“Corbeau, I understand that you are keeping a woman captive here. I must protest. Such behavior does not set a good example for the troops.”
“Come in and meet her,” Jacques said with resignation.
“Brother Denys,” Alain called. “May I introduce Madame Dupré? Corbeau assures me she is a respectable widow.”
The chaplain frowned. “Then what were you thinking of to bring her here?”
“I was thinking to protect her.” Jacques kept his voice polite. He hadn’t been called on the carpet in years and resented being made to feel like a naughty schoolboy. He grimaced at Alain who was watching with an expression of unholy glee on his face. “And she had no wish to join the other captives at the Indian encampment,” he added, knowing she would not have wanted that.
“But it simply will not do,” Brother Denys insisted.
“That is what I have been saying,” Mara spoke up. “Please, monsieur,” she appealed to the friar. “Perhaps you can help me. I only wish to find some respectable employment. I have no aversion to hard work. I can cook or scrub or do laundry, or perhaps help in the hospital.”
The chaplain looked at her, and his expression softened. She had won him over, and why not? She looked as innocent as any convent girl.
Only he, Jacques, had seen her clad only in his dressing gown, with her wet hair tangling around her shoulders. Only he had felt the softness of her skin, kissed those full lips. He clenched his fists and willed himself to stop remembering. His time alone with her was over. He had to let her go.
“Perhaps Monsieur Bernard and his wife could use some help at the trading post,” Brother Denys said. “I shall go ask. In any case, you cannot stay here. Pack your things, my child. I shall return shortly.”
After the friar left, Mara turned to face Jacques. “I would like my knife, please.”
He raised his brows. “So you can try to kill me again?”
A muffled laugh came from Alain’s direction. “You didn’t tell me about that, Jacques. Did she really try to kill you?”
“Stay out of this, Alain.”
She looked down at the floor. “I did not want to hurt you. I just wanted to be free. Can you not understand that?” She raised her gaze to his. “I will not try to stab you again, I promise. But the knife was my husband’s. I would like it as a remembrance.”
“Very well, madame. You may have the knife.” Jacques walked to his trunk, pulled out the hunting knife, and offered it to her.
“Thank you,” she whispered, dropping it in her pouch.
He should have searched the damn thing before they left the cabin, but he’d let her distract him with that gown. He grinned ruefully. “I’m sorry I never saw you in the blue silk.”
Mara glanced at Alain Gauthier, who said nothing but seemed fascinated by their conversation. Jacques made a mental note to straighten him out later.
“As I said, I shall wear it when the French are defeated.” Her face was pale but her chin was set, and her eyes shot blue sparks.
But not for me, never for me. He felt a sudden pang in his chest. Could it be regret?
Impossible. One thing was clear. He had to get this woman out of his mind while he still had some sanity left.
When Brother Denys returned with the news that the Bernards had agreed to take her in, she picked up her pack and left without a backward glance.
*
“I should never have brought her here,” Jacques murmured.
Alain looked up from his shaving. “What other choice did you have?”
Jacques rubbed a hand over his eyes. “None, really. I couldn’t let Gray Wolf and Crazy Badger kill her after shooting her husband.”
Alain crossed himself.
“I insisted we take prisoners, but Dupré fired first.”
Alain clapped him on the shoulder. “You did what you had to, old friend. But from now on, stay at the fort with your cannon. You don’t have the stomach for wilderness warfare.”
Jacques smiled faintly. “Don’t let anyone else know that. I have a reputation to maintain.” He turned away to stare into the fire. “Alain, she has such spirit. She ran away from us, into the forest, not even knowing where she was going, and when I found her…”
“She tried to stab you.”
Jacques chuckled. “In all my life, I have never been as angry as I was that day. I almost left her there to die in the forest, but I didn’t want to look weak in front of Gray Wolf. So I dragged her back with me.” He glanced at his friend. “She called me a savage.”
Alain grinned. “Perceptive as well as beautiful.”
Jacques rubbed the sore spot on the back of his neck. “Do you think she will ever stop hating me?”
Alain paused in drying his face with a towel. “What difference would it make? She is not for you, my friend.”
Jacques raised an eyebrow.
Alain put down the towel and faced him squarely. “Let me speak frankly. You, my friend, are a bastard. The only reason you’re wearing that uniform is because your father pulled the right strings at Versailles and no doubt made a large donation to the royal coffers.”
Jacques could not deny it. He’d been surprised himself when his natural father had managed to get him a commission. But when the Comte d’Archambault wanted something, no one could stop him.
“There are many who feel you have no right to be an officer,” Alain pointed out, “no matter that you were born to be a soldier. You have had to work twice as hard, be twice as competent, and twice as honorable as any other man.”
Jacques rubbed his forehead. Oh, he’d worked twice as hard, but as for being honorable, that had been a dismal failure. “Give it up, Alain. I have no reputation left in this army, so there is no use in pretending otherwise. Everyone expects me to behave badly. Why should I disappoint them?”
Alain shook his head. “I shouldn’t have to point out that in wartime it is what a man does that counts. You have a chance to redeem yourself. Take some advice from an old friend. Don’t jeopardize your career again over a woman.”
