Heaven in His Arms (26 page)

***

La Vieille,
the old woman of the wind, blew soft and light and whirled around the sandy spit of land called Chequamegon Point, to swirl in the bay of the same name. Andre and his men had improvised a sail from the tarpaulins that covered the merchandise and some straight branches of birch wedged among the kegs and bails. It puffed full, now that the wind was blowing from the right quarter, and propelled the vessel deeper into the bay. The men took their ease, sharing the last of their tobacco, tossing the ashes into the water as a ceremonial sacrifice in order to remain in the good graces of La Vieille during this last stretch of their long journey.

Andre's gaze was fixed on a spot in the distance, where the endless forest of sugar maple, aspen, and birch trees gave way to a cleared section of the shore. He thought he saw movement upon the bank—movement of the human kind. He knew for sure that the pale blue smoke that curled up beyond the spiky tips of the red and white pines indicated a settlement of some sort. It could be an Indian village. He could only hope that the smoke came from the fort his men were supposed to build around the structures Nicholas Perrot had abandoned last spring. If it didn't, Andre knew he would have to search every one of the low, flat islands that lay in the north part of the bay until he found it.

All his worries disappeared as he neared and distinguished the flash of a dozen bright red capotes—the distinctive caps worn by the men of Quebec.

"That's it." His blood surged with excitement. "They're straight ahead, where the smoke rises."

Genevieve clutched his leg and rose to her knees, leaning to one side in an attempt to see past the gaping sail. "I can't see anything but trees. Show me where it is!"

He reached down and took her hand in his, pulling her unsteadily to her feet. The canoe wobbled wildly and twisted in the water, for already the Roissier brothers were tearing down the makeshift sail. After six weeks of paddling, the men intended to enter their home under their own power. Tiny broke the excited babbling with a rendition of
Salut a Mon Pays
.

She struggled for balance on the craft, peering off to the distant shore. Her deerskin blanket fell to a puddle at her feet. Her fine dress, once rose-colored, was now nothing but a faded rag, webbed with mending and hanging in tatters around her legging-covered knees. But the sparkle in her eyes made her look as beautiful as if she were dressed to be presented to the Court.

Andre felt a twinge of apprehension. He had been dreading this moment since the day he realized she was going to stay with him all the way to Chequamegon Bay. Over the past few nights, after their long bouts of frenzied lovemaking, she had asked him so many questions about the area and the life they would lead during the winter months. There was so much excitement in her voice. He had been tempted to tell her the truth . . . but he didn't have the heart to crush her illusions, not yet. Soon, there would be no more hiding yet another secret he had kept from her.

He reached for her, spread his legs for better balance, and pulled her back against him. Then he dipped his paddle in the water to steer the canoe landward. Soon enough, she would discover the truth. In the meantime, he planned to share her excitement at their arrival. "Can you see the bits of red? Those are the hats of the men of Quebec."

Genevieve stood tense, rising up on her toes and peering anxiously off to the shore. Her hair tickled his beard and felt like silk against his throat. He thought of this morning, when he had woken up with her poised over him, bright-eyed, wet-lipped, laughing as she lowered her small body upon him.

"I see them!" A shiver of excitement shook her small frame. "There are so many people!"

"Most of them are Hurons and Ottawas. There are a few savage villages nearby, and maybe even a Jesuit trying to save their souls."

She looked up at him, smiling slyly. "And I thought we'd be alone in the wilderness."

"We'll be alone often enough,
Taouistaouisse
, and we'll have more damned privacy than we ever had at the campsites."

She giggled at his throaty growl and leaned against him. The canoe approached the shore with growing speed as the men increased the tempo of their paddling with the tempo of another song. An icy wind raised goose bumps on her fair skin. "I can hardly believe it," she murmured, snuggling back against him. "We're finally home."

