Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

by Sara Donati

  He went very still then, his jaw working hard. There was a faint buzzing in her ears because she saw something new in his expression: reluctant agreement.

  Finally he said, “You have to talk her out of it.”

  Jennet shook her head to clear it. “Talk Lily out of what? Out of going away from here? A fine bit of hypocrisy that would be, and should it be possible.”

  “Talk her out of marrying Simon Ballentyne,” Luke said, his voice dropping to a whisper, one that was meant to intimidate and in fact would intimidate almost anyone else.

  Jennet met his gaze directly and matched his tone. “And why shouldn't she marry him? He's a good man, is he no?”

  “Jennet Scott,” Luke said slowly. “You of all people know what it means to marry where there's no love.”

  She slapped him then, in her surprise and anger and frustration. Before her hand had left his face he had grabbed her by the wrist to keep her from running away, and though she might twist and yank she would be going nowhere until Luke decided to let her go. Neither would he bring her close enough to really touch.

  “How dare you.” Her voice was trembling but she couldn't help it. “How dare you throw that up to me.”

  “In battle a man uses the weapons to hand,” he said. “And in this case the truth is all I've got. You can talk her out of this foolishness, Jennet. She doesn't know Simon Ballentyne.”

  “Is he a murderer then, a thief, an abuser of women?” She looked pointedly at her wrist caught up in the manacle he made of his hand.

  “Don't be ridiculous.”

  “Then she must make up her own mind.”

  He pulled her closer. “Christ, girl, do you have any idea what you're asking?”

  She stilled and for a moment there was just the heated silence while they struggled, each of them, to calm their breathing.

  “If you don't want her to marry, then you must agree to take her to Montreal,” Jennet said finally. “It's only because you took it upon yourself to make that decision for her that she's in there, right this very moment, considering taking Simon as husband.”

  He let her go suddenly but he didn't step back. “You did plan this.”

  “You're just angry because you can't have your way. Admit it, man, and be done with it. You can't force your sister to do your will, and you can't control me, and no more can you wish away the way you feel about me.”

  And because he was so close, and because she was so angry, Jennet slung her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the fury in her. For a moment his hands were on her waist and he was holding her and he kissed her back, really kissed her and she tasted it on his mouth, the rightness of it.

  “Jennet,” he said wearily.

  She pressed her face to his chest and then raised her head to look at him. “Why do you fight it so?”

  There was a tenderness in his expression that she had only seen once before, on the day he left Scotland. It made everything inside her clench with hope and fear at once. Jennet touched his face lightly, traced the high sweep of his brow and the curve of his cheekbone and the hard line of his jaw, rough with beard. She touched him as she would touch a half-tame cat, for the pleasure of it and because there was the chance that this time he might allow it.

  He caught her hand in his own and turned it, kissed her palm and let it go. “What I want doesn't matter, not right now,” he said. “What matters is your safety.”

  “Tell me then if there's someone else,” Jennet said. It was the question that sat like a rock in her throat, one that she must cough up or choke on. “If you tell me that, I'll leave you be.”

  “There's someone else,” he said, and before she could take even one more breath he kissed her, a sharp, hard kiss.

  “Jennet,” he said. “There's a war. She's as jealous as any woman, this war, and greedier by far. I could be dead tomorrow.”

  “But you aren't a soldier,” Jennet said, mystified and frightened too. “You aren't planning on joining the fighting, you've said so again and again.”

  He shook his head at her, his gaze steady. “There's more than one way to fight in a war, girl. Not everybody wears a uniform.”

  She stepped back from him and pressed a hand to her mouth. He was looking at her steadily, and Jennet realized that he had been holding back this information for weeks, and he was glad to be free of it.

  “Does your father know?”

  “No. Not exactly, at any rate. You're the only one I've told.”

  She turned and walked away from him to sink down onto a boulder. Dusk had seeped into night; on the edge of the world a new moon was rising, a sliver of old bone pressed into the bruising flesh of the sky. Owls called, one and then another, and somewhere far off a wolf raised her voice in offering.

  Jennet wanted to ask what government he was spying for, how he had been drawn in, what he meant by taking sides when he said he could not, would not. She wanted to know these things and she was afraid to know them. And she was excited, too, and trembling with it because they had come, finally, to the place where he would deny her no longer.

  He was standing next to her, close but not touching.

  “That's why I don't want to take Lily back to Montreal,” he said. “That's why it's better that you stay here.”

  “So that if they catch you and hang you we won't be there to watch,” Jennet said numbly.

  He gave a low laugh that was meant to comfort. “Ach, and what lobsterback is quick enough to catch a Scott of Carryck?”

  “Ah,” Jennet said, for he had answered one question, at least: he was not working for the English Crown.

  “Will you do what you can to keep my sister here?” he asked.

  The anger came back to her in a rush, and she stood to face him. “No,” she said. “I won't do that because it can't be done, and because to have her there is the best guarantee that you'll be careful. For her sake, if not for mine. If not for your own.”

  In the near dark his expression was hard to read, but Jennet knew suddenly that she must leave him or embarrass herself with tears. He reached out to stop her but she shook him off.

