17
HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Inverness, Scotland, December 23, 1969
He checked the train schedule for the dozenth time, then prowled around the manse’s living room, too restless to settle. An hour yet to wait.
The room was half dismantled, with piles of cartons lying higgledy-piggledy on every surface. He’d promised to have the place cleared out by the New Year, except for the pieces Fiona wanted to keep.
He wandered down the hall and into the kitchen, stood staring into the ancient refrigerator for a moment, decided he wasn’t hungry and closed the door.
He wished that Mrs. Graham and the Reverend could have met Brianna, and she them. He smiled at the empty kitchen table, remembering an adolescent conversation with the two elderly people, when he, in the grip of a mad—and unrequited—lust for the tobacconist’s daughter, had asked how to know if one was truly in love.
“If ye have to ask yourself if you’re in love, laddie—then ye aren’t,” Mrs. Graham had assured him, tapping her spoon on the edge of her mixing bowl for emphasis. “And keep your paws off wee Mavis MacDowell, or her Da will murder ye.”
“When you’re in love, Rog, you’ll know it with no telling,” the Reverend had chimed in, dipping a finger in the cake batter. He ducked in mock alarm as Mrs. Graham raised a threatening spoon, and laughed. “And do mind yourself with young Mavis, lad; I’m not old enough to be a grandfather.”
Well, they’d been right. He knew, with no telling—had known since he’d met Brianna Randall. What he didn’t know for sure was whether Brianna felt the same.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He slapped his pocket to be sure of his keys, ran down the stairs and out into the winter rain that had begun to pelt down just after breakfast. They did say a cold shower was the thing. Hadn’t worked with Mavis, though.
December 24, 1969
“Now, the plum pudding’s in the warming oven, and the hard sauce in the wee pan to the back,” Fiona instructed him, pulling on her fuzzy woolen hat. It was red, Fiona was short, and in it she looked like a garden gnome.
“Don’t turn up the flame too high, mind. And dinna turn it out altogether, either, or you’ll never get it lit again. And here, I’ve the directions for the birds for tomorrow all written out, they’re stuffed in their pan, and I’ve left the veg already chopped to go along in the big yellow bowl in the fridge, and …” She fumbled in the pocket of her jeans and withdrew a handwritten slip of paper, which she thrust into his hand.
He patted her on the head.
“Don’t worry, Fiona,” he assured her. “We won’t burn the place down. Nor starve, either.”
She frowned dubiously, hesitating at the door. Her fiancé, sitting in his car outside, revved his engine in an impatient sort of way.
“Aye, well. You’re sure the two of ye won’t come with us? Ernie’s Mam wouldna mind it a bit, and I’m sure she’d not think it right, just the two of ye left here by yourselves to keep Christmas …”
“Don’t worry, Fiona,” he said, edging her gently backward out the door. “We’ll manage fine. You have a nice holiday with Ernie, and don’t bother about us.”
She sighed, giving in reluctantly. “Aye, I suppose you’ll do.” A short, irritable beep! from behind made her turn and glare at the car.
“Well, I’m coming then, aren’t I?” she demanded. Turning back, she beamed suddenly at Roger, threw her arms about him, and standing on tiptoe, kissed him firmly on the lips.
She drew back and winked conspiratorially, screwing up her small, round face. “That’ll sort our Ernie out,” she whispered. “Happy Christmas, Rog!” she said loudly, and with a gay wave, hopped off the porch and strolled in leisurely fashion toward the car, hips swinging just a bit.
Its engine roaring in protest, the car shot off with a squeal of tires before the door had quite shut behind Fiona. Roger stood on the porch waving, pleased that Ernie wasn’t an especially massive bloke.
The door opened behind him and Brianna poked her head out.
“What are you doing out here with no coat on?” she inquired. “It’s freezing!”
He hesitated, tempted to tell her. After all, it had evidently worked on Ernie. But it was Christmas Eve, he reminded himself. In spite of the lowering sky and plummeting temperature, he felt warm and tingling all over. He smiled at her.
“Just seeing Fiona off,” he said, pulling back the door. “Shall we see if we can make lunch without blowing up the kitchen?”
