Heaven in His Arms (7 page)

"Don't bother tying me up. I'll go willingly." She leaned her head back against the door and blew the errant lock of hair from her eyes again. "What difference does it make to you if I get an annulment now or later? You've got your license. You don't need me anymore."

The wench didn't even know the power of her own words. She didn't know that if she went to the governor, everything that he had worked three years to obtain would be destroyed. His grip tightened on her arm. Why had she come? And why now, on the eve of his departure? He should never have answered

the door; after all, good news never comes at night. Some evil manitou was at work here, determined to crush his dreams, and it took the form of this stubborn, beautiful, willful woman who threatened everything and didn't even know it.

He should just escape the settlements tonight, Andre thought, before she ever had a chance to go to the governor. He could do it. He knew where all his voyageurs were sleeping. He could go deep into the interior and roam the wilderness and forget all that had happened here. But when he returned there would be hell to pay—and it was a hell he could not afford. They'd hanged the last men who'd tried to smuggle illegal furs into Quebec, confiscating everything for which they'd worked. He had struggled so hard to keep everything legal—Christ, he had even married to keep everything legal. Short of imprisoning this woman in Marietta's house, once he left the settlements, there was nothing he could do to stop her from ruining him and all his dreams.

She was staring at him steadily, waiting for him to say something. If he were a different type of man, he would wrap his fingers around her frail white throat and choke the life from her. Andre saw a flicker of fear in her eyes as she tried to jerk away from him, but he held her fast. He was trapped . . . trapped more firmly than she was in his embrace. He couldn't free her from this marriage, nor could he leave her here in the settlements to wreak havoc. He had made a mistake in marrying this woman. He had mistaken illness for docility.

He had to take her with him. Damn it, he had no other choice. She'd slow him down, and any more delays on this voyage could be disastrous. It would take at least four or five weeks just to reach Sault Sainte Marie, the falls that marked the entrance to Lake Superior. Hundreds of uncharted miles separated Sault Ste. Marie from Chequamegon Bay—his destination—and only a few white men had ever traveled that far. The weeks wasted before he'd gotten his trading license had cut his time short. If this trip was delayed or slowed any more, he'd never make it to Chequamegon Bay before the winter freeze.

It would be a hard, long drive to the west, he thought, made a thousand times more difficult by the presence of this woman. He tried to imagine her negotiating the treacherous hills and narrow ledges of the long portages around the waterfalls, teetering on her heeled leather boots. She'd be battered and bruised in the birch bark canoes as they were poled upstream against the raging currents. She'd be useless weight, unable to carry any of the goods during the portages or paddle the canoes over calm water. She'd cry when mosquitoes feasted on her pale, exposed skin; she'd complain about sleeping on the cold earth; she'd cause endless delays. She was a noblewoman, for God's sake! Weak and pampered and utterly new to this country. He wanted to leave civilization behind, not carry it with him in the form of a well-bred wife. He'd give her two, maybe three days on the voyage before she screamed to come back to civilization. Then what would he do with her? He'd be too far away from Montreal to spare anyone to escort her back to the settlements. She'd be dead weight, a hundred pounds of whining, crying, complaining Frenchwoman.

Then an idea came to him, as swift and straight as an arrow and just as lethal. His body flinched when it came, for the arrowhead was poisoned with guilt.

He couldn't. He couldn't.

Damn it, he'd left her in Quebec, with Marietta and Philippe, in the one part of New France that had become civilized over the past few years. She'd been as safe there as any woman could be in the new world, especially now that the Iroquois were at peace with the French. And so he'd rationalized that he wasn't abandoning her, as he'd left another Frenchwoman behind once before, not so long ago. . . .

He squeezed his eyes shut. By God, why did they come here? Why would these women, these frail swan-necked creatures, leave the security and ease of France to hang themselves about the necks of the men of Quebec? What did the new world give them but danger, the threat of starvation, of cold, of a hard, rude life of labor? For men there was the freedom of the uncharted forests, the challenge of the unknown; for women there was nothing but grief and drudgery.

