Mackinnons #02 For All the Right Reasons (36 page)

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s more than beautiful. It’s like a jewel that no one has ever seen; a jewel that has lain untouched for millions of years. I feel so alone, like I’m the only person in all its vastness.” She glanced at him to see if he was making any sense of what she was saying. Seeing his face, she knew he did. “I can’t help wondering what it’s like up there, far over the hills to the jagged peaks beyond.” She turned to him. “What’s over there?”

He laughed. “More mountains.”

“Which ones? The Sierras?”

“They’re closer to Sacramento.”

“Then what do we call our mountains?”

Our mountains
. He didn’t answer right away. “The Klamath Mountains and the Salmon, farther over you’ll run into the Cascades.”

“Are they covered with snow?”

“The higher peaks are year around. The rest get snow only during the winter.”

“I suppose we’ll be seeing some of that soon.”

“Not here, but farther up.”

“I’d like to go up there, to see it when it snows.” She looked hesitant, almost shy, and he was suddenly aware of how their marriage had changed things between them. There was a stiffness, a formality between them that had not existed before. That made him miss the easy comfort and camaraderie they had once. He realized then that she was speaking. “You know how little we get back home,” she was saying. “Every five years or so.”

“You won’t have to wait that long anymore. A few hours ride will put you in all the snow you could ever want.”

She turned away and walked back toward the tent. “Can we get up to the house now?”

“The roads are still blocked, so we’ll have to go by horseback.” He stepped inside the tent to see if her trunk had come. Seeing it had, he pulled the saddlebags from where they lay across his shoulder and handed them to her. “You’ll have to pack anything you’ll be needing in here. There’s not much room. I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can do. Tomorrow we should be able to get those logs cleared and get the wagons with our supplies and your trunks up to the house.”

She took the saddlebags and moved to her trunk. With quiet efficiency she removed a few things she would be needing: her brush, a gown, a simple skirt and blouse, underthings. She closed the bags and he took them, tossing them over his shoulder once more. Taking her arm, he walked her down the slope toward the camp, where Adrian waited with two horses. When they reached the horses, Adrian dismounted. “I’ll help her up as soon as you’re mounted,” he said.

Alex nodded, and Katherine watched him swing into the saddle as she had seen him do a hundred times, but this time seemed so different. The gold fields and lumbering had been good for him, for his body was more muscular, more mature now, the body of a man. She thought what fine legs he had when Adrian’s hands came around her waist and he lifted her up to sit in front of Alex. Her breath caught when she felt his arms come around her, pulling her back to rest against his chest. “It’s a bit awkward, I know,” he said, but Katherine was thinking it was wonderful. His chest was warm and smooth and hard. She smiled and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. He even smelled like Alex.
Smelled like Alex? Of course he smells like Alex, you dolt! Who else would he smell like? Sometimes you amaze me, Katherine. You really do.

“All set?” he asked, his words stirring in her hair.

There was an awkward moment when she felt his breath warm on her cheek, felt his arms tighten around her, and her heart leaped into her throat. “Yes.”

“I don’t suppose I need to tell a farm girl like you to hold on.”

“I’ve seen how you ride, Alexander Mackinnon. I’d be a pure fool not to hang on for all I’m worth.”

He laughed and Adrian said, “That’s one drawback to marrying a woman who’s known you all your life. There isn’t much you can surprise her with.”

“I’m sure I can find something she hasn’t seen,” Alex said.

“I’m sure you can too,” Adrian said, laughing. “
If
you put your mind to it.”

“My thoughts lay in another direction entirely,” said Alex.

Katherine missed the point and then, from the way her face seemed to flame with heat, she was glad it was too dark to see it.

They rode through the trees for some time before the lights from the house glimmered up ahead. When they reached the clearing in front of the house, it was too dark to tell much, except it looked like three or four log cabins stacked together to make one big one, a long, sweeping porch tacked on the front. “Well, this is it,” Alex said, bringing one leg over and dropping to the ground. His arms came up and she slid down into them.

