Fire Along the Sky
Page 184

“Tell me this,” Jennet said. “First I was a beaver and now a panther. Why is it you must always think of me as some four-legged beast?”
“Now there's an idea,” he said, and flipped her over neatly. Jennet scrambled away from him, laughing and kicking and tumbling, until her back was against the wall and he held up his hands in surrender.
She could not keep the question to herself any longer, and so out it came in a hiccup: “How long can you stay?”
He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, as sweetly as a boy. “I'm already gone, girl.”
Her face twitched with disappointment, but she managed a small smile and saw the same things in his face that he must see in hers.
“Tell me about Daniel first,” he said.
Jennet thought about what to say while she pulled her chemise to rights. “He's in terrible pain. The damage to the nerves in his arm and shoulder, says your sister. Not that you would ever hear it from him, understand. There's never a word of complaint from him, but you can see it on his face, what it's doing to him. As if somebody had used a knife to carve it into him.”
Luke was silent for a moment. “And he still can't use the arm.” Asking her to say the words that he didn't want to hear.
“He can move it, but the pain is enough to make him swoon, if you can imagine that of Daniel Bonner. Hannah won't even let him walk about, she's that worried about keeping the arm still. Though he does, of course, when she's gone.”
“And the wound?”
“Healing,” Jennet said, and then: “More slowly than Hannah hoped it would.”
“It's the pain distracting him,” said Luke.
“The worst of it is, he's lost all hope,” Jennet said. “He barely talks to anyone except to Blue-Jay and Hannah, and there's a bitterness in him that breaks my heart, Luke. He's convinced himself he's going to lose the arm, though Hannah tells him that it's no the case.”
She watched Luke thinking, his expression blank but his eyes bright and a thousand thoughts moving behind them, weighing and calculating and weighing again. He wouldn't let himself feel his brother's pain because he couldn't afford that distraction. It was what she expected of him, but she admired it nonetheless.
He said, “We can wait another four or five weeks at the most. Jennet, listen.” He leaned closer. “My leaning is to tell you as little as possible of our plans, so you'll be as surprised as the next person when the time comes—”
“You'll get no argument from me on that count,” Jennet said.
“—but there is something I need to ask you. If things go wrong, it could be that I'll have to stay out of Canada.”
She looked at him then and saw no real worry in his face. “For how long?”
Luke shrugged, the muscles in his shoulder rolling. “For good, most likely. If things go wrong.”
“But what of the business? What of Forbes and Sons and the rest of it?”
“I've already hired another manager, and I can sell out my shares on short notice—”
“If things go wrong,” she finished for him. “You're willing to risk everything you've built up for yourself in Montreal?”
The corner of his mouth twitched, some of the old humor there in him, the fearlessness of the younger man she had known in Scotland. “For my brother? Of course. The question I'm putting to you is, whether you're willing to settle down someplace else. Boston or Manhattan or Albany.”
He was watching her closely, as if he weren't quite sure of what she would say but meant to hide his worry.
“Madame del Giglio said I would be traveling farther than Montreal,” Jennet said, suddenly remembering.
“Well, then,” Luke said with a sour grin. “That settles it. We might as well pack up right now and get ourselves on the road.”
“Tease me if you must,” Jennet said, fighting back the irritation that pushed its way up. “But here's your answer: I came this far for you, Luke Bonner, and I'm not about to give up now. I'll follow you to the ends of the earth if I must.”
“Let's hope that won't be necessary,” he said, reaching for her with a tender expression. She caught his hand in her own and held it, feeling the energy there and the heat of him, the nature of his purpose.
“There's something else,” Jennet said, and she wondered at herself that her body should be roused by nothing more than the way he was looking at her. Such sad, terrible, important things still needed to be said and here she was, covered with gooseflesh at the touch of him.
She said, “I fear Hannah won't leave when the time comes.”
Luke raised an eyebrow and tilted his head, and Jennet went on.
“You may spirit Blue-Jay and Daniel away without a peep, but in the end I think she'll stay for the sake of the others. She won't be able to turn her back on them.”
Luke raised a hand to push a curl out of Jennet's face and then his fingers moved down and flicked open the buttons on her chemise she had finally managed to do up. “Of course she wouldn't leave the prisoners,” he said. “We knew that all along.”
Jennet caught his wrist and held it. “Oh, you did. Then pray tell me, how did you plan to get her away from here? Are you going to knock her senseless and carry her off in a sack?”
“Don't be silly.” He pressed a knuckle to her breastbone and then ran it down to her belly so that she gasped and tried to turn away.