Untamed (4 page)

Amalie’s belly knotted, as it did anytime she heard mention of MacKinnon’s Rangers. They seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, these men who had killed her father. Although Papa had reassured her that there was no such thing as
chi bai,
she’d begun to wonder if her cousins were right. Perhaps the Rangers weren’t men after all.

Lieutenant Rillieux’s nostrils flared, and he bowed his head in apology. “My regrets once more for your loss, monsieur. The MacKinnon brothers are formidable adversaries, but we will break them.”

“Let us hope so. Perhaps now that the eldest MacKinnon has been released from service, the Rangers will fall under poor leadership.”

“I doubt that, monsieur. Morgan MacKinnon is every bit the woodsman, marksman, and leader that Iain MacKinnon was. It would be foolish to underestimate him. But arrangements have been made. As I said, my men are ready.

Amalie wasn’t ready. She hadn’t forgotten last summer’s battle and feared the prospect of renewed bloodshed. Her grief for her father was still keen, her dreams filled with musket fire and the cries of dying men.

If only the accursed war would end! Life would be free to blossom again in New France. Sails would fill the harbors, bringing not soldiers but men and women who wanted to build homes and raise families here. The towns would bustle with hay wagons and applecarts instead of cannon and marching soldiers. Farmers would return to their fields and orchards, trappers to their forest trails, wives to their gardens and their weaving.

And what will you do, Amalie? Where will you go when the war is won?

Bourlamaque, who was now her guardian, believed that it was past time for her either to take vows and serve Christ or to marry and serve a husband.

“I would see you safely settled,” he often reminded her. “It is my duty to your father, whom I greatly admired, despite his politics.”

But Amalie had no desire to return to the dreary life of the abbey. It seemed to her that she’d drawn her first real breath when, after sixteen years, she’d left its walls. There she’d felt listless, as if some part of her were trapped in slumber. Here at Fort Carillon, in her father’s company, she’d been truly happy. She’d felt alive.

She supposed she ought to marry, and yet in her grief she had not the heart for it. Bourlamaque assured her that a husband and children were the answer to her sorrow, and she knew he believed a swift marriage would be best for her. Still, she had hoped to make a love match as her parents had done. Women were expected to perform certain duties in marriage—to lie near their husbands and to bear their children—and Amalie knew from Sister Marie Louise, who’d taken vows after her husband and children had died of smallpox, that these wifely duties—did a man really mount his wife as a ram mounted a ewe?—were onerous even when one felt affection for one’s mate. To hear the good sister speak of it, childbirth was akin to the tortures of hell.

“I’d rather spend my life kneeling on a cold stone floor than suffer such agony again,” she’d whispered one afternoon as they’d tended the herb garden together. “God demands far less of a woman than does a husband.”

What little Amalie knew of birth seemed to prove Sister Marie Louise’s words true. It was not uncommon for a young girl to be left at the convent to bear a child in shame, and more than once Amalie had been awoken by the piteous cries that marked the throes of labor. Hadn’t her own mother perished in childbed? If Amalie were ever to suffer so, it would be on behalf of a man she loved. She wanted a husband who cherished her and whom she cherished in return, a man who, like her father, would value her opinions more than her obedience, who would see her as more than a helpmeet and the mother of his children, who would truly see
her
.

Certainly, Lieutenant Rillieux, while possessed of many admirable qualities, was not such a man. After her father’s death, he had begun to show an interest in her, pressing his suit with her guardian despite her insistence that she did not wish to be his wife. He did not seem to understand that his disregard for her opinions was the very proof she needed that they would
not
make a suitable match. And so she had pleaded bereavement, feigning confusion over which path to take—that of a novice or that of a wife—and Bourlamaque had relented in his efforts to find her a husband.

Yet she knew her reprieve wouldn’t last. Neither Monsieur le Marquis de Montcalm nor Monsieur de Bourlamaque wished her to remain at Fort Carillon any longer than was necessary, insisting that the frontier was no place for a woman without a husband. If it hadn’t been for MacKinnon’s Rangers, whose lurking presence made the forest around Fort Carillon perilous, Bourlamaque would have sent her back to Trois Rivières when Montcalm had traveled north to Montréal. But the destruction of several supply trains and the loss of almost thirty soldiers to the horrid Scotsmen had convinced him that she was safer for the moment staying at the fort.

