She climbed happily into his lap and raised her face for a kiss. The kiss went urgent, and they were both out of breath when their lips parted again.
She said gruffly, “They won’t be able to keep us apart much longer.”
“Not even with ropes and wild horses,” he agreed, his eyes glinting. His smile grew more serious. “Have you decided yet where you want us to be tomorrow night?
Ride or bide?”
She sighed and sat up. “Do you have a partiality?”
He brushed her hair from her forehead with his lips, likely because he had a notable reluctance for touching her about the face with his hook. It turned into a small trail of kisses along the arches of her eyebrows before he, too, sat back thoughtfully. “Here would be physically easier. We won’t get to Hickory Lake in a day, still less in a couple of hours tomorrow evening. If we camped, you’d have to do most everything.”
“I don’t mind the work.” She tossed her head.
“There is this. We won’t just be making love, we’ll be making memories. It’s the sort of day you remember all your life, when other days fade. Real question, then, the only really important one, is what memories of this do you want to bear away into your future?”
Now, there was a voice of experience, she thought. Best listen to it. “It’s farmer custom for the couple to go off to their new house, sleep under the new roof. The party goes on. If we stay, I swear I’ll end up washing dishes at midnight, which is not what I want to be doing at midnight.”
“I have no house for you. I don’t even have a tent with me. It’ll be a roof of stars, if it’s not a roof of rain.”
“It doesn’t look like rain. This high blue weather this time of year usually holds for three or four days. I admit I prefer inn chambers to wheatfields, but at least with you there’s no mosquitoes.”
“I think we might do better than a wheatfield.”
She added more seriously, thinking about his words, “This place is chock-full of memories for me. Some are good, but a lot of them hurt, and the hurtful ones have this way of jostling into first place. And this house’ll be full of my family. Tomorrow night, I’d like to be someplace with no memories at all.”
And no family.
He ducked his head in understanding. “That’s what we’ll do, then.”
Her spine straightened. “Besides, I’m marrying a patroller. We should go patroller-style. Bedroll under the stars, right.” She grinned and nuzzled his neck, and said seductively, “We could bathe in the river…”
He was looking immensely seduceable, eyes crinkling in the way she so loved to see. “Bathing in the river is always good. A clean patroller is, um…”
“Unusual?” she suggested.
And she also loved the way his chest rumbled under her when he laughed deep down in it. Like a quiet earthquake. “A happy patroller,” he finished firmly.
“We could gather firewood,” she went on, her lips working upward.
His worked downward. He murmured around his kiss, “Big, big bonfire.”
“Scout for rowdy squirrels…”
“Those squirrels are a right menace.” He looked down over his nose at her, though she didn’t see how he could focus his eyes at this distance. “All three?
Optimistic, Spark!”
She giggled, joyful to see his eyes so alight. He’d seemed so moody when he’d first come in.
To her aggravation, she could hear heavy footsteps coming down the stairs, Fletch or Whit, heading this way. She sighed and sat up. “Ride, then.”
“Unless we have a barker of a thunderstorm.”
“Thunder and lightning couldn’t keep me in this house one more day,” she said fervently. “It’s time for me to go on. Do you see?”
He nodded. “I’m beginning to, farmer girl. This is right for you.”
She stole one last kiss before sliding off his lap, thinking, Tomorrow we’ll be buying these kisses fair and square. Her heart melted in the tenderness of the look he gave her as, reluctantly, he let her slip out of his arm. All storms might be weathered in the safe harbor of that smile.
Chapter 19
Fawn flew through the irreducible farm chores the next morning. The milking fell to her; afterwards, waving a stick with resolute vigor, she sent the bewildered cows off to pasture at a brisk and unaccustomed trot. For practical reasons the rule about the marrying couple’s not seeing each other before the wedding was put aside till after the family breakfast, when Aunt Rose Bluefield arrived to help Mama with the food and the house, along with Fawn’s closest cousins and girlfriends Filly Bluefield and Ginger Roper to start the primping.
First came proper baths. The women went off to the well; the men were dispatched to the river. Fawn had grave doubts about leaving Dag to the mercies of her father, Fletch, and Whit for such a vulnerable enterprise, although at least the twins weren’t to follow till a long list of dirty chores had been completed.
Filly and Ginger dragged her away as she was still yelling strict orders down the hill after the men about not letting Dag’s splints get wet. There followed a naked, wet, silly, and sudsy half hour by the well; Mama brought out her best scented soap for the task. Once they were back in the bedroom with Ginger and Filly starting on her hair, Fawn was relieved to hear footsteps and men’s voices through the closed door to the weaving room, Dag giving some calm instruction to Whit.
Filly and Ginger did their best, from Fawn’s dimly remembered description of what Reela had told her, to imitate Lakewalker wedding braids, although Fawn was glumly aware that her own hair was too curly and unruly to cooperate the way Lakewalkers’ long locks no doubt did. The result was creditable, anyhow, with the hair drawn up in neat thick ropes from her temples to meet at her crown, and from there allowed to spin down loose behind after its own turbulent fashion.
In the little hand mirror, held out at arm’s length, Fawn’s face looked startlingly refined and grown-up, and she blinked at the strangeness. Ginger’s brother had ridden all the way to Mirror Pond this morning, four miles upriver, to get the flowers Fawn had begged of him: three not-too-crumpled white water lilies, which Ginger now bound into the knot of hair on the crown of her head.
“Mama said you could have had all of her roses you wanted,” Filly observed, tilting her head to examine the effect.
“These are more lake-ish,” said Fawn. “Dag will like them. The poor man doesn’t have any family or friends here, and is pretty much having to borrow everything farmer. I know he was pining that he couldn’t send down his Lakewalker bride-gifts till after the wedding; they’re supposed to be given beforehand, I guess.”
Filly said, “Mama wondered if no women of his own people would marry him because of his hand being maimed like that.”
Fawn, choosing to ignore the implied reflection upon herself, said only, “I shouldn’t think so. A lot of patrollers seem to get banged up, over time.
Anyhow, he’s a widower.”
Ginger said, “My brother said the twins said his horse talks human to him when there’s no one around.”
Fawn snorted. “If no one’s around, how do they know?”
Ginger, considering this, conceded reluctantly, “That’s a point.”
“Besides, it’s the twins.”
Filly granted, “That’s another.” She added in regret, “So I guess they made up that story about him magicking together that glass bowl they broke, too?”
“Um. No. That one’s true,” Fawn admitted. “Mama put it away upstairs for today, so it wouldn’t risk getting knocked down again.”
A thoughtful silence followed this, while Filly poked at the curls in back to fluff them, and pushed away Fawn’s hands trying to smooth them.