Fire Along the Sky
Page 85

Instead he blinked at her and a knot of muscle flexed in his jaw; even under his beard she could see it. He said, “You asked me to stay away, Lily. I take it you've changed your mind?”
She stood abruptly and moved to the other side of the room. A desk and bookcase stood in a shadowy corner and she put her back to the wall between them, crossed her arms.
“I shouldn't have come,” she said.
“Perhaps not,” agreed Simon Ballentyne from his chair.
He seemed content to leave the work of it all to her. Irritated now and close to tears Lily said, “You might at least try to make me feel welcome.”
At that he gave a short, surprised laugh and got up. When he was so close that she must raise her head to look him in the eye, he put a hand on the wall next to her head and leaned in. She felt his breath on her forehead, warm and soft.
“What is it you want from me, Lily? What's happened that brought you to my door? Word from your lover? Has your brother been wounded?”
“No,” she said sharply. “My brother is well.”
Daniel's letter, she thought then. I never even read the copy of his letter that Gabriel made. And: What is the matter with me?
“But news, then. A letter from your mother?”
She raised her chin to glare at him and saw that he was not laughing at her, and in fact that he was angry. It was in his eyes, the way he narrowed them at her, and in the flush on his cheeks, and the lines that bracketed his mouth. He was angry and trying not to be.
“And if I had a letter from home, what of it?” she said, angry too, but at herself. “I was foolish to come here, and I'll go now.”
He stepped back suddenly, released her from the cage he had made with his body.
“I'll see you home.”
Then the tears did come, great hot tears streaming down her face that could not be denied or hidden and still she turned away, pressed her face to the rough wall and shuddered.
Simon Ballentyne put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her to his chest and there was no hope for her then. The sobs came in great breaking waves, and through all of it he held her gently and stroked her head and spoke, slow kind words, words he might have used to comfort a grieving child, a beloved sister, a friend, and that made the tears come all the harder so that she shook with them.
When the worst had passed he led her to the bench against the tile oven and sat down with her there in the soothing warmth.
“Tell me,” he said.
She told him all of it, in words that first came slow and halting and then in a great rush. She told about the terrible things her sister had lived through, the story of the hollow lake and the nephew she had never even seen, and then she told him about Nicholas, winding her fingers in the fabric of her skirt as the story pushed its way out.
He interrupted her only once, to ask was this the same Jemima who had caused such trouble for her sister Hannah over the years? And when Lily told him yes, exactly, Nicholas Wilde who would have married her but for his invalid wife—dead now only two months—had instead married that Jemima Southern.
And I worried he might be dead. Lily said those words and stopped short, distraught but not distraught enough to say the terrible thing that came to mind next: Would that he were. Better to know him dead.
As he might be, of course. Perhaps they had hanged him already. Though she could not imagine him doing Cookie or anyone else real harm, a judge might see things differently. He could be hanging from the gallows at this very moment, and Jemima beside him.
The weeping began again, this time springing up from a different place: horror and shame at herself, that some part of her should like that idea.
Simon produced a handkerchief and she took it thankfully, pressed it to her face and bent forward to press her forehead to her knees, cursing herself and still unable to stop.
She felt his hand on her back, his touch light and without demand; nothing there but comfort. She straightened suddenly and spoke to him, her face turned away.
“I shouldn't have burdened you with my problems,” she said. “I'd like to go home now.”
“Would you?” he asked, and she heard something else in his voice now, surprise or even amusement.
A ripple of irritation moved up her spine. “Yes. I want to go home.”
“Look me in the eye and say that.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I won't. I can't.”
“And why not?” Simon Ballentyne asked.
“Because my face is swollen and red and—”
He laughed out loud then, and the anger came over her as suddenly and forcefully as the tears had come earlier. She stood, and he took her hand and pulled her down again.
“Ach, Lily,” he said, rubbing his forehead against her cheek. “You'll be the death of me, but I'll die with a smile on my face.”
She tried to pull away and found that she didn't really want to; in the back of her mind she heard not her mother but Curiosity: Don't rise to the man's bait, girl, unless you got a mind to play the game out. But it was such a relief, to have said it all out loud, to have somebody hear the words that rang like great bells in her head and now might be quiet long enough for her to sleep through the night.
“What have I done to you?” she asked, combative and liking the feel of that.
“You come to my door in the dead of night—”
“It's hardly six of the evening!”
“—and weep on my chest about a faithless lover—”