Elaine Coffman - [MacKinnon 04] (32 page)

God help her, she was more in love with him now than before,
and she wasn’t even certain as to when it happened. She was less certain as to
what she should do about it.
Talk to me. Tell me you don’t want me to go.

His eyes were on the portrait. “I suppose I should feel
guilty and take it down,” he said.

He watched her turn toward the portrait, amazed at her
strength of purpose. He knew he should take the portrait down, but he seemed to
have no control over it. It was as if this portrait was his defense against
being hurt again. Maggie had deceived him. Not once, but twice. Nothing she
said could be trusted. Still, the turn of events tonight, the things she said,
made him curious. He wondered what kind of woman he had married. What kind of
woman was kind enough, patient enough, to live with a man who kept a portrait
of a past and perfect love over the fireplace?

Maggie spoke without turning back to look at him. “I havena
asked you to take it down,” she said, “out of guilt or otherwise. I willna.”

Something about the tone of her voice touched him. This
woman puzzled him. This woman was different. This woman was soft and tender,
patient and understanding. This woman suffered no loss because of it. If
anything it made her stronger.

It also gave her more power over him.

Anger, he could control. Words, he could shrug off. But
patient understanding weakened him. He had no defenses against it. He didn’t
understand why. “I know you
willna
,” he said at last, feeling some
strange force drawing him forward. He stepped farther into the room, coming to
stand behind her. Close enough that he could smell her. She smelled of jasmine
and roses, and warm, willing woman.

“If you keep your head tilted back like that for too long,
you won’t be able to move it in the morning.”

She smiled. “Good. Maybe that will give me an excuse in stay
in bed.”

His voice dropped. It was softer now. Lower. “Is that what
you want to do? Stay in bed?”

Aye. With you
. “Rest is a precious thing,” she said.
“It’s every mother’s wish, I ken.”

His hands came up to massage her neck. Maggie did not move.
He felt her body tremble at his touch. His breathing was rapid. He saw nothing
but this woman. “Tired?”

“Aye, I’m tired,” she said, “but happy.”

“Happy?”

“Hmmmm. My children are safely here, and Ainsley has been
given back to me.” She raised her arms and pushed the tiny tendrils of hair up,
and off her nape. “Aye, I’m happy.”

Adrian looked at her bent head, the pale skin of her neck
glimmering in the lamp’s pale light. She seemed infinitely lovely to him now,
lovely in a way he could only call sad. His hands left her neck to drop lower,
caressing her arms, then pausing momentarily, only to slowly inch forward, his
fingers close enough now to touch her breast.

The moment he touched her, she groaned and her head fell
back against him. “Dear God,” he whispered as he lowered his head, pressing his
lips to her shoulder.

“Adrian…”

“Don’t,” he said like a command. “Don’t say anything.” He
kept kissing her shoulder, moving across it to her neck, then to her ear. His
breath was warm and steady, coming in quick flutters across the skin of her
shoulder. She was as still as the flame of a candle where there was no wind.

His blood stirred. For days he had done nothing but dwell
upon her, the bits of her he called to memory—the hair between her legs, golden
red, so like the hair on her head; her whimpering cries when she came—and the
things he hoped for, like the feel of her mouth on him, warm and wet.

He closed his eyes, remembering what it felt like to be
inside her. A sort of tense anticipation gripped him, as in the moment before
ejaculation.

He wanted her.

But desire caused him pain. He threw back his head in agony.
She was everything he scorned—wanton, brazen, unrepenting. She was everything
he admired—honest, straightforward, dependable. She had accepted him, made
herself a part of his life, opened herself to him in all the ways a woman
could. He was so immersed in her, so weighed down with her body, the way it
felt, the scent that marked her, her sound, her look, and what it was like to
be with her, that he seemed unable to reason. Maggie…Maggie…Maggie…

He wanted to love her, and his refusal to do so was willful.
It was his habit to be hardest upon himself. His secret yearning gripped his
insides like a fist, his desire for her dwelt in a dark, secret place and his
revenge was to reject her, to send her away.

How could he? She was everywhere. His house breathed of her,
her smell, her touch—her reminders were all about. When he was with her, his
eyes drank in the sight of her; when he was away, his mind provided the memory.

And when there was no memory, he would call one forth,
dreaming.

Iron bands of need closed around him. He was motionless,
frozen, his hands filled with living warmth. Slowly, tentatively, bound by
something stronger than himself, he began to caress her. Lightly.

