Heaven in His Arms (3 page)

Andre kicked the chair, though it was not in his way. He crossed the width of the room in four wide strides, to glare out the window at the bustling street. The first barque had landed on the shore, and the crowd buzzed like a hive of bees around the bounty unloaded from the new French ship.

He should be there, haggling over provisions for his trip into the interior. Instead, he was suffocating in this low-raftered room ... he was suffocating under Philippe's gloom. Philippe didn't understand. Andre would have no more trouble with this voyage; he'd waited too long to see it done. He'd traveled the familiar route to the west a thousand times in his mind during his self-imposed exile in France. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to be waist-deep in the rapids of the Ottawa River, portaging around a violent set of falls or paddling across silvery Lake Nipissing, closer and closer to Georgian Bay. It had been three years since he last journeyed into the wilderness, and the soles of his feet itched for his well-worn moccasins and the feel of the rocky path. To live with the roof as his sky, to live forever roaming, to live with a commitment to no one but himself. He was so close he could taste gritty Indian sagamite in the scent of wood-smoke.

Nothing . . . nothing more could prevent him from fulfilling the dream he had harbored since he had first set foot as a boy in the North American wilderness: a dream of traveling farther west into the unexplored forest than any white man had ever gone.

Certainly no petty government ordinance.

"When you lived here last, Andre," Philippe began, despite his friend's rigid back, despite his attention to the goings-on outside the window, "the philosophy was to suck the lifeblood from this country—take the beaver pelts from the west, search for minerals and whatever. And so every autumn the strongest men flooded into the woods, and every spring we returned as wild and disruptive as brandy-soaked Indians. But now the king doesn't want us leaving every winter. He wants to settle Quebec. As the English and the Dutch have settled their lands in this New World— with farmers, blacksmiths, tanners ..."

"What has this got to do with me? With the voyage?"

"You must fulfill the requirements of the ordinance to trade furs. It's that simple." Philippe tugged on the edge of his lace cravat and took sudden interest in the brass edging of his inkwell. "The requirement is simple, really, and won't cost you much. . . . You must"—he cleared his throat—"marry."

Andre's knees loosened, abruptly and instinctively, for it seemed as if the floor bucked beneath him, like a birch bark canoe riding the swells of Whitewater. It kept bucking and rolling and the room rocked around him, and only his latent skill in riding the swells kept him upright, glaring steadily at Philippe like the only steady point on the twisting horizon.

"More king's girls are coming to Quebec." Philippe raised a finger from its delicate brushing of the inkwell to point toward the window. "There's undoubtedly a whole new batch in that ship just coming in." The ordinance requires all single men in the colony to marry within a fortnight of their arrival, or else ..." He rolled one shoulder. "Else they'll refuse you a hunting, fishing, or more relevantly, a trading license."

"The bureaucrats of Quebec can't enforce that, and you know it. It's like condemning all of the settlement to starve."

"They can enforce it—and they will. I told you this place has changed."

"Not that much."

The skin of his palms cracked as he curled his hands into fists. Not here, not here. He'd just returned from Louis XIV's France. The monarchy was like a great, choking parasitic vine; it could not have found a way to reach across the Atlantic to strangle this New World.

"If you refuse, I can do nothing for you."

"Is this you talking, Philippe, the man who fought the Iroquois with me in '66? You've been behind that desk too long. The stale air of civilization is curdling your brain. They want money, as all greedy bureaucrats do." Andre speared the air westward, pointing toward someplace well beyond the walls. "There's a bay out there, a bay where a dozen Indian tribes travel to fish and trade each spring; you and I have both heard the talk. You know there's no better place to build a permanent fur trading post."

"You don't have to convince me." He shifted in his seat. "I've a hefty bag of gold invested in you."

Yes, in that, and in more than that, Philippe. . . In the dream. For this single trading post mil only be a base for further exploration into the uncharted western forests. It would be the first of many posts, stretching farther and farther west until I reached the elusive China Sea.

But best of all, I will live like a Caesar of the wilderness, a king of my own domain, and there would be no one to tell me otherwise—no commitments, no obligations, no ties, no one left behind . . . definitely no wife.

