Heaven in His Arms

by Lisa Ann Verge

  “My father nearly went bankrupt building this thing.” Andre leaned against the sugar maple, scowling at the house. “Used every able-bodied man from Quebec to Montreal to cut and transport the stone. He wanted a manor house in Quebec, a true seigneurie, finer than the one he’d lost in France.” He gestured to the bristle of wild land. “He was planning to terrace the gardens before he died, like he heard King Louis was doing in Versailles.”

  Her mother’s house had been made of stone, strong Norman rock yearly scraped free of lichen. The front gardens had been pruned and shaped into geometrical patterns of bushes and straight-edged hedges, a sharp contrast to the wild Norman woods tumbling out behind the manor. Funny, she’d spent so much more time amid the wild forests than skipping along the straight, pebbled paths.

  She rubbed her damp hands along her skirt. “Can we go inside now?”

  Andre scraped a rusted iron key out of a fissure in the stone sill of the opposite window, then turned it in the lock to creak open the front door. Silt sifted onto his shoulders as he stepped in. He brushed it off, disappearing into the dim interior.

  Genevieve stepped into a hallway and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. In the next room, wood clattered as Andre yanked open a pair of shutters. Golden light sifted through a mesh of dust and spilled through the portal, illuminating a stairway in the hall, with a carved railing that curled up to the second floor. Andre strode past her to the next room, clattering open yet another set of shutters.

  She wandered into the room Andre had just vacated. It must be the air, Genevieve thought, as her breath thickened in her lungs. She ran two fingers up the leafy vines carved into the wooden frame of the parlor portal. A crystal chandelier draped in dusty spiderwebs chimed in a soft breeze, its facets capturing the pale sunlight. The brass of an ancient timepiece gleamed on a mantelpiece of marble, its hands frozen at twenty of two. The chairs were turned gently toward the hearth, awaiting a lady and her basket of needlework.

  She leaned against the portal, her hand to her breast. My God … my God. Not even in the most delirious of her fevered dreams on the ship from France had she imagined there’d be such opulence in this New World or that she’d be the mistress of it. Andre had never mentioned anything; he’d had her thinking it was a tumbled-down old place. She stumbled deeper into the room, in search of a place to sit … and saw the harp standing in the corner.

  Her breath hitched in her throat. Somewhere deep in the house, Andre cursed as he struggled with yet another set of shutters. Genevieve clutched her chest and approached the instrument, daring to stretch out one reverent hand and touch the gilded frame, daring to lightly strum the dusty strings.

  A shaky laugh of wonder fell from her lips. All this time, and the strings rang true … or perhaps her ear was not what it had been, in those days when Armand taught her and Maman sat by the window watching with the softest of smiles on her lips. Genevieve ran her fingers over the basket of roses embroidered on the stool. A faint perfume, sweet with remembrance, billowed from the cushion as she sat upon it.

  She raked her nails across the strings, then probed her memory for a tune. The music swelled in her, that lovely melody… . She could not remember the name, but Genevieve found herself plucking the strings, rolling her hands in that familiar way, yearning to hear that song again, to remember Maman and those golden days, when the world was gentle and simple and enclosed by an iron gate and a series of hedges, when she was still innocent, her mind pure and refined.

  But all that emerged from her stroking was a screech of chords, a twanging mockery of the music of angels that she remembered. She released the strings abruptly and curled her hands into fists, to stop the cacophony. A sob heaved to her throat. What was she thinking, touching this instrument after so long? Did she think she could revive the skills of her childhood after all that had happened? Did she really think she could bring back the dead?

  She blinked open her eyes and scanned the room, something sinking in her breast. This was a lady’s house, the hearth of a fine family name. She did not belong here.

  “You never told me you could play.” Andre stood in the portal, his hands loose at his sides.

  “You have an ear of tin.” Genevieve jerked up with a swish of skirts and turned her back to him, feigning interest in the marble top of a chest of drawers. “I can’t play at all.”

  “My mother played.”

