Fire Along the Sky
Page 168

“Just the right height,” he said, fumbling with his own clothes.
For what? Lily might have asked, out of an odd and truly perverse modesty, but he was showing her that, pulling at her clothing and his own and then sinking into her, hard and impatient, moving into the very heart and core of her in the middle of the deserted kitchen. On a table.
“Oh, Christ,” he whispered, pausing for a moment, his breath coming harsh. He held her down with his weight and the thrust of his hips, the absolute fact of him inside her, joined to her, his mouth on hers, wet and warm, the touch of his tongue. He pulled her hips forward and seated himself in her more firmly and Lily could have drifted away into death just then and gone gladly, as long as he went with her, just like this.
“Holy God,” he muttered, his face buried in the crook of her shoulder.
She gasped. “And you call me a heathen.”
“My grumfie, my love,” he whispered against her mouth. “We'll be heathens tegither, the twa of us.”
Much later, on their way back to the village, Lily dragged her feet a little, in no hurry to be among people again. She asked herself how she could ever pretend to be her mother's rational daughter, how she had ever thought herself to be that person. She was learning astonishing things about herself that she could hardly share with anyone except Simon.
“I am a little ashamed,” Lily said to him. And then: “You have a wicked grin, Simon Ballentyne. Don't let my mother see it on your face or she'll know what you've—” She paused, and cleared her throat. “What we've been doing.”
That made him laugh. “As if we could hide it.”
“Well, we should hide it,” Lily said, a little irritated with him but most of all with herself: she wanted him to kiss her again, but she didn't want to ask for it, and what a wanton thing she was. “It's unseemly, with all that's happened.”
Simon shot her a narrow look. “Wilde will survive.”
Lily snapped at him. “I was thinking of my brother.” And it was true, in part.
At that he fell silent for a while. Then he said: “Do you want me to go back to Nut Island, to see if I can be of any help?”
Since Luke's letter had come, that thought had occurred to Lily more than once.
“My mother would like it,” she admitted. “If you went, she'd feel better about Daniel. And it would mean she could stop worrying about me. About us.”
Simon said, “And you, Lily? Would you like it?”
She stopped then, and wrapped her arms around herself. “If I thought it would help my brother, I would let you go and not say a word. But no, I wouldn't like having to worry about both of you.”
He raised a hand to run a callused thumb along the line of her jaw, and then he leaned down and kissed her. A simple kiss, soft and sweet. Nothing of lust in it, but a strong, simple affection that made her sway toward him.
He said, “You only have to ask, Lily. You know that.”
They had stopped where the woods gave way to the Todds' pasture, at the very spot where shadows gave way to light. Lily pressed her forehead to Simon's chest and nodded, glad of the bulk of him and the warmth and his smells. Pressed against him like that she felt the moment his attention shifted, felt the tension that ran through him.
“What?” she said, not looking; not wanting to let the moment go.
“Wilde. There.”
She made herself look, then. A horse stood at the fence that surrounded the kitchen garden, an animal she knew: the old gelding that Joshua Hench kept at the smithy and rented out now and then.
And Nicholas Wilde, taking a sapling from the pannier, its root ball wrapped in burlap and twine.
“Paradise Found,” Lily whispered, and felt Simon jerk in surprise.
“The tree,” she said. “He named the apple Paradise Found. He has—” She swallowed hard. “He had great hopes for it.”
Callie had appeared in the open kitchen door, and even at this distance some things were clear: the fists wound in her apron, the pale oval of her face, the slope of her shoulders.
“He's come to tell her goodbye,” Simon said. “You should take your leave of him too.”
It cost him a great deal to say that, and Lily was thankful. She squeezed his hand, and smiled at him.
“I won't be long,” she said. “I promise.”
It was no more than five minutes' walk to the kitchen, but by the time she got there Nicholas was already leaving, his expression as still as stone.
He stopped on the step, and would not meet her eye.
“You're going away.” It wasn't a question, and he made no move to answer her. The other things she might have asked, about his plans, about Jemima, those questions filled her mouth like bitter vetch, but she swallowed them.
Nicholas studied the hat in his hands for so long that she thought, just for a moment, that he might have changed his mind. Then he walked away without another word, lifted himself into the saddle, and rode away.
The kitchen door still stood open. Lily heard the sound of weeping, and in counterpoint, Curiosity's voice, the low crooning tone she used with hurt things.
What Lily wanted to do was to turn around and run away, but she forced herself up the stairs and through the door, and when she had closed it behind herself and turned, Callie flung herself into her arms so violently that she lost her balance and slid to the floor.
Callie's thin shoulders trembled. “I'll never see him again.” Her face, pressed hard against Lily's shoulder, was hot with tears and wet, but Lily heard every word clearly. “I'll never see my father again.”