He blinked open his eyes and glared at her, the lilted, defiant chin, the level gaze. She'd thrust it upon herself, the willful aristocrat, for not staying in Quebec. He'd warned her . .. he'd warned her of the dangers, yet still she wanted to go. He could not let her slay and wreak havoc on his plans, so he'd let her join him—for as long as she lasted.

Then God save them both.

"Whatever you're planning," she said, "I don't like it."

"Yes, you will." He released her abruptly. "I've changed my mind. You'll come with me."

She rubbed her forearm where he had grasped her. "After all that fuss?"

"It's in your best interests to stay, but you're a stubborn woman." His gaze traveled over her intimately. This, at least, wasn't a lie. "Stubborn and beautiful. Far too beautiful to be left alone in Quebec while I'm wandering in the interior."

"Ah. So you're taking me just so I won't give you horns."

"You underrate your own charm."

"And next spring?" she asked boldly, ignoring the compliment. "Are you still planning to annul this marriage when we return to the settlements?"

He lifted a brow. She was far too smart, far too sharp for an innocent daughter of the petite noblesse. He could lie outright, but he sensed she would suspect such an abrupt about-face.

But that kiss . . . that kiss had unnerved her. He would use it to his advantage.

So he planted his hand above her head and leaned closer to her, covering her with his shadow while the candlelight flickered gold on the rough-hewn log walls. Her pupils constricted, her nostrils thinned as she inhaled deeply. He felt his own blood surge at the aroma of her perfume, rising from her skin, her hair—French scent and woman-scent. "Nine months is a long time for a husband and wife to be alone in the wilderness, cherie."

She pressed back against the door, suddenly breathless.

"Spring is hundreds of nights away. Anything could happen between now and then. You may decide I'm a terrible husband."

"I'm convinced . . . already."

"Then you'll be the one screaming for an annulment next spring, not I." Her lips pouted so invitingly that he had to restrain himself from kissing her. "You took me by surprise this evening." He forced the lie between his lips. "I want to think about this annulment."

Her eyes flickered, narrowing. "What caused this sudden change of heart?"

By God, it was too bad she was his wife. Beneath all these prickles was a passionate woman, and he would love to clip off the thorns and make the rose bloom, just for him. His gaze swept from the cascade of her copper curls to the toes of her booted feet. He lowered his voice to a whisper and told her another truth. "You, my wildcat, are not what I expected."

She blinked at him. He saw surprise, hesitation, and suspicion reflected in her lucid green eyes. Her will was wavering. She was swallowing the bait. He pushed one step further, hating himself even as he did it.

"Have you ever gambled, my wife?"

She frowned, confused by the sudden change in topic. "Charity houses don't allow gambling."

"You're gambling now, as am I. I hadn't considered taking you with me, not only because you were ill, but because Frenchwomen never travel into the interior." He leaned closer, so his mouth was only a breath away from hers. "It can get lonely out in the wilderness, with no one but the Indians and my men for company. A Frenchwoman would be a welcome companion ... if she could withstand the rigors of the journey." He couldn't resist any longer. His lips brushed her tip-tilted nose, then, with the softness of a bird's wing, brushed her lips. They seemed to blossom beneath his touch. He forced himself to pull away. "That's where you must gamble. It's a long, difficult journey. I can't make the decision for you. You alone must decide whether you are willing to face the risks.'' And the consequences.

"I came here to be your wife, to live in your home,'' she argued. "I'll go."

He smiled into her sparkling eyes, a smile that he knew was more of a grimace. She was a bold, willful creature, a fool. Andre wondered how long she would last through the rigors of the great North American forest, how long it would take to break her spirit. He stifled the guilt he felt for having gone to such lengths to have his way. But she'd brought it upon herself; the consequences would be her own.

He pushed away from the wall and watched the golden candlelight flicker over her features. "We're leaving at dawn. I'll make arrangements with the innkeeper to get you another room."

"Oh, no." She wrapped her fingers around his arm. "I'm staying right here with you."

