Fire Along the Sky
Page 30

He kissed her mouth gently, his fingers on her face. The kiss of a friend. She took his head in her hands and pulled him to her and took the kiss she wanted.
Then she looked at his face as if to memorize it, and she left him for the waning storm.
By the time Lily had got home the sun had come out again to simmer on the edge of a sky washed clean of clouds.
Gabriel came bolting out of the house to tell her the news: Jennet was to stay with them at Lake in the Clouds when Daniel and Blue-Jay went to join the fighting. It was good news, of course. It meant company for Hannah and distraction for Lily's mother. These thoughts she kept to herself, for the time being, while anger had the upper hand.
“You're not surprised,” Gabriel said, deeply affronted that his news should garner so little response.
“There are surprises and surprises,” Lily said. “And more to come.”
She had meant to speak up during the going-away supper, but the conversation at the crowded table was quick and lively and full of laughter and Lily could not find it in herself to put an end to it. Instead she kept busy passing plates and refilling bowls, laughing with the others when laughter was called for.
Finally Many-Doves simply took a bowl out of her hands and pushed her back to her place at the table, where she had no choice but to let herself be studied.
They were all watching her when they thought she would not notice. Her parents, Daniel, Many-Doves, even Gabriel, each of them concerned, not all of them able or willing to hide it. Simon Ballentyne sat across from her and he watched too, silently. His admiration should have pleased her, she knew, but instead Lily felt only irritation: yet another man who was willing to keep his distance.
There was apple grunt for dessert and then Gabriel wanted to hear the old story of the gaol break at the Montreal garrison the winter that the twins were born. Just at that moment Lily realized that if she did not speak up now she must scream. She stood suddenly and the room went silent.
“I have something to say.”
Nathaniel had been waiting for this, but it seemed to take Elizabeth by surprise. Or maybe, he corrected himself in the small silence that followed Lily's announcement, maybe it was not so much surprise as simple fear.
Daniel put down his fork and folded his hands in front of himself. “Go ahead then, sister.”
He was expecting a lecture at best, but there was something else coming. Nathaniel could smell it in the air. He said, “We're listening.”
Lily pulled herself up to her full height, ready to do battle. Sometimes when she held herself like this Nathaniel saw his own mother in the line of her back and the set of her jaw. Which was both a comfort and a curse; he loved his mother and he missed her still every day, but Cora Bonner had been a force to reckon with when she made up her mind.
Nathaniel watched his daughter gather her courage together. “I'm leaving tomorrow too. If I can't go to New-York City, then I'll go to Montreal, with Luke. If he'll take me.”
It wasn't a question, and nobody mistook it for one. Elizabeth looked almost stunned, but she held her peace for the moment. Sometimes dealing with Lily was like finding a bear rummaging around in the larder. It could end in laughter or bloodshed, and it usually wasn't the bear who made the decision on how it would go.
Luke looked his half sister right in the eye, his expression doubtful. “What is it you want to do in Montreal?”
“She wants to study painting,” Gabriel offered. He was looking uncertainly between Lily and Luke.
Nathaniel smiled at the boy and then leaned over to him. “Let your sister speak for herself, son.”
“What she wants,” Daniel said, matching his sister's tone, “is to get away from Paradise.”
Lily's whole body jerked with that, but before she could turn on her twin Elizabeth spoke up. She was angry now, but not at Lily.
“Daniel,” she said calmly. “Do not put words in your sister's mouth.”
Lily's throat and face were flecked with bright color, as if a sudden fever had come over her. “That's exactly right. The decision is mine and mine alone.”
“There's a war on,” Nathaniel said. He said it because if he didn't, Daniel would, and that would be the start of another kind of battle, where words would cut as true as any knife.
“I'm aware of that,” Lily said. “My brother is going to join the fighting, after all.”
With a voice that wavered only slightly Elizabeth said, “If we are unwilling to send you to New-York City in time of war, daughter, what makes you think that we would let you go to Canada, of all places?”
Hannah made a sound, not quite a laugh or a cry but a little of both. “She's not asking for permission, Elizabeth.”
“That's right,” Lily said. She gripped the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles went the color of milk. “I'm not asking for permission, just as you didn't ask for permission when you left England. Just as Jennet didn't ask for permission when she left Scotland, or Hannah when she went west. I will go to Montreal and live under my brother's roof, and I will study art there, and someday when I am ready, I may come home again.”
It might have ended just there, for the moment at least, but Luke wasn't happy and he wouldn't keep it to himself, no matter what warning looks Nathaniel sent his way.
Luke said, “Maybe you ain't asking Da for permission, but what about me?”
“Ah,” said Lily. Her face had gone very still. “I see. You'll take their side in this. In that case I will find a way to go on my own.”