What will you do if the British prevail and the war is lost, Amalie?

She could not journey to France, for she knew no one there. Nor would she seek out her mother’s kin, whose customs and language were strange to her. From two different worlds, she seemed to belong in neither.

The thought doused her last spark of appetite. She set her silverware aside.

“You haven’t eaten a bite, Amalie.” Bourlamaque frowned. “Are you feeling ill?”

Amalie had come to feel affection for Bourlamaque, the sort of affection one might feel for a favorite uncle. She did not wish to seem spiteful. “I fear talk of another battle has ruined my appetite, monsieur. Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive.” He smiled indulgently. “We soldiers must do better to govern our tongues in your company.”

Lieutenant Rillieux took her hand, stroked his thumb over her knuckles. “You have nothing to fear, mademoiselle. There is not a soldier at Fort Carillon who would not fight to protect you. Is that not true, messieurs?”

“But of course!” Fouchet and Durand insisted, almost in unison.

Amalie pulled her hand free, tucked it in her lap. “I am not afraid for myself, messieurs, but for the soldiers. Almost two hundred have perished since I arrived last spring. I would hate to see more crosses planted in the earth.”

Lieutenant Rillieux chuckled. “Your concern is to be commended, Amalie, but they were soldiers. It was their honor and privilege to die for France.”

Amalie felt heat rush into her face, and the words were out before she could stop them. “That does not mean France should be wasteful with their lives.”

Lieutenant Rillieux’s smile faded, his gaze boring through her. “And what can a young mademoiselle who was raised in an abbey tell us about the complexities of war? Do go on, for I am most eager to hear.”

She lifted her chin, was about to speak, when Bourlamaque held up his hand.

“Your point is well taken,
mon cher lieutenant,
” he said, “but let us speak of something else. In Paris, we would never be forgiven if we were to persist in speaking of so dismal a topic in the presence of ladies.”

Lieutenant Rillieux bowed his head again. “Ah, quite right, monsieur. I do apologize.”

But Amalie did not miss the flush beneath his olive skin, or the angry press of his lips.

It was Bourlamaque who spoke next. “Père François tells me the medicinal herbs you planted in the garden are thriving, Amalie.”

And so they passed the remainder of the meal in polite but forced conversation, Amalie regretting her temper if not the words themselves. Bourlamaque, Fouchet, and Durand spoke on topics they seemed to think might interest a woman—the uses of herbs, the new vestments Amalie had sewn for Père François, the weather—while Lieutenant Rillieux looked bored.

The last course had just been cleared away when she heard it.

The sharp retort of musket fire.

Then the front door flew open and a young sergeant dashed inside, a look of excitement on his face. He stopped when he saw Bourlamaque and saluted smartly. “It is MacKinnon’s Rangers, monsieur! We have them!”

M
organ knew it was a trap the moment the first powder keg failed to explode.

He’d waited until it was dark. Then with Connor and Joseph to guard the retreat, he’d crept along the riverbank with a small force of Rangers to fire upon the kegs and ignite them. But, though he knew for certain he’d hit his mark and the others theirs, not a single keg had gone up. Now the French were alerted to their presence, and with no explosions or fire to distract them, they would come after the Rangers with their full strength.

“Fall back!”

Even as he shouted the command, the French opened fire—but not only from the walls. At least twenty infantrymen stood on the deck of the ship moored behind them, muskets aimed at the pier below. ’Twas like shooting ducks on a pond.

Morgan and his men were trapped in a cross fire.

“To the river!” He drew his pistol, felt a ball whiz past his cheek, crouched down to make himself a smaller target, peering through the darkness to account for his men.

Killy. McHugh. Brendan. Forbes.

All running back to the riverbank.

Where was Dougie?

Then the forest behind them erupted with musket fire as the combined forces of the Rangers and the Muhheconneok—almost two hundred men—returned fire. They staggered their fire, giving the enemy no chance to breathe, sowing panic amongst the French, particularly those on the ship, who seemed to realize all at once that they were far outside the fort’s walls.