  “There are things I need to say to you,” he called after her. “Things we need to have clear between us before I go.”

  “You made me wait ten years, Luke Bonner,” she called back over her shoulder. “Now it's your turn. See how you like it.”

  In Carryckcastle where she had been born and lived all her life Jennet could have hid for days at a time. As a child she had perfected the art of slipping from chamber to chamber as silently as a shadow, but there was no such escape at Lake in the Clouds. She was not so rash as to go out into the forests after dark, and so she must settle for the barn. There was an empty stall between the two horses and she made herself at home. She had been there no more than an hour when Hannah found her.

  “The mosquitoes will eat you alive if you don't come in,” she said at the door.

  “Too late.” Jennet slapped at her neck. And then: “What was decided about Lily?”

  Hannah said, “She's going.”

  “Of course she's going. But what about Simon?”

  “Simon was politely refused,” Hannah said. “And Luke has agreed to take Lily under his wing.”

  “There's no telling when she'll come home again.” Jennet said out loud the thing they were both thinking. Wars were unpredictable; this one might bleed out in three months or stagger on for years. Her own homeland was never at peace, not really.

  “Elizabeth?” Jennet asked.

  “She's putting on a brave face.”

  “Daniel will be furious.”

  Hannah said, “He's young. He thinks he can keep her safe if he ties her down.”

  Jennet let out a harsh laugh. “The men of Carryck all think like that. It's bred into them, I fear.”

  There was a small silence interrupted by a nightjar's call.

  “Luke asked me to find you,” Hannah said after a minute. “He says you must finish your conversation.”
r />   “Did he now. And here am I, too tired for talk. I'll sleep here, I think.”

  Hannah hesitated only for a moment. Then she went to a shelf on the wall and pulled down a pile of blankets, which she tossed to Jennet. They were worn soft with age, and smelled of hay and horse and sunshine.

  “Sleep well,” Hannah said softly, and disappeared back into the dark.

  Chapter 6

  The surprising thing was, Jennet did fall asleep and quite quickly, once she had stripped down to her chemise and underskirt and arranged the blankets to her satisfaction. One moment she was studying the stars through a crack in the timbers and then she was dreaming of home, of the fairy tree where she had spent so many hours as a girl. In her dream the branches were filled with tiny dancing lights, the fairies like stars that had fallen down from the sky to be caught up in the branches.

  She woke suddenly and with a gasp: someone had slapped her.

  Luke was sitting next to her. He had brought a lantern with him that cast his shadow on the wall; a moth fluttered around his head.

  “Mosquitoes on your face,” he said calmly, showing her the bloody smear on his palm. “Three of them at once, feasting.”

  Jennet touched her own cheek and felt the swelling bumps. A quick pass over her face found too many more to count.

  “If you want to sleep out here you'll need this.” He was holding out a jar, already uncorked. “Pennyroyal ointment.”

  She put an arm over her face to hide the fact that she was close to tears, for no reason she wanted to contemplate.

  “Jennet.”

  “What?”

  “Pennyroyal ointment.” He thrust it toward her again, and when she refused to take it, he swore softly under his breath and reached out for her arm.

  She knew she should stop him, but he had already dipped two fingers into the pot and was busy rubbing the ointment into her skin. It was cool and his touch was gentle, and so Jennet sat glumly and let him have his way, waking up little by little as he worked up one arm and then the other, stopping at the shoulder where her chemise started.

  By the time he had finished both arms she was very much awake, awake enough to wonder at herself, that she should sit here half-naked beside Luke. Outwardly she might be calm, but her body was responding in a way that she could not hide; he must see her flush and feel it in the racing of her pulse.

  “Hold up your face,” he said, and she heard a gruff note in his voice that was new to her but immediately recognizable.

  He was so close that she had no choice but to study him. He looked tired, his eyes red rimmed, his hair tousled, cheeks hollow and shadowed with beard stubble. There were faint shadows of pox scars on his cheekbones. It was the scars that scoured what might have been prettiness out of his face and gave him a hard look, but he was beautiful to her and could be no less. He was looking at her with cool blue-gray eyes as if he knew that, and more.

  Luke touched the rising bumps on her forehead and cheeks and chin with the ointment and then, very gently, he smoothed it out with his thumbs, lingering over her cheekbones. His mouth was set in a line.

  “What am I going to do with you?” His breath touched her face and woke all the nerves in her body.

  “You might kiss me,” she said. “That's one place to start.”

  He snorted softly at that but he smiled too, and took her chin between two fingers. Quickly, lightly, he brushed his lips across hers and then turned her head hard to the side. He went to work on her neck, both hands massaging the ointment in gently.

  Her voice trembled, though she willed it not to. “Do you mean to throttle me?”

  His mouth jerked at one corner. “Tempting, but no.”

  He stopped at the hollow at the base of her throat where the ribbons tied her chemise closed. Her breasts pushed against the thin fabric, and she saw the muscles in his jaw knot and flex and then he swallowed.

  He sat back abruptly. “Your legs,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon.” She must feign shock, at least.

