18

UNSEEMLY LUST

The Reverend Wakefield had been a kindly and ecumenical man, tolerant of all shades of religious opinion, and willing to entertain doctrines his flock would have found outrageous, if not downright blasphemous.

Still, a lifetime of exposure to the stern face of Scottish Presbyterianism and its abiding suspicion of anything “Romish” had left Roger with a certain residual uneasiness upon entering a Catholic church—as though he might be seized at the door and forcibly baptized by outlandishly dressed minions of the True Cross.

No such violence offered as he followed Brianna into the small stone building. There was a boy in a long white robe visible at the far end of the nave, but he was peaceably engaged in lighting two pairs of tall white candles that decorated the altar. A faint, unfamiliar scent hung in the air. Roger inhaled, trying to be unobtrusive about it. Incense?

Beside him, Brianna stopped, rummaging in her purse. She took out a small circle of black lacy stuff, and bobby-pinned it to the top of her head.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you call it,” she said. “It’s what you wear in church if you don’t want to wear a hat or a veil. You don’t really have to do it anymore, but I grew up doing it—it used to be that women couldn’t go into a Catholic church with their heads uncovered, you know.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said, interested. “Why not?”

“Saint Paul, probably,” she said, whipping a comb from her purse to tidy the ends of her hair. “He thought women ought to keep their hair covered all the time, so as not to be objects of unseemly lust. Cranky old crab,” she added, stuffing the comb back into the purse. “Mama always said he was afraid of women. Thought they were dangerous,” she said, with a wide grin.

“They are.” Impulsively, he leaned forward and kissed her, ignoring the stares of the people nearby.

She looked surprised, but then rocked forward on her toes and kissed him back, soft and quick. Roger heard a faint “Mmphm” of disapproval somewhere nearby, but paid no attention.

“In kirk, and on Christmas Eve, too!” came a hoarse whisper from behind.

“Well, it’s no the kirk exactly, Annie, it’s only the vestibule, aye?”

“And him the meenister’s lad and all!”

“Well, ye ken the saying, Annie, as the cobbler’s bairns go barefoot. I daresay it’s a’ the same wi’ a preacher’s lad that’s gone to the deil. Come along in, now.”

The voices receded into the church, to the prim tap of Cuban heels and a man’s softer shuffle accompanying. Brianna pulled back a little and looked up at him, mouth quivering with laughter.

“Have you gone to the devil?”

He smiled down at her, and touched her glowing face. She wore her grandmother’s necklace, in honor of Christmas, and her skin reflected the luster of the freshwater pearls.

“If the devil will have me.”

Before she could answer, they were interrupted by a gust of foggy air as the church door opened.

“Mr. Wakefield, is it yourself?” He turned, to meet two pairs of bright, inquisitive eyes beaming up at him. A pair of elderly women, each about four foot six, stood arm in arm in their winter coats, gray hair puffed out under small felt hats, looking like a matched set of doorstops.

“Mrs. McMurdo, Mrs. Hayes! Happy Christmas to you!” He nodded to them, smiling. Mrs. McMurdo lived two doors down from the manse, and walked to church every Sunday with her friend Mrs. Hayes. Roger had known them all his life.

“Come over to Rome then, have ye, Mr. Wakefield?” Chrissie McMurdo asked. Jessie Hayes giggled at her friend’s wit, the red cherries bouncing on her hat.

“Maybe not just yet awhile,” Roger said, still smiling. “I’m only seeing a friend to the services, aye? You’ll know Miss Randall?” He brought Brianna forward and made the introductions, grinning inwardly as the two little old ladies looked her over with a frankly avid curiosity.

To Mrs. McMurdo and Mrs. Hayes, his presence here was as overt a declaration of his intentions as if he’d taken out a full-page ad in the evening newspaper. Too bad Brianna was unaware of it.

Or was she? She glanced at him with a half-hidden smile, and he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm, just for a moment.

“Och, there’s the wee laddie comin’ wi’ the censer!” cried Mrs. Hayes, spotting another white-robed boy emerging from the sanctuary. “Best get in quick, Chrissie, or we’ll never have a seat!”

“Such a pleasure to meet ye, my dear,” Mrs. McMurdo told Brianna, head tilted back so far that her hat was in danger of falling off. “My, such a bonny tall lass!” She glanced at Roger, twinkling. “Lucky to have found a lad to match ye, eh?”

