Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  She stood breathing harshly, her chin jutting up toward him, watching him with eyes that dared him to doubt her. He stared back.

  “You realize what we’d have to do? Marry on the run and disappear long enough that he can’t petition to have the marriage annulled, or the deed?”

  “Yes.” Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, yes. I thought of that.”

  He drew back and looked at her hard as if she were some new creature he had never seen before. His temple was beaded with sweat in spite of the cold.

  “Do you want to be my true wife,” he said, “or is this a marriage on paper you’re proposing, a lie?”

  “Oh, Nathaniel,” Elizabeth said, suddenly miserable. “That’s not what I had in mind, no. But if you don’t want me you’ll have to say so and perhaps there’s some other way to stop Richard.”

  He moved toward her, and then he hesitated.

  “Forgive me for my bluntness,” he said hoarsely. “But I’m asking you now to tell me what it is you want, in no uncertain terms.”

  “I want you,” whispered Elizabeth, blinking hard. “I want you. And if there’s some way to set things right with you and yours in the process, then that’s all the better.”

  Nathaniel took her hands and drew her down to the bale of straw. Elizabeth felt his whole frame trembling.

  “I told you,” he said softly, his mouth against her hair. “I told you once that you only had to ask. I just wasn’t sure what you were asking.”

  “I was afraid, too. You never said what it was exactly you wanted from me. You still haven’t said it.”

  His fingers moved on her temple. “You want the words. I guess that’s fair, seeing as how I made you speak up.”

  “It would be a help,” Elizabeth admitted. “It’s hard to propose marriage without any assistance at all. At this moment I can almost feel sorry for Richard.”

  Nathaniel laughed softly at that, and tilted her head up so he could look her in the eye.

  “It’s what you want. You’re sure?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, then.” The muscles in his throat flexed as he swallowed. “I ain’t got much to offer except Lake in the Clouds, maybe not even that—”

  “And Hannah,” Elizabeth supplied.

  “And Hannah. And a life you weren’t born to, and a lot of trouble to start with—”

  “And your father,” she interrupted again.

  “And my father. Elizabeth.” He took both her hands, turned the palms up to kiss them and then pressed them to his chest. She could feel his heart beating, a slow, rolling thunder.

  “None of that matters, if you don’t want me the way I want you. If you come to me—” He looked away for a second, into the shadows, and then back at her. “You have to know what you’re getting.”

  “I can see what I’m getting,” Elizabeth said.

  “Can you? You think you can see to my soul, do you? You don’t know what kind of husband I was to Sarah. You don’t like it when I talk about her, I can see that. But I think you’ll have to hear about it sometime.”

  “What kind of husband were you to Sarah?” she asked woodenly.

  “Not a very good one.” His mouth was a thin line, his brows drawn together. “We married for the wrong reason.”

  She waited, uneasily.

  He looked over her head into the dark. “I been thinking about it a lot lately. I guess I married her because I wanted to be red and she married me because she wanted to be white. So neither of us got what we wanted.”

  “She gave you Hannah.”

  He nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Hannah made it worth the trouble. But there was trouble, no mistake, Elizabeth. We married too young.”

  “I’m not so young,” Elizabeth said. “And neither are you, anymore.”

  “Will you listen,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you—”

  “What a terrible man you are, how you beat women and bully children, and throw all your money away on gaming and drink—”

  “I’ve killed some men in my time, not counting the ones in battle,” Nathaniel interrupted her.

  “Well, then, there must have been sufficient reason,” Elizabeth said, a bit paler.

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  “Will you try to stop me teaching school?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Will you tell me how to run things? Will you listen, when I have something to say, and act on it? You have so far. I think,” she said, her voice trembling, “that you’d be a good husband. Better than most, when you’re not being contrary.”

  “Maybe you just want to get away from the judge.”