They managed sandwiches without incident, and returned after lunch to the study. The room was nearly empty now; only a few shelves of books remained to be sorted and packed.
On the one hand, Roger felt immense relief that the job was nearly done. On the other, it was sad to see the warm, cluttered study reduced to such a shell of its former self.
The Reverend’s big desk had been emptied and removed to the garage for storage, the floor-to-ceiling shelves denuded of their huge burden of books, the cork-lined wall stripped of its many layers of fluttering papers. This process reminded Roger uncomfortably of chicken-plucking, the result being a stark and pathetic bareness that made him want to avert his eyes.
There was one square of paper still pinned to the cork. He’d take that down last.
“What about these?” Brianna waved a feather duster inquiringly at a small stack of books that sat on the table before her. An array of boxes gaped on the floor at her feet, half filled with books destined for various fates: libraries, antiquarian societies, friends of the Reverend’s, Roger’s personal use.
“They’re autographed, but not inscribed to anybody,” she said, handing him the top one. “You’ve got the set he inscribed to your father, but do you want these, too? They’re first editions.”
Roger turned the book over in his hands. It was one of Frank Randall’s, a lovely book, beautifully typeset and bound to match the elegance of its scholarly content.
“You should have them, shouldn’t you?” he said. Without waiting for an answer, he set the book gently into a small box that rested on the seat of an armchair. “Your dad’s work, after all.”
“I’ve got some,” she protested. “Tons. Boxes and boxes.”
“Not autographed, though?”
“Well, no.” She picked up another of the books and flipped it open to the flyleaf, where Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis—F. W. Randall was written in a strong, slanting hand. She rubbed a finger gently over the signature, and her wide mouth softened.
“The times are changing, and we with them. You’re sure you don’t want them, Roger?”
“Sure,” he said, and smiled. He waved a wry hand at their book-strewn surroundings. “Don’t worry, you won’t leave me short.”
She laughed and put the books in her own box, then went back to her work, dusting and wiping the stacked and sorted books before packing them. Most hadn’t been cleaned in forty years, and she was liberally smudged herself by this time, long fingers grimy and the cuffs of her white shirt nearly black with filth.
“Won’t you miss this place?” she asked. She wiped a strand of hair out of her eyes and gestured at the spacious room. “You grew up here, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and yes,” he answered, heaving another full carton onto the pile to be shipped to the university library. “Not much choice, though.”
“I guess you couldn’t live here,” she agreed regretfully. “Since you have to be in Oxford most of the time. But do you have to sell it?”
“I can’t sell it. It’s not mine.” He stooped to get a grip on an extra-large carton, and rose slowly to his feet, grunting with effort. He staggered across the room and dropped it onto the stack, with a thud that raised small puffs of dust from the boxes beneath it.
“Whew!” He blew out his breath, grinning at her. “God help the antiquarians when they pick that one up.”
“What do you mean, it’s not yours?”
“What I said,” he replied matter-of-factly. “It isn’t mine. The house and land belong to the church; Dad lived here for near fifty years, but he didn’t own it. It belongs to the Parish Council. The new minister doesn’t want it—he’s got money of his own, and a wife who likes mod cons—so the Council’s putting it to let. Fiona and her Ernie are taking it, heaven help them.”
“Just the two of them?”
“It’s cheap. For good reason,” he added wryly. “She wants lots of kids, though—be room for an army of them here, I can tell you.” Designed in Victorian times for ministers with numerous families, the manse had twelve rooms—not counting one unmodernized and highly inconvenient bath.
“The wedding’s in February, so that’s why I’ve got to finish the clearing up over Christmas, to give time for the cleaners and painters to come in. Shame to make you work on your holiday, though. Maybe we’ll drive down to Fort William Monday?”
Brianna picked up another book, but didn’t put it in the box right away.
“So your home’s gone for good,” she said, slowly. “It doesn’t seem right—though I’m glad Fiona will have it.”
Roger shrugged.
