TWO

While Sarah was day dreaming and putting up her herbs back at the old inn, Duncan MacLeod was on his way home from the Burlington post office. The last of his things had finally arrived from Australia and he packed them neatly into the bed of the new previously owned truck Sarah had purchased to replace the old Datsun which had given up the ghost the day her Immortality was discovered. As he tied the boxes down and looked at the small areas of pit and rust in the bed he remembered pleading with her to allow him to buy a brand new truck for them. Sarah had staunchly refused his offer, even when he said he would put it in her name. That had set her off into a tizzy the likes of which he hadn't seen in a long time. Then again, a lot of things set Sarah off these days and that was only getting worse but nothing did it as much as monetary affairs.

From the day he met her until this she had yet to take one dime from him, except for the twenty-five thousand dollars he had given her in exchange for the furniture in Sarah's old rooms. Of course she had returned that money to him before the ceremony, had Marie drop it off in his room with a thanks but I won't be needing this after all.

Duncan shook his head as he closed up the cab and made double sure the latch was fastened securely. You had to watch out for that with this Chevy, it had a habit of coming undone. Every time it was the same, she didn't want his money, never wanted his help, hell Duncan was beginning to wonder if she even wanted him. When Duncan had insisted the inn be closed to visitors Sarah complained of about how she would even pay the taxes on the place if it wasn't open, her teacher's salary gave them enough to live on but...

Gently as he could, Duncan reminded her that she had no need to work anymore, he would give her all the money she needed gladly. Sarah had firmly stomped her foot to the floor below and told him she wasn't a charity case and she never had any intentions of taking money from him. Especially money that they didn't earn together. She wouldn't allow him to pay one single bill that came through, all of it came out of her small savings account and whatever pittance was leftover from the settling of James' estate.

The rotten bastard, after all his dirty dealings and manipulations, had the balls to make her executrix of his estate. Sarah had been left with the undesirable tasks of dealing with all of the hassles of probate, paying off his debts and closing the estate. However, with no friends and no living relatives James had been left with little choice save to give everything he owned to his sister, Sarah Cooper. Duncan did not know the exact amount she had received he did know that she had turned around and spent on repairs to the inn which James had hated and she loved so much. (There was a bit of poetic justice in there somewhere, wasn't there?)

Out of all that mess and to his grand surprise, Sarah had let him do the repairs to the inn with the help of some of the young men from town. But of course, she hadn't let him do it alone, she had been there every step of the way. She mixed mortar, put up plaster, mud and taped walls, crawled around on the old slate roof and generally did everything she physically could--and some things she could not--in order to help. To pull her own damn weight and not be a chain around his neck.

Sarah was like that with everything. He was coming to see that most rapidly. Whatever she did, wherever she went, Sarah would always pull her own damn weight at all times. No matter what the cost.

But then there was the other side to that particular coin, the monetary one that is. One night as they sat down to dinner--that Sarah cooked of course--she had handed him a rather fat manilla envelop. Inside were reams of legal papers. When he was done looking at them he realized he now owned one full half of Sarah's property. She had put his name on her checking and savings account, he was free to draw from either at any time he liked with no limit other than what was in the account at the time. But, he noted quickly, he was not permitted to deposit anything in either account. In her innocence Sarah had even made him beneficiary of the small life insurance policy she carried on herself.

All nice and tidy. All nice and legal. Except now, Sarah didn't own a damn thing by herself. Nothing was hers anymore, it was theirs. That is, everything which had been hers to begin with.

This from a woman who had balked at the idea of having him give her a simple credit card. Duncan wondered just where she got her ideas from. Why was it all right for her to give him everything but not for her to accept anything in return? It wasn't as though he were dropping any huge sum of money into her lap, he was only trying to give her what every other wife of a man of his stature had and nothing more than that. Along with that insistence that she carry her own weight came another darker one, she would not in any way shape or form be considered a kept woman. Sarah saw him as being above her, he knew that and did his best to avoid it because trying to show her that she wasn't below him just did not do any good at all and she would not be beholding to him. The only thing Duncan could say that she had accepted from him was her wedding ring and nothing more.

It was getting to the point where Duncan was beginning to wonder if she would take anything from him, even the love he offered her so freely. Somehow he had to find the way to show her that he was not a temporary fixture in her life, he was here for the long haul and he had no intentions of going anywhere. And that his staying with her wasn't because she was below him and it didn't mean that he owned her.

Hadn't anyone ever loved her? Anyone at all? There were times when Duncan would swear to all the Gods and Goddesses that he could see Sarah trying, she was trying so hard that it was driving her crazy. But she just didn't know how to let him love her. She didn't know how to open up and trust him. What kind of marriage was it going to be if she couldn't do that? Would it even last after their child was born? That was still a long way off, Sarah still hadn't let him make love to her and as far as he could see that was still a long way down the road. Thank the Gods for small favors, he thought as he drove down the highway, there was no way he could bring a child into this right now. Sarah had been right to wait.

