“Aye,” he sighed.
“Shall I…”
“Nay, lass, this is something I must do. But I’d not mind you being there.”
It was a terrible thing to do. Matthew cleared his throat, took a deep breath and… Yet another deep breath, and as gently as he could, Matthew told Ian his mother was dead. Not a word did the lad utter, he just sat there, and when Matthew was done, he extended his hand for the letter, making it very clear he considered it his full right to read it.
He just held it at first, and Matthew was certain he was playing one of those foolish games where you hope that as long as you haven’t read or seen something for yourself it isn’t true. Finally, Ian dropped his eyes to the brownish ink and, when he was done, folded the letter together.
“I...” Ian stood up. He looked at Matthew for a long time before leaving the room.
“Oh dear,” Alex said. “Maybe I should go after him.”
“Not yet, leave him be for now. I’ll go and find him later.” Matthew got to his feet and straightened up. “And you and I have work to do.”
“Always.” Alex grabbed a basket. “Agnes! Come on then, girl. We have a whole vegetable garden to get into the root cellar.”
*
“Mama?” Daniel dug his toe into the turned earth and leaned forward on his hoe.
“Mmm?” Alex looked up fleetingly before going back to filling her basket with potatoes and beets.
“Will I be like him, Mr Campbell, when I grow up?”
Alex was so surprised she dropped the potatoes she was holding. “Richard Campbell? Why would you think that?”
Daniel twisted a bit. “He’s a minister.”
“Most ministers are nice people, and I’m sure you’ll turn out one of them.” She picked up the dropped potatoes and brushed them off before putting them in with the others. “Do you think a lot about it? Being a minister and all that?”
“Sometimes. But it’s years before I have to go to school.”
“Of course.” Alex smiled. “After all, you’re only seven.”
He came over to where she was kneeling, and she wrapped her arms around him and held him until he began to squirm.
“Da says how he and I will begin reading the Bible together,” Daniel told her, helping Alex to hold the heavy door to the root cellar. Due to the inventiveness and sheer persistency of the raccoons, the storage cellar resembled a fortified bunker, with walls that were constantly checked for recently dug holes and a door that weighed half a ton and which bolted shut on all four sides.
“Oh, you will?” Alex stuck her head out and held up her arms to receive yet another full basket.
“That’s good.” Agnes smiled down at Daniel. “It’s important that you know the Holy Writ. My da used to read the Bible all the time with wee Angus, and he was so proud on account of Angus being such a dedicated student. He knew all the books of the Bible when he was your age.”
“And that’s good to know why?” Alex asked.
Agnes frowned. “You should know.”
“Why? If you want to know, you just open the Bible and read the index, right?”
“Index?” A new word for Agnes, Alex could tell. “All good Christian people know their Bible well enough to name the books,” Agnes said instead. Alex laughed as she ducked into the cellar.
“And all good Christian people know it is the sun that rotates around the world,” Agnes said to Daniel just as Alex popped back up for another load.
Daniel shook his head. “It has been proven that it isn’t so, by scientists such as Co... Coperniclas and Gallyley.”
“Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei,” Alex corrected. “How do you know that?”
“Offa told me and when I asked Da he said that aye, it was so.” And of course whatever his father said had to be true, Alex smiled.
*
“Once I find the time, aye I will,” Matthew said when Alex asked him about these Bible lessons. “He was right in that at least, Richard Campbell, that I’ve let my sons grow up somewhat unschooled in the Holy Writ.”
“And daughters,” Alex corrected with some sharpness.
“And daughters.” He was sitting with his hands held apart holding a skein of wool while she rolled it into a ball of yarn. “Daniel must come well prepared to school. I won’t have him ridiculed on account of him not knowing his texts.” He stretched and smiled lazily at her. “It might do you some good as well. We could spend time studying the Song of Solomon.”
“Now?” She dropped the balls of yarn into her basket and stood up. “Thou art fair my love, behold thou art fair...” she quoted. “Although I actually prefer another line...let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits.”
