The question caught Nate off-guard but he looked at his skeptical fiancée, filled his eyes with her loveliness, then turned back to say genuinely, "I love your daughter as trees love spring rain, sir."
"Good answer, son," Joseph said. "Don't you think so, Fran?"
"Excellent, excellent," Francesca agreed.
"Let me give you a piece of advice, son. Don't try and corral this girl's exuberance. Just let her go. You'll have less gray hair that way." He then pointed to his own salt-and-pepper hair. "See these? Every one of these gray hairs belong to that girl over there."
"Papa!"
"Vivid, I have to tell him the truth."
"You're as bad as Mama!"
When the laughs settled down, Vivid asked after David Hatcher.
"Vernon took him to Niles this morning."
And then in front of God, Vivid's parents, and anyone else who might be around to hear or see, Nate asked Vivid, "Will you forgive me? I sent those letters soon after you came to town. I did it because I still had my doubts. I don't anymore."
Vivid saw the truth in his gaze and nodded.
Francesca applauded softly, then said, “I can see that you love my Trabrasera very much."
Nate smiled at the name, "Yes, ma'am, very much."
She then turned to Vivid, "Viveca, and you love him?"
"Yes, Mama, I do."
"Then we will go ahead with the wedding as soon as your Tia Teresa sends the wedding gown."
Vivid, smiling up at Nate, said, "Yes."
At dinner that evening Magic and Satin joined them, much to Francesca's delight. Magic and, to everyone's surprise, Satin took an instant liking to their soon-to-be grandmother. Francesca was especially interested in Hector.
"I had a falcon when I was young. Her name was Isabella. Does your Hector hunt?"
"No, ma'am. I hunt, he eats."
Francesca shook her head. "Tomorrow, Hector will learn how to begin hunting for himself."
"Really?" Magic responded excitedly.
"Really," Francesca promised.
After Magic and Satin and the other adults had all gone to bed, Vivid sat on the swing nestled in Nate's strong arms. "Magic and my mother seemed to hit it off well."
"Especially when your mother promised to buy her and Satin a circus."
"What?"
"A circus, you know, tame animals, tents?"
"When was this?"
"Sometime after dinner. Majestic said her abuela asked her what she wanted more than anything in the world."
"And Magic said a circus."
"Bull's-eye."
"I'll speak to Mama."
"Thank you. It's not that I don't appreciate the gesture, it's just we don't have any room for lions or tigers or bears wearing little skirts."
After a few silent moments Vivid said, "I was very, very angry with you, Nate Grayson."
"I know, princess, but you have to see it from my point of view. I had my doubts, as I said."
"I know you did, but it hurt nonetheless."
"I know and I apologize for that also." He leaned down and kissed her brow. "I'd apologize profusely if I weren't afraid your screaming would awaken your parents."
She playfully elbowed him in the ribs, then lay back and enjoyed the night and the feel of his strength encircling her.
For the next few days, Vivid and Nate squired her parents around the Grove to see the land and to meet the neighbors. Francesca began teaching Hector to hunt, and Magic and Satin to speak Castilian. Nate began to learn that his mother-in-law could be just as vivid as her daughter. He didn't find out how Hector had been training until the Widow Moss stormed into his office in town one morning demanding fifty dollars for the rabbits Hector had killed and devoured. It seemed he'd been hunting in her rabbit hutch. An interrogation of the girls and their abuela proved this to be true and Nate paid up. After Nate delivered a stern lecture to the three females, Francesca kissed him on the cheek and swore it wouldn't happen again.
Nate didn't believe it for a minute, but he did go to the mirror and look for gray hairs.
The arm of the injured lumberjack at the camp near Battle Creek had to be amputated. After conducting the surgery, Vivid stayed a few more days to ensure he recovered well, then she and Michigan headed home.
The end of September brought cooler temperatures and days of rain. The gray skies finally broke and the Grove residents went about their business under crisp blue skies and the magnificent turning trees. Vivid had never seen such a riot of colors: brilliant golds, blazing reds, fiery burnt oranges. Vibrant, intense color assaulted the eye from every corner. For these sights alone Vivid vowed to remain in Michigan for the rest of her life.
