Heaven in His Arms (20 page)

"Don't stop, Andre."

Her voice, breathless, rose between them. Genevieve looked up at him with eyes as soft as dew. He realized he was still touching her, stroking her gently, and she was waiting for him. Abruptly, he removed his hand from her warmth and jerked her skirts down over her thighs. "We're finished."

Her gaze wandered down to where his passion pressed forcefully against her body, as if she knew, instinctively, what the bulge in his breechcloth indicated. "You said ... I was ready for you."

He suppressed a groan. She was still ready for him, and he couldn't seem to get the feel of her, hot and inviting and moist, out of his mind.

"Andre? What is it?" She brushed his beard. "Why have you stopped?"

"I told you . . . we're finished."

"We can't be," she argued gently, then flushed. "I ... know there's more to ravishing than this."

He glared down at her, wondering why he was cursed with an innocent wife who seemed to know most things solely from instinct, and what she didn't know, she found out by wile. "Are you complaining?"

"No." She lifted herself upon her elbows. "I just thought—"

"Don't think."

"Then show me," she whispered, brushing her lips against his. "Let me make you feel as you have made me feel."

Andre struggled with a fresh surge of desire as her soft, generous lips pressed against his mouth. He throbbed forcefully, and he could tell by her gentle gasp that she felt the motion against her belly. He pulled her head away by her long plait, which had unraveled during their lovemaking, and stared deep into her green eyes.

"For your own good, Genevieve, don't tempt me." "Oh, but I shall tempt you, my husband, for I have been waiting for you to kiss me and touch me like this forever."

That damned little smile. He tightened his grip on her hair, forcing himself to ignore those inviting lips, those green eyes that had grown as soft and gleaming as rain-drenched moss. The sight, the smell, the touch of her, was headier than brandy, and he was dangerously close to growing drunk on her. "Listen to me. Do you want to birth your first child here, in the forests?"

Genevieve blinked, surprised at the change in subject. "I haven't thought about it."

"I have." Too much, too often, have I thought about filling you with child. "I've seen Indian squaws fall back from their tribes and hide in the bushes to give birth, alone, only to follow their tribes when they're strong enough to do so." His gaze swept over her frame, the slender wrists, the delicate ankles peeping out beneath her skirts, the aristocratic bones. "If you grow big with child out here, you'll have no help, no midwife, no doctor. Do you think you're hardy enough to birth a child like the natives?"

The seductive light faded from her eyes, replaced by something else, something hard, something contemplative. "There must be some way to prevent me from growing big with child," she argued, "else you and every other man on this voyage would have a thousand half-breed children running around in these woods."

His lips tightened. Andre knew so many ways they could enjoy each other's bodies without conceiving a child, but thoughts of tasting her, of feeling her; hands on his body, of teaching her all the nuances of lovemaking, were all too powerful for him to bear while his body still strained for her. He pushed them from his mind. He might be a bastard in many ways, I but he knew he had no right to accept a gift that he had no intention of keeping.

"Don't play with the bull, Genevieve, and you won't get caught."

Andre removed her hands from beneath his shirt and yanked the fringe over his back. He untangled his limbs from hers and stood up, cursing the misty cold that rushed between their bodies, cursing the day he first lay eyes on her, cursing the unexpected passion that had put him in this situation. He brushed at the mud that clotted on his legs and hips.

Her voice rose, as soft as the mist that hovered over the river and drifted along the forest floor. "You have secrets, too, my husband."

The wind rustled the leaves drying on the boughs overhead, fluttering down a confusion of golden leaves. She brushed one off her bare shoulder, where her hair draped and covered one breast. Her bodice gaped open, and her shift drooped over the curve of her bosom.

Yes, he had secrets, so many secrets: One of them he couldn't keep from her much longer, for Allumette Island was a day's ride away. After their intimacy, he'd be a swine of the lowest kind if he held back any more secrets.

It would make her hate him, he thought. It would stop her from tempting him as she tempted him right now. It would give her a chance to protect herself from him, because he was damned close to letting what little honor he possessed fly to the wind.

"It's time to tell you the truth, Genevieve."

"Here it is, then." As if realizing that there would be no more embraces, she shrugged herself more securely into her bodice and rose to her feet, brushing litter off her skirts as they cascaded over her legs. "I knew there had to be a reason why seducing you has become such a Herculean task."

"I will never have a wife. Never."

Again.

She planted her hands on her hips. "If you haven't noticed, you already have one."

"You're not my wife until this marriage is consummated."

