Like Chaff in the Wind (31 page)

Chapter 41

It didn’t take Matthew long to work out that something was chafing at his wife, and not that much longer to understand that somehow it was him who had affronted her. She maintained a constant distance, leaping to her feet to hurry off when she saw him making for her, and keeping an impressive bulwark of children around her. If he tried to kiss her, Rachel had to be fed or changed or have her rash seen to. When he took her hand, she disengaged herself and told him she had promised Isaac to go swimming, or Mark to go into the woods. In the evenings, she complained about the heaps of mending she had to do, waving him off to bed while assuring him she would be up later, once she had finished this shirt or that smock. He never managed to stay awake until she came up.

Not until he saw a flashing movement as he came down from yet another afternoon with Ian, did he put two and two together, and he went in to supper with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Yet another good day?” she asked in a barbed tone, keeping her eyes on her plate.

“Aye.”

“Meet anyone in particular?” she asked with enough frost to freeze a horse. Joan and Simon shared a quick look and left them the battlefield.

“You broke your promise to me,” she said once they were alone. “And even worse, you didn’t tell me you’d seen Ian, even when I gave you the opportunity to.”

“He’s my son,” Matthew said belligerently. “Will you deny me to see him?”

“He isn’t your son! He’s their son! They’ve had the raising of him since he was a baby, it’s their values and their opinions that form his world and way of thinking, not yours. He’s lost to you, he’s been lost to you since the day you signed him away. Besides, that isn’t the point. The point is that you promised and broke your promise. So how am I to trust you? Maybe you’ve been seeing her as well on the sly, what would I know?”

His cheeks heated with anger and shame at the insinuation in her words.

“You know I’d never dishonour you.” An image of Kate flashed through his head and his skin burnt even hotter.

“Do I? I thought you’d stand by your given word as well.” She subsided into silence, shoving her mostly uneaten supper from one side of the plate to the other. He studied her, sighing inwardly. How could she feel threatened by the fact that he saw his son?

“I couldn’t help myself. I swear, I had no intention of breaking my word, but seeing Ian leap away from me in fear, as he did that afternoon when I came upon the lads up in the wee clearing, well, it tore at me.” He leaned his face into his hands. “He’s caught in between; he doesn’t understand why he and his mother can’t stay here, with his kin. And you’re right in that he isn’t mine, not like he would be had I had the caring of him. But can’t you understand that I take these few moments with him and try to give him something of myself to carry with him?” He kept his eyes on the table. My Ian; my wee laddie, and they stole him from me, and now, well now it was too late. A hand stroked his head, rested for a while against his cheek.

“I’ve lost a son too. Isaac is hers – Diane’s – much more than mine.”

It was different, he wanted to yell, Isaac had not been wrested from her through lies, had he? No, this unknown Diane had done the right thing by a motherless laddie – but she wouldn’t want to hear that.

“Aye, but your Isaac is in hands you trust. I…well, I’ve thrown my son to the wolves.”

There was a long silence, he could hear her every breath, how her stays creaked when she shifted in her seat.

“See him as much as you want then.” She cleared her throat. “But if I ever see you loitering around in the woods with her, I swear I’ll do you severe bodily harm. For both our sakes, don’t break that promise to me, okay?”

Matthew raised his eyes to hers. Finally he nodded, once.

“I’ll speak to her only as I must.”

They spent most of the evening in the parlour, Matthew playing chess with Simon, Alex conversing with Joan. Every now and then, he’d sneak her a look, and every time he did, she’d meet his eyes. He suppressed a little smile; reconciliation sex, she’d once told him, was considered to be spectacularly good, and from the way his pregnant wife was eyeing him, he had a memorable night before him. In his breeches his cock twitched and stretched. Alex yawned and excused herself, and once Matthew had checkmated Simon, he stood as well, bidding Simon and Joan a good night before hastening up the stairs.

She’d lit candles and turned the bed down, and there, right in the centre, she was lying on her back, as naked as the day she was born. He didn’t say anything, he just stood looking at her, and her toes curled, her legs widened.