Home. Apprehension twisted like a knot in the center of his gut. She could have stayed in Quebec with Marietta Martineau, safe in a warm cedar-shingled building with a stone fireplace, a straw mattress, and thick woolen blankets. For the sake of living in her own home, she had taken this dangerous journey with a strange man through the untamed forests to Chequamegon Bay. He had convinced her to come, with lies. Now she was about to see her home, for the first time, and he dreaded her response.

Everything had been going so well. There was no talk of the coming spring, no discussion of what he would do next summer, after they returned to Montreal. It was as if she had resigned herself to enjoying what she could now, here, and left the future to take care of itself. He liked the situation as it stood—he didn't want it to change—and he didn't want to think of the future, either. Right now, the future was a hazy thing, undefined and far, far away.

They approached the shore. Andre recognized the leader of his advance contingent and raised his hand in greeting. A crowd of Indian maidens sang their own song of welcome to the newcomers. The Duke pounded the blunt end of his cedar paddle on the thin glaze of ice that rimmed the edge of the broad cove, cracking a wide path so the men could work the canoes through to the shore. Andre urged Genevieve back down and helped push the ice away.

When he could see the sand beneath the water, he leapt off the side arid plunged his legs into the frigid bay. The water froze the skin of his thighs so badly, it burned. He turned to wade to the shore.

"Wait!" She rose to her knees and held open her arms. "Take me with you."

"No ... stay here," he ordered, more harshly than he intended. "I'll come and get you later."

"Andre!"

His stomach twisted, more painfully than the slosh of the icy water against his bare thighs, but he didn't turn back.

A thick-thighed voyageur with a mane of dark hair stopped dead in his tracks as Andre approached. He pulled his red cap off his head and stared at the canoe. Andre turned to find his wife standing, arms akimbo, in the vessel. Her deerskin blanket gaped open, showing the tightness of her boned bodice and the magnificent fullness of her breasts above. The song the men on shore had been singing died off in a strange, distorted note. Andre suddenly realized that everyone—the voyageurs, the Indian maidens, the few Indian men who stood aside—were all staring at his wife.

He frowned and turned to face David, the leader of his advance contingent. "It's good to see you made it."

The dark-haired voyageur didn't acknowledge Andre's words. His gaze was fixed beyond, on Genevieve.

Andre tried again. "Is everything built as I ordered?"

The man's glazed eyes focused on Andre for a moment, then returned to the woman on the canoe. He gestured to her dumbly. "That's . . . that's a Frenchwoman."

"I'm glad you're familiar with the species," he said dryly. "By the way you're all staring, you'd think she was some new breed of moose."

"How did she . . . why is she . .."

"She's my wife." Andre frowned as a surprised murmuring arose among the other voyageurs, while the Indian maidens huddled to one side, wide-eyed and gesturing wildly among themselves. "If you're through gaping at her like an ass, you can show me the fort."

Recovering, David nodded and replaced his cap. He walked away from the shore toward the shelter of birch and aspen trees. Not more than fifty paces from the shoreline, a high stockade stood in a clearing. Scattered around, near the walls, stood a dozen small bark huts—Huron huts—probably belonging to the Indian wives of the Frenchmen.

"There's a Jesuit here by the name of Marquette," David said, his voice returning to normal. "He's got a little bark chapel called Saint Esprit about a half league down the coast, and he visits once a week, on Sundays. When we arrived here a few weeks ago, all that was left of Perrot's post was his house, a storehouse, and a building large enough for the men to share. We had to cut the trees and sharpen the ends to set up the stockade, and that took most of our time. This past week we've been replacing some of the boughs that thatched the roofs because all of them leaked, and we whitewashed the inside of all the buildings with a white clay ..."

Andre barely heard David's report as he strode through the tiny Huron village. It was empty now, for everyone congregated on the shore where his men were unloading the merchandise for the last time. Blue smoke curled out of the open holes in the center of the bark roofs. A tiny grouse carcass cooked over an open fire, unattended. A webbed snowshoe leaned against one of the huts, discarded as the mender ran to the shore to greet the newcomers. A deerskin, with half the meat scraped off, hung on a pole dug into the ground. A wide bowl lay tilted, half filled with ground cornmeal and half filled with corn.