“Not as though I meant to settle in Inverness,” he said. “And it’s not as though it were an ancestral seat or anything.” He waved at the cracked linoleum, the grubby enamel paint, and the ancient glass-bowl light fixture overhead. “Can’t put it on the National Trust and charge people two quid each to tour the place.”
She smiled at that, and returned to her sorting. She seemed pensive, though, a small frown visible between her thick red brows. Finally she put the last book in the box, stretched and sighed.
“The Reverend had nearly as many books as my parents,” she said. “Between Mama’s medical books and Daddy’s historical stuff, they left enough to supply a whole library. It’ll probably take six months to sort it all out, when I get ho—when I go back.” She bit her lip lightly, and turned to pick up a roll of packing tape, picking at it with a fingernail. “I told the real estate agent she could list the house for sale by summer.”
“That’s what’s been bothering you?” he said slowly, realization dawning as he watched her face. “Thinking about taking apart the house you grew up in—having your home gone for good?”
One shoulder lifted slightly, her eyes still fixed on the recalcitrant tape.
“If you can stand it, I guess I can. Besides,” she went on, “it’s not that bad. Mama took care of almost everything—she found a tenant and had the house leased for a year, so I could have time to decide what to do, without worrying about it just sitting there vacant. But it’s silly to keep it; it’s way too big for me to live in alone.”
“You might get married.” He blurted it out without thinking.
“Guess I might,” she said. She glanced at him sidelong, and the corner of her mouth twitched in what might have been amusement. “Someday. But what if my husband didn’t want to live in Boston?”
It occurred to him quite suddenly that her concern over his losing the manse might—just possibly—have been that she envisioned herself living in it.
“D’you want kids?” he asked abruptly. He hadn’t thought to ask before, but hoped like hell she did.
She looked momentarily startled, but then laughed.
“Only children usually want big families, don’t they?”
“Couldn’t say,” he said. “But I do.” He leaned across the boxes and kissed her suddenly.
“Me too,” she said. Her eyes went slanted when she smiled. She didn’t look away, but a faint blush made her look like a spring-ripe apricot.
He wanted kids, all right; just at the moment, he wanted to do what led to kids a lot more.
“But maybe we should finish clearing up, first?”
“What?” The sense of her words penetrated only vaguely. “Oh. Yeah. Right, guess we should.”
He bent his head and kissed her again, slowly this time. She had the most wonderful mouth; wide and full-lipped, almost too big for her face—but not quite.
He had her round the waist, his other hand tangled in silky hair. The nape of her neck was smooth and warm under his hand; he gripped it and she shivered slightly, mouth opening in a small sign of submission that made him want to lean her backward over his arm, carry her down to the hearth rug, and …
A brisk rapping made him jerk his head up, startled out of the embrace.
“Who’s that?” Brianna exclaimed, hand to her heart.
The study was lined on one side by floor-to-ceiling windows—the Reverend had been a painter—and a square, whiskered face was pressed against one of these, nose nearly flattened with interest.
“That,” said Roger through his teeth, “is the postman, MacBeth. What the hell is the old bugger doing out there?”
As though hearing this inquiry, Mr. MacBeth stepped back a pace, drew a letter out of his bag and brandished it jovially at the occupants of the study.
“A letter,” he mouthed elaborately, looking at Brianna. He cut his eyes toward Roger and beetled his brows in a knowing leer.
By the time Roger reached the front door, Mr. MacBeth was standing on the porch, holding the letter.
“Why did you not put it in the letter slot, for God’s sake?” Roger demanded. “Give it here, then.”
Mr. MacBeth held the letter out of reach and assumed an air of injured dignity, somewhat impaired by his attempts to see Brianna over Roger’s shoulder.
“Thought it might be important, didn’t I? From the States, i’nt it? And it’s for the young lady, not you, lad.” Screwing up his face into a massive and indelicate wink, he oiled past Roger, arm extended toward Brianna.
“Ma’am,” he said, simpering through his whiskers. “With the compliments of Her Majesty’s Mail.”
“Thank you.” Brianna was still rosily flushed, but she’d smoothed her hair, and smiled at MacBeth with every evidence of self-possession. She took the letter and glanced at it, but made no move to open it. The envelope was handwritten, Roger saw, with red postal-forwarding marks, but the distance was too far to make out the return address.
