"You always called it love, anyhow," she said. "I think for a long time it was just what any man feels when he's been away from women for too long."
Since she was bound to be right, he didn't dignify that with a direct reply. Instead, he said, "Well, you can't very well accuse me of that now." As if to prove as much, he kissed her again. His hands resting on the swell of her hips, he continued, "And, since you can't accuse me of that…" He kissed her once more, his lips hard against hers. One of his hands slid to her behind, to press her to him. Her own arms tightened around his back. As the kiss went on, she made a little wordless sound, almost a growl, in the back of her throat.
He lifted her off her feet. She let out a startled squawk: "Put me down! You'll hurt your back!" She had a reasonable chance of being right; she wasn't a small woman, and he was pushing forty. He ignored her all the same, carrying her off to the bedroom. "What are you doing?" she demanded.
"What do you think?" He set her on the bed and got down beside her. His hand slid under her skirt and up her thigh to the joining of her legs. He rubbed there. Her legs slid apart to make it easier for him. He hiked her skirt up and pulled her underpants down, then went back to what he'd been doing.
She laughed. "I think you're going to take advantage of me."
"Damn right I am." Jonathan unbuttoned his own fly. He was also going to take advantage of her being pregnant: if he didn't have to worry about putting on a rubber, he didn't intend to. He certainly liked it better without.
They both still wore most of their clothes when he went into her. She wasn't quite so wet as he would have wanted, but having to force his way in added to his excitement. She wrapped her legs around him and bucked hard. "Come on!" she said as he squeezed and fondled her breasts through the thin cotton fabric of her blouse. As she kindled, she said a good deal more than that. She was the very model of a lady
… except in the bedroom, when she was well and truly roused. Then anything could happen, and anything could come out of her mouth.
It hadn't lately. The two of them had started taking each other for granted since they'd got married. Today, though… Today they thrashed on the bed and clawed at each other as they hadn't done since he would drive up to Arthur and they'd picnic and then fornicate at her farmhouse outside the little town.
His own building pleasure driving him on, Moss rammed at her, not caring in the heat of the moment if he hurt her a little, too. By the way Laura yowled, she didn't care, either. Suddenly, she arched her back, threw back her head, and let out a long, shuddering moan. At the same time, she squeezed him inside her, so tight that he couldn't help but erupt.
"You're rumpling me," Laura said a moment later, pushing at him.
He shook his head and replied with lawyerly precision: "No, sweetheart, I just rumpled you." She made a face when he gave her a kiss. He laughed, his weight still on her. "If I remember right, that has something to do with why we got married."
"You think so, do you?" She pushed at him again, harder this time. He flopped out of her, which reminded him that, despite the fierce lovemaking they'd just enjoyed, he didn't burn so hot as he had back in his twenties. Then he'd have been ready for a second round as soon as the first was over. Now… Now he'd wait for tomorrow, or maybe the day after. Laura gave him another shove, and twisted under him, too. "Let me up. Let me set myself to rights."
"Oh, I suppose so," he said. But he couldn't keep wonder from his voice as he went on, "A baby. How about that?"
"Yes. How about that?" His wife's voice softened, too. "It isn't what I expected, but I'm glad it's happened."
"So am I." He wondered if he meant it. He decided he did. "About time we put down some roots here."
" I've already got roots here," Laura said pointedly. She nodded, too, though. "It's about time we were a family."
"A baby," Moss said again. "I wonder what he'll see by the time he grows up." The baby would be his age in the early 1970s. What would the world be like then?
A creek ran through the farm on which Mary McGregor and her mother lived. Scrubby oaks and willows grew alongside it. They got some firewood there, which was all to the good. Ducks sometimes nested along it, too, which gave Mary practice with a shotgun and gave her mother and her a tasty dinner every so often. And she would pull trout out of it once in a while, though she seldom had the time to sit and fish.
The creek and the trees by it also came in handy in other ways. Mary lit a fuse and ducked down behind an oak to wait for the explosion. It came just when she thought it would-a harsh, flat crack! Mallards leaped into the air with a thunder of wings. A couple of crows in a willow flapped away, cawing in alarm. Moments later, quiet returned.
Mary stepped out from behind the tree trunk to see what the dynamite had done. She nodded to herself. The stump she'd blown up had landed in the creek, just as she'd thought it would. The hole in the ground it left was about the size she'd expected, too.
She hadn't done anything particularly useful-a stump here wasn't the nuisance it would have been out in the middle of a field. But she'd learned a little more about explosives and fuses, which was knowledge that wouldn't go to waste, either on the farm or…
Or anywhere else, she thought. She was, after all, Arthur McGregor's daughter. She wondered what had gone through her father's mind while he waged his long one-man war against the Americans who occupied Canada. He'd never talked about it much-but then, he'd never been one to talk about anything much. What had he thought? Her guess was that he'd tried not to think about it except while he was actually busy at it. That would have made it harder for him to give himself away when the Yanks came snooping around, which they had again and again.
Not thinking about it would also have made it easier for him to go on thinking of them as the enemy, as abstractions, not as human beings. Killing the enemy was what you did when you went to war. Blowing up men-people-who were just like you, who fell in love and drank beer and got sore backs and dug splinters out of their hands and played checkers… That was a different business. It had to be a different business. Mary couldn't see how anybody would want, or would even be able, to do that.
Had Major Hannebrink, the American officer who'd ordered her brother Alexander shot during the war, ever imagined him as a human being? Or had Alexander simply been the enemy to him? For a moment, Mary came close to understanding how the American could have done what he did, came close to understanding without hating.
For a moment, and for a moment only. She shoved that understanding away with all the force of the hate she'd nursed ever since the USA invaded her country in 1914. She saw Americans as the enemy, not as human beings at all. She saw them so, and intended to go right on seeing them so.
When she got back to the farmhouse, her mother sat at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea. "I heard the boom," Maude McGregor said.
Mary nodded. "I took out a stump," she said. "I'm getting the hang of it, I think."
"Are you?" Her mother's voice held no expression what ever. "And what will you do with it once you've got it?"
"It'll come in handy around the farm, Ma," Mary answered. "You know it will."
"Yes-as long as you only use it around the farm," her mother said. "That's what worries me. I know you too well."
I don't know what you're talking about would have been a lie, an obvious lie. "I don't intend to use it anywhere else," Mary said. That was a lie, too, but maybe not so obvious. Maybe.
Maude McGregor looked at her for a long time. "I hope not," she said at last, and then, "Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Yes, please," Mary said. Her mother fixed her one. She added milk and sugar herself, and sat down to drink it across the table from her mother. Neither of them said another word till the tea was done-or, for that matter, for several hours afterwards. When they did start speaking to each other again, it was quietly, cautiously, as if they'd had a knockdown, drag-out fight that might pick up again if they weren't careful.