Sweet Wind, Wild Wind

by Elizabeth Lowell

  And where was he now, the man she loved? Was he out walking in the storm because he couldn’t bear to go back to the pain and emptiness of a house that was no longer a home?

  With a choked cry Lara scrambled out from beneath the shelter of the overhang. Instantly the wind swirled around her, flicking tiny whips of ice-tipped rain across her cheeks. She didn’t feel it any more than she heard the sudden massive thunder rolling off the peaks. All she heard was the echo of her own questions and the shattering reverberations of her answers.

  At first Lara thought that the shout came only from her own need, her own dream. Then it came again, tumbled by the wind, Carson’s voice calling her name. She turned and saw a wall of blue-black storm racing toward her from the northwest. Lightning arced in an incandescent dance between cloud and earth. An avalanche of thunder came, shaking the land. Carson rode swiftly toward her in front of the storm, spurring his horse across the land at a speed that made her heart stop with fear. She called his name, knowing that he couldn’t hear her, unable to help herself from crying out.

  Within minutes Carson brought the horse to a plunging halt in front of Lara. He paused only long enough to swing her up into the saddle in front of him before he put his spurs to the big horse again. It responded with the eagerness of an animal that knew it was finally heading for the shelter of the barn with a storm in violent pursuit. As the horse raced up to the Rocking B’s ranch yard, Willie hurried out of the barn and grabbed the bridle. Cold rain pelted down, mixed with stinging hail. Thunder cracked over the land, burying everything in an endlessly breaking wave of sound. Willie said something, but the words were utterly lost. Carson understood anyway. He kicked out of the stirrups, grabbed Lara and raced for the house as Willie ran with the horse toward the barn. Lightning came again, strike after strike of white light that bleached color from the land. The bang of the ranch house door was lost beneath hammer blows of thunder so immense that the ear registered only an eerie silence. Cloud and earth slammed together in a massive avalanche of hail.

  Lara clung to Carson, trembling as the storm battered the house with stunning violence. All she could think of was that Carson could have been caught out there without shelter, looking for her, and she would have been safe beneath the rock overhang and he wouldn’t have known. The pieces of ice that were even now scouring the land could have scoured his unprotected body. He could have been thrown, the horse could have fallen, he could have been hurt and then he would have lain helpless in the ice and wind until he died. That was what had happened to her mother – an icy trail, a fall, a cold too great for human warmth to overcome.

  Lara looked up into Carson’s eyes, wanting to ask him to forgive her for not understanding him better, wanting to tell him that she loved him, wanting to say everything at once. The drumming of hail buried her words. It was the same for him. She saw his lips moving, saw the burning intensity of his eyes and heard nothing at all. She came up on tiptoe, straining toward him even as her fingers searched through his thick dark hair, pulling him toward her. His lips were cold from the wind and so were hers. She knew that the heat of him burned beneath, and she knew that she had to reach it, had to touch the hot rush of his life. She felt herself being lifted suddenly as his arms came around her with crushing force. She was holding him the same way, as though she could become part of him if she just held him tightly enough. His kiss was a promise both wild and sweet, a sharing that needed no words.

  Around them the storm raced by, taking with it both thunder and ice, leaving silence behind.

  “I’m sorry – “

  “ – forgive me.”

  “I should have trusted – “

  “ – my love. I love you. I love – “

  The sudden words glittered in the silence, fragments of overlapping thought and need, and neither he nor she knew who spoke which words, who apologized and who forgave. Their words, like their love, belonged to both of them equally.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Carson? Is that you? Are you finished already?” Lara asked. She looked away from the computer screen, smiling with anticipation and love at Carson as he came into the library, wondering if he had brought something special to share with her. Last week it had been a river stone that looked as though tiny, creamy flowers bloomed within a gray-green matrix. Two weeks ago it had been an evergreen bough perfectly spangled with rain.

  And once, in autumn, he had taken her to lie within his arms and listen to a loon’s tremulous call while night condensed around them.

  “Just something I want you to see,” Carson said, bending down and kissing the nape of Lara’s neck. “Do you have time?”

  She turned and put her hand on his cheek. “For you? Always.”

  Carson turned and caught Lara’s palm against his mouth, silently cherishing her. Then he pulled her to her feet, smiling as she trusted herself to his strength without hesitation.

  “How’s it coming?” he asked, looking at the computer.

  “Much better. You did a wonderful job of matching the men’s memories with the Blackridge daguerreotypes,” she said, putting her arms around Carson’s neck. “Have I thanked you for that?”

  “Every day you’re with me, every time you smile, but don’t let that stop you,” Carson murmured, bending down to her lips. “I love the way you thank me. I love thanking you in return.”

  Gently Carson pulled Lara against him, savoring the soft heat of her mouth, the generosity of her response and the firm, pregnant curve of her body pressed against him. Finally, reluctantly, he released her.

  “If we don’t get going, the next storm will move in and there won’t be anything to show you until spring,” he said.

  Refusing to answer questions, Carson bundled Lara into a parka and tucked her into the pickup. He drove until he was at the base of a long, low fold of land. The shape of the ridge tickled Lara’s memory. Together they climbed the gentle rise. Summer’s lush grass had been cured by frost and woven into a dense, tawny mat by autumn rain and wind. Soon the storms of winter would come, pulling a thick white blanket over the land, protecting it while it slept and dreamed, resting in preparation for the sweet violence of spring.

  “Close your eyes.”

  Obediently Lara closed her eyes. She felt the world tilt as Carson lifted her into his arms. Smiling, she hid her face against his warm sheepskin collar, telling him without words that she wouldn’t peek. After a time the world shifted again as Carson carefully set her back on her feet.

  “Now?” she asked.

  Without answering, Carson stepped behind Lara, put his arms around her and pulled her into the sheltering warmth of his body as wind stirred over the open land.

  “Now,” he said.

  Lara looked. Before her the Rocking B’s pastures lay on either side of the Big Green’s shimmering curves. A scattering of cattle grazed, and a rider wove through them. Except for the fences, little had changed since the first Blackridge had ridden into the valley, gathered a handful of stones and begun to build a new life. And that was what Carson had brought Lara to see. In front of her, no more than an anr’s length away, was the tumbled mound of native stone that had marked the first boundary of the westering dream that had shaped a family, a state and a nation.

  “You found it!” Excitement rippled in Lara’s words. “This is where it all began, the Blackridge dream and the Chandlers’, all those long years ago. I can touch the very same stones, see the same valley, stand on the same ridge-top – and it’s all here, everything!”

  Lara turned in Carson’s arms, giving him a radiant smile. His hand slid inside her parka, and he spread his fingers wide over her rounded body. Beneath his palm he felt their child stir as though impatient to be born and to walk upon the land as his ancestors had before him and as his own children would in their own time. Carson never tired of feeling that mysterious, eager life beneath his hand, of knowing that his child was growing within Lara.

&nbs
p; “Yes,” Carson said huskily, brushing his lips across hers. “It’s all here, everything, right in my arms, and its name is love. I love you, Lara.”

  He felt the tremor that went through her as he lifted her into his arms. The kiss they shared was like the wind sweeping over the land, sweet and wild, touching everything, joining the past and the present into a future that would be as beautiful and enduring as history and the land itself.