Elaine Coffman - [MacKinnon 04] (21 page)

He remained as he was. Resistant.

Last night he had made love to her. Twice. The first time
she would have to toss out, of course, but the second time… A man who made love
to a woman like that did not harbor thoughts of never doing it again, and yet
he was telling her it wouldn’t happen a second time, that he was sorry. What
was he afraid of?

She sighed, turning her face away, feeling suddenly shy
about what she was going to say. “You made love to me last night, Adrian, and
I…”

She turned back, knowing she had to say the words to him, to
his face. “What I want to say is that I enjoyed it.” She doubled her fists in
frustration. “No, not enjoyed,” she said, her hand coming up to her forehead.
“It was more than that, but I canna find the right words.” She stepped toward
him, her hand coming out as if she were going to touch him, then it dropped to
her side. “When you touch me, Adrian, I feel as though I’ve been touched by
fire.”

She looked at him. He was leaning against the door, watching
her. The air was heavy with his discomfort.

“It wasna force, Adrian. No matter what you believe.”

He shrugged. “It was, but it doesn’t matter now,” he said.

She started to speak, but he said, “Leave it be, Maggie.”

“Why? I dinna understand. Why are you so hopelessly
disillusioned? Is it because I was a disappointment to you, because I wasna the
woman you had in mind, the woman you described to your brother?”

“I said leave it be.”

“Why? So we can both hide behind excuses? I canna be
anything but honest, Adrian. I’m a real person. I can only be myself. I canna
be something I’m not—not even to make you feel safe and happy. You try to blame
me, and you do, but it willna work, do you ken? I willna be made to feel
guilty.”

For a moment he simply stood there, looking at her; then,
without responding to what she had said, he simply nodded his dismissal and
left, the door snapping shut behind him.

For a long, long time, Maggie stood there, staring at the
door, her heart wrenching for him. He hadn’t forced her. Why couldn’t she make
him see that? How could she make him understand? How could she help him to stop
being so hard on himself? Maggie had never felt so frustrated. Strange, but the
thing she found most frustrating wasn’t that she had lost, but that she had
come so close to winning.

Blinking back tears, she thought there was nothing simple
about it. She cared for him. Aye, more than she would have thought possible in
such a short time. Even more frustrating was knowing Adrian had come to care
for her as well. And he did. She felt it more with their every encounter. He
was simply too stubborn for his own good, and when it came to matters of the
heart, he wasn’t overblessed with common sense.

There were so many wonderful things she admired in Adrian,
but his moodiness, his lightning-quick shifts of emotion, were too difficult to
deal with. Just as she was wondering what she could have done to prevent this
new life of hers from slipping away, it suddenly occurred to her that she had
already taken a chance on this man and lost. There was nothing else to lose.

Something her father said to her after Bruce’s death came
suddenly to mind. “Once you’ve been knocked to the ground, lass, you canna be
knocked verra much further.”

A slow smile stretched itself across her face. Her children
would be here in a few weeks. A lot of things could happen in two months’ time.

Aye
, she said to herself,
all isna lost yet.

It was strange to Maggie how things sometimes work out, for
once everything was out in the open, a calm seemed to settle over the stormy
state of affairs that had existed between herself and Adrian.

Over the course of time, Maggie came to understand how
demanding Adrian’s life was. Sometimes she would see him slumped over his desk
going through a sheaf of papers, or drawing circles on a map pinned to the
wall. At other times she didn’t see him at all, learning later he was deep in
the woods, working with the men or staking out a new location. At home, their
life began to settle into some sort of a pattern. After dinner they would
retire to the library, where Adrian would work and Maggie would take up her
knitting, or they would go to the music room, where she would play for him.

Maggie much preferred the library. She felt at ease there,
away from the painful reminders the music room held for her. As they sat
together, he bent over his papers, the smell of his pipe filling the room, she
felt comfortable, married. And she had time to study him, time to wonder what
he thought about her.

Often she would hear his leather chair creak and look up to
see him lean back in a weary stretch, his eyes upon her, and she would wonder
what he was thinking. More than once she used this as an opportunity to talk to
him about the mill. Tonight was no different.

