felt that flash in the pit of my gut, cold and chill. He said at last, “You don’t deserve this sneaking around. I don’t want that.”
“I don’t care, if it’s the only way I can be with you,” I said, again with desperation in my voice. “I’m frightened.”
He lifted my chin and his hawk eyes were upon me, steady in the starlight. He whispered, “I’m here. Don’t be scared, sweetheart.” He kissed my forehead, so gently. “You have been through more than I could ever know, but I’m here now.”
I closed my eyes at these words; it was too much, almost more than I could bear. Surely the universe would never be so gracious, so kind, without exacting payment in kind.
I whispered, “At first I thought you hated me, for coming so unexpectedly into your lives. I didn’t ask Angus to bring me with the four of you, I didn’t. I refused to go with him.”
“I was so cold to you, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I know I seemed angry. But I was so overcome with what I felt. I couldn’t admit it to myself until the night that Federal son of a bitch was in your tent and could have taken you from me. Lorie,” and he paused, drawing a breath before he added softly, “Gus is…he’s the closest thing I’ve had to a father in years. He is one of my dearest friends. And he’s…” He faltered a little, as though not wanting to offend me, and I knew immediately to what he was alluding. I had just opened my mouth to speak when he finished, “He’s smitten with you, though he is far too much a gentleman to say it aloud. But I can see it, I remember back when he was courting Grace, when I was a boy. He looked at her the same way.”
My heart clenched with pain at this truth. My cheek was against his chest and I said, closing my eyes again, “I know, I do know that too. I wish it wasn’t so, from the deepest part of me, I wish it wasn’t so. He’s given me so much more than he’d ever know, taking me from Ginny’s. I was a prisoner there and he saved me, however unexpectedly.”
Sawyer kissed my hair and then rested his chin atop my head. He whispered, “I’ve no wish to hurt him, not ever. He saved me too, from myself. I would have been content to die, back in Suttonville these past terrible years, but Gus wouldn’t let me. Lorie, I would do about anything for him.”
Except let him have you, he didn’t say. But I heard it just the same.
I clung to him, whispering desperately, “I hate to think of you hurting. I can’t bear it. You have seen more in your life than I could imagine, either.”
He swallowed and spread his hands on my back, warm and strong against the thin material of my shift. His voice was low and ragged as he said, “For a long time I wished I’d been killed. I came so close, so many times. I couldn’t bear to speak of what I’d seen, except with Gus, or Boyd, as they’d been there and they knew. The filth, the misery of it. Killing other men. I haven’t the nature for that, not like some. But I’ve killed so many. I’ve watched men slaughtered all around me. I’ve seen rivers and the very mud I stood in running red with blood, and still that didn’t stop me from shooting out the guts of another soldier, another man. Anyone in my path.”
“It was a war and they would have killed you,” I said, holding fiercely to him. I shuddered at the picture he had painted. “You survived, and I will thank God every day for the rest of my life for that.” I cupped his precious face in my palms.
His eyes had sparked with tears and my heart constricted. He didn’t allow them to fall, clutching my waist as he said, “After my brothers were killed, I started to believe that this existence meant nothing. All of that blood and suffering and wretched death. Those sights will never be washed clean from my memory, no matter how much I beg God. I was the oldest of us, I was supposed to watch out for them. Mama begged me to protect them and I promised her I would. God, I was so green, so goddamned green and full of myself, and yet here I sit now, alive when they are not.” He inhaled a painful breath, holding me captive with his eyes before continuing passionately, “For the first time since then I understand why I was spared. I was meant to live to find you. To find you, Lorie, and to be with you. To realize that there is something meaningful and beautiful in this world that is worth fighting for, something beyond all of us.”
His eyes reached into my deepest heart and re-forged a bond between us that perhaps even death could not fully negate. It was as though every life our souls had lived together for a thousand years suddenly surged up and twined into the air between us, almost tangible; all I knew for certain was that I’d been moving towards him from the moment of my birth, searching for him, without even realizing.
I stroked my fingers tenderly over his face, traced his bottom lip with my thumbs, and he shivered, closing his eyes. He was all heat and intensity and fire, into which I would have gladly thrown myself and burned slowly for all eternity. I whispered intently, a catch in my throat, “You are mine, Sawyer. I feel it in my bones, my blood.” My throat choked with a cry as I said, “I have never known something so absolutely.”
He said, “Come h
ere, come to me.”
