Chapter 10 #2
“A moonlit walk to a mountaintop overlook,” Hank murmured suggestively, leaning against the doorframe. “Just the two of you. Under the beautiful Northern Lights.” He crossed his arms. “And you want me to believe this isn't romantic?”
“It isn't.” The denial came too fast and too flat. He hoped his friend didn’t notice.
“Of course, not.” Hank's smile didn't waver. “You're just being a thoughtful employer. Showing the governess the local scenery.”
“That is exactly what I'm doing.”
“Perfectly innocent,” Hank agreed, his eyes twinkling. “Ivy and Jewel can write an essay on the delights of the sky.” He took his coat from the rack and shrugged into the garment.
Torin growled.
Hank chuckled. “At ten o'clock at night?” He wrapped a scarf around his neck and clapped his Stetson on his head.
“The Northern Lights are not visible during the day, Hank,” Torin said in a wry tone.
Hank held up both hands in mock surrender. “I'll be here tonight. Wouldn't miss it.” He tilted his head, considering. “I ought to bring Elsie up here sometime to see the lights. That would be romantic. I'll admit it freely, unlike some people.”
“Goodnight, Hank.”
“It's three in the afternoon.” He removed his gloves from his pocket and pulled them on.
“Then good afternoon, Hank.”
“I have some things to take care of at the house.” His friend laughed, clapped him on the shoulder, and headed for the porch.
“I’ll return in time for supper.” At the top of the steps, he turned back.
“You deserve this, you know,” he said, and his voice had lost its teasing edge.
“Spending sweet time with a pretty lady. Allow yourself to believe in that.”
Torin closed the door on the annoying man and pressed his forehead against the cool wood, forcing himself to think clearly. Ivy Jackson was his daughter's governess, period. No sweet time allowed.
She lived under his roof, depended on him for her employment and her safety.
Any indication of interest—any lingering look, any touch that lasted a beat too long—would make her uncomfortable and put her in an impossible position.
She could not refuse her employer's advances without risking her livelihood, and a woman as principled as Ivy would rather leave than endure that kind of disrespect.
And if she left—
The thought sent a spike of cold through his chest. Not for himself. For Jewel.
His daughter adored Ivy. She'd blossomed under the woman's care in ways Torin hadn't dared to hope for.
Jewel counted and wrote and sang and laughed with an ease that would have been unimaginable six days ago.
If Ivy left—if Torin's selfish, reckless feelings drove her away—her absence would devastate the child.
Jewel wouldn't understand. She'd only know that someone she loved had disappeared.
I won’t do that to her.
He thought of Mary Beth. The intoxication of courtship, the certainty that he'd found his match, the revelation that the woman he'd loved was not who he'd believed her to be. He'd been wrong about the most important decision of his life. What makes me think I can trust my judgment now?
Nothing. Nothing makes me think that.
Torin straightened, smoothed his hair, and composed his features into the pleasant, neutral expression he'd perfected over years of concealing his inner turmoil from his daughter.
Tonight, he would take Ivy to see the Northern Lights. Because she was a young woman from the city who had never seen the Montana sky in its full glory, and because showing her was a kindness. Nothing more.
He would sit beside her on the rock and keep a proper distance between them. He would point out the constellations and explain the science of the aurora as he understood it. He would be courteous, informative, and appropriate.
And he would not—could not—think about how her hazel eyes had looked in the lamplight last evening, or the way her laughter sounded when his daughter said something funny, or of the proud glances they exchanged when Jewel learned something new.
From where he stood, he could hear Ivy reading aloud to Jewel. “Jack and Jill” from Mother Goose—the gentle singsong of a nursery rhyme, punctuated by his child’s delighted repetitions and Brave's occasional meow of commentary.
Torin pressed a hand to his chest, where something ached that had nothing to do with illness or injury.
For Jewel's sake, he told himself. Only for Jewel's sake.
More than three-quarters full, the gibbous moon hung fat and luminous above the tree line. The light cast pale, silvery threads over the trail that wove through the dark evergreens and the skeleton branches of leafless deciduous trees.