  She trailed a hand over a moth-eaten bit of embroidery framed on the wall, forcing the hitch from her throat. “She must have been … a fine lady.”

  “She could play like an angel. It was the only time she wasn’t weeping, the only time she wasn’t mourning all she’d left behind in France.”

  Bitterness seeped through his words. How hard it must have been for him, she thought, dragging her mind away from her own sorrow long enough to notice the shadows in his eyes, the stiffness of his shoulders. He’d told her he’d been barely twelve when his family was forced to move to New France, young enough to view the change as an adventure. Yet he’d lived in this house, watching his parents build this odd castle and spend their lives pining away over the past.

  No wonder he escaped into the wilderness, she mused, where pretty objects meant nothing and a man was forced to live for the moment.

  Genevieve approached him, her hands outstretched. “I’m sorry, Andre …”

  “It was a long time ago.” He stepped back, turned away from her, then gestured toward the stairs. “Come upstairs. My mother had a carpet from the Savonnerie specially made for the master bedroom.”

  Her empty hands fell to her sides. She watched him climb to the second floor. Grief lay as thick as dust in this house. Now it was her duty to exorcise the ghosts, to fill the house with warmth, to make it a home.

  She screamed a silent cry, then squeezed her eyes shut and grasped the carved portal to keep herself from falling into a heap on the floor. What a fool she was, a sentimental idiot. This place was more than she’d ever wanted, more than she’d ever dared dream. She’d be a rich woman, safe in a sturdy house; to the world around her, she’d be the perfect lady of the manor. With a child as well, a child of her own, to hold and to love. She should be singing praises to the skies, dancing in reckless abandon, for she’d triumphed, she’d survived and prevailed beyond all her imaginings.

  But it was all a mockery. Marie Suzanne Duplessis belonged here, sewing embroidery and plumping pillows, not Genevieve Lalande. Genevieve was a fraud, her life was a fraud. She’d never wanted to hope for more than this, and now she couldn’t help it. She’d been betrayed by her own convictions. Everything had changed.

  Love had changed her.

  She gripped the railing of the stairs and climbed to the second floor. With each step, she steeled herself to feign bright joy for the three months that remained before Andre returned to the wilderness. She wondered how she was going to live without him in this tomb of a building, for months and months untold, how she was going to live with the lie that was herself.

  She wondered, for the first time in her life, if she could really survive.

  ***

  Genevieve pushed open the inn’s wooden shutters. She winced as the blinding morning light poured in over the tangled linens. But for the warblers chirping among the plum blossoms, silence reigned in the street.

  Finally.

  All night, she and Andre had been serenaded with the shrieks and whoops of drunken Indians, the sounds of brawling men, the pounding of feet as people raced along the thoroughfare. The street below looked as if an army had marched through the mud, for footsteps had pummeled the dirt into a morass. Embedded in the sod were discarded breechcloths, caps, and other clothing, along with empty and broken bottles of brandy. Two voyageurs, looking worse for wear, snored below her window against the wall of the inn.

  Madness reigned in Montreal. It seemed as if no one cared what murder or mayhem was being committed in the streets. Not once had she heard the voice of soldiers. Andre had told her that Montreal
was always like this during the spring, when the coureurs de bois returned from the interior and Indians from distant tribes came to trade their furs. It made him even more short-tempered than he’d been at his father’s house yesterday. She’d tried to ease his anxiety the only way she could: by kissing him, by making love to him.

  Genevieve smiled as she found the empty tin of gooseberry jam on the floor beside the bed, a remnant of their loving of two nights ago. She tossed it in the pile of debris to be removed from the room. Startled, the pet beaver reared back from the tin and waddled to the cut-off barrel that stood in front of the blazing hearth. Climbing in, the creature rolled and frolicked in what was left of the cool bathwater. She and Andre had bathed in that barrel earlier this morning. Looking at it now, Genevieve wondered how they’d managed to fit into such a small space.

