Heaven in His Arms (8 page)

"Flatterer." She curled her hands into fists. "I've just taken you by surprise."

"Faithless, aren't you?"

"Faith is for God. I trust no man who has a grin as toothy as a wolf's and morals as loose as a cat's."

His teeth gleamed in the predawn light. "I see a night's sleep hasn't dimmed your spirit."

"I've been awake all night thinking about what you were scheming...."

"You'll regret that by sundown. We've got a lot of distance to travel." He gestured to the men working along the shore. Three of them heaved the last narrow boat upon their shoulders and headed down the muddy bank toward the edge of the encroaching forest. "We'll be taking those canoes into the interior. We can't launch here because there are rapids just upstream of Montreal. We're going to cross the island and launch at Lachine to avoid them."

Lachine
. She frowned. He was toying with her, as if she knew nothing about geography. She'd had enough lessons forced upon her by that wart-faced old priest Maman had hired as her tutor.

"China," she said pointedly, "is rather far for these oxen to walk."

"Lachine is the name of the launching point. It's only a few leagues away." A wildness lit his eyes. "We're going much, much farther than Lachine. We're going to places you've never heard of before, places that aren't even mapped. Are you afraid?"

"No." Genevieve winced as soon as she said the word. This man believed she was a pampered daughter of the petty nobility, who should be frightened by the unknown. She tilted her chin. "Why should I be? You're escorting me, and we have a home somewhere out there, don't we?"

"Mmm. In a place called Chequamegon Bay." He nodded to the empty cart behind him. "I spent the morning looking for a cart and oxen to borrow. You can ride with me to the launching point. It's no carriage, but it's better than walking."

Genevieve glared at the cart. She felt like a ship at full speed whose wind had been sucked out of its sails. He hadn't escaped without her but rather had made arrangements for her comfort, which only confused her more.

"You won't be needing that." He reached for her case. "I'll make arrangements to store it in the inn."

She tightened her grip on the handle and pressed it close to her side. "I'm taking it."

"
Sacre
!" He curled his fingers over hers and pulled the woven case, rattling the contents. "What do you have in there?"

"My dowry from the king. Pins and needles and scissors and a comb and two knives—"

"You won't need all that frippery. All you'll need is a blanket to sleep in."

Her fingers tightened around the handle. "I'll need it to set up a household."

"There's no room for it in the canoes," he argued. "We're packed to the gunwales."

"If there's room for me, there's room for it." Genevieve wrenched it from his grip. "It is all I have in the world."

She hated herself for sounding like a poor waif clutching her last crust of bread, but she had already left more than half of Marie's clothing at Marietta's, and she had no intention of parting with what remained of her meager possessions. "I gave up many things when I decided to come to Quebec," she explained, her chin lifting. "These few comforts are too important to me to leave behind, and I'll need them to set up a household."

Andre opened his mouth to argue, paused, then shrugged his shoulders, the fringe of his shirt fluttering with the gesture. "You'll have to carry it. My men have more than they can carry as it is."

"Fine."

He reached for her case. This time she gave it to him, making sure her fingers didn't come into contact with his rough, callused hands. He slung the case in the back of the cart with a clatter. "Are you always this garrulous in the mornings? Or is it just the lack of sleep?"

"It's a lack of trust."

"That's no way to start a marriage."

"Neither is making funeral arrangements for your wife."

He grimaced, then rubbed his stubbled chin. "It looks like I've got some explaining to do."

"The only thing I want to hear," she said as she picked her way toward the cart, lifting her skirts from the mud, "is about this chewywagon place."

"Chey-way-megon. I'll tell you all about it on the way." He climbed on the cart and held out his hand to her. "Come. I want to be on the water before sunup."

A lock of his hair, more golden than the rest, fell over his forehead. He confused her, this handsome man. He looked half savage in those smoke-ripened, well-worn deerskin clothes—what there was of them. He switched faces like an actor switches roles, and she wondered which face was really his. Then she remembered last night's devilish grin.

Suddenly, from the marrow of her bones came the scream
Run! Run!
so strong, so compelling, that every muscle, every sinew in her body, vibrated with the plea.

"Second thoughts, wife?"

