“You are entirely too conceited.” She could only blame herself for encouraging him.
“I admit my vices.” His breath fanned her face. “They are many and varied, as you are wont to remind me.”
“So do you now seek credit for your virtues? If indeed they exist, I have not yet discovered them.” She tried wriggling out of his grip, but he had taken too firm a hold. Then again, should this be their last time together ...
She sighed and stayed her resistance.
A smile parted his lips—a bewitching, breathtaking smile of no mean proportion that could almost make her forget what he himself had referred to as his past transgressions.
“Let me see. Surely some goodness must reside in me.” His brows knit together, and he paused as if in thought. “I am an honest man and steadfast in pursuit of a noble cause. Have I not been so with you?”
She kept her hands clasped together at her breast, a tiny barrier against his proximity. “Being honest and steadfast are virtues to which all men should aspire. Yet not all can claim success.”
“I believe I have been both in my desire for us to reconcile our differences. It is what I have always wanted and hoped you did, too.”
The personal nature of his statement put her on her guard. Instinct bade her deflect it. “I suppose there is no reason why we should not part as friends.”
His lips turned down in a frown. “Do not speak of parting.”
He must know that any day she might sail for the West Indies. She had been led to understand that he sought contact with the privateer willing to take her on as a passenger.
“It is inevitable.” At her words, regret clutched at her heart.
“Inevitable? Perhaps. Certainly not permanent.” He stated this with a conviction that left no room for discussion.
She thought it best not to contradict him. When an ocean separated them, he would come to accept the realization, as she already had, that their paths would not cross again.
He opened his uniform jacket, reached inside and brought out two small leather-bound books. “I want you to have these.” He placed them in her hands. “I have given the devil a bad name long enough. It is time I made amends.”
She recognized them immediately as the slim volumes of poetry that belonged to him. In the Indian village she had spent much of her time reading from them.
“I cannot accept these. If nothing else, they should provide you with a few moments of quiet contemplation.” She tried to give them back but he would not take them.
“Alas, I have no time for poetry. If good fortune turns against me, I shall have no need of it.”
“Do not say that.” With the books in one hand, she gripped his shirtfront with the other. “Do not even think it.”
She felt the steady beat of his heart. Then his long, beautifully tapered fingers closed over hers. His body touched hers lightly, and his eyes shone with the desire she had seen so many times before. She held the volumes against her breast, deeply affected by his heartfelt gift. Had he sought to buy her affections, he would have chosen something of monetary value and not the books he had carried with him since boyhood. She could not hurt him by refusing his offer.
“I shall keep them safe until ...” She bit her lower lip and swallowed the remainder of her thought—that she would hold them until he returned from the war. By then, however, she would be gone.
“Until?” He let her wriggle on her own hook as he often did when he accurately read her thoughts.
For a second she felt nonplussed. Then she made a quick recovery. “I shall keep them until I am an old woman. Then I shall make a gift of them to someone who will appreciate them as much as I.”
“Hmm.” He pressed his lips tightly. This seemed as far as he was prepared to go in calling her a liar. “When you read from them, will you think of me?”
“Yes ... from time to time.” She could not admit how constant he would be in her thoughts.
“What more can a man ask?” As if in answer to his own question, he gathered her into his arms. He bent his head and brushed her lips with a light kiss—one that might have seemed to lack passion if not for his quickening heartbeat. His hands moved up her back, plucking away her shawl and letting it flutter to the floor. Then they glided to her shoulders and along the sides of her neck, lightly skirting her throat to the underside of her chin. She shivered as his roughened palms brushed her skin. For a moment, her legs proved unequal to the task of supporting her body, and it seemed wise to lean into him for support. Her fingers, which lay against his shirt, moved over a chest that was broad and hard as a man’s surely should be; although not so hard she couldn’t feel a muscle twitch under her palm.
“Are you cold?” he whispered against her ear.
“No, not at all.” A film of moisture flushed her skin where his fingers traced a path along her nape and into her hair. He drew her closer.
His body held few surprises. She knew with aching awareness the hard feel of his hips, the muscular swell of his thighs. One hand still clutched the books, while the other slowly glided over his chest, palm flat against the lines and contours with which she had become all too familiar. Shyly at first, she let a fingertip trail along the opening of his shirt and heard the quick pull of his breath. In all the times he had touched her, she had never touched him back. Tonight she practiced no such restraint; tonight she would follow her own heart. His heart, beating just beneath her questing fingers, gave a tiny lurch, a pleasurable sensation with which she had, over the past weeks, become well acquainted.
* * * *
He planted a gentle kiss atop her head. Then his lips brushed her brow and her temple where her pulse leapt in wild response. Next, he explored her ear and teased it with the tip of his tongue before catching the lobe gently between his teeth. Her breath quickened. His lips glided along the curve of her jaw and skirted the fragile ridge to find the pale softness of her throat. With an almost languid movement, he brought his thumb beneath the dainty arc of her chin and tipped her head back. Moonlight flooded her delicate features, and he cupped her face with his hands and planted a brief kiss on the tip of her nose. Her breath, warm and sweet, escaped through parted lips. He captured them with his own in a kiss of tender restraint. Her skin held the fresh sweet scent of honeysuckle and dew, her lips, the rich taste of berry wine and sugared cakes.
