“There can’t be much rigor in setting up my household.” Genevieve remembered the fine embroidery that edged the handkerchief her husband had given her. “My husband, Andre Lefebvre, is a man of means.”
The Reverend Mother puckered her forehead in thought. “His name is unfamiliar to me.”
“But you must know him… . He must have sent several inquiries by now.”
“I’ve received no messages for any of the girls.” At the sight of Genevieve’s stunned expression, the nun added, “It’s harvest time, dear. The men of the colony are working their fields or catching the season’s eels. Your husband is undoubtedly too busy preparing for winter to send a message.”
“My husband is not a farmer or a fisherman.”
“Wealthy men must prepare for winter as well. The last ships are leaving for France, and accounts must be settled, letters must be written. There is much for all of us to do this time of year.”
“If he is busy, then that is all the more reason why I should let him know I am well.” She walked to the desk and stopped across from the nun. Four days had passed since her marriage, four days and not a word? “Let me send a message to him.”
Sister Ignatia warned me that you were stubborn.” Mother Superior pursed her lips. “But, I suppose if he is a wealthy man, he should be able to see to your care himself, and we need every bed we can get. …”
Genevieve sensed victory, but she took care not to let it show on her face.
“You must remember not to exert yourself, child. I don’t want to see you back here within a week.”
Hell will freeze over first.
“I’m sure I have his instructions somewhere.” The nun riffled through a pile of papers stacked on one side of her desk. She removed one, then placed a pair of spectacles on her nose and began to read.
Genevieve tried to peer over the edge of the paper. Her heart quivered in elation. Her husband had a bold, slanted script, but she couldn’t read his words from where she stood. A shiver traveled up her spine as she realized that soon she would meet the man who had penned these instructions, the man with whom she would spend the rest of her life—the man whose home she would tend, whose bed she would share, whose children she would bear. There would be no more hunger, no more fear. The past was over and the future was about to begin.
She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried, for the hundredth time, to remember something about him. The day she had married, her illness had been at its peak. She’d had no strength or inclination to scrutinize the man who had so swiftly chosen her as his life’s mate. Genevieve vaguely recalled the strength of his arm as she’d clutched it during the ceremony, for the floor seemed to buck and roll beneath her feet. She remembered leaning her cheek against the fine wool of his green coat, for the room in which they married had been as stifling and hot as her cramped berth on the ship, and she had been faint from hunger and fatigue. She also remembered the pleasant feeling of being buoyed up in his strong embrace and placed on the cart that brought her to the Hotel-Dieu. But she couldn’t remember his face, his expression. She wished she had a clearer picture of him to prepare her for what lay ahead.
Oh, frippery and folly! Perhaps she still did have a touch of fever, to be thinking such silly romantic thoughts. What difference did it make what he looked like? As long as he could provide a roof over her head and roots under her feet.
“Your husband is a coureur de bois. ” Mother Superior’s face sank into dour folds. “My dear child, I didn’t realize you were married to a fur trader.”
“I didn’t, either.” She wondered why the nun said the words coureur de bois with such contempt. “I remember nothing of the day.”
“Oh, dear.”
Genevieve started as the nun continued reading and pressed her hand to her chest. “What is it, Mother Superior?”
“You were ill the day you married, weren’t you, child?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, vile, vile man!” Mother Superior set the paper away from her as if it were full of blasphemy. She pulled off her spectacles, clattered them on the desk, then curled her gnarled fingers around the polished head of her cane. She rose from her chair and tried to regain her composure. “It is … unfortunate that such a man chose to marry you, my dear child. I fear he took advantage of your illness and the fact that you are so fresh from France.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t, would you, my sweet, innocent Marie?” The nun patted her chest with a trembling hand. “Oh, this wretched place! To send such a gentle soul here, to the untamed wilderness … Men like your husband feast on such innocence.”
Genevieve stilled a scowl. What was the old biddy babbling about? What was in that letter that made the holy sister so agitated? “Reverend Mother, you said you didn’t know my husband.”
