XI
Hoss sneered when he heard the first muffled thud of a raindrop on the rim of his hat, and when his creased nose turned upward and his brow furrowed to protest the upcoming weather, he pulled his coat tighter around him. The buckboard traveled over an uneven trail, wobbled under his weight and made him put one foot against the wood in front of his leg. When he tilted his head up again, another raindrop landed right next to the ridge of his nose, causing an annoyed murmuring voice escape from his throat.
"Dad burn it..."
Elin pressed closer against him, while her gray gaze swept over to the skies and her long arm stretched out to receive the droplets. As if she wished them welcome; her shawl fell a little from her shoulders, and the fold of her neck made her chignon untidy. She had a hat somewhere, but that somewhere could have been as well under all of the wagonload behind them. Her voice was clear and bubbling, for all the gathering gray clouds and thickening rain.
"It's raining, Hoss."
"Yeah, hon', it's as raining as a fair rain can rain right now."
Hoss checked the reins and thought of the road ahead of them, thinking of seeking shelter at a grove, as he didn't remember any line shacks or other suitable roofs to protect them from the weather.
A hand slipped under his coat sneakily, catching a supporting hold of his side while his wife's body enforced itself under his other arm, causing the horse to toss his head when he felt a pull at the other rein.
"I thought I needed to find cover", Elin spoke and squeezed against him to act as if the front of his coat was enough to cover her from the rain. Hoss released the reins and the horse slowed down, pushing his ears back and protesting for the weather, as well.
"Ailynn...?"
Swallowing caused a sound loud enough to be heard even in the increasing rain.
Elin wiggled on his thighs to sit tightly on his legs and got a hold of his shoulder under the coat, while the other hand clung to his side, to his belt. The chin passed under his eyes so close he saw a raindrop that had landed above her lips, traveling down the pale skin and searching the escape over the ridge of the teasing mouth. The moment was short, though, the movement of hers took another direction and he heard the lips murmuring under his ear, very close to the stubble that tickled against the brushing gestures of her face.
"Pull over."
Dad... Burn it.
"R..."
Gasp.
She had opened her gray eyes, the familiar twinkle of the morning dew had gone away and the melting iron mixed to thick smoke and coal gray caught him by surprise.
"Right here, Ailynn?"
She pulled his hat on her own head, but it was all in vain, the rain brushed the hems of her dress and whipped both of their bodies from their shoulders and below, and the way she pushed the hat back on the crown of her head and turned aside made both their faces expose to the rain nakedly.
"When we go home, there are kids waiting", she said and brought her head a bit lower, staying under his chin and whispering to the collar of his shirt.
That collar was tight. Even if the highest few buttons were open, that dad burn collar knew how to be tight. Raindrops poured over his hair and tickled uncomfortably when they ran from the tips of the hair inside the collar, but the discomfort was nearly comfortable with the way she nudged the shirt from the front.
It did – or didn't help that her lips left their marks over the Adam's apple and the throat both sides of it, one set of fingers playing somewhere where the highest still closed button was waiting. In the first weeks when they were married, her lips had found a spot from his collar bone that made his whole body respond. Still today, no matter how long he would have been away or how tired he was when returning from the trail, she unmistakably found that exact same spot.
The imagination of his wife seemed to have no boundaries, even if Hoss himself could sometimes surprise her while inspiration ran strong.
"It's all... wet, Ailynn."
The buckboard had stopped from moving, although Hoss still had the reins in his other hand, mocking him with the problem of how to get them safely hitched to the hook. The other hand held tight around Elin's body to stop her from falling; he had to shift his legs a bit to make room for her and help her balance slightly better. Her waistline softness was hardening for touch, it was preparing to expand. She hardly ever wore a corset, but it was good, he could tell if she was excited, angry, or in lack of something by the movement of her diaphragm in the pace of her breathing.
"It's dry under the buckboard."
Elin giggled, deep from her throat, her voice chiming like a voice of a child, while her hands tucked his vest in a way that was quite adult.
Hoss thought of her, how she had frowned under his weight the first time together, and how her soft moan had made him worried. 'Do I hurt you?' he had asked. 'No, you do good', she answered, and later showed how pain could be pleasure, too, how teeth could cause more than lips or fingers.
Once he had snapped at her, at her tantrums and sassing Swedish that battered him for no reason, perhaps she'd burned all her buns or broken the eggs in the basket. She was lashing out at him, and started to poke his chest with her hard-boned finger in a manner that finally drove him to the edge. For once, he had gotten angry and tucked her under his arm, and smacked a few times to make her quiet. Not harder than if she had been a child, but enough to tell her to mind her manners. When he released her and stared at her spitting angry face, she threw a pillow at him, she threw a pair of socks at him, she tried to throw a petticoat which didn't fly and made her stomp her feet, until her bad mood made her cry hot tears and she ran away.