“Chrissie!”

“Just coming, Jessie, just coming. Dinna fash, there’s time.” Straightening her hat, trimmed with a small bunch of grouse’s feathers, Mrs. McMurdo turned in leisurely fashion to join her friend.

The bell above began to clang again, and Roger took Brianna’s arm. Just in front of them, he saw Jessie Hayes glance back, eyes bright with speculation, her smile half sly with knowing.

Brianna dipped her fingers in a small stone basin set in the wall by the door, and crossed herself. Roger found the gesture suddenly and oddly familiar, despite its Romanness.

Years ago, hill-walking with the Reverend, they had come upon a saint’s pool, hidden in a grove. There was a flat stone standing on end beside the tiny spring, the remnants of carving on it worn nearly to smoothness, no more than the shadow of a human figure.

A sense of mystery hung about the small, dark pool; he and the Reverend had stood there for some time, not speaking. Then the Reverend had bent, scooped up a handful of water, and poured it out at the foot of the stone in silent ceremony, scooped up another and splashed it over his face. Only then had they knelt by the spring to drink the cold, sweet water.

Above the Reverend’s bowed back, Roger had seen the tattered knots of fabric tied to tree branches above the spring. Pledges; reminders of prayer, left by whoever still visited the ancient shrine.

For how many thousands of years had men thus blessed themselves with water before seeking their heart’s desire? Roger dabbed his fingers in the water and awkwardly touched both head and heart, with something that might have been a prayer.

They found seats in the east transept, crowded shoulder to shoulder with a murmuring family, busily engaged in settling belongings and sleepy children, passing coats and handbags and baby bottles to and fro, while a small, wheezy organ played “O Little Town of Bethlehem” somewhere just out of sight.

Then the music stopped. There was a silence of expectation, and then it burst out once more, in a loud rendition of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

Roger rose with the congregation as the procession came down the center aisle. There were several of the white-robed acolytes, one with a swinging censer that sent puffs of fragrant smoke into the crowd. Another bore a book, and a third a tall crucifix, the gruesome figure on it blatant, daubed with red paint whose bloody echoes shimmered in the priest’s vestment of gold and crimson.

Despite himself, Roger felt a slight sense of shocked distaste; the mixture of barbaric pageantry and the undulations of sung Latin were quite foreign to what he subconsciously felt was proper in church.

Still, as the Mass went on, things seemed more normal; there were Bible readings, quite familiar, and then the accustomed descent into the vaguely pleasant boredom of a sermon, in which the inevitable Christmas annunciations of “peace,” “goodwill,” and “love” rose to the surface of his mind, tranquil as white lilies floating on a pond of words.

By the time the congregation rose again, Roger had lost all sense of strangeness. Surrounded by a warm, familiar church fug composed of floor polish, damp wool, naphtha fumes, and a faint whiff of the whisky with which some worshipers had fortified themselves for the long service, he scarcely noticed the sweet, musky scent of frankincense. Breathing deeply, he thought he caught the hint of fresh grass from Brianna’s hair.

It shone in the dim light of the transept, thick and soft against the dark violet of her jumper. Its copper sparks muted by the dimness, it was the deep rufous color of a red deer’s pelt, and it gave him the same sense of helpless yearning he had felt when surprised by a deer on a Highland path—the strong urge to touch it, stroke the wild thing and keep it somehow with him, coupled with the sure knowledge that a finger’s move would send it flying.

Whatever one thought of Saint Paul, he thought, the man had known what he was on about with respect to women’s hair. Unseemly lust, was it? He had a sudden memory of the bare hallway and the steam rising from Brianna’s body, the wet snakes of her hair cold on his skin. He looked away, trying to concentrate on the goings-on at the altar, where the priest was raising a large flat disk of bread, while a small boy madly shook a chime of bells.

He watched her when she went up to take Communion, and became aware with a slight start that he was praying wordlessly.

He relaxed just a bit when he realized the content of his prayer; it wasn’t the ignoble “Let me have her” he might have expected. It was the more humble—and acceptable, he hoped—“Let me be worthy of her, let me love her rightly; let me take care of her.” He nodded toward the altar, then caught the curious eye of the man next to him, and straightened up, clearing his throat, embarrassed as though he had been surprised in private conversation.