He ended the kiss. “Let there be no more barriers between us.” He tilted his head so the side of his face lay against her hair.
“Oh, those ...” She sighed.
He took a half-step back and gazed into her eyes and saw, if not surrender, at least desire. To ensure his cause, he stroked her hair with hands that had never been gentler. A warm flush heightened the color in her cheeks, and he kissed her there in a decidedly chaste fashion, one that did not come easily, but at least came when bidden. Containing his growing excitement, he once again pressed his lips to her hair and breathed in the fresh, clean essence of rose petals.
“I have had a few regrets in my life, but keeping you with me is not one of them.” Then his restraint gave way and his mouth came down on hers in a deep, longing kiss that laid bare his need. If she were to be lost to him, he doubted he would keep his sanity. Her lips parted under his coaxing. Then he broke the kiss, lifted his head and closed his eyes for a second, willing himself not to err in presenting his proposal, which he had rehearsed endlessly all day.
“Ah, sweetest heart ... my dearest heart, my love.” He had never before felt so strong a need to express himself in some way other than just the physical. She sighed, and he decided that was enough love talk for now. With the tip of his tongue, he tasted the warm moisture clinging to the skin where he had peeled aside one sleeve of her gown.
* * * *
Catherine swayed against him. The hand that clutched the books rested against his hip, while the other somehow found its way around his neck. Just to keep your balance, she reminded herself, and refused to pay heed to the voice echoing a single word in the back of
her mind: liar. When he captured her mouth with his soft lips, he renewed those forbidden sensations she felt ill-equipped to banish, the ones that drove her body hard against his.
His splayed fingers became lost in her hair. Then, drawing back, he looked into her eyes.
“Come with me, if only for an hour. There is a house close to the Jesuit seminary.” His words came in a rush. “No one lives there. On the way ...”
She pulled her hand away from him with the alacrity of one whose skin had been burned. Then she pressed it firmly against his lips. Even from him, she had not expected so blunt a proposition. Especially from him. Weeks ago he could have bedded her with nothing to stop him except, presumably, his conscience. Now, time had become a precious commodity; of that he must be very aware. She had forgotten his determination.
She moved back a step. Not to do so would risk her downfall. “Do not ask that of me.”
He removed her hand and held it tightly against his chest. “Oh, my love, I have not put this well at all. What I should have said first is that we can be married by Father Jean at the Jesuit seminary. These are not normal times; the reading of the banns would not be required, only your consent.”
At his declaration, her jaw stiffened, robbing her of speech. Never had she anticipated a marriage proposal. Yes, he wished to bed her as, certainly, he had bedded other women. Whatever had prompted him to propose marriage? If it was truly love, she could not face it, nor could she ever declare hers for him.
“I cannot marry you,” she said in a staunch tone, turning her face away. How could she agree to marry him in one breath and in the next broach the subject of her family’s financial plight? Even if he did not think her calculating—and he would have every right to harbor such a suspicion—her pride had already determined she must never follow the same path again.
“We cannot marry.” She tried to slip out of his embrace, but he drew her in closer.
“Why can we not?” His eyes bored into hers. “Tell me you feel nothing for me.”
Words of denial stuck in her throat like a stale piece of crust. Her decision, which she knew to be right, was irrevocable. She pushed against his chest. Holding her so close, he had to be aware of the stiffness in her body.
“See? You cannot say it. Do not deny that some true feeling for me resides in your heart.”
She strained away from him, refusing to meet his gaze or answer him. Such a course was fraught with danger and would take a stauncher person than she to navigate it. Her future lay not with him, but in England.
A lone candle burned inside the house, left there for her. She felt drawn to it.
“We shall put this aside for now.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips. Then he released her.
She heard the disappointment in his tone and knew she would find it in his eyes as well. If she dared look at him. Averting her gaze, she turned and hurried back to the house
Chapter 23
Much to Catherine’s astonishment, the city of Quebec, perched high above its protective cliffs, continued to hold out, despite renewed efforts by the British to reduce it to a heap of mortar and stone. Each day the shelling intensified. In the waning days of August, Rive sent word that General Wolf had barely a month to successfully conclude the campaign. By late September the fleet would be forced to withdraw, along with the army—which he professed was drastically reduced in number, the men falling victim to dysentery and scurvy. Also—and she could not image how—he seemed privy to the news that the British desertions were rising as their food supply continued to decrease. Of those who remained, barely half were fit for duty. For once the news raised André’s spirits.