“Visiting, are ye, ma’am?” MacBeth asked heartily. “Just the two of ye here, all on your ownie-o?” He was giving Brianna a rolling eye, looking her up and down with frank interest.
“Oh, no,” Brianna said, straight-faced. She folded the letter in half and stuffed it into the back pocket of her jeans. “Uncle Angus is staying with us; he’s asleep upstairs.”
Roger bit the inside of his cheek. Uncle Angus was a moth-eaten stuffed Scottie, a remnant of his own youth, unearthed during the cleaning of the house. Brianna, charmed with him, had dusted off his plaid bonnet and placed him on her own bed in the guest room.
The postman’s heavy brows rose.
“Oh,” he said, rather blankly. “Aye, I see. He’ll be an American, too, then, your uncle Angus?”
“No, he’s from Aberdeen.” Other than a slight pinkening at the end of her nose, Brianna’s face showed nothing but the most open guilelessness.
Mr. MacBeth was enchanted.
“Oh, you’ve a wee bit of Scots in your family, then! Well, and I should have known it, now, you wi’ that hair. A bonnie, bonnie lass, and no mistake.” He shook his head in admiration, lechery replaced by a pseudoavuncular air that Roger found only slightly less objectionable.
“Yes, well.” Roger cleared his throat meaningfully. “I’m sure we don’t want to keep you from your work, MacBeth.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble, no trouble at all,” the postman assured him, craning to catch a last glimpse of Brianna as he turned to go. “Nay rest for the weary, is there, my dear?”
“That’s ‘no rest for the wicked,’ ” Roger said, with some emphasis, opening the door. “Good day to you, MacBeth.”
MacBeth glanced at him, the shadow of a leer back on his face.
“A good day to you, Mr. Wakefield.” He leaned close, dug Roger in the ribs with an elbow, and whispered hoarsely, “And a better night, if her uncle sleeps sound!”
“Here, going to read your letter?” He plucked it from the table where she had dropped it, and held it out to her.
She flushed slightly and took it from him.
“It’s not important. I’ll look at it later.”
“I’ll go to the kitchen, if it’s private.”
The flush deepened.
“It’s not. It’s nothing.”
He raised one eyebrow. She shrugged impatiently, and ripped open the flap, pulling out a single sheet of paper.
“See for yourself, then. I told you, it’s nothing important.”
Oh, isn’t it? he thought, but didn’t say anything aloud. He took the proffered sheet and glanced at it.
It was in fact nothing much; a notification forwarded from the library at her university, to the effect that a specific reference she had requested was unfortunately not obtainable via interlibrary loan, but could be viewed in the private collection of the Stuart Papers, held in the Royal Annexe of Edinburgh University.
She was watching him when he looked up, arms folded, her eyes shiny and lips tight, daring him to say something.
“You should have told me you were looking for him,” he said quietly. “I could have helped.”
She shrugged slightly, and he saw her throat move as she swallowed.
“I know how to do historical research. I used to help my fa—” She broke off, lower lip caught between her teeth.
“Yeah, I see,” he said, and did. He took her by the arm and steered her down the hall to the kitchen, where he plunked her in a chair at the battered old table.
“I’ll put the kettle on.”
“I don’t like tea,” she protested.
“You need tea,” Roger said firmly, and lit the gas with a fiery whoosh. He turned to the cupboard and took down cups and saucers, and—as an after-thought—the bottle of whisky from the top shelf.
“And I really don’t like whisky,” Brianna said, eyeing it. She started to push herself away from the table, but Roger stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“I like whisky,” he said. “But I hate to drink alone. You’ll keep me company, aye?” He smiled at her, willing her to smile back. At last she did, grudgingly, and relaxed in her seat.
He sat down opposite her, and filled his cup halfway with the pungent amber liquid. He breathed in the fumes with pleasure, and sipped slowly, letting the fine strong stuff roll down his throat.
“Ah,” he breathed. “Glen Morangie. Sure you won’t join me? A wee splash in your tea, maybe?”