Ivy walked carefully behind Torin on the narrow path. He carried a rolled bearskin over one shoulder and a folded wool blanket tucked under his other arm.
Before they left the house, Torin had bundled Ivy into one of his own coats atop hers—the bulk swallowed her slender figure, the sleeves hanging past her gloved hands.
The heaviness of the double garments made maneuvering difficult.
Still, the coat was warm and smelled of woodsmoke and pine resin and a masculine scent underneath that was simply him.
“Not much farther,” he said over his shoulder.
As they climbed, she felt the velvet night wrap around them.
The crisp air bit at their cheeks and noses.
Their breath puffed in small clouds. Except for the pad of their footsteps and the occasional crunch when one of them stepped on a twig, the silence, profound and heavy, weighed on one accustomed to the cacophony of New York’s streets.
In the distance, a low hoot made her jerk her head up. “What’s that sound?”
He paused and half turned. “An owl.”
“Sounded like a recorder, the instrument, I mean.” Wistfully, she wished to see an owl. Do they look as wise and interesting in reality as they do in illustrations? “I suppose owls only come out at night.”
“Actually, you can see them during the day. We’re lucky to have them around to curb the rodent population.” He faced forward and kept walking, glancing back from time to time to check up on her.
They emerged from the trees into a clearing surrounding an overlook. The lake gleamed beneath them, except for a path of moonlight across the dark surface that beckoned her to a fantasy world. Instead of Alice going through the looking glass, I’d be treading on magical moonlight.
Torin spread the bearskin rug across the wide, flat boulder.
With small rocks scattered around the clearing and dimly seen in the pale light, she watched her footing.
The last thing I want is to make a fool of myself by tripping and sprawling at my employer’s feet.
Relieved to reach the rock without a mishap, she sat.
The fur was thick and dark, soft enough for a cushion.
He took a seat beside her—close enough that their shoulders nearly touched—and draped the wool blanket across both their laps. He tucked the edges around her with the absent care of a man accustomed to bundling his daughter against the cold.
Then Ivy looked up to the heavens to see an unbelievable sight.
The sky above Three Bend Lake possessed a depth—a vast, fathomless well of indigo darkness that went on and on and on, layered with stars beyond counting. Not dozens. Not hundreds. Thousands.
Gasping in awe, she pressed her crossed hands to her chest. The stars blazed and glittered in dense, luminous clouds, some diamond-white, others tinged with blue or gold or the faintest red.
The galaxy swept across the center of the heavens in a great shimmering river, so thick with stars that it seemed almost solid, a band of milky light spilling from horizon to horizon.
“They call Montana Big Sky Country,” Torin murmured, his tone reverent. “Most folks probably think the title comes from the vivid blue arch of our daytime sky. But I think it’s because of this.”
Beneath the stars, backlighting the mountain, the sky seemed to move. At first, Ivy thought it was a trick of her eyes—a shimmer, a suggestion of color where there should be only black.
“Ah, here come the Northern Lights.”
The shimmer deepened and spread. Curtains of light unfurled across the sky like silk banners, a pale, ethereal green, the color of new leaves held up to sunlight. They rippled and billowed with a slow, majestic grace.
“The aurora borealis.” Struck speechless, she lowered her arms.
The color intensified until beams of emerald laced through the sky. Tipped with an orange-pink color, they shaded to a rosy pink that spread. Soon, stars in orange, pink, blue, and bright white glittered against a rosy backdrop.
The green deepened at its lower edge to a luminous blue-violet, and at its upper reaches, bled into a trembling yellow-white that seemed to pulse.
The curtains shifted, folded, parted, reformed.
Ribbons of light spiraled upward toward the zenith, thinning to translucent wisps before gathering again into great sweeping arcs that spanned half the sky.
Awed to silence by nature’s majesty, they sat speechless; Ivy could not have said for how long. When she finally spoke, her voice came out as a whisper, as though anything louder might shatter the sacred experience. “I had no idea.” She tore her gaze from the shifting lights to briefly look at him.
Torin remained quiet beside her, his face tilted upward, the green and rose glow playing across the sharp planes of his cheekbones and jaw.
