Yet it was the view that caught at the throat. They were deep enough into the Mayacamas highlands that the ledge of rock seemed to float disembodied above the steep depths beneath and amid the lower rolling peaks about, gashed with occasional cliffs north to the barely glimpsed cone of Mount Saint Helena. The trees and brush about them merged into a deep green velour in the middle distance, fading to indigo that deepened as the sun declined toward the western crest.
They watered the horses, unsaddled them and tethered them to iron rings set in the living rock where the trail emerged from the mountainside; then they walked forward to the tip of the triangle, where a single small oak cast a patch of grassy shade amid poppies and wild hyacinth; the earth fell away beneath their feet. They could see Seven Oaks below them, toy-tiny yet absurdly close after their hours in the saddle, and the soft-colored palette of the valley beyond: the white steeple of a church in a crossroads village to the north, yellow stubble in blocks amid the green of leys, the tree-studded pasture, the occasional geometrical regularity of a vineyard or olive grove or orchard, and long shadows falling toward the riverbank forest from the lines of Italian cypresses. Light glinted on water, on the windows of the scattered farmsteads, and touched the tops of trees with a moving shimmer as people and animals moved antlike below.
It changed as they watched, tingeing the whole with a yellow haze, turning to burnished gold on the bare tops of the Vacas across the valley floor.
“But it’s not pretty,” he said. His arm went around her waist, and she leaned into his shoulder, a motion that seemed very natural. “Its beautiful… like something in a dream, or an old book about stepping through a mirror.”
“It’s the Land of Lost Content,” Adrienne said softly.
The words matched what he saw, but they also had the feel of being part of a larger whole. Adrienne must have felt the question through his arm, for she went on in the same half-dreaming tone:
“But Granddad found it for us again, just for us, against all hope,” she continued, and shivered slightly. “That’s what scares me about going through the Gate, Tom, scares me bad every time I leave. What if I can’t get back?”
She turned in to his embrace and they kissed. Suddenly their hands were eager on each other, scrambling with belts and fasteners; they rolled on the long silky grass….
Some time later Tom Christiansen laid himself back, sweaty and exhausted—and glad they’d paused for a moment to get a blanket to lie on. Jesus, he thought blissfully, staring up at the deepening blue of the sky. I feel like a teenager again—or did for a couple of hours. They said a man’s stamina peaked at sixteen, and it was all downhill from there. But maybe not.
Adrienne propped herself up on an elbow and kissed him. Then she started working her way down his throat; her long, bronze-colored hair tickled, then mingled with the sparse pale blond thatch on his massive chest.
“Adri,” he said, “I’m flattered. But I’m also thirty-two, not sixteen—I was just thinking about—Jesus!”
He was lost for long moments. When his eyes cleared she was swinging astride him.
“You underestimate yourself, darling,” she said, and sank back with a shivering moan. “Turnabout’s fair play….”
The smell of star jasmine mingled with sweat and musk; his hands clenched on her hips. Her face was remote, eyes closed behind a mist of swaying hair, until she stiffened and froze, crying out—quivering motionless except for the strong internal clenching. He shouted and heaved convulsively, and heard the sound die in echoes against the rock as she collapsed forward on his chest; his hand slid up the slick skin along her spine to the back of her neck.
“Oh, my.” She sighed; he could feel the coolness as her breath met his damp skin, although her face was hidden. “Oh, my.” After a moment she went on, obscurely, “Now, that was certainly no chocolate éclair.”
He lay and enjoyed the sensation of her pressed along him—it was a lot easier for him to bear her weight than the reverse, of course; he had a gentleman’s chafe marks on his elbows. That went on for a long lazy time, until the sun struck his eyes and he noticed the time.
“I hate to say it, but oughtn’t we be going? People might suspect….” Adrienne chuckled lazily. “Suspect? They’ll do more than suspect, honeypie. Seein’ as I brought you up alone to Lover’s Leap.”
“So that’s what it’s called?” he said, and tweaked her.
She yelped and rolled off him, glaring in an anger only half-assumed; the tweak had been delivered in a highly sensitive spot, and one she couldn’t have politely rubbed in public. She could here, and did: even in his exhausted state the sight did remarkable things.
“What was that for?”
“For taking me up unto a high place and showing me all the kingdoms of the Earth,” he said, wagging a finger at her—and then grabbing her wrist when she tried to retaliate with a tweak of her own. They both laughed.
She went on, “Well, it worked, didn’t it? Unless you were planning on resisting temptation?”
“I may have Christ in my surname, but the first one isn’t Jesus,” Tom said.
A swing band was tuning up as Tom and Adrienne dismounted at the stables; sunset was about over, leaving only a red glow behind the Mayacamas. He grinned at the sound of the music; he’d been a teenager when the swing-dancing revival was at its height, and the thought of tossing Adrienne around to a brassy big-band sound held no terrors. That and square dancing were the most popular forms here, from what he’d heard.
Then a thought hit him with a sudden chilclass="underline" It probably wasn’t a swing revival . For all he knew, it had never gone out of fashion, in this enclave of the dimensionally displaced. The population was too small to generate many fashions of their own, and if they were cut off from the living currents of society on FirstSide by choice or circumstance… He remembered his father remarking once that an uncle had gone on a trip to the old country in the 1950s. Modern Norwegians had barely been able to understand the archaic peasant dialect the uncle had picked up from the grandparents who’d made the original westward migration.
Tom and Adrienne helped the stablehands unsaddle their mounts, then walked hand in hand back to the manor. They parted with a kiss at the door to his room on the second floor; he took the time for a quick shower—rubbing down with handfuls of cold springwater wasn’t enough, considering the amount of exertion of various sorts he’d gone through today. The Commonwealth equivalent of party clothes for this sort of affair made him feel a little self-conscious at first—there was a definite zoot-suit influence—but they fit well; for a semiformal occasion like this they included a jacket with broad lapels, an open-necked shirt and loose-cut slacks, with two-tone leather shoes. He gave a thumbs-up sign to the mirror and went out to meet Adrienne. She wore a cream silk dress with a pleated skirt, and low-heeled shoes with diamond-studded buckles.
Whoa, he thought, taking her in.