Under the Same Sky (37 page)

It was over two weeks before Iain returned from New Windsor, looking tired, but satisfied.

“All’s done,” he announced to Andrew. “Or as much as can be done for now. A lot of folk are none too pleased wi’ that box, aye? Like Maggie told me. But ’tis done now. She’s no need to run. Nor do the Cherokee lads.”

That was cause for celebration among the tribe. The big fire near Waw-Li’s seven-sided council house blazed so fiercely that the night burned as bright as day. There was a feast, and no Cherokee feast was complete without dancing. Maggie and Andrew sat together, watching everyone, seeing no one but each other. She leaned against his arm, her forehead on his shoulder, and he tilted his head so his cheek rested on the soft bed of her hair. Every dream, every breath had led to this moment, and he felt completely swallowed up by the sounds and the silence, the dark and the light, the warmth, the warmth of her. He stared into the fire and saw her before him, though she sat at his side. She was beautiful. She smiled at him as she so
often had, reaching out and touching his cheeks with her translucent fingers. He turned to her, sitting beside him, and she laid her own cool fingers, solid and real, on his face. He wondered if it would always be like this: living somewhere between dreams and something better than dreams.

“Marry me, Maggie?”

“Silly question. Of course.”

Neither said a word out loud, but matching smiles stretched across their faces. He kissed her, tasting her joy, knowing he had given it to her. His calloused fingers curled around the slender curves of her ears, and his thumbs stroked her fire-reddened cheeks.

“I do love ye, my Maggie,” he whispered.

Her blue eyes were slightly unfocused as she blinked up at him. “I have always loved you.”

Later that evening, Andrew walked toward the forest, needing to relieve himself, and was surprised to hear the near-silent footfalls of Soquili behind him. The men walked toward the trees, and when they stopped, Andrew said nothing. He hadn’t asked Maggie about Soquili, but knew the warrior was deeply hurt, and Maggie treasured him as a friend. Andrew admired him as well, but didn’t know how to speak to him. He thought any words of apology would come out wrong, and he didn’t want to insult Soquili. So he was relieved when Soquili spoke first.

“Ma-kee is very special to the people,” Soquili said, looking into the trees. His voice was stiff, and Andrew realised this was the first time he had spoken with him directly.

“She’s a very special woman,” Andrew said. “To me as well.”

Soquili nodded, chewing on his lower lip as he considered what to say. Ecstatic howls erupted from the fireside behind them, and Andrew peered over his shoulder. Sparks flew and fell in a fountain
of fire. Maggie sat near them, laughing at her friends, then gazed toward Andrew.

“I will take care of her,” Andrew promised, looking back toward the forest.

A frown darkened Soquili’s profile, but he nodded and it disappeared. “I know you will do this,” he said. “And I will apologise to you now.”

Andrew turned with surprise. “Apologise? Whatever for?”

Soquili took a breath, then spoke quickly, “I thought to make her my wife, and she said she could not. She said she waited for you. I did not believe her and I was unkind to her. Now that I meet you, I know she speaks the truth, and you are here for her.” Finally, he turned toward Andrew. “I love Ma-kee,” he said, standing tall. “I will always love her. But I do understand this, I think. And I welcome you as a brother.”

The blanket of fur had been replaced, laid over my body while I slept. It wasn’t the temperature that had prompted Andrew to cover me, but a sense of protection. That, more than anything else, warmed me.

Andrew was an early riser. I imagined that, before I came along, he was a busy man, tending to chores from the moment the day began. He was a man who thrived on accomplishing things, by assuring himself all was as it should be. Now he came back in, balancing a mug of steaming tea in each hand, as he did most mornings. The sun arced over his profile, tracing the line of his hair and shoulders, continuing down the long, lean muscles of his body. Low in my belly a tingle started, spreading through my body at lightning speed as he set down the drinks and settled under the furs with me.

“ ’Twill be a lovely day, Missus MacDonnell,” he said. “Shall we chance leaving our bed for a change?”

His voice was matter-of-fact, with teasing woven through it for
my enjoyment. I loved the vibration of that voice, the fact that his words were for me, and only me.

“I don’t see any reason to hurry, do you?” I mused. “After all, we were up late last night…”

He chuckled and rolled toward me. I tucked a strand of his hair behind one ear. I wanted to tell him how happy I was, how fulfilled and excited for our future. I wanted to sing and laugh and dance around the room like a child. But his eyes, those dark pools I had always seen, said so much more than I ever could.

I reached for his face and he brought it to me, touching our lips together once, twice, until they molded with a need neither of us could manage on our own. The air felt alive when we were wrapped together like this.

The first time we made love, he knew I was afraid. He caught glimpses of my memories and I, in response, felt his helpless pain.

“No one will ever hurt ye again, Maggie,” he said. “No one.”

And he kissed me. Slowly, slowly, he taught me how to leave the past behind. He showed me pleasure I had never imagined, gave me moments when I could no longer tell the difference between dreams and reality. But when all was done, when we both relaxed into a sluggish stupor, he tucked me against him so we lay back to chest, my thighs on his, my feet twisting over the hard bones of his shins. And we slept.

I craved his body and his touch. In my dreams I had always reached for him, and that didn’t change now that he was with me in the flesh. There was rarely a moment when I didn’t consciously touch him in some manner, even if it was just pressing my thigh against his while he slept. And he reached for me. I woke once to discover our fingers woven together, and him still asleep.