That’s the way, boys!

Morgan took cover behind a battered hogshead, aimed his rifle at one of the soldiers on the ship, and fired, watching out of the corner of his eye as, one by one, his men reached the riverbank and dropped out of sight, Killy cursing all the way.

“Bastard sons of whores!”

But where was Dougie?

And then he saw.

Dougie lay on his back near the stack of kegs, reloading his rifle, a strip of white tied around his thigh. “Go on! Go!”

But Morgan wasn’t about to leave without him. He’d led his men into this trap. He would bloody well get them out—all of them.

He glanced toward the riverbank, saw McHugh, Killy, Brendan, and Forbes nose their rifles over the top of the bank and take aim, ready to cover him. He hurled his rifle, his
claidheamh mòr,
and his tumpline pack to Killy and got ready to run.

And then it came—the Muhheconneok war cry. It rose out of the forest, primal and raw, terrifying the French, turning their attention away from the pier and giving Morgan the chance he needed.

Blood thrumming, he drew in a breath, dashed out from behind the hogshead, and ran a jagged path toward Dougie, barely feeling the ball that burnt a path across his forearm or the one that creased his hip.

“A fine time to get shot this is!”

But Dougie was ready for him, crouching on one knee, his injured leg stretched out beside him. “You’re daft, MacKinnon!”

Morgan dropped down, took Dougie onto his back, and forced himself to his feet. “Och, you’re heavy as an ox! And you stink!”

His gaze fixed on the riverbank a hundred feet away, Morgan ran, Dougie’s added weight pounding through the straining muscles of his thighs to the soles of his moccasins, his heart slamming in his chest.

“You run like a lass!” Dougie shouted in his ear. “Can you no’ go faster?”

But Morgan didn’t have the breath to do more than curse.
“Mac-dìolain!” Whoreson!

Sixty feet. Fifty. Forty.

A roar of cannon erupted behind him, the French firing their twelve-pounders at the forest just as they had last summer, trying to turn the shelter of the trees into a charnel pit. Jeers coming from the trees told him balls had fallen short of the mark—this time.

Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten.

Morgan sucked breath into his aching lungs, drove himself forward, hurling both of them over the edge. They tumbled, arse over elbow, down the embankment to the sand below. No sooner had they landed than McHugh and Forbes took Dougie between them and hurried him along the river toward the forest beyond.

Young Brendan clasped Morgan’s forearm, helped him back to his feet, then hurried after McHugh and Forbes, already reloading.

Killy held out Morgan’s rifle and his pack, a smile on his scarred Irish face. “You bloody daft Scot.”

Another blast of cannon.

Morgan slipped the tumpline over his head, tucked his sword into place, grabbed his rifle, and then began to reload, shouting over the din. “Help McHugh and Forbes! I’ll cover our backs in case those bastards on the ship try to follow!”

“Aye.” Killy turned and was gone.

Morgan got into position, peeked over the edge of the riverbank, picked a target on the darkened deck of the ship, and fired. Reloading quickly, he kept up a rapid fire, glancing over to watch his men’s progress until they disappeared amongst the trees. Then, feeling a rush of relief, he cast one last glance at the fort walls—and felt something strike him in the right shoulder.

Instantly, his right arm went numb, falling useless to his side. Something warm and wet trickled down his chest.

Blood.

He’d been shot.

It was then the pain struck, forcing the breath from his lungs, driving him to his knees.

He heard a shout of victory and looked up to see a French soldier high in the ship’s rigging, musket raised over his head.

So this is how it ends.

The thought ran through Morgan’s mind, detached from any fear.

But no’ just yet.

Unable to load and fire his heavy rifle with one hand, he dropped it to the sand, withdrew his pistol, aimed, and fired, ending the soldier’s celebration. But several other soldiers had climbed into the rigging to see what their comrade’s cheering was about, and before Morgan could take cover, several fired.

A ball ripped through his right thigh, the shock of it like fire and ice.

And Morgan knew it was over.

He fell onto his side, forced himself onto his belly, and tried to crawl for cover, gritting his teeth against the pain.