  She flushed. She knew exactly how they had managed to fit. They had shared a desperate lovemaking, merged their two bodies into one, and then sank into the tepid river water.

  She straightened from picking up the remnants of a loaf of bread, tossed the ends in the growing pile, and ran her hands over the velvet bodice and skirts. Her stomach was growling again. He had left only a few moments ago to find her some goose liver pate— if such a luxury could be found in this wilderness. She wanted him back already, tracing the fullness of her naked belly with eyes full of wonder and awe.

  A knock on the door startled her. Andre would never knock, she thought, then realized that as he left, he had probably told the innkeeper to send someone up to remove the bath and clean up the room.

  “Come on, beaver. You’ll scare the devil out of whoever has to pour out this bath.” Genevieve reached in and grasped the slippery creature in her hands, soaking her velvet in the process. He flattened his webbed feet against her as she walked toward the door and swung it open.

  She stared, startled, at the group who greeted her. She had expected a couple of the innkeeper’s boys, the same ones who had lugged the pails of steaming water up the stairs to her room this morning. Instead, she was faced with a soldier in full uniform, a woman swathed in a voluminous cloak, and a very officious-looking man in a blue satin doublet with scarlet ribbons around his knees and falling from his shoulders.

  The beaver bared his orange-enameled teeth and hissed. The officious-looking man stepped back in surprise.

  “He’s a pet,” Genevieve said quickly. She shifted the squirming bundle of beaver into the other arm. “May I help you, monsieur?”

  His eyes never left the beaver. “Is your husband here?”

  Genevieve hesitated, peering at the three. They didn’t seem to be a threat, at least not physically. “He’s not here at present, but he should be back any moment now. He’s gone to find some breakfast.”

  The officious-looking man turned and held out his hand for the woman who stood in the shadows. She walked forward until she was standing directly in front of Genevieve.

  “Tell us, mademoiselle.” The officious-looking man gestured rudely to Genevieve and spoke to the woman. “Is this the woman we are looking for?”

  The woman drew the edges of her hood back until it fell against her shoulders. Chestnut-colored hair tumbled in neat, well-coiffed curls on either side of her face. She lifted her lashes and her tear-filled eyes met Genevieve’s stunned green gaze.

  The beaver squealed in protest as Genevieve’s arms tightened around him.

  “Forgive me, Genevieve.” A single tear spilled out of Marie Suzanne Duplessis’s eyes. “Forgive me.”

  Chapter 17

  Andre clutched a small clay pot of goose liver pate and hastened toward the inn. It had taken him a full hour to convince the tavern owner’s wife to part with the delicacy, and it had cost him two beaver pelts in the process. The truth was, he would have paid a king’s ransom, anything to coax a smile to Genevieve’s face.

  She tried so valiantly to hide her feelings from him, but he knew the meaning of those long, unexpected silences, the hours she spent petting the beaver and staring off at the river. During the trip from Chequamegon Bay, her spirits had sunk deeper and deeper the closer they came to the settlements. Even her infrequent laughter held a quiver, and her eyes brimmed with sadness. Over the weeks, he had discovered that there were only three ways to make Genevieve happy: tease her, feed her unusual cravings, or make love to her.

  The situation tore him to pieces. He had considered bringing her back into the interior with him. He reasoned that childbirth was a natural process, that the Indian women could help her during the birth. Certainly the natives knew more about the birthing process than any French midwife, for in all his time in the woods, he had only known a handful of squaws who had died in childbirth, while in the same period, he had known of a dozen Frenchwomen who had died of the same in the settlements. The more he thought about it, the more possible it seemed. Then he remembered how Genevieve had suffered through the voyage from Chequamegon Bay, when her pregnancy had been only a gentle swell in her abdomen. She would never survive the voyage come fall. Furthermore, he could never ask her to take that risk.

  She belonged in his father’s house, seated behind the harp, strumming sweet music with white hands.

  He tightened his grip on the jar of pate. Now was not the time to think of such things. They had the entire summer before them. Now was the time to store up memories, in preparation for the long, lonely winter.