“I know his kind all too well.” The nun stumbled as she tried to walk around the corner of the desk. Genevieve hurried to her side and clamped her hand beneath her elbow. Mother Superior wrapped her fingers tightly around Genevieve’s arm and stared at her with piercing, fervent eyes. “You should be warned, child, as much as the news shall pain you. This is a savage place, little Marie, and the men who come here grow savage as well. It’s better that you enter marriage knowing the true nature of your husband’s soul than to walk in ignorance.” The nun’s eyes clouded with tears. “Oh, I shouldn’t tell you. I should let you walk in innocence a little longer. …”
“Tell me.”
“It’s the brandy!” The words burst from the nun’s lips. “It’s that wretched devil’s brew. For every one heathen soul the Jesuits save, two more are lost to brandy. The savages have no tolerance for it; it opens their soul to the demon. Every spring, this hospital is full of men with hatchet wounds, and nearly all of them inflicted by drunken Indians.”
Genevieve controlled the urge to shake the truth from the trembling, aged sister. “What does brandy have to do with my husband?”
“It is the coureurs de bois who sell the brandy to the Indians, in defiance of all the laws against it. No matter how many of the traders the bishop excommunicates, they continue to sell it to the savages.” Mother Superior’s fingers tightened on Genevieve’s arm. “Your husband is one of them, child, one of those men… .”
“Is he excommunicated?!”
“No, but he is one of the coureurs de bois , and they all traffic in that devil’s brew.”
Genevieve closed her eyes so the nun would not see them roll. She didn’t care a fig if her husband sold brandy to the savages. She had broken enough commandments in her lifetime to forgive a graveyard full of sinners—enough to send this nun reeling away making the sign of the cross, if she knew the truth. The Reverend Mother was working herself into a lather over nothing, and she didn’t even know Andre. All the holy sister knew was that he was a fur trader, and she was condemning him on that alone.
He was a good man, she told herself. The fact that he had married her, sickly and feverish, when a dozen eager and healthy women were available to him, proved that he was a man of great compassion.
“Now I know why he hasn’t contacted you, child. He’s undoubtedly roaming in the woods at this time of the year, committing unspeakable sins.” The nun released Genevieve and patted her arm. “It’s best you stay here for a few more days and then—”
“Oh, no!” She would rather drink the putrid waters of the Seine than stay another day in this hospital. “I must see him as soon as possible. How can I contact him?”
“Dear, I’m sure he’s gone by now, at least halfway to Montreal.” Mother Superior fingered the paper and squinted over it. “Yes, yes, see? He was instructed that we contact a Monsieur Martineau in the lower city. You are to stay with Monsieur Martineau’s family.” The nun patted her chest and nodded vigorously. “A good man, Monsieur Martineau, and a fine wife. Three children they have, and she’s due to deliver another—”
“Can’t I just send a message to my husband?”
“D
ear, this is not Paris. We have few horses, no roads, and no men to spare for such a frivolous task.”
Genevieve clamped her jaw tight against a curse. She was tired of delay, tired of waiting, but she supposed she could swallow her impatience for a little while longer. “Very well, then. How long must I stay with them … with the Martineaus?”
The nun rounded the desk and avoided her eye. “Why, until he comes back, of course.”
Something fluttered in her stomach. “When will that be?”
“It depends.” The nun shrugged. “May, June … whenever the ice breaks on the river.”
Her breath caught in her throat. May, June … Eight, nine months. A lifetime. A burn worked its way up her chest, over her neck, choking her with anger.
The paper fluttered on the desk, buoyed by a draft. Genevieve pushed off the nun’s spectacles, snatched the paper, and raised it to the light.
“Oh, Marie!” Mother Superior lunged for her and stopped as Genevieve whirled away. “Your stubbornness will bring you nothing but pain.”
Genevieve read the instructions swiftly, then, stunned, she read the paper again. “I don’t understand this.” She glanced up into the nun’s teary face. “My husband leaves instructions for my … burial.”
“I’m sure he was just thinking of all possibilities.”