He felt a heavy rush of warmth to his loins. "Such an eager bride."

"Did you think I was going to let you escape in the middle of the night and leave me here alone?"

The room was stifling again, but it was a different sort of closeness, the kind that urged him to draw nearer to her, to reduce the world to two warm, willing bodies in one soft bed. He needed a woman. He wanted this woman, he was honest enough to admit. Andre forcefully reined in his desire. He had to get away from her now, before he made a very serious mistake.

"Trust me, my lusty wife." He slipped her hand off his arm and kissed her fingertips, one at a time. Then he bowed, sweeping his hand out as if it held a feathered hat. "I wouldn't leave you behind for all the beaver in Quebec."

He was too damn handsome.

Genevieve paced in her room, rubbing her clammy hands up and down the linen sleeves of her shift. She was alone in this tiny room in the back of the inn, alone in the dim indigo light of predawn, but she felt as if she stood in the midst of a Parisian marketplace, knife tight in hand, limbs tense, waiting for a Victim with a heavy purse to slice, her body poised to race away like the wind.

She had spent the night pacing this room, trying to calm herself enough to sleep. Her instincts roared like thunder. Long ago, she had learned never to ignore the prickling at the back of her neck, the tight knots of her belly, the silent screams inside her head, yet now, when the prickling had turned to needlelike stabs, when the knots of her belly had solidified to stone, and when the screams grew so loud that her ears rang, she knew she must do exactly what every sinew of her body warned against.

She must trust a man who grinned like one of the gargoyles carved into the stone of Notre Dame.

Falling to her knees, she groped along the floor of her room and searched for her scattered clothing. She told herself she was just dressing in preparation for another confrontation with her husband. She told herself that morning was nearly here, because she had heard the first birds peeping outside the walls of the inn, and there was no reason to tarry. She told herself that if she stayed in this room any longer, she'd wear the floorboards down to dust.

Genevieve sat back on her shins and clutched her bundle of clothing tight to her chest, closing her eyes against the voices warring inside her head. The icy cold of the floorboards seeped through her thin shift and chilled her legs. It took every last dram of her will to stifle the urge to run away from this inn, to run like the devil away from that man. But she had come too far to escape like a coward. She reminded herself that nothing awaited her in Quebec except the battle for an annulment ... an annulment she wasn't even sure she could win without his presence, and if she failed, she'd be forced to wait nine long winter months in another woman's house with another woman's children until he decided to return to Quebec to set her free—and thus risk the vague but terrifying possibility of discovery. That would get her a quick enough annulment, she thought with a fresh shiver, and a swift and brutal return to Paris as well.

But if she stayed here with this man with eyes like a lion's, if she stifled all her screaming instincts, then she would have what she had crossed an ocean to obtain: a home. A home. A place of her own where she could be safe, warm, and protected from the world. All she had to do to make it hers was to follow this sly-smiling, heart-stopping rogue of a husband into the wilderness.

She stood up and draped her clothing over the room's single chair, taking a deep breath as the fury of her fear ebbed. There was no question what she would do, but still, someone should have warned her. Someone should have told her that he was young, tall, broad-shouldered; that his chest was muscular and golden; that he had no qualms about brazenly displaying it beneath his open, billowing white shirt. Someone should have warned her about his lazy smile, his roving eyes, his strong, hard hands; someone should have warned her that he was not the gentleman she'd expected.

Genevieve fumbled with her rose-colored bodice, slipping her arms into the sleeves as her instincts threatened to overwhelm her anew. When he had drawn near her last night, with that smoky look in his eyes, everything she had planned to say during the trip from Quebec to Montreal had melted like butter on her tongue. She had had no time to fight— no will to fight—when he engulfed her in his arms and kissed her.

She jerked the laces of the bodice closed tightly across her chest, then dragged her skirt off the chair and stepped into the folds. A bubble of humorless laughter slipped through her lips at the irony of it all. It had been her first kiss. He 'd sensed her surprise, and he'd probably mistaken it as innocence.

