Read Online Fire Along the Sky by Sara Donati - Free Book Online

looking for.”
    Jonas Littlejohn touched the brim of his tricorne and trotted off without a word.
             
    When the cook fires had died down and the last of the food had been carried away, the fiddlers—one black man and a boy who might have been his son—climbed up on crates, and the music began. The men made a circle of light to dance by under the rising moon: a ring of torches on long pickets hammered into the ground, sending sparks up into the sky like errant stars.
    The women moved through the dark calling to children who must be seen home to their beds, and for a moment Jennet thought how good it would be to be one of the little ones, bellies full of good food, tucked in next to wiggling brothers and sisters to fall asleep by the sound of fiddle music and laughter.
    But it was her first night in Paradise and Jennet would not waste it on sleep. She watched as people who toiled so hard by day put aside their weariness. Elizabeth had met Jennet's surprise with a laugh.
    “You mustn't confuse Yorkers with the pious Yankees of Massachusetts,” she explained. “The people of Paradise will jump at any excuse for a party.”
    Now Jennet sat, weary but contented, on a long trestle in a row of other young women, with Lily on one side and Hannah on the other, all of them twitching with the fiddle music. The rhythm was lively and the girls were eager, but Jennet could see that most of them must be content to listen or dance with each other, because there would be little dancing tonight, and the reason was the post rider's news.
    On the other side of the dancing circle most of the men and boys had gathered with the Bonner men at their center. Some of them cradled muskets like a sleeping child in folded arms, while others leaned on rifles that pointed sleek barrels up to the sky. Thus far Jennet had never seen a man without a weapon in his hands or on his person, a fact that said more about this place than any stories she had been told.
    Jennet could not hear them but she did not need to; they had already read the newspaper into tatters, and the debate on whether or not to join the fighting was hot.
    Not that Luke was saying very much. Even here with his family around him he did more listening than talking, his head canted at an angle that meant he was giving his brother Daniel all his attention.
    “At least Simon Ballentyne isn't too busy talking to dance,” Lily said, startling Jennet out of her thoughts.
    Simon Ballentyne was indeed dancing, his plain, good-natured face flush with ale and music and the young woman he held by the hands—one of the Hench girls, according to Hannah. Jennet would have known Simon for a Ballentyne no matter where she came across him in the world: he had his father's dark eyes, black hair that grew as thick as a pelt on his head and chest, and the stolid Ballentyne temperament. He was only one of the men who had followed Luke to Canada to make his fortune, and he had done well for himself.
    As Simon circled past them in the course of the dance his gaze met Jennet's and then Lily's. The expression that passed over his face like a flash of lightning was not lost on either of them.
    Lily asked, “Is Simon Ballentyne angry at you, cousin?”
    “Ooch, ne.” Jennet wrapped her arms around herself. “The Ballentyne men may be fierce of temper and stubborn as mules when it comes to business, but every last one of them is as meek as a lamb with the lasses. It wasn't me he was googling at, cousin, but you.”
    At that Lily laughed out loud. “You must be mistaken.”
    Jennet studied the younger woman's face to see if she really had no understanding of the looks that Simon Ballentyne was sending her way.
    “Simon's had an eye on you since he came to Paradise last year with your brother,” Jennet said. “And why should he not? A prettier lass would be hard to find, Lily, or a livelier one.”
    Lily flushed, in anger and something else, something that bordered on pleasure. “You must be