Fire Along the Sky
Page 59

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Ghislaine called at the door even as it swung inward. She stood there with a tray held high, the steam rising up to make the hair at her temples curl. Ghislaine was a pretty girl and always seemed to be in motion; the whirlwind, Iona called her, but affectionately.
“Yesterday,” Ghislaine began straightaway. “Yesterday the youngest daughter of Pierre-Amable Dézéry dit Latour—Amélie, she is called—agreed to marry Gérard Berthelet, in the rue de l'Hôpital. Such a scandal, you cannot imagine. A daughter of the surveyor to the governor engaged to an apprentice joiner who suffers from—” Ghislaine stopped to search for an English word, her small mouth pressed together in concentration. “Early balditude.”
Ghislaine was vain about her own beautiful hair, and expected no less of others. When Lily pointed her lack of charity out to her, Ghislaine only flicked her fingers. “Pffft. Do not preach to me, Miss American Who Knows All. I haven't seen you spending time with the hairless. In fact, your sweetheart has so much hair that his head cannot contain it. It sprouts from his collar and cuffs.”
At that Lily could not help but laugh, though what she wanted to do was to correct Ghislaine: Simon Ballentyne was not her sweetheart. But it would not do to rise to the bait. Instead she swallowed her coffee, very strong and laced with sweet fresh milk, and with it the protests that would only start Ghislaine off on a tangent.
“I see you do not disagree,” Ghislaine said with a satisfied sniff.
“No,” Lily said, finally throwing back the covers. “I simply do not argue.”
At breakfast Luke watched her. Lily could almost see the questions pooling in his mouth, puffing out his cheeks, ready to spill: What is it Simon Ballentyne wants from you? and, Have you written to our father or must I?
Lily applied herself to her porridge and refused to meet her brother's steady gaze. Iona gave her less room.
“Simon's a good man,” she said to Lily when Luke had excused himself from the table and gone off to see to the post. “But he's just a man, after all, lass. You mustn't forget that men are all weak willed when it comes down to it. It's the woman who must bear the burden, in the end.”
Down to what? Lily might have asked, but this would be the worst kind of deception. She knew what Luke and Iona were worried about: that she would allow Simon too many liberties and end up with child, which would mean, in turn, that she would have to marry him and make a life here in Montreal. Or go home carrying her shame before her and admit to everyone that she had not been equal to the freedom she was given. As had been the case with Iona herself, and with Giselle too, both women having borne their children without the benefit of a husband. No wonder they were worried.
At this moment Lily understood, and she could promise Iona that she would be sensible. She could say the words, and mean them. The problem was Simon; could she say the same to him? When he put his hands on her face so gently and kissed her with such skill that the muscles in her belly fluttered with it, could she remember what was expected of her, or even more to the point: what she expected of herself?
The best thing, of course, would be to stay at home today. Just as Lily was forming this resolution in her mind she heard the jangle of harness bells flying past the door. The first sleighs on their way out of the city, on their way to Mount Royal or Lachine.
She went to Iona and leaned over her shoulder. The old woman smelled of herbs and tallow candles this morning, as she often did; there were fresh ink stains on her fingers that said she had been writing. But what? And why? She never sent a letter out with the courier. Iona did not speak of the things that kept her busy behind the closed door of her chamber, and Lily had never had the courage to ask.
She kissed Iona's soft cheek. “I will be sensible,” she said. “I am my mother's daughter, after all.”
“And your father's!” Iona called after her.
A suitable warning, of course, as Lily's father had spent a winter here when he was younger than she was now, and fathered a son on Giselle Somerville.
But Lily only raised a hand in acknowledgment and wouldn't turn back, not now, not with the sound of bells filling the lanes.
When Simon stopped the sleigh at the door Lily was ready in her layers of wool, wrapped in a hooded cape lined with fur. It was impossible to walk normally when she was bundled up like this, but then she only had to negotiate the few steps to the cariole.
It was a small affair, just big enough for two, and painted a bright red with green trim. The bridles were woven with ribbons to match, altogether too fine for the team of country horses: tough little beasts, shaggy coated, narrow of chest and half-wild but able to run for hours in the cold and then stand for even longer. They were spanned not side by side but nose to tail so that they could pull the cariole through the narrow lanes. For all their rough appearance they were clever things, and affectionate: once out of their traces they would follow Simon around like dogs and push their damp velvet noses into his pockets looking for maple sugar lumps and dried apple.
The sleigh came to a halt just as she heard Luke call her. He was holding a letter out as he came forward. “From your mother,” he said. “It was in among the others.”
Lily was thinking of leaving it for reading in the evening when Luke grinned at her, a teasing brother at this moment rather than a worried one. “Take it along,” he said. “Best to have Elizabeth along with you in that sleigh, in spirit at least.”