She felt his body stiffen at the moment of contact, but he released her and moved quickly away the minute he heard Adrian approach. By the time Adrian was beside them, Alex had turned to the saddlebags. “Take her on inside while I get these.”

She had enough time to take in the main room before Alex arrived. It was much larger than she had first thought, at least thirty feet long. The furniture was made from logs and covered with brightly patterned Indian blankets. Three enormous fur rugs almost covered the floor. She wasn’t sure what animal the fur was from, but whatever it was, it was big. The fireplace was large enough to stand up in, made of stone and taking up one entire wall. Someone had been expecting them, for a good fire was going and the room was warm and filled with a delicious aroma that reminded her how hungry she was. “Well, what do you think?” Adrian asked.

“It’s much nicer than I expected…and larger.”

“You’ll have a much larger one in a couple of years,” Alex said, coming into the room and closing the door behind him. He looked at Katherine standing small and uncertain in the large room. “Would you like time to yourself before dinner?”

“What I’d really like is time to myself
after
dinner,” she said. “I’m starved.”

Alex laughed. “And it isn’t ship food.”

“Thank God,” she said. “Where’s the kitchen?”

“Through here.” She followed him into the kitchen, seeing another large room, surprisingly well stocked and neat for two bachelors. “Wong gets the credit,” he said.

She moved to the stove and lifted the lid off the pot. “Did he cook this as well?”

“It had to be Wong or M.P., since they’re the only two who cook around here.”

She leaned over the pot, stirring it and inhaling deeply. “Hmmmm, beef stew. It smells wonderful.”

“I think it’s grizzly.”

“Grizzly?” she repeated. “As in bear?”

He nodded. “Um-hmm.”

“You have grizzlies around here?” He nodded again. “Close?”

“Close enough.” He laughed, his hand coming out to ruffle her hair. “About as close as you can imagine. You just walked over two of them when you came in…of course they were dead. You’ll be eating another one in a few minutes. They’re not quite as plentiful as cattle, and a damn sight harder to bring to the supper table, but you’ll soon find we eat a lot of fish and a lot of grizzly, as well as deer up here.”

“I’m hungry enough to eat anything that doesn’t eat me first,” she said, looking around, opening a door or two. “Where are the dishes?”

“In that cupboard.”

She removed her cloak and hung it on a peg by the back door, exchanging it for an apron and tying it around her waist. Alex had never seen her in a dress as lovely and finely made as this before, and never had he seen her in such vivid color. The white apron brought out the intense richness of the deep green color of her dress, the bow at the back made for a man to undo. Her cheeks were rosy. When she glanced up, Alex was looking at her, a strange light in his eyes. “You wore one of the dresses,” he said. “The color is good on you.”

“Of course I wore one. If you only knew how long it’s been since I had a new dress you wouldn’t dare wonder if I’d wear them or not. But I’ll warn you now, you may get sick of seeing me in them. It’ll be hard to get me back into my old clothes after this.”

Remembering the worn fabric, the drab colors, and seeing how lovely she now looked, he said, “If I never saw you in them again, it would be too soon.”

She laughed, and it struck him how different her response was compared to what Karin’s would have been. Katherine laughed. Karin would have been furious and in tears by now. “You’ll be seeing my old clothes soon enough,” she said. “I’m not about to ruin my beautiful new clothes with housework. But I promise I’ll be wearing one of my new ones each evening when you come home from work.”

Something about her words caught him like a fist in the gut, and he felt the impact of it so strongly, his breath felt trapped. There was something about the way she said,
each evening when you come home from work
that leveled him. It made him feel a part of her, made him feel as if they belonged together, like he had been coming home to her for a long time.

He watched his new wife busy herself in the kitchen, and felt a man’s satisfaction in seeing her happy. He had to hand it to her. She had everything a man could want in a wife: beauty, strong confidence, humor, intelligence, quick wit, devotion, loyalty—the list went on and on. What man in his right mind wouldn’t give his eyeteeth to be married to a woman like that? But Alex wasn’t in his right mind. True, Katherine was a good-natured, agreeable woman who smiled with her heart, and he was fond of her. True, she had always been a part of his life; someone he found it restful to be around, and comforting to talk to. He wasn’t foolish enough to think this was love, but it was peace, and there was something strong and reliable and comforting at least, about that. It wasn’t Katherine’s fault that he had dug his own pit and fallen in. She didn’t deserve to pay for his mistakes. He didn’t love her. He had no way of knowing if he ever would. But he was attracted to her.

