Fire Along the Sky
Page 210

Lily grimaced. How many times had he asked the question in the last days?
“No,” she said briefly, turning away. “I can't talk about him without getting angry, and I don't want to be angry just now.”
Simon made a satisfied sound deep in his throat and knelt down beside her, leaning over to press a kiss to her cheek.
“Oh, look,” he said in his most innocent voice. “Your linen is wet through. Shall we hang it up to dry?”
Lily laughed and batted his hands away from her buttons. “You are insatiable.”
“And you,” he said, running a hand down her hip. “You are a liar if you're claiming you don't want me again. The proof is right here, if you'll just open—”
“Simon,” Lily said, slapping his hands away yet again. “Anyone could come by here, you know. This spot is known to the whole village.”
“In all the times we've been here nobody has ever come by,” he said. “Or maybe we were just too busy to notice if they did.”
That made her sit up again and clutch her gown to her breast. Lily's hair, half-wet still, clung to her face and shoulders and to the outline of her breasts, but it was her eyes that caught Simon's attention, filled to brimming with reluctant tears.
“Come now,” he said softly, pulling her down again to hold her. “He'll talk to you when he's able. You know he will.”
“He talks to me now,” Lily mumbled against his neck. “Except he doesn't say anything of importance.”
They were quiet for a moment in the cool of the forest shade, listening to the birds overhead.
“Why won't he talk to me?” Lily said.
Simon stroked her head and tried to think of something to say that would be both truthful and comforting. He had been looking for those words since the day Daniel had come home from the war, and he would continue looking, without success.
Because he hadn't come home, not really, not the way his sister expected of him. He had lost the use of his arm, maybe forever. He had left other things behind too, things that were harder to put into words but that sat plain enough for any man to see on his face.
“I'm his twin,” Lily said. “Who else understands him as I do?” Then she stiffened slightly and raised her face to look at Simon directly.
“We should have waited,” she said. “With the wedding, we should have waited.”
“Perhaps,” Simon said, thinking to himself that it would have made no difference at all; it wasn't his sister's wedding that weighed Daniel down, nor was it his mother's rounded belly or the fact that his family had moved off the mountain.
It did have something to do with Jennet, who had sacrificed a great deal—maybe everything—to win him his freedom. That weighed heavy on him and Blue-Jay both. If it weren't for their mothers, Simon had the idea, the two young men would have gone off already to join in Luke's search for Jennet. Simon felt the same way himself; she was the laird's sister, after all.
But Luke had promised to bring her home by the end of this very month, and they must be satisfied with that, though the days ticked on without word. In another week it would be September, and if they had no message by then, it would be next to impossible to keep the Bonner men in Paradise. The women would fight them, but nothing short of the end of the world would keep them from going after Jennet.
He said part of what he was thinking aloud. “Pray God Luke has found their trail.”
Lily gave him a sharp look. “Pray God he is on his way here with Jennet even as we speak.”
“Aye.” Simon rubbed his eyes. “But I fear it won't be as easy as that.”
“You blame yourself,” Lily said, with sudden understanding, and she saw Simon duck his head like a schoolboy. “But why? From everything I've heard—”
“He had everyone fooled. Aye.”
“The colonel and the garrison—”
“And Jennet herself and Hannah. Aye,” he repeated.
“But then how—”
“Because,” he said, forcefully, angrily. “Because I saw the man the last time I was on the island and I never looked at him hard enough. I took him to be the priest he claimed to be.”
This had never occurred to Lily. In all the talk about what had happened on Nut Island, he had been quiet, adding very little to the conversation.
“There's no cause for despair,” Lily said, wanting to comfort herself as much as Simon. “You've said yourself that there's no one in all of French Canada with better connections than Luke.”
To that he had nothing to say, and with good reason; it was a poor excuse for optimism, and they both knew it. On the way home it occurred to Lily that all three of her brothers were unhappy: Gabriel because he had not yet accepted the fact of Simon in his sister's life, Luke because his bride had been stolen away from him by a man who had posed a threat he had not been able to forestall, and Daniel, for reasons she did not like to list for herself.
“And my mother is making a cake.”
Simon seemed to have followed the tortuous path of her thoughts; he put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close as they walked. “A diversion that will lift her spirits, no doubt.”
“Even if it does mean sour stomachs all around.”
Simon slapped his stomach twice. “There was never a Ballentyne born who couldn't stand up to a wee piece of cake.”