She shook her head silently, but when the kettle began to whistle, she got up to take it off the fire and pour the hot water into the waiting pot. Roger got up and came behind her, slipping his arms around her waist.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said softly. “You’ve a right to know, if you can. Jamie Fraser was your father, after all.”
“But he wasn’t—not really.” Her head was bent; he could see the neat whorl of a cowlick at her crown, an echo of the one in the center of her forehead, that lifted her hair in a soft wave off her face.
“I had a father,” she said, sounding a little choked. “Daddy—Frank Randall—he was my father, and I love—loved him. It doesn’t seem right to—to go looking for something else, like he wasn’t enough, like—”
“That’s not it, then, and you know it.” He turned her round and lifted her chin with a finger.
“It’s nothing to do with Frank Randall or how you feel about him—aye, he was your father, and there’s not a thing will ever change that. But it’s natural to be curious, to want to know.”
“Did you ever want to know?” Her hand came up and brushed his away—but she clung to his fingers, holding on.
He took a deep breath, finding comfort in the whisky.
“Yeah. Yes, I did. You need to, I think.” His fingers tightened around hers, drawing her toward the table. “Come sit down; I’ll tell you.”
He knew what missing a father felt like, especially an unknown father. For a time, just after he’d started school, he’d pored obsessively over his father’s medals, carried the little velvet case about in his pocket, boasted to his friends about his father’s heroism.
“Told stories about him, all made up,” he said, looking down into the aromatic depths of his teacup. “Got bashed for being a nuisance, got smacked at school for lying.” He looked up at her, and smiled, a little painfully.
“I had to make him real, see?”
She nodded, eyes dark with understanding.
He took another deep gulp of the whisky, not bothering to savor it.
“Luckily Dad—the Reverend—he seemed to know the trouble. He began to tell me stories about my father; the real ones. Nothing special, nothing heroic—he was a hero, all right, Jerry MacKenzie, got shot down and all, but the stories Dad told were all about what he was like as a kid—how he made a martin house, but made the hole too big and a cuckoo got in; what he liked to eat when he’d come here on holiday and they’d go into town for a treat; how he filled his pockets with winkles off the rocks and forgot about them and ruined his trousers with the stink—” He broke off, and smiled at her, his throat still tight at the memory.
“He made my father real to me. And I missed him more than ever, because then I knew a bit about what I was missing—but I had to know.”
“Some people would say you can’t miss what you never had—that it’s better not to know at all.” Brianna lifted her cup, blue eyes steady over the rim.
“Some people are fools. Or cowards.”
He poured another tot of whisky into his cup, tilted the bottle toward her with a lifted brow. She held out her cup without comment, and he splashed whisky into it. She drank from it, and set it down.
“What about your mother?” she asked.
“I had a few real memories of her; I was nearly five when she died. And there are the boxes in the garage—” He tilted his head toward the window. “All her things, her letters. It’s like Dad said, ‘Everybody needs a history.’ Mine was out there; I knew if I ever needed to, I could find out more.”
He studied her for a long moment.
“You miss her a lot?” he said. “Claire?”
She glanced at him, nodded briefly, and drank, then held out her empty cup for more.
“I’m—I was—afraid to look,” she said, eyes fixed on the stream of whisky.
“It’s not just him—it’s her, too. I mean, I know his stories, Jamie Fraser’s; she told me a lot about him. A lot more than I’ll ever find in historical records,” she added with a feeble attempt at a smile. She took a deep breath.
“But Mama—at first I tried to pretend she was only gone, like on a trip. And then when I couldn’t do that anymore, I tried to believe she was dead.” Her nose was running, from emotion, whisky, or the heat of the tea. Roger reached for the tea towel hanging by the stove and shoved it across the table to her.
“She isn’t, though.” She picked up the towel and wiped angrily at her nose. “That’s the trouble! I have to miss her all the time, and know that I’ll never see her again, but she isn’t even dead! How can I mourn for her, when I think—when I hope—she’s happy where she is, when I made her go?”
