Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  The first thing Nathaniel had done was to find the supplies Joshua had told him about, hidden in one of the last caves under scraped and oiled buckskin. Everything they needed was here: two filled lanterns, a keg of oil, a handful of tallow candles, a flintbox, an empty water barrel, a pot and a fry pan, a pile of old bearskins that would serve as sleeping pallets and blankets both, a bucket and a shovel, some ammunition and powder, a fishing line and net, a couple pounds of no-cake as well as a good supply of corn stored in a double barrel with a tight lid that was meant to keep raccoons and mice out.

  Nathaniel brought the bearskins and the lanterns out to the lean-to, where he lit them both and handed one to Selah.

  Her face had gone very still, out of fear or simple cautiousness. He smiled at her, and she managed a small smile in return.

  The women picked up the bearskins and followed him through the chain of caves, each slightly bigger than the one before until Nathaniel could stand without striking his head. When Robbie was alive he had used this place like a house, dedicating each of the chambers to a different purpose, but now they were all empty. No doubt his tools and traps were being put to good use by the people of Red Rock. It would have pleased Robbie to know that.

  Behind him Elizabeth drew in a surprised breath.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, look.” It was the one thing of Robbie’s that no one had valued enough to carry away: a small oil painting of a horse in a cracked frame, almost unrecognizable now for moss and mold and flaking paint. “I always meant to ask him how he came by this.”

  “That’s a story I can tell,” Nathaniel said, running a hand down her arm. “Later.”

  Selah’s face moved in and out of the light of the swinging lantern. “What is that bad smell?”

  “Minerals,” said Elizabeth. “From the hot springs. Come, we’ll show you.”

  They passed through two more natural chambers. The first one was as black as pitch, but there was some faint light in the second cave. Elizabeth pointed out a spalt in the sloped ceiling, as wide as a hand and three feet long. Right now nothing could be seen through it, but Elizabeth had spent many nights watching the stars from a pallet Robbie had made for her.

  “It’s light here in the morning,” she said. “And we can cook here if for some reason we don’t want to use the pit outside. You see, Nathaniel has already brought us a turkey. Very enterprising of you, husband.”

  Selah had been looking increasingly anxious, but now she put down her pack with a great sigh of relief. “Can I sleep here?”

  Nathaniel grinned at her. “You might not like it if it starts to rain.”

  “Don’t mind the rain,” said Selah. “It’s being so closed up that I don’t much care for.”

  It only took a few minutes to show her the last of the caverns, two of them too small for any real purpose, and then the largest of all, where the air was dense and sour on the tongue, and the heat was enough to make a man at rest sweat hard. A pool of water spread out in front of them, as dark and heavy as oil.

  “It is deep enough to swim,” offered Elizabeth.

  A look of revulsion passed over Selah’s face, and she shuddered. “I’d rather jump in that cold lake.”

  Elizabeth said, “Well then, I’ll leave you the lake and you can leave me the hot springs.”

  The hair on Elizabeth’s brow had gone damp and curly, and Nathaniel had the sudden urge to reach out and touch it. She gave him a look that said she knew exactly what he was thinking, a little nervous and pleased, something playful there that promised good things for the night to come.

  He said, “Let’s see to that bird, and then it’s time to get to bed.” He grinned at Elizabeth. “Don’t want to use up more of this lantern oil than we have to.”

  After they had eaten, Nathaniel put down his pallet in one of the smaller caves near the lean-to and set to cleaning and reloading his rifle. He had shed his hunting shirt and leggings, content to work in nothing but a breechclout even in the cool of the caves.

  Elizabeth found him there after she was sure that Selah was settled and comfortable.

  “Everything all right?”

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on the way the lantern light played against the bare skin of his chest, the muscles in his shoulders and thighs. When they had first been married, Elizabeth had often been shocked to come upon him near naked just like this; then she had slowly come to accept the fact that she could not talk him into clothing. He was simply most comfortable in a breechclout. It had taken almost a year for her to admit to herself that she liked him like this. It was something she had never said out loud.