"He's going to fill Quebec with abandoned wives and the forest with cuckolded husbands." Andre crossed the room and planted his hands flat on the desk. "Get me out of this."

Philippe tapped the pipe onto the desk, loosening the last blackened coals. Then he looked up, and memory passed between them.

"It's not the same world." Philippe set the pipe down, leaned back, and folded his hands across his swelling middle. "We are at peace with the Iroquois now."

A cloud passed across the face of the sun, casting the room in darkness. Shadows dripped from the corners of the room, and the rafters loomed low and dark. Christ, he was in a box, suffocating in here. He tugged the neck of his wide-opened shirt until the sound of a tear filled the room. It makes no difference. Andre knew that now. Peace or no peace, he'd not have a wife in the settlements.

Then a thought came to him. He laughed—a dark, humorless sound. A twisted grin stretched tight over his teeth.

"By God, the last time I saw a look like that," Philippe murmured warily, "you were facing two Iroquois warriors who took a liking to the color of your hair."

"We are at peace with the Iroquois, aren't we?" He dapped his hands on the desk. "I can go into their country now. I can trade furs with the English at Fort Orange. They'll give me twice the price that the French will, and they won't charge me tax."

"That's smuggling." Philippe's fingers stilled on the bowl of the pipe. "That's treason."

Andre snorted. "Is this the same man who traded brandy with the Ottawas despite the threat of excommunication?"

"Treason can get you hanged.'''

"Only if I'm caught."

"Think, Andre. For once use your head and not your impulses." Philippe tapped the ash out of his pipe on the side of the desk, already pocked with dents. "Smuggling to the English the amount of furs you intended to collect is unreasonable . . . impossible. And what of the string of trading posts, hmm? If you refuse this edict, that dream of yours will crumble before the foundation has even been set.... By God, where are you going?"

Andre slammed open the door without a pause. He had to get away from these walls, this roof; he needed a good long suck of brandy. "Find a way out, Philippe. I won't marry."

No, no no, he thought as he plunged out into the muddy street. He wouldn't marry.

Never, ever again.

***

Genevieve gripped the weathered railing of the ship's prow as the vessel sailed deeper into the channel of the St. Lawrence River. On the northern coast, a pewter wall of rock heaved up from the lip of the river, its rough surface pitted with gnarled spruce trees and streaked with scrawny tufts of grass that clung along the sheltered clefts of the naked stone. On the southern shore, luxuriant blue-green forests bristled to the very edge of the horizon, seeping the fragrance of pine sap and moist, mulchy earth into the air.

Genevieve tightened her one-handed grip on her mantle as the chill September wind whistled through her bones. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a flap of a gray habit—one of the Ursulines who'd accompanied them across the sea. Lurking in the shadows and watching me, no doubt, Genevieve thought, suppressing a shiver. Eager to drag me down to that death-hold with the other girls, stuff noxious ointments in me, and make me cough my life into a dirty linen.

No, no. Not me.
She pressed her belly against the railing—for support, she told herself. The river rocked differently than the open sea, but her legs had not yet learned the movement; that's why her head was swimming so much, that's why nausea heaved in her throat. But she couldn't show one flicker of weakness now, not when the fulfillment of her dreams loomed just beyond the next shimmering curve. Genevieve had suffered the long, hard voyage, not succumbing to the shipboard fever that had claimed a dozen girls' lives and lingered, even now, in the stinking ship's hold below. She'd survived, yes, again she'd survived.

Hot exhilaration rushed through her blood, ebbing away the wind's chill. A hoarse giggle escaped her raw throat. It was over; she had won. With stiff, shaking fingers, she tore off the headrail that enveloped her head and let a gust send the cloth to the sky. The wind yanked at her loosely bound hair, tugging it free to rise weightless in a cloud around her face, sweeping clear the black clouds of memory.

Genevieve Lalande did not perch here, watching the cold blue sky of this New World melt into an evening gold. The shadow called Genevieve had died at Le Havre. Now she was Marie Suzanne Duplessis. Now she would have a roof above her head instead of the sky, a house to call her own, a fertile place in which to settle and set down deep roots. A shaky laugh rippled out as no more than a breath. Out, a husband, too, something she'd never imagined in her lifetime. And a family. Someone to love who'd be all her own, children to raise in a civilized place.