She came back, eyes wide-open and fixed on something deep inside, a small dreaming smile on her wide sweet mouth. She knelt, and he beside her.

She had a tender look at the moment, but it was not a gentle face. Straight-nosed and severe, with thick red brows redeemed from heaviness only by the grace of their arch. The cleanness of jaw and cheek might have been cut from white marble; it was the mouth that could change in a moment, from soft generosity to the mouth of a medieval abbess, lips sealed in cool stone celibacy.

The thick Glaswegian voice beside him bawling “We Three Kings” brought him to with a start, in time to see the priest sweep down the aisle, surrounded by his acolytes, in clouds of triumphant smoke.

“ ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are,’ ” Brianna sang quietly as they made their way down River Walk, ‘Going to smoke a rubber cigar…It was loaded, and explo-oo-ded’—you did turn out the gas, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he assured her. “Not to worry; between the cooker and the bathroom geyser, if the manse hasn’t gone up in flames yet, it must be proof of divine protection.”

She laughed.

“Do Presbyterians believe in guardian angels?”

“Certainly not. Popish superstition, aye?”

“Well, I hope I haven’t damned you to perdition by making you go to Mass with me. Or do Presbyterians believe in hell?”

“Oh, that we do,” he assured her. “As much as heaven, if not more.”

It was even foggier, here by the river. Roger was glad they hadn’t driven; you couldn’t see more than five feet or so in the thick white murk.

They walked arm in arm beside the River Ness, footsteps muffled. Swaddled by the fog, the unseen city around them might not have existed. They had left the other churchgoers behind; they were alone.

Roger felt strangely exposed, chilled and vulnerable, stripped of the warmth and assurance he had felt in the church. Only nerves, he thought, and took a firmer grip of Brianna’s arm. It was time. He took a deep breath, cool fog filling his chest.

“Brianna.” He had her by the arm, turned to face him before she had stopped walking, so her hair swung heavy through the dim arc from the streetlamp overhead.

Water droplets gleamed in a fine mist on her skin, glowed like pearls and diamonds in her hair, and through the padding of her jacket, he felt in memory her bare skin, cool as fog to his fingers, flesh-hot in his hand.

Her eyes were wide and dark as a loch, with secrets moving, half seen, half sensed, under rippling water. A kelpie for sure. Each urisge, a water horse, mane flowing, skin glowing. And the man who touches such a creature is lost, bound to it forever, taken down and drowned in the loch that gives it home.

He felt suddenly afraid, not for himself but for her; as though something might materialize from that water world to snatch her back, away from him. He grasped her by the hand, as if to prevent her. Her fingers were cold and damp, a shock against the warmth of his palm.

“I want you, Brianna,” he said softly. “I cannot be saying it plainer than that. I love you. Will you marry me?”

She didn’t say anything, but her face changed, like water when a stone is thrown into it. He could see it plainly as his own reflection in the bleakness of a tarn.

“You didn’t want me to say that.” The fog had settled in his chest; he was breathing ice, crystal needles piercing heart and lungs. “You didn’t want to hear it, did you?”

She shook her head, wordless.

“Aye. Well.” With an effort, he let go her hand. “That’s all right,” he said, surprised at the calmness in his voice. “You’ll not be worried about it, aye?”

He was turning to walk on when she stopped him, hand on his sleeve.

“Roger.”

It was a great effort to turn and face her; he had no wish for empty comfort, no desire to hear a feeble offer to “be friends.” He didn’t think he could bear even to look at her, so crushing was his sense of loss. But he turned nonetheless and then she was against him, her hands cold on his ears as she gripped his head and pushed her mouth hard onto his, not so much a kiss as blind frenzy, awkward with desperation.

He gripped her hands and pulled them down, pushing her away.

“What in God’s name are you playing at?” Anger was better than emptiness, and he shouted at her in the empty street.

“I’m not playing! You said you wanted me.” She gulped air. “I want you, too, don’t you know that? Didn’t I say so in the hall this afternoon?”

“I thought you did.” He stared at her. “What in hell do you mean?”

“I mean—I mean I want to go to bed with you,” she blurted.

“But you don’t want to marry me?”