She gulped the rest of her cup, choked slightly, and got her breath. She fixed Roger with a dark blue glare, as though he were to blame for the situation.
“So I want to find out, all right? I want to find her—find them. See if she’s all right. But I keep thinking maybe I don’t want to find out, because what if I find out she’s not all right, what if I find out something horrible? What if I find out she’s dead, or he is—well, that wouldn’t matter so much, maybe, because he already is dead anyway, or he was, or—but I have to, I know I have to!”
She banged her cup down on the table in front of him.
“More.”
He opened his mouth to say that she’d had a good bit more than she needed already, but a glance at her face changed his mind. He shut his mouth and poured.
She didn’t wait for him to add tea, but raised the cup to her mouth and took a large swallow, and another. She coughed, sputtered, and set the cup down, eyes watering.
“So I’m looking. Or I was. When I saw Daddy’s books, and his handwriting, though … it all seemed wrong, then. Do you think I’m wrong?” she asked, peering woefully at him through tear-clogged lashes.
“No, hen,” he said gently. “It’s not wrong. You’re right, you’ve got to know. I’ll help you.” He stood up and, taking her under the arms, hoisted her to her feet. “But right now, I think you should maybe have a bit of a lie-down, hm?”
He got her up the stairs and halfway down the hall, when she suddenly broke free and darted into the bathroom. He leaned against the wall outside, waiting patiently until she staggered out again, her face the color of the aged plaster above the wainscoting.
“Waste of Glen Morangie, that,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and steering her into the bedroom. “If I’d known I was dealing with a sot, I’d have given you the cheap stuff.”
She collapsed on the bed, and allowed him to take off her shoes and socks. She rolled onto her stomach, Uncle Angus cradled in the crook of her arm.
“I told you I didn’t like tea,” she mumbled, and was asleep in seconds.
Roger worked for an hour or two by himself, sorting books and tying cartons. It was a quiet, dark afternoon, with no sound but a soft patter of rain and the occasional whoosh of a car’s tires on the street outside. When the light began to fail, he turned on the lamps and went down the hall to the kitchen, to wash the book grime from his hands.
A huge pot of milky cock-a-leekie soup was burbling on the back of the cooker. What had Fiona said to do about that? Turn it up? Turn it off? Throw things into it? He peered dubiously into the pot and decided to leave well enough alone.
He tidied up the remains of their impromptu tea—rinsed the cups and dried them, hung them carefully from their hooks in the cupboard. They were remnants of the old willow pattern set the Reverend had had for as long as Roger could remember, the blue-and-white Chinese trees and pagodas augmented by odd bits of ill-assorted crockery acquired from jumble sales.
Fiona would have all new, of course. She’d forced them to look at magazine pictures of china and crystal and flatware. Brianna had made suitable admiring noises; Roger’s eyes had gone glassy from boredom. He supposed the old stuff would all end up at the jumble sale—at least it might still be useful to someone.
On impulse, he took down the two cups he’d washed, wrapped them in a clean tea towel, and took them to the study, where he tucked them into the box he’d set aside for himself. He felt thoroughly foolish, but at the same time, somewhat better.
He looked around the echoing study, quite bare now save for the single sheet of paper on the cork-lined wall.
So your home’s gone for good. Well, he’d left home some time ago, hadn’t he?
Yeah, it bothered him. A lot more than he’d let on to Brianna, in fact. That was why it had taken so bloody long to finish clearing out the manse, if he was honest about it. True, it was a monster task, true, he had his own job to do at Oxford, and true, the thousands of books had had to be sorted with care—but he could have done it faster. If he’d wanted.
With the house standing vacant, he might never have got the job finished. But with the impetus of Fiona behind, and the lure of Brianna before … he smiled at the thought of the two of them: little dark, curly-headed wren, and tall fire-haired Viking. Likely it took women to get men to do anything much.
Time to finish up, though.
With a sense of somber ceremony, he unpinned the corners of the yellowed sheet of paper and took it down from the cork. It was his family tree, a genealogical chart made out in the Reverend’s neat round hand.
