Into the Wilderness (20 page)

"Oh,"
she said. "Oh, how beautiful. You can't see this place from below, can
you? What is it called?"

"The
folks in the village call it the strawberry field. It's covered in fruit, in
season. Children come up and eat themselves sick. Bears, too."

Nathaniel
took Elizabeth's elbow and turned her to him. Her mouth hung open in a little
circle of surprise, her lower lip full and bloodred, and he knew that his good
intentions were worth nothing. He had tried for a month to stay away from her,
but he remembered the promise of her mouth, as if no time had passed at all.
This urgency in him was something he had forgotten about, something he thought
gone forever; he had gone so long without it. It was a surprise, and not an
altogether welcome one, that there was something in the world, someone in the
world, who could move him like this; it was shocking to want again. Here, in
front of him now, her dark hair curling around her face, her skin so pale that
he could trace the veins in her throat.
 
So different from Sarah, but with the same core of flint, able to light
the same fire in him. And he could see, in the brightness of Elizabeth's eyes,
in the way she drew breath in at his touch, that she felt the same urgency,
although she didn't have a name to put to it. Nathaniel stripped off his mitts
and let his hands move up to push her hood back onto her shoulders.

"You
look as if you've been eating strawberries," he said. "Your mouth is
so red."

Elizabeth
stared at him, her breath coming fast. Her blood rushed like a tide, and
suddenly Nathaniel came into new focus: his eyes, which she had thought to be
hazel but were shades of green and gold and brown, like sunlight in a summer
forest; the high brow, furrowed, and the way his hair waved back from a widow's
peak; the small cut healing high on his left cheek; the tiny white indentation
on the bridge of his nose; the shadow of his beard.

"Tell
me you don't want to kiss me," he said, his thumb stroking the curve of
her cheekbone.

And
his mouth, the clean lines of his lips, the blood pulsing there.

"I
can't," Elizabeth said hoarsely. "I can't tell you that."

"Then
do it," Nathaniel whispered. "Kiss me."

Startled,
Elizabeth pulled away a little. Nathaniel was looking at her with an intensity
that frightened her, and she saw that he meant it, that he was waiting for her
to do this. His fingers threaded through her hair. He waited; she knew he would
wait forever. She could do this, and take what she wanted, or walk away, and
live without it. She felt flooded with heat; there was a tightness in her
chest. Elizabeth leaned toward him and, reaching up, kissed Nathaniel.

His
lips were surprisingly soft; Elizabeth hadn't imagined that a man's lips could
be soft and firm all at once. Especially not this man, who seemed to be carved
of wood. But his lips were very soft and gentle and moreover they were cold,
while his mouth was not. This contrast was unexpected. His cheek was rough with
beard stubble; his hair swept forward to touch her own cold cheek. His smells
were strong, unidentifiable, overwhelming.

A
little sigh escaped her as the angle of his mouth deepened and he tilted her
head to meet him, kissing her lightly, a brushing; every nerve in her lips set
to humming. They stood leaning toward each other across the awkward expanse of
their snowshoes, joined like a wishbone by the soft suckling of mouths.
Nathaniel slid an arm around Elizabeth's waist, and they crumpled into the deep
snow together.

"Oh,"
she said, and he took her mouth, her warm mouth, and coaxed it open. Her whole
consciousness was centered here where their mouths joined: the soft
persistence, the way his head dipped as he changed the direction of the kiss.
They sat in the snow, Elizabeth sprawled against Nathaniel's lap with her arms
slung around his neck and snowshoes sticking up around them at odd angles. The
cold was forgotten, all the snowy world around them was forgotten in the world
of his callused hands, his rough, cold cheeks, his warm mouth on hers.

Finally
she pulled away and stared at Nathaniel with her whole body trembling.

"Better
comfort than apples, isn't it?" Nathaniel murmured, his thumb at the
corner of her mouth.

"Oh,
no," muttered Elizabeth. "Oh, no." She struggled to right
herself, managing to situate herself on her snowshoes. She looked around
wildly, brushing at her snow—dotted cape. Nathaniel got up to help her and she
pushed him away. Then she grabbed both of his hands and squeezed them hard,
looking at him with eyes gone suddenly severe.

"And
where is this to go?" she asked. "What are we to do?"

Nathaniel
looked down on her, at her gray eyes daring him to push her too far. On her
face was the clear and desperate hope that he would give her an excuse to turn
away for good.

"Where
do you want it to go?" he said.

"What
do you want us to do?" A thought came to him that made him wonder.
"Do you know what passes between a man and woman?"

"I'm
a virgin," Elizabeth said grimly, dropping his hands. "Not an idiot.
Of course I know what it means to—to mate." But she could not meet his
gaze. With a surprising change of posture, her back straight and her shoulders
set, she faced Nathaniel with a new stillness in her face, a terrible
stillness.

"Is
that what you want of me?"

"It's
part of it," he conceded. "But it's only one part. I can't look at
you and not think about touching you. How fine you feel to me, the warmth of
you. What the rest of you must be like."

She
drew in her breath audibly, her head falling back and all the harshness, all
the anger, draining out of her face to be replaced by the drowsy and infinite
pleasure of this, of hearing him say he wanted her. And Nathaniel saw something
he had forgotten about women: that words can do the same work as hands and
mouths and a man's body, that she was as undone by his admission of desire as
she had been by his kiss.

"And
the other part?" Elizabeth asked, her voice wobbling.

Nathaniel
grinned.

"Pretty
women ain't so very rare," he said. "But a pretty woman who stands up
to a room full of strange men and defends herself—that's something else. After
all," he said softly. "’Blessed are those wise in the ways of books,
for theirs is the kingdom of righteousness and fair play.’"