The end of September also brought the harvest moon—the largest, fattest, most golden moon Vivid and her marveling parents had ever seen.
On the morning of the last day of September, a man Vivid had never seen before strolled up the drive. He walked up to where she sat atop the wagon and said, "Good morning, I am Vincent Red Bird's son, Isaac."
"Good morning, Isaac, I'm Dr. Lancaster, and this is my mother. How may we help you?"
"I'm looking for Nate Grayson."
"Nate's left for town already."
"Well, will you give him this please?"
He handed up a small wooden ball. As she took it and looked at it he added, "I am this year's skabewis."
Vivid stared down, confused.
"The word translates as messenger."
She peered again at the ball. "Nate will know what this means?" Vivid handed the ball to her curious mother.
“Of course. It's time for Little Brother of War. Everyone knows that."
"Of course," Vivid echoed.
With the arrival of the skabewis the Grove became infected with lacrosse fever. Sticks were taken down and their webbed heads refitted. Nate and Vernon traveled all the way from Battle Creek to St. Joe recruiting players for the Grove team. The game was still more than two weeks away but already tribes were arriving to help the Grove men clear and level the field behind Mr. Farley's place.
The early October days, though crisp, were festive. Because of the recent harvests many fruits and vegetables were given to the doctor in payment for services. Her chef father, who'd taken over the bulk of Abigail's cooking, couldn't have been happier, surrounded by the fresh Michigan bounty.
He discovered apple butter, cornish pasties, popcorn, and paw paws—a potato-sized Michigan tree fruit which, to Vivid, tasted amazingly like bananas. After going hunting with Adam, Joseph treated everyone to beautifully prepared pheasant and grouse, mouthwatering salmon, and a venison dish that brought tears to Adam Crowley's eyes.
More and more people came to set up residence on Farley's field as the days passed. The native people and their supporters took one side of the field and the Grove residents took the other.
The children of both sides cleared the field of stones, sticks, and other bits of natural debris that might cause a player to trip or fall during the contest. Hector stuffed himself royally on the vermin and rabbits flushed out when the children marched down the field banging pots and lids. All rabbit warrens and ground squirrel holes were filled and tamped down; no one wanted the players to suffer broken ankles.
Nate was so busy coordinating events and the movement and placement of people, Vivid rarely saw him until she caught him in town one afternoon in his office.
He looked up at her entrance and smiled. "Well, hello, princess, what can I do for you?"
"I'm on my way home, and I thought I'd stop by to see how you are, I've seen you so rarely lately."
He put away his lists and looked at her from behind his desk. He beckoned her with a long finger.
Vivid came over with a grin. She hopped up on the desk in front of him. “What?'' she asked.
Nate leaned back in his chair and looked at her for a long moment. "Do you know how absolutely beautiful you are?"
"You are obviously in love. Look at me, my hair's a mess, I have on
this old man's shirt—two sizes too large—these denims need patching in the knees and in the seat, and...mmm..."
His kiss silenced her. Seated atop the desk, she was at the perfect height to savor and be savored. "This is nice..." she whispered, nibbling his bottom lip, then flicking the point of her tongue against the corners of his mouth. Nate slid his chair closer to her. He effortlessly lifted her slight weight from the desktop and down to the warmth of his lap.
"Will you tell me a bedtime story...tonight?"
"Can't," he whispered against the hollow of her throat. He began to undo the buttons of her shirt, kissing as he went.
"Why not?" she questioned heatedly. "Haven't I been a good girl?"
His kisses brushed the tops of her breasts. “Oh, yes, princess. You've been a very good girl..."
He'd opened the shirt to her waist and now eased down her thin camisole. He slid his palms over the pebble-hard points and watched her desire spread across her face. "It's against the rules...no bedtime stories until after the game."
"Really? Oh, Nate..."
His lips were closing over a pleading nipple, while the other received the tender play of his fingers. "Really. Tradition says players must be celibate."
He moved his loving over to the other nipple and left it hard and damp as he lifted up and kissed her on the mouth. He set her back on the desk leaving her to savor her pleasure while he went to draw the office's shades closed.
