Heaven in His Arms (17 page)

She was a French noblewoman, damn it. The vast wilderness should be as alien to her as a drawing room in the Louvre was to him. Yet here she stood, telling him she'd calmly wrung the necks of rabbits and geese so she'd have a bit of meat for dinner. Here she stood, her long white neck tight with tendons, her slender wrists flexing as she tugged her delicate fingers that no chapped, reddened skin could hide, pacing back and forth, her back as straight as a ramrod. She was an aristocrat, petty and poor, but part of that useless breed nonetheless. Not only could this glorious creature withstand a trip that tested the mettle of men, but she could provide meat for the pot as well.

Damn it, she wasn't supposed to act like this. What did he know of her, this little sylph he'd married? He didn't want to know anything. He'd spent all this time pushing her away, trying to tamp down a normal man's lusty urge to mate with a healthy, attractive woman so that he wouldn't consummate this unlikely marriage and bind himself to another burden in civilisation. He didn't want to know her, because to know her was to take responsibility for her, to care for her, and thus to hate himself for what he must do. And here she was, defying all his expectations, shattering his preconceptions like so much delicate church glass .... making him think things he had no right thinking.

"You wrung the necks of those geese, didn't you, Genevieve?" He flexed his bruised hand. "And the hare, too?"

"I know it's not ladylike, but it seemed so foolish to live on that mush when the forests teemed with game." She whirled in her endless pacing and stopped in front of him. "If I had a pistol, I would have shot some grouse. The huntsman taught me how to shoot straight enough."

My God. My God, I've married a lady and discovered a woman inside.

Something cracked inside him, like the movement of a great stone door to a tomb smothered in too many year's growth of woody vines, a tomb in which he'd buried feelings he'd not wanted to bring forth ever again. Who was this tenacious, single-minded, utterly unpredictable creature who looked, spoke, and walked like a Frenchwoman but had the skills and the spirit of a squaw? Andre found himself sweeping a tendril of hair off her face and tracing the point of her chin. "What kind of creature are you, Genevieve?"

She blinked up at him. Fear blossomed in her eyes—no, it wasn't fear. Fear was too timid a word for the emotion. It was terror. Stark, unadulterated. She was as frightened to reveal herself to him as he was to crack open the tomb in his heart.

"Tell me," he urged, his voice barely a whisper, wondering why now, why now, after all these years? His gaze fell to her lips, still gleaming from the juice of the blackberries, and he willed answers from them. "Tell me."

"I am no more . . . and no less than what you see," she stammered, bracing her hands against his shoulders. "I don't know what you mean. ... I don't know what you want to know."

"Who are you, Genevieve?"

Genevieve's mother had been a courtesan—the most notorious whore in Carrouges, Normandy.

For twelve years, Jeanette Lalande had serviced a nobleman she hated above all men on earth. As a young girl, betrayed, disowned, and bitter, Jeanette had learned to use her power over her patron to live the life she was accustomed to .... and raise Genevieve, her only child, in the same luxury.

Then the unexpected happened. Jeanette Lalande fell in love. Suddenly, Jeanette was willing to risk everything to be free.

Genevieve often wondered if her mother would have paid the price for freedom had she known her daughter would still be paying it so many years later.

***

"When Armand returns from Paris, we'll leave this place for good, Genny. Would you like that? To see the whole world beyond these mountains?"

Genevieve clutched Maman's hands tightly. The pale Norman sun streamed through the windows, lighting her mother's golden curls. Mother had promised a special surprise for her thirteenth birthday, but Genevieve had not expected this. She didn't want to leave Carrouges. The mountains of Normandy, which thrust up behind the ivy-covered manor house, the well-tended garden, and the wild forests, were her own little kingdom. Genevieve knew the location of every rabbit hole, every birds' nest, every deer path in the forested hills. Here were her writing slates and her books and their beloved harp. Outside of the forested perimeter was a hostile country. A place where people peered at her and whispered batarde.

Her mother released her hands and sighed deeply. "You don't want to leave, do you,
ma petite!"

Genevieve couldn't lie, no matter how much she hated to see her mother's pretty face so blotched and red. Maman cried so much lately, ever since Armand, Genevieve's music teacher, had been called away to Paris. Genevieve hoped the handsome tutor would quickly return to the country, but as soon as she wished it, she took it back, for when Armand came, he would take both of them away from here.