  Andre burst through the doors of the Sly Fox Inn. He kicked away broken chair legs and brandy bottles that littered the floor as he strode through the common room, then took the stairs two at a time. He heard someone call his name, but he ignored it; his wife and his child were hungry. Andre approached his room and pushed open the door.

  “Genevieve?”

  The cut-off barrel in which they had bathed still stood in the middle of the room. The beaver whined and waddled toward him, his chewed-off leash trailing behind him. The fire had died down to embers.

  Genevieve was nowhere to be found.

  “Monsieur, I tried to find you. …”

  Andre whirled around and glared at the innkeeper, who stood in the doorway, rubbing his hands nervously on his stained apron.

  “Where is she?”

  “They took her away.”

  “Was she ill?”

  “No, no, monsieur.”

  “What is it, then?” His heart pounded. “Who took her away?”

  “Monsieur Lelievre took her.” The apron knotted more firmly in his hands. “He came just after you left and demanded to know which room she was in.”

  Andre clutched the innkeeper by the shoulders and heaved him up flat against the door. “Who the hell is Monsieur Lelievre?”

  “The … the sub-delegate to the Intendant.” The innkeeper’s voice emerged as a squeak. “Sweet Mother Mary, I couldn’t stop him! He had a soldier with him.”

  “Where is she?”

  “He said … he said he’d be waiting for you.” The innkeeper coughed as the neck of his shirt dug deep into his throat. “In the western fort.”

  ***

  Andre stepped over the body of the soldier he had just knocked down with a blow to the face. A chair fell as the barricade he had erected against the outside door began to crumble beneath the efforts of the soldiers on the other side. He ignored it and scanned the room, striding over to the only other portal, the door that had to lead to Lelievre’s inner offices. He kicked the carved door open just as the barrier fell. A soldier cried for him to stop. Andre ignored him and entered the inner office. His glare riveted on the man in blue satin who calmly stood up behind a rosewood desk.

  Andre stopped a few feet from the desk. His chest heaved and a rib twinged where one of the soldiers had struck him with the butt of his musket. He flexed his sore fists and felt a ribbon of blood drip down his temple and over his cheek. Glaring at the man in the shimmering satin, Andre saw the crimson ribbons falling from his shoulders, the pristine white lace at his throat, and debated whether to kill him outright or to make him su
ffer.

  But first he needed to find Genevieve. It was that, and only that, that checked his bloodlust.

  “Put your muskets down, men.” Lelievre waved one beringed hand toward the soldiers who rushed in behind Andre. “I’ve been waiting for this man.”

  Andre’s nostrils flared as he watched Lelievre walk to a side table with a marble top and calmly pour some brandy into two tankards.

  “I was told you were once a soldier, Monsieur Lefebvre.” The glass bottle clinked against the side of the pewter cups. “A good soldier would determine whether he could enter at will before he attempted a full-scale siege.”

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “Yes … your wife.” Lelievre held out a tankard but Andre ignored it. He shrugged and placed it on his desk. “I suppose with such a goal in mind, a man doesn’t think much of strategy. I trust there aren’t too many casualties?”

  Andre took one step forward. Behind him, muskets clicked into readiness.

  “Monsieur, this situation is utterly distasteful as it is.” Lelievre sat down in his chair and gestured to another on the other side of his desk. “It will be easier if you sit and let me tell you about the whole sordid affair.”

  “If you don’t bring me my wife,” Andre began, his voice deceptively quiet, “there’s going to be one more casualty.”

  Monsieur Lelievre lifted a brow, and to Andre’s rage, a ghost of a smile passed over his lips. “I’ve always found you coureurs de bois to have tempers that explode more quickly than saltpeter.” He toyed with the curl of his long periwig and gestured again to the chair. “Dampen your powder. Violence won’t help your wife, who is safe and in my custody. Now please. Sit.”

  Andre ignored the offer. He took two steps and laid his fingertips on the top of the rosewood desk. He heard the soldiers move restlessly behind him.