  “Of course I do. But—” She felt a nerve in her cheek fluttering. “But I wouldn’t marry Richard Todd to get away from him, or any of the men I met in New-York—”

  Nathaniel put a thumb on her chin, fanning his fingers over her cheek. “I think you’re saying that you’re fond of me,” he said with a half smile. “And that you’re willing to chance the rest because of it.”

  She inclined her head into his palm. “In the past week, I have been thinking that perhaps there is such a thing as friendship and equal partnership between a man and a woman. Where there is respect and—affection.”

  Nathaniel touched his forehead to hers, but she kept her gaze cast down.

  “So,” Elizabeth said lightly. “Why is it you’re willing to … go along with this?”

  “Well, I thought that would be obvious enough,” Nathaniel said. “But since I promised you the words, I’ll tell you. I want you with me. I want you there to talk to, and to argue with, when nothing else will do. I’m sure there’ll be enough of that.”

  Elizabeth drew in a sigh and let it go, turning her head so that her face was hidden against his neck, her mouth close to the pulse at the base of his throat.

  “I want to watch you with Hannah, see what you’ve got to teach her. To take you into the wilderness in the spring and show you where the flag lilies grow. When it’s hot, to sleep with you under the waterfall. To kiss you whenever I please. To take you to bed, and have you there with me whenever I reach out for you.” His voice was soft and low against her ear. “To get you with child, and watch it change the shape of you as it grows.”

  Elizabeth lifted her face up to him until her mouth waited just under his.

  “That’s why I want you,” he said. “If you’ll have me.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. Elizabeth put her arms around his neck, and turned her mind to kissing Nathaniel.

  His hands were on her back, moving in circles. He kissed the corner of her mouth, took her lower lip between his teeth and worried it gently. Touched her upper lip with his tongue and then claimed her, his arms surrounding her, one hand cradling her head.

  She let her eyelids flutter closed as the angle of his head deepened. At first there were many sensations: the feel of a chest as hard as oak through layers of buckskin and fur and cloth, the exquisite rough pleasure of a day’s growth of beard, the taste of him, slightly salty, and still sweet. Slowly, her whole consciousness became centered there where their mouths joined: the soft but persistent pressure of his lips, the way his head dipped and coaxed hers. He had been gentle and tentative and now there was more, a direction and growing intensity in this kiss, in the way his hands held her head so that he could take her mouth in deepening and hypnotic waves.

  His tongue touched hers and she started, and drew away. She looked at him with eyes slightly out of focus, and then leaned forward to put her forehead against his shoulder.

  “It’s late,” Nathaniel said hoarsely.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth agreed. “It is late.”

  “And you’re tired.”

  “Oh, yes. You must be, too. It was exciting, watching you on the ice.”

  “So,” Nathaniel said, pulling her closer.

  “So,” Elizabeth echoed, faintly.

  “I want you,” he said. “I want to be with you.”

  Elizabeth forced hersel
f to meet his eye, knowing how deeply she blushed, knowing somehow that it would please him to see that.

  “I would like that, too,” she said, her voice wobbling. “I think.”

  “Good. Good. But”—he looked around himself—“not now, not here.”

  She nodded. “All right.”

  “It’s getting late,” he said again. “And there’s a lot we need to talk about. This will take some planning, if we’ve got to elope. It can’t be before mid-April, at any rate.”

  Elizabeth’s heart fell, to think of that: two months.

  Nathaniel took her hand, rubbed the palm with his own. “Well, now, Boots,” he said, his old teasing tone back. “It does me no end of good to see that you’re impatient about it. But we can’t be on the run in the thaw. The whole world turns to water and mud and we couldn’t get anywhere, not having to go north into the bush. And that’s what we’ll have to do if we don’t want to be caught. Anyway,” he said, grinning down at her. “I want to have the schoolhouse done first. Settle my business with the judge, so to speak, before I run off with his daughter. And it gives you two months to get the school started. Which is why you came to Paradise, after all.”