"After this"—she gestured to the muddied piece of linen on the ground, twisted in the imprints of their entwined bodies—"I thought it was."

"As pleasurable as that was, I didn't finish what I started." The ache in his loins testified to that. "I won't take you to my bed, Genevieve."

"What's this foolishness?" Her brows knit together. "How can you touch me like that and then tell me you'll never make me your wife?"

"I was forced into this marriage; I wanted none of it." The words seethed like acid on his tongue. What had begun as a joke to be played upon a willful aristocrat had turned into an ugly betrayal of trust upon a woman whose stubborn resourcefulness he had grown to admire. "There was no other way to get a' trading license."

"I know that well enough. So you have your trading license and you have a wife," she retorted. "What difference does it make if you sleep with the unwanted baggage?"

"Christ." He glared at her, standing erect in the clearing, her bosom heaving beneath an open bodice. "I'm doing this for your own good."

"Well, thank you very much, but I shall decide myself what's for my own good."

"Do you have any idea," he growled, daring to move closer to her flashing eyes . . . eyes that grew more fiery by the minute, "what kind of husband I'd make?"

"One who doesn't know his own mind, obviously."

"An absent one," he retorted. "The kind of husband who disappears for seasons, for years." The kind of husband who won't see to his responsibilities at home because his heart, body, and soul are always somewhere else. "There's more to this journey than a trading license. I spent three years in France, for God's sake, in a crowded city, fighting with fools to get my inheritance so I could return here and do exactly what I'm doing now. Do you really think I'm out here to collect beaver pelts?"

"I don't care if you're out here hiding from the king's judgment." She jerked the ties of her bodice closed with shaking hands. "I'm out here because I'm your wife and I intend to remain so, and by the way you behaved today, it looks like it won't be too difficult a task ."

"There's a whole world out there." He pointed to some distant wilderness. "A world no white man has explored—yet. My home is right here. Here, where there are no walls, no roof, no land to till, no taxes , no pay. No responsibilities—to man or woman. I'll never return to civilization. This is where I will always live."

"Even out here, you need a place to sleep and shelter for the winter," she retorted, her white hands fluttering in agitation. "That home is mine as well. ..."

"That home will be nothing but a temporary little hut that I abandon every spring." He resisted the urge to grip her shoulders, to shake the truth into her. "You need a husband who will stay with you in the safety of the settlements, who will provide for you, and who will give you the home you want—not a bare, empty bark hut in the midst of the woods."

A lock of her hair fell over her furrowed brow. "A bare, empty bark hut is better than nothing at all."

"Don't be a fool.'' Was it his imagination, or had he heard a plaintive tremor in her voice, a soft yearning? "You can't come with me into the unknown, year after year after year hauling loads on your back like some Indian squaw," he argued, dismissing the thought as soon as it came. "And if I were to keep you as my wife and leave you in Quebec, you'd give me horns. Obviously," he growled, glancing at their imprints in the mud, "you need a man who'll love you, often and good."

"But not you."

Green eyes, steady and hard, pinned him to the spot. He shook his head once. "Come spring, you and I are returning to the settlements to annul this marriage."

"Liar." She curled her hands into her hair, tearing the matted length into sections. "In Montreal, you said we'd see about—"

"I know what I said in Montreal. I know every lie I told you—from the day you walked into my room to only moments ago, when I made you think that I would make love to you and make you my wife. In Montreal, you were fool enough to threaten to go to the governor and have our marriage annulled in my absence. If you'd done that, my trading license would have been revoked and all I had worked for destroyed. Did you think I was going to let a single woman ruin everything on the eve of my departure?" He jabbed a finger in her direction. "You were supposed to be screaming to be sent back to Montreal by now."

"But I haven't, and I won't." She slapped one section of hair over another, then jerked the plait tight. "You're trapped in a situation of your own making, husband. For the winter, at least, we will live in your house in that chewywagon place. Nine months is a long time for a man and woman to be alone in the woods.. . . '"

"If you survive." He thought of the voyage ahead: the Joachim Rapids; the Mattawa River with its eleven rocky portages; the dark waters of Lake Nipissing; the boiling rapids of the French River; the dangerous, rocky channels of the Lake of the Hurons; and finally,

Lake Superior, the inland sea. Though she had made it this far, the worst was yet to come, and he didn't want to find her lying bleeding on a portage path, mauled by a bear or broken and drowned on the shores of a river.

"I'll survive, Andre." Genevieve tossed back her long, loose plait and something hard glinted in her eyes. "I will survive ... I always have."