Completely possessed now, his fingers found the pearl
buttons between her breasts.

“Dinna,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“The door is open.”

He laughed softly. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re alone.
Everyone has gone to bed.”

Now she laughed, low in her throat.”We’re
never
alone.”

“We’re alone now,” he said, and his tongue traced the curves
of her ear, and she felt him tug at her dress. It fell to the floor with a
golden whispering of heavy fabric against bare, naked skin.

Startled to feel nothing but skin, he let his hands sweep
over her.
Dear sweet God!
“You’re naked,” he whispered, his voice
breaking.

“I was afraid you wouldna notice.”

“I noticed,” he said, his voice low.

“Aye, you noticed,” she said, her head falling forward as he
began kissing his way from one shoulder, across her back, to the other one.
Ripples of pleasure shot through her, making her toes curl in delight. She felt
as if she had been running, until she was weak and breathless, poised on the
lip of a precipice, wanting to leap, to feel herself weightless and floating,
but terrified of hitting the ground. What was wrong? What was happening to her?
It had never been like this before. The world around her was dissolving, the
perimeters melting and running like ink in water, leaving nothing behind but a
murky blur.

“Why?” he whispered. “You had nothing on beneath your dress,
sweet Maggie, and I can’t help wondering why.”

“You wouldna believe me if I told you.”

He chuckled. “You are probably right, for knowing you as I
do, I know the answer isn’t a simple one.”

His words were light and his hands were gentle, seeming to
know all the sensitive points of her belly, her breasts, and she moaned, barely
able to whisper, “It isna what you think.”

He drew her back against him, his hands caressing her,
touching, exploring, learning. “No?”

“No.”

“And what was I thinking?”

“That I left my underthings off deliberately.”

He drew circles on her skin with his nose, and she
shuddered. “And you didn’t?”

“No. I didna know you were back.”

His breath fluttered like a moth’s wing over her sensitive
skin. “Even the most absentminded lout has sense enough to remember something
as basic as undergarments.”

“I wasna absentminded. I didna have any to wear.”

“What?”

“Everything was wet. Molly was too energetic today when she
did laundry. She washed…
everything
. I only had the underthings I was
wearing, and those were drenched when I gave the children their bath. They were
too wet to wear under this dress. It was either come like this, with nothing,
or not come at all.”

“I’m glad you came,” he whispered. “I could find myself
getting used to this.” His hands were rubbing now, low on her belly.

“The door is open,” she reminded him again. “I dinna ken
what to say if someone walks in.”

“They wouldn’t believe you, anyway. But don’t worry. I’m
behind you, blocking the view. No one will see you around me. You aren’t big
enough.”

She laughed, her hand coming around to touch him. “
You
are,” she said, and laughed softly. “I canna help thinking I’d like to see the
look on Maude’s face if she came in here and caught you with your arse bare.”

“If she comes,” he said, his hands moving down to touch the
tender skin at the top of her thighs, “I’ll wager she won’t stay long.”

“Aye,” she said breathlessly, “not long.”

“I want to touch you. Move your legs,” he whispered, mid her
bones turned to jelly, leaving her limp and breathless against him.

“More,” he said.

“I canna. My legs are too weak. I’m going to fall.”

“You won’t fall. I’m holding you.”

She opened to him and his hands came between, one touching
her, the other easing inside. She groaned and moved with him, her sanity
shattering a moment later when her body convulsed, yet he still did not release
her.

“No more,” she whispered. “Please. I canna.”

“Yes you can,” he said, and he showed her.

When her body convulsed again, he lowered her to the floor,
leaving her only for a moment to release himself, then he covered her
completely.

As he murmured his desire, his hands moved over the velvet
of her skin. Need for her went through him like a fire fanned by high winds.
With a tenderness, a patience, he didn’t know he possessed, he touched her,
telling her with his hands the things he could not say. He prayed as he touched
her—prayed that she would understand, that she would realize he hadn’t meant
the things he had said, that it was only his hurt talking, his pain.
Help
me, Maggie. Help me to show you how I feel
.

“Please,” she whispered against his sweat-dampened skin. Her
body moved beneath him, restless and impatient. Distraught sounds came from her
throat.

He eased himself into her, feeling her warmth surround him.
He paused for a moment, giving himself time to gain control. He did not want to
spill himself inside her until she had found her own release. He moved slowly,
thrusting again and again against her hips, until she shuddered and called out his
name.