She stared up at him, the primal fear whirling in her gut. She felt the softness of the mud beneath her boots, the cool river breeze on her cheeks, and realized she was staring into the golden eyes of a lion, the eyes of a predator . .. the eyes of the only man who could fulfill her dreams.

Or destroy them.

Her fingers found their way into his outstretched hand. Andre smiled that slow, wolfish grin as she settled beside him in the cart. He picked up the reins and snapped them over the oxens' backs. To Genevieve, the oxens' hooves against the earth sounded eerily like the clattering of rolled dice.

***

The morning light cast lacy shadows upon the forest floor when Andre first glimpsed the water of Lake St. Louis through the dense forest growth. As he urged the oxen on, the cart reeled over the deeply rutted earth, its wheels sinking into the mud and plowing new furrows among the older tracks. The rickety boards squealed in complaint, creaking against one another as the vehicle plodded its way beneath the feathery pines.

"I trust you can handle a boat better than you handle these oxen," his wife snapped as the cart nearly keeled over, only to right itself as it found even ground. "If this cart were a boat, we'd have drowned by now."

Andre suppressed the grin of triumph that tugged at his lips. He had discovered, several leagues back, that the only way to stop this woman from barraging him with questions was to make the cart sway dangerously over the rocky, uneven ground. As it stood, she had already wheedled too much information out of him. She knew the voyage was going to take six or seven weeks—and it should, if weather permitted and there were no injuries, wolves, bears, or Indian attacks en route, all of which he didn't mention. But she was dangerously close to discovering that neither he nor anyone else on this voyage had ever been to Chequamegon Bay, and he knew nothing about the "home" she asked so much about . . . even if it did exist. He was close enough to the launching point to smell the spruce wood fires.

Nothing—not even a stubborn, willful French wife—was going to come between him and this expedition now.

Genevieve clutched the edge of the seat, the bones of her hands standing out against the soft kid of her gloves. Her green eyes were fixed forward, on the uneven road. He had wondered last night, as he tossed and turned in his empty bed, if this woman would be as beautiful in the bright of day as she was by candlelight. Now he could see the freckles speckled over her tiny, tip-tilted nose; he could see the full, luscious curve of her lower lip. The dawn light reflected off her hair, and the tendrils, escaping her chignon and struck by the golden rays, shone like fine, clear brandy. Too brassy to be considered lovely, too unruly to be considered elegant. She was not a beauty by the standards of many—his Provencal mistress would have called this woman gamine, a little chit of a country girl—but he found an irresistible allure in her freshness, in the sensuous disorder of her hair.

She straightened and pointed to a large stretch of sparkling water that came into view as they rounded a copse of pines. "Is that it? Are we at the launching point?"

Andre saw his three largest gaily painted canoes floating in the placid water of a small bay, low and heavy with merchandise. His chest filled with anticipation. "Welcome to Lachine."

The spicy scent of the camp fires grew stronger as they entered the clearing. A bluish smoke hung heavy beneath the boughs of the sheltering pines. A few small piles of kegs and barrels littered the shore, marked in black letters with their contents: saltpeter, shot, arrowheads, kettles, glass beads. His two dozen men milled about in the clearing, heaving the bales upon their straining shoulders, sloshing through the water to deposit them in the canoes.

Tiny had done well in his absence, Andre thought as he scanned the shore. The men were ready to launch.

"Strange name for such a place." His wife eased her grip on the boards of the seat as he pulled the cart to a halt at the edge of the clearing. "Why is it called China?"

"The man who used to own this land was named La Salle," Andre answered absently, counting his men. "For years, he stopped everyone returning from the interior and asked if they had heard anything about the route to the China Sea. The voyageurs called this place La Chine, after him."

"Is he here now?"

"No. He sold the land so he could go and look for the sea himself."

She raised both brows. "Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.'''

From the faded memories of his schoolboy days in France, Andre remembered the quote as coming from some classic poem. Greek poetry and philosophy were common enough subjects to study as a boy hut were exceptional in a woman, even a well-bred noblewoman. "There is no great genius without a touch of madness,'" he countered, quoting from what he remembered of Aristotle. Andre gestured to the great expanse of water before them. "It's a big country, but somewhere it has to end."