He looked at her face, at the tip-tilted nose with the spray of freckles across the bridge, the generous lower lip, the glittering green eyes, the tendrils of claret-colored hair that flew like wisps about her face, and the rain of autumn leaves between them. Then he walked away, so his back was to her, so he wouldn't have to face her.

"No, Taouistaouisse. My mistake, thinking you'd never make it this far, thinking you'd weaken and beg to be left behind. Now, you've forced my hand." He gazed through the trees, toward the river he could barely hear gurgling beyond. You'll be safe. Safe from the rigors of the journey, safe from the Iroquois, safe from danger. Safe from me. "There's an island a day's ride from here, Allumette Island. An Algonquin tribe winters upon it, as well as a handful of Jesuits. Wapishka's wife and children are there." He waited for something, for anything, for the feel of her nails in his back, for the pounding of her fists, for the shrieking sound of her defiance. "You will be well cared for. Come spring, I'll return by this route and pick you up. When we get to Montreal, we'll annul this marriage."

"I don't understand."

Andre turned and looked at her, bright-eyed, incredulous, still disheveled from their aborted love-making. His stomach twisted into a knot. He had looked upon another woman in such a way before; he'd seen those same eyes bruised with confusion and misplaced trust, and he'd said much the same thing.

Cursed, he was, cursed to relive the past. He'd done everything in his power to avoid this, yet now it looked as if God himself had reached his hand down from the heavens and brought him back to that place, to that moment, to that very same situation, then leaned back to see if Andre would act in the same way.

Andre swallowed the acid that rose to his throat. This time he knew the consequences, but it made no difference. A man could not change his own nature.

"I'm going on to Chequamegon Bay." His throat parched with self-loathing. "But you, my wife, are staying behind, at Allumette Island."

Genevieve sucked in air but her lungs would not fill, for the air had thickened and solidified, and the river mist that swirled around her calves anchored her to the ground more firmly than irons.

Tomorrow, I'm leaving you on Allumette Island.

She waited for him to explain. He couldn't possibly mean it. Not after all the wonderful things he had said. Not after the way he had kissed her. Not after touching her so intimately..... Her body, still warm from his embrace, trembled with the memory, but the trembling grew frigid. She had surrendered herself to him, wantonly, opening her heart and her soul and inviting him in, and they had shared a strange, glorious experience. Yet, now he stood before her, insanely insisting on leaving her on some wild island with strange savages.

Genevieve willed him to retract his words, to explain this madness. He cursed beneath his breath, slapped his hands onto his hips, and swiveled away from her gaze. There was more to this than he was telling her; she sensed it. He was not this cold-blooded despite all his bluster. Moments ago, he had wanted to merge fiercely with her body; she had wanted the same. Men never denied their own lust, weak-willed creatures that they were, and never with a woman as willing and eager as she. There was something more, some undercurrent, some secret. . . . She could think of no other reason why he would insist so suddenly on thrusting her out of his life.

The knowledge had prickled her since the day she'd bargained with the savage for moccasins, since the day Tiny had slipped and revealed a bit of Andre's past, and now she blurted out the question without pretense.

"This is because of Rose-Marie, isn't it?"

Andre flinched, then he gouged a footprint in the mud as he jerked around. "What did you say?"

"Rose-Marie." She rubbed her raw palms against her sleeves. "You're leaving me because of her, aren't you?"

"Who told? ... No ..." He held up the flat of his hand. "Tiny, wasn't it? He's the only one who knows, and he's too loose-lipped for his own damned good."

Tiny hadn't said a word other than Rose-Marie's name, but it was more than enough. "A woman always knows when there is another woman on a man's mind."

Andre swept his knife up from the ground and smeared his leggings with the mud on the blade. "If you know about Rose-Marie, then you understand how dangerous this world is, how unfit a place it is for a Frenchwoman."

"What rot."

She'd spoken without thinking; but she'd spent too much time on the streets of Paris with shifty-eyed cutpurses, worn-out whores, toothless gamblers, and drunks, people to whom life was cheap. She'd take this world over that, for at least here the water was Clean and the food was plentiful, and the only men to worry about belonged to a single tribe of warlike savages she'd yet to lay eyes upon.

"This place is no more dangerous for me," she argued, "than it is for anyone else on this journey."

"Every man here looks after himself, but I must look after you." He shoved the knife under his belt, lightening his grip on the handle. "You're a woman, a Frenchwoman, in a world you know nothing about. I can't protect you from it just as I couldn't protect Rose-Marie."

