Lake in the Clouds (22 page)

“It’s too late.” She was shaking now, too, with something unnamed, unnameable. Shaking with the need to strike out at him, even as her mouth went soft and open to his.

It was a mistake, she knew that very clearly and yet she kissed Liam, because she could see no other thing in the world but the loss of him and the hurting, all the years he had been away and she had missed him, because she had always missed him and always would. He was lost to her but she would kiss him once and it would have to be enough; she could kiss him and take joy in the fact that he was kissing her back, his strong hands on her face, his fingers tangling in her hair, his thumbs on her cheekbones while she tasted his mouth, so sweet and warm. For this one moment she could hold on to him, tender and without reservation.

When they finally pulled apart they were both breathing hard, too hard to speak any of the words that didn’t need saying anyway. Hannah’s throat was thick with fear and dread: that he would try to keep her here; that he would let her go. And so she turned and walked away, leaving him this time, leaving him for good.

By ten o’clock Jemima Southern had seen every single one of her plans for Anna Hauptmann’s wedding party go wrong. She hadn’t danced with Isaiah Kuick or Liam Kirby or even Claes Wilde. Of the three men, Wilde was the only one to ask, but not until he had danced with every one of the married ladies and almost all of the unmarried girls. He came to ask after he had stood up with Dolly and Becca, and after Hannah Bonner had turned him down.

Jemima cut him off without an excuse or a smile, just as she had turned down the Camerons one after the other and Mr. Gathercole with his silly little bows and the trappers who stank of the bush, and even Jed McGarrity, rude as it was to refuse the bridegroom himself. Eventually they stopped asking, walked past her as if she weren’t there at all. With every dance her back grew stiffer and she felt the knot in her stomach pull a little tighter. She wouldn’t let it show, not here, not in front of all of Paradise. But she watched.

She watched Isaiah Kuick, who showed no interest in the dance at all, or in anything but drink. He sometimes came to the door to scan the room, looking hard at the fiddlers and then going back to join the men in the judge’s old study. She watched Hannah Bonner, in one of those gowns they had brought back from Scotland, out of fashion and still too fine for a country dance. The green didn’t suit the dark of her skin, but then she didn’t seem to care, just as she pretended she
didn’t take note of the men whose eyes followed her wherever she went.

Hannah Bonner danced with Jed McGarrity and Mr. Gathercole, but turned down most all the single men, sending them away with a smile so she could sit and talk to Dolly Smythe and Eulalia Wilde, until Eulalia’s brother Claes came to claim Dolly for a second dance. From the way she smiled up at him with those crossed eyes, it was clear that Dolly Smythe considered two dances as good as a marriage proposal. Stupid Dolly, who would never learn the most basic and important of lessons: the worst thing a woman could do was to show a man that he had power over her.

The hardest insult was Liam Kirby, who never even looked at her though she stood near him for ten minutes or more while he talked to Ambrose Dye. When Jemima had listened long enough to figure out that they were talking about the runaway, she turned her attention back to the dance. Hannah had just stood up with Jock Hindle while his wife sat fanning a face as red as cherries.

“You be gentle with him, Hannah,” called out Mistress Hindle. “He ain’t so young anymore.”

Laughter swelled up and away, and in the silence Ambrose Dye’s voice could be heard through the room.

“Red bitch.” With no rancor at all, as if he were just calling Hannah Bonner by her true name. “Got no business among white folk.”

It was almost funny, the way they all froze to hear the truth spoke aloud. Elizabeth Bonner stood and took a step forward but Hannah put an end to it all by herself, calling out clear and loud.

“Reuben, Zeke, have you forgot what those fiddles are for?”

And just as sudden as the silence had fallen it was gone, lost in the fiddle music and the talk, louder now, as if they had taken a vote and decided it was best to just ignore Ambrose Dye, outsider that he was and would always be.

All of them were content to pretend, all but Liam, who looked as if he had swallowed lye. He stood like that for all of “Molly Brooks,” fists at his sides, and then when the dance was done he followed Hannah into the hall.

A laugh caught in Jemima’s throat to see him make such a
fool of himself but she swallowed it down, as bitter as winterbloom. And still she could no more keep herself from following him than she could have stripped naked in the middle of the crowded room.

The argument had already started by the time she got there. Hannah and Liam, toe to toe, his head bent down toward hers. Talking low, but clear enough. And Hannah shaking her head, refusing to meet his eye. The doorway to the kitchen was crowded with children, mouths gaping and eyes as round as pennies. Men spilled out of the study to watch, grinning and elbowing each other. Jemima had the hot urge to slap each and every one of them. Then it was over and Hannah walked right up to Claes Wilde where he stood with his sister and claimed the dance she had turned down earlier, as if that were her right. Liam went back to his spot near the overseer, with a face as stiff as bark.

The children disappeared into the kitchen, the men into the study. Jemima stood and watched the dance, took note of people coming and going. Nathaniel Bonner came in and Peter Dubonnet went out. And Isaiah Kuick standing at the door, staring at her plain as day. All night she had been waiting for him to take note and there he was, looking at her like she was a pony with a broken leg, a creature with no good use in this world.

A great weariness came over Jemima, all of her anger washing out of her, draining away like life’s blood. She went into the hall and opened the front door. Stood there for a moment feeling the chill of an April night, saw the sky crowded with stars like unblinking eyes. She saw a cloak hanging on a nail and took it, not caring very much who it belonged to, and then she stepped off the porch and walked away toward the barn.