  “Your feet and legs.” And he pulled the blanket to one side to expose the tangle of her skirt.

  How very improper. She should say: You mustn't, but she did not. Instead when he took a foot in his hands she put back her head and tried not to sigh out loud. His hands were strong and very clever and they worked their way up over her ankle and to the knee.

  He tugged the muslin free of its tangles and his hands were on her thigh; such big hands, rough and gentle too. She could not catch her breath. Then his hands were gone and he was reaching for the other foot, and with that Jennet collapsed backward onto the blanket and closed her eyes.

  “You've been bit pretty bad.”

  She jerked in his hands. “Unto death,” she agreed.

  Then he was done and he let go of her. He was waiting, she knew that, waiting for her to say something. Come to me, or Leave me be, or Tell me that you love me.

  She touched her own mouth and said, “You missed a bump.” She felt like a girl of sixteen and not a woman almost thirty, a widow who had shared her bed with a lawful husband for ten years full. A husband who had been tender when the need was on him, but who had never made her feel like this, as if her body were no longer her own to govern.

  Luke leaned over her and looked, very seriously, at her mouth. “Ah. So I did. But you don't want pennyroyal ointment on your lip, girl. It tastes terrible.”

  So he kissed her, because she wanted him to and he wanted to and they both were tired of not kissing for all the long years they had been apart and the weeks since she had come to him. He kissed her softly and then not so softly at all and Jennet sighed into his mouth and closed her eyes.

  Then his fingers wandered down and down to work the ties on her chemise and his tongue touched hers, hesitantly at first and finally with purpose: to claim her, once and for all.

  “More bumps,” he said, and slipped away from her to press his face to her breasts and then to suckle them, his mouth greedy now, pulling sounds from her that no lady would make. Sounds that she had never imagined she had inside her.

  It went on and on, the kissing and touching and peeling away of clothing, so that Jennet slipped deeper and deeper into such terror and joy that she shivered with it. Luke soothed her with his smile and voice, words whispered against her ear, hush, and hush, and come now.

  But even his touch could not stop the things that were flashing through her mind, odd, disjointed images and words, bright and brighter still until her mouth opened and they spilled out.

  “Why?” she whispered to him. “Why now?”

  She could feel his flesh all along her own, his wanting just as immediate as the ache in her own body, but the question had come out of her mouth and he heard it and he stopped and seemed to wake up.

  For a moment he looked at her blankly and then he pushed out a sigh and he rolled over on his back and slapped at a mosquito on his neck and another on his shoulder. Finally he came up on an elbow to look in her face.

  “I was going to come to Scotland,” he said. “When I got word that Ewan had died, I was going to come to claim you.”

  This admission took her by surprise, filled her with a stunning happiness and confused her all at once. He wiped her cheek with his thumb and she realized that her face was wet with tears.

  He said, “Then the war started.”

  When it was clear he wasn't going to say anything else, Jennet pushed herself up on one elbow. “But I came to you,” she said. “I came to you and you acted as if you didn't want me.”

  He flipped her onto her back with such sudden force that she hiccupped in surprise. Above her Luke's face was contorted with frustration and anger.

  “Of course I want you,” he said. “I always have. When I saw you on that dock—” He stopped and his mouth tightened.

  Jennet said, “When you saw me on the dock you looked as though you wanted to beat me. I could barely breathe for the joy of seeing you but you turned and walked away.” Her voice caught, remembe
ring the terrible disappointment of that moment and the taste of it, bile and blood.

  He pushed out a heavy breath. “I was angry, yes, but beating wasn't what went through my mind at that moment.”

  Very quietly she said, “You might have made me feel welcome.”

  “Jennet,” he said, pulling her face to his and looking at her with such intensity that she must believe him. “Listen to me now. When I saw you standing there, my heart leapt in my chest.”

  “You don't have to sound so very put out about it,” she said. “If you care for somebody, if you . . .” Her voice trailed away, because she could not say what she was thinking, not even now.

  He said, “No matter what I felt, no matter what I feel, I can't ignore the fact that there's a war, and I'm stuck in the middle of it, and your welfare is my responsibility.”

  She put a hand on his chest to feel the beat of his heart against her palm. “So you pushed me away.”

  “You call this pushing you away?” He drew back a little to frown into her face and with one hand he pulled her to him, lifted her leg over his hip, and poised there at the quick of her, he paused.

  She swallowed the sound that wanted to come out of her throat.

  “You were going to come to Scotland to marry me, were you no?”

  His face tightened ever so slightly, but he nodded. Jennet wondered if he had ever used those particular words to himself when he was thinking of making the journey and claiming her, and decided that he had not.

  “And the war stopped you, aye, I can see it. Then I came to you, but you still haven't spoke to me of marriage. In spite of . . .” She hesitated. “This bump business. So what am I to understand? You do want to marry me? You don't want to marry me, but you'd still like to—”

  “Don't say it,” he said roughly. “Don't even think it.”

  “Then explain it to me,” she said, a little breathlessly because he was rubbing against her in a way that distracted her from even this most interesting of subjects.