Jealousy bit her hard, for there was a kink in his voice when he said her name. Whoever this Rose-Marie was, she still held a part of Andre tight in her grasp; she still could control him from afar. A sister, she thought, clinging to hope. A beloved friend. May the woman be nothing more.

"What could you possibly have done to her that was so evil?" Genevieve hated the bitterness in her voice, she hated the creature of envy chewing at her heart. "Did you lie to her about your intentions? Did you drag her hundreds of miles into the wilderness under false pretenses? Did you?" She dragged her gaze away from the muddy linen, where they had kissed and embraced only moments ago. "Did you abandon her among savages in the middle of the wilderness?"

"Tiny didn't tell you."

She tilted her chin. This is what loving a man would do to you, she thought, muddle your senses, soften your heart, fill you with worthless sentiment.

"I killed her, Genevieve."

Angry words died in her throat. Her skin chilled to ice, as if the heavens had opened and drenched her in frigid rainwater. She shivered, suddenly conscious of the cold ground beneath her moccasined feet, the faint howl of the morning wind, the bite of the air on her bare chest, the plunk-plunk of raindrops on the marshy earth. She hugged herself against the cold, against what was to come.

"I killed her, Genevieve," he repeated, flexing his hands, holding them up to her. "As surely as if I had taken her pretty neck between these hands and squeezed. It would have been more merciful if I had." His fingers curled into his palms. "It would have been more merciful than leaving her for the Iroquois."

"You're talking madness."

"Yes, it was all madness." His eyes shone dull, like pale gold coins, turned inward to some other time and place, as he looked away to scan the half-naked maples and the deep green spruces around them. "It was madness for me to roam these woods in those days. The Iroquois were on the warpath. They'd hunted the beaver on their own lands into extinction and were fighting for control of this river so they could become middlemen in the fur trade. There were bloody clashes between them and the settlers all the time . . . all the time." His tousled, sun-washed hair flew into his eyes; he didn't push it away. "But I defied them. I was eighteen years old. I was immortal."

Eighteen.
Genevieve bit her lower lip.
So young, so young
. She tried to imagine Andre at Julien's age— wide-eyed, eager, brimming with excitement, half-savage—much the man he was now without the innocence, without the shadows in his eyes, without the caution that seemed so much a part of his nature. Surely too young to be married.

"The danger was part of the attraction.'' He yanked his knife out and fingered the silvered edge, nothing showing in his face but a quiver around one eye. "I snuck past the Iroquois war parties and traded with the western tribes, and brought furs into Montreal nonetheless. My forays made me a rich man." He stretched his lips in a mockery of a smile and laid the blade on the flat of his palm. "That pleased Rose-Marie. She'd come from a family just like mine: Both of us had escaped France after the wars of the Fronde. Both of our families had been rich and powerful, and now we had nothing. It was assumed I would marry her. Being an honorable fool, I did."

Oh, God
. Part of her heart crumbled.
Oh, God, another wife. Another woman in his heart.

"Yes, Genevieve," he snarled, "I had a French wife once before."

She willed her face still. She would not let him see, she could not let him see how the knowledge tore at her. Fool, fool she was to have opened herself to him. Fool, fool to hope for the impossible, a woman who'd been willing to sell her soul for a few months' ration of bread.

"Rose-Marie filled our log house on the outskirts of Montreal with the stink of France past." He stabbed a furrow into the rind of a spruce on the edge of the clearing. The pale green inner flesh flaked to the ground. "She wanted a home, just like you, just like any Frenchwoman, a home like she'd been used to. But I had a home, a life . . . here in these woods. Then, as now.

"I smelled the stink of charred wood as I crossed the Montreal island that summer after we'd married. The Iroquois had raided." He ground his teeth as he buried the knife into the flesh of the tree. "I remember hoping that they had taken her prisoner and not killed her—for then she'd still be alive, then she might survive." He barked a humorless laugh as he cracked out a chunk of pale living wood. "I remember thinking I might save her."

Genevieve hid her trembling hands in the folds of her skirts while Andre examined the chunk of tree-flesh. He flaked off a few ragged slivers, ran his fingers over the grain, then turned the hunk of wood over and over in his hands to figure the shape of it, to figure what he could carve of it that would best do justice to the wood. She stood as silent as a statue, aching for him because for all his quiet, for all his easy telling of the tale, for all his feigned distraction, his voice had grown husky, and she knew that now he waited for the moisture to return to his throat.