They were still getting to know each other in many respects. Him trying to become accustomed to the spells and rituals she performed with their incense permeating the entire backyard or the house. Trying to understand how she lived so often and so effortlessly on that higher plane. One Duncan himself thought he would probably never reach with his finger tips let alone live there. Grappling with the fact he was living in the twentieth century with a woman whose mind set was more akin to what he had known two or three hundred years ago. Not that Sarah wasn't modern, she considered herself to be a Techno-Witch', meaning she used her computer to store all of her information. Sarah did more than check e-mail and surf the Net, she was quite the web master. She had her own full website that anyone was free to look at and glean all of her herbal knowledge from.

Still she preferred to use a hand crank can opener to an electric one. Fire or candle light to electric light. Waiting for her husband to lead so that she could follow. If she didn't like where he was leading, she was known to speak up about it, but all it took was the merest prodding from him and she was calmed enough to follow without much trouble.

While leading her around wasn't exactly what he wanted, Duncan hoped that she would be so willing when the time came for them to leave this place. Sarah was attached here, she was connected. That was something he didn't want to take away from her and so far, he told himself, he saw no reason why he should. Yes, the entire town knew what they both were--Methos too for that matter--and they seemed content to keep the secret as people in small towns are apt to do, but that didn't mean that things would always be this way. That they wouldn't change and rapidly one day. Groups of people can turn from docile to feral in the blink of an eye. Still, things were going well with their current living arrangements and he saw no reason why they should leave in the near future.

Duncan was thankful for that, he was coming to like this town and it's people as well. As he drove down the highway, Duncan began to thinking of just how much Sarah had changed in the last month. Or had she changed? Maybe she had always been this way. It was so h ard to tell, he’d only known her for five weeks. Sarah who had always been up before the sun, or so it seemed to him, had taken to sleeping half the morning away now that school was out for the summer and would, if he let her, stay in the bed with him all day long just cuddling and talking, wanting to be close to him. How easy it would be to spend the rest of his life in the bed with her, locked away from the rest of the world, just cuddling and talking. He never wanted to be anywhere that she was not. There were so many different sides to her, he learned something new about her every day, mostly when they were cuddled up in bed and she felt warm and safe in his arms.

Although she was becoming stronger and stronger every day, more confident in herself and her music, more self-assured she still had not allowed him to make love to her. They did sleep in the same bed, and they had done more than just sleep. Sarah had tried, she tried very hard several times since becoming his wife to please him and let him make love to her. When he looked down into her eyes, they were faded and distant, her words said that it was all right, but her eyes told him otherwise. Duncan had restrained himself each time, it wasn't hard to do, it was frustrating as hell but it wasn't hard. Sarah would cry in his arms and tell him how sorry she was. That, now that was hard. It broke his heart, try as he did he just could not seem to make her understand that sex was not an obligation. She did not have to please him in order for him to stay with her. Late at night when he was listening to her breath and some times cry in her sleep, Duncan held her close, whispering his confessions of love and he would hear Methos' words . . .

"...you get a woman who's afraid of men because they leave. They get what they want or need and then leave. She doesn't know how to let you in. She doesn't know how to trust you. She doesn't know how to believe you. You have to show her."

While he thought that Methos had been onto something there, it wasn't the truth, not the whole of it anyway. There were some things which Sarah was not telling him, each time he had tried to get her to open up about the rape she would simply tell him that "it's not for you." She would refuse to say anymore. Time and again Duncan would ask himself how one man, in the space of less than an hour, could inflict so much damage?

Then, much to his dismay, Duncan would wonder if he was guilty of the same. How many nights had the women he had violated lay awake in their beds and crying in the dark? Reliving it in panic filled nightmares?

Of all the lessons he had learned in his long life, this was the most difficult of all.

Duncan thought that he could probably handle it better if things were different. If it were just he and Sarah, but it was not just the two of them. Sooner or later there would be a child. Sooner or later others would come them. So many things to consider, to sort out and to do, too many things.

He would ask her to share details of happier times in her life, for instance, the times she had spent on the road with Chris Lawless. But again she would say nothing other than a polite ‘we were friends’ or ‘you don’t want to hear about that, it’s boring.’

Duncan had been very uncertain that she would ever play again even after they were handfasted. Several times he had asked her to please play the piano for him and she would politely refuse his request. One day, as he was rummaging around in the gate keeper's cottage he had come upon the guitars neatly packed away in their cases and collecting massive amounts of dust in the root cellar of the cottage. Feeling as though he were prying into some far away aspect of his wife’s life, he opened the case and looked inside, he saw that Sarah had spared no expense where her instruments were concerned. She was cheap as any "Born and Bred Yankee" in every other area of her life but here, after all, wasn't she the one who had recently taught him the joys of Thrift Store shopping? Certainly she had. But her guitars, well they were a different story.

