Bartered Bride Romance Collection (9 page)

“I must find her.” Edouard grabbed a lantern. He did not have time to stand talking. Why did women try to talk everything into the grave when a man could be
doing
something?

“You will.” Mama nodded. “And I will wait up with warm blankets and hot coffee.”

Edouard set out with Papa and Jacques to the bayou’s edge.
Oh, my sweet Josée, I am so sorry to have caused you pain. Please, bon Dieu, do not take her away from me
.

Chapter 9

A
pirogue. The boat smelled of fish, but at the moment Josée could not think of a better thing to find. She did not know whose boat it was or how it had come to be in her path in the water. She tore the encumbering skirt from the bodice and leaned onto the side of the pirogue. With a heave, she swung her legs in their waterlogged pantaloons onto the floor of the boat.

She was out of the water, no longer feeling at its mercy as the rain drummed down. In the dark, she reached around to see if she could find an oar or even a pole she could use to maneuver to the shore. Nothing.

Battered by rain, Josée hunkered in the bottom of the pirogue and cried.

A wild thought struck her.
You could float away to the next town. Start over…
. She could go far away and teach in a school.
Stop it
.

Acadians, with their language, were not welcome everywhere. If she stayed among her people, Edouard would find her. Did she want to be found?
Oui, except …

Le bon Dieu had let her marry Edouard. If He was all-wise and all-knowing, He knew this would happen, this fiasco with Celine. Josée found no joy in that knowledge. Despite their troubles and childish disagreements, she had begun to look forward to her future with Edouard. Until now.

What had happened with Edouard and Celine? She could remember seeing Celine about to kiss him. She closed her eyes and turned on her side to keep the pelting rain from hitting her eyelids.
Think harder
. Edouard. He’d had his hands on Celine’s shoulders, his arms straight out in front of him.

He’d been trying to hold her away.

Josée sat up straight at the realization then screamed when a drape of Spanish moss touched her neck. She slapped at the air around her head and yanked the end of some moss from whatever tree she had passed under. The coarse, fuzzy moss made a shawl to block out the chill. Wind moaned in the trees as the storm roared on. She did not know how long she lay there in the dark, begging le bon Dieu to let the storm end.

Bone-jarring shivers set in as Josée recalled her anger at Edouard. Tonight she had not let him explain himself, but when had she ever let him speak? She always wanted him to listen. She realized she needed to apologize. She huddled down in the pirogue to find relief from the storm’s chill.

The wind and rain lessened, and Josée sat up again and squinted through the darkness. She would never tell a scary tale to the younger LeBlancs again, should she ever get the chance to tell them another story.

A rustling, close at the edge of the bayou made her freeze, yet her pulse hammered in her throat.

Edouard held the lantern aloft and his rifle over his shoulder. Papa and even Jacques tromped along farther down the bayou and called out for Josée. But the rushing water and occasional clap of thunder covered up the sound of their voices.

He would find her. Not Papa, and especially not Jacques.

Josée was probably frightened, cold, and unsure of where she was. Edouard refused to think of the water claiming her like it had claimed a child one spring. He would not imagine a gator dragging her under in the dark. That had happened to him before, and even with daylight shining into the muddy waters, Edouard had felt like he was dying. He had been strong enough to fight the animal off and get away. Josée was not.

Le bon Dieu would take care of her. Edouard refused to believe that God would turn his life upside down with a wife only to rip her away from him when he learned to love her. The darkness did not scare him, because he knew this bayou well.

Then Edouard stopped a dozen paces or so from the bayou’s edge. Shallow water from the brimming bayou swirled over his boot tops. He thought he heard a scream.

“Josée!” He ran, spraying up water that sparkled in the lantern’s light.

Edouard saw her inside a pirogue tilted against the stump of a cypress. A gator growled, mere footsteps away from her, likely disturbed by the water and a pirogue drifting into his shallows.

“Edouard!” She squinted at him where she hunched in the pirogue, just beyond the circle of the yellow light. Then she glanced into the shadows. He saw her reaching for a broken-off cypress branch, thick as a man’s leg and just as long.

“Don’t move!”

She grasped the branch with both hands, not taking her gaze off the gator. The animal’s tail started to curl. Edouard took a step toward them.

“Ooo-eee!
Brother Gator!” He moved the lantern in an arc, hoping the gator would turn this way. “I am here! Come, fight me! It will be more to your liking.”

“No, Edouard!” Josée crept from the pirogue as the gator turned to face him. The gator’s head cocked to one side, as if it were unsure of whom to approach first.