  Much of her girlhood training had been left behind in England, but there were simply no words she knew how to say that would convey the simple truth: she took a great deal of joy in the sight of her husband’s near nakedness.

  She finally cleared her throat. “I gather that porcupine nest in the corner is abandoned?”

  He raised a brow at her. “It is. You’ve got prickles enough for me, Boots.”

  She snorted softly. “Then perhaps we should put the nest out, Nathaniel. There’s hardly room enough for me here as it is.”

  He was pouring gunpowder from the horn into the pan almost without looking. “We’ve managed in smaller spaces, as I recall, but we don’t need to worry about that tonight.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because you won’t be sleeping here.”

  “Really, Nathaniel,” she said primly. “I must sleep sometime, and so must you.”

  He put back his head and laughed. “What a wanton I’ve got to wife.”

  She sat down abruptly. “If I’m a wanton it’s all your doing, Nathaniel Bonner. And if I jumped to the wrong conclusion, there’s good cause for that too. Many a night you’ve kept me from my sleep.”

  He leaned closer and tugged at her plait. “So I have, I cain’t deny it. But what I meant about tonight was, you’ll be sleeping back there with Selah.”

  Elizabeth knew the look in his eyes very well, and it had nothing to do with her sleeping anywhere but right next to him.

  “And why would I do that?”

  “In case that bear you were worried about comes around, wanting to share your bed. He’ll have to go through me first.”

  She regarded him silently for a moment. He was thinking of Liam Kirby; she knew that without being told. Perhaps the tracks he had found earlier were not Splitting-Moon’s at all; perhaps he was more worried than he had admitted. Before she could ask, he reached over and ran a thumb across her lower lip. “Now understand, Boots. I’m going to keep you here for a while first, until you’re good and wore out.”

  She flushed because he meant her to, because she could no more resist his touch than she could stop breathing. But there was no need to rush things, and so she pulled her hairbrush out of her pack—the one luxury she had not left behind at Lake in the Clouds—and held it out to him.

  “I take it you’re willing to brush my hair before you … banish me.”

  His fingers moved over hers as he took the brush. “Oh, at the very least. Come on over here, Boots.”

  This was the best time of all, the thing she looked forward to all day long. Every evening when the children were in bed and the work was done she would sit down in the vee of his legs on their bed and Nathaniel would brush her hair and plait it for her. Sometimes they talked, but more often it was a quiet time.

  Elizabeth concentrated on the pull of the brush through her hair, the way it made all the nerves in her scalp come alive. One by one her muscles relaxed as the brush did its work. Now and then Nathaniel stopped to untangle a knot with his fingers, and with each gentle tug a shiver moved down her spine to pool warm, low in her belly. When he moved the mass of her hair to one side and nipped at the exposed skin of her shoulder she arched against him.

  The truth was, no matter how hard her day or dark her mood, these fifteen minutes when Nathaniel tended to her were enough to make everything good again. By the time he finish
ed, putting down the brush to rub her scalp, cupping her head and then her shoulders in his hands to knead gently, she was boneless and pliable, liquid enough to spill.

  Sometimes Elizabeth wondered if all over the world other women were sitting in front of their husbands like this, if it was something that everyone did and nobody talked about, like other acts between husband and wife.

  “I wonder if Mr. Gathercole would call this sinful,” Elizabeth said out loud.

  She felt his teeth at her shoulder, nipping hard enough to make her yelp. “What was that for, may I ask?”

  “I don’t like you bringing up another man’s name just now, Boots.” Warm breath at her ear, his voice low and rough, the touch of his tongue—she let out a soft moan and he smiled against her neck. “Anyway, a preacher’s got no business in this cave with us. I imagine he’d take one look and throw a fit, anyway.”