Her cheeks burned for the hundredth time since she'd entered this tiny room. She should be thankful. She knew the price she had to pay for the protection of a husband: She'd have to submit to the man's fumbling lusts. She'd long steeled herself for that.

But Andre hadn't grasped her greedily, he hadn't pawed her with rough hands or scratched her with ragged nails. And when his arms had tightened around her and his lips had suddenly parted, her entire body had jolted with a shock of something she'd never felt before, and her heart had raced and tumbled as if she had been running away from the royal orchards with a skirt full of ripe apples. It had scared her to death. She wanted no part of that feeling; she didn't understand it, she didn't trust it.

Genevieve whirled and paced back and forth across the room, the wooden floor icy beneath her bare feet. She reminded herself that the kiss had taken place before he'd realized she was his wife, when he'd thought she was nothing more than a whore looking for a companion for the evening. After he'd discovered the truth, he had looked at her as a well-dressed bourgeois might look at manure caught on the heel of his boot: He had spent the rest of the night trying to kick it off.

Until he bared his teeth in some semblance of a smile and agreed to take her along with him.

She pulled her stockings off the back of the chair, plopped down on the edge of the bed, and thrust her toes into the worn wool. She didn't have to be the most perceptive woman in the world to know that he didn't want this marriage. If he did, she wouldn't be sleeping in a windowless room on the other end of the inn. Rather, she'd be tight between the sheets with him, in the midst of the "marital duties." Genevieve stifled the strange feeling rising in her belly. Better for her that he didn't demand those favors yet, but it simply meant that he didn't want a wife, for she knew better than most women that all men craved the lifting of a woman's skirts with blind, mindless heat. There had to be another reason why he had agreed to take her with him into the wilderness. A dark, deceptive reason.

Have you ever gambled, my wife?

She tied the garter at her thigh with a jerk. Genevieve remembered the gambling halls of the
Cour des Miracles
in Paris, the hot, dark rooms where men risked their money and their lives, and women bet their faded charms on the turn of a single card. She remembered the drunkards who risked the bounty of a day's begging on the clatter of the bones on the paving stones.

Oh, yes
, she thought, her eyes narrowing with secrets,
I've gambled, my husband
. She had gambled enough to recognize Andre as a dangerous man. She imagined that Marie Duplessis's Musketeer would be Of the same ilk—roguish, charming, devil-may-care, full of promises but empty of conscience. Men like that had abounded in the books that were hidden in Mamaris library, the books Genevieve had spent many a night reading by the flickering light of a fragrant candle. And now she faced one in the flesh. During the course of a single evening, Andre had manipulated her like a puppet at the fair of Saint-Germain.

She should know better. Genevieve vowed not to let him surprise her again. Her stomach curdled like overheated milk as she pulled on her leather boots and laced them up. She was acting like a weak-kneed little fool, letting her emotions and her fears overrule her common sense. She didn't know what Andre was planning for her, but she knew the dice were weighted in her favor. She was gambling that once she reached their new home, this silver-tongued fur trader could be manipulated into giving her what she wanted most: the protection of his name and his wealth, the security of his house, and most of all, the knowledge that she would never—ever—be set out on her own again.

Nine months was a long time in the wilderness, a long time for a husband and wife to live like celibates in close quarters. If their unlikely marriage was consummated, then her future would be secure.

The past would be gone . . . forever.

Genevieve stood up and smoothed unsteady hands over her skirts. She clutched the handle of her case. The sooner they started on this voyage, the sooner they would reach their new home and the less time she would have to falter like a coward. Straightening her bodice, she strode out of the room. The door swung shut loudly behind her, echoing in the silent hall.

The darkness reeked of brandy and stale sweat. She headed blindly down the hall, trailing her hand along the wall as a guide. She stumbled twice over prone bodies, then continued ahead. It took a few minutes for her to find Andre's door, and when she did, she rapped on the wood and waited.

No answer. No shuffle of linens, no grunts of sleepiness, not even the patter of footsteps.

She knocked again, this time more insistently. The door gave way under her fist. Startled, she stared at it for a moment, then pushed it wide open.