He eyed the stockade critically, noting the tight fit between the wooden palisades. He gripped one and shook it for stability as he passed through the gate.

It was as solid as stone. The scent of pine smoke hovered in the air, for to one side of the open fort, two broad flanks of moose meat hung from a stand, slashed, drying in the air with the help of the wood-fire smoke bathing its flesh. Leaning against the side of what he assumed was the warehouse were a half-dozen willow frames with dark, silky beaver fur stretched over them. The trading had already begun. "... plenty of food. The deer sometimes wander right into the village. There's a couple of Ottawa and more Huron villages about an hour's walk south, and they've got enough maize and squash and pumpkin to feed all of us at least until Christmas. We've started setting seines into the river for the whitefish ..."

Andre walked to the corner of the stockade, where a tiny dwelling stood apart from the storehouse and the large house set aside for the men who didn't have Indian wives. There was a window cut into the logs, and an oiled skin flapped lightly against the wall. A mud and stone chimney sagged on one side.

"We were planning to wall up the window in this and use it as a smokehouse," David said, "but I suppose with you having a wife and all . . ."

Andre stared with growing dread at the tiny cabin. It was so small, he could cross the width or length of it in four strides. The chimney would have to be cleaned and partially rebuilt, or the house would fill with smoke every time a fire was lit. But even if he cleaned the chimney and walled up the window, the wind would still whistle coldly through the cabin. The logs that formed the walls were ill-fitting, and the mud that had been used to clog the chinks chipped and flaked. The dried boughs that thatched the roof were held down by poles that hung askew upon the peaked top.

He stared ruefully at his new home, thinking that no self-respecting settler in Montreal would house their pigs in this place.

"There you are! Why didn't you take me with you?" Genevieve strode through the gate. "I had to ride on Tiny's back to get off that canoe, and those Indian women were poking and prying at me as if I were a fat goose to be slaughtered."

He turned to face her. Her hair, tangled and falling out of its plait, glowed in the light. Her cheeks flushed with excitement and indignation. Wapishka, Tiny, and Julien followed close behind her, glowering at the crowd of Frenchmen who wandered in, staring dumbstruck at the ragged Frenchwoman in their midst.

"And how long have your men been in the woods?'' Genevieve asked David, pulling her deerskin around her. "They're staring at me as if I were a pet bear at the Saint-Germain fair."

"The Indian women have never seen a Frenchwoman," David explained, as Andre stared mutely at his wife. "And my men . . . you'll have to excuse them, ma'am. They've never seen a Frenchwoman out here."

"They'd best get used to it, because I'm here to stay." She peered around, examining the inside of the stockade for the first time. "Where's our house, Andre? Is it here or is it somewhere else?"

His tongue felt like a molten ball of lead in his mouth. In his lifetime, he had walked twenty-mile portages in the driving rain, he had willingly run the wildest of rapids, he had faced and fought a group of brandy-crazed Indian warriors—and he had lived through all of it. Yet right now, in the face of Genevieve, he felt as weak and unarmed as a naked child.

"That's it." His voice was a croak. He jerked his head toward the cabin. "That's our . .. home."

His neck muscles stiffened to stone as she walked around him and stood before the house, her hands on her hips. She approached it, brushed away the length of deerskin, and peered into the single window. A clod of mud fell from the top of the sill. He waited, motionless, bracing himself for the outburst he knew was to come.

"It looks ... as if it needs some work."

The lump in his throat choked off all words. She approached and took his hand. Then, incredulously, her lips stretched in a soft smile.

"When it's done, Andre, it's going to be absolutely beautiful."