I moved at once to my knees, straddling his lap as we clung, holding each other as hard as possible, tightly enough to stop time, to keep us in this stolen moment. I curled my fingers into his hair, long and silken, kissing his temple, his jaw, the side of his neck, as his big hands swept over my ribs, my waist, clutched my hips. I rocked against him as our lips met, the bottom of my shift riding over my knees and then higher. I wore nothing beneath. Deep, lush, stroking kisses that I felt to the core of my being; I could never get enough of him. He groaned against my lips and I shuddered with the force of my need, tipping my head as he kissed my throat, my collarbones, his hands again spread over my back. I clutched his head and arched towards him as he pressed his mouth to my heart, hammering out of control behind my ribs. My nipples ached, nearly slicing through the thin material separating them from his lips, his tongue.
“Lorie,” he whispered, his voice harsh in its intensity. “I want you with everything in me, but I won’t…”
“I know,” I whispered, my own voice shaking. “I know.”
He was far too honorable, and it made me love him all the more. I had never truly wanted a man, ever before, but none of the men I’d known had been him. He pressed his chin between my breasts as I straddled him, looking up at me as his fingers caressed my back. I smoothed his hair, tenderly, my heart still convulsing against him. His eyes were fierce with desire and I felt a jolt between my legs, hot and intense. But I forced myself to push those feelings away, for now. It wasn’t the time, not yet.
He shifted us, tucking me against him, kissing my flushed and sweating temple. He held me curled to his chest, my hands folded against him, stroking my hair until a fraction of the heat in our blood had cooled. After a time he whispered, “Where did this come from?”
He gently traced the scar on my face with the back of his fingertips.
“Someone hurt you,” he said, low and with certainty. “I noticed it from the first. What happened?”
I bit the insides of my cheeks, unable to prevent the sudden trembling that quivered over my limbs. Not even Sawyer could protect me from my memories of Sam Rainey’s hatred.
“There was a man named…Sam,” I whispered, my voice rough with the remembrance. “Sam Rainey. Two years ago, he came to Ginny’s and requested me and…” I was determined to tell him. “When we were in my room, he asked me where I was from. He could hear the Tennessee in my voice, and his eyes went dark. He’s crazy with hatred, I just didn’t realize how crazy. He said he’d…killed so many Tennessee Rebels in the War.” My throat snagged on the memory and I could sense Sawyer’s tension as he listened, his compassion. “He was holding my chin in his hand, but I shoved him…I shoved hard, and knocked him over…I wish I’d been brave enough to grab something heavy and kill him, claw his face, but what I should have done was run. I should have run. He lunged at me.”
“Lorie,” he whispered.
“I’ll stop, it’s not proper to talk of,” I said, misunderstanding.
“Lorie,” he said again, soft and passionate. “If you had the courage to live through it, then I have the courage to listen. Sweetheart, there is nothing you could tell me that you should feel ashamed about. Please know this.”
I closed my eyes and let myself be comforted by his words. I whispered, “He had a knife. He ran it along my neck, just the point, not breaking my skin.”
Sawyer made a sound, a deep and throaty sound, and held me secure.
“I tried to get away…I tried. But he was on top of me. My head hit the dressing screen and knocked it over, and they heard that below, on the main floor. When the door opened…he slashed at me and I know he was trying to aim for my throat, but he struck me there, instead,” and I indicated my scar.
“I would kill him if he was here, I would run him through.” Sawyer’s deep voice was harsh and I’d no doubt he meant those words. “That you had to experience such makes me ill.”
“He was never allowed back in Ginny’s,” I said. “But he’s still around St. Louis, or at least he was as of last year. I thought…that night, when someone was in my tent…my first thought was that it was Sam.”
“The other man, who was he?” Sawyer asked, stroking my hair the way I’d seen him stroke Whistler, with tender and total devotion.
“Someone from Ginny’s, though I didn’t know him well. He’s a friend of Sam’s, I think, but I still can’t believe that he’d risk himself to come after me. Ginny must have offered him enough money to make it worth his while.”
“I knew you were in danger that night. When I woke I could hear him in your tent. It was all I could do not to rip open the entrance, but I heard him telling you to hurry, and I waited. I knew if I surprised him I’d have the better advantage.”
“I was trying so hard to be quiet, I was so afraid one of you would be hurt if I made a sound,” I whispered. “You stopped him from taking me.”
“I would do that and more for you,” he told me intently. “I will keep you safe. And we aren’t so easy to hurt, truly.”