He kissed her ankle, her calf, her knee – both her knees – the inside of her thighs. Her hair; he loved her hair, the way it shifted from plain brown through bronze to deepest copper. He undid the braid, spread out her curls over their pillows. One long curl he used to decorate her breast, smiling at how her nipples hardened when he brushed his fingers over them.

A warm hand snuck into his neckline of his shirt, tugged none too gently at his chest hair.

“Take off your clothes,” she said.

“Mmm?” he teased, dropping a series of kisses down her front. She wiggled, laughing when his hair tickled her flank.

“Your clothes,” she said, struggling with his belt. Breeches, shirt and stockings landed on the floor. Blood pounded through his head, through his cock. Her fingers danced up the length of him, a hand cupped his balls, and he heard his breathing grow loud and ragged when first her tongue, then her teeth – ever so gently – found the tip of his member. With a groan he fell back, legs splayed, arms thrown out, and let her have her way with him. She nibbled and teased, she kissed and stroked, and his cock thudded and swelled to the point of bursting. She released him and sat up, licking her lips.

“Turn over,” he said. She complied, and he took her from behind, his hands cradling her breasts. She pushed against him, bringing him even deeper into her. Ah! Oh aye, there, almost there.

“I love you,” she whispered – no panted. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

And I you, my Alex. My woman, my heart.

*

Isaac was overjoyed the day he was let out of splints, gambolling like a spring-fevered calf on the thick green grass under the apple trees. Alex watched him with a half-smile, glad that he was undamaged, sad because now the decision she had been putting off with the excuse of his leg had to be taken.

“Your leg seems okay,” Alex said, lowering herself to sit beside Isaac. She winced as she stretched her legs in front of her, wiggling her bare toes. Her whole body was screeching in protest after yet another day’s heavy work. For the last week, she’d been busy in the kitchen garden from early morning to late evening, harvesting redcurrants and raspberries, peas and radishes and basketfuls of cucumbers for pickling.

“Here.” Alex extended a muffin to the boy. He bit into it and smiled at the sudden rush of warm jam that filled his mouth.

“It’s not all crap food,” Alex muttered, regretting her tone when Isaac blushed.

“I still miss things, like orange juice and hamburgers, and fish and chips and how Offa makes chocolate desserts.”

“Yeah,” Alex said wistfully. “I definitely miss chocolate.”

“Nothing else?”

Alex stretched out on the ground and closed her eyes.

“Not food, not really. I miss other things, though.” She opened one eye to squint at her son. “Like a washing machine, or toothpaste.”

Isaac flopped down to lie beside her. “But you don’t really miss us.” It was a statement, not a question, and Alex turned her head to look her son fully in the eyes.

“No, I don’t. I think of you often – of you and Magnus mostly. But my life is here, and if I were to be torn away from this I think I would die.” Much too serious for such a young boy, she reprimanded herself, but to her surprise Isaac nodded as if he understood.

“It’s the other way around for me. I miss them so much it hurts. All the time.”

Alex struggled to sit, and drew her legs up beneath her. “I have a painting,” she said, keeping her eyes on anything but him. “You know, like the one you fell through. I think maybe you can go back through it.”

“Now?” Isaac sat up as well, brown eyes hanging off her.

“No, we have to do this properly. You can’t just disappear. And I’m very scared, so we’ll have to be very careful.”

Isaac had gone white around the mouth, and Alex studied him with tenderness.

“In a week?” Alex suggested, smoothing his hair off his brow. “But only if you think you can do it.” She looked at him for a couple of heartbeats. “I would love for you to stay with me, Isaac. You know that don’t you?”

The boy crawled into her arms and nestled in as close as he could. “I don’t want to,” he whispered. No; she already knew that.

“A week?” Matthew shook his head. “He’s a wee lad, and now you’ve told him he has to wait a week for something he wants, but also fears.”

“You think he does?”

“Aye. The lad pales every time he talks about it. He’s a brave boy to be willing to do it again to get home.”

“That or he’s desperately unhappy here.”

“This is not his place,” Matthew said, “and you know that as well as he does.” Alex stroked Rachel’s head, settled her in the cradle, and more or less fell into bed. God she was tired; and all this stuff with Isaac wasn’t exactly helping.