And even that made him angry. He didn’t want to be attracted to a woman he was forced to marry. He wanted to stay angry, as if by staying angry, he could prove the depth of his love for Karin. And that’s where the problem lay. Deep, deep within the very soul of him, Alex was afraid.

He sat there with a blank, absorbed expression on his face, like a person losing his mind, a person who heard and saw things no one else could. He felt like he was two people. On the outside, he was a strong, determined man who worshipped Karin with a strange form of craving idolatry, a man who knew there was really nothing left between them. He hadn’t lost Karin when he wrote that letter. He had let her go a long time ago. They had never been lovers. She had never fired a spark of passion within him with just a look from across the room. For years they had continued to call themselves in love, when, in reality, they had grown so completely out of touch. And like a man who fears impotence, Alex had continued with his declaration of love long after it ceased to exist.

On the inside, Alex was a different man, a man who found Katherine fascinating, as if the essence of some exotic perfume had intoxicated him. Katherine was like the woods, where the soft, moist darkness hid the vastness of life, the secrets of curling mosses and fragile, unfolding buds—a sort of quiet, hidden existence, a world separate unto itself; a world one tends to overlook. There had been a sort of freedom in loving Karin, a sort of mysterious stillness that allowed a man to be private and withdrawn, for the serpent that held him to her was lust—lust that was kept alive by Karin’s refusal to have sex. It was simple, really: He wanted. Karin didn’t. She said she loved him, loved everything about him. And maybe that was true. Except for sex. This denial kept him clinging to her, but it wasn’t love.

Katherine glanced at him and smiled. The smile he gave her back was forced. She was his wife now, and with that came the feeling that he could no longer be private and withdrawn, that he had been connected to a world that wouldn’t allow him to be either. Loving a woman like Katherine would strip a man down to the bedrock, where he lay naked and vulnerable, in order to build and refine, layer by layer. It was like the difference between having sex with a woman and leaving, and having sex with one and staying with her, putting your arms around her and wrapping your legs around her and feeling the peace. Katherine was the latter, and yet Katherine was also the kind of woman a man could sleep with and be chaste with as easily as he could give in to the yearning for sex.

But those things didn’t make him any less angry. Deep in his heart, Alex knew he probably wouldn’t have been content with a woman like Karin, but he refused to acknowledge that now. He deserved a chance to test that belief, to make that decision for himself, and it had been denied. It was also highly possible that Karin wouldn’t have come even if he had written her name. It was also possible that Karin wouldn’t have come, even if he had told Katherine the truth and sent her back. But he deserved to find out for himself. But those discoveries, those choices had been taken from him. Taken away by Adrian.

The initial anger and shock had worn off, only to give way to a deeper layer of resentment. Now that he had cooled down a bit, Alex knew he would have done the right thing by Katherine, that he would have reasoned all this out by himself and married her, in the end. Once again, he was denied the chance by Adrian. It was Adrian who rushed in to champion Katherine’s cause; Adrian who could now boast of forcing Alex to marry. Adrian, of all people! Adrian, who had never forced Alex to do a damn thing he didn’t want to do. Alex felt betrayed and trapped, unable to be his own man. And that made him strike out at moments he least expected, moments he had no influence over. He felt like a smoldering volcano. He had no knowledge of or say about the moment it would erupt.

For days Alex had lived with this kind of tension and strain, feeling it more intensely at certain times than others. He was feeling it intensely now, and that made him sullen and angry. He looked at his brother sitting across the table, knowing Adrian was whetting his
meddling
knives, readying himself to poke and prod him into taking Katherine to bed, so he could claim the credit for even that. He looked at Katherine, feeling sorry for her, but unable to do anything about his feelings of resentment. He knew she had no role in this showdown between brothers, but she would feel the consequences, nevertheless.