There were five guitars in all, one Ovation six string, one Martin twelve string, one BC Rich and, one old Jackson bass and one stunning Les Paul electric guitar. Duncan took the Les Paul from its case and turned it over in his hands. Les Paul Custom was engraved in the tuning bridge. From the look of the writing and the aging yellow tinge to it, he guess the guitar to be somewhere around thirty years old. It did not have one single speck of dust nor one scratch on the wood. The solid gold tuning nobs showed only the normal signs of wear as did the solid gold tuning keys. The neck was straight and as far as he could tell it still had its original pick-ups and finish. His antique dealer's mind quickly calculated its value at somewhere between three and five thousand dollars.

As he sat there, wondering what to do, Duncan had stared at all of the guitars. All of them were well kept and fine-tuned. The Ovation had a Rare Earth pick-up permanently attached to it but no on-board controls. It seemed when she played her acoustic guitars, Sarah liked them just that way, acoustic, nothing fancy or razzle-dazzle. They were all polished and waiting for her to play them. Finally he shut the cases and lined them up neatly against the hearth where Sarah was sure to see them the next time she came down, after that the next move would be up to her. All he could do was give her a gentle push in the right direction.

Much to his surprise Sarah had brought the Ovation to the main house where they were living. Sarah had given him a very stern look as she entered the house that night with the guitar case in her slender hand, she said nothing only leaned the case up against the piano and there it had stayed for three more days. Duncan would catch her glancing at it from time to time but she did not touch it again in those three days. On the night of the third day he had felt her slip out of their bed, soon Duncan could hear the quiet sounds of the piano coming from downstairs. The quiet tinkles and tones of the keys were soon accompanied by Sarah's sweet voice singing out "Unchained Melody".

Quietly Duncan made his way to the top of the stairs where he could look down upon her as she played and sang, he saw that she was crying as she sang but he could not hear her tears in her voice. "Time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much. Are you still mine? I need your love, God speed you love to me." As he stood there listening and watching he thought that James had been right about one thing, she should have pursued her career in music instead of hiding away at the Inn for all those years. Duncan was glad that she had not, what would he have done if he had simply seen her face on a poster in a music store window one day?

When Sarah had completed the song, her eyes turned upward to look at him, "How was that?" She had asked him in a small voice.

"Beautiful," he responded as he made his way down the last of the stairs to where she sat. "Play some more?" She looked away from him then, Duncan placed his finger tips lightly under her chin and turned her to look at him again, "Please. For me?" He knew that was a cheap ploy and he should not use it, but he was quickly learning that she would do almost anything that he asked of her. Sarah placed her fingers back on the keys. "Try the guitar?" Duncan asked quietly.

Sarah shook slightly and gave out an audible sigh as she glanced past him at the guitar case. She rose and opened the case, took the guitar in her hands and gently lifted it out. Sarah nestled herself on the couch with the guitar in her lap, Duncan watched as her hands caressed the wood and the strings, the way she stared at as though it were some long forgotten friend that she was unsure if she was happy to see again. Her thumb slid down the strings and Sarah cringed. "Oh, that's horrible!" She exclaimed and then began the business of re-tuning the instrument. "These strings are ancient, Duncan." Sarah said without looking up at him, "I don't know how long they'll last or how good it will sound . . . "

"We'll get new strings in the morning." He said reassuringly as he sat on the other end of the couch and waited for her to finish tuning the guitar.

"Here goes nothing." Sarah said nervously as her thumb again slid down the strings, this time she did not cringe at the tones it made. "What do you want me to play?"

"Whatever you like."

Sarah reached into the case and put the strap on the guitar, she slid it over her head as she rose and began to walk around the room fiddling with the strings. Soon the nonsense sounds she was making began to take the form of a song. It took him a few moments to recall the name of the song, his taste in music was different from hers, she was all American Rock and Roll and he was more European Classical, the tune she was playing was an old Fleetwood Mac song, "Rhiannon".

"All your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind. Would you stay if she promised you heaven? Will you ever win? Will you ever win?" Sarah sang as she continued to walk around the room and strum the guitar. When she turned to face him, he saw that her eyes were closed. They probably had been the entire time she was playing.

Once again he was awed by her grace and beauty, Duncan watched as she blindly made her way effortlessly around the room, not so much as coming close to bumping into a piece of furniture and listened to her sing and play.

After that night she played for him often. Sarah had even had him dig the amplifiers and monitors out of the basement of the main house, she had set them up in the game room and he often heard the sound of the Les Paul in her hands as it drifted throughout the house.

Before he realized it, Duncan was turning into the cobble stone driveway of Cooper’s Inn.

Sarah was waiting for him at the door. "You're late." She said with a mocking whine as the truck pulled to a stop.

"Sorry, darling. Took a little longer than I expected." Duncan replied as he jumped from the cab to place a kiss on her lips and an arm around her waist.

"Dinner's ready. Do you want some help?"

"No, I'll be inside in a minute." He told her as he made his way around to the bed and unlocked the hatch. Duncan looked up to see her walking away, she moved lightly from side to side. "Sarah, are you all right?"

Slowly she turned back to look at him. For a moment there was no expression on her face at all then her eyes lightened and she smiled. "Fine. Just fine."

Yes, my headache has gone away. I'm just fine, Duncan.