Fire Along the Sky
Page 173

Elizabeth couldn't remember the last time Curiosity had asked for any kind of favor, and this odd request, so unexpected, put her off balance for a moment. It made perfect sense in many ways, but even had it not, Curiosity had asked it of her and that alone meant that she must give it serious thought.
“Many-Doves wants to go to Good Pasture,” Elizabeth said. “So she can be closer to Blue-Jay and Daniel. She hasn't said it in so many words, but I think she's only staying at Lake in the Clouds for me.”
“Well, then.” Curiosity smiled and folded her hands on the table in front of her.
“I don't know what Nathaniel will say.”
Curiosity gave her a half-smile. “I do. You ask him right and that husband of yours would haul the moon out of the sky for you, and you know it. Especially in your condition.”
“It would mean letting the fields lie fallow this year,” Elizabeth said, mostly to herself. “But there is enough money in the bank to buy what we need, certainly.” And in that moment she realized that she had already made the decision to leave Hidden Wolf.
Deep in the night, the moon already set, Nathaniel let himself in and stood in the middle of the common room, and listened.
He had built this house with his own hands, and he knew every board and joint. The sounds it made in the wind were as familiar to him as his wife's voice, and its smells as comforting. Wood smoke and beans simmering, wet wool drying, cornbread, lye soap. He breathed in deep and caught, just barely, the scent of his youngest son, though he could not say how he knew it for what it was.
At the bottom of the stairs he paused, thought of going up to check on Gabriel and Lily and then stopped, feeling Elizabeth before he turned to see her, standing at the open door of their chamber. With her hair loose around her shoulders and her shawl gleaming in the night shadows she might have been one of Jennet's witchy women, or the spirit of some well-meaning woman, long gone.
But it was Elizabeth's face and no one else's: heart shaped, with wide-set eyes. If he told her now how fine she looked to him she would blush and turn away, pleased and disbelieving still, after all these years.
Nathaniel went to her, quietly, and touched skin, pale and soft and chill in the night air.
“I've been waiting for you.” She was whispering, not because she needed to, but to draw him closer. He bent his head to her.
“Come,” she said. “Come to bed.”
“As soon as I wash.” He put his hands out like one of their boys, being inspected before he was allowed to sit down to supper.
Elizabeth didn't even look. She put her hands on his, lightly, her thumbs stroking the tattoos that circled his wrists.
“Never mind washing,” she said. “Come to bed, I have to talk to you.”
All day long, on his way home, Nathaniel had been thinking of this moment, of the questions she would ask and the answers he must give her. What he wanted to do—the urge was strong in him—was to lie. It was not something he did often or lightly, keeping the truth from Elizabeth. And now she had things to say to him. She had waited up all night. He clasped her hands hard, harder than he meant to, and she drew in her breath.
He said, “Is there bad news from Canada?”
“No,” she said firmly. She shook her head so that her hair tumbled over her shoulders, black and silver. “No word from Canada, no bad news of Daniel. Come, come now, let me talk to you.”
He stripped down while she climbed into bed and under the covers. When he joined her she put her hands on his cheeks and studied his face. Her breath was milky sweet and soft on his skin.
“I guess you missed me,” he said, turning his head to kiss her palm.
“I did. I always do. Nathaniel.”
“Hmmmm?”
She told him then in the way she had always shared this kind of news: took his hand and put it low on her belly, held it cupped there as if by touch alone he must understand what they had created, the two of them. Forehead to forehead they lay just like that, quietly, breathing each other in and out.
“Are you unhappy?” It wasn't the first question that came to mind, but it was the most important one.
“No,” she said. “Never that.”
“Scared.”
“To the quick.”
“Aye,” he said. “It scares me too, but mostly it makes me happy, Elizabeth. You and me, we'll manage this. We've managed everything else.”
“Yes,” she said, and drew a deep breath. By the time she had let it out, she was asleep.
He should have followed her into sleep, weary as any man who had walked hard for a day. But his body hummed with movement still, and his mind with answers to the questions she hadn't thought to ask.
In the morning she would remember. Sitting across from him at the table, she would ask while she ladled porridge. Lily would want to know, but she would wait for her mother to ask the question: What of Nicholas Wilde?
He could put it out, plain and simple: he had tracked the man west and north, and at the end of the first day had found his horse, or the little that was left of it after the scavengers had finished. On the second day the trail had veered due north and he had followed it until he found what remained of the man.
He could tell them all of the truth, or part of it, or none at all.
What happened to Nicholas Wilde.
Nathaniel could say: Jemima happened to him. Or: I lost his trail; I gave up. Or: he stumbled across a bear, over a cliff, into quicksand.
He might say: I buried him proper and marked the grave, and that was true. But it would not satisfy Elizabeth, whose curiosity was endless, or Lily. Wilde had been her first love, after all, and a girl like Lily—he paused and corrected himself—a woman like Lily would hold on to that, for the rest of her life. No matter how Nicholas Wilde had disappointed her.