THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART SEVENTY-FIVE:

                    (Morgan)

It was quiet in the inn the next day. The family had scattered early, heading to their respective homes. After breakfast, Marshall and Eden went back up to their room.

"It will be a good time to write," Eden said as they went up the stairs side by side, closely followed by Wadsworth.

"I think I can manage to write," Marshall grinned, "for a while."

Eden settled at the computer. "Has anyone noticed our young couple is alone in the garden?" she asked.

"Not yet. Everybody's busy right now."

"Ok," Eden smiled. "Let me see...."

The sounds of the tree peepers grew louder in the night around Susannah and Morgan as they stood on the brick walkway. As was typical with Williamsburg houses, the front door aligned with the back, a wide hallway joining the two. Both doors stood open, permitting the evening breeze to cool the adjoining rooms, and the voices of the male guests, now congregating in the back parlor
for cigars, brandy, and further intense discussion, floated out into the garden.

"Will they miss your presence?" Susannah asked. "Now that dinner is over?"

"Unlikely," he smiled down at her. "It was your father's own suggestion that I take my stained coat out to the kitchen."

"He...suggested that?" How strange. Why had he simply not asked Micah to take the coat?

Again his mind raced, seeking for words. Everything that came to his mind was nothing he could say aloud. "I...," he began, but paused, unsure.

"Hmmm?" Eden said. "I think my own mind is racing to find words for Morgan to say."

"That's because it's the 1770's and he wants to do this...."  He leaned over nibbling her ear, kissed his way across her cheek until his lips found hers, surrounded hers, then a long moment later, "...but all he can do is stand there and call her Miss Wellington."

"...Miss Wellington," he breathed.

Marshall chuckled, "Took me literally, did you?"

"I take you any way I can get you, Dr. Sinclair."

Susannah held her breath. The night air was heady with the scent of herbs, of jasmine, and through the scent floated the sound of her name in his deep voice. Her hand lifted, her fingers spread delicately as though she might encounter her name there in the night and it would alight on her fingertip and she would feel the brush of its wings.

"What?" he asked, fascinated by the motion of her hand.

"Nothing," she whispered. "Or possibly much."  His presence made her feel confused, almost as though the bricks beneath her slippers had shifted position and she was no longer sure which way the path led. She swayed slightly, disoriented, and his hand came quickly, gripping her elbow.

"Ah, ha!" Eden said with a bit of a smirk. "You are going to let him touch her."

"So....?"

He felt the deep lace sewn there on her gown crush under his fingers, felt the slimness of her arm and was careful to support her but not bruise. "Sus...you...."

"I think I might need to sit for just a moment," she whispered, her feeling of disorientation only increasing as his hand clasped her arm.

Keeping his hand there, he guided her a short distance to one of the garden benches, seeing that she was seated and then squatting in front of her near her knees. "Should I get one of the

servants?" he asked, concerned.

"No. I am all right. Truly."  His hand was gone from her arm, but she was entirely aware of his presence right there, low in front of her. "I do not know why I...," but she did. Somehow it was him.  How could that be? That he was there in her familiar garden had made all her well-known pathways unstable and she was not even sure which bench she was seated upon nor which way

led back to the house.

He watched her face there in the moonlight, saw a series of emotions pass over her features. "Susannah." It was said barely audibly, said in an overflow of tenderness that leaked out of his heart. He did not mean for her to hear it. He said it to himself, for himself.

But her ears were keen with much need of careful listening. What was it about his voice, about how he'd said Marietta and now her own name that made them sound so different? "Mr. Kent...?"

He leaned forward. She'd said his name very softly.

"Mr. Kent...?" she repeated and he leaned more, overbalancing himself and coming down hard on one knee, his right palm ending on the edge of the bench, dangerously close to her leg. He pulled himself away so quickly that he fell back onto his rear on the walkway.

For several seconds he was utterly appalled, then it all began to seem quite ridiculous to him and he covered his eyes loosely with his hand and began to chuckle. Susannah had no idea what to make of what was happening. She'd felt the slight brush of his hand down her leg, then his little gasp as he pulled back, heard the sound of his impact on the bricks.  Nothing remotely like this

had ever happened in the garden before. She needed to know what was going on, so she now

leaned forward, stretching out her hand to find his face right there before her. He seemed to

have a hand over his eyes and was shaking his head slowly as he laughed. "Mr. Kent...?" she
tried for the third time, her fingers lightly remaining on the knuckles of his hand.