Along with Rive’s missives, André shared whatever news he could garner on his rare forays into the town center. It seemed Montcalm and his troops were entrenched and refusing to give battle, and General Wolfe had been forced to commit his men to suicidal assaults. At Montmorency, an apparently vital area that André pointed out to Catherine on a map, hundreds of British lives had been forfeited. The French had opened fire from atop the vertical cliffs where the bulk of Montcalm’s army was encamped. The rain, under which the inhabitants of Quebec suffered as well, had turned the battlefield terrain muddy; still, the British had clawed their way up the cliffs until the steady fire from the French gun emplacements had driven them back.
Catherine found such news disheartening, not because of her British ancestry, but because it distressed her to learn that so many young lives were being lost. It made no difference to her on which side the men fought. She hoped that if Rive was in the thick of those battles the prayers she said for him every night kept him safe.
If the rumors that swirled through the city each day were true, perhaps time favored France and her North American colony. The inhabitants of Quebec appeared capable of surviving the onslaught. When the American rangers swept up and down the river putting farms to the torch, good news followed on the heels of the bad: the colony continued to be supplied by the few French ships able to slip through the British blockade. This greatly bolstered the morale in the St. Clair household—along with the news that even Wolfe’s edict forbidding the inhabitants to take up arms under penalty of death was met with derision; boys and men continued to fight alongside the experienced French forces.
However, Quebec and its inhabitants still paid a heavy price. André reported that in parts of the city, flames roared out of control. On more than one occasion, Catherine saw great billows of smoke that portended ill for the city. André also reported that huge furrows had been gouged out of the streets and roads, making navigation extremely hazardous. At that point Lise forbade him to venture far from the house. Lately, they learned the citizenry had fled in increasing numbers, fearful that the routes out of the city would be completely cut off. It had become an increasingly familiar event for Catherine to see carts pitching and weaving under the piles of household belongings as they traveled the streets, the horses urged on by grim-faced men and women determined to escape the ever-increasing bombardments. The route leading to the wharves became ever more crowded with the Seigneurs and their families who had secured passage on one of the few French ships due to return to the home country.
Catherine’s own plans to escape to the West Indies had come to naught. When Captain Desault had finally been located, he lay seriously wounded, his ship set afire and scuttled in the river. Her fate was now irrevocably tied to that of the St. Clair’s for as long as they chose to remain in Quebec.
As September dawned, the air became noticeably cooler. Peering through a window, Catherine noticed that the ground, at times, lay under a thin layer of frost, and the umbrellas of green leaves began to turn deep red and mustard gold. The arctic winds, not yet frigid but decidedly crisp, often seeped under the front door and around the window frames. This change required André to pile extra wood—an ever dwindling commodity—onto the fire in the drawing room hearth, the only one kept lit and only by day. By mid-afternoon, on the few occasions Catherine ventured outside, thick streamers of gray smoke belched from a thousand chimneys throughout the city. Obviously, the St. Clair household was not the only one desperately trying to ward off the cold.
During one particularly fierce bombardment, Catherine crouched on the cellar’s earthen floor, her hands pressed tightly to her ears. The thunderous reports of the cannons, each time they fired, seemed louder than ever. The massive beams directly overhead creaked and yawned as if at any moment they would surrender the upper stories of the house in one great murderous avalanche. Bits of stone tore loose from the walls. In the adjacent room, the crash of bottles joined in the din as the last of André’s wine cellar was reduced to ruins.
Alongside Catherine, the St. Clairs huddled together. Lise offered whatever support she could to her husband, whose skin bore a sickly gray pallor, the result of a mild heart seizure he had experienced several days earlier. Marielle clung to her mother’s arm, sobbing quietly.
A fresh volley shook the foundation. The
n another, accompanied by a deafening explosion that snapped one of the overhead beams. It crashed down almost at Catherine’s feet. The flame inside their one lamp extinguished, pitching them into what would have been total darkness were it not for the bands of weak light issuing in from a pair of small windows.
Then everything grew still, save for the squealing of a rat in some dark corner. Catherine’s heart pounded, and she wondered if the shelling had actually stopped or if she were no longer capable of hearing. For the longest time, no one moved. Then she uncoiled her cramped legs and rose unsteadily to her feet. Cautiously, she crept to the foot of the stairs, where she paused and listened for recurring sounds from outside.
“It seems to have stopped.” The silence continued. “Perhaps we had best wait a while longer before returning upstairs.”
“Pray God there is something left to go up to,” Lise cried.
When the silence remained unbroken, they navigated the dark stairs, picking their way through chunks of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. Embers still burned in the kitchen grate, and André lit the lamp and held it aloft. The room lay in shambles, with pots, pans and broken crockery strewn everywhere. In the front rooms, the damage repeated itself. Almost everything of a breakable nature lay in pieces. The worst shock, however, was the sight of the gaping holes where once the window panes stood.
“Mon Dieu,” André exclaimed, “it is a small wonder we were not all killed.”
Lise sobbed quietly as she surveyed the wreckage. Almost all her possessions lay in ruins. She picked up the pieces of a china figurine and hugged them to her breast, while a fresh spate of tears trickled down her cheeks. Catherine felt a surge of compassion, but there was little solace she could offer other than a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and a mumbled, “It will be all right,” which even she did not believe.
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