“Well,” she said, after a long moment of consideration, “I think that’s good.”
“Ye do.” The relief in his voice was palpable.
“Yes. If you’re helping all these women because God told you to, that’s better than doing it because you’d rather be with them than with me.”
“Bree! Ye can’t think that, that I—” He leaned closer, looking anxiously into her face. “Ye don’t, do you?”
“Well, only sometimes,” she admitted. “In my worse moments. Not most of the time.” He looked so anxious that she reached up and cupped her hand to the long curve of his cheek; the stubble of his beard was invisible in this light, but she could feel it, soft and tickling against her palm.
“You’re sure?” she said softly. He nodded, and she saw his throat move as he swallowed.
“I’m sure.”
“Are you afraid?”
He smiled a little at that.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll help,” she said firmly. “You tell me how, and I’ll help.”
He took a deep breath, his face lightening, though his smile was rueful.
“I don’t know how,” he said. “How to do it, I mean. Let alone what you might do. That’s what scares me.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But you’ve been doing it, anyway, haven’t you? Do you need to do anything formal about this, though? Or can you just announce you’re a minister, like those TV preachers, and start taking up the collection right away?”
He smiled at the joke, but answered seriously.
“Bloody Romanist. Ye always think no one else has any claim to sacraments. We do, though. I’m thinking I’ll go to the Presbyterian Academy, see what I need to do about ordination. As for taking up the collection—I expect this means I’ll never be rich.”
“I sort of wasn’t expecting that, anyway,” she assured him gravely. “Don’t worry; I didn’t marry you for your money. If we need more, I’ll make it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Not selling my body, probably. Not after what happened to Manfred.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” he said. His hand came down over hers, large and warm.
Aidan McCallum’s high, piercing voice floated through the air, and a sudden thought struck her.
“Your—your, um, flock . . .” The word struck her funny bone, and she giggled, despite the seriousness of the question. “Will they mind that I’m a Catholic?” She turned to him suddenly, another thought coming rapidly in its wake. “You don’t—you aren’t asking me to convert?”
“No, I’m not,” he said quickly, firmly. “Not in a million years. As for what they might think—or say—” His face twitched, caught between dismay and determination. “If they’re not willing to accept it, well . . . they can just go to hell, that’s all.”
She burst out laughing, and he followed her, his laugh cracked, but without restraint.
“The Minister’s Cat is an irreverent cat,” she teased. “And how do you say that in Gaelic?”
“I’ve no idea. But the Minister’s Cat is a relieved cat,” he added, still smiling. “I didn’t know what ye might think about it.”
“I’m not totally sure what I do think about it,” she admitted. She squeezed his hand lightly. “But I see that you’re happy.”
“It shows?” He smiled, and the last of the evening light glowed briefly in his eyes, a deep and lambent green.
“It shows. You’re sort of . . . lighted up inside.” Her throat felt tight. “Roger—you won’t forget about me and Jem, will you? I don’t know that I can compete with God.”
He looked thunderstruck at that.
“No,” he said, his hand tightening on hers, hard enough to make her ring cut into her flesh. “Not ever.”
They sat silent for a little, the fireflies drifting down like slow green rain, their silent mating song lighting the darkening grass and trees. Roger’s face was fading as the light failed, though she still saw the line of his jaw, set in determination.
“I swear to ye, Bree,” he said. “Whatever I’m called to now—and God knows what that is—I was called to be your husband first. Your husband and the father of your bairns above all things—and that I always shall be. Whatever I may do, it will not ever be at the price of my family, I promise you.”
“All I want,” she said softly to the dark, “is for you to love me. Not because of what I can do or what I look like, or because I love you—just because I am.”
“Perfect, unconditional love?” he said just as softly. “Some would tell ye only God can love that way—but I can try.”
“Oh, I have faith in you,” she said, and felt the glow of him reach her own heart.
“I hope ye always will,” he said. He raised her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles in formal salutation, his breath warm on her skin.
As though to test the resolution of his earlier declaration, Jem’s voice rose and fell on the evening breeze, a small, urgent siren. “DadddeeeDaaaddeeeDAAADDDEEE . . .”
Roger sighed deeply, leaned over, and kissed her, a moment’s soft, deep connection, then rose to deal with the emergency of the moment.
She sat for a bit, listening. The sound of male voices came from the far end of the clearing, high and low, demand and question, reassurance and excitement. No emergency; Jem wanted to be lifted into a tree too high for him to climb alone. Then laughter, mad rustling of leaves—oh, good grief, Roger was in the tree, too. They were all up there, hooting like owls.
“What are ye laughing at, a nighean?” Her father loomed out of the night, smelling of horses.