MacKenzies and more MacKenzies, generations of them. He’d thought lately of taking back the name permanently, not just for the singing. After all, with Dad gone he didn’t mean to come back much more to Inverness, where folk would know him as Wakefield. That had been the point of the genealogy, after all; that Roger shouldn’t forget who he was.
Dad had known a few individual stories, but no more than the names for most of the people on the list. And he hadn’t known even that, for the most important one—the woman whose green eyes Roger saw each morning in the mirror. She was nowhere on this list, for good reason.
Roger’s finger stopped near the top of the chart. There he was, the changeling—William Buccleigh MacKenzie. Given to foster parents to raise, the illegitimate offspring of the war chieftain of clan MacKenzie, and of a witch condemned to burning. Dougal MacKenzie and the witch Geillis Duncan.
Not a witch at all, of course, but something just as dangerous. He had her eyes—or so Claire said. Had he inherited something more from her as well? Was the terrifying ability to travel through the stones passed down unsuspected through generations of respectable boatwrights and herdsmen?
He thought of it each time he saw the chart now—and for that reason, tried not to look. He appreciated Brianna’s ambivalence; he understood all too well the razor’s edge between fear and curiosity, the pull between the need to know and the fear of finding out.
Well, he could help Brianna find out. And for himself …
Roger slipped the chart into a folder, and put it in the box. He closed the top of the carton, and added an “X” of sticky tape across the flap for good measure.
“That’s that, then,” he said aloud, and left the empty room.
He stopped at the head of the stairs, taken by surprise.
Brianna had been bathing, braving the ancient geyser with its cracked enamel and rumbling flame. Now she stepped into the hall, wearing nothing but a towel.
She turned down the hall, not seeing him. Roger stood very still, listening to the thud of his heart, feeling his palm slick on the polished banister.
She was modestly covered; he had seen more of her in the halters and shorts she had worn in the summer. It was the fragility of her covering that roused him; the knowledge that he could undress her with one quick tug. That, and the knowledge that they were quite alone in the house.
Dynamite.
He took a step after her, and stopped. She had heard him; she stopped, too, but it was a long moment before she turned around. Her feet were bare, high-arched and long-toed; the slender curves of her wet footprints were dark on the worn runner that covered the floor of the hallway.
She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him straight-on, her eyes dark and slanting. She stood against the tall window at the end of the hall, her swaddled figure black against the pale gray light of the rainy day outside.
If he should touch her, he knew how she would feel. Her skin would be still hot from the bath, damp in the crevices of knee and thigh and elbow. He could smell her, the minglings of shampoo and soap and powder, the smell of her flesh masked by the ghosts of flowers.
Her footprints on the runner stretched before him, a fragile chain of footsteps linking them. He kicked off his sandals and planted a bare foot on one of the prints she had left; it was cool on his skin.
There were drops of water on her shoulders, matching the droplets on the windowpane behind her, as though she had stepped through it out of the rain. She lifted her head as he came toward her, and with a shake, let the towel wrapped round her head fall off.
The bronze snakes of her hair fell gleaming, brushed his cheek with wet. Not a Gorgon’s beauty, but a water spirit’s, changing shape from serpent-maned horse to magic woman.
“Kelpie,” he whispered against the flushed curve of her cheek. “You look like you’ve come straight out of a Highland burn.” She put her arms around his neck, let go of the towel; only the pressure of their bodies held it between them.
Her back was bare. Cold air from the window raised the hair on his forearm, even as her skin warmed his palm. He wanted at once to pull the towel about her, shelter her, cover her from the cold; at the same time, to strip both her and himself, take her heat to himself and give her his own, right there in the damp and drafty hallway.
“Steam,” he whispered. “God, you’re steaming.”
Her mouth curved against his.
“That makes two of us, and you haven’t had a bath. Roger—” Her hand was on the back of his neck, fingers cool. She opened her mouth to say something more, but he kissed her, feeling hot damp seep through the fabric of his shirt.
Her breasts rose against him and her mouth opened under his. The muffling terry cloth hid the outlines of her breasts from his hands but not his imagination; he could see them in his mind’s eye, round and smooth, with that faint, enchanting wobble of full flesh.