  “Do you?” As hard as it was, Elizabeth pulled away and got to her feet. “He has a wife; they have a daughter. This … business can’t be totally foreign to him.”

  “What business would that be?” Nathaniel reached out for her, but she stepped away.

  “Oh no,” said Elizabeth. “We’re not going to get caught up in that conversation. Not yet. I’m going to bathe first.” She picked up the lantern and glanced at him over her shoulder.

  “I’m sure Mr. Gathercole would approve.”

  He lunged for her, his fingers brushing against her hip as she shrieked a high laugh and darted away. The sound of her laughter trailed behind her like a veil.

  “You’ll wake Selah,” Nathaniel called.

  “Don’t worry none about me,” came Selah’s quiet voice. “I’m fast asleep.”

  That was enough to quiet Elizabeth. She ran the rest of the way to the last cavern in silence, hanging the lantern on a hook on the wall in one movement while she loosed her leggings with the other, kicking her way out of them and pulling her overdress up over her head, determined to be chin deep in the water before Nathaniel could catch her. Her heart was beating so loud in her ears that she didn’t hear him coming and didn’t know he was there until his hands were on her.

  He pulled the overdress off and jerked her back against him in a single movement. “Why, Boots,” he whispered. “You weren’t thinking of getting in that water without me, were you?”

  She tried to turn to him, but he tightened his grip. Gathered her hair with one hand and put it over his own shoulder, so that all along her naked back she could feel him, the smoothness of his chest, the breechclout caught up against his middle, how ready he was. He slid one hand down her belly, hard against soft, lower and lower still until she went lax against him, the back of her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder.

  “That’s better.” His mouth on her temple, hot and cool all at once. She whimpered as his fingers worked their way between her legs, the roughened skin of his fingertips seeking and finding until her knees began to buckle.

  “Have mercy,” she whispered.

  He took her down to the hard floor, spread her open beneath him.

  “Is it mercy you want?” Heavy flesh hovering, touching her lightly and withdrawing again. A severity had come over his face, as if she might decide suddenly and without warning to deny him. All the hundreds of times she had taken him into her body and he still held himself back at this last crucial moment before they came together, demanding that she commit herself anew, pledge herself and her body again and again.

  She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him open-mouthed, raised her hips in welcome. “I want you, I want this.” Her flesh parted to accept him, unfamiliar for that moment until he had centered himself inside her and was transformed, no longer Nathaniel but as much a part of her as her own heart.

  He smiled against her mouth. Held her tight against him with one hand on the small of her back, and rolled them into the water as he surged into her.

  She gasped in shock and surprise at the heat of him deep inside her, the heat of the water everywhere else like stroking fingers, like a thousand nimble and curious tongues probing breasts and thighs, folds of tender flesh stretched taut and straining.

  He was moving against her, inside her, all around her, muttering harshly, making her gasp. He pulled her into the deeper water where he could stand and she could not. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he bent her back across a forearm, lowering his head to suckle one breast and then the other while her hair floated all around them.

  Mine. He whispered it against her wet skin. Mine.

  When the long shuddering started to move through her, wave upon wave, he pulled her up against him, breast to breast. She heard herself making inhuman sounds and his voice at her ear, aye and aye and aye, that’s it, aye, come to me, come. The shuddering began to slow and he slipped a hand between them, used his fingers to make it spin out and out, to take the last bit of her sanity and self-control.

  When he carried her back to the ledge he was still hard inside her, as hard as he had ever been.

  “But you aren’t done.” Her own voice far away and dazed, her body still keening.

  “Neither are you, Boots.” His laugh was as rough and unrelenting as his kiss was soft. “You’re nowhere near done at all.”

  Chapter 14

  By their sixth day in the caves, Elizabeth’s good spirits began to give way to disquiet and restlessness. Nathaniel watched it happen, but for once he had no comfort to offer; there was reason to worry, and it would do no good to pretend otherwise.