  Elizabeth drew in a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I can pretend for that long,” she said. “To be interested in Richard, I mean.” She looked up at Nathaniel. “What if I can’t do it? What if my father—”

  “Don’t mistake me, Elizabeth,” Nathaniel said, his eyes narrowing. “I’ll marry you one way or the other, and God help any man who tries to stop me. But I want to take you home to Hidden Wolf. If there was some other way to do it, I would. But I can’t see one. Can you?”

  She shook her head. “I wish,” she said. “I wish with all my heart that my father would see reason and right and just sell you the land. I don’t like starting out like this, with artifice. It makes me afraid.”

  Nathaniel began to speak, but she put a finger on his mouth to still him.

  “There is no other way, I know. So.” Elizabeth smiled ruefully. “I will play the game and hope that I can do you—us—some good in the process. But if I can’t—” She looked up at him. “I would go with you into the wilderness, you know.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be so hasty,” Nathaniel said. “You haven’t been introduced to the blackfly yet. But between now and then I’ll have to keep a wide berth of you. Can you ignore me, do you think, when we do cross paths?”

  She smiled. “I’ll try to think of Hamlet, and be ‘cruel but not unnatural: I will speak daggers to you, but use none.’ ”

  “You are the most quoting woman,” Nathaniel said softly, raising his hand to smooth her hair out of her face. “And will you speak love or daggers to Richard Todd?”

  “I am supposed to keep him waiting and hopeful,” she said. “I don’t think daggers would do the job.”

  “What about kissing? Is that part of the job?” Nathaniel was smiling, but there was something wolfish about it that made Elizabeth wriggle.

  “Well, I don’t relish the idea, but I suppose it might be necessary at some point.”

  “No,” he said suddenly, pulling her close again, pressing her mouth with his own, hard. “No. Young ladies of good family don’t let themselves be kissed, if I may remind you.”

  Elizabeth felt a completely idiotic grin overtake her; she couldn’t help it. Despite the seriousness of the situation, despite everything there was to gain and to lose, she had to smile. Nathaniel wanted her, all of her.

  “What a memory you have, Mr. Bonner.”

  “When Richard gets too close you remember that your kisses are mine, by rights.” And he bent to her mouth. When he lifted his head she was breathing hard.

  “Two months is a long time,” Elizabeth whispered, reaching up for him again.

  “You can send word to me through Many-Doves,” he said, between kisses.

  “Many-Doves, yes,” Elizabeth murmured back to him.

  “But don’t say anything to Hannah yet, she might let it slip.”

  “No, of course not,” she mumbled against his mouth.

  “Elizabeth,” he said firmly, holding her away. “Early April, I’ll be waiting for word. I’ll meet you then, before you go to Johnstown with your father, and we’ll settle the details.”

  She sat back, wiping her hair away from her face.

  “Until then, you have to hold me far from you,” Nathaniel said. “For all our sakes.”

  XVII

  Anna Hauptmann looked up from a bolt of huckaback as the door to the trading post opened, letting in a blast of late March wind and Elizabeth Middleton. The preoccupied look on Anna’s face was replaced suddenly with a smile.

  “Miz Elizabeth! Well, it’s about time,” she said. “You ain’t been by since the lake opened up. I was beginning to think maybe you forgot about us down here.”

  Elizabeth pushed her hood back onto her shoulders and pulled her gloves off, shaking her head.

  “It’s been very busy,” she said. “I hope you’ll excuse me.”

  “Never you mind, we’re just glad to see you. Take off your wraps. There’s room there by the warm, if these men will mind their manners. I wonder where Ephraim and Henrietta have got themselves to. They should come and say hello.”

  “Oh, don’t bother them, please,” Elizabeth said. “I came in because I was wondering if you happen to have material for handkerchiefs.”

  Anna was turning to the high wall behind her before the sentence was completely out of Elizabeth’s mouth.

  “Better than that,” she mumbled, pulling out a drawer and peering in. “The Kaes girls spun me twenty yard of good plain cloth in the fall and we sewed up handkerchiefs out of the rests, save you the needlework. Unless you was wanting lawn? I ain’t had any nice lawn in a year or more. Now,” she continued, without waiting for Elizabeth’s reply. “The question is, where they got to since the last time I seen them. How many was you wanting?”