“Yes, of course I do.”

Matthew was right, Alex concluded, watching an Isaac who grew increasingly nervous with each day. She tried to distract him, keeping him busy with his siblings and a long list of chores, and Isaac nodded and did as he was told, but he wasn’t really there, not anymore. There was so much Alex wanted to say to him, now that she’d restricted their remaining time to a few paltry days, but she was tongue-tied around him, incapable of anything but warm hugs. And Isaac hugged her back, his thin arms tight around her expanding waist.

Alex drew pictures of Mark and Rachel, of Matthew and even of herself, using the mirror to help her see, and she tucked them into the pocket of his jeans that he might have something to remember them by once he got back. But most of all she drew Isaac, quick sketches that she hid away so that she would never forget what he looked like again. It was one long, protracted goodbye, and by the end of the week she was emotionally drained, as limp as a wrung dishcloth.

*

On Isaac’s potentially last evening with them, Matthew took him by the hand and led him up to the small graveyard that sat halfway up the hillside. Isaac had never been here before, and he shrank back when he understood this place was full of dead people. Matthew laughed and patted the bench beside him.

“They’ll do you no harm.” He waited until Isaac was sitting down before he dug into his pouch and produced a small wooden figure. Isaac exclaimed when he saw his mother, sitting with her skirts spread round her and her face split into a wide smile.

“This isn’t for you,” Matthew said, “this is for Magnus. I want you to give it to him and thank him for the gift of his daughter.”

Isaac looked confused but nodded.

“One day she and I will lie here,” Matthew went on, pointing at the graves around them. “When you get back to your time mayhap you can find us here.” He could see this was too much for the lad to handle, and dropped the subject. Instead he produced another little carving.

“This is for you, so that you never forget that you whacked a maddened pig across the snout.” It was the sow to the day, down to her small aggravated eyes, and Isaac threw himself into Matthew’s arms, crying until he was hoarse.

*

There was an argument on the morning of Isaac’s departure, a hissed, intense discussion between the four adults sitting round the kitchen table.

“It’s wrong,” Joan said. “No mortal should tamper with things such as these.”

“He shouldn’t be here to begin with,” Alex tried, but Joan set her mouth into a very straight line.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right, Alex, and look at the laddie – all stiff and pale with fear. We should keep him here, with us, not send him flying through time!” She turned to Simon who nodded his agreement.

“He could stay with us, with Joan and me,” he said, “and besides, how do you know this will work? I still find it difficult to believe, aye? People leaping from one time to another, and all through a wee painting.”

“He wants to go back, and I’ve promised him I’m going to try and help him, okay? End of discussion. And I’m not too thrilled about this either. It scares the daylights out of me, but what can I do? He hates it here, he pines for them, the people he loves. I’d love for him to stay – but he doesn’t want to, he needs them much more than he needs me.” With that Alex rushed from the room. Matthew made as if to follow, but Joan waved him down.

“No, I’ll go, it’s me who upset her to begin with.” With a brief smile she hurried after Alex.

Simon sighed and settled back against the wall. “All of this makes my head spin; if I were to leap into the future and find a wife I might be marrying my own descendant.”

“Seeing as you don’t have any bairns, I don’t see how,” Matthew said, receiving a hurt look in reply.

“Not for want of trying.”

“No, and I apologise for jesting about it.” He placed a hand on Simon’s arm. “She isn’t too old, you may still have that child.”

Simon sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair. “You think? More than seven years married, and not once has she missed her courses. And you soon have four bairns.”

“Only three that are mine to raise.” Matthew swallowed back on a wave of acrid bitterness.

“Aye, but now that you look back on it, don’t you think our Lord had some kind of plan? Had you not been deceived by Margaret and Luke, you would not have been given Alex.”

Matthew had never thought of it that way, but now he nodded thoughtfully.

“Mayhap; and there isn’t a day when I don’t thank the Lord for her.”

Simon rolled his eyes. “Besotted, the both of you.”

*

They had decided beforehand that they would ride out to the crossroads where Alex had almost been dragged back to her time more than three years ago, Alex commenting in an attempted matter-of-fact voice that reasonably this should be an appropriate spot.