Matthew chuckled and hooked a finger into her waistband, drawing her close enough for him to wind his arm around her waist. “I am here. So where is my fruit?”
Sometimes it was very slow, an unhurried exploration of bodies so familiar they were but an extension of each other. Her hand – or was it his? – on his member, his fingers, her fingers, exploring her moistness. Skin on skin, the delicious sensation of his – her? – weight on top, the slope of a hip, the ridge of a collarbone. Murmuring voices, a sudden laugh, more hands, lips that were wet and soft, exhalations that tickled exposed necks, breasts and thighs. Toes that caressed their way up shins, hands that smoothed down unruly hair, stopped to trace a brow, the curve of a lip.
A kiss...a long, long kiss, and in her chest her heart picked up speed. A hand on her thigh, insistent, strong, and her breath became ragged. A low, dark voice that told her just how much he loved her; more kisses, fingers that knotted themselves into hair. Her head forced back, laying her throat bare to his lips, his nipping teeth. His body rising above hers, her hand on his arms, on his shoulders, gliding down his back to his waist, his buttocks. Her man, her Matthew. Her legs twisting into his – or was it the other way around? – hips, definitely her hips, that rose of their own accord from the bed, and there! Oh yes, there.
*
“Matthew?”
“Aye?” He spooned himself around her, drawing in her warm, moist smell.
“What if...” Alex broke off and twisted round to face him, propping herself up on an elbow. Matthew sighed inwardly. Why was it that so often she had a need to talk just when he was on the verge of sleeping?
“What if...” he prompted, stifling a yawn.
“Well, what if Daniel doesn’t want to be a minister?”
“Sometimes you don’t give them a choice. Since he was a wee bairn, we’ve told him that he’ll be a man of God once he grows up. And we won’t encourage him to question that now, aye?”
“But—”
“No buts. Daniel Elijah is meant for the kirk. You know that. Through God’s grace was he saved when he was ill, and to God we’ve promised him in return.”
She mulled this over for some time. “Okay, no buts. However, we’re going to spend a lot of time finding him a cheerful and competent wife, okay?”
Matthew lay in astounded silence and then he burst out laughing.
“What?”
“Nowt,” he said, still laughing.
“What’s so funny? You don’t agree?”
“Aye, of course I do.” He rolled her over on her side, slipped his hand in to cup her breast, and smiled. Find him a wife indeed... Mayhap Magnus was right; Alex had changed, much more than she fully noticed herself. To the point where she was even contemplating an arranged marriage for their seven-year-old son. He grunted contentedly and shifted closer to her.
Chapter 30
“I don’t like it.” Alex hid her face against Matthew’s chest. The summons had come late – so late Alex had begun hoping that maybe the militia wouldn’t be called out at all – and now he was off to participate in some ridiculous punitive operation. She didn’
t like it one whit; months away from her, months at close quarters with Dominic Jones.
“Nor do I, lass, but it can’t be helped, can it?” He disengaged himself from her hands, kissed her on the mouth, close-lipped and warm. “But I’ll be back.”
“Promise?”
“Like a dove to his dovecote,” he smiled. Assuming he didn’t die out there in the wilds, she thought with a little gulp.
“He’ll be fine,” Mrs Parson said, coming to join Alex in the yard.
“Of course he will.” Alex raised her hand in one last wave. “It’s just...”
“I know, you hate it when he’s gone from you.”
“Ridiculous, right?”
“Very,” Mrs Parson said, “but I suppose you can’t help it, can you? Weak and clinging, that’s you, Alex Graham.”
“No, I’m not!” Alex retorted before she saw that Mrs Parson was smiling, her black eyes sparkling with amusement.
The old woman gave Alex a maternal pat on the cheek. “It’s not so strange, is it, lass. You’ve almost lost him a couple of times, and that makes you overprotective of him.”
