The Pelican Bride (18 page)

Her expression lit in a most gratifying way, chasing away the stormy expression in the sea-colored eyes. “I assure you I’m quite capable of arriving at my destination on my own two feet. But if you’re going to the tavern you may walk with me.”

“As it happens, that’s exactly where I’m bound.” He bowed and offered an arm. “I’ll be honored to accompany you, if you’ll promise to slow down enough for a man of my advanced years to keep up with you.”

Laughing, she laid her hand lightly upon his forearm. She seemed glad of his support, since the road contained more bumps and ruts and puddles than straightaways. She was quiet for several paces, then looked up at him. “Thank you for not asking questions.”

He studied her upturned face. She was a bit freckled and sunburnt across the nose, due, no doubt, to her cap hanging by its strings down her back. But she looked healthier than most of the other Frenchwomen he’d seen about the settlement, many of whom were still recovering from the fever. He was glad to see that her cheeks had filled out, and her simple blue dress no longer hung
on a skin-and-bones frame. She was still far from plump, but she possessed delightful curves in all the right places.

To have a woman walking beside him, clinging to his arm, the top of her head reaching just above his shoulder, fed his masculinity in a manner he’d almost forgotten how much he enjoyed. When her lips curved and a dimple appeared in her cheek, he realized he’d been staring without answering.

“I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t talk to me at all,” she said with a hint of laughter in her voice.

“I told you before that I’m no beau,” he said ruefully. “Forgive my lack of conversation. But I can’t help wondering why you’re in such a hurry to reach the tavern.”

She bit her lip. “I have . . . business with Monsieur Burelle.”

“Ah. Then your wonderful bread is for sale to the public.”

She blushed. “Yes. It became necessary to find a way to support myself and my sister. It seems the commander has laid down an ultimatum. Either get married or face starvation.”

The realization that his brother was correct, that she had not contracted a betrothal, lit his veins like a fuse attached to a bomb. Desperately he tried to douse the flame. “Forgive me, mademoiselle, but you agreed to this arrangement, yes? Are you surprised that Bienville grows impatient?”

“Not . . . precisely surprised.” The profile she presented to him was sweetly elegant, the beautiful full lips a bit pinched. “It’s just that the situation here was very much misrepresented to all of us.” She stopped, swept out a hand to indicate the muddy, broken street, the rudely timbered cabins with their thatched roofs and unglassed windows. Chickens and pigs ran free, leaving their waste. Rotting tree stumps had been left like decaying teeth, and mosquitoes, flies, and gnats swarmed everywhere. “If this were all, I could say to myself, well, at least you are better off here than you were in France. But I find that I cannot bring myself to unite with any of the men who have thus far proposed marriage.” She looked up into
his face. “I am a realist. I don’t expect poetry and romance from men who are scratching out a living in this difficult place. But I can’t help looking for a God-fearing man of honesty and integrity and moral strength. Where are those men, Monsieur Lanier?”

I am that man.
The words trembled on his tongue. “You are right to insist on such qualities,” he said instead, somehow holding her gaze. “My brother and I are about to set out on a very dangerous mission. If we return, and you are not—”

He stopped, knowing that he had all but set off the explosion inside his heart when her feelings were a complete mystery. This was no simple, passionate Indian girl to woo with beaded necklaces and wildflowers.

To his astonishment, her eyes filled and her lips began to tremble. “Monsieur Lanier—”

“Tristan. My name is Tristan.” He wanted to hear her say it.

“Tristan,” she whispered. Her gaze fell, and he felt as if a gift had been taken away. “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, much less in a matter of months. We could all die of yellow fever next week.” She swallowed. “But if you should return, and I am still here, I . . . oh, dear, I don’t know what you were going to say.” Snatching her hand away from his arm, she whirled and took off toward the tavern once more.

He caught up in one stride, recklessly caught her wrist and stepped in front of her. “Yes you do. You know exactly what I mean, because I see my heart in your eyes. Look at me, Geneviève. Let me see.”

“This is wrong. I can’t do this.”

