Heaven in His Arms (9 page)

"A terre!
"

Genevieve sighed in relief as Andre cried out the order to land. The naked savage who stood in the front of the canoe twisted his long paddle and aimed the painted prow toward a rock-faced clearing on an island in the middle of the Ottawa River. She was sorely tempted to lean over the edge of the canoe, dip both hands into the water, and paddle—anything to hasten their arrival on dry land—but she knew if she felt the cold, clear water flowing through her fingers, she'd lose what little control she wielded over her aching bladder.

She shifted her weight and winced. Her legs lay cramped beneath her, but she didn't dare adjust her position atop the wobbly keg. The sound of the river water sloshing against the sides of the canoe, the endless bobbing of the vessel in the current, all conspired to torment her. The men had stopped on dry land only once since they departed from Lachine this morning, and then only to eat a bowl of gritty cornmeal and to pay homage at a rough-hewn church dedicated to Saint Anne. Groaning, she thought about the skin full of clear mountain water she had drunk to wash down the gritty saga-mite. She wouldn't do that again, and by the sight of the squirming men, neither would they. Several times during the trip through the Lake of Two Mountains and up the mouth of the Ottawa River, she had gazed beyond the naked, widespread legs of Andre, standing behind her in the canoe, and glimpsed one of the voyageurs from another canoe passing water over the gunwales. Her presence alone prevented the men on this canoe from standing up, pulling up the hems of their shirts, pushing aside their loincloths, and relieving themselves in the wide, flowing river.

A cool evening breeze kicked up, ruffling the surface of the river, bringing with it the scent of damp earth, pine resin, and mist. They neared the clear stretch of shore, nothing but a bare, flat rock jutting out from a dense growth of scraggly pines. Andre gave the signal and the men made one last stroke. Their paddles clattered in the boat, and before the momentum faded, they gripped the lashed edges of the vessel and sprung out of the canoe into the water. Genevieve gripped her uneven seat as frigid water sprayed over her, soaking into her linen headrail and bodice and running in tortuous rivulets into her cleavage.

By the muffled, collective sighs of relief, she knew the men, waist-deep in the river, weren't waiting to reach dry land to ease their discomfort.

Genevieve glared at Andre, who was paying no attention to her. He was grinning and watching the rest of his colorful flotilla slice its way through the water to the shore. The golden light of the sunset gleamed on the dark blond lock that streaked his hair from his forehead to his shoulders. Soon the men were pushing aside the tarpaulin atop the merchandise and starting to carry the cargo, piece by piece, through the water to the island.

"Well?" she said loudly when her seat became loose enough to wobble dangerously beneath her. "Are you going to leave me here all night, or do you expect me to swim to shore?"

His grin widened as he sloshed through the water to the side of the canoe. "How did you find your first day afloat?"

"Long," she retorted, wondering if he'd chosen the word afloat on purpose. Carefully, she straightened out her legs and tugged her wrinkled skirts from beneath her. "I'm tired enough to sleep on bare rock."

"We'll do better than that." He slid his arms beneath her thighs and back and pulled her against him. She groaned as her hip bumped into his chest, dangerously jostling her innards. "Tomorrow we won't spend as much time on the canoes. There are rapids upstream and we have to portage around them."

Genevieve wished he would stop using words like rapids and upstream. She stared at the dense forest beyond the clearing with a sort of lust and steered her thoughts in another direction. "What's the name of this place?"

"It has an Indian name ... a name your tongue couldn't hold. It means 'Island Surrounded by Flowing Water.'"

She closed her eyes, then opened them again, for the swaying motion of being carried in his arms was dangerous.

"No," he mused, "that's not right. I think it means 'Place in Center of Raging River.' "

She glared at him. He was grinning.

"Or maybe it's 'Where Stream Passes—' "

"It'll be called 'Place Where Frenchwoman Murders Insufferable Husband,'" she interrupted, "if you don't get me to the bank soon."