Hearing Adrian’s long, drawn-out sigh, the sound of his
pencil hitting the desk, she looked up as he stretched, then stood, moving to
the table to pour himself a brandy.

“What’s bothering you?” she asked.

He finished pouring and took a drink before giving her a
soft look. “What makes you think something is bothering me?”

She smiled. “You’re restless. You keep running your hands
through your hair. You tap your pencil. You beat your fingers on the desk.
You’ve chewed three plugs of tobacco. Those are the signs that you have
something on your mind.”

His smile was tentative, almost shy. “I don’t know if I like
knowing someone has privy to my thoughts,” he said.

“I dinna have privy to your thoughts, you ken. But I do know
how to read your actions. Are you going to tell me or no?”

“Or no,” he replied with a chuckle. “Maggie, it’s not
important enough to bother with.”

“It has caused you considerable thought, so it must be
important.”

Adrian grinned. “Stop standing there blinking at me like an
owl.” She blinked again, and he said, “Maggie, if I tell you, you’ll be down at
the mill at first light tacking bat wings to the bunkhouse door, or sprinkling
spiderwebs over the bunks. I know you—do you ken?”

He mumbled something when she laughed at the way he tried to
mimic her. “I know your odd Scots ways, your superstitions and your idiotic
cures.” He threw up his hands. “What in the name of God is happening to me? To
my life?”

“I dinna understand what you mean, but you canna blame it
all on me. Being Scot, I canna help, but if I promise to keep my idiotic cures
to myself, will you tell me?”

Adrian raised his hands in surrender. “All right. Have it
your way. Sometimes I forget that reasoning with a Scot is like trying to talk
sense with a grizzly. One encounter leaves you bleeding from a dozen places.”
He paused a moment, and she realized he was looking full at her.

“We have a problem with lice,” he said calmly. “It’s as
simple as that. There’s a bad outbreak of them in the bunkhouse. Much worse
than we’ve had before. It’s gotten so bad, the men are having trouble sleeping.
We’ve tried the usual remedies—even sending the men to your steam hut—but
nothing seems to work. The minute they go back into the bunkhouse, they are
covered with lice in a few hours. Their beds, their clothes…the whole bunkhouse
is crawling with lice. They’re even in the walls.”

Maggie frowned. “What if you ran a pipe of steam into the
bunkhouse?”

Adrian shrugged, treating her question with his customary
taciturn indifference, but Maggie wasn’t about to be deterred.

“You could seal the windows and door, then fill the
bunkhouse with steam just like you fill the steam hut.” She nodded to herself.
“Aye, that’s it. The men hang their laundry in there, so everything could be
left in place. They wouldna have to move a thing.”

Adrian pondered that for a moment. He didn’t appear too
enthused, but then, Adrian rarely appeared enthused about anything. “I’ll talk
it over with Big John tomorrow,” he said at last, and Maggie nodded.

Molly was clucking about the kitchen like an old broody hen
the next day when she informed Maggie that the men were sealing up the
bunkhouse in readiness. “Do you want to go watch?”

Maggie considered what Molly had said. At some other point
in her life, she would have found anyone who invited her to a delousing a wee
bit daft.

With a nod of her head, Maggie said, “Aye, I’ll go, though I
canna think of a single reason why I should.”

“Well, come on then. You can think of reasons on the way.”

When Maggie and Molly arrived at the mill, the steam was
already being pumped into the bunkhouse. After disconnecting the steam pipe,
the men waited for the bunkhouse to cool down a bit. When they opened the door,
they saw the last, hard-line stragglers of lice crawling out of the walls to
die. Clem Burnside let out a whoop, and the rest of the men followed with a
cheering roar.

The cheer died when a big blond lumberjack named Jock
Halverson mumbled something about not having any more louse races on Sundays.

The grumbling about the loss of contestants for the Sunday
louse races subsided a bit when Eli Carr stepped inside and pointed grimly at
the loggers’ crude furniture, which had been warped out of shape by the steam,
leaving it completely unusable.