She disappeared for the whole day, avoiding him – until in the night, when he had been in the barn to see to the horses, a pair of hands had crawled to circle his chest from behind while her bosom's soft figure pressed against his back, and soft lips had murmured to the scruff of his neck to ask for more.
The reins fell on his feet, the other hand rose up to stroke his wife's soft brown hair that was waiting behind the ear to fall loose from the bun in the neck. She wasn't made to be understood, but to be held in his hands, to be loved in spite.
"Not anymore, I'm afraid."
He bent his head down to reach her face, to invite it upright again, to let him join the game, too. The hat fell off from her head, and landed next to his feet by the seat. The horse shifted, making the carriage behind him shift, and the bump shook the couple but didn't separate them an inch.
"We could turn back to the trees", he said into her mouth, to her nostrils that were too close. He let the grip of his hands loosen so that she answered the movement by leaning her back against his arms.
His own eyes examined her face, the mist in his own dreamy look making the corners of his wife's eyes smile while he looked at her from the top of her head to the chin, and back, trying to memorize every quarter of a quarter of an inch under the raindrops that striped her face but glimmered like crystals. All his, she had said in the night after they were married; she had kept her promise.
Her leg snaked her body once more while it climbed over his thighs, the rain-soaked hems following with little elegance and sweeping over his knees and shins with their heavy shadow. His hand groped for a moment and found her leg, covered with the stocking and fitted into the buttoned shoe, and traveling higher he fixed her better on his thighs.
"Not anymore, I'm afraid."
Yes, for having her, there was a price to pay.
He was hers, from head to toe, but at this end of the rope, that was a small price in the bargain.
The rain twirled around them and sheltered them from the rest of the world with its thick and oozing fall like a curtain; nobody would be out in this shower. They were all alone, the rain was washing all the trails away.
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Hoss felt it often under his palms. It was still not so much to be seen, but the way his hands came from behind her back or turned around her waist had become substantially different. Elin's body was getting softer and padded in other places, too, she had a new layer under her previously pointy chin and her fingers and her ankles were sometimes stiff and hard to bend. At those times, she'd hold her hand over her lower back and glower at Hoss, with a dooming frown nestling around her blonde eyebrows. Elin was growing into a different person, even though she was still the same Elin who had dipped her toes in the cold lake early last summer and screamed at its coldness.
She used to sit down and spin yarn with her spinning wheel, and often she was captured in so many shades of yellows, greens, browns and whites that it made Hoss' own head spin; he hadn't known the colours of the mountains and hills would be so various, and yet come from those four simple families. He'd pull on his boots and put on his hat and ride out with the image of his calm wife sitting behind the wheel and the shades of the Sierras.
Even though, sometimes, when Elin's lips were not only smiling but also humming softly to herself and her own imaginary world, it would be a bit harder to leave. He liked the feel of the way the bump under her chest was forming, how it felt to be rubbing it gently, expecting the kicks that might be still further away. Elin would ruffle his hair that was escaping in untamed thin curls to all directions, and she threatened to spin it to the yarn just because it was so frizzy.
Hoss grinned again at the image. "It seems I've married a spider".
Elin continued to step on the foot-piece and laughed. "Spindel." She continued to spin the wheel and cast wool to make yarn. "En fyllig spindel."
"What does that mean?"
"Round and plump spider. Spindel."
"You're plumb spinning with your tongue, did you know?"
Elin pressed her lips in an overtly confident smile. "I should be. Somebody has to, to be a match for you."
For a moment Hoss thought, that she had showed her tongue at him, but the impression went over so quickly that he couldn't be sure.
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Hoss woke up early, and stretched his hands to overcome the stiffness caused by his uncomfortable bed. He opened his eyes and kicked his legs down from the settee, which was too short and too narrow for him to sleep comfortably. The quilt fell off, but he didn't bother to pick it up, as he needed to get up, anyway. He yawned very hard, almost making his jaws crack, and scratched his belly from both sides with his hands.
He looked up to see if Elin would be staring at him with blame and judgment in her eyes, but she was still in their room. Asleep or not, he didn't know, but it seemed she was not the one to come down and offer to make peace.
Hoss stood up and stretched his back and heard a snapping sound from his spine. He had seen challenge in Elin's eyes, she had been in a foul mood and picked a fight from the smallest things, but he had been all tuckered out after three long days out with his Pa to figure out about the timber, the contracts and ways to move the trees over the woods. Instead of sticking to the battle, he had just picked up the pillow and the blanket she had tossed outside their room and stalked downstairs. He had felt the flames coming from her breath and her eyes at the back of his neck, but he had better things to do than to humor her with an argument.
Such as sleeping.