At last, when he did roll away from her, he kept her against
him, throwing one leg over her possessively, his hand curved beneath her
breast. They remained that way, neither of them talking, until he wasn’t sure
if she slept. Raising himself on one elbow, he looked down into her face. She
wasn’t crying, but her eyes were bright and banked with tears, fastened upon
the portrait.

His hand came out to cup her face, but before he could
speak, she closed her eyes and turned her face away.

“Don’t cry,” he said, “and don’t hate me.”

“I dinna hate you,” she said, turning against him, “and I
havena cried yet.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “I would hate to think what we just
shared made you sad.”

She knew he meant it, and she felt comforted. He drew her
closer as the chill of the room began to creep into her bones; she couldn’t
help wondering how a man could make love to a woman like that if he truly
intended for her to go away.

Molly was standing at the stove the next morning, lost in a
swirl of steam and stirring a pot of grits, when Maggie walked in. It wasn’t in
Maggie’s nature to be wildly euphoric, but today she was happy—happier than she
had been in years—and that made everything about her seem brighter.

“Good morning. It’s going to be a beautiful day, I ken.”

“It’s going to rain,” Molly said.

Maggie drew up short. She looked toward the window, seeing
the sun was out. “Rain? I dinna want to believe that,” she said.

Molly shrugged and whacked the wooden spoon on the side of
the pot, loosening a clump of grits that fell back into the pot with a
plop
.
“Believe it or not—that won’t change the facts.”

“What facts?”

“The fact that every jackass in camp this morning—the
four-legged kind, mind you—was rubbing against the fence with its ears forward.
And Clem Burnside said the oxen were licking their feet.”

“And that means rain?”

“It does.”

“Then I’ll be prepared for rain,” she said, and went to kiss
Barrie, Fletcher, and Ainsley on top of their heads. She started to say
something else, but found herself distracted by Barrie’s plate. “What is that?”
she asked.

Barrie looked down at her plate. “Flapjacks,” she said in a
way that made Maggie think she was sounding more like Molly every day.

Maggie looked at Molly, then back at Barrie’s plate. “I ken
flapjacks to be round. Why have you cut them in such big squares?”

Barrie looked a bit put out, as if she could not believe her
mother could be such a thick-wit. She licked the milk mustache over her lip.
“Because,” she said heavily, “Molly said.”

Maggie looked at Molly, who exchanged accusing looks with
Barrie. “Don’t be dragging me into this,” Molly said. “I don’t care if you cut
your pancakes into curlicues, but I never told you to cut them into squares.
Now, you best be telling your mother the truth of it.”

“Dinna look at me,” Barrie said to her mother’s stern look
of reproof. “It’s her fault,” she said, pointing at Molly. “You canna blame me!
She told me to do it. She did!”

Molly shook her head and laid the spoon down, clamping her
hands on her hips. “And when did I tell you that, Miss Troublemaker, and what
exactly did I say?”

Turning her fiercest scowl upon Molly, Barrie said, “I canna
remember when, but I ken you said growing children need to eat three
square
meals a day.”

“Aye,” Fletcher said, “I heard her.”

One thing about Molly; no matter what happened or what was
said, she remained unflappable.

“Some people are resourceful at being remorseful,” Molly
said with a snort. “I’m not. But I reckon I’m caught, nonetheless. ‘By thy
words thou shalt be condemned.’”

And that was the end of that.

While Barrie ate her square pancakes, Maggie poured herself
a cup of tea, noticing that Adrian’s place was still set at the table. Her
heart thumped with renewed excitement over the tiny reminder of him and last
night. “Where is Adrian?”

Molly went back to stirring. “Outside, talking to Big John.”

Maggie looked surprised. “Big John? I canna remember him
ever coming up here this time of the morning.”

“He don’t—usually. I think there must be some problem down
at the mill. That’s the only thing I know that would bring John up here like
this.”

Maggie smiled and winked at the children. “Perhaps he came
up here to tell us the oxen had stopped licking their feet.”

Molly snorted. Then Adrian walked into the kitchen and
poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Your breakfast is on the table,” Molly said, ladling the
grits into a lopsided crockery bowl.

Adrian looked preoccupied, and Maggie wondered if he had
heard Molly at all. Apparently he had, for his next words were, “I don’t have
time to eat it now. I’ve got to get down to the mill.”