“Well, we can make new furniture,” Dudley Dunlap said. “Shorty,
you and Clyde go on in and see if you can find any that ain’t dead.”

“And then what, club ‘em?” Clyde asked.

“Club ‘em or stomp ‘em,” Dudley replied.

Shorty and Clyde stepped inside. A few minutes later, they
came back out, Shorty holding his red wool shirt up in front of him, and Clyde
holding a pair of long Johns. Both items had shunk down to a child’s size.

Molly and Maggie hurried back to the wagon, where they could
laugh in private. “I ken Adrian won’t be confiding in me anymore,” Maggie said
at last.

“He might be confiding,” Molly said, “but he may not be
taking your advice.”

Molly slapped the reins against the horses’ backs, and
turned the wagon up the hill. “Did Adrian ever say anything to you about that
fit of cleanliness you had with his study?”

“No, he didna say verra much,” Maggie said, remembering the
reason why.

Molly shook her head. “Now,
that
surprises me. It
surely does.” She shook her head again and slapped the reins. “I just don’t
understand it. Adrian never lets anything slip by. He’s so thorough with
everything he does.”

“Aye,” Maggie said in agreement. “He would burn down a house
just to kill a rat.”

Dinner had been over for what seemed hours, and Maggie was
just putting away her knitting when she yawned, thrusting her arms out in a
lazy stretch. Pausing mid-stretch, she felt Adrian’s eyes upon her and she
looked up and met his glance. Everywhere his eyes touched her, she felt burned,
consumed. Her response was immediate. Their recent compatibility, their comfort
around each other, his handsomeness, even the memory of his lovemaking, lay
forgotten. Nothing had any effect upon her, save his look—an open, hungry look
that devoured. Her heart thundered painfully in her chest. There was something
about that look that was deep and searching, and yet pessimistic. It reminded
her of the way he viewed everything, with cynicism and distrust. Even now, he
was probably putting a motive to something as natural and innocent as her yawn.

Any other woman might have dismissed him as spoiled and
childish, or at best a cold, uncaring man with a cruel streak wider than a
loch, a man with nothing better to do than to make those around him miserable
and uncomfortable. But Maggie did not. She bore the scrutiny of his dark gaze
without flinching.

When she looked at him, she saw not spoiled childishness, or
coldness, but a look of dull withdrawal, a suspicious look in his blue eyes, a
mouth that was hard and wary. If there was any childishness to his behavior at
all, it was infinitely touching.

“Are you tired?” she asked.

“No, are you?”

“No,” she said, glancing at the fire, letting the
conversation die, slipping once again into silence. She looked back at him. He
was still looking at her in that devouring, hungry way.

The last time he had looked at her in that way, he had made
love to her. Did he want to do so again? He looked as if he were about to say
something to her.
Say it,
her heart cried.
Say it!
But he looked
away. The room seemed to fill with a foreboding silence.
Say it, damn you
,
she cried inwardly.
Say what I’ve waited for weeks for you to tell me. You
can say it honestly, and without fear, for I’ve seen the feeling you have for
me in your eyes, and I willna turn away. You care for me, Adrian. You have only
to say the words…you’ve only to tell me how you feel. Dinna make us both suffer
any longer. End the agony, I pray you.

She did not realize that she had spoken his name, or that
she had looked at him with such yearning. She was unaware that she had raised
her hand toward him in silent entreaty. She only became aware when his face
darkened. His face told her how he hated the way he felt so helpless against
her.

Maggie closed her eyes, then stood, rubbing her arms as she
crossed the room. Taking up the poker, she stirred the quiet coals to a
crackling blaze. “Perhaps we could just go on pretending,” she said without
turning to look at him.

“What?” he said blankly.

“I said, perhaps we could just go on pretending.”

“Pretending what, Maggie? You’re talking in riddles.”

She turned now, and was looking straight at him. “Pretending
that we like each other. Pretending that we’re married.”

He didn’t flinch, but his face turned red. “We
are
married,” he muttered, then in lower tones, he added, “And I do like
you…sometimes.”

“You do?” she asked, her face flushed.