Oui
, civilized. Her gaze drank in the whole of the country, the endless forests not yet tamed by plow or sickle, the deep silence broken only by the caws of the cliff swallows wheeling above the ship. She had dreamed it would be like this, but she never allowed herself to believe her fantasies. In Paris, even in Normandy, she had never seen so much uninhabited, uncultivated land.

A woman could hide in such a place forever.

Oh, the girls were so full of children's bedtime stories. Savages ruled these woods, they told her, men of bronze skin and painted faces, men of unimagined cruelty. And the winters grew so cold, they said, that the trees exploded from it. She'd already known a place like that, in the heart of the civilized world. A curl twisted her lips, cracking the skin. No place, no matter how raw, could be worse than the streets of Paris.

It was over now, Genevieve thought, letting the past fade like the brightness of the sky. She had won. Now nothing—nothing and no one—could ever thwart her dreams again.

Then she crumpled into a heap on the deck.

Andre stepped out of the inn and collided with a Cartful of eels. Limp black fish lolled over the edge and licked his wide skirts, streaking them with slime. Waving the profuse apologies of the fisherman away, he absently scoured the stain with one gloved hand and stomped sullenly through the mud.

Good, he thought as he noticed the black streak marring his clothing. He was wearing his best French outfit, an ensemble he had bought in Paris for the sole purpose of appearing in front of the officials responsible for holding back his inheritance. But the damned green coat fitted too tightly, the silver buttons were nothing but nuisances, and the seams dug into his skin and itched. The matching breeches strangled his legs at the knees, where they were gathered and gartered with a frivolous spray of emerald ribbons—the least feminine of his options at the time. He wanted nothing more than to toss his tight shoes, his wretched coat, and his damned breeches in the St. Lawrence River. Now, he thought, as he slid a slime-coated, gloved finger between his neck and the linen edge of his cravat, he would have an excuse to do it after today's deed was done.

He splattered out into the middle of the street, his red-heeled boots sucking deep into the mud, and headed toward Madame Jean Bourdon's house. A tepid breeze wove through the buildings clustered in the lower town of Quebec, carrying the tart scent of a recent rain. The sun glittered off the towering granite mass of the
Cap aux Diamants
, the cliff that thrust abruptly from the earth to form a backdrop to the town at its foot. Several warehouses nestled close to its base, and in and out of these flowed a line of settlers with the local currency—beaver skins— strapped across their backs. High above, in the upper town, the churchbells gonged for the first Mass of the day.

Andre clutched the bulge straining out between the second and third buttons of his coat, pulling on it so the ties dug into his neck. Damn Indian magic. Where's the rain? The thunder? The lightning? A good Ojibwa shaman could read signs of a man's future in the wind and the weather, but Andre didn't need Indian wisdom to know what a blue sky and bright sun portended. A fool he was to believe in such things. The sun had no reason to shine on this black day.

He knew which house belonged to Madame Bourdon the moment he turned the corner onto her street. A crowd of men swarmed around the door like bees scenting nectar. Several officers milled on the outskirts. One Frenchman, dressed in a brilliant silk doublet and breeches festooned with ribbons and lace, stood apart from the swarm.

"Andre!"

Andre lifted his plumed, wide-brimmed hat to shade his eyes from the glare of the morning. The sunlight glinted off Philippe's fair corkscrew curls. Christ, look at this, will you?" Andre said as Philippe stopped at his side. "Rutting season in Quebec."

"Last batch of the king's girls for the season." Philippe tucked his hat under his arm and snapped a familiar slip of paper out of his pocket. "Though I'm pleased you finally came to your senses, Andre, you could have decided earlier in the season to send me this message and saved my heart the strain. I was sure I'd see you swinging by the neck before year's end."

Andre slid his gloved fingers under his cravat and yanked. "Can't you see the noose?"

Andre glowered at the crowd, at the closed door to Madame Bourdon's house, then he looked up the black cliff of Quebec toward the palisades of the upper city. Nearly two months he'd prepared for this voyage, and too frequently he'd come up against something: voyageurs unwilling to sign on with him; merchants unwilling to accept his credit; provisions held in warehouses for "inspection," to search for secreted brandy; bureaucrats turning away from the sight of gold gleaming beneath his hand. And all the while time slipped away. Now the first breath of autumn cooled the evenings, and every day another flotilla of canoes headed west as he watched on the shore, grinding his teeth, thrashing inside like a mountain cat trying to find a way out of this trap.