“Everything,” she said, scooching over to make room for him to sit beside her. It was true. Everything seemed suddenly bright, the candlelight from the windows of the Big House, the fireflies in the grass, the glow of Roger’s face when he told her his desire. She could still feel the touch of his mouth on hers; it fizzed in her blood.
Jamie reached up and fielded a passing firefly, holding it for a moment cupped in the dark hollow of his hand, where it flashed on and off, the cool light seeping through his fingers. Far off, she heard a brief snatch of her mother’s voice, coming through an open window; Claire was singing “Clementine.”
Now the boys—and Roger—were howling at the moon, though it was no more than a pale sickle on the horizon. She felt her father’s body shake with silent laughter, too.
“It reminds me of Disneyland,” she said on impulse.
“Oh, aye? Where’s that?”
“It’s an amusement park—for children,” she added, knowing that while there were such things as amusement parks in places like London and Paris, these were purely adult places. No one ever thought of entertaining children now, beyond their own games and the occasional toy.
“Daddy and Mama took me there every summer,” she said, slipping back without effort to the hot, bright days and warm California nights. “The trees all had little sparkling lights in them—the fireflies reminded me.”
Jamie spread his palm; the firefly, suddenly free, pulsed to itself once or twice, then spread its wings with a tiny whir and lifted into the air, floating up and away.
“Dwelt a miner, forty-niner, and his daugh-ter, Clementine . . .”
“What was it like, then?” he asked curiously.
“Oh . . . it was wonderful.” She smiled to herself, seeing the brilliant lights of Main Street, the music and mirrors and beautiful, beribboned horses of King Arthur’s Carrousel. “There were . . . rides, we called them. A boat, where you could float through the jungle on a river, and see crocodiles and hippopotamuses and headhunters . . .”
“Headhunters?” he said, intrigued.
“Not real ones,” she assured him. “It’s all make-believe—but it’s . . . well, it’s a world to itself. When you’re there, the real world sort of disappears; nothing bad can happen there. They call it ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’—and for a little while, it really seems that way.”
“Light she was, and like a fairy, and her shoes were number nine, Herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.”
“And you’d hear music everywhere, all the time,” she said, smiling. “Bands—groups of musicians playing instruments, horns and drums and things—would march up and down the streets, and play in pavilions. . . .”
“Aye, that happens in amusement parks. Or it did, the once I was in one.” She could hear a smile in his voice, as well.
“Mm-hm. And there are cartoon characters—I told you about cartoons—walking around. You can go up and shake hands with Mickey Mouse, or—”
“With what?”
“Mickey Mouse.” She laughed. “A big mouse, life-size—human-size, I mean. He wears gloves.”
“A giant rat?” he said, sounding slightly stunned. “And they take the weans to play with it?”
“Not a rat, a mouse,” she corrected him. “And it’s really a person dressed up like a mouse.”
“Oh, aye?” he said, not sounding terribly reassured.
“Yes. And an enormous carrousel with painted horses, and a railroad train that goes through the Rainbow Caverns, where there are big jewels sticking out of the walls, and colored streams with red and blue water . . . and orange-juice bars. Oh, orange-juice bars!” She moaned softly in ecstatic remembrance of the cold, tart, overwhelming sweetness.
“It was nice, then?” he said softly.
“Thou art lost and gone forever, Dreadful sor-ry . . . Clementine.”
“Yes,” she said, sighed, and was silent for a moment. Then she leaned her head against his shoulder, and wrapped her hand around his arm, big and solid.
“You know what?” she said, and he made a small interrogatory noise in reply.
“It was nice—it was great—but what I really, really loved about it was that when we were there, it was just the three of us, and everything was perfect. Mama wasn’t worrying about her patients, Daddy wasn’t working on a paper—they weren’t ever silent or angry with each other. Both of them laughed—we all laughed, all the time . . . while we were there.”
He made no reply, but tilted his head so it rested against hers. She sighed again, deeply.
“Jemmy won’t get to go to Disneyland—but he’ll have that. A family that laughs—and millions of little lights in the trees.”
PART SEVEN
Rolling Downhill
53
PRINCIPLES
From Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina,
on the Third day of July, Anno Domini 1774,
James Fraser, Esq.
To his Lordship, John Grey, at Mount Josiah
Plantation, in the colony of Virginia
My Dear Friend,
I cannot begin to express our Gratitude for your kind Behavior in sending a Draft drawn upon your own Bank, as advance Payment against the eventual Sale of the Objects I confided to your disposition. Mr. Higgins, in delivering this Document, was of course most tactful—and yet, I gathered from his anxious Demeanor and his efforts at Discretion that you may perhaps believe us to be in dire Straits. I hasten to assure you that this is not the Case; we will do well enough, so far as Matters of Victuals, Clothes, and the Necessities of Life.