In the daylight shadows he came back to her. She hadn't moved.
He leaned to kiss her bared breasts again, then slid his hand down to the large leather belt girding her waist. He pushed it away. Vivid helped him ease her trousers down and off. She sat atop the desk in her opened shirt, rucked-down camisole, and drawers.
Fired by her erotic posing, Nate brought his mouth passionately down to her mouth again while he ran his hands over the dark goblets of her breasts. "God, you're beautiful," he proclaimed.
He slid his hands over the dark satin of her bared thighs and heard her moan as he slipped his hand inside her drawers. She moaned again as his caress found her.
Without breaking contact with her warmth, Nate retook his seat. He was as hard as she always made him, but he had to dampen his own passions because he could not have her, not until after the game. Leaning forward, he flicked his tongue against the sweet nook of her navel, and when he moved his kisses lower, she melted in his hand.
Vivid's hips were rising from the desktop in answer to his passionate calls, so he had no trouble ridding her of her drawers. Bare and open, eyes closed, head thrown back, she stiffened as his mouth loved her slowly at first, then with increasing wanton ardor. When his big hands slid beneath her hips to raise her to him more intimately, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't think.
It didn't take long for him to send her soaring into release, and when he did, she yelled his name with a strangled cry.
"Now go home, before I break my vow," he whispered, loving her gently as she came back to earth. "Take this sweetness and go home."
Chapter 20
Vivid took her mother to meet Maddie. The pack of barking and snapping hounds met them at the gate. Vivid knew the dogs were familiar with her, but wasn't sure how they'd react to her mother. She needn't have worried, because when Francesca began to coo to them in soft lyrical Castilian, the pack went tame as lambs. Vivid looked on, astounded. Francesca stepped slowly into the yard and the hounds began jostling one another for position in order to receive a petting from her gentle hands.
Even Maddie, who'd come out on the porch in her buckskins, stared, amazed, then called, "Who's that with you, Viveca, a witch?"
"No, Maddie, it's my mother,"
“Well, any friend of my dogs is a friend of mine, so bring her on in."
Maddie and Francesca hit it off famously. Francesca was awed by all the books she saw when they entered, and Maddie was impressed by Francesca's way with the dogs.
"They've never taken to anyone like that before," Maddie pointed out as they all sat in her small front room. "Usually I'm picking folks' skin out of their teeth."
"I've always liked dogs; maybe they sensed that."
Maddie just shook her head.
They visited for a while, talking about the upcoming wedding and the lacrosse madness sweeping the countryside, then Vivid asked a question she'd been trying to have answered for months now. "What happened between Nate and Eli? There's more between them than politics."
"Nate takes his politics very seriously, but it really stems from Nate's old wife, Cecile. Cecile committed adultery with Eli while Nate was away at war, and for a while after his return."
Vivid stared. "Eli?"
"Yes, Eli. Although she had other lovers, too. Cecile was a selfish, spoiled little thing. Eli was sixteen, handsome, and so arrogant about his looks, Abigail wanted to smack him all the time. Made the young women around here nuts."
"Eli?"
Maddie chuckled, "Eli. He was something when we were young. Broke hearts from Kalamazoo to the Indiana border. It was a volatile combination. For Eli the trysts were nothing more than another opportunity to test his manhood, if you get my meaning, but he grew up the night Nate found them together."
Maddie paused and looked at Francesca and Vivid. "Can you imagine Nate's pain? Here people were already whispering about his wife's adulterous behavior, and then to find out that one of her lovers was his own cousin, someone Nate had grown to manhood with and loved all his life. I think Nate went a bit insane. He dragged Eli out of the bed and beat him nearly to death. Cecile stood by and watched. The fight spilled out into the street. Vernon and a few other men managed to separate them, but it was too late. They were never the same. Nate never forgave Eli. Eli was so ashamed he wouldn't even fight back. It was awful."