"I was afraid of this." Her mother rose from the seat beside her on the sapphire-blue velvet couch. "I've spent the last thirteen years protecting you, giving you the type of home that I once wished for, but the truth is, Genny, this place that you love so much is nothing but a gilded cage." She turned tear-filled eyes upon her daughter. "I had hoped I could wait until you were a little older, but there's no longer any time. I must tell you everything, Genny, so you will understand."

Genevieve understood more than her mother knew, for the servants acted as if she were deaf, dumb, and blind. They gossiped endlessly about her mother's behavior. Since Armand's arrival, their opinions had grown harsher and their words for her mother coarser. Genevieve knew Maman was the mistress of the Baron de Carrouges, a man Genevieve had seen only once from a distance, for she was banned from the main part of the house whenever he visited. She knew, too, that her mother and Armand were lovers. But when her mother spoke, she didn't speak of lovers. She spoke of other things, of wondrous things, of subjects long forbidden between them.

"My father was a financier in Paris." Her mother spoke the words as if Genevieve had never broached the subject before, as if it were perfectly natural to answer all the questions her daughter had once ached to know and had long given up asking. "He loaned monstrous amounts of money to the Queen Regent when Louis XIV was still in his minority. In return, he was given the right to levy taxes and collect the king's revenue." She lifted one fine, arched brow and turned toward the windows. "In my youth, it was rumored he was wealthier than some Princes of the Blood."

Genevieve's world tilted off its axis. A grandfather, richer than royalty? Who loaned money to the Crown? Until this moment, she had not known of any other relative but her mother; she had only dreamed of a distant family, rife with dozens of frolicking cousins, soft-bosomed aunts, and old misty-eyed grandparents. She sat, too afraid to blink, frightened that any motion she made or any word she uttered would bring Maman to her senses and stop her from telling the tale she had ached to know from the moment she was old enough to speak.

"On my fifteenth birthday, Father took me from the convent and brought me to the townhouse he had just built, in a fashionable section of Paris north of the Louvre." Her lips twitched. "Every day I had a new dress, satins unlike anything I had ever imagined, with jeweled clasps and rope upon rope of pearls. Father lined whole rooms with emerald-colored silk, and he told me he did it just to show off the brilliance of my eyes. Heirs to great estates, sons of barons, of viscounts, of other noblemen, came and dined with us. Father hired Italian acting troops for weeks on end for Our entertainment. And he would make me play the harp, looking upon me with such pride that I thought no daughter had ever had such a perfect father. Genny, I thought I had entered Paradise." Maman stepped back, away from the window, out of the light. "When I met Hamlin, I was sure."

Her mother's eyes suddenly turned inward, as if they were focused on a time long past but remembered as vividly as if it were only yesterday. Genevieve leaned forward, for there was something in the timbre of her mother's voice when she said the name Hamlin that made her tremble.

"I remember the first time I saw him," her mother continued. "He stood in the doorway of the salon, watching me as I played the harp, as if I were the only woman in the room. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen, all tall and straight in his military uniform, with gold braid hanging from his shoulders and a brilliant scarlet sash across his chest. I was told his name was Hamlin de Lautersbourg, and that he was a nobleman from Alsace, which the regent had just won in war. I fell in love with him at first sight. I nearly burst with joy when Papa allowed him to court me." A strange light illuminated her mother's features. "Hamlin had a wonderful gilded Italian carriage, and to me it seemed like freedom itself, for except for my journey to Paris, I had never been outside of the convent walls. He took me outside the city, with Nanette—who was my maidservant then as she is now—as my guardian. We ate long lunches alfresco in the country; we rode on the Cours de Reine in the evening with the aristocracy and danced on the turning circle to the music of violins. Hamlin took me to watch cattle drives through the narrow streets of Paris; he brought me to view the strange flat-bottomed boats filled with melons or wine or coal that crowded the Seine.'' She released a gentle laugh. "Once, he even stepped out of the carriage and bartered with a fishmonger for the day's catch of carp, just for my amusement."

Genevieve had never heard Maman speak of anyone like this, not even Armand, who was the only person Genevieve knew who could bring color into her mother's face.

"I was so involved with him," she continued, "that I hardly noticed the trouble brewing in Paris. When I found a dozen dead cats in our courtyard one day, I thought it was nothing more than some unruly peasants complaining, as they always did, of their lot. I didn't understand how much Father was hated by the peasantry for the taxes he levied, how much he was envied and despised by the noblemen because of his fantastic wealth. Father grew more and more anxious to leave Paris, to seek refuge in our summer house near Rouen, but he hesitated, and I vainly thought he hesitated for my sake, for to me, to go to Rouen and leave Hamlin was a fate worse than death." She clutched the patterned velvet drapes of the high window. "I didn't realize then that to my father, no expense was too high, no risk too great for an aristocratic son-in-law."