“Is something wrong?” Maggie asked.

“It’s nothing that I can’t handle. I don’t want you to worry
about it.”

“Canna you tell me what’s the matter?” He smiled, but she
knew it wasn’t a real smile, that it was only one to put her at ease.

“If I tell you, then you’ll worry,” he said.

She started to open her mouth, but he shook his head. “I
can’t tell you any more right now. Trust me in this, Maggie, and don’t worry.
I’ve got to go now.”

Before Maggie could respond, he was gone.

Maggie gazed off, losing herself in thought for a moment,
then she put her teacup on the table and started from the room.

“Don’t you want something to eat?” Molly called after her.

Maggie paused. “I’m not hungry.” She felt slightly more than
curious about what was going on down at the lumber mill. Adrian was not very
adept at quelling a woman’s natural thirst for information, she thought,
remembering the way his face had resembled a blank piece of paper with a secret
code scratched across it.

Molly’s brows went up. “Made those plans to go out early,
did you?” she asked.

Maggie mumbled something sassy under her breath.

Molly shrugged. “Curiosity—now, that’s the thing! The best
way I know to make a beeline straight from the path of wisdom.” She shot Maggie
a surreptitious look. “Now, a little curiosity can be a good thing at times,
but you don’t want to overdo it, you know. One shouldn’t be too inquisitive
about the workings of fate, or God’s secrets, or one’s mate.”

“I—” Maggie started to speak, but was unable to say more
when Molly interrupted.

“He who asks questions cannot avoid the answers. Ask too
many and you’ll be feeling like you poked your head into an adder’s basket—all
darkness, but you can feel the bite.”

Maggie smiled and quoted Burns. “‘Auld Nature swears, the
lovely dears, Her noblest work she classes. Her prentice hand she tired on man,
And then she made the lasses.’ Dear Molly, havena you heard, a woman’s wiser
because she knows less and understands more?”

Molly snorted her opinion of that. “I still say you better
ask yourself if you’re sure it’s the mill…or are you just wanting to know why
Adrian left in such a big hurry?”

Maggie laughed and blew her a kiss, whistling a little
Scottish ditty as she danced from the room. “I canna say.”

A faint look of amusement settled across Molly’s face.
“Whistle before breakfast, cry before noon,” she said to Maggie’s retreating
back.

There wasn’t much stirring around the sawmill when Maggie
arrived. Seeing Adrian’s horse tied outside the office door, she stood there
for a moment, staring at the door, debating whether or not she should go there
first.
Indecision
, she thought.
If you don’t wash your hands, you’re
dirty. If you do, you’re wasting water.
After a bit, she shrugged and
turned away. She would stop by later.

Finding nothing else about camp to distract her, Maggie made
her way to the medicine hut.

The inside was dark and dreary when she arrived, but soon
she had the shutters thrown back, the lamps lit, and the room dusted and swept
clean. Two boxes of supplies that had been ordered were stacked near one wall,
and after cleaning a place on the glass shelf of the medicine chest, Maggie
busied herself with sorting and labeling the supplies, stacking them neatly on
the shelf.

She worked uninterrupted through the morning, and once she
had the hut in order, she spent the next hour or so flipping through the new
Carlisle’s
Complete Medical Journal
, taking notes. Absorbed in the most up-to-date
medicines, she read about the multitude of plant and mineral drugs
available—quinine for malaria, digitalis for heart failure, colchicine for
gout, and opiates for pain—finding she was more interested in the latter.

It was while reading that she came across the name of Dr.
Crawford W. Long, a Georgia doctor who performed three minor surgical
procedures using sulfuric ether, which she promptly wrote out an order for. She
did not like the cartoon labeled “Prescription for Scolding Wives”, which
showed a husband forcing his wife to inhale laughing gas so she would laugh
hysterically when he punished her.

So absorbed was she in what she was about, Maggie did not at
first notice the growing sound of voices coming through the window—until Clem
Burnside thrust his head inside the door, looking for Big John Polly.

“He isna here,” Maggie said, conscious now of the commotion
going on outside. Before she could ask him what was happening, Clem was gone.

Maggie soon followed.

The camp was a cluster of gathering men, whispering,
offering speculation, but none of it loud enough to make much sense to Maggie
as she stood on the porch of the hut. A moment later, she crossed the grounds
to stand near the men, going up on her toes, yet still unable to see more than
a gathering crowd outside the door to the bunkhouse.