The next morning, Vivid, accompanied by her mother, Magic, and Satin went over to Mr. Farley's field to see how the lacrosse preparations were going. The area now resembled a small village. Wagons competed with tents and carriages for spots on the edges of the field, as did the many vendors selling piping hot corn on sticks, lemonade, apple cider, popcorn, and the like. The posts for the goals had been erected, one on each end of the field, standing over the proceedings like silent sentinels.
"What is all this, Magic?" Vivid asked, looking at the stack of goods piled high at one end of the field. She spotted beautiful blankets and quilts, jewelry, guns both ancient and new, boots, moccasins, and even a bicycle.
"These are all the things people are betting," Magic explained as they walked around it. "Pa says back when he was young, the pile would be tall as a man full-grown."
"Do we get to bet anything, Magic?" Satin asked.
"No, we have to be older. Besides, our side always loses, always."
"Really?" Vivid asked with a smile.
"Really. We never win."
The girls asked their grandmother if they might have some of the popped corn and she of course, said, "Of course!"
While her mother went off to spoil her granddaughters, Vivid began a slow weave through the encampments looking at babies and asking to see if anybody needed care. She lanced a few boils, cleaned a few festering wounds, peered into ears and eyes in search of resolutions for various complaints. When any condition seemed serious, she made an appointment to discuss it later at the afflicted person's home or her office.
She saw neighbors and strangers, folks of all races, native women in beautiful beaded dresses, and, a bit later, Magic, the immaculately dressed Satin, and their abuela snowing off Hector to a knot of impressed youngsters.
In a pasture adjacent to the cleared playing field, Nate and his team were practicing before a small crowd of Grove supporters. There were about twenty-five men on the field; all had the web-headed sticks in their hands and were running pell-mell down the field, using the sticks to pass the ball to one another as they ran toward the makeshift goal. First one man would carry the ball of wood, then he'd swiftly lob to it another nearby. They kept this up until they wer
e far down the pasture. Adam Crowley, who appeared to be the instructor, stood a few yards away from her, jumping up and down and screaming the whole time. Whether he was offering encouragement or criticism was unclear, but he was certainly loud.
Nate and his team were now running back in her direction at a furious pace, passing the ball just as they'd done before. Adam Crowley was again doing his dance and shouting what sounded like "Opening wings! Opening wings!" but Vivid again had no idea what that meant or even if she was correct.
The men went blazing by, close enough for her to see the sweat pouring down their faces and their bare arms and chests. Vivid had to admit it was quite a treat watching Nate's dark muscles glittering in the sun as he flew past. He must have sensed her thoughts because at that exact moment he looked over at her and grinned, and missed the ball which Vernon passed to him. The ball hit the ground and the game stopped.
Mr. Crowley screamed, snatched his hat off his head, and threw it to the ground. Vivid saw Nate trying to hide his grin at Adam's reaction and she found herself the object of Adam Crowley's pointed gaze. When he beckoned to her, Vivid gulped. Trying to stall, Vivid pointed to herself as if to say, "Me?"
Adam Crowley nodded yes and beckoned to her again.
Vivid heard one of the onlookers say with a chuckle, "You're in trouble now, Doc."
The small crowd laughed and threw teasing comments about her causing Nate's distraction and what Adam was going to do. Vivid tried to take the ribbing with a straight face but could not.
"Yes, Adam," she said.
"Go home."
"Why?"
"Because you are distracting my players, and distracted players do not play well. We are going to win this year but not if my captain is busy staring at a pretty face."
She smiled.
"See, that's what I mean. Go home."
Some of the men in the crowd laughingly agreed with Adam. "Go home, Doc," they cried. "You're gonna make us lose worse than usual. Go home."
Vivid spun on them. "All right, I went to school, I know when I'm not wanted."
She gave Nate a saucy smile before continuing on her way. She took a shortcut through the trees back to the main field, then stopped and stared at the sight of Quentin James standing a few feet away talking to a man Vivid did not know. They were talking intently, then as if sensing her presence, Quentin looked her way. Vivid swore Quentin's eyes grew big with fear for just a moment. The other man, short and squat, stared at her, too. Vivid felt a chilling fear of her own. He tipped his hat and he and Quentin James moved on.