Will turned to his horse, and she was glad.
Part of her wanted him to stay—to stand close to her while the clouds sent their long shadows flying across the grassland—but they had been together out here too long already. There was no reason to think anyone would come along and see them, but instead of comforting her, that idea for some reason made her more nervous than ever.
He straightened the stirrup hanging beside the scabbarded shaft of his lance (Rusher whickered way back in his throat, as if to say About time we got going),
then turned to her again. She felt actually faint as his gaze fell upon her, and now the idea of ka was almost too strong to deny. She tried to tell herself it was just the dim—that feeling of having lived a thing before—but it wasn’t the dim; it was a sense of finding a road one had been searching for all along.
“There’s something else I want to say. I don’t like returning to where we started, but I must.”
“No,” she said faintly. “That’s closed, surely.”
“I told you that I loved you, and that I was jealous,” he said, and for the first time his voice had come unanchored a little, wavering in his throat. She was alarmed to see that there were tears standing in his eyes. “There was more. Something more.”
“Will, I don’t want to—” She turned blindly for her horse. He took her shoulder and turned her back. It wasn’t a harsh touch, but there was an inexorability to it that was dreadful. She looked helplessly up into his face, saw that he was young and far from home, and suddenly understood she could not stand against him for long. She wanted him so badly that she ached with it. She would have given a year of her life just to be able to put her palms on his cheeks and feel his skin.
“You miss your father, Susan?”
“Aye,” she whispered. “With all my heart I do.”
“I miss my mother the same way.” He held her by both shoulders now. One eye overbrimmed; one tear drew a silver line down his cheek.
“Is she dead?”
“No, but something happened. About her. To her. Shit! How can I talk about it when I don’t even know how to think about it? In a way, she did die. For me.”
“Will, that’s terrible.”
He nodded. “The last time I saw her, she looked at me in a way that will haunt me to my grave. Shame and love and hope, all of them bound up together. Shame at what I’d seen and knew about her, hope, maybe, that I’d understand and forgive . .
.” He took a deep breath. “The night of the party, toward the end of the meal, Rimer said something funny. You all laughed—”
“If I did, it was only because it would have looked strange if I was the only one who didn’t,” Susan said. “I don’t like him. I think he’s a schemer and a conniver.”
“You all laughed, and I happened to look down toward the end of the table.
Toward Olive Thorin. And for a moment—only a moment—I thought she was my mother. The expression was the same, you see. The same one I saw on the
morning when I opened the wrong door at the wrong time and came upon my mother and her—”
“Stop it!” she cried, pulling back from his hands. Inside her, everything was suddenly in motion, all the mooring-lines and buckles and clamps she’d been using to hold herself together seeming to melt at once. “Stop it, just stop it, I can’t listen to you talk about her!”
She groped out for Pylon, but now the whole world was wet prisms. She began to sob. She felt his hands on her shoulders, turning her again, and she did not resist them.
“I’m so ashamed,” she said. ”I’m so ashamed and so frightened and I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten my father’s face and . . . and …”
And I’ll never be able to find it again, she wanted to say, but she didn’t have to say anything. He stopped her mouth with his kisses. At first she just let herself be kissed . . . and then she was kissing him back, kissing him almost furiously. She wiped the wetness from beneath his eyes with soft little sweeps of her thumbs, then slipped her palms up his cheeks as she had longed to do. The feeling was exquisite; even the soft rasp of the stubble close to the skin was exquisite. She slid her arms around his neck, her open mouth on his, holding him and kissing him as hard as she could, kissing him there between the horses, who simply looked at each other and then went back to cropping grass.
9
They were the best kisses of his whole life, and never forgotten: the yielding pliancy of her lips and the strong shape of her teeth under them, urgent and not shy in the least; the fragrance of her breath, the sweet line of her body pressed against his. He slipped a hand up to her left breast, squeezed it gently, and felt her heart speeding under it. His other hand went to her hair and combed along the side of it, silk at her temple. He never forgot its texture.
Then she was standing away from him, her face flaming with blush and passion, one hand going to her lips, which he had kissed until they were swollen. A little trickle of blood ran from the comer of the lower one. Her eyes, wide on his. Her bosom rising and falling as if she had just run a race. And between them a current that was like nothing he had ever felt in his life. It ran like a river and shook like a
fever.
“No more,” she said in a trembling voice. “No more, please. If you really do love me, don’t let me dishonor myself. I’ve made a promise. Anything might come later, after that promise was fulfilled, I suppose .. . if you still wanted me . . .”
“I would wait forever,” he said calmly, “and do anything for you but stand away and watch you go with another man.”
“Then if you love me, go away from me. Please, Will!”
“Another kiss.”
She stepped forward at once, raising her face trustingly up to his, and he understood he could do whatever he wanted with her. She was, at least for the moment, no longer her own mistress; she might consequently be his. He could do to her what Marten had done to his own mother, if that was his fancy.
The thought broke his passion apart, turned it to coals that fell in a bright shower, winking out one by one in a dark bewilderment. His father’s acceptance ( I have known for two years)
was in many ways the worst part of what had happened to him this year; how could he fall in love with this girl—any girl—in a world where such evils of the heart seemed necessary, and might even be repeated?
Yet he did love her.
Instead of the passionate kiss he wanted, he placed his lips lightly on the corner of her mouth where the little rill of blood flowed. He kissed, tasting salt like the taste of his own tears. He closed his eyes and shivered when her hand stroked the hair at the nape of his neck.
“I’d not hurt Olive Thorin for the world,” she whispered in his ear. “No more than I’d hurt thee, Will. I didn’t understand, and now ’tis too late to be put right. But thank you for not… not taking what you could. And I’ll remember you always.
How it was to be kissed by you. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me, I think. Like heaven and earth all wrapped up together, aye.”
“I’ll remember, too.” He watched her swing up into the saddle, and remembered how her bare legs had flashed in the dark on the night he had met her. And suddenly he couldn’t let her go. He reached forward, touched her boot.
“Susan—”
“No,” she said. “Please.”
He stood back. Somehow.
“This is our secret,” she said. “Yes?”
“Aye.”
She smiled at that … but it was a sad smile. “Stay away from me from now on, Will. Please. And I’ll stay away from you.”
He thought about it. “If we can.”
“We must, Will. We must.”
She rode away fast. Roland stood beside Rusher’s stirrup, watching her go. And when she was out of sight over the horizon, still he watched.
10
Sheriff Avery, Deputy Dave, and Deputy George Riggins were sitting on the porch in front of the Sheriff’s office and jail when Mr. Stockworth and Mr. Heath (the latter with that idiotic bird’s skull still mounted on the horn of his saddle) went past at a steady walk. The bell o’ noon had rung fifteen minutes before, and Sheriff Avery reckoned they were on their way to lunch, perhaps at The Millbank, or perhaps at the Rest, which put on a fair noon meal. Popkins and such. Avery liked something a little more filling; half a chicken or a haunch of beef suited him just fine.