"Damned fool woman."

He turned his back on the spruce and its gaping green wound, oozing clear sap around the edges. Genevieve dug her fingernails into her arms. She didn't need to know the rest; she'd heard enough from him about Iroquois torture. Her heart reached out to Andre for what he'd lost, but at the same time she wondered how she was ever going to battle against the loving memory of a woman who was no more than a ghost.

"I got my wish. She'd been taken prisoner, with some others." Heaving his arm back, he launched the block of wood deep into the woods, where it clattered with a crack to the ground. "I even caught up with them."

"Andre . . ."

"No, Genevieve, you'll hear it all, then maybe you'll come to your senses. I caught up with the Iroquois war party just in time to see my wife throw herself off the canoe into the river, with her hands and feet bound." His smile turned ugly. "Killing herself. To save her honor. Presumably, for me."

Honor. Suddenly, Genevieve could picture Rose-Marie in her mind's eye: sweet, lovely, full of grace and purity .. . and honor. Like Marie Duplessis. The kind of woman who would kill herself before bargaining away her honor in the alleyways of Paris.

"Unlike my wife, I choose survival over honor, woman." Suddenly, he stood before her, his eyes glittering strangely, his hands on his hips. "You're staying at Allumette Island—where it's relatively safe, where the risks are known. You're not coming into the unknown with me. I will have no more women's blood on my hands."

He looked powerful, standing with his feet planted firmly in the earth, the butt of his pistol and the well-worn handle of his long knife sticking out from his Indian sash, the muscles of his chest and arms straining against his buckskin, his bare thighs visible and hard, his lips tilted in mockery, hiding a pain that she now knew furrowed deep inside him. Part of her yearned to reach out and touch him, to give him the comfort he needed, but his eyes defied her.

He clutched her chin hard. "I won't have a wife. I already have a mistress, and this wilderness has proven herself a jealous, vengeful creature."

Andre released her chin. He strode to where the rabbit lay, discarded on the ground. He picked it up and tossed it in the cook's canoe. Then he returned and lifted the muddy makeshift net from the ground, stamping on the imprint of their bodies until nothing remained but a muddy morass.

She didn't understand this; she didn't know how to fight it. All she wanted to do was love him—yes, love him, she thought, with sudden fervent conviction. The truth had come to her in the midst of passion, but she knew it was true even now, for never had she felt such yearning for a man; never had she felt such warmth in anyone's presence as she had with Andre.

Genevieve thought of her mother and Armand, both risking their lives for the chance to be together, fighting against all the powerful forces trying to tear them apart. There were no such forces between her and Andre—they were married, they were together— yet he spurned a chance at the kind of happiness that only comes once in a lifetime, all because of the guilt from a past he couldn't let go. She watched as he strode about the clearing, her heart growing colder by the minute. The only conclusion she could reach was the one she feared most.

He doesn't love me. Genevieve squeezed her eyes shut to prevent her tears from spilling. He loved his damned life in these forests, he loved his freedom, perhaps he still loved his former wife enough to enshrine her memory by never taking another; but he didn't love her, for if he did, he would never consider abandoning her to her fate.

Listen to me! Talking about love as if I could ever have it, talking about it as if I deserved it. What had made her think a man like Andre would ever fall in love with a woman like her? What had happened to her these past weeks? She had lived in the dirty underbelly of Paris; she understood the cruelty of humans and the heartlessness of the world, she knew the power of a man's lusts. All along he had planned to abandon her like a leaky canoe. She was a stone-headed dullard to believe there was anything more to his lusty embraces these past weeks than the need to deceive her until they reached Allumette Island.

All for the damn trading voyage, all for a dream that had already destroyed his late wife.

She blinked her eyes open, trying to clear them even as she tried to clear her mind. What had made her so weak that she dreamed of things that only existed in young girl's minds?

Angrily, Genevieve tried to swallow, though her throat was as dry and parched as a desert. She had come to these godforsaken shores to find a husband and to have a home of her own. Somehow, silly dreams of romance had cluttered her mind, obscuring reality like a mist, and now that they had been blown away by the harsh winds of truth, she could see that her dreams were nothing but shadows of her own making, as ephemeral and flimsy as clouds.

Genevieve tilted her chin. He still had a home. She still had a home, at least until the day this farce of a marriage was annulled. Just because her heart had been crushed to a bloody pulp in this man's hands didn't mean she was going to give up all her dreams, not after what she had been through to hold on to them. She wanted a home now more than ever, for in it she could hide and lick her wounds.