Elizabeth's
head snapped forward. "So you want me because I misquote the bible to
serve my own purposes?" she asked. "That's not very convincing. Nor,
may I add, is it very gentlemanly to remind me of that episode."

"Aye,"
said Nathaniel. "Here we are at the heart of it. I ain't gentleman, but
you don't want a gentleman, do you? You want somebody as set on their sights as
you are, and willing to do what has to be done, and damn the
consequences."

"Let
me ask you this," Elizabeth said. "Will you let your daughter come to
my school?"

Nathaniel
laughed out loud. "That's what I mean. Well, tell me this: can I pay her
tuition in kisses?" he asked, but Elizabeth's eyes narrowed and he saw his
mistake. His face calmed.

"I
can't let her come. I'm sorry, Elizabeth."

"I
see." She turned and began to walk away, wobbling on her snowshoes.

"You
don't see." Nathaniel came up next to her.

"I
see that you want to put your hands on me and kiss me but that I'm not good
enough to teach your daughter. I see that you admire my courage but that you
don't value my convictions."

They
walked for a moment in silence. "You don't understand about Hannah."

She
swung around, and almost lost her balance, but caught herself quickly.

"I
understand you have a daughter whom you don't want to send to a school taught
by a white woman."

A
little shocked at herself, Elizabeth hesitated. She had let the words fall,
though, and there was no calling them back.

"Is
that what you think?" Nathaniel asked quietly. "That I don't trust
you to treat her well, or teach her things of value? I don't want her in your
school because you're white, and she's not?"

Elizabeth
nodded. "Yes, well, that is my impression."

When
they had gone on another ten minutes, they came to another bit of woods and
they passed into it, and within a few feet they came to a small cabin.

"Come,"
Nathaniel said, and turned off the path. Elizabeth hesitated behind him, and
then seeing him at the open door, and knowing that he would not concede, she
stripped off her snowshoes and went in.

The
cabin was a single room with a chair, a cot, a table, and a hearth. There was a
lopsided betty lamp on the mantel, covered with dust. Nathaniel took a flint
and steel from a pouch on his belt and set to the chore of laying a fire.

"We
won't be here long enough to need that," Elizabeth said behind his back.
She stood as far away from the cot as she could, with her arms crossed tightly
across her chest. "Tell me what it is you want to tell me about Hannah and
we'll be on our way. There's that storm coming, and I can't be caught here with
you, alone."

Nathaniel
went on with his work as if he had not heard her, coaxing the small and
reluctant flame into something more substantial.

"Come
over here and warm yourself," he said finally. "I promise not to
touch you."

Elizabeth
snorted. "We're talking about Hannah, and school," she said.
"We'll talk about ... kissing if and when we come to an agreement."
She looked straight at him as she said this, although she could not control the
color rising on her cheeks.

"Do
you mean to blackmail me into sending my daughter to your school by withholding
yourself from me?" asked Nathaniel, amused.

Elizabeth
crossed the room with sharp taps of her boots, and held her hands out to the
fire. "I'll not honor that with a reply," she said. "You know
very well that's not what I meant."

There
was a little pause as she collected her thoughts. "Your father was telling
me yesterday that your mother was educated, and that her father thought it was
right for girls to have schooling."

"True
enough. My mother was well schooled, and she taught all of us."

"Well,
then, your mother is no longer alive to teach your daughter, but I have things
to offer her."

"I
ain't disputing that, Boots."

"But
you won't let her come."

She
turned to him. "Why not?"

"Not
because I fear what you'd teach her," Nathaniel said. "But because
I'm afraid for her life."

Elizabeth's
mouth fell open, and she stood there for a good long time just like that.

"You
think . . . she's in danger?"

"I
know she is," said Nathaniel. "We all are. Some in the village do fear
us, and fear moves stupid men to recklessness."

"These
are just children," protested Elizabeth.

"Oh,
children ain't capable of meanness?" His tone bordered on bitterness.
 
"Liam Kirby is coming, ain't he, and
Peter Dubonnet and Praise—Be Cunningham, and maybe Jemima Southern?"

Elizabeth
nodded.

"Well,
now. There's a whole world of hurt and trouble in those names. Those are the
children of the men who most probably broke in, last November. The men who
would be glad to see us starve. The ones who killed livestock they couldn't
carry with them just for the pleasure of it. They make no bones in public about
wanting us gone off the judge's lands, and they ain't about to lose any sleep
over a little half—breed girl. Especially not now."

"Not
now?"

"Now
that folks know about us wanting to buy Hidden Wolf." He paused.
"They think the whole Kahnyen’keháka nation is going to move in on them.
And it don't help much that Falling—Day is Wolf clan—when they think of the
Kahnyen’keháka of the Wolf they think of warriors who fight like lions, and
move quick as birds: gone with your scalp before you got a good look at
them."

Sarah's clan
, thought
Elizabeth. Her fingers were tingling as they warmed, and she rubbed her hands
together.

"Is
there any reason to fear the Wolf clan?" Elizabeth asked in an even tone.

There
was something like regret on Nathaniel's face. "There ain't a hundred
Kahnyen’keháka men of fighting age left in all of the territory," he said.
"Most of them went to Canada and won't ever come back. There's only a few
who tried to stay out of the war. And most of them have been beaten into the
dust by liquor and humiliation."

Nathaniel's
irritation and anger were suddenly deflated. Elizabeth wanted to ask a hundred
questions, but she sensed that he had gone far beyond the things he had meant
to say, and that the things he needed from her now were different.

"Well,"
she said simply. "I apologize for my outburst."

"As
well you should," said Nathaniel, a bit calmer.

The
fire crackled for a while without their talking.