Andre threw back his head and laughed, his Adam's apple standing out in the thick column of his throat. He clambered onto the slick, rocky bank and released her legs. Genevieve stumbled as her feet touched the solid ground. They hadn't held her weight for hours and were stiff and cramped from the ride, but as soon as she regained her equilibrium, she broke away from his embrace.

Julien handed her her case, which he had carried from the canoe. She gripped the handle in one hand, walking toward the forest that rimmed the tiny clearing.

"You'll need an escort—"

"You stay right where you are."

"It's a big island and you have no idea what creatures inhabit it. If you can't abide me, then take one of my men."

She whirled and peered past him, at the men who labored to empty the canoe. "If I must choose between two philanderers, an ex-Jesuit, a giant, an acknowledged heathen, a naked savage, and you,"' she retorted, "I'll take my chances with the wolves.''

As if to prove her point, he smiled like a wolf. "Then you'd better stretch your legs over there," he said, indicating an area to the right of the clearing, just as The Duke emerged from the woods. "Else you'll end up frightening more than the wildlife."

"The only thing I want to do right now," she muttered, "is water it."

She forged into the woods, her heavy case bruising, her knees with every step. Despite the urge to crouch behind the nearest tree trunk, Genevieve walked through the thick underbrush, pushing aside branches of saplings and stumbling over upraised roots until she could no longer hear Andre's laughter, until she reached the western bank of the island. She tossed her case upon a stone outcropping and burrowed in the privacy of the bushes.

Moments later she emerged, feeling much lighter and far more comfortable than she had all day. She rolled her head to stretch the tendons of her neck and watched as the sun cast its last golden rays through the straight tree trunks, laying stripes of sunlight upon the rocky ground. She tugged on the knot of the linen headrail draped across her shoulders and let the scarf drift to the earth, then pulled on the laces of her bodice to ease the constriction around her chest. She took a deep breath, smelling the scent of the cool, damp forest, the fertile scent of wet, mulchy vegetation, and the more distant odor of camp fires, probably from the voyageurs, judging by the distant thwack of axes upon wood and the bawdy laughter of the men.

Removing the pins that held her chignon at the nape of her neck, she let her hair tumble down her back. Genevieve opened her case and felt around inside until her hand curled about the smooth handle of her brush. She pulled it through her knotted, windblown tresses until they fell soft and shiny to her shoulders. For the first time since she'd left Lachine, she relaxed. It was so quiet here, beneath the shade of the great, swaying pine boughs. The trees towered above her, like tall, straight sentinels, stiff and unyielding, guarding the wild forests. All was silent but for the sighing of the wind in the boughs, the occasional crackle of leaves falling into the litter, the swoosh and gurgle of the river, the splash of a jumping fish. Though during the voyage the men in the canoes had laughed and sang and raced one another over the lakes and rivers, beyond the circle of their flotilla all was calm and peaceful now. Even the canoes slid soundlessly through the water, creaking only when she shifted her weight or the men's paddles clattered against the rims.

Genevieve bent at the waist and shook her hair so it flowed over her head and the ends brushed the ground. The ache in her lower back eased and she felt the pleasant stretch along the cramped muscles of her legs. She hoped her wretched husband had been telling the truth when he'd said that tomorrow they wouldn't be on the canoe all day. She didn't know if she could stand another moment motionless atop that bumpy seat without her legs cramping permanently in a sitting position. He'd said they would be walking, but she didn't dare believe him; Andre lied as smoothly as he told the truth.

She flipped her hair over her head and shook it so it fell over her shoulders. Tossing her brush in her case, she walked to the edge of the river. In Paris, she never would have dared let the muddy, turbid waters of the Seine anywhere near her person, for it was always thick with raw sewage and runoff from the Parisian streets. But this river flowed so swift and clean that she could see the pebbles rolling on the bottom. She knelt and dipped her hands in the frigid water, splashing a handful of the clear, sweet-smelling liquid on her face and drinking the rest out of her palms.