Flakes of freezing snow bit into Andre's face above the edge of his beard. The frigid air stung his lungs as he drew in an icy breath. He lifted his leg, wincing as his sore thigh muscle tightened and quivered from the exertion, and took a giant step forward, planting his webbed snowshoe on the sinking snow. Leather straps dug deep into his shoulders as he leaned forward and dragged his laden toboggan one step deeper into the blizzard.

"God's wounds!" Tiny's bellowing voice was battered and dispersed by the howling wind. "This snow is as thick as bear grease! We should stop and camp until it blows over."

Andre glanced at the giant, who pulled a toboggan next to him. A white crust covered Tiny's deerskin coat and the leggings that stuck out beneath. Ice clung to his mustache and beard, where his breath had frozen around his mouth. His blue eyes gleamed between slitted lids in his red face.

"We're not stopping." He took another aching step. "The fort is ahead."

"By the balls of Saint—" The giant waved his arms in the air, gesturing to the world. "It's a blizzard. . . . We may as well be walking in the clouds!"

"A ration of brandy says we'll find it within the hour."

"Much good brandy'll do me if I'm frozen until spring." Tiny placed his meaty hands on his hips. "Make it two!"

"Two it is."

Andre peered into the blinding snow. He and his men had been walking since dawn, when the blizzard had been nothing but a gentle sprinkling of calm flakes. Now it raged and howled, and the snow fell from the sky as thickly as the wind lifted it from the ground, swirling around them and completely obscuring the horizon. As they pulled their heavily laden bark sleds, the dark shapes of trees loomed in their path. To Andre, they were familiar trees in a familiar layout, and he knew that they were only paces from the stockade.

For two weeks, he and five voyageurs had wandered through the lands west of Chequamegon Bay. En route, they met up with Indians from the Cree tribe and traded their European goods for the wealth of beaver furs that now sagged heavily upon the toboggans. But he gathered much more than fur. In the hot Indian lodgings, while he and the natives smoked tobacco in long red stone pipes, Andre listened eagerly to their stories of a brackish body of water west of Lake Superior, and a great river they called the "Messipi," which led south and west to another potential sea. On some future trading trip, he vowed to follow the threads of those stories. But he had promised Genevieve he would be home for Christmas Day, and Christmas Day was tomorrow.

His back and shoulders ached from pulling the heavy toboggan. His legs wobbled beneath him. The snow lay soft and deep and powdery, and even with the webbed snowshoes laced tightly onto his moccasins, Andre nearly sank to his knees with each step. He leaned forward, fighting the icy wind, thinking of the warmth and comfort that awaited him at home.

Home. He smiled inwardly, despite the pain. That was Genevieve's word. Before her, he had never thought of his temporary abodes in the wilderness as homes; they were simply stopping places, interruptions in a constant journey westward. Wherever he laid his head was his home, whether it be on spruce bows on the hardness of a granite bank, in an Indian's wigwam, or nestled in a hole dug deep in the snow. But over the weeks that they had lived together in the small cabin in the stockade, Andre discovered that there was a pleasant difference between a home and a resting place. He also discovered that there were some distinct advantages to living with her within the privacy of four solid walls.

The thought charged him with new energy. He bent his head and surged forward. One step. Two. The toboggan pushed the new snow forward as it rode on the ice crust beneath. He stopped to kick away the drift that had gathered to impede its progress. In the white haze beyond his toboggan, he saw the indeterminate shapes of the other three men forging their way through the blizzard.

Tiny stopped in his tracks. "By the blessed womb of the Virgin Mother!"

Andre looked ahead. Through the swirl of snow he saw glimpses of Huron bark houses, the flicker of wavering fires gleaming through the uneven bark walls. His dry lips cracked into a smile. The stockade could not be more than twenty paces ahead. As if to prove his point, a wavering voice called from the heavens.

"Qui vive
?"

Andre cried out his name, mounds of snow tumbling off his shoulders as he straightened. He heard the vague squealing of the gate. He headed toward the sound. Out of the whiteness, the stockade door emerged, yawning open in welcome. He glanced at Tiny in silent triumph.