“What do you mean?” He laid his palm against her cheek, tucking his thumb under her chin to lift her face. So soft. So fragile. He felt like he held a wild bird.

Her face crumpled, eyes squeezed tight. “I’m not what you think I am.”

He couldn’t help laughing. “What do you think I think you
are?” They stood in the center of the town, out in the open where anyone could see, but somehow he didn’t care. He felt like uttering a war whoop.

Then she did look at him, in her eyes the passion he’d suspected in full view, but overlaid by temper and fear. “You think I’m a convent-raised flower of French semi-nobility. Tristan, my father was a baker. I’ve never even seen a convent. I can’t tell you the rest because I—because I can’t.” The tears spilled over and ran warm into his palm. “So please don’t ask me.”

“Why not? Do you not want to marry at all?”

The word was out there now. Insanity. He didn’t want to marry again. But he wanted this woman with his whole heart. And he was a man who paid for what he took.

Geneviève dragged in a breath as if she had been punched in the stomach. “Oh, dear God.”

He knew that was a prayer rather than a curse. “Answer me, Geneviève.”

“I don’t know.” She stared at him, the tears still running. She sniffed childishly, making him smile. “You said you don’t want a European wife. Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged.

They stared at one another, moments ticking by, until her lips curved upward at the corners and he found himself smiling too.

“This is ridiculous,” she said.

“Yes. So let’s be ridiculous together. Neither of us particularly wants to get married at all, so we might as well marry each other and save trouble for everyone concerned.”

Her smile faltered. “I told you—”

“Yes, yes.” He rolled his eyes. “I will be getting a very bad bargain, and I shall be sorry if I settle for an unreligious commonwoman who makes the best bread on three continents.” Absently he turned his hand and stroked his knuckles across her pink cheek. “But as I am a man who craves adventure, all that somehow doesn’t
worry me. Besides, chances are great that after tonight you may never see me again, making this whole argument pointless.”

“Tristan! Don’t say that!” She gripped his forearm. “You must come back—I insist!” She laughed at herself, blushing.

He found himself grinning, completely intoxicated as he had not been for a long time. “I don’t take orders from a woman who is not my wife. Therefore if you wish to have any control over my survival during this mission, there are certain legalities which must be observed.” He caught her hand and tugged her willy-nilly back toward the fort. “I didn’t see any of those useless priests in the chapel, so they are probably at home on the rue du Séminaire. I’m sure Father Mathieu is preparing for the journey with us, and he seems like the least contrary of the three, so we’ll ask him to take care of the formalities.”

“But, Tristan,
now
?”

He looked back to find her trotting behind him, holding her skirts above the muddy ground, her face a comedy of shock, excitement, and sheer bewilderment. Having made up his mind, Tristan couldn’t wait to hold her in his arms, to kiss those sweet lips, to—

He cut off his galloping thoughts. One step at a time. He needed to find Marc-Antoine as well as the priest, because he could not get married without his brother. And Geneviève would want her sister, useless though she might be.

“Now or never,” he said firmly.

For her wedding Geneviève wore the dress she’d worn to Commander Bienville’s dinner, except she refused the corset and left her hair in its usual simple plait down the back. She had been inclined to leave on the comfortable blue everyday dress she’d worn all day, but Madame insisted one only got married once. She thought wryly of Pierre Brossard, who had reputedly married and buried three wives, then made Thérèse Brochon number four.

Still, she felt Tristan deserved some concession to celebration on the part of his bride, however confused and taken aback she might be. As she followed Madame and Aimée toward the chapel, she listened with one ear to Raindrop’s chatter, and almost dispassionately assessed her own feelings. Her skin felt electrified, every nerve atingle, her heart beating as if it would leap out of her throat. Life after childhood had thus far brought circumstances which wrought fear, rage, and heartache, but she could not remember feeling anything close to this . . . delirium.

Tristan Lanier had chosen
her
.