"You've done the right thing," Philippe murmured, stuffing the paper into his pocket. "Marriage, even a reluctant one, has its benefits, hmm?"

"Not this marriage."

"Come, come, old friend." Philippe tapped his wrought-wooden cane into the mud, clinking on a block of stone beneath. "A warm bed, a willing woman.. . . Such things I've never known you to turn away.''

"This will be a marriage of convenience." Andre slapped his hat over his dark wig, snapping one of the delicate ostrich plumes in the process. "When I come back in the spring, I'm getting an annulment."

"Andre . . ."

"I'm in no mood to hear you rhapsodize about the wonders of the conjugal bed.'' Andre rubbed his elbow, against his side, trying to scratch an itch where a seam was rubbing his skin. "I'm marrying because I was given no choice: marry or give up the trip. So here I am. But there's no requirement that I stay married."

Philippe's smile faltered. He twisted away and gazed over the black waters of the St. Lawrence, watching a small boat navigate the currents to the opposite shore. A team of oxen lumbered by, strapped to a cart laden with ribbed green watermelons, fresh from the farm. One fell off and splattered into the mud, spewing its sweet rosy fruit over the ground.

"I suppose," Philippe began on a sigh, "that you won't consider a relationship with this woman."

"No consummation, no marriage."

"I suppose not." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a circular gold case, which he snapped open with a click. The river breeze careened a whirlwind of dust off the contents. "To think, after I received your message last night, that I entertained the notion you might actually be coming around.. . . My own folly. Old ghosts are rarely buried so abruptly, eh,
mon vieux ami
?"

Philippe pinched out a puff of powder and pressed it against a nostril, snorting it deeply.

As expressionless as an Iroquois chief, the bastard, Andre thought, and all while he speared an old wound with a red-hot poker.

"So what are you to do with her?" Philippe sniffed delicately, brushing his nose with the back of his hand. "I know you won't winter in Quebec with her, and I know you won't leave her here alone."

A murmuring began among the crowd of men as the door to Madame Bourdon's house cracked open. Andre turned away and shouldered into the crowd, blocking out the flare of memory Philippe was doing his damnedest to ignite.

But the crowd jostled and did not move, and soon they were all herded into a ragged line. The orange scent of Philippe's strong perfume wafted over his shoulder.

"In rather a hurry, Andre, for a man so sullen about marriage."

"The sooner this is done, the sooner you'll get me my trading license." His nostrils flared as he glanced easily over the heads of the other men, toward the fiver. "The sooner I can be out there."

"Marietta will be doubly disappointed." Philippe used his cane as a barrier, eyeing anyone who dared consider crossing it and cutting in on them in line. "She was looking forward to a female companion over the long winter months."

"She'll get her heart's desire. Did you think I summoned you here just to be a witness?"

Philippe's blue eyes narrowed, and not against the glare.

"I'm giving you a governess for the winter, old friend."

"Governess." Philippe swung his cane in an arc and gripped its middle. "You wretched dog. I should have known you'd be up to something."

"A dozen times, you said you needed someone. Marietta is heavy with child. She'll need help with your three young ones when the babe is born."

"You wouldn't think of asking me or Marietta first, hmm?"

"I'm asking you now." Andre leaned closer. "You do want some return on your investment? You do want me to go west and bring back a harvest of beaver like you've never seen before?"

Philippe tapped his cane up the stairs as they came to the head of the line. "It's the beaver that you're leaving in my house that I'm concerned about."

Madame Bourdon, an imposing woman dressed in severe black, met them just inside the door. She reminded Andre of a pursed-lip nun who'd tormented him as a schoolboy in Aix-en-Provence.

"Your name, monsieur?"

"Andre Lefebvre." He gestured to Philippe. "My friend only came to leer."

"It has been some time, Monsieur Martineau," she said, ignoring Andre's comment and nodding to Philippe. "It doesn't seem that long ago when your wife was housed here as a king's girl. How is she?"

"She's well and expecting another child."