  “As many as you’ve got,” said Elizabeth. “It’s one item I didn’t think I’d need in the classroom, but I’ve come to see that I can’t do without. The children seem to all have colds. The sudden change in the weather, I suppose.”

  “Thaw’s the season for it, sure enough,” said Anna, climbing up on a stool to investigate cubbyholes out of her reach.

  Elizabeth left Anna to her rummaging and turned to look over the room. There was a new sign on the wall. All grains and flowers took in trade, it read. An unbidden picture came to Elizabeth, in which her father attempted to pay for his tobacco with an armful of daisies, and she almost laughed. But then she saw how carefully the placard had been painted, and she bit her lip.

  The usual crowd of men was gathered by the hearth. Elizabeth nodded to them from a distance. Julian waved one hand over his head in her direction without bothering to get up. Anna’s father was sound asleep, the fringe of his long gray beard spread over his chest like a moth-eaten blanket. Moses Southern gave her a curt nod from his perch on a barrel of pickled eggs, but Jed McGarrity jumped up and came forward to pump Elizabeth’s hand with both of his own.

  “I’m glad to see you, Miz Elizabeth,” he said. “I keep trying to catch you after church on Sunday. Been wanting to tell you what a fine job you’re doing. You keep them young’uns hopping, that’s sure enough so.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “It is certainly good to hear that you’re satisfied with the progress your boys are making.”

  “Satisfied! The missus and me can’t hardly wait till they come home and tell us what stories you come up with. Yesterday it was that Trojan horse that got them Greeks into such a mess.” He stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. “Wonder if our generals knew about that trick. Might of worked when we was trying to shift the Tories out of New-York, back in the war.”

  This was greeted with a sharp glance from Moses Southern, and a broad smile from Julian. “You could have done with Lizzie’s help, I’m sure,” he said. “She is a very handy tactician. Don’t know how that particular skill serves her in
the classroom, but it’s stood her in good stead elsewhere.”

  “Don’t you go criticizin’ the schoolmarm,” said Anna from her perch on a stepladder. “Ain’t my Ephraim reading the Good Book to me every evening? Even that great hulk Liam Kirby is tame as a kitten these days. Don’t know how she done it, and for sure she ain’t going about it the way most would”—Anna sent Moses a narrow stare—“but whatever she’s up to, it’s working.”

  There was an uneasy silence as Julian settled back down into his seat and Elizabeth retreated toward the counter once again. Lately she was finding it harder and harder to cope calmly with Julian’s teasing. He seemed to take every opportunity to goad her. The fact that Richard Todd called regularly on her now did not seem to make any difference. Elizabeth wondered once again if Julian had somehow gotten a hint of her plans. She was thinking this through once again when she was called out of her thoughts with a jerk.

  “… Nathaniel,” said Jed McGarrity.

  “Pardon me?” asked Elizabeth as calmly as she could. “I’m afraid my thoughts were—elsewhere.” What a fraud I’ve become, she thought.

  “I said, Nathaniel is moving along quite smart on the new schoolhouse. He’s got Otter helping him raise the walls, and I’d warrant they’ll be done with the bulk of it in a week. You’ll be in that school come mid-April, no doubt.”

  “Well, that is good news,” Elizabeth said, trying to sound prim and pleased at the same time. “I haven’t been by to see in a long time, I’ve just been too busy with teaching.”

  “You should go on along, then, have a look.”

  “I think not,” Elizabeth said, looking down at the wares on the counter. “Nathaniel has made it quite clear that he doesn’t like me interfering.”

  “Is that so?” Jed asked slowly, his head tilted to one side. “That don’t sound much like Nathaniel.”

  “Oh. Well.” Elizabeth wondered how she could remove herself from this discussion of Nathaniel before she said something completely incriminating. “Perhaps I misunderstood. But I am glad to know that the schoolhouse will be finished soon.”