She shook her head, white as a sheet. Something between sickness and fury stirred in his gut, and then erupted.

“So you’ll not marry me, but you’ll fuck me? How can ye say such a thing?”

“Don’t use that sort of language to me!”

“Language? You can suggest such a thing, but I must not say the word? I have never been so offended, never!”

She was trembling, strands of hair sticking to her face with the damp.

“I didn’t mean to insult you. I thought you wanted to—to—”

He grabbed her arms and jerked her toward him.

“If all I wanted was to fuck you, I would have had ye on your back a dozen times last summer!”

“Like hell you would!” She wrenched loose one arm and slapped him hard across the jaw, surprising him.

He grabbed her hand, pulled her toward him and kissed her, a good deal harder and a good deal longer than he ever had before. She was tall and strong and angry—but he was taller, stronger, and much angrier. She kicked and struggled, and he kissed her until he was good and ready to stop.

“The hell I would,” he said, gasping for air as he let her go. He wiped his mouth and stood back, shaking. There was blood on his hand; she’d bitten him and he hadn’t felt a thing.

She was shaking, too. Her face was white, lips pressed so tight together that nothing showed in her face but dark eyes, blazing.

“But I didn’t,” he said, breathing slower. “That wasn’t what I wanted; it’s not what I want now.” He wiped his bloody hand against his shirt. “But if you don’t care enough to marry me, then I don’t care enough to have ye in my bed!”

“I do care!”

“Like hell.”

“I care too damn much to marry you, you bastard!”

“You what?”

“Because when I marry you—when I marry anybody—it’s going to last, do you hear me? If I make a vow like that, I’ll keep it, no matter what it costs me!”

Tears were running down her face. He groped in his pocket for a handkerchief and gave it to her.

“Blow your nose, wipe your face, and then tell me what the bloody hell ye think you’re talking about, aye?”

She did as he said, sniffing and brushing back her damp hair with one hand. Her foolish little veil had fallen off; it was hanging by its bobby pin. He plucked it off, crumpling it in his hand.

“Your Scottish accent comes out when you get upset,” she said, with a feeble attempt at a smile as she handed back the wadded hanky.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Roger said in exasperation. “Now tell me what you mean, and do it plainly, before ye drive me all the way to the Gaelic.”

“You can speak Gaelic?” She was gradually getting possession of herself.

“I can,” he said, “and if you don’t want to learn a good many coarse expressions right swiftly…talk. What d’ye mean by making me such an offer—and you a nice Catholic girl, straight out of Mass! I thought ye were a virgin.”

“I am! What does that have to do with it?”

Before he could answer this piece of outrageousness, she followed it up with another.

“Don’t you tell me you haven’t had girls, I know you have!”

“Aye, I have! I didn’t want to marry them, and they didn’t want to marry me. I didn’t love them, they didn’t love me. I do love you, damn it!”

She leaned against the lamppost, hands behind her, and met his eyes directly. “I think I love you, too.”

He didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until he let it out.

“Ah. You do.” The water had condensed in his hair, and icy trickles were running down his neck. “Mmphm. Aye, and is the operative word there ‘think,’ then, or is it ‘love’?”

She relaxed, just a little, and swallowed.

“Both.”

She held up a hand as he started to speak.

“I do—I think. But—but I can’t help thinking what happened to my mother. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

“Your mother?” Simple astonishment was succeeded by a fresh burst of outrage. “What? You’re thinking of bloody Jamie Fraser? Ye think ye cannot be satisfied with a boring historian—ye must have a—a—great passion, as she did for him, and you think I’ll maybe not measure up?”

“No! I’m not thinking of Jamie Fraser! I’m thinking of my father!” She shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her jacket, and swallowed hard. She’d stopped crying, but there were tears on her lashes, clotting them in spikes.

“She meant it when she married him—I could see it, in those pictures you gave me. She said ‘better or worse, richer, poorer’—and she meant it. And then…and then she met Jamie Fraser, and she didn’t mean it anymore.”

Her mouth worked silently for a moment, looking for words.

“I—I don’t blame her, not really, not after I thought about it. She couldn’t help it, and I—when she talked about him, I could see how much she loved him—but don’t you see, Roger? She loved my father, too—but then something happened. She didn’t expect it, and it wasn’t her fault—but it made her break her word. I won’t do that, not for anything.”

