Fire Along the Sky
Page 51

Walking away from the river Simon said, “I'll come fetch you Sunday and we'll go for a sleigh ride.”
“My brother won't like it.”
He had a way of shrugging that said more than words. “It's not your brother I'm inviting.”
Which was, of course, just the right thing to say. Lily thought carefully before she responded.
“If I go for a sleigh ride with you, you mustn't think of yourself as my sweetheart.”
At that he gave her a good strong smile. “I'm a patient man,” he said. “All in good time.”
At the door she said, “How did you know? Did you follow me, when you were at Lake in the Clouds?”
He looked at her with kindness and maybe with a little irritation as well. “You could have anyone you wanted, Lily Bonner. It must be a man who isn't free to love you back.”
Her anger took her by surprise. “He loves me,” she said, and then flushed hot to have said the words, and hotter still to see Simon's expression: understanding, and pity.
For two days she thought about Simon Ballentyne constantly and when she woke on Sunday morning to the sound of church bells she knew that if he came to the door in his sleigh, she would go with him.
The bells reminded Lily, day in and day out, that Montreal was Catholic in its very bones. Most of the city was on their way to mass, dressed in the clothes they kept for that purpose alone. The servants in this house went too, drifting down the stairs silently as ghosts so as not to disturb their mistress, who always kept to her chamber on a Sunday. Wee Iona, who once wore the veil and called herself a bride of Christ, never showed her face on the Sabbath. It was one of the great mysteries that she trailed along behind her, along with the question of how it was she had come to bear a daughter, so many years ago, to George Somerville, Lord Bainbridge.
As a young girl Lily had sometimes gone to Paradise with her mother to listen to Mr. Witherspoon's sermons on Sunday mornings. Then he moved away and instead of services her mother would read from the Bible on Sunday evenings, enough church for anybody, Daniel used to say and Lily agreed with him. In time her uncle Todd had said she might as well use the meetinghouse for her work, and now she had somehow lost all interest in sermons.
As they were, Sunday mornings were the time Lily liked best. It seemed as though she and Luke had not just the house but the whole city to themselves. Her brother spent this time in his little study, writing letters and catching up on his bookkeeping, and Lily had soon got into the habit of sitting nearby with a book in her lap, though she did not read very much.
The room was well lit and there was always a good fire in the hearth. While snow brushed the windows they would talk, of the week that had passed or the week to come. If the mood was on him Luke would tell her stories about his boyhood here in the city, or Lily would talk of Lake in the Clouds and most of all of her brother. It was the only time she allowed herself to speak of Daniel, and she looked forward to it all week, as she imagined Catholics looked forward to confession and being relieved of their sins.
This morning when she came into his study Luke sent her one long look and said, “If you're going to let Simon Ballentyne court you, there are things you should know.”
In her surprise and irritation Lily thought of turning on her heel and leaving, but the challenge in her brother's face was such that she could not.
“He's not courting me.”
Luke tapped his finger on the desk, once and twice and three times. “He thinks he is.”
Lily shrugged. “I made myself clear.”
“And you accomplished that by kissing him under a full moon,” her brother said calmly.
She felt her temper ignite like paper put to candle. “Who I kiss is my own business, brother, and none of yours. You can call off your spies.”
“I don't need spies,” Luke said gruffly. “Not in this city. The news comes to me unbidden.”
For a long moment Lily thought about that, a truth that it would do no good to challenge or even rage against.
Luke said, “I won't stop you—”
“No,” Lily interrupted him. “You won't. Because I won't let you. I did not leave one kind of prison behind for another.”
When he was angry Luke looked most like the father they shared. Their coloring was so different that the connection might be missed, until Luke frowned and the furrow appeared between his brows. Disapproval rose off his skin like body heat; it was all too familiar.
“I can't stop you,” Luke said pointedly, as if she hadn't interrupted. “But you should know—”
“About Ellen Cruikshank. Yes, he told me.”
Surprise flickered across Luke's face. “He told you about Ellen Cruikshank. And did he tell you about his family too?”
Lily raised her eyes to Luke. “His family is no concern of mine, but go on then, if you must.”
He said, “Before she married, Fiona Ballentyne was Fiona Moncrieff. She had two brothers. One was a Jesuit who took the name Contrecoeur, and the other was—”
“Angus Moncrieff,” she finished for him.
Luke was watching her closely, hoping for something particular: shock or dismay or anger. Lily could find none of those things within herself.
She said, “Simon is Angus Moncrieff's nephew.”
“He is.”
“Angus Moncrieff, who betrayed our family and kidnapped Daniel and me when we were babies. And why would you bring Angus Moncrieff's nephew to Lake in the Clouds?”