Jacques’s temper flared. “Mara is not like that. She is still loyal to her dead husband. She would never betray the man she loved.”
“I did not mean to question her virtue,” Alain said with a shrug, “but in my opinion, you need a woman who will bring joy into your life, not a grief-stricken widow. And she needs a man who can bring her stability and respectability.”
Jacques stared into the flames, pondering his friend’s words. That his career could be easily jeopardized was true, but he had plans to resign as soon as the war was over. As for joy, that was fleeting, as he had told Mara just that morning.
Mara.
With an unexpected twinge of disappointment, he realized that on one point Alain was right. She needed a steady, respectable man. Without a doubt, she deserved better than a dishonorable bastard.
*
The trading post was a long rectangular building opposite the main gate of the fort. Mara followed Brother Denys across the parade ground, trying to ignore the stares and whispered comments of the soldiers. She felt vulnerable without Corbeau to shield her from them.
Inside the building, it took her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the dim light. Looking around, she spied a counter behind which stood the largest man she had ever seen. The chaplain introduced her to Claude Bernard who welcomed her with a huge grin. He appeared to be about fifty years old with a luxuriant black beard sprinkled with gray. But his brown eyes sparkled with good humor and joie de vivre.
While he went to get his wife, Mara wandered around looking at the trade goods in the store—knives, blankets, kettles, combs, and tobacco. In one corner stood a table covered with scattered scraps of paper and writing materials.
Claude’s wife, Sophie, was a thin, tired-looking woman with the wisdom of the ages in her eyes. A blond girl of about six years peeked from around her skirts.
“Is this your daughter?” Mara smiled at the child who stared solemnly back at her.
Sophie patted the girl. “No, she is an orphan, taken in a raid.”
The haunted look on the child’s face tugged at Mara’s heartstrings. She knelt down and lightly touched her arm. “Then we have something in common, little one. I, too, am a captive.”
When the girl still said nothing, Sophie explained, “She does not speak French very well yet.”
“Is she English?” Mara asked.
“German, we think,” Claude answered.
“What is your name?” Mara asked her in German.
The girl smiled suddenly. “Barbara.” This was followed by a torrent of German that Mara could not follow.
“Slow down,” she said to the girl.
“Not now, Babette,” Sophie said in French. “You can talk with Madame Dupré later. Now go play with your doll.”
With a shy smile, Babette ran out of the room.
“How is it that you speak German, madame?” Brother Denys asked.
“I am Swiss,” she explained. “Though I grew up in a French-speaking city, my grandfather insisted I learn German as well. His family was originally from Bern.”
“Can you read and write, madame?” Claude asked with a gleam in his eye.
“Yes, my grandfather believed that all children should be taught to read.”
“Excellent.” Claude clapped his hands together. “Then you can help me with my correspondence and accounts.”
“Yes, of course.”
The big man beamed at them all. “Now I will not have to trouble the good chaplain with my worries.”
“But why…” Mara began, but broke off at the warning look on Sophie’s face.
The older woman leaned over to whisper in her ear. “My Claude cannot read and write. I can figure well enough to keep the books, but when it comes to writing letters…”
“I understand,” Mara assured her. “I will be glad to help you in any way.”
“Let me show you where to put your things.”
Sophie led her into a small room off the main store, which served as the family’s living area. It was similar to Corbeau’s quarters, only bigger. Instead of bunks built into the wall, a rope bed large enough for two occupied one corner. A table stood in front of the fireplace, where Barbara sat, holding a rag doll in her arms.
“I am afraid you must share the loft with Babette,” Sophie apologized.
“That will be fine,” Mara reassured the woman.
Anything would be preferable to the tension of living in the same room as her self-styled protector. No more arguments, no more attempts at seduction. In Corbeau’s presence, she had to stay constantly on guard. He was a difficult man to understand, sometimes harsh and domineering, at other times gentle and considerate. Like yesterday, when he brought the soft moccasins for her battered feet.
Mara shook off her thoughts. This was not the time to ponder the puzzle that was Jacques Corbeau.
Sophie invited Brother Denys to stay for dinner, and they all crowded around the table to enjoy Sophie’s beef stew and cornbread.
Claude kept them entertained with stories of his early days as a coureur de bois. Mara listened avidly to tales of his travels in search of pelts for the lucrative fur trade, amazed that anyone would willingly go into the wilderness for months at a time without contact with civilization.
“Would you not have been safer staying in Canada?” she finally asked.
“Safer, perhaps, but less prosperous,” Sophie explained. “There is good money to be made in trade. And Fort Duquesne is not such a bad place. Our food supply comes from the Illinois country. By the new year, the Canadians will be starving.”
“Was the harvest bad?” Mara asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Claude said with a wave of one beefy hand. “Good or bad, a great deal of the harvest will be diverted, shall we say, into the black market.”
“Disgraceful,” Brother Denys muttered through a mouthful of stew.
Claude nodded. “But that is the way it has always been. Every year, fortunes are won and lost in New France.”
“Why doesn’t someone stop it?” Mara asked.
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “As long as Bigot receives his share of the profits and the Governor General turns a blind eye, what can anyone do?”