"Aye, you'll get your brandy," Tiny fumbled. A gleam entered his eye as he glanced from Andre to the fort. "But only if you can beat me to the gate."

His laugh pierced the howling of the wind. In a minute, both of them were running—as quickly as they could through the depth of the snow with rackets on their feet and two hundred pounds of fur dragging behind them. They wove past the Huron houses and surged toward the open gate of the stockade. Andre reached the doorpost a moment before Tiny and victoriously shrugged the straps of the toboggan off his aching shoulders.

"Twas not an even race!" The icicles were quickly melting off Tiny's beard from the heat of his breath. "I had my strength sapped by that Cree woman and you've been a monk for two weeks!"

"Tell that to the Huron squaw waiting in your hut," he warned, "and she'll cut your 'strength' right off."

A crowd of men burst out of the long building that served as their quarters and hurried across the snow. The sound of banging copper emerged from the gaping door, a sign that the cook was already preparing for tomorrow's Christmas feast. The men barraged

Andre and the others with questions as they unloaded the furs strapped in heaping piles on the toboggans. Wapishka handed Andre a pewter cup with brandy, which he drank in one gulp, the liquid burning the back of his throat and lighting a pleasant glow in his belly.

He peered toward the tiny cabin in the corner. Golden light sifted through the oiled deerskin that stretched across the small window. He wiped his beard and mustache against the frozen sleeve of his deerskin coat, then picked up his pack, pulled off his red cap, and strode home.

The succulent aroma of roasting meat greeted him as he swung open the door. The dry heat of a hearth fire blasted out of the tiny room, thawing his frozen limbs. Genevieve leaned over the hearth, basting a hunk of glistening meat. The firelight made her long plait glow a rich amber. She whirled around as he plunked his pack down inside the door. The spoon clattered to the floor as she launched herself across the room.

"You're home!"

He bent his knees and lifted her up into his arms. She pressed against him, small and warm. Andre closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet fragrance that emanated from her hair. "I promised you I'd be back for Christmas."

"But the snow is heaped as high as my shoulder against the walls of this fort, and there's a blizzard—"

"All the more reason to race back here."

"
Bete!
" Her arms tightened around his neck. "You could have frozen to death in the storm."

"I couldn't," he murmured. "Thoughts of you kept me warm every night."

He held her tight, flush against his body, trying to feel her warmth through the layers of his deerskin. "You missed me,
Taouistaouisse
?"

"Not a bit." Genevieve tilted her chin defiantly. "Wapishka and The Duke and the Roissier brothers kept me entertained in your absence."

"Did they?" He squeezed her until she squealed.^ "I trust I won't have to emasculate them in the^ morning?"

"For losing four beaver pelts to me in dice?" Her eyes twinkled wickedly. "I believe you're jealous, my husband. I'll teach you how to play, if you'd like."

"There's only one game I'm interested in right now."

"Is there?" She slid down the length of his body. "And I thought you'd be too exhausted from your trip."

He kissed her parted lips, showing her exactly how much energy he had left. Her breath was hot, eager. Her hair felt like heated silk against his frozen hands.

She struggled away from him.' 'I feel like I'm kissing a snowman."

Andre glanced at the wet spots that stained her chest, where the encrusted snow on his shirt had melted between them. He traced a throbbing vein in her throat. "There's another part of me I'd rather you melt."

"And your fingers are cold."

"I know a very warm place I'd like to put them."

She released a surprised gasp and Andre kissed her again, more demandingly. He tugged anxiously on the laces of her deerskin dress. She clutched his hands and pulled gently away. His loins tightened at the light of promise in her eyes.

Her voice was as husky as fire. "You'll have to undress, my husband." She glanced at the puddle growing at his feet. "You'll catch your death in all those wet clothes."