“He wouldn’t like to hear you say that. In Matthew’s view of the world, he protects, not me.”
“Aye well, that’s men for you, no?” Mrs Parson shrugged, hastening off in the direction of the closest storage shed.
Alex sighed and wandered off up the lane in the futile hope of catching one last glimpse of Matthew. Once she’d gotten to the top, she decided she might just as well take a walk, keeping an eye out for anything edible.
She meandered her way along the overgrown bridle path that led to Forest Spring, her eyes on the ground, her mind with Matthew and Moses, now well on their way to Leslie’s Crossing and beyond. At least he had a friend with him, she thought, finding some comfort in that. Thomas might be dull and somewhat staid, but he was a competent fighter and a loyal friend. She found a briar rose full of hips and, for the next half-hour, she stripped the thorny bush of the small red fruit.
“Do you recall the first time we picked hips together, you and I?”
Alex jumped at the sound of Ian’s voice.
“Don’t do that!” she scolded. “You scared me half to death. Besides, you’re not picking now, and you weren’t picking all that much that time either.”
“Aye, I was.”
They fell silent, working side by side to fill her apron.
“He’ll be fine,” Ian said, echoing Mrs Parson’s earlier comment.
“I hope so. I don’t like it, Ian; him and Dominic in the same militia...”
“He’s twice the man Jones is.”
“Absolutely, but it doesn’t do to underestimate Dominic Jones.” Alex chewed at her lip. “Men that do end up dead.”
Ian went off to continue with his hunting, and Alex was back to walking alone, humming something under her breath. The wet late October day was quiet, birds a muted background noise no more. She strayed off the path to inspect a stand of mushrooms, but as she didn’t recognise them she chose to leave them standing. She was still squatting when the unexpected sound of male voices made her freeze.
She recognised the horse first, gulped and tried to make herself as invisible as possible. Difficult to do when one was wearing a flowered shawl and a white cap, and with a low whoop Philip Burley brought his horse to a halt.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Mrs Graham.” His mouth stretched itself into a cold smile. “And what may you have in your apron? More of those peppers you so kindly anointed my eyes with last time we met?”
“No.” Alex succeeded in sounding much more relaxed than she felt. “These are hips.”
“Hips, you say?” Philip let his eyes travel up and down Alex.
“She has good ones,” one of his companions piped up, eliciting a snicker from the other two.
Alex looked from one to the other. “Oh my God, it’s actually true. You do have three brothers.”
“Why is that so surprising?”
Alex just shook her head. Dark-haired and light-eyed the lot of them, the youngest not much more than a boy, the other two closer to Philip in age, somewhere in their late twenties. “I was commiserating with your mother. Imagine giving birth to four like you.”
“Seven actually, but the three eldest were girls,” Philip said.
“Lucky her,” Alex muttered.
“Very,” one of the other brothers said. “Four sons to keep her well protected – unlike you, Mrs Graham.” He looked over to Philip. “Is she the wife of the man who stole the Indians from you?”
“Stole? Matthew stopped your creep of a brother from abducting them!” Alex shifted a couple of yards further away from the path, eyeing her surroundings.
“Yes, she is.” Philip rode his horse into the underbrush, and Alex retreated behind a stand of maple saplings. “Think you can run?”
“Run? Why should I? Matthew will be here any minute.”
“Really?” Philip drawled.
“Really,” Alex said, taking yet another step away from him. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in Virginia?”
“Our business is none of your concern,” Philip said.
“Business? Here?” Alex swept her arm at the surrounding wilderness. “What do you do? Sell nuts to the squirrels?”
Philip laughed. “There are always buyers for our goods – and services.” He turned to his brothers. “What do you reckon she’s worth?”
“Worth? Me? Why you—” Alex broke off at his look and backed into the closest bramble.
“She’s quite old,” the youngest of them said.
