Fire Along the Sky
Page 140

Lily pressed a fist to her throat. “Thank God. Blue-Jay?”
“In good health, or close to it.”
She was weeping again, this time in relief. Her father put a hand on the back of her head and rocked her toward him, to kiss her on the forehead.
“Tell me,” she said.
It took him a while to gather his thoughts, but Lily could wait, now.
He said, “Your sister took a bullet out of Daniel's side and there's some worry about his arm, but she thinks he'll survive. When he's well enough he'll come home, him and Blue-Jay both.”
She blinked hard to clear her eyes of tears. “Come home? How will they do that?”
“Runs-from-Bears and Luke have a plan,” her father said. “Simon will tell you the little he knows.”
She sat back against the wall. “Simon came back. He said he would.”
“Aye. He keeps his word.”
Praise indeed, from Nathaniel Bonner. And: “Before we go down, I want you to tell me how you feel about the man, daughter.”
Her first impulse was to lie, or to pretend that she didn't know what he was talking about. But Simon was downstairs waiting to give her news. In his calm way he would lay it all out, and it would make sense, and she would be able to sleep again at night. Because Simon was here, with good news.
Her father said, “Do you love the man, Lily?”
She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and drew in a breath, and then another. Finally she said, “I don't know.”
“Ah,” said her father. There was a smile in his voice. “So it's that way, then.”
“What?” She took away her hands. “What way?”
“If you said no, I'd have some trouble believing you. I saw how you looked at him when he drove off. If you said yes, I'd have trouble believing that too, after the business with Wilde. But ‘maybe,' that's an answer I can live with.”
“I doubt that Simon can live with it,” Lily said.
“Oh, he'll manage.” Her father held out his hand and she took it, and let herself be drawn to her feet. “He's no fool, is your Simon Ballentyne.”
Elizabeth sat by the hearth with her stepdaughter's letter in her lap and a hundred questions unanswered in her head. Most of them had to do with her son, and the things that Hannah hadn't said. Because she had written in haste, or perhaps—Elizabeth couldn't free herself of the idea—because she didn't want to worry them any more than she needed to.
The worst possibilities had been faced, now, and put aside. There was still the matter of getting the boys home, but somehow Elizabeth couldn't find it in herself to worry about that or even think about it just yet.
It was time now to think of Lily, and the man who sat on a stool on the other side of the hearth.
Simon Ballentyne, once of Carryck. Ten years Lily's senior, a solemn man with a head for business, well established, respected. A man who loved Lily—that much he had already made clear—and wanted to take her away from here, for good. Forever. To live in another country. And not just any other country, but the one place Elizabeth did not want to go, and would not permit her husband to go.
She had extracted that promise from Nathaniel almost twenty years ago, when the pain of what they had suffered in Québec had been fresh. And here was Simon Ballentyne, of Montreal.
He was studying the cap he held in his hands. Strong, capable hands. Long of finger and broad of palm. Hands that had touched her daughter, Elizabeth was somehow sure, in the most intimate ways a man could touch a woman. Luke had written to them of the growing connection between his business partner and his sister, but Elizabeth had not understood the nature of it until she saw them together, on the morning he had left to take Hannah and Jennet north.
Simon had been a gentleman in every way; he hadn't touched Lily or said anything to her that he could not have said to a stranger, but the look they exchanged had been full of promises and a subdued longing.
Then Curiosity had come to call, thumping the truth down plain on the table for the two of them to look at together.
“In case you ain't took note, our Lily's been with that Simon.”
Elizabeth had been dozing with a book in her lap, but Curiosity showed no concern or pity, and her tone did its work. For the first time since the news came that Daniel and Blue-Jay had been taken prisoner, she was truly awake. At that moment she understood—as Curiosity meant her to understand—that she had let her worry for one child blind her to the needs of another.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I think you are right.”
“And?”
She rocked for a moment. “I don't know,” Elizabeth said. “I don't know if I should speak to her about him, or wait for her to come to me.” And then, seeing the look on Curiosity's face, a new thought came to her. “Unless you think there's real cause to worry—”
“Now you waking up,” Curiosity said.
A new set of images presented themselves, images too disturbing to contemplate.
“Is she? Do you think—”
“No,” Curiosity said. “She ain't, I'm pretty sure. She'd come to you or me if she was in a family way.”
“Well, then.” Elizabeth settled back into her rocker.
“Is that all you got to say?” Curiosity began to ruffle like a hen.
“Of course not. Of course I must speak to her. But—”