Oh, there was so much she didn’t know about him. She was crazy to fling herself into matrimony on so little information. But the things she did know reassured her that her instincts had not failed. He was a man of principle, strong enough to stand up against the force of Bienville’s personality. He had established his own property and quietly worked it alone, when weaker men seemed to either cave in or explode in rage at the commander’s vacillating and sometimes ill-judged policies. Tristan’s brother respected and admired him, and little Raindrop, who had emerged as quite a clever judge of character, clearly worshiped him.

And then there was Father Mathieu, whose opinion she trusted implicitly. When she and Tristan had finally run the priest to ground in the brickyard, he had been all but incredulous at their request that he perform their marriage ceremony. But after a moment’s thought, he’d smiled broadly and wrung Tristan’s hand. Then he’d caught Geneviève in a fierce hug. “My dear one, this is such a very good thing, and I hadn’t hoped—” Clearing his throat, he set her away from him briskly. “Yes, I approve, and yes, I’ll marry you. Give me half an hour to go home and brush off the dust. I’ll meet you in the chapel.”

Tristan had left her to locate his brother, while she went to Madame’s to collect Raindrop, Madame and Monsieur L’Anglois, and Aimée. Now here they were at the gallery steps outside the chapel,
and she was about to become a married woman. She would be Madame Lanier, who could bake and sell bread if she wanted to.

Aimée dropped back to wait for her as she reached the gallery and caught her hand to speak urgently in her ear, “They say he lived with the Pascagoula and married an Indian woman, you know that, don’t you? He’s as much a savage as any of them.”

Geneviève tried not to let her sister rattle her. “
They
say lots of things that are neither true nor kind. Monsieur Lanier—Tristan—is a man of substance and good sense. We shall deal well together.”

“Have you told him about—”

“No,” Geneviève answered sharply. “I will talk to him about it tonight.”

“Oh, that will make scintillating pillow talk.” Aimée made a small derisive noise. “By the way,
cherie
, I am a wanted felon in France. You will never be able to go back—”

“Aimée!” Stung by her sister’s hateful words and tone, Geneviève stepped back. “What is the matter with you?” She could almost swear she saw jealousy in the blue eyes just before Aimée lowered her gaze.

“I only want you to be careful,” Aimée muttered, turning away. “Never mind, let’s go in. They’ll be waiting for us.” She slipped into the chapel, leaving Geneviève to stare after her, hands pressed against her knotted stomach.

After a moment, she inhaled a deep breath and forced herself to enter the chapel. Her gaze went immediately to Father Mathieu, dressed in formal cassock, standing behind the altar with the prayer book open. Madame was fluttering about, moving furniture and adjusting the altar cloth for no apparent reason, while Raindrop stood, hands behind her back, examining an ivory crucifix which held a place of prominence on a beautiful mahogany side table. Aimée had sidled up to Marc-Antoine Lanier, who leaned against a wall like a prisoner of war.

Then she found him, her bridegroom. Standing in front of the
altar, moccasins braced wide and arms folded, Tristan filled her vision as if there were no one else in the bare, shabby little room. He was a tall man, and the open-collared white shirt broadened his shoulders, drawing her eye to the strong column of his neck. His beard and mustache had been recently trimmed, but his hair fell in ragged curls to his shoulders, and there were those slashing, piratical eyebrows. . . . She might have turned to run but for the look of sheer terror in his eyes.

She couldn’t help smiling. To her delight, his expression lightened, his posture relaxed, and she went to him like a compass needle drawn north. For the first time since her father’s murder, she felt as if the morrow might bring happiness.

Watching her friends take husbands had not prepared her for the surreal experience of standing beside Tristan Lanier, listening to Father Mathieu read those solemn charges, promising to love and obey this man until death claimed him or her. As she took the communion bread from his big callused hand, she noted again the scars across his knuckles and wondered what had caused them. She had scars of her own that were going to be very hard to explain. Perhaps her husband would not see them. She had only a vague idea of what to expect in the marriage bed, but it was too late to ask Madame. The bread stuck in her throat as she swallowed it, and the knot of anxiety that had left her midsection began to twist again.