She let out a reverent breath. “To think, in New York we went about our lives, never bothering to look up unless to check the weather or the position of the sun to note the time.
I'd see a few stars on a clear night. Although, I suppose, with all the chimney smoke, no night was really clear. If I climbed to the roof and got above the streetlamps, I could see a handful more.”
“You climbed onto the roof?” Torin sounded more amused than shocked.
“There was a flat area, where I could sit and watch.”
“That’s hardly reassuring,” he said wryly. “Just to be clear, you and Jewel are not allowed to climb on the roof.”
“Spoilsport.” With an elbow, she playfully nudged his side and then let out a shuddering breath.
“I thought that was what stars were—a faraway scattering of dim lights. From a book, I learned about the constellations and thought I was very educated about the heavens. I could pick out the Big Dipper. Orion, although mostly his belt.” A soft, wondering laugh escaped her.
“But the whole time, all those stars were out there,” she lifted a hand to the sky, “unseen and unknown, waiting for darkness to reveal their jeweled majesty.”
He pointed upward. “There’s the Montana version of the Big Dipper.” He moved his arm, his finger indicating a different direction. “Orion is almost lost among the other stars until you see bright-red Betelgeuse on his shoulder.”
She pressed her gloved hand to her chest, as if to hold in her emotion. “There's a verse in Psalms, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork.’”
“Psalm 19,” he confirmed.
“I've read those words a hundred times. But I never understood God’s majesty until just now.”
Above them, the aurora rippled—a great slow wave of green light rolling northward, trailing wisps of violet in its wake.
New colored light formed, brighter than before, pulsing with an inner radiance that cast faint, shifting shadows on the snowcapped peak.
They shimmered and danced and folded in on themselves.
“The first time I saw the lights,” Torin said quietly, “I almost wept.”
Ivy turned to look at him.
His eyes were still fixed on the sky.
“I can see why,” she said, unable to resist tilting her head back again to gaze at the glorious array above.
“I'd just arrived here,” he continued. “Jewel was a baby. I had no one—no family, no friends who understood why I'd done what I'd done. I was living in what seemed like a primitive home with a vulnerable baby.” He paused. “We’d been having a difficult night. Jewel wouldn’t stop crying. Teething, I know now. I bundled her up and walked down to the lake. And then, the sky did this.” He waved upwards.
“And I thought—if God can make something so beautiful in the darkest, coldest part of the night, then maybe I hadn't made a mistake. Maybe something magnificent still waited for me, for us, even though I couldn’t see through my darkness.”
Ivy wanted to ask more questions about his past but sensed Torin needed to share at his own pace. Lightly, she laid a hand on his forearm and squeezed to show she understood. Then, although she wanted to linger, she pulled back her hand.
“I’ve thought back on that knowing more times than I can count.” He looked down at her. “I wanted you to experience the miracle, too.”
The sight of all those stars was magical, a glimpse of something extraordinary that would fade when the sun rose. But now, Ivy knew they were there, hidden—a secret memory she’d cherish for the rest of her days.
She looked up at the magnificent sky, the mystical splendor a contrast to the human heartache of their conversation.
Unbidden, a swell of emotion rose in her.
Her throat ached. Needing connection, she wanted to reach for Torin’s hand.
Instead, she clasped hers together in her lap.
Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over, rolling down her cheeks. She sniffed.
Torin removed his glove. More tenderly than she would have thought possible, he brushed her tears away with his fingertips, his eyes bleak. “Thank you for caring.”
Her mouth trembled.
With a dampened finger, he touched her lips.
She tasted the salt of her tears.
With a short, raspy breath, he stood, tugging on his glove. “We’ve left Hank and Jewel long enough.” Holding out a hand, he helped her up. “We’d best be getting back.”
Abruptly, Ivy realized how cold she was—at least on her outside. But her mind remained full of beauty.
Something had shifted between them, born of the majesty of the sky. Ivy longed to pursue the wondrous feeling, to have the freedom to tuck her hand into the crook of his arm and stroll together. But the game trail was too narrow, and Torin was her employer.
The magic of the night could not be allowed to extend any farther.