He creased his eyebrows and the look in his blue eyes got a bit preoccupied when he thought about the possibly awaiting tongue-lashing. In a rasping manner, she would attack him with her words, the majority of the time in a language he could understand. Even though, often the things she went head to head with him on were beyond his understanding. Hoss yawned and hoped for some of the kids to be around when Elin woke up.
When he came back from the outhouse, Rebecka was up with her mother. She didn't care about the stormy looks of her mother, but she was innocently surprised by the sheets and the pillows on the settee. "Who slept here?" she asked, her eyes still covered with faint remainders of her sleep.
"As a matter of fact, Rebbeca, I did", Hoss said, and held his expressions inside.
Rebecka stared at him, and frowned. "Why did Mamma put you to bed downstairs?"
Hoss twisted his mouth and formed an alliance of ignorance with his daughter.
"Because he smells bad", Elin grumbled, and made Hoss bite his tongue.
He lifted his arm up to his nose, and sniffed audibly. "Yes, I think I do", he said, and looked Rebecka in the eyes. The girl came by him and smelled his shirt, too, and shook her head.
"You don't smell worse than usually", she said, and made Hoss' eyebrows rise so high that for a moment he was afraid they'd fly off his forehead. Rebecka was odd enough to make his chest tickle out of laughter, but Elin's hissing snarls were almost as, if not more, entertaining. She was bouncing around in her night gown and tossing things here and there with sharp motions.
"Go and wake up your brother and sister, Hoss is going for a business trip and we should say good bye." Elin patted the reluctant little girl on her back with a little bit too much force, and turned her back at Hoss.
Hoss sighed, and tried to walk closer to her, but she kept turning her back toward him no matter which direction he took. Even her back was glowering at him, and her braid had been pulled over her shoulder to hang at her own side. Finally she glanced at him over her shoulder. "Did you catch some sleep?" she asked curtly.
"Yes'm, I did." Hoss guessed that she hadn't had so much of it, but she wouldn't say.
"Uh-huh." She crossed her arms over her breasts and glanced over the other shoulder. "Was it lonely?"
"No, ma'am, not overbearingly." Hoss looked down at the wood of the floor, and knew she'd never admit she had been so.
"Are you sorry?" she asked, and turned to face him with an accusing look on her face, her shoulders covered with a shawl that she had spread over her shoulders like armour.
Hoss shook his head. "No." He knew she'd not say she were sorry, or that she had acted hastily, or that she would feel bad about throwing him out. Even less would she say that she didn't want him to leave for days after waking up from the uncomfortable settee in the great room, but if Hoss were lucky he would be able to cross the wall between them and touch her for a goodbye.
She'd come to her senses, pick up his pillow quietly and put it back on their bed, and forget about her promise never to talk to him again sooner than a morning would turn to noon.
Even if it was impossible for her to admit she had been wrong.
"Bring the children something nice, will you?" she asked, and bent her head down.
"I will." He would bring something nice for her, too. He didn't know what, but maybe his Pa could be of use. After all, his Pa had been married not only once but three times.
"Say my greetings to your father, and your brothers, will you?" she said, and turned her eyes to her idle hands.
"Of course I will." He walked past her only so close that his arm brushed her gown very gently, and she stirred a bit as she didn't know if to wait for more or to resent from even that little bit. Hoss looked at her profile and combed his own ruffled hair with his fingers. "I'll tell somebody to come by and see you're all right, while I'm away."
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Rebecka was holding her hands over her mother's belly. "Why is it so big, Mamma?" She looked at Hoss, and kept her ear close to the growing waistline. "How did it get there?"
Hoss could have told many stories and Elin a little bit more, but they both just stifled their smiles while Tor and Sigrid were looking as though they'd like to be really far away. Hoss knew the kids felt awkward and intruding every time he liked to cuddle their Ma, but he couldn't resist to tease them with a secret kiss every now and then, just to make Elin laugh at the blushing crimson complexions of the kids.
Rebecka stroked her mothers round and firm body, and Elin lifted her up on her arms, even though it was getting hard because of her daughter's age and her own size. But she was still able to lift Rebecka on her arm and rest her upon her hip, and she tried to collect the children in her arms as often as she remembered, even though in Tor it aroused a sheer will for kicking and snaking away to get out.
Elin pressed a little kiss on the cheek of Rebecka, and touched her silver blonde hair. "Your little baby sister or brother is getting ready to come out, sooner every day." She grinned and squeezed the tip of her daughter's nose, and looked at her other kids, smiling so widely that her freckles shone out right in gold and saffron shades. "Maybe this time you can concentrate on being a brother and sisters, not like last time when Tor had to be a Papa and Sigrid a second Mama." The wrinkles around her eyes told about the life she had lived, but they also sent warm feelings to the flushing children, and she put Rebecka down and walked to the older siblings.