Not since her youth in Normandy had she tasted such fresh, clean water.

As the cool liquid iced her throat, Genevieve stiffened, for she heard the sound of a woman's laughter, as clear as a bell on a crisp winter's day.

But the forest was silent. She sat back on her heels, letting the water drip down her neck. She thought she had buried those memories so deeply that they would never again surface, yet here in the silence of the woods—woods so much more savage, so different from those of her youth—the memory assaulted her, so vividly that her ears still rang with her mother's laughter.

It's the river, she thought, splaying her glistening fingers. The taste of the river water reminded her of the tiny creek that twisted and turned down the rocky mountainside behind her mother's manor house. It reminded her of a hot summer day when she and Maman had decided to walk through the forest, and they had come upon the creek, peeled off their silk stockings, tucked their satin skirts between their knees, and dipped their bare feet into the icy stream. She had done a little courtly dance for her mother along the smooth, flat stones in the creek, and Maman had laughed at her antics.

Maman had laughed so seldom during those few happy days before their world was destroyed.

Genevieve stood up and pushed the memories aside. She wondered why now, after all these years, after all that had happened, she still could remember Maman's voice and laughter as clearly as if they still lived in that ivy-covered manor house in the hills of Normandy.

A thousand lifetimes ago.

She turned around and walked back onto the outcropping, deafened by the memories. Not until she was within footsteps of her open case did she realize she was not alone.

"Hell and damnation!" Genevieve stumbled back. Andre stood in front of her, a tall, brooding figure whose deerskin clothing and bronzed skin merged naturally with the dark, knotted trunks and the fading night-green of the forest.

"I took you by surprise."

She grasped her chest to still herself from instinctively reaching for the dagger wedged in her boot. "How long have you been standing there like a ghost?"

"Long enough to have stolen all that glorious hair from your head, if I were Iroquois."

"What in God's name is an Iroquois?"

"The name of the Indian tribe that claims this territory."

She tried to still her racing heart as she stared at him, dressed in his fringed buckskins, his leggings, and his beaded moccasins. "The only savage in these forests is the one dressed in animal skins, carrying a dagger, sneaking up on me like a thief."

"If you come upon the other kind, you won't live to tell the tale. The French have been warring with the Iroquois for decades."

"What do I have to fear from a tribe of wigmakers?''

"Wigmakers?"

"If they want my hair, they can have it," she retorted. "It's always in my eyes, anyway."

His lips twitched. "The Iroquois take scalps as war trophies."

"Please, not the savage stories again." She sighed as her heart began to beat at a normal level. "The least you could do is not insult my intelligence by telling me those ridiculous tales. And any decent man would have let a lady know he was near while she was in the middle of her toilette.''

"A lady doesn't curse."

"You scared the wits out of me," Genevieve argued. She'd slipped; Marie Duplessis would never curse, but it had been so long since she'd acted like a lady. "Sneaking up on me in the darkness and then just standing there, staring at me."

"It's a pretty site to come upon a Frenchwoman in the middle of the woods, all clean and. . . undone.''

His gaze wandered to where the golden light illuminated the softly brushed mass of her unbound hair, then slipped lower to her damp, loosened bodice and her bare shoulders rising from the ribboned edge. Genevieve became acutely aware of the sagging of the sleeves over her arms and of the cool, damp cloth that covered her suddenly sensitive breasts.

She toyed with the hanging ends of her bodice laces as her heart began to race for a new and different reason. "Why were you prowling around in the darkness, anyway?"

"Looking for you. You shouldn't have wandered so far from the campsite."

"I'm not allowed a toilette in privacy?"

"This isn't Paris." He reached out and took a tress of her hair between his fingers. Her heart leapt at the briefest brush of his callused fingers against her bare skin. "There are no walls to keep out the dangers."