“But Malcolm,” I whispered. “He’s just a boy, he was never a soldier. I would have gone with Jack to save any of you, but I worried so about him.”
I traced Sawyer’s scar then, asking him with my eyes to explain.
“It was after the War,” he said softly, his eyes lifting upward for a moment, back into his memory. “Boyd, Gus and I had been mustered out. We were riding home from Georgia. A group of Federals came across us, late one night. They tried to take our horses, tried to take Whistler from me. The one who gave me this was mounted, slashed at me with his saber.” For a moment he was utterly still, caught in the memory, before he finished, “But he didn’t get her.”
I kissed him there, lingering, breathing against him as he stroked my back, my hair. The night around us was anything but quiet, crickets fiddling and the humming of mosquitoes, the sound of birds as dawn rapidly approached; I noticed nothing out of the ordinary at the high-pitched chirp of a bobwhite quail, though Sawyer at once straightened and said, low, “Boyd.”
Boyd came creeping into sight, shaking his head at us and stopping not three feet away, hands on hips. Sawyer drew the blanket modestly over my shoulder, continuing to hold me tightly, and said with a hint of both dark humor and sarcasm, “Well if it ain’t Bainbridge Carter, come to check on me.”
Boyd muttered, “Would that I were my daddy, at least I’d be able to strap your hide like you done goddamn deserve. Beggin’ your pardon, Lorie.”
“Boyd,” Sawyer began, but Boyd held up a hand and interrupted.
“Dammit, man, how could you do this? Take advantage of Lorie this way?”
“Now wait just a minute—” Sawyer shot back, his deep voice defensive bordering on angry.
“Boyd,” I said firmly, and they both quieted, looking to me.
I flushed, but it was hidden in the darkness. I said firmly, “That isn’t the way of it. We’ve been talking here, truly. Sawyer has been nothing but a gentleman.”
Boyd rolled his dark eyes heavenward, but he then he said softly, “It’s not even that I’m so concerned about, Lorie. I mean, I am, if your honor is in question, but it’s more that I worry for the both of you. You know what I mean, old friend,” and with those words he looked hard at Sawyer.
“I know,” Sawyer said then, all traces of anger gone from his throaty voice. “I do know, Boyd.”
Boyd crouched down, forearms on his sturdy thighs, and regarded both of us in the starlight. He said, “I can see plain as goddamn day what you-all are feeling. An’ I fear someone’ll be hurt.”
He and Sawyer held gazes for a time, before Boyd rose to his full height. He concluded, “I’ve a-said my piece an’ I’ll be on my way,” and with those words he left us in the darkness.
“I know he means well,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Sawyer, he�
�s right…someone will be hurt, and it will be my fault.”
He held me to his heart. Against my hair he murmured, “I’ve told you of my granddaddy Sawyer and my granny Alice.” I nodded. He went on, softly, “Granddaddy told me that he and my granny Alice weren’t allowed to be wed, back in England. We all knew the story from the time we were small.”
I wanted to hear everything, all of his history, his stories. They became part of me, when he passed them to me with his words. He kissed my forehead and continued, “It was because Granny Alice was from a wealthy family. Her father was in the military and my granddaddy was of no means. His father was a woodcutter, that’s where our name ‘Sawyer’ comes from—” Here he paused as I gasped, unable to stop myself. The woodcutter. The woman in silver had known, somehow.
“Go on,” I whispered. I would tell him of her another day.
He kissed me and resumed his story, while my heart bloomed with renewed wonder.
“Granddaddy met her of a fall afternoon, and he knew that she was for him. I remember him telling me and Ethan and Jere this same story, and his eyes would be full of the sight of her all those years before, on that autumn day they met. Granny would come and put her hands on his shoulders, and he would draw her against his side, and I knew that I wanted nothing less than that for myself, one day. I knew I wouldn’t stop searching until I found my woman. Oh Lorie, I mean to have that with you.”
I was cradled to him, and he held me as though I was the most precious thing in his world. Sawyer lifted my chin, looked deeply into my eyes.
“Her father forbade their marriage, but they were handfasted, the two of them, and came to America shortly after, around 1820. My father was born in 1821, and then my great-uncle Isaac joined them and they started the smithing business in Suttonville. And all of those years, until they died, they were never formally wed in a church. Granny said that the handfast was enough for her. That was all she wanted. They loved each other so, Lorie. After Granny died, Granddaddy just stopped living. He died not weeks later.”
Heart of a Dove Page 30