Edouard set the lantern down on the nearest patch of grass that peeked over the water. “Josée, don’t move.” He readied his rifle. When he moved his foot, he kicked something solid. He glanced down. The lantern had fallen onto its side.

In a flash, the gator came for him. Josée screamed like a wild woman. Edouard fell onto the mud. The gator whipped its tail around and clubbed him with it. Gasping for breath, Edouard reached for his gun. He glimpsed Josée, hitting the gator with her cypress branch as if she were beating a rug.

The gator whipped its tail again, knocking Josée to the ground, before the beast fled to the water and disappeared.

Edouard crawled to Josée, who had rolled onto her side. “We were more than he wanted to fight with tonight.”

She nodded, her normally sun-browned skin pale by lantern light. She sat up and wrapped her arms around her waist. Tears streamed down her cheeks along with the rain.

“Mon amour
, I am so sorry.” He reached for Josée, pulled her onto his lap, and held her while she cried. Even with her matted hair and torn clothing, he thought her beautiful.

“I’m sorry, too.” She leaned back and caressed his face. “I didn’t mean to fall in and worry everyone. I was going home, and then this wagon came, and—”

“Shh.”
He placed his hand over her mouth, a mouth he very much wanted to kiss. But he would wait until they were back inside the cabin and warm once again. “Let us thank le bon Dieu for saving us and go home.” After signaling to Papa and Jacques with a shot from his rifle, Edouard picked up the lantern, and they started on their way.

Josée never wanted to let him go. She did not know how far they walked through the night to get to the cabin. She waved at Papa LeBlanc and Jacques, who headed to the big house. Edouard told them to tell Mama LeBlanc that
he
would take care of Josée.

He whisked her into the cabin and lit the fire while Josée slipped out of her wet clothes and into her chemise. Her breath caught in her throat. When they had left for the fai do do, she knew they had grown closer, in spite of their bickering like rooster and hen. Tonight, safe at home, her stomach quivered at the thought.

“Warmer?” Edouard approached with a blanket.

“I’m better now.” She tried not to let him see her shiver.

Edouard took her hand. “I am sorry about what happened earlier. I did not realize it was Celine under that tree….” He glanced at the fire, and Josée made herself wait for him to continue.

“Then she kept comin’ towards me. I had to hold her off like a gator. I was trying to get Mama or someone else to help her, and then you appeared.” He pulled the blanket around her shoulders.

“I am sorry that I did not let you explain. I only knew how bitter it must taste for one’s heart to break—”

He fairly crushed her in an embrace and gave her a kiss that she never wanted to end.
This
was what she had longed for while out in the darkened waters. The shelter of her husband’s arms and knowing he loved her with his whole heart. Edouard kissed her again, something she knew she’d never tire of now that she knew what a kiss was like.

They sat before the fire and shared the blanket. Edouard poured coffee for them, and Josée sipped hers at first. Then she hurried and burnt her tongue, so she waited until the brew cooled.

“Edouard, I must ask you something. What did you mean earlier, when you said le bon Dieu saved you?”

“When you were missing, I was angry at the thought of losing you. I do not always understand you, but you are my world now.” His eyes glittered in the firelight. “Then I realized I had been wrong ag’in, as I had been about Celine. When I lost her, I thought I had lost my world and had no reason for joie de vivre. Not that I love you less than I once loved her, but I hope to love you better, my sweet Josée, and love our bon Dieu most of all.”

“He is good to us, isn’t He?” Josée ventured another sip. “Even with the bad that has happened, we can trust Him to watch over us.”

“That is true.”

Josée set the cup on the hearth. She stroked the scar on Edouard’s cheek with one finger and shook her head. “I also meant to say, when I had time to think on that bayou, I realized you were doing nothing except trying to keep her away from you. I grew so angry because I knew how you had loved her a long time ago. I should have known how you truly felt now, though, because of how you held me on your lap on the way to the fai do do.”

Then she stopped talking, because Edouard covered her lips with his. After the kiss, which ended too soon, she sat there, saying nothing.

“Well, that’s one way to quiet you.” His dark eyes twinkled.

She smiled at him. “In that case, mon amour, I’ll make sure I always have something to say.”

Epilogue

J
osée sat back on her heels after pulling a handful of weeds from her garden and watched her
enfants
playing in the sun. Francois and Mathilde giggled and clapped. Francois, happy and singing; Mathilde, quieter like her papa. They kept their mama busy.