He shrugged off the deerskin robe that covered his body and hung it blindly on a peg beside the door, then let the other fur wrappings follow. When he wore only his deerskin shirt and leggings, she took his hand and led him one step deeper into the hut. The flickering, red-orange light of the fire cast fantastic shadows above the guns, pistols, knives, snowshoes, and sundry scraping tools that hung on pegs on the walls. He sank in the luxurious pile of furs that served as their bed and took up nearly half of the room. She fell to her knees in front of him.

Genevieve started at his feet, painstakingly picking apart the frozen knots that held the teardrop-shaped webbings to his moccasins. When she finished, she tossed the icy rackets aside, pulled off his sodden moccasins, and placed them near the fire. He watched her every move. The dress covered her from the neck to the knees, but he loved the way her hips swayed beneath the deerskin. Cinched with a belt decorated with dyed porcupine quills, the simple garb showed off the fullness of her unbound breasts and the narrowness of her waist. Leggings covered her legs to the knees, and he knew that above them she was naked.

The thought sent blood rushing to his loins. He was painfully aware that the only thing separating them was his own breechcloth—a single layer of soft, smoke-ripened deerskin. Andre clutched her by the waist and drew her closer, burying his head in the bare, scented nook of her throat. Her hands worked busily over his body, stripping him, while his hands hungrily roamed over hers.

His pistol and knife clattered hollowly to the boards that formed the floor. She fiddled with the snow-encrusted edge of his sash, then tossed it close to the hearth. He lifted his arms as her fingers curled around the hem of his shirt and she pulled it up, over his head, spreading cakes of snow on the floor and the pelts. He ran his hands over her body, from shoulder to hip, lifting her skirt so he could wrap his fingers around her strong thighs.

Her laugh was deep and husky as she pulled away to undo the lacings that held up his leggings, the last piece of clothing but for his breechcloth. As she tossed them away, Genevieve placed her hands on his chest, feeling the aching muscles of his shoulders, and it was if she burned him with fire.

"Two weeks," she murmured raggedly. "Two weeks."

He lifted her, spreading her legs until she sat upon his lap, proving that no amount of trudging through blizzards would exhaust his hunger for her. Her dress rode up her legs. He felt her bare limbs against his, the skin of her inner thighs as soft as butter. Andre dragged her up his lap until she was placed squarely on his aching groin. He kissed her, slanting his lips against hers, drawing her tongue deep into his mouth and then filling her mouth with his. Her nipples hardened beneath the deerskin and lightly grazed his chest.

He drew away. "Take it off." Without a murmur, she untied the lacings at her throat, loosened them, then lifted the deerskin dress and the shift she wore beneath it over her head. Now all she wore were her leggings, tied tight against her calves. Bathed in the glow of the fire, her breasts stood proud and heavy. He laved one taut nipple with his tongue and felt it tighten into a knot against his lips. He pressed her pelvis against his, feeling the crisp curls of her secret place scrape his bare thighs.

Andre slipped a hand between them and felt the moist heat of her womanhood.

His sex threatened to burst from his breechcloth. What shaman's spell had this creature cast upon him, to make him want her and only her, to make him turn away from the promise of distant saltwater seas, to return to the warm glow of this tiny hut? It wasn't as if there were no other women available, for the Cree chief had pressed several wives upon him, all of them comely and lithe. He had felt nothing for them, though their dark eyes had danced in promise. He wanted only Genevieve.

I love her.

The thought came without preamble, without doubt, without angst. It wasn't the first time it had come. It had slipped into his mind a hundred times since the day she fell into the rapids on the French River. And each time it entered his consciousness, he fought against it less.

There was no time to dwell on it now. She was all fire and passion in his embrace, and his own desire overcame the thought as quickly as it had come. Andre stroked her while he kissed her breasts, her neck, her lips, feeling her grow warm and slick in his hand, feeling a power, a victory in making her want him so badly-—as badly as he wanted her.