She saw Big John standing a few yards away and made her way
toward him, knowing he would tell her what was happening. Before she reached
him, the bunkhouse door crashed open with such force, it slammed against the
planked sides with a loud
thwack
. Maggie’s eyes were accustomed to the
bright sunlight, and that made it difficult to see into the dark interior of
the bunkhouse. A moment later, two men wrestled a third, trying to get him
outside, but the man, who looked both frantic and desperate, fought them
wildly, bracing both of his feet on either side of the doorjamb.

This
, Maggie thought, feeling a moment of excitement,
is nothing more than one of those rituals men seem to have a fondness for,
one where some poor, unsuspecting soul is made a laughingstock of the rest of
the camp, much as was done the day the men bathed poor old Dirty Shirt.
She
smiled to herself, remembering how Dirty Shirt had taken off for parts unknown
the next day, and hadn’t been heard of since.

She was about to turn away when something she could not describe
detained her.

As quickly as it had come, her smile faded, and with it, the
sense of excitement. There was something else going on here, something that was
neither humorous nor amusing. The man wasn’t just protesting a little brotherly
fun. He was screaming and kicking, a look of stark terror on his face. The
others in the crowd were subdued, not shouting and laughing, or taking jabs at
the man being wrestled through the door. It was clear that these men had
gathered here for another purpose entirely.

Surrounded by the crowd of men, Maggie could only follow
along with them as the poor man was forced through the door, then pushed,
wrestled, and led—stumbling and falling—over the rough, deeply rutted ground.
They had no more than reached the center of the camp when Adrian stepped out of
the office.

His face was white, his lips held in a tight grimace. She
reluctantly realized that Adrian had something to do with all of this. Her
mouth open in silent denial, Maggie began to back away, her movement halted by
a scream of bone-chilling agony.

“Please,” the man yelled. “You can’t let them do this to me.
Someone help me. Clem! John! Elijah!” he screamed, desperately looking from man
to man, finding no support.

“Don’t let them do this!” the man shouted again. “For the
love of God, somebody help me!”

He began crying, his words no more than incoherent babbling.
Transfixed, Maggie stared as drool began to dribble from his mouth. A moment
later he wet his pants. She had seen such fear only once before, when she saw a
man hang.

A low, rumbling whisper spread through the crowd. The men
began backing away, as if they were afraid.

The thought of such cruelty made her stomach heave.

There was no clue as to what was going on here, no more than
she knew before—that Adrian lay at the center of it.

Trust me in this, Maggie.

Dear God, she wanted to, she wanted to. Her gaze drawn to
her husband, she looked at him with eyes that were hazy and yellow-green with
confusion. Eyes that questioned. Eyes that doubted.

If he saw her in the crowd, he didn’t let on.

“Lock him up,” Adrian said, his voice loud and in control.
His eyes scanned the crowd for a moment, then rested on the man, but they did
not soften as he spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s no other way. If there
was, you know I would do it.”

“Liar! Bastard!” the man screamed. “Cold, unfeeling bastard!
You’d find another way if it was your hide that was being locked up like
this…to die like an animal.”

Maggie saw the muscle in Adrian’s jaw work. “Put him in the
shed. I’ve had a bed set up in there…” He paused a moment, then said, “Tie him
to it.”

“
Nooooo
,” the man screamed. “For the love of God,
no!”

Maggie looked at the man straining with every muscle,
struggling against the two others leading him away. He was barefoot and thin, his
face covered with a dirty black beard. His hair was long and unbrushed, adding
to his wild look. Unable to pull her horrified gaze away from him, she couldn’t
believe anyone, especially Adrian, could be so cruel. No matter what the man
had done, to tie him to a bed in a tiny shed was, as the man said, inhuman.

Woe to them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent
in their own sight.

The words of Isaiah came to her, words she knew were meant
for Adrian.
Righteous, pompous fool,
she thought.
How could he?

So overwrought was she by the sight of this man’s misery
that she was barely conscious of the warning that seemed to come to her in the
guise of her father’s voice, a past prophecy she thought to bear witness to
Adrian’s wrong.

My son, these maxims make a rule, and lump them aye
tegither; The Rigid Righteous is a fool, the Rigid Wise anither.

She was trembling with anger at the rigid righteousness of
her husband, and the sound of her own voice at first took her by surprise.
“Stop it!” she screeched. “Stop it this instant!”