“I wasn’t that ill.”
Surely, Genevieve thought, he could tell that she would recover from her illness as soon as she had a few days’ rest on solid ground. She was no frail flower, not Genevieve Lalande. Did he know that in this Hotel-Dieu, just like the one in Paris, death was more probable than life? And if he was so convinced she would die, why had he chosen to marry her at all?
Mother Superior was babbling about brandy and savages and fur traders, twisting the knob of her cane with her gnarled hand. Genevieve tried to make sense of it all, of this unexpected broadside.
“… the number of annulments in this parish already is disgraceful—utterly disgraceful—and all because of the Intendant’s new ruling. It has brought nothing but grief and sin—”
“What ruling?”
The nun started as Genevieve interrupted her. “My dear child, you don’t know about that, either, do you? Such a cruel, vile man! May God show him the face of His anger!”
“What ruling?”
“All single men in the colony must marry within a fortnight of the arrival of the king’s girls.” Tears glimmered in Mother Superior’s eyes. “If they don’t, they’ll be denied trading, fishing, and hunting licenses.”
Genevieve pierced the paper with her thumbnail. The truth slapped her like a frigid wave of seawater crashing over the bow of a ship.
“Now you know, my dear Marie.” The nun’s tears flowed, but her eyes shone with righteousness. “These men are devils, all of them, preferring the profligate life of the savages than taking a good, honest wife. I’m surprised this hasn’t happened more often. I’m surprised they’re not here in this hospital right now, fighting over the pallets of the dying girls, demanding the priest perform the sacrament of marriage before the sacrament of the last rites. Oh, wretched, vile men!”
Ramrod-straight, Genevieve swiveled away. She snatched one of the plums lying in a bowl on the Reverend Mother’s desk and sank her teeth into the reddish-purple flesh. Her mouth puckered from the sour taste but she didn’t spit it out. The sourness fueled her anger. It reminded her that the men who lived on these shores came from the same seed as the men who lived in France. Andre Lefebvre was a rich man, the crudest of the breed. She should have known that here in Quebec she would find the same cruelty as she had known in France.
She chewed the flesh of the plum while the sticky juice ran down her chin. What an idiot she had been to believe that a man would marry for any reason other than his personal gain. The fever must have made her daft. Apparently, Andre Lefebvre wanted a trading license, not a wife, and could only get one with the other. Because of her illness, she’d been swept into the union, and now she was married to the sort of man who freely abandoned his newlywed wife in the hellish halls of the Hotel-Dieu, hoping for her death rather than for her life.
Well, she was back from the grave, Genevieve mused bitterly, sucking another bite of the sour, fleshy fruit. She had come clear across the Atlantic, nearly losing her life in the process, for the chance at a home, land, a family. She had waited too long, worked too hard, and risked too much to let a single man ruin everything.
She would not wait eight months for a resolution. She would not wait another day.
Tossing the plum pit in the bowl, Genevieve clutched a handful of her skirts and hiked them over one shoulder.
“… vile, wretched men…. My dear girl! What are you doing?”’
Genevieve tugged free the ties of a lumpy bag slung around her waist, emerging from beneath the froth of her skirts hefting it in her hand. She clanked the bag onto the table. “I have some money, Mother.”
“Dear child, there’s more gold in your hand than in all of Quebec.”
“My dowry from the king,” she lied. Genevieve scowled at the worn leather sack of gold. The price of a woman’s honor—the price of my honor.
“I will hire a guide with it.” Genevieve yanked her skirts straight and met the nun’s astonished gaze. There was no better way to spend this long-hoarded fortune than by buying the illusion of an honorable future. “I will find my wayward husband and help him see the error of his ways.” A humorless smile slipped across her face. “Surely you must help me in this holy cause, mustn’t you, Reverend Mother?”
Chapter 3
Andre gathered the last of his papers and tossed them on the bed. He rose from the chair and strode to the window of his sparsely furnished room, peering between the ill-fitting slats of the shutters toward the Montreal shore. Pulled up on the bank, several birch bark canoes lay belly up in anticipation of the morning’s departure, the last caulking with pine pitch drying in the air. A half-dozen voyageurs hunkered around a campfire nearby, smoking pipes and passing around a bottle of brandy.