Her mother stared, sightlessly, toward the hills of Normandy. "You see, one thing eluded my father, Genny, one thing all his gold and all his power could not buy: true aristocracy. I was prettier than my younger sister in his eyes, most likely to catch the attention of an aristocrat willing to lower himself to marry a rich woman of bourgeois blood. The noblemen of Paris would always look down upon him, a mere tax collector, but my father had vowed that their sons would address his grandchildren as 'my lord.'

"I didn't notice the changes until much later, when I was alone and had an eternity to reflect upon it all. Nanette accompanied me and Hamlin on fewer and fewer of our journeys outside the city. Instead, my father entrusted another nobleman to be our guardian—a man. The very man who had introduced Hamlin to our salon, an aristocrat of rank and title whom my father respected and trusted. I was foolishly grateful to this nobleman, for he was lenient and generous in allowing Hamlin and I to be alone and.. . celebrate our love.

"Within six weeks, I knew I was carrying Hamlin's child." Maman looked at Genevieve, her green eyes full of shadows. "You have his hair, petite. Sometimes, I hear his laughter in yours."

Genevieve's heart stopped. For years, she had dreamed that her real father—whoever he was— would come back to Maman and drive the baron away, for despite the fact that the baron paid for her food, clothing, shelter, and education, Genevieve always knew, instinctively, that she couldn't be the Baron de Carrouge's illegitimate daughter. Maman hated him so much but still loved her, and the baron had never once asked to see her in nearly thirteen years. Now, she realized all her suspicions were true. Her father was an Alsatian nobleman that Maman had once loved. It was almost too much for her to absorb. Genevieve resisted the urge to barrage her mother with questions, for this sudden honesty was too new, too fragile, and she feared Maman would stop if she dared to ask the questions boiling in her mind.

"I was frightened," her mother continued. "I had to tell Father, for although Hamlin promised to marry me, he told me that we must wait for approval from his family, and it was long in coming. But instead of Father's fury, I was faced with his joy. Father was so sure he had trapped this wealthy aristocrat into marriage." She absently traced a pattern on the drapes. "My father sent a message to Hamlin, demanding that he come and do what he must, but the message was promptly returned. Unopened. It seemed that Hamlin had recently left Paris. My father, frantic, sent inquiries all over France and even to Alsace, but Hamlin was nowhere to be found. Soon enough, my father discovered that there was no such man as Monsieur de Lautersbourg. Hamlin simply didn't exist."

Genevieve gasped and felt tears surge to her eyes. Hamlin must exist. He was her father.

"My father sought out the man who had introduced Hamlin to him, the same man he had entrusted as our guardian." She met Genevieve's wide-eyed gaze, her voice as cold as snow. "I suppose you know by now that that man was the Baron de Carrouges."

The Baron de Carrouges. The man to whom her mother was courtesan.

Mother straightened her shoulders beneath the thickly boned emerald silk bodice and took a deep breath. "It seems the nobleman had paid Hamlin, some ne'er-do-well without a drop of noble blood in his veins, to ruin me and thus my family. He said it was my father's punishment, for daring to think his common blood was as good as that of an aristocrat." She tilted her chin. "Well, it was good enough for something, for when Father disowned me and threw me out of his house, the baron was waiting in his carriage outside, like a vulture hungry for the spoils. It seems he had wanted me from the start, but he knew my father would never approve of his interest— for the baron was, and still is, married—so he ruined me so my father would no longer want me. I became his mistress because he made me an offer and I had no other choice." She met Genevieve's gaze squarely. "But I bargained with him, like a true bourgeois, I suppose. I told him he would have to give me a home, far from Paris, and that he would have to pay for your upbringing. After all his trouble to get me into his bed, I suppose he had no choice but to agree.

"So here I am, Genny, all these years later, still courtesan to the man who destroyed my life. I would have remained here until you were safe and settled somewhere, but I met Armand, and he has shown me that I have been dead all these years. He has proven to me that I'm not too old to be happy."

Her face softened as the memories faded away, as she locked them away in their secret places and thought upon the future and the face of the man who had changed everything for her. She walked to her daughter and sat on the couch by her side. "He has promised to marry me, Genny, despite my past, despite all the risks. Now do you understand why we must leave? Do you understand why we must flee this place and never, ever return?"