Andre swallowed his growl. Philippe puffed out his chest whenever he uttered those words, as if he had succeeded at some feat never before accomplished, when to Andre, it was the prevention of conception that was the more difficult task.

"Send her my regards." Madame Bourdon turned her attention back to Andre and raised a quill over a yellowed book. "Monsieur Lefebvre, what is your means of livelihood?"

Andre told her he was a fur trader, and that he owned some land outside of Montreal that had once belonged to his father but had been neglected for several years. He told her that during the course of the next year his wife would be housed with the Martineau family. Madame Bourdon's nod was noncommittal. Philippe then interrupted to inform her that Andre's father had been a Parliamentarian in Aix-en-Provence and that Andre had just returned to France after collecting his inheritance.

Her demeanor changed entirely. "If I had known, monsieur, that you came from such a good family, I would have made sure you did not have to wait among the others." With a flutter of hands, she motioned for one of her domestics. "We have an exclusive group of women set aside especially for men like you. Well-bred women. Women of good family, who will grace your home with their charm and education."

Andre frowned. The last thing he wanted for a wife was some cold, high-strung, inbred bitch. Before he could say anything, Philippe nudged him to follow the domestic down the hall. They passed a large room nulling with young women in common dress, then continued on up a narrow flight of stairs. Midway, Andre turned to Philippe and muttered, "You left a few things out of my biography."

"Nothing of note, I'm sure."

"You forgot to tell the good Madame that I've already spent my inheritance."

"You'll be a rich man soon enough."

"You also neglected to tell her that my father was a rebel Parliamentarian, exiled here during the wars of the Fronde."

"That was decades ago," Philippe argued, waving it away like a gnat. "Besides, it wasn't your father's money you were claiming, it was your brother Leonard's."

"You know damned well that Leonard's money was my father's money. He hid it amid Leonard's affairs before we left France."

"Details."

"Those details kept me tied up in the royal courts for three years."

"I don't think it's necessary for Madame Bourdon to know that you came from a family full of rebels. Leonard appeared to be a good royalist, and it is all ancient history now." Philippe frowned. "It seems I must take charge of this issue of choosing you a wife. All you need is a trading license, but I'm getting a governess for my children. I want one with some intelligence, not some broad-beamed dullard." Philippe bowed mockingly before the open door, allowing Andre to proceed him inside. "Of course, if she has any intelligence, she won't marry you, so obviously we'll have to settle for breeding."

The domestic ushered them into a bright room facing the St. Lawrence, on the second floor of the three-story house. As he and Philippe entered, a dozen women turned and peered at them expectantly, fans fluttering like butterfly wings. Andre could guess their ranking by the richness of the ribbon edging their dresses.

"What am I supposed to do now?" he muttered, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably in the binding clothes. "Choose one as a butcher chooses his sheep for slaughter?"

"You have an open field, soldier." Philippe nodded a greeting to the one other man in the room, an aging officer of the Carignan-Saliere regiment, which had fought in the Iroquois wars. "Any woman in this room would rather marry a fine buck like you than that aging stag."

He felt like a buck—like a buck facing a pack of hunting dogs. "They'd be better off with the aging stag. At least he'll be home to rut."

"Don't choose the prettiest one." Philippe swept oil his hat and bowed to the room. "Marietta will positively skewer me if I bring home a beauty."

"You sound as sour as an old whore." Andre extended one stiff leg in what he hoped was a courtly bow, "You and Marietta need a girl in the house. I need a wife to get a trading license. It's the perfect solution."

"Why then," Philippe said, through a frozen smile, as one woman approached them, "does it feel like extortion?"

Andre pulled on his cravat as the scent of sweet, light Parisian perfume wafted from the petticoats of a woman who stopped boldly before them. She snapped her fan closed to reveal a tightly boned bodice and wide, shoulder-to-shoulder decolletage. His fingers itched to pinch one of those fleshy mounds to test it for firmness. Certainly such an act would be allowed in this market. After all, one wouldn't take home a soft melon, would one?

"I am Renee Affille," she breathed, bouncing in a pert curtsy, "recently from La Rochelle."

He bowed and felt his coat strain dangerously across his shoulders. "Monsieur Lefebvre."