He reached upward and pulled the shift over my head with no more care than he had his own shirt. It caught in my hairpins and sent them flying about the room like so many scattered grasshoppers. My hair fell upon my shoulders, and I pulled at it as his eyes traveled the length and breadth of me. “Oh, my love,” he crooned, “you are so much more beautiful than all my dreams, all my ponderings and imaginings.” Suddenly he straightened his back and his face showed mistrust. “Are you not a fairy? You must tell me if I ask, for fairies cannot lie.”
“Oh, husband. I assure you I can lie and that alone proves I am of this world. It is my abiding sin and I struggle with it daily. I promised to be true to you, and with all my heart, I vow honesty and loyalty. I am no fairy.” I drew in a breath so loudly it was as a sigh on the wind, for at that last word with one arm he drew me to him. His lips suckled one nipple as his fingers dimpled and caressed the other. The sound of his breath stopping and starting as he pressed and rolled his face into my breast gave me fear, but the feeling of pulling and suckling drove me mad with heat and a softening in my knees so that I nearly fell upon him. “Eadan,” I said, surprised at the depth of my own voice. His hand against my back slid to my buttocks and explored the curves of them as I had his chest only moments before. “Eadan, my husband, take me to the bed, for I am chilled.”
His powerful arms swept me up and over him, putting me gently upon the bed on the side against the wall. He doffed his trousers and curled under the blankets next to me. “Shall I build you a fire, Resolute, my wee wife?”
“I shall require a fire this night, and many others, I trow.” He kissed my lips, and as he did I found his hand and put it against my breast again. “What is this fire, Eadan? What is it?” I could not contain my own longing. I cried out. I kissed him.
Eadan’s other hand slid down my belly and rested between my legs. Rather than the violence and affront I had felt when touched thus by Rafe MacAlister, when Eadan moved his fingers through all my hidden places, as if he knew them but at the same time as if he had waited his whole life to find them, I felt only joy. He said, “All fire, especially this fire, is God’s gift to mortals. We want it even before we know it.” He stroked. My back drew into an arch, even against my bidding. He did it again.
“You must stop,” I croaked.
“Why?”
“I shall perish.”
He laughed softly, his voice so low as to be barely audible. “Take me with you.” Then he rolled atop me, kissed me, and thrust himself inside me.
CHAPTER 23
September 1737
In the second week of September our first child tumbled into this world, nearly missing the sheets prepared for him. A boy. Eadan brought me beer-and-barley soup while I nursed. Jacob wanted us to name the babe after him. I had wanted him named after his father, but both men wore me down. Brendan Fergus Argyll Lamont, the third generation of Lamont clan on this shore, would be known to the world as Brendan MacLammond II. The four of us made a family. Well and aye.
Mrs. Boyne, our closest neighbor, had given up on the thought that I was enchanted, and had instructed me in the finer points of motherhood such as binding the babe’s belly, healing my sore breasts with sheep fat and just-sheared wool, and drinking plenty of dark beer. Mr. Boyne kindly sheared one of his sheep himself, just for me to have the new wool.
With the birth of my child, I felt a terrible guilt and longing for James, Patience’s child. I sewed him a little coat from the new wool. I made a second cap of warm wool. I packaged them and sent them to the Couvent Sainte-Ursule in Montréal. Every year, I promised myself, I would send a cap, a blanket, something I could make with my own hands, so that the boy would always know the touch of love from someone of his own blood. At Christmastide every year I would also send Rachael Johansen a letter and a scarf I had made.
MACLAMMOND was printed on the shingle before my love’s shop in Lexington. Nothing more was needed. Jacob often spent some days at home, rather than the shop. Cullah complained sometimes about his father shirking his labor, but one evening when the light was just so from the window, I saw that Jacob’s eye had clouds in it. That night in bed, I told Cullah and asked him to stop harrying his pa for the work, that I could use him at the house. Warping the loom was painstaking and detailed, and Jacob could mind goats and repair fence while I worked.