His laughter ceased at her touch, but he left his hand there because she was allowing her fingers

to stay.  "I am," he whispered.

"You are...?"

"Mr. Kent, Morgan Kent," he smiled, peering at her through a gap in his hand.

Morgan. Ah, yes. How could that have slipped her mind? It was, perhaps, the things she'd heard him say to her angel that emboldened her, though she did drop her hand back onto her lap. "Morgan Kent. I think I am glad you came to dinner."

"I wished to meet Patrick Henry," he said, "...and other people."

"You must not let Mr. Henry bother you," she responded, remembering his sharp questioning.

"He is an intelligent man, but passionate about his beliefs to the point of bluntness."

"I was not bothered," he replied truthfully. His attention, indeed, had been centered on dinner guests seated much more closely to him. "And your father is a gracious host."

"Though that he would send you to the kitchen still puzzles me," she commented, then was quiet

as the sound of Mr. Henry's voice, raised loudly in defense of some point he was making, came from the house. "They will be at that for some hours yet." She let out a long breath then suddenly remembered he must be sitting on the walkway.  "You have not injured yourself?"

He got his feet under himself and rose, dusting off his knee breeches.  The evening had proven rather rough on his new suit. "I, too, am all right," he said, "just a new layer of Williamsburg dust."  Williamsburg, he'd discovered very soon after his arrival, seemed often coated in a fine layer of dust that rose from the unpaved streets, settling on everything from the horse-blocks to flower petals. He was still patting at his pants when she stood.

"It must be very late," she murmured. "I should...."  But she turned her head to her left and then

to her right. Truly she had no sense of where she was.

"Is something the matter?"

"I...I don't know which way I should go."  Then she bit her lip, hating that he should find her so helpless in her own garden. It was not an opinion she wanted him to have of her. She had simply never gotten so turned around out here before and felt embarrassed by it.

He had witnessed her sure steps earlier that day, so sure that he had not had any idea that she

was blind. He did not understand that his presence was her handicap. She was extending her arm out to the right, hoping to encounter some marker that would set her aright. His slid his left palm under her searching hand. "May I?"

She paused. In this world she inhabited, the touch of a hand often came out of nowhere, was not there and then suddenly was. She was used to it, though it still often disturbed her, made her feel vulnerable, bringing to her attention yet again that though others had some way of knowing where she was, she could not know that of them until they chose to let her know. But his hand was warm under hers and she did not start at his touch. She wanted to say to him that this being directionless in her own yard was entirely unusual, that she was not some helpless girlchild who could not find her way, that she was perfectly competent in getting where she wanted to go.  But the warmth of

his touch was spreading along her arm and at the moment she barely knew up from down.  What was the matter with her?

He stepped around beside her and she moved her free hand to her throat where her pulse was beating way too rapidly.  "I believe this may be the way," he said softly. 

"It...it is better if you simply let me rest my hand on your arm," she explained. "For me...that is better."

"Of course," he replied, holding out his left elbow and moving her hand there. "I fear I am new

at this."

"It is not the same for me. It is all I know."

"All...?" he repeated, stopping again and looking down at her. "Always? You have never...?"

"I have never. No."

"But...."

"Ah, waste no pity on me, Mr. Kent. My life is beautiful and gentle. I am a lucky woman, very blessed."

Again his eyes roamed her moonlit features. Her chin was tipped and she was entirely sincere in her words.  With his right hand he lifted hers from his left arm, lifted it to his lips for the merest brush of a kiss, then replaced it on his sleeve. "I, too, am glad I came for dinner."

"Mr. Kent, suh." Micah had turned the walkway corner and appeared suddenly. "Myra done say she finished wid all she kin do fo' yo' jacket. Say to come'n fetch you from de garden, suh." His eyes had widened considerably when he saw that Mr. Kent was standing there in the dark with Miss Susannah's hand on his arm.

"Well, at least they seem to have made some progress," Eden sighed.

"Progress was a very slow process then," Marshall smiled.

"Speaking of progress, I was rereading what you'd written already about Morgan and the beginning of the Revolution. Don't you think we can keep an awful lot of that? We'd just need

to work in more of the Susannah parts, but all that led into the war is fine the way it is."

"I was rather thinking that myself," Marshall agreed. "But speaking of progress of another sort...." He slid his hand down her throat.

"You do realize," she said, "that you are acting like a newly-wed and the progress of your hand

will drastically curtail any Morgan might hope to make." Then she gasped as his hand moved further down.

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