The room was empty. An inky blue light spilled through the cracks of the wooden shutters, splashing stripes of color across the twisted linens. The covers lay half on the bed, half on the floor. Andre's pack was missing from the corner.

The stinking son of a poxed whore
.

Genevieve strode in and searched the room for a note, a message of any kind, tearing the linens off the mattress. He had sounded so sincere when he said he wouldn't leave her behind! Short of sleeping in the hall outside his room or throwing herself upon him, she'd had no choice but to take him by his word.

She whirled and raced down the stairs to the common room. Ignoring the sleeping innkeeper slouched behind a small counter, she stormed across the room and barreled through the door.

A diffuse bluish light bathed the shore. A breeze ruffled the inky black expanse of the St. Lawrence River, rippling the pale light gleaming on the waves. The bank swarmed with activity. Most of the long, narrow boats that had littered the shore the evening before were gone. A long line of men, hefting sundry kegs and bales, trudged westward, parallel to the row of compact wooden houses that formed the settlement of Montreal. Their laughter drifted over the breeze and broke the heavy silence of the early morning. Genevieve searched for Andre's silhouette, but she couldn't see a feathered hat or a wide-skirted coat among the men on the banks. She watched them disappear into the darkness. Beyond, the great western forest loomed, the spiky peaks of the pines stark and black against the indigo sky.

He was gone.
She suddenly saw herself, standing in the mud outside this Montreal inn, clutching all her worldly possessions in her arms and staring out toward the wilderness.
Abandoned again.
She had no idea where he planned to go after Montreal. She'd been told that this was the last settlement in this country, straddled against the enormous expanse of wilderness. Beyond these well-fortified stores and warehouses were nothing but forests and savages, and no roads but those forged by men like Andre. Her fury grew.
Coward
. Why didn't he grant her the annulment and end this marriage before it had ever begun?

She straightened her shoulders. She would get her annulment. If she had her way, she would get her annulment before the week was out.

"Madame Lefebvre?"

She started and turned around. The driver of a cart that had pulled up in front of the inn leapt agilely off the wooden seat and strode toward her. Only one person could have told this man her name.

She lifted her skirts from the mud and marched to meet him. "I suppose he sent you to. . . . Oh!"

Her case fell with a thump to the mud. She recognized the deep lines that fanned out from his brandy-colored eyes, the only similarity between the Frenchman she had faced last night and the savage apparition now standing before her. Andre's shaggy mane of fair hair—which last night had been covered by a curled periwig—was now tossed back haphazardly from his wide forehead, falling straight and unencumbered to his shoulders. Fringe hung from the sleeves of his form-fitting deerskin shirt, belted low and reaching mid-thigh. His hand rested easily on the butt of a pistol, which jutted from a beaded sash, accompanied by the hilt of a dagger. Below the hem of his shirt his thighs were naked.

Naked
.

Her breath caught on a gasp. All the restless virility, all the repressed animal grace she had sensed last night, lay raw and exposed before her. She had the distinct feeling that she was staring at her husband— her real husband—and that last night she had been fooled by a wolf in sheep's clothing.

And there was a dimple in his buttocks.

"Having a change of heart, my wife?" He glanced at the case at her feet. "Last night you were screaming like a brandy-crazed squaw to come with me."

He was clever, very clever, trying to make her look as if she were the one escaping. "So the pot calls the kettle black! I went to your room to find you and you were gone, slipped away like a thief, leaving no note, no message."

"I wish I had been there to reassure you." A sly, dangerous smile slipped over his lips. "But I had business to take care of, and I didn't expect you to wake so early."

"Are you sure you didn't just forget me?" Her glance dropped to his bare, sinewy thighs. "As you forgot your breeches?"

He bent one knee to show her the fringed tube of deerskin that covered his leg from his knee to his ankle, held up by thongs that gartered somewhere below the hem of his shirt. "They're called leggings. You'd best get used to them. All my men wear them." His smoky gaze slipped lazily over her. "And you're not an easy woman to forget."