Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 48

She passed through the narrow and dimly lit corridor to Pickering's quarters, blinded now by the last of the sunlight that sifted through the shutters in flickering bars. Elizabeth made out the narrow bed, the table set with silver and linen for supper, a desk of gleaming mahogany, its cubbyholes spilling paper. And on the far side of the room, a man in a rough white linen shirt and dark breeches bent over the basket where the babies slept. A sharp shiver of fear slid up Elizabeth's spine. She looked around herself for some kind of weapon, but he had already heard her.
His head came up as he turned, the long line of his back straightening.
Nathaniel. Elizabeth stepped backward, feeling the door at her shoulder, so solid and real. She blinked, and still he was there: Nathaniel. He touched the basket as if to steady himself and she recognized his hand as she would her own: the turn of his wrist, the long, strong fingers. The muscles worked along the column of his neck as he swallowed convulsively and swallowed again.
"Aren't you going to talk to me?" he whispered from the other side of the cabin, ten feet and an eternity away.
Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to clasp them together, hard enough to make her wince. "Are you real?"
His smile was so familiar and full of joy that it burned her to look at him.
"Never doubt it, Boots." Suddenly he was in front of her, his hands closing around her upper arms as her knees began to give way. He smelled of strong soap and of his sweet self, Nathaniel. He leaned down to her, his hair swinging forward to touch her cheek.
"I am real," he said. "And by God, wife, so are you."
She might have answered him but he cut her off. He was all a blur to her, for she would not close her eyes even as her mouth went soft and open and slack with want and need to meet him. Then Nathaniel broke away and wiped her wet cheeks with his fingers, crooning small comforting sounds. And he kissed her again, the taste of him sending small shocks into every corner of her being.
"Nathaniel!" she said finally, gasping for breath. "You are supposed to be in gaol! What are you doing here?"
He pulled her to sit beside him on the cot. "Rescuing you."
"Rescuing me?"
"Didn't they tell you on deck?"
"No," Elizabeth said. "They most certainly did not, the rotters. I thought you were a pirate. Does Captain Pickering know you are on board?"
He laughed out loud at that. "Of course. Did you think we stowed away?"
"But how--"
He kissed her again, her grinning pirate of a husband. "We broke out night before last and headed straight here to keep you from going upriver. By God, Elizabeth, you had me scared out of my wits."
"You were scared!" Indignant, she grasped his forearms as hard as she could. "Runs-from-Bears came to me this afternoon with the news that gallows have been built at the garrison gaol. I have never been so frightened."
"It was close, that's true. But we got away before they could try us--"
On the heels of relief a new kind of dread. Elizabeth tightened her grip on him. "The entire army must be looking for you. And what's become of Will?"
"He's on his way to Québec--probably there already."
"This is a fine mess," Elizabeth said. "Why is Will going to Québec? It makes no sense."
"It does if you think about the way things look for him. He shows up to negotiate us out of gaol and the next thing you know, we escaped. Somerville asked Will to chaperone his daughter to Québec-- testing him, is the way Pickering looks at it. So Will's in the clear, Boots, and you'll see him soon enough."
"But how shall I see him if he is in Québec?" Elizabeth felt suddenly dizzy. "We are going to Québec? But I want to go home!" She was mortified by her own childish tone, and still more by the tear that spilled down her cheek. But he simply wiped it away and held her.
"God knows we all do, Boots, but Somerville's got troops looking for us all over."
"Nathaniel, Québec is in the wrong direction!"
He kissed the palm of her hand. "We can't go overland with the babies, not with Somerville set on tracking us down. We've got no choice but to go north and look for a ship there that will take us home down the coast from Halifax. If it weren't for Moncrieff and Pickering, we'd be in a worse scrape than we are already."
Elizabeth struggled to order the hundreds of questions that came to mind. "I don't understand why Pickering should go to such trouble for us."
"He's a friend of Moncrieff's."
"Moncrieff." Elizabeth had all but forgotten the Scot and his mission to find her father-in-law. It seemed very unreal right now, and utterly unimportant. "This is very confusing, Nathaniel."
He nodded, smoothing her hair. "I can't tell you exactly how it came to pass, except that Iona got to Pickering through Moncrieff. And more than that, I can't pretend I ain't worried. We'd rather set off overland on our own, but it just ain't safe."
He met her eye but something flickered there, unsaid. It was absurd, the idea that the three of them should somehow be unable to get away--Hawkeye and Robbie and Nathaniel could slip into the forests and Somerville would never be able to put his hands on them. Because she could not deny the truth to him or herself, Elizabeth said what he would not. "I should not have come."
Nathaniel caught her face between his palms. "Listen to me, Boots. I was never so glad to see anybody in my life as I was to see you on that dock."