His hand drifted lower, grasping the swell of bare buttock. She shied, lost her balance, and the two of them collapsed awkwardly, grappling with each other in an effort to stay upright.
Roger’s knees hit the floor, and he dragged her down with him. She tilted and sprawled, landing laughing on her back.
“Hey!” She grabbed for her towel, then abandoned it as he lunged over her, kissing her again.
He’d been right about her breasts. The one under his hand was bare now, full and soft, the nipple hard in the center of his palm.
Dynamite, and the fuse was lit.
His other hand rested at the top of her thigh under the towel, close enough that he could feel the damp curls brush his finger. God, what color was it? Deep auburn, as he’d imagined? Copper and bronze, like the hair of her head?
Despite himself, his hand slid farther, dying to cup the soft slippery fullness he could sense, so close. With an effort that made him dizzy, he stopped.
Her hand was on his arm, pulling him back down.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, I want you to.”
He felt hollow as a bell; his heartbeat echoed in head and chest and painfully hard between his legs. He closed his eyes, breathing, pressing his hands against the rough fiber of the rug, trying to erase the feel of her skin, lest he grab at her again.
“No,” he said, and his voice sounded queer, hoarse to his own ear. “No, not here, not like this.”
She was sitting up, rising out of the dark blue towel that puddled around her hips, like a mermaid from the waves. She had cooled; her flesh was pale as marble in the gray light, but goose bumps stippled the smoothness of arms and breasts and shoulders.
He touched her, rough skin and smooth, and drew his fingers over her lips, her broad mouth. The taste of her was still on his lips, clean skin and toothpaste—and a sweet, soft tongue.
“Better,” he whispered. “I want it to be better … the first time.”
They knelt staring at each other, the air between them crackling with unsaid things. The fuse was still burning, but a slow match now. Roger felt rooted to the spot; perhaps it was the Gorgon, after all.
Then the smell of scorching milk rose up the stair, and both of them started up at once.
“Something’s burning!” Brianna said, and made a dart toward the stair, her towel clumsily back in place.
He caught her by the arm as she passed him. She was cold to the touch, chilled by the drafty hallway.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “You go and get dressed.”
She shot him a quick blue glance and turned, disappearing into the spare bedroom. The door clicked shut behind her and he dashed down the hall, clattering down the stair toward the smell of disaster, feeling his palm burn where he had touched her.
Downstairs, Roger dealt with the spilled and scalded soup, berating himself. Where did he get off, lunging at her like a crazed salmon en route to the spawning grounds? Ripping off her towel and grappling her to the floor—Christ, she must think him next door to a rapist!
At the same time, the hot feeling that suffused his chest wasn’t due either to shame or to heat from the cooker. It was the latent heat from her skin, still warming him. I want you to, she’d said, and she’d meant it.
He was familiar enough with the language of the body to know desire and surrender when he touched them. But what he’d felt in that brief moment when her body came alive to his went a great deal farther. The universe had shifted, with a small, decisive click; he could still hear its echo in his bones.
He wanted her. He wanted all of her; not just bed, not just body. Everything, always. Suddenly the biblical injunction, one flesh, seemed something immediate, and very real. They’d nearly been just that, on the floor of the hallway, and stopping as he had made him feel suddenly and peculiarly vulnerable—he wasn’t a whole person any longer, but only half of something not yet made.
He dumped the ruined remains of the soup into the sink. No matter; they’d have supper at the pub. Best to get out of the house and away from temptation.
Supper, casual chat, and maybe a walk by the river. She’d wanted to go to the Christmas Eve services. After that …
After that, he would ask her, make it formal. She would say yes, he knew. And then …
Why, then, they would come home, to a house dark and private. With themselves alone, on a night of sacrament and secret, with love newly come into the world. And he would lift her in his arms and carry her upstairs, on a night when virginity’s sacrifice was no loss of purity, but rather the birth of everlasting joy.
Roger switched out the light and left the kitchen. Behind him, forgotten, the gas flame burned blue and yellow in the dark, ardent and steady as the fires of love.