He leapt off the cart and sauntered around to help her down. When he rounded the oxen, he saw his wife jump off the cart of her own volition, sending up a spray of mud in the process and exposing a well-turned pair of booted ankles. She glanced at him, startled, then brushed past him to stare at the scene on the shore.

"Are all the boats yours?"

"Canoes. Everything you see here is mine." He pulled her case out of the back of the cart, realizing the sooner he got her into the canoe, the better his chances would be of actually getting her into the interior before she got a good look at his men and had second thoughts. "It's all going with us."

She scanned the bags of cornmeal, the pots, the tolls of birch bark, the oilcloths. Her eyes narrowed as she turned to him. "There's enough here to take to that mythical China Sea of yours."

"So the
Onontio
has finally come!"

The voice bellowed in the clearing. Andre glanced over his shoulder. Tiny emerged from the water, his meaty thighs bare above his leggings. Andre smiled at the timely interruption and strode to meet him.

"After yesterday," the giant roared, "I thought you'd be rousing us from our beds before the first birds awakened."

Andre tilted his head toward his wife, who followed in his wake. "I ran into a delay at the inn."

"Jesus! Andre!" Tiny pulled off his red cap and bowed to her as she reached their side. "Not three weeks since you've stepped foot on Canadian soil and you've captured the finest filly in the settlement. By the passion of Sainte Therese, where'd you find such a sweet morsel?"

"Certainly not in the brandy-house you spent the night in," he retorted, backing away from the path of the giant's breath. "Are all the men here?"

"All but the Roissier brothers. I sent Simeon to drag them out of the widow Toureau's house." Tiny gestured to her with his cap.

"Are you going to be a boor, old man, or are you going to introduce me to this heavenly vision?"

"Madame, I'd like you to meet my most experienced voyageur, Tiny."

He saw the surprise on her face. There was nothing tiny about Tiny. His shirt alone was the product of the skin of three stags, stretching across his shoulders and belly and barely covering his privates.

"The real name's Bernard Griffon," Tiny corrected as he reached for her hand. She gave it, belatedly, then tugged it away as Tiny leaned over and kissed it. "He forget to mention that I'm as strong as a black bear and can carry four hundred pounds of cargo without breaking a sweat. ..."

"He's also a shameless liar," Andre added.

"I've never said a lie in my life!"

"Ah, yes," Andre mused, "as saintly as the blessed Virgin ..."

"Let's not be committing blasphemy, not with a lady about." Tiny turned his attention back to her. "Tell me, sweet creature, where have you been hiding from me, and where did this ruffian find you?"

She tilted her head. "So I'm not the only one who thinks he's a ruffian."

Tiny roared. "The woman knows to call a rat a rat when she sees one!"

"I wouldn't insult the rodent."

Tiny's bushy blond brows raised high on his forehead, "Tell me there are a dozen others just like you! Where can I find them?"

"The same place where this ruffian found me— in front of a priest."

His yellow teeth gleaming, Tiny glanced sideways at Andre. "Going to Mass, now, are we? Praying we'll make Chequamegon Bay before the first frost?"

Andre shook his head. "Making marriage vows."

"Making vows? Well, there's a fine way to—" Tiny stopped mid-sentence. His blue eyes bulged above the high, ragged edge of his bushy blond beard.

"I hope the canoe isn't fully loaded." Andre thrust her case into Tiny's belly, then released it and slipped his arms around his startled wife. He heaved her high in his arms. "We've got a bit of unexpected cargo."

Tiny opened his mouth but no sound came out. He grew blue around the lips, as if he had swallowed his tongue, then he emitted a faint croak.

Andre laughed aloud and splashed into the water, leaving the giant sputtering soundlessly behind him. His wife's arms slipped around his neck, warm and soft. He felt her breath on his cheek when she spoke.

"You took great pleasure making a fool of him, monsieur."

"I've waited twelve years for an opportunity to make that blowhard speechless."

"Your men are gaping like visitors to a menagerie,''. she murmured. "Did I mention that they look like they belong in cages, dressed as they are in nothing but feathers and beads and skins?"