The fire cast a rosy glow upon the faces of his hired men, illuminating out of the shroud of darkness a twinkling eye, a flash of laughter, a companionable grin. He would give a dozen beaver furs to be out there, breathing in the scent of the pinewood fire, drawing the stinging tobacco smoke deep into his lungs, feeling the river breeze on his face. This tiny room stifled him with its odorless silence, with its low
roof, soft mattress, and smothering woolen covers. He had stayed out of the room all day long, but come evening he had no choice but to sleep in this coffin. As leader of this voyage, there were limits to how companionable he could be with the men he had hired.
Andre pushed away from the window. He yanked his sweat-stained brown silk doublet off his shoulders and tossed it on the floor, where it joined the wig, shoes, and cravat he had discarded the moment he had entered the room. He paced at the foot of the bed in shirttails and breeches, forcing himself to think of the details, anything to take his mind off the walls closing in on him, the flickering of the candlelight off the solid log walls. The cornmeal and peas had been bought and bagged; the hatchets, glass beads, knives, brandy, blankets, and other trading goods had already been packed in tight ninety-pound packages. He had hired and paid out one-third wages to two dozen voyageurs, most of them work-hardened, tough, dependable men. The canoes were pitched and ready to be loaded. All he awaited was the dawn.
Finally. All the bargaining, all the delays, all the unexpected new rules in the colony—they were over now. This was his last night in the settlements. Tomorrow he would put on his well-worn leggings and moccasins and return home to a hard, earthen bed and an open sky.
A knock on the door interrupted his musings. Andre glared at the portal. He had finished his business for the day. The last thing he wanted to do was haggle with a merchant over last-minute prices or argue with the authorities over the behavior of his drunken voyageurs.
The knock came again, more persistent.
>
“It’s open.” Andre swept his wig off the floor and jammed it on his head. “And you’d best have a damn good reason for disturbing my peace.”
The door swung open. A blur of pink swept in like a gust of wind. The creature suddenly stilled and fixed him with a fiery, green-eyed glare. With a start, he realized that the guest was a woman.
A beautiful woman.
“Andre Lefebvre?”
Surprised into silence, he stared at her. He had expected Tiny with some problem concerning the canoes or the men, or, worse, a merchant with bad news about promised cargo . .. not a woman with green eyes and pouty red lips and copper-colored hair that gleamed in the candlelight, falling in windblown curls over her shoulders and … Dieu! Though she was corseted tightly, no amount of boning could crush those curves. His shock abated; his thoughts whirred. He wondered if the innkeeper had sent her up to him, but one look at the fine rose-colored ribbon trimming her pink bodice told him that this was no public woman. Courtesans of this caliber didn’t live in New France.
“You must be Andre.” She slammed the door behind her. “No other man would be so shocked to see me.” She clattered a woven case upon the floor between them, like a nobleman tossing a gauntlet in challenge. “I’m not a ghost, monsieur, but I have come to haunt you.”
Haunt, little firebrand. He’d never exorcise such a vision from his bedroom. Who the hell was she? She seemed to think he knew her. Andre peered at her features in the darkness, frantically trying to place a name to a face. When he was last in Montreal, he had spent a few passionate evenings with a young widow before he returned to France. What was her name? . .. Charlotte? Colette? It didn’t matter. This couldn’t be the widow of Montreal. The woman tapping her foot before him couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty years of age, which meant when he was last in Montreal, she couldn’t have been more than sixteen—and he avoided sixteen-year-olds as religiously as he avoided Indian stews.
“Well?” She crossed her arms. Her mass of reddish curls quivered about her face, and the point of her booted foot tapped, lifting the soggy hem of her skirts. “Are you going to stand there and stare all night, or are you going to congratulate me for recovering from my illness?”
Heaven in His Arms Page 5