"I know you still remember how hard it was when your Pappa had gone and Rebecka spent every night and day crying, my dears." Perhaps the children had no idea, but she herself had been there very much. Elin touched Tor and Sigrid faintly on their heads, and ignored the ashamed looks of them that came from somewhere that was not connected to anything in particular. "But maybe this time you don't have to be so tough and so strong, and you can play with your baby sister or brother just as it'll be." The children struggled out from her gentle cuddles, a trifle ashamed and a trifle embarrassed, and their expressions made Hoss grin inwardly. Sigrid thanked them for the breakfast and sneaked out from the table.
Rebecka tucked the sleeve of Hoss, and looked at him with her still blue eyes. "Pa, can I go and fetch Svartan to come inside with me?"
If she would have asked to bring in all the porcupines and skunks of the county to protect her room and to crowd the house, he would have said yes. He would have said yes to any wish to haul every living angry beaver and the fighting hawk to the house, because he had only heard one word.
"Pa."
He had to think over it again, and he forgot what Rebecka asked. It felt quite delicious in his mind.
Elin was a lot firmer. "No, you can't. Absolutely not. Faffa and Uncles are coming over and everything should be tidy. Tidy, not muddy and messy as you'd make it with Svartan."
Tor rolled his eyes. "Do you mean we'll have to..."
"Yes. You put on your suit and the bow tie."
"But Mamma..."
"Men Mamma, men mamma... you will also eat with all the forks we put on the table, to learn!"
Tor rolled his eyes again. "What for? For me to clean up afterwards?"
"Maybe." Elin cocked an eyebrow at her son. "I will not be called a gold digger by anyone, just because you're too stubborn to learn the good manners." Tor made a grimace, and the gesture made Elin raise her forefinger warningly. "Yes, son, you'll do as I say, and watch and learn. I've borrowed Hop Sing for tonight, and you aren't gonna spoil my fun. Now, go out, and let me scrub the kitchen clean before he comes!"
Tor stuck his fists to his pockets and stalked to the door, as if his feet were a bit too over-grown for his slender body. His sulking reminded Hoss of his own little brother, even though Joe had been made out of a completely different set of temper and agitation.
Elin collected the plates into a pile and snapped at Tor, while he was putting on his coat and opening the door. "Remember, Hop Sing wants his fire wood and the eggs, remind Sigrid!"
Hoss helped Rebecka with her coat, too, and held the door open for her before he returned his attention to their mother again. "Elin... I wish you wouldn't say that."
"Say what?" Elin rested her hand over her protruding middle and looked at him.
"Don't call yourself a gold digger. You're no such thing." Hoss sat down, and leaned his elbows on the table. He pursed his lips behind his crossed fingers and looked at Elin questioningly.
A slow smile climbed on Elin's pregnancy-softened face, and she came to sit on his lap. Her big belly was adding a lot of weight to her already plumped up figure, and it was already starting to make it harder for him to reach his hands around her body. But he managed to hold her very firmly and still, although he couldn't tell for sure how long it would last.
"Maybe that's just exactly what I am, a golddigger", she said, and looked at his eyes and his nose and his whole wide face with playful intensity. "Maybe I'm sitting on top of the biggest mountain of gold ever found in the whole state."
A few chuckles and guffaws escaped from the depths of Hoss' diaphragm, and they built up into a short laughter when he thought about the image she had built in his mind. "You are doing it a bit on the heavy side, too, to make sure, ain't you?"
She refused his hands that tried to touch the fluffier neckline and her rounder cheeks, and shifted a bit to sit deeper down on his legs. "It's not only me you should blame of it", she teased, and grinned at him very arrogantly. Her blunt stare made Hoss laugh and turn his head down for a moment.
"I don't know what for you've been given that tongue of yours, but you sure can surprise me every day", he said, smiling at her confident expression. He put his hand over her body and looked down. "How's our little prospect coming along?"
"Let me see." Elin looked down, and returned her glimmering eyes at Hoss' blue ones. Her freckles had woken up again, and the cardamom scent of her smile was making her bite her lower lip very jestingly. "It might need a bit more mining to find it out."
"Don't go diggin' too deep, there's a lot to do before the evening."
"My claim and my bid, I'll do as I please."
Elin's excavations were interrupted by a noise coming from the yard. The cries sounded like three pairs of fists in action against each other, with some scratches on the skin and some sore scalps from pulling of the hair. She rolled her eyes, and pushed her lower lip forward, and looked at Hoss beggingly. "Your turn?"
"My turn."
Hoss stood up and let Elin slide down on the floor, before he walked to the door to pick his hat and his coat, He took a deep breath and entered the yard to see what the fight was about. Dang those children, always at each others neck.
And he couldn't wait to have even more.
