Fire Along the Sky
Page 139

Up before first light, he would take his rifle down from the rack over the door and slip out. Lily imagined him on the mountain, his back to the sunrise as he studied the horizon to the north. In his mind's eye he would travel the great lake, winding through islands to where Champlain narrowed into the Sorel, all the way to Nut Island and the stockade.
Every morning she lay awake and hoped that her father would come and ask her to walk with him, and every morning he went alone.
When she had been home a week, Lily began to believe that her father was never going to raise the subject of Simon Ballentyne or Nicholas Wilde with her. At first it was a relief and then, quite quickly, a burden. The surprise was this: his anger would have been easier to bear than the terrible weight of his thoughtful silence.
Then one day she came home and found her father sitting in front of the hearth across from Nicholas Wilde.
She stood in the doorway, her heart beating so hard in her throat that she couldn't make a sound. Instead she closed the door and took off her mantle and hung it on its hook, and then she came into the room in her stocking feet and waited.
“It's time we talked,” said her father. “There's business we need to settle.”
Lily had seen Nicholas three times since she came home: that night in Curiosity's kitchen, and twice from afar when she was on her way home from the village. She had yet to see Jemima at all. This was the first time she could really look at Nicholas, and what she saw was more painful than any stories told in malice.
He's reaping a fool's bounty, Curiosity had said. At the time it hadn't meant very much to Lily, but now she saw what the last months had cost this man.
Nicholas stared at his hands while he spoke. He said, “I just want to say once more in front of Lily what I said to you before, Nathaniel. I'm sorry for the hurt I've caused. I should have known better than to let you get attached to me, no matter how innocent it was. It was wrong, and I apologize.”
There was a stone in her throat, one that would choke her if she did not spit it out or swallow it. But if she said those things that were in her mind, if she put those words out into the world, then they could never be taken back again: they would live in her father's mind and heart for as long as he drew breath. And she could not bear how he would look at her then, if he understood what kind of person she was, really, down deep.
Lily closed her eyes. Nicholas took that for agreement, or at least surrender to the inevitable. “You know I'm married again. It don't matter how I came to make such a mess of things, at least it don't matter to you. I take the blame for it.” His voice went hoarse. “I apologize to you. And I wish you well, Lily Bonner. I truly do. Will you shake my hand?”
His hand, long and fine fingered, an artist's hand, she had once told him, that could coax gold-red fruit from the earth. What a child she had been. Lily took his hand and felt how cold it was, and limp, and tentative.
She stood up and left the room, and not until she closed her chamber door behind herself did she realize that she had not spoken a single word to Nicholas Wilde, a man she had loved with all her heart, and now must love and hate in equal measure. For his cowardice, and for his betrayal.
Her father said, “What would you have had the man say to you?”
She had been asleep when he came in, her face damp on a pillow slip wet with her weeping. Now Lily righted herself in the dim of the late afternoon and blinked. For a moment she thought it was her twin sitting on the chair beside the bed. She would have given anything just now to have Daniel beside her; she would have gladly taken whatever hard words he had and asked for more, just for the pleasure of sitting with him. But instead here was her father, her beloved father, looking at her with an expression she could hardly stand to see. Not exactly angry, but worried and disappointed and frustrated too, and struggling with all of that.
She let herself bend over, pressed her forehead to her knees and rocked herself.
“Come, girl,” he said, low and soft; her father's calm voice in the night. “Breathe deep. You're safe, now. You're home.”
She stayed like that for a while, weeping without sound, her father's hand light on her back. Then she straightened and wiped her face with her hands. “I don't know. I don't know what I wanted him to say. Something else.”
Something impossible. Something foolish.
After a moment he said, “I've got two things I need to make clear. First is, no matter what nonsense you've got in your head, I'm not mad at you. Not over something like this. You'll pick up and move on and make more mistakes, and I won't be mad at you about those either, unless you set out to hurt somebody on purpose. The second thing is, I'm glad you're home, daughter. I missed you, but I'm wondering why you came.”
Lily raised her head and blinked at him, confused now and so tired that she could have slept for hours. “I came home to hear him say what he said.”
He rubbed a thumb across the line of his jaw. “I suppose I can understand that. Will you go back now, to Montreal?”
There was something in her father's expression that she couldn't quite read, some fear, or, Lily corrected herself, hope. Then she heard what she had missed before: the sound of voices downstairs. Gabriel and Annie chattering like squirrels, and a deeper voice in answer.
She said, “Simon's come.”
“Aye. He brought word of your brother.” And before she could launch herself from the bed he held up a hand. “Daniel's on the mend.”