She found an empty stall with a scattering of old hay. With the cloak of boiled wool wrapped around her Jemima fell into an uneasy sleep; dreamed of her dead mother and woke to the sound of whispering. For a moment Jemima was confused enough to imagine herself in the bed she had shared with her brothers, and then the faint smells of milk and leather and animals long gone reminded her where she was, and why.

But she hadn’t dreamed the voices.

“All winter,” said Isaiah Kuick. “All the long winter.”

“Too long.” The overseer’s voice, but Jemima had never
heard it like this, low and soft. “I thought you’d never give me the sign.”

She tried to calm the beating of her heart, to still the breath that stirred the hay beneath her cheek. Listening with all her concentration to the sound of mouths touching wetly. She was a child again in the dark, unable to sleep through the noise from the next bed. Every night, as sure as the coming sunrise there would be the rustling of bedclothes and sharp words from her father as he pulled and prodded and climbed on top of her mother. His hoarse grunts and her whimpering, like a small animal in a trap; the creaking of the ropes that held the tick mattress, the whole bedstead rocking, on and on and on.

She could not remember her parents ever kissing; she herself had never kissed another human being, but still Jemima knew very well what she was hearing. She blinked hard, willed her eyes to focus. Turned her head just enough to look into the stall across the way, where under an unshuttered window filled with moonlight she could just make out two shapes, twisting and turning as clothing fell away to the floor. And then the line of a naked back bent forward, the sound of flesh on flesh, a sharp gasp.

“Oh Christ, oh Christ.”

“Shhhhh.” A whisper, soft and softer. “Shhhh.”

Jemima Southern trusted nothing more than her own eyes, and what she saw was men mating like dogs. What she heard was the talk of lovers who knew each other well, tender words of encouragement,
sweet Lord yes,
and
more,
and
oh please.
Isaiah Kuick on hands and knees and Dye bent over him, using his backside like other men used a woman’s front. She could make out the white of Kuick’s leg, his arm, his head hung low, mouth open and gasping, in pain or pleasure or both. Dye’s free hand busy between Kuick’s legs, stroking in rhythm with the pumping of his hips. And then he arched his back and put his face up to the starlight and Jemima saw the most unbelievable and strange thing of all: the man she knew as the overseer—distrustful, cold, mean unto death—that man was gone. The face Jemima saw in the starlight was alive in a way so overwhelming and personal that she must close her eyes, blinded for a moment by a stunned and wordless joy that was not meant for her to see. When she looked again, the two men were still joined together, gently rocking.

This was no strange dream, but a gift. Unexpected treasure, as solid as gold.

Now they’re done,
she thought.
Now they’ll go.
She needed time to sort out the thoughts that raced through her head: her father’s voice as he read from the bible, fragments of verses she had not understood but had memorized because he required it of her:
thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination … leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly.
And the widow’s voice:
heathens
and
papists
and
eternal damnation
and
Mr. Gathercole, I do hope you’ll read from Leviticus today, we are all in need of a consuming fire.

The widow. Jemima imagined the widow in her chair by the window, always watching, ever keen to uncover transgressions against God and herself. Jemima felt the stab of her embroidery needle, heard that thin voice, so sure of her place in the world, so sure of her son. The way she looked at him, the plans she had for him.
Pride cometh before the fall.
Jemima mouthed the words silently and imagined the widow’s face if she were to walk into this barn and see the overseer using her precious Isaiah like a whore. Lucy Kuick’s only son was a sodomite.

The men were talking face-to-face, kissing now and then. Their voices were lower and Jemima couldn’t make out much of what they said to each other, but the tone was clear enough, gentle and loving and almost more of a shock than what had come before. Then Dye slid down Isaiah’s belly and Jemima watched, not so much disgusted or outraged as she knew she should be, but simply amazed and more than a little curious to see a man put his head between another man’s legs to suckle like a baby at a full teat. The pleasure it gave both of them was obvious and a mystery too, and she studied it carefully while another part of her mind raced backward through the months she had schemed to get Isaiah into her bed.

She understood now that her open door meant nothing to him, would never mean anything to him. But that didn’t matter, not anymore. Once she had hoped to lie underneath him as many times as it took for him to get a child on her, but tonight he had given her something better. Now he could deny her nothing at all.

Then they were standing again, brushing the hay from each other’s clothes, hands lingering here and there. Talking days, and times, and opportunities.

Thursday,
said Dye, and Kuick laughed.

As if either of us could wait that long.

It was the first time Jemima had ever heard him really laugh, without any trace of mockery.

When they were gone she lay for a while, making plans. Twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour she had watched them, and in that short time her whole life had changed. So deep was she in this knowledge that the sound of footsteps took her by surprise and she froze, thinking they were coming back to start again. If she had stood up too soon and they had found her here, what then? Dye would simply kill her; she knew that without doubt.

But it was Liam Kirby and he was alone. She knew him by his size and the gleam of his hair in the light of the stars. He stood without moving for a long minute, his hands at his sides.

He was waiting for Hannah, and that made perfect sense: Jemima must watch Liam take Hannah as the overseer had taken Isaiah Kuick; she must listen to the things he would say to her, love talk, sweet words. This was the price she would have to pay for the advantage she had been given, and it was bitter.

After a long time Jemima began to realize that Hannah was not coming. He was here alone, and hiding. Hannah had refused him, and he had sought out this place to lick his wounds. For a moment Jemima was stunned by the depths of her good fortune, and then she whispered his name.

He started, turned sharply. “What are you doing in here?”

“Waiting for you.” Her fingers moved to slip her sleeves off her shoulders, letting her breasts spill out as she moved toward him.