The dreams didn’t end, but they changed. In the past, when their violence ripped me from my sleep, loneliness haunted me like
clinging smoke. I was often afraid, but the fact that I was alone in the knowledge of what lay ahead made it even more frightening. Now, with Andrew here, I shared everything but the loneliness. We were together, awake or asleep, and when I saw the worst, Andrew was there to hold me close and understand without speaking.

We made love slowly that morning, subsiding into oblivion at the same moment. The tea sat untouched and cooling as we drifted back to sleep.

The dreams were murky at first, a confusing, rolling texture moving closer with every heartbeat, and I felt an unaccustomed flutter of fear. Without warning, my belly clenched and I curled instinctively around it. A searing pain cut through me, sharp, with a brutal, relentless urgency. I reached for Andrew, and felt him beside me, but he was an undefined shape, though I sensed his concern. His hand held mine, anchoring me, refusing to let the pain take me from him.

“You said no one would hurt me!”
I screamed, resentment boiling in my thoughts.

“I canna take this pain from ye,”
he answered,
“but I willna leave ye alone wi’ it.”

My body burned, my skin tore, and yet I could see nothing of the source.

“I can’t! I can’t!”

The pain eased a bit, and I realised he was stretching his mind toward me, his strength a cushion, a place I could feel safe. Then the agony was back, and I was certain my body had burst into flame.

“I’m sorry, Andrew! I’m dying! I can’t! I can’t!”

Relief came unexpectedly, leaving a hollowness I was afraid to trust. Sleep still trapped me, but Andrew’s face was clear to me now, drawn with concern. His breath touched me from far away. I ached for him.
“Andrew! I don’t want to be alone!”
I cried, but heard another
voice singing through the dream instead of my own. The sound of a bird, harsh and sweet, calling in persistent squawks. A weight in my arms, a warmth… Andrew’s tears, his handsome face alight with joy.

“She’s beautiful
,” he said.

She was hot in my hands, wet and slick with my blood. Her tiny limbs flailed like windblown branches as she greeted us. Her shocked expression blurred behind my tears.

“Ruth
,” I said.

We woke then, our eyes blinking open at the same time. We stared at each other, our heartbeats eventually slowing to a shared rhythm.

“Are ye afraid?” he asked.

“Yes,” I admitted. “The pain—I don’t know…”

He pulled me into his chest, and I breathed in his sweat. His scent was reminiscent of fear, but fresh now with relief. He kissed the top of my head, then spoke into my hair.

“Aye. But ye will survive. Ye will. I will hold ye an’ keep ye safe. And ye will wake as ye did just now, holding our child in yer arms when ye do.”

I sniffed. “I have a better idea. Maybe you could do it, and I’ll hold your hand instead. How would that be?”

He smiled. “Ye’re a brave wee thing, my Maggie,” he said, sweeping damp hair back from my brow, “an’ I love ye wi’ all my heart an’ soul.”

I sighed and snuggled tighter against his warmth.

T
he dreams may never stop, but I’m not alone anymore. Nor is he. Never again.

Before death comes silence. It hovers during the final heartbeat, in the moment between the screams, moans, whimpers of the dying and the final puff of air. A breath suspended, waiting, held in expectation or discovery. Silence is the last sound a dying person hears.

Dougal was no stranger to the voices of the dying, but he had never heard the silence within himself. Not yet. The tones and timbres of last words and final pleas were familiar, though. He had heard them countless times as they slashed at men’s hearts and bodies, separating souls from skeletons.

Dougal was a warrior, born and trained to kill. Death was simply part of his life. In the heat of battle, blood roared so ferociously through his head he barely heard the men’s voices anymore as they screamed defiance or whispered frantic prayers of disbelief, crying of futures never met.

But on this bloody morning in April 1746, one voice cut through the curtain of noise, yanking Dougal from his battle frenzy. The
sound was small, almost buried beneath the misery of it all. Still, he heard it: a particular voice. A voice he knew so well, distorted by grief and pain.

His father had known this would not go well. Before the butchering began, Dougal had looked into Duncan MacDonnell’s liquid blue eyes, tearing from the cold, and had seen the knowledge. He focused on the words in his father’s mind, hearing them clearly, though they were more of a prayer than a thought. When Duncan gathered his sons to him for what would be the final time, Dougal saw defiance in the set of his father’s chin. He also saw the sweat of fear on his brow.

“I’m proud o’ ye, my lads,” Duncan said. “An’ I’m proud to be here wi’ ye.”

Dougal remembered the weight of his father’s hand as it had clapped onto his shoulder. Then the cannons had started up and the hand was gone, grabbing for pistol and sword.

“Where are th’ others?” his father had hollered, meaning Dougal’s brothers, Andrew and Ciaran. They had vanished, swallowed up by the smoke-heavy mist.

When the battle began, they’d gone in together as they always did, the four of them. Andrew always ran at Dougal’s right flank, his father and their younger brother, Ciaran, at his left. The MacDonnell men always fought in pairs. He and Andrew had trained to fight side by side, covering each other’s more vulnerable points. Together they were an invincible force. Since Ciaran was the youngest, he and their father fought together, Duncan taking Ciaran’s weaker side. But when Dougal looked beside him now, he saw his father, not Andrew. The English had managed not only to decimate the entire Scottish army, as ragtag as it was, but to fracture his family’s tiny battalion.