“Who is Bigot?” Mara asked.
“He is the Intendant of New France.” At Mara’s frown, Claude explained, “The Intendant is the official in charge of finance and trade for the colony. He is also responsible for seeing the army gets the supplies it needs. And if some of it ends up lining his pockets…”
Mara shook her head. She had never heard of such a corrupt system, but then what else could one expect of the French? “I understand how a fortune can be made that way, but how are they lost?”
“At the gaming tables, madame. Intendant Bigot is a compulsive gambler, and one who is not always lucky. I hear Corbeau won a fortune off him the last winter he spent in Quebec.”
“Really?”
Claude chuckled. “Bigot was not well pleased. He pulled some strings and, voilà, your friend found himself transferred to the outer fringes of the empire.”
“He is not my friend,” Mara replied, but couldn’t help asking, “Did he cheat?”
“Corbeau? Oh, no, madame, he doesn’t have to. He’s the luckiest bastard I’ve ever met.”
“Perhaps not so lucky,” Mara observed. “He ended up here.”
“Does this seem so bad to you, child?” Brother Denys asked, a sympathetic expression on his face.
Mara looked around at the kind people who had taken her in and felt a pang of guilt. “Please, do not think I am ungrateful. But I am afraid of what may yet happen.”
The chaplain nodded in understanding. “The British are not far away. Soon Captain de Ligneris will have to decide whether to abandon the fort or prepare for a siege.”
Mara felt a sudden chill. Neither alternative gave her any comfort. What would happen to her if the French decided to abandon the fort? Would they take her to Canada with them or leave her to the mercy of the Indians? And if the British attacked first, all their lives would be in danger.
“Why do men fight?” she murmured, not expecting an answer.
“For God,” said Brother Denys.
“For king and country,” Claude added.
“Bah!” Sophie set down her spoon with a clatter. “They fight for money, or plunder. Or because they have been conscripted and have no choice in the matter.”
Mara looked around the table at her new friends as an idea struck her. Perhaps these people could give her some insight into the man who so puzzled her. “What about Lieutenant Corbeau? Why does he fight?”
Brother Denys looked sad. “Ah, that one. He fights to regain his lost honor.”
Chapter 7
Mara woke to the sounds of drums and shouting. She hadn’t slept much since being taken captive, but last night, with Babette’s warm little body curled up next to her, she had fallen into a deep sleep. Sunlight peeked into the loft through chinks in the roof, and she realized that dawn was long past.
Why hadn’t Sophie awakened her sooner? Why was the fort in such a stir?
Hurriedly, she dressed and climbed down the ladder to the kitchen where she found the Bernards. Once again, Babette clung to Sophie’s skirt, her head buried in the folds.
“What’s going on?” Mara asked.
“The British are outside the gates,” Claude said. “Only a mile away.”
Mara’s heart began to pound in her chest. The attack had come. Perhaps Gideon was out there now. A surge of hope that her ordeal might be almost over brought tears to her eyes. Please, God. Lead the British to victory. Deliver me from mine enemy.
Unexpectedly, Corbeau’s face flashed into her mind. But she realized with a jolt of shock that the vision was not the forbidding face of her captor. Instead, she saw the man who used his strength and authority to protect her.
She choked back an angry sob. He was her enemy, but she had no wish t
o see him hurt. Nor did she wish any harm to the Bernards or Brother Denys or Alain Gauthier. Why did everything have to be so confusing?
“Madame Dupré, are you all right?”
Mara looked up to see Sophie looking at her, a worried frown creasing her brow. “I’m just worried about what will happen.”
Claude bent to lift the now-sobbing Babette and cradled her in his arms, crooning to her. “Poor little thing, she has seen too much death for one so young. There is nothing to fear,” he assured her. “Our soldiers will beat back the English.”
That was what she was afraid of. Or was it what she wished for? Either way, she had to find out what was happening. She would go crazy if she stayed inside.
“I’m going out,” she said and turned to go.
“Wait, madame,” Sophie called after her. “Monsieur Fourgue will need our help in the surgery.”
“Very well, I will meet you there,” Mara said. “Please understand—I have to find out what is going on for my own peace of mind. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything rash.”
With that assurance she dashed out of the trading post.
*
Jacques stood on the ramparts, squinting into the sun, deciding whether to order an artillery barrage. To his left stood the remnants of a storehouse the British had set afire early that morning. Straight ahead, less than a mile away, was the enemy: about four hundred men, half Highlanders, half colonials, drawn up in ranks. Jacques hadn’t seen such a textbook formation since arriving in America.
He glanced down inside the walls at the fort’s defenders—Canadian and Louisiana militia, and Indians, about eight hundred in all, mingled together, blood fired and ready for battle. No, his big guns would be unnecessary today.
A furtive movement caught his eye. A woman was making her way toward the ramparts. It couldn’t be, but it was—Mara. What the devil was she up to?
Jacques hurried to meet her at the top of the ladder. “What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled at her. “Go back to the trading post.”
“Sophie said we will soon be needed in the surgery. But first I have to see what’s going on.” She glanced up at him, a pleading look on her face.
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