  Every day he went out hunting; every day he stayed out a little longer and went a little farther, looking not so much for game, which was plentiful, but for some sign of Splitting-Moon. He brought back a steady stream of turkey, grouse, rabbit, and duck—nothing so large that the meat would go to waste, or have to be smoked. He brought no news at all.

  He kept his growing worries to himself, and watched Elizabeth do the same. Sometimes at night he could almost hear her mind working, but so far they had not talked about what they were both thinking. If there was no way to get Selah Voyager to Red Rock, what then?

  There were three possibilities that came to mind, and none of them appealed much. He could go out and do some serious tracking until he found the runaways, leaving the women here to fend for themselves. That could take up to a week or more, if it turned out that Red Rock wasn’t any one place in particular and the group was on the move. Elizabeth had been on her own in the bush before, but never by choice.

  Or they could go home, just take Selah back to Hidden Wolf and keep her and her child hid on the mountain. That would be the easiest solution, but now that Liam Kirby had brought Ambrose Dye into the search, it was also the most dangerous.

  Then there was Canada. They could take Selah all the way to Montreal, where she’d be safe from blackbirders and Manny could join her. There was a woman in Montreal who would take Selah in without question, but Nathaniel knew pretty much without asking how Elizabeth would react to this idea of adding another four weeks to a journey she hadn’t wanted to make in the first place, and that with a pregnant woman or, more likely, a newborn.

  Elizabeth would flat out refuse to go to Canada, but whether she admitted it to herself or not, any kind of movement would suit her better than the waiting.

  In some ways Elizabeth’s growing restlessness was more trouble than anything else. She liked to think of herself as a creature of habit, but the truth was, she just didn’t take well to the routine that went along with a life in the bush. The playfulness that had taken her through the first few days was still there at night, but in the day she was jittery, and in an unsettled mood Elizabeth was likely to get herself and everybody else into trouble.

  For her part, Selah seemed as calm as ever, but she tended to keep to herself and spent long hours sleeping in the caves under a pile of bearskins. Sometimes she would get a distracted look, and sit quietly with her hands on her belly. For a few minutes all her attention turned inward, as if she were having a conversation with the c
hild on whether or not it was ready to come into the world. Elizabeth went very still when this happened, relaxing only when Selah let out a deep sigh and picked up whatever work she had put aside.

  Selah provided Elizabeth with distraction, for which Nathaniel was thankful. Every day she managed to find something she needed to know that Elizabeth could teach her. Yesterday they had spent most of the morning putting together makeshift compasses, something Robbie had taught Elizabeth when she first came to spend time with him here. The day before they had gone looking for the first fiddleheads, or wild onion, or anything else that would add some flavor to the regular diet of meat and cornbread.

  “Fishing,” announced Elizabeth. She had come up behind him where he sat by the cook fire, barefoot and with her hair slightly damp and flying free. She bent forward from the waist so that it fell to the ground and grasped it all in her hands as if it were a tangle of wayward rope. Peeking out from between the strands, she looked at Nathaniel and said, “I would like it if you came with us and showed Selah how to use a fishing spear.”

  “That could be arranged.” Nathaniel watched the hair slide into her hands on one side, pass through the busily working fingers, and emerge as a fat plait.

  “No meat today,” Elizabeth said firmly.

  He made a hiccuping sound of agreement. “Trout, if we can get some.”

  She righted herself to finish her work, her gaze still fixed on him. “You are very accommodating these days, Nathaniel Bonner.”

  “And you are looking for a fight, Boots. Maybe you should just haul off and punch me in the nose, get it over with. If that would improve your mood.”

  She sat down on the old log that had served as a bench for as long as Nathaniel could remember, polished down by years of use until it gleamed like a great bone. A smile jerked at the corner of her mouth.

  “Am I looking for a fight?” She put back her head to look straight into the sky. “Yes, I suppose I am. I thank you for the kind offer, but I don’t need to punch you in the nose. It will be enough to improve my mood if we get a few fish for our supper.”