She wiped a hand under her nose, and he gave her back the handkerchief, silently. She blinked back the tears and looked at him, straight.

“It’s more than a year before we can be together. You can’t leave Oxford; I can’t leave Boston, not till I’ve got my degree.”

He wanted to say that he’d resign, that she should quit her schooling—but kept quiet. She was right; neither of them would be happy with such a solution.

“So what if I say yes now, and something happens? What if—if I met somebody else, or you did?” Tears welled again, and one ran down her cheek. “I won’t take the chance of hurting you. I won’t.”

“But you love me now?” He touched a finger gently to her cheek. “Bree, do ye love me?”

She took a step forward, and without speaking, reached to undo the fastenings of her coat.

“What the hell are you doing?” Blank astonishment was added to the mix of other emotions, succeeded by something else as her long pale fingers grasped the zip of his jacket and pulled it down.

The sudden whiff of cold was obliterated by the warmth of her body, pressed against his from throat to knees.

His arms went around her padded back by reflex; she was holding him tight, arms locked round him under his jacket. Her hair smelled cold and sweet, with the last traces of incense trapped in the heavy strands, blending with the fragrance of grass and jasmine flowers. He caught the gleam of a hairpin, bronze metal in the copper loops of her hair.

She didn’t say a thing, nor did he. He could feel her body through the thin layers of cloth between them, and a jolt of desire shot up the backs of his legs, as though he were standing on an electric grid. He tilted up her chin, and set his mouth on hers.

“…see that Jackie Martin, and her with a new fur collar to her coat?”

“Och, and where’s she found the money for such a thing, wi’ her husband oot o’ his work this six month past? I tell ye, Jessie, yon woman…ooh!”

The click of French-heeled shoes on the pavement halted, to be succeeded by the sound of a throat being cleared with sufficient resonance to wake the dead.

Roger tightened his grip on Brianna, and didn’t move. She tightened her arms around him in response, and he felt the curve of her mouth under his.

“MMPHM!”

“Ah, now, Chrissie,” came a hissed whisper from behind him. “Let them be, aye? Can ye not see they’re getting engaged?”

“Mmphm” came again, but in a lower tone. “Hmp. They’ll be getting something else, and they go on wi’ that much longer. Still…” A long sigh, tinged with nostalgia. “Ah, weel, it’s nice to be young, isn’t it?”

The twin tap of heels came on, much slower, passed them, and faded inaudibly into the fog.

He stood for a minute, willing himself to let go of her. But once a man has touched the mane of a water horse, it’s no simple matter to let go. An old kelpie-rhyme ran through his head,

And sit weel, Janetie
  And ride weel, Davie.
And your first stop will be
  The bottom of Loch Cavie.

“I’ll wait,” he said, and let her go. He held her hands and looked into her eyes, now soft and clear as rain pools.

“Hear me, though,” he said softly. “I will have you all—or not at all.”

Let me love her rightly, he had said in wordless prayer. And hadn’t he been told often enough by Mrs. Graham—“Be careful what ye ask for, laddie, for ye just might get it?”

He cupped her breast, soft through her jumper.

“It’s not only your body that I want—though God knows, I want it badly. But I’ll have you as my wife…or I will not have you. Your choice.”

She reached up and touched him, brushed the hair off his brow with fingers so cold, they burned like dry ice.

“I understand,” she whispered.

The wind off the river was cold, and he reached to do up the zip of her jacket. In doing so, his hand brushed his own pocket, and he felt the small package lying there. He’d meant to give it to her over supper.

“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Happy Christmas.”

“I bought it last summer,” he said, watching her cold fingers fumble at the holly-printed paper. “Looks like prescience, now, doesn’t it?”

She held a silver circle, a bracelet, a flat silver band, with words etched round it. He took it from her and slipped it over her hand, onto her wrist. She turned it slowly, reading the words.

“Je t’aime…un peu…beaucoup…passionnément…pas du tout. I love you…a little…a lot…passionately…not at all.”

He gave the band a quarter turn more, completing the circle.

“Je t’aime,” he said, and then with a twist of fingers, sent it spinning on her wrist. She laid a hand on it, stopping it.

“Moi aussi,” she said softly, looking not at the band but at him. “Joyeux Noël.”