"Shocked?"

"Surprised. I didn't expect so many." Her eyes narrowed: "Is there something you've neglected to tell me, husband? Are we off to find the China Sea like that madman La Salle?"

"So full of suspicions." His grin widened, for he was knee-deep in water and this woman in all her skirts was tight in his arms. Success smelled good and he was close enough to taste it, even with the bitter edge of guilt. "I wouldn't mind having my name bandied about after I'm rotting in the grave, so if I happen to stumble upon the China Sea during my travels ..."

"Now you're making me think you're mad."

"I am not mad, most noble wife, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.' "

"Quoting the Scriptures won't convince me otherwise," she argued. "You didn't tell me this was such a large expedition. There must be thirty men here."

"You sound disappointed." He leaned over and toppled her onto the oilskin, toward the rear of the canoe, where the French flag in white with gold fleur-de-lys snapped in the wind. "Did you think we'd be alone?"

She tilted her head so her hair slipped off the column of her white throat. "I suppose there are always ways," she said, her voice dry and husky, "for two people to be alone in a crowd."

He released her abruptly. The canoe wobbled as she searched for a steady seat atop the uneven floor of boxes, bales, and kegs.

"For a lady," he said hoarsely, while she settled her bottom in the center of a keg and curled her legs to one side, "you have a disconcerting habit of speaking your mind."

"You, my husband, are as slippery as an eel." She lifted her hands to her hips, then thought better of it as the canoe wiggled beneath her. "Now, convince me again that we're going to this chewywagon place."

"Chey-way-megon," he corrected. "We'll have little time to go any farther west." He nodded woodenly toward a young man clutching the end of the canoe. "Julien, make sure she doesn't drift away. I'll be right back."

He walked away from her, still reeling from the effect of a few whispered words. Andre couldn't remember a time when he'd ever turned away from a willing woman—least of all a beautiful one. Now he was faced with five or six days in the wilderness with this bold creature—a wife who offered herself willingly—and he hadn't touched a woman in months. She was a dangerous temptation. He'd best get himself a willing squaw, he thought, for his sake and his wife's, for she had no idea that she was tempting her own ruin.

"Married, my ass!" Tiny, fully recovered from the shock, thrust Genevieve's case into her husband's belly as Andre reached the shore. "By all the flaming martyrs, you almost fooled me! How long are you going to leave her bobbing out there?"

"It's no trick."

"By sweet Saint Anne ..."

"The Intendant's ruling, remember? I married her right after the last ship arrived."

"What did you do, pluck her off the ship before it even warped into its moorings?" Tiny squinted against the sun to get a better look at her. "The fops at Quebec would never let such a fine piece slip out of their net."

"I'll have time enough to tell you the story after we're far away from this place. She's running over with questions and I can't keep her still."

"Shouldn't have left her out there with that boy."

Andre turned around and saw his wife, dressed in her rose-colored, beribboned, boned dress atop a savage-looking canoe in the middle of the wilderness. Her bright hair was close to Julien's dark head. Andre splashed quickly back into the water. As he neared the canoe, he heard Julien's words.

". . . it's made out of bark from a birch tree. The bark is stretched over some cedar beams, and it's all sewn tight with spruce root and caulked with pine resin so it's watertight. There's not a nail in the whole damn—excuse me, ma'am. It can hold almost two thousand pounds of weight without cracking the gum or sinking, and it's light enough to be carried—"

"You'd better hold the canoe tighter than that, pork-eater," Andre interrupted, using the common term of derision for men on their maiden voyage into the wilderness. He turned to Tiny, who followed behind him, and whispered, "Shut that boy up until we're out of here."

"Eh, pork-eater," Tiny bellowed. "Are you ready to start your first voyage?" A gleam lit his eyes as he approached the young man. "Are you ready to live hard, lie hard, sleep hard, and eat dogs?" Tiny placed one meaty hand firmly over Julien's head, the other on the gunwale of the canoe. He dunked the boy in the cold lake water and smiled at Andre's wife. "Didn't mean to frighten you, ma'am." Julien sputtered and struggled beneath the giant's grip. "You see, the boy needs to be baptized, it being his first trip and all."