“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.”
“Obviously.”
“I can’t watch you always, though looking at you now …” He released the tress upon her bosom, letting his fingers graze the swell of her breast. “I can think of only one thing I’d want to do more.”
Genevieve drew in a deep, ragged breath. She saw something, bold and unguarded, in his tawny eyes. She’d seen that look a hundred times before. The knowledge came to her, swift and sure, as undeniable as the sound of the wind soughing in the pines above their heads.
He wants me.
She hadn’t expected this, not yet. She’d expected him to avoid her until he was sure she would make it to that chewywagon place; she’d expected him to watch her like a hawk during the trials and tribulations of the journey, to test her, to judge if she were, worthy to be his wife. That’s why he’d brought her out here, she’d concluded after a day of thought. Yet here he was, on the first day of the voyage, alone with her in the woods, staring at her as if she were some sort of succulent dessert.
I’m supposed to want this, to submit to this. The voices she had heard earlier this morning clamored in her head, but they were dull now, muffled by some other, stronger sound, something new, something that she had never heard before. It was a primitive music, unfamiliar and yet familiar, strange and potent, full of sensation and emotion, rising from a primal source, deeper than any instinct. It had no words, no voice, no reason, and it surged in her from a place far too distant and far too deep for her to control. She stared at the tall man before her, watching the stripes of light illuminate his hair, the fire grow in his eyes, and Genevieve knew that somehow he was the source of this new feeling.
She smelled the damp, smoke-ripened skin of his shirt, saw the sudden gleam of his eyes as she dropped her hand from where it lay protectively against the laces of her bodice. Words rushed to her lips, words she knew she shouldn’t say. But she found herself thinking that it was right to encourage him, that once their marriage was consummated all would be secure, all would be right, and her battle would be finished, even though she sensed in her heart that there was more to this than she could yet understand.
She dared to reach for him, to finger the frayed fringe of his sleeve. “We could stay here for a while,” she whispered. “The men wouldn’t interrupt us.”
A muscle moved in his cheek. His nostrils flared. He reached out and buried his hand in her hair, lifting it so it was lit by the last ray of the sun. Then he let it slip, tress by tress, through his fingers. “Such a brazen bride.” His voice was tight, controlled. “You’re supposed to be frightened, little Marie, not staring at me like this.”
She slid her hand from his shirt. “Don’t call me that.”
“You are a bold wife,” he murmured. “Too damned bold for your own good.”
“No. Not… not that.”
Genevieve dropped her gaze. Perhaps she was being too bold. She had to be careful … careful. In her veins ran the blood of her mother—that had become clear enough in Paris. But that was not what bothered her. This was the first time he had called her by her false name, and it jarred against her ears.
She had prepared for this long ago, but she didn’t expect to have to lie now, when her tongue was thick in her throat and her senses whirled in confusion. This was too important to her. If she were to be his wife, she couldn’t stand to hear another woman’s name on his lips until her dying day.
“No one ever calls me Marie,” she said with a shrug. “There were a thousand Maries in the Salpetriere.”
“What should I call you, then?”
“Genevieve.”
“Ah, yes.” He traced her cheek. “You nearly wrote that name on the parish register.”
She started. “I did?”
“You were so delirious that one of the other girls had to remind you of your name.” His finger slipped to her mouth and rubbed her lower lip. “It fits you somehow. Marie is such a common name for such an uncommon woman. Genevieve. …”
Time stopped. The whole world condensed to this one place, to this one moment in time. The last ray of light died, bathing them in a dusky blue glow. She heard the river lapping gently against the stones. She heard his slow, ragged breathing; she felt the warmth of his body; she watched a hundred emotions pass through his eyes. Genevieve waited, interminably, for him to lean just that one inch closer and take what was already his.
Instead, he passed his hand over her breast, then cupped its fullness in his palm.
She flinched at first but did not move away. His touch was gentle, not what she’d expected. Shadows swathed his face, and she could see nothing but the glitter in his eyes. He squeezed her breast tenderly. Her nipple hardened against his palm. Her knees felt ridiculously weak and her heart pounded in her chest, though she stood as still as a doe sensing danger. Come, Genevieve, you ‘re no shrinking innocent. Come, come, you know something of the lusts of men. She knew he could feel her heartbeat through the layers of chemise and boned bodice. His hands were so warm on her body, the skin of his callused fingers scraping where he touched the bare skin above the sagging edge of her bodice.
And he touched her gently … gently. No roughness, no harshness here. He kept touching her, making her feel something … something strange. Perhaps a taste of what a man feels when he wants a woman.
She was swimming, swimming … and these were unfamiliar waters.
The silence stretched on. She grasped his upper arms and swayed slightly, as if the solid rock beneath her feet had suddenly broken off from the shore and floated into the river. She wanted to understand these strange feelings. She wanted him to kiss her, as he had once before, and show her ho
w it could be between a man and a woman.
“I thought you would be like this,” he said, his voice strangely ragged. He brushed his thumb against the rigid peak of her breast. “All needles and sparks on the outside, but on the inside, pure molten fire.”
Of course … She should have known that her mother’s blood would flow true through her, that she could never escape it. She pressed her hand against his own, forcing his fingers hard on her breast, reacting by instinct again, even as some secret part of her bucked against the truth. “Andre …”
He swooped down upon her. She welcomed his lips, closing her eyes as they moved over hers, demanding, greedy, hungry. His arms wound around her and crushed her against his solid frame. His unshaven cheeks prickled her skin. He tasted of tobacco and heat and passion, and as he forcefully bent her head back and parted her lips, she went limp in his strong arms. Genevieve felt as weightless as an autumn leaf being buffeted about in a tempest, but before she could lose herself completely, before the winds of passion swept her away, he released her and left her standing, swaying, alone.
“I didn’t come out here for this.” His breath was uncertain as he ran a hand through his long hair. “I came out here to bring you back.”
“Stay.”
“Sacrebleu.” He stepped away as if she had struck him. “Do you want to lose your virginity within shouting distance of the men,” he asked hoarsely, “with your skirts bunched around your waist and your back hard against the forest floor?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She couldn’t tell him that the thought of his strong body poised above hers had robbed her of the power of speech, that it had brought with it a rush of other memories, cold, hard, and ugly, rusted daggers from a past she had determined to forget.
“Jesus!” He turned and strode into the forest. “Come now, back to the campsite … before I fulfill my own damned prophecy.”
***
Genevieve gripped the gunwale of the canoe, her fingers raw and stiff from clamping the lashed edge. All around her the river seethed in fury, whipping up a froth as thick and white as milk as it tumbled down a bed of worn stones. Here and there, jagged edges of bare rock thrust from the boiling cauldron, stopping slick tongues of current and transforming them into torrents of foam. Sudden eruptions of spray thrust high from the roiling surface of the river, then slapped down like thunder. Powerful whirlpools eddied in secluded bays along the steep banks, churning fallen branches and slender tree trunks into slivers of splintered wood.
Heaven in His Arms Page 10