“Yes,” one of the others agreed. His eyes stuck to Alex’s chest, did a cursory inspection of the rest of her and returned to her chest. He had eyes as light as Philip, eyes that made her knees wobble.
“Just because she’s old it doesn’t mean we can’t sell her,” the third brother said. “Some sort of compensation for the lost Indians.”
“Just because you walk on two legs and can talk, it doesn’t follow you have a brain, does it?” Alex retorted.
“Feisty,” Philip said. “I like that in a woman. Makes it more fun to...” He made a rude gesture and his brothers grinned, eyeing Alex hungrily.
“I just told you. My husband will be here shortly.”
“Now why don’t I believe you, Mrs Graham?” Philip Burley leaned forward over the neck of his horse.
“Because you’re stupid?” Alex said.
“Stupid? I think not, Mrs Graham.” He rode closer. Alex groped for her knife and raised it high. Philip looked at her with a glimmer of admiration in his eyes. He smiled, a slow, dangerous smile further enhanced by the lock of coal-black hair that fell forward over his face. For eternal seconds, she was nailed to the spot by his eyes. The palms of her hands, the insides of her thighs broke out in a cold sweat.
Finally, he wheeled his horse. “I’ll be back,” he threw over his shoulder. “If nothing else to offer my condolences to the recently bereaved widow.”
She couldn’t help it, she gasped, making him laugh.
“We don’t have time to waste. We have a militia to join – coincidentally the same company your husband belongs to.”
“But...” the youngest whined. “I thought we’d—”
“Not today, Will,” Philip cut him off. He smiled at Alex and touched the brim of his hat. “We know where to find her when we want her.” With that he was off, his three brothers in his wake.
Alex sank down to sit where she stood.
*
“Mama?” Ian crouched before her. “What’s the matter?” Alex just couldn’t stop crying, throwing her arms around her eldest son while she tried to explain why she was sitting here in the dusk, a mile or so from home.
“Shush, Mama, he’ll be fine. And he has Thomas with him.”
“They’re four,” she sobbed. “Five, if you count Jones.”
“Mama!” Ian gave her a little shake. “Look at me.”
Alex sat back, snivelled, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“You’ll have to trust him to take care of himself.”
She nodded. “He’ll be fine,” she said in a voice hoarse with crying. “Of course he’ll be.” She twisted at her wedding ring, round and round it went. “But what if he isn’t? What then?”
Chapter 31
Matthew had forgotten how tedious life was when spent entirely in the company of men – in particular men young enough to be his sons and with one single thought in their brains: to prove themselves men by slaying an Indian or two. After five weeks, he worried he might lay into one of these young hotheads, but he held his tongue and avoided them as much as possible, riding with the other officers instead.
He adjusted his bright sash, pressed his hat down harder on his head, and urged Moses into a trot to catch up with Thomas, who was riding a few horse lengths ahead, involved in a heated debate with the men beside him. The conversation died away the moment he joined them, and from the strained look on Thomas’ face, Matthew understood it had been him they’d been discussing. Again. It made him seethe inside, and instinctively he turned, looking for that goddamn Dominic Jones, preferably to tear that lying tongue out by its roots.
Everywhere Matthew went among his contemporaries, he was now met with glances that spoke of distrust and caution – after all, Matthew Graham had at an earlier point in his life been sent over as an indentured criminal.
“It doesn’t help, does it?“ Matthew said. “I can repeat that I was unlawfully abducted until I’m blue in the face, but he got there first, and anything I say will be taken as a weak attempt to defend my reputation.”
Thomas made a non-committal sound. “Dominic Jones is not the best liked of men and, once the novelty of it has worn itself out, men will forget. After all, quite a few of the elders in Providence were shipped over against their will.”
“Aye, but he’s painting me a common criminal, not a prisoner of conscience.” Matthew tightened his gloved fist around his reins and glared at Jones’ back. “All to discredit me and any story I might have to tell – be I dead or alive.”
A Newfound Land (The Graham Saga) Page 27
